Jacob was excited about the drawings, named them her Bestiary. She started to tear them up, slowly, deliberatedly. Whichever drawing he particularly commented on in the evening was certain to have disappeared by the next day. He stopped commenting.
One afternoon he came home when she had the tape on. ‘What’s that you’re listening to, Sylvie?’ he asked.
She looked at him dimly, hardly aware of the voices on the machine. Then, with a careless gesture, she switched it off.
‘That was you, wasn’t it?’ Jacob was curious.
Sylvie sat up straighter. He was concentrating on her. The full force of that old gaze. She smiled, ‘Didn’t I tell you. I’m researching a book. That was one of the interviews.’ The words came to her lips with no forethought.
She saw his initial scepticism. ‘No, you didn’t tell me?’
‘I like my little secrets, you know,’ she laughed, her low, throaty laugh.
‘What is it about?’
Sylvie babbled, saw the scepticism settle into belief. He’ll believe anything if he wants to, one of her voices said. Anything but the truth. Perhaps she could try the truth on him now. ‘Jacob,’ she started, but he was already hugging her, congratulating her.
‘A brilliant idea. A grand idea. How far have you got with it?’
‘I’m just starting.’
‘Well, you must tell me all about it. If you want to, that is,’ he was a little wary now. ‘On the way. We can talk more on the way. I must shower now.’
She looked at him quizzically.
‘You haven’t forgotten, Sylvie? It’s the party tonight. For my new book. Leo will be there.’
She had forgotten.
The room in the Fifth Avenue complex was crowded with half-familiar faces. Analysts, writers, doctors, journalists. She couldn’t remember their names. She felt dizzy. It was so long since she had been to a party like this. She clung to Jacob’s arm, saw him spirited away on a tide of compliments. Loud flattering voices. Leo. Thank god, there was Leo. Her tall, blond son. She had hardly seen him over the last months. She hugged him, held on to him.
‘Everything okay, mom?’
She nodded, ‘And you?’
‘Just fine. Must find Dad to add my congratulations. Have you read the new book?’
Sylvie shook her head. ‘Have you?’
‘Most of it. It’s interesting, even if it is by the old man,’ he gave her his lopsided grin. ‘Let’s go and find him.’ They wound their way through the crowd. ‘What have you been doing with yourself.’
‘Oh this and that? Drawing a little again. Thinking about doing a book, myself.’
‘That’s great, mom,’ he squeezed her hand. ‘Don’t let the old man get all the plaudits.’
And that, Sylvie thought, was that. Everything fine and dandy as long as she was gainfully occupied. And what if she told Leo now that she wasn’t writing a book, wasn’t doing anything? Told him she was thinking about his brother? A brother he had never known? A brother whose voice was now lodged firmly inside her? He would look away, refuse to meet her eyes. Try to change the subject.
They found themselves trapped in a little group. A bulky round-faced woman in a huge hat was holding forth in stentorian tones. ‘And that’s the trouble with men,’ her dark eyes bore down on Leo. ‘All of them. They tell you you’ll never have to iron their shirts. You do it once, twice, as a special gesture, to please them, and then before you know it, they expect it, week in, week out and grump if it doesn’t happen. Surprise transformed into the habit of expectation. Never give men anything. Isn’t that right, Mrs. Jardine?’
Sylvie looked at her blankly. Saw expectant faces. Who was this woman? ‘I wouldn’t know,’ Sylvie mumbled. ‘I’ve never ironed a shirt.’ Open mouths. Laughter. Sylvie turned away.
‘Good one, Sylvie,’ Leo beamed at her. ‘There’s Dad. Wait till I tell him how you put down that old harridan.’
Put down? Sylvie gazed at him queerly, thought about what the woman had said. In essence she agreed with her. She might never have ironed shirts, but she too had once upon a time brought Jacob little surprises, little presents. Stories, they had been mostly. Stories about herself. He liked stories best of all. Stories intrigued him, excited him. She couldn’t remember whether the stories were true or not, but she thought dimly that they had both hoped they were. Jacob certainly had cared about their truth.
