Dearest Marja
It seems an age since I last wrote but it isn’t really. It’s just that enough domestic trivia have been going on here to make the exact sequence of things hard to remember. Have you noticed how just trying to impose any sort of chronology on events makes it seem as though a lot of time has been occupied?
By now Ljuka will have told you of his flying (literally) visit here. Really, he gave me the shock of my life. Can you imagine, a helicopter landing in your back yard in the middle of the night & you go out to find someone looking like Special Agent Z-57 standing there all in black? I nearly had kittens. I was more scared, & consequently crosser, than I let on. I don’t believe it ever occurred to him that he might have given me a shock. Boys: they have no imagination whatever. They just star in their own private film & that’s enough for them.
I must say the Red Cross parcel he brought from home did make me homesick. Mili sent me some jars of her blackberry kompot & a box of goose grease just as if I were still 10.
I’m working well & all that film stuff’s coming along brilliantly. The only cloud on the horizon (and it’s a very small one, and passing) concerns my dudi neighbour. That’s my only real news, to be honest – just to tell you that a sort of temporary war has broken out between us.
How on earth? you’re wondering. Well, the night Ljuka turned up Gerry had a guest staying with him (& although it’s hardly my business I can’t say I think much of his taste. Bald as a goose egg). Apparently they were sitting out when Uki flew in directly over their heads! I must tell him to land from a different direction next time because Gerry came across in the morning after breakfast, ratty & moaning about damage to his precious pergola. That weird roundabout way he has of saying things: had I by any chance noticed a helicopter around these parts last night? Well, Mari, you know me: Ms Mischief herself. What could I possibly do but feign complete ignorance? I mean, our little brother had practically landed several tons of howling machinery on his roof, but instead of laughing & telling me what a dreadful liar I am Gerry was completely thrown. He went all baffled and sulky. I still don’t know if it’s just him or whether all Englishmen avoid being direct (lack of courage?) and are forced instead to become tetchy. It was also unfortunate that when he came in I’d happened to be playing my pastiche of his singing. I couldn’t tell if Il Falsetto recognized it with thirty-six tracks of synthesized orchestral backing & I now suspect he can’t have: he would surely have been much angrier if he’d realized what I’ve been up to at his expense. Poor Gerry! Memo to self: in future only play those bits of the score through headphones.
He went away still nonplussed by my literally incredible lying but came back again the following morning, slightly strutty like a cock mounting its dunghill to make an announcement to the farmyard. ‘I’ve been thinking, Marta,’ he said, ‘and it seems to me it would make sense if we established some sort of visible boundary between our two properties. Those little red pegs the geometra put in the ground when I bought my house are obviously a short-term way of marking our confini. As it cost me money to have the survey done I’m suggesting we put up a fence by way of something more permanent.’
‘Like the Berlin Wall?’ I couldn’t help asking.
‘Obviously not, Marta. No – just something rather more tangible than a few sticks of wood that any passing helicopter could blow out of the ground.’
This showed spirit, and I mentally awarded him a point. To make things still easier for him I poured a glass of his favourite tipple which he accepted with an admirable show of reluctance. I remarked that a fence would probably be even more susceptible to helicopters than pegs.
‘Certainly it would if the helicopters became a habit & if they were flying low enough to contravene every possible air safety regulation, like the one the other night‚’ he said with what he probably thought was witty aplomb but which just sounded petulant. ‘But at least if our fence were blown flat we would have tangible evidence. Certainly enough to show to the carabinieri. A valuable fence destroyed. So might I ask, Marta: would you be willing to share the cost of this fence?’
‘No,’ I said – & I suddenly heard Father’s intransigent voice in my own. Breeding will out, ek ni? ‘No, Gerry, I wouldn’t.’
‘I thought not,’ he said. (I then topped up his glass with Fernet & the poor addict, powerless to resist, was reduced to a social blithering: ‘Really oughtn’t … Barely ten a.m … Frightfully naughty’.) Then obviously emboldened by the stuff he went back to being ‘the coward who kills tigers in his sleep’, as our huntsmen say. ‘Marta!’ he said with an attempt at sternness that made me turn away to hide my smile, ‘This is all terribly silly! I may as well come out with it and tell you that my guest and I saw that helicopter land here. Not only that, but we came over to see if you needed help and watched you greet the pilot and bring him into this very house. So it’s useless your going on with this pretence of not knowing anything about it. Now, I don’t want to know who it was. I couldn’t care less who it was. It’s not my business who it was. As far as I’m concerned it could have been the CIA or else your groceries being delivered.’
The poor lamb went on like this for ages. He was aching to know, positively eaten up with curiosity. In my role as Ms Mischief, of course, I just sat there with an innocent look on my face – & as you know, I’m pretty good at that. Eventually he ran out of possible identities for our little brother.
