Dying in the First Person

by Nike Sulway

  There were other gifts: new clothes, records, tennis balls, but those coins are what I remember most. Those tiny coins, barely 25 mm wide, thick silver soft and slippery with age. Both coins bore the crescent moon and were more than two thousand years old. They seemed magical to us: objects from another world. The coins were relics of an antique and glorious civilisation. They might well have been traded in the agora for oil or wine by oligarchs, priests, soldiers, philosophers; by Pericles or Socrates, Herodotus or Aeschylus.

  For my father, she had a bottle of Russian vodka and an antique book of seafarer’s maps. The vodka bottle was crusted with ice when she presented it to him. ‘Cold as Russian snow,’ she said.

  ‘Russian vodka,’ my father told us, exuberantly, ‘is the finest in the world. Only the Russians know the importance of Mendeleev’s precise formula for true vodka. Only the Russians know how to adhere to the standards for its production, which he introduced into Russian law when he was the director of the Bureau of Weights and Measures in 1894. He was a scientist – a genius – he knew about the need for precision. In 1869 he presented a paper to the Russian Chemical Society describing the valency and atomic weight of each of the elements; he discovered the periodic table. He even included eight elements that hadn’t yet been discovered. A genius!’

  He poured out two shot glasses of the vodka. The thin glasses immediately frosting with cold. ‘Chtob vse byli zdorovy,’ said my father, and threw the ice-cold drink into his open mouth.

  Our mother smiled a crooked smile, raised her glass and followed suit. She clapped the empty glass down on the coffee table beside the bottle. ‘What do you think?’ she said.

  Our father’s eyes were watering, and his face had flushed deep pink. He smiled and wiped his mouth, releasing a small, husked cough before he put his glass down beside hers. He applauded, slowly, smiling as the heat left his face. Stamping his feet and bursting out with a song we couldn’t understand. Something rough and dark and Russian.

  He pulled her gift from his pocket. A thin, flat leather box inside of which was a string of black pearls. She bent her head and lifted her hair for him to place them about her neck. He kissed her there, and on her sunburned shoulder. The pearls had a wine-dark lustre against her skin.

  ‘Krasivaya,’ he said.

  ‘I have to get the turkey on,’ she said. ‘And you need to go out and find me another bottle of cream.’

  ‘Cream?’

  ‘And extra milk, too. Try the service station out near the highway. Take the boys with you. They can go for a swim before it gets too hot.’

  ‘I’d rather stay,’ I said.

  My mother hesitated in the doorway, glanced up at my father. ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘but don’t get lost, Paul. I need the cream at least an hour before lunch, and I need you and Morgan home before eleven o’clock so you can shower and change before I serve.’

  ‘Lost! Good God, woman, we’re men of the world. Sailors! We know how to find our way home in a storm, in a blizzard. Besides, nothing could keep us away from your Christmas lunch.’

  My mother raised an eyebrow, winked at us still sitting cross-legged on the floor and swept out of the room, the glasses and the bottle tinkling in her arms.

  An hour later Morgan and our father had finally left and I was lying on the lounge, in the room kept cool with closed windows and drawn curtains, listening to our new records and flicking through our new books.

  In the kitchen, our mother laid out her ingredients, as well as her needles, skewers, scissors and string, her long-handled, flat-faced spoons and glass bowls. She had taken out her recipe from its hiding place, where it lay folded all year, cheek-to-cheek with a page clipped from the newspaper in 1949, which had detailed instructions on how to truss a turkey. Once everything was in place, she opened a bottle of dry sémillon, poured herself a shallow, golden glassful and began.

  I drifted in and out of the kitchen to watch, to refill my glass of ginger ale and ice, to breathe in the smells, to stand in the cloud of orange peel and herbs and lick gobbets of stuffing from our mother’s outstretched fingers. The day became hot and the house hotter. My mother opened the kitchen window and set a bowl of ice in front of a fan on the bench. She kept a face washer in the bowl, with which she patted her shoulders and throat occasionally, though she never looked hot. She sipped at her wine between cooking stages, glancing down at the recipe with a distracted smile, or wafting out into the dining room where, over the course of the long morning, she laid out the white cloth, the silver cutlery, the cut-glass candleholders and wine and water glasses.

