DOMESTIC LIFE

In life?

You always have to go forwards, never backwards. And so they were both falling down, a simultaneous free fall that lasted ages. At first, there was a short lovers' fall which dropped them from the ceiling to the unmade bed. It took seconds to complete. By the end of it, they were both melting away in each other's arms. Kissing, caressing, making love. They thought that would be it, really, as this was by far the sweetest thing that had ever happened to either of them. However, it was just the beginning as next they fell through the bed that was in fact filled with a million little cracks a naked eye could never notice.  

Falling through the wooden boards of the floor, they looked like party-goers, either drunk or naked, at the end of a long night. Like Irish dancers betrayed by the feet. And they kept on falling, somewhat ironically, as their fall had to be broken by the wet soil and the bones of the dead. 

Well, not so fast. Because it so happened that they found themselves hanging upside down from a cloud in an overcast sky. And so like a million black suited gentlemen from a painting by Rene Magritte, they rained down upon the city. Swirling in the wind and shocking random citizens wandering along the pavements, lost and found. Barely missing the wild disarray of electric wires that could roast them in a second. Until a house appeared and they fell through the roof that caught them by the concrete block of the ceiling. 

Underneath, at the bottom of the room, there was a bed. The bed was done. Covered with blankets, cold, a hospital bed in all but appearance. And she looked at him and he looked at her and they both wondered if it was worth it anymore. In a life never lived backwards.   

PHILOSOPHER'S DANCE

At first, they were nothing. It was only later that they became something. In fact, they were created by the seemingly random movements of one tall Frenchman. He was producing these movements to the sound of American music that was so popular in Paris at that time. 

Maurice Merleau-Ponty was dancing in the middle of the room. It was not the dance of his life - more of a dance, really, one of many. Maurice Merleau-Ponty was dancing between two groups of people - on the left, there were people who knew something. On the right, there were ignorant people. Those who knew nothing (there are always those who know nothing, God bless them).

The man was French. He was dressed French, too, wearing the sort of white suit you associate with tasteless people or those who know everything about taste. It did not take long to realise that Maurice Merleau-Ponty was a man of style. He wore that white suit like he meant it. 

As for the other people in that room, they looked random. Those who knew something were sitting at the tables staring into their cups and talking (to each other? to themselves? to God?) in quiet, semi-whispering voices. Those who knew very little (nothing, if we are being entirely honest) were busy drinking from half-empty glasses some kind of liquid that had neither taste nor smell. 

Initially, nobody seemed to notice Maurice Merleau-Ponty. The way he danced across the room as if trying to recreate some sort of quiet jazzy tune. As of now, the tune was inaudible and the audience was not engaged. In fact, the whole situation had been looking hopeless right until the sound of saxophone was first heard inside the room and something changed. Two groups of people on opposite sides of the room started to dance two different and entirely pointless dances. 

But the change was irrelevant. Clearly this was not what Maurice Merleau-Ponty wanted. Which was why the French philosopher did his great trick. He stopped altogether. The flame died, and two dozen heads looked towards the center of the room trying to figure out what had gone wrong. They did not even realise what drove them, those two groups of restless people recently conceived, as they ran towards each other in the hope of falling into someone else's outstretched arms.

In the hope of dancing, much to the happiness and discomfort of the Frenchman lying dead in the middle of the room.

MOVIES AND BLACK TEA

I spied on Pauline Kael. All through my brief tenure as a film writer, I spied on her. Each time she went to Musso & Frank Grill on Hollywood Blvd, it offered a chance to see her. Or, to use a metaphor suggested by an American film critic, it offered a promise of great sex. Like a great night at the movies.

Back in mid-70s I was working on my first film, and the only times I wasn't at home writing, I was in Musso & Frank Grill drinking black tea. Black tea was the cheapest item on the menu, and the only thing I could afford at the time. The waiters made no secret of being annoyed, but they let me be. Pauline Kael? She was having whatever she looked at first.

I don't know. I enjoyed sitting there for an hour or two, observing her from a distance. The way she talked to her companion (she always had one), the way she looked through the waiters, the way she chewed her food, the way she drank red wine she could never say no to. The way she sometimes almost looked at me...

All these years later, Musso & Frank Grill is still there. And all these years later, I still come to that place for a good conversation and a glass of red wine. Anything, really, anything that catches my eye.

And, occasionally, a cup of black tea whose price has gone way up since then. I guess it's for people not to waste their time. Not to annoy the busy waiters. Well, and also maybe to give more attention to the great line from Owen Gleiberman's classic autobiography: cinema is there to "hide from the world and spy on it at the same time". 

MANHATTAN VIA LISBON

The idea was first expressed by John K. Bronson, and the idea was that once in a lifetime we get to meet ourselves at a later stage. At a time when we are much older and going somewhere on a bus or else stuck in a barber's chair getting a haircut. We only get a fleeting glimpse, and then it's all over. To me, well, to me it happened in a small bar in Lisbon where I was saying goodbye to Europe's most underrated capital.

He was drinking Manhattan at the counter, three or four seats away from me, in a depressed manner reminiscent of Judi Dench from Chocolat. Straight away I knew it was him. Or, rather, me. Fifty or maybe sixty years later. I knew it was him the way a wife knows about her cheating husband. I felt it.

The man was drinking Manhattan, and I hated Manhattan with a passion.

