Read The Vanishing Act Online

Authors: Mette Jakobsen

Tags: #General Fiction

The Vanishing Act (3 page)

BOOK: The Vanishing Act
12.06Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

‘All philosophers walk,’ Papa explained, ‘Kierkegaard, Descartes, Kant, Nietzsche, all of them. They walk along empty beaches with cold hands and windblown faces, searching their minds for the truth.’

I liked the beach early in the morning. The horizon would appear suddenly, as if someone had decided, said Mama, to paint two bold strokes on the night sky. And the beach changed overnight. There was much to be found along the water’s edge. Sometimes I forgot to think philosophical thoughts and stopped to collect raven bones and shiny shells among the rocks. If I were lucky I would find a whole raven
skeleton. They were beautiful, with black beaks and bones the colour of sand. Their skulls were the size of Boxman’s juggling balls, round and smooth with deep indentations where their eyes had been. Their necks looked like knots on a thick string of wool and their wings were still adorned with feathers. I had three of them in the tower in my collection of bones.

Papa never waved if we met on the beach on our solitary morning walks. He just stared into the sand and dark rocks and I tried to do the same. But if I happened to meet Mama I would stop and talk to her. She liked finding things, too, and had collected a rusty bike with bent wheels that Boxman unsuccessfully tried to fix for me, and half a violin with two strings that Mama thought looked like an unusual boat, in which you could go to unusual places.

Kant, Papa told me, took the same walk every day. He left his house at half past three every afternoon, timing his departure with such precision that neighbours, shopkeepers, the shoeshine man on the corner, and whoever else saw him adjusted their watches as he passed. He walked down the same streets, through the same park, passing the same shops and, just before turning the last corner into his street, he would admire the same large chestnut tree.

But one day the chestnut was gone. In its place were blue sky and a straight view to Madam Trapp’s laundry. On the footpath sat neat stacks of firewood. Kant went to bed with the heaviest of hearts and had no philosophical thoughts whatsoever for three weeks.

The worst thing about it all, said Papa, was that Kant began to sleep soundly at night.

‘But isn’t it good to sleep at night, Papa?’ I asked.

‘No, Minou, a philosopher should never sleep soundly.’

‘But why?’ I thought that sounded terrible. ‘Don’t you sleep, Papa?’

‘My girl, that is my greatest sorrow, I drink coffee every night and yet I sleep like a bear in hibernation.’ Papa’s cheeks flushed. ‘As if there was nothing to work out, no problems at all.’

I thought of my nights awake in the lighthouse and all the scarves I had knitted after Mama disappeared, and I wondered if staying up at night had made me a better philosopher.

Papa claimed the first word I said was ‘Hegel’. Mama said that I had just eaten my first enormous portion of stewed apples and had the hiccups.

But Papa insisted. ‘You had such an intelligent look in your eyes, Minou. You looked straight at me and said “Hegel”, loud and clear. And,’ he lowered his voice, ‘I read Hegel’s
Phenomenology of Spirit
to you when you were still in your mama’s womb. She thinks his sentences are too long, Minou, but I read to you while she was asleep. So you see, it’s perfectly plausible that your first word would be “Hegel”.’

I read Descartes’
Meditations
when I was ten, and tried to read Kant’s
Critique of Pure Reason
, but couldn’t make anything of it. Then I read Galileo and Freud. Freud, Papa explained, wasn’t really a philosopher, but still part of modern thinking.

‘You have to know what is out there,’ he said. ‘The more you know, Minou, the more equipped you are to find the truth.’

But Descartes wasn’t just a great philosopher, said Papa. He was also our ancestor and it was therefore especially important to know his philosophy well.

Papa told me that Descartes’ first name was René and that he was born in France on a cold day in March 1596.

Descartes said, ‘I think, therefore I am.’ He
argued that it is only through thinking that we can know something to be true.

I wasn’t sure I completely understood, and asked Papa, ‘You mean, we can’t even know the ocean exists just by seeing it?’

