by Deborah Levy
My most recent customer brought his terrier dog with him – it whimpered under the bed for the ten minutes it took. He has a tattoo on his upper arm, an anchor with roses, and underneath, the word MOTHER. A lot of men have tattoos with MOTHER written on parts of their body. After he had finished he said, ‘I can taste coal in my mouth’ and then he confessed that something had gone wrong between him and his mother. ‘It’s civil war, Tremor, it’s civil war between me and her,’ which might be why he likes to have sex in his car to the sound of war guns – it’s a game he likes to relax to.
My own son has discovered he is good at making things grow. He’s got green green fingers and he’s hit on the idea of growing roses in the window-box to sell at the tube station. Despite the lead from the traffic they are blooming blooming blooming. We bought everything together, the soil and seeds, read how to plant them, the light and position and how much water; I watch his seven-year-old body bent over them every morning and hope he will never have to fight a war, certainly not a civil war. I hope he will never want to beat a woman because something went wrong between me and him and he wants to take it out on her. Yesterday, when we were having supper together, my youngest daughter started to sing
‘Lavender’s blue, dilly dilly
Lavender’s green
When I be king
You shall be queen’
and we all joined in because we know the song has a special meaning for her. She had two budgies, one called Lavender Blue and the other Lavender Green and they died seven months ago. She told me she’d buried them in the park. But yesterday she said, ‘Mum, you know how I buried Lavender Blue and Lavender Green that day . . .’ and I said, ‘Yeah,’ and she said, ‘Well I didn’t.’ She stood up, perfectly serious, took her pencil box – one of those wooden ones with a sliding top – off the sideboard and, in front of us all, opened it up. There was Lavender Blue. Just lying there like he’s having a blissful night’s sleep, except his eyes have rotted. She said, ‘I put your scent on him.’ I said to her, ‘Where’s Lavender Green then?’ She shook her head and said she couldn’t remember where she had put him. Her brother and sister began to sing
‘Call up your men, dilly dilly
Set them to work
Some shall make velvet
And some shall make shirts’
giggling and nudging her until she gave up and told us to be quiet while she led the way to my bedroom, smiling at me to see if I was cross. She crawled under my bed, her little feet sticking out, and reached for an old shoe. Nestled in there, wrapped in tissue, was Lavender Green. She said, ‘I put your scent on him too.’
So this little corpse has been lying on its back, scented, under my customers for seven months now. Just like me. I would hate my daughters to know anything about how I put a roof over their heads. My daughter has grieved in her own way for the birds she loved and lost. I don’t know where I have buried all I have loved and lost but it’s not in an enterprise zone. Why did they pay actors to hit us over the head with foam rubber hammers? Was it to show us they were only pretending?
Tonight, Jupiter, the god of animal metamorphoses, rules the stinking animal pits in the zoo. Urine and shit trickle into a ring of rage, a ring of starless moonless night.
The rage of animals imprisoned by a clumsy culture.
The smell of garlic oozes into the air, wafts over from the gorilla cages; the sweat of images behind the eyes, under the skin and in the cracks of lips. In the reptile house a python feeds on twelve dead rats. A mongoose eats a scorpion without removing its sting. The elephants lift up their trunks and bellow out, over London, and the refuse trucks collect the shedded skin of the day gone by to take to incinerators and burn.
Freddie lies on his belly outside the llama cage. He is covered in mud and worms, and the llama, all soft curves and very golden, bids him to speak. ‘Where are your words?’
‘I am unemployed,’ says Freddie. ‘That is to say I have no place in the scheme of things. No role to put on in the mornings and take off in the evenings. I am of the hungry species and I am alone. A stranger in a familiar land. I have no place to put my head, no thighs even in which to bury my head, no shoulder or lap or concept or cup of happiness or red rose in which to bury my head. No employment of any kind.’
‘Unemployed?’ says the llama. ‘Oh come on. There are zillions of jobs for a slut. Why not accccccelerate, put your foot down on that steely pedal, how about a career in the citeeee? Penetrate the city like a hungry blue worm, find the worm in your self and become it. Innovation breeds success and success breeds delicious hungers of all kinds. How you do enjoy your pain, Freddie!
