Labels and Other Stories

by Louis de Bernières

  ROMANCE ON THE UNDERGROUND

  Women are not like us; this is the first thing that you need to know. You should not be misled by having grown up with a mother and sisters, for they are not women in the sense in which I mean to speak. Mothers and sisters have no romantic interest in their brothers and sons, and so one’s experience of dealing with them is quite useless when it comes to coping with the real thing. Now that you are fourteen years old, it is time for me to tell you that all through your life you will be perplexed by women, you will discover over and over again that even the most clear of your perceptions was not quite the truth, and you will undoubtedly go to the grave as confused and puzzled as you are at present.

  Your mother tells me that recently you had your first real kiss, and that you found it slobbery and disgusting, like chewing a slug. I am not surprised; this is your first lesson, and one that you will probably never learn, which is that what you think you want from women is not what you actually want. Men want to go to bed with every eligible woman in the world, and when by a stroke of luck the opportunity arises, they often take it. But what happens? The experience might be disappointing, or even slightly repellent. This does not prevent us from sticking to the hunt, however, for at heart we are just dogs, and cannot help ourselves, even though we know both by experience and instinct that only some women are truly able to turn this animal act into something mystical and sublime.

  Curiously, and perhaps fortunately, the woman who is able to do this for me is not the same woman who can do it for you, or for the man next door; the woman who is an enchanted being for one man may well be an entirely ordinary piece of work for another. Another lesson that every man learns, incidentally, is that these enchanted beings are not necessarily the most resoundingly beautiful. We all know this perfectly well from our own experience, but because we are dogs, and so easily deceived by our own eyes, we forget it over and over again, usually within a few seconds of relearning it. Time and again I have left a superb woman who was not quite pretty enough, only to be disappointed by a woman who was beautiful … but I am sure that you do not wish to hear about what has happened to me.

  On the other hand, now that I come to think of it, perhaps if I do tell you something from my own experience, it might help you to see what I mean about the rarer and more unusually beguiling kind of woman. The sad and tragic thing is, by the way, that somewhere along the line, sooner or later, one usually forgets what it was that made her so enravishing, and everything slowly becomes unravelled. But that’s another matter.

  I know that you are only fourteen; I don’t see you as often as I would like, and I cannot put my hand on my heart and say that I know you as well as I should, but if you are anything like a normal fourteen-year-old, you probably think that the experience of someone who is inconceivably old, such as myself, is completely irrelevant. I felt the same whenever my father offered me advice. Tant pis. That is the way the world is, and we cannot change it, but let us pretend that we are the same, not man and boy, but man and man, swapping tales about women, and then perhaps you will feel less like a youngster who is being lectured.

  I have always loved women. If I pick up a telephone after a woman has used it, and her perfume comes back out of the mouthpiece when I speak, I am entranced by a delicious sensation of intimacy. When I go into the bathroom after a woman has been in there for two hours performing all those rites and mysteries of which I still know nothing, the atmosphere of feminine humidity arouses in me an inexplicable tremor of gratitude and affection. My imagination is full of women, even when I am supposedly working, and even during those few times when I have been trying to pray.

  The world is bulging with desirable women, as you have no doubt noticed already, but there are some who have a special presence, as if the space they occupy has more intrinsic depth and reality than that of others. These ones are surreptitiously incandescent, they glow with an invisible light reminiscent of mountains, shortly after dawn, in a tropical land. When I encounter one of these, it is like being in a clearing in the Amazon when a jaguar strolls past, sniffing the air, or like going to the front of a boat, looking down into the water, and seeing dolphins curvetting across the bows.

  There is a sense of rare privilege, an emotion that says, ‘I am glad, after all, that I have lived.’ Even though in some ways women have been the bane of my life, I still feel touched by grace whenever one of these exceptional creatures crosses my path, and it is about one such exceptional creature that I am going to tell you.

