“Why aren’t you angrier?”
“I don’t know.”
Pharsin he never saw again. But he did see Pharsin’s wife, once, nearly two years later, in London Town.
Rodney was consuming a tragic tea of crustless sandwiches in a dark cafe near Victoria Station. He had just left the Pimlico offices of the design magazine he worked part-time for, and was girding himself to catch a train for Sussex, where he would be met at the station by a childless divorcée in a Range Rover. He no longer wore a ponytail. And he no longer used his title. That sort of thing didn’t seem to play very well in England anymore. Besides, for a while Rodney had become very interested in his family tree; and this was his puny protest. The scars had deepened around his eyes. But not much else had changed.
Weatherless Victoria, and a cafe in the old style. Coffee served in leaky steel pots, and children eating Banana Splits and Knickerbocker Glories and other confections the color of traffic lights. In this place the waitresses were waitresses by caste, contemplating no artistic destiny. Outside, the city dedicated itself to the notion of mobility, fleets of buses and taxis, herds of cars, and then the trains.
She was several tables away, facing him, with her slender eyebrows raised and locked in inquiry. Rodney glanced, blinked, smiled. Then it was dumb show all over again. May I? Well if you. No I’ll just…
“Well well. It is a small world, isn’t it.”
“…So you’re not going to murder me? You’re not going to slag me off?”
“What? Oh no. No no. No.”
“…So you’re back here now.”
“Yes. And you, you’re…”
“Me mum died.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry. So you’re just here for the…”
“For the funeral and that, yeah…”
She said that her mother had been very old and had had a good life. Rodney’s mother was also very old and had had a good life, at least on paper. But she wasn’t dead. On the contrary she was, as the saying had it, “very much alive.” He was back with his mother. There was nothing he could do about that. He had to talk to her a lot but everything he said enraged her. Better to seal up your lips, he thought. Mum’s the word. Seal up your lips, and give no words but—mum. She said,
“I can’t believe you’re being so sweet about the money. Have you got loads more?”
“No. What? Sweet? No no. I was upset at first, of course. But I… What did you do with it in the end?”
“I told him I found it. In a cab. It’s New York, right?” She shrugged and said, “Went upstate and got a place in the Poconos. We were there twenty-two months. It was handsome. Look. A boy. Julius. Not quite one.”
As he considered the photograph Rodney was visited by a conventional sentiment: the gift of life! And stronger, according to his experience, in the black than in all the other planetary colors. “Can he talk yet? When do they talk?” And he pressed on, “Our code of silence. What was that—sort of a game?”
“You were a Sir. And me with my accent.”
The implication being that he wouldn’t have wanted her if she’d talked like she talked. And it was true. He looked at her. Her shape and texture sent the same message to his eyes and his mind. But the message stopped there. It no longer traveled down his spine. Sad and baffling, but perfectly true. “Well I’m not a Sir anymore,” he said, and he almost added “either.” “Did, uh—?”
“It was nice though, wasn’t it. Restful. Uncomplicated.”
“Yes, it was very nice.” Rodney felt close to tears. He said, “Did, uh, Pharsin continue with his…?”
“He got it out of his system. Let’s put it like that. He’s himself again now.”
She spoke with relief, even with pride. It had not escaped Rodney’s plodding scrutiny that her face and her long bare arms were quite free of contusion. Violence: it’s in their culture, Rock had said. And Rodney now asked himself: Well who had a say in that?
“He’s back doing the chess,” she said. “Doing okay. It’s up with the economy.”
Rodney wanted to say, “Chess is a high calling”—which he believed. But he was afraid it might be taken amiss. All he could think to offer was the following: “Well. A fool and his money are soon parted.”
“That’s what they say.”
“Take it as…” He searched for the right word. Would “reparations” answer? He said, “Still doing the mime?”
“Doing well. We tour now. How about you? Still doing the painting?”
“Got fed up with it. Don’t know why really.”
Although Rodney was not looking forward to his rendezvous in Sussex, he was looking forward to the drinks he would have on the train to prepare himself for it. He turned to the window. His upper lip did its thing: slowly folding into two. He said,
“So the rain held off.”
“Yeah. It’s been nice.”
“Thought it looked like rain earlier.”
“Me too. Thought it was going to piss down.”
“But it held off.”
“Yeah,” she said. “It held off.”
1997
HEAVY WATER
JOHN AND MOTHER STOOD side by side on the stern deck as the white ship backpedaled out of the harbor. Some people were still waving in friendly agitation from the shore; but the great machines of the dock (impassive guardians of the smaller, less experienced machines) had already begun to turn away from the parting ship, their arms folded in indifference and disdain… John waved back. Mother looked to starboard. The evening sun was losing blood across the estuary, weakening, weakening; directly below, the slivers of crimson light slipped over the oil-stained water like mercurial rain off fat lilies. John shivered. Mother smiled at her son.
“Tired and thirsty, are you, John?” she asked him (for they had traveled all day). “Tired and thirsty?”
John nodded grimly.
“Let’s go down then. Come on. Let’s go down.”
Things started heating up the next day.
“What, so he’s not quite all there then,” said the man called Mr. Brine.
“You could say that,” said Mother.
“Bit slow on the old uptake.”
“If you like. Yes,” said Mother simply, gazing across the deck to the sea (where the waves were already rolling on to their backs to bask in the sun). “Are you too hot, John, my pet? Say if you are.”
“Does he always cry then?” asked Mr. Brine. “Or’s he just having a good blub?”
Mother turned. Her nicked mouth was like the crimp at the bottom of a toothpaste tube. “Always,” she consented. “It’s his eyes. It’s not that he’s sad. The doctors say it’s his poor eyes.”
“Poor chap,” said Mrs. Brine. “I do feel sorry for him. Poor love.”
Mr. Brine took his sopping cigar out of his mouth and said, “What’s his name. ‘John’? How are you, John? Enjoying your cruise, are you, John? Whoop. Look. He’s at it again. Cheer up, John! Cheer up!”
Drunk, thought Mother wearily. Half past twelve in the afternoon of the first full day and everyone was drunk… The swimming pool slopped and slapped; water upon water. The sea twanged in the heat. The sun came crackling across the ocean toward the big ship. John was six feet tall. He was forty-three.
He sat there oozily in his dark gray suit. John wore a plain white shirt—but, as always, an eye-catching tie. Some internal heat source fueled his bleeding eyes; otherwise his fat face was worryingly colorless, like an internal organ left too long on its tray. His chin toppled into his breasts and his breasts toppled into his belly… With some makes of car, the bigger the model, the smaller the mascot on its bonnet; and so, alas, it was with John. A little shy sprig for his manhood from which Mother, at bathtime, would politely avert her gaze. Water seeped and crept and tiptoed from his eyes all day and all night. Mother loved him with all her heart. This was her life’s work: that John should feel no pain.