The Dumb House

by John Burnside

  One morning, as I was clearing her breakfast things away, she pointed at the mirror.

  ‘Cover it now,’ she said. Her voice was still alive, still clear, the only part of her being that had remained undiminished.

  I stared at her in surprise.

  ‘I don’t want to see myself like this,’ she said. She was cool; as usual, she showed no emotion. ‘Cover it up.’

  I shook my head.

  ‘You look fine,’ I said. ‘You’re just tired today.’

  She smiled.

  ‘I’m tired every day,’ she replied. ‘Cover it up. I want to think of myself as I am. Not like that.’

  I nodded.

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘I’ll do it now.’

  I carried her tray down and took some twine from the cupboard under the stairs; then I found an old shawl, and used it to cover the mirror, binding it with the twine, unable to shake the idea that we were still there, frozen on the surface of the glass, in a last glance. Now the room was darker; perhaps it was this dimming of the light that effected the change, but from that day on, she began to slide, losing touch with me, drifting in and out of something that resembled sleep, but was heavier and less permeable. I’d sit by the bed and watch her. She was already becoming hazy, less clearly defined; as she slept, I could feel her seeping away.

  The last thing I remember clearly was the morning of the day she died. She had been asleep for a long time – or rather, she had been floating under the surface of the drugs the doctor had left for her, floating free like an underwater swimmer, drifting with the tide, becoming the current. Suddenly she opened her eyes and looked at me. Sometimes, when she woke from the drugs, she seemed surprised to see me, as if she couldn’t quite work out who I was. But that day, she knew me immediately; she reached out her hand and brushed my forearm, as if she was trying to get my attention.

  ‘Tell him when you see him,’ she said, in a clear voice, without the least trace of a slur.

  I nodded.

  ‘Tell who, Mother?’ I asked.

  She shook her head.

  ‘Just tell him,’ she repeated. Then she made a sound – a kind of sob, though it was more than that, more deliberate, almost articulate, like a word in some foreign language that I didn’t understand, rooted in some dark, wet place, the beginning of decay perhaps, the beginning of annihilation. Whatever it was, it transcended the woman I knew. There was nothing personal here. She tried to pull herself up, but she couldn’t; a moment later she cried out, twisting her body round in an effort to shake herself free. She lay like that for minutes, it seemed, straining to be loosed from something – and I couldn’t do anything, I couldn’t act, I simply watched till she collapsed back and dwindled into absence.

  It was eleven o’clock. I pulled the sheet up over her face, and went outside. I stood in the hall for several minutes, trying to decide what to do, then I went out for a walk. It was raining. The road to the village was covered with dark, oily puddles, and the cattle in the fields stood huddled for shelter under an oak tree. I didn’t see anyone on the road and, for a moment, I felt certain that Mother and I were the last people in the world. I walked as far as the edge of the village, letting the rain trickle through my hair and run down my face, cleansing me of something, of some last vestige of ordinary being. When I got back it was lunch-time. I changed into dry clothes, then made some sandwiches and took them upstairs, with a glass of milk and an apple, to keep Mother company.

  Late that afternoon I drew the curtains and sat beside her in silence. I caught myself listening, as if I imagined she would speak, as if she would resume one of her stories from years before, in that tone of voice she had when she had been obliged to break off, when my father had come in and interrupted her, or the telephone had called her downstairs – the tone of voice that told me the story was infinitely repeatable, that it could always be resumed, in exactly the same place, and nothing could bring it to an end. The petals had fallen from the flowers I had set by the bed – they had been fresh the day before, now they were scattered across the table and the floor, still soft, still almost living.

