All the Days and Nights

by Niven Govinden

  What are you disappointed by? That I won’t bend down so that my mouth is level with yours, or that my head keeps turning back toward the house, because what sits on the easel continues to draw me back, even though my eyes sting and the muscles across my shoulders and upper arms have twisted into knots? You read too much into my face, too many things that are true: that it is better to stay inside the house because I cannot compete with your knowledge of what is outside it, farm child or no; that I am ignorant to taste, eating whatever is set before me; how I think of food as fuel rather than as a wonder.

  Previously, those three or four occasions where you chided me, it was for a lack of manners or showing unkindness to someone who did not deserve it; my temper getting the better of me. When Ben, Vishni and others would lose their patience with my stubbornness, you did not encourage them; rather the opposite. You believed that, however I chose to do things – show my paintings, appear in public – was the best way for me, and loyally conveyed that to others.

  One of the few things you told me: as a child you went to bed hungry when work on the docks slowed down and your father took whatever employment he could find, on one unlicensed building site after another. These weren’t prolonged periods, but frequent enough during your youth; deep enough that the memory of hunger pangs stayed with you. The quiver you would feel in your gut from time to time would reconnect to a pain you thought long-since vanished. An aura you had when the table was empty, or on mornings before Vishni went to the store.

  It explained why you would help birth a foal in return for a glut of apples or all the melons you could carry from ten yards of vine. Why you broke your back and the requirements of my work to build the garden beds for Vishni, when your voice, and intent, finally became as heated as mine.

  YOU ARE FILLED WITH the stench of the city. It seeps into your skin and clothes, feeding you the way the sunlight does out here. Previously grown from fallowed soil, damp and moss now revive. You’re stiff from your night in the park, but energized. Traffic noise is distant but inescapably there; children’s voices as they walk to school; streams of joggers patter a well-worn path through the trees. A horse runs past you, slick and sweaty, followed moments later by her owner. All this gives you life. If you were in the meadow, you too would run, blood pumping through your body, cold air flushing the sleep from your head. You think about chasing the animal, partly because of its distress and also for the lightness you yearn for, which only comes from the speed of your legs moving over terrain. Years as a farm hand of sorts has taught you how to rein in and calm those that are frightened; how it all comes from a harmony of quick thinking and the softness of hand and voice. I have seen you sprint over the stream and across fields after a spooked foal, or cows too unsettled to join their herd. Knowledge and speed are second nature to you; your gentleness is innate. It’s why you are so loved.

  But you are no match for even the sluggish pace of the ill-dressed rider errantly chasing his lost status symbol. You have not run like this for some time. Your lungs can take the strain but your legs would not thank you. Walking, the persistence of walking, as you do now, is all you’re capable of. Your freedom comes from the ongoing discipline of a steady pace, not breaking into a swifter movement that may impair you later, seriously or otherwise. It’s a new form of fitness that has had to be explained to you now that more strenuous options have been forcibly curtailed. (It has crossed my mind that this is why you’re doing this: walking to New York being the driest two-fingered salute you can think of for well-meaning doctors.) Only the horse weighs on your mind. There is an absence of riders and you worry that there is no one else nearby able to pacify her. How the wrong touch or call will send her into a more frantic mode. You’ve already gathered your things without realizing that you have done so. Now your feet follow the dismounted rider, who pants over a pathway fountain before the rise of a modest hill and a dense copse of elms and cedar. Your ears filter all that rushes past until you identify the sounds of hooves pounding the dirt trail, flattening the untended grass. This symmetry of panic, the one-two clop of hooves, slowing now, is the beacon you aim for. Something in that sound prompts you into more direct action, walking at pace until you have overtaken the rider, and then running through the trees.

