Night in Tunisia

by Neil Jordan

  She pulled in at a causeway that led across marshlands to the open sea. She quenched the engine and gave herself time to absorb the shock of silence. Then she opened the door, got out, her fingers drumming on the metal roof.

  Sounds that could have been the unbending of grass or the scurrying of insects. The lapping hiss of tide from the marshlands, its necklace of canals. But now she was here she wasn't sure why she had come. What to do with "this"—as if the scene before her were some kind of commodity. It was the silence. The sheer pervasiveness of it.

  She ran from the car door to the edge of the causeway in an attempt at the abandonment she imagined one should feel. There was a drop there, then mudflats awaiting tide. Nothing came of it however. Only the sense of her being a standing, awkward thing among grasses that crept, tides that flowed. It didn't occur to her to fall, flatten herself with them, roughen her cheek with the ragwort and sea-grass. She began to walk.

  There were ships, tankers most likely, on the rim of the sea. As she walked through the burrows she saw hares bounding. She saw the sun, weak, but still potent. She saw a single lark spiralling towards it. She saw, when she reached it, a restful strand dissolve on either side into an autumn haze. It was empty of people.

  The sand rose in flurries with her steps. She had worn the wrong shoes—those high-heeled slippers. Useless, she thought, slipping them off.

  The sea amazed her when she reached it. Surging, like boiling green marble. Very high too, from yesterday's spring tide. There was a swell, beginning several yards out, that reached her in ripples. Each wave seemed to rise like a solid thing, laced with white foam, subsiding into paltriness just when she felt it would engulf her. Swelling, foaming, then retreating. The sun glistening coldly off it. She felt spray on her cheek. Wet, ice-cold, the feel of church floors, green altar-rails.

  She decided to risk a paddle. She glanced round her and saw nothing but a black dot, like a rummaging dog, in the distance. So she opened her coat, hitched up her skirt, unpeeled her stockings. She'd stay near the edge.

  She threw them, with her slippers, to a spot she judged safe from the incoming tide. She walked in, delighted with the tiny surging ripples round her ankles. Her feet were soon blue with the cold. She remembered her circulation and vowed not to stay long. But the freshness of it! The clean salt wetness, up around her calves now! It deserved more than just an ankle-paddle. And soon she was in it up to her knees, with the rim of her skirt all sodden. The green living currents running about her legs, the rivers of puffy white foam surrounding her like a bridal wreath. She hitched up her dress then, the way young girls do, tucking it under their knickers to look like renaissance princes, and felt the cold mad abandon of wind and spray on her legs. A wave bigger than the others surged up wetting her belly and thighs, taking her breath away. The feel of it, fresh and painful, icy and burning! But it was too much, she decided. At her age, skirt tucked up in an empty sea.

  She turned to the strand and saw a man there, a wet-tailed cocker-spaniel at his heels, bounding in a flurry of drops. She froze. He had seen her, she was sure of that, though his eyes were now on the dog beside him. The sight of his tan overcoat and his dark oiled hair brought a desolate panic to her. The shame, she thought, glancing wildly about for her stockings and shoes.

  But the sea must have touched her core with its irrational ceaseless surging. For what she did then was to turn back, back to the sea, picking high delicate steps through its depths, thinking: He sees me. He sees my legs, my tucked up skirt, the outlines of my waist clearly through the salt-wet fabric. He is more excited than I am, being a man. And there was this pounding, pounding through her body, saying: this is it. This is what the sea means, what it all must mean. And she stood still, the sea tickling her groin, her eyes fixed on the distant tanker, so far-off that its smokestack seemed a brush stroke on the sky, its shape that of a flat cardboard cut-out. Around it the sea's million dulled glimmering mirrors.

  But she was wrong. And when she eventually turned she saw how wrong, for the man was now a retreating outline, like the boat, the dog beside him a flurrying black ball. And she thought, Ah, I was wrong about that too. And she walked towards the shore, heavy with the knowledge of days unpeeling in layers, her skirt and pants sagging with their burden of water.

