by Sarah Hall
We spent an hour in the glass dome of birds, admiring their rich plumage. We strolled the conservatories and felt a welcome lightness of spirit. We gave new names to our favourite characters, as if we were cataloguing specimens in an uncharted land. We discerned the bolder personalities from those too shy to linger at the rails. Children tried to capture feathers from the green tails of the peacocks.
I mentioned to Theresa that I thought she was in fact a very good colourist and that I always notice the areas of the house where her arrangements are complementary and I thanked her for her years of good service. She shed her tears again and would not be consoled, and once again she sounded like a distressed bird, and I hoped that the exotic parrots might fly down and comfort her. We visited the church and she lit a candle-there were queues along the staircases so we did not go down to see the frescoes and the sacred robe. We bought pencils embossed with gold letters for her nieces and nephews, of which there appear to be several hundred now.
When we returned to Serra Partucci it was evening and she prepared salted vegetables, which we ate together at the table as if at a restaurant. I was of half a mind to read Ugo Foscolo to her but I thought perhaps it was too much and that she would once again break down. We sat companionably until the dusk arrived. Then, instead of walking her bicycle down the hill, which is her custom, she mounted it and I heard its wheels un-stiffening as she rode.
I had not truly realised her attachment to her position here, nor her affection for the stubborn old man for whom she caters every day.
Today she is her usual self again-that is to say, she has been banging in the kitchen and terrorising the house. We had a minor quarrel when she attempted to make me eat breakfast. I have no appetite, and the excursion yesterday had tired me. I wish to begin painting, but I have been too distracted. All I want to do is look out of the window at the view I love so much. A kestrel has been hovering in the air above the slopes, intimidating the mice and the larks. The ravens mock it, tumbling from the sky as if to strike a target. They fall suddenly, as if shot with a pistol, and then they recover. They are birds of the circus, trained for swinging on trapezes, and cannot balance on the tightrope of the hunt.
I read in the newspaper that on the greatest mountain in Africa the skeleton of an elephant has been discovered. It lies at an impossible altitude, as if the creature were seeking a path to the glaciers at the summit. Only God might know the reason for its journey. How slowly it must have moved, and in incomparable privacy, perhaps anticipating its fate. That animals choose their resting place speaks of a curious foreknowledge. In the East, they believe the soul travels at the speed of a camel. Perhaps migration and meditation are close to the same thing. But stillness might also offer enlightenment. Outside, the kestrel perches in silhouette on the scorched branch of an olive tree, unmoving. It recognises the glimmer of coprolites in the rock and the wet-brown eyes of the voles. The contours of its head and wings are like those of the milliner’s mannequin, borrowed by De Chirico to discuss the metaphysical. The kestrel achieves perfection in stillness.
I do not like to see omens in small occurrences, but a plague of dead flies has visited this room. In every corner there are upturned black bodies, balanced on dry wings, so it seems each ascends from the ground by a fraction, keeping in the death-pose a portion of that skill which they possessed during life. I prefer the shutters to be left open, even when it is chilly, so the house invites all kinds of little visitors. There are often scorpions on the steps. Strangely, these provide less consternation to Theresa than the lizards. The locusts have hatched from their tunnels now and have gone. The soft little phosphorous ones no longer illuminate the garden at night. Only the moths remain, drumming against the lamps. From inside the glass shades there is whispering. The moths are speaking of our prehistory, discussing the world before fire perhaps.
As a boy I kept a jar of dirt in which the traffic moved casually between the layers. Grubs and beetles got along together very well. I liked to watch the rows of ants scaling the sides. In this small condominium there would be the neighbourly investigation of items dropped inside–a Roman coin, sulphur, dough. Each fellow within the jar would attend to the object at its own speed and then return to its interval of soil.
I look out at the mountains, so dear to me. Their place on the horizon is utmost. It would be difficult to take them down and alter the sky around them; it would seem like an unfinished composition. There is sadness at the thought of leaving them, even while I rejoice in their presence. How can I explain the longing in my breast for what is present before me? I surprise myself with this melancholy. I have told them not to operate.
