by Ananda Devi
She had gone back into her bedroom, had huddled under her duvet like a wounded animal, like a barely living ghost, and prepared to wait for the furious noise outside, just beneath her window, to stop. (Punches landing, flesh being hammered, bones breaking, she wasn’t sure whether she was really hearing it or simply guessing it, or maybe, in her fear, outright imagining it.) It had nothing to do with her. Maybe her neighbors were peeking through their curtains with selfish relief that they were safe in their barricaded houses while the horrific spectacle upended the day’s normalcy, but she didn’t want to see anything, she would rather have not heard anything, not seen the tortured body with its eyes shut like a reproach for not doing anything. And what could she have done? Called the police? It was far too late for that. By the time they came, there would only be a body, the hooligans would have left, and it would be her door they’d knock at for explanations and eyewitness accounts. It would be no help. And so nobody called the police and all Portobello Road waited, breathless, for the noise to stop and the blows to end and the screams—
The screams. Mary finally heard them. They hadn’t been there at first, but now a voice stood out from the other sounds and Mary shivered, Mary got up immediately, Mary jumped out of the bed with a moan, Mary almost yanked apart her curtains to see, at last, to look, to know, and her eyes confirmed what the voice had just told her, that it was indeed Cub, he in a yellow-and-blue cap, he who she had instantly welcomed into her heart, it was he they were beating up, massacring, about to—
She ran every which way in her room. She looked up at the ceiling.
Howard, she yelled, Howard, what should I do?
She went to the phone, the police, maybe it’s not too late—
It’s no use calling the police, Howard said. You should go and help.
Me? But, Howard … They’ll make short work of me, that won’t help him, I have to think of him and save him, maybe the neighbors …
You know your neighbors won’t do anything. Look in the mirror, Mary. Don’t tell me they won’t be terrified of you!
Mary looked at herself in the mirror and saw what Howard saw: a harpy. For once, this ghastly sight suited her. A few seconds later, armed with a kitchen knife, her hair belligerent around her scalp, her jowls drawn tight, looking every bit like an insane skeleton in her fluttering dressing gown, she burst out of the house, shrieking like a siren, frightening the skinheads. They saw her descending upon them and did not realize that she was a very old, barely living woman. Dazed by booze, drugs and blood, they saw a demon come out of the shadows, and they didn’t wait one second. Stricken by the same fight-or-flight instinct that had seized Cub earlier, they bolted, leaving behind their victim.
Maybe they would go back to their normal lives, if they’d ever had any. Maybe Mary had stripped them of their taste for violence and blood. There was no way of knowing.
In that moment, Mary fell to her knees in front of Cub’s unmoving body.
She did not wait, did not take the time to inspect his wounds or to check whether he was breathing. She leaned down, slipped her arms beneath his body and raised him up with no awareness of just how far such an act was beyond her. He, too, did not know. She carried him into the house, went up the stairs and set him on the bed where the sheets immediately soaked up the blood flowing everywhere.
She refused to believe it could be too late. That there was no point in fighting. That his face was too pale and his lips too white. He was so, so beautiful. It shook her to hold so much beauty in her arms. Such a perfect body entrusted to her hands, offered up to her solitude and her silence. She could have made him, formed him herself, before arthritis had undone her fingers and her dreams had turned toward devastation. She could have shaped the clay to create this outstretched David, this Christlike martyr, this mutilated perfection. She could have hewn his muscles, his neck, his hands. His lips, his cheeks, his eyes, his lashes. His torso, his chest, his stomach, his thighs. His calves, his knees, his feet, his toes. His skull, his hair, his forehead, his nose. The more she looked at him, the more she admired him, no, that verb was weak, she revered him, this pure, animalistic marvel of his body turned so tremulous and so temporary by its very fragility, how could she not adore him, get down on her knees and pay him homage by tracing the lines with her fingers, calling him back to life by infusing him with her own energy, her own blood, her own heartbeat, by instilling him with a regenerative, redemptive love?
