Seahorse

by Janice Pariat

  At first, it looked like an abstract collage of colors, skillful, unfigurative, yet the more I gazed and followed the lines, the more they seemed to swirl into shape. I could discern a figure, up close, painted from the neck down to just below the waist, hands held out and up, as though trying to push through the canvas.

  My hands, I noticed, hadn’t quite stopped trembling.

  Myra pulled her woollen shawl closer, and leaned back, tilting her face up to the blank ceiling. Finally, she said, “How do you think it feels?”

  I had no answer.

  “Isn’t it strange,” she continued slowly, “that there’s no way of imagining unconsciousness that distinguishes it from a blank in the memory…”

  An irreconcilable imbalance.

  “There’s light and darkness… a contrastive definition that’s justifiable since we have experience of both… but with this…” With consciousness and unconsciousness the experience is inevitably, perpetually one-sided.

  “Descartes said when we sleep, the soul withdraws from the body.”

  “Then where is it now?” She looked at me; I couldn’t hold her gaze. “And if… and when… he is back, will be remember? Will he have memory? Is consciousness itself possible without memory?”

  She stood up and approached the fire, holding out her hands to the warmth.

  “I read this strange story once, about a French footballer who was given anesthetic that should have knocked him out for a few hours… and thirty years later, he’s never awoken. He doesn’t change, he doesn’t age… his wife still looks after him, in a house she named Mas du bel athléte dormant… the House of the Beautiful Sleeping Athlete…”

  I placed my glass, empty, on the side table. “Myra, there’s little chance of that happening. The doctor said your father is physically strong…”

  “For his age,” she completed.

  “For his age,” I repeated, moving closer to her. The smell of the hospital still clung to her clothes, her hair. The sharp, nauseating smell of disinfectant. I placed my hands on her shoulders, slight under her jumper.

  “He will wake up.”

  But something in my voice betrayed me. Perhaps it was the memory of that afternoon, played out before us as something altogether distant, a series of events removed by a thin veil of disbelief.

  “What does that mean?” Myra had asked.

  A ruptured blood vessel, he explained, in the space between the skull and the brain.

  And so we had waited, outside closed doors, within pristine white corridors, with figures in light blue gowns gliding around silently as angels. It was, in a way, a church, where confessions spilled behind doors, where there was a steady plunging into secrets—held aloft like birds and stabbed with needles.

  Nothing here was delicate anymore.

  Was it like this with Lenny?

  Did they also rush him to the hospital? Was it already too late? Had he fallen asleep in his bed and never woken up? I remembered my dream, suddenly certain it was a premonition. That somehow, it had been a warning of this eventuality. Sitting on a bench, clutching a paper cup of cold, insipid tea, it wore off—the shock of the chase, the ride, the fall—and the words pierced me, sharp and steely as the silver instruments I’d seen on trays and trolleys.

  It was my fault.

  We left the hospital sometime after seven, after the surgeon in-formed us the operation had been carried out as best they could. For now, it might be better for us to wait at home. The patient was in a medically induced coma. If the swelling reduced by morning, they’d decide how to proceed.

  “Doctor…” Myra had that look on her face again, firm, resilient, “what should we be prepared for?”

  In a diplomatic turn of phrase, clinical as our surroundings, he replied that her father was physically strong… for his age. That the situation would look more promising if he pulled through these early days.

  All the way back to Wintervale, I waited for Myra to question me on what had happened. Instead she switched on the radio, catching, mid-way, the shipping forecast. She left it on, the nightly litany of the sea, and the forecaster’s slow, methodical delivery filled the silence, soothing and hypnotic. Tyne… Slight or moderate, becoming slight… Fisher… Variable, becoming mainly southwest… Thames… Variable 3 or 4… Sole… Easterly 3 or 4. Moderate. Fair… Shannon… Moderate, occasionally poor in northwest. Fog patches in southeast… Malin… Hebrides… Bailey… Faeroes…

  When it ended, the news began on the hour. Headlines intent on the recent floods. The newsreader’s calm, clipped voice of emergency.