Tomorrow, Antonio is arriving. No doubt he will fuss and try to organise, and he will want to see the painting, which is unfinished. I have asked him to bring the official documents necessary for the transfer of the estate. It is all quite complicated. There is talk of creating a museum and there have been several requests for donations, which I must consider. Florio is also coming with a breathing mask and a tank. It will be impossible to drive up the hill in an ambulance; I do not know how he is going to manage it. The house will inevitably be too crowded. They will all buzz about and squabble over my chair and get under Theresa’s feet, and everyone will need to be separated and calmed. Serra Partucci will no longer be a peaceful hermitage.
Often I tell visitors, who come and who sit uncomfortably in their city garments, to be heedless of the train timetables. I invite them to remain past the hour of their appointment, to take some wine and sit outside and relax. Take your hand from your wrist, I tell them, your blood pressure is not abnormal, you are not on the verge of disaster. Listen to this greater pulse, to the lowing of cattle and the beating of wings against the wind. The earth grunts as it dislodges and buds break open. Can you hear? The pulse will be there too in the place where you live, I say to them. Nowhere is exempt from the service of Nature. Perhaps the drains and cables between buildings are like stethoscopes, and you may hear the heartbeat of the city if you listen.
My visitors indulge me. They are charmed by my antiquity and my devotion to this place. Later they walk back to the station along the road, and perhaps halfway they kneel with an ear to the ground. And perhaps they hear their own blood, and then the traffic in the town, and then a deeper rhythm. They get up, and brush the dust from their knees, and they continue walking. If everything seems lost, I tell them, trust the heart.
The Fool on the Hill
When he gets home the house is quiet. No one is inside. He walks through the kitchen and the sitting room and goes out the back door. Lydia is in the garden retying beanstalks, with oversized canvas gloves on her hands. She seems engrossed in what she is doing, intent on the binding. The air is very still around him but her dress is rippling madly against her arms. Her straw hat keeps threatening to blow off and, under it, her hair is snaking about, tying itself in knots. It’s not the right time of year to be worrying about reinforcing the vegetables, but she has a sense for the turning of the weather and he can see that she herself is stormy, so perhaps it is all right. He waves to her. ‘Are we expecting a gale?’ She doesn’t look up. She flops a gloved hand towards her hat, too late, and it flies off her head and into the distance. There is a shaved patch on her crown. She tautens a length of string, as if about to garrotte the beans. She bends down among the frothy green runners and disappears.
‘Hey,’ he calls. He steps over the lettuces and onions, and the row of stunted marijuana plants that have failed again. In the place Lydia has been kneeling there is a little plastic doll with bald genitals and empty sockets where the legs should be. A string has been wound around its neck.
Peter knows he is dreaming. Part of him is all too aware that he is lopped over on the wet rocks, his chin on his chest, awkwardly asleep. He can almost hear the owl, calling from the fence post above the Gelt ravine, almost feel the cold tightening around him, but he doesn’t want to return to the harsh waking world. He would rather the surreal, disquiet
of the subconscious, with its soft threats and lies. So he commits to it.
He’s wandering round the outbuildings, unlatching the door of the barn and going inside. The barn is perpetually shedding its skin. Some time soon he is going to get a quote for re-plastering it. He is going to convert it into a gallery, and have people look round when they call on him, instead of traipsing through the cottage, leaning on the bookcases and fiddling with Lydia’s bowls of sea glass. There is a distinct odour in the barn, a birdy, limey pungency. Strange light infuses the structure, admitted through the four narrow slit windows, between the bolts and slates and the open doorway. The walls are audibly crumbling. Flakes of mud and grout slough off and drizzle down. The floor is soft with feathers and sediment, years of debris. It feels pliant when he bounces on his heels.
