Gael

by Mok, Judith;

  I had no access to my belongings so our rooms had bare walls and scanty furniture, except for two paintings – one belonging to my husband that he had entitled ‘The Wrong’, and, ironically, one by my father that he had named ‘The Right’. I was cradled between the two each night, dreaming of some kind of equilibrium. Even in my dreams there were problems to be solved and obstacles to be considered, but the moment I awoke and stumbled to the stove to cook Sam’s breakfast my priorities changed. Sam left very early with his bag on his back and faint circles under his eyes. They would disappear during the day, but then the finest of wrinkles on his brow would have replaced them by the evening. I would stare at my husband’s painting and feel bloodless, limp, unable to do anything to make it change. All I could do was to struggle on my violin and try to make small drawings for children’s books that made me a little money.

  My bed was a mattress on the floor. I could touch the hard planks if I reached out. They felt like some kind of truth, as if there was really nothing more to truth than air and hard surface and my anxious breathing in between. I read Nietzsche and put the book in a corner on the floor with the others. We had no shelves for them.

  Hard to explain to my friends or my brother abroad that I sometimes ran out of money that enabled me to keep my arse clean. The big needs were not provided for at all. Dentist and doctors had to be avoided at all costs. In the evening we would study Sam’s homework and lie in bed watching the tiny screen of our TV.

  Sometimes I was my old self and would go into a clothes shop dressed in the remains of my designer clothes. I could still act out the woman who knew all about fashion and could afford it. I was just a stingy eccentric who wore her expensive clothes into shreds before acquiring new ones. Or the sentimental one who was so attached to her garments that she found it impossible to be separated from them and left them to rot. I fed the dream for a few hours and felt stupidly elevated and good.

  In my bed I folded my arms under my head and lay on my back focusing on the bare spot in between the two paintings. It grew dark and in that dark it lit up: the writing on the wall said Santorini.

  Black beaches and straight sea. The suspicion of sharks circling the depths of the swimming waters. A Greek island on which they had sharpened their pencils every day of their holiday. Finding subjects to draw was what they discussed in the morning, what silenced them during the afternoon when they rode donkeys to go down and dip their brushes in the sea and swim to wash the efforts of colouring away. The sun would go down on them while they rested on a pier built in a small sandy bay. Once they saw a boat with faded colours. It came drifting in from its own saga, carrying a horse, a goat, a cow, a sheep and a couple of toothless old gods who held up a lobster to them.

  They fixed a fire of twigs and roasted the crayfish for themselves. They laughed so much when they watched them eat showing their naked gums to the full. Happy, happy they clapped their hands while they walked away and left them with the helpless claws.

  They slept in the sand, snakes nearby, heard but never seen in the low bushes. Morning came to reveal a calm, blue basin of salty sea. Never been crossed by the likes of a boat. Or so it seemed. They had to reproduce it, paint what they had seen. They did and she forgot about her music for weeks. His body, hers, was all there was to that warm vacation. Until they made it to a terrace of a café built high above the sea, where they sat alone in the evening. To listen to Brahms suddenly sounding through bad speakers. On Santorini, island of burnt-out volcanoes, the volcano within her had burst. He held her hand because she cried as she watched the fine line of notes disappear over the water, but he had no idea why.

  25

  I went to a pub and asked for a job. Playing a few tunes, enough material to tell the public about my life in Ireland in between the music. I had to be a bit of a glamorous bird, standing there with my stories, a tittering phoenix rising from her self-induced ashes.

  Sam went to England at the end of his summer holidays. Apparently his daddy had found a way to make money, and I thought it would be okay for him to spend some time with his father.

  I went through my routine for the tourists – you lot – and waited for his return to our rooms, feeling more and more as though I was turning into a ghost.

  The knock on the door at four in the morning. They must be back, I thought.

  It was him, without our child. A suffocating sense of panic. Where was my child?

