5

Book of the Open Mouth

Rain lashes against car windows. Her favourite dress lies in a heap on the floor covered in candlewax. The white wax against black velvet looks like a fierce livid scar. The scar above her eyebrow makes the shape of a K which is the second letter of her name. J.K. shuts her eyes.

H arrives. They have met once before, briefly, in a train where she felt the brooding and bemused attention of someone staring at the wet black fur of her Russian hat (it had been raining), which she placed on her lap, lightly caressing its fur as the train rattled through the smoke of belching industrial chimneys. When at last he spoke, it was to conjure a picture for her. ‘Your hat makes me think of the time I thought I was going to die. I was standing on a jetty. There was a raging wind and a huge wave of white froth seemed to curve above my head. I thought I was drowning. At that moment I looked down and saw a black kitten sleeping on the wooden boards.’ He waited for her to say something or ask him something and when she did not he said, ‘The white smoke from the chimney reminded me.’ J.K. guessed from his voice that he was German, and another image of smoke raging from chimneys presented itself to her.

Now, as he walks through her front door, gift in his hand, he comments on the pleat in the sleeve of her black velvet dress, the books on her shelves and the thick ivory candles flickering in two heavy Ukrainian candleholders. J.K. pours rum into two long-stemmed glasses. She is ill. Flu is streaming through her, a virus, it is the decade of virus, and H, who offers her his handkerchief, is in a maverick mood.

Three days earlier, as she shut her front door, unlit cigarette in one hand, box of matches in the other, and started to walk down the stairs, a short man in his thirties walked up the stairs. They collided and he quickly shoved his hand inside her skirt. In the fight that followed with this stranger on the stone stairway, he somehow manoeuvred her on to his shoulders so that she, still with the matches in her hand, was on top of him, looking down at the frizzy blond curls of his hair. He was struggling with her weight and at the same time running his hand up her thighs. Suddenly she knew what to do. She lit a match and set fire to his hair.

After they have eaten, H turns his chair towards her and says, ‘You look like a matador. You would fight small bulls, though. The sort you see running wild in the Camargue.’ She lights his cigarette and asks him what his accent is. ‘German,’ he says. ‘I like cold winters.’ They drink more rum and she unwraps the gift he has brought her. It is a small packet of wild rice.

‘Wars were fought over that rice.’ H strokes the grey suede of her shoe. ‘In fact it is not rice at all. It is a black seed that grows into aquatic grass in certain parts of North America.’ As they dance across the curved room, tasting the rum on each other’s lips, her hand pressed into the back of his neck, his hand pressed over her heart, which is beating fast, something salty mingles with the taste of rum. It is her tears, streaming again, and he moves his hand from her heart to her cheek. After a while she says, ‘What kind of places would the trains journey through in a united Germany?’ His fingers, now wet from her tears, draw a map across her cheek: ‘Erfurt–Leipzig–Potsdam–Berlin.’

She lit a match and set fire to his hair. The blond stranger on the stone stairway began to burn, his frizzy hair in flames, the palms of his hands slapping upwards, anywhere, her calves, her knees, still holding on to her, until he got desperate and began to dig his sharp nails into her stomach and finally into her forehead, making the shape of a letter K.

‘What shall we do about your flu?’ H whispers as they dance into the flickering light of the candles. ‘Tell me about Erfurt,’ she says. His pale eyes settle on a painting behind her. Two vultures hover over a cream satin slipper, a languid red rose on its buckle. Next to it, a thin bamboo stick pokes out of a pot filled with soil, thin strips of shiny paper, gold, purple, green, glued to it so that if whirled it creates an arc of light and colour. ‘In this room you have made yourself a world that pleases you,’ he says. ‘In Erfurt there is a cathedral. The houses are covered in soot and the air smells of coal smoke. There is also a theatre and …’ he smiles … ‘good ice-cream.’ She follows his gaze as they dance, reading book titles as if they were new to her, and when they kiss under a small book called Undocumented Lives: Britain’s Unauthorized Migrant Workers she says, ‘Well, I think we should go to bed and drink more rum.’ He smiles, sticks his finger into her mouth and says, ‘Um … you see … you are quite lovely, but the thing is I have another involvement and I don’t want to lie to her.’ They dance in silence, this time his hands in her hair, and she says, ‘So tell me about Berlin.’

