What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours(62)
The siblings are so very unhappy. They can’t understand how this could be happening to them when they’ve never put a foot wrong. A colleague makes a jocular comment at lunch and introduces the possibility that someone in Moscow is pissed off with the wonder siblings, finds them insincere, has settled on this tortuous scheme to force them to dig their own graves. As you watch these siblings squabble over daily chores and exchange bland commentary on the doings of their neighbors there are unfortunate indications that every word of praise these two write actually is profoundly insincere, and has been from the outset. They have denied themselves all social bonds; everybody’s just an acquaintance. Now they search their souls, discern silhouettes of wild horses stampeding through the tea leaves at the bottom of their cups . . . What omens are these? “The horses are telling us to drink something stronger than tea.” This counsel is invaluable—the siblings dearly wish to be quiet, and it’s been their experience that alcohol ties their tongues for them. So they drink that at the kitchen table, facial expressions set to neutral, knees scraping together as each stares at the amply bugged wall behind the other’s head.
—
IT’S A SPECTRAL wisp of a film, film more in the sense of a substance coating your pupils than it is a stream of images that moves before you. It’s all felt more than seen; tension darkens each frame; by the end you can see neither into these siblings’ lives nor out. Neither, it seems, can they. The film seems to be a judgment upon the written word and the stranglehold it assumes. Woe to those who believe in what is written, and woe to those who don’t.
I put this to Aisha and she shook her head.
“It’s a puppet show,” she said. Yes, it’s that too. The film’s siblings are played by two feminine-looking puppets and voiced by a singer and a puppeteer, both friends of A’s stepfather. The sister towers over the brother; she’s wooden. The brother’s made of metal, and his face is one of the most arresting I’ve seen, composed entirely of jagged scales—scales for eyelids, a button-shaped scale for a nose. When he opens his mouth to speak, it’s as if the sea is speaking.
I’d decided to show the film to my own sister Odette, and as I waited in the lobby of Hotel Glissando I used the free Wi-Fi to watch it again in miniature, on my phone. A man tapped me on the shoulder and I looked up: He was a black man about my father’s age and half a head shorter than me. Those sideburns: I’d seen them (and him) before, but couldn’t think where. The man was talking. I pulled my earphones out.
“. . . looking well, Freddy. How have you been?”
“Yeah, really well, thanks. And yourself?” I hadn’t a clue who he was, but as long as one of us knew what was going on I didn’t mind chatting.
He nudged me with his elbow, winked. “You’re surprised to see me, eh? Thought I was dead, didn’t you?”
When he said that it all came back to me; this man really was supposed to be dead. He was my godfather, and I’d last seen him at my christening. I might have gone to his funeral but I’m not sure: I’ve been to so many they all blur together.
“Gosh, yes! So you’re alive after all? Excellent. How did you manage that? I mean, you went—”
“Sailing, yes,” he supplied, beaming.
“Right, sailing, you were circumnavigating the globe in your boat, and then there was that Cuban hurricane and bits of the boat washing up on various shores—”
“I ditched the boat pretty early on, Freddy,” my godfather said, serenely. “Sailing isn’t for me. I only came up with the idea to get away from the wife and kid, really, so once I got to Florida I just let the boat drift on without me.”
“So you let your family think you’re dead, er—Jean-Claude?”
“That’s right. I’ve been living here at the Glissando for years.” His hand moved in his pocket; I could guess what he was doing, having seen others perform the same ritual—he was running his finger around and around the outside of his room key card, doing what he should’ve done before he checked in and became subject to the rules. Before assuming ownership of a key you should look at it closely. Not only because you may need to identify it later but because to look at a key is to get an impression of the lock it was made for, and, by extension, the entire establishment surrounding the lock. Once you check into Hotel Glissando there’s no checking out again in your lifetime: I imagine this is a taste of what it is to be dead. In many tales people who’ve died don’t realize it until they try to travel to a place that’s new to them and find themselves prevented from arriving. These ghosts can only return to places where they’ve already been; that’s all that’s left for them. Depending on the person that can still be quite a broad existence. But whether its possessor is widely traveled or not, the key card for each room at Hotel Glissando is circular; if you took the key into your hand and really thought about it before signing the residency contract, this shape would inform you that wherever else you go, you must and will always return to your room.
“It’s nice and quiet here and every morning there are eggs done just the way I like them,” Jean-Claude said. “Jana divorced me in absentia and remarried anyway; she’s fine. And just look how well my boy’s doing!” My godfather opened a celebrity magazine and showed me a four-page spread of his son’s splendid home. Chedorlaomer Nachor’s House of Locks! Sumptuous! Mysterious!