Live Bodies

by Gee, Maurice

  Although Nancy and I went to Australia several times and once took a Pacific cruise, we did not travel properly until 1982. Proper travel meant Europe for us both. I won’t name the cities we visited, or the paintings we saw and the concerts we (she) heard. I’ve already said we stopped in Vienna and Berlin. That will do. I did not go hunting in Vienna; I grew no lump in my throat. This perhaps signals a deficiency in me. I’ve read of people visiting rooms in which they grew up and finding them smaller and weeping there, but I did not set my foot in Gluckgasse, did not even glimpse our apartment there; in a sense did not set foot in Vienna but visited a city strange to me – another city, it made me yawn – and looked at pictures, heard music, enjoyed my wife’s pleasure in all this. Just now and then I saw that Vienna had tried to scrub away what must be remembered. The Danube smelled of bathwater and soap. And once, while Nancy was resting, I walked out from our hotel and stood on the Sweden Bridge and saw grey water trickle from a drain under it; and I sensed, in the sewers, something sleeping, with an eyeball gleaming between its lids. It had no snake shape any more, it was simply a human face – and I turned away, went away fast, from what might have been revealed to me. I took Nancy on tourist outings to Mayerling and Melk; ate stale Sachertorte; satin a Heurige in Gumpoldskirchen and drank wine that seemed to me neither good nor bad. I’m a cold fish, I thought. Nancy was pleased by my animation. I shook off a headache that had troubled me and walked in the streets with a springy step. I wasn’t all there in Vienna.

  There were just the two of us. No children. No ghosts. We grew very close on our European trip. It was as romantic as our early days in my Brot Werke; it was loving and erotic and meditative and practical. Our disagreements became a joke. It seemed that no one gave in, although it was me sometimes and Nancy at other times – less often. It was our trip, and her trip, and mine when it was hers. I can retrace it step by step – that’s when I try. When I don’t try it surprises me; an image makes me pause in my steps or in my breathing: Nancy sitting on a warm brick wall in Siena, with her arm outstretched to stop gelato dripping on her trousers; Nancy in the Österreichische Galerie, looking at the picture that hangs on my bedroom wall. ‘Is it Egg-on or Ee-gon?’ she says. Best though, everywhere, is Nancy listening. Operas and symphonies in London and Vienna and Stockholm and Berlin. She listens to goat bells sounding through the trees on the hill of Kronos. Listens to the Paris taxi horns. But she liked to make music as well as hear. The first thing she did when we arrived home was sit at her piano and play and play.

  And then it goes on, it goes on, it seems like the next day but in fact it was almost a year and she is in hospital having the operation that comes too late, cancer cells have reached the lymph nodes under her arm, they have gone everywhere – and in another year Nancy dies.

  That is all. Nancy Mandl. Sixty-one years old. I don’t cry. The girls cry. Kenny walks out of the room and out of the house and away into the pine trees on Tinakori hill. I find him there when I go searching. He runs off deeper into the trees as I approach. I see his white shirt flicker in the trunks, and I turn and leave him. He is not a child, he is a man.

  I do my own grieving in my own way.

  We stayed three or four days in Nice and did not like that overbuilt coast. On our last day Nancy said, ‘Let’s get on a little train and go somewhere.’ So up we went on winding tracks past villages perched on hills and got off in a town whose name I forget, where a two-mile walk by a stream would bring us to a chapel, I forget the century, but very old, decorated in fresco by an artist I forget. A mile into the country a stone bridge – elegant, Genoese, our pamphlet said – crossed the stream. We sat on it in the sun and ate our lunch of fruit and cheese and bread. A brown snake four feet long bolted – he thumped like feet on stairs – for his hole in the rocks. We lay down in the grass where he had been and snoozed for an hour, then walked on and found the chapel and admired the frescos, which told the whole story: Mary and the angel Gabriel, Christ feeding the multitude, Judas hanging on a tree with a demon tearing his black soul from a hole in his side, the saved in a blue heaven, the damned tormented in a red hell – no inch of wall was bare. It made us shrink and shiver, and made us laugh. A busload of tourists arrived so we explored up a track and surprised a classy-looking lady peeing on the ground. We turned our backs until she had finished and stood aside as she came down, a little slower than her urine running on the clay. ‘’Sieur ’dame,’ she said. ‘Bonjour,’ we said, and carried on.