And then, after a time he hadn’t. It wasn’t only that he wasn’t interested in her any longer. What had he told her once? In the world of psychoanalysis there was no distinction between truth and fiction. Only what was uttered mattered. And now she was trapped by that. A glass bowl, enclosing her, with Jacob staring in - smiling, benevolent, disinterested. Anything she said was only a symptom of her condition. No truth. No world outside the bowl. How could she puncture that glass? How could she make him see? Make him feel? She had to do it. Make him see the truth about Alexei. Feel the truth about what she had done. To him. For him. For Caroline. To them all.
She was tired. So tired. So many voices. In her. Around her. She needed to escape.
The following week Sylvie went to the clinic in Pennsylvania. She breathed easier here. Nobody bothered her. Asked anything of her. And she dreaded the winter holidays. All that semblance of seasonal good cheer. That pretense of family life. It was better here. She could think her own thoughts. She stayed. And stayed. Took up residence. Going home only occasionally. To see Leo. To see Jacob. They looked strange to her. Unreal. They kept trying to speak to her and yet they didn’t see her. They didn’t let her think.
One day when the sticky buds on the trees were at their plumpest and the sun gleamed a promise of summer, Sylvie took her sketch pad down to the little lake in the clinic grounds. She perched at its edge and let her pen, as was her wont, run automatically over the creamy paper. Line took on shape and form. A mermaid with dark, tangled hair. She spoke in Caroline’s voice. ‘It’s cool here. So cool. So nice. So quiet. Only the water ripples.’ Sylvie looked at the lake, the water rippling in the breeze. Its depths murky, secret. There was a mermaid there, too. Just like in her drawing. She looked again. A tangle of dark hair. A woman’s body. A grimace. Sylvie screamed. Screamed and screamed again. An attendant came running. She pointed, stared.
There was commotion at the clinic. Everyone was transfixed. Transfixed by the death. From the lowliest attendant to the senior doctor through all the patients. They could talk of nothing but that. And even in their silences it was there.
The senior doctor addressed them all in a memorial service. Sylvie could barely remember the woman who had drowned herself, but through his words she took on the grand status of a tormented romantic. That was when the idea lodged itself in her. It brought a smile to her lips. Made her feel light, buoyant, as airy as those soft spring clouds. Death had them, had them all by the short and curlies. Just like after the war. What had they done, all of them, Jacob, Caroline, all of them, but stare wild-eyed into the face of death? Medusa’s unremitting gaze. Sylvie laughed.
She sat by the lake and drew and laughed. A scorpion’s body flowed out of her pen, the crushing claws, the segmented middle with its spider’s legs, the tail, large with its sting; and between claws and body, a Medusa’s head, with cold, unlidded eyes. She looked at her drawing and was pleased. Where had she heard that scorpions when threatened by fire stung themselves? Yes, but the tail kept its sting. She laughed. She would fracture that glass bowl which kept her imprisoned once and for all. Jacob would see her as she was. They would all see her. But what was the sting? Sylvie drew.
A week later, she left the clinic and went home. Jacob, looking at her, thought she seemed happier than he had seen her in years.
‘It’s good to have you back,’ he said.
Sylvie smiled secretly.
‘Is the book going well?’
‘Mmmnn. In fact, I need to go to Europe to do a little more research.’
‘If you think you’re well enough?’
‘Oh, I’m quite well.’
She couldn’t stop smiling. She would see Alexei again. One last time. She flew directly to Milan, checked into a hotel, telephoned. Ah no, the young Signor Gismondi was not in. He was on holiday. Would be away for some weeks. Where? Where was he? Sylvie wailed. Could the lady please identify herself? He was not at liberty to give Signor Gismondi’s whereabouts. Sylvie hung up. She started to shake. She hadn’t counted on this. She couldn’t wait. She wasn’t strong enough. She paced her room, back and forth, back and forth. And then it came to her. Of course. Mathilde. Princesse Mathilde. She would spend some time with Mathilde. Wait at Mathilde’s.
But Valois wasn’t auspicious. She had forgotten Katherine’s aura there. The Princesse was enchanted with Sylvie’s daughter. Could speak of little else. Nothing Sylvie said seemed to penetrate her loyalty to that daughter who wasn’t hers. Sylvie drank and babbled. But Mathilde wasn’t seeing her. Wasn’t listening. Wouldn’t hear what she had to say. She couldn’t stay here. Couldn’t. And Katherine would be coming soon. No, not that. Sylvie fled.
