by Alex Pheby
But, then, what will you do when she is gone?
We went about our recording of the tomb. Later we filed the claim with the consulate. Still later, we hired professionals to photograph the tomb decorations, but when it came to the removal of the sarcophagus, I found ways to prevaricate and obstruct progress. I feigned illness, I ensured I could not be found when the time came to sign papers, I sent to England for funds when I had ready access to them in Egypt – I even argued unnecessarily with Mr Pfeffer, provoking him with curses until he resigned and left in a huff for Paris. I did everything I could to ensure no movement was made.
And your god being behind you
She names the portalkeepers: he who eats snakes, the burner, and the one who eats the excrement of his hinderparts.
STEPHEN JOYCE
PENSION DELPHIN, ZURICH, SWITZERLAND, MONDAY 13TH JANUARY, 1941, 3:30AM ONWARDS
It was dark outside and when the gentle shake woke him, and then the calm whisper, he saw them first by reflection in his window. There was a rectangle of light, his father silhouetted in it, and then the outline of his nonno leaning over him. In the first moments of being woken from his dream there was a disjunction – he couldn’t quite tell whether they were in the room with him, or on the other side of the glass. Also, where had the dream world gone? Walking beside the river, leaning down to feed fish who were half-emerged and gaping for bread. But fish do not come up onto the bank and beg for scraps, and fathers and grandfathers do not hover outside the windows of an upstairs room – the fish would drown in the air, and the people would fall to the ground.
He rubbed his eyes with the sleeve of his pyjamas.
His nonno’s hand was on his shoulder, and his lips were at his ear, and from far away there came the mournful tones of the air raid siren, wailing at the sight of incoming bombers and the fires they set in the homes and streets of the city.
—Up you get. Quick as you can.
He said quick, but there was no hurry in his voice. The boy turned to face him and sat up in one movement, moving with the fluidity that only the very young can demonstrate. Nonno leaned in to him and the boy reached out in reflex, his body expecting to be picked up and carried from the bed, but Nonno did not lift him. He embraced him instead and squeezed. The boy put his head over Nonno’s shoulder and yawned across at his father, who was slow to smile, but did it in the end.
—Where are your slippers?
Nonno was speaking to himself, not waiting for the boy’s answer, sweeping an arm beneath the bed and pulling them out, one at a time.
In the far distance there was a concussion, dulled by miles, sounding like a faint hit of a bass drum, the fur on the head of the drumstick dampening the sound, but not so much that it didn’t shake the glass in the window frame.
His papa turned, but he didn’t leave the rectangle of light. He raised his hand and placed it on the door frame, and sighed, and the boy blinked and swallowed the sleep away, knowing that his father’s muted reaction wasn’t what one should expect of the real in this situation, but having nothing to account for the disparity except the closeness of sleep and the bleeding into the world of the logic of a dream.
His nonno turned him around on the bed, evened out the legs of his pyjamas and slipped the slippers onto his feet. Then the old man stood and offered his hand to the boy.
He took it.
Even then there was no great urgency, as there had been in the past. Instead of today’s calm and measured quietness there had been bellowing, and slamming of doors, and the sense everywhere of anger and fear. The sleepiness of everything was of a harsher sort, of the jolting out of one world into another, the reluctance of the mind to accept a fate harsher than the one it dreamt for itself in the warmth beneath the blankets, and an overcompensation for this felt in the veins which surged with anxiety and a jittery eagerness to be in motion.
There was a flash, like lightning, that painted his papa and Nonno’s faces with harsh highlights, contrasting wedges of colour that edged the lines that travelled down from the corners of their mouths and across from the edges of their eyes. He had been backstage at a pantomime once and had seen the performers removing their make-up – white face paint makes a similar effect when you smudge it with a sponge, before it is all off and the principle boy ages in a second, then makes herself youthful again with a damp flannel.
It was a few seconds before they heard the noise. Just like with lightning, if you count until the thunder comes it will give you an idea how far away it hits. Perhaps that was it; there’s no need to panic if they are miles away. Panic is counterproductive. Proceed calmly to a place of safety.
He walked with his family out of his room, out of their rooms, and into the corridor. Here there were people panicking, but panic of this sort is oddly private, and each family panics by themselves, acting out their role in a little play that is much like their normal behaviour, except compressed into moments.
There is little conversation between groups who meet in corridors, and even ritual nods and liftings of hats are held in abeyance. Small children will stare at each other, while doors are locked, or forgotten possessions gathered, and he looked at the boy from across the way, but neither of them made any fuss, or spoke. Indeed, their expressions were utterly flat – there was no time to express anything, only to obey the important commands of the adults. This boy’s parents were engaged in an argument about keys, where his own papa had already locked the door, and as they left them behind and went for the stairs, he gave the other boy a little wave, which was reciprocated following a glance at his people to ensure they weren’t watching.
