Nine Folds Make a Paper Swan

by Ruth Gilligan

  I left the toilets behind and smeared my hands on my shorts, thirty times each side. But when I made it back to bed that night I couldn’t manage sleep, the panic of the memory written all over my dreams.

  And then, when it could get no worse, the cretin came looking for me.

  It was the final day of the month, the furthest from April Fools’, though to be honest, my loneliness was beginning to drive me so mad I almost felt an affinity with the gobshites around me. A kindred gombeen spirit.

  We were out in the yard for Work Hour, twenty of us in total, each with a broom in hand and instructions to brush up the dust, no matter that our scrapings only made its splutter worse. A black, emphysemic hock.

  Above us, the sky was completely blank, like someone had forgotten to colour it in.

  We must have been some scene to behold, every manner of retard you could imagine out there – a comedy if it weren’t so bloody tragic. And an irony to it too, given Montague House was meant to be as good as it got – the crème de la curdled crème of the country’s lunatic facilities. Apparently there were about twenty thousand of us across the nation in total, locked up without a key – more per capita than the Soviet bloody Union.

  Ireland, the Isle of Saints and Scholars. And Psychos.

  Of course, long before I arrived I had heard all the horror ­stories about places like this; the schoolboy rumours, usually to do with taunts of ‘your ma’ getting ‘locked up’ for being a ‘whore’. Apparently the patients all crawled around on shite-crusted floors, guzzling their meals from troughs. Farms not hospitals, the dead buried outside in one giant hole, flesh atop unknown flesh.

  But by now my father had heard enough about mass graves to last him a lifetime, so to his measly credit, he had taken no risks; had put his money where his son’s mouth wasn’t and gone private, to Montague House – practically a holiday compared to those other hellholes.

  Wish you were here!

  And I wasn’t.

  ‘Shmendrick, can I have a word?’

  I saw his wheels crunch in beside me before I saw the rest of him. My whole body ached, knackered with the work and the heat. And now this.

  He locked his chair into place with his fidgety hands, all set for his attack. I saw a stain of red on the cuff of his shirt, hard to tell if it was blood or grub.

  For a moment I didn’t move and neither did he, his question still the only thing between us. Though I realised he must have known I was feeling even weaker than usual these days, pining for my Ima more than ever, because when he finally opened his gob again he annihilated me in one fell swoop: ‘Listen, Shmendrick, I’m after finding… this.’ In the shake of his palm the scrap of paper looked more pathetic than I remembered. A tiny yoke, and yet it was about to capsize the whole bloody thing.

  I felt the weight of my body as it slumped into the broom, six and a half feet of skin and bones and oh fuck. Because how the hell had I managed to let the thing go missing? Usually I was so careful – tucked it down into the secretest of cracks where no one could ever find it. But I supposed I had just been distracted lately, my mind off the game and off with her instead, clinging to our memories for dear life.

  But now there weren’t going to be any more of them. Because he would turn me in; would hand me over to the nuns to bang me up on the top floor with all the other rats in the attic, a plague of spastication and not an antidote in sight.

  I played the notion over in my head. I thought my breakfast might chuck up on his wheels.

  But of course, Alf wasn’t finished with just me yet, going in for a second round. ‘You see, Shmendrick, I have… I have a proposition for you.’

  I looked at him now, the clouds of dust settling between us as he began to lay out his terms. I saw the liver spots on his temple and the little bum chin; saw the trouser legs that flopped downwards from his knees and didn’t lead to feet. I wondered what he had done with all his shoes. And by the time I managed to catch up with what he was saying I had to double take, because the stuff he was coming out with was the strangest shite I think I’d ever heard. First there was something about a ‘change’ in him ever since I had arrived; about the first time in years he had shared a room with someone else, and about this load of ‘memories’ that was after coming back.

  ‘Only,’ he said now, his voice dropping a little lower, ‘I want to get them… on paper, like. But I can’t… Me shakes won’t…’

  He paused. I glanced at him glancing at the scrap. The fidget of his hand gave it a life of its very own.

