Paradise and Elsewhere (6 page)

“Don't blink. Stay still,” he warned me, the watch ticking in his hand.

And after that, there were yet more photographs. These light pictures, he told me, made by and of the real body, were no mere daubs or imitations or interpretations, but a physical print of sex itself—that raw thing which joined humankind to the beasts, the irrational heart in the thinking machine, the greedy void that hid beneath the skirts of romance, the thing that lodged not just between our legs but also somewhere deep in the brain, hidden in a place which would some day be found and understood… The century to come, he told me, would be all about seeing the invisible, the interiors of our bodies and minds, the atoms of matter, the surfaces of the moon and stars. Open your legs wider, he said. Touch yourself.

And after all, he decided, it was far better that the inspector did not see me. Let alone the challenge of dressing—her things, whoever she was, did not fit me, a woman still part wild—his neglect in reporting my return would involve too much explanation. The smokehouse was the obvious place for me to hide during the inspection. But it was always possible that just this once Mr. Davis would decide to glance in there, or that I might grow restless, peer out of the window as they passed and give us both away… Did I understand how important discretion was?

Not really, no. Not yet. Any suspicions I had floated too deep to see or really feel; I knew only that something new burned inside him and I did not like it.

Suppose I waited the visit out in the bay at the north end? The inspector would never go there, would not even know such a private spot existed. Or better still, leave me on the mainland—I'd shelter in a cave or bush until it was safe to return… I do believe the keeper saw the sense of these stratagems, and even wanted to enact them. But he could not. He could not allow me to be beyond his sight and reach.

“Why ask,” I said, “if you will not hear what I say?” He caught me by the arm as I turned away; I bit him, drew blood. We fought hard, breathed in grunts as we yanked and twisted, gasping at what the other could inflict, though either we were perfectly matched or neither of us was quite prepared to deliver defeat; our struggle took us to the ground, and there turned blow by blow into its opposite, or else love became a battle; it's hard to say which, and when we woke, bruised and aching in the half-light of a new morning we were shocked at ourselves, terrified, when we realized that we had slept, fucked or fought through changing of the lamps. A strong wind buffeted the tower and though there was no sign of any harm done, we might never know if someone had been misled by the darkness, whether we had done any harm.

We were both overwrought, he said, and offered a tonic: another of his inventions. Just a few drops on the tongue—a sweetness, which soon became metallic. Then a vast, dense fog surrounded and infiltrated me, overwhelmed all my senses; sight, then hearing, touch and smell. I slept so soundly that I could neither move nor cough, but for good measure he tied me and fit me inside a box: I know this only because of the photograph. And shortly after I came to in the watch room, weak, hungry and at the same time nauseated, the birth pangs began to roll through my lower belly and up the insides of my thighs.

He would not seek help. There
was
none, he said.

Limbless, covered in thick fur, her small face arranged around dark, deep eyes like mine, our child was stillborn. I wrapped her and held her close, knew I must return her to the sea and begged him to let me go down to the rocks. “I'll take you,” he said, and though his voice was gentle, he was rightly fearful that I might swim away or drown myself. He grasped my hand tight and would not let go as we clambered back from the water's edge.

And perhaps it was to the good, he said, adding syrup and a measure of brandy into hot tea: the same for each of us, and I watched him drink first. The island was no place for a child, he said. Mere breeding was not what free thinkers such as he and I were for.

Free?

He said that he understood that I was sad, that words failed me, but he knew it would pass. And luckily, we had our work for the light, the routine around which all else must be fitted… Winter would come soon, bringing storms. We must eat well, gather back our strength, and put everything in order.

Now he wore the keys at his waist and locked doors behind him. When he was away, I was bound to the bed. And yet I also worked my share, cleaning the panels of the lens, and, when permitted on the windy platform outside the watch room, I scanned the sea for ships. I explored my prison too; I found, folded and tucked into the back of the Bible an article headlined
Tragic Death at East Point
: Two days after the storm of November 3
rd
, the battered body of the deputy lightkeeper at East Point had been found washed up some three miles south of the island, following a failed attempt to launch the lightship craft in order to aid a whaler in distress. The fate of the whaler was still unknown.

