#2
This is for the first question, a description or a photo you say. I never had a photo of her. I remember now that she had brown eyes. Also short dark hair. She was slim with a quiet, serious face. She was no raving beauty although better than on that snow photo. Four years older it must have been. How come you can’t remember yourself? You saw her every day for two years a thousand times more often than I did. Your memory can’t be that bad.
(There’d been a second photo, a reduced studio portrait. Delivering a book-order to Harvey a couple of weeks after the first photo I find it on the living room table. Mrs Morgenstern has gone to get Harvey for me. He’s down in the cellar. Her oval face emerges out of artistic blur and darkness into the narrow zone of focus. The lighting of her features is cleverly done. The illumination seems to come from within. Her sensitive lips are on the verge of a smile. Her great dark eyes elude mine, barely. I stand there trying to capture that mysterious gaze. It can’t be done since she’s looking past the lens. I try anyhow for minutes. When I hear Harvey coming I slip the photo into my pocket. When I get home I cut off the margins and place it over Wendy Hiller in the secret compartment beneath the semi-public girl friends. It’s funny how you can operate on two levels like that. A little over two years later it’s necessary to reduce her to shreds and flush her away. That was the only photo of her I’d ever possessed.)
One night in January – so another year between me and all that – I heard the staircase creaking laboriously. There were shuffling steps up the corridor, then his harsh panting in front of my door. The alarm-clock dial showed 2:32 am green in the darkness. Now he was trying the doorknob. The door was locked. He practically whispered it, either because he couldn’t manage anything but a whisper or else because he knew I was awake and so a whisper would do.
“I have her. Down in the cellar. Your mother.”