Joyful

by Robert Hillman

  Professor Delli closed his eyes. When he opened them again, his gaze was still on the hills. His lips moved but he made no sound. Then he looked at Leon.

  ‘Joyce?’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’

  The professor’s gaze took on a shocking candour.

  ‘You see how it is for me,’ he said. He held his arms away from his body as if in emphasis.

  The professor’s candour invited reciprocation. In all the hours of his life before this one, Leon would have rejected the invitation. Now he let his own gaze reveal that he too was mortal wreckage, washed up on the same beach as Professor Delli. In the way that the caste-conscious discern in each other the stamp of rank and know what is acceptable and what is not, both men concurred silently that standing naked in the rain cawing like a raven could be accommodated by the customs of their type. Covering the interior of a large house with mournful scribble might be accepted in the same way.

  ‘Joyce,’ said the professor. ‘What has become of us?’

  =

  He came to Joyful, the professor, on foot and still unclothed. It was only when he and his wife and Leon were within the house that he was prepared to accept any comfort. He allowed Leon to drape an orange blanket over his shoulders and draw it close around him. Daanya Delli changed from her wet clothes into a pullover of Leon’s and a pair of his summer trousers, held up with one of his ties fitted through the belt loops.

  Leon boiled the jug and made tea. They sat at the kitchen table, the three of them. The rain drummed on the porthole windows. The professor’s gaze roamed over what was written on the walls, on the table’s surface. Clasping the orange blanket at his chest, he looked at Leon and smiled.

  Daanya picked up from the floor at her feet a little book made of fabric, each page fattened with stuffing. She raised her eyebrows in inquiry.

  ‘I had a visitor,’ said Leon.

  The fabric pages were brightly printed with pictures and text. Edith Duck went to market with a basket. She met friends along the way. Each friend—horse, goose, hen, pig, cat—asked her where she was off to. She said, each time, ‘It’s market day! Are you going my way?’ Her friends followed her to market and added items to Edith’s basket, until it was full to overflowing. It had been a busy day and the animals were tired. The hen said, ‘It’s a long way home that we must roam!’ The horse, Hector, invited all the animals to travel on his back.

  Daanya, when she’d turned all the pages, placed the book on the table. The professor leaned forward, the better to study the picture on the cover. He freed a hand from the blanket and opened the book at the first page.

  ‘Sofia had a book like this,’ he said. He was silent for a time, then added: ‘As I recall.’

  chapter 33

  Night

  DAANYA SAID yes, she would accept Leon’s offer to stay the night. Where else could they go? But Daanya would not deprive Leon of the one mattress in the house. If there were blankets enough, she and the professor would make a bed on the floor somewhere. And so they did.

  Leon slept in fits and starts, always waking to the sound of the wind stirring the foliage of the chestnuts. But when he woke in the dark for the sixth or seventh time it was to a different sound far off, one he couldn’t place. He listened closely. Someone was weeping—it would have to be Daanya or the professor, and was not as far away as he’d first thought.

  He slipped from under his blanket, made his way on bare feet to the hallway and stood with his ears pricked in the darkness. The weeping rose and fell. At its quietest it made him think of the whisper between tracks on a vinyl record. He crept to the observatory where Emmanuel and Daanya had made their bed. He could see nothing. He took a few cautious steps into the room and murmured Daanya’s name. No reply. He said again: ‘Daanya, are you there?’ Now he could make out the paler shape of the window. Maybe the sound of breathing.

  He felt his way down the hallway, unwilling to turn on a light. His fingertips ran over the sanded panels he had covered in messages to Tess. He paused and listened, trying to gauge whether he was going towards the weeping or not. It was impossible to tell. Whenever the wind gusted the sound disappeared altogether. The thought came to him that Tess herself was weeping, for all the years of life and breathing that her illness had destroyed or for her folly in loving Daniel Mikolajczyk. She might say: ‘Leon dearest, what a travesty, my time in this house with Mikolajczyk. Can you forgive me?’ Or she might say: ‘I will come each night at the darkest time and you will console me.’ The thrill started in him that the darkness will conjure when we cross a frontier and choose to believe what cannot be true. We might even risk speech, communion, as Leon did now: ‘Tess? Tess, darling?’ He was in the library. His hand glided over the racks on the wall that had once held billiard cues. The weeping was closer now—was it really? It was closer. He heard the intake of breath. At each open door along the passage past the library he stopped to judge how near or how far.

