Bowl of Fruit

by Panayotis Cacoyannis

  11

  Minotaur

  Farsighted

  ‘You suddenly seem lost in your thoughts,’ Anna says.

  Out of a magic hiding place that somehow must generate heat, Anna has produced a blanket that isn’t damp, and we have it wrapped around us as we sit beside each other dangling our legs on a tall concrete block whose purpose, if it has one, eludes me.

  ‘I was just thinking this isn’t what people our age do,’ I say.

  ‘You mean you’re thinking we’re not young any more,’ says Anna. ‘And so we shouldn’t be on a roof pretending it’s the top of the world and we’re making the most of the moon. But just look at it up there, begging to be made the most of! Why should that prerogative belong just to the young?’

  ‘No, that’s not what I’m thinking,’ I say. ‘I’m just remembering being young, and I don’t mean I don’t think that we’re young any more, that’s not the kind of young I mean.’

  ‘You mean teenager young,’ says Anna.

  ‘I mean young as in totally self-obsessed.’

  ‘I don’t think I was ever totally self-obsessed,’ says Anna. ‘And I can’t believe that you ever were.’

  ‘Well,’ I say. ‘You’re right about the moon and the top of the world, and I’m glad I’m the first man you brought to this roof… I was about to say that I wouldn’t have missed it for the world, but what’s this if it isn’t the world? And it’s made me feel young, but in a way that isn’t like the way I felt young when I was young. That’s what I’ve just been thinking.’

  ‘You’re reflecting on the past,’ says Anna.

  ‘I’m reflecting on my past,’ I say. ‘Which I’m carrying in my pocket pretending I’ve left it behind - and that’s what I’ve done all my life, found excuses for myself. And I’ve never been fair to my father. I’ve made excuses for myself, but I’ve always been unable to do the same for him, and now I feel I’ve judged him too harshly.’

  ‘We all judge each other too harshly. My mother blamed herself until the end for judging you too harshly.’

  ‘But I deliberately judged him too harshly, to make it easier to be who I was.’

  ‘I don’t think you know who you were,’ Anna says.

  ‘But I know I colluded with Mary,’ I say. ‘And I don’t mean as a child, but later, when I knew what I was doing and also that I shouldn’t be doing it.’

  ‘Now you’re judging yourself too harshly,’ says Anna. ‘Things can’t have been easy for you, either as a child or later.’

  ‘Either as a child or later… all vagueness and euphemisms, that’s the mess of my past in a nutshell. So tell me what you think I should do. Blame everything on Mary? Things can’t have been easy for her either. And there were times when I thought I loved her more than I ever loved my father, in spite of his beautiful stories, and who should I blame for that?’

  ‘Instead of blaming anyone, how about just letting go?’

  ‘Letting go can’t be so simple if I can’t even bring myself to say his name out loud.’

  ‘George,’ says Anna.

  ‘Like in your book,’ I say.

  ‘Say it,’ says Anna. ‘My mother’s name was Ana. They just gave me an extra “n”. And my father was Daniel.’

  ‘Daniel and Ana,’ I say.

  ‘George and Mary,’ says Anna.

  ‘And Bea,’ I say.

  ‘And Ana,’ says Anna.

  ‘George,’ I say.

  ‘Let’s make peace with everyone tonight,’ says Anna. ‘As a way of saying thank you, because without them we wouldn’t be here.’

  ‘On top of the world, making the most of the moon.’

  ‘That’s right,’ says Anna.

  ‘So what should I do with this?’

  The envelope is out of my pocket, and I’m holding it at arm’s length between my fingers like a suspect artefact that might blow up at any minute in our faces.

  ‘My eyesight isn’t what it used to be,’ I say.

  ‘Nor mine,’ says Anna.

  ‘And the light’s a bit iffy.’

  ‘Don’t let the moon hear you say that.’

  ‘But I can still read my name quite clearly.’

  ‘Not just because you know it’s your name?’

  ‘Now who’s insulting the moon?’

  ‘Then why don’t you open it,’ says Anna.

  ‘Because I’m still not sure I should.’