Susan is there, in the corner. She is wearing her little purple jeans and her hammer-and-sickle T-shirt. She is small, perhaps five years old. She points down. ‘We’re on the back of it,’ she says. He looks and it’s true. The floor of the barn is soft fur: between the tufts there is yellow skin, a smattering of follicles. It is rising and falling slowly, breathing. The barn has been built on the back of a slumbering behemoth. ‘Shhhh,’ she says, ‘it’s going to wake and ride us away.’ They hold hands and stand very still. Dust is in Peter’s nose. He wants to sneeze. Every rustle and skitter of crumbling plasterwork sounds like the stirring of the Baba Yaga barn beneath them. ‘Where’s your brother?’ he whispers. ‘Where’s Danny?’ Susan grins.
He looks around. In the corner is the dilapidated agrarian equipment he rescued from the old farm down the road. There is a huge iron roller, which looks heavier than the world, and an apple-press with a broken handle, its pulping bucket full of bird shit. The rusty industrial frame of something unknowable, perhaps a thresher or a mangler, hulks in the corner, casting a shadow shaped like a bear. The massive slab of piebald marble he had shipped over from a quarry in Italy leans against the gable. Everything is moving up and down as the floor inhales, and exhales. There’s the flap of wings in the rafters above, the slow warbling drill of a pigeon. ‘Shall we go and find Danny?’ he asks. ‘OK,’ she whispers. They start jumping furiously.
Blackness when he opens his eyes, as if he’s buried in a rough stone coffin, as if his eyes are stitched closed and laid over with coins. Where is he? He hears oars in water. Someone’s laughter. What is this hard thing beneath him? Ah, yes. He is here. In this hellish position, in the empty dock of night. The dark is so dark. Nothing will ever be created from it again. If he thinks too clearly he will ache from the twist of his hips, the strain of his neck, and the brace of his good knee against stone.
So, don’t think of it, Peter. Don’t go back to those tired legs, and that dry tongue. Don’t enter the wakeful mind with its helpless honesties. Be kind. Come away. Yes. A sweet voice, so comforting. It is not his, though it is familiar.
The sky has a slight wash of green to it when he wakes up. The first streak, like a chemical development. After wanting dawn so badly, he was sure it would never come. There is stiffness throughout his body. Cramp in his side, a chill in the marrow of him, and pain. The very gift he asked for an hour or so ago is back in his ankle. It is good. Nice and sore. Nice and living, clearing his head, making him sharp. The night is draining and he feels rinsed of the panic and fear.
It is pain of a genuine variety, that’s for sure, and competing with all the other pains he has experienced in life. Root canal infection. Bacterial meningitis. Hangovers. They were simply trials for this, the real thing. How much pain can a person withstand, he wonders? They used to saw off limbs on board ships and on battlefields. They used to hold folk down, dose them with spirits, then saw through shanks of bone with blunt unsanitary instruments. They used to cauterise the stumps with tar. Some of them survived.
An interesting thought now, and one that is surprisingly alluring: he could get rid of it. He could cut off the leg. If he had the little red-handled knife he uses for trimming the block of resin in his tobacco pouch, he could get to work. There are plenty of stories about outdoor types having to remove frostbitten lumps of themselves. Plenty of farmers sever hands and arms in combine harvesters then, heroically, carry the mangled limb to hospital in hope of reattachment. Amazing what the brain tells you to do in an emergency. Amazing what is imperative.
He could do it. He’d go at it quickly, just below the knee, where things might be reasonably tidily separated. No hacking with the blade and making a mess, but carefully scouring through the flesh, and jointing the bones, like dismantling a rabbit. Yes, if he had the little red knife that’s up in the car, he could most certainly do it, right now.
Howay! Of course he couldn’t. Every fibre in him would revolt. There would be a mutiny upstairs and Captain Kneejerk of the Black Amputation would be made to walk the plank. Honestly, what kind of desperate lunacy is this? Lack of food and water and warmth is messing with his higher faculties. He has mentally buckled. The facts of the matter are embarrassingly simple. He has not been here that long. He has not been here long enough to contemplate mad acts of self-butchery. He will be found, eventually.
