Our daughter’s folded-shut eyelids make crescent moons. She is two years old. I have passed through Immigration Control and become illiterate. The streets are unreadable.
*
From the town centre, one can amble on foot into the Netherlands, and Belgium is a short bicycle ride away. It is common for residents to shop in Belgian supermarkets, with their different and cheaper range of foods, and my guidebook recommends popping over the border to load up with Dutch cheeses.
We English-speakers together represent hundreds of years of British foreign policy; we are living repercussions of Britain’s ‘Cape to Cairo’ policy of African colonisation and slave trade profiteering, remnants and results of English gentlemen and undesirables sent to New Worlds and Antipodes.
Our ‘Belgian’ dinner is in the twentieth-century French style, unidentifiable meats disguised with various creamy sauces.
*
The American president’s most statesmanlike portrait stares out from every bus shelter in the city, some overpinned with a competing protest announcement: Assemble at 12 noon in Willy-Brandt-Platz.
The American president’s impending arrival closes the entire heart of the town, clogs roads for a hundred kilometres with converging security police, compels security services to seal tight every manhole leading to every drain leaking towards the town centre.
This must be how presidents always travel, with hundreds to prepare for and undo the effects of their every move. He sweeps in, sweeps out, moderately damaging the local economy and leaving only local newspaper stories and a few souvenir posters. Away from home, when he is revered, it is for his individual vision; when he is despised, the loathing is directed towards his embodiment of the American nation. Dozens of day-trip US secret servicemen sitting around the market square gorge themselves on penne arrabiata and pizza.
No doubt truckloads of heavy-duty solvents are on the way, and overalled workers preparing to unglue the drains.
*
I am floating, or am failing to be grounded in a floating world. When should I wear a suit? Is it polite to offer whisky to young women? Was the taxi driver correct that one-third of the population has cancer? Did he mean that one-third would eventually die of cancer? Was this misuse of tense the extent of his mistake?
*
At Woolsthorpe Manor, Newton’s teeth are doubly displayed by pulled-back lips and the National Trust; this death mask laughs from its shelf.
In the museum, study has turned to play; his argumentative nature forgotten, the new Newton illuminates prisms at the touch of a well-signed switch, great devices shrunk to five clack-clacking metal spheres, body in motion, two in motion, three toys to suit every purse.
In his garden, bodies at rest may bench under a Tree sprung from a Seed that, it is said, split free from its Apple as Newton watched, arse on earth. Should I choose to recline, this chair entreats, I too may see fruit drop. Rain falls, I stand. No gravity to observe here.
*
10th December: Collision
I observe a minor car accident under the expressway which runs above Civil or Civic (depending on which map) Boulevard. A taxi drives into the rear left side of a businessman’s car. Both drivers jump out to see what damage has been done. I am on the blind side. The accident strikes me as noteworthy because I am surprised it is the first I’ve seen. People drive in different patterns. My cultural interpreters explain that there are two road rules:
1. Fill all available space.
2. Try not to have an accident.
This is the sort of information that gives a visitor a sense of connection, of cultural progress.
A week later I see two other accidents, also minor. I cannot decide if this is statistically significant.
*
Lunch: hamburger, which I feel ashamed to have chosen. I am an inadequate tourist.
*
At the mining museum, explosive blasts send waves of dust along the face. There are huge booms as miners knock out the supporting ‘trees’ to crash down the coal from above. Sometimes it keeps on coming and coming, falling in all the way to the surface. Sometimes you’re starting on the morning shift when the slack seems waist-deep and there has never been enough sleep. There’s the humour the miners think unprintable, the shirkers who manage to be off work when there’s stone at the face. There’s how well the pit ponies are cared for, showing cheek to managers, having to trust the fellows who worked the previous shift, the blokes working the next length. There are the silly risks young miners take, the deputy too young to listen to experienced workers who say it’s all about to go, miners who complain about water dripping, who walk out because they’re getting wet, and who are unable to return to work until the entire underground lake has been pumped out. There’s the poor gaffer who checks a Dosco at the wrong time and it starts and kills him. There’s the miners’ telegraph, how everyone hears about terrible accidents, how quickly everyone in all the mines knows: at Swadlincote, Donisthorpe, Measham. But it’s finished now, pits closed, councils wondering how to attract tourists now their towns have supposedly lost all usefulness.
*
Events take turns. Historians mix superstition with mortal slowness. I am reading about this place as I ought to read about home.
*
Sunbathers stretch out, illegally red. People passing, one about to have his skull tattoo removed, another whispering, ‘Fucking shit.’ A poster advertises a lecture on ‘The fundamental cultural imperatives that shape our nation’.
*
‘Through the image of a single donkey, Wall wanted to explore the function of donkeys.’
*
The bed and breakfast proprietor shows couples first to the room with two single beds. They look disappointed.
‘Haven’t you a double bed?’ or ‘These are two single beds.’
She asks, ‘You would prefer a double bed?’
‘Yes. If possible.’
Sometimes, the proprietor knows from experience, the man or woman will say, ‘Never mind’ or ‘It’s only for one night’ or be too embarrassed to comment at all, will accept the room with its sexless arrangement.
