To the Volcano

by Elleke Boehmer

  I cried like a baby, Beri, when I opened the lawyer’s letter. He’d left it all to me, everything, every bit. More than unimaginable. Never before.

  Anne is crying now. She stands closer to the yew tree. It’s the thought of him lying crumpled like a bit of rubbish at the base of that slippery rock, so helpless and ruined, that breaks her up. And the thought that it must have been just days—a mere few days—after he changed his will.

  She touches the wetness on her cheeks with her wrists, so as not to mess her make-up. If Beri were here, she might give her a tissue. She has not brought tissues herself. No need. She has never before cried at a funeral.

  People begin to wander off in the direction of the parking lot. Anne sees the broad back of the former colleague who gave the eulogy, so-called—just five minutes it was, just a few words really. Could have been anyone. What a hard worker Graham had been. What a mate. Had been, is no more. The mate hadn’t shed a tear.

  Where the main group was standing, a mound of earth covered in squares of AstroTurf like carpet samples is almost visible. Anne turns away. Something odd and bright crosses her vision, and she is suddenly dizzy again, dizzy enough to grab on to a bit of yew to stop toppling over.

  Had been, it’s hard to hold in her head.

  She makes her way to a fold-out canvas chair some mourner has left behind. It’s the only place to sit. If Beri had been here, had been—if Beri were here, she, Anne, would ask her to come over and have a chat, sit down on the grass here beside the chair, the real grass, that is, not the stuff on the mound, and then she’d try telling her what happens next.

  Beri would listen of course. She’d say that for Paul’s girl, she is the listening type, the kind, wide-hipped sort of woman who, however, never keeps her man.

  Come, Anne, she imagines Beri saying, maybe patting her knee, tell me what you dream of doing? Now, you know, you have all that money.

  And Anne tells her. She sits up, takes a gulp of air—an old lady gesture, she knows, a gobble, she really shouldn’t do it—and she tries to tell Beri everything. It’s tough though. As soon as she gets going, she stumbles. There’s so much to say and she wants to say it all at once. It’s hard to keep the words in order. Silly stuff comes out of her mouth, debris, as if she’s sleep-talking, none of it making sense, she can tell. She tries to go slower. There are a few people lingering around the mound. Were they the ones staring earlier? She’d hate to draw their attention now.

  There, Anne, Beri says soothingly. Don’t mind them. Now she really does pat her knee. Take a moment, steady on.

  A cruise, Anne says, I dream of taking a cruise—east, north, all over. Across the ocean you can get to anywhere. Graham’s holidays, they were landlocked, and see, he was killed by a rock. I want to visit places across the ocean, I don’t even know their names. Those beautiful beaches on television, while they are still clean, I want to visit the beaches that are still clean. Those islands like treasure islands that poke straight up out of the water. I want to dance on deck the way I danced with your father. The stars like a canopy overhead, the equator underfoot. I want to dance while crossing the equator.

  For some reason people really are looking at her now, the people still beside the mound. They are looking round, they are walking towards her, their faces frowning. She must speed up.

  Top of the list, Beri, she says more softly, her finger at her lips, are those diving boys, the pearl divers. I want to take my cruise to the places where the pearl divers work, where the pearls come from. Those boys train themselves to dive straight and deep, full fathom five, they learn to hold their breath till their lungs nearly burst. Sometimes they do burst, there is a mishap, they don’t make it. They drown. Imagine, Beri, your pearl earrings, our pearl earrings, came from a boy who drowned while diving, who whooshed up to the surface with the closed oysters still clutched in his dead hands.

  There is a rush to Anne’s chair. The first person to reach her catches her drooping arm, and with his other hand clasps her around her waist.

  ‘My best love,’ Anne says, straight into his eyes, ‘my dancer.’

  Her head moves to his shoulder and his gentle hand goes to the small of her back and holds her there.

