Rumi and the Red Handbag

by Shawna Lemay

  I went to the Museum every few days and the rest of the time I occupied the bench, my laboratory, my workshop. I thought she had been here and she knew I was there too. I thought this because after the first week, there was something scratched into the bench, just where you would rest your right hand if you were sitting in the middle of it, as I usually did. My bag was to the left; I had bought one of the museum’s shopping bags that had a photograph of their signature peacockfeather purse on one side and a closeup, a detail really, of the same on the other side. The bag had a zipper so that I didn’t have to worry about all my bits and pieces of paper blowing away and was capacious enough to hold the collection of small purses that Ingrid-Simone made for me.

  Maybe they had been there all along and I hadn’t noticed, two small letters. But you see the sun had come out and I had closed my eyes and put my hand on the bench, gripping it really, because I felt a bit of vertigo, like the bench was a boat and the waters had become a little less calm of a sudden. At first I didn’t think anything of the roughness beneath my fingers but something made me lift my hand and look underneath it. The initials, I.s., carved small, ever so small.

  Before I left town, before coming to Amsterdam, I went to visit Ingrid-Simone’s mother. I knew she lived at an extended care facility called Gardenia Hall. I expected flowers, great vases of flowers in the entryway, on a huge table, and that there would be small vases on the table in the common room where I found Mrs. Stephens. I didn’t know her first name but I expected it to be Camellia or Rose or Dahlia or Lily. Anthea, perhaps. I was looking for vestiges of Ingrid-Simone. A bowl of flower petals on a dresser, something she might have left. A small slip of paper with her miniature writing on it, a photograph that, turned over, would have a date on it, names of people.

  She didn’t speak, Mrs. Stephens, she stared at her hands, and I listened to her breathe in the corner of the common room, alone. The nurse left us before I could ask what Mrs. Stephens’ given name was and when I asked Mrs. Stephens, there was only staring and breathing. I listened. I softly told her that Ingrid-Simone had left Theodora’s and we were worried. But there was no change in the breathing. There were no flowers in the room. She wore a light blue dress, and the chair was grey and the walls were dovegrey. I listened to her breathe for a very long while, maybe three hours or more, because it seemed a way to pay homage to her existence. And I felt that she was dreaming, though I don’t think studies on Alzheimer’s patients would bear this out. I expected that she would tell me something extraordinary, which would seem like nonsense but that I could later decode. I thought she might have a moment of violence when I told her about Ingrid-Simone, but maybe she was subdued by drugs or had sunk so far into the abyss of her condition. And though the light in the room was low and filtered, Mrs. Stephens was a shadow, a breathing shadow, wrapped in a white blanket and wearing a most beautiful blue dress, with the most elegant, anklelength skirt. And her shoes were black, low heels, from the 1950s, a MaryJane. The kind that you can dance or take long walks down city streets in. Sturdy, yet elegant.

  At one point I leaned in rather close, which may have seemed overfamiliar. I thought she was murmuring something, I imagined she said, “my soul breaketh for longing of thee.” But I’m sure I only heard this because I wanted to hear it or because it had begun repeating in my head.

  There wasn’t a single gesture, not when I stood or left the room. I might not have been there. I learned nothing, though I remember the sound of her breathing, soft and even and quiet.

  ***

  I came to know the purses in the Museum intimately. I stared at them for hours. I spent a lot of time wondering who made the beaded and handworked bags from the 18th century.

  I loved looking at the embroidered bags, the reticules and the silk letter cases. One of my favourites was a deep red velvet satchel dating from the 17th century. At the end of the drawstrings were three ornate silver balls and a silver key and I imagined the key had magical properties, that it might open up other realms and that one day I would write a book about that purse, that key. After gazing at the velvet purse, I headed to the Chatelaines. I thought Ingrid-Simone would like these, the small objects hanging on chains. There were miniature scissors, pincushions, thimbles, knives, fans, perfume bottles, dance cards, and even a miniature purse made of silver mesh.