In this way, the proprietor can save double-bedded rooms for couples arriving later in the evening, couples who might otherwise go elsewhere.
*
Guidebooks recommend this bank over that one, prefer one taxi company to its competitor. How is this possible for these professional visitors, these visitors who cannot understand the local politics, the implications of choosing this bank or that taxi company?
*
I am expected here. All escalators rise and none descends. Posters promise that where others charge 7, here will be (yellow) 6 or (red) 5.
*
The language touts
occupy Oxford Street
take turns to paper me;
it’s what? learn English, I close
fingers to them, show the back
of my hand, gone; they fluent
next at someone olive else,
they’re without shame at judging,
and I should have practised
my Spanish.
*
Hearing that the king intended to visit, the populace became concerned at the likely expense: red carpets, ceremonies, banquets, loss of productive work time. As one, they resolved to discourage the king from receiving homage.
‘Let us be as mad people,’ spoke one townsperson. All others agreed.
When the king’s viceroy arrived to ensure the celebrations were of sufficient regality, he discovered all manner of stupidity. Haystacks were piled with the apex to the base. The mayor consulted his duck before taking decisions, and juries were made up of groups of pigs.
‘Here,’ a townsperson informed the viceroy, ‘it is always spring.’
The viceroy saw a cuckoo tr
apped in a bush.
‘You see,’ said the townsperson, with pride.
The viceroy soon left, and the king cancelled his visit, citing pressing matters of state. The town was saved from bankruptcy, but its reputation as a place of fools persists to this day. In nearby villages, folk insist that the townspeople are indeed foolish. The habits of folly, once developed, are impossible to throw off.
*
This is not London.
*
I am trying to keep a travel diary, to record my feelings when I confront or experience famous and beautiful sites. I begin with a well-focused aesthetic, powerful observational techniques, easy sense of historical context and up-to-date knowledge of juxtapositional irony. Nonetheless, I find I write little but telephone numbers and extracts from train timetables. The places I eat have no menus.
*
We are high up between the spires, on a narrow bridge. He and I recognise each other, or at least recognise our mutual vertigo. I am gripping the handrail and failing to straighten my legs. He is crouched in the doorway, fearful of crossing. We can neither of us say anything reassuring. We will eventually die. He hands me his camera to photograph him. It will be a souvenir or evidence. I am not sure of what. He backs inside to allow me to pass. I begin to make my way down the spiral staircase. He has normalised me.
*
This is the bus. The bus. Here are the steps. Steps. That will be one dollar. One? One dollar. One dollar. Thank you. Thank you. This is your stop. Please? You get off here. Here? Here. Thank you. Goodbye. Goodbye.
*
injured wrist blister talcum powder comfortable water. talk personal. Mrs Sugar scald. pain stay. headache dizzy cotton wool. bowl dinner. midnight.
next reflection towards trust. Mr Now smile. disinfectant. summer afternoon rain. letter envelope surname writing paper. mend blood pressure. look for oxygen spectacles medicine ointment toothbrush.
discharge. luggage.
*
Because of my range, I cannot be displaced. If I am placed initially at point X, over time I will walk eight hundred metres in all available directions. This is my range. Once I have walked my range to the fullest extent, it is mine. When I move beyond my range, I will always return. If I am dislocated, I will re-establish a range at the new site. Through this method I come to know myself and, through this self-knowledge, I can claim any landscape on Earth.
*
At the hot spring, one of the Italians begins a Beatles sing-along. There is nothing I can do about it.
*
I am freezing. I am wearing all my clothes, am under all the blankets, have wrapped the pillow around my ears and still I shiver. I prepare myself. I get up and put the kettle on the stove, run back to bed while I wait for the whistle. I continue to shiver. The kettle whistles. I pour hot water over tea, remembering to warm the cup first. I shiver as I press my palms against the teacup. I go back to bed.
*
Please give me directions to the Central Railway Station. Please write the directions on this piece of paper which is in my hand. Please tell me the duration of the journey from here to the Central Railway Station. Please inform me of the distance one must cover in order to be there. If one were already at the Central Railway Station, what would one be experiencing? When inside a very large building such as the Central Railway Station, do the sights one can see constitute a view? Why should I ask directions to the railway station rather than to the place to which I shall travel from the railway station? Why should I assume travel is to be by rail? Please guide me in this also.
Blind Date
She seemed sweet, but she never removed her sunglasses and I couldn’t read her. I assume she didn’t want to be read. She was thinking, perhaps, that she hadn’t expected the beard. If she’d known about the beard beforehand she might have come prepared, but seeing the beard just there, grown very large on my face without warning, she felt instantly put off. In retrospect, the beard most likely impelled sunglasses stasis.
