by John Elliott
‘Antonetta Simon. What about her?’
‘Not a name I can recall from my childhood. I’ve no picture of her at all. Llomera, as I said, was a very brief episode for me. Most of my growing-up was done in Orias.’
Agnes stopped. Sonny stopped with her. ‘Do you have family there, Roberto?’
‘My sister and her husband and their three kids live there. My mother’s in a home. She has Alzheimer’s. My father, as I told you, died a long time ago. Sebastian Marva, too, is dead. He had a stroke and then a few years later a fatal heart attack. I haven’t been back. Once I left Miranda, I left for good.’
‘She was my grandmother. Batiste Cheto was, or is, my grandfather. Since my mother died this year I thought I was alone in the world. My father ran away from the two of us when I was a child. Now, I find I have relatives who I didn’t know existed, and they come from a country I was barely aware of and places I’d never heard of. I’ve got to tell you they seem very foreign to me and I don’t know how to feel or what to do about it. Do you have children?’
‘No. I don’t.’
She leant forward and touched his arm. He found and held her hand for a moment and then let it go. ‘So, you, too, are part Mirandan. Strange strangers. Foreign foreigners. Something we all are to others no matter where we are. Is this why you asked me about Fernando Cheto Simon? You had discovered he was your father before your mother died.’
‘No, she didn’t know. I only found out for sure today, and that’s not all. My father has masqueraded in a series of different identities. You work for Chance Company. You knew him under the name of Joe May.’
The news Sonny had been on the point of tentatively divulging after some discreet questions stayed frozen in his gullet. He needed time to think. ‘Why did you come to Greenlea, Agnes?’
‘I promised my mother I’d find my father if he was alive. She seemed certain he was. In truth, I wanted to punish him if it was at all within my power. I’ve got more than I bargained for though.’
Sonny glanced at his watch. ‘They lock the gates at five in winter. We need to leave. I’d like to talk to you again tomorrow if it’s okay with you.’
Agnes nodded. ‘Phone the flat in the morning. I’m going out tonight. You know, these drawings of yours, I keep sensing I saw them once before when my father was living in the house.’
‘It’s a habit of mine. I’ve done it ever since I first went to school. I used to practise them a lot. Whenever I got a spare moment and there was a piece of paper and a sharp pencil, that’s what I’d do. They started without me really being aware of why I was doing it. Then I began to polish them up. I suppose they’re a form of release.’
‘Do you keep them?’
‘No, that’s not their purpose.’
They reached the gates. Agnes shook his hand then awkwardly kissed his cheek. ‘I must learn to be more Mirandan,’ she said. ‘Thank you, you’ve helped.’
Sonny kissed her on both cheeks in return. They went their separate ways.
*
Sylvia’s imagined face, trapped in the shuddering rectangle of the adjacent tram window, reflected back at him.
Begin with her face, Lucas told himself. Only hold on to her face then everything will come right and develop naturally. Sylvia was the embodiment of substance: a substance that could overcome his previous emptiness and fill and sustain his newly regained existence.
He found it easy to visualise her face. It floated unhindered wherever he looked. It seemed as though Greenlea itself was becoming impregnated with her features. Her eyes stared down towards him from each billboard they passed. Her mouth opened wide and inviting at each entrance, beneath the sequential concrete bridges, while her presence haunted the flyovers above and infiltrated their one-way systems. At the street intersections and beyond the traffic lights, her lips parted to connect the city’s flow with the intake and exhalation of her breath. She was visible everywhere. Buildings were defined by the stamp of her lineaments. Vacant lots were transformed by her beauty. Under her benevolent gaze, Antoine Viall disappeared and Lucas Jones emerged reborn.
‘Come to the Rag Market,’ she had said, and now here he was on his way, earlier than she had expected. Her words, her affirmative, ‘Yes I will see you,’ formed a descant to the ubiquity of her features and his retrieval and acceptance of his true past. They were a welcome refrain, an easy burden, a thread, which was leading him note by note into an unforeseen future while simultaneously changing and remedying all his previous deeds of bad faith. Walter and Emmet Briggs were no longer of any importance. Sylvia’s existence had cancelled them out. He felt so intoxicated with the prospect of meeting her, allied to his own newly found sense of being, that he decided to get off the tram and walk the rest of the way.
