The Queen on the Pyre
Far below her, yachts lay on the sea like crumbs on a blue sheet. Before her, on the twentieth floor of her attorney’s ivory tower, the air, in a paler shade of blue, also reminded her of a sheet. A faded sheet.
The distant island hung hazily above the water, a flying saucer slowly ascending. If wishes could still come true, Griet speculated, the prisoners would have made that happen long ago. ‘The greatest escape’, the newspapers would dub it, a bunch of prisoners escaping miraculously with a whole island. Somewhere over the sea the warders and their families would get the chance to jump off, close enough to be able to swim safely to shore. The island would rise higher and higher and then orbit the earth like a satellite, accompanied by angels and witches and geese and winged horses and exotic nightbirds and other apparitions. And only once the fairy land was liberated from maniac rulers would the island splash down again in the sea near its continent.
‘I dreamt about my ex-husband’, Griet wrote the night before in her notebook. Then she drew a line through the sentence and wrote: Griet dreamt about her husband.
Make yourself into a fictional character, her shrink had advised her.
They stood in a long empty passage in a huge empty building. He told her he was going away and she must take care of the place. She could do whatever she liked, he told her, but she mustn’t open the thirteenth door. After he’d left, she opened a door each day. Behind every door there was a bedroom that she recognised immediately.
The room she and Petra had shared as children, the pink-painted wall rough under her fingers when she ran her hand over it in the dark as she told Petra stories. The hostel dormitory she’d hated so much during high school, a grey Cape Education Department blanket as scratchy as steelwool on a high iron bedstead. The ramshackle outside room full of posters of surfers, where, as a student, she’d first made acquaintance with sex. The one-star hotel room somewhere in the Karoo where she and her husband had passed a sleepless night en route to his mother’s funeral. She too hot to sleep and he too sad. She lay waiting for him to tell her how he felt, but he didn’t say a word all night. The five-star hotel room with the equally strange king-size bed where they woke, both equally alienated, the morning after their wedding.
When she came to the thirteenth door, she couldn’t stop herself. She pushed the door open carefully, just a crack, then quickly shut her eyes as a blinding light shone on her. She slammed the door shut, but it was too late. She began to fall, tumbling, and the further she fell the darker everything grew around her.
‘Does that mean everything could be over within two weeks?’ she asked Hilton Dennis who was fiddling with his tie incessantly today. ‘That I could be legally divorced?’
‘It’s possible.’ It was a hand-painted floral silk tie, just a bit too flamboyant in this elegant office. ‘If both parties are willing to settle.’
Griet was so relieved she felt she could rise up with the island.
‘So, whatever the result of the Rule Forty-five application –’
‘Rule Forty-three,’ he corrected her irritably.
‘– Rule Forty-three application is, we can deal with the divorce on the same day?’
‘First they get a fright, then they settle.’ He smoothed the thinning hair over his forehead and tugged at his collar as though it were too tight. ‘That’s what I always say.’
He was trying to sound as confident as usual, but his sentences somehow shattered on his glass-topped desk. Maybe he’d had a difficult client. Or lost a case. She actually preferred him this way, Griet decided. A Napoleon who sounded as though he’d at least heard of Waterloo.
Once upon a time, she wrote as a result of her dream, long ago, when wishes still came true, there was a girl who lived in heaven and played with the angels. But because she didn’t listen to her master and opened a forbidden door, she fell to earth. She woke up to find herself alone in a wilderness. She wanted to call for help, but she couldn’t utter a sound. She’d lost her voice – but she discovered that she could write.
During the years she wandered in the wilderness, she slept at night in the branches of a tree and during the day she sat in its shade and wrote stories in the sand. She didn’t know where she’d learnt to write; when she woke up on earth, she could do it.
After many years a prince rode through the wilderness on a green horse. He was so surprised to see the dumb girl with the dirty, hairy body that he tied her to his horse and led her to his kingdom. In his castle he had her washed and shaved and then decided to marry her. She wasn’t really beautiful but at least she wouldn’t talk the ears off his head like all the beautiful princesses he’d considered.
‘Is there any chance of getting it over with sooner?’ she wanted to know.
‘Why are you in such a hurry?’
How did she explain to her arrogant attorney that she felt like a piece that didn’t fit into any jigsaw puzzle? Ill at ease with half her friends who had husbands and children, and equally ill at ease with the other half who had neither. She had a husband, but she had to live alone. She had a child, but he could only live in her heart.
‘I feel as though someone’s pushed the Pause knob in my life and I’ve been paused to death. Anything would be preferable to standing still like this. Fast Forward, Play, even Rewind!’
‘If you’re prepared to give in now …’
‘I’m prepared to do anything,’ she said quickly. ‘He can keep the washing machine, the tumble-dryer and everything else. I just want to get it over with.’
‘I understand how you feel,’ soothed her attorney. ‘I know you want to get on with your life.’
He’s lying, thought Griet, he doesn’t know what I’m talking about. He’s a general who’s enjoying the war. It’s an opportunity for him to put his theories and tactics to the test.
But she knew how the soldiers in the trenches felt. She was the one who could lose her head.
‘But it would be stupid to withdraw now,’ said Hilton Dennis with all the sympathy he could muster. ‘You’ve made it through to the final dress rehearsal. The only thing that remains is the opening night.’
So he saw it as a concert, she thought gloomily. It wasn’t even serious enough to be regarded as a war. She was an actress with stage fright, he an impresario with an eye to his bank balance. The longer the show ran, the more money he could make.
