Borrowed Light

by Anna Fienberg

  Grandma Ruth joined the library when she was very young, and was allowed to take twelve books out at a time. Soon she knew about electromagnetic forces and elliptical galaxies, she could describe the impact of meteorites and theorise about why the dinosaurs died out. She was breathless with information, and dying to use it. She couldn’t wait to add herself to the map of the universe, like a new star.

  At university, Ruth was not popular with other students. She wore the wrong clothes and argued with everybody. But Ruth says she didn’t care. She was far more interested in the colour of Mars than the colour of lipstick. Once, when she’d been reading through breakfast and was late for uni, she raced out in her pyjama top, and when she realised, she wasn’t even embarrassed. Can you imagine?

  At university, Grandma Ruth irritated people terribly. She admits it with a laugh. She developed a particular sneer—the left comer of her lip rising almost to her nostril—when any of her colleagues held forth about the absolute truth of some new theory. She often quoted the astronomer, Fritz Zwicky, on the subject—he was a prickly individual, just like her. ‘Absolute beliefs are nearly always absolutely wrong!’ she’d declare with that lift of her lip. She prided herself on her scientific flexibility.

  At lunch, she usually ate her sandwich alone. But this didn’t worry her, as she always had a book in her bag. Her constellation of friends sat in her heart, continually talking, exploding, transforming hydrogen into helium and lighting up her dark.

  Grandma told me once that she found the cosmos far less complicated than the human mind.

  Grandma Ruth met Grandad at university. He was studying Humanities. He probably had no absolute beliefs, so he was safe. Humanities people, Grandma said, were like washing in the wind. They went wherever it blew them. She admitted to me that secretly she rather admired this flexibility. But she sneered at the way ‘they’ weren’t interested in facts, only feelings. Grandad said imagination was greater than knowledge. ‘Only a scientist could think of that,’ Grandma retorted. She was right—the quote was from Einstein—so she had the last word.

  Strangely enough, when she holds forth, she always expects other people to listen and believe. This is one of the things that Mum seems to find most enraging about her.

  I just sit back and soak her in.

  IT WAS THE Christmas when I was twelve years old that Grandma said the thing about space. I’d just finished unwrapping my mother’s present and it had been a long process because it had been clumsily done, with too much stickytape, to make up for lack of ribbon. Under the wrapping I found a small square cardboard box. I took the lid off. It was empty.

  I peered into the box. I dug my finger into the four comers, tracing the smooth flat base. A false bottom, like a drug-runner’s suitcase? No, just empty space, framed.

  That was when my grandmother leaned toward me and we looked together into the box.

  ‘That box is full, not empty,’ said Grandma Ruth. ‘It’s brimming with a rich, gaseous mixture of oxygen—21 per cent, vital for life on Earth, my dear—and other amounts of nitrogen, argon and carbon. Without the contents of that box, we would not be here having Christmas!, She gave a great crow of triumph and took out a packet of cigarettes. ‘Remember, space is mostly matter and matter is mostly space!’

  It wasn’t until months later that I began to understand about matter—that the atoms inside it were like galaxies, holding huge valleys of space. It was a great discovery, and I looked at ordinary old tabletops and rocks with wonder for weeks afterward.

  But in that moment, at Christmas, it was hard to concentrate. There was the dreadful disappointment about the present. And yet through the fog, something penetrated. The sounds of Grandma’s words were sharp and delicious—like new tangy fruits you’d love to put in your mouth. The possibilities of meaning I folded carefully away into a pleat in my mind.

  There was a shift in the way I saw the world. It was as if I’d walked through a wall and come out on the other side. I was standing close to my grandmother in this new place, so near I could smell the layers of her. There were the fumes of Christmas sherry, thick as petrol, the peppermint of toothpaste, and underneath, the eternal menthol cigarettes. I saw my grandmother’s quick black eyes darting like fish, and the iron-grey hair whirling out of their pins like roving electrons. In this new world my mother was very far away, a diminishing speck, almost imagined.

  I was learning a new language, and I was going to make it my own.

  THAT CHRISTMAS, GRANDMOTHER Ruth’s words gave me something else to think about, right when I needed it.