His knowledge of the city centre, apart from the immediate surroundings of Salonika Street and the Rag Market, was rudimentary. Walter and he had travelled everywhere else by car. The tram, he reckoned, had deposited him somewhere still to the north of his intended destination. As he walked, he searched the building walls for a street name but found none. Guessing which way was to the south, he continued following the tramlines to the nearest corner.
Through the door of a lit grocery store, he watched fascinated as Sylvia, her back towards him, reached over and picked an item from the topmost shelf. Farther along, beyond the narrow tiled entrance to a Turkish Baths, he imagined her rise resplendent from the water of its cold pool. Draping herself in a yellow towel, she greeted him, as she had already done that morning, with an eager embrace. He passed a cheap hotel, and looking upwards there she was, framed in the third-floor front bedroom window: the same kind of hotel where, after a single night, she had sat in her room, knowing that even its modest tariff was too great for her diminishing funds. Next door, above the Excelsior Cinema box office, the title of the now playing attraction The Loves Of Martha Hanrahan melted letter by letter into The Loves Of Sylvia Manjon.
The loves of Sylvia Manjon. Lucas had an uneasy feeling. The grocery store. The Turkish Baths. The cheap hotel room. Sunrise Tea & Coffee. A benefactor. Her words about him: ‘His only reward.’ He struggled to get the niggling possibility out of his mind. WENDE WILL BE FREE! The white painted slogan sprayed on the wall of H. Mavor & Sons Glove Manufacturers halted his speculation, but he failed to see Sylvia’s hand anymore around the aerosol, nor did her image immediately materialise in the adjoining stationer’s window. He turned the corner, looking for someone to ask for directions, and suddenly there she was, up ahead in front of two groups of pedestrians, her hair swinging in time to the rhythm of her shoulders, not as a figment of his wish fulfilment, but in the flesh with a green knapsack hanging down against her back. Exultantly, he quickened his pace and threaded his path between the men and women coming towards him. She was not alone when he managed to get a clear view. Andrew Guthrie, the man at the coffee stall, her benefactor, was walking and talking beside her.
*
The lobby of the Old Russia Hotel had seen better days. Sometime in the last decade someone had tried to bring it up to date, but with skewed results. Swirling patterns of declamatory oranges and equally strident blues made messy bedfellows on the walls and carpeting. High-backed tapestry-covered easy chairs appeared marooned in the large, unresolved space between the doors, the concierge desk and the stairs.
At the untended counter, Andrew Guthrie pressed the bell and waited impatiently until a pregnant brunette in a loose-fitting black and grey smock came out of her inner sanctuary. As soon as he asked for a room things moved quickly. She made out a bill for a one night stay and, with a cursory glance at Sylvia’s knapsack, shuffled the key to room 234 across to him, putting his cash payment in the till drawer.
He let Sylvia stride on ahead up the stairs. The sight of her loping vigour and youth intimated the promise of a sustained erection. In the corridor, her buttocks jiggled in front of him under the thin covering of her black Chinese peasant-style slacks. When he joined her in front of their do
or and turned the key, her small, bra-less breasts stood out in relief against her gauzy top.
The room was like thousands of others he had been in, designed precisely to utilise the same restricted space and provide the same standard, uniform fittings. He switched on the light of the bathroom crammed in the corner and inspected the washbasin mirror, WC and half-sized bath with a showerhead above the taps. When he returned, Sylvia had emptied the contents of her knapsack on the table by the bed: a packet of condoms, a tube of KY jelly, a circle of black masking tape and a pair of nail scissors. She had divested her top and dropped it on the floor. Her breasts were bare with her nipples as yet not erect. She slipped off her slacks and her minimal panties, while he removed his jacket, shoes, socks and shirt. Waiting until he, too, was naked, she cut off a strip of tape and, stretching up on tiptoe to reach his mouth, affixed it firmly to his lips. ‘Please keep it on,’ she said.
