by Mok, Judith;
20
Antonio had arrived at the presidential suite of the best hotel in Dublin. My husband’s tricks-of-the-trade Merlin who was going to make him millions.
The correct thing to do was to go out to dinner with him. I knocked on a couple of unpacked boxes to check if they might hold what I wanted to wear. I found it. A dated outfit that looked neither cool nor at all New York. Sam howled with laughter when I tried it on and shouted ‘geek’ at me. I had no idea what he meant by imitating a seagull like that. So I went for jeans and a torn designer black shirt. I needed to get my dress sense back, my husband said, could I not buy something up to his standards? Once more there was a sexual flash of anger that made me rip off my clothes and pull at his to get him naked as well. And ready to be consumed.
The idea was that he was going to paint a series of religious paintings. Saints or goddesses, with their favourite animals.
While we were being fed one Michelin star after the other, Antonio discussed the deal with my painter husband. I swallowed everything with a pinch of herbs and salt and pepper – and wine of course – and didn’t take notice of the subjects that were being discussed, apart from the financial side that sounded less obscure and lacked pretence. Money was money, and I would be more then happy to see it on the table in front of me.
Antonio was a classical music lover and knew everybody in that world in New York. A tough business to make money in, huh? He had heard my recordings and was impressed. But it was so hard. He knew Yitzhak and Shlomo, of course. I should know the things he could tell me. He waved his manicured hands about to emphasize the importance of his anecdotes. A diamond flashed on his little finger.
My husband smiled over his glass of Sauternes, and I nodded in agreement as to how terrible my state as a musician was. Was I letting my music slip away to be replaced by an addiction to the deep ache of anger? I squeezed my crotch underneath the impeccable white tablecloth.
Antonio seemed happy enough with our dual performance playing talented but penniless people who crawl their way through life always on the lookout for a coin. So there it was, a fat cheque, enough to survive on for a year, and my husband’s firm promise to deliver the series at the end of that period.
We kissed our old pal Antonio and flew home on our newly grown wings.
Time to meet the friends and fellow artists over homemade dishes, with the doors open to the deck to let the smoke escape. These were the smokers and drinkers of the town, who also knew what they were talking and joking about whenever a politician, pop or film star, or even a society bitch, was mentioned. In between their phases of growing drunkenness I hurried up and down to the kitchen with my ridiculous porcelain filled with gourmet food. Nobody made any move to give me a hand except to uncork the next bottle. As I had no idea who or what they were talking about, I sat and ate, and ate more. My shape was slowly changing and soon I would be able to join the floating jellyfish down at the pier.
They had seen my name in the paper and they groaned that it was good; they liked my food. They stayed on until they sounded like talking amoebas. The dog was under the table, lying on her back, her belly bloated from badly digested leftovers. The cats were on top of her, and Sam was on the sofa, snoring. My friends were asleep. I was awake with the wife of an artist sitting on my lap, wailing that she loved me and was never ever going to leave me. Never ever going back to that swine. She pointed at my dog, but meant her husband.
A beard came and sat next to me, breathing spirits in my face. So it was the fiddle I played, he tapped me lightly on my one free knee, the desperate woman still hanging on to the other. Yes, you people are very talented, what with the languages and the food and all that. I looked around for the rest of the talented people before I understood what he meant. Jews, he muttered. Not a lot of those over here. Some of us, I said with heavy emphasis on the ‘us’, have just as little going for them as some of you lot here. Now it was my turn to pat him lightly on the balding head. I could see the morning coming in over the sea and with it a mystical light that captured me again and again every morning.
They stumbled out and thanked me, but said they could not invite me to their homes, they could never cook that way.
