Mrs Caliban and other stories

by Rachel Ingalls

  He wanted to cry out with anger and grief. He’d missed the whole of his life. And he knew that – as he had once hoped – his life had indeed been picked out, from the beginning, to be the life of an artist, which wasn’t like the life of other men. An artist’s life was his work. He thought: How disappointed God must be in me. How disappointed I am in myself. He hadn’t believed in God for years.

  He knew what he should do: he should get out and go to the south – the real south, where he’d be able to recover his health. But he couldn’t now. He’d left it too late.

  *

  After two days, he thought he was better. He wanted to get up. Eino came to visit him and sat by the bed; he told Axel the doctor had said he was to stay indoors, although if he wanted to move to the writing-table or the sofa, that would be all right. Axel got up out of bed and fainted.

  When he came to again, he was sure he was near death. ‘You’ll get well,’ Eino told him.

  ‘Of course I won’t. I’m going to die. You’re the one who’s going to live. And you deserve to, because you didn’t refuse the glass. I should have known how important it was.’

  Eino looked around him. He shot a glance towards the foot of the bed, at the side, where Axel used to stash his empty bottles. ‘What glass?’ he said.

  Axel pretended to sleep. A picture came to him, like a dream, of Maria sitting by the fire and working on a piece of material. He thought it was sure to be one of her hooked rugs, but when he looked more closely he saw with horror that it was a long, grey chain of little people that she was knitting. She was producing the future. Then he was staring at the wall and realizing that he’d fallen asleep after all.

  He’d been right in the first place to distrust the idea of living in one of these artists’ colonies. He ought to be near the bustle and variety of a modern city, not buried in some fantasy of Eden, where the food had no real taste and the people were all the same. The women, the girls, were like the lumpy food: standing there with their mouths open while you tried out a little persiflage – nothing too complicated, no elaborate scrollwork or classical vocabulary – and then giggling or laughing loudly. Their laughter was like the quacking of ducks, the braying of donkeys. It took an effort to believe that they were human. He used to be accustomed to good society – not at the top, but men and women who could hold a conversation. Even Eino wasn’t up to that. He’d thought Eino was some sort of rough-hewn genius, but actually he was only an obstinate craftsman with a love of the peasant traditions.

  Suddenly it infuriated him that not only was he going to miss being an artist and living an interesting life, but that he’d tied himself to someone else who was, in his own way, second-best. It was like being a wife who finds out twenty years too late that she’s chosen the wrong man.

  ‘He’s starting to go a little crazy,’ Eino said.

  ‘He was always like that,’ Maria told him. ‘Even before he started to drink so much.’

  ‘This is different. I suppose it’s the illness.’

  ‘What does the doctor say?’

  ‘As much as he knows, and that isn’t much.’

  ‘I think,’ Maria said, ‘there are some artists who go off their heads. And there are other people who go crazy because they aren’t artists. That’s Axel. He doesn’t have any talents, not for anything.’

  ‘He’s got a talent for friendship.’

  ‘Oh?’ she said. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Let’s leave all this,’ Eino said, ‘till we know when he’s going to get better.’ He went to visit Axel again. He was astonished by the change in him.

  Axel was sitting up in the chair. He was fully clothed and wearing his heavy outdoor boots. His coat, scarf and hat were on the table next to him. His face looked deathly. He said, ‘I was waiting for you, Eino. I wanted to take one last walk with you.’

  ‘I don’t think you should, Axel.’

  ‘I need to. If I can’t get all the way back, you can bring me home. Or you can leave me.’

  ‘I don’t think the doctor would like it.’

  ‘You know that doctor – that doctor only likes healthy people. He can’t do anything for me. You’re the one who can help. You can take me for a walk.’ He stood up and reached out quickly to touch the table.

  Eino thought they probably wouldn’t make it past the two neighbouring cabins. He said all right.

  They started off down the path that led into the woods. The sun was out. There was no wind, but it was a day of intense, dry cold. Axel started to talk.

