by Paul Bailey
Ivan watches with feigned humility as Death demonstrates what ought to be obvious to him. She lies down in the coffin with her face uppermost, her feet stretched out, her hands on her breast and her eyes closed – Death herself pretending to be dead. ‘“Look, Ivan, this is how you do it.”’
‘He slams the lid on her. Is that what happens?’
‘Yes, Kitty.’
And that’s what amused him, that moment in the story when Ivan becomes the man who coffins Death. It seemed a wonderful joke to a boy of nine recovering from influenza. Years later, in liceu, it seemed a wonderful notion, too, when he was reminded of Ivan’s tiny, short-lived triumph by a line of John Donne’s: ‘Death, thou shalt die.’
The bold and confident Ivan has forgotten, or overlooked, the bargain he has struck with God. He lifts up the coffin and carries it to the river and throws it into the fast-flowing water, wishing it a swift voyage to Hell. The Apostle Peter, witnessing this unprecedented scene from above, draws God’s attention to Ivan’s arrogance. ‘“He said well, Lord, who said ‘Give them an inch and they will take a mile’.”’
God releases Death from the coffin so that she might revenge herself upon her captor. When she stands before the old soldier he is petrified. She speaks to him for the very last time. He listens in silence as she scolds him for his obstinacy and for trying even God’s boundless patience to its limits. From now on, she says, he will long to die; he will drag himself in her footsteps, begging her to take his soul. God has commanded her to ignore Ivan, and to let him live on and on and on, so that he will learn that life can be insufferable.
Death abandons him to life with the words: ‘As long as light and earth exist the wind will not put out the fire.’ And Ivan’s fire, fuelled by brandy and strong spirits, will never be extinguished. Death has turned a blind eye on him and he will live for centuries, trying not to go mad with boredom.
‘Because I was young, Kitty, I did not understand that the silly story has a tragic ending. How could I? I had no idea what boredom was. And what was so terrible about being alive for ever? Being dead was far, far worse, I thought. I am afraid I have been telling you too many stories.’
‘You can’t tell me too many.’
‘These last weeks I have been – which is the best word I can use? – garrulous. Yes, that is the best one. I have been garrulous. Forgive me.’
‘There’s nothing to forgive.’
‘You are sure?’
‘Yes, sweetheart.’ She patted his knee. ‘Yes, I am.’
‘I have been confused. Is that what I mean to say? They have been crowding out my brain, these stories. I have needed to share them with you.’
‘I know you have.’
(He is giving me his childhood: the realisation came to her, she would recall, on a roundabout in Purley. He is giving me the stories that brightened his childhood.
It struck her, then, that this might be his parting gift to her. Her hands tightened on the wheel.)
‘“I presume you draw the line at underpants?”’ she asked as she undressed him that evening. ‘Or is my presumption false?’
‘No, Kitty. I do draw the line at underpants. You must believe me, even if your sceptical father doesn’t.’
Dear Kitty [she read]. I have never had much cause to write to you before, apart from Christmas cards and the odd thank-you letter. Here goes.
This is a mammoth task for yours truly. Business correspondence has never been a problem, as you can no doubt imagine, but I am not writing to you about stocks and shares and high finance in general. I almost wish I was (or is it were? You are the grammarian, so please excuse any basic howlers!). It would certainly be easier.
Let me begin by saying that I have always admired you. I like your independent spirit. You are the chalk to Daisy’s cheese. You have a quiet strength of character. It is not my intention to flatter you, although flattery is nothing less than you deserve. I feel this is the truth I am writing.
On with the mammoth task. I have left Daisy for another woman. You know this already. I want to take this opportunity to explain why, if I can, not being the sort of person who finds it easy to deal in words with matters of the heart. I am in love. It is as simple (and as complicated!) as that. The amazing fact is that Gillian loves me in return. She is young enough to be my daughter, just about. You will not be surprised to learn that I was the subject (object?) of much sniggering in the Exchange when our affair started. That’s over now. The sniggering. Everyone can see that I am seriously smitten and now sowing my last crop of wild oats. I am going to be a father again, which you also know.