  He said that he could find us a place to meet; that he could get me pen and paper, on the sly of course. ‘And look, I know I’ve been a bit…’ He stopped then, the apology less than half-born. I stubbed my toe into the dirt, kicking ’til it went sore. ‘But if you do this for me, Shmendrick, I promise I’ll… I’ll…’

  I waited for the next words to come – surely an undercut that would knock the wind out of my gut. But when it didn’t arrive I looked up, and Alf looked back, the light catching something different in him, something I hadn’t seen before, a sadness in his eyes I think I almost believed. ‘Shmendrick, I’ll…’ He glanced away, hoking a crust from his eyelid, a bit of dust that must have got lost. Before he found me all over again: ‘I promise… I’ll help get you back to your Ima.’

  Friday

  Neither says a word as he drives her home.

  The car doors are locked, the windows fogged white as if they have been fucking for the last ten minutes instead of just sitting there, accelerating, breathing all the things they aren’t quite ready to say aloud.

  In her lap, the unopened present sits snug as a sleeping child.

  Beneath it, her little black dress is all creases – a shame really, after she bothered to go and get the thing pressed, to try to look the part. It was her first ever venture to Paradise Dry Cleaners, though she had passed the place a thousand times before; had felt the hot, chemical air gushing out onto the footpath, maybe, yes, a bit like the climate of some Paradise far far away.

  This, though, is Hampstead Garden Suburb.

  The houses are as silent as the couple, a candle in every window to mark the occasion. And a regulation hedge outside every front, pruned and high, so that the entire neighbourhood feels a bit like a maze – need a spool of thread to find your way out, or better yet, a compass.

  Apart from anything, the silence is just so unlike them. Usually they get straight to it – the evening post-mortem – the night slit open and the entrails of it slick across the back of the car before they make it home in time for a cup of tea and a drunken fuck in front of the mirror. But tonight, she supposes, is different. Monumental. The milestone finally complete. The months of build-up, maybe even the full two years of their relationship, holding its breath for this: an invite extended to Noah’s non-Jewish girlfriend to come for Chanukah dinner in the Geller family home.

  Aisling’s head spins at just the thought of it. The corner of the parcel digs hard into her crotch.

  She looks at him to steady herself, the face that never fails to calm her. She sees the gouge-deep eyes; the seasoning of stubble; the impossibly symmetrical features – like one of those children’s paintings you fold in half to make a butterfly.

  She wishes now that she could kiss him; stop the awkwardness taking hold.

  But he concentrates on his driving, his hands stiff around the steering wheel of the Audi S7 Sportback. It is black, lacquered like wet tar; paid for by the investment bank, but then again, if you are going to sell your soul then you might as well guzzle up the perks, the full-fat cream of the leather interior.

  The car slides them down Wildwood and onto Meadway, the air electric with a thousand thoughts. At the bottom of the hill they pass death on either side, the Golders Green Crematorium to the left and the Jewish Cemetery to the right. Aisling stares through the shadows at the patchwork of tombstones, entire lives
condensed into a marble shorthand. Not that her job is any better, of course – half-page obituaries that leave out anything that matters. Like:

  Aisling Creedon. Irish Catholic. Aspiring journalist who moved to London to become a better version of herself.

  Or:

  Noah Geller. British Jew. Banker and part-time magician who is keeping oddly quiet.

  She uncrosses her legs, sweaty from the twenty denier and the close weight of the gift. ‘So,’ she finally asks. It seems as good a place to start as any. ‘Can I open it?’

  It wasn’t her first time meeting the parents tonight – you didn’t get to two years without a single glimpse, even if it was complicated. The pilot run had been for one of Noah’s performances – a gritty Camden pub crammed with a troupe of hipsters, and Aisling and the Gellers loitering, pastel-hued, down the back. Hardly your average Magic Show clientele, but they had been united, at least, by that.

