We both sat for a while, as the clouds gathered and took away the light, raising goosebumps on flesh and flooding the heart with anguish. He offered me a drink, but I turned it away. There are times when you have to face the terrors naked. Vanya spoke staring straight ahead, his words both for me and for all the ghosts who reside in the deep waters of the sea, slowly putting on incorruption:
I close the book;
But the past slides out of its leaves to haunt me
And it seems, wherever I look,
Phantoms of irreclaimable happiness taunt me.
We continued sitting there for a while; Vanya in a place somewhere that I couldn’t even begin to imagine, and me robbed of meaningful things to say. ‘I don’t pretend to understand any of this,’ I said. ‘But I respect the fact that for you it has a deep personal meaning . . . And I understand, too, that there are things in my life that would be mysterious to you but which are of vital significance for me. But . . .’ The words trailed away into the empty air.
Vanya broke off staring at the sea and turned to me. ‘You remember I told you about a story I heard in the camps, the story that haunted me all my life: about a poor woman who was arrested while she suckled her child, who was taken away that afternoon and never returned, never saw her child again. To tell you truly, Louie Eeyoreovitch, I did not hear that story in the camps. I carried it with me. That child abandoned was me. My whole life has been haunted by the tantalising prospect that I might one day find her again, but now I see this for the vain and futile self-deception that it is. Only in heaven will we be reunited. I am a failure, Louie Eeyoreovitch, everything I touch turns to dust. Even the fragile and short-lived bliss I had with my wife and child I managed to destroy. I am like my namesake in the play by Chekhov who failed in everything, even in his attempt to kill himself.’
We sat in silence, drinking slowly, each tending his own thoughts. The goosebumps became fiercer, the hairs all the way up my arm curling into the wind like ears of corn. Far off, the children could still be heard playing with laughter that at this distance sounded forlorn. Vanya began to speak, words not so much addressed to me as to the sea or all the people he had passed on the road over the years.
‘A wise man once said there are three ways to find a fool. He is a fool that seeks that which he cannot find; he is a fool that seeks that which being found will do him more harm than good; he is a fool that, having a variety of ways to bring him to his journey’s end, takes that which is worst. These have been my ways and the way of all the men I know. Dreams, illusions, faith, even love are flaming brands we pull from the fire and wave against the night, to keep the wolf at bay. Eventually we re-consign the charred stick to the flames. Sit on this beach in the late afternoon, dear Louie, when a strong breeze is blowing, and absorb the lesson. See how the wind whips the back of the sea; the sky is full of torn clouds that scud across the surface of the blue. The sun is fierce and laces the bubbling waters with veins of gold. You squint ahead into the crashing watery fire, ears filled with the roar. A transcendental feeling of loveliness floods your being, and then a cloud passes across the sky, the heart contracts like those deep-sea creatures that retract their tentacles at the approach of danger. Even in that moment you hear the pale far cry of the wolf. More clouds drift by, slowly they fill the sky with grey, and colour drains from the land, the gold that seamed the surface of the sea turns to stone; it gets chilly. The throbbing golden sea now looks cold, forbidding. You walk into the fierce waves, soon you are out of your depth, and the strong wind blows. You swim for the shore but you notice a strange thing: the shore recedes. You swim more strongly, and thrash against the mighty sea with all the power of a bobbing cork. This is all you are: a cork on a stormy sea. The waters no longer sparkle with shifting silver, they are dark and dim, and underneath the current grasps and pulls you towards the deep ocean with a force that mocks the puny efforts of your arms. The water is deep, and cold and alien, and bitterly salty: you have passed the boundary of the familiar, of ice creams and suntan lotion and sand in wasp-tormented sandwiches, of gritty towels. The figures on the beach grow small, the town retreats from view, and floats unreal like the view of town in the dim dish of the camera obscura. You gasp to catch your breath and instead of air you swallow a lungful of sea water; you choke and gasp, choke and gasp. Water is heavy, oh so heavy! It is like cement that fills the natural buoyancy chamber of your lungs. But it tastes good now, it works like morphine, the pain diminishes along with the subsiding world. The shore on which you left all your troubles recedes so gently, the way it does when you stand on the stern of a ship, of the ferry they sent for you alone. You watch the receding shore, perplexed by your sense of detachment. You recall vaguely it was fun there mostly and there were laughs, there was fellowship and dancing and there were tears. But both the laughter and the tears seem unaccountably unimportant. What was it that made them matter so much? It feels strange to leave this way, but no stranger than the way you arrived: immersed in salty water with a far-off drum-din pounding in your ears.
‘This was how your mother brought you to the shore, years before with the stars fading before the growing dawn. Soon there will be nothing left to see of the town, just a V-shaped wake trembling into nowhere. You scan the coast. There, on a headland maybe fifty miles away, is a field still shining fire-green, one field picked out by a single beam of sunlight. A delirium of envy convulses your heart as you perceive the bleak truth: that field belongs to your past. You drink a little more morphine, just a few more mouthfuls to take away all pain . . . This, my dear friend Louie, is the dark wisdom of the sea, which we all must drink one day.’