‘Go into international finance, become a dynamic sales manufacturer in a high-growth computer company, become a senior sales consultant, a marketing manager, a business analyst for a billion-dollar corporation, become a technical support analyst with BUPA membership and relocation expenses, relocate your ambitions, relocate yourself from here to there and beyond. Relocate your head and you will find a zillion homes for it.’
‘But . . .’ and Freddie weeps, ‘I don’t know how to become those things. I don’t know what will become of me at all. I am lost, llama, lost and lost and lost. How do I begin to become a corpuscle in a corporation?’
‘OH SLUTTY SON be result-motivated! Think of those mortgage subsidies and executive benefits. Be a self-starter, be profit-motivated. Learn to Be. You need enthusiasm, no one invests in depression. Try harder and you will get the right package because you are the right person. But first you might emigrate. Pack up your head and heart and will and move to a different landscape. It is called let these words shimmer above your poor ruined head . . . The Real World.’ The llama giggles.
‘Oh . . . llama . . . I defend The Naked Truth of Dreams.’
‘The Naked Truth of Dreams? Oh Freddie. You are indeed a funny little thing. A funny little flower.’
Freddie buries his toes in the mud and watches two apes groom each other. The giant panda stares out into nothing, melancholy as she chews a strip of sugar cane; mosquitoes wail above her head.
‘What dreams are you talking about, poor Freddie?’ llama’s eyes widen.
‘I used to have dreams, llama. But I’ve lost them. I search in gardens for them. It would seem it is a family I want. Do you know male seahorses give birth? They have labour pains, curl their tails around a plant stem, bend backwards and forwards with the pain, with severe cramps, until they empty their pouches. I have severe cramps and no baby. I want a baby.’
‘You digress,’ says llama, digging the earth with her hooves. Digging the British soil up. ‘We are talking of Enterprise. Why not have a baby syndicate? If you want a family there are
hardware families
and software families.’
‘What is there left for me to become if not a father? I will take my children to swing in parks, to swimming pools, rock them to sleep, mash them bananas . . .’
‘Freddie, I fear you are talking about a Family in the bigger sense of the word. You are perhaps talking of sisterhood? Brotherhood?’ Llama sticks out her tongue to catch an invisible fly.
Freddie’s tears fall like pebbles on to the mud. ‘I don’t know what I want, llama. I would like to be happy.’
‘Poor Freddie. You have lost your way. Lost your silky slutty senses. I confess I am rather fond of people who have lost their way.’
‘Aw, fuck off, llama,’ weeps Freddie. ‘I just want to be loved.’
Llama scratches her ear.
‘You want to be loved? Ah. Aaaaaaaaaah. But can you love, Freddie? Remember the woman with the lilies, how she sang for you, how you became a flower in her bouquet, and how you ruined her? Not because she was stupid but because she was brave. I see her now with your daughter, her little love child. It is she who fries her potatoes, pushes her on swings, buys her crayons and paper and plasticine. Your daughter makes green and blue daddies in front of the television. And the woman with the violin who mothered your son, bought him
plimsolls, introduced him to The Story, took him to libraries and cinemas, played tunes for him on her fiddle to send him to sleep. And where were you, Freddie? Here with me searching for your head? Wanting children you already have? Excuse me, Freddie, I have a stone in my paw.
‘If you cannot love, Freddie, do something radical with your condition, service systems that manufacture sorrow instead. In this way you will hate well rather than love badly.’
A baby chimpanzee pulls at the long black nipples of its mother, who has her arm crooked to hold its head; her mouth opens and closes in time with the suckling.