He was not talking to anyone and only occasionally peered through his glass as if trying to magnify something written on the bar counter. A word of warning? A message? In spite of Art Blakey's Moanin' as well as drunk, thirsty conversations buzzing through my ears, I was feeling uncomfortable and tried to engage a reluctant barman into a conversation about Westworld. His English was poor and I was guessing he hadn't seen the show.

My unease was mostly caused by the fact that I knew I had to do something and yet had no idea what. Deep down I was quite happy about my plane leaving Lisbon in a few hours. Which paralysed me, happily, the way indecision often does. Besides, I was dumbed down by alcohol and almost missed the way he left his seat four people away from me.

In fact, I did miss that moment entirely, and only woke up when the barman shook me alive and said that a Portuguese gentleman had just left a message for me. At which point I saw the stylish glass filled with one of this world's most recognizable cocktails. "But I don't like Manhattan", I offered, meekly. And the barman said to me (his English impeccable) that the old gentleman had instructed him to ignore my protests.

For a vague second I wanted to run outside and catch the man, make him explain or even talk, but then I remembered that John K. Bronson strongly advised against all contact with our future selves. Besides, I did not want to miss the plane. Besides, my own glass was already empty.

LITTLE GIRL WAITRESS

War could start in weeks, maybe days.

I'm sitting in the French cafe wondering what I'm supposed to do with my life. Greta wants me to stay and have a long drink with her. She wants me to listen to Edith Piaf singing "La Petite Boutique", again and again. She wants me to eat the almond croissant she doesn't feel like finishing. She doesn't want me to go.

And neither do I. But equally I don't feel like drinking this coffee which is too black and too cold anyway. I don't feel like listening to any more of those French songs. I don't feel like eating. I don't feel like killing Germans.

Greta and I, we both know about the future. Earlier today this little girl waitress approached us and introduced herself. In the touching blue apron and with short hair dyed sand, she told us that the war would start later tonight. She was new to the French cafe, this girl, and it was her first day at work.

There was no way of proving or disproving what she said, but Greta covered her face in her hands and began to weep as we heard the voice of Edith Piaf singing "La Petite Boutique", again and again. It was only now that we realised the song had been playing for hours, and the invisible little waitress kept pushing the needle back, and the war may have already started.

RED HAIR (Portrait One)

'The art of life lies in getting things done'. Words on a brief note. 

Red-eyed, red-haired and sleepy, she was sitting by the window, about to order her first cup of coffee. It was early morning and it had to be this poky little cafe that she hated so much. The place smelled of people. Millions of people that may or may not have been here at any given moment in history. Aristocrats. White collars. Working class. Millions. This was what she once said to him in a jazz bar when he pushed his glass towards her: 'It tastes like my grandmother's village'. Scotch whisky: brutal, punishing sort.

And now this place smelled of people. Thick smell of pavements, villages, boiled eggs and cigarettes. She ordered a medium-sized cappuccino and tried to imagine this was somewhere else. Somewhere in Italy, when they first met on a beach in Tuscany and he tried to bury her legs in the sand. She screamed and turned around and he was standing over her with a toothpick in his mouth. He looked huge, like a basketball player. He smelled huge, too, but that was not the smell of a basketball player. Rather, it was that strong odor of seduction she had long associated with James Stewart. She had seen him in Shop Around The Corner two Christmases ago. 

'I want to sculpt you', he said, and then she followed him to his hotel room. 

The sculpting went well (as far as sculpting goes), and he almost had the time to finish it off. His James Stewart voice never broke the silence, except once, when he reprimanded her for dyeing her hair red. She found this remark offensive and somewhat strange as it would not matter on a sculpture, but she never said anything. It now hit her, by the draughty window of a cheap Tuscan cafe, that this had happened only yesterday. And three hours ago she had woken up in his empty hotel room to a brief note saying something about the art of life. She was trying hard to remember, but the words escaped her. 

The girl who was serving her looked in horror, the second cup of coffee dropped on the floor, as the striking woman by the window did not move and had a stone face that, if you did not pay too much attention, rather became her. 

MY HEART STOOD STILL (Portrait Two)

Jazz is dead. Jazzmen are now roaming through this town the way ghosts do because nobody wants to hear jazz anymore. 

This Italian guy with a small child and a violin. What's his name? Giuseppe? Giuseppe something? I think I know him, I recognise his face from an old poster that was featured on every wall of this town. Giuseppe used to play in a swing band that was once part of an Oscar Peterson ensemble. That was seventeen years ago.

Giuseppe's eyes look tragic, and so does the long face of his violin. It's lying stretched on the coffee table and the child has put his banana milkshake on top of the brown case. I think I know how this will end. It will end the way it always does: Giuseppe will drink his double espresso, put on his coat and leave.

However, this time I'm willing to walk up to Giuseppe and ask him to play. Because I like jazz and I can still remember those balmy, moonlit performances which he gave years ago. 

'Giuseppe?' I ask as I approach him.

To which he nods, spilling his double espresso all over his pants, and I take the violin out of the case and start playing "My Heart Stood Still" to the half-empty cafe. And to my son, whose face is smeared with banana milkshake and who is looking at me in quiet disbelief.

COFFEE AND DATES (Portrait Three)

She was the sort of girl who spoke loudly on the first date. It means she was either full of confidence or else just willing to impress. High on coffee, Coleman's sax buzzing through my ears, I was still trying to figure out which it was. We were separated by three tables crackling under the weight of cups and voices and still I could hear every word she said. The girl was eating something from a tiny bowl of glass brought to her by one of the girls working here. 

