by Brian Castro
Could I not have travelled to Europe instead?
Beethoven, deaf, unable to converse without signs, received his guests, two fellow musicians, I was saying to Nickel Hawk. (Yes, lightly she has come to the end of my bathtub.) He had written something. Macbeth, Beethoven had said to the others. The landscape of Macbeth. It is not Scotland; it is not China; it is a place in his head. A ghost, it refuses to disappear. They rehearse the ‘Ghost’ trio. Key of D. Flurry, then melody. The impatience of an old man. His fingers fly over the keys. On a slope, lined with trees at the top of the hill, a figure walks across a bridge. I can hear her wooden clogs. Two buckets and a bamboo pole slung across small shoulders. Warm water. She has brought warm water, pushing aside very gently the jalousie, standing now behind me, pouring the water upon my back. Second movement. I remember: I was suffering an influenza. I could not stay quiet for more than two minutes; sneezing, coughing. I timed myself with a watch. I was in London. Living in a very cold, mouseridden flat. I did not have the stamina of Baudelaire. I walked to rid myself of the ague. For miles and miles I walked. Then I walked back to Earl’s Court, where there was a small concert in progress in a small church off Kensington Road. Beethoven’s ‘Ghost Trio’. I show Nickel Hawk the importance of the painting, the change in the weather. It was hard to keep my cough under control during the recital. I had fallen into a feverish love for the violinist. I gave the last of my gold sovereigns to her after the performance.
Are you not afraid of soaking, Nickel Hawk asks, with all this steam and water and coughing? She means the paintings. I have placed them on the edge of the bath. The bamboo blinds filter steam through their ribs. Beethoven was too deaf to realise his piano was out of tune, I said, ignoring her warning. Some of the keys produced no sound at all, only a kind of muffled hammering. He heard the music only in his head and he raced, slowed, without listening for his cellist and violinist. It was horrendous. All this steam and horror. Close your eyes when you approach me in the bath, I ordered. She turned away. She turned her back. Stood at the door. ‘How can I learn about the change in painting then; the moment at which the weather in the spirit turns?’ she complains.
20
Cold. Conceição shivers. He has sent Nickel Hawk out to the shops because he needs things to inspire him. More opium from the pharmacist, from the old man with snakes in bottles, foetuses in jars. But also more of the cheap scrolls from the dime shops, for which she will have to bargain. He is teaching her. Well, how to recognise what is artless from what is art, for one thing. Is a foetus art? No, but it is a creation of the body. But Camilo (Nickel Hawk uses his name because he said it was a present for her…not even her mother, Silver Eagle herself, could do this, use his first name, for he was always Sire, or Don, or Mestre…though Nickel Hawk could only address him in private with this valued currency)…Camilo has collected the moods of his painters, capturing all those atmospheres, saving them up like slow money for use in his poetry, dark depressions which he can study and then release. Camilo said this was capital, something which Nickel Hawk thinks is very powerful, seductive, like her little budding breasts, which the old pharmacist is gleaning with his eyes, sweeping this way and that, not lingering, remarkably swift and agile, tiny black swallows, very mobile for an old, supposedly weak-sighted man, sharp wings of glances which take in pleasure from beauty; almost the real thing. Soon. Capital for her.
Conceição has not only collected paintings of dubious value since the rest of the world knows little about this period of Chinese art, but he has collected a family as well. He purchased them. Given that Nickel Hawk is turning out to be a beauty is pure luck or grief for him. Eurasian; looked down upon as a curio. A relic of historical traces to be treated with semi-respect because it is impure, though not inbred, thought to be clever, immune to diseases and above all, since it draws from disparate cultures, sexually potent, nymphomanic, highly strung, emotionally dependent. Jealous-cheating-possessive. And on the other side, seductive-sultry-passive. Conceição’s shock at the discovery that Nickel Hawk was the daughter of Silver Eagle and the Procurador has changed his feelings. He no longer has this ideal ‘secure’ little family he has purchased. She told him as much, his bartered wife. No way back when money has changed hands. But now he cannot touch Silver Eagle; I mean, he cannot bear to be near her because he imagines her thin body beneath the Procurador’s, which is oily and fat and even though he knew of her past, her lovers were faceless and he had rescued her from them; but now…now he cannot remove the Procurador’s pockmarked face from his mind and he cannot touch her, for fear of contracting a hatred for her. Jealous-cheated-alien. Silver Eagle was part of his collection. She was bought, possessed and restored. When he collected her, he purified her, saved her from being a commodity, returned to her the dignity and aura of a wife and woman. But now…what about Nickel Hawk? She didn’t even have the status of being classed among the cabritos, children of white men and half-caste women. Thinking about lineage gave him a sexual tingle; that it was possible to procreate…redeem Nickel Hawk’s pale visage, her light-coloured eyes which burned in the street…possible to save her from predatory men and rapacious history.
