The girl stared at him. The dog, too. He was, he realized, speechifying. He pressed his eyes, suddenly embarrassed.
‘I’d like to go to Europe,’ she said, and began to tell him about a plan she had. He watched her move her hands in the air excitedly. Now and then she even touched his arm for emphasis, but he was not listening. He was thinking about Denis and fiddling with the biscuit, marking it with fingerprints of sweat. For some reason his heart had started pounding, as if on a great set of doors in his chest. What is wrong with me, he asked himself, alarmed and trying to draw a breath. How animated she was, how imploring. Do I love her? he wondered. Oh, Christ! Could I have sunk to that? Or am I dying? Is this a heart attack?
Grace, meanwhile, had wandered over to the sidewalk where she stood waiting abjectly for a passer-by to rescue her. No one came.
‘You understand, don’t you?’ Alison asked. He looked at her blankly from under his crow-dark hair and she saw he had not heard a word of what she had agonized over saying.
‘My dear, I am acutely distractable these days.’
Sighing, she fell back against the bench. Now she would have to say it all again.
Malcolm held a finger up, then pointed to where the dog stood some distance off wearing a curious martyred look. ‘Excuse me.’ Taking from his pocket a plastic bag, he went over and, after a moment, gingerly stooped. He came back and stood in front of her—a tired man with dyed hair concealing behind his back a bag of poo. For the first time she saw what he was—not sarcastic, not bitter or indifferent. What really he was was sad.
And why, Alison wondered, why had it taken her so long to think of Malcolm as her friend? Of everybody, he was the only one who seemed to understand how she felt. He would go with her. She would convince him.
‘It’s a museum now.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Auschwitz.’
He heard her out. He reeled. First she had proposed a conversation and now a European holiday—together, just the two of them. How romantic! ‘What a coincidence,’ he said. ‘I was just reading the Inferno.’
‘I couldn’t go alone,’ she said.
‘What happened to your boyfriend?’
Her eyes, widening at the suggestion, were very blue.
‘Oh, I couldn’t go with him!’
‘I should show you my bank statements,’ he said, mildly hysterical. Then Grace came whinging back, and by accident he threw her the dampened biscuit. She could not believe her luck.
For a long moment they watched the dog’s strenuous champing, then the girl began to cry. He remembered her telling him that she didn’t think he had liked Christian. It had bothered him at the time. Stricken by her words, he had turned away: because she had come close to the truth. The tears he had been holding back had not been for Christian, but for himself. Bent over, face in hands, shoulders heaving, the girl was no rocket scientist, true. But surely there were qualities equal to intelligence. A line from Mrs. Dalloway came to mind. ‘What did the brain matter, compared to the heart?’ He thought it marvellous, marvellous that she could care so much.
TENUES SINE
CORPORE VITAE
A Soul in the Lower World
1
If love could actually be measured, she would have said that she loved Billy more. He was her first real boyfriend. Before she’d met him, she hadn’t known you could be so absorbed by another person. Gravely, she’d given him her virginity; he joked about it to this day. For Billy, even their most tender moments had a punchline. Nothing was sacred.
How surprised she was then to realize she was the one leaving and to see him so upset. He was actually crying and, at first, she didn’t know why. ‘It’s only for a week.’ She tried to take his hand, but he pulled away and got up off the bed.
‘Who are you going with?’
‘Malcolm. He went to court with me, remember?’
‘No,’ said Billy, glaring. ‘I don’t remember. You never told me that.’
It was in that moment, with Billy standing before her, accusing, that she caught a glimpse of her own future and knew he would not be in it. Shocked, she stared at him without seeing how ugly his anger made him—crimson, sneering—without seeing him at all. Prescience had cut around the outline of his body and removed him from her life. Instantly she missed him and all the things about him that she loved—the wayward curls, the indentation in his chest, his sense of humour, even the sex. She would never find another lover with Billy’s appetite. She thought she would never have another lover again at all, that she would always be alone with her dark thoughts from then on.
‘Why didn’t you ask me to go?’