‘That’s true Minou, we can’t, although—,’ he glanced through the window at the dark ever-changing sea, ‘—it makes for such a convincing argument that I am almost tempted to make an exception.’

‘And me, Papa?’

‘You?’

‘Do I exist?’

‘You definitely exist, can’t you hear yourself think?’

‘Yes, but you can’t.’

Papa looked worried. ‘I’ll take your word for it,’ he said, and patted my head as if to make quite sure I was really there.

A philosopher, Papa explained, spends most of his time searching the dark room of his mind for the absolute truth; the one he has no reason whatsoever to doubt. Grandfather once said to Papa, ‘When you find the absolute truth it’s like finding the beginning. It’s like a string. You pull and pull and pull some more. And then it all falls into place.’

Papa hadn’t found the beginning yet. But he had
found smaller truths, and taught me how to write them down:

Truth:

Theodora had great stamina.

Evidence:

1) She built the houses and the church on the island.

2) She lived on the island with only a goat for company.

3) She read Aristotle every day.

Deduction:

Reason conquers all.

Papa often said that if only he had been as smart as Grandfather then he would have found the absolute truth a long time ago.

Kant still lay next to my pile of blankets in the lighthouse, and some nights I tried to decipher a sentence by torchlight. But all I could make out were odd shapes in the hollow spaces between the words: birds, lions, and the curve of Mama’s rowboat that had lain near the fishing spot since the day she arrived.

It was the twenty-seventh scarf that I had knitted. Descartes too had a hobby. He loved parades and would travel far and wide to attend one. Papa said it was entirely possible that Descartes’ hobby had contributed favourably to his reasoning. He encouraged me to keep knitting, so that I too could strengthen my philosophical faculties.

I glanced at the four portraits of Descartes on the big bulb. It was the same portrait, but in different sizes. I could barely make out his profile in the darkness, but I knew he looked both serious and brooding, as though he was pondering a very tricky philosophical question. Papa said I resembled Descartes quite a bit. I couldn’t really see it; instead his sharp nose and his dark eyes reminded me of Peacock.

Papa was still talking downstairs. A hoarse cry from a raven cut through the night. Snow whirled and danced on every side of the lighthouse and Boxman had moved on to a slow tune on the accordion. I stopped knitting and measured the scarf. It reached from one end of the mattress to the other. It was almost finished.

Mama liked birds. She liked the blue-black feathers of the ravens and their strong beaks, and she
had done many drawings of them. But the bird she liked more than any other was Peacock.

When Mama arrived she opened her red suitcase and unpacked five dresses, eight jars of paint, two brushes and a white enamel clock that didn’t work. She left the golden bowl outside the house, wherein Peacock immediately settled. Mama warned Papa that Peacock had seen things during the war that no bird should see. He had become sensitive and was known to nip without rhyme or reason. Papa didn’t know much about birds, but he knew how to repair clocks, and asked if Mama wanted hers fixed. But she didn’t, she liked time standing perfectly still.

Peacock lay in the golden bowl for hours each day, head resting lazily on the edge, but when he died years later, the golden bowl got filled with rain and snow, and over time it lost its shine. Mama didn’t like the bowl without Peacock in it. She even kicked it one day, because it reminded her that he had died. The bowl rolled onto its side where it lay, grey and neglected. But that didn’t stop the boatmen wanting to buy it.

The boatmen came with our weekly deliveries. We would all be on the beach, Papa and me, Boxman,
Mama and Priest, when their ship arrived out past the reef. We would watch the boatmen lower a dinghy into the chaotic sea and hear them swear across the waves. They didn’t like coming to the island. Our deliveries often consisted of packages in strange shapes and if they saw a box on the beach next to Boxman, packed and ready to go, then their swearing grew louder.