Desejos/Desires
I teach Portuguese with a headache, waiting for the world’s destruction, a tidal wave ringing the South China Sea to vomit up yellow silt in the corridors. The maids had to clean the floors this morning; choleric, the boys before me sick from breathing in this city of rotting cats. A cholera epidemic. Why not watch out of my window instead, the schoolgirls in their starched blouses hopscotching through the miasma with the pride of innocence?
Above the flat sea a hawk hovers, kingfishing for shrimp in translucent water made fresh by the morning tide, running with the ebb to pick stragglers off the sand, silvery crustaceans coiling, droplets of water spilling from its beak.
Yesterday, Sunday, we lay head to foot in the long bed, lazy from sunlight. In no mood to wrestle, we read instead, Robert Louis Stevenson, though I recall nothing of the story, save the way Nickel Hawk tickled my foot with her hair as she turned the pages. None of this could you call uniquely paternal love; besides, it is a long journey from ethics. And why not? The moment was given to examining the way Western culture has always presumed that the moral high ground belonged to innocence. There are millions of examples of the world not operating this way. There is no innocence in Macau.
Not going there now though. My class of boys are reciting Camões with correct pronunciation. Their voices are soft and tentative, but one day they will yell and curse, burn these poems to symbolise their independence, leave school behind, riot in the streets and then find jobs in order to dress like me and work in an office only to learn again, the correct grammar of their bosses. They will take girls who are not their wives to their beds and one by one they will return to Portugal and dream, on magnetic nights when the moon is full, sailing in their baths, nostalgic for their little beautiful cabritos and the possibility of finding pork dumplings in Lisbon.
I discard my high collar and my tie for good.
I take over the cooking, wear a long white linen gown which is soon bespattered with sauce.
For the filling: 1 onion, finely chopped; 1 clove of garlic, finely chopped; olive oil for frying; 1 teaspoon of finely sliced fresh ginger; 2 fresh chillies, finely chopped; 1 carrot, finely diced; 2 potatoes, cut into small cubes; 100 g (3½ oz, ½ cup) green peas; 1 tablespoon ground coriander; 2 teaspoons curry powder; ½ teaspoon saffron; 1 teaspoon salt; 1 tablespoon lemon juice; 2 tablespoons breadcrumbs. For the wrapping: spring roll wrappers; eggwhite; oil for deep-frying; cut wrapper into strips, brush with eggwhite; fold.
There you have it: chamuças. Samosas. A triangular pastry. He sits between the women at the dinner table, a concept between two raptors. They eat in total silence. Something has changed forever. He has crossed over…there is no perspective and they are confused, fearing a loss of their livelihood.
Svelte, She Appears
She wades ashore, wet.
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I have a panic attack, disorientation, vertigo. Not because of her white silk pyjama suit. Not because it is filmy, translucent as a jellyfish cruising off the island of Coloane; Portuguese mano’-war, hydra-headed, trailing stings of rebuke to my liquid meditations. Out there are swimmers of the unconscious and I need to be a judge; rescue some, drown others in shameful strings of evidence. I feel protective. A life preservative. Tightly it clings. Wet, she wades.
Today I failed to go to work for good. Night sweats, a strange fever which left my extremities freezing. Let’s go to the beach! Nickel Hawk dragged me to the dinghy I kept moored near the temple. Somebody has evacuated himself in the boat, using the gunwale to hang his legs over while musing upon the sea. Never mind, turn the boat over in the shallows, retrieve it with my weak arms, lungs like gasping bellows – I try to present a strong face. Suction as we drag it out. Bail water. Clean. Catch the oar in the deep green, standing one foot on the transom, waggle out Chinese fashion.
Wet she wades, treading the ginger bottom of an old sea. Willowy, still innocent, swaying, squeezing dry her dark brown hair. She’s grown taller. I’ve failed to work today; failed to teach her, failed to write. What matter when she surprises me from behind, landing on my back with force, her breasts, her quivering heart conjoined! In the clear shallows we mime seahorses, the glittering water clouding briefly, mirroring the sky. How can I reach, she splutters, cleansing her face of all false dignity, the second level of experience? You mean in art? Of course, she sighed, knowing more than I, in this time of failure. The first level, I said, was simply the level of competence and cleverness. Hard work patching together design, scraps of beauty. The second level is to banish thought – to swim in the sea and not to know why things flow the way they do in accordance with any truth until the moment of enlightenment – it is said only men can achieve this kind of detachment after many years of meditation. She scoffed at that. Pure selfishness, she said. She was wrestling with me in the sea. I have to kill the hydra-head now, for it will grow in time. A brief braggadocio upon my moral victory. I am not Heracles. In my bathroom, much later, the clepsydra drips out its tortured timescale and my desire is stilled. The water serpent preserved in a vessel, this friend of orators, whispers a filibustering wish-wash. Today I did not go to work; I stole my life back from routine; I stole her in sleep, the never-purchased sylph who swims among jellyfish, wet and sea-salted. Oh, how I melt!
