There is a photograph of me you have seen but will probably not remember. It was taken in 1918, when I was not yet two. I am on my feet; I appear to be reaching towards the camera; my mother, kneeling behind me, restrains me by some kind of rein that passes over my shoulders. Standing to one side, ignoring me, is my brother Paul, his cap at a jaunty angle.
My brow is furrowed, my eyes are fixed intensely on the camera. Am I merely squinting into the sun or, like the savages of Borneo, do I have a shadowy sense that the camera will rob me of my soul? Worse: does my mother hold me back from striking the camera to the ground because I, in my doll's way, know that it will see what the eye cannot: that I am not there? And does my mother know this because she too is not there?
Paul, dead, to whom the pen has led me. I held his hand when he was going. I whispered to him, 'You will see Mama, you will both be so happy.' He was pale, even his eyes had the blanched hue of far-off sky. He gave me a tired, empty look as if to say: How little you understand! Did Paul ever really live? My sister life, he called me once in a letter, in borrowed words. Did it come to him at the end that he had made a mistake? Did those translucent eyes see through me?
We were photographed, that day, in a garden. There are flowers behind us that look like hollyhocks; to our left is a bed of melons. I recognize the place. It is Uniondale, the house in Church Street bought by my grandfather when ostrich-feathers were booming. Year after year fruit and flowers and vegetables burgeoned in that garden, pouring forth their seed, dying, resurrecting themselves, blessing us with their profuse presence. But by whose love tended? Who clipped the hollyhocks? Who laid the melon-seeds in their warm, moist bed? Was it my grandfather who got up at four in the icy morning to open the sluice and lead water into the garden? If not he, then whose was the garden rightfully? Who are the ghosts and who the presences? Who, outside the' picture, leaning on their rakes, leaning on their spades, waiting to get back to work, lean also against the edge of the rectangle, bending it, bursting it in?
Dies irae, dies illa when the absent shall be present and the present absent. No longer does the picture show who were in the garden frame that day, but: who were not there. Lying all these years in places of safekeeping across the country, in albums, in desk drawers, this picture and thousands like it have subtly matured, metamorphosed. The fixing did not hold or the developing went further than one would ever have dreamed – who can know how it happened? – but they have become negatives again, a new kind of negative in which we begin to see what used to Me outside the frame, occulted. Is that why my brow is furrowed, Is that why I struggle to reach the camera: do I obscurely know that the camera is the enemy, that the camera will not lie about us but uncover what we truly are: doll-folk? Am I struggling against the reins in order to strike the camera out of the hands of whoever holds it before it is too late? And who holds the camera? Whose formless shadow leans toward my mother 'and her two offspring across the tilled bed?
Grief past weeping. I am hollow, I am a shell. To each of us fate sends the right disease. Mine a disease that eats me out from inside. Were I to be opened up they would find me hollow as a doll, a doll with a crab sitting inside licking its lips, dazed by the flood of light.
Was it the crab I saw so presciently when I was two, peeping out of the black box? Was I trying to save us all from the crab? But they held me back, they pressed the button, and the crab sprang out and entered me.
Gnawing at my bones now that there is no flesh left. Gnawing the socket of my hip, gnawing my backbone, beginning to gnaw at my knees. The cats, if the truth be told, have never really loved me. Only this creature is faithful to the end. My pet, my pain.
I went upstairs and opened the toilet door. Vercueil was still there, slumped in his deep sleep. I shook him. 'Mr Vercueil!' I said. One eye opened. 'Come and lie down.'
But he did not. First I heard him on the stairs, taking one step at a time like an old man. Then I heard the back door close.
A beautiful day, one of those still winter days when light seems to stream, evenly from all quarters of the sky. Vercueil drove me down Breda Street and into Orange Street. Across from Government Avenue I told him to park.
'I thought of driving the car all the way down the Avenue,' I said. 'Once I am past the chain, I don't see how anyone can stop me. But do you think there is room to get past?'
(You may remember, there are two cast-iron bollards at the head of the avenue with a chain, stretched between them.)
'Yes, you can get past at the side, ' he said.
'After that it would just be a matter of keeping the car straight. '
'Are you really going to do this?' he asked. His chicken-eyes glinted cruelly.
'If I can find the courage.'
'But why? What for?'
Hard to make grand responses in the teeth of that look. I closed my eyes and tried, to hold on to my vision of the car, moving fast enough for the flames to fan out backwards, rolling down the paved avenue past the tourists and tramps and lovers, past the museum, the art gallery, the botanical gardens, till it slowed down and came to rest before the house of shame, burning and melting.
'We can go back now,' I said. 'I just wanted to make sure it could be done.'
He came indoors and I gave him tea. The dog sat at his feet, cocking its ears at us in turn, as we spoke. A nice dog: a bright presence, star-born, as some people are.
'To answer your question What for?' I said: 'it has to do with my life. To do with a life that isn't worth, much any more. I am trying to work out what I can get for it. '
His hand moved restfully over the dog's fur, back and forth. The dog blinked, closed its eyes. Love, I thought: however unlikely, it is love I witness here.
I tried again. 'There is a famous novel in which a woman is convicted of adultery – adultery was a crime in the old days – and condemned to go in public with the letter A stitched on her dress, She wears the A for so many years that people forget what it stands for. They forget that it stands for anything. It simply becomes something she wears, like a ring or a brooch. It may even be that she was the one to start the fashion of wearing writing on one's clothing. But that isn't in the book.
'These public shows, these manifestations – this is the point of the story – how can one ever be sure what they stand for? An old woman sets herself on fire, for instance. Why? Because she has been driven, mad? Because she is in despair? Because she has cancer? I thought of painting a letter on the car to explain. But what? A? B? C? What is the right letter for my case? And why explain anyway? Whose business is it but my own?'
I might have said more, but at that moment the gate-latch clicked and the dog began to growl. Two women, one of whom I recognized as Florence 's sister, came up the path carrying suitcases.
'Good afternoon,' said the sister. She held up a key. 'We have come to fetch my sister's things. Florence.'
'Yes,' I said.
They let themselves into Florence 's room. After a while I followed. 'Is Florence all right?' I asked.
The sister, who had been unpacking a drawer, stood, up straight, breathing heavily. Clearly she relished this foolish question.
'No, I cannot say she is all right,' she said, 'Not all right. How can she be all right?'
The other woman, pretending not to hear, continued to fold baby-clothes. There was far more in the room than they could carry in two suitcases.
'I didn't mean that,' I said; 'but never mind. Can I ask you to take something to Florence from me?'
'Yes, I can take it if it is not big.' I wrote out a cheque.