A small key at the back of the desk drawer led me to a box containing a single photographic print of a woman who could only be my namesake: she wore the clothes I had handled, and stood against the whitewashed cottage wall, her blonde hair blurring in the breeze. Beneath the photograph was a lock of red-gold hair, and a copy of the signed statement the keeper had submitted the day following the discovery of his colleague's body.
I was sadly mistaken
, he wrote,
in thinking my poor wife cured of an infirmity for which she had in the past been treated. Acting impulsively during a fit of hysterical mania brought on by the storm and feelings of guilt concerning the loss of the deputy, she cast herself into the water while I slept.

 

A
nd now the days shortened
; flocks of birds passed, returning north across the vastness of the ocean. I said nothing to the keeper, but thought often of Marina, whose body had never been found. Had she loved the deputy keeper, or simply been the object of his affections? I did not like to think of her as drowned, let alone murdered. Did she go into the sea? Perhaps she was like me, but able to return? Had she found her skin? Or did she swim in the awkward human way to the mainland, and make some kind of escape… Who knew, I told myself, but that she might be living with natives in the bush, or have got so far as the town and have booked her passage out under a new name. Out there on the platform, buffeted by the winds, I breathed in the cold salt air and watched the seabirds, marvelling at the way they stayed together, and at the steady beating of their wings, mile on mile. The largest birds, the mollymawks, pass without apparent movement or effort through the air; their wings fixed, just barely tilting from side to side to ride the currents like waves, they simply turn their heads the way they wish to go… Such huge birds, the mollies, yet it was as if they had no weight. I watched them slip and soar and it lifted my heart. I longed for the bird-­feeling and imagined it: the ocean and the land spread out beneath in intricate detail, but also in depth and with extraordinary focus. In my mind's eye I saw as if from very far above the rocks the island and the tower where I myself stood looking out. The wind blew steadily to the east and the air seemed to offer itself to me. And I would not go back inside, would not endure another night with Clarence Morgan, the clockwork beneath us unwinding itself cog by cog until the next time it must be set, and the next, and the next. Ignoring his call, I climbed onto the rails, balanced for one terror-stricken moment then gave myself to the wind. Immediately I felt the new strength in my chest and back, the structural dominance of two great limbs.

The water below was almost pink. Just two wing-beats, and I was rising fast. I could no longer hear his call, and did not look back, for the air is a kind of ecstasy, a far freer thing than even a swimmer could believe.

Yet I'll admit that come spring, on my way to the grounds, I did return, and landed on a low cliff to watch my former keeper, on the beach below, set up a new version of his camera. The apparatus was directed at the seals sunning themselves on the rocks. He was thinner and older than I recalled. He had broken his promise not to hurt me, and there was a gun slung over his shoulder which I knew he might use. Yet even so, watching him, I felt for the first time the need to open my wings wide and stretch my neck to its utmost, then tuck my head deep down this way, then that, to stretch and bow and tread out the steps of our dance. A sound came out of me, part shriek, part moan: oh, look at me! For looking is the beginning of the dance. He must see me exactly as I am and what I do, the exact way of it, and I, likewise. And by scrupulous imitation, turn on turn, we come to see better and prove to each other that we see, and what we see. We must show that each can and will exactly follow the other, or, failing, try again…

Hearing me, the keeper turns and reaches for his binoculars. He faces me, but gives no sign of recognition or sympathy. My call dies in my throat; I put myself into the wind, run, and scull hard until the updraft bears me and I ride suddenly without effort and free of the earth's jealous pull; I soar above vast ocean into the even vaster air. I must fly on to the place where I will meet my kind, and find the one with whom I can perfect the dance.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My Beautiful Wife

 

 

 

 

