by John Elliott
From then on the die was cast, cast forever. Some other hand Sula could not see had spilled the dice free from their shaker. Patiently, she waited for their roll to cease. Hands, she thought, hands that once might have been folded in prayer. A deck of cards fanned out before her on the green baize of the bedclothes. Surely, they must realise she lacked the power or concentration to pick them up; especially when the dice still rolled and rolled.
René’s chuckle in her left eardrum made her laugh out loud. How sweet and salty his lips felt on the dryness of her cheek! How calmly he recited the numbers that fitted the puzzle! Each one so cleverly fell into place. It turned out he had only ever existed so as to be here with her and share this one shining, separate, impervious moment. There was no need, after all, to pick up the heavy, burdensome cards. No need for the dice to stop tumbling.
Agnes at last was listening to his words. Pride overwhelmed her as she watched him stoop and stroke his daughter’s hair. Everything was going to be okay now that she had listened to his explanation. A one impervious moment.
But another voice cut in, a hateful voice. It murmured about the everlasting arms. Something was missing, something dreadful. Sula struggled to summon the phlegm to shout it down, to find the strength to kick up her legs and haul her skirts up for one final show of defiance. Whatever she did, though, she must not disturb the two of them. Agnes must not turn away from René, nor he from her. Still, be still, she told her body, but the needling drone would not stop.
‘ . . . oh what a friend we have gathering in the sheaves we will rest contented by the bend of the river this I know because his factories tell me so his works look on this and despair for the old rugged cross in the morning we will go rejoicing bringing in the sheep one by one two by two there is a balm in Gilead amongst the alien corn little boy blue will turn Manhattan into a many mansioned house on the hill but I do Dindi without the castle walls seek and hide for you the fatted calf and the widow’s mite insures a small hotel in the still chill of the night to cling together and face the unknown . . . ’
Her René, her Agnes reconciled. She strove to sing their names in exultation, but the other would not give way. Nothing seemed to halt its utterance. Its flow was . . .
‘The beat beat beat of the tam tam the drip drip drip of I hear and you are the one he was funny that way and she was on the seashore o Lorelei I hear you calling in the pines another day five shirts and collars smooching away with the dashing iron nor all your needles and pins your scents of Araby when luck was a lady and dice will never come to rest or snake eyes . . . ’
*
Agnes, struggling to stay awake, tried to unravel her mother’s mumblings. They were more sounds than words, more humming than singing. Sometimes she cried out in anguish, and Agnes was appalled by the look of fear in her eyes. She cursed her father for his continual absence, for this now was surely his greatest and final betrayal, his last act of heartless separation. A nurse appeared and asked Sula if she was in pain, but Sula shook her head and gave Agnes a baffled look.
Then, one morning, when Agnes had returned to the motel room she had rented, the inevitable happened. The phone rang and she knew the words before the sister at the hospital spoke. She cried often afterwards, after she had ceded Sula’s body and the simple rites were over, after she had chosen to believe her father was still alive, and she had decided she really would search for him. She did not expect him to share her tears. She cared little about who he had been and less about who he was now. She only wanted to bear witness to her mother’s life and death in his presence, so that he could never say he did not know, that it had happened without him hearing.
*
. . . ‘Hombi Tadjko started up a co-operative. He wanted to explore what he called second wave new thing. Russ van Effs and Melvin Singer were in it. A couple of kids and me knew Hombi’s brother, Danito. We used to hang around his place. One day, Danito put on one of Hombi’s working tapes by mistake. He started fooling around, imitating the sound, putting his hands up to his throat as if he was being throttled. Then he wanked at his cock and moaned and groaned like he was about to ejaculate. The others burst out laughing and I joined in, but the sounds stayed with me and I knew I wanted to hear them again and find out how they were made. So one evening I ducked away from the rest and plucked up the courage to talk to Hombi, who was visiting his old lady. It wasn’t easy. At that time, he was a forbidding figure to us kids. He had a real solid local reputation and a fuck-you-first exterior to go with it. Anyhow, I managed to get it out as best I could about the music I’d heard and whatever. He stopped me right there and damn me if he didn’t play me stuff for around an hour, stuff that came from different times and different countries and he said, “Do you want to just listen or do you want to play?” I was embarrassed. “Both,” I said quietly, half hoping he wouldn’t hear, but he heard me alright and he smiled. Well, from that moment we hit it off.