'Then, later, I got into Arctic Monkeys. Strokes. Libertines.'

I could not concentrate on my writing as this was way too loud to weave my thoughts into anything readable. Never mind good. So I had to listen, as did the possible boyfriend staring at her from the other side of the table. His tea had gone cold from all the listening. His face had gone red from sexual intensity that was not too sexual after all.

'That whole genre. What's its name'.

Which was when her face grew puzzled and she stopped. A momentary blip. She picked another piece out of the glass bowl. She didn't mean 'indie rock', did she?

'Oh my God, I can't remember the genre'.

'It's okay', said the guy, offering some relief. It was also the only thing he would say the whole evening. 

'And then I got into the club of 27. Well, you know. Jim. Janis. Jimi.' Intensely, she sipped her latte. 'Amy. That film was truly amazing, in fact. No, God, I can't go on. I have to remember the genre'.

She picked up her phone and began to browse through those endless playlists she had compiled two or three years back. A little later, she gave up.

'Then lots of things in my life changed. I left a boyfriend of two years. I got into post-punk. Joy Division. I remember watching Control late in a lonesome cinema and thinking I wanted to commit suicide. No, give me a few more minutes'.

He was willing to give her a year. He wanted her to be silent for a while so as to maybe kiss her later that evening. At which point she screamed 'indie rock!' and I knew it was all over. 

In the meantime, she took a date out of the glass bowl, chewed it, swallowed it, and went on talking. 

DEPRESSION (Portrait Four)

The girl was crouched in the corner writing a poem. There was a certain kind of inspiration outside the window as the winter was starting to look endless. Inside, the young couple to the right of her was deep in their mobile phones exchanging racy pictures as well as verbal innuendos and she was starting to sense that her poem was getting erotic undertones.

She liked this cafe as it took her places. Like the first time that she found herself behind the Christmas lights of the entrance - she was bored and confused and she wrote her most romantic piece ever. All due to the sounds of Glenn Miller's orchestra playing some of this world's most beautiful serenades. That piece alone made Paul fall in love with her. Then there were times when she picked a book from the shelf and drew her inspiration from a random line of poetry and prose. Like the time when a collection of Nikolai Gogol's writings led her to a mystical poem that everyone in their secret society loved so much. Or the time when a cup fell down on the floor and cracked to pieces, leading her to break up with Paul following that biting four-line piece.

Now she wanted something depressing to maybe lead her to the end of the existential crisis and accept the world as it was (cruel, bizarre, absurd), but the couple to the right was relentless. 'What would you do if I came to you in a pornographic outfit like that?' She looked expectantly, hoping he would not disappoint. 'I do not know', said the man, slightly taken aback. At which point the girl in the corner sighed, turned her head to the window and her thoughts drifted to the endless winter outside. 

APPROXIMATIONS (Portrait Five)

Following a yoga class that made him stretch beyond his physical powers, he was drinking herbal tea and discussing electromagnetic fields with a group of young fellow scientists. Suddenly, he mentioned the word 'approximations', which could not even keep a visibly jazzed-up Tom Waits from singing "Summertime" on the TV screen attached to the far end of the cafe. The word 'approximations' did not amount to much, except that somewhere in a different part of the world, a million miles away and at that precise second, Donald Trump was starting to deliver his inauguration speech. 

Where do birds die?..

Somebody clutched the sleeve of my coat and pulled down.

- Yes? – I said briskly, rudely awakened as if to an interrogation. But no, it was all right. This was only Jeremy.

 - Daddy, where do birds die?

“Oh for God’s sake, Jeremy!” – I thought, examining my son’s face which radiated that silly thoughtfulness children can pull off so easily. Where did he get that one from?.. However, I knew from experience as well as from Joan’s words that there was no point in being annoyed. Instead, I tried to concentrate: “Daddy, where do birds die?” Well, come to think of it, that was a perfectly legitimate question for a 5-year old. And besides, it could have been so much worse. I closed my eyes for a second and tried to imagine just how much worse it could get. Poisonous insects? Joan’s tears? Something scatological?..

I looked into my son’s puzzled stare – as if trying to find the answer in the expression of his eyes.

To my shame, I was dumbfounded. Birds… Could be anything, really, it’s not as if you had these specially designated places, like ornithological morgues or owl cemeteries. For the moment I couldn’t think of anything. Which was no good, since Jeremy looked up to me and expected a clear-cut answer. Something he could impress his friends with. Obviously I couldn’t mumble – I had to be articulate.

- Well, Jeremy, why do you ask?

This was a lame trick no doubt, but at the moment it was the best one I had.

- There are just so many of them, but you never see them lying in the streets... Only sometimes. If there's a nasty driver. And also, Benjamin said today that birds don’t die at all, but that can’t be true – can it? Billy said Benjamin was telling a lie.

Benjamin. Who was this Benjamin anyway? It wasn’t the first time I heard of him, and it seemed like I badly wanted to see this guy. Why was William called ‘Billy’, but Benjamin was never shortened to ‘Ben’ and always stayed ‘Benjamin’? Who was this precocious genius going around frustrating and misinforming other kids? A month or two ago this Benjamin told Jeremy that his parents screamed every night. In their bedroom. Thank God it was Joan who had to explain that one. She told me later that Jeremy kept asking why we weren’t screaming at night. “Yeah, – I said. – Why not?” Joan didn’t take that lightly.

