by John Elliott
‘No, you’re right. Emily Brown’s not my real name. It’s a dress, a suit I’ve been given. Bespoke or ready to wear, I’m not sure which. I’m Agnes Darshel. I was hoping,’ she paused, ‘hoping my father might be here. It’s ridiculous,’ she gave a nervous laugh, ‘because to tell you the truth I don’t know what I’d do if he were.’
‘Upset yourself if it helps. I’ve got time enough, though you might not think it. But tell me where you acquired this name.’
His eyes were red-rimmed round their dark-brown irises. Agnes guessed he had probably been drinking before his performance as well. ‘Chance Company. I’ve paid up for a fortnight.’
Loumans laughed. ‘It goes round and nothing’s private anymore. The hucksters get to know and, sure as shit follows sunrise, they sell it back to you. Well, Agnes, I once met a guy who called himself René Darshel. It’s an unusual name, and you just could be connected. I also met him before when he was known as Ferdy Simon. Now, he used to talk about Emily Brown. It was a way of his. Instead of saying like everyone else he was slipping off to take care of business, he’d say he’d gotta git go. Emily Brown’s train’s due or Emily Brown’s waiting on the corner so I can’t be late, and you know what a stickler for punctuality she is. Then you wouldn’t see him for a day or two or longer, but that wasn’t unique. There’s a lot of disappearers in life. The things of the world discourage them and sometimes obliterate them.’
‘Did you like him?’
‘Are we talking about your father?’
‘Yes, I believe so. In fact I’m sure.’
‘Then I’m glad you’ve come.’ He replenished his glass and moved the bottle towards Agnes’s. She placed her hand over it. He put the bottle down. ‘There’s people you don’t hear about anymore. They don’t get together like they used to. Nobody expects us to be home buddies and stick around the old neighbourhood, but once we were like family, all the musicians, and that’s when I met your daddy. Yeah, I liked him alright. He was open to the new thing as some called it. He studied trombone with Mahlik Ali, a cat I’d known since high school in Pittsburgh. It would be in the winter of ’59 or ’60 in New York City when we hung around. I used to needle him by saying he should stick to Mirandan music alone. You got those deep soul singers and mean guitarists I’d say; go mess with them. Well, he’d pretend to get fired up. “You’ve heard me sing,” he’d say. “Am I playing the guitar like the kid from Whahawha?” Then he’d fit his mouthpiece and give me an imitation of the bullpen stare. We were both young.’
‘I hear you recorded together.’
‘Yes. As far as I recall, he was on a nonet date. Usual shit for the time. We’d rehearsed for about a month in an empty floor of a press tool plant on the Lower East Side. Frank Hayes, our altoist, got us a recording date with a new independent label. Then when we arrive the guy wants us to play standards, and he gives the thumbs down when he hears us take off. Frank got mad. He was a sweet guy normally, a family man, but he’d played gigs down home and been on the territory road so he knew how the mustard had to be cut. Anyway, he pulls a big, scary revolver out of his satchel and tells the producer guy, “We’re gonna roll with or without you man. You dig?” Silence. It was silence like the mortician’s waiting room. Willie Peabody, the bassist, I think it was Willie, says, “Sweet Jesus, baby, music sure does soothe the savage breast,” and he starts up arco. Well, the upshot was we laid down seven cuts. We never were paid, but a record came out. Poor tonal quality, no publicity, the standard practice shit.’
‘Do you have a copy?’
Loumans shook his head. ‘No. I rarely listen to my own work. What’s done is done. How much do you know of your father?’
Agnes told him what she had found out. He nodded here and there. ‘When you’re little, grown-ups are like giants,’ she said. ‘They loom over you. Their smell lingers in your room and pervades the whole house then they stride away from you as if they were wearing seven league boots. As you get older they shrink to manageable size. This happened with my mother, and finally when she was terminally ill I felt, as we probably all feel, that she had become the child and I had become the adult she looked up to, but with my father that couldn’t happen. He had absented himself. He had chosen not to be with us. So you see, he’s still a vague shape to me. In many ways, he’s a figure of my imagination, an unknown kind of non-reality on which I can pin anything I wish. I promised my mother I would seek him out, and now, for my own sake, I need to see him in the flesh. I need to reduce him to human stature—back to someone I can choose to reject or embrace.’