  ‘Oh damn it!’ my mother cried when she registered the empty box. ‘Where is the ring? I put a mood ring in there for you, Cally, you know, it changes colours according to how you feel.’ She’d grabbed the box from me and tipped it upside down. ‘It’s a beautiful ring, it reveals your innermost feelings. Even if you have developed a hard shell—’ and she stopped staring at the box and stared at my father instead, ‘it can show you and others the true state of your heart. Damn, it must have dropped out when I was wrapping it. It’ll be here somewhere.’

  I said nothing. I was thinking about my grandmother’s words. The thing about space. ‘It’s a paradox,’ she’d said. ‘You’ll find a lot of those in astronomy!’ It was as if she had given me a present instead. She’d filled the box with an idea so rich it was impossible to put the lid back on.

  My father sighed heavily.

  The family had then gone on a search for the ring, led by my frantic mother. We picked up rugs and pushed back sofas. Beds were flung apart and cabinets as heavy as elephants were inched out from the walls. Dust fluttered up in clouds. Grandmother Ruth sneezed and her eyes streamed.

  Mum, I saw, had begun to enjoy it. She had closed her eyes, and was using her mental energy to tap the secrets of the house. Her face was feverish with excitement. ‘Come on everybody! Let’s look on this as a symbolic journey!’ she cried, clowning, one foot balanced precariously on the windowsill and the other on the kitchen table. (As if it could possibly be there.) ‘We are looking for a ring, a mood diviner—buried under all the weight of material possessions!’

  I stared at my mother. It’s strange how people like her seem to feel every quiver of their own hearts as if they were earthquakes, but are deaf to anyone else’s. (Unless you are a sad lady of forty and over, of course.)

  ‘This is ridiculous,’ my father said. He detached himself from the search party, and began to wipe a thin grey coverlet of dust from the leather sofa. He sank down heavily with his paper like a ship throwing down anchor.

  Just then Jeremy, who was only a few months old, slid off the cushion where someone had put him, and onto the floor. He wasn’t hurt, but like a cricket on its back, he couldn’t turn over. His howls were like sirens.

  Dad sighed loudly. ‘Who’s going to get him?’ he asked, just as if the baby were a kettle screaming. ‘Go on, Cally, there’s a good girl. I’ve just got comfortable.’

  You should have seen him, sitting on that sofa. He was like a well-manicured mountain, immovable and unruffled. A baby’s cries were supposed to make the milk start in a mother’s breast. What should it do to fathers? I walked stonily toward Jeremy, wondering why some people had children.

  I scooped the baby up and cuddled him into me. His cries stopped as suddenly as if a cork had been popped in his mouth. He smiled at me and dribbled enthusiastically onto my new Christmas dress. I smiled back. I breathed in the warm earthy smell of his head and promised him then, as I looked at the back of my father’s newspaper, that I would teach him the Language too. He would grow up with the Universe, and the names of the planets would be as familiar to him as apples and oranges. Maybe he could become a star, one of the lucky ones who make their own light. And Grandma Ruth could help.

  I looked around the room, at the wrapping paper washing up at my feet like debris at the beach, my grandmother sticking strands of steel-wool hair back into their pins, the shape of my mother’s legs as she bent to look u
nder the piano. I felt piercingly empty and full at the same time. Just like the cardboard box I still held in my hand.

  AFTER CHRISTMAS LUNCH, when Dad and Jeremy were asleep and Mum was clearing up, Grandma Ruth led me outside into the garden. The sun was sinking behind the rooftops and power lines, and rising up in front, like an actor coming onto the stage too soon, was the moon.

  ‘Why does the moon shine while the sun is still in the sky?’ I asked. I sat down in the grass and crossed my legs. I looked at my grandmother expectantly, hoping to hear more of the Universe. But suddenly I saw the long thin shape wrapped in black canvas, tucked behind the clothesline. It was standing on a tripod that looked to me like the claws of a giant prehistoric bird. I jumped up.

  ‘What is it? A rocket?’ I tugged at the canvas, believing in the magic of my grandmother.

  Grandma Ruth smiled. ‘Well, it’s nearly as good as a rocket.’ She took my hand away from the canvas. ‘Guess! Come on, Cal. How can you go to the moon and stay on the earth at the same time?’

