by Mok, Judith;
16
He made them smile, the people in the offices, those that rang his doorbell and brought him papers. He told them about the fishing and they went along with his story, went with him to the green shores and the rocks in the dubious sunlight until they saw the silver streaks in the white water and forgot all about the papers because they wanted to catch these bold and free animals. He made them laugh, the people who had warned him on the phone that life needed to be lived in the way they had organized it. If not they would nail him. He invited them to his studio and told them about Maria in his paintings, about Laxmi, how he had invested in her music, supported her, how they should turn to her, she knew how to handle papers and questions about a practical life. He showed them the riders and the heroes in his drawings and brought colour to their pale faces. He brought them excitement, telling them about the people that lived underground and made them think that nothing mattered, centuries, countries, wars, the myth was carried on, that these stories were true, were poetry. They laughed and liked him until he closed the door on them. Then they would rush to spread more bad news about him. His lies were good, just as good as his stories, as the great poetry in his paintings.
At night he dreamt about the Great Fish, the one he caught although the Old Druid Fergus had forbidden it, and he grilled it and ate from the pink tinted meat and felt the glow. More wisdom came to him. He now knew. It was the way in which she had said it: come to me. She was the Banshee. She had cursed him to live his life in this country that was populated by people carrying wide wallets full of cards and money. Cowards that left half the whiskey in the bottle on a night out. Couples that sat in big rooms on designer furniture and talked about insurance and the price of houses to keep themselves and their friends entertained. People who got up early on the first summer morning to drive to their second home in a hot country, pretending to be modest in a secondhand car, off they went with a stash of extra insurance papers in the glove compartment.
He wanted to paint and to get the paint on the canvas he had to protect himself and to protect himself he had to tell the whole world lies, beautiful lies that sounded so much like the truth that the people from planet earth believed him. At least for a good while. Enough to be left alone with his painting. She took them from him. She held a mean mirror in front of him and stood in the silent hall where he had to share his life with her and her offspring. The boy he would feed with some Fish and make him see. She was the one that turned his gaze from his painting to the mirror. He heard her howling outside, panting in his ear when he lay awake in his bed and her beside him, warm and asleep. The whole alphabet of truth she possessed. But he had the Fish and the wisdom, and he could be the priest of evil gods if he wanted. Yes, he could celebrate her the Banshee and give her a name even. Moira had his child raised by her mother. But her mother was weak now and losing her bewitching power. Soon he would sacrifice Moira to a greater being and offer him her stones. She would have to go naked and freeze her limbs. Still she carried that blinding light with her, it was so clear that even she could not see. Ban Shee, Ban Shee needed the darkness of death to discover his pain in his paintings. She held the lime-green snake that fled under her feet, she held the rat that could not bite and died. She wheeled him around on a fast lane from cold to hot and back, the landscape shook behind the windows of her foreign house. She made him talk to other painters and wear a worn straw hat and hide from the sun, walking with a bottle under his arm filled with the spirit. Among the gods they discussed he told the story of Moira the evil who wanted more of his seed to turn into her look-alike. She now had her demons to serve him, bang at his door for more, more, more.
She stood alone now, carrying death as a giant cape, taking it with her when she abandoned them to mourn on a foreign shore. He could make her hide in it, now the theme of her beloved song could be lived on his foreign shore. And nobody would listen. Let her sing and play over there. In darkness let me dwell…
17
Anumber of bailiffs called on me, all in search of the same thing. Again, I had no idea what they wanted from my husband. But I had no time to deal with them. My mother was dying.
Again I asked my brother to help financially – with the nursing, so she could die in her own home. But he said hospitals take good care of dying people, she had only a few months to go and besides he desperately needed a new Italian kitchen and had no means to waste on a private nurse. I cancelled my life for the last six weeks of hers. Sam was with his adoring father and his adoring nanny, living city and primary school life to the full. I could be missed at home, and in concert, for a while.
I drove her to the sea along the road in the dunes and she mentioned the sea light. I drove past the house where she had given birth to me and once again she told me the story. How warm it was and how my father and the doctor were celebrating with a glass of brandy at midnight, how she saw them standing outside, two triumphant small Jews lifting their glasses to life, laughing. The house we lived in was a present from one of my father’s admirers. She talked and talked and filled the whole book of time again with stories and people I knew so well. At the beach we struggled down to a beach café where I left her sitting behind a glass windbreak. I waded through the sand to the sea and dipped my toes in the waves, afraid to turn around and look at her. I just stood and noted everything, the colour of the sky, the gulls with their broken song, the kisses of the light foam on my feet, endless, endlessly repeated, the stretch of white sand reflecting my blankness, because all my thoughts were leading up to the moment when I would turn to see my mother sitting there alone on the terrace.
She wore sunglasses and a straw hat, she was reading a book. I stared until she felt it, and waved at me as if I was a child.
Then she became my child. I washed her and read her favourite authors.
