Nutshell(7)
Just one hymn to the golden world I’m about to possess. In my confinement I’ve become a connoisseur of collective dreams. Who knows what’s true? I can hardly collect the evidence for myself. Every proposition is matched or cancelled by another. Like everyone else, I’ll take what I want, whatever suits me.
But these reflections have been distracting me and I’ve missed the first words of the exchange I’ve stayed awake to hear. The aubade. The alarm was minutes from sounding, Claude murmured something, my mother replied, then he spoke again. I come round, I press my ear to the wall. I feel a disturbance in the mattress. The night has been warm. Claude must be sitting up, pulling off the T-shirt he wears to bed. I hear him say he’s meeting his brother this afternoon. He’s mentioned this brother before. I should have paid more attention. But the context has generally bored me – money, accounts, taxes, debts.
Claude says, ‘All his hopes are on this poet he’s signing up.’
Poet? Very few people in the world sign up a poet. I only know of one. His brother?
My mother says, ‘Ah yes, this woman. Forgotten her name. Writes about owls.’
‘Owls! A hot topic is owls! But I should see him tonight.’
She says slowly, ‘I don’t think you should. Not now.’
‘Or he’ll come round here again. I don’t want him bothering you. But.’
My mother says, ‘Nor do I. But this has to be done my way. Slowly.’
There’s a silence. Claude takes his phone from the bedside table and pre-emptively turns off the alarm.
Finally he says, ‘If I lend my brother money it’ll be good cover.’
‘But not too much. We won’t exactly be getting it back.’
They laugh. Then Claude and his whistling make for the bathroom, my mother turns on her side and goes back to sleep, and I’m left in the dark to confront the outrageous fact and consider my stupidity.
FOUR
WHEN I HEAR the friendly drone of passing cars and a slight breeze stirs what I believe are horse chestnut leaves, when a portable radio below me tinnily rasps and a penumbral coral glow, a prolonged tropical dusk, dully illuminates my inland sea and its trillion drifting fragments, then I know that my mother is sunbathing on the balcony outside my father’s library. I know too that the ornate cast-iron railing of oak leaf and acorn design is held together by historical layers of black paint and should not be leaned on. The cantilevered shelf of crumbling concrete where my mother sits has been declared unsafe, even by builders with no interest in the repairs. The balcony’s narrow width permits a deckchair to be placed obliquely, almost parallel to the house. Trudy is barefoot, in bikini top, and brief denim shorts that barely allow for me. Pink-framed, heart-shaped sunglasses and a straw hat top this confection. I know this because my uncle – my uncle! – asked her on the phone to tell him what she was wearing. Flirtatiously, she obliged.
A few minutes ago the radio told us it was four o’clock. We’re sharing a glass, perhaps a bottle, of Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc. Not my first choice, and for the same grape and a less grassy taste, I would have gone for a Sancerre, preferably from Chavignol. A degree of flinty mineral definition would have mitigated the blunt assault of direct sunlight and oven blast of heat reflected off the cracked facade of our house.
But we’re in New Zealand, it’s in us, and I’m happier than I’ve been for two days. Trudy cools our wine with plastic cubes of frozen ethanol. I’ve nothing against that. I’m offered my first intimation of colour and shape, for my mother’s midriff is angled towards the sun, so I can make out, as in the reddish blur of a photographic darkroom, my hands in front of my face and the cord amply tangled around belly and knees. I see that my fingernails need clipping, though I’m not expected for two weeks. I’d like to think that her purpose out here is to generate vitamin D for my bone growth, that she has turned down the radio the better to contemplate my existence, that the hand caressing the place where she believes my head to be is an expression of tenderness. But she may be working on her tan and too hot to listen to the radio drama about the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb, and is merely soothing with her fingertips the bloated discomfort of late pregnancy. In short, I am uncertain of her love.
Wine after three glasses solves nothing and the pain of recent discovery remains. Still, I’m feeling a friendly touch of disassociation: I’m already some useful steps removed and see myself revealed some fifteen feet below me, like a fallen climber spreadeagled and supine on a rock. I can begin to comprehend my situation, I can think as well as feel. An unassuming New World white can do this much. So. My mother has preferred my father’s brother, cheated her husband, ruined her son. My uncle has stolen his brother’s wife, deceived his nephew’s father, grossly insulted his sister-in-law’s son. My father by nature is defenceless, as I am by circumstance. My uncle – a quarter of my genome, of my father’s a half, but no more like my father than I to Virgil or Montaigne. What despicable part of myself is Claude and how will I know? I could be my own brother and deceive myself as he deceived his. When I’m born and allowed at last to be alone, there’s a quarter I’ll want to take a kitchen knife to. But the one who holds the knife will also be my uncle, quartering in my genome. Then we’ll see how the knife won’t move. And this perception too is somewhat his. And this.