Reality, Reality

by Jackie Kay

  People would say that I was the world’s greatest singer, back when I was Ella, I had a vocal range spanning three octaves and a pure tone, my dear. They said on the one hand I seemed to feel and know everything and on the other, I had never grown up. (True, true!) I could sing the greatest love songs and yet appear as if nothing touched me, as if I’d never had sex. Nobody but myself knew the irony in the way I sang Gershwin’s, The way you wear your hat, the way you sip your tea, the memory of all that, no, no they can’t take that away from me. I sang it defiantly, despite the fact that they were taking it away from me all the time, and one husband’s hat frankly had blended into another’s and I barely noticed the way they sipped their tea, let alone remembered it. When I sang Cole Porter’s I’ve got you under my skin, so deep in the heart of me, so deep in my heart that you’re really a part of me, I was singing to myself, to Elina, Eugenia, Ekateriana, Elisabeth, I was trying to keep myself together.

  I had sex over and over again. Sometimes I’d get lost in it; sometimes it was the only thing that could go right through me, where I could banish the lonely feeling and abandon myself to somebody else, the soft skin of an earlobe, anybody’s earlobe, the smell of morning breath, the hair on a chest. For a moment, any little intimacy would make me feel I was standing on a smallholding, and not out in the vast, yellow, empty plains, the wind roaring on my face, singing my plain-song. I barely remember some of my men; the love songs lasted way longer than the lovers. Some were large and some were small, but all seemed to be fertile, alas. And when child came out after child, between my legs and over the centuries, I would gaze down in a sort of trance, a huge boredom coming over me already, before the new baby even suckled on my breast. Another baby! So what! Another baby to feed and teach to read and count and watch die. I lost my children to typhus, whooping cough, scarlet fever, tuberculosis, cholera, small pox, influenza. Many of my children died before they were ten or fifteen. I remember a couple of hundred years ago looking wistfully at my daughter Emily, and wishing on the bone of the hard white moon that I could catch her whooping cough and die, die, die. It was never for me, death, never going to be handed out to me on a lovely silver platter, not the gurgle or the snap or the thud or the whack or the slide of it, death. No. I was consigned to listening to the peal of church bells barely change over the stretch of years.

  When I came to be Ella, I was so much more independent. Those were plucky, scatting days. Even the moon bopped in the sky. I was on the road forty out of forty-five weeks. I’d come a long way. I’d gone from working with dodgy numbers runners to being the first African-American to perform at the Mocambo! Life takes odd turns. In my case, lives take odd turns. There I was finally as integrated as Elvis, singing songs by Jewish lyricists to white America, having folk like Marilyn Monroe fight in my corner. Every time I say goodbye I cry a little, I was saying goodbye all my life, I was saying goodbye to my other selves, Elina, Eugenia, Ekateriana, Elisabeth, Ella. My own names were a kind of litany. When you’re near I want to die a little. Only the songs knew my secrets. When I was Elisabeth, I was known for how I sang Strauss’s Four Last Songs. One time, late in my Elisabeth day, I was performing at the Albert Hall, singing Straussy for the umpteenth time, and I got to the last stanza. I felt like him; I welcomed death. I sang with true feeling – O vast tranquil peace, so deep at sunset, how weary we are of wandering, is this perhaps death? One of the reviewers said I’d grown into the songs over the years. Well, yes.

  There’s been so much to grow into over the years. I’m like an old person the way I pick out memories and cluck over them. Well, they say the old repeat themselves and the young have nothing to say. The boredom is mutual! I’ve got an old woman’s head in a young woman’s body. Thank you for the memories! I remember: my excitement when I first got to fly on an aeroplane, getting adjusted to the phone and its ring, having penicillin suddenly for my children, my first X-ray, how my hair felt the first time it was blow-dried, how exciting, the indoor bath with running water, how bamboozling the supermarket was at first. There was nobody around who’d lived as long as me, nobody to say, I liked it before we had supermarkets, I liked it before zoos arrived, before we had aeroplanes, before the hole in the ozone, I liked living before all those things. I didn’t like the poverty, the sickness, but there is still something to be said for a good cobbler, an honest loaf of bread, a cobbled street, bare oak beams, revolution. Even the words have kept changing over the centuries. I’ve had to keep up with the Vocab. Jeepers Creepers. I’ve had to keep changing my talk. Bloggers. Tweeters. Finders keepers losers seekers. I’ve lived long enough to see bourgeois go out and bespoke come in, to see daguerro-type vanish and Facebook appear.