‘Well, we’re both adults,’ he ended incontrovertibly & opaquely. ‘Have you heard of Brill?’
The name of a place? Something for cleaning saucepans? I said I hadn’t.
‘I can’t say I’m surprised‚’ said Gerry loftily. ‘No doubt in Voynovia you have a nationally famous balalaika player or something. Brill is one of the most famous pop stars in the West. His real name, actually, is Nanty Riah, but most people don’t know that. I wasn’t going to tell you any of this, of course, but I’m afraid you’re rather forcing my hand. Well, that’s who my guest was the other night. An international celebrity. And I’m not telling you this for the sake of boasting – I’m hardly a pop fan myself. He was here for professional rather than social reasons. I was supposed to be writing his life story. I say “supposed” because it’s no longer going to happen. And it’s no longer going to happen because your helicopter visitor has driven him away.’
‘He’s frightened of helicopters?’ I asked.
‘Not as such, probably. No, he’s convinced your helicopter was a UFO. UFO? You understand, from space? Like a flying saucer? Martians?’
‘We call them CSU,’ I said weakly.
‘Well, Brill’s got a thing about them. Rightly or wrongly, he’s convinced your visitor was from outer space.’
I couldn’t help myself, Mari, I simply howled with laughter. The idea of our little Uki dropping in from Alpha Centauri … Half an hour earlier Gerry might have looked like a cock on its dunghill but by now I’m afraid he resembled the way our hens used to look when they’d got at those rotten plums in the lower orchard – you remember how alcoholic the falters used to get lying in the sun? He was woozy with Fernet & indignation. My laughter goaded a sudden squawk out of him.
‘Morta! It’s all very well your laughing but that’s my livelihood we’re talking about. You know: money? Earning a living? You might be able to live on a shoestring and faff around all day with your song-thingies but we ordinary folk have to work. I don’t wish to come all heavy but the fact is this visitor of yours – whose existence you so deny in the face of witnesses – has done me out of a job. Not to get all pompous about it, here in Western Europe we might consider that worth a legal enquiry with a view to compensation for loss of earnings.’
He raised his hand as if to forestall a protest I was not about to make & then tried to perch himself on the arm of the sofa, I suppose with the idea of adopting an informal posture more suited to a change of conversational tack. Unfortunately, what with all the Fernet he misjudged it. His hip skidded off & he collapsed onto the sofa & went ‘Ooh!’ Then he began scrabbling urgently beneath him, his face very red, & came up with that antique mahogany metronome of mine that Father gave me when I went off to Moscow. I must have dumped it there off the table when the keyboard & computer arrived & some sheets had fallen over it. I was wondering where it had got to. These new keyboards turn out to have built-in electronic metronomes that go clack-clack-clack at any speed you like & I suppose pretty mechanical metronomes like mine are now antiques & obsolete. Still, I’ve got a soft spot for Father’s & evidently Gerry had, too. I’m afraid I collapsed again.
‘That’s a bloody dangerous thing to keep on a sofa,’ he said, grimacing & in obvious discomfort.
I pulled myself together & hastily plied him with more Fernet ‘to take the pain away’, as we say to children, & because he had slopped what remained of his glassful all over his shirt. I even offered to ‘rub the place better’ & his face was a picture.
‘Poor Gerry,’ I said, trying to sound contrite. ‘I’m really very sorry. But I’m grateful to you for finding it. It’s a genuine Maelzel from Vienna; 1817, I believe.’
‘Well, I do hope I haven’t damaged it,’ he said, heavily ironic & still very tensed about the thighs.
‘I’ve been thinking, Gerry. Maybe a fence isn’t a bad idea after all. I tell you what: if you’d like to do some research and find out roughly how much it’s going to cost I shall be happy to go halves with you. After all, we’re friends as well as neighbours.’
At this he perked up. ‘Really? You’re sure?’ Clearly he’d been expecting bitter resistance & was surprised by my sudden capitulation. To be frank, Mari, I’d suddenly realized how inconvenient it would be to let a neighbour stew to the point where he starts wanting to sue me for damage to his livelihood, to say nothing of his bottom. As our family history brilliantly shows, it pays to know when to be emollient as well as tough. So there we left it.
Gerry went off again, walking stiffly, to get estimates for the fence while I made myself some coffee to recover from his visit.
Darling Marja, I shall keep you posted on this ludicrous saga. Meanwhile I was relieved to hear you were so firm with Timi. Well done. He’s not someone you should be emollient with. The news that he’s spending August in America is even better. He’s sure to meet someone he fancies more than you. Well, you know what I mean! This boy Mekmek sounds like a good ally for you. Just don’t spoil him too much too quickly. But who am I to advise you? I’m hardly a brilliant example of a successful romantic.
Your loving sister
Marta