In that moment, Mary knew that all her skill in shaping ceramics had been for this one purpose: to refashion Cub, to give him the appearance of life, to offer him eternity. She wrapped him in bandages that, in her eyes, bore no resemblance to shrouds. She tried to warm him again with her own body, the only way of reviving this flesh cooled and discolored too quickly, there had to be this transfer of matter and substance between the two of them, and in this way she knew he was hers, hers alone, and that no one could take him away from her.
She made him a cotton-wool cocoon to keep him warm and did not see the vultures circling in the sky over London. She set him in the nest of his dreams and was not surprised, the next morning, to see his eyes open and watching her solemnly. He was as real as she had wanted him to be.
Sometimes, love can bring about such things.
The days passed and Mary experienced boundless happiness. She had boarded up the doors and closed the shutters. She protected the two of them from all intrusions, including that of the light. No skinhead could threaten Cub anymore. No unknown presence could darken his features.
She cared for him with the same blind patience. She cut up the sheets to make bandages, cleaned his wounds, immobilized his limbs so that his bones would heal. She gave him the medicine that her doctor had prescribed to relieve joint pain for her arthritis, and she was reassured to see him sleeping deeply while his body soldiered on. She washed and scrubbed him carefully, taking great care to move his swollen limbs as little as possible. The dark red wound took the longest to heal. Mary knew it should have been stitched up, but she tightened the cloth bandages as much as she could, and neither her confidence nor her courage let her down.
Little by little, Mary reconstructed the scenario. He hadn’t been a wounded animal that had collapsed at her door, but a quiet, small, self-assured man ready to see Mary as something other than an outsider in his life, ready to live and dance with her. They had lived. The two of them had lived together so well.
Outside, winter entered its gloomiest phase. Outside, there was no more sun. The people walking down Portobello Road were bundled-up shadows. They barely bought anything now. The sellers opened up their shops later and later, closed them earlier and earlier. A heavy snow started falling, clinging with stubborn fingers to every surface and refusing to melt. It muffled every noise. Outside, the world entered its emptiest phase. A few lights glowed in the darkness without ever dissipating it. Shapes floated briefly and then disappeared. No sound of cars or trains or planes. Everything had paused, except in the house on Portobello Road, where life wore a mask of joy.
Mary talked to Cub. In his sleepiness he was uncomprehending and unresponsive. But she paid no attention to his silence and sang songs to him, told him stories, made jokes she knew were stupid but which made her laugh like a charming little girl. She dredged up memories she thought she had forgotten, such as the time she learned to make proper British tea, you know, Cub, when I went to Granny’s farm, and outside there was sunshine every so often, it wasn’t common but it was warm, an early summer sun, and the flowers were still lively. The grass smelled dewy because it was morning, I’d just boiled the water for tea in an old enamel kettle, it had been white at some point but now it was coated in a greasy residue. The kettle was so heavy it took both my hands to pick it up and pour the bubbling water into the teapot I’d warmed up ahead of time, the way Granny taught me. The tea leaves floated up and formed a black, smoky layer on top. When they’d infused enough, they came apart and fell to the bottom of the stout, brown porcelain teapot. Only the
n was the tea ready to drink, ready to be poured into the teacup where we’d already put a drop of milk that would give it the color of warm gold. That was when I added a spoonful of honey, which would melt so slowly. And at that point I brought the spoon to my mouth to lick the rest of the honey; it tasted like bees.
The sun was as round as a hot loaf of bread just out of Granny’s oven. I’ll take you there one day, Cub, I’ll take you to visit this place, the most beautiful place in the world.
And then, Mary said to Cub, there was Howard, who I met before the war and whose memory has stayed in me like a streak of hot wine. You know he’s here, don’t you? He’s the one living in the attic and watching me through the hole in the ceiling. He’s the only man in my life, Cub, the only man I’ve ever known, the only one I’ve ever loved, and my entire life on Portobello Road was constructed around this absence, this absent man, until you came. You filled the void.
