by Regi Claire
‘Turns out the boss has a stomach bug,’ Dominc tells her. ‘He’ll be doing the shutters though. On and off, anyway.’ He laughs, then gives himself a good scratch behind the ear and saunters off, to do whatever. Celia doesn’t care.
It’s driving her crazy, this silence and the subterfuges on Alex’s part. She decides to take the bus again today, doesn’t trust herself with the car. Her foot might slip on the accelerator, or get trapped under the brake pedal. It’s happened before when she was upset.
She is still shaking the snowflakes off her coat and stamping her boots on the doormat just inside Reception when Angelina pounces on her with the words, ‘A fucking fiasco, Celia, pardon the language.’ Referring, it would seem, to her evening out with Sergio.
Celia smiles, waves a hand sharply as if to say, now don’t you worry, but really wielding an imaginary dagger: why hasn’t bloodybloodybloody Alex sent her at least a note? Then her attention is caught by Angelina saying ‘Bluebeard Club’. All Celia can think of is the villain who tricked and murdered his wives, and she stabs him with an extra-hard thrust.
‘Nice place,’ Angelina continues. ‘I’d never been before. But I didn’t fancy the show much, with those girls gyrating all over the stage. “I can do better than that,” I told Sergio, “just you watch me.” Got up from my chair and peeled off my blouse, real slow.’ She giggles, scowls, sneers, like an actress practising facial expressions. ‘I’d a crop-top on underneath, so no harm done. But then one of the waitresses comes rushing across, almost trips over her tongue stud, says they don’t allow this kind of behaviour and would I sit down again. Or go. So I did: sat down, drank up, and went. Sergio never knew what hit him.’ She laughs. ‘And l was in time for the end of Kurt’s evening classes. Lucky, no?’ Her laughter sounds brittle, and she lets her hair flop over her forehead. It occurs to Celia that now she won’t be able to obtain Paolo’s number, won’t be able to console herself with the violet promise of his eyes.
No mention is made of the silk handkerchief, and frankly, Celia isn’t in the mood. Nothing exciting happens all morning, hardly any phone calls. Handsome Henry won’t be back until tomorrow, and Eric waddles off at the first chimes of the eleven-o’clock bells to meet a new supplier for lunch and ‘subsequent negotiations’, leaving Lapis behind as an office responsibility. Eric will be away all afternoon, ‘liaising’ between sips of the best local Beerliwy, Celia knows, because he’d taken pains to soften her and Angelina up beforehand with several of his Fémina chocolates.
Walking the dog is the apprentice’s job, strictly speaking. But Celia decides to take a chance; it’s the perfect excuse for her to pay a certain someone a visit. She has checked the address in the electronic phone book.
At quarter to three, their usual coffee break, she whistles for Lapis and puts on her coat. ‘Back soon,’ she calls to Angelina, over the racket Lapis has started up, barking like a creaky old door. ‘You could do a bit of dusting afterwards; listen to some music if you want.’ She smiles generously, feeling mean and selfish when the heavy security door shudders locked behind her.
Madame conferring a favour, Angelina thinks, with a grimace at the pomegranate red she’d watched fissuring out from Celia’s lips as she smiled. Her espresso is ready now and she sinks into the softness of the nearest leather seat.
With Lapis firmly on his lead, Celia catches a southbound bus and gets off hear the ghastly towerblock of Anders Cantonal Hospital, on a hillside built over with the big villas and estates of the wealthy. It has stopped snowing and gone bone-chillingly cold. A grey day that blots out the panorama of the Swabian Mountains behind Seerücken Hill, the long low hump that conceals Lake Constance.
Celia puts up the collar of her coat, presses her elbows against the loose folds of fabric to hold in the warmth. Lapis seems happy enough snuffling along by her side, marking their steps with yellow trickles every so often. But then, halfway, up the mostly residential street, just as she’s laid eyes on the sign Painters & Decorators in the same curlicued writing as on the van, he embarks on a fierce tug of war.
‘No!’ Celia yells, panicking. Pulling and jerking desperately in the direction of the sign. ‘Bad dog!’
Next thing she’s slipping and grasping at the slats of a wooden garden fence, steadying herself in time to see him charge down a lane some metres back, his lead whiffling up fine clouds of powder snow.