  ‘You’re not sure you should or you’re not sure you want to?’

  ‘Is this, all this,’ I say, gesturing to take in the moon and the world, and ourselves in our wigwam of blanket, ‘going to be part of our story?’

  ‘Our story?’ asks Anna.

  ‘Well I’m not here by myself,’ I say.

  ‘You are if I’m a ghost,’ says Anna.

  ‘You’re everything at once,’ I say.

  ‘All this will be part of our story,’ says Anna.

  ‘And if I let my father’s letter drift away off the top of the world, without reading it I mean, that’ll also be part of our story.’

  ‘Before you do that, remember it can’t be undone.’

  ‘Let go, you said.’

  ‘That’s not letting go, it’s another evasion,’ says Anna.

  ‘Is there a difference?’

  ‘I don’t want to pressure you, Jack.’

  ‘You’ve called me Jack again,’ I say.

  ‘That’s who the letter’s addressed to,’ says Anna.

  ‘And that’s why I’m not sure if I should read it. But then I don’t suppose your mother would’ve given it to you if she thought it might harm me.’

  ‘She wouldn’t,’ says Anna.

  ‘But my father can’t have been so sure.’

  ‘If it might harm you?’

  ‘Or he wouldn’t have needed your mother to make the decision.’

  ‘It might’ve harmed you back then, when you were still too young.’

  ‘And your mother really never told you what’s inside?’

  Anna shakes her head.

  ‘No,’ she says, ‘but if you’re not sure what to do, just put it back in your pocket.’

  Now she rests her head on my shoulder, as if to let me know that she’s there for me but that there’s nothing useful left for her to say about the letter. She knows I know she wants me to, but at the same time I don’t think she wants that to be the reason I read it. And for the first time since this morning, shortly after eleven o’clock, when she walked into my life at the Sprinkle of Rocket to cause quite a stir, for the first time since then I am feeling alone.

  I turn the old envelope around, and then I turn it over again.

  Our secret

  Whatever I do, I will not put the envelope back in my pocket. The moment of truth has arrived – either I am able to open my father’s letter or I am not. If I am able to, then I will open it here, tonight, with Anna beside me, and I will read it. And if I am not, then here, tonight, with Anna beside me, I will tear it unopened into one thousand pieces.

  When I begin to try to imagine what the letter might say – what my father might have written for me on this single piece of paper before folding it, putting it unsealed inside another envelope together with a letter to Ana that perhaps he had written already and was probably longer than the letter he had written to his son…

  ‘How many pages was the letter he wrote to your mother?’ I ask Anna.

  ‘Not many,’ Anna says. ‘Maybe three.’

  ‘With writing on both sides?’

  ‘I think so, yes.’

  ‘There’s just one sheet of paper in this,’ I say.

  ‘So?’

  ‘So the letter to your mother was at least three times longer.’

  ‘More than half of what George wrote to Ana was about you and the letter you’re holding.’

  ‘George wrote to Ana about Jack,’ I say. ‘And then what did he do?’

  ‘And then he left you,’ says Anna.

  ‘And then he left Jack,’ I say. �
�So this letter’s for Jack, it’s not really for me.’

  ‘Jack’s a part of who you are,’ says Anna. ‘He’s inside you.’

  We’ve had this conversation before and she’s right. And because she’s right, I no longer want to imagine; suddenly I need to know.

  ‘Reading it can’t be undone either,’ I say. ‘But it needs to be done, and Jack needs to do it.’ And when Anna doesn’t reply, because I haven’t really asked her a question, ‘I’m going to open it right now,’ I say. And I do, I open George’s letter to his son.

  Before I unfold it, the single sheet of paper is empty. So one side is blank. And on the other side there isn’t a “Dear Jack” after all. At the very top, tentatively in pencil, almost as a hesitant afterthought, just those familiar few words: Son, you can be anything you want to be, always remember that…

  Not far below that, in a different hand a few more words are written more boldly in ink: A nuestro querido hijo, de su madre

  I know, because I recognize one of them, that the words must be Spanish. And below them, just as boldly in ink, a remarkable drawing fills up the rest of the paper.

