My Life With Eva

by Alex Barr

  She said, “Tell me about it.” She thought, Tell me anything, anything you think or feel.

  He told her Wagner’s life was like a fairytale: nearly drowned at sea escaping from a dull routine, dogged by failure in Paris, never losing faith in his vision, rescued at last from poverty by King Ludwig of Bavaria. Soothed by Cosima. He omitted any mention of Mathilde.

  She asked, “And what will you compose next? What’s Opus Four?”

  He shrugged. He distrusted the subject. He had some disjointed themes in his head, which he would have liked to play to get her reaction, but he feared they would skip back into discussing Opus Three, inseparable from the school play and the other woman. She might ask again, as she’d asked so often, “But why? Why did you do it?” And when he failed to reply, “Admit it, I bored you, you wanted to fuck somebody different, a different body.” Making him seem crude and self-seeking. Not someone who simply gave of himself. Not someone prepared to pluck the Heidenröslein and be lacerated with thorns.

  He received a letter from the University of Omdurman. Yes, they would employ him for a year, to develop a course in acoustics, the physics of music, the mathematics of harmony. The name Omdurman excited him. The scene of the last cavalry charge, in which the youthful Winston Churchill had taken part. A city of traders in gold, at the meeting of two great rivers. He brought the letter home, smiling.

  His wife said, “I didn’t know you were writing letters.”

  He played down his having applied, and spoke enthusiastically about his head of department’s web of foreign contacts. His wife was left with the impression that he hadn’t so much sought this offer as had it thrust upon him. She knew nothing of Omdurman. They looked at the map together. Her husband seemed to know what it would be like there, tracing the two rivers with his finger, the finger that had secretly touched the other woman. But she received no impression except, from the climate graph, one of heat.

  She said, “Good. When do we go?”

  She thought he seemed surprised by her willingness.

  “July.”

  The University had enclosed some fact sheets, which didn’t seem to interest her husband. She went through them carefully, trying to decide what clothes to take, what injections were needed, where the children would go to school. She asked him to check how much of his salary he would be able to send home, and at what rate of exchange. They could let the house for a year, but the rest might only just cover the mortgage, and they had other payments to keep up.

  The more she read about education, the more uneasy she became. There were only Islamic schools, and one private college run by Jesuit priests. The older child was about to choose her GCSE subjects, the younger was struggling with his maths. She wanted them to be happy, to have successful lives. They weren’t too happy now because of the emotional fog inside their home, but at least they could look forward to careers and supportive partners.

  She said, “I don’t think we can go.”

  Her husband stared at her, his mouth trying to form a reply. She explained at length about education. He went for a long walk, looking all round him at the fields, at the distant houses and still more distant hills, as if for something he’d lost. When he returned it was dark. The stars were obscured by cloud. The children were going through their bedtime rituals, which absorbed all his wife’s attention. When they’d settled they looked at one another, each trying to read the other’s face.

  She said, “Perhaps you should go.”

  His heart leapt. He said, “Without you? No.”

  “But it’s what you wanted.”

  “When I said that …” He shrugged. He’d been about to continue, ‘I was confused’, but that would have been a gross lie. The pain had given him a sense of clarity, of living deeply. It was now, when the pain had dulled, that he felt confused. He said, “I don’t know, I don’t know.”

  In the end he decided to go. It would enliven his CV. It could even be a good career move. The music of another continent could inspire and inform his Opus Four. In the desert, away from street lights, he’d see more stars than he’d believed possible. As for money, he’d be able to send a proportion home: he’d checked that with the consulate. The exchange rate was poor, and of course his UK salary would be suspended, but his wife assured him that she’d manage. There was just enough, and it was only for a year. Meanwhile the University would pay for one return flight home, and one return flight for his family to Omdurman. After he’d settled in, they’d come for a few weeks’ holiday.

  The night before he was to leave, in bed, his wife cried. She realised she hadn’t quite believed he would go alone. She went over the past few years and thought how things ought to have been. She thought how other families, their friends, lingered over meals together, played ball games in their gardens. Her husband asked what was wrong.