  HER SOUL

  " I'VE LOST MY wife," the man said.

  "And I've lost my soul . .

  She leaned back on the banisters. The man swayed as he came down, spilling his orange-coloured drink on her dress. But the dress was patterned in broad horizontal stripes like a spinning-top and all of the stripes were some shade of orange so she didn't remark on it. She held on to the banisters swaying, wondering how it had gone so easily.

  It hadn't gone the way it should have, like a silver bird flying upwards leaving the shell of her behind, of an aeroplane glinting. It had slipped out of her as if she was a glass and it was the liquid, she filled too full, it slopping down her wet side. And being insubstantial it had disappeared, melted like quick ice, not giving her a chance to grab or shout come back. Well, she thought.

  The music came from the room downstairs and the ecstatic party sounds. She flattened the damp side of her heliotrope dress with her hand.

  "My soul," she muttered to the grey suit and the loose neck-tie that was ascending the stairs.

  "My undying love," he said and she wondered whether this was taunt or invitation. She was past recognition of witticisms. She looked down the stairs seeing the broad swipes of shadow and the broad swipes of light and thought how easily it could have slipped through one of them. Sidled through, sly thing that it was. Her eyes ran with the shadowed stairs, bumped with them down to the stairs-end closet. Coats hung there, etched and still. Broad folds and shadows. That's it, it slipped, she thought, like a shadow slips when the sun goes in. And every shadow and every fold of cloth became an invitation to her, a door behind which the shadow-world lay, through which one could slip and float and be insubstantial and pure, like gas released from a test-tube, not heavy and swaying like in this bright-light world. That's it, she thought.

  Suddenly the shadows tottered and wheeled and the cream-white walls swung dark and bright and she thought she would be blessed with entry into that shadow-world where her soul perhaps was. But then she saw the man with the open tie above her on the stairs tapping the light-bulb.

  "My soul," she said, thinking it was a party and one must say something.

  "My beard and whiskers," he said, tapping the bulb.

  "Stop it, will you." She covered her eyes.

  "I'm sorry," he said. "Have some."

  He held out his hand, proffering a glass. She saw a silver bracelet over the hair on the wrist, then a white cuff and a grey sleeve. At the top of the sleeve was a loose tie and a fattish white neck and brown eyes and a smiling mouth. The eyes were fixed on her left ear and the mouth smiling at something adjacent to it, over her shoulder.

  And she fancied, taking the glass, that that was it. Her soul hadn't dripped or flown but had retreated to some point beyond her shoulder; that point towards which people looked, the point posited by his eyes, his eyes that had ripped it from her breast or wherever, from under the heliotrope dress where it should have lain pulsing and whole; had done so because there it was safe, there it was distant.

  All the anger at the loss of her soul ran through her so strongly that she imagined she could somehow get it back, that by smashing the glass with her hand on it against the banisters it would somehow appear, reappear with the real pain and the ripped palm and the red sharded pieces of glass.

  But she sipped from the glass instead, thinking she would never know, perhaps it's better gone, rolling the whiskey about her palate and her tongue, wondering what to say.

  OUTPATIENT

  WHEN SHE CAME back she was thinner than ever. She had always been thin, but now her thinness seemed to have lost its allure, her mouth seemed extraordinarily wide, all her facial bones prominent. And when he looked at her he stopped
thinking of love and began to think of necessary companionship, mature relationship and things like that. It will be better, he told her, when we get the house. And he put his arms around her on the steps and knew that he had married her for that peculiar quality of thinness that had been fashionable that year. Somewhere inside him he felt obscurely angry at her for having let her stock of beauty fade; for standing before him in the same tweed cloak in which she had left, like a thin pear topped by flat brown hair and brown eyes, an oval of skin the colour of thawed snow. He felt cheated. He also felt virtuous, accepting as he was her flawed self, and only a little ashamed. And all the while she felt his arms around her on the steps she had left and imagined the house to be rectangular, as all houses are, with rectangular rooms and a pebble-dash front. And a garden. There would have to be a garden.

