by Edward Docx
‘No.’
‘And I couldn’t say that when she lay beside me with her eyes beaming her deepest existence into mine and me pouring mine right back, saying that she loved me and that this was how the world was meant to be, I couldn’t say that she didn’t seem to want it not to be physical.’
‘So that was it?’
‘I asked her to sign her book.’
‘And?’
‘She couldn’t do it.’
‘Right.’
‘So . . . so I got ready to leave and I asked her if she had ever loved me.’
‘And what?’
‘She said, “I believe so.”’
Jack is quiet: ‘She was just protecting herself.’
‘And so what’s left?’ I ask.
‘Sorrow. Grief. Sadness. Emptiness. Loss. The memory of happiness. The memory of love. Affection.’
‘Affection?’ my father asks.
‘Yes, deep and timeless affection that beams out into the universe like those hopeless radio signals they send in the search for extra-terrestrial life.’
Jack comes in softly: ‘Any lessons?’
‘None. Not a single one.’
Dad says: ‘You’ll find someone, Ralph.’
‘No.’ Ralph is sharp. ‘I don’t need someone. Women are particular, Dad. Not general. You know that. And I’m OK. It’s just . . . sad. But this whole thing.’ He drains his glass. ‘This whole thing is good for me – your suicide, I mean. It’s really helpful, actually. The perspective. More champagne, Lou, come on. And what about the sandwiches?’
‘It’s moving again,’ Jack says, ‘up ahead.’
PART FOUR
LET US NOT TALK FALSELY NOW
FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS
We are sitting in the small Hansel-and-Gretel square of a hilltop German village.
‘Only the Germans really know how to make beer, Lou.’
‘Apart from the Belgians, Dad,’ I say. ‘And the Italians and the British and . . . pretty much everyone who tries. The Indonesians.’
‘And you have to hand it to the Germans: they love real concerts. None of the struggle or shame that there is about classical music in Britain. There are Debussy posters everywhere.’ He indicates the village noticeboard. ‘What d’you put it down to?’
‘Could be that Dean is big in Denzlingen.’
‘You mean it is more Dean than Debussy?’
‘Let’s not rule it out.’
‘Dean Swallow?’
‘Dean Swallow,’ Dad affirms. ‘You said yourself he was talented.’
‘Oh bloody hell.’ Dad’s brow furrows deeper. ‘We never listened to his CD.’
‘We’ve other things on our minds, Dad.’
‘It’s unforgivable though.’
‘And we don’t have a CD player.’
Directly across the flattened grey cobblestones of the square, there’s an old hotel with a big wooden door beneath a pointed arch; dark beams rise and cross in crooked rectangles across its facade like bones – all the way up to its steeply raked roof from which elvish garrets protrude. On our left is the pale-pink Rathaus with turquoise-grey shutters and flower boxes beneath every window with just about every colour of petal you can imagine – velvety-violet through to blanched almond. On our right is an immaculate pale-yellow church with a simple bell tower, a witch’s hat steeple, a white clock, a neat belfry with two self-restrained arched windows. Behind us is another row of wooden-beamed buildings – each with those vast triangular roofs that sweep down almost to the ground in which the upper floors are contained. The evening smells warmly of the green of the vines in the valleys all around – and somehow, faintly, of basil or cloves.
We are sitting outside at the only bar, waiting for Ralph and Jack who have gone with Malte to fix a table for the Feinschmecker Hochgenuss. Malte met us here forty-five minutes ago. He turned up in a copious double sweat of delight to see us and pre-concert distraction about the piano, the audience, the programme, classical music in general. The festival always took place in several of the surrounding villages as well as Denzlingen itself, he explained, and there were constant transportation and smaller-venue issues. But he suggested we come with him super-quick in person to the nearby castle where the food events were centred – and there he would introduce us to the maître d’ of the restaurant as ‘friends and family of the artist’ and see if he could get us a table. He had some traction, he reckoned, since everyone knew Dean in Denzlingen. Still, it would be better to go and pretend to be Dean’s family and guests of the sponsors . . . And so, rather than load Dad back into the van, Malte shot off with Jack and Ralph, our van chasing his van in odd communion down into the valley below.
