A Dog's Life (19 page)

‘The kitchen sink was good enough for us when we were kids, and good enough for us today.’ This was a fact, an unassailable fact, beyond argument, beyond logic.

‘I love my bathroom.’ I said. ‘There’s nothing better than a long soak when you’re tired and aching.’

‘I don’t want no bathroom.’ Her tone, at once both chastising and smug, hinted that I was decadent.

‘Bathroom,’ she muttered, contemptuously. ‘Bathroom.’

I learned, in the park again, that the sisters shared a bed on the first floor. The upstairs rooms were seldom occupied, except on ‘special occasions’, the special nature of which Deidre did not disclose. They had been redecorated, ‘just in case’.

It was Deidre’s habit to stick a card in a cauliflower with the message NICE WITH A WHITE SAUCE. Rhubarb was similarly honoured: NICE IN A PIE WITH CUSTARD. Carrots were SAID TO BE GOOD FOR EYESIGHT, while AN APPLE A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY. Sissy, who did most of the cooking, remarked to me whenever I bought Jersey potatoes, ‘They’re dirty little devils when they’re cold.’ I purchased Jerseys only from them in order to hear, and relish, this gnomic observation.

At the end of Sissy’s life, when her sight was fading, a neighbour drove the van to market. Trixie, or Tricksy, ‘passed over’ first. She had rarely seen a vet, for the sisters were as contemptuous of medics as they were of bathrooms. The limping, worn-out dog was distressing to look at, particularly when Circe – who was roughly the same age – was so lively. Deidre found herself another animal, who now follows her sluggishly around the park. Sissy ‘passed over’ and Deidre closed down the business. She lives alone in that Victorian pile, still sleeping – I assume – in the bed she shared with Sissy; still washing at the kitchen sink, and still covering a boiled cauliflower with a nice white sauce.

On a Saturday morning in December 1995, I was driven up to the town of Petrópolis, high in the hills above Rio. It was a typical Brazilian morning, I was told by the driver as I commented on the lush greenness all about us on the way – those sudden, dense showers followed by immediate warm sunshine ensured the healthy survival of plants, trees, flowers. You could call it the climate of Paradise, and that’s what the poet Elizabeth Bishop did. Bishop, who was born in the less-than-paradisal Nova Scotia, lived in Brazil for ten, largely happy, years. She had a lover, the architect and designer Lota (full name Maria Carlota Costellat de Macedo) Soares, and she had two houses – one near São Paolo, and the other in Petrópolis. We were going to visit this second house, which she describes in ‘Song for the Rainy Season’:

Hidden, oh hidden
in the high fog
the house we live in,
beneath the magnetic rock,
rain-, rainbow-ridden,
where blood-black
bromelias, lichens,
owls, and the lint
of the waterfalls cling,
familiar, unbidden.

There was no fog that day, just the occasional rainy mist, but the magnetic rock was visible. Isabella, the young curator at the local Imperial Museum, met the six of us in the town square. For some years now, she disclosed, she had been in charge of taking research students and literary pilgrims, mostly American, to see the house. Its present owner, a rich woman with apartments in Paris and Rio, had been unaware that its previous occupant was a famous poet whose fame had increased since her death in 1979. Everything belonging or appertaining to Bishop had gone, we were soon to discover. It was the completeness of that expungement that both intrigued and saddened me.

Let me remember that glass-fronted house. There is only one sizeable room, divided by a walkway from the ground floor to the floor above. In 1995, it was furnished in execrable taste, and the sight of those vibrant, headache-inducing colours was the first shock. A glance at the bookshelves in the reception room confirmed that this was no longer Bishop’s domain. Could the translator of
The Diary of
‘
Helena Morley
’ have really found a use for Reader’s Digest condensed books, and was she a secret connoisseur of Jack Higgins and the other avowedly populist authors beside him? I couldn’t begin to imagine so, and it was then – prompted by my puzzled questioning – that Isabella revealed that the rich owner had cleared out everything that was left in the house when she purchased it in the 1970s. The furniture, the garish paintings, the uninviting
objets
were all hers.