  They walked up the steps and up the stairs, past the many flats into their own. She heard the old woman moving round above them. She hasn't died yet, she asked him. No, he whispered, and looked shocked. He told her there was nothing to be ashamed of, that it wasn't as if she had had a breakdown, just that she needed a rest. He asked her what it was like, said that her letters hadn't told him much. She told him that she had seen the Burren and described the burnt mountain landscapes. She told him about St Brigit's Well and described the long line of pilgrims stretching up the mountain and the faded holy pictures inside the grotto and the four crutches of the cripples who had been miraculously cured. Do you believe it, she asked him. Do you believe they were cured? Perhaps, he said, they were never really crippled, or the cure was psychosomatic. But miraculously, she asked, not miraculously? and the word sounded like a peal of trumpets in her ears, she saw the biblical walls tumbling. And he didn't

  answer, he looked at her quickly once, and then took her by both shoulders and stood back from her, as if complimenting her on something. It did you good, he said, and it will be better this time. Won't it?

  She heard the old woman moving again and pictured her wrinkled thin head bending over the one-bar electric fire. He had let his hands drop. They were standing facing one another, neither looking. Mentally she took several steps backwards. She saw two people in a room with three white walls and one orange wall, with blue-coloured armchairs, prints of old Dublin and poster reproductions. There was a hum of traffic through the window from way below. If she had seen it as an extract from a film she would have known it to be the last-but-one scene of some domestic tragedy. And she knew it wasn't going to work once more, she could see the end from the extract, but it wouldn't fail tragically, it would piffle out, with barely a whisper. For she knew that once she could look at herself as if she were another person it would not work, there would be no real pain even. And she discovered to her surprise that she thirsted for pain and reality. What was it about this house, she asked. It's a bargain, he began . . .

  He watched her undress as if wondering would her thinness be the same underneath. It was, except that her belly now seemed to sag outwards. She was wearing the tight girlish underwear that always had excited him. He looked at her face as little as possible so as to remain aroused, concentrating on her thin buttocks and stark ribs. He had determined not to sleep, he had determined this should stay even if the rest failed. He decided that her sagging belly was due to her stance. He looked in her face and saw her eyes, unbearably brown and her flat hair. Come, he said.

  She was amazed he wanted it. She was gratified in an automatic romantic manner till she gauged his methodic sensuality and knew he was already thinking of children. She determined to disappoint him and lay flat and rigid. She knew he was disappointed but felt the dome of a great heavy bell around her, she looking out through it, at him lying flat and white, staring at the ceiling. Help me, he said. Promise me you'll help me. I can't she said, if you don't help me. What does that mean, he asked. It means there's a space between you and me that no-one can help. No-one, he said. She didn't answer. She was composing an equation, of the sum of her need and the sum of his, of the compound of their ability to give and of the small persistent almighty minus in between. Then she pulled herself from between the covers and went out to wash. We'll go to see the house tomorrow, she heard him say and she noticed how the wretchedness of his voice a moment ago had gone. It sounded common-sense and confident, coming to her in the dark of the bathroom.

  He mumbled something and turned on his side, with his back to her, when she returned to the bed. He was well into sleep. But she lay awake staring at the wastes of the ceiling, thinking, I've just come back from a place where people walk three miles to see the miraculous crutches and the rotting mass-cards and he— Her thought stopped here, blocked by something deadening, momentous, stolid. And he what, she thought. She couldn't praise or blame or hate. She thought instead of the equation again, of the sum of his giving and the sum of hers, of their mutual spaces and the ridiculous pathetic minus round which the worlds hinged. She thought herself, rocked herself to sleep, praying for more, for the miraculous plus. She dreamed of meat. She dreamt she was love-making, rigid against his rapid orgasm and above them was hanging a butcher's half-carcass, swinging between ceiling and floor. Gigot or loin, she wondered. Each rib was curved like a delicate half-bow, white, made stark by the red meat between. She wanted to shake him, and cry out: Look at that dead meat. But it swung above her, silencing her, glowing, incandescent.