So nobody invited us back and that was that. They came to our table and I didn’t manage to mellow them through their stomachs and turn them into my friends. They didn’t allow that sort of intimacy. Somebody who visited a psychiatrist was spoken about in hushed sentences. I learned the telephone routine; when somebody asked you how you were and your leg was falling off, you were supposed to say you were fine, fine, and if you were a bore and mentioned the leg you were told that you had nothing to complain about what with the weather being so dry and sunny these last few days. I went to my room and painted everything that I wanted to say. Maybe it was good. Maybe the absence of the warm embrace of friendship makes people productive.
Meanwhile I was taking my fiddle to various green places and getting heard in castles and towns where they served steak and chips at the local Inn. Rehearsals took place in backrooms, and sometimes an odd dog would run up to the stage and bark at me in what I hoped was approval.
I got to know my fellow musicians during rehearsals and road trips. They looked at their scores through a thick mist of longing. After the concerts the drunken dreams rolled off their tongues; they all wanted to leave for the Continent, where the music was.
Here is a lovely, folksy twiddle-dee-dee for you. Listen well. And when it gets sad it comes from far away. It sailed out with the sorrow of these poor people and came back to stay.
Although he considered anniversaries and celebrations to be bourgeois, Gael did like handing out gifts. With the back-up of Antonio’s promises he came home with gold and precious stones for me. Throwing them in my lap with contempt, but content with himself to be able to give in to my silly weaknesses. After all they were an investment, and he could always take them from me and sell them. That thought seemed to cheer him up. This time he promised he would ask me first. What he said cheered me up. Not that I believed him. I wanted to be cheered up. I just missed that euphoric feeling of having a future.
He was working on some striking pieces that he allowed me to see. They made me feel humble. Seals swimming around in a flooded ruin that had sunk into the sea and looked like a church. Holding salmon out to a god with a faded-out face they seemed to worship. The lines were strong enough to avoid seeming kitsch or baroque. I was there entering his realm, knelt at the altar to worship his talent. This I had learned back home. Talent was something you used to make the world yours and heal your wounds. Were they wrong back then? My parents? I was inflicting wounds on myself to produce inspiration. But my talent did not heal them. Neither did my husband’s talent heal me. My father picking at the shards of his life. I held on to his opinions, to his scars.
Gael joined me in my walks with the dog on condition that we would only discuss the things he wanted to discuss, none of my usual drone now, you hear me?
This was a country that had taken me in and showed my face in magazines and newspapers. I had my own place here and he was happy for me, but I should really get more of a life and leave the country to make a serious financial contribution to our lives.
I dreaded leaving Sam behind, and I was tired of the hard years we’d had and the loss of my parents that had left me without any family apart from my brother and his good life. I feared I might never come back. But I agreed to set out for other shores.
Christmas was coming, with friends from abroad and the turkey I had to cook for my in-laws. Through the eyes of my friends I saw another country. Eyes that saw the light changing, the rainbows above the sea, mountains that lit up for a few minutes beside others that were veiled in clouds.
Their critical remarks were exasperating; it was like listening to myself talking in a mirror. All day long I agreed with them, all night long thoughts tortured my sleep, until I dreamt that I both stood beside the bed and was in it at the same time. And I would let myself w
ander through the house and walk down the moonlit path of the sea till I reached the last small island, with the lighthouse lighting my thoughts one by one in a consistent rhythm of dark and light. From there I could see them all in the house asleep. Then they seemed to have died, because I had spent too much time thinking at the lighthouse. I woke up sweating as if I had been running for a century, and went to Sam’s bedroom. He was asleep with his teddy bears. The light from the lighthouse beat through his bedroom window.
There was a day when we visited my in-laws with our friends, to make them realize what they were in for during the Christmas dinner. Not being proper Christians, Christmas had very little significance for us. Except for my husband and Sam who now demanded a house full of presents.
My husband was joking and jollying around town on his way to his parents. Our friends sang in the car and then turned quiet when we reached his parents’ neighbourhood. Granny was at the door, agitated by the foreign invaders. She had forgotten the holy water to spray us with. We had biscuits and tea and chatted politely in the kitchen. Plastic branches and red berries hung around the holy images and the crib. I had allies now and could afford a mean giggle. Very inappropriate, but that was me.