‘Later, when we met again, I told him how I’d started on the drums, and he invited me some months on to the Tuesday rehearsal sessions they held in the basement of the Lutheran Society Hall. Russ van Effs arranged for me to study with Sam Richards, and, as my technique and understanding improved, he persuaded my parents to let me attend the erratic hours the co-operative played during school vacation.
‘René joined us for a spell in . . . I’m not good with dates. I think it must have been around spring ’67. That’s me with him in the photo I’ve included. I guess you won’t have seen it before. Who took it or exactly why escapes me now. Anyhow, to get back on the trail, René was a good reader and he played both valve and slide trombone. I wouldn’t say his time with us was very happy because, when you come down to it, he didn’t express the feeling, the feeling you’ve got to have, as Lennie Tristano said. That’s my book, anyway. Added to that, he and Hombi didn’t get on. Part of the trouble was René was friendly with Wilson Loumans, the pianist, had even recorded with him on some small label back east, Blat or something. I think it may have been taped originally by one of Loumans’ fan club and issued later. Anyhow, the story was when Wilson had quit working for the studios and had woodshedded for six months, he went back on the club and college circuit. René was in Amminghurst, doing what I don’t know, when he bumped into Wilson in a Cantonese restaurant. They got talking. He went to Wilson’s gig. After, they walked round and round the town shooting the breeze for hours. Now, let me tell you, before he played, Wilson couldn’t bear to have anyone in the same room as him, and after he’d finished he couldn’t bear to be alone. So it made sense. Later they met up again in Shawnee and that was the time they played together in a pick-up quintet.
‘Now Hombi detested Wilson’s whole approach and especially the music his disciples produced. “Arid intellectual con trick” was how he described it. He kept saying that motherfucker not only didn’t know shit from shinola, but he wouldn’t recognise real shit if he had three lifetimes. He never lost an opportunity to dish it up to René. Believe me, your father didn’t need it. It really got his goat. They came near to blows once, but Melvin told them, “Hey, we’ve all got to eat,” and Hombi cooled it.
‘The other thing, like I said, René wasn’t really following the same song sheet, not committed to go with us, go where we were heading. I got the impression he was building himself up to leave the music altogether, to give up on the life. I can’t place exactly where it all started to slip, but some days he wasn’t there and then he let us down on one of our rare paid engagements and that was that.
‘After a week or so, Hombi stopped cursing him and we found a replacement. The exciting thing was by the time I quit school Hombi had got us funding for a tour. He took me and seven others. We played his music and Liz Freuch’s and some early Theo Wright. That’s how I began to experience the wider world and become less inclined to head back home. On that tack, your dad was spot on with languages. I’ve heard him do them like it was second nature, and I want to tell you he was always straight with me. He never treate
d me like a kid the way some of the others did with their stupid errands and their go for this and fetch that. No, looking back we had some good chats. Trouble was, at heart I’d say, he didn’t care too much about anything . . . ’
For some time, Agnes had only been half listening to the tape which, accompanied by a small black and white photo of her correspondent and the man he claimed was her father, had arrived on its own, long after the others. The combination of driving an unfamiliar car and following her newly bought road map demanded the majority of her concentration. Besides, she could reel off most of what he said by heart, not that it shed any more light on her opaque quarry.
A sign for Greenlea North showed up ahead. She dropped her speed and eased into the traffic heading for the slip road. A sudden flicker of indecision caused her to look out for a place to stop. She was almost there, nearly ready to assume a part she still did not understand, but she needed time to collect her thoughts. Ahead, a curved arrow bent towards Bay Bush Services. She followed a blue transit van past a line of parked intercity coaches and drew up by the cafeteria entrance. Taking the papers contained in the dark-green folder from her attaché case, she locked the car and went in.