  One of the doors was closed. It was from the room behind this door that the weeping was coming.

  It was not Tess; how could it be? Leon’s fantasy faded in an instant. He might almost have retraced his steps back to his bedroom, but didn’t. He opened the door slowly. The hinges groaned; the weeping ceased.

  He remained where he was, neither in the room nor outside. Breathing rippled in the darkness. He said nothing but at least stood in solidarity with the breather. The dying moon yielded something almost too faint to be called light through the small, square windows of coloured glass on the far wall, gone in seconds. But it fashioned a shape for a moment, very dim, more human than not.

  It seemed to Leon that he could say nothing of any worth, and was glad of that. He stood completely still and let his silence take the place of the sympathy he would never be able to express. And whether it was true or not, he believed that all he did not say or could not say was valued by the breather. Leon thought: What will happen? What will I do next? He did nothing next. He stood still.

  For some reason Leon found himself thinking for a moment and longer not of the invisible person breathing on the far side of the room but of the little girl Goldy on her hands and knees, and of the deliberate way she moved left hand, right knee, right hand, left knee, her eyes blazing like searchlights. Almost as soon as he became conscious of what he was thinking it was gone, it fled, Goldy fled. He was alone again in the lightless room with a person who had sobbed until silence came.

  He turned and found his gradual way back to his mattress. He stopped on his way at the observatory door. The rain had gone and the window briefly let in more light here than anywhere else in the house. He could make out Daanya sound asleep on her back, arms thrown wide at each side as if she were breasting a tape in her dreams.

  =

  He slept until well past six, later than usual. He thought immediately of the weeping figure, then of Tess. As if they had been shaped in sleep, he found himself murmuring the words: ‘She didn’t love you, not at first or last or ever.’ No pain, no grimace, no denial. Because it didn’t matter. The whole vast business of Tess, the years of it, the longing and agony, that was all him. When Tess had said, ‘I do love you, dear person,’ it was only her saying, ‘It’s not intolerable to be with you, not at all; some things you do and say are pleasing and welcome.’ That was all, and it didn’t matter. It was true of many people that the best of them only ever comes to life in the imagination of another. No pain, because now what he loved in Tess did not rely on any confirmation by others, nor on the purchase of people’s experience of her nor on bonfires under the chestnuts nor miles and miles of words on floorboards and wall panels.

  Emmanuel Delli appeared at the door wrapped in the orange blanket Leon had given him the previous evening. ‘I heard you stir in your sleep a few minutes ago,’ he said. ‘There’s a cup of tea beside you.’

  ‘So there is,’ said Leon.

  The professor took a few steps into the room clasping the blanket at his chest. ‘Leon,’ he said, ‘may I ask
you a favour?’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘Would you permit my wife and me to stay here a day or two longer?’

  ‘Of course.’

  The professor nodded his thanks. Then he looked at Leon with a renewal of the candour they’d shown each other in the rain.

  ‘I have so much to thank you for,’ he said. The candour did not extend to any talk of weeping.

  ‘Do you know,’ he said, shuffling over to the window, ‘Daanya and I used this bedroom when we lived here.’

  ‘No, I didn’t know. Where is Daanya?’

  The professor fell silent, gazing down through the dusty glass. Leon, as always in his life, was more comfortable with the silence than with conversation.

  Without turning the professor said quietly: ‘The shame.’

  This time the silence lasted long enough for Leon to pick up his cup of tea.

  ‘Daanya has gone into the town,’ said the professor, still looking through the window. ‘To the bakery. It opens early.’ Now Emmanuel looked back at Leon and asked with a puzzled frown: ‘Did you think Daanya seemed happy last evening? Oh she was wet through, the poor darling, but did you not think she seemed happy, somehow?’

