I thought I heard the Snow Queen laugh, she seldom laughs.
There I was nodding away in my terrible old carcass and Galahad was trying to tell me something. He was shouting at the top of his voice: “No, I am not inviting you to play tennis, I am trying to tell you something very agreeable and important.”
Agreeable? Important?
“You are going away on a nice holiday, Mother. You are going to enjoy it very much.”
“My dear Galahad, don’t tell me such silly lies. You are sending me away to a home for senile females because you all think I am a repulsive old bag and I dare say you are right from your own point of view.”
He stood mouthing at me, looking as if I had picked a live goat out of my bonnet.
“We expect you to be reasonable about all this,” he yelled eventually. “You will be very comfortable and have a lot of company.”
“My dear Galahad, I wonder what you consider being unreasonable? Do you mean that I might tear the house down brick by brick and stamp on it? Throw the television set off the roof? Ride off naked on Robert’s revolting motorcycle? No, Galahad. I do not have the strength for any of these reactions. I have absolutely no choice except being what you call reasonable, you need not worry.”
“You will find that you will be very happy Mother, you will have all sorts of interesting pastimes and a trained staff to see that you are never lonely.”
“I am never lonely, Galahad. Or rather I never suffer from loneliness. I suffer much from the idea that my loneliness might be taken away from me by a lot of mercilessly well-meaning people. Of course I never hope that you will understand me, so all I ask is that you do not imagine that you are persuading me into something when you are actually forcing me against my will.”
“Really Mother, it will be for your own good, I know you will appreciate this later on.”
“I doubt it very much. However, nothing I can say will change your opinion, so when do I have to go?”
“Well we thought we might drive you out on Tuesday, just to have a look at things. If you are not pleased with the place you can come right home again.”
“Today is Sunday.”
“Yes today is Sunday. I am glad to see you perking up Mother, you’ll see what a fine time you are going to have making lots of friends and taking healthy exercise out in Santa Brigida. It is almost the country you know.”
“What do you mean ‘healthy exercise’?” I asked, prey to an awful premonition that they might have a hockey team; one never knows with modern therapy. “I get plenty of exercise here.”
“Organized sports of some sort,” replied Galahad, confirming my fears. “You are going to feel like a two-year-old after a month or two.”
I didn’t seem able to get my breath properly, I held my peace in order to reserve energy, I had too many things to find out before falling stark into a grave. Besides argument with Galahad was obviously unfruitful. He went on talking for some time but I no longer heard what he said as he wasn’t shouting any more.
Some fifty or sixty years ago I bought a practical tin trunk in the Jewish quarter in New York. This trunk has resisted time in all sorts of different services. Recently I had used it as a tea-table when Carmella came to visit me. I had only expected to pack it again when I would leave for Lapland. One can never be sure of the future. I had not opened the trunk for about seven years, that must have been the time Carmella gave me a bottle of sleeping potion that she made herself and that I never dared to taste. The bottle was still lying at the bottom of the trunk and had turned into a crystalline sediment which looked extraordinarily venomous, having a brownish tint with a grey fungoid growth around the top. I decided to keep it just the same, one never can know what might be useful, I never throw anything away. The trunk inside was made of solid wood and papered with a tasteful design which was slightly stained in places.
The first object I packed next to the sleeping potion was of course the fatal hearing trumpet. This made me think of the Angel Gabriel although I believe he is supposed to blow his and not listen through it, that is, according to the bible, on the last day when humanity rises to ultimate catastrophe. Strange how the bible always seems to end up in misery and cataclysm. I often wondered how their angry and vicious God became so popular. Humanity is very strange and I don’t pretend to understand anything, however why worship something that only sends you plagues and massacres? and why was Eve blamed for everything?
Then I had to open the chest of drawers and sort things out, and all the cardboard boxes with different labels, marmalade, glass, tinned beans, tomato ketchup. They did not, of course, contain what the labels said, but different odds and ends which agglomerate with time.
One has to be very careful what one takes when one goes away forever, something seemingly useless might become essential under specific circumstances. I decided to pack as if I were going to Lapland. There was a screw driver, hammer, nails, birdseed, a lot of ropes that I had woven myself, some strips of leather, part of an alarm clock, needles and thread, a bag of sugar, matches, coloured beads, sea shells and so on. Finally I put in a few clothes to prevent things rattling about inside the trunk.
Knowing Muriel to be an officious Nosey Parker and wanting to prevent any possible revision of my belongings, I filled the empty cardboard boxes with stones from the back yard and tied them up again with string, so that she would think I had left all my miscellaneous collection behind. Muriel would call it all “rubbish” and throw it away.
Of course I knew I was not going to bribe the Eskimos, but I put everything in as if I were. Institutions like the far north are also cut off from civilization and you never know what people might want. I was not educated in a convent school for nothing.
Time, as we all know, passes. Whether it returns in quite the same way is doubtful. A friend of mine who I did not mention up till now because of his absence told me that a pink and a blue universe cross each other in particles like two swarms of bees and when a pair of different coloured bees hit each other miracles happen. All this has something to do with time although I doubt if I could explain it coherently.
