‘I’m still involved with that theme and doing more sketches and paintings. It’s a toughie, it’s so full of ambiguities. The thing about “Death and the Maiden” is that they need each other. Redon did a wonderful lithograph in his Temptation of Saint Anthony series in which they’re both full-frontal naked, although Death is more naked because he’s in his bones. The Maiden is rising above him like a fire balloon but he’s got hold of her arm with one bony hand and she won’t get away. The incandescence of her body lights up the air around her but her face is shadowed by night and Death has a firm grip. He’s very pleased with himself; in the caption he says to her, ‘It is I who make you serious. Let us embrace each other.’ He’s so full of himself that he doesn’t realise that she makes him serious too. Without her youth and beauty on which to exercise his droit du mort he’s nothing but a Hallowe’en costume. Niklaus Manuel Deutsch, 400 years before Redon, draws the maiden fully clothed but showing a lot of cleavage and not putting up much resistance while Death slides his tongue into her mouth and his hand up her skirt. The permutations are endless.’
‘Maccabees,’ said our waiter, plunking two bottles on the table.
‘No glasses?’ said Peter.
The waiter pointed to the slices of lemon stuck in the mouths of the bottles. ‘That’s how we do it,’ he said, and left.
‘You drink it through the lemon,’ I said.
‘Seems very effete for a bare-knuckle place,’ said Peter.
‘This is a very cosmopolitan establishment,’ I said. ‘How many paintings have you done so far in the new series?’
‘Three, but nothing finished — I’ve been papering the walls with sketches as I gradually get my chops together.’
‘I thought “chops” was a musician word.’
‘I got it from Amaryllis but the word isn’t limited to music — it means skills, technique, or talents of any kind.’
‘Sometimes my chops are a little bit scattered,’ I said. ‘This morning at the clinic I found it hard to stay interested. How’s Amaryllis?’
‘Fine. She’s into composing now, working on a Cthulhu suite. The Dream of R’lyeh is the first part.’
‘How does it sound?’
‘Oceanic. The mode is Lydian in a non-Euclidean sort of way if you know what I mean.’
‘Not yet, but I can wait till it comes to me.’
A man at the next table paused with a forkful of gefilte fish halfway to his mouth and turned to Peter. ‘What,’ he said, ‘You’re supporting Gaddafi now?’
‘I said Lydian, not Libyan,’ said Peter.
‘I don’t know from Lydians,’ said the gefilte man, ‘but if they want to start something Israel is ready for them.’
‘Thank you for your input,’ said Peter. ‘I feel easier in my mind now.’
‘There is no mental ease these days,’ said the man, and went back to his fish.
‘Amaryllis is known for her volatility,’ I said to Peter. ‘How is she to live with?’
‘I’m pretty volatile myself, so we get along all right. In any case, the whole thing between men and women is a very dodgy business. Have you seen Christabel Alderton since the Royal Academy?’
‘Yes.’
‘I thought you might. Are you going to say more?’
‘Not yet.’
‘OK, be prudent.’
‘Latkes twice,’ said our waiter, plunking down two plates which sent up strong feel-good aromas. Also a dish of sour cream. ‘Enjoy,’ he said.
‘Thank you,’ said Peter. ‘I’m sure we shall. By the way?’
‘Yes?’ said the waiter.
‘I saw the bartender working a beer pump,’ said Peter.
‘Oh, that,’ said the waiter.
‘Yes?’ said Peter.
‘That’s Masada bitter. I wasn’t sure you’d like it.’
‘Could I have a pint? I don’t want to be pushy’
‘My pleasure, sir,’ said the waiter.
‘Make it two,’ I said.
‘You got it,’ said the waiter. ‘My name is Moe.’
‘Nice to meet you, Moe,’ said Peter. ‘This is Elias and I’m Peter.’ We shook hands.
‘You I’ve seen before,’ said Moe, nodding to me.
‘You do any boxing?’ said Peter.
‘When I was younger. This is what I do now, plus I get extra work in movies from time to time. I’ll bring your Masadas.’
When the bitter appeared Peter sampled it and said, ‘It’s bitter all right.’
