There is no understanding from the creature that his strength is what you need. How happy it would make you to fall asleep with the heart of this animal beating on your chest. The loyalty of man and dog, and the simple pleasure it gives. And through sleep how his sporadic whining would tell you everything you didn’t know about the city. All that you had missed. You were lying on the ground, warm and damp, because otherwise you couldn’t be sure of where you were. You couldn’t trust your eyes. You needed the dog to tell you. But he would not come.
BEN IS BEGUILED, the same as you. After a week he leaves for the city to collect clothes and check on the gallery. He plans to redirect his work to the house for as long as it takes until the painting is finished. A second phone line is arranged for one of the upstairs rooms.
– So the gallery can always keep in touch with me without clogging your line. I’d feel less of a nuisance this way.
– No one rings the house. We don’t even know if there’ll be a painting. We’re just casting off, is all.
– Anna, let me. Please. I live in fear of being a bad house guest.
In waiting, anticipation sweeps the house. Vishni works through a list of jobs she wishes had been completed the night he arrived. From lifting furniture, to beating the rugs in the yard, to the endless possible combination of vase and jug placed on the dresser. She moves like a typhoon, one small touch after another designed to make his room homely. I’m drawn in despite myself, taking the stepladder to hang a pair of thickly lined curtains according to her instruction, and change the lampshade over the bed. Our movement seems faster than usual, our coordination more nimble. I am breathless with the exertion of moving up and down the ladder; chest hot with resentment at the pleasure I feel once I have finished. The room no longer looks like an afterthought; it has the feeling of an actual residence, with its low lamps, washstand and small armchair. Still, I feel overcome with the hot-headedness of a girl barely out of her teenage years at the unfairness of this dynamic: us running around like housewives in preparation for a man. I think of the novels I despised as a child and of the air of expectation that must fill the hallways of houses in commuter towns as wives anxiously await their husbands. You were never fussy about your surroundings, dryness and warmth being all that you needed. Ben is a different creature, and Vishni feels this deeply. She is nervous about all her choices, every refinement. That I spend half the day riding this hysteria is more to ensure she is happy than Ben, though he too is appreciative in a manner that satisfies her worry.
– You have made a prince of me. Flowers, kisses, will never be enough for your thoughtfulness.
Still, flowers arrive the next day while we are in the studio, bountiful and extravagant, and the same the day after that. New York manners. The dinner table groans under the competing weight of roses and food, as one gratitude reflects another.
Your room remains untouched and will do so for as long as you are away. I tell them not to move anything, to venture so far as to even open a window. Even with the sparseness of your possessions, there is a sense of permanence there; in a stark contrast to Ben’s, which has all the plushness and thoughtless scatter of a hotel room. If you had meant to close your door and never open it again, something of the composition in the air would have told me. The taking of an extra coat or pair of shoes would have made your intention clear. When Ben takes his coat from the hook, the emptiness is apparent. He is gone but not missed; not physically. The air from the house does not weigh on our shoulders or sit heavily at the bottom of our boots.
One aspect of the improvements was a bother. The man from the telephone company took up most of the day installing the second line. Ben was yet to return, almost as if he knew how much disturbance it would bring and how I would spend that time seething in the barn once the noise permeated every inch of the studio. Silence is not always conducive to working well, but nor was this singular invasion. When there wasn’t drilling and hammering, there was raucous laughter from the kitchen as he made the most of Vishni’s hospitality. Once he got the measure of how generously she catered, the delicacy of his work during the afternoon, painfully slow in his line-feeding, tacking and testing, ensured he did not finish until the scent of the cooking pot reached him a second time. The man was from one of the local towns, distant enough that we did not know him by sight, but well aware of the house and its reputation. His eyes roamed freely, looking for stories to take back.
– So this is what it looks like inside, is it? I don’t know what I was expecting, but from the way I heard it, nothing this … ordinary.
The thickness that ran under his chin and along his gut suggested an innate satisfaction with being born and raised on this fertile soil; no different to those smirking faces at the store. The yearning in his eyes was only for a second chicken leg with gravy rather than for youthful opportunities lost. His legs would not run the way yours did.
– Small room for a telephone. You couldn’t find a smaller space if you tried.
– Hotel rooms have phones. Nothing very strange in that.
– True enough. Is that an office they’re planning to make there? I could understand why a second phone line was needed if this was an office.
– Stop with the questions and eat your chicken. I was going to offer pudding, but your forwardness is making me have second thoughts.
A pie lay between them, heavy with dusted sugar and threat. The man said no more, finishing his meal with an amused expression, one that would be exaggerated for his co-workers when he returned to head office.
Did you see her? they’d ask in succession, a modicum of interest aroused by the name, as if he was talking of a panther or another rarely seen creature.
– Not a sign. I heard her plenty, belly-aching about the noise. At one point a cup or plate was thrown against a wall that I heard only in the back of my head against the drill. But the housekeeper kept me away from her – or should that be the other way around?
– Did you see any of them?
– No. The walls were bare. Nothing but flowers and brass plates.
