Loving Sylvie

by Elizabeth Smither

  There was no way he could replace the window but, suddenly inspired, he bought a glass brick. In the weeks following he repainted the smallest of the bedrooms and Isobel bought a striped cotton rug. Kit tied a cutting ribbon across the bedroom door and Isobel carried the not-too-sharp kitchen scissors on an old sofa cushion. Behind them trailed Sylvie, her face in what, for a four-year-old, passes for neutrality, which simply means the next expression has not yet arrived and the smooth skin rests. Both her grandparents watched as the scissors made a small then a larger cut in the pink ribbon and the porcelain door handle was turned. Isobel had drawn the curtains so the room was dim, the glass brick on a tea trolley at the foot of the bed. It was to this that Sylvie moved, exclaiming and lifting it in both hands. The surface of her eyes came alive then; the light entered and the surface flickered. That night Isobel, climbing the stairs to begin what would become a nightly ritual—no more than ten pages of a book, a tucking-in and a kiss—found she was too late, and Sylvie’s sleeping head, book, bear and glass brick were in a line on the pillow.

  The honeymooners returned and the parcel from Paris was duly opened. Layers of tissue and expertly tied ribbons were undone, and out came sheets from another century, edged in fine and faintly yellowed embroidery.

  ‘I wonder who slept in them?’ Kit asked. He was thinking, incongruously, of cheese wrapped in vine leaves or dusted with what looked like fine ash.

  ‘Someone very proper,’ Sylvie said. ‘Someone brought up in a world of linen.’

  Linen to cover everything, was Isobel’s thought. As if the body was a temple and when it was unveiled the sheets remained to cover front and back. Rolled in the sheets were two silver candlesticks that ‘might have come from a nunnery’, Madeleine had written on a card with scalloped edges. She had neglected to ask for a certificate of authenticity. Under the sheets were two fine large table napkins and two napkin rings. Inside were entwined initials: B and D.

  ‘Beatrice and Dante?’ said Kit, holding one up to the light.

  ‘More likely Brigitte and Didier, humble residents of the suburbs, too poor to own a carriage,’ said Sylvie. Anything to cover the knowledge that her mother had stayed away. Still the sheets would be good to slide between, naked. In any case, almost everything outlasted a human being. Upstairs she must find her glass brick and take it with her.

  She could hardly wait to take possession of the flat above a shop she had stumbled on and which the Chinese family of greengrocers, after years of cramped living, were vacating for a house they had bought in Mt Eden.

  ‘It smells of noodles and cabbages,’ Ben complained when they were alone in the tiny back room. An ancient toilet was crammed into a space the size of a cupboard. But the upstairs rooms, that had overflowed with beds, had windows that could be forced open once the paint had been scraped and the hinges oiled. After a day among citrus scents and cabbage stalks, unwashed potatoes with earth clinging to them, the family must have consoled themselves by sleeping in a fug.

  On the sill, against the middle pane that didn’t open, the glass brick instantly reflected the shivering leaves of a plane tree.

  Sylvie had been walking along K Road after her anthropology lecture. Ben had agreed she should go back to university for a year and see how she progressed. The degree path, disordered as it so often was at first, and Sylvie was no exception, needed to be smoothed. He was sceptical about the relevance of the great apes. He could admit there were many parallels in the boardroom or in politics, even at Meier Olson where one leg, in his one and only suit, was raised to touch the bottom rung. Sylvie was passing a fruit shop and slowed to look at a pyramid of persimmons. She went in, drawn by the earthy scent that early morning hosing had failed to erase from the concrete floor. She could smell newsprint as well and the mingled scents of flowers drinking deep. She bought a red apple, lifting it from its nest of green tissue and then taking the tissue as well. The young Chinese man rubbed the apple on his apron, rewrapped the tissue around it, and handed it to her.

  ‘Bag?’ he asked.

  ‘Thank you. No,’ she replied, catching, though he had said only one word, a different order of language. An old Chinese woman had materialised at the back of the shop. In her black dress and apron she was almost invisible.