  Clumsily I read out the Spanish words to Anna.

  ‘To our beloved child, from his mother,’ says Anna, the words struggling to be heard as her breathing shortens abruptly.

  ‘Or son,’ I say.

  ‘To our beloved son, from his mother,’ says Anna.

  ‘And from my father just twelve words in pencil, added years later: Son, you can be anything you want to be, always remember that...’

  ‘Isn’t that what Mary used to say to you?’

  ‘It’s what my father used to say to me.’

  ‘A nuestro querido hijo, de su madre - Beatriz must’ve written that while she was pregnant.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But is that all she wrote?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘And she also drew this, for me, before I was born.’

  ‘Let me see.’

  Before I pass the piece of paper to Anna, without touching them I point at the figures in the drawing in turn:

  ‘That’s Bea and that’s George, sitting side by side just like we are, but naked. And restively straddling his legs across theirs, reaching out for who knows what, that little muscular Minotaur’s me.’

  I choke my tears back not entirely successfully, and I wipe my eyes dry with the back of my hand.

  ‘But that’s…’

  ‘A drawing by Picasso,’ I say.

  ‘It can’t be…’ Anna Tor is holding a masterpiece crumpled by being carelessly handled, crammed into my pocket disrespectfully and then almost discarded, and her voice is a gasp of almost inaudible air, muffled by the thickness of its own disbelief. As I watch her caressing very slowly the intricate lines with her gaze, she looks at the moon and then again at the drawing, as if re-orienting herself by comparing two unlikely but equally palpable wonders before she turns to look at me.

  ‘From 1937 most probably,’ I say. ‘After the tragedy of Guernica, judging by the sorrow and rage in their eyes.’

  ‘Before the inevitable tragedy of Chile,’ Anna says.

  ‘Before the two of them had to part.’

  ‘Before the two of you had to part,’ says Anna.

  ‘Before they came for her the day we were born.’

  ‘Before Beatriz asked my father to take you away.’

  ‘Before I even existed.’

  ‘So many reasons for sorrow and rage,’ Anna says sadly.

  ‘In ‘37 as in ‘73.’

  ‘But you’re the hope of the future,’ says Anna. ‘Moving out of the picture like a new beginning. And you can also see that in their eyes, quite unquenched by the sorrow and rage.’

  I am weeping without sobs, silently, wondering how Bea might have judged me.

  ‘Come on, you should be full of joy,’ says Anna, squeezing closer to me. ‘Bea, George and Angel, it’s the three of you together for the first time at last.’

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘The three of us together before any of us even existed. And the first time never actually happened.’

  ‘This is a gift to you from Bea of her gift,’ Anna says. ‘It’s like she willed it to be her inheritance to you, and it was.’

  ‘Bea couldn’t have known that one day I’d be painting Picassos.’

  ‘She mightn’t have known, but all the same that’s exactly what happened. But look…’ Anna squints as though trying to make something out. ‘I think there’s something else written there near the bottom, in the shadow being cast by your Minotaur head. Right there, can you see? It’s like the words have been deliberately hidden.’

  ‘The second word looks like secret,’ I say. ‘And that’s definitely another nuestro.’

  ‘Our secret: nuestro secreto,’ says Anna. ‘Your secret – yours and hers.’

  ‘And my father’s,’ I say. ‘Who owed it to Bea, and to me, to try and make me keep it. If I’d known… If he’d shown me this… But there were so many layers of secrets, so many layers of lies…’

  ‘Stop it now,’ says Anna softly. ‘It’s unfair to judge your father so harshly, you said so yourself. And he never really had the chance to tell you, not in time to have made any difference.’

  ‘That’s not true. He saw how I could draw! That’s when he should’ve told me, straight away, instead of buying me canvases and paints.’

  ‘Told you what? That you had this magnificent talent that nobody could know about because some woman you hadn’t even ever heard of had once scribbled on a piece of paper that something was “our secret”? For all your father knew – for all anyone knew – your gift from Beatriz might one day have made you the happiest man in the world.’

  ‘Some woman I hadn’t even heard of?’