With every delivery the boatmen got a new shopping list. Mama used to add a list to Papa’s weekly order:

Flowers, red (if not possible, then yellow)

Ink, black

Three boxes of Zackerburg’s Ginger Treats (make sure it’s not Tennille’s Delights, they are too chewy)

Three tubes of oil paint: cerulean blue

A stuffed bird, white, to put in hair, not too big

Green ribbon

A pair of reading glasses. Same as the previous pair

A box of oranges, the finest you can get

A paintbrush, 15mm, horsehair only

Four rolls of violet yarn and another pair of knitting needles for Minou

The boatmen had lined faces and thin mouths, and their eyes were watery blue. They lived on the ship and whenever they had to step onto the beach they looked uncomfortable and wobbly, as if the sea moved inside them.

Once their dinghy capsized as it was leaving the island with one of Boxman’s wrapped boxes. Boxman shouted, the boatmen got wet and the box was lost. The sea was very deep. A few metres out the sand abruptly gave way to an oceanic grave, six hundred and fifty metres deep. The box for Ludwig von Bundig, Master of Card and Magic Tricks, sank to the bottom. I hoped it had lost its lid on the way down. It would make an extravagant home for fish and the kind of one-eyed creatures that live in the darkest places of the sea.

But, a few weeks later, Boxman’s loss was made up for in the unexpected form of No Name. The boatmen had no idea they had a dog on board. It was only when they lowered their dinghy into the sea that No Name appeared, jumping in one daring leap to sit between them. As they reached the shore, and before any of us knew what was happening, No Name scrambled onto the sand and ran straight past us, up the path.

When Boxman arrived home, No Name was sitting in the lilac interior of a spare box. Boxman wasn’t happy; he had never wanted a dog and certainly not a dog in one of his boxes. But later I found them: No Name asleep in the box, little dream-feet moving against the satin, and next to him Boxman, tenderly watching.

Papa was asleep when the boatmen stumbled across the golden bowl. He had spent all night having nightmares about the cellar, and the boatmen had agreed to help Mama and me up the path with the deliveries. When they saw the bowl, abandoned and dirty in front of the house, they wanted to buy it.

Mama wanted nothing of their proposals, not even when they offered her a special blue paint from France. And when they kept insisting she got angry.

‘Go back to your boat and find yourself some manners,’ she said.

I stood next to Mama, keeping an eye on the boatmen, as they wobbled down the hill past Theodora’s gates.

‘But Mama, you don’t really like that bowl,’ I said, as we watched them get back in their dinghy and leave the island.

‘It’s there to remind me.’

‘Of what?’

‘Two friends that survived the unspeakable.’ Mama turned around and walked towards the house.

‘What happened in the war, Mama?’ I ran after her. ‘With you and Peacock?’

‘Don’t ask me that again, Minou.’ Mama stopped at the doorstep to pin up a strand of her hair. ‘You know I can’t talk about it.’ Then she opened the door and went inside.

It was very late when I finished the scarf. Boxman had stopped playing and the lights in his barn were out. I folded the scarf, buried myself in the blankets and closed my eyes. I fell asleep listening to Papa’s voice and thinking about the ravens. How surprised they must have been all those years ago, when they flew out towards Mama’s rowboat, like twirling, tumbling hats, and saw Peacock sitting in the golden bowl.

Papa was rummaging through a drawer when

P
apa was rummaging through a drawer when I came downstairs the next morning. A gust of snow followed me through the front door into the warm kitchen. Papa was wearing an old fur hat, and gave me a rare smile as I stamped my boots free of snow on the mat.

‘It’s extraordinary, Minou,’ he said, pulling a knife from the drawer as if he had just found a wonderful treasure. ‘I feel young and invigorated.’

‘Why, Papa?’ I sat down at the kitchen table, noticing that Papa did in fact look different.

‘I am close to finding the beginning, Minou. The first truth.’ Papa poured me a coffee and began to slice the bread vigorously. ‘Ah, if only your mama
were here. There are so many things I would like to tell her, Minou.’

‘What would you say to her, Papa?’ I asked eagerly.