  You trample across grass in the wake of the horse. A trail of wet shit marks her nervousness. That the greater proportion of it makes contact with your shoes is of no importance. Both the docks and farms have schooled you. There is little that makes you squeamish. Shit will not make you reconsider your actions. You have been trained to run. Your memory does not let you down; your legs remember. You don’t think of knee cartilages ground down until they are as flat as bone, nor the weakness in your back; only about the events that have led to her scare; whether it was the slightest miscommunication between animal and rider – a kick or jolt from the latter’s leg where there was not intended to be – the malicious clap of a passer-by, or something more unexplained: that it is in the creature’s nature to be skittish.

  You will later say, hand on heart, that you were in no way pushing yourself, but a cursory glance behind as you make headway into the copse shows the rider still at the base of the hill, moving in a jagged, aggravated fashion. How you have overtaken him, cutting away from the hill path and through the trees, is something you will marvel over after the event, sitting in a bath of cold water at the 105th Street YMCA. For now, you press forward along the trail of shit and crushed bracken, several hundred yards of darkness until she is in sight. She is standing before a wall of trees, regal ashes that mark the heart of the park before it was created. Still yards away, you take stock of the perspiration falling in slicks off her coat and the heaviness of her breathing. You are both exhausted by the chase, something she acknowledges in the incline of her head as your hand slips through the reins. What does she read in your steps as you approach that keeps her there? What is the rhythm of your pulse as your palm strokes her face that soothes her so? The rider will tell how you were able to change the atmosphere within three steps. How a dance of 1-2-3 brought the mare to heel.

  The sun remains low, barely touching the dampness of the ground and the dew held together by invisible string across foliage, yet still you remove your coat and sweater, draping them over the mare. You should not be cold. You know this, but do it anyway. Selfless, stubborn. You wipe her down with the shirt from your bag, and then you cover her, your hands moving in swift rubbing motions across and over her trunk. You are also soaked through with effort, but there is no one to pay you the same care. Your heart rates decrease, but one recovers more quickly than the other. The rider will tell me of the quiet satisfaction in your face as you continue to comfort the animal, but how this does not mask the deep tiredness that seems to radiate from every part of you.

  Your pocketbook slips from your bag under the trees as you tend to the horse, its presence unnoticed until your departure. Two days later, it’s returned by the rider in the mail, with five hundred-dollar bills enclosed.

  All good deeds should be rewarded. You’ve done nothing for my pride, but you’ve saved me a few dollars in catching that bastard horse.

  Vishni recognizes the rider’s name, rifles through a stack of yellowing newspapers in the kitchen until she finds a picture. He manufactures shoes upstate and has recently completed a successful takeover of a clothing retailer in Manhattan. Despite the glow in his eyes, his lips remain in a defiantly sulky grip. This is a man who has everything to celebrate but still looks as though he wants to take on the world, person by person. Dissatisfaction glows around him, marking the pallor of his skin and setting his face into a gargoyle’s rictus.

  – Look at him. A scoundrel. Where is John going, to mix with men like him?

  In a second letter, responding to the enquiries to the incident, he wrote:

  He was beat in a way that had little to do with the horse, that’s what I thought. He had the eyes of someone doing his damndest to run himself into the ground. It was only something I
thought about afterwards, that he’d pushed himself almost past the point of what his body could support. And he looked like nothing, this guy. His teeth were good, the shirt, but everything else … you can understand why I thought he might rob, or ask for money, at least.

  I swung for him before I spoke, I remember that. I didn’t touch him. My fist was nowhere near him, but the frustration of getting up that damn hill, and finding him standing there so placidly with her, as if I was the one at fault, made me lash out. The horse kicked up a bit, but his hand was still on the reins and he had her calmed in the time it took me to pull back my punch. He has an even tone of voice, your guy. ‘I was worried when I saw her get away from you,’ he said. ‘Something must have frightened her. She’s had a time of it, but she’ll be fine now.’

  Truth is, his gentleness was making things worse. There was words I wanted to call him. Shameful things that belied the good turn he had done, which I kept to myself, because even I understood that shouting before the horse would only spook her again and start the chase anew. My heart couldn’t take any more damn running.