  “The paramedic spoke to me earlier,” said Myra. Her father had regained consciousness, for a short while, in the ambulance, on their way to the hospital. He was disoriented, muttering repeatedly…

  “What did he say?”

  “I’ve often told him to be careful with General… that he was a good horse but with a nervous disposition. At first, we tried to train him to jump ditches at home… you know, with poles and black bin sacks, or have him graze near one, but it didn’t help, and eventually we gave up…”

  I repeated my question, gently.

  She kept her eyes on the road. “He kept saying, I knew this would happen…” she added, “Like it was some kind of prophecy.”

  The next day, I stayed behind at Wintervale.

  Myra said she’d call, from the hospital—“If anything happened”—but for now she’d prefer I kept Elliot company at home.

  “Are you sure?”

  She nodded, slipping on her tweed coat, adjusting her beret.

  At the door, I stopped her, my hand on her arm, but the words faded in my throat. “Drive safe.”

  All morning, we lingered in the letter room, Elliot and I. He stayed well away from the piano, squatting instead on the floor, which he littered with paper and broken crayons.

  “Where’s Mummy?” he asked once, lifting his head, and looking around as though she might suddenly materialize.

  “She’s visiting your grandpa… he’s hurt, remember? He’s in hospital.”

  “Oh.” He stooped back to his drawing, then sat up again. “Will he be alright?”

  “I don’t—yes… he will be alright.”

  And, for him, the world slipped back into place.

  I was in the wing-back chair by the window, attempting, pretending to work on my article for Nithi. Watching the rain strike the glass with a quiet and relentless fury.

  Isn’t consciousness memory? Myra had asked. Last night, on the sofa.

  Even if we concentrated on merely one thing, we wouldn’t be aware of it without memory, since in each instant we’d forget what we were thinking the moment before.

  I tried to cleave it before it was born… Philip may have no memory… but the thought arose, dissipated, and, like smoke, lingered.

  For lunch, Mrs Hammond brought us tea and sandwiches. Egg and watercress, ham and mustard. The tea milky and strong.

  “Any news?” she asked. Her usually formal aspect disarrayed by worry. She was a tall lady, a little stooped, as though to always apologize for her height. Her hands, clasped neatly before her, were large, and elegantly slender.

  “I’m afraid not… not yet. I’ll let you know if Myra calls,” I added gently.

  She nodded. “Well, they say no news is good news.” For a moment, she stood there, wavering, and then abruptly turned and left the room.

  The afternoon passed slowly.

  Elliot, I could tell, was growing restless, tired of his drawings and toy soldiers, of being trapped indoors. It was still raining, and we couldn’t step out for a walk, or for him to cycle around. “I’ll watch TV?” he asked. I didn’t see why not.

  He skipped to the set in the corner, switched it on, and settled on something colorful and animated. A jingle rang through the room, followed by the sound of something falling, a dramatic crash. Elliot chuckled, immediately entranced.

  Despite the feeble signal, I checked my phone, and then again. But if Myra called, she�
��d do so on the landline. The phone in the foyer, black and archaic, stayed silent.

  We had a quiet, subdued meal of mutton and barley stew, bread, and cheddar. Then Mrs Hammond took Elliot up to bed.

  “There wasn’t much I could do really,” Myra told me later in the letter room. “I waited, by his bedside, but he was too weak to talk… I don’t think he even knew I was there. I noticed,” she added, “he had a stubble and needed a shave. It was strange to see him like that.”

  I asked her why.

  She drew her feet up on the sofa; framed within its leathery depths. “Because as far back as I can remember, my father has always been… immaculate. As though the face he wore for all of us every single day must be as perfectly presented as it could ever be. I used to always wonder what it was like… when I saw my friends’ families… or their family pictures… how much more casual their fathers seemed… in their attire and affections. Today, I saw my father unshaven, and I thought how that might be what would upset him most…”

  My glance fell on my shoes, the rug. I remained silent.

