Cleaver

by Tim Parks

  Cleaver dragged his suitcase up the stairs – there should be a little more light here now – and emptied the contents on the bed. It was still gloomy. The phones were in a side pocket. He can’t see properly. The problem is the panes are filthy. Opening the window, he risked smashing the damn thing. It jammed at a corner. But he needs light. My eyes are such crap. He wouldn’t even be able to read the names on the phone’s address list. There was still the biggest of the trees to cut. I’ll do that tomorrow.

  Leaning out of the window over the tangle of broken branches and the dark deep wound of the gorge, he turned on the red phone. On the opposite slopes were dense woods broken only by cliffs of grey stone, the white thread of a waterfall. In the palm of his hand, the small screen glowed and then died. The battery is dead. You knew that! He shook the thing. You knew it would be dead! Now the dog came scrambling and scratching up the stairs after him. Fuck off! Can’t I be left alone a single instant? Amanda had been furious about the business of Ivan sleeping by Angela’s bed. I didn’t mind at all. Cleaver had never shared his partner’s obsession with hygiene, the business of running to the bathroom after sex. He hated that. Your honour, I claim as just grounds for this divorce the fact that my wife always runs to the bathroom after sex. But you were never married.

  Only now, though still dimly, and still pressing the button that should have turned on his phone, did Cleaver realise that what had disturbed him most about his son’s book, was not, or not just, what it said about the past, but the past itself, quite independently of that book, the past his son hadn’t spoken of. How could the boy talk about Angela without mentioning all that was healthy and even brilliant about the girl? Only now did Cleaver realise that the scratched and splintered varnish of the stairs must be the result of this smelly dog with his long claws dragging its fat carcass up here day in day out after its ageing Nazi master. Go down, damn you! I will never be anyone’s master again, Cleaver decided. I want relationships with no one. He tried to push the animal with his foot. He didn’t have the heart to kick. My father, his elder son had written, for all his cynicism and careless cruelty, was actually a big softy when push came to shove. Even that is to be held against me. And they were rewarding a writer who used expressions like when push came to shove! I’ll shove the bastard downstairs.

  But already Cleaver was rummaging in the suitcase for the grey phone, the office phone. Already the dog was lying on the bare boards beside the bed. The old Nazi slept with his dog, Cleaver realised. He was a softy. The creature could well be fifteen years old. He had that flea-bitten look to him. So the man hadn’t really lived alone. He’d had his dog by his bed. How many years was it since Angela died? Fifteen? Seventeen? All kinds of things happened then that you didn’t understand. Life changed. Yet my documentary on bereavement was widely praised. He particularly remembered the sequence about the pet that searches everywhere for its dead mistress. It was funny you used the word mistress with dogs.

  Cleaver turned on the phone. It’s what my son didn’t want to mention that disturbs me. Good. Two bars of battery had appeared. So why am I planning to call him? Come on, come on, he muttered. There was no sign of a signal. To talk about what really happened. Let’s talk. To get it out in the open, to have him admit a few things. Let’s really have it out. How could he write a book like that without saying what really happened? There is battery now, but no signal. Cleaver hung out of the window, holding the phone at arm’s length. The bastard. The sill sawed into his paunch. He had definitely scraped the skin off an ankle. I took a knock. The utter bastard. Nothing. You came here, a voice reminded him, precisely in order to be beyond the reach of a mobile phone signal, and here you are hanging out of the window over a thousand-foot drop in the hope of catching one.

  Cleaver hurried down the stairs. It’s the fourth from the top that groans so ominously. He is now extremely aware of behaving irrationally. Why? What is it that has driven me so crazy? Just when I was finally alone. The dog came clattering down the stairs after him. Cleaver turned on him. Fuck off, dog! Go write a book!

  He ran out of the house and began to walk briskly back up the track. It’s the gorge that’s cutting out the signal, he decided. I’ll make one last phone call. Above Trennerhof there would be something. To sort things out with my son. I’m not a coward. I’ll confront him. I should have confronted him the moment I saw the thing. I should at least have spoken to him before I left. What’s the point of taking on the President of the United States of America if you can’t speak to your son?