Granny commented on how complicated our language sounded.
The Da was in his decorated grotto, sparingly lit by electric candles on the plastic Christmas tree and the giant flicker of the television screen. He waved at us all, and we stood and stared at him watching a game show on TV. The gas stove leaked and the carbon monoxide made us feel slightly giddy. Soon we were cheering along to a soccer match. The old man was in his element, shouting at the black players. Straight out of their trees they came, he said, and look at them now, playing for a European country and all. That evening we drank the deep red wine my friends had brought with them from home, and their warmth reminded me of how much I was missing.
But I had my lover’s, my husband’s, arms to hold me and his voice to tell me not to worry. Not to worry Sammy, not to worry doggy, catty, not even you big fat spider on the wall, not to worry. Sleep.
The fowl and the deer leapt into their mouths, juices ran down their chins, my friend asked for a tune. Her little daughter, a pal of Sam, sat at the piano and I played a Christmas song. His parents had never heard me play. She’d had enough wine, my husband’s mammy, to chat away forever. She turned around and said we had such a large deck out there, could I not go and stand outside and play to the wind? Surely, it was so loud she couldn’t hear herself think.
In the months after my friends left, and the money was running out, I started the senseless sobbing again that had become my way of expressing grief. Grief over ignorance, theirs and mine.
I battled with my violin, and I battled to keep my house warm and its inhabitants fed.
My painter took to roaming the city and losing his belongings along the way. Me being around so much disturbed his concentration, could I please fuck off ?
I fucked off to various countries and invariably came home to weeks of household manure. The gold and stones made their way back to the pawnbrokers. Sam complained that his daddy did not pay his transport or school fees and Daddy did not know where all the money had gone. I started being a screen between Gael and the world, and its mean and ugly people.
His work was not progressing fast enough and the lease of our house was up. There they were, the little people at the door with the papers. Leases lasted longer in my country and there was such a thing as protection for people who rented a house. Here they saw things slightly differently. So we moved. I packed and unpacked and still the sea was beside us.
My music started to inhabit the house, and everywhere I went I took the blinding light that shone in the windows with me. I smelled of the gorse in the garden and my skin was soft from the early salt dip I took in the sea. I started to smile again, and people came knocking at the garden door to have a look. And stayed for the food that I served.
The car died and we couldn’t afford a new one, then bits of the roof fell off, and it rained on my grand piano. Great-grandmother died and there was to be a funeral: Sam’s great granny Concepta, that he’d met twice in his life. He didn’t want to miss school to go and put her in the ground, but he had to. The whole clan would be there.
I woke up wet and cold at five in the morning. No idea where I was. The room looked unfamiliar and my bed was soaked. I looked up and saw the water trickle down along the wall and drip right on to my pillow. My side of the bed that had turned into a thawing fridge. I woke my husband who felt the wet patch beside him and turned away from it to continue dreaming. Downstairs in the kitchen I saw the snow falling in the garden. It was early April. The house had no central heating so I shivered up and down the stairs with towels and an iron. I ironed through my husband’s sleep until the sheet was dry. Then it was time to get up. Sam and his daddy hiccuped with laughter when they saw the remains of the wet snow on the wall. They went outside and told me that the snow was just above me on the roof and had trickled down the wall on to my head.
It was so cold we ended up looking like bears going to greatgranny’s funeral. No taxis to be had. Sam complained that he missed the car and was told by his father that we’d have a new one by next week. Now try to remember what the dead person was called. Granny Concepta, remember?
The train was late because of snow on the tracks. Hundreds of damp people had stacked themselves in the compartment we stood in. I felt strangely comforted, breathing in other people’s oxygen. What did it matter? A cold house, a wet bed and an empty purse, my child’s hand was warm in mine.
