In the City of Love's Sleep

by Lavinia Greenlaw

  His two uncles flew in and his mother, Bridget, asked if Raif wanted to go with them to see his father’s body. She looked worried but she was nodding and so he nodded too. When he came home she thanked him for going.

  I’m sure it was hard but it will help you in the long run. To process it all. And your uncles will tell the family. It’ll mean a lot to the family.

  This was what she said when coaxing him into writing thank-you letters and birthday cards. Now she was coaxing him into being proud of having gone with his uncles to that appalling nothing-coloured room where his father lay with a sheet tucked so high and tight across his chest that for a moment Raif had thought that all that was left of him was a head on a pillow. They were there for an hour and he tried to weep and pray like his uncles, when they did.

  At school, boys passed him carefully while girls showed a new interest. The word they used when approaching him was tragic. Really tragic. Then everyone forgot about what had happened until one day the queen of the girls said something about having never seen a dead body.

  I have, said Raif.

  You have what?

  Seen a dead body.

  What was it like? asked a boy who was the only one not to recall at that moment that Raif’s father had died two weeks earlier.

  Not like anything, really.

  The group waited.

  Did you see him? Your dad? After?

  The queen of the girls put her hand on his arm as she said this, causing such an eruption of desire that when he spoke it sounded as if he were finding the words too painful to utter.

  My uncles flew thousands of miles to pray over the body. They wore black. It is our custom.

  If his father had heard him speak like that he would have laughed.

  When Raif told people that his father had been an architect, they assumed he’d grown up in a house of glass. The few friends he’d taken home were surprised by the bungalow which, although quite large and white and modern in its way, lacked character. When he brought Liis down for the first time, she’d shown no interest in the house or his childhood room or the photo albums. Bridget told the family stories. Liis went early to bed.

  Do you think she’s bored? he asked his mother.

  For Bridget, as for Raif, everything about Liis was explained by her father’s defection.

  I should think she’s in shock.

  Raif envisaged the moment of the decision to stay in New York and Liis, so young, the stakes so high, frozen inside it. He didn’t tell his mother that he was no longer sure that the moment belonged to her.

  *

  Liis was not supposed to die. They’d only just started on the discussion of treatment options but it was as if she made a private decision to accelerate her illness. There was a horrible smoothness to the way things progressed. The scope of her days diminished neatly until she lay in a state not unlike sleep. Her hospice room had a glass screen behind which was a bed for Raif. The glass was intended to encourage him to rest without fearing that he had lost sight of her. Such an arrangement felt quite familiar. He found it easy to relax.

  Afterwards, he went to talk to a therapist.

  Your father didn’t want you to learn Arabic?

  He didn’t speak Arabic. That was his father. His mother spoke Japanese. I don’t. We spoke a bit of French. I learnt it anyway at school.

  Tell me about school.

  I wasn’t popular.

  Because you were foreign?

  What? No. Because I didn’t know how to …

  How to fit in?

  How to be.

  Were there incidents?

  No. Yes. None that made any particular impact.

  What are you feeling?

  I’m in pain, I think.

  You think?

  That is, I don’t feel a lot.

  It was as much as he knew.

  *

  It took him days to make himself contact Liis’s family. The number was right there in her book, listed under her surname – Must. Least Most, he liked to call her, pleased with the paradoxical qualities of this although she was the kind of person no one teased or conferred with a nickname. Unlike the girls he’d grown up with, she was never silly and never sweet.

  The woman who answered the phone said that she was Liis’s sister. (A sister?) She asked for no more information than Raif offered.

  I’m sorry, he said. I’m very sorry. But it was alright. She didn’t suffer. I know it’s a cliché but she just fell asleep and didn’t wake up.

  A cliché?

  I meant that it was what we all hope for. The best we can hope for. She just let go.

  OK.

  I know she spoke to your mother only last week.

  My mother.

  I think so, yes.

  Thank you for calling.

  Is there somewhere she’d like to be? Her ashes. A place, I mean. Somewhere she liked to be.

  There’s no need.

  Please. I have to.

  As you wish.

  Ashamed not to know the sister’s name, he did not ask. He was back on the ice, reluctant to take a step towards his dead wife’s story for fear of what it might reveal.

  I’m not, I don’t feel

  The gradual development of their relationship has led Raif to think that Helen moving in would be another gentle adjustment. But as he enters the flat each evening, a weight slides into place. Helen notices.

  Has something happened?

  I’m not, I don’t feel—

  He’s coming home not to Helen but to Liis, someone he felt unauthorised to touch, who served food he couldn’t taste. Her silence, even more than her illness, was what weighed on him. Liis has been dead for two years and here is someone new offering him all the things he craved from her but here, too, is the weight.

  He thinks he loved Liis in spite of her remoteness. In ten years’ time he’ll be walking down the street when he’ll be struck by the realisation that it was in fact why. By then he’ll understand what he is drawn to – a withholding that balances something similar in himself – but he doesn’t know this yet. He comes home to Helen, bumps into furniture, gets headaches and turns away.