  I took a boat trip down the Vltava River in Prague, many moons ago. The food in Prague – how I loved breast of duck with saffron apples, how I loved my mother’s flaky apple strudel. I remember the first time I ate a sandwich in England and even when the word sandwich came in. My favourite pie ever was way back in the nineteenth century. They don’t make them like that these days! It was filled with chicken, partridge and duck and had a layer of green pistachios in the middle. I don’t remember who I was then, but I remember that pie! I remember when tea and coffee and sugar started being so popular. I remember my first drink of aerated water, ginger ale. I used to have a lovely silver spirit kettle. I remember the excitement of my first flask, how I took it on a lavish picnic. All musicians love a picnic. There’s always been music and wine, concerts and hot puddings, strawberries, champagne. Food and claret and ale all seemed to taste better a while back. As I’ve gone through times, I’ve noticed so much getting watered down. Not just taste, but ideas. Oh for the fervour and passion of Marx now. Oh for the precociousness of Pascal. Oh the originality of Picasso.

  My body never changed shape or height, give or take an inch or so. It was my colour that changed, and with my colour my voice. I’ve returned to singing the spirituals that I sang back in the days when I was another self. Swing low, sweet chariot, coming forth to carry me home, swing low, sweet chariot, coming forth to carry me home. There is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole. There is a balm in Gilead to heal the sin-sick soul. My voice is deeper than I could have ever believed when I was a soprano; if it was a colour it would be maroon. I go low, Go down, Moses, till my voice is at the bottom of the river bed, with the river reeds and marshes.

  I look at myself in the mirror. My skin is still young-looking, and a dark blue-black colour. I look about thirty when I’m really three hundred years old. I’ve looked about thirty all these years. These days, it’s easier for me to make up my face, to add a little lipstick, a little blusher, and mascara for my already very long eyelashes. My eyelashes have grown over the centuries and are now a lavish length. People comment on them. ‘I’ve never seen such long eyelashes,’ they’ll say and I roll my eyes. I’ve been here a long time. There is nothing new under the sun, nothing that anyone can say. I’ve lost the ability to be surprised. Nothing about myself interests me. I’ve lost all vanity. I’ve lost my passion for ideas. I’ve lost my love of listening to the way that people talk, because I’ve found, over the years, people say more or less the same thing, and expect me to be riveted – the price of food, the price of fuel, the children, the schooling, the illness, the betrayal, the blow, the shock. Specific times and events jump out at me – I remember when the abolition of the slave trade was announced; when women first got the vote; when Kennedy was assassinated, when segregation and Jim Crow laws started to change. Actually, I really thought something might change properly in the nineteen-sixties. That was the last time I felt optimistic. I’ve lived through so much hurt, so many wars, so much hunger, so much unkindness and cruelty. At last, it seemed to me a decade when people cared, and the talk was interesting and I buzzed and sang and actually made some friends. And the friends I made seemed to care about me, and we all had pretty good sex with each other, sometimes three or four of us at the same time. It was liberating until it became narrow and selfis
h, and petty jealousies and concern about money started creeping in, and all those lovely sixties flower folk seemed to wake up and say, I want I want I want. And off they went, the marchers, protesters, petitioners, to see acupuncturists, therapists, homeopaths. So I crept off, changing my name again and my skin darkened. I bumped into one of my old friends twenty or so years later – I lose all track of time – and she had a bungalow, three kids, a garage, a drinks cabinet, a mortgage, a pension, a car and a broken heart. Her husband had gone running off with someone half her age. She looked at me wistfully and said, ‘Oh but Emmy you haven’t aged at all. It’s quite incredible. You look exactly the same as the day I last saw you.’ She stared at me, and looked worried. She was the first person that ever really knew in her bones that something was not right with me.