Chapter 16
A century or two later I was shaken awake by hands too gentle to be cops’. I opened my eyes. I was alone on a bench on the Prom. Vanya and Clip had gone. I looked up into the face of a monk. He had wispy white hair, shaved into a tonsure, and was wearing a cowl the same colour as the stormy sky.
‘Louie, you mustn’t sleep here,’ he said. ‘It isn’t right. Why don’t you come with us, we’re going for a cup of tea.’ And then, while the fog cleared in my mind, he grasped my hand softly and said, ‘I’m John Nepomucene, the Patron Saint of Silence.’
Another man stepped out of the shadows and said, ‘Yes, come with us, Louie, you can’t sleep here.’ He wore a plain dark suit that had seen many years of wear, with an old-fashioned shirt from which the collar had been detached. The studs still hung in the eyelets at his neck, pressing against his Adam’s apple. His throat was scrawny and had the soft blush on it of a man who had shaved before coming out this evening, and had done so every evening of his adult life in a ritual involving a badger-fur brush, and unperfumed shaving soap smelling lightly of municipal toilets. His hair was white, but neatly trimmed, thin on top. He smiled at me, his face was wrinkled but suffused with health. It was the kindest face I had ever seen. His hands were resting on the bar of a shopping trolley similar to the one belonging to Ffanci Llangollen and in the trolley, lying on top of the plastic bags, was a bowler hat and a violin case.
They set off. I fell into step behind, with John Nepomucene. I said, ‘I don’t think there will be anywhere open. The cafés close fairly early.’
‘Maybe we’ll be lucky.’
‘How did you get to be a patron saint?’
John Nepomucene chuckled. ‘Oh! thereby hangs a tale. I was working at the court of King Wenceslas, preaching, converting, that sort of thing. Trouble was, old King Wenceslas had a short fuse and I was taking the confession of his wife. Take my advice, Louie, never get yourself into a situation like that. Naturally he wanted to know what his wife had been getting up to. If you knew his wife, you wouldn’t blame him. How do you handle a situation like that? He had me tied to a wheel, set on fire, and thrown into the Moldau. Even now my skin comes out in goosebumps when I recall how cold the water was.’
‘What was the wheel for?’
‘I’ve no idea; he didn’t say. I can tell you from personal experience th
at it doesn’t add anything of any great significance to the displeasure. Seven stars appeared above the town after my death, which was a nice touch.’
The man in front turned and said, ‘We’ll try the café on the Pier.’
I said, ‘There isn’t one.’
‘O ye of little faith!’ said John Nepomucene.
When we arrived at the Pier, the video shop had been replaced with a café. It was a humble affair of bare wooden floorboards, tables and chairs, a jukebox and a Formica counter. On the counter there was a silver tea urn and a glass case containing custard slices. I had seen it before somewhere long ago but I couldn’t remember where. Although I was pretty certain it wasn’t in Aberystwyth. The café was empty and we walked in and sat down at a table. The old man excused himself and walked off towards the sign saying ‘Gents’.
‘Your friend doesn’t say much,’ I said.
‘He’s one of those guys that speak softly and carry a big stick.’
‘Who is he?’
‘Don’t you know? It’s the Big Guy. The Boss.’
‘Of the café?’
‘Not just that. Of everything. The world.’
‘Not God?’
‘He prefers to be called Jehovah.’
I absorbed this new information. ‘What’s He doing in Aberystwyth?’
‘It’s like Hitchcock, you know how he liked to appear as an extra in his own movies? Nothing special, you know, just a fleeting glimpse of his face in a crowd shot. It’s like that.’
God came back and sat down. I looked around at the empty room.
‘I really like silence,’ I said. ‘It’s the best thing you did.’
God smiled warmly, but with a hint of tiredness in His old watery eyes. ‘That’s kind of you to say, Louie, but the truth is, that is about the only thing in your universe that I had no part in. It was there when I started.’
‘Oh.’ I was keenly aware of having said the wrong thing. ‘But of course that’s not the only thing I like.’
‘Please don’t feel bad,’ said God.
John Nepomucene yawned and rubbed his eyes. ‘I’m worn out, the sea air always does this to me. Is it OK if I . . .?’
‘Sure,’ said God, ‘you go.’
John Nepomucene shook my hand and disappeared into the night.
‘He’s a good guy,’ said God simply. He took out a stick of rock and unpeeled the Cellophane. He began to suck thoughtfully.
I played with my teaspoon for a while and then said, ‘I have to ask.’
‘I know.’
‘You probably get sick of being—’
‘Just say it, Louie.’
‘Why do we have to suffer so much?’
He examined the stick of rock, held it an inch away from his chin, lost in thought. The silence lasted a whole minute. He took a deep breath and said, ‘It was a mistake. It was my first attempt, I got it wrong.’
‘Attempt at what?’
‘A universe.’
‘Oh.’
‘They told me suffering would give it “depth”.’
‘Who did?’
‘The other deities. They didn’t want me to win. They saw my stuff: Kilimanjaro, new-born lambs, lapis lazuli, Polynesia, Saturn, bluebells. They knew it was good. They said it needed more dark stuff to set it off, more light and shade – like a chessboard.’