Howard fought for this country, Cub, for our country, he came back with medals and wounds. That’s how things are, Cub, but Howard kept an appetite for life that the others didn’t, he was a war veteran, he was a cripple, he was poor and then an outright beggar, but do you know what he really did? He jumped from the top of the Post Office Tower, he fell on a newsstand and he splattered the papers with his blood, Cub, this forgotten beggar hero did that. This is how we live these days, by becoming a paragraph or two in the obits, by taking on significance only when we die, or when we start living without any idea of where we’re headed. But Howard overcame all that, he showed me where real life could be found.
We walked through the streets and he showed me something beyond the city’s exteriors; he showed me its soft, heavy underbelly, everything that we don’t speak or even hear of. I asked him why he killed himself and he told me that he was behind in life. He was quoting a poem to me, but I didn’t recognize it. Our life is over, Cub, too much time has gone by since we were young, nothing looks like us now, not Mary the wallflower, not Howard the crippled veteran.
Cub did not reply but Mary was sure she saw him smile. She stroked his forehead. Sleep, Cub, sleep, she said, refusing to acknowledge the twinge in her heart and his increasingly cold extremities. She curled up around him and looked through the window at the strange colors of the sky that did not know her.
And then Mary talked to him about other things, she told him about the towers of silence that Nari, her Parsi neighbor, had described, the black-and-white towers that vultures circled above to clean men’s bodies, and the two of them contemplated the beauty of this violence, of this end their imaginations could sense was near, and Mary promised Cub that she would take him to see these towers one day when he was better, I’ll use all my savings for that, but so what? I know you want to see them and to discover their secrets.
Howard came down from the attic and set his hand on Mary’s shoulder. We’ll go, all three of us, Mary, he said. They looked at Cub, sleeping, and tears flowed down their pale cheeks.
And so they stayed, Mary-Howard-Cub, bathed in their dusty light, half dead, half living, exuding a strange mixture of oldness and youth that seemed like a joyful pollution. They slept. Calmly, gently, softly. She became luminous. Cub, in his sleep, had a childlike innocence, his arms and legs outstretched as if all that space belonged to him. Howard was tanned, dust was embedded in the thousands of wrinkles on his face, the little hair he had left was greasy, his clothes were still those of a beggar, mismatched, shapeless, a mockery of elegance with the worn-out wool jacket, the yellow tie, the moth-eaten vest, the too-large pants held up with a pin, the moccasins. And in him was a wildly energetic laugh that pierced the ever-changing green of his eyes. Glimmers of both irony and tenderness replicated in his mouth with its trembling corners, recreated in his steps as he walked—light, airy, buoyant, as if he could take flight at any moment. He could give a small flick with the tip of his foot, as if he’d just reached the bottom of a body of water, a tiny push to propel himself upward, and he rose up in the air while blowing bubbles, the air carried him upward because he had no substance, and, as in a Chagall painting, the beggar in a flimsy hat and rumpled clothes glided, almost unmoving, in flight over the city, levitating above damp roofs. And, of course, he was dragging behind him his Mary dressed in white and their Cub, their baby wolf. So Mary dreamed in her sleep, refusing to accept that Cub, in front of the door that night, had never woken up.
The house collapsed around them, but they went on living, dancing, laughing, eating. And making love, whether it was two of them, or three, or just one, without any thought to who was who, even if Howard fell apart and Mary’s heart threatened to burst. It was a sheer miracle that kept the house on Portobello Road standing. Because they were there, because they refused facts and reality, and because they’d taken the first step into another world free of war, skinheads, aging, youth. They had transformed themselves. Become strange, splendid creatures that no longer touched the ground when they moved.
Cub did not talk anymore. The knife, apparently, had cut his vocal cords. Or, at least, that was what Mary thought, believing as she did whatever she liked. She had cared for him, she had fed him, she had given him life. His eyes were lively enough for her to understand everything he was telling her, for him not to need words, and so words became useless, what use would they be when every particle of air was a vibration? She heard everything and saw everything. Cub’s hot-chocolate eyes talked to her of love. They told her that Cub would never leave her again. It was as if she had gathered him into her bosom. She could feel the milk flowing in her breasts, the pain of the newborn child, she who had never been a mother. Stretch marks showed on her rounded belly. Cub wasn’t her child, this she knew. What they did have was love.
