We formed up and marched down the mountain in the direction of Ayia Ekaterini.
The rival forces confronted one another in an atmosphere of confusion and the smell of burning flesh. I guessed what had happened from the desperate cries of Meera. On what had been my vegetable patch, Onouphrios stood tearing apart and devouring the kid’s burnt flesh. Around him an array of townspeople and peasants pointing in my direction, at my back the goat army from the mountain.
The humans were shouting. ‘The Eye! The Eye! She put the Eye on His Holiness Panaretos.’
Normally they would not have given a bugger (in blunt terms) for their pederast Abbot, only here was the foreigner, the blue-eyed witch, who could be held responsible. Panaretos, one gathered from the mob’s hysterical exchanges, had been strangled during the night – probably murdered by some of the boys he had misused.
While Onouphrios stood, a Moloch tearing the kid’s charred flesh with his ugly ‘Christian’ teeth, I closed my eyes. Through the confusion of curses and smoke, the votive plaques in the tagari, which I still held squeezed against my ribs, set up their wheezy, metallic twitter … If returning the stolen tokens to the donors might have renewed their hopes of a miracle, in spite of the murky sins they more than likely suspected had denied them an answer to their prayers, I would have flung the wretched plaques in their faces. But the tagari had stuck to my side like a lung infected with pleurisy.
Where would it end? My legs supported me, but I turned and ran, anywhere, into a formlessness of time and space.
It is all the more surprising that I should find myself seated, legs curled under me to make a cushion, surrounded by perfect calm. Beside me is this open suitcase overflowing with letters – old, damp, mouldy, yellow. My only reason for distress is the absence of my precious tagari. I must have dropped it as I ran. Good riddance to the metal tokens with which it was stuffed. But I am now without the only possession I valued, and which I could call my own.
‘Heavens, what on earth is this?’ Her voice sounds incredulous as she kicks at the shabby Globeite.
‘A suitcase, I imagine. No, I don’t. It is.’
‘But from where? It can’t be from the garage. I’ve checked the contents of every suitcase stored down there. Anyway, you couldn’t have opened the door. You haven’t the strength.’
‘Who knows what the possessed possess?’ I can’t help sniggering as I come up with my reply. ‘And the garage isn’t the store-room of all our secrets. Large houses have corners which even the professionally inquisitive haven’t explored.’
Her hand reaches down and stirs the contents of the suitcase. ‘All these – what are they?’ The hand withdraws as though bitten by a spider.
‘Letters – can’t you see? Perhaps also prayers. That’s something you the rationalist wouldn’t understand. If only I could find my tagari I might prove to you that prayers sometimes twitter in the metal voices of those who offer them.’
‘You must hand over the suitcase. All these letters are my concern – as archivist.’
I can’t disagree with her in words. I am too feeble after my flight from Nisos to this other, greater, in many ways more distressing island. I make a little gesture and stir the surface of yellowed letters, picking out a couple at random.
I read, and my voice trembles with released emotion, ‘I will believe you love me if you reveal yourself. But you never do. Surely you can give me a clue, at some humble, earthly level?’ And I open the second letter, more desperately because of the damp mould which seals the dart or aeroplane shape in which it is folded. ‘… is it unnatural that I should ask you to strengthen my belief? Oh God, surely not? I am only human …’
Like the letter-paper, my voice sticks to itself: it can hardly separate the several sheets of meaning enfolding it. ‘There, you see – a prayer – as I said. And I am very wrong in asking you to share feelings so private that revealing them becomes an enormity.’
She practically snatches the letters from me and throws them back amongst the freckled chaos in the suitcase.
‘Don’t upset yourself, Mother. You should let others interpret the past – objectively. That’s why I’ve made a point of taking charge of any papers which concern the family.’
She snaps the hasps on the bulging Globeite. And that, Hilda believes, is that.
All around me the Park like a waking dream. Perhaps in time it will turn into a nightmare as Ayia Ekaterini did. But not for the moment. The ugly mynas stalk, squeak, and fly into the branches of the paperbacks. There is an old man with matted hair and a hand down his back, scratching. Probably a mystic.
‘Come on, Mother.’ She reaches down, offering to pull me to my feet. ‘Your joints will set if you sit there for ever on this damp ground.’