  Walking through the museum, I tried to hear the breathing of the purses, as Ingrid-Simone would. And I thought I did hear them, in the Lucite purses, in the flapper bags from the 1920s, in the Kelly bag, and in the bags shaped like telephones or champagne buckets or adorned with images of flamingos or Madonnas. When I left the museum to take up my life on the green bench, I was drained. Even though the handbags were all behind glass, I felt like I had been breathing in the lives of all the women who had once owned these bags.

  Sometimes I watched the short film on the history of the museum or glimpsed it as others watched it. I loved the part where the opening of the museum is filmed and all the women are walking around with their own purses, looking at the purses. When I sat on the bench, I had a heightened awareness of all the women carrying bags and purses and the film continued in my mind. Women glided by on their bicycles on their way to work with medium grey satchels across their bodies. Tourists walked by gripping their handbags. And I sat on my bench, with my huge shopper and my smaller handbag, and none of us knew what the others were carrying. I pulled out my book on the bags in the museum and looked up the plastic, seethrough ones on page 278 and 279. But even these didn’t offer up perfect clarity—one was adorned with pink fabric flowers and the other was faceted in the manner of cut crystal. To every disclosure there is a degree of obscurity, at times a softening, a veil of flowers.

  ***

  There were a few books in my peacockfeather bag. In one I read, “It’s never quite right to make a character disappear or die.” And I moved from that passage and read the line from Clarice Lispector that “each of us is responsible for the entire world.” I was dedicated to being the instrument of Ingrid-Simone’s reappearance. I was dedicated to listening for her footsteps over my right shoulder. Waiting. Keeping her disappearance company.

  ***

  One afternoon, I sat on the green bench on the canal and wrote for hours, all the thoughts that came into my head. An entire notebook of streamofconscious thought, of wandering. And while I did this, I listened for her,

  I felt as though I would know if she were coming toward me, over my shoulder. That I would feel the disruption the air would make.

  I wrote down her favourite lines from Rumi, “What is the soul? / I cannot stop asking. / If I could taste one sip of an answer, / I could break out of this prison for drunks.” Had she tasted one sip of the answer?

  I wrote down things I noticed when we worked together that winter at Theodora’s. I had noticed that when she spoke to a woman who came into the store, or maybe two friends, that she would often be ignored. It was a strange phenomenon so far as I was concerned. They would ask her something and she would respond, intelligently and to the point. But the two friends would suddenly talk over her, cut her off, forget that she was there, looking right through her with glazed eyes. Ingrid-Simone would be left standing midsentence with her mouth open. Once, she glanced over at me and pulled a face, rolled her eyes and stuck out her tongue. The women didn’t even notice. She mouthed to me, see? Then she shrugged and walked away, looking at me over her shoulder with a smile. Later, when we talked about what had happened, laughing at the complete rudeness of these two women, she said, —Oh, Shaya, this happens to me all the time, love, all the time.

  —It’s because you’re on a different frequency, I said fervently, —a more mystical frequency. You have a dimension too many, I said, quoting from Steppenwolf.

  —That’s lovely, Shaya, hmmmmm, she said, and paused a rather long time. —But I understand that they see I’m nothing. Which is interesting in a way, isn’t it? How little I registe
r, how small it is possible to be. How insignificant. How inconsequential. And then, I do think that some people must feel that to rob a small creature’s dignity from them gives them more power. Do you think, Shaya?

  I don’t remember what else we said to each other after that. But I remember how I felt near the end of the winter, how these daily slights compounded, how they wore us down and made us soulheavy, so that we couldn’t laugh as much anymore about them. How we became frayed and maybe dangerous because of them. We were bored, had exhausted the possibilities of the store perhaps. We became less of ourselves. And tired, how tired we became. Always yawning. I remember Ingrid-Simone once put her head on the front desk late one afternoon, how she fell asleep, standing. I thought she was joking. I’m not sure how long she stayed like that but the front door opened and the bell jangled and she sang out so beautifully, —hello, welcome to Theodora’s, which is something we had long given up on doing. Even when we walked right up to customers or stood beside them and said hello, how many times did they not return the hello? No time for hello. We were of no consequence and didn’t deserve the courtesy. Instead, they launched into what they had come for, their wants. We still greeted people who were in our vicinity or those who approached us but we had certainly given up saying hello to anyone who walked into the store.