If you have made it this far, please continue. The hardest part is yet to come. For me, the ham-fisted writer. Bear with me. I have left Daisy in the proverbial lurch, but I mean to see that her nest is properly feathered. She will not be short of money. She may even find herself with too much for her needs. Money isn’t everything, they say (I have never met anyone who says that and really means it, but ‘they’ exist), though Daisy won’t be averse to it, all the same. She enjoys her few creature comforts. I will ensure (and insure!) that she goes on enjoying them. That is the least I can do for her. I can afford to be generous in this regard, if no other.
I am a bit in knots now. There is another way in which I can show generosity, and that is by harbouring no bitterness or rancour vis-à-vis our long marriage. Daisy and I had the absolute minimum of squabbles. We were reasonably happy together, it seems to me, and when there were any dark clouds above us they soon passed quickly. From the very beginning, before the kids came along, Daisy insisted on running the household like a captain runs a ship. Her First Mate seldom complained. In actual fact he (I!) was quite satisfied with the arrangement. I might have gone on being quite satisfied with it if I hadn’t fallen in love.
Did I ever think I would be writing these words one day? And to you? Only nine months ago, not in a million years. Let me claim in my defence that I was frightened to begin with. I was scared out of my wits. I am not a vain man, though I say so myself, but I took to staring in every available mirror in order to see what she sees in me. I saw plain Cecil Hopkins and nobody else. A case of ‘In the eye of the beholder’, I suppose. I was the Frog transformed into the Prince, except it was the Frog who was staring back at me.
Please persevere. I want you of all people to understand the situation (alias mess!). I tried my level best to put Gillian off, but to no avail. I only caved in and decided to take the proverbial plunge when Daisy returned from her trip to India. That was the turning point. That was the crunch. I was hoping Daisy would surprise me, Kitty. I was hoping (against hope?) that she would come back to me a new woman, full of new-found enthusiasm. I reasoned, during her absence, while I was holding my feelings for Gillian in check, that the experience of India might change Daisy for good and all. I was hoping to find her brimming with excitement, with lots of interesting and amusing anecdotes to pass on. I almost hoped she would be sporting a sari as she came through customs! Fond hope. She was even more like the old Daisy than ever, if that doesn’t strike you as double Dutch. She was Daisy in spades. My every question was answered with a complaint. When I asked her to describe the sights and smells of India, she embarked on a diatribe about sacred cows’ poop (shit to the rest of us!). I laughed and was duly reprimanded. She was serious. It is her (considered?) opinion that India stinks. As you have no doubt heard, ad nauseam.
I am skating on thin ice here and may very well sink. If there was a moment (decisive? deciding?) when I thought ‘Gillian, it’s you now, I’m sorry I’ve kept you waiting’ it was when Daisy got on her high moral horse regarding your poor long dead grandfather. It dawned on me that I had spent twenty years of married life ignoring (or putting up with, or laughing at, but with no smile on my face) Daisy’s intolerant views on other people’s behaviour. I was accustomed to listening with half an ear, and sometimes with no ear at all (logic?). But when she let rip on sad Mr McGregor’s cowardice(!) I told her to shut up. I told he
r I had heard enough.
If anyone should be accused of cowardice it’s me. On the day I moved myself out of Richmond and into Clerkenwell I wrote Daisy a letter. (I wasn’t such a coward with the kids. I poured my heart out to them.) It was a short letter (not like this endless screed!) giving the bare facts. A stronger man would have told his wife to her face that he was leaving her, but not me, I’m afraid. It wasn’t so much that I lacked courage. What scared me is that I would end up pitying her and put the damper (or is it dampener?) on any future happiness. I have pitied her for years. Pity is a demeaning thing to feel for another person, especially someone so close to you. I have been torn apart with pity for Daisy at times. I can’t help myself. Perhaps I knew I wouldn’t have been able to help myself when I chose not to tell her in the flesh. I am more of a coward than the tea planter. And that’s the awful truth!