She runs after him. Alternately swearing under her breath and shouting cajolingly, ‘Lapis, come here! Lapis!’ Slithering past a girl and a placid black labrador. Then two boys who’re pulling up their bobsleighs. ‘Chop-chop!’ they yell and their laughter pelts her with the force of gritty snowballs, follows her all the way to where Lapis is standing panting and slavering and being patted, his lead looped round the wrist of a sturdy old woman.
‘I thought there’d be someone looking for him,’ she says regretfully. She has guarded eyes. ‘Such a nice dog.’
‘Thank you,’ Celia gasps.
‘Oh, no bother. I love dogs. We used to have them all the time on the farm before the son took over. Dogs are so much nicer than humans, don’t you think?’
Taken aback by the old woman’s frankness, Celia only manages a nod. Then she reaches for the lead and gently unwinds it from the broad blue-veined wrist, repeating, ‘Thank you.’
To Lapis she hisses, once they’re out of earshot, ‘No more biscuits for you!’ At the word ‘biscuits’ he pricks up his ears and starts to grin. ‘No,’ Celia says. ‘No. Stupid dog.’
They carry on walking down the hill to the bus stop by the grammar school – what else is there to do?
Eric’s ‘negotiations’ with his new supplier had lasted well into the evening and it’s twenty to seven when Celia finally unlatches her garden gate. Snow falls off the wrought-iron bars, icy cold. She stoops over the jasmine for a moment, but the scent seems to have frozen within the yellow hearts of its flowers. Then she notices that the little door of her letter box is ajar: inside there’s something flat and silvery on top of her daily paper, like a slice of the moon.
A box of chocolates – Lindt Swiss thins, her favourites!
Alex wouldn’t know that though, would he? Anyway, the box is too light for chocolates – it feels empty.
She begins to joggle off the lid.
‘Haven’t seen you in a while!’ Rolf, her neighbour, is striding towards her from the house, dressed in the smoke-grey overalls of the sugar factory with the inevitable black biker’s jacket on top, and heavy-duty boots that make the thin layer of snow on the path spurt up before him.
Celia hastily shoves the lid back down.
‘How’re you doing?’ he asks. His eyes dance and pierce. They’ve always reminded Celia of polished iridescent obsidian, like those American Indian arrowheads she’d seen in one of Eric’s books.
‘All right, thanks.’ She indicates the box in her hand to deflect the keenness of his gaze: ‘It’s a present, I hope!’ She smiles.
Well, I won’t tell anyone.’
The next instant he’s bent so close she can smell the machine oil off his overalls. She isn’t too sure what he means and prays to goodness he didn’t hear anything the other evening, with Alex.
‘What happened to your beauty spot?’ she asks, more bluntly than she’d intended, and points to the space between his nose and upper lip where his toothbrush moustache has shrunk to near-invisibility.
‘Ah, that,’ he says, unfazed by her abrupt change of subject. ‘A new party game we played: I shave you, you shave me. You should try. It’s good fun.’ He winks, laughs. ‘I’d better get my skates on. Night shift. Car doing okay?’
‘Yes, fine, I just took the bus this morning. Too snowy. Sugar doing okay?’
Now they’re both laughing. But as Rolf scrunches off along the street, the phrase he used earlier starts skittering round Celia’s skull like a curse: goodfun-goodfun-goodfun. A blackbird is hopping about the feeder in the ash tree, chirping feebly at the heaps of yesterday’s husks. Celia
seizes the newspaper and clamps the Lindt box under her arm with sudden irritation. She doesn’t want to see what’s in it; Alex has kept her waiting and now his present will have to wait for her.
A microwaved lasagne and half a bottle of Bardolino later, Celia is ready to survey her lounge. Passing the corridor mirror she sticks her tongue out like a saucy girl, then scoops up the chocolate box from the telephone table.
She won’t open it yet, though; she’ll tease herself a bit longer.
When she flicks on the light, the room springs alive; its deep purple hues vibrate around her as if in physical embrace. The furniture, too, seems to be affected by the unaccustomed intensity of colour. Without its protective sheets now and pushed more or less back into place, it appears smaller and duller, almost cowering. Celia smiles to herself. Given time, it will no doubt adapt to its altered surroundings; the rosewood bureau will once again glow softly in its corner, the sofa and armchairs uncramp themselves and the standard lamp straighten up. That she might end up having to buy new furniture never even crosses her mind.
