by Alex Pheby
In comparison to what she’s just been doing, the exchanges suffer.
She’s not a prude, but she’s not a whore. When the money changes hands she does rather feel like a whore. Is one paid, after all, to visit a friend under the pretence of delivering post? No. Is one paid by one’s friend’s father to remove her drawers? No. Is one paid by one’s friend’s father to allow that friend to kiss her breasts? No. And, if one is, then what’s to say that one isn’t a prostitute to one’s friend?
She wants to feel that it can’t be prostitution if there aren’t any men involved, but he is a man, with his pirate eye-patch and the nudges to the shoulder. Admittedly, he isn’t in the room at the time, watching from a wardrobe, cock in hand, stroking, but he is somewhere nearby, drinking until his breath smells, and writing little plays for them both to act out.
Do they make the same bargain with Hélène and the others? If not, what is it about Myrsine that is so special? She is known for her charm and her efficiency – perhaps that is it – an excellent combination in a whore, charm and efficiency – nice and quick, cheap when paid by the hour, without sacrificing any of the fun.
He looks utterly guileless, though. Either he is a great actor, along with his other skills, or he simply does not know. Perhaps it is customary to pay for friends to keep lithe and troubled daughters company where he is used to living, and that the fondling and slipping in of fingers is a side issue, an agreement between two girls with nothing else to entertain them between ten and one daily. That is certainly nicer, more in keeping with the world as she wishes it were. Let it be that, then – terribly old fashioned to think of it in any other way, terribly reactionary, and she is neither of these things.
When his wallet is back in his jacket he is away and down the stairs almost instantly. Blown kisses farewell, and he leaves the odour of wine processing through his system and out in the sweat, and of cheap cigars.
She returns to the bookshop, past the Moroccans, but this time she crosses to the Left Bank as soon as she can, where the unease drifts away as if it was a function more of geography than morality.
I listened to him and kept my own counsel; after all, our first duty was to the recording of the find, and whatever secrets the tomb contained could be puzzled over together regardless of any differences in our motives. I took a pad and pencil of my own and began a brief sketch of the east wall, where instances of the deceased’s life were combined with representations of various rituals carried out on her either before or after her death.
Then he speaks to you, and the Great Ennead
The body is placed in its coffin, which is in turn placed in a catafalque, protected by goddesses at the bow and the stern.
THE IB AND THE BA OF LUCIA JOYCE
LES ATELIERS DU VIEUX COLOMBIER, PARIS, SUMMER 1927
This world is numerological, numbers having such great importance that they are counted every day. They are divided so that they are easier to manage into very small divisions for constant appreciation. There are larger and larger units so that more subtle sensations of numbering are catered for: the passage of an hour, that time between meals, day and night, menstrual cycles, tides and moons, religious observances, the progression of the seasons. These numbers are all measurable and relatable to each other over the course of a life. They are placed on top of the coursing of events, and are celebrated most loudly on the most numerical day of them all – the passage from one annual numeral to the next, and the beginning again of all things at the beginning, at the strike of midnight on New Year’s Eve.
At this time, snow will fall on the slums and the numbers will mark the progression towards heaven of a slum child. She is close to death, and the excited reiteration of the numerals in sequence across the whole day makes inaudible her gradual and increasing deathliness. Those numbers rise in inverse relation to the numbers measured on a thermometer falling, if inserted rectally, indicating the gradual reduction in her core temperature, or, if mounted on a wall, the ambient temperature of the air.
Down snow falls in heavy flurries to drift and gather against the walls of her shack. It forms a rather picturesque scene not unlike that which would decorate a tin of biscuits, or a festive advertisement for cough syrup. The contrast between the presumed coldness of the snow, its pretty whiteness against the damp black wood, and the presumed warmth of the wan, yellow light coming through the window somehow evokes the Christian virtues of faith, hope and charity, and the pagan ones (now forgotten) simultaneously. All this is an illusion, of course, because there is no warming fire within this shack. How could there be? Any warmth would certainly cause the snow drifting against the poorly insulated walls to melt. It is only the fitful flickering of a candle stub, itself threatened by the girl child’s laboured breathing as she attempts to instil in herself enough courage to leave the shack and attempt to sell her matches.
She is obliged to do this work for a number of reasons.
Firstly, one must work. Such is the number fetish of the culture that each participant in it must substitute their worth and effort for numbers allocated in fiat currency. The promisors of that currency oversee the distribution of those numbers on a largely arbitrary, though practically inescapable, scale depending on the historical prestige attached to various forms of employment, movement, or physical/mental activity.
Secondly, she works under duress – her guardian will beat her if she does not return with money, in coins and notes, sufficient to allow him to buy enough material to satisfy his requirements. These vary between drink, food, and the payment of debts for the late payment of which he will be beaten.
Thirdly, she has always done it, as far back as she can remember, so she will do it today.
Fourthly, she has been conditioned to believe she has no ability to question the way things are.