Mary put on weight. She ate voraciously. She couldn’t understand where the provisions in the kitchen cabinets had come from, because she had no memory of going shopping. But there were quality foodstuffs there that she had never bought before, much less tasted: caviar, oysters, quail eggs, lobster. She prepared them expertly, the fish and the meat barely touching the pan because they had such fresh, succulent flavor that they barely needed cooking. The oysters filled her with a taste of the sea so overwhelming that she had the impression of being dipped in sea salt and the ocean breeze. The caviar convinced her a thousand sturgeons had hatched in her stomach. As soon as she peeled a hard-boiled quail egg and placed it in her mouth, she sucked on its smooth surface for a long time without crushing it, her tongue savoring the elastic slickness of the white, her senses refusing to let go of it. Cub shared her meals, complimenting her with his eyes as he relished each plate. In this way she saw him sighing as he tasted a suckling lamb chop from the salt marshes, its meat and fat practically melting as his mouth closed around it. He devoured a dozen, and when he was done, she licked his greasy mouth, the flavor of the cutlets mixed with that of his saliva.
Howard, however, only ate the food after three days. He actually preferred to fish it out of the rubbish after it had started to rot. One day, Mary saw him scarfing down some fish covered in a greenish film. She smiled, not even feeling any disgust. Everything was permitted. She who had tasted dog food could not be shocked by these gamy foods. When she kissed Howard, she inhaled the tainted air of his mouth and she thought to herself that this was the smell of graveyards, of loam, of clay, and that all this was part of the figurines she had started making again. Death, land, life, food, flesh, rot: all that differentiated them was the eye of a woman who had become a perpetual cooking goddess. She formed characters that peopled her house and climbed everywhere like almost-friendly insects on the move. She and Howard played with them, giggling when they tried to hide in terror in the gaps between wooden planks and in the walls. Sometimes she laughed so loudly that she wondered if the neighbors would complain about the noise. But she didn’t hear the neighbors now; in fact, she didn’t hear any noise at all.
From the other side of the street, Wanda watched the house. Ever since she’d arrived, nobody had come out. She had r
ung the bell, but nobody had answered. No sign of life. She wondered if someone was still living here, or if Cub had been lying. It had been several days since she’d seen him. For the first time, she was afraid for him. A haze had filled her thoughts ever since that night when she had woken up with Cub’s name on her lips and with her heart broken.
Too many traps in this town, in this life. Too many risks and dead ends for her, for Cub, for the girls. The gaps grew as she saw her money disappearing at full speed, nothing in the bank where she no longer dared to go now that her account was overdrawn, her credit cards frozen, notices piling up in her letterbox. All she cared about was bringing something home for her children to eat, not crossing that limit beyond which she would be forced to go to food banks or dig just-expired items from supermarket skips or even ordinary rubbish bins. The sky was threateningly red. The sky over London told her that she had made her choice and now there was no turning back.
Her hours at work had been cut in half. Other women had already been sacked. She was still hanging on, but everyone’s gazes were furtive and the implications were clear. The shelves were getting emptier. There were fewer and fewer shoppers, higher and higher discounts, and a sort of desperation had overcome all the employees, as if they knew that, sooner or later, the announcement would be made and their lives would stop. And there was the other letter, the contents of which she already knew but superstitiously refused to open: the date on which the police would come to evict her from the flat she had filled with her dreams and with her own flesh.
Now, as she walked down the street or got on the underground, she noticed the homeless people seemingly multiplying each day. She walked more slowly, looking at them out of the corner of her eye. She saw how they walled themselves off internally so as not to think about how they were living on the sidewalks, visible to all. Their bags, their coats, their boxes, their shopping carts, their scarves, their hats: an accumulation of grayish objects meant to hide them and push away the others; and, indeed, passersby looked away or looked just to the side, rendering them invisible. So they lived outside unseen because nobody wanted to contemplate the obscenity of such a sight. No colors, above all, because colors hinted at a hope they did not have. A sort of burned skin, exposed to the elements here and there like mummies with bandages accidentally torn off. Their eyes were buried beneath hooded eyelashes because they looked at the world from behind a barricade of suspicion. And the world returned the sentiment.