Their rooms were on the fourth floor and the lift was so slow that it wasn’t worth waiting for it, so they passed by the iron cage, which was empty anyway, and took the stairs. His papa took them two or three at a time, at first, but when it became clear that his nonno couldn’t match the pace, he waited with one hand on the brass rail for them to catch up. The boy could have done it – he could have done better, in fact. On mornings before the adults were up, he would take cushions from wherever he could find them and pile them on the mezzanine between floors three and four and jump from the stairs down onto them. He’d start at the first step and jump, which was no jump at all, more of a step, and then the second, which was still not taxing, nor the third, nor even the fourth and fifth. The sixth, though, was higher, and by the seventh or eighth, a certain degree of courage had to be mustered before he could throw himself down. His record was twelve, but this resulted in him flailing back and cracking his head. The inevitable crying brought his nonno out. He didn’t scold, but he did gather up the cushions and take them back before anyone else found out. They were dusty, something which later caused comment, but his nonno winked at him and the mystery was never solved.
—How’s Nonna?
There was the briefest of pauses, but neither of them replied. This is the way of adults; they find it very hard to do more than one thing at once. If they are talking on the telephone, they cannot also help with a paper aeroplane. If they are reading up on the requirements for the arrangements of permits to travel and visas, they cannot also reach for a high glass or cup so that he might pour himself some milk. If they are swearing and cursing to people in one room, they cannot also be wiping his nose.
So, if they are making their way down the stairs, they cannot also answer questions.
Coming up the stairs, in the opposite direction, was a man in uniform and he put his hand on papa’s shoulder and ushered him down, saying something in Swiss German that he didn’t understand. The man didn’t touch him or his nonno, only nodded to them, but once he was past he started shouting. Hurry up, or something like it. As the man ascended the stairs the soles of his shoes squeaked like mice, and when he turned the corner his heels clicked together. He wore green socks.
Nonno let go of his hand and gripped him by the shoulders. With his hands here he both used him as support and steered him around the corners of the stairwell, following p
apa. Nonno was heavy, but the boy was getting stronger as he grew, and he felt that it was something he could manage, this weight, albeit slowly.
They were overtaken on the way down the stairs by a grey-haired man carrying a doctor’s bag that he clutched to his chest like an infant. His chin was tucked over the handle and clasp, and so tightly was he holding it there that he had to look up from beneath his brows to see where he was going. As he rounded a corner he slipped, and even then he did not reach out with his hands, but let his shoulder hit the wall rather than risk dropping the bag. The man clinked: there was glass inside his bag, probably, and whatever was in this glass would be valuable. Nonno had taken him to see a western, once, where a man had ridden in the back of a wagon with a crate of nitro-glycerine on his lap; every bump on the road had this man sweating. The grey-haired man was like that with every step he took, though, like the man in the western, speed was of the essence and a certain amount of carefulness had to be sacrificed to avoid death by Red Indians. He was soon out of sight.
By now the last remnants of sleep were gone and the sharpness of everything was obvious all around: the growing shriek of the sirens as the ground floor approached, the cold night air encroaching from the open doors into the contained heat of the hotel, angry voices from corridors he did not look down. Still, his nonno’s hands on his shoulders were safety to him, his papa’s broad back was too, and now he felt hungry. When a child is asleep he does not feel hunger unless it is represented to him by something else in a dream. He can dream of pillows in place of bread rolls, or axes in place of chops, and by some logic, either visual or verbal, this will satisfy the stomach. When he is awake no such trickery will stop the rumbling if the boy is calm enough to eat, and despite everything he was calm enough.
—Will there be breakfast in the shelter?
He turned to look at his nonno’s reaction without slowing his progress. The old man’s face was in an intermediate expression, somewhere between puzzlement and resolution, and it stalled there until he had to look forward again or stumble on the stairs.
—Possibly not.
Now here came another man, moving stiffly enough that they were side by side for a little while, shoulder to shoulder, and the men behind him had to wait to get past. This man was dressed very nicely in dark tweeds and smelled of lemons and flowers, some hybrid cologne that made him seem sophisticated in a way that was impossible to account for. His cufflinks were silver squares stamped with a diamond pattern, and his shoes were perfectly polished. If the boy had been thinking carefully, he would have realised that the man was immaculately turned out, more so than any man had the right to be, disturbed from his rest in the middle of the night. That said, he might not yet have gone to bed, or might have risen particularly early, to make a morning meeting somewhere a train journey away, for instance. What time was it anyway? If the boy had looked before leaving the rooms, he would have seen that it was twenty-five to four.
This man’s hand was burned and scarred, the mottled red of his skin contrasting with the white of his cotton sleeve, the weight of its fabric, its starched stiffness, the perfection of cloth against the failure of his flesh. The boy looked up and his face was like it too, on the left side. The right side smiled down at him, but the boy could not manage to smile in return – the effort was somehow too much.
The burned man turned away and with an effort of his own that showed in small lurches into the railing, drew ahead of them, past Papa, and away. His cologne drifted in his absence, and the other men coming down the stairs behind him, anxious in having been restrained in their pace, picked up some of the scent of it, except too little to be noticeable.