‘That’s why it’s called Masada,’ said Moe. ‘It’s an acquired taste. Have you read Josephus, The Jewish Wars?
‘No,’ said Peter.
‘Do,’ said Moe. ‘You’ll like our bitter better next time.’
The cosiness of The Daniel Mendoza made the day seem colder and greyer when we were outside again. At Covent Garden Peter went to browse the Jubilee Market. I whistled to Bo and we disappeared into the Piccadilly Line.
22
Christabel Alderton
25 January 2003. I was glad to see the last of Elizabeth and her ashes. I was beginning to think I had LET’S TALK ABOUT DEATH tattooed on my forehead. Or maybe it was just written on my face. Ashes. Two black horses drew Django’s black-plumed hearse to the Golders Green Crematorium. ‘Nuages’ was the music as the beautiful coffin that Rudy Ka’uhane had made went through the doors. Later I was given a little urn of ashes. I scattered them over the Thames near the Albert Bridge just as the tide was going out.
After going through customs I came out into the main lobby with the other arrivals. My footsteps joined the other footsteps and I listened as they took me back to 1993.
Although I knew that the Mini Hotel Sleep/Shower had been shut down I went to have a look anyhow. There it was, chained and padlocked, still with signs by the entrance showing the room rates. A hand-lettered sign on the door: AS OF TODAY (10/15/01) WE ARE NOT LONGER OPEN FOR BUSINESS. MAHALOÜ! Looking through the glass I could see various rubbish and debris, fallen ceiling tiles, some partitions, a stool, an old map on the floor. It had been such a quiet place, and now it seemed noisy with emptiness. I imagined my ghost beating its fists against the glass while I stood there listening to footsteps and echoes and smelling fries from where the Fresh Express cafeteria used to be. Now there’s a food court with Burger King, Pizza Hut Express, Chinese fast food and a bakery with coffee and ice cream. If aliens from outer space ever want to visit us they could home in on the smells from Burger King and Pizza Hut. Maybe they already have, and now they staff those establishments and say ‘Have a good day’ like regular people.
In London it would be almost nine o’clock in the morning; here it was getting on for ten in the evening of the night before London’s morning. So I was really in yesterday but that’s nothing new. I had coffee and pineapple ice cream while the people around me from yesterday or tomorrow had whatever it was time for by their reckoning.
Through the glass I could see the spotlit gardens and the little Chinese pagoda. I visited the ladies’ and remembered the air freshener of 1993 with its Juicy Fruit fragrance. Now there was just a blank smell. Then I went out to the Japanese garden and sat under the gazebo there. It was raining a little by then, and the drops pattered on the roof and on the leaves and splashed in the ponds. It was a good sound and the rain was like a time freshener with a smell of tomorrows.
I must have been sitting there for quite a while when I heard another sound. Then I saw something on the ground that flapped a little and stopped. I went to it and saw that it was a bat, strange and furry, the fur not like a mouse but like a proper little flying animal. It seemed dead but I was afraid to touch it.
I was standing there looking at it when a very large security man with a gun appeared. ‘Everything all right?’ he said.
I pointed to the bat. ‘It just dropped out of the air,’ I said. ‘Is it dead?’
He knelt to examine it. ‘Ope’ape’a,’ he said. ‘It’s dead all right. They’re not as rare as they were a while
back but they’re still an endangered species.’
‘What did you call it?’
‘Ope’ape’a is the Hawaiian name. Hoary bat is what it’s called in English. Lasiurus cinereus semotus is the scientific name. It’s Hawaii’s only bat.’
‘How do you know so much about it?’
‘I’m a member of the Sierra Club and we have a project to save this bat. Look how beautiful it is.’ He held it up by its outspread wings. Its fur was grey, with a cream-coloured ruff around the head. Long ears and sharp teeth.
‘What killed it?’ I said. ‘Why did it fall out of the air right here in front of me? Do you think it was sick?’
‘No idea. I’ll take it to the university, there’s a man there who can do an autopsy.’ He took off his cap and put the bat in it. ‘Bat in a hat,’ he said.
‘Is it a male?’
‘Yes. How come you asked?’
