But the police had not, so far, come to Indovinella Street. They might come later; meanwhile those two landed faggots could snore in each other’s arms. And the police would certainly have no occasion to look for the body of Llew. The body of Llew was in Llew’s mother’s Cyrano, driving carefully to a sleeping circus.
I had lugged that corpse to the outhouse to desecrate the works of Sib Legeru. All the candles had burnt out except one that had been doused earlier, before its half life was done, by an incoming draught. Relighted, it was able to melo-dramatize the settling of Llew behind teachests and canvases, throwing gross Bram Stoker shadows. There, locked among masterpieces, he could await the opportunity of a permanent disposal. Meanwhile I must be he. Fucking him, man. I had a general scenario worked out, but there were so many things – the things that are of no moment to God but matter in domestic life – I must feel towards, guess at.
I tried to make the journey last as long as possible. I was helped in this by a minor or preliminary roadblock just before that green that had flowered, transitorily, with the circus. It was as if the way to the circus was a way out of Castita, which in a sense it was. Failed assassins and miracle exploders as clown recruits, temporary ringhands hiding in the straw of departing elephants. No wonder a state like this was uneasy about even peripheral circus men – Llew, for instance. Llew had tried rape and cracked his occiput. He had not actually harmed the state, but there had been good potential nuisance value there. A circus was international bolshevism or Jewry or the Vatican. This one must have had great influence to get in at all. And think of the cost of transportation. Elephants trumpeting in holds, tiger cages sliding down stormy decks, the thunder of terrified hooves in the tossing night, birds crying over the gale. For what profit?
– Papers? Passport? the young constable asked. His dark glasses reproduced in duplicate the spinning crimson stoplight in the middle of the road. His companion had parked his black lenses on his brow, like a presbyopic granny, while he looked at the cartoons in the evening paper.
– If you want fucking identification, man, I tried, you come to the fucking circus. There’s plenty’ll say who I am, see.
– Oh, circus. Any free tickets?
– You come any fucking time. Mention me, Mr Llewelyn. No fucking trouble at all, man. Caught your murderers yet?
– Won’t be long.
They waved me on, and now I was face to face with the weary old paradox of a journey, however prolonged, slowed, made circuitous, still being in its very essence a yearning towards a destination, and here was the staff carpark. I parked with care. There were the trailers. I walked on legs of jelly. Jellif. The stupid bitch my sister had not really taken anything in. She had not even taken in properly the fact of a corpse nestling in the outhouse. I feared that perhaps in the night it would all dawn on her with the first cock and she would panic and bring people in. But Miss Emmett, temporarily deranged, might be a calming sugary presence as well as a sufficient responsibility. Me, I had my own fucking problems, man. In one of the trailers there was singing and glass-clinking. Probably not clowns, who were said to be sad and abstemious people. But the cream trailer of the Bird Queen was in darkness. Where did her birds roost, by the way? Probably over there in that animal park, a bloodwarm compound of gamy and atavistic dreams.
The trailer door was not locked. I seemed, as I entered, enclosed like a foetus by a loud pounding of exterior heart. I felt for the switch; subdued light came on and showed the mess of Llew’s room or cabin no longer as sordid but pathetic. That cheap stilled music and its timid little makers to whom learning and skill and the whole of history were a dead scene, trying to shock with hair and rebel moustachios and tight pants embossed with the shape of genitals. I had in my pocket a notebook, one of Sib Legeru’s, totally out of Llew’s character but a hold on sanity that I needed. I would read it through the night; I had to keep awake and alert; I could not risk surfacing from sleep as Miles Faber, perhaps with the Bird Queen looking down from her great height to catch deception, like a gannet a fish. I had to think of all possible dangers.
On Llew’s bed was a pair of puce pyjamas newly laundered. This was a lucky chance: I could not have borne the wearing of anything soiled, even microscopically, by his body. I undressed, folded the clothes that were his, and prepared for bed. As I was turning the sheet down, peering for any small sign of his night incontinence, I heard the voice of his mother calling his name. There were two doors between us, but the deep sharp tone carried. Now to act, not without an excitement that was partly pleasurable.
– Yes, mam?
I went past the kitchen and bathroom to her door and opened it gently. She lay yawning. Some light overflowed from Llew’s cabin: I could see her long shape under a coverlet, the doors of the wall wardrobes, a couple of fixed mirrors. Her long dark hair was proved removable: I observed grey short curls on the pillow topping the strong face in deep shadow. She spoke kindly enough. The accent was, like Llew’s, Welsh tinged by American. But how deep the voice was. She said:
– What was the movie about, then?
– Oh, sex, mam. Like all movies these days.
How far should I garnish with obscenity? Llew had seemed to make no distinction between men and women interlocutors. His mother said:
– Nothing about the sea? Giorgio said the sea came into it.
How pure that vowel in sea was. I said:
– Something about the sea, yes. It wasn’t all that good, mam.
And then she said something that made me freeze:
– Taking meat to your sister.
– T – tay –?