- Okay, Jeremy, – I said. – It’s actually rather simple.

What was simple? As far as I was concerned, there was nothing remotely simple about that. Looking around, spotting random birds, I was desperately trying to have my ludicrous, improvised brain storm: birds turn invisible when they get too old, birds drown in rivers and lakes, birds die in trees, birds fly into the sun, birds don’t die at all. I had to admit that that last one sounded good, and I would have gladly used it had Benjamin not taken it already.

But then again: I became aware of Jeremy’s minute but strangely imposing presence, and felt the grip on my arm tighten even more. Where could he get that much strength?..

- Simple, Jeremy.

But then Joan’s words came back to me, and I suddenly remembered. She said – no, she didn’t say – she insisted that it had to be done this week. And it didn’t take a news report or a mobile phone to tell me this was already Sunday. Well then: I had to do it today.

The words wouldn’t come, though. This time it wasn’t even about what to say – this time it was about how to say it. “Jeremy, Joan and I…” – my mouth so dry, my tongue so thick, these weren’t even my words. These were still my thoughts.

- Or do they just fly away? – suddenly asked Jeremy. – Do they, daddy?

- Yes! – I said, and was almost knocked off my feet with relief. – That’s it, Jeremy! You’re right. Birds… They just fly away. They do. They just…

I kept repeating that, again and again, but I don’t know how much Jeremy could hear or, indeed, understand. I tried, though, I really did. But it just seemed as if my words got drowned out, muffled by the feathery little bodies whooshing past the two of us at an enormous speed.

Dilemma

Choosing which house to blow up wasn’t at all easy. The houses looked strikingly identical, and if there was a reason why he should prefer one to another, he didn’t see it. Of course, your imaginary terrorist manual told you it had to be the one with the biggest amount of people currently indoors or in the immediate vicinity, but there was no way of him making a survey so late in the day. After all, the five buildings lined up along the road were all filled with rather unremarkable flats inhabited, he presumed, by rather unremarkable families: husbands, wives, widowed and enuresis-stricken grandfathers, teenage kids... Maybe dogs, maybe cats, maybe guinea pigs – pets, however, were immaterial. So: which house to choose then?..

The thing was, he shouldn’t have left it for the very last evening in the first place. Back when the plan was conceived, he thought any house would do nicely. Back then there were other things to consider: the explosion, the street, the day of the week … Some writers naively believe that the novel’s title will come hot and easy once the job is done and the publisher is banging on the door. But no, it never works out that way, and now he (also an artist of a kind) had this unfortunate and completely unnecessary dilemma on his hands.

His heavy grey bag clutched in his fist, he stared blankly into the distance in front of him. Nothing about the house or the street was telling him anything.

There were five houses standing along the street which he had long considered his target. No special reason for choosing that particular street, but it really was on the quiet and rather inconspicuous outskirts. Ideal setting for him to make his point. It’s just that making his point on a random basis seemed somehow… wrong. He didn’t want to let chance get into it, certainly not the very first time.

It was gradually getting darker, which he thought was rather handy: that way fewer people could see him. The dissolving light made the problem he was facing even more painful and gloomy, though it did contain a rather unlikely clue: the windows. People were starting to give themselves away by switching on the lights. Which wasn’t much, but it was at least something to go by. There was of course no certainty to it, but by counting the number of lit windows in each house he could make a more or less decent guess of the number of people presently indoors.

People were only beginning to settle down in front of their kitchen and living room TV sets, so this gave him time to consider a couple of other important issues. Like his alibi, for instance. The problem with his alibi was that he didn’t have any. He did make the point of telling one or two co-workers about tonight’s horror flick in one of the city’s cinemas, but if it came to it, there would be no ticket to declare. Admittedly it would be a disaster.  He was stuck, and  he wasn’t even sure that Helen would care to play along or that Andrew would come out of his drunken haze – and they were telling you about families corroborating ridiculous, grotesque stories to cover up hapless sons, misguided uncles and wives…

He went back to the windows and, as it often happens, the idea that seemed so full of uncanny genius at first, was slowly becoming less and less appealing. In all honesty – it just couldn’t work. Watching those houses at night was a bit like shaking kaleidoscope. The lights just kept changing, there was a completely different pattern every minute or so. The whole thing was fascinating in a way – as if people were spending their hard-earned evenings just running around their flats switching lights on and off like crazy.

Procrastination no longer seemed comforting. It felt annoying. He was a terrorist, for God’s sake, he had to think of something.

While the idea was rather whimsical, he decided to go along with it. After all, he didn’t have a better one. It was fairly simple: he will blow up the house out of which a man will come out. In an odd way the plan reminded him of a fairy tale in which a princess would marry the first man who proposes to her. Silly but efficient.

It was with a feeling of harrow, sickly excitement that he was looking at the front doors of those five houses. As it turned out, he didn’t have to wait long. Pretty soon a shadowy, obscure silhouette came out of one of the houses and started to move in his direction. He was supposed to do likewise, but he was somehow mesmerized by the sheer incredibility of the whole scene and felt glued to the part of pavement he was standing on.

In a minute or so he could easily discern that it was an old woman, and she was clearly approaching him in a relentless, bewildering fashion.  

Red light, green light. Having crossed the street, she stopped and looked directly in his face.