Loumans smiled. ‘It’s tough to be human in this life. Some people don’t even try. You say he might be here in Greenlea. Well, I don’t know anything about that, but let me tell you about some of the things I do remember from the old days. Picture it. I guess it wasn’t long after the record date I was speaking about, he’s scrabbling around trying to pay the rent, like the rest of us, when he runs into this society lady who takes a shine to him. She’d seen him around the Village and up in Harlem. Funnily enough, God knew her as well. Let me explain. God was a young guy who roamed the streets and avenues of the district. You’d say hello God, and he’d say hello Wilson and you’d tell each other the news, but I digress. Anyhow, as well as the thing they locked on together, she introduced him to some of her business associates. Her name was some gospel number or other: Evangelina or Evangeline. Of course, at the time none of this amounted to a barrel of shit, but later I knew from your father it was really the minors debut of Chance Company. All sorts happened then in the early sixties, especially in New York City. Their particular angle was they thought business could be the new narrator of the times, the provider of manufactured illusions, and they figured if they invented a mythical founder he would lead them to the majors. You mentioned the name they dreamed up, Joe May, and with it they gave him tailored suits and money. Believe me, he lived in some high-style apartments when the owners, friends of theirs, were away. I’ve been in them. It’s a view you don’t get easily from the street. He was file zero, a kind of prototype. Their idea was for people to pay for an assumed identity for a fortnight or a month, and they would hire others to collude in the fantasy and charge them a percentage from the fee they paid them. As he outlined it to me, he was in on the deal, and they were going to market a franchise after they got it up and running. Then I split for the West Coast and didn’t see him for a few years. I did okay in the studios, still playing the music around LA and in the Bay area. When I came back to New York, I asked God if he knew anything. He still talked to the gospel lady. In fact, she’d offered him a job, but he said, “You can’t give God money. God’s not for hire.” Then one night after hours in a little town upstate, your father turned up again. “They’re going to kill me off, Wilson,” he said. “I got a tip-off. The easy life is on the slide.” Well, it so happened a guy I knew from California, Liam Fitzhugh, had also come to catch my set. He and your father got yakking. I laid out for a while, but when I came back they were still at it. Later, when I was up in Seattle, Fitzhugh told me they had brokered a deal together through a Japanese gangster he knew and some European operator, who had been put forward by a local cop. According to him, your father met them, but something went wrong. I don’t know what. That kind of shit is bad news, and the energy needed is misplaced.’
He stopped talking as the door opened. Agnes half turned, expecting to see that Jimmy, who had brought her chair, had returned. Instead, a middle-aged man stood in the doorway. ‘Wilson,’ he said.
Loumans got to his feet. After a moment’s silence, he said, ‘Oh, what spirit is conjured up!’
‘Aren’t you going to embrace me?’ the man said.
Agnes felt her hand begin to tremble. She lowered her glass to the table, shifting her chair the better to see the newcomer straight on.
The two men enveloped each other in a bear hug. ‘Baby,’ Loumans said.
There was no doubt. Agnes felt none of the hesitation, the uncertainty, she though
t she might have experienced during her protracted search. Loumans had taken a minute to recognise him. She had sensed his presence immediately as soon as she had turned her head to look.
‘Sit down here beside me,’ Loumans said. ‘Have a drink.’ He passed over the cognac bottle.
Agnes saw he was about to introduce her, but did not quite know how to go about it. ‘Emily Brown,’ she said. ‘Mr Loumans was giving me a history lesson.’
The man stared at her without replying or touching his drink. She was aware how closely he was inspecting her from her hair down to her shoes.
Loumans polished off the brandy left in his glass and poured himself another. ‘What should I call you, spirit from the depths, for I think you have journeyed here from the underworld?’
‘What you’ve always called me, Fernando Simon.’
‘Well then, Fernando Simon, tell me whether love is the answer as in the sublime music of Wolfgang Amadeus?’