  I frowned. I desperately wanted to win in this first test with the Universe. But I could only see my grandmother’s face, only feel how vital it was to hear her say ‘Yes, you’re right, that’s my clever girl!’ Why couldn’t I think?

  ‘Well? Well?’ Grandma Ruth tapped ash into the grass.

  How can you go somewhere and stay home? Can you divide yourself in two? I thought of when I read my books—lying there on the bed I felt nothing of the blue cotton coverlet or my chilly feet. I’d be far away, in the story. Or what about Mum, lying in the dark, off in some other daylight world of her imagining.

  ‘You can imagine the moon, and live there, in your mind!’

  ‘Hmm yes, imagination is very important in science,’

  Grandma Ruth agreed vaguely. But she snorted with impatience, blowing smoke through her nose. ‘Before you imagine anything Callisto, you need to have a framework—you need to see a bit of the world before you make up the rest. Look at the shape of this thing—how do astronomers see the stars?’

  ‘With a telescope,’ I said dully.

  ‘Yes!’ crowed Ruth, and she began to peel back the velcro flaps of the canvas. I was trying not to cry. My throat ached. It was so constricted I couldn’t utter a sound. The canvas fell to the ground like a magic cloak, revealing the silver and glass elegance of the telescope.

  ‘This will be your eye,’ said Grandma Ruth in heroic tones. ‘Keep your eye on the Universe, Callisto!’

  The beauty of the instrument worked its way past my tears and loosened my throat. I walked all around the telescope, as Grandma Ruth explained about the lenses and mirrors, how they were arranged to gather light. She showed me how to scrunch up one eye and look through the lens with the other. A light-gatherer, this instrument was, and I had it in my very own back garden.

  AT EIGHT O’CLOCK, Ruth announced that it was Jupiter Night, and the family came out to investigate. They stood around in the grass, Mum holding sleepy Jeremy, Dad with his hands in his pockets.

  ‘Jupiter is the largest of the planets in our solar system,’ Grandma told me. ‘And tonight it is in position for us to see it.’ I moved toward the telescope, but she clicked her tongue. ‘Listen first, and you’ll know what you’re looking at.’

  ‘Well don’t go on too long, then,’ my mother said, looking at Jeremy who whimpered in his sleep.

  Ruth ignored her. ‘So,’ she breathed expansively, ‘did you know, Callisto, that Jupiter is a giant world, the brightest planet after Venus?’

  ‘What is it made of?’ I asked, proud of my question.

  ‘Green cheese and puppy dogs’ tails,’ grinned Dad, and tweaked my ear. I scowled at him.

  ‘On the contrary, the core of Jupiter,’ replied Ruth loudly, ‘is composed of melted rock, and is even hotter than Earth’s core. There’s a shell of ice around the core and over that an atmosphere of hydrogen that is thousands of kilometres thick.’

  My father began to pull up weeds. He hummed the Star Trek theme under his breath. Soon a bundle of limp dandelions lay in his arms, so he excused himself and wandered off to Mum’s compost heap.

  I began to finger the telescope. It was growing harder to wait.

  ‘Through the telescope,’ Ruth went on, ‘you may see the poison clouds around Jupiter—they look like bands of different colours. They rush around at vast speeds—and on one band there is the Great Red Spot.’ Ruth brought out this last phrase with relish, like a chocolate she’d been saving for me.

  ‘What’s that?’ I asked. I imagined a giant leak of blood, unstoppable.

  ‘A storm that has been raging for over three hundred years,’ Mum answered quickly, before Grandma could open her mouth.

  ‘Is that true?’ I looked from my mother to my grandmother in amazement.

  Caroline gave a short bark of laughter. ‘Well, I am the encyclopedia’s daughter, am I not?’

  Ruth smiled happily. ‘Yes, the Great Red Spot was discovered by Galileo, the first man to point his telescope in its direction. Thanks to him we’ve been able to see the storm raging ever since.’

  I stored that piece of information away. It made me shudder, it was fascinating and horrifying, the idea of a storm continuing forever. All that lashing rage and fury, with no horizon of forgiveness at the end. I looked at my mother, who was looking at her mother, and wondered why Caroline had never told me anything about this.