21
You see how his dish was presented. His confession, which is folded in a dream, served in a moment of private conversation with a blonde female guest in a river pavilion.
After that particular fugue of Conceição’s (his Dinner by Lantern-light in a River Pavilion), on the 21st of September 1916, when he imagined he was confessing to a woman of the future about his moral failure…obviously with an eye to the posterity of his poems…he would write nothing more for several weeks. He was trying to attract catastrophe. Because he saw every experience as a rehearsal, he purchased what was possible in order to make what he had rehearsed, real. He doesn’t tell you how to cook the samosas; that the filling had to be sautéed, placed in an oven at low heat etc. He wrapped what was raw. It was never meant to be the final product. He thought he had time for that; for marinading morality. He thought if he rehearsed life, his imagination would converge with reality and everything would be fulfilled and accommodated. But by not enforcing reality, by not facing it, he invited catastrophe.
He had collected more than two dozen poems at this stage and was on the verge of sending them to Hannah in Lisbon when Nickel Hawk confided to him that she was pregnant. There are no personal notes or poems which register his reactions. Nickel Hawk was confined to the house and Silver Eagle was going to pass the child off as her own. It surprised him how easily he accepted the news. He had already rehearsed all that. There was even some joy. He walked back and forth along the waterfront, among the stalls in the marketplace, talking to anyone who would listen. Yes, he was about to be a father, can you believe that! The Chinese were complimentary, some even overjoyed to hear from this foreigner who spoke such good Cantonese, that his Chinese wife was pregnant. They envied Silver Eagle; producing a son with a Portuguese man guaranteed her a golden future. They didn’t talk when they heard it was Nickel Hawk. At the blacksmith’s, the Procurador watched a cutlass being hammered out over an anvil. He was being promoted. Now, he said to the engraver, the judge is one of ours.
22
The Conceição archives yield some juvenile sketches. No, not by him.
August, 1916, sailing to China in a wooden cabin on a creaking ship, sails collapsing periodically when the wind dies, the moist, cold air eroding your face. The two women had left Sydney a week before. They are standing by the port rail, at the back of the ship, on the third deck, talking passionately, sometimes one touching the other, because this is how it works…there is the lover and the beloved, and it is the lover who instigates everything, because the beloved doesn’t need to…and perhaps is flattered rather than anything else. She touches the other on the back, kisses her cheek. One blonde, the other dark. One taller than the other. Edge closer to hear the conversation. They are talking animatedly now, their phrases catching in the wind. Nothing anyone can make out. Speaking English with a slight twang and flattened vowels. Yeh, yeh. Off to China. Intrepid women. Delphine and Hippolyte; heroines of modern travel. It is their industry that impresses. Even on board ship, one of them, the fair one, is constantly sketching. The beloved. The beloved always has time. There she is again, leaning her pad on the iron rail which smells of paint, but she is used to paint and loves the different varieties of smells so they have a colour, these odours. But on board ship she cannot drag out all her own paints. Besides, the lover doesn’t approve. Why do you have to be preoccupied all the time? Surely we can have moments of dreaming together, of laziness, of pure indolence? But the beloved cannot help herself. Her industry is pure, for no reason, perhaps simply because emptiness is a gulf for predators. They swoop. Men, women. Upon her lips. She has thin lips, which makes her fragile-looking, nervous, flighty. The lover takes this in, watching a wisp of hair drag itself across her beloved’s mouth. Despair befalls those who stoop to drink there! The lover is dark, her hair cut short, shorter than current fashion allowed. In Australia she sometimes wore a wig because construction workers on the building opposite her Kings Cross studio called her a Nancy Boy. A harsh place for women, Australia. A hostile place for artists, even though she called herself an artisan, because she didn’t believe in art for art’s sake. An impossible place for the warrior in her. Not because of her fear, but out of fear of her temper. What she might do. Her Swedish father had eaten raw seal meat off the coast of Tasmania in order to survive his geographical expeditions. He placed himself beyond them all. His wife, her mother, complained day and night, then on her deathbed, blaming her daughter for not having taken care of her. That was enough. That was the end. Her father returned to an empty house. He had a mistress but he didn’t want to lose his daughter. He gave her money. An annuity. He said: Anna, you will not extend the Ångström line, so I have had to find other means.