This particular friend, Mr. Marlborough, has been living in Venice with his sister so I haven’t seen him for some time. Mr. Marlborough is a great poet and has achieved fame in recent years. At times I had thought of writing poetry myself but getting words to rhyme with each other is difficult, like trying to drive a herd of turkeys and kangaroos down a crowded thoroughfare and keep them neatly together without looking in shop windows. There are so many words, and they all mean something. Marlborough tells me his sister has been a cripple from birth although he says it so mysteriously I sometimes wonder what is really the matter with her.
If I remember correctly writers usually find some excuse for their books, although why one should excuse oneself for having such a quiet and peaceful occupation I really don’t know. Military people never seem to apologize for killing each other yet novelists feel ashamed for writing some nice inert paper book that is not certain to be read by anybody. Values are very strange, they change so quickly I can’t keep track of them.
I say all this because I think I might write some poetry after all. I think a ballad would be rather in my style, with short simple verses, such as:
Not a thing upon the floor,
Although I looked from door to door.
Abandoned by my kith and kin
I’ll leave them not a safety pin.
Not anything pretentious with long words. This is merely an example, as I would actually favour something more romantic.
With all these thoughts running through my head like sand through a sieve I continued my packing. It was quite a long job but I had no desire to sleep. I was too preoccupied.
Sleeping and waking are not quite as distinctive as they used to be, I often mix them up. My memory is full of all sorts of stuff which is not, perhaps, in chronological
order, but there is a lot of it. So I pride myself on having an excellent faculty of miscellaneous recall.
The cats were singing hymns to the moon,
On the seashore just a silver spoon,
This rhyming image never was finished, I must have dropped off to sleep after all.
•
Santa Brigida is a suburb on the southern extremity of this city. Actually it is an ancient Indian-Spanish village linked by petrol stations and factories to the metropolis. The houses are sometimes of adobe and sometimes of massive stone, the streets are roughly paved and narrow, bordered with trees and high walls hiding colonial mansions and parks. The place would have a certain charm if it did not smell so strongly on wet days of the paper factory, Gomez and Company. A drop of rain and the whole place is invaded by a frightful stink.
The last house on Calle Albahacca was the Institution. It was quite unlike anything that either Carmella or I had imagined. There were walls, naturally, but otherwise everything was different. Outside nothing much could be seen except great old walls over which dripped plumbago and ivy. The front door was a massive lump of wood studded with iron lumps that might once have been heads. They were rubbed almost smooth. I could just see a tower jutting about a storey over the wall. All this looked more like a medieval castle than the hospital or prison I had expected.
The lady who let us in was so surprisingly different from the immaculate keeper I had expected that I could not stop looking at her. She was somewhat younger than myself, about ten years say; she wore a pair of flannel pyjama trousers, a gentleman’s dinner jacket and a grey, turtlenecked sweater. She had rather a lot of hair which straggled out from under a yachting cap which bore the words H.M.S. Thumbelina, and a crown. She seemed very excited and never stopped talking. Galahad and Muriel tried to make a remark now and then and she did not let them get a word in edgeways.
First impressions are never very clear, I can only say there seemed to be several courtyards, cloisters, stagnant fountains, trees, shrubs, lawns. The main building was in fact a castle, surrounded by various pavilions with incongruous shapes. Pixielike dwellings shaped like toadstools, Swiss chalets, railway carriages, one or two ordinary bungalows, something shaped like a boot, another like what I took to be an outsize Egyptian mummy. It was all so very strange that I for once doubted the accuracy of my observation. Our guide went on talking excitedly and seemed to be explaining something to me, she ignored Muriel and Galahad. I could see astonishment written all over their faces, but the fact that they had taken the trouble to bring my trunk prevented them from changing their minds.
After walking for a long time we got to a tower which was standing alone in a vegetable garden. This was not the tower of the main building. It was a new tower and not more than three storeys tall and whitewashed. It had a certain resemblance to a lighthouse, hardly what one would expect in a garden. Our guide opened the door and, after talking for a quarter of an hour, let us in. This extraordinary place was evidently where I was supposed to live. The only real furniture was a wicker chair and a small table. All the rest was painted. What I mean is that the walls were painted with the furniture that wasn’t there. It was so clever that I was almost taken in at first. I tried to open the painted wardrobe, a bookcase with books and their titles. An open window with a curtain fluttering in the breeze, or rather it would have fluttered if it were a real curtain. A painted door and a shelf with all sorts of ornaments. All this one-dimensional furniture had a strangely depressing effect, like banging one’s nose against a glass door.
It was not long before Galahad and Muriel left, but our companion stayed on, talking like mad. I wondered if she knew that I could not hear a word she said. But it would have been impossible to communicate anything through the torrent of words, even if my enunciation had been loud and strong. Finally I left her alone still talking and climbed up the stairs to examine the rest of the tower. There was a room with a real window, a bed and a closet. The walls were undecorated. In the corner was a ladder leading to a trap door which I decided to leave for another occasion, as I felt rather weak from so much exertion.
