by Muriel Spark
She says again, ‘Are you all right?’ And again she knocks. ‘Mrs Fiedke, are you all right?’
The latest comer now bursts out of her cubicle and makes for the wash-basin. Lise says to her, while rattling the handle of Mrs Fiedke’s door, ‘There’s an old lady locked in here and I can’t hear a sound. Something must have happened.’ And she calls again, ‘Are you all right, Mrs Fiedke?’
‘Who is she?’ says the other woman.
‘I don’t know.’
‘But you’re with her, aren’t you?’ The matron takes a good look at Lise.
‘I’ll go and get someone,’ Lise says, and she shakes the handle one more time. ‘Mrs Fiedke! Mrs Fiedke!’ She presses her ear to the door. ‘No sound,’ she says, ‘none at all.’ Then she grabs her bag and her book from the wash-stand and dashes out of the ladies’ room leaving the other woman listening and rattling at the door of Mrs Fiedke’s cubicle.
Outside, the first department is laid out with sports equipment. Lise walks straight through, stopping only to touch one of a pair of skis, feeling and stroking the wood. A salesman approaches, but Lise has walked on, picking her way among the more populated area of School Clothing. Here she hovers over a pair of small, red fur-lined gloves laid out on the counter. The girl behind the counter stands ready to serve. Lise looks up at her. ‘For my niece,’ she says. ‘But I can’t remember the size. I think I won’t risk it, thank you.’ She moves across the department floor to Toys, where she spends some time examining a nylon dog which, at the flick of a switch attached to its lead, barks, trots, wags its tail and sits. Through Linen, to the down escalator goes Lise, scanning each approaching floor in her descent, but not hovering on any landing until she reaches the ground floor. Here she buys a silk scarf patterned in black and white. At a gadgets counter a salesman is demonstrating a cheap electric food-blender. Lise buys one of these, staring at the salesman when he attempts to include personal charm in his side of the bargain. He is a thin, pale man of early middle age, eager-eyed. ‘Are you on holiday?’ he says. ‘American? Swedish?’ Lise says, ‘I’m in a hurry.’ Resigned to his mistake, the salesman wraps her parcel, takes her money, rings up the till and gives her the change. Lise then takes the wide staircase leading to the basement. Here she buys a plastic zipper-bag in which she places her packages. She stops at the Records and Record-Players department and loiters with the small group that has gathered to hear a new pop-group disc. She holds her paperback well in evidence, her hand-bag and the new zipper-bag slung over her left arm just above the wrist, and her hands holding up the book in front of her chest like an identification notice carried by a displaced person.
Come on over to my place
For a sandwich, both of you,
Any time …
The disc comes to an end. A girl with long brown pigtails is hopping about in front of Lise, continuing the rhythm with her elbows, her blue-jeans, and apparently her mind, as a newly beheaded chicken continues for a brief time, now squawklessly, its panic career. Mrs Fiedke comes up behind Lise and touches her arm. Lise says, turning to smile at her, ‘Look at this idiot girl. She can’t stop dancing.’
‘I think I fell asleep for a moment,’ Mrs Fiedke says. ‘It wasn’t a bad turn. I just dropped off. Such kind people. They wanted to put me in a taxi. But why should I go back to the hotel? My poor nephew won’t be there till 9 o’clock tonight or maybe later; he must have missed the earlier plane. The porter was so kind, ringing up to find out the time of the next plane. All that.’
‘Look at her,’ Lise says in a murmur. ‘Just look at her. No, wait! —She’ll start again when the man puts on the next record.’
The record starts, and the girl swings. Lise says, ‘Do you believe in macrobiotics?’
‘I’m a Jehovah’s Witness,’ says Mrs Fiedke. ‘But that was after Mr Fiedke passed on. I have no problems any more. Mr Fiedke cut out his sister you know, because she had no religion. She questioned. There are some things which you can’t. But I know this, if Mr Fiedke was alive today he would be a Witness too. In fact he was one in many ways without knowing it.’
‘Macrobiotics is a way of life,’ Lise says. ‘That man at the Metropole, I met him on the plane. He’s an Enlightenment Leader of the macrobiotics. He’s on Regime Seven.’