T
his, here, is the beginning
of spring: the snow has melted; it is a yellow-grey day, and faintly raining. Gulls tear the still air with their screams, wheel between the concrete blocks, settle on the chimneys and on the mud-green balconies and their empty flower troughs. And now for the first time in many months the tape has been peeled off, the catches oiled, the double glazed panes pulled in: the windows are flung open to be cleaned. Siiri Nistsoo shakes her rug from her balcony. My neighbours pause at the doorways to the staircases and talk. Perhaps they seem to stand straighter than last week; certainly the courtyard paths have reappeared now that the snow is gone and children play on the red climbing frame by the stand of birch trees; they spatter themselves with mud and the last of the slush as they rush from the bottom of the slide to the steps at the back. Two of my neighbours' wives, both hatless for the first time this year and wearing the self-same purple anorak from Lauduhama, watch over them with half an eye, while Ralf Jarlik, once an engineer, now a member of the parliament, crosses from 134 House to empty his rubbish bucket into the skips that stand in the middle of the courtyard. He's wearing a good coat these days. A scrawny Alsatian sniffs at the mud. The gulls caw and wheel, caw and wheel. Television aerials stretch from the flat roofs, quiver, point in the direction of news: there is more of it now, and more reliable.

Soon, Liia said this morning, we will be able to wear our summer clothes. All these small changes are important.

For example, because it is the weekend, Liia makes proper coffee, from beans, which last year were unavailable. The quality could still be better, but even so we savour its complex bitterness as our eyes rove through the window—out, always out. The place would look less anonymous, I think, if the windows and balconies of each block were painted a different colour. I tell Liia I might suggest it: little improvements are happening all the time. But really they should blow the whole district up and start again. If it could be afforded.

At least, says Liia (she always tries to make things bearable) there are trees within sight of the windows, on one side. But the kitchen is too small, as the English say, to swing a cat in. It always has been so, but I find it seems even smaller now. The sink on its brackets, not level, a row of the green swirled tiles behind it. The folding table, the round topped plywood stools pushed under it, the two shelves: everyone has them. The cooker, once white enamel, its lid that no longer folds down, its leak that no one could ever fix. How sick of it I am. We are lucky to have no children and so enjoy three other rooms—a study each and a bedroom which we also use as a lounge. We need all that space for our books.

Yesterday, my wife Liia said to me: “Tell me, Toomis, why is it that I can never-ever find a book in this collection of ours?” She stood at the threshold between our two studies. Her white-gold hair was just brushed and bristled with electricity. She wears it cut simply, straight, at shoulder length with a fringe. She has scarcely aged in fifteen years. Her voice, I thought, was teasing.

“I don't know, my love, my little berry,” I told her, “but what is it you want? I will find it for you.” The library system is perfectly workable. Chronology is the most important factor, but here and there I think an author deserves to have all his works next to each other, however long he lived. And then again sometimes a volume on the history of France makes connections with one from Political Theory or English Literature and so I might put the two of them together. Then of course, I put those I use most nearest to my desk, which can only be sensible. I have explained this before, but she will not agree.

“You are just like a man,” she said. Of course I am! But that, she said, is not what she means. She went back into her own study. She is a translator, I am a historian (though I have worked mainly as a language teacher and currently am of necessity in a clerical role: perhaps that explains this disagreement over the library system).

And then mischief entered me. Just like a man, I thought. What a statement! I went from shelf to shelf, pulling out books. The yellow books and then the red and the blue, the white spines and the brown. It took an hour or so, extracting them from their correct places, deciding where to draw the line between orange and red, and which colours to put next to each other. I dusted them and ranked them, by hue, on a single shelf. It cheered me up, as physical work can, so I started to whistle, and the sound of that brought her in.

“What's this?” she said.

“Is this a woman's system then?” I asked. “Will this suit you?” I found myself laughing like a schoolboy, uncontrollable; I did not understand why I was doing it. I am not a frivolous person, I thought, even as I continued to laugh and she stared gravely at me. Eventually, she smiled and only then I stopped. Oh, she said, but how long did it take you to do this, my love? Do we have so much time to spare? It was a joke, I told her, only that. But somehow it was not the truth.