I was able to make twenty-five trips up and down stairs and unpack my entire trunk and she was still talking. I decided I might risk using my hearing trumpet. The bathroom was on the ground floor and was a good spot for testing acoustics.
“Not that it would make a great deal of difference because he was not allowed here in any case because of the ducks. He sent me a fine long letter, though, and you should have read how he chased a jackal for ten kilometres.
“It is almost teatime now and Dr. Gambit expects us to be assembled before the bell rings. Dr. Gambit is a highly unreasonable person concerning time so we had better hurry. Personally I think that time is unimportant and when I think of the autumn leaves and the snow, the spring and the summer, the birds and the bees I realize that time is unimportant, yet people attach so much importance to clocks. Now I believe in inspiration, an inspired conversation between two people with some mysterious affinity can bring more joy into life than even the most expensive kind of clock. Unfortunately there are very few inspired people and one has to fall back on one’s own store of vital fire, this is most exhausting especially, as you know, I have to work day and night even if all my bones ache and my head is swimming and I am fainting with fatigue and nobody understands my mortal fight to keep on my feet and not to lose my inspired joy of life even if I do have palpitations of the heart and they drive me like a poor beast of burden I often feel like Joan of Arc so dreadfully misunderstood and all those terrible cardinals and bishops prodding her poor agonized mind with so many unnecessary questions. I can’t help feeling some deep affinity with Joan of Arc and I often feel I am being burned at the stake just because I am different from everybody else because I have always refused to give up that wonderful strange power I have inside me and it becomes manifested when I am in harmonious communication with some other inspired being like myself.”
I made several futile attempts to tell her that I heartily agreed with her philosophy of life. I also wanted to ask if I might bring my hearing trumpet in to tea without exciting too much commentary but it was impossible, she went right on talking although I stood in front of her opening and shutting my mouth hopefully. I was also beginning to worry about the Dr. Gambit who disliked people being late for tea but my companion showed no signs of moving and she stood blocking the only exit. We might get no tea at all if we did not go immediately. This would be very unpleasant. Supposing they only gave high tea and no supper, I would have to go hungry till breakfast.
“If only people in this world realized the importance of understanding each other. Now take me, nobody understands me here, they don’t even make an effort to take a small share of the terrible burden of work which is crushing me down like Joan of Arc. Yet my source of inspiration is still untouched because of the fighting power inside me. Bubbles of pure creative ideas pouring out of me, I give, give, give, yet other people do not share this faculty of understanding. More and more work is poured upon me, when I get up in the mornings I am overcome with a terrible nausea because I am overworked, simple overwork is enough to bleed you dry. I am so foolishly generous that other people profit from me all the time and all the endless tasks of the day (and night) are heaped on my shoulders.”
This was most alarming, what sort of terrible toil had deranged the poor woman? Would I also have to work day and night till I couldn’t stop talking? Perhaps they made her shovel coal for a huge furnace, probably they kept a private crematorium, old people do keep dying off. Maybe they had a chain gang too and we would have to chop stones and sing sea shanties (this would explain why she wore the yachting cap). All those eccentric huts outside began to take on a sinister meaning. Nursery rhyme bungalows to trick the old ladies’ families into thinking we led a childish and peaceful life and behind the scenes a huge crematorium and a chain gang.
I began to feel ill and not to mind if w
e missed tea after all. My arm was paralyzed with holding the hearing trumpet but some kind of unhappy fascination prevented me from taking it away and sinking back into what now seemed like blissful silence. Somewhere in the distance a bell rang and, still talking, my companion took me by the arm and we set out towards the main building. I held the trumpet to my ear as if hypnotized. Her talk was like the wheel of fortune that has certain variations but always gets back to the same point. Her enthusiasm never flagged, nor did her pleasant wrinkled face change its expression of intense sincerity.
Later on I learned that my companion’s name was Anna Wertz. She did not tell me this herself as she would never have had time to communicate anything so practical and banal.
The dining hall was a long panelled room with French windows leading out into the garden. Green velvet curtains somewhat the worse for wear separated us from a big lounge in which everything was covered with chintz. We arrived just in time to take our places as everybody sat down. I was placed between Anna Wertz and another lady. We were sitting in the row with our backs to the French windows and this gave me a feeling of claustrophobia.
For a day or two the nine personalities of my new companions were somewhat confused. They were all quite different of course, but it takes time to tell people apart. After a first brief examination I did not dare look too closely at Dr. Gambit, as I was afraid to appear rude. He sat at the head of the table, which was natural I suppose, he being the only gentleman present.
The first impression he gave was of being bald, almost starkly bald, very plump and nervous. It was difficult to see his eyes as he wore very thick spectacles. When I did eventually manage to peep behind these thick lenses I saw he had mild green eyes with dark lashes, rather incongruous in such a face; they looked like the eyes of a child. They were eyes that looked at nothing. I suppose he was so short-sighted that there was nothing much he could see anyhow, poor man.
The Hearing Trumpet Page 3