  The next day he drove her to the house, positively angry now at her silences, more and more repulsed by her battered thinness. It was in a North-side suburb near Portmarnock beach. Streets rose up a hill, breezes came from the unseen sea, the salt air was belied by the system-built houses. They drove up to it and parked on the opposite side. Its facade, she saw, was a large rectangle, half red-brick, half pebble dash. What do you think, he asked. She nodded her head. You'll get nothing better under eight thou, he said. She didn't answer. She suddenly hated him for that abbreviated word. She looked at the house, itself like an abbreviated word, its shape, its texture. Why is it square, she said, why not round? I want to live in a round house, with a roof like a cone, with a roof like a witch's hat. She laughed and heard her laugh echoing strangely in the car. She saw his hands clasping and unclasping, each finger in its curve on the plastic wheel. She stopped the laugh quickly then. But the silence rang with the stopped laugh.

  They walked through it and she saw her imagination verified. They walked through the hall, with its regular stairs rising upwards, into the kitchen, which gleamed bright steel. They walked out of the kitchen and up the stairs, through each bedroom and then returned to the kitchen again. What do you think, he asked. She had her back turned to him and she felt the great bell descend on her, its brass tongue falling with a threat she only dreamed of. She turned to his voice, which was tiny and distant, and saw his horror of silence in his set face. She saw her face reflected in his pupil, with enlarged thin cheekbones and a too-wide mouth. Then she longed for the tongue to clang with its trumpetlike peal as she heard him say: We'll look at the garden.

  And she saw him open the kitchen door, totally without her fear. She saw through the door the green mound of Howth Head, a long stretch of sea and a thin elongated smokestack of grey cloud. She saw his square back moving towards the backdrop of waste sea and cloud. He was moving to the paltry green rim of hedge at the end, avoiding the mounds of cement-coloured earth, scraping with the toe of his shoe at the resilient ground. When he reached it he turned. And she walked towards him down the calloused garden wanting to tell him that this house had nothing to do with miracles and trumpets, knowing she would not. There was a wind blowing from the sea, ruffling the hedge, his hair and her kilted skirt.

  TREE

  THERE WERE TWO things he could not do, one was drive a car, the other was step out of a car. So she was driving when she saw the tree, she had been driving all week. He was telling her another point of interest about the crumbling landscape round them, the landscape with more points of historical interest per square mile than—something about a woman who was t
o have a baby at midnight, but who sat on a rock and kept the baby back till dawn, an auspicious hour, and the rock ever after had a dent in it and was called Brigid's—

  She saw the tree from about a mile off, since the road they were driving was very straight, rising slowly all the time, with low slate walls that allowed a perfect, rising view. It was late summer and the tree looked like a whitethorn tree and she forgot about local history and remembered suddenly and clearly holidays she had taken as a child, the old Ford Coupe driving down the country lanes and the flowering whitethorn dotting the hedges. It would appear in regular bursts, between yards of dull green. It would be a rich, surprised cream colour, it would remind her of a fist opened suddenly, the fingers splayed heavenwards. It would delight her unutterably and her head would jerk forwards and backwards as each whitethorn passed.

  Then something struck her and she stopped the car suddenly. She jerked forward and she heard his head striking the windscreen.

  "What's—" he began, then he felt his head. She had interrupted him.

  "I'm sorry," she said, "but look at that tree."

  "There are no trees." His fingers had searched his forehead and found a bump. He would be annoyed. "This is a limestone landscape."

  She pointed with her finger. His eyes followed her finger and the edges of his eyelids creased as he stared.

  "Well there is a tree, then."

  "It's a whitethorn tree," she said. "It's flowering."

  "That's impossible," he said. She agreed.

  The thought that it was impossible made her warm, with a childish warm delight. She felt the hairs rising on her legs. She felt the muscles in her legs glow, stiff from the accelerator. The impossible possible she thought. She knew the phrase meant nothing. She remembered an opera where a walking-stick grew flowers. She thought of death, which makes anything possible. She looked at his long teutonic face, such perfection of feature that it seemed a little deformed.