Ménage (28 page)

‘Owen’s had a hard day at work,’ Saul said.

Molly, content with the simple answer, fastened the last hands together and ran with her garland of paper people to the corridor to fasten it to the end of the last. Dot followed her. Saul ruffled up Owen’s hair and sat facing him.

‘Old man,’ he said, ‘you’re such a sentimental old fuck.’

Owen stared at the floor.

‘I . . . just don’t know why . . . She is so . . .’

‘Isn’t she?’ Saul said, rubbing his shoulders.

‘I just don’t know how . . .’

‘I know, no one ever taught us how to be happy.’

Owen put his hand back then and held Saul’s at they both stared out at the festooned hallway and the mother and child.

There were poles in the middle of the playground where there once must have been swings. Molly was running
round
and round chasing a little black kid in fluorescent bodysuit.

‘Sorry I couldn’t make it yesterday,’ Saul said, ‘I had something I had to do. I’ve been meaning to tell you. I mean, I’ve noticed, well, I thought it would be good for us to talk about what happened.’

Owen sat on the roundabout next to Dot as Saul stood. They were still turning slightly, from when Molly had been on the roundabout minutes before. Owen was a little concerned by Saul’s tone of voice, almost confessional.

‘The desert,’ Saul said. ‘You have to see it. I mean breathe it,’ Saul started, then stopped. Then smiled. ‘Maybe it’s not the right time . . .’

‘Tell us,’ Dot said. ‘The desert? You were . . .’

Owen stopped the roundabout from turning so they could face him.

‘Messiah syndrome,’ Saul said. ‘You ever hear of that?’

Owen hadn’t, neither had Dot.

‘The security forces stop them at Ben Gurion Airport, Tel Aviv. A thousand of them a year, still to this day, all these poor bastards from all over the world thinking they’re the next messiah, turning up in loincloths and all that. It’s like Monty Python or something.’

Dot laughed. Owen was curious as to where this was heading.

‘I was there, seven years ago, my mum had just died. You sure you want to hear this?’

Owen did not, as if if they all went into confession then it would be trauma and tears and blame. He stared up and located Molly. She was being chased by the little black girl; they were both hiccuping with laughter as the kid’s mother watched over them.

‘Go on,’ said Dot.

‘I’d been, well, in a hell of a state with drink. I woke up one morning, some party some junkie had had, I was
staggering
round Soho, Oxford Street, a real mess, I ended up down Marble Arch, all those big embassy buildings, really fucked up. I heard some music. It was the synagogue, you know the big one down there, it’s got a beautiful dome, I’ll take you there some day, if you like.’

This whole thing seemed impossible to Owen, Saul the hater of religion, the Antichrist. Saul in the desert – had that not been one of Owen’s fantasies?

Dot nodded for Saul to go on.

‘Anyway, this song, my mother used to sing it. I must have staggered into this place. I don’t know what happened but they took me in, this Lubavitcher got me a place to stay. I was fucked up, I don’t know, maybe it was just the guy’s face, like he’d seen people like me before, like he cared. I don’t know. Relinquish, that was the word he used, accept, surrender, words like that. I had to see the desert, he said.’

Owen could hear the quiver in Saul’s voice. Dot gripped his hand. Owen looked out to Molly and the black kid as they headed towards the slide. The mother of the kid looked around for Molly’s mother. Owen made hand signs to her that it was OK for the kids to play there, he was watching. Saul went on.

‘They paid for my ticket, flight, food, everything, got me dried out.’ Saul laughed to himself. ‘I was the oldest student there, in the kibbutz, by far. And it’s hard work, every day the same stupid jobs, like the fucking Stone Age in a tent. And I had to fight it, the naive faith they had. It drove me nuts, you know, made me want to drink and trash it all. But the Lubavitcher, it was like he knew. He’d look at me with these eyes and it’d tear me up. He’d hold my hand and say “I know.”’

Owen heard Dot sniff beside him. He wrapped his arm round her. Saul went on.