- Please, young man, could you tell me what bus will take me to the nearest underground station?..

He looked around, and realised that he was standing in the middle of a bus stop. Also, he heard himself utter the following words:

- Any bus will do from here.

- Oh good. Thank you.

There was an odd feeling of discomfort, and in a moment or two he became aware of a huge grey bag weighing heavily on him. He sighed, looked down and opened it up to see what was inside.

Nothing remotely new about that one. The same thing, all that time. God, will they ever publish that?..

In the distance he could see a bus approaching. He looked at his watch and then at the number of the bus. Always the same number. Okay, so what was the escape route again?..

Breakup

The moment she thought about it, her heart sank. A heavy, unsettling plop in her chest, like she suddenly remembered that she hadn’t closed the door on her way out. This was no door, of course, – but perhaps in the long run something even more frightening.

And still there was a containing moment of doubt: did she or did she not?..

The point was, she most probably did not. For if she did, surely there would have long been a letter from him. A text message. A note. Something.

But – no, and the reason for his silence was most irritating: she’d forgotten to put a smiley at the end of the sentence. This tiny little piece of texted emotion that could point him in the right direction of her thoughts, feelings, intentions. As it was, the whole thing had that stale odour of cruelty.

Peppering your e-mails and text messages with smileys was such a natural thing that missing one this time was pure carelessness. Those thirty seconds queuing in her local grocery store, she must have been distracted by some angry customer or maybe a sudden noise from the checkout counter.    

Because, her trusty and sweaty iPhone in her hand, this was what she wrote:

luv u, dear. still, u were such a dirty bastard yesterday

Chilling, heartless atrocity. She would be offended. Hell, anyone would be offended.

And what about him? Well, from the moment she first held his hand he struck her as particularly vulnerable in that respect. Almost too sensitive. And here she was, telling him he was a dirty bastard (with a seemingly straight face!) when the only thing he did was give her their first goodbye kiss. On the porch of her house. Well, how about that? Surely he couldn’t see that she meant it in a most loving, gentle way.

She rewrote the message, just for the hell of it:

luv u, dear. still, u were such a dirty bastard yesterday:)

This was completely pointless of course, but somehow rewriting the message made her calm down a little. Though there was of course no question of sending him the altered version – this would be just plain mockery. No, that train was gone, and she was determined to wait for his reply. It looked like the only thing to do.

She’d read enough interviews in her life to know that innocent jokes have a wicked way of not translating into print. Celebrities lose their fans, murder their own careers, alienate other celebrities. Mainly because the newspapers and magazines are too smug and senseless to insert a smiley where necessary.

And now: did she blew it?

All the more bitter because she actually enjoyed the abrupt intensity of his kiss. More than anything else in the world she wanted to repeat that.

Finally it came, at around midnight. A shrill buzz knocked her out of the blank dream and revealed his message.

sorry, couldn’t write sooner. luv u 2. interesting slutty dress yesterday btw:)

Her initial relief badly crashed on that second part. She kept staring at that ‘slutty dress’ and couldn’t quite understand what to make of it. Yes, so there was that smiley at the end, but with the words like that was it perhaps hiding something? Some evil intention? Some perverted cheek? Some cruel nature?.. 

Hospital farewell

In a suppressed, earnest, somewhat conspiratorial tone, aunt Jane asked the three of us to meet her behind the house, in the backyard. She said she had something important to tell us. As I saw Susie going downstairs, we exchanged glances: we knew what this was about. This was about uncle Matthew. Uncle Matthew was paralyzed, and we were about to go see him at the hospital. We knew all that, even Sam (though he probably was clueless as to what ‘paralyzed’ actually meant), so I was failing to see what aunt Jane was getting at. Preventive scolding? Pep talk?

- Your uncle is not going to make it, – aunt Jane said as we stood there in the already chilly August wind. Leaning against the barren, threadbare apple tree, Susie was shaking visibly, maybe deliberately, as if to let everyone know she wouldn’t mind getting back inside the house. However, the sad, humourless woman that aunt Jane was, she was of course determined to speak further.

- You’ve heard about the accident. You know uncle Matthew is very sick… He is paralyzed.

- What’s paralyzed, aunt Jane? – This was Sam, obviously. He was at the age when asking ridiculous questions felt like the best way of establishing good rapport with the outside world.

- Well, Sam, it’s when a person can’t move. The muscles in his body won’t respond. Your uncle is dying.

Thankfully, Sam fell silent. My right foot might have had something to do with that. If he asked what ‘dying’ meant, he knew there would be heavy beating afterwards. So he fell silent, and aunt Jane continued.

- Now I know what you think of your uncle. Particularly you, Philip, – she looked at me, and for the first time that day I paid attention to her oily cheeks, like something a particularly fastidious rain could do. Distant tears, they made the area around her eyes look like dimly shining fish scales. I thought that looked repulsive. Also, why me. Why not Susie. She had her reasons, too. – You really hate your uncle, don’t you?

- No, aunt Jane, I can assure you…

- Oh please, drop it. I’m talking to you here because I don’t want your parents to hear this. You know how they are. They will get upset. – She waited ten seconds, as if anticipating some challenge from me or from Susie. This time, however, we knew better. – Well, anyway, I guess I just wanted to tell you that you will probably see your uncle for the last time today. The very last time. He is not going to make it.

That’s it, I thought, she has gone full circle.

