Matthias looks at his feet, searching. Kate smiles, maternal toward his novice surprise. Finally she touches his shoulder and helps him out:
“Do you feel ashamed that you never stood up before?”
He looks at her, bewildered, then decides: “I guess . . . we’re so out of the habit of respect . . . in the West.”
“Oh!” says Kate. “That’s so what I felt. I’ve just got to give you a hug for that –”
You Can’t Go Home
1Name a Buddhist text, Ralph can recite it from memory.
1.1He meditates, immobile, for five hours at a stretch.
1.2There is no triviality in him, and he cannot be vulgar.
His
•fear
•ill-temper
•sexual desire
•self-pity
don’t show. He has no problems: he never makes mistakes.
1.3When he fixes the air-conditioning, there is superstitious awe.
2He’s amazed at the purity of Tom, Dick and Harry’s auras.
2.1Kate Higgins must be patient with others who lack her deep insight.
2.2“I’m giving you the mantra my teacher gave me,” Ralph tells the needy.
2.3He tells me and Eddie:
“I think I do fairly well for a complete fake.”
“Watch me awe this cunt realtor.”
“I guess you two despise me.”
3Only those with a mantra are admitted to Tonglen meditation.
3.1Tonglen graduates may progress to Higher Practice.
3.2There are stages and titles: I’m an advanced-level meditation adept, but Tantric Healing is by invitation and I’m not invited. Embittered, I suggest we call them “guppies” and “dolphins,” but Ralph doesn’t laugh. I am to understand he has his reasons. And he
4• got college-educated adults to believe chanting made them into good people
•improvised secret teachings, attributing them to a guru named after his mother’s Nepalese drug dealer
•healed the sick with a silver wand, formerly a chopstick
•never laughed about it, was first condescending, then vengeful – like a lover too slavishly adored
5But I was happy for the longest time.
Another Point of View: Mine
1I woke with the program of my morning duties, primed to get the porridge on, peel apples, ring the bell.
1.1I was late. I must get around to those receipts. I’d have to skip the meditation again, I must see the printer. If Jenny couldn’t help out with lunch, I was doomed.
1.2So much for my early night.
2• “Could you ask, Chrissie, cause I don’t want to bother him?”
•“So what do you two talk about, when you’re alone?”
•“When he said that, do you think Ralph meant I’m always stupid, or just that was stupid?”
2.1Walking with me, people stood self-consciously erect, flaunting their fraternization with the A group.
3I worked so hard, it must be doing good.
3.1I practiced fortitude every time I spoke in public; humility in scrubbing floors. I asked nothing in return and I thrived.
3.2That Christmas ’98:
We had a Christmas tree, complete with lights and heaped gifts. Twenty people stayed and we cooked from scratch. Anything that smacked of rejoicing, we did. We drank punch, we mulled wine and sang. For the first time, Ralph spoke passionately, invoking brotherhood. People wept, and couldn’t stop smiling. Strangers held hands. My and Ralph’s love would boom and proliferate, sufficing all, all, all California would thank –
3.3And he told us the story of his mother, the beautiful gypsy, who got into a Ford Zephyr once with a man when only a girl and loosed her braids as the wind began and never looked back
LOLA SECTIONS (cont.)
Argument
Peter Cadwallader and Irene “Lola” Michaelson
have an ill-advised romance:
its repercussions.
Reprise
“I had him hooked that quick. Two weeks’ time! No worries. Course, it wasn’t me like you see me now. And, I had my tricks. That’s the Romany side. My gran could just walk up to a woman in the street and get her rings off her. It’s sheer mesmerism, you have to see it to believe.
“Thing of it was, he couldn’t marry us, yet, account of some bother with his daughter I weren’t ever good enough to meet. So, but, he meant to all right, and we just went ahead and told everyone like we was. That was like the same thing, really: it’s what people think. Only then Peter pulls that he’s not coming to our reception do, he’s got work. Well, that looks wonderful, doesn’t it, the bridegroom not shown up to the reception? But, Mandy stood by me, she was our ‘witness’ to the wedding had there been one to witness. Oh, I can be harsh on her, but she was solid for me then.