  Whenever I went into the kitchen she gave me a small job to do. I filled the sink with fresh, cold water and rinsed the salad leaves. Peeled potatoes or topped and tailed beans. I filled the silver bowl with cranberry sauce, or occasionally – once the turkey was in the oven – she handed me the jug of melted butter, olive oil and vermouth so that I could baste it with her glass baster. She knelt beside me and lifted the butter-soaked cloths from the bird, showing me how to squirt juice from the pan into the holes she had made in its skin while she was trussing it.

  Every now and then she sent me out into the garden with the kitchen scissors for a handful of rosemary, parsley or marjoram. Going outside was like passing into another world: burned, dusty, bright. The heat was like that which spilled out of the oven when she opened it: a warm, moist wave that flooded my mouth and face and left a film of wet heat on my skin. The grass was green, but so dry that if I forgot my thongs the tiny blades pricked the soles of my feet. The concrete path beside the herb garden shimmered and burned. The herbs, which I had been sent out to water earlier in the day, slumped on the earth, exhausted. The sky was burned blue – almost white. When a car passed on the road, I could hear the stickiness of its tyres on the half-melted bitumen.

  In the blessedly cool kitchen, I placed the herbs on the table and put my face in the fridge.

  ‘Hot outside?’ my mother said, smiling and patting the back of her neck with her damp face washer. I nodded, and she bent and pressed the iced washer to my neck. ‘Want another job?’

  I grimaced as I poured myself a glass of water and fished ice out of the bucket in the freezer. ‘Not if it means going outside,’ I said.

  My mother shook her head, and sat me at the table. She gave me a small glass bowl, over which rested a tea strainer with half a dozen slippery red chillies in it. They were cold and smelled of alcohol: the bowl had a slick of clear vodka in it. ‘This is a secret,’ she said. ‘A Christmas secret, just for you and me. These are the peppers I’ve been soaking in your father’s vodka. A year now. To make it hot. A surprise for him: authentic Russian vodka, with authentic Russian chilli-soaked heat. Did you see him trying not to cry when he drank a glass this morning? Ha!’

  She emptied the chillies onto a chopping board, then picked up the glass bowl and poured half the liquid into a glass. ‘I’ve been training myself not to cry when I drink it,’ she said, handing me the glass. ‘Cheers!’ She threw the bowlful of liquid into her mouth and tipped back her head. I followed suit, taking a small sip from my glass. The vodka – barely a teaspoon of liquid, clear and blameless as rainwater – burned my lips and teeth and tongue and nostrils. My eyes watered. I drained my glass of water, holding the ice in my teeth, sure the vodka had stripped the soft skin from the inside of my mouth, seared my taste buds. I could feel it excoriating my lungs like acid, flaming down through my gut and groin.

  My mother nodded. ‘Good,’ she said, clapping me on the back as I sputtered and coughed. She took my glass and drank off what was left in it without blinking an eye. Outside, we heard the car pull into the drive and she looked at the clock. ‘About time,’ she said, and smiled.

  My mother refilled my water glass and I drank from it, more slowly this time, holding a chip of ice on my tongue until it melted. Outside I heard the car doors open and close: one, two, three. Then the boot opening and slamming shut. Our father’s boots on the stairs, and then the door opening. The heat o
f the day rushing in with him and Morgan and the rustle of plastic bags and a soft, snuffling sound.

  ‘About time,’ my mother called out as she immersed the glass bowl and the shot glass in the kitchen sink. ‘We were about to send out a search party.’

  Morgan and our father appeared in the doorway. Morgan a little behind, holding a cardboard box in his arms. ‘Smells good,’ my father said, peering into the pots and bowls around the room, pulling open the oven and breathing in the steam that billowed out over his already hot face. He kissed our mother on the top of her head and plonked his plastic bag on the table: cream, milk, butter and an opened a bag of crisps, which tipped over, spilling its contents. He pulled out a parcel wrapped in white butcher’s paper and tore it open. ‘Kilo of prawns!’ he said, ‘only five bucks.’ Pulling one out and tearing off its head with a grin. Morgan was waiting in the hall, as if unsure what to do with his parcel.