‘Oh, it’s very exciting.’ Papa put two pieces of bread on my plate, and pushed the butter and jam closer to me. ‘First, of course, I would tell her that with a constant temperature of six degrees below zero the dead boy is keeping remarkably fresh.’ Papa fumbled in his pocket and withdrew a crumpled note. ‘I measured the temperature at precise intervals last night, Minou.’ He waved the note in front of me. ‘But there is something else. In the middle of the night, as I was speaking to the dead boy, I saw his face in the shadows. His jaw, his hair, and I realised—’ Papa paused for effect, ‘—that he looks distinctly like a young Descartes.’ He took a gulp of coffee. ‘How strange we didn’t notice that yesterday, Minou.’

I buttered my bread and watched Papa retrieve his bucket from the cupboard. He seemed to have forgotten what Mama liked. He seemed to have forgotten that she believed in the imagination, and not in Descartes or measurements at precise intervals.
Once Mama closed her eyes and let her hand run through No Name’s fur. ‘Try, Minou,’ she said, ‘tell me what he feels like.’

No Name looked slightly confused, scarf askew, but I closed my eyes and felt his fur.

‘Like a pinecone?’ I said, then blushed, feeling I had spoken without thinking.

‘A pinecone?’ said Mama, and nodded as if I had just done something special.

Mama said she could feel snow, little cold shapes in her body, two days before it arrived.

Most times she was right. But Papa said that, if you say something often enough, you are sure to be right once in a while, and it did snow a lot on the island. And besides, Mama’s predictions often seemed to change with the way she was feeling.

‘Did you know, Minou,’ she said one day, ‘that seafarers and explorers of all kinds have visited this island? She looked out at the horizon. ‘I can see them arrive!’

‘Who, Mama?’

‘A pirate and his men, Minou, on a huge black ship. There is surf spraying from the bow and there, right there,’ Mama pointed, ‘is a silverfin tuna. It’s jumping alongside their ship.’

‘Were there silverfin tuna then too, Mama?’

‘Oh yes, Minou, there have always been silverfin tuna. This is a wonderful place. We are surrounded by history, little one.’

I stared in the same direction as Mama, but saw nothing apart from the endless sea, not even the faintest outline of a pirate.

But on another day Mama said, ‘This is a terrible, terrible place, Minou,’ shaking her head in despair. ‘No one can live on this island and stay sane. Not even Theodora, with her big hands and her “Reason conquers all”.’

‘But she did live here,’ I said.

‘She died.’

‘That was an accident,’ I protested.

‘That,’ said Mama, ‘is what everyone wants us to believe, little one.’

‘What do you mean, Mama?’

‘I mean that reason doesn’t help much when you are stranded on a barren island.’

A few days before I was born Mama found a black fish. It was beating its tail in the shallow water of a rock pool. Sea salt glittered like small stars on its scaly body, the way, she later told me, that
things become bright and visible when something extraordinary is about to happen. Mama had wrapped her scarf around the fish and was going to cook it for dinner. But halfway home, just before the gates, the fish cried out. It was a terrible cry, and as she unwrapped it, it looked straight at her, still crying out, its mouth wide open. It cried out like a cat, a baby, a siren, a rusty pipe, and all of them at once.

After that Mama wanted nothing to do with the fish, but Papa examined it and declared it to be a fine, healthy specimen and fried it for dinner. For the next two days he was sick in bed. Fever coursed through his body, and he couldn’t stop thinking about the root cellar. The war, he said, was in his blood again.

I was born three days later, and Mama was certain things would have gone very differently if she had listened to Papa and eaten the fish.

Everyone knew the story of my birth. Priest said, ‘Your mama was bigger than the church bell, Minou. Every night when I got to bed, I would look at the bell and pray for a safe delivery.’

Even Boxman, who had come to the island years later, would say, ‘That fish was scary, Minou.
Your mama trembled like an actress before the final curtain call.’

I asked Mama to tell the story of my birth again and again. And she never said no.

