“David, you’re not thinking of leaving me, are you?”
“Well, not leaving you. Just, leaving.”
Maggie fixed her gaze on me, fully engaged now. I looked sheepishly at her. She had that look of exasperation I sometimes got from girls, the look that told me I was whining. I wasn’t particularly mindful of the way I sounded before I made my sounds, but I was self-aware enough to see it in retrospect, to catch an immature neediness in my demands after they had slipped from my lips.
“David, I love you, but I can’t help you through everything. You need to do something. I don’t know, write or take up jogging or something. Find a hobby. Americans jog, don’t they?”
“Maggie, my problem isn’t my hobbies. My problem is my job.”
“Job? Is that how you think of Hans?”
“I shouldn’t?”
“I dunno. I s’pose.”
She thought for a moment. Her look of annoyance faded. I could see her mind working, then coming on something.
“David, if Hans is a job, you don’t bloody do it very well, do you?”
“Whadya mean?”
“You don’t do much of anything. I mean, I know you do what he asks you to do, but you don’t take any initiative. Surprise him.”
“Surprise a quadriplegic?”
“Have you thought about taking him somewhere?” she asked.
“Taking him somewhere? Like where?”
“Anywhere, you great idjut. The two of you just need to get out of the bloody house.”
It made perfect sense. If I was stir-crazy, Hans must be too. An excursion—damn, I loved Maggie. So two days later, I took the first step (which was no mean feat). I learned to use the winch. It was a contraption next to Hans’s bed, a hammock of sorts hanging from a stainless-steel boom. You lowered it until the black canvas fabric lay flat by Hans’s side, then you carefully rolled him onto it, straightened him up, and lifted. I had to laugh at Hans’s expression as he rose, a mix of genuine fear (he had no defense if he fell), bemusement at his condition, and some excitement at a change in routine. As the harness closed in around him, his arms involuntarily hugged himself. His knobby knees drew up toward his chest. His eyes darted around him, willing his dead body back to earth. I lowered him into his wheelchair and gingerly tugged the canvas from under him.
Hans had a way of attracting interesting friends. It may have started with pity, but he roped them in and kept them around. And they rewarded him. One of the more handsome rewards was the coyote-fur coat he would wear when he went out in his wheelchair, made for him by James and Wills. His friends could be divided into pre-accident and post-accident. James and Wills were post-accident friends, which is why I liked them. The pre-accident friends, mates from school or Europe or Hampshire, were insufferable.
“You know, Hans, I went riding the other day. Wonderful exercise,” one of the pre-accident friends droned on once, a porcine man named Cecil, a classmate from Eton. “Really, the up-and-down motion, the squeezing of the thighs, all that running about. Really wonderful for the constitution.”
“Sounds like all the exercise belonged to the horse,” Hans replied.
“Oh yes, quite right,” the man allowed. “Very droll, Hans. Say, Hans, how is Elizabeth these days? I take it she never remarried, no?”
“No, no, Cecil.”
“Yes, well, it was something of a miracle she landed a husband the first time,” he said with an insolent chuckle. “But I suppose all young flowers can catch a bee when their blossoms are most tender. A little more difficult when the petals start to wilt and droop.”
I don’t know if it was out of malice or some notion of politeness that Hans would laugh softly at such comments.
James and Wills were nothing like that. Gay, flaming actually, they gushed over Hans’s newest Callas recording and regaled him with stories about the latest gorgeous boy who wandered into their London fine used books store.
“You should have seen him, his smile. Really, Hans, I had to bite my palm, like this,” Wills said, demonstrating with relish as he shoved the heel of his palm into his mouth and clamped down.
“I had to run into the back of the shop. My heart ached,” James chimed in.
“What were you doing back there, you old queen?” Wills slapped his friend with mock ferocity.
They also joked about Hans’s past live-in helpers.
“Remember that first, fat one a few years back, when you were getting ready for Tuscany?” Wills launched in. “We were talking about this boy’s ass or that boy’s ass. ‘Who will ever want my ass?’ he squealed. I swear, I didn’t think he had it in him.”