‘Yes, Wilson, love is the answer, but am I confronted with yourself and a Pamina or is this a joke you’ve cooked up between you?’
‘No joke, Orfeo. No joke at all.’
‘I’ve been reading your life, Mr Simon,’ Agnes said, deciding she could no longer listen to their male banter, ‘or, should I say, Fernando Cheto Simon, because one mustn’t forget the Cheto part.’
‘Who are you?’ Fernando looked to Loumans for guidance. Wilson’s eyes led him back to the fixed stare of the calm face opposite.
‘It’s Agnes. Agnes Darshel.’
‘Did you know this?’
‘She told me before you came in.’ Loumans got up and put on an olive-green T-shirt he found on the floor behind the sofa. ‘I’m tiring,’ he said. ‘Did you catch me tonight?’
‘The last twenty minutes. It’s you who should be Orfeo. You’ve kept the flame while I . . . ’ His voice trailed off. ‘What is it you want me to say, Agnes, for I believe it is truly you?’
‘Nothing. There is nothing you can say to me. Did he ever talk about me, talk about his wife, during those wonderful times you were telling me about, Mr Loumans, when you discussed music and art and the birth of Chance Company and the squalid seizure of a life up for grabs? Did he never mention the cruel trick he had played when he came back to a house others thought was a home and from which he walked away without any explanation, without any warning, as if it and the people in it were not worthy of a backward glance? Oh, you see, Fernando Cheto Simon, I’ve become a great listener and an assiduous reader because of you. I know all about your life in Llomera and when you went to France with your father. I know how you fell in love with music and could have become a human being. I know about the man whose valve trombone you inherited and how you went to the States. I’ve seen huge photo portraits of you when yet again you weaselled yourself into a new persona. I’ve heard enough about your exploits from Mr Loumans here and a crazy woman called Evangeline, as well as from a criminal and a cop, to last me a lifetime, but no, I don’t want to hear anything from you.’
‘You hate me.’
Agnes shook her head. ‘No, I don’t hate you. I might if you were my father and I was your daughter, but that’s no longer the case.’
‘I never denied you or your mother, Agnes. I want you to know that.’ He took a vigorous pull at his brandy and, seeing she did not interrupt him, went on, ‘There must be some mistake. Today must really be All Souls’ Day, for the ghosts have gathered round me with a vengeance. First of all I bump into Sonny Ayza, who I had never met before, but whose drawings used to plague my childhood, then in this hall that madwoman you mention, who keeps turning up and claiming she’s my daughter, and now you, Wilson, and you, Agnes, who are really my daughter. Neither of us can change that. I see a lot of Sula in you, in your eyes and round your chin. You’re more of her than me, but once you were ready to entrust your hand to mine, to let me pick you up and carry you in my arms. These are memories I’ve always kept.’
‘Emily Brown,’ Loumans said. ‘I was thinking of all the times you pretended to go and meet Emily Brown, and there she was waiting for you somewhere else. Who is this madwoman? Is she still around?’
Fernando shrugged. ‘That’s a long story. She claims to be my daughter. You knew her mother, Evangeline Simpson. The weird thing is this woman has got the same name. Sure, we used to have a thing, her mother and I, but her date of birth is all wrong for me. Besides, I knew the guy who was her father.’
‘You’d do better with her than me,’ Agnes said. ‘She worships you. She’s written, or had commissioned, a testament of your life. She lives for you. She wants to inhabit your innermost being. If you think you have a daughter, choose her.’
‘Help me, Wilson. Tell her we do stuff we regret, that sometimes people are better off without us.’
‘There’s no point, Orfeo. You can’t look back at your Eurydice. You’ll have to handle the present and see what future it makes possible.’
‘Sula’s dead. Did you know that?’
Fernando bowed his head. ‘No I didn’t, Agnes.’
‘It’s why I’m here. To tell you this and go.’
Loumans got up and crossed the room to the door. He opened it and called out for Jimmy twice. A distant voice answered. Loumans asked him to get a cab. ‘I’ll leave you to it,’ he said to them both. ‘I’m tired. I’m going back to the hotel. I’ve an early flight tomorrow morning. You know what it’s like, Fernando. It costs to maintain that feeling. I’m pleased to have met you, Agnes. I just wish it had been sooner.’
