Hair Side, Flesh Side

by Helen Marshall

  He breathed deeply the cool, crisp, acetylene air.

  Here, with the edge of a three-inch ledge digging a groove into the soft instep of his foot. Here, with one hand desperately tamping down on the nozzle, while the other blindly felt out and stabilized each step. Here, in that shiver of adrenaline, something burst free. Simon felt the city opening up beneath him, the beautiful city. A moving, beating thing.

  And then, as the paint blossomed, pooled and dripped in sticky lines, as Simon slashed at the wall in frenzied strokes—a name, a name in the centre of a dark-winged bird—he felt Jeremy moving too. The hard stone at the centre of him.

  It was easy then. Easy in a way that only truly terrifying things are easy.

  Simon opened himself up. The wind whistled madly around him. One hand clutched at the skin of the building, Beatriz beside him, helping him, the other hand carving out those letters. Putting a word to things. Claiming something, but also letting something go.

  Simon was frightened, of course he was. The fear was alive in him, and his heart hammered like a trapped bird. But then, it wasn’t his heart hammering, it was Jeremy, Jeremy hammering inside him.

  With a word, he let him free.

  [ shoulder ]

  HOLDING PATTERN

  They say it started with the angels and the saints in Saint Peter’s Basilica: Maderno’s façade with Christ, John the Baptist and eleven of the apostles (the eponymous Peter was somewhere to the left of the stairs, away from the pack, but no less effective, the rumour went, no less inspiring). And to be fair, that’s where it should have started. There would have been something proper about that, as if it were God who had done it. But believe what you want.

  It started with the statue of Paul on the road to Damascus in Soho Square. You know the one. No? We used to pass by there when you were young, when we had that little place in the West End, but I suppose the statue wasn’t there yet. Most people didn’t notice it, they certainly didn’t visit it the way they would visit the Charles I statue in Trafalgar Square or Frampton’s Pan in Kensington Gardens. It never rated highly in the tourist brochures if it was given a look at all. Life-sized and cast in bronze, the horse rearing up and a surprised Paul with one hand thrown over his face to block out the blinding light of God. A decent enough statue, I suppose, as far as these things go. The kind of thing you might spot in half of London’s public parks.

  But there had always been something about the face, and if you ask me, that’s what got the whole mess started, that’s what I say: Paul’s expression should have been terrified, and that’s what the sculptor had gone for, terror, mingled with something else, but it hadn’t quite come off. Paul looked startled, certainly, but the hand shielding his face, the angle was just a bit wrong, just a bit off, and so it seemed more like he was falling into a faint. When you spotted the thing you couldn’t help but mimic it, that look of surprise, the sweep of the arm over the forehead. We used to see tourists doing it in Soho Square. You don’t anymore of course, you wouldn’t now. But back then, there would be flocks of tourists, great red-faced, sweating men, wives armed with guidebooks and vacant stares, and children, bored mostly. They’d all perk up when they saw the statue. They’d crowd around in groups of two or three and take turns, bulging their eyes, sticking out their tongues, bodies bending like broken coat hangers into a half-faint. Oh, some of the parents would squeal with joy. The mothers would applaud their little darlings, the fathers would beam with approval: “Look at my boy,” their eyes would say, “look at him go, clever kid.”

  I don’t know who the first kid was, probably a Tommy or a Tucker or a Timothy trying to show off, maybe he was part of a tour group and his friends, other boys of a similar age, say, thirteen, all egging him on. And he would have screwed up his eyes, that boy, let’s call him Tucker, he would have tried to get the look just right. He would have studied the angles of the arms beforehand, you know how kids your age are, always wanting to show off. And he would do it, he would get that face perfect, the arms held out stiffly, comically above his head, a phantom horse squeezed between his knees.

  And then it would have stuck.

