Stone Mattress: Nine Tales(73)

Perhaps the strike, or whatever it is, will be on the local news. She can listen while washing the breakfast dishes, which she does fairly well if she goes slowly. In case of broken glass she’ll have to connect with Services on the intercom and then wait for Katia, her personal on-call cleaner, to arrive and sweep up the damage, tut-tutting and lamenting in her Slavic accent all the while. Splinters of glass can be treacherously sharp, and it would be unwise of Wilma to risk a cut, especially since she’s temporarily forgotten which bathroom drawer she keeps the Band-Aids in.

Blood puddles on the floor would give the wrong signal to the management. They don’t really believe she’s able to function on her own; they’re just waiting for an excuse to slot her into Advanced Living and grab the rest of her furniture and her good china and silver, which they’ll sell to support their profit margin. That’s the deal, she signed it; it was the price of entry, the price of comfort, the price of safety. The price of not being a burden. She’s kept two of her nice antiques, the little escritoire and the dressing table – the last relics of her former household. The rest went to her three children, who had no use for such things really – not their taste – and no doubt stuck them all in the cellar, but who were reverentially grateful.

Upbeat radio music, jovial chit-chat between the male host and the female one, more music, the weather. Heat wave in the north, flooding out west, more tornadoes. A hurricane heading for New Orleans, another one pummelling the eastern seaboard, the usual thing for June. But in India it’s the opposite story: the monsoons have failed and there are worries about a coming famine. Australia is still gripped by drought, with, however, a deluge in the Cairns area, where crocodiles are invading the streets. Forest fires in Arizona, and in Poland, and also in Greece. But right here all is well: it’s a good moment for the beach, grab some rays, don’t forget the sunblock, though watch out for storm cells popping up later. Have a good day!

Here’s the main news. First, a regime topple in Uzbekistan; second, a mass shooting in a shopping mall in Denver, the doubtless hallucinating assailant then killed by a sniper. But third – Wilma listens harder – on the outskirts of Chicago, an old-age home has been set on fire by a mob wearing baby masks; and a second one near Savannah, Georgia, and a third one in Akron, Ohio. One of the homes was state-run, but the other two were private institutions with their own security, and the inhabitants of them, some of whom were fried to a crisp, were not poor.

It was not a coincidence, says the commentator. It was coordinated arson: a group naming itself Artern has claimed responsibility on a website whose account-holders the authorities are attempting to track down. The families of the elderly dead people are naturally – says the newscaster – in shock. An interview with a weeping, incoherent relative commences. Wilma switches it off. There was no mention of the gathering outside Ambrosia Manor, but it’s probably too small and nonviolent to have registered.

Artern. That’s what it sounded like: they didn’t spell it. She’ll ask Tobias to watch the television news – an activity he claims to dislike, though he’s always doing it – and tell her more. She ignores the festival of little people that’s going on in the vicinity of the microwave, a pink and orange theme with multiple frills and grotesquely high beflowered wigs, and goes to lie down for her morning nap. She used to hate naps, and she still does: she doesn’t want to miss anything. But she can’t get through the day without them.



Tobias leads her down the hallway towards the dining room. Theirs is the second sitting: Tobias considers it gauche to lunch before one. He’s walking more quickly than usual and she asks him to slow down. “Of course, dear lady,” he says, squeezing her elbow, which he’s using to propel her. Once he’d slipped his arm around her waist – she still does have a waist, more or less, unlike some of the others – but that had unbalanced him, and the two of them had almost toppled over. He’s not a tall man, and he’s had a hip replacement. He needs to watch his equilibrium.

Wilma doesn’t know what he looks like, not any more. She’s probably embellished him; made him younger, less withered, more alert. More hair on top.

“I have so much to tell you,” he says, too close to her ear. She wants to tell him not to shout, it’s not as if she’s deaf. “I have learned they are not strikers, these people. They are not retreating, they have increased in number.” This turn of events has energized him; he’s almost humming.

In the dining room he pulls out her chair, guides her into it, pushes the chair back in just as her bottom is descending. It’s an almost-lost art, she thinks, this graceful ladies’ chair push, like shoeing horses or fletching arrows. Then he sits down opposite her, an obscure shape against the eggshell wallpaper. She turns her head sideways, gets a vague impression of his face, with its dark, intense eyes. She remembers them as intense.

“What’s on the menu?” she says. They’re given a printed menu for each meal, on a single sheet of paper with an embossed, fraudulent crest. Smooth, creamy paper, like the theatre programs of a former era, before they became flimsy and cluttered up with advertisements.

“Mushroom soup,” he says. Usually he dwells on the daily offerings, disparaging them gently while reminiscing about gourmet banquets from his past and reflecting that no one knows how to cook properly any more, especially not veal, but today he skips all that. “I have been delving into it,” he says. “In the Activity Centre. I have been trolling.”