‘I was walking on the beach, right near the spot where I found the dead fish, when I suddenly felt an odd pain in my finger.’ Mama would hold up her left index finger and look at it curiously. ‘And the pain didn’t stop. It got worse. I sat down on a rock near the fishing spot and noticed that the ocean was unnaturally quiet. It was blank, like a sheet of drawing paper. And then the pain in my finger shot straight into my stomach. It wasn’t just pain, Minou, it felt like the waves had moved from the sea and into me. Soon I didn’t know whether it was me yelling, or if it was the cry of the fish still hanging in the air. When Priest found me I was lying on the sand and you were almost there.’

‘Did Priest get scared, Mama?’

‘No,’ Mama shook her head. ‘No, he was the finest helper. He put his jacket under me and he held my hand and I remember his eyes, Minou. He looked at me in the kindest way. I kept telling him that the fish was a bad omen and that I could still hear it crying out. But Priest kept saying, “I have it
on good authority that it will be a girl and that she will be a blessing to us all.”’ Mama looked at me. ‘I remember everything he said. He talked about pretzels and God, it was good to hear his voice.’

‘What happened then, Mama?’

‘You were born on Priest’s coat right at the water’s edge. And just as you arrived, your Papa came running down the path. He sat down in the water at my feet and took you in his arms. You were tiny, Minou, with the darkest hair.’

‘What did Papa say?’

‘He didn’t say much, little one. He was just so happy to see you. He kissed you and held you as if he had always had a little girl to look after. And then the ocean started moving again, one wave after another and you, little one, you stared into the sea like you knew it well. Then you looked at us in turn, at your Papa, at Priest and at me. And your Papa was sure that it was your way of saying hello to all of us.’

Papa was glad that Mama didn’t eat any of the fish. But even though she was right about the fish, he insisted that in general there is only one way to the truth and that is Descartes’ way.

I put jam on my bread and watched Papa as he buttoned up his coat, and got his nets and bucket ready. I needed to remind him what kind of things Mama liked. But it was difficult. Papa never wanted to talk about her. Like everyone else on the island, he was convinced she was dead.

I thought she was dead, too, right at the beginning. I even told No Name that she had been swallowed by a great big whale beneath Theodora’s Plateau, one dark eye peering from below the surface of the water.

No Name looked as if he didn’t quite believe me, but I reminded him of the story of Jonah, and that Mama, with her long red hair and black umbrella, would have caught any whale’s eye, and that she always, always, walked too close to the edge.

Mama disappeared the morning after the circus performance.

We had rehearsed for weeks, Mama, Boxman and I. Mama had put a big cross in the calendar for the day of the circus, and Papa and Priest had each received an invitation that she had expertly composed, sitting on a bale of hay in Boxman’s barn with an old black typewriter on her lap.

Come to the circus!

Time: 6pm Saturday

Place: Boxman’s Barn

Dress: marvellously

Prepare to be surprised

A storm reached the island some hours after the circus performance. I had watched from the tower as wind moved sand and pebbles from one end of the beach to the other. Lightning lit up the sky and Priest had rung the church bell until it was all over.

By morning the storm had passed and the rain was falling softly.

Papa had stayed in bed and left the fish to their own devices, and Turtle, who was blind and lived under the doorstep, appeared in the kitchen next to the stove. Turtle didn’t venture inside very often, and Mama almost stepped on him while making breakfast. His shell was wet and he looked like a different turtle.

‘He is so shiny,’ I said. ‘He is the same colour as the curtain last night, Mama. At the circus.’

Mama didn’t reply. Instead she paused behind me to smooth the collar of my dress. I had to wear a
dress every day and didn’t like it. I preferred wearing pants and a big green jumper with deep pockets, useful for storing things found on the beach. But every morning Mama would say, ‘Something special might happen today, Minou. And then you would want to be dressed for the occasion.’

The morning Mama disappeared she sat down on the edge of a kitchen chair and looked at me from across the table.

‘You should put your hair up, little one,’ she said, leaning over crumbs and coffee cups to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear.

Her eyes were a darker grey than normal. She looked tired. The door to the blue room was open when I got up. There was a blanket at the end of the bed. And I wondered if Mama had slept there instead of with Papa.

