by Joanna Coles
Of Franz Sigel, there is, alas, no sign. He has not made it into world history’s top 16,000, so I feel my ignorance of him is excusable.
‘Have you heard of Franz Sigel?’ I ask Joanna.
‘Is he an actor?’
‘No, I think he must be a German patriot of some sort, but I can’t find him in my Cambridge Biographical Encyclopaedia.’
‘Maybe he’s eyeing Schwarzenegger’s mantle,’ she suggests, deep in a copy of Daily Variety.
‘Schwarzenegger’s Austrian. Even I know that.’
‘Austrian shmostrian. Ever heard of the Anschluss?’
‘Did you know that I’m related to the Earl of Wessex?’ I ask, ignoring her. ‘He was a Godwin. I read in the Cambridge Biographical Encyclopaedia that he was the chief political adviser to King Canute.’
‘So your ancestor advised King Canute to stand on the shore and bid the tide not to come in. That figures.’
Tuesday, 13 October
Joanna
Today I receive my weekly update from BabyCenter.com, an online resource centre I discovered a fortnight ago while surfing the web during a sleepless night. After registering my due date, I now receive regular e-mails outlining our baby’s development.
The real attraction, however, is the other subscribers’ personal stories, which appear on BabyCenter’s various bulletin boards. Today’s story comes from the Depression Bulletin Board, where new mothers are encouraged to air their baby blues.
It is sent in by a Colleen Leslie, and her experience is not encouraging. ‘I made the biggest mistake by having this baby,’ she writes morosely. ‘Before, my husband and I were so happy, and now our lives are completely different. My husband is stressed out, too. We both don’t like being parents and wish we’d never made this mistake. I just want to have my old life back and be able to be alone with my husband again. I’ve thrown away my happiness.’
Normally I forward my weekly updates to Peter to keep him abreast of what’s going on. Knowing his propensity for gloom, I keep today’s to myself.
Wednesday, 14 October
Peter
In addition to Columbia grad students nursing single cappuccinos while they tap away at their Macintosh PowerBooks, trying to complete their dissertations, my local Starbucks, on Broadway at 103rd Street, is populated by a flock of hands-on dads. Their babies are slung upon their chests in Baby Bjorns, a popular brand of papoose. The dads sit there, sipping their coffees and exchanging proud, goofy new-men smiles with one another. I cannot imagine that I will ever be this kind of father.
Today, at Starbucks, there is a new character who is causing a ripple of alarm through the grad students and the Bjorn-again dads. He is an amateur news impresario, a Matt Drudge of the coffee house. A huge Jabberwocky of a man, with his small head perched on the summit, he sits at a table on his own, eking out his small mug of house blend, and performing as though he is being interviewed on a chat show. His subjects are topical and he is well informed and very opinionated, plucking quotes from literature and analogies from history with a remarkable facility for both.
Actually he exudes a rather superior brand of guff than the real daytime topical talkshows, and instead of avoiding him I find myself trying to sit within earshot to hear his rant.
‘I’m glad you asked me that, Jim,’ he begins. Apparently today he is an imaginary guest on the Jim Lehrer Show on PBS Radio. ‘Gays in the military. So what’s new? Bah, there’s been pansies in the armed forces for centuries, it’s full of them. Alexander the Great, military genius, best general of all time. And a faggot.’
On the offchance, I ask him if he knows who Franz Sigel might have been.
‘Another military man,’ he declaims, without missing a beat. ‘Civil war general, on the Union side, of course. Don’t think he was gay. He might have been. After the end of hostilities he retired from the army to edit a German-language newspaper. Now what was it called?’
Wednesday, 4 October
Joanna
Though we have yet to spot our building’s most famous resident, Richard Dreyfuss, this has not stopped us talking to him.
‘Hello, Richard,’ says Peter to an imaginary Richard Dreyfuss, as we get into the empty elevator. ‘I thought you were marvellous in The Valley of the Dolls.’
‘One point – everyone’s seen Valley of the Dolls,’ I scoff. According to our point system, the smaller the part, and the more obscure the film, the higher the score. We are also allowed to suggest bogus films, but if successfully challenged, forfeit six points.