  “I feel abandoned.”

  He said, “I could still not go.” He wondered whether, if she leapt at this, he’d feel frustration or relief.

  “Your decision’s made. I wouldn’t respect you now if you didn’t go.”

  He dabbed at her tears, trying not to cry himself. The books he’d read before his affair, about the path of the warrior, about love, hadn’t mentioned this kind of situation. He felt his resolve in danger. For months the fog had stopped his wife’s words and feelings touching him deeply. Later when she fell asleep he looked at her face, which suddenly looked unfamiliar. When next he saw her she would look even more strange. He sought for a form of words that would carry him through. He thought, This is what I wanted. No, what I’m fated to do. The thoughts made him feel no different. He hummed to himself the Prelude to Act One of Lohengrin. The music warmed his heart, and after a while he too slept.

  The journey to London seemed ordinary. The train, the scenery were pleasantly familiar. The idea that he was taking a flight alone seemed unreal. When he’d flown before it had always been with his wife and children on holidays, or on rare academic trips with colleagues. It was only when he got off the Tube that he felt his real journey begin. He was staying with friends who lived half a mile from the Tube station, too close for it to be worth taking a cab. He moved his four heavy pieces of luggage two at a time, walking ten paces with the first two, going back for the second two, walking forward till all four pieces were reunited, then repeating the process. Sweating freely, he submitted himself to the discipline. He noticed that when his luggage was at its greatest separation, he felt anxious, but that the anxiety diminished as it came back together.

  In the morning, once again, it was hard to believe he was going. His friends usually drove him to Euston for a train home. When they drove to Heathrow he almost called out that they’d taken a wrong turning. But at the airport he was reassured, because by the check-in desk were the most handsome people he’d ever seen. Three men, very tall, with high domed foreheads and finely sculptured faces, their skin a rich, slightly dusty black. On their wiry night-black hair sat delicate round skullcaps of white openwork. Two women, wide-eyed, attractive, their heads covered by white shawls of surprising delicacy and lightness. His heart lifted on seeing them. It was clear he was taking the right step, going to a land of people such as these.

  Walking to the plane he had a moment of doubt. There were other aircraft, from India, the Far East, Australasia. Was he going to the right continent after all? Was it possible that his destiny lay elsewhere, that he’d somehow misread the signals? But here were the steps, his feet were leaving the surface of his homeland, now visible either side of the handrail, grey, crisscrossed by tubes and cables.

  His was a middle seat, facing a pale grey bulkhead with a mural of flying storks. In the window seat on his right was another of the men with fine black features, but rather smaller and slighter. In the aisle seat, a bulky man who greeted him.

  “Hi there. They don’t give us a hell of a lot of space.”

  They smiled at one another. He wondered whether he should have perhaps gone to America. The fellow was so relaxed and con
fident. The man by the window was more formal. He seemed to have no English. They nodded politely to one another. Well, soon he’d be able to address these people in their own tongue. After the first meal was cleared away, against the steady throb of the engines, he studied the language book.

  The poor man, where is his house? — Sir, I do not know.

  Is the road long? — Yes, the road is very long indeed.

  O girl, mother of big earrings —

  He closed the book. He would not be speaking to women, not socially, not alone. To go through the pain of abandoning the other woman, only to fall into the same trap in Omdurman through sheer loneliness, would be a cosmic joke.

  He closed his eyes and put on the headphones; alien music filtered through him washing away the past. A new beginning, a new beginning. The singer’s voice hesitated and soared in quarter-tones, and a flock of string instruments, like a flock of evening swifts, hesitated and soared with him, while a drum like a sleeper’s pulse beat gently and artfully. He settled into his seat. Perhaps this new stream would flow into his own compositions. As Wagner had transcended the narrow rivalries of German and Italian opera, had forged a new whole on the anvil of his suffering, he would bring Omdurman home, or home to Omdurman.

  A journey of peace — And you Sir, God give you peace.