She had moved into my father’s studio and had installed a hospital bed amongst his paintings and books. On the floor stood vases full of flowers that her friends brought in every day. I also brought her flowers and a new recording I had just finished. She kept her eyes closed, listened, and declared herself intensely satisfied. She had always been a stern critic and the approach of death had not tempered her judgement. She even refused to see some people she had mildly disliked in the past. Her body consumed itself, she could not eat and the day came when I was able to lift her up and carry her to her chair. She liked it and said I was strong. And I felt stupid and proud to be strong.
When my brother or a friend stayed for the day, I would drive home and collect clean clothes. I changed my rings and noticed a few had gone missing from my box.
Had I left them at my mother’s? I forgot about this on my way back to her house.
She was still there laughing and joking with her old bohemian friends. They were my friends, too. We sat around her bed and talked about the good and the bad that had occurred in art and politics. My husband came to visit and loudly joined in any discussion. They liked him and admired his work; he fitted into their circle.
A few weeks before her death she said I should go to a concert or a play. So I went home and got dressed and looked for my rubies, earrings and necklace, which were gone. Had Sam and his friend been dressing up in them? He had never done such a thing. I asked him and made him nervous; he did not like things that went missing. My husband had no idea either and looked worried. Was there a thief among our visitors?
Again I let it be and hurried back to my mother the next morning. I had to tell her about Sam in detail. We looked at my father’s drawings and went through the war years when she had been alone, hiding and starving. She waved it all away with her thin hand and sank into a morphine slumber. When she slept I practised in another room until she called me in for her daily concert. Music of her choice.
It happened that she asked for a piece to be played at her funeral. She was sorry to die so close to Christmas. With all the holiday dates coming up, it would be complicated to cremate her. She did not know that we had to pay for her funeral becau
se nothing had been arranged by my father. The word ‘money’ rarely entered her vocabulary, she knew nothing about it and had dealt with her losses by cultivating a bitterness tinged with humour.
Sam came and held her hand, counting the brown spots on it. He was shy with her because she had shrunk so much. But her voice was the same and soon she made him laugh and got him to tell her a thing or two. He kissed her hand and said goodbye. His father took him home. I spoke to Sam on the phone the last week before her death and he asked me if I had found my rings and pretty things. Daddy, he said, Daddy thinks that it might be a ghost that took them and now I am frightened and sleep with him. I teased him and hung up. I sat beside the telephone for a long time. I wanted to talk to that ghost, to show it my fury.
We talked on the phone every day, my painter husband and I. He casually mentioned that he had found a few rings in the pocket of his jacket, a queer business he added, and then proceeded to ask about my mother’s health. I announced that he’d better come over because she was not going to live another full day.
The wind hammered on the cold windows again, but the next morning the garden was white and my mother greeted me with a faint smile. The house was warm and I spent the afternoon reading and chatting with friends while she faded into her last sleep. A painter came to the door and asked if he was allowed to make a drawing of her.
He was an old friend so I let him in and gave him a glass of gin. He went into the studio and started drawing my mother’s face. Again the doorbell rang and my husband came in, bringing snow on his coat into the house. He was hungry and wanted to eat. How was my mother, he asked, and blew a butterfly kiss on my cheek. My answer was dry and clear: she was going to be dead within the hour. Jaysus, he sipped from his wine, I didn’t realize it was that bad. I heard him from the kitchen, yes, I muttered over the frying pan, it was that bad. I sat down and watched him eat his fries, and went to the studio to feel her hands and face turning cold. I came back, and before my husband had finished his food the painter called me. He was crying. I held a small mirror in front of her mouth and saw no reflection of life on it. She was dead.
I rang my brother and some friends who immediately came over to have a drink with us. My husband rang the funeral home and had a bizarrely jolly talk with the undertaker. There was no room for my mother over there, the fridge was full because of the holidays. Better leave her at home and open all the windows, as it was freezing out. We laughed and I hoped to hear her laugh. But she didn’t, and when I went to turn off the lights and open the windows in the studio I felt the ghost’s cold claws grabbing at me, coming in so quickly from outside. How could she have defended herself against this? It rushed out again and took my home along into the winter’s night.
Where is Grandmama going? Samuel wanted to know when the coffin went down to be burned. Our whole world was silenced under the white shield of snow, frozen snow with stars that winked at the sun.
More went missing in the house. Sam saw his granny’s ghost and couldn’t sleep. The ghosts had taken over, we had to give them what they wanted: a party. Everybody came and made a drawing of his favourite ghost to be hung on the party wall. There were ghost cakes and ghost clothes and a choir to ban the ghosts. It worked and Sam was again able to sleep. I was lost in work and papers that needed to be ordered, and her absence whenever I tried to phone her. Her silence was slowly choking me.
I took a train through the country to see spiritualists in three ugly cities. The first came from Africa, banged the drums, lit incense sticks, and chanted and waved his large sleeves while freeing his armpits of their fantastic odour. Orbu, his private god, said all was well. I left with an empty purse. The second was a woman who rode her bicycle around the room and knocked over the family photographs, the one that fell nearest to me told her what she needed to know. I had to cross the water, she said. I went downstairs, unlocked my bike and crossed the first bridge over a canal, feeling none the wiser. The third, another man, asked me one question and stared at me for half an hour without speaking. It was in the house, he said, somebody in the house took my jewellery.