- I want you to be nice to him. He deserves it. – She gave me a hard look, her voice quivering. – He will not be able to move, but he will hear you. Say something nice. He will see you. He will understand.

- Okay, – Susie said. – Okay, aunt Jane. Of course. We get it. Can we go now? I’m cold.

Aunt Jane nodded, her desperate ‘I give up’ gesture. I was in awe of Susie’s seemingly boundless cynicism and felt like a child, bewildered schoolboy, hopeless neophyte at moments like that. I could not go that far, I was bound to choke on something. Like a nasty fishbone, a bad dream would come, a feeling. Feeling!.. Sometimes Susie’s attitude seemed so relentless, so disgustingly overwhelming that I wanted her to shut up. However, I could not kick her ankle. Susie was not Sam. She was 16. She was two years older than me.

Hated him? Sure we did. However, not before both of them started regularly coming to our house for summer. At first neither Susie nor I could see any reason for that (after all, they had a perfectly normal house themselves), but it was not like we could do anything about that. The first time they came, we disregarded the two bulky suitcases and thought this would be a short-lived hello-goodbye sort of thing. A matter of two days. But – no. Like bad habits, like painful memories, like your worst splinters, they had to stay.

While they both seemed like a nasty, unwelcome contrast to my parents (who suddenly revealed themselves as two flimsy, invisible, listless entities whose authority could only extend to Sam, and even that could be questioned), we still thought that for all her fussiness aunt Jane was okay.

- It is just that she doesn’t have kids of her own, – Susie said once. Interesting how she excluded uncle Matthew from that thought. And then she would always add: – I bet they never even had sex.

Sex was where you could trust Susie. Judging from her own stories, she could have been pregnant numerous times. If all those names of her male classmates and her peculiar size gradation were anything to go by.

But with uncle Matthew it was different. There was hate, yes, but part of it came from fear. Fear that one day he would tell everyone, fear that he has already done that. However, I didn’t see why aunt Jane had to include Sam in all that. Sam didn’t mind uncle Matthew. Sam didn’t mind anyone. Sam wouldn’t have minded the end of the world if he was still allowed to drink milk-shakes and play shooter games. Susie and me, though, we certainly had our reasons. I still shiver from the memory of him entering the kitchen right when my hand was under her summer frock and in the delicate process of rolling her panties down her legs. I imagine my father standing there. No, he wouldn’t have said sorry – he would have probably frowned, blushed and made the kind of disgusted face that could send us both muttering lame excuses… Uncle Matthew, though, made a scene of it, and didn’t let us go away until he told me I could grow up a pervert and (he did say it, though I still find it hard to believe) a pedophile. He then asked us what we thought would become of our parents (or, indeed, Sam) if they saw us. Also, we had to make a half-hearted promise to never do that again. Only then he let us go. We felt slighted, embarrassed, ashamed. The thing was, you could not challenge that depressing, dwarfish man. You could challenge aunt Jane on just about anything, but you could never challenge uncle Matthew even on watering the goddamn flowers.

Of course we did that again, numerous times, but this would always be accompanied by an edgy sense of frustration. Susie would never let me touch her as often as before, and I myself would only do that if time was right and the door was locked. Lest uncle Matthew should feel like entering the room.

It was odd, but it appeared that he never told anyone. Though strategically that must have been the clever thing to do. This was something we always had to be aware of, and when he told me to go outside help him wash his car, I did exactly that. As for Susie, I remember one instance when one look on his face made her change her skirt next time she went to a party.

- He just wants to get laid, believe me, – Susie told me afterwards. – It’s not you who’s a pervert.

- Yes, – I said. – But do you think he might have told someone?

Though speaking of ‘tell’, it no longer seemed so desperate after that car accident. Of course, there was no way he could tell now, but the day Susie got into what she called her first the relationship, the whole thing stopped. She never said anything, but from now on I had to think of a damn good excuse to even enter her room…

So what could we tell him as he was lying there paralyzed in his hospital bed, unable to speak or move a muscle? “Something nice”, – aunt Jane suggested. “Nice”, – I thought. Sorry about the accident. Love you, uncle Matthew. Won’t do that again, uncle Matthew. God, I could hardly say any of that.

- Susie, – I knocked on my sister’s door. It was time to go.

- What? – she called out. – I’m going, I’m going.

- Susie, please don’t put on that purple skirt of yours. Just please don’t do that.

- What?!? – she exclaimed, blowing the door open, hitting me on the shoulder and almost knocking me off my feet. – Are you out of your fucking mind?

Part of me was bewildered, another part relieved. She was standing there in front of me in that dress mom had given her for her birthday two or three years ago. The one she was supposed to feed to the moths. I wondered whether she was taking the piss.

However, nothing about the look on her face could help me detect any falsehood.

- Susie, – I said as we were about to get inside the car. – What should we say to him?

- Just say goodbye, – she whispered blankly. – That’s the only thing to say, really.

Oh okay, I thought, pushing Sam to the other end of the car seat. Now it looked like we were all ready to go.

I don't like the clown

You see, I don’t have any particular claims here. Nothing. I don’t own the place. I wasn’t around back when it first appeared. Hell, I don’t even love it all that much. I only have my working hours to declare, and it has recently dawned on me that I have 36 years of those. No small thing.

