An old Chueca brothel once reputedly frequented by Benito Mussolini, our hotel was surrounded by bars, and Anna suggested a couple of glasses of wine before dinner. Apparently after Guernica I had seemed a little down, and a couple of glasses of wine might help to cheer me up. I said the only thing I found depressing was the weather – in Chile it would be summer, but in Madrid it was the end of the second-coldest January on record – so rather than traipsing around in the cold later on, looking for a place to eat, why not have our couple of glasses of wine in a nice tapas bar where we could also have something to eat. Young Miguel at reception said he knew just the place - friendly, intimate and just around the corner. When he told us the name – his mouth moved so fast when he spoke to us in Spanish that he looked like he was feasting on the words - Anna and I exchanged an affectionate glance, and in less than five minutes we were in El Minotauro, cosying up to each other and waiting for a bottle of wine and some agua con gas.
Anna stopped the waiter from pouring. When he left, she filled my wine glass with wine, and the two tall glasses with agua con gas.
‘I don’t mind waiting too,’ I said, ‘if you’d rather have the wine with the food.’
‘No, you go ahead,’ said Anna.
‘But it was your idea to have a drink,’ I said.
‘I thought you said you needed cheering up,’ Anna said.
‘It was you who said I needed cheering up.’
‘You don’t like it here?’
‘I do like it here, I like it very much, but I don’t feel like drinking a bottle of wine by myself.’
‘Drink as much as you like,’ said Anna.
‘Have one glass, at least,’ I said.
‘I’d rather not.’
‘Anna, what’s wrong?’
‘Nothing’s wrong.’
‘But there’s something you’re not telling me.’
‘There’s something I’ve not told you yet.’
‘And you thought I should be drunk before you told me.’
‘I thought it wouldn’t be a bad idea.’
‘You’ve changed your mind.’
‘About what?’
‘About us; or the book; or going to Santiago.’
‘I’ve not changed my mind about anything.’
‘So then tell me what it is you’ve not told me.’
‘When Miguel recommended this place and he said it was called El Minotauro, it made both of us think back to your mother’s drawing.’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Of Beatriz and her lover and their Minotaur child.’
‘Yet another coincidence,’ I said.
‘And here’s one more,’ Anna said. ‘I’m pretty sure I’m pregnant, and in September there’ll be three of us too.’
Anna had had no other symptoms apart from being late, but she’d been late many times before and she hadn’t been pregnant. As time passed, she forgot how late she was because of all the preparations for Chile; at the airport in London on the way to Madrid she suddenly remembered. She bought a pregnancy test, put it in her handbag, and took it after we got back to the hotel from the Reina Sofia. The test’s accuracy wasn’t a hundred per cent, but in her own mind – and body – she knew beyond even the slenderest sliver of doubt that the positive result was correct.
‘I hope you realize that tomorrow we’re going back to London,’ I said.
‘No we’re not,’ Anna said. ‘Tomorrow we’re going to Santiago.’
‘But you’re pregnant,’ I said. ‘And it’s a very long flight to Santiago, I don’t think it’s safe.’
‘I promise you it’s perfectly safe. I’m not more than six weeks’ pregnant, seven at most. The embryo can’t be any bigger than a kidney bean.’
‘Please don’t call it that.’
‘I’m not calling it that, that’s what it is - an embryo the size of a kidney bean.’
‘Please,’ I said, ‘can’t we just call it a baby?’
‘Fine,’ Anna said, ‘it’s a baby the size of a kidney bean. And it’s happy to travel.’
‘But what about you, you’re not feeling sick?’
‘No, but I will if we don’t order food.’
‘You must promise me you’ll see a gynaecologist as soon as we get there.’
‘And you must promise me you’re not going to be constantly fussing.’
‘Have you thought about names?’
‘If I don’t eat very soon, I think I’m going to faint.’
I hardly ate. Anna, on the other hand, ate rather more than for herself and a bean.
‘I thought you said you didn’t feel like drinking a bottle of wine by yourself.’
‘I’m just happy,’ I said. ‘And I feel like getting drunk.’
‘You’re nervous,’ said Anna.
‘That too,’ I said.
‘You’re going to be a father,’ said Anna.
‘Three months ago I was the neighbourhood freak. And then I had a phone call from a ghost.’
‘And now you’re on your way to Santiago. With a pregnant ghost and a kidney bean baby.’
‘I’m still not happy about Santiago.’
‘There’s nothing to be unhappy about,’ said Anna. ‘Santiago is important, for you, and for us, and for the book. If we don’t go now, we’ll never go. And since you asked me about names, if the kidney bean turns out to be a girl, we’re definitely calling her Beatriz.’
‘We should call her Ana Bea,’ I said.
‘Ana Bea,’ Anna said. ‘I like that.’