  She invited me round to her house a few weeks later. ‘What have you been doing, Emmy, did you get married, have children?’ she said. I laughed, and told her the truth. I thought what have I got to lose? ‘I’ve been alive for three hundred years,’ I said, and she exploded laughing. ‘Emmy,’ she snorted, ‘you always were so droll!’ ‘Children?’ I laughed, ‘I’ve had children, many, many children, and outlived the lot of them. ‘Husbands?’ I’ve had husbands over the centuries, and buried them all.’ The tears were pouring down my innocent friend’s face by now. ‘What have I been doing?’ I asked her back. ‘I’ve seen kings and queens come and go. I’ve seen governments rise and fall. I used to have sympathy for the Whigs. I’ve lived in Czechoslovakia, America, England.’ My friend’s eyes glazed over. Suddenly, I wasn’t funny, I was boring. She yawned. ‘You’re tired?’ I asked, gathering speed. ‘I’m exhausted. Imagine how tired you would be if you were three hundred years old?’ ‘Would you like a big gin?’ she asked eagerly, desperate to change the subject. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘why the hell not after all the things I’ve seen. What about you?’ I asked. The rest of the evening was spent on the husband, the betrayal, the younger woman that did not have a brain in her head, was skinny, was his secretary, how she’d not suspected a thing until . . . how, how, how. I felt myself droop into my gin. I squeezed her hand and noticed that she’d got drunk incredibly quickly. (That was something that didn’t happen to me, incidentally. I’d learnt to watch the goblets over the years, to hold my drink.) She leaned towards me half-sozzled, her eyes a little vacant, a little dear departed, and she kissed me, or rather her lips slid across my mouth like a small child sliding down a shoot. I kissed her back and fondled a little at her breasts and then I left, opening and closing the door of the quietly disturbed bungalow.

  With such a long life as mine, it’s impossible to capture it. And maybe it is of no consequence. I don’t know what I’ve learned that is all that different from anybody here for a shorter time. I think because I’ve never had to get on a bus with a walking stick, never had to think about stairs, never had to buy hair dye, worry about brittle bones, never had false teeth, never drawn a pension, never been in an old people’s home, never had dementia, angina, because I’ve never had wrinkles, bald patches, plastic hips or knees, that I have been deprived! I’ve never had that tender frailty I’ve seen in the old, that sudden lost old-girl, old-boy vulnerability, that anxiety the old have about travelling anywhere different, packing and unpacking cases. I’ve pooh-poohed all of that for centuries, jumping on and off boats, trains, planes. I suddenly wanted it. I wanted to become old. I wanted to know what it was like to have death ahead of you finally, that I could let go, that my hair would go grey and curly. I longed for the simple business of getting old, giving myself a break, not singing for the world any more, not up on the big stages, staying in the big hotels, singing my heartless heart out.

  Enough is enough is enough! I went back to Prague. I hadn’t been there for years and could barely credit the change in my old town. Part of it had changed into Clubland! I traipsed round the old part of the city looking for the lawyer’s office, through the Staromestke namesti, the old Town Square where I stood remembering my girlhood when the astronomical clock struck twelve and one hand rang a bell and a second overturned an hourglass. I’d forgotten the clock! How had I forgotten the astronomical clock? I wandered through the square in a daze, remembering how my father had told me about the twenty-seven people who were executed there. I walked on and on, through Wenceslas Square until finally I found it! The lawyer’s office hadn’t changed names. They hadn’t moved buildings! I climbed the stairs with trepidation. I had no idea how long I was being consigned to live. In the office was a woman by the name of Kristina Kolenaty. She hunted for the precious document which revealed my father’s secret. I paid her a handsome stack of euros and fled down the steps, down the street, back through the old square, down the achingly familiar street of alchemists, and back to my hotel. The document told me the details of the potion my father had given me, that would ensure I lived for ever, and the details of how to reverse it.