Where do I work? Circus. And I don’t say that in any indirect, conspiratorial way. I do mean ‘circus’, the very one: kids, clowns, cotton candies. I’m an illusionist, and have been all my life. I can make your watch disappear and be suddenly found around the wrist of an old lady sitting at the opposite end of the circus. I can take up to sixteen eggs out of my mouth and then break them in front of your very eyes. I can do it with cards, rabbits, hats, anything. I can do it with anything. I can do anything. But that’s onstage. 


Offstage there’s this clown.

Coulrophobia, ever heard about that one? It means fear of clowns, and apparently many people have it. Mostly kids. In fact, up to some point I strongly believed it was only kids. But I was wrong. The moment he came to our circus, everything changed. Like I say, I’ve worked here for 36 years, so I can’t fuck anything up onstage, not anymore, but in a way and after thirty it’s the heavy pull of the offstage that gets you. Offstage hits me like a cold ocean wave. Coulrophobia. We all have it. We are all afraid of the clown.

It somehow pains me to admit it now, 6 years later, but I think I felt it from the start. When he swept past me on his way to our director's office just two days after Mitford’s heart attack – I felt mocked and humiliated. His erratic hair, his sickly breath – we would all have to get used to it, and act as if it was all right. What else would have to be all right? Well, many things: his lewd jokes, his misogyny, his fingernails.

As a kid I loved circus because of clowns. I adored them. The loose motley trousers, the stuck-on noses, the silly jokes – it really couldn’t and shouldn’t have worked. It had to fall apart and be written off as one vulgar and ridiculous non-sequitur. And it did fall apart, of course, but in a most weird and transfixing way. I was amazed. Oh it worked so well that my father had to resort to bribery and intimidation trying to dissuade me from becoming a clown. I was born a family of illusionists, you see, so I had to become one. I had to give in and follow the tradition. For the record, I have never really regretted it. Because you don’t want to be a clown. You can admire him, love him, be amused by him, but you don’t want to be like him. That said, I could always establish a good relationship with a clown. Mitford used to be a good friend of mine. There was this rapport. He would teach me a clumsy, hilarious gesture, and I could always teach him a card trick or two. But that was before the terror began. 

Terror is not in the actions or what your eyes do. Terror is in the presence. Terror is abstract, it has to be rationally inexplicable. We all had classmates whose occasional absence could spark a sedate feeling of calmness and joy. With them around, raising hand, smoking outside, mocking teachers, – it was edgy and strained. Why? You don’t know; it just was.

Offstage – it’s him, the clown, who’s the illusionist. He can say something stupid, nonsensical, and still make you fear for your life. He can put on a freak show, effortlessly. Really bizarre stuff: like a giant bloody hole in his forehead, razor-sharp teeth tearing through his cheeks, multiple nostrils. I could never understand just how he does all that, but it surely has a sickening effect on my senses. You feel desperate, nauseous. And it’s not only me he feels this way. I’ve talked to everyone, in hushed whispers, after work. We are grown up men, but that’s the only way you feel safe mentioning those sinister wigs, that childish gait. For when the clown is about, you just get splashed flat against the wall, prison style, and feel eager to do anything he might ask you to do. Yesterday I brought him a glass of water. He took it without even looking at me. Which makes me think: I shouldn’t have spared the spit.

If he needs it, the clown can have the circus ring all to himself (he usually performs alone). Doing his juggling, dragging his pants down. And the thing is, he is a really crappy clown.

So yes, I hate him. I despise him, I wish him dead. But it seems like there’s nothing we can do. We don't have any claims. You see, when you’re in a circus, you are entangled in this odd camaraderie. You’re one team, you fake bonhomie. Onstage, offstage, on tours. You’re in it together, you’re all alike: animal tamers, clowns, jugglers, illusionists, acrobats... I should know: I work with mirrors.   

Looking for traces

The first thing he did as he closed the door behind him, stepped forward and dragged the snow-powdered coat off his shoulders and onto the floor, was grope for the switch. It was dark, and there was his heart to consider. Light could fix it, light could settle his breathing. Also, light could let him examine the room: slowly, carefully, searching for any traces she might have left. A hair, a favourite book, a picture from Vienna… There were so many traces he could think of.

The books. Oh yes, like his own disheveled hair and thoughts – they were everywhere. 18^th century novels, hard-cover anthologies, cookbooks, children’s books, scientific monographs, expendable travel guides… But he knew this was all wrong. Like a good sleuth he never was, he knew this was not it. For it was Italian poetry she loved. Those amorous stanzas overflowing with passion, she would recite them whenever she was depressed or suffered from a bout of insomnia. Italian poetry, of all things. He could never understand this obsession of hers (for it really was an obsession), but then he could never read Italian.

Whenever she travelled to Rome, on business or for pleasure, she would always bring  back a new collection of poems, a new anthology of verse. All in Italian and always something anacreontic (her word). And then of course it became a lot easier. Through the Internet she could order any number of books she wanted. It didn’t even take weeks – it took days. Or that’s what he heard anyway.

However, as his eyes kept running over mushy paperbacks and glossy dictionaries, he was growing more and more frustrated. For in the whole of this place there was not a single book in Italian, to say nothing of Italian poetry... The numerous shelves of this vast living-room did not contain a single trace of her. Maybe other people. Maybe her ghost. Maybe really her – but seen through the eyes of strangers, aliens, enemies, distant acquaintances…

Her clothes. He knew there was no time to go upstairs and examine her room thoroughly and with due attention to the detail. This living-room really was his lot, and he had to make the best of it. He inspected the low, rather excessively pillowed sofa and three enormous red armchairs, but all he could find amid the teddy-bears and a crude, formless pair of men’s gloves was a pretty ordinary hat of deep red. There was no style about this hat, no personality, no taste. He winced. Who could have been so blind and pathetic as to give her this sorry thing? She, who could spend long hours studying fashion magazines and making relevant pencil marks, she would never put on anything like that!.. This was not her, this was a bad joke, and no wonder it was stuffed so deep into the corner of the sofa.

