Goodbye Lucille

by Segun Afolabi

  We were all sluggish on the journey back to town. People dragged about like drowsy bluebottles. All the heat and food and energy expended seemed to have sapped the collective spirit. It was like watching a film in slow motion, the edges blurred, the silence surreal. I felt the sun weaken as the day began to wane. No one shouted at their children or fanned themselves frenetically. Only a few reedy voices could be heard above the chatter of the train. A woman sitting next to me sneezed five times in rapid succession. She unfolded a paper napkin and blew her nose. Shards of material flew in all directions like tiny snowflakes swirling in the late afternoon sun. Famke rested her head against Tunde while they spoke in a barely audible murmur. Her hand rested on his thigh and he stroked her hair tenderly. I wondered what would become of Isabel, whether Famke would last the summer. Angelika stared out of the window while Lucille pretended to doze.

  ‘We should come here again one day,’ B said to me. I smiled. He looked across at Angelika, but she refused to acknowledge him.

  9

  IT WAS LATE by the time I returned from the Rio. I couldn’t remember saying goodbye to Clariss or B, whether they had left me or I had left them.

  I was having difficulty with the front door. I stood on the pavement flicking through my bunch of keys. It seemed a simple enough task, but I couldn’t locate the appropriate one. I belched and the evening came back to me in a warm, beery cloud.

  I caught a glimpse of movement from the corner of Frau Lieser’s ground floor window. I turned to look and a head shot back inside. When I managed to let myself in, I tripped on the threshold and fell into the hall. I felt no pain, but I cried out in surprise. Then the barking began. The door to Frau Lieser’s apartment drew open a crack. I looked up at a slit of face peering down at me, a thin, craggy, ghostly white face.

  ‘Who’s there?’ the face uttered in a strangulated whisper. ‘Who’s there?’

  The door opened wider and another voice started. ‘What’s happening out there? What’s all that racket?’

  The second voice belonged to Frau Lieser even though I could not see her face. She was obscured behind the figure of the first. I sat up to confront Frau Bowker.

  ‘What are you doing down there, young man?’ she growled when she realized who it was. She didn’t seem as frightened as before. ‘Why’s the young man sitting on the floor?’ she demanded to no one in particular. Schnapps slipped out of the apartment and confronted me with little yaps.

  Frau Lieser squeezed past her friend and ventured into the hall in her nightdress.

  ‘Heavens!’ she said. ‘You gave us both a fright.’

  ‘Your floors … I’m sorry, Frau Lieser … your floors …very slippery … you polish them so well.’ I could hear my words attempting to follow a straight line, trying to navigate themselves, failing miserably. Schnapps would not be quiet.

  ‘But you didn’t polish today, did you?’ Frau Bowker demanded.

  ‘Dear me, I can’t remember.’ Frau Lieser reddened.

  ‘There’s been no polishing today, young man,’ Frau Bowker snarled. A deep gurgle leapt out from the back of her throat, which only encouraged Schnapps.

  ‘We were in the middle of our sing-song,’ Frau Lieser explained, trying to pacify her friend. ‘We heard a noise. Maybe someone has broken in, we thought.’

  ‘No … just me,’ I said. ‘Always forget about your polish …’ I paused and looked up at the two elderly women. ‘Won’t happen again …Promise!’

  ‘No, not a problem, really,’ Frau Lieser said. ‘You’re quite right. Yes, perhaps I won’t be so thorough next time. After all, I can’t afford to have young people breaking their bones …Vincent?’

  I must have passed out and come to again, because there she was, still barking at me as if I were the devil himself. It didn’t surprise me; I always assumed Schnapps was a stupid dog.

  ‘Aren’t you getting up? … Why’s the young man sitting on the floor?’ Frau Bowker asked, as if she had only then noticed me. ‘What with the police and the fire brigade and people trooping up and down the stairs all day long – what’s the world coming to?’ She let out a shrill cry. ‘It’s too distressing. We want to live in peace.’ She swirled about. ‘We see them, young man, coming and going, from the window. Don’t think we don’t know. Police driving by every hour, men wearing women’s clothes, people with blue hair, and the stupid one – you can hardly understand what he’s saying. And drunkards!’