  Leon thought for a few moments. ‘I suppose she did, yes,’ he said. ‘And younger, quite young for some reason.’

  The professor dabbed at his nose with the satin hem of the blanket. And realised. ‘Oh my dear fellow!—I will have it dry-cleaned, I most certainly will!’

  ‘Emmanuel, not at all, please.’

  Now the professor wiped his eyes with his hand. ‘I must make myself more presentable today,’ he said. ‘My father, you know, had himself shaved twice a day. At seven o’clock in the morning and at three o’clock in the afternoon. In his younger years he was said to be the most handsome man in Iraq. Vanity. You know Leon, the first thing a vain father passes on to his son is that very vanity. I have been vain all my life. Absurd.’

  The professor stood with his head bowed, the orange blanket clasped at his chest. He looked haggard in the thin light from the window. He reached his free hand out from under the orange blanket and touched the lines of Leon’s messages to Tess with the tips of his fingers. ‘Do you know the story of my son’s murder?’ he said.

  ‘A little of it,’ said Leon.

  ‘The prosecutor insisted it was a dispute between Kurds,’ he said. ‘All politics, rival groups. Excellent propaganda for the Turks at that time. And I…acquiesced. And that is the shameful thing. The truth was quite another matter, you know. The wild fellow who shot Joseph was the father of his lover. A man with even more disgust than I. He shot his own son, too, the father. A carnival of shame.’

  Leon roused himself from bed to offer Emmanuel trousers and shirt and some slip-on shoes that achieved no more than an approximate fit.

  =

  That night Leon again slept fitfully. At each waking he listened for the sound of weeping but heard nothing. The rain was well gone and in place of the wind just that mild surging and ebbing of the night air in the foliage of the chestnuts. He left his bed before dawn and made his way in silence to the observatory. Moonlight shone on Daanya’s sleeping face and along the length of one bare leg. His impulse was to cover the leg but he didn’t risk it, instead stealing through the library to the rooms along the eastern side of the house. The door that had been closed the previous night was closed again. He opened it to the same creak of the hinges and stood in silence. The moonlight this time gave greater distinction to the figure beside the window wrapped in a blanket. No words were spoken. After a long period of listening, each to the breathing of the other, Leon returned to his bed, closed his eyes and fell instantly into a sleep that lasted until the full blaze of the sun filled the window.

  =

  Daanya drove to the depot in Chiltern where the Dellis’ belongings were stored and returned with clothing and books. The professor in the past would have worn collar, tie and jacket in all weathers but instead chose slacks with a faded yellow T-shirt left behind by Lucas. The flowing script on the chest of the shirt read: black is the new black. He took a special delight in the garment.

  Emmanuel kept close to Leon, maybe without realising. He was reading his way through The Prelude again in a Modern Library paperback edition of Wordsworth’s collected poems. Wherever he found Leon doing whatever Leon was doing (nothing) he sat down and opened his book.

  It was at one of these times of reading Wordsworth on the verandah close to where Leon sat dreaming of oblivion that the professor suddenly put his book aside and reached for Leon’s hand. Leon had only an instant to withdraw his hand if he wished—only an instant but time enough. He didn’t take the opportunity. The professor’s grip was as uncomfortably sincere as he’d feared.

  ‘Will you come with me to the town?’ said Emmanuel.

  ‘To the town?’ said Leon. ‘Why?’

  ‘No, I shouldn’t ask. So much kindness already. I’ll go alone.’

  ‘You’d like me to go with you to Yackandandah?’

  ‘Beechworth. Too far. Forgive me. Unless you’d wish to.’

  Leon, with all the enthusiasm of a man agreeing to poke himself in the eye with a sharp stick, said he would go with the professor if it was important to him.

  ‘Important? Yes, most important. If I might impose on you? As a witness, if you would?’

  ‘As a witness?’ said Leon.