Fifthly, she no longer cares.
Sixthly, she will be dead soon anyway, so what difference does it make? Let it happen, for God’s sake. There is only so much a child can bear, and if this is all the world has to offer then to hell with it and let her die in the street and the rats can have her.
When she opens the door the shack almost collapses – the joints were never properly fitted, the wood never properly cured, and her guardian is not the kind of man to pay attention to the remedial work a property requires to keep it in good condition. Quite the opposite: the effort required to make a single stitch and thereby save nine is more effort than he is prepared to make. Moreover, he is insensible to the world around him, dizzy through drink for the best part of the day and always on the verge of some terrible bodily emergency, whether it be the unwilling passing of motions, or the regurgitation of blood and bile, or some other ailment that causes him to grip the back of the chair and gasp. His situation is too pressing, certainly, for him to worry about the fitting of the door in its frame, or cracks in the glass window panes, or whether girl-children in his charge are this or that distance from death by starvation and exposure.
Once outside she is cold, but there is still a beauty in the falling of snow. She appreciates the way it lies on the streets and covers up the shite that covers up the mud that covers up the shite that she usually walks over. She has seen biscuit tins in the past, like we all have, and she has seen Father Christmas and his elves, like we all have, and she knows how closely this kind of precipitation is related to the giving of gifts and the being of good cheer, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way. Even if she has rarely experienced it, there is in her no less, probably more, appreciation of the wonder of it all.
Even as she teeters on the brink of collapse, the matches she is obliged to sell in a tray are suspended by straps across her shoulders. Her shoes are made of slum detritus – cardboard, elastic bands, scraps of rubber – and no use whatsoever against the snow.
We might imagine her catching a snow flake on her tongue, if we wish. We might imagine her smiling.
We might imagine also that she is not a starving girl, but a well-fed girl. She acts the
part of a starving girl, not starving herself, but trying to seem starving. She is not hopeless, but represents hopelessness. Thus we alleviate any guilt on our part, replacing the question ‘what should I do to help this child?’ with the question ‘is there any help I need provide?’ and ‘am I being hoodwinked?’ We replace a starving child, who is deserving by any definition of the word, with a mythical undeserving child who has been put on the street, for example, by her gang master, to extract the charity of passers-by in a confidence trick it would be idiotic to fall for.
Both are true of this child in any case. She is starving, and any charity would be given to her gang master. Either way she will die, and the passers-by are little more than silhouettes to her – coiffures and hats, cigarettes and handbags, cossetted dogs held to the chest. They are all in shadows, lamplight drawing them against the walls as they pass. They are cold themselves, hungry themselves, hopeless themselves, differing from her only by degree, and there but for the grace of God go we, and all the sooner if we waste money we don’t have on matches we don’t need for children who misrepresent themselves on the street on New Year’s Eve, when the numbers reach the end and begin again.
It is hard, though, to misrepresent death.
It is equally hard to represent oneself as having a conscience when one does not.
She cares about none of this: neither that they do not care for her, nor that they might be induced to care for her once she is dead. It is a condition of care that it comes after the event, when one can be sure it is merited and after there is any practical requirement on one to do anything except feel appalled. Feeling appalled is a very trivial matter, and something that can be done whilst going about one’s normal business without it impacting too much.
When a man who has found himself without any matches – his daughter has surreptitiously taken them from the box, chewed them, and spat their remnants into the corner behind the bed – and now has no way of lighting his cigarette, comes to buy her matches then she is not paying attention. She is distracted by his opposite, by the people who pass by and do not want to buy her matches. She turns to follow them, looking for any sign that they might want the matches, determined not to miss her saviours through inattention. In striving so hard for their attention she misses the man who can save her. He is always behind her, pantomimically, when she turns. When he tries to attract her attention he fails because she is whirling about like a dervish after people who wish to ignore her. When he taps her on the shoulder she is so numb with cold that she doesn’t feel it. He gives up and goes to a nearby bar, where it is easier to get a light.
He goes into this bar and he goes into his own hell, for he, despite his almost saving this girl, or almost contributing to her saving, is in trouble himself. He has something that someone wants, something they are willing to take by force. Or he does not have the thing he is supposed to have, and for which he has already received money, but has gambled it away. Or he has lost the thing that was given into his charge and no amount of hiding in bars and smoking cigarettes is liable to save him. It might even bring him to the attention of the men he is hiding from, and they will torture him, something that this girl cannot complain of. She has nothing, her guardian has nothing, so they will be allowed to die in peace and will not have to suffer thumbscrews, and kneecappings, and threats against their children.
So, if this world of numbers is cruel, it is cruel in a largely even-handed way, and the starving girl need not think she is alone in this.
There is justice, then, of a sort, and here is a policeman, amongst the men in hats and women in coats and toy poodles carried to the breast. Against the panes of lit glass which separate the starving girl from the world of warmth behind them, there is an officer of the law. His attention is turned to the match girl.