Be patient a little longer. The mammoth task is nearing completion. Thank you, Kitty, for reading this far (if you have! But somehow I know you have) and for your kindness to the Hopkins family while it lasted. I want to express my esteem for you for the way you handle your sister. You never allow yourself to become her whipping boy (ought to be whipping girl, but she’s not in the dictionary!) and I have to admire (so do the kids) the good humour you always display when Daisy is throwing her casual insults at you. The kids and I think you are really remarkable. And remarkably tolerant.
Janet is bearing up under the strain of her parents’ separation and I am sure she will survive the once-in-a-lifetime (definitely!) experience. Andrew isn’t speaking to me. I appreciate what he is going through. He loves his mother deeply. His love shows in his embarrassment. Since Daisy is incapable of being embarrassed herself, Andrew assumes the responsibility instead. Hence his blushes and groans …
I hear from Janet that you and the intriguing Virgil remain happy together. Give him a message from me. Next year Gillian and I (and the new arrival, touch wood) are planning a holiday in Crete. It is my ambition to meet and chat to a Socrates, to add him to the Homer and Virgil I have already ‘scalped’! I would wager a large amount of money that Virgil’s command of the English language is more secure than mine. How can I say that Gillian has lightened my dull life, and not just in the bedroom, which is entirely our business? I can’t, adequately. I am more at home with the beautiful abstraction that is mathematics than I am with words.
Let us keep in touch.
With kind wishes, Kitty, and with love,
Cecil.
(‘Stay with me a while, Virgil. Your father wishes to give you a history lesson.’
‘What kind of history lesson?’
‘The kind, my cultivated son, you did not receive in liceu. In the cemetery, as your gloomy poet called it. This will be a lesson from life. The life I have lived.’
‘It is a lesson in survival, then.’
‘Partly. Fetch yourself a glass and drink some of this excellent uicã, Eduard’s wife, Pia, has made.’
‘Her uicã is too powerful for me. I do not have your constitution, Tatã.’
‘I am the ox and you are the fawn. That is apt, is it not?’
‘Have you forgotten the lesson?’
‘No, no. I should not have said I am the ox. I am the elephant, who does not forget. Sit down. You are restless, as ever. Sit down, Virgil.’
‘If you please.’
‘Permit me to collect my thoughts. I wish to talk to you about a Romania – the Romania – you were born too late for.’
‘You have talked a thousand times about your glorious youth. This is a history I know too well.’
‘You are wrong. This is a history of which you are ignorant. How many Jews have you met?’
‘Not many. We do not have many Jews to meet. There is a brilliant scholar, Marcel Antip, here in the city. Professor Costea hosted a reception for him once, after his lecture on my majestic namesake. He is a delightful, modest man.’
‘Did you speak to him?’
‘Yes, I did. I said little. I was – and am – in awe of him. I listened to him and learned much.’
‘Does he have freckles on his face?’
‘Freckles? I did not see any.’
‘I remember lots of freckles. Freckles, freckles, freckles. And red hair.’
‘This is going to be a Jewish history lesson, is it?’
‘You listened to him – this – this —’
‘Marcel Antip.’
‘You listened to him. Now listen to me. Did Matilda ever tell you the tale of the bowl of soup and the boiled cockerel?’
‘No.’
‘You sound certain.’
‘I am. Every story Mamã told me is – is engraved on my memory.’
‘You remain your mother’s son. I do not have her flair, her knack, but I will do my best to piece it together for you. I heard it first when I was a small boy – long, long ago. I was a devout Christian child and believed it to be true.’
‘I am listening.’
‘Good. That is all I am asking of you. The story begins on the night of Christ’s resurrection, with a group of Jews gathered round a dinner table. A large tureen of soup, with a boiled cock-bird inside it, is brought in and put down in front of them. They start to discuss the resurrection. Did it really happen? Was it a miracle? Was it an illusion? They cannot make up their minds. Then one of them, a doubting Thomas, says in a loud, vulgar voice that if such a thing as Christ being resurrected were possible then they might as well expect the cock inside the tureen to return to life. No sooner has he spoken than the cock, with a mighty crow, leaps up, flapping his wings and sprinkling them all over with soup. And that is how the Jew came by his freckles.’
