The House of Pure Being

by Michael Murphy

  A woman sought her out that night, an American. ‘Don’t I know you from somewhere?’

  Anna was perplexed.

  ‘Have you ever been to the United States?’ she asked.

  ‘My husband Carl and I had a home in Palm Beach, Florida.’

  ‘But we live in Palm Beach, on 23 Coronado.’

  ‘We lived at number 27!’

  ‘You’re Anna Timmermann,’ she said triumphantly. ‘I could never forget that face: you’re the image of Ingrid Bergman!’ And she immediately rang her mother in Florida to tell her of the coincidence.

  Vicente was impressed. When the accountant told him that Anna had paid money out of her own money to cover the launch, Vicente reached into his pocket, and handed across to her about five hundred euro in notes. ‘I’m afraid that’s all I’ve on me,’ he said, apologetically. Unthinkingly, Anna carried the shortfall.

  When Anna recounts her dramas, the language she uses seems to draw its energy from other happenings in her life, so that the references are non-specific and could be lifted up and placed elsewhere on the time-line, since they’re applicable to more circumstances than the one she’s describing. Anna speaks in parables, which give the emotional flavour of her inner life. What’s thrown alongside the surface story cross-references the various complexities, and affords an insight into what Anna hasn’t fully admitted to, and into her efforts at dealing with the difficulties in which she finds herself ensnared, and her increasingly desperate attempts to bring them to a successful outcome as they escape from her control. Although she rarely speaks about James now, the developing breakdown of that relationship permeates Anna’s everyday life, and is a background accompaniment to her each waking thought. It’s been affecting her mood, and at times Anna has appeared morose. After having recovered well from breast cancer, she’s developed this serious problem with her heart. ‘I’m under a lot of pressure,’ she’d say thoughtfully, without expanding on what happens when she goes home to James in the early morning. Undoubtedly, he’s very concerned for her, pointing out that nobody can continue working at the pace she sets for herself, seven days a week from eight in the morning until three the following morning, and that she’s not getting any younger. But the recriminations she alludes to that recommence behind closed doors are oppressing Anna, and she’s indicated that they’re not helping her.

  She made an incredible statement. ‘I’ve seen the accounts, and Vicente pays everyone else on time at the end of the month, except me!’

  We were horrified for her.

  ‘I put off discussing a contract,’ she explained, ‘so I suppose I could walk away.’

  ‘Anna, of course you can: your health has to be a priority.’

  On Saturday night, a doctor had to be called to the restaurant when Anna’s heart went out of control, and he gave her Valium. ‘I felt so calm within twenty minutes,’ she giggled.

  ‘Did you go home to bed?’

  ‘It was after three by the time the last customers left.’

  Although Anna talked to Vicente several times a week, she felt unable to ask him for the money that she felt was owing to her, and she was unsure whether the fault was entirely hers. ‘I’m very like Helen down in Tarifa, who knows how to make do with very little. And in her case I can understand the process involved in giving unstintingly to the other person without any expectation of a return, but I need the money, and not another proposition!’

  ‘Good for you, Anna!’

  Vicente had phoned her to say that he’d a proposal to put to her, and he sent her a ticket to come up to Madrid. But Anna was running out of cash. There was no electricity in her house at Elviria, because the electrical company put in four new poles to upgrade the private party-system that she and two other houses were on, and since the owners of the other two houses lived abroad, the company had presented Anna with the bill for nine thousand euro. She assured us that when her neighbours return, she’ll get their share of what they owe, although she admitted that her track record in this regard wasn’t the best. In the meantime, she didn’t have that sort of money, so the company had turned off her electricity until the bill was paid. ‘To tell you the truth, I’m not much bothered, because James has to go along to the internet cafe in Elviria to get his computer to work. More importantly,’ she said, grinning, ‘the machine that James uses to help his breathing when he sleeps runs on electricity, so he has to go up to Mijas to sleep in the home of his old friend, Richard. And the enforced separation is good.’ She said, ‘It’s been suiting me!’