  When the time came, when I felt ready, I took off my clothes and draped them over the chair by the window. It was beginning to get dark. Mother lay still, the way I had arranged her, with her arms by her sides, the sheet pulled up now, over her face. I switched on the lamp so I could see the bottles on the dressing table, glittering in the gold light. Mother had built up this collection of perfumes over years: she had added new varieties as they came on to the market, but she had never finished anything, never thrown anything away. There were fragrances that had gone out of fashion years before I was born, as well as timeless classics that had never gone off the market. I had always been fascinated by that table. Once, when I was a child, she had found me there, in front of the mirror, my face dusted with powder, my mouth a gash of lipstick, splashing Chanel on my neck and wrists. I have no memory of that afternoon; she told me years later that I’d looked like a baby vampire, with blotches of lipstick glistening on my teeth, like fresh blood. She said she’d been surprised to see my reflection in the glass: by rights, there should have been nothing there, only a gap where my face should have been, a metaphysical absence.

  Now I stood, naked, in front of the wrapped mirror. I picked up each bottle in turn and anointed my body, reading the labels and choosing each scent carefully – one for the crook of the elbow, another for the collarbone, yet another for the skin between the index finger and the thumb, or the angle of the knee. To begin with, I could smell each one distinctly, but after a while, they all blended one into another, with the warmth of my body, till I felt I myself would evaporate, becoming a scent, a pure vapour.

  I lifted the sheet. Mother’s face was quite discoloured now, and it seemed, already, that something was missing – not just the colour, but the life, the expression and vitality that made her recognisable. She was like the animals I had found by the road, smaller than lifesize, already going to waste from the first moment she had stopped breathing. I brushed her hair and applied some perfume. I thought about make-up: a little lipstick, perhaps a touch of powder. Those things seemed appropriate, just as I knew she would look better for her best pearls and those classic, single drop pearl ear rings. I hesitated a long time before I could bring myself to remove her night-dress, but I knew it was needed for the ceremony. I wanted her to be naked on this, our last night together. In the morning, I would begin the normal business of doctors and funeral directors, but for now, in the silence of our locked house, I wanted to lie down beside her and sleep, under the white sheet, warming her with the blood-warmth of my living body, equals before death. After I had finished making her up, I applied the same thin film of lipstick and a dusting of powder to my own face, then I lay down beside her, my arms by my sides, my eyes closed. It was utterly still in the sickroom, but outside a bird called, and a gust of wind tumbled through the holly tree. For a long time I lay there, listening, waiting for the story to resume, or to reach some natural end. When I woke, it was morning, and I knew that I had dreamed, but whatever it was I had seen, I remembered nothing.

  part two

  lillian

  For some weeks after the incident with Karen Olerud, I stayed at home, concentrating on my research. I could have worked at home all the time: it was quiet, I had everything I needed, and nobody ever came to the house. Sometimes I worked all night in the upstairs study. Sitting there, alone, surrounded by Mother’s books, I felt a heightened awareness of everything around me; my skin was stretched tight as a drum; every sound reverberated in my spine; I registered every draught of air, every change in temperature. I could feel the deer moving in the woods, or drifting along the hedges; I heard dogs and foxes barking from miles away. At three in the morning, I would go out and stand in the garden. I would look up at the sky; I would taste the cool night air and I would feel as if I was the only person left in the whole universe, the one observer who was making it all happen. If anything, my visi
ts to Karen Olerud had made me even more aware of my isolation in that house, but I had no desire to return. If I sometimes paused, in the middle of the day, remembering her wet flesh, I drove the image from my mind immediately. I no longer wished for the physical. I wanted to transcend the body. Occasionally, I would take the drugs Mother had left behind after she died; I would lie in her bed, half-conscious, drifting in and out of dreams, feeling my body dissolve, feeling my mind hover at the edge of another state, on the point of becoming something new.

