Dad too. I’m taking Dad to the shindig. Dad who might nurse a shandy in his wheelchair and sneer at the canapes. Sourpuss Dad, last explorer of the vinyl frontier. Yes, fifty. Dad’s girl is fifty. Fifty, her empty womb. Fifty her hairy nipples and fifty her loose front tooth for which no tooth fairy has a remedy. Not that Brian wouldn’t write a cheque. Not that Brian wouldn’t be absolutely desperate to pay.
And, you know what? I’m going to take Brian’s money. Oh yes. Because teeth are different. Teeth count. Especially here, teeth count. They count in the united states of teeth, they count here in the Manhattan of teeth, and on the Broadway of teeth teeth still and will count. Even above 100 Street teeth count and will count more with every passing year. Teeth will count as they tear down the cinemas and build the highrise. Teeth will count as they sweep the floor and put the Guinness up to seven bucks. Teeth will count all right. The currency of gleaming teeth. I think of my father and his codeine-killed brown stubs. Nicotine brown, my old man’s mouth. Goat breath.
But, as I said, it doesn’t gleam here yet. Not quite yet. So I push at my tooth with the tip of my tongue and make a big smile at the room. Then take another black mouthful. Pouring the blackness into myself. Which might be a lyric. Oh yes, oh boy, another lyric. The waters, these black waters, these black waters of oblivion. Only some bastard has got there first.
I’ve tried, but I’m having problems keeping up payments on the Inwood place. The landlord wants to know about the next six months. Yes, I hear you. Ask Brian. Tap good old Brian, because it’s easy for Brian, Brian with the hot tub he doesn’t use, the golf clubs and golf cart he doesn’t use, the computers he never switches on. Because Brian is a simple soul. What Brian wants is the midnight-blue Alpha Romeo Spider with that creamy leather interior.
The same colour as meadowsweet, Bri, I said to him.
Is it, Rhi? he beamed. That’s nice.
Brian parks his motor at the golf club where he doesn’t play. Or Brian stays home because Brian has the full Sky package with 24-hour sport on the telecinema. Let’s see. Aussie Rules. Snowboarding. Girls in little gold pants playing beach volleyball. And panels. Panels of pundits talking stats and transfers, lists of the greatest-ever Kenyan middle distancers, the best Brazilian World Cup freekicks. Ultimate’s the word the pundits use. So Brian uses it. A lot. Everything is always ultimate for Bri. The big man’s word in the big man’s world.
Oh, and my mum. I think Brian still wants my mum. But Mum is older than Brian, and on dodgy ground because of it. Her face is lovely, heart-shaped and strong. But as to the rest? Someone left the cake out in the rain. Now if Bri had anything close to an imagination, she wouldn’t get near. But there’s no accounting for lack of taste. So, yes. I could ask Brian about the apartment.
Course, love, course, he’d say, delighted. Have to come out there one day, won’t I? Glad to see you doing so well.
You know, sometimes I feel Brian looking at me out of his life of Brian and I can guess what he’s thinking. Bet she’s never had a shag. That’s what Brian’s thinking. Well think all you can, Bri. But if I’m going to tap him twice, maybe it’s not for the room. Because Amir says he’s given up on the US. Amman’s the place now. The place for film, for digital, the place for Amir. Where his parents happen to live. His melancholic mother. Cheap, he says.
Amir wants to make a film about shepherds in the desert. Their life in a landscape like another planet. No water, black rock. But a purple sky all shot with stars. Then, a film about the Tower of Babel. Amir says he knows where it is. Or before that, a short piece called ‘Suq of Souls’, about the market he took me to in Amman. You see, Amir’s bored with the tours. Film’s the future.
Move on, he laughs. Or else.
Or else what? I say.
Or else I send you back to McDaddy’s in Big Stone City.
Not Big Stone City, I say. No, daddy, no.
Now I cross to the bar and pick up a Jacky Dee, double, because this is my last before the gig. It’s a special gig tonight. In a museum. Usually they have classical duos there, or po-faced poets from the shorn lawns of academe. But I’ve been visiting the Roerich for months now, a hidden-away brownstone over on the rather discreet One Hundred and Seventh Street. Hey, that’s a verse. Don’t worry, I’ll remember it. And I love it at the Roerich. So quiet. Some days it’s only me and the paintings, the smiling Buddhas of copper and bronze. Yes, the hush of the Nicholas Roerich Museum is the biggest kick I’m getting these days. Where I can look into myself and out the other side into the universe.