  At first it might have felt like a cramp, the way muscles lock up when you’ve been out in the cold too long. But then the boy would try harder, try to unscrew his face, but he would find his eyebrows frozen, his mouth locked in that very funny, perfectly sculpted oh of surprise. Perhaps the crowd is moving on now, perhaps they’ve gotten bored, it was a good trick, really, but the kids are antsy—kids your age always are, hey?—it was the kind of thing funny for a moment, or funny in a photograph, years down the line when his mother wants to show off the album to a new girlfriend but even then, even then it’s only funny until the page flips. But Tucker doesn’t move. He just stands there. And on the other side of the square there is another kid doing it too, another boy Tucker’s age, and he’s just nailed the look, got it to a tee, but his parents are starting to roll their eyes now, and they are trying to usher him along, but now he won’t move. At last, Tucker’s dad grabs his arm and tries to haul him away, but he can’t do it. His son, at thirteen, hardly a scrap of flesh on his tent-pole arms, is now heavy as stone, heavy as time. Frozen. Still as that statue.

  That’s where it happened first.

  The angels, the saints, they all came after. Those were the expected places and, to be fair, that’s where it should have started. If I’m honest. In Rio de Janeiro they say there’s a crowd of them settled around that giant statue of Christ the Redeemer now, his arms spread out a hundred feet up in benediction over the city. But they look like seagulls in the photos, or people pretending to be seagulls, all of them with their arms stretched out like wings, their heads lolling just so, just the way that Christ lolls his head a hundred feet above them. They can’t move. Their jackets flutter in the breeze. Sometimes a scarf comes undone and you can see it floating away, off the edge of the plinth, like a banner above the Corcovado Mountain. The place has become the hunting ground of pickpockets, they say; no one moves a muscle to stop them. No one can. Not anymore.

  But it wasn’t just the saints, no, you couldn’t say that it was something about God. It was all the statues of the world. In Paris, they’ve had to close the gates to the Musée Rodin. There are thirty-seven people trapped there at last count: sixteen hunched over, hands curled backwards like commas to support their chins, eyes downcast in inner turmoil; a group of five posed as the Burghers of Calais; and the lovers, oh, the lovers, pairs of them twisted, contorted, hands seizing or spurning, faces turned away or else locked together in passionate embrace. The lovers, I’ve heard, are the biggest problem; they still line up outside the gate, they climb the walls of the garden, even after the warnings, even after the closures. Every day the security guards discover more of them, teenagers, barely fifteen, re-enacting The Kiss, newlyweds, and the desperate ones, the ones afraid of having lost that spark in their marriage years ago.

  We went to Paris for our honeymoon, your dad and I, oh, a good fifteen years ago now. Back when he had a full head of hair and he still worked for the bank, all those dark suits and expensive ties, he looked so posh, so important! Before you were born. Before he gave up on suits and I got the stretch marks and the grey hairs, back when the skin didn’t hang off me like old laundry. Oh, I was a looker back then, there’s no doubt about it! We couldn’t keep our hands off each other, your father and I.

  The curators, the ones at the Musée Rodin, they don’t know what to do with all the bodies. All thirty-seven of them. They’ve taken to leaving out the young ones, the pretty ones—the kind of statues your dad and I would have been, I reckon—but the older couples, the ones who are not, if I’m honest, in the best possible condition for all that contorting and kissing, those ones have been put in the basement. The paper said there is an art collector in Germany who has offered twenty thousand euros for a pair of honeymooners. They’re considering the offer. The austerity measures have hit the arts hard. Even in France.

/>   Nobody knows what it is like, whether they can feel anything, whether it hurts. Some say it must be agony, but I don’t think so, not really. It isn’t the standing still that hurts, is it, love? Well, you don’t know yet. You wouldn’t.

  It is harder to get access to the sites now. Statues have been pulled down in public squares, gardens have been scoured of cherubim, fountains smashed. The Mayor of New York has called for giant tarpaulins to be suspended from helicopters to shroud Lady Liberty. Her victims have filled up Ellis Island. They’ve stopped the ferry from running, but it hasn’t done any good. Not one bit of good. They mimic each other, all those people; they pose like the statues of statues, and the statues of those statues, and when they get it exactly right, when they get it just so, then—then it still happens, and they are frozen in place forever.