  ‘Before the telescope was invented, no one knew that Jupiter was the mightiest of the planets,’ Grandma Ruth went on. ‘But it is named after the most powerful of the Roman gods. And you know, Jupiter’s gravity is so strong,’ here Ruth lowered her voice to a whisper, so that I had to stop fingering the telescope and lean closer, ‘it keeps other members of the solar system captive!’

  ‘Oh Mother, for heaven’s sake!’ cried Caroline. ‘Why do you have to put it that way?’

  ‘Who’s captured?’ I asked.

  ‘Asteroids, dark matter, moons—your namesake, of course!’

  ‘What?’

  Ruth looked at Caroline, her eyebrows raised in surprise. ‘There are sixteen known moons that spin around Jupiter.’ Ruth turned to me. ‘Four of these you’ll be able to see with the telescope and one of them is called—Callisto!’ Ruth stood back to gaze at me, like a painter who stands back to see the effect of his last brushstroke.

  ‘You knew that, silly,’ said Mum, shifting Jeremy to the other shoulder. ‘I told you about it years ago, but you were never very interested.’

  I blushed red. I didn’t want Grandma Ruth to think I was so out of tune with the universe, such a dull stone. Once I’d seen my name in a science book at school, but it had seemed like a coincidence, nothing to do with me. When I’d asked Mum about it, I remembered her saying dismissively, ‘I don’t know, I heard the name from your grandma, and I thought it sounded musical, like calypso, or castanets—something with a Spanish flavour, exotic.’ And she’d gone on preparing the table for her ladies’ meeting.

  I looked at Mum. She was staring fixedly at an insect crawling on her shoe. It was my mother who wasn’t interested, I thought, not me, and I kicked at a paving stone with venom.

  ‘The Jovian moons are ice palaces,’ Grandma Ruth said into the silence. ‘Callisto has a twin, called Ganymede, which is the largest moon in the solar system. You’ll see it up there—it is even bigger than the planets Mercury and Pluto.’

  I heard a sharp intake of breath. My mother was standing rigid, like a tree struck by lightning. She moaned, and the movement of her mouth was terrible against the stillness of her body. The sound woke Jeremy, and as if in sympathy, he began to wail. She clutched him tightly and stumbled away, moving over the dark grass like someone who couldn’t see the path.

  Grandma Ruth shook her head. She turned, as if to go after her, but then stopped.

  ‘What, what?’ I cried. ‘What’s up with Mum?’

  Ruth looked at me. Then she looked back at the telescope. She took another cigarette out of the pack.
‘So, do you want to have a look at the universe? Come on,’ she said briskly, ‘stand here and close that eye, that’s right. No, don’t hold on there, it’s fragile.’

  I hesitated. My pulse was still hammering with the sight of Mum, her face all broken up like a shipwreck. I kept remembering her mouth. I had never seen her like that. She was like a stranger. But Grandma Ruth was tsking impatiently, and the lure of the universe was strong.

  At first I could see nothing, just a black surface, opaque, like canvas. I felt a leap of alarm—Oh, I can’t even see through a telescope, I’ll have to make it up for Grandma! But then Ruth twisted the lens position slightly. Suddenly a round silver ball came into view. It had four smaller beads strung around it like a perfect necklace. I felt shock spread like a current through my body.

  I was seeing it, another world spinning in the universe. I could hardly breathe. I turned for a second to gasp at Grandma. She laughed, and gave me a thumbs-up sign. I swung back again. The telescope was a living nerve attached to my eye, and I was travelling along it, into space. Those shining spheres, fixed in motion, were like balls thrown up by a juggler. They were so near, I could almost catch them.

  To see pictures of something in a book, and then see the real thing in the world is heart-stopping. It’s like your favourite wish jumping out in front of you. I shifted my weight onto the other leg. I had a cramp. It didn’t matter.

  To think that this other world had always been there, orbiting, storming, fighting with meteors while I went to school and played with Jeremy and ate my sandwiches. All those huge transforming things were going on and I never knew. The sky was suddenly different, inhabited by ice palaces and beads of silver.

  As I gazed, I was aware of the blades of grass on my anklebones, and the smell of Grandma Ruth’s cigarette on the breeze. But these things were muffled, more like memories of things familiar.