  ‘They should’ve told you about Beatriz when you were little, I’ve already said that. But the fact is they didn’t.’

  ‘The original lie that had all the other lies wrapped around it,’ I say. ‘And now you’re going to tell me I’m still being unfair.’

  ‘Remember how you told me you reacted when your father tried to bring up Santiago?’

  ‘My father didn’t bring up Santiago, my passport did.’

  Anna takes the envelope out of my hand, she folds the drawing carefully and puts it back inside.

  ‘Shall I keep this for now?’ she asks. ‘It’s safer in my bag than in your pocket.’

  ‘Fine,’ I say.

  With the letter, which is so much more than just a letter, safely secured in one of the invisible compartments in her bag, Anna jumps off our concrete block, and with her hands clutching at my knees she’s confronting me by looking up at me, straight in the eye.

  ‘And when your passport brought up Santiago, what happened next?’

  ‘You know what happened next, I’ve told you.’

  ‘You burst into tears.’

  ‘Yes. But I brought it up again, and I’ve told you that too.’

  ‘And this time it frightened your father.’

  ‘It seems everything frightened my father.’

  ‘That’s probably true,’ says Anna. ‘So imagine how frightened he was when he discovered you were gifted with the same inexplicable gift as your mother. Nuestro secreto was suddenly something completely different – not the secret of the three of you any more, not a commonplace secret of father, mother and lovechild, but the mystery of a secret between you and your mother from which everyone else was excluded.’

  ‘You’re writing the book already,’ I say. ‘We should use that as the title – Our Secret. And why not put the drawing on the cover?’

  ‘I was thinking exactly the same,’ says Anna.

  ‘Unbelievable,’ I say.

  ‘So unbelievable, in fact, that your father was just totally overwhelmed. At times he must’ve wondered how much of any of this was actually true.’

  ‘But the proof’s in your handbag,’ I say. ‘And he always had it.’

  ‘Surely that there’s proof is the scariest thing
of all,’ Anna says.

  ‘The scariest thing of all is that my mother and Picasso coexisted, and my mother had this talent while Picasso was alive.’

  ‘We don’t know that for sure,’ Anna says. ‘If she drew this drawing while she was pregnant…’

  ‘But less than 156 days before we were born, then it’s possible she drew it after Picasso was dead. And I don’t suppose we’ll ever find out if she could draw Picasso drawings or paint Picasso paintings before that.’

  ‘Come on, let’s go and say a quick hello to Ruth. Clear our heads with tea and some dull conversation.’

  ‘You think we’ve made the most of the moon?’

  ‘The moon must be fed up with us by now,’ says Anna.

  ‘What about that nightcap?’

  ‘There’s night enough left for that too,’ says Anna. ‘Or would you rather go to bed?’

  ‘No,’ I say, ‘let’s squeeze this night as dry as we can.’

  Narcissus

  It’s late, too late for quick hellos and dull conversations, but we’ve already locked the moon behind us and are making our way down the stairs.

  Apartment 22 is on the third floor. Each floor is marked with a large bronze number screwed onto the landing wall, and we’re definitely on 3. We’ve come in from the stairs through an emergency exit, and we’re standing in a hallway in front of 22. To our left is 53, and behind us 11. Anna rings the bell.

  ‘You’re looking at the numbers,’ she says. ‘Don’t even bother trying to figure it out...’

  ‘Figure what out?’ asks the woman who has answered the door very promptly.

  ‘Ruth!’ says Anna.

  ‘My dear Anna!’ answers Ruth, as she reaches out and grabs me by the arm. ‘I was hoping you’d pop in. I just knew you must be harbouring a man.’

  ‘Ruth, this is Leon,’ Anna says. ‘Leon, this is Ruth.’

  Ruth hasn’t let go of my arm, and now she pulls me over to kiss me hello.

  ‘Come in, come in,’ she says after kissing Anna too.

  ‘But are you sure we’re not disturbing you?’

  ‘Disturbing me? Disturbing me from what?’

  ‘It’s late,’ I say.

  ‘And how are the two related?’