“I don’t think he ever did have it in him,” James responded on cue.
The two of them dissolved into squeals of laughter.
“I wish the image had never been allowed into my aching brain,” Hans replied.
The one sensation Hans could not escape was cold. He felt it in his depths. He dreaded going outside for that one reason more than the many others on his list. And putting a jacket on Hans was practically impossible. You had to lean him forward in his wheelchair to slip it behind him, then pull back his arms and somehow feed them through without breaking his increasingly brittle bones or tearing his papery skin. He wouldn’t feel it if you did, but that was all the worse; infections set in quickly and mercilessly.
James and Wills had the answer, a shop they knew of in London that specialized in fetish wear, bondage and domination, straitjackets and the like. A straitjacket could be slipped on from the front, no need to twist arms or wrench shoulders. But the ties or zippers in the back would dig into the bony spine, producing a bedsore without even a bed. So James and Wills’s friend designed for Hans a fur straitjacket, the sleeves protruding from the front, with one side so long it wrapped neatly behind Hans’s back. The two sides of the jacket met at Hans’s side and zipped up diagonally over his left shoulder. To top it off, he was given a coyote-fur mat to cover his legs.
“But why coyote?” I asked. “It’s like a mangy wild dog.”
“David, must you always destroy my images of your country? Occasionally I can muster some romanticism about the call of the wild and all that,” Hans replied.
“Those were wolves, Hans. Actually, if you really must know, they were huskies.”
“Well there you are. Mangy dogs.”
We were heading to the pub. Not the Imperial Arms down the street but a much brighter place in a hotel overlooking the sea a block down toward the beach.
“You sure you don’t want me to come along?” Elizabeth called out in a singsong voice from upstairs. She hurried down, still buttoning a flouncy white blouse that she had just thrown on over a prim skirt that fell below her knees. She looked at me with a harried smile. “I could be good company for a handsome young man on his own.” She gave me a playful nudge.
“He won’t be on his own,” Hans sighed wearily.
There was no use in me trying to mediate. I was paid, however woefully, to take the cripple’s side. I gave Elizabeth an apologetic look.
“I’m sorry, Elizabeth. I’ll join you for a drink tonight.”
For a skeletal wraith, Hans was, it turned out, surprisingly difficult to wheel around. Even strapped in, his body fell with gravity, exaggerating the slopes and turns and forcing me to stop every few feet to hoist him back up. He was used to it and good-natured about the whole thing.
Inside the pub, I ordered us both a bitter, a pint for me, a half pint for him. His money. I held the glass to his mouth and turned it up nervously, watching for the little gasps from his chest to signal when to pull away. And then I noticed them. The stares. Not everyone, but quite a few, just staring, without an ounce of shame. If Hans met their gaze, they didn’t flinch. Do you look away when the gorilla looks back at the zoo? It was like that, like Hans was a different species. Like they had total license. I flashed them a glare and tried to swat their gazes away, but their eyes wandered back, if they moved at all.
“How ca
n you take this, Hans? Do you want me to say something to these people?”
It dawned on me that Hans had agreed to this little expedition for my benefit.
“That’s kind of you, David, no. One gets used to it. You should have seen your own expression when you walked in that first day.”
Hans, clearly exhausted, ate only a few bites of sheep kidneys for dinner. I set him up with his reading easel and rubber pointer, then cleared the dishes away.
“I’ll be fine, thank you,” he whispered, almost inaudibly, so quietly that I almost didn’t notice that he actually thanked me.
“How did you get on then?” Elizabeth asked as I walked into the kitchen with a plate of food even I couldn’t pick clean.
“With dinner?” I asked, setting the tray down by the sink.
“No, David, this afternoon.”
She stood instinctively to relieve me of the dishwashing. It was one of those infrequent nights when Elizabeth and Cristina had eaten together, and mother and daughter were sharing a cup of tea. It was childish of me, I know, but I always got flustered and self-conscious around Cristina, like I was around Kelly Hill in fifth grade. I cleared my throat and tried to sort through a response.