  But now he had to stop. He was winded. His chest is hurting. There’s a taste of blood in his mouth. Jesus! As soon as he sat down, on a wet slab of rock, the dog was there. Cleaver gasped for breath. The stupid creature has decided that I must replace his master. Unless he was a she. To him I’m no different from an ancient Nazi. Ghost of the mountains. In his documentary, Cleaver had shown a dog that howled whenever it heard the sound of a violin. Its dead master had played in an orchestra. In our house nobody played the piano after Angela died. He and Amanda had not insisted, Cleaver remembered, that Phillip and Caroline go on with their lessons. Angela was the musician. Angela was dead. The kids were all too happy to stop. His son had mentioned none of this. Alex! Cleaver fondled the dog’s ears. The pain was passing now. The music died with her, he thought. In a stupid road accident. Despite being convinced that he would die at any minute, his elder son had written, my father always refused to get a proper medical check-up. He was afraid that theatre might become reality, or alternatively that he might find he had no cause for panic. What I am going to ask him – Cleaver got to his feet – is why he blew up that year or so of Angela’s rebellion into something so portentous, yet entirely omitted to mention his twin sister’s musical genius, the encouragement I gave her, the expensive Moog, the permission to travel with a band when she was barely seventeen. She died because I gave her permission, because I believed in her.

  Cleaver began walking up the track again, a little more sedately now. He held the phone in front of his eyes. No signal. He really didn’t feel well. The dog waddled along beside him. This dog is as unfit as I am, Cleaver thought. He’s ancient. He shamelessly seeks company, while I just want to be alone. Why are you trying to make this phone call then? He stopped. I could vomit, he thought. Bereavement, the voice-over in his documentary had said, is a form of enchantment in which the most constant presence in your mind is the person in reality absent.

  Cleaver climbed on. The same could also be said of lost love, he reflected. In fact he had stolen that line, he remembered now, give or take a word or two, from some tearful novel about mid-life crisis. What a bore. Coming out of the wood onto the high plateau, he suddenly realised that there was a breeze. I’m sweating and it’s chill. The dog barked. Then the screen lit up. There’s a signal. Cleaver stood still. It was gone.

  He took a step back, moving the phone around as if it were a Geiger counter. Nothing. In the distance, Trennerhof released a wreath of smoke into the gathering dusk. The breeze snatched it eastward over the gorge through failing light. One bar of signal appeared, disappeared. What am I doing here? Cleaver wondered. The battery had shrunk, he saw, from two bars to one. His son would answer, of course, if I do actually speak to him, that he hadn’t talked about these things because the book was a novel. It’s fiction, Dad. Italics in his voice to make me foolish. My son is waiting for this call, Cleaver suddenly realised. When you write a book attacking, no, destroying, a member of your family, the most powerful member, you naturally expect a tough phone call, at the very least. You are ready for it. It’s just a novel, Dad. He can hear his elder son’s rather high-pitched, defensive voice. There’s a disclaimer, remember. It’s not a memoir, Dad. The younger children, Cleaver thought – Caroline, Phillip – were left very much to their own devices after Angela’s death. He watched the screen attentively, waiting for the signal to reappear. Your relationship with them never had the same intensity. The moment the signal appears, he decided, I call. Neit
her he nor Amanda had had the energy to impose piano lessons. The sound would be a terrible reminder. On the other hand they hadn’t actually got rid of the piano. And it was surreal, Cleaver suddenly decided, obscene, that Amanda had invited Priya to the funeral without saying anything at all to me. You can’t – he would tell his son the moment this signal deigned to connect with his mobile – just rearrange the past, my past, to have your father appear in the worst possible light, and then get away with it by claiming it’s fiction. Precisely through its falseness, the lie obliges us to look for the truth. We were never really lovers again, Cleaver recalled. From that point on, it was all a charade.

  All at once Cleaver was quite certain he was catching a chill. This’ll be the death of you. The back of his neck is icy. Why don’t I have my hat on? He turned and walked down the track to Rosenkranzhof. He couldn’t remember where he’d left his hat, my nice grey, broad-brimmed hat. The boulders, the outcrops, the nettles and the coloured mosses, the roots fastened to the rocks, the funguses on the tree trunks, they are growing familiar already. Don’t turn the phone off, he decided. Let the battery run out. Let it die. His nerves are calming. You must put yourself beyond temptation. Apparently pleased with the decision to turn back, the dog trotted beside him.