The tape tasted strange. How long did she want him like this, unable to speak? He breathed through his nose. He tried to caress her, but she avoided his grasp. Moving back towards him, she suddenly reached down and cradled his balls in both her hands. His eyes glanced over to the condoms on the table, but she shook her head. She knelt before him, her lips parted as her fingers continued to massage and rub the base of his extended member. He stroked her scalp and kneaded the nape of her neck and shoulders when finally her mouth closed in its O of acceptance. A perfect O, but an O which did not move, did not exert any pressure. It simply enclosed that which it had within its circumference. By now her hands had abandoned their cargo. He propped himself gently within the space which he sensed by common consent he would only partially fill. Her eyes were open but abstracted, as though in a void, her lips had simply formed an O to let the stuff of the world, whatever it was, enter unhindered for a second. He came. She received then withdrew her mouth without swallowing. His semen flowed, moistening his still erect penis. Drops fell on the carpet. Sylvia rose and went into the bathroom. He heard her run the tap and spit into the sink. The sound of the water continued for a moment or two then she returned and lay down on the bed, her arms behind her head.
In turn, he washed and dried himself, fitting on one of the condoms. He wanted to speak but knew while they were together they would not do so.
Even though his tongue was a prisoner, he put his head down to her bush. She pushed it away and gently did the same when his fingers tried to find her clitoris. Raising her legs, she grasped the small of his back with her thighs and moved against him as he thrust inwards. No sound came from her mouth. There was no change in her all-seeing eyes. He understood then that she was not going to let him have any of her youth or beauty. She was going to deny him any opportunity of worshipping at her altar. This was only a transaction between them, but a fuck was a fuck and in the way of the world he was as willing a fucker as any.
‘You must be hot in those stockings.’ His father’s hand had stayed on her slim, young leg a fraction longer than the conventions of hospitality allowed. Madame Morsom had audibly grumbled. Juliette had blushed then turned away. Batiste winked, a compliant wink, a wink of man to boy saying you desire her, but you see I can do this. Forgive you father for you have sinned.
He started to come. He raised his head away from hers. Still she made no sound. There was no possibility of recognition in her eyes. There was only her pelvis continuing to throb, only her receptive vagina wanting his cock, any cock perhaps that met with her choice. He withdrew and watched as she finished masturbating beside him, careless of his presence. Not even a tiny sigh escaped her lips at climax. Their eyes met again. She looked across the room to the chair where he had draped his trousers and for a moment her eyes held his fixedly until she inclined her head. In compliance, he got off the bed and unthreaded his belt, holding it coiled in front of him. Her eyes neither signalled yes nor no. Skirting the bed, he went into the bathroom, slipped off the used condom and dropped it in the bin. His reflection in the mirror held him trapped and pensive after the act. The stupid tape. He felt like ripping it off there and then, but whatever happened between them he knew he was committed to carry out her wishes to the end. Forgive her for she knows not what she does.
When he returned, Sylvia had rolled over on to her front. He climbed on the bed beside her. Tightening his grip and making sure the buckle of the belt was held in his palm, he rested it dangling gently against her cheek. Contrary to his expectations, she did not turn her head to kiss or caress it nor moisten it with her lips. He struck her lightly twice between her shoulder blades then moved it down to stroke her ribs. He had always adored the backs of women, the curve and hollow of their spines down to their waist and the jut of their buttocks. A hand always fitted there. His hand had rested there time after time before and after copulation. Suddenly in anger because of her relentless passivity, he slid his legs over the side of the bed and dragged her listless body across his. Her buttocks were apple-shaped. He hit their summit with the flat of his hand and struck again harder on their fullness. Her head was pressed against the sheet. She made no attempt to wriggle free. He realised whatever he did she was going to accept it. He felt for the belt and brought it down hard on her. She gave no sign of feeling any pain. Numbly, he knew he could thrash her until she cried for mercy or at least betrayed some sensation, but at the same time he knew he could not do it. The nearness of her sex had given him another erection.
