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She's not here. But I can see in the face of the old woman Anna's lips and chin, and also the same smudge of rouge high on her cheek-bone, the blushes of a ripe peach. I hand them the invitation and try to enquire after her. They don't understand me. Instead they look at the letter - their own spidery scrawl - in dismay. The old woman gets up and places it on the edge of the red cloth as if meant for someone else. As she does this I notice a slight tremor in her knuckles. She returns to the seat and looks in the direction of the window. Her lips move as if she speaks, but her innocent, puzzled gaze falls upon nothing, and no sound slips through.
The photo on the dark chest is one I recognise from Anna's desk at the agency. That's Kristof, I think to myself. There she is, with him. It looks like Christmas but the flat is bare, nothing on the walls, just a small table with wrapping paper and a couple of bottles. This must be his place in Estonia. Four in the photo, huddled together on the settee. Kristof, the one who asked her to marry him, many times. And each time she had become angry, tearing up the letter. All this she told me over the first few months. I still don't understand her. Didn't she say she loved him? Didn't she say everything would have been just great? The old man picks up the photo and brings it over to me. He is staring at me wildly and pointing at Anna. I take it from him to have a closer look, not really sure why he's done this. Estonia? I say. They seem to understand this word and both of them nod. Is this where she is? Is she with him? The mother of the stranger in the picture seems uncomfortable, gets up and slips behind the curtain. After a short time the clang of pots and tins warns me that food is being prepared. The popping rattle of bubbling water. I put the photo down. This place! So dark and cramped. I notice a Viennese pattern on the ceiling, an unusual handle on the door.
I am alone with an old man.
Soap used to drive away customers with his insults, when he wasn't bringing up into his glass. I had no idea how old he was even then. Sixties. More. I used to turn up, under-age, codging the cream, listening on as if I were the cornerstone of the tavern, always on guard for the day Uncle Mick might whisper in my ear, it's time you weren't here, son. I'd even sit at the bar, everyone thinking, funny, can't see his diaper. But they all knew. Guinness and Soap's breath. It's all I recall of that bar-room now. Apart, that is, from her, Mary, bogging at me as if she were forty and all alone, when in fact she was barely in her twenties and very much not alone. A mature woman to be sure! And I remember thinking then, but this is a grand life, isn't it just!
Anna's mother comes back in, her cheeks burning, wiping her forehead. I feel sorry for her without knowing why. She rests opposite me on the sofa and attempts a flushed smile. We become quiet.
The two of us, Anna and I, met now increasingly often, outside her place of work or in the 'corner' bar, though she never invited me back to her flat. I remember wondering why this might be - a brutish mechanic husband maybe, who worked late into the night? an old ma who needed looking after? kids? I didn't mind the not knowing though, I was obsessed only with seeing her. At the piano each evening I created scenes for us to act out together, love-arias, chases, finales with passionate behind-the-curtain embraces. And when we did meet it was even lovelier and funnier than I could had imagined. We swapped intimacies. We talked long into the night, as if this were the highest of pleasures, and seemed to be cautiously inviting each into the other's world. She listened attentively to my musical plans and I held on firmly as she relived high speed adventures on her crazy, telepathic horses, laughing, drinking through the night until she slipped into appassionato, my watery eyes notating her every movement, her every stroke. And yet, even as we spent such a time, through long nights and longer talks, there was no physical intimacy, the closest we came would be her head resting against my shoulder - a gesture of closeness, of trust? Perhaps therein lies the magic?
One crisp afternoon as I stomped my feet on the pavement outside her offices, she walked out and kissed me on both cheeks. I stood transfixed by delight and surprise, my arms - indeed my hands - given to a sensation that something had suddenly been taken from them, not knowing whether to make some nervous quip or make a grab for her! Shall we go? she said, seemingly amused with something in my hair. I need some kiskutya! And she sought my arm.
The old man looks deeply into me as if he can see into my recollections, as if tuning in to me. I point to the red cloth, feel its rich texture and motion to him that I like it, that it pleases me. He lifts his eyes to the ceiling briefly, and lets me know with this simple motion that this is not important.
Just then we rise to eat. We are mute. It feels awkward, as if we are incomplete, as if we are all expecting another to join us. But the food is seducing and I greedily lap it up, relaxing more as my hunger leaves me. Her father has pale blue eyes. I remember Anna saying she was very close to him. He had been an engineer, and quite prosperous. But something had happened to cut short his career, and with his wife and daughter he made for the country. There are spots of black blood on the rim of his shirt collar, dust on the slim shoulders of his waistcoat. A long and complicated conversation is going on between the three of us, made up entirely of gestures and uncertain thought transcriptions. And yet, for all my careful studying of their facial and bodily movements, I understand nothing.
As soon as we have finished our drinks the old man becomes more animated. He gets up from the table and beckons me outside. We step into a mid-afternoon blaze, incredible heat. We walk around the line of houses and back up behind the white walls to the rear of their house. Here there are wicker baskets as big as trunks. One is half completed. Is this his work? He waves his arms and laughs now, his eyes sparking. He's trying to explain something, chuckling, then throwing me glances. It's all beyond me. I hunch my shoulders and try to look interested but I'm too hot, burning in fact, and after an awkward pause he gives up the ghost, smiles ruefully, and we make our way back. As I walk beside him I feel not only that part of me loves this man - that hidden somewhere in his make-up, in the very building-blocks of his character there lies something that I could use - but also that he is profoundly disappointed in me.