When she finally smiled, it was one of those charming dimpled smiles that I like, but even so, it was too late. Her smile was more for the waiter than for me, I could see. Perhaps it wasn’t just my largeness of beard. If she’d seen a photo of me from before, when I’d had all my hair, perhaps she expected hairiness. Perhaps the photo, if she had seen it, showed me with dark hair all the way to my forehead instead of stopping somewhat short, pulling back as a result of all the worrying and all the genetics. I could have explained that I was still the age I appeared to be in the photograph. She liked photography. She told me. I didn’t want to one-up her on the photography, because that seemed to be her thing. I admitted I’d taken photographs in the past, that at one point I’d had a camera and taken it wherever I went, but I focused on my love of running, occasional carpentry. Everything except the photography. If I’d taken that as well, it might have been the last straw, if the beard or the ebbing hair hadn’t already made her mind up, as I thought they had within the first ten seconds.
Orangeade
I did not hear what Thomas whispered to her at the table that night, but she left precipitously, without even kissing me goodbye – this on my birthday. Thomas might have said anything; he has an obnoxious manner and no sensitivity for anything but urban planning. At one end-of-semester university party he reportedly told the young women gathered around him, ‘You’re all so good-looking and I haven’t slept with any of you! Haven’t I superb self-control?’ and they didn’t back away even then. I couldn’t understand it at the time and I still can’t. I do not like his easy, sexualised mode of address and pretentious, actorly manner.
Helen denied she and Thomas had a continuing thing. She said it was another of Thomas’s ego-games. He, on the other hand, was always claiming to be obsessed by Helen.
‘I wish I could stay away from her,’ he announced from time to time, with enough projection to intrude on everyone present. ‘It’s all her fault. Helen has me completely trapped: I can’t leave her alone.’
His mouth twists into a smirk that is supposed to look worldly. Somehow, he never seems to shout.
He didn’t smirk when Helen walked out of my birthday party, though. He manoeuvred himself into the next conversation along the table. Perhaps I should have asked him to leave right then, just as the entrees showed up. I considered it, believe me. He was no friend of mine without Helen, but he had already wheedled his way in with Bruno and Louise. I didn’t interrupt because of Louise, who I thought might one day find me attractive: as often before (too many times, oh! too many times), I was attempting to control Louise’s view of me. Louise is agonisingly beautiful, and I was conscious not to stare at her all the time. She looked up at me briefly, and turned back to Thomas and Bruno or perhaps, I thought, more towards Thomas. Nothing to be done about it, not at that instant.
Instead, I asked Teresa, who had been sitting on Helen’s right but had come around the table to flirt with me, ‘Do you think Helen’s okay?’
Teresa shrugged, ‘I guess.’
I must have looked unconvinced, but Teresa didn’t want to talk about Helen or the whispered scene with Thomas: she stroked my bicep with her fingertips and breathed, ‘I’m sure she’s fine.’
Eventually, she understood from my face’s failure to take on a reassured expression that I really meant, ‘You ought to go and check.’ She left to look for Helen. I would have gone myself, but I reasoned against it because it was my birthday. I tried to involve myself in another conversation – the host has a responsibility to ensure people enjoy themselves and, in this case, their celebration of me and of my time on Earth – but I failed to say anything much. I was distracted by Helen’s absence and Louise’s beauty, and I couldn’t concentrate. While others talked about the constitution of greenhouse gases, I kept missing my turn to emit profundities.
Thomas had almost succeeded in cutting Bruno out of their conversation. Thomas had
stretched his arm across the table, palm down as if he were leaning on it or using it for some sort of constant emphatic conversational gesture. Bruno, on the other side of this barrier, had a fixed smile and was craning forward to listen whenever Louise spoke, relaxing back when Thomas did. The assertiveness recording that Skyboat had sent me advised asking in similar circumstances, ‘Excuse me, were you aware you were excluding me from our discussion with that gesture?’
Bruno’s discomfort must have bothered Louise, because she widened the conversational arc almost immediately. Overhearing my other friends alluding to the value of noblesse oblige, Louise reminded them about the ‘women kings’ through history, those who ruled during their sons’ minorities.
‘I’m amazed there wasn’t a proliferation of Medea episodes,’ she said, trying to sweep Thomas and Bruno into the discussion along with her. Louise is studying theatre history at night, and finds it endlessly relevant. I confess that when she talks about it, I find the theatre relevant too.
‘How do you know there weren’t killings and the stories weren’t suppressed?’ Carol wanted to know.
‘Uh, because the sons took over when they came of age. It’s pretty clear in the lineages,’ Louise said. I couldn’t tell if she really knew or was making it up, and I didn’t care. The party was calm again: Louise had rescued it on her own.
On the subject of women kings, Thomas was silent. He didn’t know which cities they had built, or whether they preferred to put castles or churches on their newly designed hilltops. He was, no doubt, almost certain that they had had nothing to do with choosing underground mass transit over the cheaper-if-less-space-efficient ground-level alternative. He soon began what looked like an intense-looking dialogue with Simon which was thankfully inaudible, so I did not have to play out my anger with him about Helen by reflexively discrediting anything he said. It’s a kind of negative butterfly effect: if everything we do has worldwide implications, what about the things we refrain from doing? I didn’t put Thomas down and, hours later, in clever, intimate asides to Louise, he didn’t attribute secret motives to me. Birthdays should be a time when one has no motives. I was glad Thomas knew nothing about women kings. I was even glad he only participated in a conversation when he could hold forth authoritatively.
When I Saw the Animal Page 13