‘Richard, I thought you were terrific in The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz,’ I counter.
‘Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz?’ says Peter sceptically. ‘Never heard of it. I challenge.’
‘It’s set in Montreal’s Jewish ghetto,’ I say confidently. ‘Made in the seventies, I think. So that’s six points you forfeit and six points to me for obscurity, plus a bonus point to me because it’s Canadian.’
Thursday, 15 October
Peter
I should be working on my Zulu piece for National Geographic, but instead I am watching David Letterman’s late-night talk show on CBS. I am watching it with the sort of fascinated horror of Europeans impaled on the satanic trident of American popular culture, affecting to despise it even as we are consumed by it. Letterman is introducing a succession of ever more bizarre guests performing novelty acts: a bald grocer tosses a toilet plunger into the air, getting it to land on his head, where it suctions onto the dome of his pate. He then takes a bow and the plunger handle describes a low arc like a unicorn’s horn.
Now it’s a duo who perform tricks with marshmallows. One man inserts a marshmallow up his nose and blows it out to his colleague, who tries to catch it in his mouth. He misses the first two but successfully captures the third and eats it, and the trick is repeated in instant slow-motion replay.
I have finally had enough of cranial plungers and nasal marshmallows, so I flick rapidly through the channels. A snatch of urgent Fox Newsdrive headline assails me: ‘Up next – new parents, beware – there’s something in your crib that could kill your baby!’ Now they’re plugging the next day’s show, New York Live, ‘Cure Cancer the Natural Way, and Real Life Encounters with Angels!’ I flick channels again. ‘Up next: a New Hospital for Repetitive Sexual Predators Opens in New Jersey!’
Thursday, 15 October
Joanna
Irma, our new Polish cleaner arrives. A small but determined shrimp of a woman with a Mickey Mouse headscarf that she shows no signs of removing, she grabs the vacuum and immediately repairs to the bedroom, where she remains for at least an hour. Anxious she leave sufficient time to do the laundry, I go to find her. She stares at me blankly before producing a grubby piece of paper with a number on it. ‘Phone, phone!’ she orders.
I dial the number, give her the receiver and she says something in Polish before handing it back.
‘Hi there, this is Nicky, Irma’s niece,’ says a New Jersey voice on the other end. ‘Irma says she doesn’t understand what you need her to do. In future, rather than ask her directly can you just call me and I’ll translate, OK?’
‘Er, OK,’ I say, my heart flagging. ‘Can you ask Irma to do the laundry then?’ I hand the receiver back. Irma cocks her head to one side, nods and hangs up.
Half an hour later she returns from the basement. ‘Phone, phone,’ she orders again. Once more she says something in Polish, then hands me the receiver. ‘Hi, it’s Nicky here. Irma says you should send your laundry out because the facilities in your basement are too old.’
‘Oh,’ I say nonplussed, handing the phone back.
‘This is not going to work,’ says Peter, as we retreat into his study and debate in whispers how we can resolve the situation. Ten minutes later, Irma raps on the door.
‘Phone, phone,’ she demands. Knowing the drill, I wait as she hands me the receiver. ‘Hi, Joanna,’ says Nicky. ‘Irma says she can’t come for the next two weeks because she’s going on
vacation to Orlando.’
Friday, 16 October
Peter
Joanna’s brain, as has been widely predicted by her growing library of pregnancy books, is beginning to turn to mush. On the long and winding road between lobe and tongue, many words go missing – punching through the cerebral crash barriers into the gloomy mental tundra of almost recalled dreams, nearly remembered names and untethered sentence ends.
As her memory deteriorates, I am mildly panicked. She is my social seeing-eye dog. She can recognize and name people from across the room and cue me with their identities, through the side of her mouth.
Now, as she forfeits her nimble cerebral Rolodex of celebrity trivia, I am suddenly out there on my own. I am unable to tell if I recognize someone from a small role on the big screen or a big role on the small screen or because they live on our block. My failure is not really to do with lack of interest (Joanna’s accusation) but rather some neurological malfunction. When I really concentrate I still tend to blurt out nomenclatural malapropisms.