  I remember Ingrid-Simone wincing once, shuddering, when I likened us to WalMart greeters. For a split second, I think she doubled over, I imagine she had, as if she’d been punched in the abdomen, feeling a deep psychic pain. But then she raised an eyebrow and said, —oh no love, I’m sure they get paid far more than we do.

  I remember nodding and saying to Ingrid-Simone, —hmmmmm.

  And she responded, —hmmmmm.

  Then we went back to whatever tedious task we were doing.

  ***

  She was the sort of person who crossed the street without looking over her shoulder.

  She was attuned to birds flying overhead, could feel their shadows before she saw them. She loved when this happened and followed the shadow with her eyes as long as she could. Had often broke into a run without realizing it for several paces, trying to catch up to the shadow of a crow or a seagull, her hand outstretched.

  She too loved the book Jane Eyre and could feelingly recite many lines from the book. When Jane says to Rochester, “Do you think because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! —I have as much soul as you, —and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty, and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you.”

  She made me a purse dedicated to Charlotte Brontë, in moss green. Inside were the items Jane Eyre took when she left Rochester and Thornfield Hall. Some linen, a locket, a ring, a smaller purse containing twenty shillings. The handkerchief and the gloves that she attempted to trade for a bread roll.

  ***

  She noticed how women carry their handbags and divined meaning from it. Over the shoulder, across the body, under the arm, dangling from the arm, gripped. —I once saw a woman who would find a wall to put between her hip and the purse, she said. —I followed her around the mall one day when I was there. She would stop to look at something and take it to the nearest wall, where she would place her purse and then throw out her hip to meet it almost like the beginning of a dance. She stopped to buy a coffee and then stood to drink it for a while, with her purse against the wall. I’ve seen women who trailed their purses from one finger. Some prefer the wrist. I’ve seen women put their purses between their legs, or hold them in their teeth. I’ve seen them tangle the strap of their purses around their arms or hang them so low they nearly reached their knees.

  —You can tell so much about what a woman is going through by the way she holds her purse. Is she composed and serene? Or has she lost her nerve, hanging on by a thread…

  ***

  She seemed happiest when cleaning the purses, repairing them. She used Crazy Glue to affix loose rhinestones. She had a special cloth to shine leather and another cloth for the insides of the purses. Sometimes I saw her open a purse and say into it, —hmmmmm, almost as though she were trying to resuscitate it. Maybe she was saying hymn, a prayer. When I caught her eye after she has did this, she laughed so infectiously.

  ***

  I wanted to write about her as beautifully and as tenderly as love. I wanted to say that I sat on the green bench and meditated solely on Ingrid-Simone. I had an idea, that if I could concentrate perfectly on her, focus my attention with devotion and clarity, that she would reappear, return. And if I spent time learning about purses and handbags and frequented her yearnedfor Museum of Bags and Purses, that would be my way of keeping her company.

  I made lists of all the names for handbags. Clutch, reticule, pouch, pocketbook, balantine, sac, duffle, rucksack, messenger, grip, workbag, evening bag, dance bag, saddle bag, Kelly bag, carpetbag, backpack, chatelaine, minaudiere, baquette, hobo, satchel, petite portmanteau, bracelet bag, lunchbag, boudoir bag, miser bag. This list became a mantra for me and I repeated it as I walked back to the small flat I was renting. My favourites were, reticule, clutch, and portmanteau, as this combination made for a nice walking pace, I found.

  ***

  She had made me one last miniature purse, though at the time I didn’t know it was the last. But first there was a large white handbag, in honour of Clarice Lispector. Full of flowers. Ingrid-Simone had watched the YouTube video of the only time Clarice Lispector was ever interviewed on film, near the end of her life. She sat in an awkward leather chair in a desert of a studio. She held a large white purse in one pale hand and a cigarette with the other. Not understanding Portuguese, Ingrid-Simone listened to the spaces and silences and pauses. —Her pauses, said Ingrid-Simone, —were the most insightful and holy pauses I have ever heard.