  It might have continued like this forever, if I hadn’t decided to go back to the library at Weston one afternoon, while I was shopping. The library was small; most of the shelves were given over to popular fiction and accounts of true crime, with pockets of biography, gardening, home crafts, self-improvement, astrology, and the odd inexplicably wide selection of books on dog breeds or veteran cars. The reference section was set off to one side; it contained large format books and local histories, as well as a range of encyclopaedias and dictionaries. When I arrived, this section was empty. I took a book down from the shelves and opened it. I was struck by the quiet, and by the sense I had of having been there long ago – not déja-vu, but a thread of lost memory, a half-vision of a summer’s day, long ago, when I was around twelve or thirteen. Suddenly I recalled sitting in this very room, working my way through the dictionaries, looking up the word for ‘soul’ or ‘birth’ or ‘speech’ in different languages, trying to understand the etymology, the underlying sense people had of the fact. I was certain, at the time, that language corresponded to the world, that essential truths were conveyed in the choice of a word: if a word existed, it existed for a reason; no matter how vague or unsatisfactory the definition might be, the very fact that a word for ‘soul’ was found in every language meant that something had to be present that corresponded to that word.

  By then I had already begun experimenting with the living animals I caught in the woods, cutting them open and looking inside for that evanescent warmth or rhythm that might contain its essence. I had come to understand the beauty of anatomy: everything was finely structured, each animal was a wet machine made of tissue and filigree, a machine that could be taken apart and examined, down to the smallest component. I had not understood this before. The process of decay had rendered me passive, a mere observer, unable to intervene; but with the first dissection, I became a participant. I felt I had entered a secret domain, the domain that opened up beneath the scalpel and forceps. For a long time, I was happy. I felt it was possible that, by some effort of will, I would discover the truth.

  Then, all of a sudden, everything changed. No matter what I did, there was something that slipped through my fingers, something that evaded the tip of the blade. I began to think of other possibilities, new horizons. I did not know where the soul resided, but suddenly I suspected that it was not in the body as such. Yet – if not there, then where? If not in flesh, or blood, or in the synapses of the brain, it had to be elsewhere. Perhaps it wasn’t physical at all. Perhaps it was a process, like thought, or conversation. If the components of the body were organs and veins and cells, then the components of thought and language were words and grammar. It was just what Mother had been telling me all along: a creature without language is a creature without a soul. To know the soul, I would have to know language. It seemed so obvious, I was surprised not to have thought of it before. Now I had my true vocation. If I wanted to dissect the soul, I would have to use a new method, and develop different skills.

  That sudden memory changed my life. I realised, in that moment, that my true vocation had begun there, in Weston Library, amidst the shelves of books on fish breeding and polar exploration. It was an entirely sentimental impulse that decided my fate, an unwarranted nostalgia, but this was the path that led to Lillian, and to the twins. I can say to myself that, if this had not happened, something else would, and it’s true, but what matters is the course of destiny, the inherent order in things that drives us forward, so we make one choice rather than another and each choice, no matter how trivial it seems, has the potential to be decisive.

  I began going to the library once a week. I would set myself up in the reference room and make copious notes, searching the shelves at random, looking for some connection that would reveal the secret, knowing there could be no systematic way to study this question, that any method or plan would impose its own artificial logic on the very information I was finding. I knew, if I had a specific idea, or a methodical approach to the subject, I would miss some things and allow undue weight to others, so I read almost indiscriminately, pulling out encyclopaedia volumes, reference works, books on history and mythology, making photocopies, spending whole days deciphering obscure commentaries on the Old Testament or sympathetic magic. When I found a reference to a text with which I was unfamiliar I would ask Miss Patterson, the one full-time librarian, to order it for me. Miss Patterson was my immediate friend: a slight, middle-aged woman who looked younger than her years, she always dressed immaculately, in classic twin sets and simple strings of pearls or semi-precious stones. Her hair was very black, but touched here and there with a premature grey, and that, combined with her gold-rimmed spectacles, gave her a studious, slightly quizzical appearance. Sometimes she looked like a young grandmother, who had just set aside her knitting to put away a few books; on other days, it was as if she were a young woman disguised as an old lady, concealing a firm, well-rounded body, a lithe energy, behind the appearance of respectable womanhood. Generally, she treated those who came in as visitors in what was essentially a private space: she was courteous but distant, she answered questions patiently, and with an impressive thoroughness, but her clients were never allowed to feel entirely welcome. She treated every enquiry as casual. Nothing was to be taken too seriously.