  They want it to happen, that’s what I think. They want to be like that. They do it on purpose now. You can see them on the subway, in coffee shops, the people standing absolutely still, trying not to move a muscle. They want it.

  But who can blame them, darling? Sometimes you find that moment in your life, that perfect moment, and you want it to stick. To really stick.

  I remember sitting in Montmartre, oh, years ago now, and we were eating croissants at a table in one of those open cafes, and he was sweet then, your father was, and I took his hand ever so gently. I had been afraid he would be cross, you never can tell with your father how he’ll react to things. He doesn’t like surprises, doesn’t like changes. He never has. But I told him the news, that I was pregnant, that we were going to have a baby! And then I waited, just waited to see. He sat there for a moment, licking crumbs off his fingers and I thought maybe he hadn’t heard me or maybe it had all been in my head, maybe I hadn’t told him at all. Then he took my hand, and he didn’t say a word, he just smiled. And it was perfect. It was perfect then, and maybe, if I could have kept it that way forever, then I would have. Oh, I don’t know, it’s silly. But I might have.

  Perhaps they’ll all wake up, they’ll shake out those tired, stiff limbs of theirs and they will realize it was all a dream, it was all of them pretending, it was all that wanting to stay in one place, to be one thing forever, all that dreaming and wishing crystallized.

  Last night I had a dream. I dreamed that your father took me out into the garden, to that little patch of lobelias, the ones I put in two years ago, and he told me to hold still, to hold my arms just so and then I could stay like that, I could stay there forever, amongst the lobelias, in our little garden. And I wanted to. I wanted to so badly, but my muscles get tired so quickly now and they wouldn’t hold, and he kept moving bits of me. “It’s not supposed to be like that,” he would say. “You have to get it right, you have to get it perfect. And then you can stay.”

  Don’t worry, darling, it wasn’t a sad dream. That’s the thing, that’s the thing about it. I was happy.

  I love him, you know. It hasn’t always been like that between us—there have been rough patches, everyone has rough patches, of course, when you grow old together, when you grow out of one thing and into another, but I’ve always loved him. He gets scared sometimes, when he sees me looking out the window. I know he does. I know he asked you to keep an eye on me, to make sure I don’t wander into the garden. He’s afraid, you see, he’s just afraid. Poor man. He doesn’t like change, but then, who does? Even Paul needed a thunderbolt before he got the message.

  In that dream, though, it wasn’t so bad, it wasn’t so hard. I could learn to do it, I know I could. I could learn to hold myself like that. Just the way he wanted. Until the stillness settled in. And the quiet.

  [ knuckle ]

  THE BOOK OF JUDGEMENT

  Let us say that she was sitting at needlework when he came for her; that her fingers were still deft, that they moved without a stumble as the thread tucked in and out; or perhaps it is better if she were at the pianoforte, playing, and she did stumble, her fingers slipping on a jarring note. It might have been something by Handel or Haydn or Dibdin or Samuel Webbe; or, were she venturing further afield, she might have attempted Corelli or Cramer. But, no, despite what they say, I know better, and she had no especial taste for the pianoforte; she did not care for it though all the world said she did; I know she did not, I know it.

  And so it could not have been that she was at the pianoforte when the stranger came, but let us say she was, let us not unsettle the sensibilities of those who claim intimate knowledge of her practices, let us say she was there, bent just so, rapt in the rhythm of Handel, then, (for I admit I am partial to Handel even if Jane was not) and let it be a jest between us against my detractors if it were not as I have described it exactly.