It was on the return journey to New York in a plane which seemed motionless, caught in an eternity of blue, that the plan came to her. It came, as so much did for her now, in the cadences of a disembodied voice. A voice which ordered the clocks back, which made a nonsense of time. Time moving back while her body, her life, moved forward. Just like that, Sylvie twisted the dial on her watch, saw the woman beside her do the same. They were all doing it, everyone, moving time back, at the simple behest of a voice. Sylvie stared at her watch, twisted again and again. And now it was yesterday and the day before that and the day before that. So simple. An order from a disembodied voice. Yes, yes now she had it. Her own disembodied voice, speaking. Speaking the truth. Moving the clocks back. Now, she knew what the sting in the tail would be. They would remember her. Remember her in years to come.
Sylvie gazed out at the eternity of blue and took a long, deep breath. She felt strong again. Calm. Only the details remained to be arranged. Yes. And then she had merely to wait. To wait for the appropriate moment. A moment to commemorate Caroline. Just before Christmas.
She smiled serenely.
Chapter
Fifteen
__________
∞
Beyond the sheltered glaze of Princesse Mathilde’s drawing room, the snow fell lazily. Thick, heavy flakes, silently covered the sleeping earth. The Princesse, looking out, felt old. As old as the peaks she could see from her window. She fingered the envelope in her pocket, drew it out, read the brief lines again without seeing.
It wasn’t right. Dying shouldn’t be a matter of choice. Not for the young, the healthy. The privileged. Not after all the unnatural deaths these last years had already witnessed. It disturbed the order of things. Ruptured lives. The girl, how would she feel? And her brother? And Jacob?
Irritation unleashed now flooded through her. Sylvie had always been selfish. Selfish in her impulsiveness, in her unthinkingness, in her assumption that the world moved only around her. And now, selfish in her dying. Forcing them all to retune their lives to the pitch she set.
The Princesse crumpled the telegram into a tight ball. Then, with a visible change of heart, she carefully smoothed it out again. No, she wasn’t being fair. An ironical smile played over her features. Here she was, sounding, even to her own ears, like a puritanical Swiss burgher, imposing a moral code on Sylvie that had never been hers; forcing her into a mould which was alien to everything that made her Sylvie. It was Sylvie’s unconventionality that had always fascinated them all. And she had chosen to die as she had lived.
Princess Mathilde jabbed at a log in the stone fireplace and watched the sparks leap angrily upwards. She wondered how Jacob was taking it? He must be distraught, agonized. She should rush to comfort him.
A little thought pounced on her, took her unawares. He would be free now. Perhaps… She stopped the fantasy in its flow and chastised herself. Here she was in her sixties and still dreaming like a schoolgirl about a man. A man she had had an affair with some thirty years ago.
She corrected the picture. Not any man. The only man she had ever wanted. The only man who had ever wholly captured her imagination in a lifetime of meetings and travel and ceaseless activity. She glanced at the outlines of her image in the vast window. People told her she still looked wonderful. Flatterers. Time trapped one in a masquerade with costumes of its own choice. Sometimes when she caught a glimpse of that woman with the drooping lids, the pronounced cheekbones, the crêpy neck in a strange mirror, she didn’t recognize her as herself at all. An old woman who looked, as the flatterers said, remarkable. But an old woman, nonetheless. An old woman ridiculous in the presence of desire.
An old woman dreaming. Musing. If only all those years ago she had not been so strapped by convention. But no, she had no regrets. It could not have been otherwise. It was not a matter of ‘if only…’, but rather a nostalgia for a different, a parallel plane of existence, a nostalgia for a future she could never have lived.
An old woman made older by the suicide of one whom she still considered a girl. She wondered if during that last frenetic occasion when she had seen Sylvie there had already been a premonition of the end. A hint she had been blind to because the very notion of suicide was so antithetical to her own nature. Sylvie had raved, raved with that undertow of intensity which always made her seem to be speaking the truth. The Princesse shivered. Could she have done anything to save her?