‘So one night, it was just, you know, a hundred yards away. I went to the desert. I mean, it’s not what you’d
think
. Like a beach with no water, but really cold at night. Anyway, I was waiting for this big religious conversion or something. I actually went kind of nuts, you know, screaming at the sky. FUCK YOU, GOD! and all that jazz and of course there’s nothing, it’s just a stupid desert. And I thought, I’m a Jew – what’s wrong with that? A Jew in a desert! I don’t know why, I went crazy, howling and giggling, and the desert, I suppose I expected it to laugh back at me or something. You know, you look into the void and it looks into you. But it was just silly. I mean, hysterical, I was. When the Lubavitcher found me he said I had the divine laughter. So I go to synagogue every Saturday. That’s why I couldn’t help out yesterday. I don’t know why I’m telling you this.’

‘C’mere you.’ Dot burst into laughing tears, reached out for Saul’s hand and brought him closer. Owen sat back and let them hold each other, as Dot hugged and kissed the head of Saul. Saul reached to take Owen’s hand. Something in the movement must have set off the roundabout because they started spinning.

‘Jesus Christ!’ Dot muttered and that set Owen off. All three were spinning on the roundabout holding each other. Owen looked out and the mother by the slide was staring at them as if they were mad, while Molly waved.

Owen could not bring himself to look at the last two tapes. The violence within them. Slaps, blood, screaming. He was at his desk and unable to face the impossible essay. Dot was putting pressure on him about Zurich. She needed the text finished and since the touring childminder situation was, as always impossible, she wanted either him or Saul to come to Switzerland with her.

Down the corridor, they were making houses. Saul had constructed a little tent with sheets thrown over Molly’s bed and had brought her dollies inside. Words only half heard
and
guessed at but he was sure Saul was asking her all their names, his bare feet peeking out onto her alphabet rug.

Owen couldn’t focus. A tiny gap through the door, down the hall through the sheets, and he was sure he saw Saul being served make-believe cups of tea. And Saul holding his plastic kiddie-cup like an old lady, like Oscar Wilde, his little finger pointed outwards. ‘It’s delicious.’

The child’s laughter and he himself had never found time to play under Molly’s drape. Perhaps Dot was right, the old Saul was dead and we had to get to know the new one. But the inner peace of the new Saul scared him. He was ever-conscious of the lurking messiah.

Owen was on his feet, walking towards that small tent of whisperings. But then, stopping before the sheets, he heard words from inside.

‘Tea is a funny thing,’ Saul said, ‘just some crushed leaves from India.’

‘What’s India?’ Molly asked.

‘Well, I’ll tell you in a minute. But milk comes from England and sugar from Jamaica. It’s all very strange and wonderful this thing called a cup of tea.’

Owen had to step away, there were things going on in there the like of which a normal four-year-old would never have heard. The deconstruction of colonialism, and Saul, his voice in whispers, his fingers maybe drawing maps in the air, telling Molly about the world. As Owen made it back to his room there was an understanding of Saul’s new place in the order of things. On one level it was tragic that he’d had to find a four-year-old as his new student, but on another, just imagine, to be that child and for that adult to take that cup with its imagined tea and for him to tell you of holy Hindu cows and how to milk a teat and how sugar boiled down from cut vines in the West Indies. And to see this man’s eyes, wide open, as he again teaches himself the wonder of words he had once found predictable. For the most cynical
man
in the world to find joy in the eyes of a child who waits on his next word. A word that might redeem him. If only he could live with them under that little makeshift tent. If only there was no essay and no Zurich, no career to build and no homes to find. No tomorrow to fear.

*

We were all drunk and Dot had made up a song with Saul playing along on his beaten-up guitar, as we brainstormed threes: three strands in DNA, green, red and blue make white light. Three for two in the off-licence with Sauvignon Blanc. The third term of Tory rule. Three hours to Goldsmiths and back. Jesus predicted that Peter would deny him three times. Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil. We live in 3D. Bad luck comes in threes.

As Saul struck the final chord he collapsed, drunken into the depths of his wardrobe.

We were high on our threeness, floating on vast quantities of alcohol. Our lovemaking in that month had drifted into a somnambulist semi-waking sensuality, in which we never knew or admitted we knew who was touching who.
Our
limbs and mouths dissolved into each other, but still not a word had any of us said about what we were really doing. Dot thought we had finally become a work of art, that art and love could be bedfellows. But neither art nor love can thrive without the silent third element and that is social reality, and it was rushing at us, fast.