Seriously, I’ve become contemplative. Contemplation rules. I wander the museum and look at the paintings of Tibet, the monks in the mountains, the monks contemplating away like fury. Yeah, those monks. Sly or what? And the weirdness they believe in. So tonight I’m going to do all the contemplative songs I know, including my little ode to Topaz Street, which is the title track of the next album, and my song about Dad, spark out on his couch, my songs of vigil and songs of loss, all the soft songs off the CD, the CD here with me now, my precious amulets these CDs, my album that is selling slowly but still selling.
Because that’s all I want. That’s all I ever wanted. My music for the people to hear, locked up in these silver circles, holy to me as Tibetan prayer bowls, the sound I make, the sound I’m making, paying the bartender and crossing Broadway, out amongst the poor people now in the heat, this heat stinking of the Texas T Rotisserie and the Mexican dry cleaning, and who knows where these poor people will sleep tonight under all this glass, all this concrete, the subway trains running under my feet, the 1 train, the 3 train, the rivers of shit, the rivers of rats, and yes I’m ready as I’ll ever be because I’m getting where I need to be and that’s exactly where you’ll find me. On the brink.
Rachel
August 13, 5 p.m. Zichron Ya’akov, Israel
Go to Fatoosh, everyone said. If you’re in Haifa, you must try Fatoosh.
The woman next door drove me to the hospital the first few times. Then she pointed out there was a bus. Some people wouldn’t dream of taking the bus. For obvious reasons. But after a few journeys, everything seems fine. In Haifa, I go by taxi to the hospital, and am with David for two hours, two afternoons per week.
But David’s friends at Sachs say we should come back to New York. So that’s what I’m thinking. Back where I started. Or didn’t start. Not back to West End Avenue, because the apartment is sold. But what about those new places down by the water in Battery Park City? they ask. The ones the Slovakians are building. So modern. And the river walks are fabulous.
Maybe. I look at David in his blue gown and think he should be home. David’s a Manhattanite. His sister is there on 107 Street. Yes, Rebecca should see him again. I know she will never come here.
At our place in Zichron I sit where David sat, on the ridge in our garden, looking at the Mediterranean. There’s a triangular view of the sea, like a page turned up.
Yes, time is slow. That’s what I like. Olives drop and I pick up the rubbish the mongooses have pulled out of the bin. There is a family of mongooses in the undergrowth between this and the next house. I see them in the early morning. They are clever, yes. It’s as if they’re learning. And they’re big. I would never chase them, as David used to, back into the undergrowth. David in his shorts and sandals, waving a collector’s magazine. His glasses glinting.
The doctors say he might soon be discharged to somewhere nearer me. But his friends want him home in an apartment by the river. Beside the Hudson that flows both ways. With a live-in carer, they say. Leave it to Sachs. Yes, David was good to the bank. And the bank remembers its own.
One afternoon the nurses were changing him and they said it would take some time. See the town, one suggested. I know you’re back here on Thursday.
So I went to Fatoosh. The taxi dropped me under a palm. All I had to do was step out from the car and sit down under a parasol. A boy came up and took my order. Then when he brought my coffee he placed it too near the table e
dge. But I wasn’t paying attention. I was looking around. Office girls eating salads. A few men on their own, smoking at smaller tables. They had already noticed me, every one.
So this was Fatoosh. I went to the Ladies and passed through the dark little bar with its awnings and rugs, the pipes with their glass bulbs on the table. And I thought of Robin in the saloon, the propellers of the fan overhead, her shoulders bare. Robin would have liked Fatoosh. She smoked all the time and would have investigated it here, although I don’t think women are allowed. To smoke, that is. Mind you, it’s nothing strong. They say the tobacco’s mild, and that each smoker can mix in ingredients of their choice. Lemon or mint to cool the throat.