  There is nothing picturesque about the railway line out from the capital to the airport. Part of the journey is underground, and all of it is somewhat slow and uncomfortable. Frequently one is hemmed in amid heaps of luggage, and usually there are crushes of foreign travellers whose voluble conversation creates a veritable Babel.

  I was on this train one evening on my way to foreign parts, when my attention was caught by a young woman seated at forty-five degrees opposite. She had reclined her head against the glass partition next to the doors, and had an air of lassitude which intrigued me. I watched her. As you will have discovered already, we men cannot help watching pretty girls, it is as much a part of our nature as a horse’s need to run, or a bird’s to build a nest. The trick is to do it skilfully, so as not to cause offence; a woman likes to be noticed, but she does not like to be stared at as though by a predator. For the most part she enjoys practising the art of pretending not to have noticed that she has been noticed, and if, on the other hand, she is in a tetchy mood, she seizes equally the opportunity to practise a kind of disdainful indifference. The young woman of whom I speak noticed immediately that I was watching her, and gazed directly back into my eyes as though reading information from behind them. I was disconcerted by this frank counter-scrutiny, and was forced to look away.

  Her own eyes were small, but very dark indeed, so that I could not see the pupils, and she had fine eyebrows that curved with classical simplicity. Her face was more pointed than it should have been in one who gave such an impression of natural beauty, for her lips were a little too thin, her nose a little too sharp. At the corners of her mouth she carried just the memories of a smile, giving her the air of one who is capable of sensual but harmless mischief. In the lobe of her right ear she wore two tiny studs, one a blue sapphire and the other a white diamond.

  Her cheekbones were high and prominent, rending her face a hint of a Slavonic tilt, and her neck was very slender, so that I felt that I could have encircled it with one hand. Its delicate tracery of blue veins was just discernible beneath a very fine, pale and translucent skin. Her fingers were slim, with narrow nails, and in repose they gave the impression of precision and creativity; they belonged to hands that were those of a jeweller, perhaps, or a watercolourist. I imagined vividly that if I were touched lightly by them, I would receive a small shock of pleasure.

  The girl’s hair was indeterminately dark brown or ebony, very smooth and clean, and, parted at the centre, falling to the level of her neck. Her hair curled slightly inwards at the extremity, so that it seemed that it was caressing the skin of her neck.

  My first impression was that she was quite tall. Certainly her legs were lightly made, with thin ankles, but with sleekly contoured calves and thighs that were set off to discreetly erotic effect by sensible black stockings. She was, in fact, dressed almost entirely in black, that being the colour of her cardigan and her short woollen skirt. Her shirt was white, however, and yielded not a hint as to the true conformation of her breasts. She wore two silver rings, and a necklace with a pendant that consisted of one large amber set in a silver heart.

  Now, you can tell from the exactness of my description that I was captivated by her, and I watched her at every possible moment of the journey. Each time that we came to one of the many stops, I was once again surprised by my own relief that she had not alighted. I willed her to be there, coolly opposite me, right until I reached the airport.

  From time to time she turned her head and regarded me wi
th all the dignified and anthropological detachment of one who knows that she is worth observing in the train, and thinks little of it. When I smiled at her, she did not acknowledge it, but continued to gaze at me for a few seconds as though I were something that she had never seen before, but found only mildly interesting. I had a distinct suspicion that she was quite deliberately mystifying me. I had reason to think, however, that she was not as indifferent to me as she wished me to believe.

  If you grow up to be anything like me, you will fall in love twenty times a day, but of course most of the lovely women in our lives are transient. We spot one in the market, or at the side of the road. Perhaps we are lucky enough to converse for a while at a social occasion. Even so, we are resigned to the ephemerality of these loves and desires, we are reconciled to taking gratefully what crumbs and morsels fate has afforded us, and we pass on, regretting what might have been, but with a regret that is sweet and poignant. We have not dirtied our illusions by diving into the turbid waters of a real flesh-and-blood encounter.