‘Come back with me,’ Fernando said when they were alone. ‘You can’t simply leave it like this. I own a house in Massard. We still have time to catch the last ferry. I need to know more.’
‘That’s rich coming from you. Where’s your sense of irony? No. I’m going back to my flat.’
‘Tomorrow then. Surely you can spare an hour to tell me about Sula and let me know something about yourself. I understand why you want to punish me, but the truth is I still love you both. Wilson’s a good man. You would have been better off with someone like him.’
‘She loved you. You were all she spoke of at the end. Perhaps she always loved you. I don’t know why, but it would be wrong of me not to acknowledge it. She wanted us to be together. She saw you all over the hospital, in her room, up on the ceiling, in the corridor, out of the window.’
‘Did she suffer?’
‘Yes. She suffered.’
Fernando buried his face in his hands. When he raised it he said, ‘Thanks for telling me. You needn’t have said it. What do you want to do, Agnes? I recognise I’ve long since abandoned any right to make demands on you.’
Agnes got up. He looked so dejected and defeated for the moment that she softened towards him. ‘I will come tomorrow morning. Give me your address. What did you think when you walked in here and saw me with your friend?’
‘I thought I might be interrupting something, but then I got a lot more than I bargained for.’
‘And when I turned round and looked at you?’
He did not reply. She took the address he had scribbled on a piece of paper. ‘It would have been nice if you had been able to say, why, it’s Agnes,’ she said softly.
*
Wait a moment.
Now, you can see again. Your eyes are accustomed to the light.
Slit the last bean pod open with your thumbnail and detach and add its contents to the pile already in front of you on the table. Sprinkle the grains of salt on to them through your fingertips. Cut a hunk of bread and eat. It is never too late to try and gain sustenance.
‘You still have appetite,’ Vincenz says. ‘It gladdens my heart, Manolo.’
At the counter, Tony Pigeon puts down the tattered pages of an old Jim, The Fastest Draw in the West adventure. Vincenz slices an onion with his knife. His head bent over his stick, Uncle Jaume, seated on the bench, grumbles over the past only he now remembers. Paca stoops, opens the tap of the barrel, and fills a glass jug with wine. Nowadays, there are
more chemicals in it than before, but none of that stops it from being raised aloft and poured in a stream down accepting throats.
Tian sits opposite you. Here, he feels somewhat out of place, like yourself. He yarns about the old singers from the golden age, the days and nights of wild sprees that rich men organised, the music he alone was gifted to write. Vincenz talks of the pig he slaughtered the other week up in the foothills beyond Ligac.
‘Nolo,’ Tony Pigeon says, ‘I swear I thought it was you. We were down on the road, breaking it up then resurfacing it, but Orange Miguel told me no, it was someone he knew from the forge at St Mateo. These days my sight plays tricks on me, for I truly seemed to see your gait and the way you carry your head.’
The jug is in your hands. Tilt it and clear the dust and the ruins of time that coat your gullet.
Swallow your fill then pass it to Vincenz as he scrapes off a sliver of dried cod. He remembers when the three of you were boys together, standing on the sloping shelf of the cave mouth, watching torrential rain sealing off its entrance.
Speak to Tian. Tell him direct. This is as good a time as any other. You have spoken before in here. You managed to speak to Iusebio in the night streets outside and to My Son, clanging at a water pipe with his spanner. Your throat is clear. You have the necessary saliva. Perhaps the spurt of unaccustomed wine has loosened your tongue. Say now what you must have said privately to Rosario. Say openly to Tian what you must have discussed with him before you departed.
No words come. No words it seems will ever come. The confines of Paca’s cannot accommodate them. The survivors here can neither see nor hear you. The past may loiter on in this obscure corner, but, outside the door, times have changed, and the world wears a new sensibility in which you are no longer a man with a voice to be heard.
May the Divine Shepherdess
keep me company
for I am without the warmth of anyone
in a strange country.
