[79] A tender spring melancholy
Life counts nothing until you give it meaning, and then its value lies in how much you insist it have. On days Paul’s happy with his work, that is what he would tell me if he knew what he was thinking. But he can’t express it while he’s…
[78] Know? Do? Hope?
We marry in Budapest on our slow return to the Dream City. It will silence the people we don’t want to have to listen to so that we can get back to things that matter. Budapest, because Charlotte is there that month and can summon witnesses…
[77] This urge to convey the relation
We get a letter from Gus a year later, in the spring. It’s short and empty of useful content. He’s no good with words in any form; he can barely bring himself to sign his name. But he wrote this one all by himself, and here’s what it says:…
[76] Leave chance to the shy one
In the Dream City, subtract all the poor people, all the outer district people, the aristocrats, the howling shopkeepers, the numbing bureaucrats – in other words, all the people you don’t know – and you’re left with the people you can’t…
[75] What will remove all fear forever?
I write to Gus every month for us both. We never get one back from him. We don’t expect to – he dreads writing letters. But we get them from friends of Gus, along with heavy envelopes stuffed with gallery notices and newspaper clippings.
Grandfather…
[74] Naught but their primordal begetter
I come home from dinner shopping, soaking wet from a March rainburst, to wait him out in his studio before a walk to Gerstl. But with two hours of light left, the studio door is gaping open, and Paul is sitting on the couch, reading the neighbourhood…
[73] Let us meet the gods on another star
Maybe it’s good that I’m going to see Mister Professor again next week. Maybe it’s time I told someone the nightmare. Maybe, maybe, I’m running out of time to do it. All those sessions from eight years ago, and all those mind tricks…
[72] Wise and dread spirits
It’s just grandfather and I, with an hour of sunlight left by the time he closes his shop, and I’ve talked him into posing his hand for me while we wait for Emma to return from Charlotte’s inner palace. He’s at his kitchen table, with…
[71] Time as the crushing new dimension
When I tell him that Charlotte has found me, he smiles: ‘Good old Charlotte ...’ How do we learn to love? By now I know how he did. We’re not jealous of each other about anything (he won’t touch another woman – I know because I’m…
[70] To the Kimmerian lands
The same afternoon she’s going to Charlotte’s for luncheon, I walk to the Outer Orbit. How can one walk safely in this city? To the always next place? By walking with eyes open to the sun within you. Capitalism is a shadow over the world…
[69] If the death wish ever dies
After we moved into grandfather’s stable loft, for twelve days I couldn’t bear for her to be out of my sight. Then on day thirteen, I woke up beside her thinking, ‘There – that’s the longest I ever stayed with any woman.’ The first…
[68] Predicting ruins, fulfilling dreams
Any secrets Emma has had till now, they’re ones from before she met me, and she keeps those from everyone. Sometimes I trip over the mute signs when she doesn’t think I can see them. For example, she had a nightmare once, I can tell. I know…
[67] Where do we walk?
Paul needs to get out sometimes, not that I can ever put it to him that way. He must know it too, or he wouldn’t let me make us go out. Before Johnny’s Big Day, which is, before we moved into this apartment, when he was between series (I…
[66] No chambers of stone, no palace or dwelling
Grandfather’s room over the stable had two north windows, good for Paul. No heat, no water, but two north windows. Paul installed a brazier and punched a hole in the roof for a metal chimney for when it got really cold. We needed the city.…
[65] Simultaneous experience of consciousness and dreaming
Swig again. Then in heels and one red stocking and red lipstick, foot on our high bed, I bend over again and look under my shoulder. ‘I don’t mind,’ I tell him again. ‘Get me drunk first, all right.’
[64] You have lived
That drawing of Emma I made while we were waiting for Emil at the Griensteidl. I’d posted it on my way out, on their notice board by the business cards and theatre bills. I regretted that, because it was a specially good one, so I went back…
[63] Fright and horror might overcome
[63] Fright and horror might overcome
After we met Emil ... Sometimes we’re both too proud, okay, but we didn’t know that at the time. I can plead youth, a little, possibly – I wasn’t so young any more – but even so, it made me…
[62] The myths that comfort me
Johnny doesn’t need a big world yet. In the studio, I fold two painted blankets in the circus trunk and wrap his fist around a piece of chalk to colour his face, and Mister Frog is bobbing where he can watch, and it’s enough for the little…
[61] Hushing the room enclosed
Emma says, here, this is his table. We’re twenty minutes early, which gives us half an hour before Emil is expected. When she’s looking her best, she’s a whip. You can soften her all you want, with all the frills you can sew on – her…
[60] Evil wonder
Paul’s silence companions me. I’m out shopping or pushing Johnny’s pram down the quay, and I picture him working, or sitting there staring past his pipe and his three-fingered shooter in his parlour chair, or dandling Johnny in the air,…
[59] Beyond the reach of the senses
That first month, I’m always almost telling her, ‘Emma, there was a time ...’ But I never do. Better neither of us. Our first summer, she’s always asking me about day-to-day things, soaking them in, but about before we met, she has only…
[58] A seven-headed beast from the sea
One day, she may tell me how. The first night we spent together should have signalled me her nature – not the way she followed me into the forest without a word or look, not her first moment of swoon, or the firelight on her hair, or the way…
[57] Carious teeth that cannot spit
Art is a description without a place. I can handle a portrait easily enough, because the subject has to hold still, and I can sense what he would do if he moved, and that shows if I’ve painted him well. And I can handle an allegory, but that’s…
[56] History is in thrall to repetition
It’s happened once or twice a year since I met Paul – Emil approaches me wearing his deputation face some afternoon when Paul isn’t there and makes a prepared speech about how mommy wants me to get help for something. Which is how she…
[55] Not all our strange mother lost
That summer, Paul and I pull a bubble over ourselves, so that we can see out if we have to, but I don’t want to. We have a magnetic field in place, I can feel it by holding his hand, my life heightened by his touch. I don’t go back to Emilie’s…