  ‘What’s the problem?’ I said. ‘You’re …’ I tried to continue, but the words wouldn’t arrive. I belched again and a fountain of vomit threatened to leap past my throat. I didn’t see what any of it had to do with Frau Bowker. She glared viciously at me as if she were about to burst.

  ‘Ausländer!’ she spat. She stamped her doll’s foot against the parquet floor, but it only emerged as a nervous tic.

  ‘Time to go back to our sing-song, Elsa,’ Frau Lieser said, tussling a little with her friend. Frau Bowker wasn’t at all pleased at this intervention, but the mass of her friend’s body was no match for her own slight frame. Schnapps was still yelping and skipping to and fro, happy now with the bedlam. She often hobbled and implored to be carried, but when she grew excited, the imaginary years fell away and the legs became pistons, her bark as fierce as a Rottweiler’s.

  ‘Foreigners!’ Frau Bowker screeched once more from behind the closing door. Schnapps let out another yelp and I could hear her scamper into the sitting room, then scramble back, pawing at the door.

  I turned over onto my hands and knees and dragged myself into a standing position. As I climbed the stairs I could hear the beginning of one of Frau Lieser’s songs. She didn’t know many tunes and I guessed Für Elise as soon as the first bars were played. The old women made up their own lyrics. I could not tell whether Frau Bowker had started to sing, but her thin, reedy voice was seldom audible above the sound of the piano. I listened for a moment on the landing outside my apartment and then went in.

  ‘What happened to you?’ Lucille asked. ‘Where’ve you been all this time?’

  ‘Out,’ I grunted.

  ‘Out? What d’you mean out? You disappear for half the day and all you can say is out.’ She stood up and sat down again, but her mouth kept moving.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ I groaned. On the radio Sarah Vaughan was singing It Shouldn’t Happen to a Dream. I couldn’t focus on Lucille’s words. Out, out, out she seemed to be shouting and then she started bickering in a way I thought would soon bring on a headache. I only wanted to listen to the song. I closed my eyes and tried to think of something to take me away.

  The music reminded me of Uncle Raymond, the slow drunken way he moved his gangling body when he danced with Aunt Ama or one of his children. I remembered the funeral, how he had approached me in the garden that late afternoon. He drew me aside during a quiet moment, after the burials, after most of the food had been consumed and people had started to drift back to their homes. Others milled about morosely with nothing particularly useful to do or say. Uncle Raymond had been drinking steadily all afternoon and now his eyes were bloodshot and moist.

  ‘Well, it’s just you and Matthew now,’ he said, matter of fact, trying but failing to look me in the eye. He kept shifting his weight from one foot to the other. I remember aching for him to stop, to stand still. ‘You will need to look after each other now. From now on. You will need to get along, okay?’ He would already have had a similar talk with Matty.

  It felt strange to hear him say those words because I felt I still needed looking after. I felt I, and Matty for that matter, did not know enough about the world to be responsible for anyone else. But I looked down at my Sunday shoes, which I had polished to a metallic gleam the night before, and obediently replied, ‘Yes, Uncle Raymond.’ And he smiled and said, ‘Good boy,’ because, after all, that was what he had wanted to hear.

  ‘You’re not even listening to me, are you?’ Lucille said. ‘I could be talking to myself for all I know.’

 
‘Probably,’ I said.

  She glared at me. ‘You’re drunk!’

  ‘Listen Luce, I’m really tired …I just want to go to sleep.’

  ‘You never listen, do you? Everything simply passes you by. Water off a duck’s back.’

  ‘A duck’s back?’ I said, swimming back to things. ‘What are you saying?’

  She sat across from me, arms folded.

  ‘Let’s just go to bed, Luce,’ I pleaded. ‘Let’s talk in the morning.’

  She stood up, twisting her hair in one hand. ‘What the hell am I doing here?’ She walked out of the room and in a moment the apartment door slammed shut.

  In the ensuing calm I became aware of noises from the floor above – moans and stifled screams, the sounds of bodies thumping across the room. It sounded as if there were multiple murders being carried out, but it was only sexual frenzy. I could only guess what Dieter, Caroline and their friends were doing. It would be at least half an hour before they either wore themselves out or killed each other. For once I wasn’t annoyed. They seemed to have the right idea. I stood up and paced around the apartment.