“I think it went OK, I guess.”
“David,” Cristina chimed in, “I think you can do better than that.”
I could feel my face flush, but I appreciated the challenge. It woke me out of my torpor.
“Well, I was taken aback, I guess, by all the staring.”
Elizabeth considered that, her face slightly knit.
“You’ll get used to that soon enough,” she said. “This was your first time out with my brother.”
“I was a little more concerned about him.”
“Don’t be, David. Hans is a big boy. He won’t let you do anything he doesn’t want to do, believe you me.”
“How are things at home, David? I saw you had some letters from your parents,” Cristina said by way of rescue.
“Fine. I mean, nothing ever really changes at home.”
“It occurs to me I don’t know anything about you, David,” Cristina probed. “Do you have any brothers or sisters? You’re so far away from family.”
“I have a brother, Noah. I know, very Jewish, right? ’Parently he’s going to law school.”
“‘The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers,’” Elizabeth jumped in theatrically.
“I had a sister, but she died.”
I hadn’t meant to say it. I talk about Rebecca almost never. But it slipped out, like a shroud over the little party.
“I suppose I shouldn’t have killed off your brother just then too,” Elizabeth muttered to break the silence.
“Mum!” Cristina snapped.
“No, no, it’s OK; it was a long, long time ago.” I waved my hand and smiled wanly.
Elizabeth looked at me with a sad, sweet smile. “‘Everyone can master a grief but he that has it.’”
“My parents have never mastered it,” I said softly. “My sister gets a mention at least once in every letter. Her room has never been touched.”
“They must miss you terribly, David,” Cristina said. Elizabeth shot her a silencing look.
“I don’t know. They never seemed to need me much when I was around, but they are writing more, I’ve noticed, a lot more.”
“Well, David, don’t bugger off too fast. We need you as well,” Elizabeth rang out.
That night, after I had emptied the urine bag one last time, adjusted the blankets, and wrenched the drapes shut, I fumbled in the gloom for Hans’s hand stick. The top left drawer was a cluttered mess, the convenient repository of volunteers’ shortcuts, Elizabeth’s hasty tidying, and flotsam deposited by Hans’s friends over the years. My hand brushed across a pile of old onionskin correspondences.
“What are these?” I asked, raising a few letters aloft and into Hans’s view.
“You Americans are as impertinent as your reputations.”
I turned to shove them back into the wreckage that had moved to fill their spot.
“You are curious about our story, are you not? Me, Elizabeth, Cristina?”
I hesitated. I wasn’t sure whether a yes would be proper or prying.
“Oh, come now, David. You are. I dare say Elizabeth has told you something. I can hear through the walls well enough.”
I didn’t know what to reveal about our nightly story-time ritual.
“Those are letters, evidence.”
“Evidence…?”
“Yes, of all that happened,” he snapped, then sighed. “Hand me that top letter.”
“Now?”
“Yes, David, now.”
I set the reading table that propped up on finely carved pegs across his chest and smoothed out the letter in front of him.
He cleared his throat.
“Oh, this one.” He laughed. Then he began.
Dearest Biggest Brother Hansy,
Oh, I’ve been a naughty girl. You’d be so proud. I hitched up with Victoria and fled Houndsheath, to Portugal! We are on a beach in the Algarve, dear brother, eating blood oranges, dark ham and gigantic prawns—yes, there is such a thing. The sun is hot, the wine is cheap, and Hans, I think I’m in love—not that you would know of such a thing. Perhaps a turn on a tropical shore would soften even your cynical heart. Come unto these yellow sands, and then take hands: Curtsied when you have, and kiss’d—The Wild waves whist.
I wanted to jot off a note to say, alright to boast, that I too have found lift. I’m not too bashful to admit, Hansy, that your own flight across the Channel gave me some inspiration and more than a little courage—not that I could have done it without Vicki. But now I am feeling so free, to live, to love. The isle is full of noises, Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not.