When they eventually reached the bottom of the stairs the lobby was empty except for the owner. He was in a long night gown, like something from a comic short. He didn’t have a night cap, limp down his back, with a pompom at the end, nor did he have huge loose woollen socks (he had heeled brown leather slippers), but he gave that impression – a ridiculous emergence into the public realm of small comforts that should properly remain private.
—Cellar is full. Nothing to worry about. Word is that the raid is over Friesenberg.
—Can we get something to eat, then? For the boy?
—I’ll see, sir.
He turned, and when he was facing away he shook his head, as if to suggest that no one Swiss would think of asking for food at a time like this.
They stood in the lobby while the owner went into a back room, and through the glass doors the night played out on the street. There were restaurants and pensions in both directions and into and out of the segment defined by the edges of the doors passed men of all classes, walking, running, out at a time when they should properly be indoors, awake when they should be asleep, in the living world when they should be safely contained by their own unconscious minds, traipsing the streets they make for themselves there.
There is something of the dream world in the real as it is at twenty-tofour in the morning during an air raid, even if a boy is fully awake and has his awareness sharpened by hunger. There is the absence of some of the things we take as constitutive of reality – there are no cars on the streets, for example, and there is no light except that which leaks from poorly blacked out windows, since the streetlights do not operate after dark here in wartime. Men act in a way that is peculiar to situations like this, too – they will come out in public in their private clothes, as one might in a dream, and tiredness will affect their behaviour so that they act in ways that are not entirely like those that dominate the waking world. Perhaps they are not thinking straight, or perhaps this is what they would always do, given the chance, but they allow their hidden natures, their desires, to surface, as happens in a dream. They will clutch vials of serum to their chests, and protect them like infants.
Outside in the street, on the steps down to the cellar of the hotel opposite, there was a man with a cow. Despite the noise from the sirens, and the bass drum concussions of bombs falling in the distance, and the constant shouting of men with very important things to say, loudly, this cow’s distressed lowing was the loudest thing. The man had a rope around the cow’s neck and no matter how hard he pulled the cow would not go forward; it set its legs apart – four corners of a huge black and white rectangular cuboid, almost impossible in the straightness of its lines, especially at the back – and would not obey its master. He went round to the rear and pushed the right angles her thighs and hips made, but it had no effect other than to make her swish her tail in his face, something that enraged him. He looked around on the street, and, finding a broom leaning outside the restaurant next door, he began hitting the cow, first across its backside, and then, when that didn’t work, on the backs of its legs. The cow moved then, and the man dropped the broom and ran to the rope. The cow was in motion and the man sought to direct it, jamming his feet against the third or fourth step down into the cellar and leaning back, but instead the cow moved steadily off, dragging the man with her, out of the segment of street the doors gave view of, and into the war beyond.
—There are pastries, but they are not fresh.
—Thank you.
They left the lobby through the back door and the owner watched them all the way, until, as they passed the threshold, a man all in black, thin as a bird, with his hat under his arm drew the owner’s attention to him with a cough.
—Sir, if you find you have the need…
The man in black passed the owner a business card, which identified him as a funeral director, though the writing was too small for the boy to see. The owner had no pockets in his night shirt, and, anyway, what kind of time was this to be touting for business? What was the world coming to? First, foreigners asking for food in an air raid in the middle of the night, and now one of his own seeking to make a profit from the dead.
The owner sighed and admitted to himself that both these things were practical for them, if impractical for him, and he put the card on the counter beside the small silver salver on which mi
nts were piled, and now, for the boy, the pastries were a more pressing issue, lacking the smell that freshly baked goods had, but visually stimulating his appetite even without it. He didn’t see either the man leave or the owner retreat into the private areas since he was looking up at his nonno, and tugging his sleeve.
Nonno made him wait until they were standing on the steps down to the cellar before he passed him what looked like a horseshoe, coated with toasted almonds.
—It’s full. You’ll have to find somewhere else.
He had had these horseshoes before, and inside he knew there would be jam, and perhaps crème pâtissière.
—You’d turn away a boy and an old man?
At the bottom of the steps were two men in white uniforms, grubby at the cuffs and neck. If the trousers had been checks they might have been chefs, but their trousers were white too and while the jackets weren’t clean, they also weren’t smeared with food. A chef when rushed, as most chefs are, will wipe his hands not on the towels he carries in his belt, but down the sides of his jacket, occasionally across the front, or on the front of his apron. So, if he is working with sauces, gravies, or coulis, the colours of those things will stain his clothing – these men had none of that.
—Don’t worry, they’re bombing the Jews today, so this is a formality.
—Then why not swap?
One of them shrugged.
Whatever concussions and flashes had set off the sirens were memories. The cow and the undertaker, and now these two – orderlies from a spa? Dentists? Obstetricians? – and, most of all, the horseshoe pastry were things more recent in the memory, or right in front of him.