The beautifully designed and ordered garden – Lota’s work – was a bird sanctuary when the poet and the town planner lived together. As our tour progressed, we learned that the birds had flown. The only bird in view was a roguish parrot who was now confined to the house. He’d had a partner and offspring, but they had been set upon by a pack of poodles and slaughtered. Poodles? Murderous poodles? The lady of Paris and Rio bred them right here in Petrópolis. We would meet, and smell, them later.

There was, and probably still is, a hut halfway down the sloping garden. On opening the door, we discovered a bar – without bottles or glasses, but recognizably a bar. It was here that Elizabeth and Lota would sit in the evenings, in the midst of those now-vanished tropical birds. American poets and novelists who drink too much tend to favour the heavy stuff – bourbon, Scotch, vodka, tequila – unlike their European counterparts, who mostly favour wine or beer. Bishop enjoyed a cocktail, in which the potency of the liquor is temporarily disguised. When the motherly Lota was around, she drank moderately, but when her lover was away she put moderation behind her. Lota was often absent, due to her involvement in left-wing politics. Towards the end of Bishop’s sojourn in Paradise, she was gone for weeks at a time, campaigning and electioneering. Whenever they were reunited, they had bitter, furious rows. Elizabeth returned to America. Lota followed her to New York and killed herself in a hotel.

Those ‘facts’, such as they are, tell only part of the story. Next to the house in Petrópolis is the chalet, designed for her by Lota, with its direct view of a waterfall, where Bishop worked – slowly, painstakingly – on her incomparable poetry. Her books and papers have been removed, but her spirit is present. There’s a table and chair and the constant sound of water, and these are enough to summon her back. If there’s a literary shrine to attract the devoted to Petrópolis, it’s here, in this damp, restricted space, and nowhere else.

Just before we left, Madame’s butler – in a white jacket, wearing white gloves – offered us glasses of fruit juice from a gleaming silver tray. It was then we were invited to inspect the kennels which had been specially built behind the house. It was here that Madame’s poodles were bred. In December 1995, there were thirty-five of them, and the stench emanating from the kennels was not of the kind associated with an earthly Paradise.

I have never regarded the poodle as being properly canine. Like the chihuahua, its principal function appears to be as a fashion accessory. It seems to spend most of its charmed life in beauty parlours, where its coat is clipped and shampooed and from which it emerges looking ever more precious. A primped and cosseted poodle often comes to resemble its owner, and vice versa, especially when the fur on its head is bouffant, with dainty ribbons tied into bows over each ear. Madame’s darlings may have murdered a parrot or two, but they looked appropriately snooty and pampered in Petrópolis that day. Luxury objects, in a luxurious setting.

I thought of Lota on the journey back to Rio – Lota, the radical who was one of the prevailing forces behind the creation of the park in the capital; Lota, who fought her lover’s demons by giving her not one but two beautiful homes as well as the security of her trusting companionship. But Lota, who worked tirelessly to ease the plight of the poor, had her own demons – not least jealousy, and a sense of betrayal and loss. The way in which she brought her useful and dignified life to a close was cruel to Bishop but also cruel, lastingly cruel, to herself.

The poodle is privileged in Brazilian society, where the rich are very rich and the poor utterly destitute. Only about ten per cent of the huge population can read or write. God, for the children who live in shacks and caves, takes the form of the footballer who has escaped from the slums by dint of his natural talent, which has somehow been discovered early and nurtured. The statue of Christ the Redeemer – paid for by the French, sculpted by a Pole – so long the most imposing feature of Rio’s skyline, looks down on a quotidian mélange of death and disorder. The young who die here daily are lucky if they can be identified – a mutilated corpse is just another mutilated corpse; one among thousands.