  It was then that he looked as if he was in some pain from the run. I couldn’t look at him. Didn’t want him anywhere near me. I held out fifty dollars, but he wouldn’t take it. I’m a man of the world. I know how money makes every difficult passage smoother, but he looked at me like I was the one with shit on my hands, not him. All that came from him was a very intent stare, as if he had moved his attention from her and was now attempting to calm me. You can’t swear a blue streak in that atmosphere. It’s unholy. And like I said, I didn’t want to rile up the horse. It was easier to take the reins and send him away.

  I saw what you saw: how hatefully he must have stared at you when he finally reached you and the horse. The insults he’d taken pains to keep from me; how easily they would have tumbled from his mouth. How it was only the muck on your hands from when you had slipped (where? How badly?) that held him back from brushing you with his fists. That the money was not offered, but thrown into the mud and shit, as if that was where you came from and still deserved to be. Even once he was aware of your name he did not wish to encounter you in the park again. Reminders of his ineptitude were avoided. Similarly, the horse was sent to another stable on the other side of the park where he would not have to see her again. He didn’t regret his actions.

  EVEN WITHOUT YOUR POCKETBOOK, you can’t bring yourself to check in at our hotel. With your last fifty dollars, you find a bed at the Y and bathe away the puffiness from your legs and knees. A series of cold tubs to somehow trick the body out of its stiffness, a remedy they use on the farms after plowing and harvest. In a lower bunk, where you rest for the next two days, it is tenderness that you feel the most; how sore the skin on your body feels, painful to the fingertips. Discoloration from the bruising on your shins and kneecaps where you fell, losing your footing on the uneven track as you left the park.

  You lie on your back, spread-eagled and prone, the only position you can sustain without any sound coming from your mouth.

  There is attention at the Y if you want it. Age does not always divide here, as it does in other parts of the city. The four-bunk room you share is not without its fellows: men in their twenties and thirties visiting the city for the first time; two busboys at Studio 54 in the room across the hall. There is something of home in your face that they all respond to. You are not snobbish about some of their clunky ways; nor their ruddy, well-fed faces, or too-smart shoes. That open, plain friendliness is not something to be looked down upon, as it is in most of the bars downtown. The boys bring you painkillers, coffee and food. Directions are sought, also advice on better jobs, and leisure, and where best to make a home so that both of these things can be achieved. Wounds from their home towns are covered over with hopefulness. They talk very little about those places, reducing them to a postmark fading into a smudge. At night, when they are back from the bars, rejected and disheartened, you hear them seek comfort as one relieves another.

  When you feel strong enough to stand, you make your way downstairs, walking on the balls of your feet, like a child, to avoid putting adverse pressure on your joints. You call St John at the bank and make arrangements. You accept now that a financial cushion is needed, that keeping your strength and health is not an indulgence but something that should remain pertinent in your mind. St John accommodates, as per your instructions, each murmur reminding that he is there to serve. Knowing us as he has done for these many years, however, he is aware of the weariness in your voice; even without seeing you, he recognizes that some vital spark has been lost in the months since the two of you last met. He makes gentle overtures about calling Ben to arrange a transfer to the hotel we normally favor, how he is happy to do it if you do not wish Ben to be informed. The nature of your call, your tiredness, suggests secrecy, and he wants to spare you embarrassment. Nevertheless, the mention of the Y strains the credulity in his voice. He understands your need for independence from me, how that has always been so, but clearly he is shocked. There must be more comfortable places you could be staying. Anonymity, if that is what you require, need not cost that high a price. Another time, you would brush his concerns away, confident in your decision. If you could slip from this unrelenting grip of exhaustion, you’d hang up and hail the first cab to collect your money. Instead you pack your things and wait for him in the hall. You take a last fill of the noise and scent from the Y: the slamming of doors, shouts and yells of fraternal love, the depth of musk and muscle, top notes of cheap aftershave and marijuana, before allowing St John to help you into the car.