Is it a crime to be a seller of matches? Is it tantamount to vagrancy to be close to death and unable to convince others that they need matches and might buy them from her? The statutes and bylaws are mysterious even in one’s own country, and who is to say what is and what is not prohibited in this land, which is like ours, but also different. It is different in the uniforms, in the architecture, in its attitude, possibly, to cold, starving girl-children.
He does not seem to be intent on arresting her, so perhaps this is a more liberal regime than we imagine. Perhaps here the agents of the state roam the streets looking for unfortunates to rescue, rather than miscreants to bring to book. That would be a great thing, if it were true, we will all agree. If we, as a people, could turn our resources to the rescuing of starving children it would be wonderful, but he is neither rescuing, nor arresting – he hovers, watching from a distance, then drawing close, as if considering the possibilities before settling on one.
She, as with most things, does not notice him. Now she presses her nose instead against the glass, frosted already on one side by the gathering of the water vapour from the warm breath of the people within as it meets the cold glass. It is frosted now by her own breath, which she wipes away with stiff fingers. The glass is obscured by the breath on both sides, opaque as if she has cataracts, equally blind are the people inside, to whom she is nothing but a shape. She could be anything – a pile of boxes, a sack of coal, a shadow of some smaller or larger object lit from behind and at a distance. She need not be a child, certainly, who has substance in the world, even when she is frail and dying.
She switches to another pane and here, by some fluke, she can see in. When the rag with which a pane of glass is wiped is greasy, this grease can transfer to the glass. If that grease is clear (if it is linseed oil, for example, rather than lard) it can both go unnoticed and also prevent the gathering of water vapour. It prevents the fogging that might otherwise obscure the movement of light. If she keeps wiping off her breath as she breathes, she can see in now.
Inside there are wonderful things – beautiful men and smiling women, dresses and jackets, cossetting of dogs, drinking from flutes, pampering by servants and slaves who have been conditioned to smile through their servitude, and who exist in a regime so lax that, once their masters turn their backs, the slaves can snigger and offer their low opinions of the assembled to each other without it resulting in their torture, or expulsion into the snow. The monocle is particularly frowned on, and laughed at, though amongst the rulers this affectation is a sign of great status, providing it is not undercut by contradictory indicators of low status, such as poorly polished footwear.
There is an excess of cake, and this draws the starving child’s attention. So hungry is she that it isn’t the sweetness of the thing that particularly entrances her, despite that being what marks cake out as desirable, it is the amount of it on offer. She is attracted by the presumed mass of it, imagining what that amount of food would feel like in her stomach. In reality, to fill a starving and empty stomach with food of this richness would certainly result in vomiting, perhaps even hypophosphatemia in the long term, but there is no reality in which this child would be allowed access to the cake, so the question is moot.
Now the policeman is over her shoulder, attempting to see what she sees. When they have seen the same thing, the policeman finds something in her behaviour that is actionable by an officer of the law – she should not consider stealing those things which do not belong to her, not unless she wants to get on the wrong side of him. With this warning he withdraws to a distance again.
She returns her eye to the glass, hoping for one more glance of the food, as if its nutrition is transmissible optically, but before she can see it she feels the chill and light concussion of snowballs, which have been aimed at her and thrown by two naughty boys.
A child, even a starving one, is like a kitten: it is wont to play given the opportunity. Play is a kind of reflex. It may be that a child will play at snow fighting up to the point of death. We can certainly imagine such a situation, even if it isn’t one we can empirically prove, and the girl’s reflex is not yet so dulled that she can ignore it. Consequently, she picks up powdered sn
ow, wads it together, and returns fire.
This might provoke a pleasant scene in the mind: children playing in the snow. Let us imagine squeals and laughter, mock indignation and mock aggression, all in the context of a good natured expression of high-spirits. If we wish, we might see this as an outpouring of the dying girl’s humanity, irrepressible even under the harshest of conditions.
This is certainly a supportable reading.
However, we must remember that snow is formed from solid water, and that the body temperature of even the coldest living child is capable of melting snow back into liquid. We should also remember that, once wet, matches are useless for their primary function; they will not strike and go alight. We should also remember that when powdered snow is balled it does not remain balled on impact, but rather scatters about.
Bearing all this in mind, we can see that the snowballs will disintegrate into the tray of match boxes that the girl has close to her chest. We will understand that it is impossible to sell wet matches, and that the girl’s life depends on her selling her matches. By wetting a proportion of the matches (not all, as we shall see later) she thereby reduces the chances that she will live out the night.
We can see, then, that her playfulness is also fatal, and that along with the other factors that combine to see her dead, her childishness in this regard is not without its consequences. It is tragic, in fact, and/or ironic, that her childish nature should result in her death as a child.
The game causes a nuisance to passers-by and the policeman returns to issue a ticket for loitering, a ticket for littering (a certain number of matchboxes were dropped in the game) and a demand that she move on.
Move on, black lips.