‘Berlin,’ he begins, and then stops. ‘Berlin is where I was born. Erfurt is where my … my … companion was born. She comes to Berlin to buy lipstick.’

‘And to see you,’ J.K. interrupts.

‘Yes.’ The vultures and satin slipper seem to fascinate his eye. He dances her closer to the image and studies it.

‘The bird has a snake in its mouth,’ he says.

‘Were you standing with her on the jetty when you thought you were drowning?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why did you say I and not We?’ she asks as they dance on and she untangles his hands from her hair, holding on to his hand though, both warm from the rum and he pressing against her velvet hips, ambivalent and desiring, his pale eyes somewhere else.

‘Because it was my thought,’ he says. ‘The white smoke and your black fur hat. The white wave and the black kitten.’ He takes his finger out of her mouth and presses it against the scar on her forehead. ‘K,’ he murmurs. At that moment his elbow nudges the Ukrainian candleholder.

She lit a match and set fire to his hair. At last she managed to jump off his shoulders, calves and forehead bleeding, and ran down the stairs leaving him folded over himself, slapping at his blond head with blistered hands. And then, he spoke.

‘And because,’ he looks away, ‘I want to beam love into you.’

As hot white wax trickles down her black velvet breasts, J.K. sees the packet of wild rice lying on the table, a delicacy, a frivolous gift, and pulls in the following memory:

A woman holds up a queue of impatient (West) Berlin office workers one lunchtime in a supermarket while her groceries are cashed up at the till. At the other end of the supermarket (East) Germans queue for shopping trolleys because a sign tells them to. The shop is crowded with people pushing empty trolleys, a can of beer in one, a box of washing powder in another, two bananas and a can of Pepsi in another. No one can move. There are skid-marks on the lino from the wheels. An old man reads the label of a small carton of cream, broken shoes tapping against the beat of Muzak spilling through the speakers. He puts the cream very carefully into his trolley, walks to the cashpoint, stops, bends down to pick it up and read it again. Eventually the woman turns round to face the office workers who are having to dodge the trolleys squeaking past them. They do not have trolleys. They carry their groceries in their hands and have currency ready to pay and leave.

‘I queued for food for twenty years, you can queue for twenty minutes. Look! My mouth is open.’

They shout back at her, call her a White Turk, and she becomes quiet as she takes them in, their perfumes, shoes, briefcases, watches, cufflinks, haircuts, jewellery. ‘Are you the new world I’ve been promised?’

J.K. stares into H’s pale eyes.

‘It’s not a good idea to stick your finger into the mouth of a hungry woman.’

‘Who is more predatory … the satin slipper with rosebuds on its buckle … or the bird above it?’ he says pointing to the painting.

And then:

‘Tell me how you hurt your forehead?’

His hair was on fire and then his mouth opened and words poured out. ‘I gotta plate inside my head. Some cocksucker cracked my head. Only wanted an aspirin. Looking for an aspirin. Need an aspirin. I buried the dead in Bucharest, miss. Threw apples on the graves, six foot under the snow. A HAPPY NEW YEAR IN LIBERTY! If you’ve not got an aspirin, can you spare a piece of cheese?’

‘My companion and I are together because we are frightened to be alone.’ His fingers search for the zip of her black velvet dress. ‘But we are alone. I live half my life pretending I am full up.’ Outside, bins topple as drenched city cats search for food.

‘I am touched,’ J.K. says to her mother, Lillian Strauss. ‘I am touched by H in every way.’

‘Give some more form to the object of your affection,’ Lillian Strauss says softly, trying not to smile.

‘How do you mean?’

‘What’s his name?’

‘I’ll tell you when you’re sober.’

Lillian Strauss’s hands tighten around her glass of scotch. ‘You self-righteous pious little shit.’ Her eyes go dim. ‘Why do you have to ruin everything?’ They sit in silence. Lillian Strauss takes a small sip from her glass and purses her lips. J.K. looks out of the window.