The phone line weighs heavily at night. I barely glance at our telephone in the hall, even after Ben reconnects it. I never once imagined that you would use it, so paid it no mind. You are not one for telephones. Every word you speak down the line seems to strip away your intentions: good humor never rings true; your confidence becomes something brash and liable to offend. I can only trust your silence; the sound of your breath in my ear tells me more than anything else you say. Those times when you are away from the house, farm or harvest work, your messages are brief and convivial, aware of an audience around you.
– The calf is stuck. We’re waiting on the cow doctor, but if he’s not here soon we’re going to have to cut her open.
Later you would tell me how you clammed up with farmers and their wives standing over your shoulder; how you felt each word break down into a stutter of consonants. A flare of heat ran from the back of your neck and across the side of your face. You were overwrought with the possibilities of what might happen to the heifer, nervous that your voice didn’t give it away. You had birthed before, and shot horses that had gone lame, but something that day cut through any notion of routine; the trembling of the cow and the fact that she did not bellow, but acquiesced to your hands. The farmers required what you had always given: a strong hand and a tight-lipped confidence. The farmhouse hall was not a place where crying should be heard. You called again a couple of hours later, after the vet had failed to arrive (learning the next day that he had driven his car into a ditch and was crossing the valley on foot). There were no words then, just your breathing into my ear, hoarse and thick, and the background commotion of the wives as they were told the news.
– I know.
– I know.
You carried it on as a joke subsequently, wanting to ride over the rawness of that moment; needing it to be stamped into long-forgotten memory. I needed oils from the store, specific reds that you were unable to find. Your
silence and a sigh, with the barest hint of theatricality at its edges, told me, followed by a giggle, because we knew then that this would be our language. What passed between us in the studio was now also something real outside of it. Across the other rooms in the house we were no different to how married people conducted their business. We fussed, bickered and held grudges. But from one telephone to another, we were silent, close to heavy breathing like the perverts some in the town suspected us to be. And at night, in our respective rooms, falling asleep to the sound of the other.
We have the new telephone to ourselves for one full day before Ben returns. Vishni rings the store and has them call her back to test its capabilities. Then she polishes the receiver several times. Once she leaves, and later while she sleeps, I sit on the edge of the bed and await your call, as I know it will come. Ben will send you the number, somehow.
– OH YES, IT WAS HIM. Of that I have no doubt.
– Did he identify himself?
– There was no need. He was like a mirror image from the moment I opened the door. And if there were any questions, they were put to rest when he stood before the painting.
– He was pleased with what he saw?
– It was as if he had stepped from it. The same haircut and shirt. The shoes had clearly taken some wear, but they were still recognizable.
– He is not a ghost. Just attached to those clothes.
– So I gather. I am not, I imagine, like others who buy your paintings, Anna, in that this was bequeathed by a congregational member to whom I became close. There are neither the funds nor the inclination for work such as yours to reach us otherwise.
– That I understand. We were made aware of the bequest after Mrs McMahon had passed. It’s an eccentricity my dealer has, wanting to know where each painting is. A mania that sometimes reaches me. Some of the transit passes through my ears, but yours I remember.
– Not just from your dealer, of that I’m certain. It was a scandal across the borough that such a valuable work should be personally bequeathed this way, with firm instruction not to sell it on behalf of the Church. Many felt I was undeserving; that a painting should not be enjoyed by a person such as me, who has greater moral matters to consider.
– And he spoke to you, Father Michael?
– He had no need to speak. I knew who he was. That painting has hung on my wall for so long, I know every crease in that boy’s face. I know the whorls in his eyes, the colors within colors. The rain must have stopped half an hour or so earlier, but he was still wet through when he stood at the bottom of my stoop. His jaw was clenched tight as if to stop himself from shivering; his forehead taut also, so as not to give in to the cold.
– You led him to the painting?
– I took him to the fire so he wouldn’t catch pneumonia. I went to fetch a towel and some dry clothes. When I returned he had stripped down to his underwear and was hanging his wet things on a chair before the fire. Only when I returned, this time with tea and some of the supper I had prepared for myself earlier, did I see that he had found the painting.
– Where is it?
– Opposite the fireplace. I wasn’t sure that it was a painting suited to such a sparse living room, but to leave it in the hall would have been to dishonor the sentiment behind the bequest. And there was something indecent about having it in the bedroom. So …
– How long did he look at it?
– Long enough for the clothes to have dried and supper to have spoiled. He wasn’t interested in anything else, you see. Just a sip or two of the tea, and the painting. He accepted my offer of a chair but turned it away from the fire so he could gaze unhindered. He was no longer damp by this point. I keep the rooms fairly hot in this weather on account of my weak chest. It’s the only indulgence I have. That and the painting. The way his hair now sprang from his forehead in its thickening curls was cause for my chest to jump. He became even more like the painting as he dried, almost as if he was waiting for the exact point when he’d be able to jump back into it.
– I thought you were a man who did not believe in ghosts.