16
Bowl of Fruit
(1907)
The end isn’t really the end
It remains unknown what happened to Beatriz Solovera on September 11, 1973, after she was taken by force from her hospital bed by a group of unidentified thugs. Her name is still among “the disappeared”, but she rests in the hearts of the people she knew who survived, and for the short time that is left to me in mine. Anna was right, Santiago was very important. If we hadn’t gone then, I would never have gone, and that special place of absence I carried for Bea would have never been filled, and her story would have never been told.
I had my first inkling of the sheer amount of work Anna must have put into preparing every aspect of our trip the moment we arrived in Santiago. We were greeted at the airport by a group of over-animated women – I remember a sea of affectionate eyes dancing topsy-turvily as they tried to catch ours all at once - some of whom had known Beatriz Solovera, and others, some still in their twenties or younger, who had joined them to help keep alive the memory of a woman who had not been afraid to speak: to many of them my mother was a friend and to others a powerful symbol. Some among them carried grainy pictures of their own disappeared, and were keen to express their solidarity by showing them to us, and to tell us every detail of the stories behind them. One of the women, who I understood had never met Beatriz, held aloft a large studio portrait of my mother, and she lowered it for us to look at with the reverence that saintliness deserves. Every one of them was keen to have Anna translate something for me; some story that they thought in some way would make me even prouder to be Bea’s son. There would be many such meetings, and many people wanted to pay their respects. We heard a thousand different stories, but really what mattered were not so much the stories themselves but the purposeful love with which they were all recounted. I was relieved that no one mentioned Picasso, and proud that Bea had always kept “our secret”.
Just as precious was to walk alone with Anna along the same streets as Bea had, and to visit the places we knew had been part of her life. In a kindness of fortune the hospital where Anna and I were born, and where even Anna’s father had been powerless to protect Beatriz, was gone; from the ground where it had stood, a new glass building that mirrored the new Santiago – a confident city no longer afraid of its past - tore high into the sky.
Every day we visited the grave where Ana was buried and Anna’s father’s ashes had been scattered, and every day we took with us fresh fl
owers: Santiago had taught me the power of ritual. The lives of all our people, who had found themselves together more than forty years ago in this distant city, had culminated in this moment of Anna and me together in the present, and this happiness imbued any lingering sadness with a cathartic sense of purpose: it had not all been for nothing after all.
In another coincidence, Ana Bea was born on September 11, exactly on the day she was expected. She is already just over two years old now, and those two years alone have made me too grateful to feel even a tinge of resentment. And if I go back another year, and I also add that to the balance, then I realize how inadequate it is to speak of gratefulness alone, and not of the enormity of the joy that overwhelms me.
Anna and I decided that we shouldn’t dismantle the room, and she on her laptop and I in my handwritten scrawl – exactly the same as my father’s - we worked in it on Bowl of Fruit (1907) together. The first draft was ready about a year after Anna gave birth, and there was little that our editor found fault with.
We left out no secrets at all in the end, ‘because secrets are lies, aren’t they?’ as Anna liked to teasingly remind me. Was it love that had driven Anna’s father to murder? Anna and I wanted to believe that it was, and we said so, but we also said that people had a right to decide for themselves.
‘We should begin at the beginning and end with today.’
‘But today hasn’t ended.’
‘That’s the best kind of resolution,’ Anna had said. ‘When the end isn’t really the end, when there’s at least the possibility of another beginning.’
“Today” has never ended; the end of Bowl of Fruit (1907) is Ana Bea on the day she was born, and the end isn’t really the end but another beginning. And that is what our story is: a story of miraculous beginnings, reaching out to each other across so many coincidences, weaknesses and continents, converging on the first day I met Anna Tor.
When she wasn’t pretending to ghost me, Anna also tried to put together a collection of my stories, but there was not enough material for a book, and she put that project aside for the future. Personally I still thought the material was poor, but with Bowl of Fruit (1907) my writing had found a new way, and an energy I was secretly proud of. My head was abuzz with new ideas. Life, however, had different ideas of its own. I suspect that one day Anna will publish what there is, and I will not be there to try and dissuade her.
Billy is an exceptional kid, and Anna is certain he will make it as a writer – make it very big in Ruth’s opinion, Anna told me, and I hope Ruth is right. When Anna and I got married at Islington Town Hall after we returned from Santiago, our witnesses were Billy and Ruth, and our dozen or so guests included almost everyone we had been able to connect with “today”: Luigi was there, and so was Federico, sobbing in the arms of his girlfriend Esmeralda: the three of them had already prepared quite a spread for us back at the Sprinkle of Rocket, where later, to the shedding of more tears, the feisty Esmeralda would go down on her knees and propose to Federico in our presence. Ivan was there too; on another full moon Anna and I had passed by Los Hijos to invite him, and had found him outside pretending to smoke while he looked at the sky. The Chief boasted of his part in “our Angel’s” metaphorical room, and flirted first with Eva and later more successfully with Ruth.
