by Alex Pheby
Does the soldier deserve credit for the successful prosecution of a campaign of war? When territory has been seized and the corpus of the army advances, to whom does the credit accrue? To the general, correct, and the soldiers must console themselves with the spoils of the conquered territory – its wine cellars, its sausages, the bodies of its women. On the converse side, who has to fall on his sword if his decision results in defeat? If there are mounds of corpses steaming and crow-pecked in the morning, dew on their beards and moustaches, dew on their eyelashes, long and stiff like kittens’. Like Kitten’s? Ha, ha. Who is it that must answer for the error? Not the soldier, no indeed, miss! Not she. Unless of course she be dead, heaven forbid, and answers in that way for her failure.
And when her whole scene is disposed of, decided against, then does the soldier have the right to question her officer, to insist on a rationale? – no amount of chest beating or hair pulling can force a man to explain to a girl the dictates of his art.
I looked at my colleague, hoping to see in his eyes some understanding of what we were seeing that was lost to me, but he was as baffled as I was.
We did differ in one important respect though – he thought this was all enormously wonderful, and outlined the benefits to our expedition and reputations that a discovery of this sort would bring. There is nothing the papers like more than a mystery, he concluded, and this mystery would be the making of us if we could only play it correctly. Providing we kept this find to ourselves, jealously guarded the tomb’s secrets and, after sufficient study came to some easily understood conclusions as to the function or provenance of the tomb, it would be worth a fortune to us, just as the discovery of the boy king’s tomb and the mysteries associated with that made the fortunes of Carter, et al.
Geb at the head of the corporation of the Great Ennead has healed you
Duamutef, the jackal, overlooked by the goddess Neith, protects the stomach. The uterus and its associated generative organs are redundant in the afterlife and, like the brain, are discarded.
THE SHUYET SHADOW OF LUCIA JOYCE
PARIS, 2ND FEBRUARY 1932 ONWARDS
Under what circumstances may James Joyce beat his wife? No doubt there are many. He may beat his wife since she acts shrewishly, and is always ready with an insult the husband does not deserve, such as that he pays too much attention to his work and not enough attention to her, so that she, like an untended garden, goes to seed in the absence of his affections.
James Joyce may beat his wife since she is inadequate to the tasks that are allotted to her, and the house is rarely dusted, and the surfaces remain covered in crumbs even when he has been out for several hours. When he comes home for his lunch and pours himself a glass of water his sleeve is covered with jam from where he has leant on a countertop. The floor crunches when he walks on it, because something – perhaps eggshells, which would be appropriate, given the saying – has not been swept up from breakfast, and what’s the point of having a broom if it is never used? And he chases her from room to room like black Schmutzli, giving her the benefit of the birch twigs against the buttocks and upper thighs.
He may beat his wife also since he is drunk, a condition he induces in order to be less sensitive to the shrewishness of his wife, and less aware of the poor standard of cleanliness, of which his mother would not approve, and to allow him to sleep at night against the sobbing of his beaten wife who will not be quiet, but keeps the bedclothes pulled over her, even if it is very hot in the house.
Under what conditions may James Joyce beat his daughter? These are also numerous. He may beat his daughter since she is wilful and will not do what she is told, and shows surliness when requested to do even the simplest of tasks – such as sweep up discarded eggshells and wipe breadcrumbs and jam from the work surfaces. She is growing up to be a right madam, which she gets from her mother, that much is clear.
He may beat his daughter for coming home late having been out God knows where, with God knows whom, doing God knows what. What time do you call this? You’ll be getting a name for yourself.
A father may also beat his daughter, though barely, at her menarche. She comes to him confused, brow furrowed, blood on her fingertips with not the slightest idea what has occurred, since the selection of proper bedtime reading for a child has been rigorously achieved. At that point the father may deliver one hard slap to either cheek of the face in order that he draw blood up from the uterus to the head, and so lessen the menstrual flow and prevent undue soiling.
This slap has a symbolic function, also, of bringing the girl to an awareness of herself. It forces her to understand what she must do in the future, which is to leave the world of children behind and prepare to enter the world of women. This world is characterised not by that easy and surly resistance to work that she has so far evidenced, but is primarily a thing of pain, duty and anxiety. She ought to get used to it now rather than later. If James Joyce wishes, he may deliver a kiss to Lucia’s forehead, to balance things out, though equally he may wish to leave this to the mother.
Under what conditions may a daughter beat her father?
None at all.
Regardless of what the father does with a broom, or how much he resembles black Schmutzli, the evil Christmas elf, or how irritating the newly menstrual daughter finds him, she may not lay a finger on him. He is the God-sanctioned authority in the household, and if one does not believe in God then he is equally sanctioned by the state and by general opinion in all the civilised parts of the world. Certainly, if one wishes to read the entirety of the encyclopaedia, or spend time amongst isolated tribes in the Amazon, or in Papua New Guinea, one might find mention of matriarchal societies, but does the girl live in one of these places? By God she does not, and so she should treat her father with respect in his own home lest she induce him to go to the broom cupboard, or take off his belt, or have a fourth or fifth tumbler of whisky, after which all bets are off.