I shook my head. ‘I am going to visit Priest.’

Mama got back up and started to wipe the kitchen bench.

‘It falls down when I run,’ I explained.

Turtle headed towards the living room, almost hitting the door.

‘Will he be able to find his way out?’ I asked, feeling sorry for him.

Mama didn’t answer. She took off her apron and placed it on the chair. Then she picked out her purple shoes from the rack—her actress shoes she called them—with heels and a flower sewn on the side, and put them on.

I could see the ocean through the open kitchen door. A paint tin that must have belonged to Boxman floated on the quiet sea. I thought of how Priest had rung the bell, and how frightened he must have been by the storm.

‘Poor Priest,’ I said.

It was what Mama usually said when we saw the church lit up like a ship on a stormy night.

‘Yes.’ She stroked my cheek and smiled a sad kind of smile. ‘Poor Priest.’ Then she picked up Turtle and a black umbrella and walked out into the rain. I could see her walk down the path with the umbrella held high, stepping around the gates, then, swaying slightly in her heels, reaching the beach.

Papa appeared, standing in an old singlet, looking at the open door and then at Mama’s coffee cup on the table, still full.

‘Why is the door open, Minou?’

‘Mama has gone for a walk.’

Papa poured himself a coffee. He looked tired. ‘Is she all right?’

‘Yes, Papa.’

I kept looking at Mama in the distance, mesmerised by her silhouette, partly obscured by the black umbrella. But afterwards I couldn’t remember the last moment I saw her or where she was on the beach. It was like the vanishing act Mama had performed with Boxman the night before. One moment she was there, the next she wasn’t. All I remembered was the swaying of her umbrella.

Later that afternoon we searched for Mama. We searched the beach and Theodora’s Plateau. Boxman turned his barn upside down; he looked behind the apothecary’s desk and inside every box. And we searched the church. Papa climbed the stairs to the tower, but found nothing apart from Priest’s bed and the large silent bell. I looked in the shed next to the church, but I already knew there wasn’t room for anything else but the rusty machine. Priest even opened the door to his industrial oven.

The rain turned to snow then back to rain and late afternoon we went back to our house, all terribly wet and cold.

That night we waited up, sitting around the
kitchen table. No Name slept next to the oven, and Priest, who was fond of origami, folded an enormous number of paper cranes.

‘Cranes are such graceful animals, don’t you think, Minou? They remind me of your mama,’ he said, his hands working incessantly.

Papa didn’t say much. He made coffee over and over, and seemed to forget his manners when Boxman started crying and told us that Mama was by far the best circus artist he had ever worked with, better even than Cosmina.

Boxman turned to Priest, ‘Remember last night? The way she sang?’

Priest nodded. ‘She was spectacular.’

Boxman blew his nose on a serviette, ‘A real circus princess. The flower in her …’

Papa banged the coffeepot down onto the table so hard that the coffee spilled over and burnt his hand. ‘There will be no mention of the circus tonight.’

‘But Papa,’ I said.

‘Not even from you, Minou.’

Boxman went home early, but left No Name for me to look after. Priest stayed and told Papa about Moses. But I don’t think Papa listened. He just sat listlessly, staring into an empty cup as Priest
recounted Moses’ extraordinary strength in the face of trying circumstances.

I woke on the floor at dawn, certain that a boat horn had droned somewhere far away. I lay listening, waiting for the horn to sound again, but it didn’t. No Name was sleeping, warm against me. At some stage during the night Papa must have covered us with a blanket. Priest was asleep at the table, and over the chair next to him hung Mama’s apron. Papa moved around the kitchen, clearing the table and making a new batch of coffee.

BOOK: The Vanishing Act
12.06Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

The Serenity Murders by Mehmet Murat Somer
Out of Sight by Stella Cameron
Death Walker by Aimée & David Thurlo
The Figure In the Shadows by John Bellairs, Mercer Mayer
Pleasure for Pleasure by Jamie Sobrato