  She had read The Stream of Life, the book that I most revere, the book that is for me, even in translation, the book beyond all books. It made me feel as though we are part of a flow; that life continues, that life goes on, as they say. As someone who embraced the study of genetic criticism, I was fascinated to read about Clarice Lispector’s friend Olga Borelli—how she had helped her structure the book. “Delicate interventions” they are called in the biography of Clarice Lispector, Why This World. Olga is quoted as describing the process of editing the book as “breathing together, it’s breathing together.”

  I read this book, this biography of C.L., when I worked at Theodora’s with Ingrid-Simone. I even wrote the author, Benjamin Moser, a short message on Facebook and he wrote a short note back, which made me happy. An acknowledgement of an acknowledgement. I remember thinking that when I read the line about breathing together my process and obsession with being the secret chronicler of Ingrid-Simone’s life was described. All the strange bits of paper I wrote on when I got home from work, sitting in my chair covered with the rough turquoise fabric. Even in the store I wrote on scraps. I became less and less secretive. Sometimes I wrote on the back of a receipt that someone didn’t take. I wrote down things while Ingrid-Simone spoke and her eyes twinkled. Did she think I was writing down a poem, or a note to remind myself to purchase milk on the way home? I don’t think so. I think she knew more or less what I was up to. That I was attempting to take her likeness, as an artist would, to draw the contours of her face, her jetblack hair, her lovely olive skin. But I was doing this with scant words, scrawls and word impressions. At times I tried to write quickly enough to document exactly what she said but I was never quick enough. I wanted, if nothing else, to capture the particular way she breathed, her pauses. The way the short film of Clarice Lispector captured Clarice’s breathing, her smoking, the way she was burned on one hand, and the way she clutched her large pure white and holy handbag.

  I recounted the recollection of Olga Borelli to Ingrid-Simone —where she talks about her friend, how she kept the fragments of The Stream of L
ife, some of which were written on “the back of a check, a piece of paper, a napkin.” Borelli went on to say, “I still have some of those things at home, and some of them still even smell of her lipstick. She would wipe her lips and then stick it in her purse.”

  The miniature purse that Ingrid-Simone made to honour Clarice Lispector was white, larger than the other purses she had made, but still tiny. Within: a tiny typewriter, a piece of paper with words and lipstick, a turtle, and flowers. A rose, a violet, a sunflower, a daisy, an orchid, a tulip. One of everything you might conjure in your mind when you think of Clarice Lispector. The purse was overrun with flowers. The sadness of flowers.

  The last purse was one for me, Shaya Neige, full of snow and sticky notes. “Remember me”, one yellow scrap said. How could I not? The tiny purses, like gondolas, skimming toward me, down preordained canals, untraceable.

  ***

  I walked over to the Albert Cuyp market and wandered through the throngs of people, so many tourists. I bought frites and mayonnaise, rather than my usual tomato soup from the restaurant on the opposite corner, then hurried back to my bench. I was always worried that someone else might take it up but this never seemed to be the case. Once in a while someone alighted in my absence but they didn’t stay long. Perhaps they sensed me hovering, they sensed my need.

  I slowly ate my frites and though I tried to concentrate on Ingrid-Simone, my thoughts moved from her to the store, to Florine. I said I would keep in touch with her but I saw no point and as yet I haven’t. I thought back to the day in the hayfield, how hot it was, the intoxicating smell of newmown hay. I remembered the bicycle, the familiar feeling I had when the woman named Maureen on the bicycle spoke. Her plaid shirt. I remembered wiping the sweat from my brow, how heavy my bag felt. All the thoughts I was trying to walk out of my head. The way a very long walk can empty you, still those voices that disrupt, that worm and stammer into you, that are stronger and more persistent than breath. And it occurred to me that this woman on the bicycle, maybe she was not Florine at all.