‘No reason. Do you think it’s unlucky if a bat drops dead in front of you?’
‘Look at it this way: this bat got to the end of his run and he picked you for his crash landing. Most people never get to see an Ope’ape’a, so this makes you special.’
‘Like a beacon for dying bats?’
‘Try to think positive — maybe he was picking up good vibrations from you. Maybe he knew you’d keep him in your thoughts and remember him. Have you got a camera with you?’
‘Yes.’
‘So you should take some pictures.’
‘To capture this dead-bat moment?’
‘It’s a moment you’ll want to look at again.’
‘OK.’ I took one of him holding the bat and another closer one of the bat in his hands.
‘Here,’ he said, ‘I’ll take one of you with the bat.’ I gave him the camera and held up the bat and he did it. And came in for a second one, a close-up of my face. He was a nice-looking Hawaiian with a lot of charm.
‘I don’t need to remember what I look like,’ I said.
‘I do,’ he said. ‘My name is Henry Panawae.’
‘Henry, are you hitting on me? I’m old enough to be your mother.’
‘A woman like you is special,’ he said. ‘Age don’t matter. ‘Your name?’
‘Christabel Alderton.’ He was around thirty-five or so. The kind of man a woman says yes to. ‘You’re probably married with a couple of kids,’ I said.
‘For sure,’ he said, ‘but if I wasn’t.’
‘You’ve made me feel twenty years younger. Thank you.’
‘My pleasure,’ he said.
‘If you give me your address I’ll send you prints.’
He wrote down his name and his address on a notebook page that he tore off and gave me and I wrote down mine for him. It was raining harder so we got under the gazebo. ‘I make a circle around this day on my calendar,’ he said.
‘Me too.’ And I did. The circle is there now. And he and the bat are in my photo album. A moment I look at sometimes.
‘You going to be here a while?’ he said.
‘Yes. I’ll get a morning flight to Maui but I’ll be around all night. Later I’ll go to the lounge.’
‘OK, I’ll see you later then. I’ll be going on my rounds now.’ He turned to go, then stopped. ‘We never said hello properly,’ he said.
‘OK. Hello, Henry.’
‘Better we do it the old way, which is called honi: we touch foreheads, we look into each other’s eyes which is where the soul looks out, then with nose to nose we mingle our breath.’
I knew about honi because I’d done it in 1993 with Rudy Ka’uhane and his wife but I felt like teasing Henry. ‘That’s going pretty far with a stranger,’ I said.
‘Nobody’s a stranger, that’s what it’s all about, OK?’
So we touched foreheads and his thoughts were next to mine; we looked into each other’s eyes and I could see he was a man you could depend on; we mingled our breath and he wasn’t a stranger.
He left and I sat there for another hour or so, smelling the rain and listening to it on the roof and the leaves and the water of the ponds. I wondered what Elias was doing and whether he was thinking of me. I’d never looked straight into his eyes as closely as I did with Henry’s.
23
Henry Panawae
28 January 2003. That woman, Christabel Alderton, she was sad. Lot of trouble in her eyes. But she was special, maybe she’ll be all right. I hope so. Ope’ape’a picked her.
24
Elias Newman
28 January 2003. When I left Peter and went down to the netherworld of the Piccadilly Line with the ghost of Bo padding after me I found myself remembering Mary Snyder, a girl I had a crush on when I was fourteen. I’m not sure how Bo led me to her but there she was. She was very pretty, with blue eyes, fair hair and a face that I’ve seen on porcelain figures. I got her to go fishing with me one summer day. I cycled over to her place in Kulpsville or maybe it was Souderton and we rode to a nice little tree-shaded part of the Perkiomen Creek. I caught one small sunfish which I grilled over a little fire. Fortunately we’d brought sandwiches and a thermos of iced tea with us. Mary was so graceful, so nicely finished, a real pleasure to look at. I was thrilled to be with her, my first magic shiksa. She didn’t like Tchaikovsky and she wasn’t much interested when I wanted to read The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam to her but she seemed to like me and I thought she might be my girlfriend. That summer day was all there was. A few days later when I asked her to go to the movies with me she turned me down. She said her parents didn’t want her to go out with me. I asked her if it was because I was Jewish and she said yes. At school after that I’d see her in the halls with Karl Gunther and we’d both look away.