  It seemed odd we had been together for this long and yet Lucille did not know me. I knew her well enough, I thought, but it seemed unfair somehow for me to be so strange to her after all this time.

  When she returned thirty minutes later, she went straight to the bedroom and locked the door. I walked slowly through the apartment turning off all the lights. As I bolted the front door and put the chain in the latch, I could make out, very faintly, the tinkle of the piano filtering up through the floors.

  A cool breeze slipped through the window and slid gently over me. The net curtains billowed. The sounds from the street were slick and seamless. I opened my eyes and panicked for a moment. For an instant I thought I was somewhere else: another city, a forgotten country. Then the table legs loomed and I heard the disgruntled shudder of the refrigerator. Sleeping on the kitchen floor was never a sign that things were going well.

  I sat up and looked out of the window, expecting rain. Instead the sun beat down defiantly. It made me feel tired and heavy.

  A sixth sense made me turn round. ‘How long have you been there?’ I rubbed the sleep from my eyes.

  ‘Not long,’ Lucille replied. ‘I’m going to have a bath.’ She got up and left the room.

  I stayed hunched on the floor in my warm spot and drifted to sleep again and when I woke, Lucille was still in the bathroom. I sat up and hugged my knees. My temples throbbed after the alcohol of the night before. When Lucille had finished bathing she returned to the kitchen wearing a raspberry-coloured halter-neck dress.

  ‘Coffee?’ I asked.

  She didn’t answer, but I poured her a cup anyway. We sat in silence for several minutes. My shoulders ached.

  ‘Why are you limping?’ she asked.

  ‘Probably from the floor …from sleeping on the floor.’

  ‘Ah – I thought it might be from when you fell over. Your landlady said you fell over in the hall last night.’

  ‘Did she?’ I couldn’t remember. Dust motes danced in the beams of light that fell across the kitchen. I had a hazy recollection of a face peering down at me from a doorway. A crazed dog.

  ‘She said you were blind drunk.’

  ‘I fell. So what?’ I sighed. ‘You’ve never fallen before?’

  ‘That’s not the point.’

  ‘What is the point?’

  ‘What do you mean “what’s the point”! What is wrong with you!’

  It was a shouting match already and it did not surprise me.

  ‘You’re drinking too much … I need more than this, Vincent! You’ve got hardly any money, and this … this awful building.’ She waved a hand at the apartment. ‘It’s not …it’s not enough.’

  ‘Money, is it now? Is that what this is all about?’

  ‘Don’t try to evade the issue. You know what I’m talking about.’

  ‘I know exactly what you’re saying. It’s all you really care about when it comes down to it. Money, status – all of that. Well, fine. Fuck it. You know, there are plenty of women out there who don’t give a shit about money. Just don’t dress this up into something it’s not.’

  ‘Listen,’ she laughed a little maniacally. ‘It’s got nothing to do with money, once and for all, so don’t try and convince yourself that it has. And don’t ever talk to me about other women again or I’ll slap you into next week.’

  All I could think of was Uncle Raymond and how that used to be his phrase. ‘I’ll slap you into next week,’ he would warn, ‘and you won’t be smiling any more, believe me.’ It brought to the surface how much I had hated him, how I still hated him after all this time. It occurred to me that whenever I was angry I began to think of Uncle Raymond and whenever I thought of Uncle Raymond, I was usually irate. I don’t know why this should have been, but it unsettled me.

  We argued and I walked out and when I returned Lucille had packed her things. I didn’t try to stop her – it would have been futile in any case. When she left it was without commitment to the future on either side.

  At the last minute I said, ‘You know how it is. I didn’t mean to get carried away. Sometimes I just …I can’t help it. It won’t happen again.’ But I said it without conviction and she wasn’t really listening anyway.

  10

  WHEN I ARRIVED at Zip, Thomas’s secretary was in the middle of a telephone conversation that didn’t appear to be work-related.