  Sylvie walked along the street, biting into her apple. She had read something, but couldn’t remember the source, about a male bite and a female one. The male, who had the more powerful jaws, took a deeper bite, practically one whole side of the fruit, before offering it to the female. This was just like the apes, she decided, turning the apple so a channel was made. Then she bit deeper and the core was revealed like a keyhole.

  A schism was opening in her mind: her basic disapproval of anthropoid behaviour, and her need to make Ben see that this behaviour was deeply embedded in the human race and therefore useful, though he undermined her theory by behaving like one of the more intellectual apes, content to be lower in the male dominance hierarchy.

  Still she felt the ape’s imperative to find a nest. It amused her to think that a creature so inclined to theatrics and mock rages had such a desire for freshness in its nightly nest. The long arms could reach into the trees and pull down low branches with springy fresh-smelling leaves. Apes had a superior sense of smell, so a used nest might be doubly offensive. After the night’s sleep and before the elaborate grooming that occupied several daylight hours, the nest was kicked over and all traces removed.

  ‘It is natural for the apes, it is natural for me,’ Sylvie thought, walking unheedingly along and bumping into a man who swore at her. He had an angry glaring face, so she turned and went back to the fruit shop. She walked quickly towards the rear where the tiny grandmother was standing, her hands folded over her apron. She saw the man walk past without glancing in. This time Sylvie inspected the boxes and partitioned sections slowly before she crossed the road and walked on the other side. It was from there that she looked up and saw the sign: ‘Flat to Rent. Apply Within’.

  She almost went back; then she reflected she needed to bring Ben. And like an alpha ape she needed to attend to her grooming: no ticks in her hair, no lice eggs on the thick fur that covered her shoulders. On the department noticeboard was the famous photograph from National Geographic: the sloping shoulders of the huge silverback resembled the fringe of a great forest. A blue-black mist seemed to rise from the fur, a beauty both poignant and powerful. So all the grooming paid off.

  In his tidy casual clothes Ben stood in the upstairs rooms that would become their first proper home. He towered over Ma Xingjuan, Ma Shen, Ma Cheung.

  ‘Shop open 6 a.m.,’ Ma Xingjuan explained.

  ‘No problem,’ he replied. He liked the idea of slipping down to buy a peach or a bunch of red grapes, leaving the money beside the big silver till for Cheung to ring up. In the evenings, if they left the door open, scents of fruit would drift up the stairs.

  They could just afford it, with a little help from Kit.

  Sylvie did eventually meet Ben’s mother at the University Women’s Club. It was an awkward meeting punctuated by silences that were a test of will. Cora Taverner sat in a club chair while Sylvie was perched on a deep and disadvantaging sofa in slippery leather—whatever animal it came from would have had raindrops sliding from it at speed. She clenched her back and wiggled her hips to ease herself. Then she thought this might look provocative and she suppressed a smile. Cora, of course, noticed. The words that passed between them seemed to lie on the air like wafers.

  Cora was careful at first to avoid references to Ben or to test Sylvie’s newfound knowledge of him. This untested knowledge floated between them, but after a suitable length of time had passed it could no longer be avoided. There were childhood illnesses to be mentioned and the lingering effects they can have, even in adulthood. This led naturally to sensitivities. Only a mother could broach these since from the earliest stages of her child’s development she had become their sole keeper. Benjamin might not have gone to boarding school but h
e had entered a male world, and doors, starting with the bathroom door, had been shut on her.

  For a moment, sensing this, and seeing it might apply in her future, Sylvie felt a moment’s sympathy. But it could not last and soon, aware her face was being minutely scrutinised, her look became glazed and she found herself examining the furniture.

  ‘Your mother …’ Cora was saying. ‘She too was missing.’ The implication was this was an absence of a different kind, something far more sinister than tending an ailing daughter.

  ‘I believe you travelled by water,’ she went on, when no information about Sylvie’s mother was forthcoming.

  ‘I’ve heard stories of her,’ Cora said, when the tea things were gathered up and Sylvie, taking advantage of a temporary absence, had shoved a cushion behind her back. A sinking posture, she sensed, put her at a disadvantage. ‘Was she rather vain?’ It was as far as she dared to go.