I said to David once, when we were outside, sea gazing, what about a pipe? I had had two glasses of the Baron’s white. I don’t think David heard. But if Robin were here, we’d do it together. Two Scherezades, Robin and I, with no one to hear our stories.
When I arrived back at my table there was a disturbance. Someone had knocked my cup over, and the coffee had spilled everywhere. A waitress was cleaning up. And the men were still looking at me. Lizards, I thought. With lizard throats. A little like my own. I wear a silk scarf now. David has bought me quite a collection.
Oh, it’s you, I heard a voice. A young woman stepped from behind the palm tree. It was a girl I had spoken to once on the bus. A tall girl, Arab blood I had supposed, who had sat opposite me all the way from Zichron. Her English was quite good.
I’m sorry, she laughed, and I noted the laugh. My friend is so clumsy.
Her friend was a dark-skinned man. Thirtyish, stylish tee shirt that said ‘System Ali’, jacket hooked over his shoulder, a Gold Label in his other hand.
My apologies, he beamed. Of course, I’ve ordered another.
In the end, they took me back to Zichron. I was amazed. The man drove what he insisted was a Ford Mustang. Five litres, he said. I had it imported. Hold on.
When we started, I could feel the whole car sway.
Fishtailing, he laughed, as I looked in surprise across at him. As you say in America.
The girl was in the back seat. She was wearing a leather miniskirt and her knees were pushed up into the air. How her foal’s legs gleamed. She showed a tiny blue triangle. Like the sea. On the bus she had been dressed in uniform.
During the journey they both asked me questions. I think they were intrigued. I told them about 9/11. I explained as best I could how Sachs had survived the banking crisis, and about the imaginary apartment in Battery Park City. Its big windows, its river walks. I told them about it in impossible detail. Until it became real in my mind.
In the end, I was wracking my brains. What more could I say? What else from my life that was somebody else’s life? Of course I said nothing about Kazimerz and Krakow. There was nothing to say. Then I remembered the automobile.
David owned an Impala, I said. We would drive those straight Florida highways. When it rained the car was like a barge in a river of rain. A barge on the Hudson.
And I could see David, both hands clutching the steering wheel, staring ahead, eyes wide, through the streaming glass.
Impala? the man said. And whistled.
Super Sport, I added.
Mm, he said. V8.
It was a Chevrolet, I said helpfully.
Oh Yes. Drove my chevvy to the levee, he laughed. And looked across.
When we pulled up at my gate, the girl climbed out after me and stretched. Skinny as a Haifa street cat. But the honey of her.
We’ll see you again, she laughed.
And so they do. A week later they walk into the garden where I’m waiting under the olive tree. David and I always used to sit here as night fell. Blue evening sun. Yes, darkness comes quickly in Zichron. The cedar seeds hang like black stars, there are lights in the wineries and the polytunnels on the plain below. Sometimes the pneumatic drills sound after dark. There is so much building here, the older people in the supermarket throw up their hands.
The girl is Ranie, the man Feroz. To put me at ease, they tell me they are both Christian. And I smile and say nothing because I have never told anyone my religion. It is not part of my dream. But others dreamed it about me. As to David, he had no time for those orthodox Williamsburg couples, the men in ringlets, the women’s hair tied tight under their wigs.
Yes, they are intrigued. When I told them about David walking north in Manhattan on 9/11, the dust on his shoulders, they seemed to think he was a hero. They were sure they had seen him on TV. And I was thinking the same thing. There was a famous image of a man covered in dust on that morning. A survivor, staggering through the choking clouds. That’s the man I was describing. Because David didn’t go to work that day. He watched it on TV in his study.
And those figures, falling from the twin towers? I thought one might be me. Falling and taking so long to fall. Yes, that must sound strange. But it’s what I felt.
I’m not sure why I let Ranie and Feroz think David was a hero. A survivor. But other people make up their lives. Other people have dreamed my life. Why shouldn’t I do the same?
Ranie is so stylish. She makes me feel stiff as olive wood. She tucks herself into the back seat and soon Feroz says we are on the Yitzhak Rabin highway. Traffic is slow.
I like speed, he says. This isn’t speed.
For a while we are stuck behind a van carrying sheep. The sheep’s faces are pushed against the wire netting of their pen. Feroz drives close to the van and the sheep stare at us as we stare back into their yellow eyes.