‘Which I did not see on Marcel Antip’s face.’
‘No? I saw them on hundreds of faces, because there were many, too many, Jews in our country when I was young. You could not move out of your door in the Bucovina without seeing a Jew with the fur of a red fox on his hat. And talking of red fox fur, we had a Jewess installed in her own special villa near the royal palace – Madame Lupescu, the mistress of Carol the Second, our apology for a king. She was his du Barry, his Pompadour, his pet she-wolf. He ruled us with the bitch Lupescu’s consent. There was no other conniving Jewess behind no other European throne. That was our unique privilege.’
‘I am still listening.’
‘They were everywhere. They owned everything. In the cities, they had banks and stores and buildings to let, and in the towns and villages they ran the shops that supplied the materials our women craved – silks and velvets and organdie. Even the poorest of them – not many – had enough money to run a tavern, where they served the peasants watered-down drinks. Not like this uicã. This is the pure stuff.’
‘Is that the end of the lesson?’
‘No. No, my fidgety son, it is not. I promised you a history lesson from life and I will keep my promise. Most, if not all, of my brothers-in-arms are dead and I may be the very last survivor. The one last witness. Be attentive. The horse’s mouth is about to open for you.’
‘Tatã, you are getting drunk.’
‘I was drunk on my wedding night, Virgil. I have rarely been more than slightly inebriated since. A drunkard does not stay in office. A drunkard is not entrusted with important information. A drunkard becomes an outcast, like that wretched poet you worship so much. Are you prepared to pay attention?’
‘If you wish.’
‘I wish you would. The horse’s mouth will soon have to be bridled again. It may be the only one left. On the night of January the twenty-second nineteen forty-one – there, my boy, I have given you the exact date – I was involved in an event that could not be averted. It was destined to happen. It was on the cards. It was fated. That was what we believed, my brothers-in-arms and I – my young, handsome, idealistic brothers-in-arms. We were the legionaries of the Archangel Michael. We had the future of Romania in our minds and hearts, a future that had no place for the freckled scum from Russia and Poland who were everywhere in ou
r country. Our united country was not even a century old, and here it was infected already by usurers and pawnbrokers. They were everywhere. They owned everything.’
‘You are repeating yourself.’
‘Of course I am. I want to impress upon you, in your ignorance, just how many of them there were, with their greasy locks and gabardines and hissing voices. You have me to thank, and my brave brothers-in-arms, for the fact that their numbers were reduced. If they had all been modest scholars we would not have done what we felt – what we felt passionately – we had to do. We would have left them to their harmless studies. But those people were not modest. They were not modest when they were go-betweens for the boyars: modest men do not demand money from the starving peasants. No, no. They bowed and scraped and pretended to be humble, and a vile pretence it was. Modesty does not make a man wealthy. They were bleeding us. They were bleeding us weak. And that is why we bled them.’
‘Bled?’
‘Yes. In the slaughterhouse, on the night of January the twenty-second nineteen forty-one, when I was a young, Christian patriot. My brothers-in-arms and I rounded them up, as many as we could find, two hundred or more, and forced them – squealing like the pigs they do not eat – into the slaughterhouse, where we killed them the way they kill their cattle. They bled. And as they bled we sang the hymns, the Christian hymns, their vast scattered tribe despises. We sang of Our Lord rising from the dead and of His birth in the stable. It was for us a mystical occasion. And now I want you to understand that I feel no shame or guilt. I was caught up in an act of Christian brotherhood, or retribution. And I survived. I am here to tell the tale. My brothers were shot – by the army, Virgil – but I disappeared. I disappeared and I came back, then I disappeared again. It is a gift I have. It is a necessary gift, Virgil. Just think of it! The Russians themselves would have executed me for doing what I believed was my Christian duty. The stinking Russians, who exterminated millions of the chosen race. We had no extermination camps in Romania. Not one. Not a single one. We had a few events, that was all. Stop squirming. I am not shit under your shoe. I am your father. The history lesson is over. What had to be done was done. They were what they were. And what they were was no longer acceptable.’)