‘How delightful!’ says Mrs Fiedke.
‘But he isn’t my type,’ Lise says.
The girl with the pigtails is dancing on by herself in front of them, and as she suddenly steps back Mrs Fiedke has to retreat out of her way. ‘Is she what they call a hippy?’ she says.
‘There were two others on the plane. I thought they were my type, but they weren’t. I was disappointed.’
‘But you are to meet your gentleman soon, won’t you? Didn’t you say?’
‘Oh, he’s my type,’ Lise says.
‘I must get a pair of slippers for my nephew. Size nine. He missed the plane.’
‘This one’s a hippy,’ says Lise, indicating with her head a slouching bearded youth dressed in tight blue-jeans, no longer blue, his shoulders draped with an assortment of cardigans and fringed leather garments, heavy for the time of year.
Mrs Fiedke looks with interest and whispers to Lise, ‘They are hermaphrodites. It isn’t their fault.’ The young man turns as he is touched on the shoulder by a large blue-suited agent of the store. The bearded youth starts to argue and gesticulate, but this brings another, slighter, man to his other shoulder. They lead him protesting away towards the emergency exit stairway. A slight disturbance then occurs amongst the record-hearing crowd, some of whom take the young man’s part, some of whom do not. ‘He wasn’t doing any harm!’ ‘He smelt awful!’ ‘Who do you think you are?’
Lise walks off towards Televisions, followed anxiously by Mrs Fiedke. Behind them the pigtailed girl is addressing her adjacent crowd: ‘They think they’re in America where if they don’t like a man’s face they take him out and shoot him.’ A man’s voice barks back: ‘You couldn’t see his face for the hair. Go back where you came from, little whore! In this country, we …’
The quarrel melts behind them as they come to the television sets where the few people who have been taking an interest in the salesman appear now to be torn between his calm rivulet of words and the incipient political uprising over at Records and Record-Players. Two television screens, one vast and one small, display the same programme, a wild-life documentary film which is now coming to an end; a charging herd of buffalo, large on one screen and small on the other, cross the two patches of vision while music of an unmistakably finale nature sends them on their way with equal volume from both machines. The salesman turns down the noise from the larger set, and continues to address his customers, who have now dwindled to two, meanwhile keeping an interested eye on Lise and Mrs Fiedke who hover behind.
‘Would that be your gentleman?’ Mrs Fiedke says, while the screens give a list of names responsible for the film, then another and another list of names. Lise says, ‘I was just wondering myself. He looks a respectable type.’
‘It’s up to you,’ says Mrs Fiedke. ‘You’re young and you have your life in front of you.’
A well-groomed female announcer comes on both televisions, small and large, to give out the early evening headlines, first stating that the time is 17.00 hours, then that a military coup has newly taken place in a middle-eastern country details of which are yet unknown. The salesman, abandoning his potential clients to their private deliberations, inclines his head towards Mrs Fiedke and inquires if he can help her.
‘No thank you,’ Lise replies in the tongue of the country. Whereupon the salesman comes close up and pursues Mrs Fiedke in English. ‘We have big reductions, Madam, this week.’ He looks winningly at Lise, eventually approaching to squeeze her arm. Lise turns to Mrs Fiedke. ‘No good,’ she says. ‘Come on, it’s getting late,’ and she guides the old lady away to Gifts and Curios at the far end of the floor. ‘Not my man at all. He tried to get familiar with me,’ Lise says. ‘The one I’m look
ing for will recognize me right away for the woman I am, have no fear of that.’
‘Can you credit it?’ says Mrs Fiedke looking back indignantly in the direction of Televisions. ‘Perhaps we should report him. Where is the Office?’
‘What’s the use?’ Lise says. ‘We have no proof.’
‘Perhaps we should go elsewhere for my nephew’s slippers.’
‘Do you really want to buy slippers for your nephew?’ Lise says.
‘I thought of slippers as a welcome present. My poor nephew — the hotel porter was so nice. The poor boy was to have arrived on this morning’s flight from Copenhagen. I waited and I waited. He must have missed the plane. The porter looked up the timetable and there’s another arriving tonight. I must remember not to go to bed. The plane gets in at ten-twenty but it may be eleven-thirty, twelve, before he gets to the hotel, you know.’