  With me, it was different from the beginning. I would sometimes become aware of her approving gaze as I sat in the reference section; she seemed to believe I was engaged in something important, that her library was now graced with the presence of a real scholar. Sometimes, when I was making an enquiry, or requesting an inter-library loan, she would ask how my work was going. Though I had never imparted to her the purpose of my research, and though she knew nothing more than the titles of the books I had ordered, she took an active interest. I think all she wanted was for me to tell her something, to take her into my confidence, to let her participate in some small way, but my answers were always non-committal, and I was careful to give no sign that her interest was welcomed. Still, my days at the library, and even these snippets of small talk, these moments of obvious admiration, made me feel I had a purpose, that I was getting somewhere. Sometimes, driving home, I would become aware of an odd feeling of pleasure, of satisfaction. Somehow, no matter how little I had actually learned, these hours of research made my work seem real, almost professional.

  The drive to and from the library was the only outing I had all week. I would go in on the main road, but I would take the back way home, over the hill, where there was less traffic. In the evening, as the air darkened, I felt connected to the earth, as if the car were plugged into a current of oakroots and gas. My headlamps scanned the twilight, catching the shape of an owl in a thorn, or picking out the eyes of a fox on the road ahead, and I would feel included in something, in some ancient, pagan existence that had been disguised over the years, mopped up in corrupted place names, built over with chapels and supermarkets and wafer-thin housing estates. I sensed the joy and malevolence of this existence. I thought of it as multiple and hooded, a manifold spirit, like the genii cucullatii I had read about in a book on pagan Britain: those dark creatures of the verges and borderlines the Romans had adopted as companions to Mercury, the subtlest and least predictable of their gods, the unreliable carrier of messages. I wanted to know what they meant, those Hooded Ones. I wanted to understand how they worked, what gave them their power, what set them apart from other deities, so they were capable of anything, and seemingly immune to retribution or even judgement. I
f spirits existed, in any form, I thought, they would have to be like these: impersonal, neutral, rooted in the physical, utterly remote from human concerns.

  The girl was sitting in the far corner of the reference section, with a pile of books – maybe twenty or more – spread around her on the table. At first I assumed she was a student, in her heavy knit sweater over a thin summer dress and her large, clumsy-looking work boots; her hair was long and wavy, and she was pretty in a pale-skinned, red-mouthed way, reminiscent of a thin child in poorly-applied make-up. But I could not help noticing, as time passed, that her approach was even less systematic than mine. She wasn’t looking things up, or cross-referencing; she was simply turning the pages, gazing at the pictures, abandoning one book suddenly for another, quite unrelated volume, crouched over the table with her head down, her hair hanging over her face, or suddenly sitting up and looking around, as if she had just become aware of her surroundings. Once she caught me watching her and I turned away quickly. I could tell she was still watching me – I had a strong sense of her vague and aimless attention coming to focus upon me, and when I looked back at her she was still looking, quite unself-consciously, as if I were just another picture in one of her books. I turned away and pretended to work. When I glanced at her again, she had raised her knees so they rested on the edge of the table, and she was sitting back, sucking her forefinger, looking at a large-format book of black and white photographs. I could see she had no writing materials, no notebooks or sketch pads, like the other students who very occasionally visited the reading room. On closer observation I could see that her dress was a thin, billowy, almost see-through cotton, printed in blue and white with stylised cats or kittens, like something a child might wear. Her hair was clean, but her fingernails were dirty. She became aware of me watching her again, but this time she kept her eyes fixed on her book. It was as if she was letting me look at her, as if we were playing a game, making up the rules as we went along. From time to time she would flick through the pages of her book, then stop when she found a picture she liked. She would study it closely for a while, sometimes for ten minutes or more, then she would move on. There was no common theme in the choice of books that I could see. They were all large-format picture books, but the subject-matter varied – volumes on fashion, collections of photographs by Cartier-Bresson and Richard Avedon, monographs on the paintings of Stanley Spencer or Vermeer, a history of Time-Life magazine, books on birds, aviation, fishing, plantlife and travel, books of cartoons and recipes.