– Keep away from people, bachgen. The police don’t like strangers in places like this. Clever strangers like us especially. And you had what they call a perfect alibi. They made it sound as though taking meat to your sister is a kind of-
– Euphemism?
– Duw mawr, big words is it now? But it’s all big words nowadays in whatever you read. Like this big word in my eye. What is it again?
– I’ve forgotten, mam.
– Well, I hope he can put it right. Don’t let me oversleep now. The appointment’s at ten.
Me and my big mouth and big words.
– Conjunctivitis?
– No, not as big as that. But something itis. Well, we’ll see. How different your voice sounds tonight, bach. You’ve not been drinking again?
– Only coffee, mam.
– Coffee? Coffee? Big words and coffee. Well, you’re growing up, of course. I have to face that my boy is growing up. Nothing stands still. I’ll try and sleep now. Nos da.
I didn’t know whether Llew kissed her nos da or not. But to be on the safe side I leaned over. I could see the sharp strong face clearly. One of the eyes was red and sore. A bird bite? The good eye betrayed no doubt that this was Llew leaning over. I caught a slight odour of a poulterer’s shop as I kissed her forehead.
– Nos da, mam.
Back in Llew’s room I had a brief syncope. I fell on to the bed and was out for a heartbeat. The strain. I could not put up with this strain for long. Perhaps tomorrow the airport would be open again. Miss Emmett had money from the lawyers. I would fly with them as far as Kingston, Jamaica, and breathe there before the next phase could be assembled. But I would leave as Llew. Or be Llew at least till the sanctuary of the international departure lounge. Big boy now, mam. Go my own way, see. Settle down. Marry, perhaps. Change my name, even.
Muskseed on white poplar
Caraway biscuits for
The roughhaired siskin
Aberdevine
But, lying in bed with that notebook, I found Sib Legeru no longer a total release from the world’s shaped and bony madness. Llew had to be removed from among those works, yet, perhaps because of the Poe guignolizing of that solitary candle, I would find it difficult to extricate crass corpsedom from all this free cleanliness. Sleep would enable me to think of tomorrow as a separate time, with my problems resigned to it, but where there is no sleep
there is no tomorrow. The problems were here and now. What had I done to deserve these problems?
15
– Healing nice though it is. Funny you never said. Nasty gash like that.
– Didn’t want to bother you, mam. Had enough on your plate, like. That eye and all.
– Still. Funny you never said, bachgen. Changing you are. For the better in some ways. Still. Fighting, was it?
My boldness had the panache of desperation, which is, after all, the usual state of mind of the artist.
– It was on the ship, mam. That time it kept lurching.
– Yes. The ship. Nasty rough old crossing that was. I wonder sometimes whether it’s worth it, this kind of life. Never settled, always on the move.
– Yes, mam. I’ve been thinking a bit lately. It’s time I thought of-
– It was a quieter life with Professor Burong in the aviary. Science, that was. But a lot of science gets turned into showbiz as they call it. You remember the Parkingtons that place in Missouri?
– Yes yes, the Parkingtons.
– They’d been doing real research as they called it. At that place that sounds royal. North Carolina I think they said it was.
– Duke?
– Something like that. You remember better than me. E.S.P., whatever that stands for.
– Extra-sensory perception.
– Learning you are, bachgen. Changing for the better with your big words. But they’d been lured, as they put it. I never forget what he said. You remember what he said?
– Is that fucker going to cross the road or isn’t he? Sorry, mam, I shouldn’t have let that word slip out. Exasperated they make you and that brings out the short words.
I was tired enough to be exasperated. And I was probably giving away more through my unconfident mode of driving than through my speech or even the back of my head. She had a good view of my head, sitting in the back, a lady being driven to a medical appointment by her chauffeur. She looked like, say, last night’s M.G.M. film’s idea of a lady… long, slim, in severe slategrey suit and stockings of black mist, the short grey hair blued, drop earrings. Earrings, she had said, and had undoubtedly said often before, were supposed to be good for the eyesight. There was no henna glow on her cheeks: that was just part of her professional makeup.
– Real Tiger Bay language. Well, you’ve tried to curb it lately, I’ll say that. What Eric Parkington said was that behind every art there’s a science. That’s true, bach.
– That’s what I wanted to mention, mam. I’ve no art and no science. Time I got down to something. Time I got away and did something proper. I lay thinking all last night. Tired I am this morning, see.
– Thinking, is it? Well, there’s a change for the better, too. I know how it is, boy bach. I’ll never stand in your way. As soon as you want to settle I’ll give all this up. I’ve said it often enough before but you only laughed. Chwerthaist ti. A job and a house and birds in the garden and your mam taking it easy for a change. What are all those people doing?
– They want blood.
We were passing the Dwumu where the devout refused to be cheated of their miracle. There were old women with vessels angry outside the locked doors.
– Want blood, is it?
Her voice thickened, as though blood had been stirred into it and I wondered if the gooseflesh were visible on the back of my neck.
– But I want to get away soon, mam. I’ve wasted too much of my life.