  ‘Well, we must meet up soon,’ she kept repeating. I could hear the excitement in her voice peak and dip, in a kind of rhythmic cycle.

  ‘Let’s meet up soon,’ she said again. She glanced up at me, then started patting the air with her free hand, as if dribbling a basketball. She drew the receiver a fraction away from her ear so I could see she was making an effort to attend to me. Then she clasped it to her head again and narrowed her eyes in renewed concentration.

  ‘One moment, Tina,’ the secretary said, turning to me in annoyance. ‘You’ve come to see Thomas, yes?’ she asked hurriedly.

  ‘Vincent. I phoned this morning.’ I held up my portfolio. ‘He said to come before noon.’

  ‘Oh, that’s right. Yes. Go right on in then,’ she said. ‘He’s expecting you.’

  I hesitated, unsure whether to take her at her word, but when I glanced back she had resumed her conversation. I knocked on the door, but couldn’t discern a reply, although I could make out a voice on the other side. I turned to appeal to the secretary who only looked up, made a waving motion to usher me in, but did not break her conversation.

  As I creaked open the door I could hear Thomas speaking in raised tones. He too was in the middle of a telephone call. I looked from him to the secretary and it occurred to me they might be talking to each other. Thomas glanced up and waved me in. It felt awkward listening to his conversation. I sat down and looked about the office in an effort to appear preoccupied. There was a cactus on a corner of his desk, and begonias and ferns dotted along both windowsills. A potted palm occupied a corner of the room. It didn’t look like the territory of a picture editor. The only decorations on the walls were a large poster of The Seven Year Itch and two framed book covers, which I assumed Thomas had illustrated – Alfred Dressler’s Collected Stories, and The Winter Waltz by Cornelia Düring. The Düring was a photograph of a white-gowned woman dancing in the snow with an imaginary partner. I thought he had borrowed the idea from a painting, but the title escaped me.

  ‘Why don’t you reconsider?’ Thomas was saying. ‘The terms we offer are quite standard … Frankly Jürgen, I’m not one hundred per cent satisfied with the presentation …If I remember correctly, we agreed on something altogether different in the brief.’ There was a long pause and Thomas twisted the tips of his moustache, one after the other, absent-mindedly. ‘Why don’t I give you some time to reconsider?’ He was straining to keep his voice under control. He looked up at me. I smiled and turned towards the potted palm.

  I wa
s sitting on a black leather sofa three feet away from a coffee table buried in back issues of Zip. I picked up a copy, but could not focus on it. I was concentrating hard on trying not to listen to Thomas, but it only had the opposite effect. His voice rose, but he didn’t seem to be getting anywhere. Then in the middle of his tirade he said, ‘Oh?’ very quietly. I assumed the person on the other end of the line had hung up, but, in an effort to cover the indignity, Thomas continued to talk in a stilted, perfunctory manner. He ended with, ‘Well, till next time Jürgen. Till next time. Goodbye. Bye.’

  It felt odd sitting there, pretending I hadn’t heard one side of the discussion, then witnessing his humiliation.

  ‘Well then.’ Thomas pulled his fingers through his long grey hair and growled, then shook his head free of the telephone conversation. Marie had said he was forty-five, but he looked older to me. ‘Finally we meet. Sagemuller’s told me all about you.’

  I wondered who he was talking about, until I remembered Marie.

  ‘Let’s see what you’ve got there.’

  I clutched my portfolio. I had half a mind to tell him I needed to leave and would only return when he was in a better frame of mind. I didn’t think he was calm enough to be able to make impartial judgement. But I was there after all and after disappointing him already, I thought it doubtful I would get another chance.

  ‘Well,’ I said, trying to smile, giving him instead a kind of grimace. ‘Why don’t we start at the beginning.’

  ‘Not there!’ Clariss screeched, protecting the seat next to her. ‘That one’s taken. Pull up a chair.’ She pointed to an adjacent table.

  I peered round the room. ‘Who’s your guest? Someone I know?’

  ‘Nosy. You’ll see in a minute,’ she said. ‘Now hush and tell me what you’ve been up to, you and Lucy? Where is she anyway?’

  I looked at her, then turned to the passing waitress. ‘Ah, there you are,’ I said.