When her lukewarm coffee was partially drunk, she pushed it aside and extracted the first sheets she had received from Chance Company, which had so unexpectedly set her upon her present journey. She reread their introductory letter, feeling its texture beneath the light pressure of her thumbs, as if to verify it had not dematerialised during the plane flight.
Dear Agnes,
Forgive me for addressing you so familiarly, but I feel I already know you as I am in a position to help you in your continuing life journey. Many others have found themselves in a similar situation. Some, by chance, have used it as a channel to deeper fulfilment. Everyday existence can take on a new meaning. You see, I’m talking about the wonderful opportunities offered and arranged by CHANCE COMPANY.
Each of our packages comes with a finance plan to suit all pockets and purses. Our range of options is wide and comprehensive. Why not pick up your pen today and start to chart your future? It’s fun and easy to do. Just complete and return the enclosed questionnaire in the pre-paid envelope. I promise things will happen quickly.
Remember, CHANCE COMPANY commands the cutting edge. We have enjoyed two great decades of inspired innovation. You’ll find details of our terms in Appendix One. Appendix Two features client experiences, which you, too, could soon share.
Yours in anticipation,
Harry Fulton (Field Manager)
P.S. Our product will be tailored to your individual needs. You could find that special someone, Agnes. In your case, there are strong indications that GREENLEA would be an excellent location. DUTY and DESIRE will unite there with REVELATION and REWARD!
Agnes slid the letter back. Her fingertips met the metal of her new apartment keys lodged at the bottom of the folder. It had been quick, she reflected. From her sudden caprice to fill in the questionnaire, as in what the hell, then her decision to actually drop it in the mailbox in front of the Lansing Building on Wilding and Providence, to getting a pay-later scheme under the auspices of Desey Finance Corporation, swiftly followed by airline tickets and a hired car booking, had all been accomplished in less than two weeks. Now, here she was on the outskirts of an unknown city, in a foreign country, with the keys to an apartment she had never seen, a briefing for a character who was a Chance Company fiction and the name of her sole contact, Mr Roberto Ayza. She tied the toggle on the folder and glanced at her watch. It was 8.47 a.m. Around her, people were coming and going, their clothes and looks only slightly different from those back home. An announcement over the fuzz of the tannoy repeated a request for Mr Perkins to cash till eleven immediately please. At the far end of the room the sporadic tremolo beeps and bells of fruit machines punctuated the hum of multiple conversations. Three children began to run ever faster between their table and the counter queue, watched blankly by wearied adults. It was a scene she had experienced many times. Here and now, she thought. This is as good a time and place as any to stop seeing the world through the eyes of Agnes Darshel and begin to drift into my new, imaginary being, my separate entity, Ms Emily Brown.
Once back in the car, she adjusted the rear-view mirror and inspected her reflection, reminding herself to relax her jaw muscles more. She took out the dark vermilion lipstick she had bought at the airport and smoothed it over her lips. Her new character outline was vague in the extreme. A blank page would have served as well. Its implication seemed to be do as you will. A standard issue, she guessed, leading to the conclusion that she was just one more in a stream of clients who had all been Emily Brown before. Think Emily thoughts and behave Emily behaviour, whatever that was, she told herself as she drove back to the main road and joined the tail of traffic heading towards the city. A fit of scarcely suppressed giggles gurgled up within her when she saw the Lagran cut-off and realised she was almost there. Emily Brown was on her way home from the airport after seeing off her friend, Agnes Darshel, on another hare-brained trip. The joke was she did not know how to get there. After asking several pedestrians, she was still in a cheery mood when she finally reached the lights at the top of Lagran Hill.
The apartment was on the second floor of a three-storey red-brick building, which, along with five others of identical construction, made up the designation Tara Village. Each block bore an Irish name. Maynooth was Agnes’s.
