[85] Eternal circling of souls in flight
Call them colours if you want, but they’re textures. They’re surfaces of light. I’m always climbing up from someplace dark towards that light. Something or someone throws me into a well every day at sunrise and I spend every minute of…
[84] Eroded by winding waters
And Wolfie stands in place and watches them vanish up the path and through the tree line onto the carriage street. For another day he will wander the city. Two years ago he had spent every day at this bench, a roll and a piece of ham on one…
[83] The storms, swamps, and jungles of modernity
Gus carved out his own world long ago, and no one after all his years inhabiting it is going to try to come get him or throw paint on his vision. He’s been approved. He had us over for lunch at his studio our first week back. What year was…
[82] Dicing for pieces of silver
Later, Emma looks and says to me, ‘Yes, that’s how she smiles at me.’
[81] Desires tend toward earthly ends
So a few days later, the Aaronsons commission me to paint their family portrait. What you have to understand, a city like this – if it happened indoors, it never counts. Emil appears at the cottage again with the offer, and with a price in…
[80] Back to where the sun is silent
I don’t know how to be poor. Too late for me, okay. But I know what being broke is like, and when we return to the Dream City, Emma tells me we have to stop using the purple fund. The afternoon we return, I tack a drawing on the poster wall…
[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…