There are cars now, parked in a neat row at the edge of the green. All sorts of people have them. What use is a car, Liia says. Books are more important. A car can only take you half as far as the fuel you can pay for lasts, and then you have to come back; but books are infinite journeys and each one can be taken many times. We two, she smiles, are old travellers,
n'est ce pas
?

I was her teacher once, and she the cleverest student I ever had. And I was married to someone else, but I left, because not to would have been unbearable. In books, we renewed our passion, secretly at first, then frankly. We met other worlds and then returned to each other. Much of the past twenty years Liia and I have spent reading.

Back then, what we read rarely had consequences. The ideas could not grow. They came from elsewhere, like seeds blown on the wind, and depended on freedom's climate to grow: that was why we loved them so. I realize now that when I imagined the revolution, before it happened, I thought of it in terms of what we would be able to read. I thought of reading works by people who were only reputations to me, magic names, pregnant with many possibilities, of finding books I had hunted for in vain; they would fall into my hands like ripe plums. I dreamed of owning my own copy of an important text, being able to write pencilled notes on the page. I imagined gifts of books between me and my wife and the conversations we would have about them; I thought of books in our own language as well as foreign ones. That was what excited me about freedom. Since it has happened, I see of course that it means other things as well, instead, even. Perhaps the thing is that before we had only books? Somehow, I cannot read today.

The spring disturbs me. It is a time of longing. Paths criss-cross the courtyard, leading to other blocks like this and other courtyards and eventually to the woods, where the march bells will soon be out, then the crocuses and daffodils. We will go as soon as the mud has dried. Oh, summer… At this point, we all long for it, for the trees, the myriad rustlings and the light through leaves, for the long days, the feeling of sun on our skins, the other pleasure of shade. Picnics. I would like to have a car.

But that is the future still. Now, the rain begins to fall more heavily. One day in this country, I often say, we will learn to make drains, which currently exist only in the dictionary. One day, Liia said to me yesterday, we will learn how to talk to each other in different ways. Which way? How, different?

In the afternoon, I take the trolleybus to the market. My wife used to do this but some time back she said that she goes three times in the week and why should it not be shared? And I said that I am both working and studying at night school and so have less time, but, she said, who makes you do that? So I go to please her. At the entrance a row of people stand with puppies huddled in their coats or sleeping in straw shopping bags, all newness, shining fur, half-human faces, clean paws.

I go past the tools and vacuum parts, the military paraphernalia which only tourists buy. On through the new clothes, stall after stall, garments I don't even recognize, colours I don't have names for. Past the imported groceries tied to the shelves with string, the fat overwintered carrots in their dirt, the new potatoes, the churns of milk, the apples in piles. There are bananas everywhere now, but still too expensive for regular use. I buy sausage, bottled peas, bread and a chicken. Old women stash their money away in broken purses, kept among the cuts of meat. There is never enough change! A plastic bag costs thirty cents. It takes longer than you might think. All these things, the quantities, the choices, it is tiring somehow.

When I get back, there is a small pile of books on the rug in the centre of my room. The door to her study is ajar. What is this? I call. Those: they are the books written by women, she calls back. I am sure that she is wrong, and look for myself, but I only find two more.

But what do you mean by it? I ask, standing at the threshold of her room. She pauses in her typing but doesn't turn her head. A good book is a good book, I say, surely, whoever has written it? I'm not sure, she says, it's just that I never thought to do it before. Simply to count. She laughs. Then she looks at me and I can't name the expression. Somewhere between shy and amazed.

Something must have made you think of it, I say. This is the twentieth century and she is no longer translating just the classics, but contemporary works also. Yes, she says, I wonder: would I ever have thought of it on my own? She's talking to herself. For a second, I feel invisible.