  The four of them got a drink afterwards around a sticky table; a bowl of American peanuts gone stale.

  ‘My poor nerves,’ Aisling had admitted, greedier with her vodka tonic than she probably should have been. ‘I was convinced he was going to tell your one the Ace of Clubs!’

  While Linda and Robert Geller had stared at her from the other side as if she were speaking in tongues.

  So Noah had taken over. ‘Oh ye of little faith.’ Had rubbed his hand on her denim thigh, smoothing her anxiety down. ‘And how about you, Dad?’ he had asked then, changing the subject, his very own seek of approval. ‘What did you think?’

  But Robert only looked down on his coffee cup, a chip in the rim that could savage a lip. ‘Look, you… you know what I think, son. But if it makes you happy…’

  Aisling smiles now at the memory; how foreign the discomfort with his parents seems. A million miles, especially after tonight.

  They pass Golders Green station, a parade of red buses looping around and around the concourse, though the Tube itself looks empty, the Northern line fast asleep. It is the most popular line for suicides, she read somewhere – a career made out of death so only natural that she should know these things. Only, apparently all the Underground stations have now embraced the inevitability of jumpers; pits dug deep beneath the tracks to gather the bodies, open graves for the rats to explore.

  She thinks back to her first few months in London, her own tingle every time the train slowed in, the yellow line only a leap away. A chance to leave the loneliness behind – the version of herself she just couldn’t seem to make work.

  And then the Sunday afternoon in 2011 when she was riding the train to the end of the line and then back again, and then back again, just to avoid the world up above; just to watch the passengers and wonder at their stories – good practice for the obituaries, she had convinced herself. Barely. Until a stranger got on at Leicester Square and sat down beside her; told her he was off to give a performance in Hyde Park where he stood on Speakers’ Corner and did magic tricks in silence, protesting in favour of the unsaid.

  He made a paper swan appear in her pocket.

  She looked at him. Hello. This is a version I don’t normally give.

  A little leap.

  ‘So can I?’ Back in the car, her voice is a too-loud thing.

  The light from the streetlamps washes up and over Noah, like that game with a hand passing slowly down your face to reveal a different expression every time.

  His does not change.

  ‘Noah?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Can I open it?’

  The lump is a book, she suspects, the wrapping paper an iridescent blue so shiny her fingers leave three white smudges that linger for a moment then fade away.

  ‘Well, can— ’

  ‘No,’ he says, at last. A relief to have an answer. But a firmness to it she doesn’t understand.

  She hadn’t seen the parents since that Camden gig. Made a few comments about it when she was teasing him; a few when she wasn’t too.

  ‘What, are you ashamed?’

  ‘Still think they’ll disapprove?’

  ‘Coming up to two years now – do you not think it’s a bit odd?’

  But of course, she knew it was more complex than that. A lot more. And anyway, she reminded herself, two years carried enough weight as it was – most of her friends had already begun the steady decline into house hunts and mortgage rates and maternity leave; wedding invites and babies delivered in their droves – God knows she had no interest in all of that. And even Noah’s little sister was six months gone herself, her bump brandished like a medal as she scrutinised Aisling’s own stomach from across the dining-room table that night.

  Because despite everything, the invitation had finally come.

  The chance.

  It was six weeks ago he had mentioned it, lying in bed one morning after a gig, the throwaway so quiet she almost missed it.

  ‘So,’ he had asked. ‘Will you come?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘To Chanukah?’

  Twenty minutes later her orgasm had yelled even louder than usual, drowning out the daunting implications. Or maybe the vol­ume was a celebration – turned on by the acceptance, the possibility.

  But of what?

  They drive into Hampstead Village, the High Street a blaze of festive lights. Despite the hour, a line still stretches from the famous crêpe van – they flock from far and wide; wise men traipsing after a star but no, wrong bloody holiday – she knows better by now. She watches the queue and bites her nail, tasting the start of something sweet. She flicks it to the floor beneath the seat.