  The phone call came while we were still sitting there; Myra drowsy, reclining against my shoulder. I’d forgotten how it sounded, the shrill, pompous ring of a landline. For a moment, we didn’t move.

  “I’ll get it,” she said quietly, and walked out of the room.

  Should I follow? That would be rude, I thought. I couldn’t assume it was the hospital calling.

  “Yes, Myra speaking… his daughter.”

  But it was.

  She was strangely calm. Her voice precisely poised, her words falling like polished stones. “I see… yes… I understand. I’ll be in tomorrow morning. Yes… will the doctor be in touch with the coroner? Alright, thank you… thank you.”

  The funeral was held two weeks after Christmas.

  So I watched as the priest blessed the ground where Philip would be laid to rest and saw the coffin being lowered—Whom I shall see for myself and mine eyes shall behold, and not as a stranger. The grave filled. The flowers carefully arranged on top. It was too wet to light the candles. Myra, black-clothed, pale but dry-eyed. Elliot, too young to comprehend this, standing beside her in a little black suit, looking up at her in bewilderment.

  It was my fault.

  The rain fell as hard cold pellets.

  At the reception there was little relief.

  I lingered at the fringes, picking at cucumber sandwiches and drinking cup after cup of tea. Not from hunger or thirst, but to keep my hands occupied. To seem as though I was somehow part of this communal ritual. I didn’t know if it was true, walking through the house, everyone’s eyes on me, watching my back, whispering about my role in the tragedy. He was there. Philip was trying to save him.

  Sometimes, when Myra passed by, she’d grip my hand, gathering something from me—strength, perhaps, some warmth.

  I knew no one, apart from her and Elliot, and mostly I sat with the boy in his room.

  “Will grandpa come back if I practice the piano everyday?”

  “But it will make him happy, and if it makes him happy, he’ll come back.”

  “It’s my fault,” he said, his eyes bright with tears.

  No, I said, trying to reach for him… no, it isn’t… but he slipped from my grasp, and ran out crying for Myra.

  By the time everyone left, late that afternoon, she looked pale, wrung out by the hours. Mrs Hammond had left soup and sandwiches in the letter room, and bolstered the fire. She’d also placed a bottle of brandy on the tray, and a flask of warm water.

  “I don’t know what I’d do without her,” said Myra, pouring herself a drink. She swirled the dark golden liquor, drank it neat, and then joined me at the hearth.

  “Will you sleep here tonight?”

  The past few weeks she and Elliot had slept in the hay loft. She couldn’t bear it, she said. To be next to a dead person’s room. We’d made up a bed for me on the floor.

  I gathered her, my arm around her waist. Whatever she wanted…

  The silence filled with the crackle of wood, spitting out their secrets.

  She looked at me, her eyes edged with firelight. “And you. Thank you for staying.”

  I shifted on my feet, uneasy. I said it was alright, that after everything that had happened, I couldn’t possibly have left.

  Once, Doctor Mahesar told us a story in class from Plato’s Phaedrus, in which Socrates compares the soul to a chariot pulled by a pair of winged horses. While a god was blessed with two obedient animals, a human drove a tame, immortal horse paired with one that was mortal and unruly. One pulled the soul upward, towards goodness and courage, and the other plummeted into darkness and chaos. Within us, they perpetually wrestled.

  For the remainder of my winter break, I was at Wintervale.

  A Christmas spent, not around the tree, but in drives to the hospital, appointments with the funeral director, and visits to the coroner’s office—where I reiterated what had taken place that morning. There isn’t a doubt about it, a lie often repeated becomes, for that moment, real. A fabrication woven so intricately it’s impossible to unpick.

  It set in, a vague discomfort, only after the formalities and paper work were over, and all we needed to do was wait for the funeral.

  New Year’s Eve was quiet, we stayed home. I cooked an unelaborate chicken curry that pleased them all, even Mrs Hammond, and in the evening, we watched old Lawrence Olivier movies from a pile of DVDs. On Myra’s insistence, we opened a bottle of champagne. It was a time—didn’t I remember?—of also looking to the future. Else Janus, the two-headed god, would be displeased.