‘Llama,’ whispers Freddie, ‘I have tried to change. I know indeed that human nature is an invented thing. I have tried to reinvent myself but confess I am reluctant to give up the little power I have on this earth. Yes, I am weeping again, I don’t know when I’ll ever stop or why. It seems there is no longer any grass to dream on. I hurt, llama, and I want someone to make me better. Have I really missed out on my children? I try to dream about women who have loved me but they refuse to appear. I want peace of mind. I want some peace but I don’t know what it is. Anything to get rid of this . . . stuff . . . inside me, this fear, these tears, this shaking. I would shoot guns and thrust bayonets through flesh to distract me from myself; I would whip, torture, wrestle, drive racing-cars over cliffs to distract me from myself; jump from helicopters, throw hand grenades to distract me from myself; I would march right left right screaming orders in my throat, obeying orders in my throat, to distract me from myself. I would build muscles I never knew I had, to distract me from myself.’
Llama shuts her honey eyes. Her belly rises and falls. It is as if her breath is a gentle wind; it makes the salt on Freddie’s cheeks smart and sting. He notices three cards pinned to her cage. The blue card says History, the white card says Behaviour and the pink card says Medical Record.
10.15
Specimen sounds as if she is coughing slightly.
10.40
Specimen vomited a little fluid.
1.10
Specimen restless.
1.40
Specimen has stomach contractions.
2.00
Specimen lying on back with periodic grunts.
2.30
No change in position.
4.10
Specimen throwing her weight against cage bars.
Seems agitated.
5.10
Specimen shows evidence of some nasal discharge.
5.30
Specimen shows no reaction to noise.
5.45
Specimen refusing food. Eyes shut.
6.00
Specimen runs and falls over on occasions.
7.00
Specimen co-ordination much improved.
Saliva around mouth.
If no change tomorrow take swab.
‘Are you ill, llama?’ whispers Freddie
‘Are you ill, Freddie?’ whispers llama.
‘I think I might be very sick, yes, llama. And I cannot afford health.’
Llama smiles patronizingly. ‘The only freedom you have, Freddie, is the freedom to want more sugar. I am no barbarian. I do not come from your country. By a strange set of circumstances I find myself locked up here. How strange it is I find myself teaching you the hieroglyphics of your culture.’
‘Oh God,’ Freddie howls. ‘Oh God.’ He scoops up mud and begins to eat it. ‘Llama . . . perhaps . . . you could . . . could just bite my artery here. Put me out of my misery.’
‘My teeth are blunt,’ says llama. ‘The zoo keeper filed them down.’
Freddie lies on his back and listens to the owls hoot into the night.
The lion shuts his eyes. He dreams he is lying in the shade of the acacia trees. The sound of that strange piano from an invisible part of the city dips in and out of the pictures behind his eyes. To the lion it is the wind. In his dream he prowls over to a nearby waterhole only to find it on fire. Fire over water. The smell of burning flesh wafts over the long bleached grasses. He opens his eyes. The grass has turned to cement.
Outside the zoo, a young boy and girl in their early twenties sit against a wall. A tattoo on their upper arms says THE INNOCENTS. Their eyes are closed as they sing in harmony
‘And then the knave begins to snarl
And the hypocrite to howl;
And all his good friends show their private ends
And the eagle is known from the owl’
They both think about hitching to a forest where they spent two summers and remember one particular tree. A pine tree. But the forests have been blown down in a small hurricane, the night the Stock Exchange crashed, and no one is planting things any more. They remember the evergreen of this tree and how it collected water on the tips of its needles; they would take it in turns to rip off their clothes and one of them stand under the tree while the other shook it by the trunk as it bowed this way and that way and little drops of water sprinkled the head of whoever stood under it.
The Innocents open their eyes. They feel the wall behind their backs and take deep breaths of the city’s air.
Dear Lapinski,
It is so HOT here in New York. I’m sitting naked at the table writing this. Sweat keeps dripping on to the page. Eduardo and I are now married. He works in Rome and flies over to see me at weekends. Instead of diamonds he brings me sachets of sugar and salad cream from the aeroplane – I have a whole closet full of them.