Lise is looking at the leather notecases, embossed with the city’s crest. ‘These look good,’ Lise says. ‘Get him one of these. He would remember all his life that you gave it to him.’
‘I think slippers,’ says Mrs Fiedke. ‘Somehow I feel slippers. My poor nephew has been unwell, we had to send him to a clinic. It was either that or the other, they gave us no choice. He’s so much better now, quite well again. But he needs rest. Rest, rest and more rest is what the doctor wrote. He takes size nine.
Lise is playing with a corkscrew, then with a ceramic-handled cork. ‘Slippers might make him feel like an invalid,’ she says. ‘Why don’t you buy him a record or a book? How old is he?’
‘Only twenty-four. It comes from the mother’s side. Perhaps we should go to another shop.’
Lise leans over the counter to inquire which department is men’s slippers. Patiently she translates the answer to Mrs Fiedke. ‘Footwear on the third floor. We’ll have to go back up. The other stores are much too expensive, they charge you what they like. The travel folder recommends this place as they’ve got fixed prices.’
Up they go, once more, surveying the receding departments as they rise; they buy the slippers; they descend to the ground floor. There, near the street door, they find another gift department with a miscellany of temptations. Lise buys another scarf, bright orange. She buys a striped man’s necktie, dark blue and yellow. Then, glimpsing through the crowd a rack from which dangles a larger assortment of men’s ties, each neatly enfolded in transparent plastic, she changes her mind about the coloured tie she has just bought. The girl at the counter is not pleased by the difficulties involved in the refund of money, and accompanies Lise over to the rack to see if an exchange can be effected.
Lise selects two ties, one plain black knitted cotton, the other green. Then, changing her mind once more, she says, ‘That green is too bright, I think.’ The girl conveys exasperation, and in a manner of vexed resignation Lise says, ‘All right, give me two black ties, they’re always useful. Please remove the prices.’ She returns to the counter where she had left Mrs Fiedke, pays the difference and takes her package. Mrs Fiedke appears from the doorway where she has been examining, by daylight, two leather notecases. A shopman, who has been hovering by, in case she should be one of those who make a dash for it, goods in hand, follows her back to the counter. He says, ‘They’re both very good leather.’
Mrs Fiedke says, ‘I think he has one already.’ She chooses a paperknife in a sheath. Lise stands watching. She says, ‘I nearly bought one of those for my boy-friend at the airport before I left. It was almost the same but not quite.’ The paper-knife is made of brassy metal, curved like a scimitar. The sheath is embossed but not, like the one Lise had considered earlier in the day, jewelled. ‘The slippers are enough,’ Lise says.
Mrs Fiedke says, ‘You’re quite right. One doesn’t want to spoil them.’ She looks at a key-case, then buys the paper-knife.
‘If he uses a paper-knife,’ Lise says, ‘obviously he isn’t a hippy. If he were a hippy he would open his letters with his fingers.’
‘Would it be too much trouble,’ she says to Lise, ‘to put this in your bag? And the slippers — oh, where are the slippers?’
Her package of slippers is lost, is gone. She claims to have left it on the counter while she had been to the door to compare the two leather notecases. The package has been lifted, has been taken away by somebody. Everyone looks around for it and sympathizes, and points out that it was her own fault.
‘Maybe he has plenty of slippers, anyway,’ Lise says. ‘Is he my type of man, do you think?’
‘We ought to see the sights,’ says Mrs Fiedke. ‘We shouldn’t let this golden opportunity go by without seeing the ruins.’
‘If he’s my type I want to meet him,’ Lise says.
‘Very much your type,’ says Mrs Fiedke, ‘at his best.’
‘What a pity he’s coming so late,’. Lise says. ‘Because I have a previous engagement with my boyfriend. However, if he doesn’t turn up before your nephew arrives I want to meet your nephew. What’s his name did you say?’
‘Richard. We never called him Dick. Only his mother, but not us. I hope he gets the plane all right. Oh — where’s the paper-knife?’