  ‘I remember going through the museums in Paris with you,’ he said. ‘I was fascinated by the things you told me; your whole life. One day you said you’d been living on pumpernickel sandwiches recently and that meant two slices of bread with a piece of pumpernickel between them. I was so shocked by everything and so pleased. You took me to meet the Italian who used to be a glass-blower and you ran your fingers down the outside of a vase and said you could tell the lead content that way. I couldn’t believe it. Then you laughed and said it was like everything else, you had to have a feeling for it. You said that the forests of Finland were better than the finest museums and I believed you. I came here. I remember that girl, the farmer’s daughter; when she bent down to pour out the water; her shoulders and back. I thought maybe humanity was still possible for me. But you told me you’d always been interested in glass more than anything else, because it was the medium closest to ice. Eino, the first winter we were here, I had my warning. I was walking along this very trail, right about here – and something fell from above, just in front of me: plop! and there it was – a bird. It had died in the air. It must have been lost too, at that time of the year. I’d heard such a thing was possible, but to have it happen to me, after everything else – no. This beauty and nobility of nature you’d been telling me about; I thought it was all lies. It seemed to me that nature was pitiless: it was engaged in a constant effort to annihilate what was already there, in order to produce new forms. Or to come up with one more form just like the last one. It was only interested in moving onward. I began to understand the character of Judas. I knew that he must have been a man who watched his friend with sympathy until the moment when he realized that the friend was wrong and stupid, and that none of his ideas would work, and shouldn’t be allowed to, anyway.’

  ‘Stop talking, Axel,’ Eino said.

  ‘How dark it is in the winter, all the time. The snow. Of course the snow has its own brightness, but the light goes out of the sky. It isn’t fair. The cold goes on too long. It makes me feel horrible sometimes.’

  ‘You’ll feel better in the spring.’

  ‘How am I going to feel better? I’ve got what Karen had.’

  ‘The doctors are learning new things every minute. Some day people won’t have these diseases.’

  ‘But what makes anyone catch diseases? Some do and some don’t. That’s heredity. Or is it? Nobody understands that, either. What do we know at all? What have we ever learned?’

  ‘Well,’ Eino suggested, ‘there’s photography. That’s quite an extraordinary thing, isn’t it? Much more complicated than most machines.’

  ‘Yes,’ Axel said, calmed. ‘Yes, that’s right. That was a great discovery.’

  ‘And there are the arts.’

  ‘Oh, that was the one thing I could always understand. I just couldn’t do it, that’s all. And I don’t know any more why people try to do anything in life. None of it has any meaning without beauty, and beauty goes – it just evaporates. Look, like snow. Like youth, Eino. Like all of us, everything. What was it for?’

  ‘For the ones who come after us.’

  ‘The hell with them. It’s going to be the same for them as it’s been for us.’

  ‘No, it’s going to be better. We’ll leave them that inheritance.’

  ‘That’s idiotic. One good war can wipe out what ten generations create. In times of need, everything goes by the board. If life gets hard enough, people eat anything. They’d eat the paint off the
Sistine Chapel. They’d eat the face off the Botticelli Venus.’

  ‘Stop talking so much,’ Eino said. ‘You’re tiring yourself out. I think we should go back.’

  Axel stopped. They had come almost to the end of a plantation where the regularly spaced trees were so encrusted and massy with snow that they no longer resembled living, growing things; they looked like structures built for some purpose, as if to guard a fortress or line the approach to a palace that wasn’t there. Now that the day was giving out, a bluish light seemed to come from all the weight of ice on them.

  Axel took a few more steps forward. Beyond the trees lay a long, open stretch of land that was absolutely even and blank. ‘You want me to leave,’ he said. ‘All right. I’m leaving.’

  ‘It’s too cold to stay out here, Axel. Come on.’

  ‘Look, Eino.’

  ‘If you don’t come now, I’m going to knock you out and carry you back.’