They told me to bring a swimming costume, so I had to buy one specially in the high street. I suppose we’re going to the beach. I haven’t swum since Florida but I’m not scared. Not bothered either about showing my body on the beach, my olive tree body with its grey leaves.
Feroz plays CDs and looks at me to check my reaction. Arab trance, he says. Electro. Good stuff.
And yes, I like it, like it because it repeats itself over and over. Round and round the music goes. Just a few notes, and Ranie is laughing and singing in the back while Feroz is impatient with the traffic. When they talk to one another it’s in Arabic, although I don’t pretend to be able to tell Arabic from Hebrew.
It’s comforting that I can’t understand. That I’m cut loose from language. As our speed picks up I’m free to look out at the landscape, the soldiers at bus stops, the helicopters like black wasps.
Now I can tell we’re not going to the beach. We seem to be heading inland. The earth is dry and thin with ribs of rock and dark boulders choking the streambeds. Stone is winning its war with water.
After two hours we are in the desert. Rock like rust. Grey and gold grit. But Feroz slows and we drive off the road. Below us are a few huts made of planks and plastic sheeting. There is a camel too, and a lorry supported by flat stones.
And here they come. The children have seen us and they are running uphill from the hovels, running barefoot over the famished earth, the soil like cement dust. We stand outside the car and the heat seems to suck all the air from my lungs and Ranie gives me sweets and a few shekels and then the children are swarming around saying mun-nee, mun-nee and their enormous eyes are pleading, their faces filthy, their clothes in rags, impossible rags, and we give them all we have and show our empty hands and then we are back in the Mustang and it fishtails as it starts, oh yes, I have learned that word just as Feroz learned it, and one of the children touches the car and recoils in shock and the tyres send a cloud of dust and gravel down the hillside, and the bigger children are running after us and laughing, laughing in this parched and barren place, and we are back on the desert highway and the three of us are laughing although I don’t know what we are laughing at, no I have no idea at all.
The camel never lifted an eye.
There, says Ranie.
And I look.
There.
A gleam. There are saltbushes now. Even trees in the sulphur-coloured rock.
Again a gleam.
We’re there, she
says.
Ah, I say.
We thought you’d like it. Because we love it. The Sea of Salt.
The Dead Sea, I say.
Very dead, says Feroz. But fun.
Ranie takes me to the women’s changing room, which is a shock. So much olive wood. So many grey olive leaves. But it’s all part of the dream, I say to myself, and soon we are walking down the path to the water where Mr Mustang is waiting for us in his striped Speedo’s. Feroz is thicker round the waist than I had expected. At the tide’s edge there are people daubing themselves with black mud. Some of them are completely covered, their teeth flashing in their faces.
Don’t get the water in your eyes or nose, laughs Ranie, and she winces in over the stones, and I follow as best I can and do what another woman is doing, lowering herself into the water, dark here where the lake bed has been churned up.
And then I am floating. My head facing Israel, my feet towards Jordan’s bare hills. Floating in the steaming air, the sulphur in my nose, the salts already slippery, a kind of soap on my skin, slippery because the dead cells are peeling, that’s what Ranie says, the dead skin being burned away.
Ranie and Feroz are swimming east to where the water is clear. But I think I will stay here in the shallows. Floating. Floating in a dead world. Floating under the red cliffs, under the scrolls of red rock. As Robin floated in her pool, blowing smoke rings at the sky. Just as David is floating, I think, in his shadowy room, and the Bedouin children are floating in their sea of bitter dust.
They say my name is Rachel. They tell me I am seventy years of age. I know my name is Rachel. I know I am seventy years of age. But no matter how much I know I know I know nothing.
Postscript: a note from the neolithic
I stop at once. Then crouch down. Nothing is moving. Nothing but a blade of grass five yards away. The only blade that shivers. Something has brushed it. Or someone has passed by. As I look, the grass stops trembling, that one grass stem, one arrow in a lynxskin quiver, and soon it is invisible amongst the other grasses that grow out of the sand. And there is no sound at all. Not a breath in this crater under the ridge. All the world, my home world, silent.
Keys of Babylon Page 23