  I was likewise stoically facing the fact that she and I would never become acquainted, and likewise I was experiencing those inevitable tiny pangs, when the train stopped at the airport station, and we stood up to leave.

  I saw that in fact she was a very small woman, not in the least bit tall, for it had been only her slenderness that had created that impression. I saw also that she had an enormous suitcase, which clearly weighed a great deal. She struggled to heave it through the doors, and then managed to get a few yards before she dropped it, and looked about. I supposed that she was looking for a trolley or a porter.

  I touched her on the shoulder and said, ‘Please may I help? Your case seems to be very heavy.’

  She looked up and said, ‘Oh, it’s you.’ Her voice was light, with a trace of the countryside outside the city.

  I shrugged and smiled, implicitly admitting culpability. I pointed to the case. ‘Shall I take it?’

  ‘What about your own luggage? Aren’t you carrying anything?’

  ‘I’m only taking this,’ I said, indicating the small Gladstone bag in my right hand. ‘I’m just going for the one night.’

  She looked at my bag and said, with irony in her voice, ‘I think you’ve mastered an art that I should study myself.’

  She took my bag from me, in token exchange for hers, quid pro almost quo, so to speak, and we set off towards the moving staircase. ‘What have you got in here,’ I asked, ‘books?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘Makes a change from dead bodies,’ I said. ‘I’m bored with dead bodies.’

  She laughed. ‘There’s no fun in dead bodies. Books are better.’

  ‘Depends on the books. I can name quite a few that would make a corpse seem lively.’

  She glanced at me sideways, and in a severe tone of voice that belied the easy tone of our conversation hitherto, she demanded, ‘Don’t you know that it’s bad manners to stare?’

  I was taken aback. ‘It’s only bad manners to be caught staring. I’m sorry, I thought I was being subtle about it.’

  ‘It’s a kind of oppression, when a man keeps staring at you. It’s not nice.’

  ‘What is it when a woman keeps staring at a man?’ I asked. ‘And I don’t mean when you do that trick of looking straight at me as if I were an advertisement for soap in a vaguely familiar language.’

  We were upstairs by now, heading towards the check-in counters, and we stopped in our tracks as if by mutual agreement. ‘What do you mean?’ she asked.

  ‘I mean,’ I said, ‘that you were watching me the whole time, but you didn’t think I’d noticed. So when you did your staring trick, you were just being a hypocrite, and you’re being a hypocrite by asking me whether I don’t know that it’s rude to stare.’

  ‘I wasn’t watching you,’ she protested, but a little feebly.

  ‘You were next to the glass partition,’ I reminded her, ‘and you were examining me minutely the whole journey, by looking at my reflection in it. It’s an old one, that. I’ve used it myself really quite often.’

  She bit her lower lip, and cast her eyes to the ground. As an admission of guilt it could not have been more fetching. ‘Damn it,’ she said, ‘you’re observant.’

  ‘You’ve been caught out,’ I teased.

  She spread her hands. ‘Mea culpa.’ She looked up at me humorously, and caught me with those black eyes. We looked at each other in silence for some long moments, and then I spoke. I said things that under other circumstances I would not have dreamed of saying, and I looked away, and not at her, so that those things would be easier to express. Nonetheless, the situation almost rendered me somewhat incoherent. Normally I am a fluent talker, as you know, but she was so lovely, and time was so short, that I collected my words together only with great difficulty.

  ‘I always look at women,’ I confessed. ‘I can’t help it. If it’s any excuse, I have reason to believe that all men are the same. Anyway, I look at a lot of women.’ She smiled encouragingly, and I continued, ‘But sometimes I see someone who is especially bewitching. I mean that she might have fathomless eyes, or lips that one could kiss for ever or she might have an air of being very adorable or very sad, or very wilful. You are one of those: a woman I would have to look at even if the penalty were death.’

  ‘My God,’ she said, ‘he’s telling me I’m a gorgon.’