I say Dad and I ‘are sitting’ as if I mean the word casually . . . But the thing is that my father is sitting in his wheelchair.
That we have adjusted to be just the right height.
That we have fixed with a brake.
Dad reaches for his beer. I affect not to notice the care that he puts into the action. He is sideways on to the table because he cannot get his legs under in the chair. Which does not help – because his left arm has a new tremor. We are pretending that none of this is happening. That much I get. But this extra bit – this pretending he is not now in a wheelchair . . . I should be all for it, of course. I should be delighted. But what I want – what I want – Yahweh, Jesus, Mohammed, Zeus, Brahma – is my father as he was. I want my father healthy, robust, independent, funny. Cooking, talking, eating, joking, walking, swimming, teaching. And I want his fucking face to work. Normally.
And I don’t want to push him around.
And I definitely don’t want anyone else to push him around.
And if I can’t have that, if I can’t have that, you idle fucking gods, then maybe I don’t want my father at all. Maybe I don’t want my father at all. Something cold strikes my soul as Dad reaches for his glass again: that without my brothers, all of a sudden, we are back to it: the reality. And actually . . . they are the ones . . . they are the ones casting spells . . . taking us away from the truth. The truth which is the same question it has always been: to be or not to be.
‘The problem in Britain . . .’ Dad takes an ostentatious sip for my benefit – to show me he can do it – but some of the beer spills as he sets down the glass. ‘The problem is that knowledge has been confused with snobbery.’
‘Go on,’ I say.
But I’m not listening. Because this is not the problem. I’m thinking that the problem is that Ralph and Jack have never even exposed themselves to the basics: like going online and reading the MND message boards and forums. All the pain, and loss, and courage, and trauma, and fear, and heartbreak. It’s like some kind of post-terrorist-strike chat room – except worse because it redraws itself hourly – new outrage, new anguish – wider, bigger, spooling down every screen that seeks it out. This – this – is the problem.
‘Well, expertise is to do with the assiduous collection and assimilation of knowledge – right?’
‘If you say so.’
So many real people posting in real time from all over the real world. Disaster detonating in lives here, there, north, south, one after another. ‘Angry and Bewildered.’ ‘Crying while I type.’ ‘Exhausted – just got hubby home from the hospital.’ ‘Be kind to yourself, Sam, you have courage and reserves that you don’t yet know.’ ‘Biting the Inside of My Mouth.’ ‘Michael began with walking more slowly – catching his feet only now and then. It progressed to his legs giving way. After a while he was unable to get up without assistance. Then he couldn’t stand. This was over eight months to September. Now he has no arm movement and the start of choking and speech changes.’
‘But snobbery is nothing to do with expertise,’ Dad says.
‘What?’
‘Snobbery is essentially an emotional manoeuvre that goes something like, I know – or pretend to know – a certain thing – which I use – emotionally – to make myself feel better about myself for k
nowing it – usually by way of making you feel worse about yourself for not knowing it.’
The truth is that Dad loathes sitting sideways on, too. The effort of twisting his body to talk to me is irritating, tiring, exasperating. But it’s too late for me to move round and sit somewhere easier for him in the direct line of his sight. That would be to acknowledge the problem. That would be to stop the pretence. This pretending . . . this pretending is extra-ridiculous given that before this trip we both faced and understood and dealt with the physical actuality – every morning, every night, every minute, for months. Until my brothers arrived, in fact, and bought this wheelchair. Now we’re pretending there are options. I hate the word options. I hate the way it, too, pretends . . . the way it pretends to agency and power and doesn’t notice the vast black universe laughing its massive black hole of a heart out at such a fleeting creature on such a fragile planet.
My father is waiting for me to respond. But I can’t remember what we are talking about. So I say: ‘Remind me why this is an issue, Dad?’
‘Because, Lou,’ he replies, agitated, ‘people are now using the two terms interchangeably. People call experts snobs. And it’s a disaster for the culture.’