“We had a lovely lovely do on the roof of her block, King’s Cross, where you can see the gasworks. Real champagne and that for fifty, it was proper. We had heart-shaped balloons for it, Karen Ann and I killed ourselves blowing them up all that morning.
“Well, I thought it would be a bit of dosh for us for a change. I thought, you’d have a father, everyone was always giving me grief, you without a dad. Dosh, mainly. I was tired, pulling rabbits out of hats. I couldn’t pull any more rabbits out of any more hats.
“I did love him, though. Who knows what makes you feel things? He’s like a horrible dried-up lizard, isn’t he? Peter. Well, they say love is blind, don’t they? I’m the living proof. I loved that horror like the last man on earth.”
Romantic Elopement: Gambler
1How Gypsy Lola learned to play blackjack, some.
1.1Her new short hair and long skirts, worn with court shoes. She took her earrings out, and what it made her feel, in secret.
1.2Before long they flew to their first and next and next casino,
1.3and, through winning, were soon thrown out
1.4to plane it, to coach it, to the next, to walk with luggage in the driving rain forever to
•another filthy hotel room, the same bugs
•the same casino pit, the players’ ill-lit eyes moving to the left, left, towed by the march of cards
•the slot machines ding for seven hours, every cunt smokes
•a close-up of a drain toilet, Apotheke’s their chemist, Spain you don’t need any prescription and it’s pennies
1.5Each town came to its end.
1.6They cashed their chips in.
2. SCENE
if he wanted nice they could have gone back when she said. She’d told him she was tired but he chose not to understand English. So, down to him if her play was no good.
He was at his table by the window, doing the chip tally.
On the ceiling the same beetle from the morning was still clinging, paddling with its one good leg. Watching it, her heart slipped away: she thought with a far-off, futile trembling: No, I love you. You can’t get shut of me like that. I love you, I can’t help I’m thick.
“Oh, Gawd’s sake, forgive me, it’s just one of them nights. Eating that spicy food, I’ve got it all in my bloodstream.” She rolled over onto her back on the stiff made bed, smiled at his profile.
“Whatever’s in your bloodstream, Irene, I don’t think it’s curry.”
Her heart staggered like a drunkard then, his face went in and out.
She said, “Don’t tell me what I’ve got.”
Then the cash: the garish Malaysian ringits, gay like money made for children; the khaki, serious dollars. He dealt them into stacks with a croupier’s brisk assurance, crossing the notes when he reached ten.
“I think we may as well face that what we had was a sexual infatuation, Irene, and now it’s run its course, we see we’re mismatched. I don’t see any point in . . . dragging things out.”
“Oh! Maybe someone had a sexual infatuation.”
“That’s the sort of thing I mean. Your jibes.”
“Don’t even know what a jibe is, when it’s at
home.”
“So, why did you marry me, Irene? I think we may as well have it out in the open. I’m curious. If the sexual interest was so one-sided.”
“I married you because I loved you and I love you still,” she chanted, loud, to drown his evil out.
“I’m sorry. I must have the wrong impression. You’re telling me there was no financial element whatsoever?”
Then she started crying, she couldn’t take this one more time. She wailed, “Stop – killing – me! You’re a fucking butcher! You’re a butcher! I can’t bear it!”
“Oh, the amateur dramatics. I’ll leave you to it.”
He’d got his briefcase open and was packing the cash away. Snapped it shut and turned the tumblers on the lock – to keep her paws out.
A faint tinkle of Musak came as the lift passed their floor. She shut her eyes again and fingered the 500 chip she’d stashed in her bra. Get up and go to the toilet soon: thank Christ she had that blue Valium.