  He dozed as the plane beat southwards.

  When drinks came the American asked where he was headed. He explained about the University. The American said every rainy season some part of the one railroad from port to capital was washed away, blocking the flow of food and raw material. “That’s when they turn to air freight. Which is where I come in.”

  With his big face and wide shoulders, the man had the air of someone not very important in his own right, but useful as part of a greater whole. Another voice in the chorus, two more hands to the pump. He kept twisting in his seat.

  “My goddamn back. Injured it years ago.”

  “So what do you do on long flights?”

  The man grinned. “Suffer, what else? In the hotel I run a bath, hot as I dare, and lower myself in. Fwsssh! And you? Which hotel are you in?”

  “Don’t know yet. Being met, by the University.”

  Later, after crossing a new coastline, he spoke to the man on his right.

  “Where are you going?”

  “El Obeid.”

  “What is it like, El Obeid?”

  “It is my home.”

  They smiled, and again nodded politely. Beyond the man’s shoulder, through the window, the sunset was a fiery brushstroke on the horizon. He thought, The lone and level sands stretch far away, and spent a dreamy half hour trying vainly to remember where the line came from. At least now he could write to his wife and children: I watched the sun set behind the desert. The brushstroke faded. Night fell.

  When the aircraft rolled to a halt he felt tense until the doors were opened. The air outside had a burnt smell, like clods of couch-grass on a slow bonfire. He filled in an immigration form on poor quality paper, irritated by the delay, then filed past a control kiosk. A man with stars on his shoulder-straps took the form and stamped his passport. The man’s face, dark brown rather than black, was pitted as if from smallpox. He went through, found his luggage, all four pieces intact, and pressed on to the arrivals hall.

  He stood on tiptoe, looking above the crowd for a placard bearing his name. He felt that once he saw it, in this echoing space, something would have been proved, something settled. It was like a photographic negative of the departure lounge. Now he and the other Europeans were the exotic ones, weaving in and out of the crowd of black men like figures from someone’s dream. There was no sign of the tall fine-looking men and handsome women he’d seen at the check-in. Perhaps they were already halfway home. The crowd thinned: he no longer had to stretch. No-one held a placard, with his name or any other. When only officials, police, and baggage-handlers were left he knew he was alone.

  At a small kiosk, so dimly lit that at first he thought it closed, he changed his cash for local currency. He thrust into his back pocket the foreign notes, limp and greasy from numberless sweaty hands, and looked for a taxi. Outside, in the grainy darkness beyond the lights of the building, men in voluminous white turbans and white robes like nightshirts flitted like moths, like spectres. Above him were the stars, intense and numerous; he paused for a moment to look up, but after a moment anxiety drove him on. To his great relief, in the taxi queue he found the American.

  He said, “No-one came.”

  The American shrugged with a wry smile, as if to say, What did you expect? They waited together. In front he heard British voices, someone talking about econometrics.

  He said, “Excuse me, do you work at the University?” The fellow turned, and before nodding studied his face and clothes. He went on, “I should have been met. No-one came. Where does one stay?”

  The fellow looked at him vacantly. “Where you like. We’re going to sleep on a friend’s roof.”

  Someone else said, “The University uses the Hotel Percival.”

  He shared a taxi with the American, who pointed out, under a concrete road bridge, the meeting of the two rivers. He wondered whether his wife and children would enjoy, after all, a holiday here. The American was dropped at the Grand, a reassuring building with floodlit flags on stainless-steel masts, still full of visible activity despite the hour. The English names: Grand, Percival, were reassuring. After all, the place wasn’t that foreign, it was only a few decades after the end of British rule.

  The Percival was almost in darkness, occupying half a block. The city-centre blocks were hard-edged and rectilinear. Opposite the hotel, at ground floor level, was a row of galvanised steel shutters in a framework of concrete columns. Inside, the small reception lobby was lit by a yellow bulb and smelt of fenugreek, cigarettes, and hot dusty leather. A porter, small, thin-faced, rather frail, his skin grey rather than black, showed him to the fourth floor. Their slow steps echoed on the terrazzo. Each carried two pieces of luggage.