  ‘And what have you got?’ my mother said, smiling. ‘A partridge in a pear tree?’

  Morgan glanced at our father, whose mouth was full. He nodded at Morgan, snapped open another prawn and handed it to me, beckoned my brother into the room and cleared a space on the table. ‘Free!’ my father said.

  Morgan settled the box on the table awkwardly, avoiding our mother’s gaze. My father handed him a shelled prawn and started cracking open and peeling another.

  ‘Free?’ she said.

  Morgan nodded.

  ‘For the boys,’ my father said, handing my mother a prawn. His fingers laced with the long, orange threads of their feelers. ‘Sam can open it.’

  I moved closer to the box. Morgan gave me a lopsided grin of encouragement. The box was an old fruiterer’s box, the top flaps folded over each other to keep it closed. When I reached out and lifted one of the flaps the whole lot flipped open and, after a breath’s hesitation, a dog – a puppy – leapt up and put its paws on the opened edge of the box.

  ‘A dog,’ my mother said. ‘You bought them a dog.’

  ‘Not bought. It was free! Vaccinated. Wormed. The whole kit and caboodle.’

  ‘A dog.’

  ‘It’s a beagle,’ said Morgan.

  ‘I see.’ Our mother washed her hands in the sink and dried them on her apron. She glanced at the clock, opened the oven and basted the turkey, then turned and surveyed the kitchen: the mixing bowls and serving plates, the ingredients laid out on the table, the opened paper dish of prawns, the contents of the plastic bag, the crisps spilling onto the floor. ‘He’ll have to go in the laundry for now,’ she said. ‘Morgan, go upstairs and get your father’s old beach towel for him – is it a him?’

  Morgan nodded.

  ‘For him to sleep on. Samuel, fill up a bowl of water. I don’t suppose you bought dog food, Paul? A collar? Flea tablets?’

  ‘Solange. Don’t be like that. Look at him: he’s gorgeous.’ My father lifted the dog from the box with one hand. The tiny puppy dipped its head and licked at his fingers. His wide, dark eyes peered at our mother. The same mournful, measuring, affectionate fool’s eyes my father had, and which our dog carried about in his head his whole long life.

  ‘Where did you get him?’ she said.

  ‘Docker’s place,’ Morgan said. ‘Dad dropped in for a beer.’

  ‘One beer?’ she said.

  Morgan shrugged. My father handed the pup to Morgan and pulled another prawn from his pile, snapped off its head, peeled away the legs and shell.

  ‘How many beers did you have, Paul, before driving our son home?’

  ‘Dad didn’t drive home,’ Morgan said, leaping in before our father, chewing on his prawn, could answer. ‘I did.’

  ‘You did.’ There was a long, strange moment of quiet during which we could hear the prawn squeaking against my father’s teeth as he chewed. Our mother wiped her hands down the front of her apron. She took a step closer to our father. She was only centimetres from his face. So close she could smell the beer and seafood on his breath. ‘Let me just get this clear. I sent you out to buy cream and you brought home a dog. You got drunk. And you let your fourteen-year-old son drive you home.’

  ‘I gave him a driving lesson.’

  ‘I see,’ said our mother. She turned her back on us and picked up the knife she had been using when they came in. The pup snuffled and whined, making a sound like a seal sneezing. She squared her shoulders. ‘It’s probably got worms,’ she said. ‘Put it in the laundry and then you two can go and wash up for lunch.’

  ‘Him,’ Morgan said, nestling the dog against his belly while I picked up the box to follow him. ‘Enkidu.’

  As we left the room, I heard our father’s voice drop and skim across the surface of the boiled air. Soothing, softening, crooning to our mother as she wiped down the table, rolled up the paper parcel of prawns, ran hot water in the sink, snapped the fridge door open and closed. The muted vibrancy of her fury spilled down the hall into the laundry, where I held Enki while Morgan folded the old towel for him to lie on, and filled a bowl with water. Enki tumbled after the tennis ball Morgan and I rolled around the tiled floor, snuffling and mewling. He fell over his own feet if he ran too fast; his front paws slid out from under him when he stopped or turned too quickly.