  ‘Look. Don’t you see?’ Axel stumbled forward. A gigantic, bursting whiteness flowered everywhere around him, over the entire country, over the world: a white like the blossoming of trees in the spring. Everything else gave way to it, even the thought of colour. He would have laughed, if it hadn’t been so cold. It was cold enough to snatch the breath from your body and keep it.

  ‘You were always pointing things out to me,’ he said, ‘and I never saw: forms, shapes, patterns. I thought I knew what you were talking about. But now I’m seeing them, Eino. Look, there in the snow – it’s the wing of a dove. Perfect. And over there another one, like a fan of feathers, and next to it all the white flowers. And this house around us: the house – don’t you see?’

  Eino followed, keeping his hands ready in case Axel started to fall. They walked far out into the open: into an immense, white-filled space that was flat and silent. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I can’t see anything.’

  ‘But it’s everywhere. I’m seeing them, Eino. I’m seeing everything. God, what a feeling. Like a sword going into me. All this beauty.’

  ‘Axel, we’ve got to get you back to the house.’

  Axel stood away and faced Eino. He coughed a little.

  ‘We can talk about this later,’ Eino said.

  ‘Wonderful forms,’ Axel whispered. ‘Beautiful shapes.’ He began to wave his arms, lost his balance and toppled straight backward on to the ground, where he lay motionless, arms and legs outspread. His eyes, as still as ice, looked towards the sky.

  In the Act

  As long as Helen was attending her adult education classes twice a week, everything worked out fine: Edgar could have a completely quiet house for his work, or his thinking, or whatever it was. But when the lease on the school’s building ran out, all the courses would end – the flower arranging, the intermediate French and beginning Italian, the judo, oil painting and transcendental meditation.

  She told Edgar well in advance. He nodded. She repeated the information, just in case. He said, ‘Mm.’ Over the next two weeks she mentioned the school closure at least three times. And, after she and her classmates had had their farewell party, she told him all about that, adding, ‘So, I’ll be at home next week. And the week after that. And so on.’

  ‘Home?’ Edgar said. ‘What about your adult education things?’

  She went over the whole history one more time. At last he was listening. He looked straight at her and said, ‘Oh. That means you’ll have to find something else to occupy yourself with on those afternoons.’

  ‘I suppose so. I might stay home and paint here.’

  ‘I’ll be busy up in the lab.’

  ‘I could make a kind of studio down in the cellar.’

  ‘I’ll be working. I need absolute peace and quiet.’

  ‘Well, painting isn’t very loud.’

  ‘Helen,’ he said, ‘I’d like to have the house to myself.’

  She never got angry with him any more; that is, she’d discovered that it did no good: he’d just look at her coldly as if she were exhibiting distressing habits usually encountered only among the lower species. Raising her voice – when she’d been driven to it – produced the same reaction from him. She’d learned to be argumentative in a fudgy, forgiving drone she’d found effective with the children: enough of that sound and the boredom level rose to a point where people would agree to anything. Edgar had a matching special tone for private quarrels: knowing, didactic, often sarcastic or hectoring. Whenever he used it outside the house, it made him disliked. It was a good voice for winning arguments by making other people hysterical. His hearing seemed to block off when it started.

  She said, ‘If you’d like the house to yourself, you can have it. Maybe you wouldn’t mind fixing some supper for us while you’re here. That way, I’d have something to look forward to, soon as I get in from walking around the block five thousand times.’

  ‘There’s no need for that.’

  ‘OK, you can take me out. Twice a week. That’ll be nice. We could see a lot of new movies in just a month.’

  ‘You’re being unreasonable.’

  ‘Of course I am. I’m a woman,’ she said. ‘You’ve already explained that to me.’

  ‘Let’s not get into that.’

  ‘Why not? If I’m not even allowed to paint downstairs somewhere for two afternoons a week? I never come up to the attic, do I?’

  ‘You’re always tapping on the door, asking me if I want a cup of coffee.’

  ‘Only that once.’

  ‘It was a crucial moment.’