Anna...
The lights are out. Anna has emptied the leaking oil heater and with many matches has set it alight. Its musky aroma lends to the room something of a sleepy richness. It is my first overnight stay. The city is quiet now after the fireworks. She has prepared the bed - a fold down bed-settee - in front of the TV. An old American teenage sex-comedy is showing. Its rough dubbing barks across the room, its images flashing sea-blue against the walls and ceiling. She undresses between us with a neon aura, her hair loose, tantalisingly long. She throws her head back, I love this motion, turns aqua-marine and pours herself into bed. I move towards her. The sheet is rough, like an ocean bed crumpled in sleeplessness, clean moon, fine blue shadow. I am at the bedside, waiting for her to call me, to invite me. I undress, clumsily it seems to me, and slip in beside her. We must both be very nervous for we have forgotten how to communicate, our eyes do not meet. She has turned away from the glare of the TV, and from me. I am brushing back the hair that has fallen over her mouth and eyes, she is lifting her head away. I am holding her in my arms, arranging her, imploring her. She bows a cold, fleshy arm over my head. I am whispering to her, calling her, reaching out to her, reaching into her, she twists convulsively, mouth open, pulling away, a shark caught in violent struggle. We are blue film melting, entangling deliciously in silent footage. I love her strength, her shyness, the way she hides herself from my kisses, the way she keeps her eyes tight shut and her powerful arms limp across her body. Blue flashes bathe and torture her. I lift her up like a catch in my arms, she resists. I comb my fingers into her hair and massage her head towards me, bringing her lips into contact with mine, again she resists. Finally I forget what it means to be here, forget that she is not a shark but a scorpion, I clasp both my hands behind her ears, lifting her head up to mine...
No! she gasps.
The hurt in her breath is unmistakable. I am
startled.
What is it? I ask.
She twists away, using the considerable strength in her shoulders. I watch her breaking free - fear gripping me as the volume from the TV increases by itself - and try to grab her again, though more softly, try to kiss her, behind her arm, on the shoulder... to touch her face with the gentlest parts of my hand, my palm. She is shrinking away from me. What have I done? But truly I don't know. Anna! I want her to talk to me. What's the matter? She shuts her eyes, sinks her head into the pillow, slipping at last from my clumsy grasp, down, down, to some other safer ocean bed, way-away, hundreds of miles away.
For those few brief seconds I became aware of the weight of my body, as if I had just been pulled out of the water, heavy, cumbersome, suddenly impossibly tired. A bizarre succession of thoughts sprang in and out of my mood, some violent, some tender, while all the time my eyelids grew heavier. I really didn't know who I was for a moment. Or whom I was willing myself to be. I lay next to her, one knee under her leg, afraid to move.
I would not have chosen this time. Maybe I was belatedly wishing they had come earlier, at a more appropriate moment. Maybe I felt they could have brought her back, or at least softened the turbulence between us... because I say them. I say those three words I am told every woman wants to hear. I say them quietly, as if in a code I am not quite sure of, but it was not the voice of the man inside me, more a shudder from the ghost in the machine. Or just the words themselves perhaps, having their moment.
She moves, turns sharply. She is wild.
How vulnerable she looks, I remember thinking, this woman with the spirit of a beast. She is staring hard at me. It couldn't have been so dark after all, because I see them - only now - the black horses in the grey of her eyes, startled, preparing to bolt. They are beautiful and I want to have them, to calm them, to spread the reins and master them. But no, they are fire, burning me...
I roll back, put my hands behind my head and turn towards the TV.
How to explain the lies that come at such moments? The fabrications of will on coming face to face with its own ugliness? The blatant reshaping of events by a wounded pride without so much as a glance at the figures, at a single figure? Women's stuff, uncle TOM, a bad day... I transposed against her sleeping body everything that might have conspired to deflect me, everything but the simple truth that I was too rough on this, my friend. Beneath the tough hide of the beast of Budapest lay a woman, more vulnerable a creature than I had ever imagined her to be. Moreover, and I know this to be true, one that on occasion, and not without her own shame, weeps. It never occurred to me to leave, and perhaps if I had, there would have been no second chance. For one of the many discoveries I made that night was that she didn't want me to. In the morning I awoke to feel the touch of her hand in mine... This was all less than one year ago, yet to me now it seems as if I have made a journey longer than I was at that time ready for, that I have jumped - in good faith or bad, without knowing how - from one beginning to another.
I lay back and watched the last titles of the comic romp rising through the roof. Then having turned it off and struggled back under what remained of the icy sheet, I saw to my horror that she wasn't sleeping at all. Beside me, deathly still, lay the shaken spirit of an uneasy lover, a mare that had pulled up lame, lying on some deserted beach, afraid to breathe - aware only of the ground beneath her stained with terror and tears, the whites of her eyes - opened and glassy - fixed upon some vengeful point in time and space, the past or future I couldn't tell.
Kiskutya - A Musician's Tale Page 4