She almost let slip a laugh. It inflamed him all the more. He stepped forward and pushed her, shoved her so her head snapped back and thudded against the wall. Concentric rings of pain, a skullcap of hurt. Wincing, she put her hand to the back of her head. Billy left the room.
Should she follow him, she wondered, hearing him in the living room, crying again.
‘If you go with him, don’t come back here!’ Billy called.
She went, found him hunched miserably on the couch, face in his hands. ‘You’re not jealous of Malcolm, are you?’ she asked.
‘You heard what I said?’ He wouldn’t look at her. He talked through the cracks between his fingers.
‘Yes.’
‘I mean it.’
She was heading for the kitchen when something soared over her shoulder and landed with a clunk beside the fridge. A shoe. A moment later, its mate came flying.
‘Are you going or not?’ he shouted.
‘Yes,’ she answered and went to pack.
She went to her parents’, moved back into her childhood room. That night, Alison lay on her bed looking around. Everything was the same as the day she’d moved out to live with Billy: the white-and-gold furniture, her patchwork quilt, the stuffed toys staring down from the shelf. Only she was different. Innocent the last time she slept here, now she looked up at the animals and saw their heads lolling, like they all had broken necks. Half of them had missing eyes or were in some way maimed. And in the next room, Jeffy was still up and playing on the computer. Through the wall they shared she could hear the click, click, click of the mouse.
2
Grace’s claws ticking along ahead of him at the end of the red lead. Oh, Brute Time, Malcolm thought. For some the clock ran backward, for some it just stood still. The clock in Grace was winding down, and very shortly would unspring.
She rode the elevator showing her pink slip of a tongue, eager, as if she knew who she was coming to see. When the doors opened, she hurled herself out. ‘Mr. Firth!’ someone called and Malcolm was glad to see it was Nurse Health towering behind the nursing-station desk, not her officious twin.
Grace, overjoyed and twitching her little stump, lost all control. ‘Regrettably,’ said Malcolm, ‘I haven’t fixed that leak.’
Nurse Health laughed. ‘Denis is having another quiet day,’ she said. ‘He’s been very subdued since he was sick. Did they tell you?’
Malcolm nodded.
‘You’ll see a change. He went downhill fast.’
Haven’t we all, thought Malcolm, or was it just that the world had tilted?
‘Are you ready for it?’
‘Yes,’ he chirped falsely.
‘He’s in his room. Do you want me to come with you?’
‘That won’t be necessary. I have Grace.’
Tick, tick, tick went her claws on the linoleum. They entered the lounge where the television was on, though not for the benefit of the old lady Buddha propped up in her wheelchair. She was turned the other way and her cardigan had dropped to the floor. A woman who must have been her deadened daughter was watching a game show while two young children sported with Granny, the boy holding in the air her prodigious arm, the little girl swat
ting at the dangling wing of fat.
‘What’s that?’ the old lady croaked.
Immediately, the giggling ceased. The grandchildren gaped and even the daughter seemed astonished. Turning glazed eyes from the sequinned wheel on the television screen, she looked over the back of the couch at what had miraculously caused the idol to speak—Grace.
They moved on, brushing past the lanky grove of dieffenbachia, the dusty palms, into the corridor where halfway down someone staggered out of Mr. Stavros’ room. His shirt was buttoned incorrectly, dentures missing in action, his hair a tragic mess. What was he doing in Mr. Stavros’ room? Surely not that. The man looked so driven as he moved towards them, so strange that he set off the alarm in Grace. Oblivious to her yapping, he reached out to Malcolm.
‘Daddy?’
Sidestepping him, Malcolm jerked the leash to shut up Grace. ‘Daddy’s dead,’ he said.
And so was Mr. Stavros, he suddenly remembered. And Mrs. Ross. Even Mrs. Mikaluk; death had silenced her incessant prayer.
The dog knew Denis’ room, could perhaps smell him over the scent-screen of Lysol. Malcolm dropped the leash and watched it snake around the door. Ecstatic, Grace’s barking: high-pitched yelps that sounded almost as if she were in pain. Perhaps she was. Malcolm himself was pressing his eyes to stop his tears. A full minute passed before she decrescendoed. It was almost unbearable to hear her giving up.