‘You don’t realise how supple I’ve remained from being a dancer. And, I’m cushioned by my haunches against this – bog.’
I can tell from the vibrations that Hilda is becoming impatient. She says, moreover, ‘I can’t stay here arguing.’
‘Admittedly, the thigh muscles of some dancers tighten so that, in the end, they can’t give birth. They strangle the children they are trying to expel. Anyway, my dancer’s thighs didn’t prevent me expelling you and Hal.’
‘Oh, come on! I’m expecting a telephone call.’
‘Who on earth would ring Hilda?’
She doesn’t answer. So I get up without distorting my body to any great extent, leaving a saucer in the ground. Looking back over my shoulder, I see the saucer filled with moisture.
‘I hope it isn’t blood.’
‘What is?’
‘That liquid in the hollow where I was sitting. There’s an awful lot of blood about.’
‘Nonsense. Come along at once.’
She speaks to me as though I am a little girl.
‘I’m not ready. I have to limber up. You can’t understand how important it is. You can’t believe in my connection with the dance. Ask your father – your grandfather – who were there when I performed in front of an audience of celebrities in Washington DC.’
I execute an arabesque. The effort is pretty agonising. Hilda refuses to look. She marches off, lugging the dismal suitcase.
‘If I take my clothes off, it could be easier and more convincing.’
She turns round in horror. I have already unzipped as far as my cleavage.
‘Not in the Park!’ she hisses.
‘At this hour there’s nobody here. Except the Mystic – whose mind is on higher things. And that big black dog in the distance.’
Hilda’s poor little face crinkles. ‘Oh, Mummy, you do make me suffer.’
So I know I have the upper hand. ‘The trouble with ordinary people is they haven’t suffered enough.’
We walk abreast. I take my little girl by the hand. I cry with joy. We are both crying.
But Hilda stops. She is afraid she is making a fool of herself, and that anyone coming across us might equate her with her ‘mad mother’.
‘What they don’t understand is that joy and suffering are interchangeable.’ I slow down the words rolling around in my mouth, I listen for reaction. Am I losing control of my Australian child?
‘You must be ravenous, darling. I’ll boil you an egg.’
‘Bloody eggs!’ I throw away her hand, ‘Words are what matter. Even when they don’t communicate. That’s why I must continue writing. Somebody may understand in time. All that I experienced on Nisos – as Cassianí – in any of my lives, past or future – as Benedict, Magda, Dolly Formosa. Somebody’, I look back, ‘could understand tomorrow … I don’t aspire to God the Father – but one of his understudies – that mystic for instance …’
This same character is still following us, with pauses to search through the contents of rubbish bins and to scratch his back.
‘That’s no mystic. He’s a lousy old derro.’ So speaks my uncharitable daughter.
‘I ought to ask him home. He might have the answers.’
‘Over my dead body!
Lice added to the white ant and cockroaches.’
‘To share the contents of each other’s souls. While you rummage to your heart’s content through a suitcase of mouldy archival letters.’
I look back again.
‘And that big black dog. A dog is what I need.’
‘He’ll kill your cats.’
‘My cats hate me. But this dog may be sent as atonement for the dog I murdered – Hilary’s Danny. I can feel his tongue licking the sins from my sticky hands. All sin is sticky, don’t you think? Blood, and semen, and condensed milk. I shall call him – why not? Dog.’
*
None of my plans mature the moment they are conceived. They have to be proved acceptable, pass through a novitiate so to speak.
Hilda/Hulda rings Patrick. Patrick comes, leaning on his stick, the born Mother Superior.
Hilda goes. ‘My friend Mrs McDermott is expecting me.’
I have never discovered who this Mrs McDermott is, but am happy Hilda is not friendless. I’m sure the McDermott is ‘safe’. Probably Presbyterian – an agnostic Presbyterian.
When Hilda has left us Patrick and I enjoy a slight giggle. There is nothing in holy writ to say the pursuit of salvation hasn’t its humorous side. Teresa herself when not in ecstasy was a jolly, bouncing girl.
Patrick is stalking about the room supported by his stick, wearing the invisible conventual veil, Puccini would have adored him.