Even leaving the building can present a problem. Is this doorman helping us with our luggage Ishmael, who has worked here for twenty-five years and lives in a tiny apartment on the ground floor? Or is it Igor, who lives in Queens, has his hair savagely cropped down to his scalp twice a year and had his recent holiday in Jamaica disrupted by a hurricane. Ishmael or Igor? I know I can do this.
Friday, 16 October
Joanna
Today I see my first cockroach. I know New York is riddled with the Blatta orientalis, to give it its full name, but I had yet to actually see one until this morning. I am going down with a bundle of laundry and when the elevator door opens at the basement there it is, sitting staring up at me as if it had called the lift and was waiting to go upstairs.
It is sticky brown, nearly three inches long, and its antennae are twitching furiously. I stare at it for several seconds and then, completely unable to walk over it or around it, I press the button and go straight back up to the apartment again.
Saturday, 17 October
Peter
On today’s desultory jog I notice that successive lamp-posts bear a new poster: ‘Hi!’ it reads in headline type, ‘I’m Otis, and I’m missing.’ Underneath, Otis declares himself to be a small neutered male cat with a red flea collar and an amenable disposition. There is a full-colour picture of Otis curled up cosily in a chintzy armchair, not looking as though he’s about to make a dash outdoors into the icy arms of a New York fall. Otis’s owner, Steve, asks anyone who has spotted the animal to call him.
For the rest of my run I am on Otis detection duty, but no small neutered feline crosses my path.
Saturday, 17 October
Joanna
‘Hello, Richard,’ says Peter as we step into the empty elevator. ‘Loved you in the The Krippendorf Tribe.’
‘Mmm, I challenge. I don’t believe there’s any such film.’
‘Absolutely was. I saw it on the plane back from South Africa. Dreyfuss plays an eccentric professor who makes his children dress up as savages to impersonate a fictitious tribe, to cover up the fact that his research has failed.
‘For what’s it worth, Richard,’ Peter continues, ‘I thought the reviewers were quite wrong myself. I found it quite diverting.’
Monday, 19 October
Peter
The Otis poster has faded a bit now and several have been tugged off their posts by the wind. I wonder if he has been located.
‘Don’t you think owners of lost pets owe it to the public to do follow-ups?’ I ask Joanna. ‘I mean if Otis is found shouldn’t Steve stand us down, rather than just leave us hanging there, in the purgatory of lost pet searching. I think I’ll phone Steve and ask him if Otis has returned.’
‘He’ll think you’re a nutter or he might even suspect you of some sophisticated con. I read about a con like that in the paper,’ she says, warming to her topic. ‘It was an attempted kidnap and ransom, the perp’, I’ve noticed recently this tendency of hers to take on little bits of NYPD slang like ‘perp’ for perpetrator, ‘demanded money before he would return the pet, which he didn’t really have anyway…’
Her voice softens. ‘Maybe Otis met the same fate as The Skipper.’
The Skipper was an expensive blue pointer kitten we acquired in London. She was so absurdly inbred and highly strung that, as well as having the definite article in her name, she disappeared on her second day, notwithstanding her diet of gourmet food and lavish attention. The reward notices I stuck on lamp-posts down Colville Road bore fruit after a couple of days – a call from the resident of the basement flat next door. ‘I think I may have some news on your cat,’ he said in the solemn way that the police on TV break the news of a death to the next of kin. ‘You’d better come down.’
In his garden was The Skipper’s delicate, over-bred, pale grey and white corpse, somewhat threadbare now, looking like the product of antique taxidermy. I nudged at her with my toe and she was stiff as a stuffed Victorian toy.
‘Hmm,’ said my neighbour, looking up to examine the trajectory from our top flat to his garden, ‘she must have jumped.’
I said nothing, feeling embarrassed that our cat had apparently been so desperate to flee that she had hurled herself from the fourth floor.
‘Don’t worry, I’ll bury her in the corner of my garden if you like,’ he said, clasping his hands together like a concerned vicar. ‘And plant a commemorative shrub on her.’
‘That would be nice,’ I murmured.