Can, then, Lucia beat her mother? No, she may not, since Nora Joyce (née Barnacle) is the father’s representative in household affairs when the father is not in the house. Should the daughter beat the mother then she is delivering a beating to her father, by proxy, which we have already seen is forbidden. If the mother displays her jealousy by repeatedly smacking the daughter on the calves, or demonstrates favouritism toward her son by ignoring the daughter until the daughter acts up, and then pushes the daughter away, even so much so that the daughter falls and bangs her head against a low table and raises a bump the size of a songbird’s egg, this does not give the daughter the right to enact violence on the body of the mother. If she has a complaint, then this should be reserved for when the father returns home from his place of work, or a bar. It should then be uttered in very mild and plaintive tones out of earshot of the mother. The father, should he give the complaint credence, can then beat the mother himself, when he has had a skin-full, and the wife complains about the daughter’s behaviour and what exactly is he going to do about it? He’s been told a thousand times.
If, many years later, the mother puts any number of obstacles between the daughter and her chosen career – let us say dancing, which is more of a hobby than a serious attempt to earn a living – that does not give the daughter the right to pick up a chair and hurl it at her mother, even if it does only strike her glancingly on the ankle. This can really hurt, as anyone who has caught their elbow on a pub bar will attest, the joints being singularly prone to knocks of this kind. It can send a person hopping round the room in an odd mixture of giddy, almost good-tempered, delirium and excruciating pain.
So what is to be done with a daughter who attempts violence on her mother? She should be taken to a sanatorium, where she can then be treated for the disorder that afflicts her. For a father to enact violence is understandable, and by association also a mother, since she is the father’s proxy and his rights devolve onto her in this regard, but for a daughter to attack a mother, or father, is to break any number of laws, including the biblical law that one s
hould honour one’s mother and father.
Nor should that girl be allowed to interfere with the life of her brother, Giorgio, even if his wife is many years his senior and it is the scandal of the year, though no-one will say as much. The bohemian set in which this brother mixes thinks nothing of it, but what of the older generation with which everyone is obliged to live? He might not care, but he doesn’t have to put up with the snide comments of Madames X, Y and Z, or the sniggering of a Monsieur whose surname is represented by the Greek letter gamma, or sigma, or mu. Even so, Lucia has no right to deputise for the mother’s indignation and make trouble with this new wife. Nor should she, in an attempt to regain the high opinion of the daughter that was previously evidenced by the brother, make extortions with menaces against him, the exact details of which are shrouded in secrecy, obviously, since to make them plainer would be to do the work of the extortionist, and why is she asking? Please leave it.
I could not deny the logic of his points. He was a Cambridge man and a great intellect in his way, but the speed with which he had come to his conclusions I found troubling. I am slower than him, that I admit, and where he leaps to conclusions it would take me days to conceive of by myself, the scaffold of his thinking, if you’ll accept the metaphor, is often rickety or non-existent, whereas I will tend to build an edifice on first principles, each block firmly placed on the ones below it. The first principle here was that there was something wrong, and that the nature of this flaw should be examined before any further consideration of the future.
Also, I think we differ in our ethics – I would not want to profit from a crime, even if it is committed by another. Further, my first feeling is for the victim of the crime, not for my own advantage. My colleague took an entirely different, more self-interested position.
Joining your head to your bones
Now mummified, the deceased is taken from the house of purification and returned to her family. Seventy days have passed, and the preparation of the tomb is complete.
MYRSINE MOSCHOS
PARIS, JULY 1933
Myrsine takes the satchel from the counter, gives instructions to Hélène, and leaves. It’s so hot outside that the shutters are all closed against the sun, and she has to hold her free arm up to shield her eyes in the crook of her elbow. Like home, today.
There are an infinite number of ways to get where she’s going, some of which will be shadier than others, but unlike Hélène, who is so pale for a Greek, her skin can take a tan. It looks good on her, so she walks the direct route to the river where she rolls up her sleeves, puts her empty satchel over her shoulder, and crosses the Pont des Arts to the Rive Droite, which seems appropriate.
The Joyce’s apartment is on rue Galilée, and while she has been there many times she doesn’t often go from the shop – that’s her sister’s job. Today she’ll kill two pigeons with one shot, or one stone – however they say it – and she’ll ‘take the post’ by whatever routes she feels like. Past the Tuileries, through the Tuileries, wherever.
It’s not unpleasant work this morning, but it is work – she enjoys Shakespeare and Company, enjoys the feeling that she is indispensable, enjoys being the sensible one amongst so many deliberately impractical protagonists of their own melodramas. All the while so unselfconsciously beautiful! This side of the bargain, though, is more of an imposition. But why not? Shouldn’t work be an imposition? If it was all une partie de plaisir then she oughtn’t to be paid for it.
She exits through the Place de la Concorde – it is the quickest way, and even if it weren’t, the sun is high and why walk in the shadows?