  Anna said shamefacedly, ‘Don’t tell anyone about me not being paid on time!’ She’d dressed up in the clothes she felt comfortable in: a fashionable three-quarter length grey cardigan tied at the waist that she’d bought in Clifden on a laughter-filled visit to Ireland, a pair of dark brown Bally shoes paired with a fawn cashmere coat, and the Bally postman’s shoulder bag we’d brought her down to Malaga as a present. She’d taken the high-speed Ave to Madrid on Monday, her day off, to confront Vicente about the money she believed she was due. Anna was apprehensive about the meeting, but more anxious about not being paid. We’d schooled her in the gift that Roman jurisprudence had bequeathed to Iberia: ‘pacta sunt servanda’, contracts are meant to be honoured.

  Vicente met her at Atocha station; he was double parked. ‘How long is it since you’ve been to Madrid?’ he asked.

  ‘Five years,’ said Anna. ‘It’s five years since I sold my apartment above the Hermès shop.’

  ‘I’ll show you some of the sights on the way,’ he offered. And he took off in the car cutting across four lanes, and he was pulled over by the police. Anna was absolutely incredulous to hear Vicente give his domicile as Florida when they asked for his papers: seemingly, his car had Florida plates, and he’d never mentioned that connection to her before. After a curt conversation about Vicente’s insurance, the police said they were going to impound his car. Vicente then reached under the dashboard and produced another set of papers. The police glanced at them, and in an unprecedented move for Spanish police that took Anna by surprise, they apologised to the both of them for causing them disturbance. ‘Despite the freedoms following Franco’s death, the old alliance in Spain between a few wealthy families, the Guardia Civil and the Church still seems to hold sway,’ she concluded.

  When they entered his office on the outskirts of Madrid, Vicente’s mother was there. He was very affectionate with her, kissing her on both cheeks and holding both her hands, delighted to see her. Señora García greeted Anna warmly and let her know that Vicente had spoken well of her. She complemented Anna for not putting colour in her hair. And no, she wouldn’t be joining them for lunch, but would be walking home in the bracing spring air, despite the offer of the chauffeur.

  When Vicente was initially wooing Anna to come to work in Restaurante Alborán, he invited James and herself down for a meeting at the family’s summer home, east of Malaga. As they arrived, he was standing out in the road waiting for them. Vicente is a handsome Spaniard in his early sixties, of commanding height, with curling black hair which straggles over the collar of his shirt. But Anna thought he looked like a little boy, dressed in threadbare clothes. The house was decorated in the seaside colours of blue and white, with impersonal furniture which Anna recognised as being in the style of the American designer Ralph Lauren: even the sun hats casually placed on the hangers in the lobby looked American. Vicente’s wife, Alejandra, was introduced to them in the garden, where a large table had been laid for lunch. She was an attractive businesswoman in her fifties: ‘I don’t cook, you see, and I didn’t know what to serve you. You know all about the glassware, Anna, and the way that a meal should be presented …’ The maid served salmon, and Vicente opened a bottle of his favourite wine from the bodega, a very expensive red. It was at that point that Anna understood she wasn’t in a subordinate position, but that Vicente was attempting to buy what couldn’t be bought, despite his considerable riches. Anna had style, from the wavy locks of her greying hair,
to the toes of her leather pumps. It was innate, a product of her background and education in Denmark, and her subsequent married life among the wealthy of Palm Beach.

  ‘I want you to marry me,’ Vicente had joked, as he filled her glass. It was a remark that she noted nevertheless, surrounded as it was with lightness and laugher.