  He is frightened too, although this is another thing he doesn’t feel. He’ll find out, surely, that Helen is no more real than Liis. She’ll discard veil after veil until she disappears. Perhaps women are no more than a series of veils?

  *

  Helen wants to mark the anniversary of meeting Raif but she’s not sure what really counts. So she waits and when it’s a year to the day she first stayed the night, she sees the bottle of champagne in the fridge and realises that he has remembered. So she places a CD of her favourite songs on his pillow and says that she will make them a special meal.

  She’s lit the candles and Raif has just taken his place at the table when the doorbell rings. Emily, Ashley and Jessica bustle in, talking all at once about the day they’ve had shopping and how they just need to leave their bags and get changed and then they’ll be off, no bother at all. Ashley is first into the kitchen where Helen, wearing a smart new apron, is holding a spoon in one hand and a saucepan in the other.

  It’s her! A domestic goddess as well as a nympho scientist, says Jessica.

  We chose well.

  Helen isn’t sure which of them says it, perhaps all three. We chose well.

  Emily goes to the fridge and pulls out the bottle of wine that Helen has been chilling. Jessica is getting three more glasses from a cupboard. Ashley looks around.

  I think we’re interrupting something.

  You are, says Helen.

  She doesn’t mean to sound rude but, damn it, they are.

  Raif does not react. He introduces his cousins and explains that he took them to her play. Helen is delighted and waits for them to say something about the performance, only they don’t. They talk to Raif. It’s as if Helen’s not there; the candles, the curry, the flowers not there. She has the same sensation she had at the party when Raif was talking to Iris: th
at she’s been left outside a circle and that he hasn’t noticed or doesn’t care. This time she will step in and stay in. She thinks of something to say.

  I’m going away tomorrow.

  I’m going to an all-day meeting about the new maths curriculum, says Jessica.

  And I’m going to the dentist, says Emily.

  Poor you, says Raif.

  It’s really quite an interesting job, says Helen. You see, I’m going to be—

  Emily interrupts her.

  Raif, do you eat curry these days? Because there was that time on holiday—

  That’s right! You lay on the bathroom floor all night.

  It’s a training course for magistrates, Helen persists. I’m going to role-play people in court.

  We should be getting ready, says Ashley, standing up.

  Some days I’ll play a barrister, says Helen, others a defendant.

  Ashley, who hasn’t said that she’s a police officer, laughs.

  Is there a way to play a defendant, then? Were you taught that at drama school? How to play guilty, how to play innocent?

  Of course not. Not in a general way. I’m given character outlines, the context.

  Jessica, the mathematician, joins in.

  Talking of defendants, someone’s invented a new algorithm for detecting serial killers.

  What exactly is an algorithm? asks Helen.

  This time they all laugh. Helen’s not stupid. She knows roughly what the word refers to. She’s just trying to show an interest.

  Clearly I’m only smart enough to chop lemongrass, she says.

  The triplets do not modify themselves easily. They have refused to notice how they’re making Helen feel but now that she has been curt with them, they’re alert. They look at her and at each other and then stand up.

  Stay for another drink, Raif says to them. Please.

  It’s challenging work, says Helen as if she’s just remembered something.

  Chopping lemongrass? one of them says.

  All three give the same ugly snort of laughter but Helen pushes on.

  You have to memorise enough facts about each case to be able to improvise.

  I’ve chipped my nail polish, says Jessica.

  I’ll be away for a month, says Helen as they top up their glasses, finishing the bottle.

  Maths and manicures – what a life! says Raif.

  Still he has not looked at Helen.

  The triplets head off again to the bedroom – or is it the bathroom? They seem to be everywhere at once. Helen contemplates the curry and waits. Raif sits back and opens the newspaper.

  Something smells good.

  I am not your wife, thinks Helen. I am not a woman who spends all afternoon chopping lemongrass to make you happy. This is a special occasion. It is my occasion.

  Dinner can wait till we’ve got the place to ourselves again, she says. They’re just dropping some stuff off, aren’t they?

  They’ll stay for a drink.

  They’ve just had one.

  Raif hasn’t heard sharpness from Helen before. Now he looks up.

  I hardly ever see them and they’re almost the only family I have. They’re the reason you and I met. It was their idea, you see. We should thank them.

  Someone is playing music and someone else is speaking loudly into their phone. It’s as if there are thirty of them, thinks Helen, not three. Half an hour later they reappear.

  That smells delicious, they say without enthusiasm.

  Would you like some? Raif says. I’m sure it will stretch.

  It won’t, says Helen. Sorry. If I’d known you were coming then of course—

  Raif looks upset.

  At least let’s have another drink.

  He goes to the fridge.

  We have champagne! Let’s celebrate.

  Celebrate what?

  Helen waits for Raif to say It’s a year since Helen and I met but he doesn’t.

  I know, he says, let’s drink to … to … Thursdays.

  The triplets dance round the kitchen swigging champagne and toasting Thursdays until Helen says that it’s a Tuesday.

  That’s the point! Raif shouts in a new silly voice.