– The Spirit. But that is something else entirely. Ghosts, if they exist, have no interest in a spartan house in Brooklyn.
– When we have seen the work in private houses, nestled among the decoration, it can sometimes mute the noise that has built up inside while creating it. There’s nothing out of the ordinary if he was quiet as he studied it. Elsewhere, in the starkness of a gallery, it’s amplified. All your joy and resentment screaming back at you. He can be noisy in galleries for this reason. Talks non-stop. And not only for my work. He’s trying to shut out everything else.
– He was quiet, but there were no signs that he was fighting himself. I have seen the faces of the tormented, the weary, but his was not of their number. He was illuminated by it, at once seeming much younger than his years. Curiosity was feeding him rather than unhappiness. He laughed several times. His eyes roamed over every inch of the canvas. The hands were studied at length, then the face and neck. I saw how he took in the brushstrokes that created the parting in his hair and the crook of his raised leg as it rested upon the other knee. I am not an expert in painting, Anna. I can only tell you what I saw.
– You saw everything. You studied him as you would the painting.
– More so, I suspect, once I had taken in what was happening. He is not a visitor I expected to receive. I welcomed him as I do all comers to this house. Those in need are always helped. But my nerves were shot to pieces. It was the shock of seeing his face. There was whiskey put in his tea to warm him up some more; I took a swig or two myself while I was making it, because I wanted my expression to imbue comfort rather than what was actually there. I caught sight of myself in the glass as I was getting the teacups. I looked terrified.
– You were frightened of him?
– A man arrives on your doorstep without a word? Crosses your threshold without a word? A stranger who is somehow not? Who now stands silently before an image of himself? Almost naked? These are fearful matters. I started speaking for him, filling the room with words until they rose with the heat and settled on my shoulders. I asked how he found me, or how he even knew where the painting was, so long had it been since it was first sold. I was thinking of how tucked away this parish is, for a stranger, and wondered over the steps taken to journey here. But you have answered me on that point; unlike him, who continued to say nothing. He nodded in thanks for the drink, though the whiskey was not noted, as if liquor meant nothing. But his was not the hardened face of a seasoned drinker. His skin was too clear for it. There was a luminescence across his cheekbones and under the eyes, an effect I had often thought must have been exaggerated for the painting, only now I realized that you simply painted all that you saw. The damp flushing of his cheeks heightened it, but it was undeniably there. Everything I said fell into background noise.
– You make it sound like a religious experience. A portrait of a man sitting on a chair.
– I fear you will mock me if I refer to a state of grace, but there was something of that peace in the moment. This vocation, with the Lord’s help, teaches you to recognize when people have found what they were looking for, temporal or otherwise. Mine will not come until the last. I’ve always known it. There is no drive toward an object or place to give me peace. I am not so lucky. It’s what makes me acknowledge the fact when I see it in others.
– Did you explain how you felt? That for a man selling faith, you had none of your own?
– How astute you are. To speak so briefly with a person and yet somehow know them.
– I do not have your gifts. It is simply what you have already told me.
– There was no opportunity for a mutual exchange of secrets. He had yet to say a word. I realized that, although I knew his name, I was wary of using it; as if to say his name aloud would make real all that he wished to hide. If he had wanted to offer something tangible, to make something solid of his identity, he would have opened his mouth
when he was on my doorstep. He would have shaken my hand. He wanted to be this recognizable stranger, so that the next day it would feel like a dream. Painting aside, there would be no words to anchor him to this place. Except …
– Except what?
– There were some things he couldn’t keep to himself. The warmth from the fire weakened his resolve. Once he lay on the couch, he slipped. Spoke as if I wasn’t in the room, as if to himself. Words that couldn’t make sense to a stranger. ‘They’ll say I’ve run, when they hear about it afterwards,’ he said, ‘not knowing that I’ve seen death. That I’m unafraid of it. She knows that too, if she thinks hard enough.’
– So he did speak.
– That is what I’m trying to tell you. He clammed up when he saw I was paying attention, and dried himself. Later, after an hour or so of standing, he lay on the couch and regarded the painting from there. ‘You can see it in my face, can’t you?’ he said. ‘How much I believed that this was the way to live your life.’ Only then did his anguish show.
THE CAGE WHERE ORLA, the postmistress, sorts the letters is at the back of the building far behind the post office counter, bypassing two trolleys – one broken, one working – and a sizeable pile of gray burlap sacks. The rack spans the full length of the wall, envelopes and packets folded into their chicken-pen compartments. The cumulative effect is of a concertina stretched to its fullest, as a thick band of white from the bundled envelopes runs from corner to corner. The sheer amount of post housed there puts paid to the myth that this town of farms and the two villages beyond it is not the home of letter writers. How many envelopes there contain bubbles of gossip to be passed from house to house? Packets that float to the top of each individual pile and take precedence over bills and other indicators of financial woes. These nuggets seem destined for every address except ours, because I am still considered an outsider who rarely socializes. Under the cages sits a green metal box, twice the size of the compartments, its door held securely with a tarnished brass padlock.
All the Days and Nights Page 5