  ‘No more than half the human race,’ Sylvie said, meeting her eye.

  If she had heard about Madeleine’s treasure box, Cora’s lips would no doubt have curved in a sneer. It sounded babyish, almost retarded. Yet Sylvie knew her mother’s love for jewellery was no more blameworthy than a magpie’s liking for shiny things. Why should a child not reach for one thing instead of another? The treasure box, as Isobel explained it, had been in the window of an antique shop, sitting on the seat of a red velvet chair. Isobel had gone in, looking for a plate to replace one she had broken. She turned around and Madeleine had vanished. She ran to the door and looked up and down the street, then back into the shop. Madeleine was crouched in the window, pulling out the fake beads from the box which she had lowered to the floor. As Isobel watched, catching her breath, she saw her daughter stroke the gem-encrusted lid and then kiss it.

  Isobel had felt she could not deny such a longing. It was as mysterious to her as it was to Kit. The silver and gold beads—from Mardi Gras in New Orleans—were included. When the auctioneer lifted out a handful, Madeleine began to cry. He smiled but his eyes were judging as he looked at the avid little girl.

  ‘It will be your Christmas present,’ Isobel said firmly to Madeleine, and Madeleine had nodded vigorously. She was three and it was only July: Isobel knew her edict would be overridden.

  Clearly Cora knew nothing of this. She was probing about diet, meaning Ben’s, the lethargy women failed to notice in men who worked with their brains.

  ‘You needn’t fret about fruit and vegetables,’ Sylvie said. ‘A band of gorillas would find it hard to keep up with Ma’s Fruit & Veg.’

  The face that looked back at her had none of the philosophical mien of a great ape. Suddenly apes seemed very appealing: an ape that might unseat Cora with a swing of its heavy forearm; an ape unpeeling a banana with delicate black fingers as if each segment of skin was a long yellow petal.

  Looking back, Sylvie could see the boat on the lake was easy. Whole days now required such attentiveness. It began in the early morning when she needed to be up and presentable in case Cheung came and knocked on their door. She heard the shop door open and the bell’s first chime even before the light in the room had fully revealed their few pieces of furniture: a dresser with round handles like buttons and an old tapestry chair. Sylvie would open the door and Cheung would bow, holding out a gift of fruit from the market. It might be a pear or an apple. One morning it was an aubergine with a miraculously glowing skin. However Sylvie tried, Cheung could not be dissuaded.

  She still remembered the first morning Cheung had caught her in her dressing gown, hastily and properly belted, and averted his eyes. That morning his bow was deeper as if a god had vouchsafed a secret. Surely he would see it was inappropriate. There were offerings of fruit on the windowsill, a line of tangerines. Ben had thrown one to her as she stood on the far side of the bed. ‘Oh hell,’ she cried, pulling her arms through the sleeves of the old robe that was as soft and comforting as a bath towel, the moment she heard the soft footfall on the stairs.

  ‘The God of Hunger,’ she said to Ben when she had unloaded three perfect lemons onto the bed. If she kept adding to the tangerines she could make a train. It was too late to pretend they were shunners of fruit. The only solution was fruit salad for breakfast and dinner.

  It was not merely her dressing gown that seemed slothful. Other resolutions were coming undone. At first, remembering Lea the courtesan in the Colette novels her mother had left behind, Sylvie had tried to attend to her appearance before Ben woke. This was difficult because he slept heavily and woke first. He lay with his arms folded under his head, looking at the ceiling, as if the tasks of the day were written there. He swivelled his head and caught all the things Sylvie wished were invisible: her sleeping face with its uncontrolled expression and the movement he said he could see behind her eyelids—the twitching of a dream—her crushed hair, her night breath. The body had to close down, as far as it could, she understood that, but she hated her dry mouth before swallowing recommenced, the grainy feel of her eyelashes. And then would come the knock on the door on mornings when her ears had closed down as well and the steps went unheeded.

  ‘Can’t you go?’ she said to Ben, nudging him in the ribs.

  ‘The household god brings fruit only to the mistress of the house.’ He slid the pillow over his face to stifle his laughter.