  Over a dinner in La Mairena, we’d discussed the psychology of what was happening to her. Vicente continuously talked in terms of millions, of the deal which was about to be signed with the banks whereby his cash flow problems would be solved. He spoke of his chateau outside Bordeaux which she was to visit, the hunting lodge and hotel in Doñana National Park which he owned with other investors, and which was available to her for a holiday. At various times he promised her a car, a free apartment in Elviria above the restaurant, and several other inducements. Over time, Anna came to realise there was a great deal about this high-powered businessman that he concealed from her, despite his apparent openness, which initially she found seductive. ‘Always there’s a repositioning manoeuvre, a further deal in the offing, but the upshot is that I’m not being paid properly for my work, which is what I want.’

  ‘From what you’re saying, Anna, it sounds as if he’s gambling with your affections, grooming you, but always keeping you in a powerless position: the devoted woman, the good wife, the mother who never complains, essentially a family member who’s not on the payroll. You’re the long-suffering Madonna who’s not to be paid like a whore.’ Terry added, ‘Maybe I’m being terribly unfair in this analysis of the situation, because I’ve only got one side of the story, what you’ve been telling me.’

  ‘I like to give everything,’ Anna admitted, ‘and that has become a problem for me, on many levels: it’s no longer working for me as it used to do.’

  When Terry and I were invited to join Vicente and his wife for dinner in the restaurant, they proved to be an unusual and interesting couple, cultured and well-travelled, who’d met each other at the Woodstock Music Festival in 1969, when they were both enrolled at Harvard Business School. As well as raising several children, who are now working in Singapore and in London and New York, Alejandra runs the Ropa De Diseño chain of department stores all over Spain, selling clothes which she designs, and then has made up in China. She visits there four times a year, and her insights on the psychology of the Chinese were revealing. ‘From the cradle, they’re brought up to work: it seems to be their whole raison d’être, to the exclusion of everything else. In that, I can really feel sorry for them, and their unbalanced lives,’ she said, and I wondered whether she was deliberately making reference to Anna: she had to be. ‘In each factory there’s an overseer, whose sole function is to make sure that the workers are not slacking.’ And she held out her emptied glass of wine to her husband.

  Vicente had been sent to boarding school in France by his industrialist father, who’d created the family fortune. He told me that one of his passions is books, particularly French literature, which I found to be surprising in a businessman. We discovered we both share a love of Albert Camus. I told him I did my Master’s thesis on Camus at the Centre Européen Universitaire de Nancy, and he warmed to the subject. Vicente said, ‘I have lectured my fellow businessmen on the absurd, which perplexed them, until I explained that dealing with the building bureaucracy here in Spain resembles Camus’ take on the myth of Sisyphus. You roll the stone to the top of the mountain, and watch as it rolls back down, from whence you have to push it back again towards the summit. I went into the Town Hall, and personally confronted those who were holding up the planning permissions I needed. I’d discovered that person number four had lost the papers, so I handed the copies to him, watched him sign off on them, and physically brought them to person number five, and then on to person number six, seven and eight where I repeated the process. Ultimately, it was the only way to get the permissions cleared. More wine?’

  I demurred, and so did Terry. ‘Pity: it’s very good,’ and he filled his glass.

  ‘Oh, I complained to the mayor, but he said the bureaucracy was immutable, everything apparently geared towards accomplishing nothing. I’m a realist,’ he said, ‘and you’ve got to do whatever it takes to survive. The only advantage in this business is that you get to push the stone up the hill.’ And then he quoted Camus, and I joined in the quote: ‘“The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.” That’s my philosophy,’ he offered.

  ‘And mine. Which of those two sentences do you prefer?’ I asked.

  He ignored my question.

  Anna, who’d sat down with us at the table, looked away, taking in the activity in the restaurant: ‘Would you excuse me for a moment?’

  Anna still felt unable to ask Vicente for money. ‘How can I stop people ripping me off?’ she questioned.