Maybe only my father is left in the world to say things like ‘a disaster for the culture’.
‘Now the emotional transaction goes the other way, Lou. Because you do not know about subject “a” or “b” – you bring balm to your emotional anxieties and insecurities with the diversion of a simple catch-all attack – you ascribe snobbery to me. This makes you feel better about your lack of knowledge.’
‘Can we leave me out of it?’
Maybe what sort of person you are comes down to how much truth you can table and how much truth you can take.
‘Rather than make the effort,’ Dad presses, ‘the effort to learn or admit that there are things to learn . . . And rather than respect the fact that someone else has taken the time and trouble to learn them, you negate my learning and soothe your ignorance by calling me a snob. In this way, ignorance becomes some sort of a vindication. You feel better. I feel worse.’
‘I don’t feel better. I never feel better.’
‘But the subject in question – music, trainers, coffee, art, beer, sunglasses, telephones, computer games – remember we are all experts in something, Lou – the subject in question is not engaged with at all. It’s not even being discussed.’
Birds that I’m guessing are swallows dart and circle the steeple of the church – maddened with life – like they’ve only just realized that the day is nearly done and so they must seize and swoop and binge upon the evening.
‘So you see what I mean?’
‘Not really.’
‘When we use the word snob we have been talking about our feelings for ourselves and for each other. We haven’t really been disputing the subject in hand or the relative levels of our expertise.’
‘Dad?’
‘In fact, Lou, the truth about most experts is that they are the opposite of snobs: they like nothing better than to share their knowledge, to teach . . .’ My father is raving and burning now. ‘Most of the time they’re desperate to do so – all they want to do is share and explain and demonstrate and pass their passions on. But instead . . . they’re made to feel guilty – guilty about knowing things! That is the modern world in a nutshell. And it’s a—’
‘Dad.’
He’s gesturing like we’re at a political rally. ‘The right to an opinion does not extend to the right to having your opinion taken seriously – unless you can—’
‘Dad.’
‘I mean – you sign up to Twitter and away you go. Away you go, Lou.’
‘What—’
‘But tell me this. How do you make sense of suffering on Twitter? Tell me. It’s knee-jerk and skin-deep and awash with idiocy and sentiment. All this opining. There’s no moral virtue in anything. The world is gone for me. Gone. I don’t understand what is happening any more. I don’t understand. You know all my—’
‘Dad! Stop. You—’
‘—all my study and effort is rendered meaningless, Lou.’ He’s holding his glass so tight I think it might shatter. ‘Meaningless and dismissible. There’s no respect. Nothing you can measure any more.’
And then the fucking bell tolls.
Just like that – as blithe as it is solemn: the church bell just starts sounding out the hour. Toll. Toll. Toll. Knell. Knell. Knell. And the sound rings across our little square and down into the valley and there’s nothing we can do about it. And the moment seems like it will stop us here for ever. Trapped in time. And I’m thinking – this is it; finally, we’re down to it; at last, the hour when we speak our hearts. My father and I – we can do it. We can speak to one another without falsity. Yes. Because the bell tolls for thee.
But then there comes a second sound of an engine straining up the nearby hill. And slowly Dad sits back in the wheelchair and eases his grip on his glass.
‘Ralph treats that van like he’s flogging a dog,’ he says quietly.
‘How do you know it’s him?’ I ask, like anything matters.
‘Unmistakeable sewing-machine sound of a VW engine, Lou.’
‘No, I mean how do you know it’s Ralph? Could be Jack.’
‘No sympathy in that right foot.’
The van appears across the other side of the square. Ralph is at the wheel. He drives not-quite-slowly-enough into the pedestrian zone and parks up boldly in front of the hotel. The side door slides open.
‘Come on,’ Jack shouts across, ‘we’re really late.’
I put down some money for the drinks that neither of us have had time to finish and I push my father across the cobbled square beneath the bell tower, which is silent again – totally silent – as if nothing has happened.