I asked my devoted cleaner and she started to cry. Then I asked the wall. It did not answer. Not his hands, my husband’s, not even Sam’s little hands could distract me from the loss of her. My mother. I flew to a remote coast where I sat on the rocks and spent my days in the company of pelicans that offered me fish once they got to know me. Their compassion made me cry for the first time. Tears of salt added to the salt of that Pacific ocean, as indifferent to any of this as my sea at home.
No reason for you to stay here any more, he said, when I came home with a bandaged leg. Let’s move to Ireland my country, but you will have to take second place.
He had had a great offer from an art dealer called Antonio and was all excited about it.
My reviews in European and international newspapers and television appearances were all very well, but my work didn’t really bring in the big money, did it? We had to move and he had to start his series of paintings that were going to make us rich.
Before taking second place I had to appear in a summer festival, and my leg was bothering me.
When I went to see the doctor he complained that he hadn’t been paid and wouldn’t treat me. During the last months I had neglected the insurance papers and hoped that my painter husband would take care of the administration while I took care of my mother. But he hadn’t. There were the phone calls, there were the threats, the phone was cut off. There was the crowd of bailiffs again. So when I came home from the doctor he told me he had sold our house. All I needed to do was to sign the contract. Great, gone in one day and so were his debts. Our debts, he stressed, our debts. My leg got worse as the concert drew nearer. My husband laughed at the idea of a one-legged pretty violinist on stage. An excellent publicity stunt, he said.
I had developed gangrene. Friends and colleagues helped my slow recovery. All those I was going to leave behind. Why was I going with him? To follow my angst and learn to ignore it. Because once a teacher had told me to seek impossible boundaries and find a greater depth behind them or a more beautiful life. And because he still held me ensnared in his web of love and lies and mysterious imagery. His hands, with his brush on a canvas, or on my body, could still banish the dullness, the greyness, with one touch, one dab of passion.
Listen to this ancient tune; in darkness let me dwell.
18
We discovered the path to the moon from the windows of our new home. It was a very empty home for the first months because none of our belongings had arrived. But there were windows everywhere filled with the views of the sea and a rocky island with the ruin of a castle on it. I told Sam that Isolde had lived there before she travelled to Brittany to find her great love. He had just read a version of the story in a children’s book and stood on the deck in front of the house for hours looking out for her.
After our move my husband had gone back to the Nordic country to finish some work.
Sam and I were alone. I had no car so we investigated our new surroundings on foot. Sam had to explore a new language and the small school he went to.
We set out for the city centre to buy him a uniform, something that nobody had ever seen in Sam’s country of birth. Uniform means the same, I explained to him on the train that moved like an ancient slug. People stared at us with our foreign brogue and funny clothes. We looked back at them, with their woollen hats and anoraks and shapeless shoes. They smiled at us and we smiled back to mirror their warmth.
Sam couldn’t stop giggling in the big old-fashioned shop where a nun-like creature tried to sell us the leftover sizes of the uniforms, as we were late in the year. Trousers that hung around him in grey misery and a cardboard jumper with a V-neck, showing the collar of his equally deplorable shirt. I could not restrain the tears of laughter when I saw him dressed like that. Already I missed his bright T-shirts and jeans. It seemed as though he had to peel off the first layer of his pleasant freedom to be able to fit into the
new system. At least his school had no religious hang-up as all the State schools seemed to have. Schools that pretended to be non-religious yet had nuns presiding over the grim buildings. They all said it meant nothing anymore. Nothing, mere habit. Like those non-believing friends of my husband, who got married in Church to please their parents and baptized their babies to please their family and the neighbours. Ach well. I liked to listen to the horn-blowing of the Kol Nidrei at Yom Kippur in the splendid Sephardic synagogue. And meet those lost souls afterwards in the semi-darkness to listen to them commemorate my parents.
In the evening we stood, the two of us, in front of the kitchen window to see if the moon had already rolled out its silver carpet. He wanted to know what ‘Catholic’ meant. He said it with his back turned to me, keeping the moonlit sea path for himself. The place where his granny went every morning was a church for Catholics, I began my lame explanation. Granny was not Sam’s favourite person, neither was his Da as he called the man who never spoke a word to him. He seemed to breathe cigarette smoke and kept a whole lot of televisions and a radio on full blast in his cramped house. The rare times he had been to visit, there were never any toys for him and granny insisted that apples were sour and bad for your digestion and that Sam should drink a drop of liquor when he had a bad cough. There were bags and bags of sweets and biscuits, and granny would talk for a long time without waiting for an answer, so he could eat the stuff till his belly burst. Even so, Catholic meant that you had no fun, watched TV and drank big glasses of burning water they called brandy or whiskey. It meant you went out in the rain in the morning and washed your face at the entrance of the Church and muttered some inaudible words while you kept your hands folded. I held him and whispered that the good thing was that if you were naughty you went to see a man in a dress and he would ask you to mutter some words called prayers and that was it; you were not a naughty boy any more. Punishment was only for those who did not know the words.