by Neil Jordan
She left then, and we both sat there. His eyebrows were furrowed and silent for once. I almost felt sorry for him, his predicament, his chosen profession, the patience one would need for it, the mental endurance. There was a fly buzzing in the room and the sound of traffic through the open window.
I bought it for her, I explained.
Ah. Well, that’s hopeful. And you mislaid it?
No. A woman took it. She presumed it was hers.
Ah. That’s not hopeful. Not hopeful at all.
He sighed, regretfully, I thought. And remember being surprised that he felt so much for us.
She has a name?
I don’t know it.
There is or has been a relationship? An intimacy?
Of course.
The plot thickens.
Yes, I said. That’s what plots do. Like gravy.
Gravy?
It thickens. Or one thickens it.
You thickened it?
The plot? Yes, perhaps I did. It was interesting what she said about metaphor, doctor. How we can’t live without it.
Can’t we?
Live without – even that’s a metaphor, isn’t it? We won’t die without it, but we can’t explain ourselves, anything about us, without it.
And the metaphor here is?
A plot that thickens. Like gravy before cooking. But it never thickens of its own accord. It is thickened, doctor, by whoever cooks. And she was right, you know. With her cooking metaphor. I bought her pearls. But I gave her a zander.
A zander? he asked.
A pike-perch.
And, he said, you thickened the thing – deliberately – yourself—
Accidentally, doctor. I saved a woman from drowning.
Admirable.
At the beginning, perhaps.
And now you are stuck, so to speak, in the gravy.
More like treacle, doctor.
I do not know treacle.
A cloying, sugary substance that tends to stick to whatever it encounters.
Treacle, then. Another metaphor.
We can’t do without them, it seems.
And her? Can you do without her?
I am definitely willing to try.
32
I found a café with a humidifier that reached the street tables. I sat there, waiting for a waitress, but none came. I took out a notepad then and began to write. I wrote one version of a goodbye, but the veil of atomised spray fell on the pages and smudged them, the way tears would. And I thought, how strange, the circling nozzle attached to the wall below the sunshade is supplying all of the emotion. Surely some of it should come from me. So I tore out the page and wrote again. I shielded the fresh page with the tearful one and managed to write an unsmudged letter of goodbye.
It was almost dark by the time I was done. So for some reason I knew there would be no cello sounding out, doing its baroque thing around the cobbled streets. Something had to finish, I knew, and I had heard enough of it, for the time being at least. But everything else was much the same. The tiled arch in the fading light, the antique courtyard, the bullet-grey stone steps fanning upwards into the shadows. There was an outline behind the lace curtain of the apartment next to hers and I imagined the neighbour’s face with its dispassionate stare. I found the door unlocked when I pushed it and it swung slowly open. It had done so before to the accompaniment of the cello suites, so the little creak it made seemed plaintive and lonely.
I walked inside and it was all there again, the sofa beneath the window, without its cello for once, the curtains blowing softly from the blessed breeze outside, the half-open door to my right with the mattress visible on the floor. I half-expected to see her sleeping there, like the Rokeby Venus, face turned away from me. But there were only rumpled sheets visible, and there were no garments thrown about the floor. I folded the note, but the unwritten side of paper seemed to be crying out for a name. I didn’t know her name, so I addressed it simply to ‘dear’. It seemed as good a name as any for her, so when I had walked inside and whistled a tune and ascertained she was not in the bathroom either, I smoothed the sheets on the mattress, almost longingly, and left the note on top of them. I walked outside then and pulled the door behind me, careful not to let it make that final click. She might have forgotten her keys, I thought, and as I made my way down the stairs, it gradually began to build. A constriction in my chest, a sense of panic, a sudden sense of loss, as if someone or something had died. So this is how it feels, I thought, to lose somebody and know you won’t be able to see them again. What surprised me was the physicality of it, the muscular impact. I could hardly make it down those steps. And I thought everything the scientists tell us is wrong: there is a heart and a soul and it is stronger than this body of mine. And there was a sound now, echoing round the arch, and I realised it was coming from my phone.
It was a relief to hear the voice. Istvan’s, as if the real world could take precedence again. And as I walked down the cobbled street on to the boulevard, it all returned, the traffic, the evening heat, the hissing sprays of the humidifiers from the sidewalk cafés.
We have appointment, he said, tomorrow. Eleven thirty.
Where? I asked stupidly. I had to remind myself I had a business.
City morgue, he said. In the twelfth district. For you, me and your friend.
What friend? I asked stupidly, again.
Psychic friend, he said. Who sent us there.
I thanked him and cut off the call. But the moment I had done so, I suddenly missed his voice. Any voice. The feeling had returned, the constriction in my chest, as if a metal hand were closing on it, and the fingers were my ribs. Was that it? I wondered, the last goodbye? and I realised I had nowhere to go, nowhere I wanted to go. Home seemed impossible, for a while at least, and the only place of rest I could think of was that mattress, with my note waiting on the smooth bedsheets, but that seemed impossible too. So I did what all the lost ones do. I walked.