  Sit down, woman, he said, just sit down. He had sold his paintings, he said, for a lot of money. Took Sam to that boarding school with the horses that he always wanted to go to. Paid for the remaining school years, gave the child money. They had gone to the Races and had a few bets, yes, and the boy had got drunk with him. First time. Had a tattoo put on his bum, right near the inside of a cheek. A Star of David, you know, so he can shite on it when he has the runs. Went to the races the next day. Lost the rest of his money. As usual. He laughed about something. I had never known where it went. The money. On betting. Spent talent, blown away. There was surely somewhere he couldn’t find me. Or, like my father, did I need to suffer in order to achieve? Mistress Pain I had called love.

  If I murdered him I could turn him into an angel, maybe. If I killed myself would I become one?

  Quite coldly I put the question to him. It all seemed logical to him. As a Jewess, my soul would simply travel to another body. Imagine, you can be like all of those great violonists: Jasha Haifetz, Ida Haendel, Izak Perlman, Shlomo Mintz. That’s what you wanted, hey? You could have been as good as them, that’s what you think, hey? Well here’s your second chance, sweetie, take the jump. I started to kick him and he ran.

  26

  He feels he is becoming the wisest of men. A rebel. Sam has joined him in his search for the ultimate secret. How to start all over again, now that he has wasted his paintings on fools and buffoons who threw money at him. They have crossed waters and Sam has gone with the horses. He has brought him to a blacksmith. But first of all he laid down his head on the anvil. Begged the smith to reshape it with the glowing heat of his brain. Hammer on its turmoil until chaos has a shape at last.

  Sam is waiting at the stables. His hand on the soft nostrils of the horses until the blacksmith comes and brings him over to the anvil. Sits and puts his feet in his pardoned lap. Tender skinned hooves to be gently shoed for every type of ground. You little Jew man, you never know which way you will have to go. Just joking, all that is gone now, we know that much out here. You are all rich now, what with your own country and all that. And horses to ride. It used to be donkeys for you lot. Not any more. Not any more. And your father who comes from our church, now look at him. A rebel. His loud laughter echoed the thunder of the galloping herds. Nothing is evil in nature, neither his innocent laugh nor their senseless speed. Only his father. His father will not knock at the door anymore or read from the books. He will read from them himself and make the commentaries come to life. There are shelves in his room filled with games from the Torah and the Kabbalah. Don’t smash the puzzle, sort it out. Even if it takes him a lifetime. What he feels he must use for a higher purpose. Like painting.

  He is not to miss the mother who raised him. Look, there she is. You can see her from the window of your new room. A dapple-grey creature will talk to you. And make you forget, running against your memory. Racing, if necessary. This is what you always wanted, to compete with time on horseback. To rest with your favourite books in your own room. To walk with classmates and be equal. Your father is good.

  We had your bum branded with the symbol of your mother’s race. We shared some firewater. Enough to bottle our last sane thoughts up and keep them for posterity. He must teach him the significance of the universe now that he wears the rebbe’s robe. The beard that hides the smile. The side locks that he hides when he pays for his son’s exquisite boarding school. It feels right to be this way. Look at the strong animals. So much freedom, Sam. Here is his chance to live. Ignore humanity. He painted his life. He did it. It brought him her
e, the spirit of his work. Not music. His mother will not come at bedtime. If Sam needs it he will bring him her violin in its pretty coffin. If Sam needs something, anything, he will be what he needs. The Messiah.

  27

  Sam was happy over there. I spoke to him on the phone and I heard grass and clouds in his voice.

  Tell me what to do, people. Murder or suicide? I know you’re all bastards; you haven’t been listening. Tomorrow he will come back, my husband the painter.

  You tell me, Loth. Yes, I recognized you immediately. My first husband, he’s sitting right there, folks. He hasn’t lost his hair or his looks at all. Still the elegant man. Seems to have materialized all the way from France. The husband who pushed my talents and spoiled my tastes. We have to have a chat in a minute. Please stay. Good to see you. Tell me, all of you, what shall I do? Thank you. A tune?