  St John has the foresight not to entrust a cab driver with so delicate a journey, instead choosing to drive himself. You are squeezed into the modest cabin space of his town car, suppressing the desire to shout when your legs compress to fit the foot well. Though you sit in traffic for the next half-hour as St John navigates the park toward his apartment on the Upper West Side, he has the good sense not to speak. The journey is one of reflection for you both. At several points – driving through the park, at West 74th and 6th – you consider asking him to turn around; not for the Y, but to drop you at Penn Station. The spaciousness of a Pullman car, and a stiff drink. You think of your room in the house and the welcoming partial darkness there. You think of Vishni’s careful ministrations and the space that I will give you; that there’ll be no questions. It would be so easy to return and fall back into the shade of our home; except, your list is far from being completed. There is still too much you have to see. In a guestroom heavy with crushed velvet and lavender, you convalesce for a further day. St John’s housekeeper lacks Vishni’s attention to detail, but there is tea, soup, bread and, later, a tender poached chicken and dumplings. Stronger now, you attack the plate with relish and ask for more. You allow the presence of a doctor, but only briefly, long enough to confirm that you are of sound health to continue; short enough to avoid his sermon. The verdict is that ultimately your suffering has not been so serious as to hamper your undertaking. You’ll live.

  You stay wrapped deep within the frills of your room. St John is not a man given to opulence, but there is richness to the furnishings throughout the apartment that gives you butterflies. There are paintings, though this is not the source of your unease. Paintings are a point of familiarity; you know the chaos of their origins and do not equate them, specifically the money that is sometimes paid for them, with something obscene. It is more the thickness of the carpets and the gilt-edging that outlines furniture and glassware that triggers your nausea. The apartment is simple and at the same time not so. You have dined at more luxurious houses, yet something about knowing how St John has founded his wealth – from the same visual agony he displays on his walls – makes your stay an unsettling one. You know where you stand with industrialists and politicians. The viscous nature of money as a business, a banker trading off and on the money made from your image on canvas is less opaque. You are gracious for his hospitality, but feel as though you are walking on eg
gshells. He studies you with the inquisitiveness of a benefactor: how well you sleep and the amount you eat. From time to time his eyes stray to the phone on your bedside table; how hard he is fighting the impulse to telephone me.

  St John knows the work, its range and development over the years. He comes to the few shows that have taken place in New York and goes out of his way to see others during his holidays. He will take a train to Valencia following a conference in Madrid; ask his driver to stop at the National Portrait Gallery en route to the Bank of England. He knows every contour of your face; knows what is happy and what is otherwise. The doctor’s visit has reassured him; now he worries less about your physical state, only that which he can’t see. It’s not blankness as such, more a reticence to discuss why you are here and where you are going. No explanation has been offered for why you were sleeping in the park. He is a man who speaks little, so when he sits on your bed for those twenty minutes during his lunch hour, it is a conversation of silence, space and presence. Still you offer nothing.

  Only when you are on the train – wrapped up in one of his cashmere sweaters, a basket of provisions carefully packed into your laundered duffel bag – do you reflect on your stay. House guests, whatever the state of their health, need to reflect back the generosity of their hosts. There was no glimmer when St John studied you, only dullness; a patent lack of manners which you now regret, away from the stifling atmosphere of the house. In the same way that I have taken on some of your words – the ‘Goddamn Almighty!’ you picked up from a Saturday-morning Western as a boy and never let go of – you have unknowingly absorbed the tenets of my selfishness. When you are with me it’s a despised behavior that we argue over; away from me it flourishes. I have known you to stand up and leave the table once you have finished eating, regardless of your hosts. Your impatience at the vanities of some art curators and collectors is no longer concealed in their company; farmed eccentricities are something to be despised. St John sees what I see: a man falling back into what he has been taught, that everything should be said without words. Expression is to blame. The faces you have learned.