We were warned on arriving in Brazil to keep our watches and any jewellery we possessed in the hotel safe. There were nimble thieves in every street. One afternoon, attending a performance of the ballet
La Fille Mal Gardée
at the Opera House, I noticed several overdressed women nip into the Ladies relatively unadorned, only to reappear minutes later sporting bracelets, necklaces, earrings and – on one
grande dame
– a diamond tiara. Their chauffeurs had transported the jewels to the Opera House in locked metal boxes. The women wouldn’t be seen dead in public without these tokens of their terrible wealth.

A society such as this has its quota of stray dogs, who exist on virtually the same level as those human beings who are themselves strays. Yet the poodle, bred by Madame’s faithful staff in Petrópolis, is the breathing equivalent of the diamond brooch, the string of pearls. It does not look out of place next to a mink coat. It is, in every sense, a lapdog.

I am his Highness’ dog at Kew,
Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?

Pope’s lines came to me as I stared at those thirty-five prized treasures in the compound behind Elizabeth and Lota’s portion of Paradise. I could imagine them saying much the same in Portuguese.

A close inspection of Christ the Redeemer reveals it to be kitsch, its potency as a symbol only powerful when seen from afar. The nearby tourist shops sell miniature Christs and tear-stained Virgin Marys alongside X-rated porno videos of ‘highlights from the Carnival’. The participants in those stimulating ‘highlights’ are almost invariably men – men who look like men, and men disguised as, or surgically transformed into, women; the brightly plumed transvestites and transsexuals who strut each night in Copacabana. The shack-or cave-dwelling boy who thinks he should have been born a girl has a chance of survival in this decadent culture, particularly if he is prettier than his sister. He could become a rich man’s plaything, with luck. If he can escape being raped or murdered, he will be wearing jewels and furs and the finest silk lingerie by the time he is in his twenties. He will have a woman’s name by then, and a certain kind of woman’s aspirations, which might include the ownership of a poodle from Petrópolis.

Grief melts away
Like snow in May,
As if there were no such cold thing

writes George Herbert in ‘The Flower’, the most affecting poem of renewal and hopefulness in English. And Herbert, bless his sweet and inquisitive nature, is right, for grief does have a habit of evaporating – suddenly, without warning, inexplicably.

I was in Florence two summers after David’s death. I had visited the Brancacci Chapel at eleven and eaten lunch at Angiolino’s, the
trattoria
I had frequented in the late 1960s. (One of the waiters from that time was still serving – a melancholy looking man who bore a close resemblance to the lugubrious French comic actor Fernandel. He was older, greyer, and his expression was more hangdog than ever.) I climbed, that warm but not overpoweringly hot afternoon, the several steep roads that lead to Forte Belvedere, which affords – as its name suggests – a wonderful view of the city. It was while I was looking down on the pink and green splendours of the Duomo and the Campanile that I found myself happily weeping. I was glad, overwhelmingly glad, to be alive and in possession of such beauty. These were the first contented tears I had shed since that March morning when I kissed his cold, untroubled forehead as he lay at peace at last.

And then, in 1992, in Trieste, something similar happened. It was a warm day and again I had eaten lunch – a simple meal of grilled sole and salad – but on this occasion I was looking at water, at the huge ferry boats waiting to go to Brindisi and Corfu. Jane was in my mind now as I recalled the letter she sent me following our delightful eating tour of Scotland. From Glasgow, where we said our goodbyes, she had driven down to the Lake District. It was there, by Lake Windermere, that she discovered she wanted to live for the first time since November 1985, the month Geoffrey died. But it was too late, for the cancer she was battling against was advanced to a stage beyond cure.

It was with this bittersweet memory of her that I once more felt the joy of simply existing, of being in the city of Svevo and Saba, two much-loved writers. And I remembered that Geoffrey had hated the idea of extinction and often quoted those lines by Herbert

And now in age I bud again,
After so many deaths I live and write

Which is what I am doing, even as I know that melted grief can ice over in the night or in the dense darkness of early morning, before daylight brings some hope of continuance.