Stepping into the room and seeing Denis at the window, Malcolm was once again reminded that hope was an autonomic function. Surely by now he had been disabused of such imaginings. Yet Denis looked just the same. Showing no sign of his recent illness, he looked more the same now than he had a year ago. As Malcolm crossed the room, he felt his rage dissipating. He felt once again as if he were walking into that most amiable of places—Denis’ arms.
Except they did not open. They dangled at his sides. At least they did not throw a punch. When Malcolm greeted him, Denis only stared and Malcolm’s rage came back.
‘Did you miss me?’ he asked in chilly French.
Very slowly, with a decided hauteur, Denis turned away from Malcolm to the window.
‘Ah,’ sniffed Malcolm. ‘The silent treatment.’
The view was down on a courtyard where a cherry tree was in frothy bloom. Thinking he would try another tack, Malcolm clapped his hand across his forehead and pretended to reel. ‘Oh, my dear! I understand now! We are trapped together in a Chekhov play! No wonder I feel so wistful all the time!’
To this sudden outburst, Denis made no comment. Malcolm cleared the embarrassment from his throat. ‘I’ve come to tell you something.’ Denis didn’t deign to turn. ‘Je m’en vais. On a holiday of sorts. That doesn’t interest you? Not in the slightest? You don’t give a damn what I do?’ Peevishly, he looked down to where Grace was splayed, licking herself. ‘Tiens,’ he said with sarcasm and lifted her. ‘Your true love.’
They made a better match—an incontinent dog and a man who shat in drawers.
Denis took Grace. Expressionless, he held her to his breast and, in his arms, Grace writhed with pleasure and stretched up to lick his face. Malcolm looked away, jealous, so only out of the corner of his eye did he see her fall. Instinctively, he reached out to catch her. Her foreleg wrenched the wrong way unleashed a histrionic stream of yelping.
‘What happened?’ asked an orderly, poking her head in the door.
‘Butterfingers,’ Malcolm said.
‘You want me to take her? I’ll show her around.’ She swooped down on the whimpering dog, Malcolm calling cheerily after them, ‘Bon débarras!’
He turned and saw Denis staring at him again, eyes pale and glassy. What Malcolm had taken for aloofness he saw now was vacancy. A chill washed over him.
Here was the ghost, at last.
What was it Denis saw? A person—Malcolm—vaguely familiar, moving his lips, each word overlapping the preceding so nothing he said made any sense. Likewise, all moments that preceded this one had been obliterated, so he didn’t know where he was, or how he had got here, or why he was here at all. Something squeezing his shoulder. He looked and saw a hand, then looked past the hand, instantly forgetting it, forgetting even that there was another person with him in the room.
In the corner was a chair. This at least he remembered: that a four-legged object with a back was a chair. He shuffled towards it. What was it again? A dog? He had no idea that there had been a dog in his arms a minute ago or that the person he didn’t remember—Malcolm—was behind this impulse to sit, was actually leading him to the dog that was, in fact, a chair. He simply felt impelled to sit. He saw his own hands feeling all around the chair, desperate to recall the act of sitting. All that came to him was that his body had to be somehow on this object which he no longer remembered the name of. Nor did he understand why he was hurling himself over the back of it, or why he was now lying on the floor. Why did he hurt? And who was this man staring down at him? How did he get in the room?
Tsking, Malcolm helped Denis to his feet, led him over to the bed and sat him on the edge. Denis, staring at the wall, his face beautiful and empty, had already forgotten his spill. Malcolm sat beside him, took his hand, hot and limp. He stroked it. This close, he smelled a sourness in Denis’ hair and on his skin.
There was a soft knock on the door. Malcolm dropped Denis’ hand. ‘Come in.’
Nurse Health entered, tentatively, compassion flushed across her broad cheeks. ‘Does he understand you?’
‘He doesn’t seem to.’
‘Between us, the staff know a few songs. Moi, je ne regrette rien, that sort of thing. He used to catcall us, but now he doesn’t respond at all.’ She paused. ‘Are you all right, Mr. Firth?’