  When we heard the bus leave we went back for another look at the frescos. The valley was silent, the chapel stood empty where it had been for five, six, seven hundred years. I explored along the wall by the stream where the foundations of an earlier building crumbled in the moss. Nancy appeared fifty yards up the hill, beside a spring bubbling out of rocks. (The spring was the reason the chapel had been built.) She sat down and looked into the water. She folded her hands. Nancy listened. She listened in the way she had to our babies breathing. I watched. I’m a watcher. I moved to let her see me, and climbed up and sat on the other side of the spring. She drank handfuls of cold clear water and cooled my hot cheeks with her palms.

  Then we shared the apple we had saved and walked back to the station and caught our little mountain train to Nice.

  Nancy Mandl. I feel her cool hands on my face again.

  FIFTEEN

  Kenny telephoned yesterday and asked me to go to his office at half-past two, when Mr and Mrs Gummer were coming in. I did not like the sound of that.

  ‘Kenny, it’s not my business,’ I said.

  ‘I want you here. This woman is driving me barmy. I need your help.’

  I could not refuse a request like that, so I went. Now I must say what I’ve learned.

  His office is on The Terrace, at the back of a building, three floors up. A smart young woman called Veronica sits out front. Kenny has a room overlooking the motorway. He works with his back to the window because the cars distract him, zipping by. There’s a larger room through a side door, with a table and six chairs. Veronica calls it the boardroom, although there is no board. She took me through his office and ushered me in there. Kenny was at the table with his hands flat on the surface and a folder between them, neatly squared. The Gummers had not arrived, but they were close; I had seen them on the footpath as I got into the lift, and had hit the button hard, in a panic at the thought of riding up with them.

  ‘They’re on the way, Kenny. They’re in the lift.’

  ‘Veronica won’t let them in until I say.’

  ‘What do you need me for? What do they want?’

  ‘She says she’s got an ultimatum. I’m ready for them, Dad. I’m telling her exactly where she stands. And I need you as a witness, to hear what she says and back me up.’

  ‘I can’t do that. You’ll have to get your girl.’ I meant Veronica. Who tapped on the door and opened it: ‘Mr and Mrs Gummer are here.’

  ‘Ask them to wait a minute,’ Kenny said. His fingers played piano on the table, some final chord Nancy would have known. All I could recognise was his Brisbois look, his oxblood hue. ‘It won’t come to court,’ he said. ‘But she doesn’t know that. I’m going to draw up a document – my lawyer is, saying that if she doesn’t stop … What I need you for is to say it’s true. Do you know what she did? She came in here last week and stuck a card with Blu-Tack on my door: “Jewish crooks!” I don’t have to stand for that.’

  ‘No, you don’t.’

  ‘I’ll scare her, that’s all. Sit down, Dad. Try to look as if you’re here on business.’

  So I sat down and he buzzed for Veronica. She showed the Gummers in, then crossed to a cabinet by the wall and was busy there – switching on a recording machine, I found out later. Mrs Gummer had already begun: ‘A thieves’ kitchen.’ (The recorder was too late for that.) ‘Jews counting their pickings, look at them.’

  ‘Deely, sit down and be good,’ Gummer said. He pulled out a chair and she sat; opened her mouth to start again, but he s
aid, ‘Ah!’, holding up his finger, ‘you promised me.’

  Veronica left, closing the door softly. Then for a moment we heard Gummer breathing as he lowered himself into a chair.

  ‘I hope this is important, Mr Mandell. It’s not easy for us to come in here.’

  ‘Yes? Well I’ll be brief,’ Kenny said.

  But I found myself impressed again by Gummer, I found myself liking him, in spite of my disgust at his wife, and I said, ‘Mr Gummer, it’s good to see you. I hope you’re keeping better now.’

  ‘Me?’ he said, surprised.

  ‘And Mrs Lloyd too. How is she?’

  Mrs Gummer hissed. She struck the table. ‘Much you care. You want her dead.’

  ‘Ah, Deely,’ Gummer said. He looked ill and tired. He said to me, ‘Don’t set her off.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Kenny said, ‘I could start by outlining where Mrs Lloyd stands with Outlook as of this moment.’ He opened his file but did not need to find figures there. ‘We entered our agreement with her in July 1990 and made an initial payment –’

  ‘We know all this,’ Mrs Gummer cried.

