Live a little, p.3
Live a Little, page 3
“I don’t have it in me to increase anyone’s optimism coefficient to that degree,” Shimi says.
“That you know of…Can you be sure Anastasia isn’t singing in her bathroom right this minute?”
It crosses his mind to say, “And you? Will you be singing when you get home?”
But he shouldn’t. Or rather, he can’t.
Beryl Dusinbery, despising indistinctness, stitches with a merciless precision whatever her fingers want to stitch, though the only thing her fingers want to stitch is death.
Fear is not what drives her. It is more exhilaration. A sort of glee.
She forgets herself when she is at her frame. She could be any age. She is a true artist, no matter that her subject matter is limited. When she stitches, her soul leaves her body. Intention flees her mind. It’s her fingers that call the tune.
She is not so free when she writes. She is more, then, the person she means to be. More the woman, less the artist. Though even when she’s filling out the old school filing cards she is not circumscribed by mere actuality. These are meant to tell the true story of her life, but she is only in possession of the truth she can retrieve. Who the hell cares, anyway, she thinks. It’s true if I say it is. It’s true if I recall it that way.
She must have said something of that sort out loud because Euphoria comes running in from the kitchen. “Is everything all right, Mrs. Beryl?”
“In the world or with me?”
“I heard you shout. Did something frighten you?” Euphoria hitches her tight floral skirt and steals a quick look under the bed. Nastya had reported seeing a mouse there. Mice are everywhere in these North London mansion blocks. Generations have lived in them since the beginning of the last century. They have brought up families here. Generations of proud mansion block mice. As long as they aren’t rats, no one has ever minded. “The English are filthy,” Nastya says.
Beryl Dusinbery peers over her smudged spectacles at Euphoria, who is chancing a second look under the bed. Afraid she might encounter a mouse peering back at her, Euphoria tries to bend her back and keep it straight at the same time. It’s not just her clothes, the poor girl has bad posture, Beryl Dusinbery notices. But then, don’t they all in Africa? It’s what comes of eating lizards and carrying baskets of bananas on their heads. She’ll be in traction before she knows it and I’ll be running in and out to see how she is. “It would appear that it is I who should be asking,” she says, “if something has frightened you. What on earth are you looking for under there?”
Euphoria shrugs her shoulders. Something else that isn’t good for posture. Stand up straight, girls, Miss Dusinbery can hear herself say.
If she had a ruler handy she’d strike Euphoria’s shoulders with it.
Straight!
“Boo!” she booms instead.
Euphoria jumps.
“Your nerves are clearly very bad,” Beryl Dusinbery says triumphantly. “You need to see a…” But she can’t remember the name for the person Euphoria needs to see.
“Yes, Mrs. Beryl.”
“What have I told you a thousand times? If there’s any fear in this room it’s yours. Nothing frightens me.”
“No, Mrs. Beryl.”
“Except forgetting what the name for you is.”
“I’m Euphoria.”
“No, the name for what you do.”
“I care for you, Mrs. Beryl.”
“Ha! Is that what it is? Did anyone ask you to?”
“Yes, your son, Mr. Sandy.”
“I have a son?”
“You have three, Mrs. Beryl.”
“Do I really? Are they all called Mr. Sandy?”
“No, Mrs. Beryl. There’s Mr. Pen, and—”
“All right, all right, let’s not run through them all. And please stop calling me ‘Mrs.’ It makes me sound provincial. I am the Princess Sch…Schh…Schhh…you know who.”
She has forgotten who herself. The Princess Scherbatsky is it? Why does she recall that name? The Princess Shostakovich? Schnitzler? Schrecklichkeit? Schumann? Struwwelpeter?
Then she remembers. “I am the Princess Schicklgruber.”
Euphoria can’t help with any of that. “Yes, Mrs. Beryl.”
The Princess sits up in bed and pulls her bedjacket tighter around her shoulders. It is embroidered with the words life is a tale told by an idiot. There is a blood-red pansy with a smiley face between each letter. “As I was saying to you,” she goes on, “I am not an easily frightened woman and don’t at all dread my own decease—when I go, I go—but I do fear being dead while I’m still alive, opening my mouth to speak and nothing coming out of it. My life is how I describe it and I haven’t finished describing it yet. So”—she points to a chocolate box on her bedside table—“everything is going down on the cards I keep in there. I tell you this in case I omit to mention something important later. If I do, you will find it on one of these. Just don’t ask me which.”
“I love your stories, Mrs. Beryl.”
“You won’t love these, and they aren’t stories. I don’t want you making that mistake. What this box contains are annals. Don’t look so alarmed. I said annals, not animals. The chronicles of each year of my life, though I will certainly have confused one year with another. That doesn’t matter. Chronology is for the little people. I care only for eternal truth and eternal truth isn’t ordered in time. And it isn’t even true. I am Mother of the Century—did you know that? I have a medal to prove it—that’s also in the box. I am Mother of the Century so it’s important I keep a record of what the century’s been doing. It’s all in here. The men I married, the men I divorced, the children I had, the children I didn’t. The century’s story, not mine. It is essential to your understanding, not only of me but of the times you live in, that you read it.”