He slid her off him and got out another condom. When he turned, she had not changed her position. He fitted on the condom, picked up the jelly, rubbed it over the sheath and gently massaging and moving the cheeks of her behind, pulled her into position and inserted his penis. Forgive me mother for I have sinned.
How he had wanted to overcome his timidity when Juliette opened the cupboard door and bent down in the enclosed space to search for the right bottle. How he had wanted to place, only to place, his hand on her thigh, to go no further because that was out of the question and beyond his boyish powers. Even without touching her, he had felt her heat, the overpowering warmth of her body. Then she had found the bottle, straightened up, turned to him and laughed, seeing his embarrassment as she looked pointedly and good-naturedly at his stiffening crotch. For we do these things. Thrust in. Thrust again. Had Taji Mohammed died in a room like this? No, not like this. His would have been an even simpler room with linoleum on the floor, a cheap cast-off wardrobe against the wall and a bed with a sagging mattress. He did not have a girl with him to fuck before he killed himself, not even one of the whores hanging about the Passage Ducasse. Not even his trombone was with him. It had stayed locked in its case where he had left it at the station. He, though, now had this beautiful young woman to fuck, to traduce, to defile, just as he had expectantly opened the case and wonderingly pressed his lips to the mouthpiece, letting his fingers play over the stops. The sound, the sound, the beautiful sound that you could make but never really hear for yourself, not even with the aid of heroin as others had told him. The sound that only your listeners could hear, and most of them did not truly listen. They were preoccupied with other things so the sound faded away and, though it might be reprised or re-made, it was never the same. The last time he had lain with Sula. The last time, without saying anything, he had left, and now this young woman’s arse, whose every contour, every facet, he could say he saw and absorbed as it twitched and turned to the drive of his cock, yet was still unknown to him, beyond his powers of comprehension, just as Sula, himself and Sylvia here under him totally were.
Again he was done. He had signed the contract, as they used to say in Miranda. It was over. He withdrew and released her. At the same time, he tugged the tape away from his mouth, but he did not speak. His mouth held the taste of overripe figs. His lips exuded gunge.
Sylvia lay on her back, her eyes staring at the ceiling, showing no discomfort as if he had never beaten her. ‘Wee wee,’ she said in a forced childish tone then added, ‘pee on me,’ in Mirandan. He shook his head and went into the bathroom. She said it ag
ain when he came back.
He spoke for the first time. ‘No. It’s not possible.’
‘You pee here.’ She laid the tip of her index finger against each of her eyelids then closed her eyes. Wearily, he discarded the condom and raised his penis onto her forehead and trailed it down her nose. ‘I can’t.’
‘Think of water. Think of a watering can sprinkling a rose bush. Its finest spray reaches the bloom.’
Forgive me mother for at heart I am a no good bum, a nomad, who until now has never unpacked his things, his gathered detritus of the world.
A dribble of urine lay on her left eyelid. A splatter fell on her cheek. He raised himself, his cock in his right hand. He aimed it over her face, against her neck, across her breasts, down to her navel and into her bush then over her legs, each foot and back, after anointing the sheet, to those eyes, which, although shut, would see more than his, long after his had ceased to see. Bless you daughter for yours is the kingdom of heaven. Now there’s only the coda left, he thought.
Sylvia rose and went into the bathroom. Guthrie listened while he heard the shower beat against the enamel of the bath. The water would soon sluice away the traces of his urine. Its flow would restore her body, sluice by sluice, into whatever it was she planned for it this evening and night, whether to be with her lover or to be by herself, or to be once more with someone like him.
She re-emerged still naked with a towel in her hand. ‘Dry me,’ she said.
He was grateful for her words. He draped the towel over her shoulders and rubbed it gently against her skin. Her buttocks still bore the red marks he had given her. He knelt down and dried the fronts and backs of her legs. When he finished with her feet, he lifted his head to kiss her ankles and calves, but she forbade him. ‘Don’t kiss.’ She leant down and took the towel from him, drying her breasts and her sex. When she finished, she moved across to her knapsack, took out her wallet, counted out some notes and left them on the table. ‘For the room,’ she said. ‘I don’t have enough for the service.’