– Looking after your widowed mother was waste, was it? Ah, here it is, then. Marrow Street, a queer name for a street, especially where doctors are.
She laughed, chwerthodd hi, and I had to laugh in duty without comprehension. How much Welsh was I supposed to know? I found out much later that marw was the Welsh for dead.
– Park over there, she ordered, where it’s clear. Wait for me. I may not be long.
– A book I want to buy.
– A sexy one, is it? No, you’ve changed, isn’t it, siwgr? A sexless book, one full of knowledge. Right then, don’t be too long away.
I watched her mount the steps outside the big oak door of Dr Matta, whose name was engrossed in copperplate cursive on a brass plate. She rapped the brass dolphin knocker and then turned for a last look at me before being admitted. Her look was hard and puzzled but, as the door was opened by a girl in white, she turned it into a swift smiling one of somehow hurt affection. I didn’t like the way things were going: the strain was already inducing in me pains in the rectum, difficulty in breathing, a loosening of the top incisors, as well as a recurrence of the throb in my head. She went in and the door was closed on her. That morning I had said I would have coffee, and this was the first time Llew had ever wanted coffee for breakfast. But it was hard for her to be more than merely puzzled by evidence of change of habit and manner. The great undeniable was the face, Llew’s face, and the so to speak pendent body. And the voice was right, I knew it was right. Vocabulary was a different matter, but she seemed to like the first shoots of a new, maturer, Llew. If he had lived, even Llew would have had to start growing up. The main point was that the three-dimensional essence was there; the rest was a matter of accidents. But I had to get away as Llew regretfully leaving his loved mother for his own good. A human right to be free, a thing talked of much those days.
I thought these things marching on my, his, thin and urgent legs towards Indovinella Street. I itched to be in the outhouse with Sib Legeru, but that would mean also having dealings with a corpse already set upon by Caribbean heat. Tonight that shed would be cleansed of the presence; I felt sure that, with a few nips of hard spirit inside me, I could do the interment in something like thirty minutes. Very light sandy soil, none of your lead loam to crack back and lungs. A spade, there must be a spade about. Perhaps, most inappropriately, in Sib Legeru’s own shed. Spades were for Wordsworth, not that earthfree radiance.
I wiped my wet forehead, ringing the bell. Catherine came, looked cautiously through a crack, then opened the crack into a silent way in. She didn’t look too bad all things fucking considered, man. Her dress was clean simple blue and she’d knotted her hair behind with, I saw after, an elastic band. We went into the sittingroom. I noticed on the way that the kitchen table had not been cleared: there were flies dancing around the cold joint. Miss Emmett was not to be seen.
– In bed still, Catherine said. I gave her a pretty big dose.
– What of?
– I mean another dose this morning before I went out. We’ve only got aspirin. She was willing to take any amount of them. Feeding herself in rhythm, like sugar. Not a lethal dose, though. Just enough.
– So you went?
– Only to the telephone in the post office. I couldn’t go and tell them face to face, I just couldn’t. It was a very long job finding somebody who’d listen. But it was there all right, still in somebody’s tray on a desk. The same. Just the same as you gave me. How did you remember?
– Ah.
– And they saw that the move and myself and New Zealand did give a kind of answer, but they wouldn’t commit themselves about doing anything about it.
– God God. Duw. Were they inquisitive about who you were?
– Yes. Name and address and all. I said I was Dr Fonanta’s secretary.
– Dr who, Dr what, whose secr—
– Dr Fonanta. The man I went to to be cured. He’s a poet now, though. That poet there.
She shrugged towards the thin white book in the Indian bookstand by the window. This was something else to be – Later, however. I threestepped over to the book and handled it, however.
– We’re innocent, Catherine said. Remember that. We did nothing wrong. And they couldn’t do anything to Miss Emmett, could they?
The title: Structures. The name: Swart Smythe. I said, flicking the pages:
– Innocent is the word. Innocence is no good to anybody these days. Who lies best wins.
Fonanta. Shmegegge, chaver. Gaston de Foix. It would all fit together when there was tim
e. Here was a sonnet:
Two aircraft trails make barlines on the sky,
The weak sun lies between, a semibreve.
The dog’s fur smells of cowpats. Trees unleave,
Leaves lie like fillets of fried fish. Untie,
Autumn, summer’s corsage. Apples lie
In rotting fallowships, making believe
My twitching nose that round it soon will weave
Companion odours of roast pork –
– Oh my, I said, God. This is terrible. I’ll take it, I’ll read it later. I said I’d gone to buy a book. I must get back to her.
– Yes, her. Is it going badly?
– She’s puzzled. But it may be a kind of epistemological puzzle.
– I’ve had no education, remember.
– A question of her own perception. It may not be me who’s transmitting the wrong messages, it may be her own perceptive apparatus that’s garbling the right ones. That’s what I hope she’s thinking.
– I’ve been thinking, too. Is it possible we have, had, a brother? Your twin? Is it possible? There’s been so much mystery and secrecy and –
– It can’t be possible. You can see that it can’t be possible. How in God’s name could it possibly be possible that –
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