  It was pitch dark by the time Cleaver reached the house. At some point, I must have been distracted, he realised. He hadn’t noticed how rapidly the twilight was deepening. Without a series of appointments, the rigid scheduling of studios and news programmes, one tends to stop looking at one’s watch. He breathed deeply. There was still a little way to go and he could barely see to put one foot in front of the other. The track was rutted here. It was a mistake to look up at the sky between the trees; the ground grew blacker. Fortunately, the dog was waddling along in front of him. He makes the darkness visible, just. His coat glistens. In any event, the need to concentrate and watch his step cheered Cleaver up. How dark the woods are! Already it seemed impossible that he had been meaning to phone his son. It was the locked room started it off, he remembered. Was it? Alex, he called the dog. Again he had that vague feeling that he was trespassing. He would be caught. The creature turned, eyes faintly visible, mouth hanging open. Of course I could simply break the lock, Cleaver told himself. Though there was hardly any point if the room was filled with old junk. Why should I care? I have space enough without that. It’s not my junk.

  He walked extremely slowly, pushing one shin after another into the uneven darkness. Such fresh air can only be good for you, he thought, after London, after a lifetime of studios and offices, taxis and trains and planes. He breathed rather theatrically in self-congratulation. Not a single pollutant, quite probably. The dog padded on a few paces and turned back, padded on and turned back. He wants to protect me. And it was strange the way the creature appeared to understand the man’s need to give him a name, even if it wasn’t the name he had always been called by. Coming out into the clearing in front of the house, Cleaver stepped in the shit the Haflinger had left. He laughed. Holy Mary Mother of God, he said, touching the beads on the door, remembering the old woman’s skeletal fingers up at Trennerhof. He took off his shoes on the threshold. Brought up a Protestant, I lagged behind into atheism. He smiled. Perhaps the only way to get back to God, it occurred to him, rather bizarrely, would be to eliminate consciousness altogether.

  But where had he left the matches? In the dark kitchen, Cleaver padded about carefully in damp socks, running his hand over the various surfaces. I will have to be much more organised. The wooden table top was dangerously rough. The torch is still packed away in a box somewhere. From now on I will have to know when it’s getting dark, I must be sure where everything is. They weren’t on the stove, nor the chairs. He felt the surfaces again. One of the things no film can ever really show, he said out loud, is how it is to be in the dark. They weren’t by the sink. Cleaver had come up against that problem on a number of occasions. You can only hint at the mind’s confusion in darkness. Again he was puzzled by the thought of all those old valve radios and no electric current to run them. I’m finally beyond the grid, he reflected. For better or worse. Once, he had tried to conduct a few minutes of Crossfire in the dark, complete darkness, just to show everyone how essential seeing was to talking, how much the viewer of a talk show was interested in the show rather than the talk. Why didn’t my son stick that in his book? There had been three or four guests arranged on two sofas. When the lights went out, nobody had wanted to speak. There were nervous giggles, whispers. Cleaver stood up straight. Where are the matches? The dog whined. He wants to be fed. He stinks. Even inside the house it was cold. I must light a fire and prepare something to eat. I often asked myself, his elder son had written, why my father never did anything to moderate his eating. Cleaver sat on a chair in the darkness. Because Amanda insisted on feeding me like a pig of course. Because we always had guests. Because it would have been antisocial not to eat, not to drink. Because I like eating and drinking. Where in Christ’s name did I put those matches! It’s so silent here, he thought. Without any warning, there came a knock at the door.

  Cleaver stiffened, he stared. The larger shapes of the room were just visible: the cupboard, the table. There is a hint of light from the window, a trickling of water from the tank above the sink. It couldn’t be a knock. The dog would have barked. Alex! he whispered. What is a dog for? The creature didn’t move. He is half deaf perhaps. The knock was repeated, quite clearly. Two sharp taps. This time the dog got to his feet and went to sit expectantly by the door. When he let out a little yap, a husky female voice said, Uli! With a grating of wood and stone, the door began to open.

  Hello, Cleaver said. An ample silhouette filled the pale rectangle of the door. The fat girl, he realised. Uli! she called. Then a stream of words. But now she was taken aback to see Cleaver’s big bald head floating there in the pitch dark. Ich kann nicht Feuer finden, Cleaver tried. Hast du Feuer?