  ‘You’re special,’ I persisted, ‘you’re a wish-bringer.’ I paused, but she seemed nonplussed, so I blundered on. ‘Look, I’ll probably never see you again, otherwise, believe me, I’m not normally like this. I mean, I wouldn’t normally talk like this. What I mean is that, given the chance, I would be seriously infatuated. I’m sorry, have I said too much?’

  She twisted her mouth and shook her head knowingly. ‘Either you’re a shameless flatterer or you’re very sweet.’

  ‘Men hate being called sweet,’ I said, glad to shift the subject a little.

  ‘Men are going to have to put up with it,’ she replied.

  ‘Have you got time for coffee,’ I asked, ‘before your flight?’

  We drank our coffee in shared silence, as if subdued by what had been said, or as if cowed by the necessary brevity of our time together. She put down her cup and looked away across the tables, and sighed. She shook her head as if annoyed with herself, and delved into her handbag. She said, ‘I’m going to do something my mother told me not to.’

  I raised my eyebrows in enquiry.

  ‘I’m going to give you my address. I’m going away for two weeks, and when I come back you can send me flowers. If I am impressed, I might give you a call. If you turn out to be a nuisance, though, I must warn you that I have two affectionate and solicitous brothers who are much bigger than you are.’

  She handed me a card, and stood up. She leaned over, kissed me softly on the cheek, and walked away quickly without looking back.

  When I returned from my trip I decided to go and have a look at her address; one can learn much about someone from the outside of their house. In this case I was to be frustrated, since she had plainly only just moved in. The ‘For Sale’ notice was still there, lying on its side on the tiny scrap of front lawn. It was a pleasant but ordinary house in a pleasant but ordinary suburb, and I guessed that she had bought it with the probable intention of having a lodger or two to help her out financially.

  I stood there in the drive, noticing how tatty everything was, and how desperately untended the garden seemed, when I remembered what she had said about the flowers. I was fortunate indeed that it was early summer.

  Suffice it to say that when she came back she found hanging baskets full of lobelia and pelargonium. She found the grass mown, and she found the beds weeded and planted out in the cottage style, with delphiniums, aconitum, periwinkle, aubrietia and Rose of Sharon. When she telephoned me, the first thing she said was, ‘Lucky I hate gardening.’

  Now, I have completely forgotten why I was telling you this story. I think it was something t
o do with women in general. No? Oh yes, you are right, it was to do with the world’s most exceptionally Circean women, and how a woman who is an ordinary piece of work for one man is a goddess or a princess for another. I should think, for example, that you would never have imagined, if I had not told you this story, that that is what your mother was to me.

  MAMACITA’S TREASURE

  The old midwife swung her legs over the side of the bed and rubbed her eyes with the heels of her palms. A cruel and implacable light had already invaded the house, stamping a brilliant rectangle upon the floor where the door stood open. She moved her feet a little to one side, so that the sun would not scald them, and took an experimental breath of air. She breathed out with resignation, reconciled in advance to one of those days when each inhalation would be a desiccation of the lungs, so that little oxygen would be absorbed. One would have only to move a hand to brush a wisp of hair from the eyes, and the sweat would pour down one’s back and between the crease of the buttocks, it would trickle down from the neck between one’s breasts, and one would thank the Good Saviour for the gift of eyebrows that prevented the salty water from running down from the forehead and stinging the eyes.

  They called her ‘Mamacita’ or ‘Abuela’, ‘Little Mother’ and ‘Grandmother’ being the only terms that seemed adequate to express the respect and affection in which she was held. Her true name had long since been forgotten, sometimes even by herself, and she possessed the happiness of one who has been useful all her life even though none of her youthful aspirations had been fulfilled. She had never had a husband, had never had money, had never learned to read, and had never travelled further than the town of Domiciano, but on the other hand she had delivered three generations’ worth of babies, had never starved, and had never made an enemy.