Monday, 19 October
Joanna
We’ve been informed by her New Jersey cousin that Irma will not be reappearing from her Orlando vacation. Instead a doorman recommends Maya, a Croat from Queens.
‘Hi, I don’t do laundry, OK,’ she says, arriving for her initial visit to inspect the apartment. She is tall and rangy with gauntly attractive features, a wiry red bob and a restless manner.
‘Wow, that’s definitely a mini-skirt,’ I gasp, as she removes her coat to reveal a crimson gymslip so short it ends before her thighs really get started.
‘Yeah,’ she grins, ‘I may live in Queens but I dress Manhattan.’
I give her the tour and she too tut-tuts about the state of the ravaged parquet floor.
‘A hundred dollars for five hours,’ she says. ‘And I’m serious, no laundry, OK?’ I give in on both counts.
Tuesday, 20 October
Peter
On my coffee run to Starbucks this morning I discover that the Jabberwocky has a rival loon. He is a middle-aged white man, with a fierce, battered face, who clutches a video camera. Instead of declaiming to the world at large from his own table like the Jabberwocky does, this new loon is more of a roving balladeer who moves from table to table, treating each group to his bons mots, and apparently filming their squirming reactions.
‘That fucking Clinton, it’s unba-lievable what he’s getting away with. What’s wrong with you all? The more he lies to you, the more you like him. His approval ratings go up every time he bullshits you. The unavoidable conclusion, I’m afraid, is that you, the American People, like being lied to. Well? Do you?’ He whips his camera lens and its attendant mike around the room, as though filming a vox pop, but though it’s a good question no one will answer him.
Then, without so much as a word from our sponsors, he segues into a verbal pummelling of New York’s mayor.
‘Giuliani – that creep, he’s a crook if ever I saw one. He’s only gonna kick twenty-five per cent of tobacco taxes into health care. Where’s the rest going, huh? Where?’ Again no one will oblige his restless lens. ‘I’ll tell you where the rest’s going. It’s going to buying votes.’
I am on the verge of replying to bolster the atmosphere of general democratic debate, but a look at his crazed eyes warns me that he may well kebab me with a concealed knife or open his bulging olive anorak to reveal an AK 47. Instead I concentrate on ordering my coffee.
Tuesday, 20 October
Joanna
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A notice has gone up in the lobby reminding tenants with ‘roach problems’ to sign up for the fumigator’s quarterly visit. I sign up immediately, wondering how many roaches we need to have seen to qualify as having an official ‘problem’. Since the incident in the basement I have now seen two in our apartment, both a horrible viscous brown. One was scuttling up the fridge door, the other was beetling down the wall in the tiny box room I am planning to use as my study. Both times I shuddered but backed calmly out of the room before shrieking for Peter to come and remove them.
When I complained to a neighbour, she laughed. ‘I’m surprised you’ve only seen two. The people below you were infested,’ she told me. ‘Infested.’
‘The people below us were infested,’ I wail to Peter, who, having grown up on the lookout for gaboon vipers and puff adders in Africa, is unmoved by a roach. I have, of course, taken suitable prophylactic measures by placing copious numbers of ‘roach bombs’ – black pods of poison – under the sink, behind the fridge and the loos.
The fumigator turns out to be a huge, silent, teenage girl armed with an enormous syringe. Around her midriff she wears a wide leather belt, from which dangle several cartridges of poison.
I lead her into the kitchen and she clips a cartridge into the syringe as if arming herself for combat. With some difficulty she crawls into the cupboard under the sink, a favourite hangout for her quarry, she assures us. She emerges to refill her syringe, squinting at the tip as if she were a doctor in ER. It takes her five minutes to squirt her roach poison into our kitchen cabinets.
‘All you need,’ she nods, heaving herself back up and holstering her syringe.
‘What’s the highest number of roaches you’ve come across in this building?’ I ask, as she departs.
She pauses. ‘The apartment under you had about two hundred.’ She taps her belt. ‘They were nesting in the oven, but I sorted them out. Now remember, this stuff only lasts three months, so I’ll be seeing you again in January.’
Thursday, 22 October