It was the second week of May and only a week till Dot’s premiere in
Bug
. The problems with electricity and lighting and her choice of tape had been solved: she was going to exhibit our slapping kissing tape on a TV on a plinth somewhere. Everyone told her she was headed for success but there was an electric air of restlessness around her. She could not sit still for a second. She’d shoplifted a bodice and bowler hat to wear to her opening. Her lipstick was black or was maybe eyeliner, or possibly permanent marker. I hoped not. She wanted to film everything, all the time.

Saul had already drunk two boxes of sherry on the day when it happened, and his snoring was filling the flat. Dot asked me to come with her to his room and for us all to sleep together, for once, deliberately, eyes wide open.

— You’re right, she said, it’s silly to keep on pretending like this.

I suggested it may not be such a good idea to wake Saul and expect him to be happy about it.

— Perhaps we should bring him a coffee and some ibuprofen before our discussion?

— A discussion? She laughed, quoting an old Saulism back at me. — Must you always explain away the fabulous?

She had her video camera with her. — Come on, she kept saying, as she pulled me through Saul’s doorway, over his piles of unwashed clothes.

— I can see it in my head, she said, — a thing of beauty, to make all humanity weep.

— Pardon?

— Get in beside him, I want to film us sleeping.

It made sense, we had filmed everything else we’d done, what would be the harm in it? I decided to keep my pants on, and when Saul woke, to sit and quietly discuss our situation.

I was woken by screaming. I tried to keep the peace but they were both in hysterics. Dot was picking up her camera, the lens seemed broken. Saul yelled: — How dare you? Get the fuck out!

He was trying to cover his nakedness, kicking Dot out. He screamed so loud they couldn’t hear me.

— Psycho bitch, you’ve no fucking right!

She was in tears, didn’t understand, saying sorry, sorry, telling him that we looked so beautiful together, her eyes shooting to me for help.

— Tell him, when he sleeps, he’s so –

Saul pushed her back. She fell and banged her head on the stereo, writhing in pain as she clutched her skull. Saul ran from the room, dragging his clothes, screaming back: — CUNT! Never darken my door again!

I was left alone with her. I found that I was more naked than I had thought and searched for my underpants. She wanted to show me what she had filmed, by way of explanation. Saul must have dressed quickly out in the hall and found some boots because I heard the front door slam. I tried to be practical, plugged her camera into the VCR, rewound and hit ‘play’. It was just some footage of Saul and me sleeping, harmless.

— Don’t you see how sweet you are?

I sat and watched. She had woken between us and got her camera. She’d filmed the space between us where she had been. Slowly Saul and I, in our sleeping sense of her lack, rolled over and held each other. Saul was naked, and I wearing only my shirt. Saul muttered, I snuggled up against
him
. Then he rolled over and I went into spoons, holding him from behind as he curled his hand under his chin like a little kitten.

— So beautiful, she said over and over, as I reached for her hand, my eyes stuck to the screen. She started staring at her upturned hands, chanting sorrys and beautifuls, as if in mantra.

On-screen, the smile on Saul’s face as he nestled his chin into my neck. As his hand reached back and held me closer. The voice from the recorded footage then, the same as the voice beside me, whispering, — So beautiful. Then the face of Saul waking. Then in shock. He lunged for the camera. His eyes flashing furious from between the dark fingers that obliterated the lens.

I realised then what had happened in the mind of Saul.

— What did I do wrong? Dot kept asking, but I could not tell her.

She had broken his one unspoken rule: to keep the repressed repressed. It was not a portrayal but a betrayal. Or maybe something more simple, more base and selfish: he was the only one allowed to make an artwork of his life. She had reduced him to an object in her art. The one thing Saul could never bear was to have his powerlessness exposed.

She wept on my shoulder but I could not hold her, my hand floated by her side. She had plans to buy him presents, to give him sherry, flowers, money, five hundred pounds. She sat on the edge of the bed, inconsolable.