  The rest of the High Street is deserted, most of the locals staying in tonight to light their candles. Aisling pictures the Menorah again, the beautiful thing, its eight arms arched proudly out. And the ninth branch for the shamash – the ‘servant candle’, the one that is used to light the others, or so the ritual decrees.

  Or at least, so the Internet told her.

  It had just started as a bit of background reading, preparation for the night itself – a feeble attempt to stop her standing out even more than she already would. But there was something about the information that had kept her going, clicking page to page, on and on into the night until her eyes went blurred and black. She read about the rededication of the Second Temple and the Maccabean Revolt; about how there was only enough oil for the Menorah in the temple to burn for one night, but how it somehow lasted eight – a miracle of light and love against the odds.

  Then a few days ago she and Noah had been sitting on the banks of the Regent’s Canal, the Sunday papers spread out across their laps as if mopping up a spill. It was a ritual they had come to observe every week, their fingertips blue and black by the end like love bites gone too hard.

  They took it in turns to read to one another, stories traded like gifts back and forth.

  ‘Six-year-old girl gone missing in Kent,’ she began. ‘Police have found a shoe but nothing else.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Noah had replied, not looking up. ‘We’ll keep ours locked in chains.’

  ‘Which, our footwear or our children?’

  He had laughed in response and she had glanced away, trying to hide her satisfaction. She spotted a pair of swans coasting by on the canal, so perfect they almost looked fake.

  He went next: ‘New Merchant of Venice at the National gets four stars.’

  ‘Want to book?’

  ‘Could try get them through the office?’

  ‘God bless corporate hospitality, eh?’

  ‘No, don’t worry, they’ll make me slave for them. After all, the line is expressly “a pound of flesh”. Although, I suppose your lot would call it a “Euro” instead?’

  She had rolled her eyes and checked the swans again – two kitsch, garden ornaments swept away in a flood.

  ‘And there’s an article h
ere about Chanukah, in case you’ve any interest?’ She had been tentative at first with the line of argument; the casual drop into conversation. ‘I suppose it’s just kind of ironic that the festival all about rebelling against assimilation and conversion and stuff has become the most secular holiday of the bunch.’ Still the feathers paddled by on the water, Tippex-white against the grey. ‘And according to this guy Rabbi Hirschfield I found online – quite a witty bastard once he gets going, actually – but according to him the whole thing can be attributed— ’

  ‘Aisling, what are you doing?’

  Instantly she had stared at the paper in her lap as if she had never seen it before in her life. She checked the water. By now the swans had moved on.

  Next she checked Noah, his face still formed into the question; his hair newly cut extra-short. Not that she had ever seen it as long as the photos from his university days, the thick black curls and the flowing Oxford gown, Harry Potter chic. Sure no wonder you’re after pretending to have magic powers! Even if recently she has started to think that maybe he isn’t pretending after all. Maybe, she concedes, in spite of herself, maybe there really is something special going on.

  In a way, all the more reason to be careful.

  ‘Pardon me for showing an interest,’ she had snapped back at him, smothering the sentiment dead. ‘Jesus, I’m bored. Can we get lunch soon? My head’s still in bits from those shots.’

  So now here in the car, buried in silence, she tries for the same approach – anything to buffer the weight of the moment. Or really, the weight of the present in her lap. ‘Are we not there yet? Don’t tell me you’ve got us lost again.’

  Belsize Park flashes by, Chalk Farm station up ahead, the distant Camden buzz. The downward slope of the hill makes it feel like they are building speed, the thing a little harder to control.

  Of course, she had brought her own gift along with her to the Gellers’ house this evening, a bottle of Barkan Classic kosher wine with a bow around the neck. She got it from a website called Booze for Jews where a stranger named Isaac sent her a thank-you email, shalom-ing her for her custom, obviously oblivious to her imposter status. Not that she had minded, really – she supposed Booze for Gentiles didn’t quite have the same ring.