‘Look, if you’re determined to settle, we can do it on the day of the Rule Forty-three decision. We get the chance to negotiate with the other side before we go into court. You can’t lose anything by waiting another fortnight.’
‘Nothing but a little more self-respect.’
The prince married the dumb girl and became king, and a year later the queen had a baby. The night after the birth, one of the queen’s old playmates from heaven appeared and said, ‘If you admit that you opened the forbidden door, you’ll get your voice back and you’ll never have to write again. If you refuse, I’ll take your child away with me.’
‘But I like writing,’ the queen wanted to cry, but she couldn’t utter a word. The angel picked up the child and flew away. The next morning, when word got out that the king’s child had disappeared without a trace, the people began to whisper that the queen was a cannibal who’d devoured her own offspring.
A year later the dumb queen had another baby. The night after the birth an angel appeared again with the same message as the first time. The queen dissolved into tears and wanted to beg the angel not to take her second child too, but she couldn’t utter a word. The angel flew off with her second child, and next morning the rumour spread throughout the kingdom that the queen had devoured her second offspring.
A year later the dumb queen had a third baby. The next night an angel appeared again with the same message as before. The queen fell to her knees before the angel. ‘I’ll do anything not to lose this third child too!’ she wanted to scream, but because she still wouldn’t admit that she’d opened the forbidden door, she still couldn’t utter a word. And the angel flew off with the third child.
Griet took a packet of cigarettes out of her bag. Her attorney hadn’t had a cigarette since she’d arrived fifteen minutes ago, she realised. The big black ashtray, which normally looked like an obscene offering to the god of lung cancer by this time of the day, stood gleaming and empty on the glass-topped desk. Griet experienced a feeling of impending doom, but offered him a cigarette all the same.
‘I’ve given up.’ He folded his hands over each other hastily as though they might reach out automatically for the sin before him. He’d never looked so vulnerable. ‘I’m trying to give up.’
Now it really was only her and the chap in the Camel ad who still smoked, Griet thought despondently.
‘How on earth are you doing that?’
‘Doctor’s orders.’ Griet shoved the cigarettes back in her bag. You can’t eat ice cream in front of a hunger striker. ‘But I don’t mind if you smoke. Please go ahead.’
He didn’t sound very convincing. He hadn’t reached the sanctified stage, the stage when Reborn Non-Smokers watch you consume one cigarette after another with a kind of sadistic pleasure. They’ll even keep cigarettes in the house just to show you how much will power they have. But her poor attorney was still struggling through purgatory.
‘I suppose I could wait another two weeks,’ she sighed.
‘Of course you can. And you’ve got a better place to stay now. Why don’t you just sit back and relax?’
Only a man could say something like that.
‘I can’t relax, I have to pack!’
He probably had a wife who packed his bags every time he went off on a business trip.
It wasn’t only the packing that made it impossible for her to relax. It was all the forms she had to fill in and all the calls she had to make to let the world know she had a new address.
There were forms for her current account with one bank and her credit card account with another bank; for her personal insurance and her life insurance and her medical aid; for her membership of the Writers’ Guild and the Children’s Book Forum and the Theatre Club and the Friends of the National Gallery and the AA (the one for motorists, praise be, not the one for alcoholics); for the street children’s night shelter and a home for dying cancer sufferers and a creche in Nyanga; for READ and the Peninsula School Feeding Scheme and the SPCA …
If you no longer gave a tenth of your income to the church, you had to get it to the underprivileged some other way.
And then there were all her personal priests who had to know where she was going to be living. Her doctor and her gynaecologist and her dentist and her auditor and her attorney and her therapist. When had her life become so complicated?
Long, long ago, her most important possessions had been a rucksack and a pair of hiking boots. She’d toured Europe, without credit cards, without personal insurance, without an attorney. She’d slept on trains and at stations. She’d been fearless and happy. She hadn’t needed a therapist.
She’d never be that happy again, even if she sold all her possessions tomorrow, consigned all her personal priests to hell, and tore up all her membership cards and insurance policies.
She couldn’t travel in Europe with a backpack again; she’d never be able to find one big enough for all her neuroses. And she couldn’t sell her sadness along with all her other possessions.
‘Why don’t you take a few days off work?’ The change in her attorney’s voice told her that her time with him was up. ‘To settle down in your new flat?’
He tugged at his collar again and swivelled his neck like a dog that’s trying to get out of a leash. The poor fellow had put on weight, like everyone who gives up smoking, and his wife hadn’t bought him new shirts yet.
‘I don’t have any more leave due to me.’ With her wretched pregnancies and all her crises, she’d used up her quota. ‘And I can’t afford to take unpaid leave.’
‘Never mind, in two weeks’ time you’ll be able to afford a holiday,’ promised Hilton Dennis and stood up to see her out of his office.
And so my story’s almost done, thought Griet.
The next day all the people rose up against the queen who’d devoured her children. The people demanded that she be burnt to death. The king shrugged and rode off on his green horse. The queen was dragged to the pyre by her hair. As the flames started to lick at her feet, she found her voice and screamed, ‘I opened the forbidden door!’
And it grew dark suddenly and the clouds were ripped asunder. Rain drenched the earth and quenched the fire. And when it grew light again, the queen was gone. She had disappeared without trace, just like her children.
She apparently became a saint who killed dragons. She was seen at a festival of witches in England. She was seen on a beach in South America – riding a green horse. She changed her name and became a writer. No one will ever know what really happened.