Thoughts of Mary Snyder took me to the big old wild cherry tree in our backyard and the books I used to read there as a child, sitting in its branches and eating sun-warmed cherries: three of my favourites were illustrated editions of Robin Hood, The Arabian Nights and Treasure Island. I still had them through high school but in 1959 my heart was broken when Jessica Williams dumped me for an older fellow who was in the Navy. As a broken-hearted lover I felt that I had entered man’s estate. Life was hard, women were cruel; it was time to put childish things behind me, so I took those three books and burnt them in the backyard. I watched bits of charred pages flying and the smoke rising past the bare winter branches of the cherry tree with a lump in my throat and tears running down my face.
Jessica had been my first serious girlfriend as an adult, which is what I considered myself at seventeen when we began to go steady. In 1958 I cycled over a hundred miles to visit her in Wildwood, New Jersey where her parents had a seaside bungalow. They lived in Philadelphia and earlier that year I’d taken Jessica to a concert in Robin Hood Dell. The night was full of stars and the Philadelphia Orchestra played Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture. The music swelled and my whole being swelled with it. I took her hand and squeezed it and she returned the pressure. First love!
Years later I wanted my three burnt books back, those editions and no others. They were, after all, a first love that never stopped being true to me even when their ashes were blowing in the wind. I haunted second-hand bookshops until I learned to use book searches and the Internet. I had no luck with The Arabian Nights because it was a cheap edition in which the illustrator had never been credited and I’d forgotten the publisher. I found the Robin Hood I wanted, illustrated by Edwin John Prittee, and only the other day I obtained from Abebooks my old Treasure Island with Louis Rhead’s wonderful illustrations. I held it in my hands and the pictures and text sprang to life as juicy and soul-satisfying as when I had them in the cherry tree. The book fell open to the page with the Hispaniola nearing the island at night. THE MAN AT THE HELM WAS WATCHING THE LUFF OF THE SAIL, said the caption under Rhead’s full-page pen-and-ink drawing in which Jim is about to get into the apple barrel, where he will hear:
Silver’s voice, and before I heard a dozen words I would not have shown myself for all the world, but lay there, trembling
and listening, in the extreme of fear and curiosity; for from those dozen words I understood that the lives of all the honest men aboard depended upon me alone.
No matter that Rhead drew a square-rigged ship when the Hispaniola was a schooner. Seeing that white moon in the pen-and-ink sky and the moonlit sea below, I could feel the warm wind filling the luff of that wrong sail. I turned from the picture to the text again and I had tears running down my face.
The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam was a teenage favourite that I never did think I outgrew; I still have the edition I wanted to read to Mary Snyder, the Fitzgerald translation, with an unforgettable drawing by Edmund J. Sullivan for each of the seventy-five quatrains of the first version. And I still know most of it by heart.
Recaptured childhood pleasures, however, were no help at present. Living alone was no longer good enough. Having opened myself to the possibility of not being alone, I now felt less than complete in Christabel’s absence and anxious in the uncertainty of where we were with each other. I sensed that the things I didn’t know about her were important. I also sensed that she was at some kind of hard place in herself. She was just as alone as I was and I didn’t think she should be alone right now. The more I thought about it the more I wanted to talk to her. She’d said she was going to Honolulu and Maui but she hadn’t given me any telephone numbers or the names of places where she could be reached.
25
Christabel Alderton
25 January 2003. And now a dead bat. Not just any bat but a rare one, an endangered species. I can imagine this bat — I’ll call him Jim, he’s from Maui. Hasn’t been feeling all that great so he goes to his doctor for a check-up. Doc Bat says, ‘What seems to be the problem?’
Jim says, ‘Shortness of breath, chest pains, I pass out when I hang upside down, my echolocation is wonky, I have trouble taking off and I can’t get any altitude.’
‘Hmmm,’ says the doc. Listens to Jim’s heart, looks into his ears, opens and shuts his wings, says, ‘Hmmm’ again and shakes his head.