  Ashley puts her glass down.

  No offence but this champagne tastes like shit. To be honest.

  Don’t be so rude! shout Emily and Jessica together.

  I don’t mind, shrugs Raif. It’s just something I won in a charity raffle at work. I’ve been wondering who to palm it off on.

  Helen takes off her apron.

  I’ve got a headache, she says, so I think I’ll just go and lie down. It was nice to …

  They seem not to notice her leaving the room.

  The walls of the flat are thin and as she lies there she can hear the triplets quizzing Raif.

  Does she live here?

  No, she’s just between places.

  That’s what they all say.

  Raif makes some sort of noise in response.

  Eventually they leave. Raif helps himself to the curry and takes a long time coming to bed. He can see that the triplets have reservations about Helen. Is it too soon? How long will she stay? The weight slides into place.

  Later they’re woken by the triplets coming back for their bags and figuring out that they won’t make the last train home. They sleep, with practised ease, in a row on the sofa bed which, when open, fills most of the room.

  a blade

  The lancet is the tool with which we prise ourselves apart. It’s a way of doing what the eye would like to: piercing surfaces and isolating detail so as to hold it up to the light. We do this even to the eye itself.

  First we used our teeth and nails, and then sharpened reeds, bamboo and thorns. We adapted mussel shells and shark’s teeth. We carved blades from flint, obsidian and jade, and forged them from iron and steel following the lines of hunting knives, chisels and swords.

  More recently, operations were confident and majestic. Those born in the mid-twentieth century bear scars that sweep across the belly, back and chest. Now much is done through keyhole surgery, and using light and sound rather than blades. Today, as minimally invasive techniques, endoscopes, laser and ultrasound sources evolve, many hallowed incisions of surgical access diminish in length or disappear entirely … We have lost our scars and so forget that the body has been disturbed and that while a problem may have been solved, the solution will leave its trace.

  our best selves

  Iris understands her connection with Raif. It has reminded her of a certain capacity in herself but she knows that this has nothing to do with who he really is – or she – and that it will pass. The oppressive summer made everything seem overheated. She was gripped by their whispering messages but all that has subsided now.

  The yes, the waking, the following, meeting and whispering do not necessarily lead anywhere. Sometimes all that’s needed from an encounter with a stranger is a reminder of your best self. If they see only what shines, you remember that there is a perfect version. They expect the best of you and so this is what you offer and you thank them for it. You might even fall in love.

  *

  Lou has turned twelve and David takes the girls to the cinema with four friends while Iris prepares a birthday tea. How to fit all those girls round the table? And David. That makes eight and there are only four chairs. She and David can stand. The girls will like that, the grown-ups not joining in, but there are still six of them. Iris steps out into her dingy garden and brings in the chairs, which are rickety and crusted with lichen.

  The front door opens and the girls clatter in. The four friends hover, nibbling their fingernails and twiddling their hair. They’re wearing nail polish and lots of necklaces and the same skinny jeans, T-shirt and trainers as Lou and Kate.

  Iris looks again at the table and sees that she’s made a birthday tea for eight-year-olds and not what these self-conscious and wary creatures might expect. She’s baked and iced the animal biscuits she always makes. There are mini-pizzas, ch
ocolate buttons, strawberries, celery and carrot and dips, and a large bowl of crisps. There are also three kinds of ice cream in the freezer, and she was up half the night making a cake covered in butterflies because six months ago Kate and Lou had a craze on butterfly hairclips. Now they both wear their hair scraped into a knot like their friends.

  Iris points at the garden chairs.

  Kate, Lou, I’ve put you there and there.

  A look passes between them – the garden chairs? – but they sit down. The guests hover, waiting for Iris to tell them where to sit too but at that moment her phone buzzes in her pocket. (When did she start carrying it around?)

  Sit down, everyone, help yourselves.

  She strides out of the room. David, Kate and Lou are used to Iris not explaining herself. She is often curt and they know she doesn’t mean to be rude but the guests are wondering what’s wrong. When she comes back they’re still waiting to start. A year ago no one would have waited. They’d have been helping themselves to the chocolate buttons and biscuits, and heaping crisps onto their plates.

  I told you to start.

  She means it as an apology for keeping them waiting but it sounds like an order. Kate passes round the carrots and Lou the dip. Each child takes a small amount.

  Iris is smiling to an unusual degree.

  Were you looking at something funny? asks Kate. On your phone? Was it funny?

  Lou fixes her sister with a look and a quick shake of the head. She knows not to ask this kind of question but she doesn’t yet understand why. Her shifting self has acquired a new sense of atmosphere. She detects tides and currents, electricity and clouds, and sees that her mother and father ignore them and so she is trying to do the same.

  It was obviously important, David says tightly, or Mum wouldn’t have left the table.

  For fuck’s sake, David.

  Iris says this quite ordinarily and it’s another thing her family are used to. The other girls are impressed but Kate and Lou move quickly to divert an argument. They are practised at this.

  What was it, Mum?

  Was it funny, Mum?

  It was a merman.