  Thank you again. Goodnight.

  28

  She turned to stone, a pillar. A statue of salt.

  God had moved to Paris a long time ago. At least Loth had had that feeling for a few decades now. Ever since she had left, so to speak. He knew he was a man of his city and shared its delirious memories of the nineteenth century when it had been dictating culture and science to the rest of the world.

  By just being there she had added an extra dimension to his two-dimensional life. She had been able to pull him out of that life with her mad dancing and horrendous tastes for popular music, all the while toying with the Great Romantics on her instrument.

  She still got the sound right, even in those slight tunes he had just heard her perform. Her hands had suffered. He could take her to a good doctor, the best.

  Her skin was flawless now that she was up close to him. It had been the cruel light that made her look gaunt. She was skinny and her hair was dyed too harshly, but that could be remedied easily enough back home. He still felt attracted to her. He had been listening to her speak for hours. She was quiet now, waiting for him to say something. Tell her what to do, to improve her marriage maybe. They were sure to be a lot better off if one of them turned into an angel. It was bound to be bliss. He did not know where his voice came from when he added that she should come home now, back to Paris with him. He had seen enough.

  She agreed without much hesitation. Sam could visit her there when he had time off boarding school. She wanted to go back to one spot. Torca Point. See the landscape once more and try to understand just once more how the son of that landscape could be evil. She would join Loth in Paris. He would leave her ticket at Dublin Airport for the following night. That should leave her time for her last sentimental journey. Again she agreed and kissed him on the cheek. It was a cold evening. He gave her his coat and took a taxi back to his hotel.

  There were so many flowers that reminded him of her back at his apartment. Camelia floating in crystal pink and red skin and lips. White tulips in the bathroom, petals dropping from a fresh erect stem. Primroses, bushy and mildly wild like her, in her uncrushed hair. The big roof terrace overgrown with her fairytale stockroses.

  He stood on the terrace looking at the fountain on the Place de la Concorde. Had she turned into one of those mermaids, the one staring straight at his apartment keeping her stone gaze fixed on him?

  They raised their glasses to her and her beautiful taste in flowers, Loth and all her old friends. They drank to her funeral.

  29

  Here she is with her small case on her back, looking for dolphins to play to, without our child. Lonely without her child. Our son. Under this impeccable sky I am here again. This time I call her. She hears me and calls me by my name; how clean it sounds in the open air. ‘Gael, Gael is that you?’ Did she finally hear me that last time when I told her she could be all of them, just to let her soul fly out there in between the light horizon and the dark waters and pray for it to go to another musical body? I can come out of my hiding place now that I am God and just as visible as invisible. So close beside her that I can catch her breath. She touches me. Can she see me? I am not too sure. But when I talk to her she listens. Now she looks at me. The silver lightning in her eyes does not scald my nerves anymore.

  I am free to show myself to her. She stands like a statue petrified by her vision of me.

  Woman, let me help you this once, let me tell you what to do. Take off your clothes, dress yourself in the naked truth.

  How magnificent they are: her feathered arms. I can hear the soft crackling of the fragile bones still growing into the pinkish inner nerve of her wings. You always believed in me. Now trust me once more. We are going to fall together. For good and evil. These are your rewards. Let me stroke them. Don’t panic if you can’t feel them, or see me. I am here. I am yours. I am God. You want to come with me. Just start your flight. There is only room between these rocks for one takeoff at a time. I am the gentleman – you can go first. Let me help you. There you go. Pity the flight is so short. Feel my hand on your back. There, there you go. Your choice: rocks or water, water or rocks. We both like to gamble. Remember?

  She does not fly, she does not fall. Dissolves the cormorants, dismembers the seals, her wings spread as wide as far as foam on the eternal firmament.

  She has left me behind.

  British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 978-1-84659-006-1

  eISBN 978-1-84659-793-8

  copyright © Judith Mok, 2006

  This edition published 2006 by Telegram Books

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

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