‘You mean it was a competition?’
‘Yes.’
‘You entered the universe for a competition?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Did you win?’
In answer, God gave me a look of such desolate sadness it pierced my heart. He took a quiet suck of the rock and added, ‘It was my human condition that let me down.’
I gave him an encouraging squeeze on the shoulder.
‘My later ones were much better.’
I said, ‘I’ve never been to this café before but it seems strangely familiar.’
‘I took it from Brief Encounter,’ said God. ‘You remember that movie set in the railway station café?’
‘Of course.’
‘It’s one of my favourites. Do you know the one thing they really loved? The one thing I made that really tickled the other deities?’
‘No idea.’
He held up the stick of rock. ‘This.’
‘They liked Aberystwyth rock?’
‘Rock they liked. Doesn’t have to be from Aberystwyth. The stuff I showed them said Eden. It really tickled them, though. They kept looking at each end and professing in wonder, “The letters go right through! How on earth do they do that?” And I said, “I don’t know, it’s a mystery. One of the profoundest mysteries of my universe.” ’
‘Surely not quite as profound as time and space and stuff?’
‘Those things are not so very mysterious to me.’
We wandered out into the night to look at the summer lightning, a phenomenon for which long ago God had got top marks. We walked through the darkened castle past St Michael’s church and on into the castle grounds. At the war memorial we stopped and sat on the steps. The breeze was warm and salty, summer lightning pulsed in the sky. Sometimes it flickers like a faulty neon tube, and sometimes it is like pinball in the sky, but tonight it had a soft creamy quality. There was no thunder and, unheralded by any noise, different parts of the sky would flare up, bright as the moon, and for a split second invisible thunderclouds would become incandescent like heads of spectral coral swimming in the ocean above us. I looked up at the statue: a naked girl in bronze reaching into the sky above us. Her breasts were full and uncovered, her hair wild and luxuriant like the figurehead of a windjammer; everything about her bespoke vigour and lusty sinews and glory; a cruel falsehood cast in bronze. They should have a statue of a mother holding a telegram from the War Office and weeping.
God stared up at the statue for a while, lost in melancholy, his kind old features creased with a pain that might have been guilt. Then, as if overcome by a sudden weariness, he rested his head against the stone. ‘You know, it’s part of my essence to be forgiving, but sometimes it’s hard. Sometimes the ingratitude really . . . I mean, I don’t expect “thank you” letters or bouquets of roses or anything, but some basic appreciation . . . an understanding of . . . of . . . what I did would be nice. Have you any idea how chuffed I was about the horse?’
‘Which one?’
‘Any one, all of them . . . just horses. Of all the beasts, don’t you think they are possibly the most lovely?’
‘Off the top of my head I couldn’t think of a more wonderful creature.’
‘Don’t you just love the way they take apples from the palm of your hand? The way their big black noses peel back to unveil those big choppers, and so gentle . . . they could bite your arm off but they never do. And those big dark lake-sized eyes. I worked for ever on the detail. Horses were my special gift to man. And what did he do with them? Sent them to the Somme. It’s the little things that haunt me, you see. Not the poison gas nor the stupidity of the generals, but the whinnies of the horses as the shells landed among them.’ He closed his eyes and whispered, ‘My lovely horses.’ The wind blew strands of white hair softly across his brow as he rested his head against the stone column. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘when the fighting finished and the troops went home, the War Office was too cheap to buy return tickets for the horses and sold them all to French butchers.’
We both sat in silence for a while, listening to the wind. I said, ‘I read, in a magazine, an article about Hiroshima. There was this little girl, would have been about two or three at the time, I forget her name.’
‘Sadako, her name was Sadako. It means chaste.’
‘Ten years later she got leukaemia. They called it the atom bomb disease, and they knew they couldn’t save her. But she got it into her head that if she somehow managed to fold a thousand origami cranes she would be saved. So she spent the last months of her life in hospital folding cranes.’
‘Yes,’ said God quietly.
‘F
olding, folding, folding.’
‘Yes.’
‘Even used the labels off her medicine bottles for paper. She reached the target, and went past it, and then she died.’
God nodded.
‘I mean, what were you thinking?’
‘It’s difficult to describe.’
‘You must have known, right? When she was doing it, you must have known it wouldn’t work?’
‘It’s not as simple as that.’
‘Isn’t it?’
‘What would you have done, Louie?’
‘If it wasn’t going to work I wouldn’t have let her have the idea in the first place.’
‘How do you know it wasn’t going to work?’
‘What does that mean? Did it depend on the cranes? She just didn’t make them nice enough?’
‘No, not like that.’
‘Could it have worked?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe.’
‘A thousand and fifty cranes.’
‘One thousand two hundred and seventy three. I counted every one. They were beautiful.’ He paused and said softly, ‘Louie, I must leave you now. Try and . . . have faith.’
‘But I don’t believe in You.’
‘I know. It’s the ones who don’t believe who need faith; it’s easy for others. Goodbye, Louie, I’ll be watching over you.’
From Aberystwyth with Love an-5 Page 16