  ‘– of fifteen thousand dollars,’ Kenny said, ‘that being the annual sum agreed on.’

  ‘We know.’

  ‘Since then there have been five further payments, and now, of course, with interest added on, we’ve reached the valuation set on the property –’

  ‘Your valuer was a crook.’

  ‘So now,’ Kenny said doggedly, ‘it’s a matter of agreeing on the rent –’

  ‘Rent,’ Mrs Gummer cried, ‘we’re being asked for rent in our own home. You,’ she said, jutting her face at me, ‘you’re the one. You sucked her in. She called you because you were supposed to be her friend. And my father’s friend.’ She began to cry. ‘How did we get in this? You and your Willy Gauss.’

  ‘I simply referred Mrs Lloyd,’ I said. ‘Kenny, Mr Gummer, can’t we end all this? We can’t get anywhere today.’

  ‘If you knew what he thought of you,’ she said.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Willy Gauss. Who’s supposed to be my father. It serves you right.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I said.

  ‘You would, if you asked. Ask Mr Moser.’

  ‘Deely, ah Deely,’ Gummer said, ‘let’s go home.’

  ‘We haven’t got a home. They’ve got it all.’

  ‘Quite legally,’ Kenny said, ‘and with your mother’s full understanding. Everything is signed and notarised. So now, there’s the matter of the rent. And Mrs Gummer, you had an ultimatum, I believe.’

  ‘Oh, I do. Yes, I do. It’s in here.’ She scrabbled in her handbag on her knee.

  ‘Deely,’ Gummer warned; and I thought, She’s going to pull a gun out of there.

  Only Kenny was unalarmed. ‘What?’ he said, trying to keep her talking for his record.

  It was not a gun, it was a knife. It had a blade three inches long and a black plastic handle. A kitchen paring knife, a Diogenes – we have one here. She might have stabbed his face with it, but he was sitting out of reach. Instead she clamped his fingers on the table and sliced the fat part of his hand like cheese. Kenny cried out and pulled away. He fell sideways off his chair and thrust his heel against the table leg, making the table slide and pin me in my chair. Gummer was pinned too but he reached out and seized his wife’s wrist. There was no need. She released the knife on to the table. She panted for a moment, then blinked at him and smiled like a child who has been naughty.

  ‘Now I’ve done it, Mervyn.’

  ‘Yes, you have.’

  ‘What made me do that?’

  ‘Your temper, Deely.’

  ‘It’s just that I never could stand people being greedy.’

  Gummer managed to push the table back. He stood up. ‘No more, lovey, please.’

  ‘No. No more. I’m finished now.’ She might have meant a meal. She smiled and sighed.

  ‘Mr Mandell,’ Gummer said, ‘how badly are you hurt? Let me see.’

  ‘No,’ Kenny said. He had climbed to his feet and was holding a handkerchief to his hand. He stepped close to the cabinet and bent his head to it. ‘I want to record that Mrs Gummer has attacked me with a knife. I have two cuts in my hand that will require stitches. My father, Josef Mandl, will bear witness to this. Dad, your turn.’

  ‘Yes, she did. It’s true,’ I said.

  ‘That was the voice of Josef Mandl.’

  ‘So, you’ve got us,’ Gummer said.

  ‘You bet I have.’

  ‘Switch it off then, please. Will you, now?’

  Kenny looked surprised. He began to look wobbly too. He turned a switch. He sat down at the far end of the table.

  ‘The rent,’ he said. ‘It’s three hundred dollars a week. It just went up.’

  ‘Write to us. Put it in a letter.’ Gummer was supporting himself on the table. He smiled at his wife. ‘You’re going to have to help me home, Deely.’ He picked up the paring knife and slid it into his pocket, and she, chirping, helped him to the door. She looked – it’s astonishing, for she was defenceless – she looked like Willi Gauss.

  Gummer turned and spoke to me. ‘Don’t let him call the police.’

  ‘No. God, no,’ I said.

  She opened the door and they were gone. The meeting, for it was a meeting I suppose, had taken no more than five minutes. There was blood on the table: that was the only mark that they had been. And there was Kenny, white and wounded, at the far end. He had no Brisbois cheeks any more.

  ‘Let me see your hand,’ I said.

  ‘In there. In the cabinet. Get me a drink.’

  I found a bottle of whisky and poured a glass. Kenny gulped and fell into a coughing fit. I banged him on the back.