The first key she tried opened the outer door. Turning the second one in the lock, she entered her new resting place. She noted the smallness of the entrance hall and brought in her luggage. The sitting room had a lived-in look. The same applied to the kitchen, bedroom and bathroom. Magazines, books, CDs, fresh flowers, ornaments, cupboards stocked with tins and foodstuffs, a cabinet shelf arrayed with cosmetics and medicines, all gave the impression of someone already in residence, someone who had only popped out for a moment or two.
There were no clothes in the built-in wardrobe, however, nor any pairs of shoes, but a partially open drawer revealed neat piles of underwear, tights, knickers and bras. Agnes felt the weight of the towelling on a white bathrobe, which was casually draped over the shower screen, and pressed it to her face. It gave off an unfamiliar perfume. She inspected the set of cases, far superior to her own, that she found in the recess of the hall. They were empty.
For the next half hour, as she settled in, she half expected to hear the sound of footsteps outside, followed by a key turning in the lock and culminating in the reappearance of . . . She paused and said it softly to herself, ‘Emily Brown.’
Curious as to what she would find, she rewound the tape of the answering machine. In spite of herself, she shivered slightly while she listened to the succession of unknown voices say, ‘Hi,’ and proceed to discuss their plans, give accounts of what they were up to and pose questions awaiting an answer, ‘See you soon.’ ‘I’ll be in touch.’ ‘Ciao.’ She still had time to walk away, to revoke Chance Company’s contract, to abandon this foolish adventure, yet she knew she would not, not if she truly wanted to meet her father. The phone trilled, making her start. She leant over and picked it up, saying, in her own voice and her own way, ‘Emily here.’
*
Sonny Ayza opened his eyes.
He blinked. Sleep had mired his lashes with its sticky residue. A clammy sweat chilled his thighs and torso. Through the thin green curtains, a wan light was filtering across the ceiling. Shifting his head, he caught sight of a tiny moth, its wings closed, clinging to the bottom rim of the paper lampshade. Unusually, he could not remember waking up once in the night. I’ve enjoyed a sleep fit for the dead, he thought with a sardonic grimace. Was this an omen for his future perhaps? His normal waking up every two hours or so a thing of the past? What had been will no longer be? An unlikely scenario, he concluded, as he got out of bed, drew back the curtains and glanced at the familiar rooftops farther down the hill.
He padded barefoot through to the bathroom. Le
aning over the tap to begin running a hot bath, he farted twice, quietly the first time, more emphatically the second. His body, it seemed, was continuing its usual routine as if nothing untoward had happened. While the water ran and steam misted the mirror’s face, he dawdled over the toilet bowl, holding his penis in a sporadic pee. Compared to his urination of last night, it lacked urgency. Climbing into the bath, he ran the cold tap until the temperature of the water was on the verge of bearable. Its heat prickled his skin and then eased through his supine limbs. The back of his legs, shoulder blades and neck relaxed in its therapeutic volume. Slowly, he slid his head backwards and down until he was completely submerged. He closed his eyes. To live through the body. To exist in the body alone, if only for a second. He broke the surface and reached for the soap and sponge. It was Wednesday, fifteenth of November. In spite of himself, he was alive. Why not accept it? He soaped his genitals and squeezed the sponge beside the inside of his big toe. A light film of scum floated round his arms. Why are there things in the world? Well, now he had given himself a breather, a little more time to try and figure it out. Pressing down on the side of the tub, he levered himself upright.
In the wiped mirror, his reflection stared steadily back at him when he switched on his electric razor: Roberto ‘Sonny’ Ayza, son of Manolo Ayza, schoolteacher, and Rosario Delfin, milliner’s assistant, brother of Veronica Ayza, lawyer, now married and mother of three, stepson of Sebastian Marva, composer and musicologist, Roberto Ayza, one-time adherent of ‘nothing for us’, inured wanderer, inconstant lover, fritterer away of opportunities, accumulator of forty-seven years, half-hearted suicide, present employee of Chance Company and denizen of Greenlea. Finished shaving, he rubbed his chin to test its smoothness and packed the razor into its case.