Slowly she wanders around the room, the Lindt box half-forgotten in her hand; she tinkles her fingernails on the amethyst radiator panels, tests the firmness of the painted lining paper with her thumb, runs her palm over the window frame’s gloss, slippery as topaz. She has just rested her flushed face against the pane when a bus comes swooshing along. It’s empty except for the New-Age student couple from the apartment block opposite, whom she’s observed on various early-morning occasions scuttling off towards the station with bulging shoulder bags, having missed the bus. Now, arms interlinked, they’re standing by the double exit doors, eager to jump off, and for a moment it seems to Celia that they’re looking directly at her.
Their stare acts like an unspoken command and she flings herself down into the sofa cushions, tears the lid off the box before that stubborn inner voice can stop her.
Inside is a passionflower, rather dusty, made of pale-purple silk.
Thankgod it isn’t a tulip! How sweet of Alex! Celia laughs, delighted. A flower to commemorate their half-hour of passion! Then she laughs a little more, disillusionment kicking in fast. How absolutely touchingly mind-bogglingly naive of the man!
Because she knows better, of course. Not passion, but suffering.
It was the summer Walter started his apprenticeship and went to live at the Schlosshotel that her mother had explained to her the plant’s symbolism. ‘Christ’s Passion,’ she said one day as she and Celia were walking past the flowers growing rampant on their neighbour’s fence, ‘Look,’ and taking Celia’s index finger, she made her touch one.
They’d counted ten petals, one for each faithful apostle. The corona felt tickly, not at all as she’d imagined a crown of thorns. The five stamens left golden-brown streaks on her skin, like ancient dried-up blood. But she’d baulked at the hammer and the three nails, and snatched her hand away. ‘Silly Cel, they can’t hurt you!’ Her mother had giggled and poked the ovary herself before sliding her fingers up the three round-headed styles. There’d been a triumphant gleam in her eyes.
The following day Celia had mustered up courage; and for weeks afterwards she would dawdle by that fence, select a flower and rub her fingers up and down inside it, from ovary to stigma, stigma to ovary.
She became intrigued by tales of plants thriving on pain. The white lily springing from Eve’s tears when, driven out of Paradise, she found herself pregnant. The violet created from the tears of the nymph who’d been transformed into a heifer and couldn’t bear to eat the coarse grass. The hyacinth blossoming from the blood of Apollo’s beloved Hyacinthus, killed in a game of quoits. The fruit of the mulberry tree turning red from Pyramus and Thisbe’s mingled blood. The tulip – symbol of the Perfect Lover – growing from the tear drops of a spurned Persian youth who cried his heart out in the desert (red tulips, not black ones, Celia is quick to reassure herself now). And, most awesome of all, the mandrake – part man, part drake – also called the gallow plant because it was said to sprout from the semen of hanged men.
The idea of semen had repelled and attracted Celia; in conjunction with hangings, it proved simply irresistible.
The librarian in town, a small thin man with flitting eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses, grinned and tapped the side of his nose when Celia and Lily asked him about gallows and executions in the area. ‘Is that what they’re teaching you in school these days?’ he asked. Then, just as they were about to slink off, he beckoned to them. Lowered his voice: ‘I’ll see what I can do. Mind you put a volume of Grimm’s or Andersen’s on top in the reading room, all right?’ He gave his nose another tap, and they smiled their most alluring schoolgirl smiles.
With the help of a photocopy the librarian had made for them of an old map from 1825, they located the precise place later that afternoon, trudging through the noise and dust of the construction work going on for the new motorway along the common. But they couldn’t find a single mandrake, let alone any telltale stumps of wood or special atmosphere. Just a few picnic benches and some soot-blackened stones round a grate. The only thing that dripped on the ground here now was the grease from sausages fried on hot summer days.
Celia pinches the silk passionflower between her thumb and forefinger to lift it free of the box, then blows off the dust, realising at the same instant that it isn’t dust at all: bloody Alex has given her an artificial passionflower covered in ashes!