3. PRE-INTIMATIONS OF BLUE VALIUM
That time she promised Ralph a bicycle, that Christmas. Then, of course, the money weren’t there, how could it be? His face when he saw the book was all he was getting, and him squealing it were too easy, I’m too old for this, this is for babies. Well, poor dumb Mum wouldn’t know. That did it, she had to go and pick a fight. Him sent to bed with a slap. Brung his dinner in to him, but he wouldn’t eat, wouldn’t much as look at her and her bawling finally and raging,
You’re like ice, you’re cold-hearted, evil.
Saying all that to a little boy. It was her was the evil one.
She’d say to him, she’d tell him, you never do appreciate what you got till it’s gone. Cause now she’d hardly wait to get free and see her son. That’s what it was for, she’d got to remember, Ralph would have his bike all right, and more –
From the far bright corner of her dreaming, Peter said, “Reenie . . .”
His voice gone syrupy: she heard the ice move in his drink.
She shifted to peer, rubbing the crying out of her nose.
He was beckoning with one hand, intent on something out the window:
“Come on, you can’t miss this for a little tiff.”
She crawled off the bed, rested her feet on the floor to get the blood in. Went to him reluctant, grimacing, though he didn’t look.
From the mountaintop resort site, the Malay jungle flowed down in stages of green and shadow. A few soaring palm crowns were spotlit in the dusk’s sidelong orange, and in the sky overhead stood two furry upright rainbows.
“So, do you really hate me all that much?”
He reached back and trailed his fingers over her buttock. A chill went through her. She would say no, but not just yet.
“Irene?”
“I’ll be with you in a second, I just must use the toilet . . .”
He said, insinuating, gruff: “I’ll be waiting.”
Romantic Elopement: Gambler
1Just leaving Ralph there. Just, fucking off without him.
1.1“It’s only for a while, like a honeymoon, then I’ll be right back for you. It does my nerves, Ralphie, leaving you like this, but if I’m longer than a week, you’ll go to Mandy’s, eh?”
1.2Peter gave him three ten-pound notes in an envelope.
2A heart-shaped white balloon stirs in one corner, bumping its head against the wall each time you open a door.
3• The phone went dead.
•The radiator stayed cold.
•The lights went out.
•If there was a knock, he held still.
3.1He bought cornflakes and jammy dodgers. He bought cigarettes.
3.2Every few days he went to the public toilet, where he patiently extracted yards of loo roll, stuffing it into a Happy Shopper bag to carry home.
4A shriveled rag of pale rubber trails from the hard puckered ring where the balloon was tied.
4.1Ralph turned eleven.
3. Princess Margaret House, Shoreditch, 1973
She wasn’t like a fairy, she was something else. Her hair was like his, and she was short like a child but she was grown up. Her dress was made of some material that didn’t exist. Sometimes she had paws. She came from Mum’s bed.
He drew her over and over. The ones that were closest, he saved in his cigar box with the 8-ball marbles.
You said Montara to call her, and Cossie when she went away. You had to say it out loud, even if there were people there. To whisper was cheating.
At first she was always nice, but then she started saying evil things. Telling him things to do, which sometimes he couldn’t. That was when he started nicking stuff, all cause Cossie Montara said if he didn’t get the phone on, Mum would ring for help. Then, he’d never even get the phone call, and Mum would die.
Once he told her Cossie Forever Cossie, to get rid of her, but when he saw her again, he decided he didn’t mean it. Plus, it was only his pretend, she couldn’t really hurt him.
She was haunting the upper-story windows, all down Old Street, that day he walked home with Belinda Myers.
Belinda Myers was like his fucking monkey on his back. Her and her soppy notes she left in his schooldesk, the bottles of pop, Jaffa cakes screwed up in a paper napkin. All the girls in his year were daft like that. But he daren’t tell Bel to piss off, cause she was the tenth floor of Princess Margaret House, and if she got the hump, she might start snooping. Then it would be parents, and then the social, and then Ralph would be fucked off to a home, where, he knew it from Uncle James, they was all nonces. So it meant, grit your teeth at old Belinda’s jabber.