Euphoria shakes her head. She couldn’t do that. She has been brought up never to read personal correspondence.
“I give you permission. There are things in here you need to know, in case someone tries to tell you otherwise. Lists, dates. Husbands and lovers alphabetically arranged—sometimes, that is, when the fancy takes me and I can remember the alphabet—when and where they died, what shocks or diseases they died of, and the manner in which they failed as men. Read them carefully, Nastier, you are to be my witness, it’s your job to report me and my causes—”
“It’s Euphoria, ma’am.”
“It is. You are right. Though I’m not sure that’s a good enough reason to interrupt me. Attend to me more carefully, Euphoria, yes. Read what I have written and you won’t make the mistakes I have. Unless you want to be Mother of the Century after I’m gone.”
Euphoria shakes her head again.
“A wise decision. It’s a big responsibility, having the century’s children. And they will only ever disappoint you. To give birth to a child, to sharpen its wits and teach it all you know, and then to watch it join the Labour Party—better you never come to know how that feels.”
“No, Mrs. Beryl.”
“So read. We will discuss it from time to time. You can be my sounding board and tell me if you find anything incomprehensible or outré, but only when I ask you to. It will give us something to talk about other than cups of tea and tablets. Stand up straight, Euphoria. That’s better. All I request in return is that you don’t make the error of expecting happy endings. I don’t want to hear you snivelling about the place. I can tell you now that none of my husbands or inamoratos made me happy and they all died in great pain and misery. That’s men for you.”
* * *
—
THOUGH SHE KNOWS she’s been dismissed, Euphoria seems unable to tell her legs to move. It is as though compunction has made her heavy.
“Mrs. Beryl,” she says at last.
The Princess, turned vacant, is surprised to discover she is still there. “Yes, Nastier.”
“Euphoria, ma’am.”
“Whoever. Go on, go on.”
“Why is it so terrible to join the Labour Party?”
“Who said it was?”
“You did, Mrs. Beryl.”
“Did I? And did that upset you? Are you a Labour voter?”
“I don’t think I should say, Mrs. Beryl.”
“Quite right. We don’t want politics here.”
Euphoria is pleased with that, but not pleased enough to resume her kitchen duties.
The Princess thinks she understands the problem.
“It’s not because he joined the Labour Party that he broke my heart,” she says. “I felt the same about the other one when he joined the Conservative Party. You don’t bring your children up to think along the same lines as other children. Or along the same lines as their fathers, which is worse. You bring your children up to defy their genetic disadvantages and to honour their…”
There is a word for what she’s brought her children up to be but it’s flown out of the window.
“You have brought your children up very well, Mrs. Beryl,” Euphoria says.
The Princess snorts.
She can’t remember bringing up children at all.
When it’s mild the Princess likes to walk in the little park that was once the burial ground for St. John’s Wood Church. Euphoria, who accompanies her on these walks, keeps suggesting they cross the road and go to Regent’s Park, where there is more to see.
“More to see of what?” the Princess wants to know.
By way of reply, Euphoria describes a circle with her hands. The globe. The universe. Creation.
“If this is meant to be a charade,” the Princess says, “you’ll have to tell me how many syllables and what it sounds like.”
“I could take you boating on the lake, Mrs. Beryl.”
“You! On a lake! Why would I trust you on a lake? You don’t have water in your country, do you?”
Euphoria has learnt that there are some questions she isn’t bound to answer.
“Or we could feed the ducks.”
“Ducks!”
Euphoria wonders if Mrs. Beryl might have forgotten what ducks are. “Birds,” she says helpfully.
“If I want to feed birds I can hang a bird box outside my window.”
So it’s the little park. The one drawback of which is its play area, but the Princess has worked out that she can avoid the sight and sound of children if she walks when they are in school. Euphoria loves children and is always disappointed not to find any on the swings or climbing frames when they get there. “We are out of luck again, Mrs. Beryl,” she says.
“Such a shame,” the Princess says. “Maybe we’ll time it better when we come again.”
What primarily draws the Princess to the park are the gravestones. She likes the disorder in which they seem to shoot up wild under the trees, like toadstools. Push a branch aside and you enter a gothic mystery. Some of the stones are lined up against the walls, like paintings surplus to requirement, others moulder under moss, never having seen the light all century. “It’s like The Mysteries of Udolpho in there,” she tells Euphoria, pointing to a crow disappearing into the gloomy undergrowth.
“Yes, Mrs. Beryl.”
“Are you frightened of ghosts?”
“I have never seen one. I might be.”
“Then don’t go in there.”
The Princess, who has a taste for oracles and sibyls, likes to pause to read the writing on the headstone of Joanna Southcott, the eighteenth-century prophetess.
“The future is always brought to us through the voices of women,” she tells Euphoria. “Men are moribund. They only listen to the past.”