  ‘Stop,’ he managed to say. ‘Stop that.’

  ‘Shall I call Veronica?’

  ‘Get some tissues from her. Wipe that blood.’

  I went out, asked for some, and told her nothing was wrong, some whisky had spilled, that was all. Kenny had unwrapped the handkerchief when I came back. The wounds were ugly: two deep cuts in the meaty part of his hand between his little finger and his wrist.

  ‘Bitch,’ he said. ‘I should lock her up.’

  ‘You’ll need some stitches, Kenny.’

  ‘No. They’ll heal. Get rid of that blood.’

  I mopped it with tissues and found him even whiter when I’d done. ‘You should go home. You’ve had a shock.’

  ‘There’s a bandage in the first-aid kit. And don’t let dumb Veronica in here.’

  I went out, not telling him that I needed attention myself: my ribs were stabbing me where the table edge had struck, and I think I too was suffering from shock. I asked Veronica for the first-aid kit, and kept her out, although she stepped one way then the other to go round me.

  ‘He’s hurt his wrist, that’s all. You stay here.’

  I fixed a sterile pad on Kenny’s hand with sticky tape.

  ‘You shouldn’t have pushed her, Kenny. You should have seen.’

  ‘You’re blaming me?’

  ‘You know they can’t pay three hundred dollars’ rent.’

  ‘Jesus, I don’t believe this. I’m to blame.’

  ‘Listen, Kenny. Let me handle it. What I’d like to do – let them have it for, just say half, and I’ll pay the rest. I’ll transfer the money every week. No, listen to me –’ but he would not. He swelled with rage; his cheeks came back, Brisboy red, and his eyes popped. He shouted at me, he let all his hatred out, and I won’t, I can’t, repeat it, for it seems to sully Nancy, who loved him – as I do, as I do – and is innocent. Veronica looked in and withdrew. I allowed him to go on until he was exhausted. My ribs hurt, my head and body hurt. I thought, He’ll be better after this.

  He sat and panted. I waited for his coming down, for him to shrink; and after a time he closed his eyes. Tears, a thin single tear each side, ran beside his nose.

  ‘Now, Kenny,’ I said, and I was nearl
y crying myself, ‘tell me about Julie. What went wrong?’

  ‘You’re to blame for this fucking bad blood in our family.’

  I saw that he did not keep her hidden away. She was in the front part of his mind.

  ‘Tell me. It might help.’

  ‘Nothing will help.’

  ‘I know you didn’t do what she says but something went on …’

  ‘It’s you and bloody Priscilla and everybody’s fault. Not mine.’

  ‘Please, Kenny.’

  ‘She’s got your bad blood.’

  But that was no more than a defensive step. I kept at him and would not let him go, and he had to tell: exactly what was said and what was done; and more than that – I got in closer – exactly what he said and what he did.

  Here’s his voice: ‘She was good until she was six or seven. I was a good father, I know I was –’ But I can’t go on. Kenny is too much there and it’s not about one of them, it is all three. It is Kenny and his daughter and his wife. The time that changed their lives was less than an hour long. It hid away, and came out, and hid away again, fixing them in positions that are unnatural. Then at last it emerged in a different shape, but no more horrible than it had always been.

  Julie: six. A happy child, Kenny says. An early walker and talker, able to read simple stories before she went to school … He went on with all this getting ready, but I can cover it by saying, she was a child the same as any other, and different from them too, with the normal differences. I’ll just add that she seemed by nature dissatisfied – but I should stay out of it. Kenny wept, telling me what happened. He gulped and choked and his cheeks grew damp, and when he wiped them with his wounded hand blood squeezed through the gauze and marked him from his nose to the angle of his jaw.

  The thing itself: Kenny always showered when he came home from work and Priscilla lifted Julie in with him when she hadn’t given her a bath. He did not like that and asked her to stop, but ‘she’s a lazy bloody bitch’ and once or twice a week she pulled the curtain back and sat Julie down at his feet: ‘Daddy will wash you tonight.’ He knelt in the falling water – rain, he and Julie had named it – and soaped her and rinsed her clean, then lifted her on to the mat and wrapped her in a towel. He stepped half out himself and opened the door: ‘Run to Mummy.’ Julie trotted along the hall and into the living room and Priscilla dried her by the fire. That was how it used to go.