Billy visits us as often as he visits his mother, which nowadays he does almost always with Anna, who finds comfort in remembering our dead by caring for untended graves. This mutual observance of ritual has brought them ever closer together, and when the time comes I know that they will be there for each other. And the time is coming soon; I see it in my own eyes, and I also see it in Billy’s much more than I can see it in Anna’s, because Anna is much better at hiding her sadness. I have made it my last wish that Anna should be able to remember me in whatever way she chooses - by caring or not caring for my grave, or by scattering my ashes from the top of the world.
Dedicated to Ana Bea, Bowl of Fruit (1907) was published on September 11 two years after her birth, as a gift from us on our birthday for hers. The biopsy results had come in the day before, to confirm what I knew but had not yet had the heart to tell Anna. I kept them from her for another few days. Time was past being of the essence, and I wanted to give both of us a little more time to be happy about the book and its success. She was happy for me and I was happy for her and I was sad that she would soon be unhappy. For the sake of Ana Bea she will know that she must not be unhappy for long.
I leave behind for my child a mother who will love her as much as mine loved me. Like my father I leave for her also a few simple words, handwritten in pencil: You can be anything you want to be, always remember that. And like my mother I leave for her proof of my gift, which may or may not be “our secret” - a present from her father on her eighteenth birthday, Their Meeting on the Bridge, the novel Kafka wrote after The Trial. Among its pages I have placed the piece of paper my father had addressed to Jack Faro.
I have sealed the bulky envelope and given it to Anna already.
Note from the author
Thank you for choosing Bowl of Fruit (1907).
I very much hope that you’ve enjoyed it, and that you might consider posting a short review on Amazon.
If you would like to contact me, or give me your feedback directly, I’d love to hear from you. You will find a contact email address on my website.
http://www.panayotiscacoyannis.com
By the same author
The Dead of August
“A sophisticated, comic novel that brilliantly captures the triumph and folly of art, media, and publishing.”
Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00GLAAMGU
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00GLAAMGU
POLK, HARPER & WHO
“As with other Cacoyannis novels, the language, the cleverness, the juxtaposition of heartbreak and humor and the presence of truly hilariously drawn characters is at least half the pleasure of reading the book. The author has a way of describing mundane scenes in ascending lines of subtle humor that, for me, often results in an outbreak of irrepressible laughter by the end of the scene. The attention to detail and the complexity of his descriptions of both character and setting are captivating.”
Casey Dorman - Lost Coast Review
“In this literary novel, family secrets, friendship, and the resilience of love play out in a dinner party between two couples…
A thoughtful, observant, and often humorous tale about real connections.”
Kirkus Reviews
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01N5CXTPJ
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01N5CXTPJ
The Madness of Grief
“A well-written, richly complicated, and deeply engaging coming-of-age tale.”
Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07B25456M
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07B25456M
You will find a short extract from The Madness of Grief overleaf.
The Madness of Grief
I
1969
1
Karl
‘I hate him!’ I said.
‘No you don’t,’ said Karl.
‘Yes I do.’
‘Jane, he’s your father.’
‘So?’
‘You’re not allowed to hate him.’
‘Says who?’
‘Says the Bible.’
‘I don’t believe in the Bible,’ I said matter-of-factly.
‘You’ll go to hell if you’re not careful.’
Karl was sweet. He was always looking out for me. I was glad we were friends.
‘Nonsense,’ I said.
‘Shh! God can hear you.’
He ran his fingers dextrously over the keyboard, as if to smother my profanity with something irrefutably divine – the heart-stopping opening of Beethoven’s 5th. That was something else I liked about him: no one ever knew if Karl was being ironic. Even when I tickled him to try and make him lau
gh, Karl wore his straight face like an iron-faced mask. But when he played the piano for me seriously, then he wouldn’t so much lose as surrender control, giving himself over to the music completely. Or perhaps it was the other way around. In fact it was both. Becoming as one with it, he had a way of interpreting the music that added to it something mysterious, an inscrutable extra dimension. I didn’t know all this because I knew a lot about music, I knew it because someone important had written it and Karl had read it out to me, and although I’d be the first to admit that I didn’t know a lot about music, every time I heard him play I could feel what it meant. Karl gave an edge to the music that made his performances “visionary”, a word that made me proud to be his friend. And it made me even prouder that Karl said he was proud to be my friend.
‘Of course he can’t hear me,’ I yelled over Karl’s playful thumping. What I liked best was the lack of complication in our friendship. The other boys I knew were all after only one thing, or at least made a show of being after one thing – which they wouldn’t have known what to do with. My interest had always been in much older boys. They too were after only one thing, which they would know what to do with, after they had bullied the younger boys out of the way. But though I relished their attention, I had only ever let them go so far – about as far as holding hands and a dry kiss on the lips, which wasn’t very far and fell short by a very great distance of the one thing they were after, and which really I only imagined they would know what to do with. Probably they were just better at pretending.
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