He smelled the room. Her scent. Her perfume. But soon he realised how pointless that was and gave it up. This was like trying to distinguish the smell of strawberries in the midst of the roars of market vendors – selling fish, melons, dogs, flowers, tomatoes, pastry… He could not scent her, and neither could he scent those two small Siamese cats she used to have. Instead, there was the thick, gruesome smell of some old and gruesome Labrador, there was a distinct smell of rough tobacco (yes, she did smoke, but surely not something this cheap, sickening and repulsive) and even (though he was not too sure about this one) alcohol, there were millions of other smells – but there was nothing in the air that could help him trace her.

Next he carefully observed the mantelpiece and that ugly, overcluttered array of pictures it contained. Tamed memories: so many families did that. Well, he did recognize her face on most of the pictures, but all the blurry and burry figures dangling annoyingly next to her or in the background – those he couldn’t recognize. And it had a bizarre effect on his perception of her face. Oddly, it no longer looked like she really was there – rather, it looked like she was cut out of a magazine or maybe another picture and then pasted here, on this beach or under this tree. Vienna? There was no Vienna anywhere in sight. 

His eyes ran through the walls around him in search of a clock. Yes, there was one, but it did not tell him the time. It told him that soon it would be time to leave. Or perhaps not leave – but flee, escape, or maybe something even worse than that.

And speaking of walls. There were pictures. Many pictures, but not something you could get your teeth into. Random patches of paint, this was like looking at street slush suddenly made colourful by a child’s hand. And this, he thought, was coming from someone who couldn’t stomach abstract art. She really couldn’t, and when somebody had the audacity to offer her a visit to a gallery exposition of modern paintings, she would laugh it off. Or maybe she would give it a go, and then be found dozing off on one of those rigid banquettes placed at the centre of museum halls. So these splashes of someone’s laziness and self-confidence didn’t make any sense. He looked away, as if embarrassed.  

Music? Films? Well, there were CDs and DVDs and even some old-fashioned video tapes he could look through, but she was never into those things. No traces to even look for. As everyone else was going to the movies or camping at rock festivals, she was more likely to be found wandering through the streets, dreaming and having long, abstract conversations with her friends.

However, she could play music. Her father (who was the kind of father who had these ridiculously overblown thoughts about the future of his children) even forced her to take piano lessons. The first piano, that huge black casket. At first it intimidated her so much that she was reluctant to enter the room for the purpose of watering flowers or watching TV… Her music teacher, that long-nosed, crumpled, uptight man who demanded too much and who probably believed that in terms of cultivating a true classical celebrity she was his very last shot. Her playing was good, but she was never particularly diligent. Having learnt the basics, she struggled to understand why she should study the faded music sheets encoding works of Mozart and Liszt, and kept trying to come up with her own stuff. Some thought it clumsy and amateurish, but of course it was all down to envy. She was young and talented…

He didn’t notice it at first, but now, full of hope and suppressed anticipation, he approached it. It wasn’t easy: in order to sit on the stool and open the lid, you had to throw away books, pens, empty vases and even a small children’s globe. When he finally managed all that, he placed his dirty, horny fingers on the white keys…

There was a heavy sound of the front door opening so wide as if to let the whole world in. But it wasn’t the whole world. Just four of them: a man, a woman and two little girls. And the dog, too. They were all looking at the strange man sitting behind the piano and pressing its keys – deliriously, indiscriminately. The scene was hypnotic. When the stranger finally realised that he was no longer alone, he nervously stood up and started muttering something unintelligible. Something none of them could understand. They saw the black teeth, the baggy clothes, the coat crouching under their feet… She told the girls it’s all right, and they let him go.

It was quick, they all wanted it to be quick.  

When the girls were upstairs and sleeping, and the two of them were alone in the living-room, he asked her:

- My God, so weird. And playing the piano, of all things… Do we know him? I seem to vaguely recognize the face…

- Oh yes, – she said. – I think we do. Beggar from around the corner. I’ve seen him many times when walking Kyle.

- Ah, – he said. – That’s it. Spooky. Do you think we should do something about it?

- No. I guess we should just be more careful about closing the front door. He obviously didn’t steal anything. Besides, he will never come back.

- Yeah, I guess you are right. Maybe he fell in love with you or something.

- What utter bullshit, – she seemed angry.

- I’m sorry, – he said. – Just being silly.

As he poured himself another drink, she approached the piano and tried to play some rudimentary melody.

- Will you play something? – he asked.

- Well, – she smiled. – The truth is, I don’t remember anything. Besides, the girls are sleeping. Besides, – she then added, – the piano is so badly out of tune.

In the meantime, the man was limping away through the invisible slushy streets. Everybody would be limping through weather like that. He was confused, and he was still muttering incoherent excuses, but deep down there was a comforting thought, memory to get him through another night: those sounds, those beautiful piano notes, it was as if he finally found the traces he’d been looking for.