  The Biographer and the Wife

  I

  The biographer

  The writer is late. He takes long strides across the wet forecourt to the entrance doors suddenly plush with red carpet, shining glass, theatre lights. Crap, he is later than he thought. The noise of the company has receded to a distant murmur. But for two security guards in tailored black, everyone has gone through.

  He straightens his black tie, his hand goes to his nape, the bristly line of this afternoon’s cut. It reassures him. Already he can imagine the widened eyes and annoyed looks around the table. He’s seen it before, writers more recognised and garlanded than he tacitly assuming the right to deal out judgements, as if literary composure were chiefly to be expressed through the handing down of censure.

  Except that tonight, he reminds himself, he counts for something. He is himself on a judging panel, though the prize is a minor one. His fellow panellists will be elsewhere in the room. His breast-pocket is full of newly printed business cards with crisp edges. He will make the most of the evening, his red velvet seat alongside Professor this or Doctor that, under that glittering roof he has till now only ever seen on television, that vast hall where, he notices glancing back as one of the black-clad guards slides his coat off his shoulders, the bright arc-lights are already torching the stained-glass windows violet and red.

  To the blonde in black at the chrome barrier taking names, he breathes ‘Traffic’, and then ‘Sorry’, though his name doesn’t at first seem to appear on her list, and must be spelled and re-spelled.

  ‘Ah, here. Don’t worry. It takes ages for people to find their seats.’

  ‘There’ll be a bottleneck, I anticipate,’ he tries a smile. ‘Could I slip in without a fuss, perhaps if there’s a short cut?’

  ‘Josh,’ calls the woman, taking pity.

  The security guard, his coat still in his arms, comes over.

  The writer sets off a few steps behind the security guard down a passage at an angle to the noise and light. They reach lino-covered stairs with the look of backstage, plastic-covered banisters, scuffed walls.

  ‘Down the stairs, one flight, can’t go further, corridor to the right takes you to the side entrance,’ the security guard says at a gallop, refusing to look at him for some reason, his eyes directed slantwise down the stairs.

  ‘Thanks, mate, I appreciate it,’ the writer says to the guard’s retreating back.

  It’s a chance, is his main thought—make the most of it. Not to arrive last after all.

  He takes the stairs two at a time, once or twice almost losing his footing, sliding down an extra step. He skids on to the next landing, panting hard. The black eyeball of a security camera ogles at him. He feels suddenly, inexplicably, on edge and agitated, like a trespasser, stumbling in where he has no business.

  There is one other person on the landing, or, no, two—two people, a tall man in an expensive suit, a face he knows he has seen before, and some flunky hovering in his shadow.

  He nods briefly, then looks away embarrassed. He should know who this man is, that high forehead, narrow-bridged nose. He’d recognise that nose anywhere…

  He turns to look where the other two are looking. The red floor numbers on the panel over the lift door mark its descent. 1, 0, -1. He touches his bow tie and his hairline. An arriving lift means opportunity, fresh chances, perhaps some fellow guests, similarly belated.

  Looking up, the identity of the guy flashes through him. He’s that MP, one of those penny-pinching scrooge-type politicians who cut funds to everything that makes life enjoyable while keeping his own pockets lined. And here he stands—the writer restrains himself from taking another look—a man of culture, seemingly, taller than he had imagined, thinner, too, debonair in his fine grey suit, looking as though
he doled out money to the arts every day.

  The lift ping-pings, a fragment of Morse code. The politician puts a smile on his face. The writer catches the movement in the corner of his eye. Involuntarily he, too, stands up straight, at attention.

  The lift doors slide open. From its illuminated alcove rolls a wheelchair bearing a man with a massive head atop mighty shoulders. Behind is a burning nest of golden hair, a slender, towering woman pushing the wheelchair, and, to the side, an assistant helping to steer.

  The politician steps forward with his arms outstretched, his sleeve just brushing the writer’s, and, as he does so, the writer shifts his weight and so is caught up within the party of three now revealed to the trinity in the lift as to all intents and purposes part of the waiting tableau.