  I didn’t want to live for ever. I never did want to live for ever. There’s no one to share your memories with except history books, and they get so much of it wrong. (Unbelievable, how much they distort and omit!) When I got the formula, I didn’t even hesitate. I mixed the spoonfuls of X and X and Y and ZH together in the exact proportions and I threw it down my neck and I swallowed. I gulped emphatically, making a sound with it, a kind of animal sound. Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien, Non, Rien De Rien, I sang at the top of my voice. Then I lay down on the hotel-room bed, waiting for something to happen to me, listening out for it, as if I was listening for the sound of slippers walking along the corridor. I felt a little uncertain, a little frightened. Nothing happened. Nothing happened. I returned to my house in London and waited. I stopped singing publicly. I had no desire to be famous any more, no desire to sing to anybody but myself in the bath. I had plenty of money. I gave as much as I could away. Years passed, and still not a single sign – not a grey hair, nothing. My face was the same face in the mirror that it had been for centuries.

  A few weeks ago, I was in the queue for the first day at the Proms. I got chatting to a lovely woman with a very beautiful face. She had curly hair. Dark winged eyebrows. I could see her hair was dyed. I liked that. She had a few, maybe one or two kind wrinkles around her eyes. She was large-ish, like me, a big bosom and belly. We talked about music we loved. Her eyes were shining. She had something about her that was quite, quite special. We’d been talking for ages before we found out each other’s names. ‘Irene,’ she said. ‘Emilia,’ I said. ‘I thought so,’ she said. ‘I thought it was you.’ I was trying to work out her age; for the first time in my long life, I found myself interested in someone’s age. ‘What age are you if you don’t mind me asking?’ I asked her. ‘Fifty-seven,’ she said. ‘Me too,’ I said. I’d guessed I must be roughly that by now. We stood together, promming it. She’d brought along some champagne and some very delicious sandwiches. I felt comfortable in my skin. We stood listening, rapt and happy like two women that had known each other all of her life, if not all of mine! When the Prom finished, I could sense her sadness. ‘Would you like to go out some time to a concert together or for a meal?’ I asked her and her smile lit up her face, the river, the night sky. I could feel something quite extraordinary happening to me. I could feel myself soften and give in. My heart, something was happening to my heart that hadn’t happened for years. I could hear it thrumming and strumming and chiming. I could feel my body trembling, vibrato style. I looked at her eyes, deep into her eyes, and I felt euphoric. It was a wonder. That night I found myself singing, Good night, Irene, good night, Irene, I’ll see you in my dreams, before climbing into my double bed on my own. I slept, dreaming her. ‘You are quite wonderful,’ I told her on our sixth date. ‘Oh,’ she said, smiling, shy, ‘you are not so bad yourself.’

  That night I was putting my night cream on my face when I saw it. A little grey hair. I stared at it astonished. So frail, I might not have noticed it. How lovely! A few weeks later, another, and another. I looked again. ‘Hello, little wrinkle,’ I
said gently. Well hello dolly! A while after that I got my first fuming red-hot flush. It wasn’t so great, but I couldn’t complain! I’m looking forward to getting past the flushes and into proper old age. I’m very much looking forward to it, creaking bones, memory lapses. What a lovely word – dotage! What jolly delightful words: old age.

  Last night, I went to bed humming an old song I hadn’t sung for years. It was like I’d written that verse waiting for her to come along, and then my own song suddenly made sense. I opened the curtains. A big wise moon glowed in the sky, the same moon that had been there since time. The moon appeared to me like a listening eye. I sang to it before I climbed into bed. I sang to the moon and I sang to Irene. For the first time in my long life, I really wanted to live. You knew just what I was there for. You heard me saying a prayer for / Somebody I really could care for.

  The Pink House

  I had a big wad of money once about twenty years ago. I blew the lot. If I hadn’t blown the lot, I’d be dead by now. I needed to throw dosh around to stay alive. I could do with those readies now. I keep thinking if I had just put some of it away, I’d be sitting pretty. I’ve got debts that flutter in my head all night. When I tried to get an unsecured personal loan to pay off other loans, there were sharks’ teeth marks against my name. I had to write to this place and pay two pounds to find out my credit history which wasn’t pretty. It is scary that all that stuff is kept about you, marks against your name – blodges and splots and stains. Are you a person of integrity? No, you are a liability. Are you going up or are you going down? You’re going down. Six missed Visa payments in a row. I’m not Elizabeth Ellen; I am a bad debt.