  Our father’s voice rose, crested. The kitchen door slammed open and shut and we heard him stomp down the stairs. The heavy creak of the shed doors opening. In the kitchen, our mother turned on the radio. We took turns having showers and playing with Enki. Our pleasure muted at first. I ventured into the kitchen for glasses of ginger ale, and an hour later our mother came to the laundry door and knocked before sliding it open.

  She surveyed the small room: the towel folded over an old pillow in the box Enki had travelled home in. We’d cut down the sides of the box, and cut an entrance in one side. The bowl full of water. The mop drying in the sink. She knelt in the doorway and lifted him up, peered into his face. Enki tilted his small head and lifted one paw, patting at her nose. She reached into her pocket and fished out a sliver of turkey meat, letting him lick it from her fingers. ‘Good dog,’ she said, rolling him over in her hands. She rubbed her fingers over his belly, lifted his tail, peered at the space between his legs. ‘It is a boy,’ she said, without looking up, lifting Enki’s ears, running her hands over his back and down his legs one at a time. Our mother set Enki on the floor and rolled the ball towards Morgan, frowning with concentration as she watched Enki run after it and flop on the ground.

  Morgan rolled the ball back towards her, Enki following it, rolling over it, a furred tangle of legs, tail and ears. ‘Can we keep him?’ he said.

  Our mother looked at the dog for a long time. Her dark eyes studying him carefully, as though looking for something she had lost, or which stood at a great distance and could only be discerned through careful, sustained attention.

  ‘We’ll see,’ she said.

  ‘But can we?’

  Our mother stood and stepped between us, turned on the tap and scrubbed her hands in the stainless steel tub. The water sputtered and pinged in the deep sink. ‘I said we’ll see,’ she said. ‘Don’t ask me again. Now go and wash up for lunch. Samuel, you can go and get your father.’

  The table was laid out with bowls and platters. The white china with its silver rims glittered in the cool room, reflecting the light of the candles, the rainbow flickers thrown by the crystal decanter of wine, by the candleholders and silver serving platters. The bowls of vegetables steamed; the salads glowed. The turkey was a fragrant, golden centrepiece, surrounded by roasted onions and baby artichokes. Our mother was hot and weary, watching our father carve the meat and pile it on our plates. The meat soft and warm as fresh-baked bread. When he cut into the crisp skin, juice flowed out over its sides in rivulets, releasing the scent of hot butter and herbs, of lemons and oranges heated into fragrant steam. We passed the bowls of vegetables and sauces and bread and salad up and down the table, filling our plates. Our mother poured water into our glasses, the ice tinkling against the crystal. The slices of lemon
shining. Our father poured the champagne and raised his glass to make a toast. Down the hall Enki mewled and snuffled at the laundry door.

  Our mother looked down the long table, across the heavy white linen, the silver bowls and cutlery and candlesticks, the fine bone china plates heaped with the food she had spent all morning preparing. And half the day before. She looked over the whole glorious cluttered mess to our father’s face. She raised her glass, and smiled.

  *

  Six months ago I was invited to give a keynote address for a conference hosted by the Society of Linguistic Anthropology. At first I declined. After all, linguistics was not my field and though I had built a career out of working on Morgan’s work – translating his books, as well as writing about them and about Nahum – I wasn’t an academic. I was sure that anything I had to say would seem at best naïve. But the organiser of the Language, Culture and History Conference – Dr Elizabeth North – was persistent. She sent long emails, offering to help me develop a paper to present, and insisting that the delegates would be thrilled to have me speak about anything to do with Nahum. And she offered to show me around Amsterdam, sent me photographs of the apartment where I would be staying. Finally, I reluctantly agreed.

  My flight and accommodation were booked, and Elizabeth sent a long and cheering email about airport transfers, conference registration and so on, as well as a list of places I might like to visit while in the Netherlands and some more notes in our long correspondence about the topic of my presentation. I entered the dates in my diary, and filed the rest away for later.