‘You put it in here,’ says Lise, pointing to her zipper-bag. ‘Don’t worry, it’s safe. Let’s get out of here.’
As they drift with the outgoing shoppers into the sunny street, Mrs Fiedke says, ‘I hope he’s on that plane. There was some talk that he would go to Barcelona first to meet his mother, then on here to meet up with me. But I wouldn’t play. I just said No! No flying from Barcelona, I said. I’m a strict believer, in fact, a Witness, but I never trust the airlines from those countries where the pilots believe in the afterlife. You are safer when they don’t. I’ve been told the Scandinavian airlines are fairly reliable in that respect.’
Lise looks up and down the street and sighs. ‘It can’t be long now. My friend’s going to turn up soon. He knows I’ve come all this way to see him. He knows it, all right. He’s just waiting around somewhere. Apart from that I have no plans.’
‘Dressed for the carnival!’ says a woman, looking grossly at Lise as she passes, and laughing as she goes her way, laughing without possibility of restraint, like a stream bound to descend whatever slope lies before it.
FIVE
‘It is in my mind,’ says Mrs Fiedke; ‘it is in my mind and I can’t think of anything else but that you and my nephew are meant for each other. As sure as anything, my dear, you are the person for my nephew. Somebody has got to take him on, anyhow, that’s plain.’
‘He’s only twenty-four,’ considers Lise. ‘Much too young.
They are descending a steep path leading from the ruins. Steps have been roughly cut out of the earthy track, outlined only by slats of wood which are laid at the edge of each step. Lise holds Mrs Fiedke’s arm and helps her down one by one.
‘How do you know his age?’ says Mrs Fiedke.
‘Well, didn’t you tell me, twenty-four?’ Lise says.
‘Yes, but I haven’t seen him for quite a time you know. He’s been away.
‘Maybe he’s even younger. Take care, go slowly.’
‘Or it could be the other way. People age when they’ve had unpleasant experiences over the years. It just came to me while we were looking at those very interesting pavements in that ancient temple up there, that poor Richard may be the very man that you’re looking for.’
‘Well, it’s your idea,’ says Lise, ‘not mine. I wouldn’t know till I’d seen him. Myself, I think he’s around the corner somewhere, now, any time.’
‘Which corner?’ The old lady looks up and down the street which runs below them at the bottom of the steps.
‘Any corner. Any old corner.’
‘Will you feel a presence? Is that how you’ll know?’
‘Not really a presence,’ Lise says. ‘The lack of an absence, that’s what it is. I know I’ll find it. I keep on making mistakes, though.’ She starts to cry, very slightly sniffing, weeping, and they stop on the steps while Mrs Fiedke produces a trembling
pink face-tissue from her bag for Lise to dab her eyes with and blow her nose on. Sniffing, Lise throws the shredded little snitch of paper away and again takes Mrs Fiedke’s arm to resume their descent. ‘Too much self-control, which arises from fear and timidity, that’s what’s wrong with them. They’re cowards, most of them.’
‘Oh, I always believe that,’ says Mrs Fiedke. ‘No doubt about it. The male sex.’
They have reached the road where the traffic thunders past in the declining sunlight.
‘Where do we cross?’ Lise says, looking to right and left of the overwhelming street.
‘They are demanding equal rights with us,’ says Mrs Fiedke. ‘That’s why I never vote with the Liberals. Perfume, jewellery, hair down to their shoulders, and I’m not talking about the ones who were born like that. I mean, the ones that can’t help it should be put on an island. It’s the others I’m talking about. There was a time when they would stand up and open the door for you. They would take their hat off. But they want their equality today. All I say is that if God had intended them to be as good as us he wouldn’t have made them different from us to the naked eye. They don’t want to be all dressed alike any more. Which is only a move against us. You couldn’t run an army like that, let alone the male sex. With all due respects to Mr Fiedke, may he rest in peace, the male sex is getting out of hand. Of course, Mr Fiedke knew his place as a man, give him his due.’
‘We’ll have to walk up to the intersection,’ Lise says, guiding Mrs Fiedke in the direction of a distant policeman surrounded by a whirlpool of traffic. ‘We’ll never get a taxi here.’