The heat brings out the tourists, like ants from their nest, and they swarm past her. She sighs like a Frenchwoman, and though she catches herself, she doesn’t let any hint of her awareness of the hypocrisy of this show on her face – she’s been here long enough; she’s earned it. Anyway, isn’t she part of a more international crowd? Travellers have little in common with sightseers; they gather together for camaraderie and the shared commitment to their art. She can sneer at the crowds from that perspective instead, and if anyone picks her up for the fact that she’s not French, she can claim a better, broader, more intellectual community. And if that doesn’t work, then she gets to sneer by virtue of her bohemianism, which she is on her way to demonstrate, while they huddle in their bourgeois little tribes eating stale bread and bland cheese on a chequered tablecloth on the grass on their holidays.
And she does all of this so effortlessly and without having to consider it! Silly, really, the things we think. Still, the unexamined life…
Suddenly she feels she’s had enough of being in the sun, so she cuts left between the high apartment blocks, into the streets where one side at least is always in shade. Here she doesn’t feel as if she is on display, and the consciousness of her self-consciousness can give way to the everydayness of everything that it’s almost impossible to experience in the avenues of history. Who can truly feel as if the Champs-Élysées is their home? With all that grandeur?
In the side streets there are doors opening, people on bicycles, tobacconists shouting, backfiring engines – the scale is reduced, and a person need not constantly live up to the impossible. Architecture, it has a lot to answer for. It dwarfs the soul and makes everybody feel insignificant. Which is why it’s better to live in the poorer parts of town, where the dishevelment of the everyday removes the burden of posterity, and where the real work gets done, where real change is made, where real experimentation takes place, out of view of the giants of the past. Which is why they all crowd into the shop… couldn’t be more dishevelled. Her fault, though, perhaps. Still, makes a nice justification for not dusting.
The longer she spends in the back streets, the more she forgets the river and the more she realises that even the underside of the right side is still too much – the shops are so expensive, the people arguing so much better dressed… even the vagrants have an air of superiority. How much is she being paid for this? Anyone who catches her eye seems to see straight through any pretence she might adopt on her own turf, and looks inside her, to a place where she feels uncertain. Or perhaps they judge her on her skin, since they are all so pale here, while she is like patinated copper. Her skin is like tanned leather, like a Turk’s. She rolls down her sleeves, hitches the satchel onto her shoulder, and lets her eyes follow the cracks on the paving stones.
Myrsine should have come by bicycle – there’s something about pedalling that calms the mind, and the shorter journey time means there is less chance that one’s fragile and delicate mood will change between travelling to a task (which implies some kind of willingness) and arriving at it (when reluctance has gradually won out).
She stops at a drinking fountain, and approaches it from a number of angles, hoping to find one that doesn’t risk getting her dress wet. Any angle will do, don’t be so ridiculous. Stalling now? Why? Coy, now? Embarrassed? Ridiculous! Doesn’t she live amongst people for whom modesty is anathema? Especially governing this kind of behaviour. And if there is one thing she is not uncertain of it is her body. She has seen enough nudes to know that her body is something to be proud of. Enough people have said so. Artists, for God’s sake. Is it Lucia’s body that disturbs her? No, not at all. Anyway, perhaps there will be none of that. Often it’s a sisterly chat, or a game of cards. Sketching.
There is a bar run by Moroccans that she has been to. They know her there and like her, sensing a kindred spirit, and they don’t raise an eyebrow when she wants a drink or two, so she slips in before it’s too late.
There are rounds of cheerful hellos, chefs brought out to see her, curious looks from patrons. Generally, she would sit outside, but today she doesn’t want to be overlooked, so she sits with the men playing games and smoking. They bring her a coffee, very bitter, even with sugar, and spiced. She orders pastis, which they don’t have, but unusually they do have arak, which is fine.
Sitting alone she is the object of staring, but she has the protection of the st
aff who have sat her near the counter and who make slow, halting, but consistent conversation. This keeps the other men at bay. They ask her about the shop, about the authors who come in, and whether she knows of a string of writers whose names she cannot translate into words, let alone recognise. One of the waiters goes into the back and returns with a book, but it’s in Arabic and she can’t make that out either. She smiles anyway, and they press the book on her, waving away any attempts for her to give it back.
She pays and goes, to a mixture of cheerful farewells and suspicious stares, and on the street it is very bright again, and hot. There doesn’t seem to be any point hanging around, so she goes to the apartment building and rings the bell.
After, on her way out, she meets James Joyce. He takes notes from his wallet with the manner of a man who has been waiting: he seems stiff and too focussed, his pleasantries are rehearsed, safe. When she comes across a busy man he’s often too preoccupied with what he was doing before, or flustered by not expecting to see her, to be completely on his guard. She likes times like that, when things are said, or gestures made that are truer in some way than at other times, even if the meeting as a whole is more awkward. This meeting with Joyce is awkward, but more because he is playing out a scene, and the lines he’s written for her are so banal and predictable that she can scarcely deliver them with any sincerity. Warm, isn’t it? Yes, very. How are things at the shop? Fine, thank you. Any post? Not today. Thanks for this, we really appreciate it. It’s nothing, and thank you.