  There was a rustling noise and a powerful light shone out and swung into the room. Uli, she said again, pointing the torch. Der Hund. At once Cleaver saw the matches on the floor by the other chair. You stepped on a single dollop of shit crossing a clearing, then couldn’t stumble on a giant box of matches in ten minutes faltering back and forth around a couple of square yards.

  The lamp was on the table. He lit the wick. It smoked. The girl switched off the torch. She stood gormlessly just inside the door, shoulders hunched, one hand raised to squeeze an ear between chubby fingers. In the yellow light he can see a dark green sweater, tight trousers on heavy thighs. She crouched down and took the dog’s head in her hands. Uli! That sounds like a girl’s name. Uli, komm. She turned to go.

  Willst du … Cleaver began. The big girl hesitated. She is about seventeen, Cleaver thought. She was wearing a loose smock top, a blue work-jacket. On the table, the lamp was smoking badly. He couldn’t decide whether she was retarded in some way. The nose was hooked, the lips very fleshy. No woman, his elder son had written, was too young for my father, no age gap too incongruous. Willst du trinken? They didn’t even have to be pretty. Who would have told such a monstrous lie, if not Amanda? And to what end, if not to provoke a battle?

  The girl took two paces across the room, picked up the oil lamp and, standing on tiptoe, hung it on a chain that Cleaver now saw for the first time dangling from the central beam. It was a heavy, vigorous body, hidden from the thighs up in loose clothes. Again she pointed at the dog. She was explaining that she had been looking for the dog. Ich habe … Wasser, he smiled, Milch, Wein, Whisky. He had lined up his supermarket bottles on a shelf. Und Bier.

  The girl was casting her eyes rather furtively round the room, as if surprised to have been allowed the chance to look. Again she raised her left hand to tug at her ear. The dog whined and tried to bite at the root of his tail. She is comparing the place with how it was before, Cleaver thought. There was a look of perplexity in her eyes. The cheeks were chubby, but not ugly. The eyes are small, troubled. Sit down, Cleaver suggested gent
ly. Sitzen Sie, bitte. He wondered if what he said made any sense. It must be full of mistakes.

  The girl sat quite suddenly. She said something by way of explanation. She bent to stroke the dog. It must be Frau Stolberg cut her hair so brutally short. Cleaver remembered when Angela had come home with her head shaved. It was as if, his elder son had written, she were deliberately destroying her femininity in protest against her father’s philandering. She looked more beautiful than ever, Cleaver recalled. A strange, luminous, vulnerable beauty. He went to pick up a beer. Ist das deine Hund? he asked. The girl didn’t seem to understand. Uli? Jo, Uli.

  Cleaver had found the bottle opener now. He filled two glasses. The girl got up, scraping her chair back, and moved, tentatively, shoulders hunched, to the threshold of the sitting room. You want to go in there? Cleaver asked. He saw quite clearly now that she had no neck. The chin was weak. And she carried a smell about her, an animal mustiness. It blended with the general damp.

  Kalt, she announced. She folded her arms across ample breasts and pretended to shiver. Feuer. She added something that appeared to be a question. Cleaver shrugged, pulled a face of incomprehension. She wouldn’t meet his eyes: she returned to the table, picked up the box of matches, stretched to unhook the lamp and walked through into the sitting room. He followed. She had hung the lamp from another chain and was already kneeling by the fireplace. There were split logs in a box, but no kindling wood, no paper, no firelighters. She worked rapidly and precisely, arranging the logs so that three splintered corners were almost touching, then two more above.

  The dog arrived and stretched out as if there were already a fire. Cleaver put her glass on the mantlepiece. The smoky light made everything interesting and rather attractive. He sat in the armchair opposite Olga while the girl kneeled and worked. She struck a match. Moving his head he saw she was letting it burn right to her fingertips. At the third match, the flame caught. The three splintered corners began to burn together. The girl stood and turned. Again there was a concern in her eyes. Danke schön, he said. And then: Ich habe eine Tochter … he didn’t know how to say, the same age as yourself, which wouldn’t even have been true. She had noticed the doll now. Pretty, Cleaver said at once, nicht wahr? Sie heisse, Olga. The girl picked up her beer, looked at it and drained it in a gulp. She was ready to go.