‘I enjoyed Gregory’s funeral.’ Her mother takes another sip.

‘Thank you for inviting me. I liked his mother. She said if she’d called him Klaus and not Gregory he might not have got Aids. She’s a bit weird isn’t she? We’re having supper together on Tuesday.’ She looks at her daughter, whose eyes are glued to the window.

‘If I’d known I was going to blubber, I would have taken a tissue.’ Lillian Strauss stands up. Walks to the sink and pours her drink into it.

‘Bloody good stuff to waste,’ she says, slamming down the empty glass.

‘Mom,’ J.K. says.

‘Don’t call me Mom. And don’t ever have children. They’ll just end up hating you. That’s what happens to parents. Their children hate them.’

‘Let’s have a baby,’ H says to J.K. His hand rests on her belly. It is summer. A small aeroplane hums above them. Her camellia has flowered again, another pink bud opening in the petrol winds of the city. She looks around her room; a little saucer full of yellow canary feathers, pebbles, postcards, a bag full of coins, an address book, a white bowl on a stand, a photograph of Gregory, a cashew nut in its shell – not unlike a foetus – a poster of a man with a dragonfly taped to his forehead, a green ribbon, the letters XYZ scrawled on the back of an envelope in felt pen, a picture of an orange hand with six fingers, ALIEN written underneath it, and a 1936 Smith Corona typewriter. J.K. feels panic rise in her chest. The same panic she always feels when arriving at a new place. She is in a new place. She is in H’s arms and the aeroplane nearly drowned out his words, but she heard them and he is waiting for her reply.

This is a frightening place. His hand on her belly. More frightening than walking the city late at night, alone, in clothes that make running away difficult. Than the crazy gaze of bureaucrats in uniform, thin youths with knives, the violent hands of a commuter in pinstripes.

‘I hope,’ H says, ‘that when I touch you, you can feel everything I feel for you.’

Mother. The word is full of pain and rage and love. Her children play in small city parks. Cut their feet on glass. Howl into pillows. That’s what children do. They howl into pillows. Howl for justice, for beans, for God, for love.

‘I’ll think about it.’

After a while he says:

‘I’ll drive you to the airport.’

She is walking past a cement factory, straw hat on her head, books under her arm. J.K. knows she will have to collect ten 100-peseta coins to phone H from a call box. She knows she will have to find out what the international dialling code is and she will have to find a voice to talk to him with. She could say, why are you there and I’m here? She could say, I’m learning the language, I’m brown and strong, the scar on my forehead is completely gone, every day I dive into the sea and every day is full of you. And then she remembers the eyes of a woman in her early fifties irrigating her garden in Southern Europe, drinking a glass of home-made lemonade at the end of the day after she had scrubbed the soil from her fingernails. What was that look in her eyes? Betrayal. J.K. knew she had been betrayed. Utterly. And the woman knew J.K. knew so she felt humiliated and when their eyes met J.K. had to pretend not to know. She had to find a way of meeting her eye dispossessed of knowledge. What does J.K. know? She knows that no one is innocent. Only the privileged and sentimental can afford to be unknowing.

J.K. is guilty. She buys the black-haired waitress at the local bar a beer and asks her to describe her room and all the things in it. And who do you love? And how do you survive on your wages? And how is your life different from your mother’s life? And then, much later, she asks her for some 100-peseta coins for the telephone box.

Telefonica-dialling codes:

COLUMBIA 07-57

BRASIL 07-55

EMIRATOS ARABES-UNIDOS 07-971

CHILE 07-38

YUGOSLAVIA 07-38

INDONESIA 07-62

J.K. studies codes. A code is a collection of laws. A system of rules and regulations, of signals and symbols. So now, as she drops the coins into the steel slot of the telephone, she is thinking about rules, signals and symbols. H says, ‘Is that you J.K?’

My precious.

My sweet.

My darling.

My lovely.

What is German for ‘the twentieth century’?

Das zwanzigste Jahrhundert.

And how do you say ‘enigma’?

Enigma.

J.K. has two coins left. She rolls them into the slot.

And how do you say, ‘the open mouth’?

Der offene Mund.