  We were lounging on the sofas in La Mairena, about to watch a DVD. Terry looked over at me, and my heart hesitated. Anna is a good person, staunch and true. She’d never harm anyone, and I hated to think of people taking advantage of her good nature. ‘Anna, Vicente somehow represents the past for you. It’s my belief that if you were to revisit the divorce with your ex-husband, Carl, which is where all of these recent difficulties began, then the exploitation would stop.’ Fifteen years ago, while divorcing her husband, Anna said she’d been told by his lawyers that his money was tied up in the family trust fund, so regrettably he wouldn’t be able to make a proper settlement with her. Relations were so bad between them at the time that she was relieved to walk away with nothing, although the separation had left her devastated emotionally. For the longest time afterwards, she’d been unable to stop crying, and through a friend, she’d approached Terry, who was on holidays in Spain, to help her, which is how they met.

  She raised her head: ‘By revisiting the divorce, I’d be doing something about it …’ she concluded, and her tone sounded hopeful.

  I squeezed her arm.

  ‘He told me that I came into the marriage with nothing – I was only seventeen – and that I was entitled to nothing. After twenty years of marriage to him!’

  ‘So he bullied you!’ declared Terry.

  On the following morning, Anna was spooked to get a phone call out of the blue from Carl, who was crying on the phone. ‘My house in Mijas has been robbed!’ he sobbed.

  ‘But that’s terrible!’

  ‘All of the furniture, the paintings that we had in storage in London, everything we bought together has been cleared out. Would you look into it for me?’

  Anna was taken aback: she hadn’t spoken to Carl since their divorce. ‘Well, I don’t know …’ she said, playing for time to get her bearings.

  ‘Anna, I’m tied up here in the United States, and you’re the only one who can recognise this stuff: please, help me!’

  ‘Very well, Carl, but I can’t promise anything. I’d need to get into the house in Mijas, and I don’t have a key.’

  ‘Richard still has the key,’ referring to the neighbour, who lived beside the house they once shared together. ‘And I’ve offered a ten thousand euro reward for anyone who can help find our furniture!’ Carl’s manipulative use of the determiner our which he slipped into the conversation didn’t go unnoticed. Whether Carl was holding out the ten thousand as an inducement, or whether the offer didn’t apply to her because she’d once been family, Anna knew that Carl would never share his wealth with her, if he could help it. She noticed that his crying had stopped.

  What Carl didn’t know was that Anna’s cleaner had asked her to get a job for her son, Mario. Anna had recommended that the young man go and talk to Carl, but to say nothing about her, otherwise Carl wouldn’t employ him. And Anna knew that Carl had been employing Mario for the past few months as a caretaker: she hoped he hadn’t had anything to do with the robbery. When eventually Anna walked through the house she hadn’t set foot in since the day she’d packed up her car with her clothes on hangers that she laid out on the back seat, although the plac
e had no furnishings, not many memories came flooding back. Carl had always wanted to build an apartment over the swimming pool, and the new extension onto what had been their home was what surprised her. Anna enquired of the neighbours whether they’d seen anything suspicious. A woman told her, ‘There were four truckloads taking everything away, but the man said that the furniture was being removed because of the woodworm …’

  Anna confronted the cleaner about her son.

  ‘We don’t know where he is,’ she admitted. ‘We haven’t been able to get in touch with him.’

  ‘Then I’m going to have to let you go.’

  Anna questioned herself about why she was being faithful to Carl, whom she considered had treated her so badly, and who’d ignored her since they split up. Fidelity was a quality which has marked her life, not always for the best. The obligations she feels towards people who need her help, her committed loyalty to those whom she considers friends, the necessities which flow from her practical sense of duty, these qualities aren’t always respected by those who benefit from her kindness. When she was asked in the restaurant by a customer from Ireland, ‘Are you the Anna in Michael Murphy’s book?’ She bashfully conceded that she was. The man then said to her, ‘Such a pity he’s gay.’

  Anna was offended on my behalf by his remark, and her face flushed.

  ‘My son is gay,’ he justified, ‘and I cannot accept his partner.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound very generous of you,’ she replied honestly, refilling his wine glass, and the man had got up from the table and stalked out, leaving his friends to apologise for his boorish behaviour.