  ‘I might give up the great apes,’ Sylvie said to Ben one evening when they were dining at the Mexican Cafe. They went early because Ben was convinced the cooks were fresher, the service faster than later when the air was full of wine fumes, raised voices and the occasional spectacular quarrel.

  ‘Why stop now?’ Ben asked. Surely she was trying to get to the bottom of something? Normally he found her doggedness endearing, though it could be intensely irritating. He thought ape spoor and deconstructed nests should lead somewhere.

  ‘I suppose in some ways it could be useful,’ Sylvie said. As usual she began with a bold statement and then backed away. ‘I could never be on a committee without thinking of apes and giving people roles.’

  ‘Reducing someone to an alpha ape. I don’t see how that could help.’

  ‘That shows how little you know,’ she said, kicking him under the table and making their plates wobble. ‘You can never reduce an alpha ape.’

  Nonetheless he felt he might try. At the drafting office there were manoeuvres that might be diverted. There were ways of withholding praise or puncturing something, the strategic use of silence. He had held out in this fashion at a meeting during the week. In truth he had been distracted but the poker face he prided himself on, his cheekbones that he deliberately visualised as frozen, had come to his aid, and when he responded it had sounded mature. Sylvie, he thought, was too absolute. She saw a flaw and instantly it swelled and flooded everything. Then he reflected he hadn’t been abandoned, if this is what Sylvie’s mother had done. Perhaps he should suggest a trip to Paris. Then the thought of their finances intervened and he looked down at his plate where the Devil’s Nachos were beginning to congeal. Sylvie had ordered a milder version so he must be the alpha ape. The napkin she had tucked into her blouse was spattered with the rich red sauce.

  Isobel, in the room that had been Madeleine’s and then Sylvie’s, was dusting the bookcase. The Colettes occupied most of one shelf. Only Claudine and Claudine at School were slightly worn. Possibly The Ripening Seed. The others had that sealed look of the new book, held with gossamer cords. She lifted one to her nose and sniffed, and the paper smell was still there, sealed inside the creamy pages. It was herself she had bought them for, thinking she lacked some kind of primitive knowledge and might gain it from this woman who liked to scrabble bare-fingered in the earth with a cat and dog by her side. Whatever this knowledge was—instinctual, amoral, relying on feelings, the reading of signs—she had wanted to pass it on to Madeleine. She had seen the books as manuals, since her own nature made her an observer. Madeleine might be vain and easily duped but she was not divided. After each defeat she returned to her plan: she was like Gig
i, who preferred her old plaid dress and cotton stockings.

  When the Colettes were in two piles, Isobel emptied the other shelves. She would ask Sylvie if there was a special book. Those on the top shelf were tiny, designed for little hands; some had thick cardboard pages, easy to grasp and turn. Little fingers grasped the edge and lifted it and the image of a striped ball and a single bold word reared up and fell down on the other side. Madeleine had shrieked with pleasure when this happened. Now the paper that overlapped the cardboard was peeling at the corners.

  Outside, in the garden, the pungent scent of the tall gum was wafting its cat-piss smell. Over the years Isobel had grown used to it: a sudden burst that smelled like tomcats. She thought again of Colette and her animals, her eyes darkened with kohl so she looked like a cat. The secret was never to apologise. Animals might feel shame—their old spaniel, Gatsby, when he had an accident, hung his head—but it might be the shortest way to a biscuit. In the novels Isobel had identified with the blundering less-sophisticated characters, the uncertain English girl thrown off balance while she was being taught innocence was no protection.

  Sylvie confronted Professor Woolf while he was standing in the doorway of his office, talking to the Dean. She stepped back, mock-modestly, and surreptitiously rubbed at the corner of one eye. In her hand she held a balled-up tissue. The professor was inordinately disturbed by tears, particularly when they issued from a pretty woman. Stocky or unprepossessing students—naturally no male would think of trying it—had to fall back on reason, doctors’ certificates, or makeup applied to look like spots. Sylvie’s hair was freshly washed and the shampoo scent still clung to it; she had dabbed perfume on her wrists and sprayed her throat. The two top buttons of her blouse were undone and the professor’s eyes would naturally follow.