  ‘Well, now you’ve got your thermos bottle and everything, you’re all set up there.’

  ‘You came up other times.’

  ‘That big noise – explosion, whatever it was: of course I did. I was worried. You could burn the house down.’

  ‘I think this is time number fourteen for telling you that the experiments are not dangerous.’

  ‘Fourteen? I’m sure that must be right. You keep track of things like that so well. Each time I conceived, it was a positive miracle of timing. I can remember you crossing off the days on the calendar.’

  ‘You’re trying to sidetrack me.’

  ‘I’m trying to get you to allow me to stay in my own house.’

  ‘I really do need complete freedom to work. It simply isn’t the same when somebody else is in the house. Even if you didn’t try to interrupt me again.’

  ‘The only other time I knocked on the door was when there was all the screaming.’

  ‘I told you,’ Edgar said. ‘I got the volume too high.’

  ‘It sounded like real people.’

  ‘It was a tape.’

  ‘For heaven’s sake, Edgar – where can I go?’

  ‘See some friends? Look around a museum or two. Find another one of those adult education places.’

  All at once she felt hurt. She didn’t want to argue any more, even if there was a hope of winning. She was ready to walk out and tramp up and down the streets like a child running away. She said, ‘I’ll try,’ and went into the living-room. She walked around the corner, into the alcove where the desk was. She sat down in the plump, floral-patterned chair, put her knees up and curled into a ball. She heard his feet going up the stairs, then up the next flight to the attic. He wouldn’t be wondering whether he’d made her miserable. He’d be getting out the keys to unlock the attic door, which he kept locked all the time, and if he was inside, bolted too. He’d be sighing with pleasure at the prospect of getting back to his experiment. Of course he was right: she’d have to find something to do with her time. But just for a few minutes, she’d stay in the flowered chair, with her arm over her eyes.

  *

  The next morning, she was angry. He read through his newspaper conscientiously, withdrawing his attention from it for only a few seconds to tell her that she hadn’t cut all the segments entirely free in his grapefruit – he’d hit exactly four that were still attached. She knew, he said, how that kind of thing annoyed him.

  She read her letters. Her two sons were at boardin
g school. Edgar approved. She herself would never have suggested sending, or allowing, the boys to go away: in fact, the suggestion had come from them. They had suddenly clamoured for the expensive snobberies of the East Coast; they needed, they wanted, they couldn’t live without education at the last of the all-male establishments. Helen’s attendance at adult education classes dated from the time of their emigration.

  Both of the boys had written to her. Usually she was delighted by whatever they had to say. This morning their news seemed to be nothing but boastful accounts of how they had won some sports event or beaten another boy at something, shown him who was who: and so forth. She was probably lucky they were far away. That would have been two more grapefruits she wouldn’t be able to get right.

  When she passed the letters over to Edgar, he was soberly pleased with the boys’ victories. He wasn’t too bad as a father. He wasn’t actually too bad anyway, except that sometimes he irritated her to distraction. She still couldn’t believe he was asking her to get out of the house every Tuesday and Thursday, so he’d have the whole place to himself.

  ‘What’s wrong with the coffee pot?’ he added.

  She snapped back out of her thoughts. ‘I was wondering about adult education classes,’ she told him.

  ‘Fine. More of that flower arranging, or maybe a new language.’

  ‘Yes, maybe. Who would I talk to in a new language?’

  ‘Well, the teacher. Anybody else who speaks it.’ He went back to the paper. Soon afterwards he took his last sip of coffee, looked around for his briefcase, and left the house for the pathology laboratories where he had his job. They did a lot of work for the police as well as for hospitals and private clinics. His speciality was haemoglobin.

  With the dusting and vacuuming she worked off some of her vexation. Then she sat down with a cup of coffee. She phoned about the plumber’s bill, the bracelet link that was supposed to be done but still wasn’t, the garage. Nothing was ready. She was about to call up her friend, Gina, to complain about life in general, when she had a better idea: she’d go up to the attic.