19
THE ALARM CLOCK goes off much too soon. Celia is still looking for Alex-the-coward who’s been eluding her all night. The man of her dreams: taking cover behind the arsenal of jars, tubes, pots and bottles in the Beauty Room vanity cabinet, lurking inside her mother’s shiny walnut wardrobe where he’s held in check momentarily by snakes and the advancing-and-retreating-and-advancing armies of hemlines, then again barricaded behind piles of suede shoes at the bottom of an antique oak cupboard, holed up in the sloppy roll of the white lounge carpet, or camouflaged with old lace curtains, like a ghost. But when the alarm comes on a second time, more strident now and louder, Alex simply vanishes into thin air. Nothing remains, neither curtains nor carpet nor shoes nor dresses, not even a single eyeliner in its jar.
Only a solitary passionflower, ashy pale.
Quarter to seven already. Celia forces the image from her mind and gets out of bed, showers, dresses, prepares breakfast. On the local radio station the announcer predicts ‘a crisp glorious day so don’t forget your gloves and sunglasses and, if you’re lucky enough, your skis, because snow conditions are absolutely fabulous. But remember: never beyond the demarcated areas. Flumserberge and the Toggenburg report record levels …’
As she bites into her Weggli roll, a blob of raspberry jam lands on her napkin, bright red. That’s when she remembers her promise to Angelina. Damn that stupid handkerchief! Stuffing the rest of the Weggli into her mouth, she pads over into the spare room. The drawer handle on her mother’s bedside table gives her a crooked grin. Of course: she needs to find the key first. Back in the kitchen she gulps down more coffee. Closes her eyes, trying to picture her mother’s perfectly manicured fingers feeling for that key. Somewhere soft, she thinks, soft, innocuous and within easy reach, unlikely to have ever aroused her own interest or curiosity.
She pauses, hovering. Then, like a sleepwalker, she is being steered out into the corridor. The cleaning cupboard next to the bathroom door seems to spring open all by itself, the lid to lift from the old wicker sewing basket with the gallantry of a gentleman’s hat.
And there it is, buried under reels of white and pastel-coloured threads, glittering, gold-plated, its bow like a wedding ring, its bit resembling a neatly trimmed beard.
She doesn’t hear the van getting parked in the backyard, the slam of the street door out front, the heavy tread on the wooden stairs, made by one pair of feet. Doesn’t hear the key inserted into the lock of her front door, the steps approaching along the corridor, halting briefly at the threshold to the kitchen where muted radio voice
s are discussing the refugee crisis in the former Yugoslavia. Doesn’t hear the steps turning sharply right, continuing towards her.
She is on her knees, the bedside drawer with its honeycomb of cards and jewellery boxes on the floor beside her. She’s crouched over a large piece of water-and-dirt-stained paper which had been folded up like a map. Except that there are no agglomerations of black dots suggesting homes and people, no green swathes of woods. Merely a tangle of lines shaped like a bat in flight, and printed names such as Devil’s Wall, Nirvana, Witch’s Cauldron, Styx, Nile Valley, Titans’ Tunnel, Galerie des 1001 nuits, Angels’ Fort, Lake Pagoda, Tunnel of Hope, Coral Gallery. Though that’s not everything. The margins are crammed with smudgy large-scale plans and scribbles in pencil, most of them quite indecipherable, and arrows pointing at the bat shape (found two large specimens of niphargus, lost glove, perfect for radio reception, fifth handhold missing, replace rope, slipped here twice three times, dammit are some of the entries she can make out).
Celia’s fingers are brushing along the edges of the paper. She has recognised the handwriting; it’s identical with the inscriptions in her Schellenursli picture books. So this used to belong to her father. This was his personal map of the Hölloch. Then she goes rigid, her fingers poised in mid-air. Why did he leave the map behind? Surely, he’d have taken it with him on that last expedition? So whyonearth didn’t he?
All at once she becomes aware of a presence in the room. Someone is here with her. Someone … The map falls to the floor as she swings her body round sharply, jerking upright, hair flying, her right hand balled into a fist.
‘Alex!’ Her hand uncrumples slowly, like the bud of a flower. ‘How–? What –? You must be early.’ She has sunk down on the mattress of the bed, her stomach in a sudden flutter. She tries not to gaze at him. Forheavensake, woman, she admonishes herself, he is the bastard that gave you an imitation flower, and a grubby one at that! Don’t let him put one over on you again!