  The first week of January, windswept and snowy, saw us mostly holed up inside the house, venturing out only for the occasional walk. To an abandoned water mill, a giant oak tree on a hillock with long, sweeping views of white countryside, even the peripatetic ruins of a medieval castle. Each setting perfect for a confession. For a spilling of secrets. Somehow, I held it all back.

  At night, I’d lie awake in the loft, listening to Myra and Elliot, their soft, even breathing. How could I ever sleep? I’d move, restless, on the mattress on the floor, perturbed by the immense silence, by the endless canvas on which I could paint troubled dreams.

  On the night of the funeral we walked solemnly up to her room. It felt like the ceremonial re-enactment of some ancient ritual. The undressing. My jumper, and hers, my belt, her dress, with its line of tiny buttons running from her neck down to the small of her back. The touch. Filled with swift, earthy urgency. The need. At this time, great and pressing, to reaffirm life.

  “Do you have to leave?” asked Myra, when we lay later in darkness.

  I had no choice. “Term begins on the seventeenth.” Santanu and Eva would have texted, or called by now, and been left wondering why I wasn’t reachable.

  “I’ll come visit you…” She ran a finger down my cheek. To my chin. Like Nicholas.

  “Myra…”

  “Yes?”

  I hesitated. “Never mind.”

  Her eyes searched for mine. “Tell me…”

  “I’d like it if you came visit…”

  She lay back, and smiled, her skin, uncovered by the sheet, outlined in silver. “That’s sweet… but it wasn’t what you were going to say, was it?”

  I insisted it was, even if, to my ears, my voice rang false. I listened to our breathing. The sudden mute sadness of the house. Somewhere, a pipe gurgling.

  She didn’t ask again.

  She’d closed her eyes, fallen asleep.

  On my last day there, I was audience to a private recital.

  “Bravo! Bravo!” We applauded at the end. He stepped off the piano stool and bowed, beaming.

  Then Myra took her place and said she’d play a movement from Brahms’ Sonata in E-flat major. She clasped her viola close to her—“Usually, someone accompanies me on the piano… I hope I do justice to this alone…”

  The notes rose through the house, soaring, I imagined, as seagulls. Filled with
their exhilaration, and loneliness. How it felt to be a bird in a cloudless sky. Suddenly dropping, swooping lower, bolstered by the wind. Lifted, swirling higher, climbing up to the edges, and then drifting further away, growing smaller, fainter.

  Eventually disappearing.

  At the end of the piece, her cheeks were wet.

  Elliot clapped—breaking the silence—and I joined in, giving her a standing ovation.

  “Now,” she said, laughing, “to the dining room… for a surprise.”

  She’d requested Mrs Hammond to bake a cake, and she and Elliot had iced it. Loopy letters spelled out “Gool Luck Nehmiah” and a candle burned in the middle, which I permitted Elliot to blow out.

  That evening, we feasted on cake, custard and wine, leaving dinner untouched. We played cards and snakes and ladders. Once again, Elliot fell asleep on a cushion.

  After we put him to bed, we returned to the letter room. The fire cast a sunset glow on the furniture, deepening the color of the walls.

  “Are you alright?” asked Myra.

  “Yes… thank you… so much.”

  She smiled. Her hair, falling loose over her bare shoulders. “I was thinking, if I could get Mrs Hammond to come in over some weekends, I could visit you in London more often… and when there’s a concert, I’ll have a place to stay. At least, until September.”

  “Yes,” I reiterated, “until September.”

  “But let’s not talk of farewells…”

  She walked across to the piano, and lifted the lid, running her fingers lightly over the keys. “Once, when Elliot had just started his lessons, I said… oh, something like, one day, you might play in a quartet like mommy. And my father, sitting there, where you are, said, “unless he’s good enough to join the London Symphony Orchestra”. It’s strange… I walk around this house and it’s full of memories of my father… and I try to catch a glimpse of something… happy, but I’m left mostly with this sense of… relief.”