I tell him I shall make some tea. ‘And bread-and-butter rolls?’
Out of charity he declines the bread-and-butter rolls.
In the kitchen I am suddenly afraid. What am I embarking on? Is it ever safe to take a person into one’s confidence? Even a friend of such long standing as Patrick. He and I have been so close we have lain in bed together, holding each other as the flying-foxes shriek in the Port Jackson figs, and at times enter the room, to hang upside down from the ceiling above us. As we lay together I wondered if any flicker of unseen eyelashes gave him cause to remember that he had been my husband’s lover, or that I could translate myself at will into the form of my hated mother-in-law, in other words his ex-lover’s mother. There was no sign, and the flying-foxes continued squeaking inside and outside the house.
But now in the kitchen I’m afraid. I scatter tea, you would think a mouse plague had broken out. I pour scalding water on my instep. How much has Hilda told Patrick? She can’t know all that much. She couldn’t conceive of life at Ayia Ekaterini. Could Patrick – the ersatz Reverend Mother patrolling the living room at the moment? Patrick himself is in search of the unanswerable, the unattainable. He will know that we, the explorers, stop at nothing. He may smell on my body the semen of that crafty monk Onouphrios, or see me as Benedict leading the frail Bernadette deeper and deeper into the bush till in her fear and confusion she reveals to her strapping companion the source of goodness. All this is to come, of course. The worthy Patrick cannot possibly know that as Dolly Formosa I am prepared to tour every Australian outback town, devour however many sponges and Pavlovas in however many bourgeois lounge rooms after the nightly performance, in hopes of biting on a clue buried along with the passion-fruit seeds and the toothache at the heart of the cake.
My range is immense. There is no reason why I should doubt my potentialities. Yet here I dither in the kitchen instead of taking the tray and going out to the living room where Patrick is waiting. If only I could nip upstairs first and read all I have written about Alex Xenophon Demirjian Gray, past, present, and future.
To confirm that I am I.
I
If I were a certain kind of mousy little thing I would embroider that most important pronoun on a guest towel and hang it on a rail in the cloakroom.
But I am not.
Come on, Suor Angelica.
I click my heels like a Sarge. Seize the tray and march out to where I am expected by somebody who ought to know me as well as his own heartbeat, but doesn’t – for better or worse.
Patrick has thrown off the Puccini persona. He is seated in an armchair, the walking stick slanted beside him. He is stroking his upper lip like a man.
He makes a grunting, heaving motion, as though to rise, while hoping he will be absolved through age, arthritis, and having known me, anyway outwardly, always.
‘Don’t! Don’t!’ the practised hostess pleads. ‘I don’t know how to apologise – for taking so long – to make a simple cup of tea.’
I settle the tray.
‘Hilda takes care of this sort of thing. Usually.’ I listen for the crash from a tipped tray. It doesn’t occur.
‘But if I’d persuaded her to stay and do the necessary, we shouldn’t enjoy our privacy, should we?’
What a twit I am at times. And Patrick a clod. A bore this afternoon. Or am I the bore boring Patrick?
I seat myself after giving him his tea. ‘Jasmine!’ I remember to cross my ankles as I have seen the experts do. (What the hell, aren’t I an expert?)
‘Since when did you decide, Patrick, to grow a moustache?’
‘Did I?’
‘Don’t I see you stroking a moustache?’
‘A mannerism – a tic.’
We sit. I am convinced I saw the moustache. Could have been a shadow. Or something he abandoned with the Reverend Mother persona.
And now, we sit.
One of the most distressing situations is when two people who know each other by heart feel a gap widening between them, elastically, elastically, for no accountable reason. It is filling the room between myself and Patrick. We daren’t look at each other. I can hear it twanging. In my mind innumerable stopgaps offer themselves, like a nest of seething maggots. None of them is desirable. I can feel myself growing more foolish by the second. If I open my mouth to speak I know that my teeth will show up long and yellow like those of an elderly ewe. If, for some reason, I were to bite Patrick he might turn septic.
Sheep haven’t the wisdom of goats. For the moment I am completely lacking in wisdom.
I clear my throat finally. I cough it up like a gobbet of phlegm.