The third tape is the worst. The first voice is screaming and the violence is immediate. A glass smashes really close by the machine and then something else is thrown. People are moving around the room fast. You can hear bangs and crashes and furniture either falling or being pushed aside. There’s swearing from the second voice. Then you hear a kind of wet thud or thwack. What sounds like a heavy fall. And the second voice cries out from what must be the floor in what is obviously real pain. Then more swearing and the second voice saying: ‘There’s glass – it’s in my eye – my eyes – there’s blood in my eyes – I can’t see. There’s blood in my eyes.’
And then – right up close – the sound of the first voice breathing . . . shallow breathing . . . in and out . . . right by the microphone . . . in and out. And then in a hissed whisper: ‘I hope you’re fucking blinded.’
I wheel Dad up to the van door.
‘We have a table.’ Ralph says from where he is half-turned in the driver’s seat. ‘Dad, it is your birthday – and you are Dean Swallow’s uncle for the night. Lou, you are Dean’s cousin.’
‘Who are you?’
‘Dean’s boyfriend.’
Jack helps Dad in. I try to collapse the frame of the wheelchair. I don’t quite have the knack yet.
Ralph continues: ‘Malte says it’s fine since Dean never has a girlfriend anyway. Jack is my brother.’
‘Which is an honour,’ Jack says, leaning out again to help lift up the wheelchair. ‘Dean Swallow’s boyfriend’s brother.’
I get the thing folded and offer it up and Jack catches my eye like this is the future and it’s amazing how things work out.
‘I don’t know what you guys did for Malte,’ Ralph clicks his tongue, ‘but he loves you like you’re best friends for ever.’
‘We saved his considerable bacon,’ Dad says.
I slide the door shut – too hard.
Jack slots back into the passenger seat, and swivels round as he pulls on his seat belt. ‘The concert is about ten minutes from here.’
‘Where?’ Dad asks.
‘A church in a little town on the way.’ Ralph lets down the handbrake.
‘And the restaurant is in
this castle overlooking the Rhine,’ Jack says ‘On the battlements. We’re in business, Dad. They’re world class.’
‘What are we doing?’ I ask. ‘I mean . . . where are we even going to sleep. I don’t—’
‘Wohnmobilstellplatz,’ Jack says.
‘Worry not, Lou,’ Ralph says. ‘There’s a mobile-home park on a nearby hill. We can bathe our wounds in the gentle light of their Michelin star and stagger home. Only one, I’m afraid, but that’s all the three wise men had and look what they found.’
The pews are filled with the faithful who all believe in music. Late arrivals, we stand at the back behind our father; his sons, a trio. There must be two hundred pilgrims here tonight – all clapping in concert. Dean comes back on for his encore – Chopin – and bows, embarrassed in the piano’s crook; he flicks out his tails, fine-tunes the stool, and thus begins once more to conjure harmony and dissonance from the empty evening air.
Above the dais, three windows arch. They must look over the valley and into the west because the light lingers there, in dying orange, ochre and blood-red; and there, too, the dusk’s long shadows point and steal and swear that the day is not done, the chance not yet gone. And, fleetingly, all the beauty in the world is gathered up in human notes. One last time. And the music is a yearning and a requiem and a prayer.
I can tell that my father is weeping. I cannot lean forward. I do not know if my brothers have noticed. I grip the handles of the wheelchair.
The programme says Chopin died at the age of thirty-nine. Tuberculosis. I think he must have known for quite a while. I’m sure of it. He must have foreseen his own death a few bars ahead. For – yes – the music is a yearning and a requiem, a mystery and a declaration, a heart-song for the people whom he loved, a prayer that the moment can be stayed, a concession that it cannot, a defiance, a defeat, an exultation.
The day my father told me that he had motor neurone disease, I had left work to go to the house to borrow the van to help one of my friends move flats. I was on the top deck of the bus, listening to some music that I didn’t know in the hope of hearing something that I liked, looking down at the variously bunched resentments of London’s yellow-vested cyclists. And I was hoping that my father would be out so that I could get into the house, grab the keys and raid the kitchen cupboards, and then leave without having to talk to him.