I don’t know how long I was walking, but I became aware, and it was an awareness that slowly crept up on me, of someone following. I wasn’t used to being followed, I had always been the follower. But I sensed, I couldn’t have heard, the slide of canvas sandals on the pavement behind me. I got the scent, then, of a fresh body in a summer dress, fresher than all the dank city air around me, and I knew she was behind me. I slowed, and felt her hand slip through my arm, in that quite unthinking way she had done it the first night we met.
The thing is, she said, it felt so different with you. With us. You were my twin.
I could feel the hand uncurling round my ribs, the constriction lifting, and I could breathe once more. So this is what it feels like, I thought, to find someone again.
Don’t talk, she said. I don’t want you to talk. I want you to hear what I have to say. You want to forget it all, I understand. You want to forget me, I understand that too. But the thing is, I met you in another life. There’s another world, where this never dies. And it has all happened before.
And it had, I knew that somehow. I was walking in another’s place.
With who? I asked. And stupidly, I thought of grammar. I should have said ‘with whom’.
You know who, she said. He lives on the other side. And you must take me there.
Why? I asked, stupidly again.
Because, she said, and her logic seemed impeccable, I cannot go there alone.
So we walked back down the boulevard of linden trees. There was a strange forbidden frisson to this, a sense of adult abandon. I was with her in public, among the night city crowds. They surged around like moths, past us and away; we were mosquitoes, flitting through them, never touching. We came to that shell of concrete rising out of the pavement and I led her down the steps that he had taken with the gentlest of touches on her elbow. She moved wherever I moved her, like an obedient pet. Down towards the platform, where all the day’s heat had gathered into a dark night cloud. We took the metro then and she sat on the wooden seat, laid her head back against
the smudged glass and caught my gaze, in an amused, abstract way. There was a transaction here, a goodbye gift, but whether the gift was for her or him I didn’t allow myself to dwell on. I knew my capacity for jealousy and knew I had to keep it at bay. The train slowed then and we walked back up the steps and found ourselves on those rising, medieval cobbled streets and I almost didn’t recognise them at night. But I could see the shape of the castle in the gloom, a piece of moon dangling above it, and I let it guide me. Through those streets with the crushed windows and the sagging architraves. And I saw the sign then, down the thinnest of streets where the gutters of the roofs above almost touched each other. Musikinstrumente.
He runs a music shop, I said.
Of course, she said.
She walked down the street, like someone remembering.
There was a light glowing from the window. I came behind her, and saw the dim gloom of the music shop, the warm glow from the kitchen at the back. And I felt jealous again. Her stillness was unnerving, outside that window. It implied a world of feeling I would never know.
We should go, I said. And she shook her head.
Don’t do something foolish. And she shook her head again.
You want me to leave you here?
She nodded.
So I turned and left her there. The street was hers, if anyone’s. Definitely not mine.
As I rounded the corner, I heard the crack of splintering glass. Was she the stone-throwing type? I wondered. But I thought it best not to look back.
33
The house was still when I got home. It was late, but I didn’t know how late. There was a note on the kitchen table that read: I’m sleeping with Jenny tonight. So this is it, I thought, the new dispensation. I went to open her bedroom door and enjoy for a moment the spectacle of them both curled up together, but I stopped my hand by the door handle and thought better of it. There was a quiet, deathly peace in the house that didn’t seem to want disturbing. So I crawled into the empty bed and then began to worry about sleeping. There was a box of pills by the cabinet on her side that read Stilnoct. I took one of them, swallowed some water, and when sleep didn’t arrive, I took another. And some small death must have taken me over, because when I awoke the sun was pouring through the French windows and they both were gone.
I was already late, I knew, so I drove without breakfast and bought a takeaway coffee from one of those stalls by the river. And I crossed the metal bridge again and saw the barges below draw streams of dirty yellow in their wakes, like urine. As I approached the other side, I could see Gertrude standing by the window on the second floor, something white in her arms, which I assumed to be the Pomeranian. She was looking towards me and I wondered, could she see me from that distance, a tiny figure on this cathedral of rusting steel?
How is he, I asked, after she had buzzed me in, and how is his luxurious patella?
Luxating, she said. And thank you for asking, but Phoebe is a she. And luxating has ceased, entirely.
I took the Polaroid from my pocket and saw the bright, smiling blonde-haired face. Of how many years ago? I wondered.
We have to visit city morgue. Are we to assume she is dead, Jonathan? I’m not sure I could bear such a conclusion.
We assume nothing, I said. You mentioned a small room, that she cannot leave. I visited a brothel, I was wrong. This could turn out to be—
A wild-goosey chase?
And her eyebrows lifted when she said this and I had to smile.
A dead end, I said.
I had texted Sarah to see would she pick up Jenny and she had replied simply, yes. It was monosyllabic, but a reply none the less. Could I assume from that that we were still communicating?
And your wife, Gertrude asked, how is she?
You know my wife? I asked, stupidly, because I knew she didn’t.
She was the reason we first met, she said.
Let’s forget about Sarah, I said, for the moment.
Sarah, she said. Yes, I remember the name. And she took my arm with one of hers, while the other held the dog.