It was only ten minutes’ walk from school, but Bel insisted on going some “special” way that made it longer. She kept going on about other boys who’d tried to kiss her. If it was Jimmy, that was a three sick, but Rico was a whole ten sick. Ten was like when the dog eats sick and sicks it up again, in your mouth.
When Ralph said she should keep clear of boys, then, Belinda asked if he was jealous.
As they turned off Old Street, Cossie Montara vanished from the plate glass of the Best Café and reappeared way overhead, watching Ralph from his thirteenth-story window of Princess Margaret House. She put a dark pawpad to the glass.
Then he was scared. He looked up and the sky was gray, it was like when you touch metal after it’s rained. Belinda Myers was chewing her lip.
She said, “You fancy coming down the canal?”
He looked at her, she was winding her blond hair down around her satchel strap. For a second he thought about getting his fishing rod. He could give her one of his cigarettes, they’d go looking for half-empty beer cans on the canal boats. Maybe he would kiss her if she really wanted.
But he forced himself to say: “Can’t. My mum’s not well.”
Bel wrinkled her nose: “Yeah? What’s she got?”
“I don’t know. She’s ill.”
“Is that why you sold your telly to Alan? Cause your mum’s poor?”
“She isn’t poor, she’s ill.”
“But, is it? Cause, my best mate, that’s Ann, she’s Alan’s sister, and she said, you was nicking things for him, but then it was your telly from home. So she said she asked if you’d got a new telly, and you said it wasn’t, it was someone else’s that you’d nicked, but she thought it was never, and when she asked Alan later on, she was right.”
“I think my mum’s going to die,” said Ralph.
He looked for Cossie Montara then, but she was gone. That meant mum was really finally dead, Peter’d killed her: why he took her to France, to get her where the cops and anyone wouldn’t never find out. Mum wasn’t coming back, it was like a sex killing.
Now it was his flat.
He frowned at the skimpy, half-hearted trees the council planted at the front, to make you think you were in fucking Surrey. He hoped they would wither. Then they’d have to dig them all out again, a waste of money.
Bel grabbed Ralph’s collar and kissed him on the lips.
He shoved her away, sta
ggering. When he wiped his mouth, he was fleetingly afraid she would see his hand was bleeding. Only it wasn’t even bleeding, that was daft: he threw his satchel down and swore.
Belinda danced away a few steps and shouted, “That’s because I’m sorry for you with your mum ill.” She stopped with her feet wide apart and tossed her head; belligerent, overjoyed.
Ralph shouted, “I don’t want you sorry for me.”
Then Bel rocked back, all pop-eyed, and screamed, “Well, you’re a cunt, and I don’t care if your whole cunt family dies!”
Ralph crossed his arms. He said in a deep, definite voice, “Now you’ll die instead.”
The little girl ran away.
He waited her out of sight and took the steps up into Princess Margaret House.
Cossie Montara was waiting for him in the lift. He pressed 13 and leaned against the wall, breathing the piss smell in deep. Cossie Montara wanted to comfort him, but he didn’t need that. Even if Mum wasn’t really dead, because he’d known she was, that made him grown up.
Only, when he got in the flat and walked into the cold smell of the front room – he lost his bottle.
The dark flat: like it was looking at him. It had enmity. He turned to Cossie Montara, but it was hard to pretend her when you were frightened. Carefully not looking left or right, he dashed to the mantel. He had two candles stuck already to the top of the gas fire, rooted in a swathe of scar-like wax. He lit a candle praying Hail Mary. Lit the other candle, crouched down to retrieve the neat parcel of the book.
Its faded wrapping paper was worn to silken fineness. The outlines of repeating Santas were eroded; the remaining strips of sellotape dark and brittle.
He lifted the book out carefully, muttering, “Just a second, Montara, just a second.” When he had it placed, he shut his eyes and opened it at random. Then he put both hands down on the cool paper, chanted, “Cossie, cossie cossie,” and looked down at the flickering page.
The Only Good Thing Anyone Has Ever Done Page 17