They glanced coldly at us over their synthetically-clad shoulders. Here he was, Granny Concepta’s favourite grandson, half an hour late with that awful woman, the poor child. Half an hour of Mass over already and we were sitting in the last row. Sam and I were sitting there numbly when a painful screeching reached our frozen ears.
It’s a violin, Mummy, Sam stage-whispered, and he pinched me hard. So they had rented a fiddler instead of asking me. I raised my eyebrows at my husband. Sure they would have been afraid to ask me, he said. I was so stunned by his statement that I missed out on most of the miserable violin playing. Why? I wondered. I’d have happily played a tune for them.
All the women had plastered their faces with orange-tinted makeup, and they all wore the same skin-coloured tights. Sam and I had problems understanding the speech given by Uncle Willy. He was deaf and whispered away, while Sam kept hissing at me. What was Uncle saying? Oh, just that they all love Great Granny ’Cepta so much. I kissed the top of his head. On a private impulse of love. The snow was even denser when we left the church. A cousin offered us a lift to the cemetery. As long as we didn’t mind the, well, we’d notice it ourselves. He marched us over to the fish market where his car was parked.
A good thing Granny loved fish, he laughed when we sat in the back clutching our noses, we’ll be sure to think of her this way. Sam was sick at the gates of the cemetery and we decided to walk to the grave.
Nobody cried. We heard the priest but louder still were the crows above our heads. Black clothes, black birds, black umbrellas. Snow white ground, white grave, white death.
There was food and free drinks in the pub down the road. Double doors that flapped back when you pushed them open and a big space behind it with tables lined up, and plastic plates and cups, sandwiches on each plastic plate wrapped in cellophane. We sat at the corner of a table, Sam and I, while his father disappeared into the crowd. Nobody talked to us for the first half-hour, then, after several pints, people approached us. My mother-in-law kept telling everybody that I was so good not drinking at all. I never drink during the day unless I’m in the South of France, I said.
Sam got nervous and wanted to leave. He felt unsafe. But this was the house Great Granny had built. He was safe, I told him. He wandered off and left me to the sisters and aunts who by now were quite drunk. Why had I married him? What was I doing here? I realized I had forgotten what kept me there.
/> Selfishness, I said, getting drunk on my own selfishness, that was the reason I stayed. Because there was only him and me. But I was talking to myself. They’d gone to get more drink. Some uncles came up to me with old family photographs. I took a liking to the faces in them. Why were they not around? Sam came back and wanted to go for a pee with me in the Ladies.
The ladies stood on their unsteady legs in a circle on the wet floor in the restrooms, smoking fags, gossiping. ‘There you are,’ one of the aunts shrieked. ‘He’s gorgeous all the same, isn’t he?’ They closed in on him, all the aunts and cousins, and Sam started to cry.
‘Crying are you, laddie?’ a gulp from her glass and on she went. ‘Remember, your Great Granny Concepta had a photograph of you on her mantelpiece.’ I winked at Sam and he retorted that all he could remember about the old woman was that he had to go outside in the cold for a pee. That just added oil to the fire, and on they went, about how the granny had always burned a candle beside his portrait, and did the laddie know why? I grabbed my child and pushed my way to the door. Because you are the godless child, I heard them shriek.
My husband drank for another two-and-a-half hours before I told him we were leaving. There was no money for a taxi. We’ll get money in the city centre, I said. A friendly family member who’d only had fifteen pints offered us a lift. We took the bus and found our way to a cash machine. ‘Go on,’ said my husband and handed me a card. ‘Get some.’ But the machine refused to spit out any money. My husband started to laugh. He knew there was nothing in the account; it was just funny to see my face.
Then I hit him hard in the face in the middle of the street and his glasses were on the pavement and there were lots of people around us and Sam was crying.
We walked home in silence. I tucked Sam into his cold bed and stroked his head and said I was sorry. Then I confronted Gael, demanding to know what was with him, provoking me while I was struggling to keep us going. He looked at me coldly, and calmly asked me who I thought I was, talking to him like that.