Jacob must be asking himself the same questions now. She imagined him at his desk, his head in his hands. Jacob filled to the brim with sorrow for the woman whom, despite everything, he had loved. She could almost write his hurt for him, his wonder at another of Sylvie’s acts, trace the workings of his mind as it ferreted out reasons, laid blame at his own doorstep. And she could hear the tittle tattle round the world’s psychoanalytic tables, the shaking of a hundred eminent heads, ‘Oh but did you hear? Yes, suicide. His own wife. I always suspected he was improperly analysed. That old guard. They never took proper time over it.’ And on it would go, the dissections, the speculations, the dismantling of Jacob’s work.
And Katherine. With sudden decision, the Princesse pulled the bell cord. All this musing was simply a way of deflecting the inevitable moment when she had to face her. Tell her. The girl wouldn’t, couldn’t take it well.
Mathilde had planned a party for her, a party to celebrate her sixteenth birthday in a week’s time. Katherine had looked so achingly beautiful when Mathilde had talked about it. The shyness, the hesitancy, the gratitude, all spoke in that face which drew the eye and held it. And now?
Princesse Mathilde was a brave woman. But her present task daunted her. She remembered the last occasion on which mother and daughter had met. Well over a year ago now. She hadn’t been privy to the goings on at the opposite end of the table, but she had a distinct, almost tactile memory, of the girl fleeing, the usual calm repose of her features fractured. And then the tremulous silence round the table, ruptured by Sylvie’s insouciant laugh.
‘A cup of hot chocolate, my dear?’ The Princesse glanced at Katherine’s cheeks, pink from her walk, and gestured her towards a chair.
Katherine smiled, nodded.
The Princesse collected herself. It was all so difficult. The girl had settled into her new life now, had begun to relax. Madame Chardin was pleased with her. It had taken time but her written French as well as her spoken was now first class.
‘Was it lovely out in the fresh snow?’ Mathilde delayed.
‘Beautiful,’ Katherine breathed happily. ‘I’ve been sketching. Would you like to see?’ She presented her pad to the Princesse. Mathilde looked, recognised the cluster of tall pines, the little bridge, the stream rushing beneath it. Katherine had drawn it all with snail-like whorls of her pen, a multitude of curving strokes, so that the landscape had a hectic life of its own, at once like and unlike itself.
‘You’re getting very good, Katherine. I think we should
perhaps provide you with some extra lessons.’
The girl shrugged. ‘It’s not quite right. You see there, the light,’ she pointed to a corner of the drawing, ‘I couldn’t capture it. It’s all too dismal, too heavy.’
Princesse Mathilde paused, waited for hot chocolate to be deposited, sipped. The girl was always so hard on herself.
‘Katherine, I have to tell you something I would rather not have to say,’ Mathilde plunged in and then hesitated. The girl looked at her expectantly, wariness gathering in her gaze with each passing second.
‘A telegram arrived this morning. I’m afraid… I’m afraid your mother has committed suicide.’ It sounded so blunt, but there was no way to say it delicately. And the girl had to know.
Katherine sat silently for a long moment, her eyes growing perceptibly wider, the colour draining from her cheeks. Then abruptly she got up and turned away from the Princesse.
‘Good. I’m glad,’ a cracked voice broke from her. A moment later she turned back. Horror was written on her features. ‘I didn’t mean that,’ she mumbled and raced from the room.
Katherine lay on the bed which had become hers and gazed blankly at the ceiling. The sentence curled round in her head over and over like the whorls of her picture. ‘Your mother has committed suicide.’ Two antithetical emotions pulled at her. One side of her screamed with delight. Good, good. She’s dead. She won’t be able to kill me. The other throbbed guiltily. I killed her. I wanted her dead. Pappy said she was frail. Unwell. It’s my fault. Between the two emotions, Katherine was paralysed. She lay dry-eyed and motionless on the bed and was still lying there when the maid came to ask her if she was packed.
Jacob sat in the plush chair and stared directly ahead. On the raised dais in front of him lay Sylvie’s coffin. Next to him, on one side, Katherine, her hand resting in his. On his other, Leo, his face pale. All around them the solemnity of other faces in mourning.
Mourning. What did the word mean? Most of the people here had hardly known Sylvie. Yet they had come. Come without immediate invitation. A great many of them, out of respect for her, for him, for the grief which was meant to inhabit him, but which for the moment, he knew, he only represented. A community of grief.
Memory and Desire Page 41