Currently, at the office, I am compiling biographies of our politicians. There is to be a brochure, issued to everyone in the country, detailing their professions, family status, and beliefs as well as a symbol for the party they stand for and a photograph. And at night, I read about economics and make summaries—this is for my Diploma in International Relations: it is no use being only a historian. Neither is it much use, in my opinion, having a government of poets forever. Besides, if they stop writing we will have no literature!

We need a new kind of politician, I tell Liia over supper. She has forgotten to take off her reading glasses and they steam up in the heat of the soup. The ingredients are much better now. We can savour what we eat, make it last with talk as they do in Europe, in novels. Yes, I say, we need a new kind of man, one who has an overview, and not served under previous conditions of course, because old habits—not so much of thought but of behaviour—die hard. I study her as I speak.

My wife is a very elegant woman. The cloth we have here is not of the best quality, but she wears the things she has made as if they were couture. She is slender, her hair the colour of winter sunlight, her skin, though it suffers a little at this time of year, is smooth as the finest paper. Her grey-green eyes call to mind the sea, the flecks of gold are sun on the waves: she is beautiful, there is no other word; no one like her. Myself, I am not handsome and I am older, ordinary. I have a potato face, but she has told me often that she loves it.

Visitors find us inexpressive, and this may be a result of the long years when to preserve one's self was to conceal it. But we two read each other well enough and I see a tremor pass over Liia's face as I talk about government—the faintest of frowns, just for a second as she bends forward over her plate. I have not yet told my wife that I see myself as a statesman eventually, an ambassador perhaps. Of course, it may not be possible. But I think I am as qualified as anyone else, and am beginning to build up the connections. Only last week I drank a beer with the Minister for Foreign Affairs.

I'll do it then? I say, meaning the dishes, which I also do on weekends. Toomis, why
ask
? she says. Then I am angry. She and I have run through gunfire across the Town Hall Square, and hidden in a cellar until morning. We have suffered countless indignities and wiped them away from each other in the night with words and caresses. We have not gone through all that, become free, in order to argue over greasy dishes. I want to tell her this and other things, I want to talk of the future, of international relations, of the possibilities, the right way to proceed. But she is not there. She has slipped away and back to her damned books. I almost want to take her by the shoulders (but they are so very thin) and shake her and say—

But I am not sure what, and I plug the sink with the bit of rag and fill it. We are making our own washing-up liquid now, faintly scented with something like lemons. The bottle is bright yellow plastic, with a picture of bubbles on it, though not so many come in reality. I search my mind for things I have read which might bear on the situation and I find nothing. Then I think that it is all over in five minutes and that if I can one day be an ambassador, to have gone to market and stood with my hands in greasy water on weekends will be neither here nor there. So long as I can take my place, I think, and this is a new feeling for me—I was before a medium and a repository for ideas, a memory, never a man of action. I realize that I am reading differently now: not all books interest me equally as they once did. I examine them for their use, their application. I see that I have already bypassed who I was, even though I seem to be the same and even though my circumstances are lagging behind me.

She works late in her room. I get out the bed and arrange the quilts and pillows for later. I go to the window. Karel from downstairs stands stock-still while his half-breed dog careens about in the night, its breath smoking. On Monday, if the weather holds, the old women will be out with their twig brooms, clearing everything away, last year's rubbish, the weekend's dogshit. I see too that the old person in the torn coat is rummaging about in the bins again, pulling out the cardboard cartons and the bottles and putting them into separate carrier bags: another new thing. Lights burn behind the thin curtains. Most things are thin here and curtains are a good example: I have seen foreign ones in magazines, velvet drapes on heavy rails, but here they are scanty pieces of cloth or net which only gesture at concealment. I made our curtain hooks myself, bending them from wire. I am an intellectual and not a naturally practical man but circumstances compel. The flat opposite ours has a brand new white venetian blind, but that is very unusual and I wonder how they came by it. Carpets too are thin, not like the ones you find in hotels, and mostly clothes are thin as well, which surprises visitors. Coats are one exception: woollen, kapok-lined. Without such a coat, here you would die… Things, so many things.