  ‘A mission of apology,’ said the professor. ‘Mister Singh in Beechworth. His daughter, you know. Things I said. Frightful.’

  ‘And Daanya?’ said Leon. Daanya was on hand, but wandering about the property in a way that seemed to please her.

  ‘Daanya certainly. But you too.’

  =

  The professor’s apology to the Singh family could not have been more heartfelt, more complete. And yet Leon, in his role as witness, could only imagine that a short note in the mail would have been more welcome to Courtney’s parents. Ananda Singh in his vivid blue turban sat stiffly on a damask sofa with his hands folded in his lap. Verity Singh sat at her husband’s side, a perfect match in unease. Courtney herself breezed in and out of the meeting looking plump and pregnant. Every time the refrigerator door slammed it signalled one of her brief saunters through the room with her mouth full.

  Her father said: ‘Courtney, Mister Delli has made an apology for the way he conducted himself when you were…in other places.’

  ‘That’s okay,’ said Courtney. She started upstairs (the house was imitation Queen Anne, two floors and an attic) but then turned and asked with a smile: ‘Do you want to see my room? I swapped for Mum and Dad’s.’

  Emmanuel couldn’t accept such an invitation; of course not. He looked at Ananda Singh, not sure what to say.

  ‘Later perhaps,’ said Courtney’s father.

  ‘She may seem to have emerged unscathed,’ said Verity Singh once her daughter had disappeared upstairs and her door had closed. ‘But deep down…’

  Ananda Singh gave a soft hoot. ‘There is no deep down in the girl,’ he said. ‘She is keeping the baby. That is all that concerns her.’

  Saying goodbye at the front door, Ananda Singh, a towering figure, shook Emmanuel’s hand and said that he was ‘very appreciative of this visit you have made’. He said that he knew of Emmanuel’s own tragic loss. Leon, keeping well out of range of any handshakes aimed at him, hoped with all his heart that the professor wouldn’t give in to emotion. He needn’t have worried. Emmanuel made a small, dignified bow and said nothing more than, ‘I thank you, sir, for accepting me.’

  =

  Leon went that night back to the room with the closed door. This time the moonlight reached into every corner. He could see no figure and could hear no breathing. He was disappointed to be alone. The moonlight was so full that the writing on the walls and floors could be read, or almost.

  A low moaning sound startled him out of his torpor of disappointment. He crept to the passage and across the library to the hallway. He waited and listened and h
eard it again, as rhythmic as singing. The observatory door was the only one in the house too stiff on its hinges to shut. From the darkness of the hallway he saw Daanya with her dark hair flowing, rocking and rising on her husband. Emmanuel’s hands were spread on the swell of his wife’s hips. As Leon watched, Daanya lowered her head and took her husband’s face in her hands to kiss him.

  =

  The understanding evolved that the Dellis would stay for as long as they wished. Daanya prayed in the observatory, took walks with her husband, cooked Kurdish fare each day, made visits of three and four hours to the clinic in Wangaratta. Her contentment, to Leon at least, was just a tiny bit horrible.

  And Emmanuel. Worse. The professor had steadily gained peace, like a rescued starveling gaining flesh on a diet of broth and lamb chops. He held Daanya’s hand, embraced her, farewelled her in the morning with a kiss, welcomed her home. It wounded Leon when the professor called from the balcony, ‘Glorious day!’ He wanted to shout back, ‘Yes, the sun’s out, please don’t talk to me anymore!’ The man’s daughter was horribly dead, and his son. What sort of grotesque consolation was fair weather?

  Soon enough, however, Daanya sought Leon out in the kitchen to say that she and Emmanuel would take their leave mid-week. ‘We’ve imposed on you too long. A month, a bit more.’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Leon.

  ‘Leon, we are returning to our house in Northcote. I think we must.’

  ‘Emmanuel will resume university life?’

  ‘I hope so. Leon…’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘May I say something?’

  Leon didn’t reply for the moment. Then he said, ‘Would you mind if I declined? I hope that doesn’t seem rude.’