‘Peachy.’
‘You don’t look it. Are you sure?’ He pressed his eyes. ‘Quite.’
‘I can give you the name of a counsellor. We also have our little group.’
Probably he flinched. ‘Thank you. I appreciate your concern.’
She left the room, a big woman with delicate footwork. Before she closed the door, she told him, ‘Don’t you stop talking, Mr. Firth. It will help you, telling him what’s on your mind.’
As soon as she was gone, he pulled his cuff back to expose a wrist and sniffed. He shook his head and looked at Denis whose mind was filled only with that second. Malcolm’s flowed over with the past.
The salon that Malcolm had gone to Paris to see in 1959 turned out to be far from ready. The windows had been masked with newspaper, which Denis began tearing down once he had ushered Malcolm inside. Light poured in in mote-dense shafts and Malcolm started coughing. There had been an odour, too, something rancid. Rat, Malcolm thought, seeing the scatter of droppings on the floor. A plan was laid out on the floor, marked in wear and discolouration, of what had been removed—a long counter. As Denis moved about the empty space, pointing here and there, Malcolm heard in his exuberant monologue a reference to la boucherie.
Behind them, hanging from a hook, was an apron, bloodstained and forgotten.
‘Here is better. For the sinks,’ Malcolm had said. He mimed it out.
Denis looked at him, pondering a moment. ‘Vous avez raison.’ And where would Malcolm put the hairdryers?
‘Here.’
‘Ici?’
Denis was impressed by Malcolm’s judgement, Malcolm could tell. Already, Malcolm badly wanted the job. More to the point, he badly wanted Denis, but doubted Denis would deign to consider a moody Canadian with acne on his back, with whom he had to communicate in pantomime.
That odour had to come out. The place had to be cleaned and painted. Malcolm, eager to prove himself, set to work. Over the next three days, on his hands and knees scrubbing or reaching with a paintbrush, he didn’t rest. Denis came downstairs occasionally to stand with his small clean hands on his hips, watching Malcolm sweat in the Paris heat. He would point and make graceful g
esticulations, which Malcolm interpreted as Denis drawing attention to his faults. Denis was entreating him not to debase himself another minute. It was ridiculous! A nettoyeuse was coming on Tuesday!
Malcolm didn’t learn that until later.
What Denis did was cook. He made omelette aux fruits de mer, ris de veau aux pointes d’asperges, a salad of lettuce hearts. Every evening when Malcolm staggered filthy and aching up the stairs, Denis greeted him with his only English sentence: ‘Are you angry?’
On the third day, Malcolm’s clothes were ruined. He’d gone through both trouser knees and camouflaged himself in paint, but the salon was ready to be equipped. To celebrate, Denis ran him a bath and invited two friends to dine with them. He prepared his speciality: matelote d’anguille.
At the table, Malcolm felt very young and very sorry for himself. The three Frenchmen were all much older and blond, models of sophistication. One smoked his cigarette in an ivory holder. They laughed a lot and Malcolm couldn’t understand a word. When the matelote was served, the two friends each took a sip, then leaned across the table and kissed Denis on the lips.
Turning to watch Malcolm lift his spoon, they all waited with their perfect eyebrows raised.
‘Bon,’ said Malcolm, an understatement. The men laughed trillingly.
Exhausted and morose, he told them goodnight, then slunk off to the sofa where he’d been sleeping the last two nights. He couldn’t sleep now for their voices. The room was hot enough already without his burning jealousy, without his holding a pillow over his head to block out their good time. Suddenly, he kicked back the sheet and sat up panting. He had fallen asleep after all, and dreamed of fire, and now his undershirt and shorts were drenched with sweat.
But it had not been a nightmare: awake, he still smelled smoke.
The guests had gone and the only light now came through the open window, brightening, then strangely fading. He went over and looked down into the courtyard where, tomorrow, Denis would leave for the cats the left-over matelote in a newspaper hat. The restaurants were still open, but with only a scattering of diners. Nothing appeared to be on fire.
A History of Forgetting Page 20