As words have never been our strong point we sit in front of the television flicking the remote control and eating our way through cartons of popcorn. The wedding was wonderful. When I cut the cake I cut my finger too and blood dripped all over the icing the Italian baker had taken three months to make into the columns of the opera-house. It was OK. Eduardo has always found blood sexy and sucked my finger for the photographer. My lips are covered in blisters. It always happens before I have an appraisal of my performance by the company. This is difficult to write. I feel very far away from you, both in experience and distance. Last time we met you looked at me as if all the worst predictions you made for me at fifteen had come true. More sweat. Blanche would have worn a floral wrapper but otherwise it’s very Tennessee Williams.
Love Gemma
Gemma has become The Banker; a super-rich money marketeer whose qualities of commercial acumen, aggression, energy, contact ability (most of her colleagues at Oxford), motivation, ego drive and adaptability earn her a salary she will not disclose. She has closed up like a seaflower, her voice on the phone is expressionless and brief; at the hairdresser, under the bright lights, she catches up on sleep. Nights alone are very still and black, she prefers to sleep with people around her. She pays a special consultant to buy and choose furniture for her New York apartment, a mixture of old and new: a telephone from a 1930s Hollywood movie, two chaise-longues from an auction, a Perspex table, a bunch of glass poppies that light up at night, two Magrittes for the white walls, theatre posters from sell-out Broadway musicals, a sculpture made from nails. Her wardrobe is full of navy suits and leather pumps to match, she long ago threw out the Mexican smocks, orchids, glittering shoes of her school days and camouflaged herself in the discreet colour and cloth of a feminized male uniform. Her towelling robe is yellow and so is the bathroom soap; such attention to detail is what the consultant is paid for.
She jokes that she is not complimented on her bone structure any more, but on her bonus structure. Yesterday the blisters on her lips popped. On summer evenings, The Banker sits on her tiny balcony chewing Swiss chocolate and aspirins, watching the Empire State Building twinkle in the distance.
From dawn to dusk she is surrounded by computer screens and telephones. The day starts with a pep talk from the company analyst and then she begins selling. In her lunch hour she either has a pregnancy test (she does not want to be pregnant) or eats bagels on the edge of the desk watching the screens. Instant reactions to information is her skill. The slightest flicker and her jaws stop chewing on turkey mayonnaise. He
r ruby nails dig into the black silk of her stockinged thighs, every rip equals a decision, and she has to buy them in bulk each week. Torn, laddered, full of tiny holes, they are her calendar to judge the stress of each day.
On Saturday mornings she works out in the bank’s gymnasium and then meets a colleague for a Mexican meal. She has got short of breath but her lips still shine. Sometimes when Eduardo is asleep by her side she sobs like a wolf cub. The strange thing is there are no tears, she is dry-eyed even after hours of sobbing. Once when Eduardo woke up to find her body shaking and heaving he put his arms around her and asked what was wrong. She just buried her head under the pillow, lying on her stomach, and continued to sob, sometimes surfacing to look at the clock.
Eduardo thinks about the week ahead and the small sleek whores in Bangkok, always smiling and ready to please. They know grief is not good for business.
In the morning he takes her shopping. He buys her spiky shoes, suspenders, petticoats, wigs she will never wear, a briefcase with a combination lock and a small revolver. She buys him the best cigarettes, starched white shirts, a cap with checks the shop assistant said was his tartan and twelve pairs of socks. Afterwards they eat ice-cream in parlours all over the city and then she takes him to the Waldorf where there is a little red bus in the window with HOVIS AND BUTTER FOR TEA written across its side. ‘Makes me think of home,’ she tells him as the Barts Bells chime twelve. Her sobbing fits stop and she knows they will never, never happen again. She is shaking hands with a fat man in grey flannels and a bow tie who thanks her for her help and promotes her to their branch in London. He says, ‘You are a star, climb to the top and don’t look down.’ She says, ‘I guess I’ll miss the pace here Joe,’ and jumps into the scarlet company car. As she looks in the mirror we catch each other’s eye. We are startled voyeurs. The last time we were this close was when she took the glass of hot chocolate from my hand and put it to her lips.