  The room was a normal hotel room, if a little severe. A bed, a window, a ceiling fan. On the tiled floor near the window, traces of sand. He pulled back the curtain, exposing a door to a balcony. It faced a concrete building a few yards away. He went out onto it, treading unevenly on more sand, and saw on his right the shuttered building across the street. A car drove by, its headlights dim, the beams a little misty, slowing and beeping at the intersection.

  The porter, examining the coin he had been given, left him. He stripped off his shirt, and in the small en-suite splashed cold water over the sweat of his chest and stomach. He ignored his back which, when he lay on the bed, stuck to the sheet. A small black beetle travelled intently across the floor. A fly buzzed in a corner. He watched them with relief: at least it was no worse, these were the only signs of life. Above him the fan beat slowly, the shadows of the blades sliding across the wall in a giant dance. He was here, in a room in Omdurman, scene of the last cavalry charge, a city where gold was wrought.

  The fan turned with a rhythm which seemed to hesitate. He tried to fit a tune to it. The Prelude to Act One of Lohengrin seemed to fit if he increased the tempo, but as it reached its climax, the clash of cymbals, broke away completely. He realised it had never really fitted, that beneath the apparent fluidity of the music, the liquid, molten notes, was a firm unyielding pulse. He tried his own Opus Three. It brought back the smell of the school hall, of the orchestra pit. He thought it would bring back the other woman, grinning at him from over her sewing, but what came was the sight of his children walking towards him in their blazers across the dusty maple flooring. The fan blurred and jumped as his eyes filled with tears. He wiped them and hummed My Funny Valentine. That brought back his wife’s single bed in her student flat, the pillow with the light fragrance of her hair. He remembered the alien landscape of her body, the giddy sensation when they embraced naked, sweating in the midsummer heat. The fan would not fit My Funny Valentine, which came in sallies, in flurries, like t
he music of Tristan, not in a steady thrum-thrum-thrum.

  He thought of the money he’d send to his wife, his first pay cheque. Did the University know he existed? His name had not appeared on a white card. But tomorrow he could collect his Initial Payment. Meanwhile the cash he’d changed would last. He was wise not to bring a cheque book or traveller’s cheques, so as not to drain the home finances. He wife would just manage till he started to send his pay. With a sudden rush of anxiety he rolled off the narrow bed and reached for his trousers.

  He took the dull-textured wad from the back pocket and spread it on the fibre-board bedside table. The rate of exchange was wrong. He’d been cheated. But no, here was the transaction slip, headed in alien script but also in English, the official airport bureau de change. The rate was clearly stated. What he had left, allowing for the taxi fare, was correct. Since he’d first enquired the rate had changed. Or he’d been told wrong. No, it must have changed, the economies of these countries were notoriously unstable. His university salary would convert at a tenth of what he’d believed.

  He calculated, with an unsteady heartbeat, the amount he could send home to his wife. It was laughable, hardly worth the commission he’d pay to convert and send it. What would she say?

  You who are called my husband, have you yet again deceived me? — I was led astray.

  He stretched on the bed again and watched the fan. He had abandoned any thought of music. It was night. The hotel was quiet. He had no sense of time, his watch was beside the window. He watched the fan turn, just fast enough to blur the edges of the blades, and the edge of the shadow of each blade as it slid across the wall. The beetle crossed the floor, skirting his shoe, the sign of an immense life the beetle could not conceive of. He thought of Wagner, penniless in Paris having quit his dull job in Riga. His failures, exile, loss of Mathilde, impoverished trek from town to town. Then the knock at the door, the fairytale messenger from King Ludwig, the glorious rescue. The fan continued to turn in the breathless hush of the hotel. He heard distant steps in the corridor and listened as they died away. The blades of the fan, the chrome central boss, moved endlessly, with occasional hesitations. Only his reflection in the chrome, greyish-pink on the grey-white bed, was motionless; unbelievably small.