Shall we?
She moved me towards the door.
The dog, I asked her, do we have to take her?
I am afraid we do, she said. You are afraid we will look stupid?
It’s just that pets may not be allowed in city morgues, I said.
In that case, she said, we leave her in the car.
She held my arm in the lift down and the Pomeranian licked my fingers. I could feel her breast beneath the smart summer dress she was wearing, with my elbow.
Time, she said. It moves so slowly, sometimes it almost stops.
Are we in a hurry? I asked her.
No, she said and the old lift creaked. She turned her face to me, and I could discern the beauty that must have been there, some years ago, beneath the make-up.
But it plays tricks on us. Tricks that we never are prepared for. Like here, she said. I lift my face to yours, look at that downy mouth and wonder, have I ever done that before?
Downy? I said. I touched my chin, and remembered that I had shaved.
Your mouth, she said. Turns downwards. You would have been my type, all of those years ago.
How many? I asked.
Ach, you disappoint me, Jonathan. Never ask a woman’s age.
I’m sorry, I said. But there was a bubble of flirtation in the lift that was not at all unpleasant. She had those Marlene Dietrich cheekbones, old Gertrude, and that Teutonic mouth, carefully delineated with a make-up pencil. And I realised that the beauty of this frisson with her was that it would never come to anything. So I allowed her to hold my elbow to her breast as the lift doors opened, and we crossed the street to where Istvan was waiting with his car. And perhaps I had a future as a consort to older women if the world I knew fell totally apart.
34
The old glass-fronted sign read Morga, and repeated the word in German, Leichenschauhaus, but the building hardly needed a sign, because everything about it spelt morgue. It was an old breezeblock structure in the grounds of what once must have been a hospital, but most of the buildings had boarded windows and there were weeds growing in the cracks between the paving stones. Odd, forlorn figures walked around, and there were two lab assistants smoking by a double door covered with strips of thick, industrial plastic. Where the ambulances backed in, I surmised, as Istvan parked the car and we walked towards the drab entrance.
Gertrude held my arm again and cradled her dog with her other hand. We signed forms at the reception through the door and nobody made mention of the canine. A pretty lab assistant in a clean white coat led us past what must have been a pathology room, where two women worked over a marble slab, towards an industrial lift. And as the lift groaned its way downwards, I wondered at how death was so often attended by women. Was that brisk, feminine practicality what was needed to deal with dead bodily tissue? Or maybe our exits and our entrances to this world needed female guidance. By those lights mythology had got it wrong. Charon should have been a woman and the Grim Reaper a uniformed girl.
Anyway, she led us forwards, our pretty white-coated Charon, out of a lift and through a series of subterranean corridors. There was an overpowering smell of formaldehyde. The dog moaned, as if sensing the otherworld.
Hush hush, Phoebe, Gertrude whispered.
We entered two swinging double doors and the temperature had dropped perceptibly. We found ourselves in a long room with fluorescent tubes fixed to the concrete ceiling, throwing a bilious light on a metal wall of trays, each tray with its own number and handle.
The girl murmured to Istvan and he murmured to me.
She asked me, do we want to see them all?
And Gertrude was looking, painfully, at the row of handles.
A small room, said Istvan, that she cannot leave.
How many? I asked.
And the assistant turned her head to me. She understood my English.
Fifteen, she said, currently.
There is no need, whis
pered Gertrude, who seemed alarmingly fragile, for once.
Hold Phoebe.
She placed the dog in my arms, and it whined in protest.
Give me Petra.
And I eventually understood, she meant the Polaroid. I took it from my pocket with my free hand and placed it in hers. She held it towards that wall of metal.
I could see her hand, her painted nails, the young girl smiling, dangling from them, all of the colour bleached by whatever the years does to acetate. And the Polaroid was trembling slightly, although Gertrude’s hand was steady, tense with all the veins showing.
Achh, she whispered, and seemed to glide towards that bank of steel. The Polaroid fluttered as if in its own private breeze. And I wondered what was I to understand about what was going on here.
The faded image of Petra was drawing her towards that metal wall. Or so it would appear. Her feet moved forwards, slowly, her eyes were half-closed, there was that familiar half-smile hovering round her lips. And the young girl held between her finger and thumb stared back at me, flickering in the invisible breeze, as soft as an image on a magic lantern.
There was a row of handles from ceiling to floor. And behind each handle was the emptiness of death, a cadaver awaiting identification, the pale and frozen flesh the spirit leaves.
There was a smell, like plastic burning. The Pomeranian moaned. And I could see the faded colours on the young girl’s cheeks turning slowly brown.
This one, said Gertrude, and she stopped by a steel handle. The number said 11.
This is most irregular, the assistant began, but Gertrude cut her off.
I know, she said. And the image was fading on the Polaroid, as if the chemicals had given up the ghost. It flared, like a negative after-image, and became an out-of-focus blur. It curled, as if the impossible had happened, and it was burning.
Little Petra, she whispered. What happened?
She placed the Polaroid in my free hand and I had to blow on my fingers, it felt so hot. She wrapped her painted fingers round the metal handle.