‘Did Hilda tell you about the man we saw in the Park?’
He looks alarmed. ‘A man, Alex? What kind of man?’
‘I’d say a mystic.’ I hurry on to avoid what might become difficult. ‘Hilda dismisses this person because she suspects him of lice. When he’s probably only suffering from psoriasis. You know, the hand down the back.’
I hold up my own hand like a traffic cop. I am not yet ready to face advice or opinions. ‘Hilda would be against anyone who promised illumination of any kind, and she would try to force her own adverse opinion on one. I have to form opinions for myself. Like relationships with human beings – or others – with God for that matter.’
Patrick might be suffering from wind, or his arthritis is tormenting his buttocks.
‘So I’ve got this plan for cultivating the Mystic from the Park.’
I like the tone of my voice, it is mellow, dark as molasses. But Patrick might have been stupefied by Valium.
So I try another tack.
‘Did she tell you about the letters I found? An old suitcase full of mouldy letters in a corner of the house she’d never explored.’
‘No-oh …’
‘Well, there are the letters. She grabbed them, needless to say, but won’t be able to interpret them, even if she succeeds in prising the damp sheets apart, because I suspect, from the couple I have read, that they are poems – or prayers – far beyond the archivist’s comprehension. Shopping and laundry lists are more in her line. Wouldn’t you agree?’
I shan’t give him the chance, because today Patrick is not at his best.
‘Well, I found the suitcase in what I call the priest hole. You know the secret room where the faithful used to hide their pet priest from the Prots. Hilda doesn’t know we have such a refuge in our house. Hers is the pantry, amongst the pulses and detergents. Or the locked filing cabinets where she keeps her archives. Well, we have our priest hole. Which is where I found this
grotty old suitcase full of poems – love-letters – prayers – whatever you like to call them. You approach it through the built-in cupboard in my bedroom. Inside, there is a second door, uncomfortably narrow, leading to this hideaway under the eaves. I might show you if …’
Patrick looks guilty, distraught, disbelieving, or perhaps only fearing the arthritic twinges the narrow door will bring on as he squeezes through.
‘On second thoughts,’ I decide, ‘it may be wiser not to show you. It would put you at risk if I have to hide someone – not necessarily a priest – but a guerrilla during the invasion, or a revolutionary after concerned people have been forced to rise up against the Government. Anyhow, this is where I propose to keep the Mystic – safe from Hilda – when I’ve smuggled him in from the Park.’
I pause and take a good look at Patrick to see whether he is really on my side.
He says, and it sounds horribly like his on-and-off ally Hilda, ‘I wouldn’t advise you to smuggle him, Alex. Better bring him in openly, find out all about each other, on the ground floor. He might not live up to your expectations of illumination. Lightning flashes are less impressive in the living room, fireballs are extinguishable. Upstairs, the Mystic might crawl out of the cupboard, lice and all, and into your bed. An endless source of irritation.’
Patrick was always pompous. I set my face in the expression I know from many mirrors turns it into a stone wall. I don’t know why I have ever persuaded myself to accept this old sod as my friend.
‘During my life I’ve experienced, over and over, lice in the bed. Husbands and lovers included.’
I don’t include ‘friends’, because Patrick, for all his sophistication, is too innocent to hurt.
As for the Mystic, I shall investigate him at some appropriate moment.
Patrick’s mouth may be wrestling with that useful but non-committal word, so dear to English evaders, ‘Quite’.
I hurry on. ‘Did she tell you about the dog?’
‘I don’t think so. No.’ He lurches forward in the chair as though propelled by a hiccup.
‘The dog! The dog!’ I hear myself shouting, reverberating. ‘It’s a wonder either of you missed out on that big black dog – must be a dumpling – who haunts the Park. Dogs have played such a part in our lives. Well, I mean to adopt this dog to atone for what I did to Hilary’s Danny. I shall bring him in. He’s called Dog. What else? There won’t be any question of a priest hole for a dog. Not like the Mystic. Mystics can be contained – anyway, when off duty. A dog never. Hilda must learn to put up with him. She put up with Danny, at least till I shot him, when she used his corpse to show up her father’s wife as the big disaster of her life. So …’
Memoirs of Many in One Page 8