He’s almost quite sure he told them where he was going. He thinks he can recall at least one conversation with someone in the family before leaving, that indicated he was coming to the ravine to work. Perhaps Lydia. Perhaps they rolled down the windows of the cars as they passed each other on the moor and he said, ‘Hiya, love, I’m just heading to the gorge. Won’t be long. If I’m not back for supper something is definitely wrong.’ No. Blatantly false. Total self-delusion. How about Danny? Did he talk to Danny-Dando? Danny was in the bath, then the boy went to town on the bus, maybe with his guitar, but they didn’t actually say goodbye. In fact he really only saw Danny when he was in the buff, passed out at the bottom of the stairs.
Then it was Susan he told, the disgruntled daughter. It was One of Two. Yes, it was definitely her. He can remember the exchange. He can picture the scene. He can rerun it again like a film and find the exact moment when he told her where he was going, which will be vital evidence in the case of the missing father. Rewind. Play.
It is two o’ clock yesterday. He’s in his studio, surrounded by clutter. On the desk, chunks of crystal, microliths, pen holders, papers. Under this tip, somewhere, his computer. He is leafing through ingots of loosely bound envelopes, letters bundled together year by year and secured with elastic bands. His fingers are walking up and down their edges to reveal geographical franks, recognisable or forgotten handwriting. He is considering the value of more shelves and drawers, though where he would put them is a mystery; the room is full to the gills already. He has been lost to his thoughts while searching. ‘The spirits have lifted you, lad,’ his mother would always say, peppering a herring, shaking flour over it and patting it down, while he stared out of the window on to Alnwick Street, wishing for what exactly he did not know. ‘I wonder when the spirits will drop you back to us, Petie.’ His mother, with her nylon pinnie and her tired eyes, beginning to forget things, saying, ‘Where’s Nev gone, why’s he working on a Sunday? Has the pit collapsed?’ Walking the street in her slippers and wetting herself. Oh, Dorothy.
Cut to the present. He is sitting at the desk in his studio looking for a letter to show the children. He can’t find it, but he has turned up old first drafts of Donald’s poems and some photographs. He has found his and Raymie’s wedding certificate from the courthouse in San Francisco and, stapled unromantically to it, a receipt from the Justice. The staircase creaks. ‘Hello Rumplestiltskin, where’s your gold?’ He looks up. Susan is standing there, a cup and saucer in her hand. ‘Hiya, love!’ he almost shouts, because he is pleased she has come into the studio to see him. He reaches round her bum and hips and squeezes her in a side hug, rattling the teacup in her hand.
She glances round. ‘Looks like a bomb’s gone off in here, Wilse.’ He laughs. ‘I’m looking for something to show you.’ To illustrate his point, he continues to flick through the s
tiff envelopes. She raises her eyebrows, looks about at the rubble-some room, at her father’s dishevelled hair, at the poor state of things generally. ‘Right-o, well, here’s a brew. I’ll leave you to it, shall I?’ No, please don’t go, he thinks, and rises halfway out of the chair. ‘Wait on. It’s a really special letter, probably worth a fortune. It took years to reach me. Came halfway round the world! You’ve got to read it.’
She steps back. She sets down the tea and it ripples, as if a little stickleback has just swum across it. She crosses her arms and tips her head to the side, her brow lowering. Uh-oh. He knows that look. She’s annoyed. The room’s annoyed her. The fish in the cup’s annoyed her. He’s annoyed her. ‘So,’ she says. ‘Whose letter are you looking for, Dad? Another famous colleague and chum?’ Seldom misses when she aims, his daughter. He jerks his chin up and reaches for his pouch, pops it open. Yes, he knows this tone of hers. It says, ‘Oh Dad, not this nonsense of yours. Ding-dong, let’s humour you, shall we.’ Doesn’t she know, doesn’t she realise, it’s all for her? It’s all just to impress her and make her smile. He’s simply playing for affection, like Danny busking by the bandstand. What else can he do?