Euphoria, who isn’t sure whether this is true, does what the Princess tells her and reads aloud the words on Joanna Southcott’s headstone. Behold, the time shall come, that these TOKENS which I have told THEE shall come to pass, and the BRIDE shall APPEAR…
“With more feeling, Emporium.”
“It’s Euphoria, Mrs. Beryl.”
“That shouldn’t stop you putting feeling into it. Try to make the bride resplendent, child. Imagine it’s you getting married with a pineapple on your head.”
Euphoria asks who the bride refers to and whether she has appeared yet.
“The bride refers to me,” the Princess tells her. “So yes, she has appeared. Several times, as it happens.”
“You must have been a beautiful bride,” Euphoria says.
“It was said of me that I beggared belief. It isn’t for me to confirm that or deny it. But I can tell you that the second man to marry me fainted when he saw me coming towards him in my wedding gown and tiara. It took half an hour to bring him round. I had to speak his vows for him. Unless that was the third man I married.”
“What about the first, ma’am?”
“He was killed, but not by me. By Italians, if what’s left of my memory serves me right. It would have been a kindness had I shot him before they did. But you don’t always know these things at the time. By my fourth and fifth marriages I could no longer see the point of putting in the effort. That didn’t always stop them fainting, mind you.”
She throws Euphoria a knowing, sideways look. Woman to woman. What caused them to faint, she wants the girl to understand, was not the spectacle of her in her gown but anticipation of her out of it.
Euphoria looks back at her blankly. The Moldovan slut would understand me better, the Princess thinks.
“How many times were you a bride, Mrs. Beryl?” Euphoria asks.
The Princess doesn’t want to say she’s forgotten. She lifts up her left hand and then her right. “I don’t have enough fingers to count them,” she says.
She likes asking Euphoria to read what’s written on gravestones from which all inscriptions have been worn away, and then, when Euphoria has stared her eyes out and discovered nothing, telling her what they say.
“Here lieth the body of Abigail Mills,” she pretends to read, “a woman who gave everything to a man who deserved nothing and now enjoys eternal rest while he lies rotting, his body gnawed by worms as his conscience was never gnawed by misgivings.”
“I love the way you describe things, Mrs. Beryl,” Euphoria says. “But how can you see those words when you aren’t even wearing your glasses?”
“They come to me,” the Princess tells her. “I feel them through my fingers. Here, feel these with me.”
She takes Euphoria’s index finger and guides it over one of the smoothest of the standing headstones. “In memory of Elizabeth Sturridge—can you feel?—wife, mother, philanthropist, and head teacher who, after years of faithful but thankless service to her community, had sex with the devil and went to hell with a smile on her face.”
Euphoria snatches her hand away. “I am surprised such a woman is buried in a Christian graveyard,” she says angrily.
“My suspicion is she wasn’t. The devil must have moved her here in the dead of night. We could come back after midnight and see if he returns to visit her. He might bring her flowers.”
Later Euphoria will ask Nastya what she thinks of this story. “Poppycocks,” Nastya tells her. “Mrs. Beryl is having one over you.”
“Why would she do that?”
“She thinks you’re ignorant colonial person who believes in black magic. My advice would be to look for job somewhere else.”
* * *
—
THE PRINCESS SITS awhile on one of the benches opposite the empty playground. For some reason the sight of unused ropes and swings soothes her.
“So quiet here,” she says to Euphoria.
Euphoria is about to reply but the Princess puts a hand on her arm. So quiet, so let’s keep it that way.
On a nearby bench an elderly man in a fur hat is sitting forward with his head almost between his knees. He doesn’t appear to be praying or weeping. He could be breathing in the earth’s deepest smells. Smelling out the dead. He too seems to be relishing the silence of the park, the sound of traffic muffled by the trees, and not a plane in the sky.
A squirrel, taking his posture to imply a willingness to communicate or dispense bounty, approaches his leg. Without malice, the man shoos it away with his foot. You stay in your world, the Princess takes his action to be implying, and I’ll stay in mine. A sentiment that strikes a chord with her. Parks are wonderful places—especially for connecting to the spirits of the long-gone—but among the living there is too much mingling of species.
* * *
—
“SO WHAT ELSE did you do in park beside talk about devil?” Nastya asks Euphoria when she gets back.
Unable to think of anything else, Euphoria mentions the squirrels.
“Those are rats,” Nastya says.
At some remote period in the history of humankind, anthropologists say, a terrible crime was committed. One brother fatally struck another. We gave up gardening for hunting. We ate a god. We sent a goat into the desert. We killed our father.
Shimi Carmelli tried on his mother’s underwear.
He was eleven. About the age Homo sapiens was when it discovered the joy of murder.
Out of humankind’s great originating transgression—however it’s defined—religion, morality, and, eventually, neurosis evolved. We became less carefree. We came to know guilt and shame. The fun went out of us.
This is exactly what happened to Shimi Carmelli.
He climbed into his mother’s bloomers and tumbled into hell.