  The air is suddenly a-hum with laughter, warmed perfume. Light glances off jewels and stainless steel. Names are called. The writer catches a name that he has only ever heard on the radio, the name of another writer, a very great writer. Ah yes, of course!—he knew that he recognised him.

  Now he quickly draws back, pushes himself up against the side of the lift door. Chances like this come but once… From this side-angle he has a view straight down on to the bulky figure in the wheelchair, the politician now bent down to him, his arms around his shoulders. The writer can see the famous silver quiff —wouldn’t he recognise it anywhere?—and, beneath, the uplifted face, the twisted, sensitive mouth and hooded eyes. He sees the long bejewelled hand on the great man’s shoulder lightly touch the politician even as he is hugged, the hand of the tall woman in red velvet with the burning hair who is pushing the wheelchair. Yes, he has read about her, he knows her name, the young wife who, at this very instant, looks straight at him, the writer, sees him even as she is seen, and nods.

  Physical love, to me it’s like meat. The line from the interview the great man gave shoots into the writer’s memory, the rare interview just prior to his last marriage, his third, to this burning woman, his wife.

  Physical love, to me it’s like meat is to another man. I cannot do without it. In her alone I have found my match. My meat and my bread.

  In her alone. The writer stares into the wife’s face, but her eyes have dropped away. The politician has drawn upright, somehow still holding the great man’s hand, and the assistant is taking the handle of the wheelchair from the woman’s long fingers, but no, she presses her to one side and swings the wheelchair in the direction of the red passageway that extends smooth and empty towards the distant hubbub. The silver quiff disappears behind her arm. Every hair on the writer’s body stands on end. A ball of energy has rolled from the lift and caught him in its burning. He has no choice, he steps into her wake.

  The politician to his left, the assistant and the security detail a little ahead, the writer keeps within their bubble. No one gives him another look. Her red velvet dress drags a little on the carpet. He takes care not to step on it yet to remain in step. Stay with them. He feels his neck, his jaw, might snap he feels so turned on, so up.

  In fact, he now knows or recalls, there is no writer he admires more. This great man is a son of his soil. His work has given word and voice to the expanses of his sere land that no one else has found before him. From other writers, himself included, the sensations slip away like oil. The great man collects that oil and gives it shape and form in vessels of bone and rock. Years ago, didn’t he write to him and say this, or words like it? Or, if he didn’t, he should have. He should write them down now, tomorrow.

  He imagines the young wife opening the great man’s fan mail, smoothing the pages with those long, manicured hands, filing the praise away in special boxes to be kept for those moments when his spirits fall and the dark cloud descends, as the great man has himself written, the cloud that grows in darkness as his years increase.

  See here, he imagines her saying to the great man, smoothing the pages, see this moving tribute, vessels of bone and rock, isn’t it just right?

  Halfway down the passage the party halts.

  ‘My shoes,’ the young wife laughs and shrugs apologetically at the politician. She lifts her hem slightly to reveal the ballet slippers she is wearing. The writer wants to step forward and shield her from his gaze.

  The assistant hands her a drawstring bag, high leopard-skin heels protruding from its mouth, and points down the corridor in the direction from which they’ve come. The wife bends and whispers something quick and low in the great man’s ear. As she comes past the writer, the flow of her movement stirs his hair.

  It’s his chance, before anyone else can get in. She created the possibility, she conferred it, an unconscious blessing.

  With one hand he takes the wheelchair handle still warm from her touch. He swivels the wheels part-way round and drops down on one knee in front of the old man. The politician and the flunky step closer. The politician’s hand is on the writer’s shoulder but the old man makes a gesture and the hand falls away. The writer extends his free hand. He presses his freshly cut business card into the great man’s palm.

  Words gush from his mouth—strong, powerful words about his visionary work, about soil, shape, form, bone. Thank you for the work, I’ve loved it always, the dark and bitter passion, the wry irony. I’ve got up with it in the morning. I’ve gone to bed with it at night.