  When the stranger entered, he may have startled her, so that the “March” in Judas Maccabeus was insensibly altered, and her chin might have nodded up at the unexpected sound of the door, and perhaps a slight gasp even escaped her lips when she saw him; this Hun invading the centre of her quiet domesticity. Some might describe him as tall, and that would be a perfectly adequate description; he was tall. But to say that is not to capture the sense of magnitude he brought with him, the grandeur. I have been told that some hear a rushing noise like a cataract when they first look upon him, the sound of pounding blood, and it may be this that she heard, her heartbeat accompanying the forever-marred Handel. I cannot say. And to say he was handsome, again, might be seen as somehow a lessening, and such falsehoods, such tendencies toward understatement are inappropriate in a chronicle such as this, which requires the strictest veracity in all things; his hair was soft as lamb’s wool, curled gently over his forehead; black, most likely; he had dark, piercing eyes, possessed of intelligence and keenness, and sensuous lips of the kind true lovers, or lawyers, possess. Perhaps, she had some subtle premonition when she first saw him; perhaps she heard a note like a bell, tolling, as some saints do. But there was almost certainly something; that, at least, is not in question.

  And so her pen might have fallen from nerveless fingers, yes, it was a pen after all, and so it was the writing desk at which she sat and not the pianoforte. And he will have said to her, “Fear not, madam, that I should disturb you at this late hour, for I have come with tidings.” And she will have been shocked, but that stubborn grace to which she was born will have steeled her resolve, and she will have said, “Indeed, sir.” And he will have said, “You are to die.” And she will have said, “That is known. For is it not that every woman on God’s earth is appointed an hour of death?” And he, with a terrible smile, though not terribly meant, of course, but frightening, nonetheless, to a mortal, will have said, “Yes, Miss Austen. That is so.”

  Since the beginning of Time, there has existed in Heaven a perfect record of all deeds, an accounting of each man and woman upon which they will be judged, a great Book written with words of gold, watched over by Saint Peter, the holiest and most trusted of the Apostles. All this I revealed to the astonished Miss Austen, her face flushed to a beautiful pink, like the first blossom of a rose; all this I revealed and something more: that I, myself, had been chosen as the Author of that Book. Certainly, she was wonderstruck that such a task had been entrusted to one so beautiful and terrible, though, of course, not willingly terrible, never willingly terrible to her. Certainly, she will have felt as if her story were perfectly safe, that each notation should accord perfectly with how it had been performed in History, that the accounting should be true and her immortal soul safe.

  And I assured her, eagerly, that this was so; that there had never been a keener observer of her manners than I; that none had been so attuned to her every thought, the reveries, the little meanderings of her brain, than the one who stood before her. And she might have nodded, just a little, but at this point I will have noticed that the wonderment she felt, the jarring to her soul had jarred her hand as well, and a thin pool of ink might have been gathering on the pages before her. Gallantly, I might have said something to draw attention to this, “Madam, the ink is running.
” And she will have said, “Why should ink matter when an Angel of the Lord stands before me?” and I will have said, “Because it is all that matters. Was not the universe brought into being with a Word?” And she will have said, “Yes, perhaps.” And I will have laughed gently, “Then you must attend to words, to your little creations, lest some force of evil enter into the world.” Perhaps this was not a very kind joke.

  The other angels had little in the way of poetic sensibility; they were wise, yes, and terrible, certainly that, but none of them, at their hearts, were aesthetes. They were messengers, servants, builders, killers even—you might say that there was a certain creative flair in, for example, that little episode with Lot’s wife, but you have to realize that even Azrael was a little embarrassed about it, he didn’t know what had come over him, and the others, they wouldn’t trust him with anything apocalyptic for centuries. You see, they wanted wisdom; they wanted terror; but poetry, that was a thing for mortals, that was a way of imagining the world not how it was but how it could be; and as the world was exactly how God had ordered it in his Infinite Wisdom and Infinite Knowledge, it was, therefore, Infinitely Perfect. Why sadness, you might ask? Why death? Why pillars of salt and punishment? Why manna in the wilderness and the twelve plagues of Egypt and the forbidden fruit if not for the sheer poetry of it? I asked Azrael once, but he only looked at me with those eyes that had seen the passing of eons, that had basked in the radiance of a most perfect love and had delivered thousands upon thousands of mortals from one world to the next—eyes that did not want questions, only thousands put to the sword, not even a fiery sword, just a simple iron sword with two sides honed for cutting down mortals like wheat—and he said, “I don’t know why I did it, mate. I don’t.”