Well, in truth the delight did hurt a touch, but we women suffer even in pleasure. I hope I’m not shocking you, brother, but I have lost my virginity here. Oh what joy!
Mum is just fit to be tied, not that she knows the gory details. She has an inkling that I’m up to no good. I must admit I think Dad is quietly glad to be rid of me.
But enough about me, you should be well ensconced in Paris. I want to hear all about the City of Light and your latest, spine-tingling adventure. I’m sure it involves a lady of exceptionally ill repute. I’m all ears. Of course, I don’t have a fixed address at the moment. Please send your sporadic correspondences to Houndsheath, care of dear mama and papa. They’ll have a better idea of where to find me.
Oh and Hans, although your stories from university were wonderfully graphic, they could not hold a candle to this “heaven that leads men to hell.” If it works out, I’ll tell you all about my Joao Goncalves. Just the name will titillate you, no doubt. If not, there are otros peixes no mar, no?
Take care, dear brother.
Your loving, beaming sister,
Elizabeth
Chapter Four
“Just a minute,” Cristina yelled from behind the bathroom door.
It was morning at the Bromwells’, which meant the usual scramble for the upstairs toilet, and if I didn’t have such a weakness for Cristina, I might have been angry, like Greg waiting for Marcia in The Brady Bunch. Instead, I thought of Hans’s catheter; there are advantages to his condition. I slinked into the study to look at an African carving—a woman on her knees, with pendulous breasts and a curious smile, holding on her head a great bowl, which Elizabeth, or perhaps Cristina, had filled with cowry shells.
“It’s from Portuguese Guiné,” Elizabeth broke in, startling me. She reached out a hand, and I handed the figure to her. She studied it for a moment.
“What do you know of the Portuguese wars in Africa?”
I shrugged. “Wars of liberation, right? Angola and Mozambique are still fighting. Reagan keeps pumping them with money to fight the communists. ‘Our man in Huambo’ I remember reading somewhere. I can’t remember who the guy is, bad though, I’m sure.”
“‘Hua
mbo.’” She laughed. “‘There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries.’”
She paused to look at the statuette, but her eyes were elsewhere.
“‘On such a full sea are we now afloat.’ Are you interested, David?”
Italy had Il Duce, Germany the Führer, Spain El Caudillo—murderous one and all, but flamboyantly evil. Portugal had a mama’s boy economist who went by the honorific title of “Doctor.” What António de Oliveira Salazar’s fascism lacked in flare, it made up for in longevity—forty years of absolute control. Maybe his dullness explained his durability.
After the assassination of King Carlos in 1908 and the hapless two-year reign of his son Manuel II, the Portuguese Republic commenced what would be sixteen years of chaos—enough revolution, government change, corruption, and anarchy to give democracy a bad name and the Weimar a run for its money. It was a relief when the generals put an end to it by launching a bloodless coup on June 17, 1926. Portugal was the laughingstock of Europe when the military government summoned Dr. Salazar in 1928 from the University of Coimbra. And at the tender age of thirty-nine, the quiet, precise economist performed a miracle: He balanced the budget. For that simple act, he became the Ditador.
From his poor redoubt on the western edge of Europe, Dr. Salazar commanded a ragtag empire: to the east, half the impoverished East Indian island of Timor, the seedy, corrupt outpost of Macau, and the exotic beaches of Goa; to the south, the desert outcroppings of Cape Verde, the lush isles of São Tomé and Príncipe, and the tiny sliver of West Africa known as Portuguese Guinea—Guiné—not to be mistaken for the only slightly larger French colony of Guinea. Then there were the jewels of the Portuguese empire—the ultramar—Angola and Mozambique. That empire was proof of Portugal’s once and future greatness, the legacy of da Gama and Magellan, men who had brought a planet to fealty, and Salazar was not going to cede an inch of it, not a fragment of fetid mangrove swamp.
No. 4 Imperial Lane Page 7