  A new tableau has formed around them. The writer sees the young wife come striding back in her leopard-skin heels, standing even taller than before, her hair aglow under the lamps. He sees the scene as she sees it, the attendants respectfully inclining from right and left, the man at her husband’s feet presenting his homage.

  He sees, as she does, the old man’s eyes melt. He has learned to crave praise, as the writer felt he would. His mouth working as he listens, the great writer reaches into the lesser writer’s heart, and lays hold of his admiration, his devotion, but something more again, critical consideration honed through a lifetime of diligent study. The writer sees, as she sees, that the great man has endured the days of his old age in a wheelchair pushed by his radiant wife on account of this type of tribute, that tumbles into his lap unsolicited and yet that he commands.

  But there is more. The writer sees the great writer uncover that thing within him he did not want to hide and yet wanted him, this reader of men, to find in him—not discernment alone but a matching ambition, a reciprocal intelligence, or close to it; in short, something of greatness, a mind that might complement his. He wanted him, the great writer, to discover within him, the lesser, a talent who might nonetheless draw him out, might paint his portrait in prose, so that he might contribute—with her help, he trusted, with her inspiration—his small portion to the annals of the greats, so that the generations would go on reading him, the great man, as they would thus read the lesser, and the lesser the great.

  The writer, the life writer, as his crisp card says, feels her eyes still on him, looks up and is differently touched again.

  She, the wife, is looking at him with new recognition. Her unblinking eyes are finding within him the architect of her husband’s reputation, the custodian of his future. He knows she cannot be part of a future that will forget his work.

  Therefore, he, the younger writer, life writer, biographer—self-appointed but soon to be authorised—will forthwith vault into the future on the shoulders of the giant, and the young wife will jump with him because she loves the man, the great writer and the man. The story of their love will be placed in the biographer’s safekeeping—already she knows it, feels it. With the passionate fire that ignites the great man’s late work, he, the biographer, will re-illumine the earlier. He will learn to understand this energy from the inside, this fireball of energy that has caught them both, the great man and the wife, in its burning.

  The closing lines of the interview come back to him.

  I looked for love in a desert world and only now have I uncovered it. I have uncovered it and will hold it and I will die in its embrace.

  Writer, his card says it, life writer. The po
litician has taken the card from the great man and looks at it with approval. He nods lightly at the assistant. At that moment the great man’s hand falls momentarily on the writer’s, the new biographer’s shoulder.

  His life story of the great man, the writer knows in that instant, will open with this moment of his anointing on a red carpet, under these yellow lamps, surrounded by these key witnesses, with the great man’s hand upon him.

  Yes, he could not have imagined it, there was a touch, a sudden pressure on his shoulder, she saw it, too, as the great writer bestowed his consent.

  ‘We should get a move on,’ the wife says, and takes the wheelchair. ‘Do join us, Mr—. Everyone will be waiting for us to get seated. They are about to say grace.’

  II

  The wife

  It was cold that winter, the kind of dank unforgiving cold that clings to the skin and penetrates even wood, even the warm oak floorboards we had specially fitted the first summer we were married. Night after night rain lashed the windows on the west side of the house, it seemed horizontally, and the run-off from the blocked gutters—blocked since his last illness—coated the walls in trails of green slime.

  It was the second winter following his death and, if anything, I found it longer and harder than the first—the nights longer and darker, the days sludgy. I had enough to do, the legacy to arrange, the papers and photographs that had stacked up across his last years still to file, but everything took an age, as if there were leaden weights attached to my limbs, my mind.

  Just a few months before, at the end of the summer, I had signed the contract to write my memoir, a narrative of our time together. I had thought it would lift my spirits. Already I saw how I’d set up the storyline, a Z-to-A reverse chronology, beginning before his final short decline and ending with the first time we met, at that out-of-the-way literary festival on the island—he the famous author scattering upon the event a little of his stardust; myself the volunteer, the gopher. Already I had written the opening yet closing scenes, our last holiday in Europe together, in Arles among the baking lavender fields. What better setting for the long honeymoon that lasted our whole marriage?