Basic Black with Pearls Read online

  His confession surprised and moved me. I had never heard him speak so poetically.

  Now I was lining up in the aisle to disembark. I was thanked for flying. Then began the walk along endless deserted corridors, up an escalator, another lineup.

  – What is the purpose of your visit? a uniformed man at Immigration asks.

  These are strange times and I must be careful. I finger the pearls at my throat, my coat is open to reveal a basic black dress. Now that I am middle-aged I have a slight advantage in these situations. I try to give off that mixture of confusion and unhappiness that will make him reluctant to detain me, for in that state I remind him of his mother.

  – A holiday, I reply.

  Even as he stamps my passport he is already appraising the next person in line.

  A long wait for my suitcase, a lineup for customs, and finally, the lineup for the bus. The passage from one part of the world to another has been silent and unfelt. My voyage has meant nothing to anyone.

  Not until we were driving along the Lakeshore did I come out of my daze. In those gray waters I had learned to swim. It is going to be difficult to remain anonymous in this city where I had scratched the name Lola into wet cement outside the library on St. George Street, above the neat stamp of the contractor, Felucci, 1942. Lola (it is not my name) stays in my vision among the lines of speeding cars; she roller-skates in front of skyscrapers; she holds up street signs. I observe her in her misfit dresses and ridiculous coats. I feel sorry for the girl who (still) wanders darkening streets carrying two or three library books, shifting them now and again from left arm to right and back again. Sometimes both arms hold the books across her chest like a shield. They belong together, she and her books, and as long as she carries them, she is safe. The writers of books will become her familiars and protect her from betrayal. In the years in which I see her, she remains pale and thin; she hardly seems to grow; her breasts do not increase appreciably in size, although shortly after her thirteenth birthday she wears a brassiere to suppress her nipples. I watch her leave the wide street of grocery stores and fish markets and dry-goods shops and small factories and turn south (it is always south) where rows of narrow houses, separated only by tin drainpipes, are without lights, their doors shut fast. The doors are of solid, heavy wood, dark-stained, and fit tightly into their frames. She approaches one of these houses. The door yields to a strong push from her shoulder. All who live there are in a state of anger and pain, given to violent quarrels and helpless silences. Sometimes these people are relatives of sorts; or it is a Scottish couple, the husband working in the C.N.R. stables. The house smells of manure. It isn’t an unpleasant odor. Once it is the house of a fat man who almost becomes her stepfather. Houses where there are three kitchens and one toilet and mattresses everywhere. I watch her mount dark stairs. Someone slips out of somewhere to secure the lock on the door behind her. That is the only sign that her homecoming has been noticed. And so she continues up the steps, to the second floor, or to the third floor; for two winters she is seen going down the hall to an unheated addition behind the kitchen, where her cot stands in the midst of potatoes and onions. Her mother is given to sudden attacks of hysteria and they move often. Now her mother is in a deep sleep, snoring, exhausted. Even as I watch that girl she climbs again and again, changing from child to young woman, up on a cot, a sofa, a bed. No one has spoken her name. No one has said goodnight.

  The first few minutes in a hotel are always the same. The order of procedure is this: I approach the desk and fill out a little card with the (false) name on my passport. Except when I am in New York, I give as my domicile the address of the United Nations. On the line provided for my occupation, I used to write Volunteer; then, later, perhaps as a childish form of self-assertion, I put down the truth: Meeting Coenraad. It is extremely difficult to leave empty the space provided for the admission of a dreary existence. The pen hangs in mid-air. Actually, it doesn’t matter what I write on that card. The clerk is interested only in numbers — on my passport and on my credit card. At the bottom, my signature Lola Montez is supposed to attest to the truth of the statements above it. A bellhop is summoned with the palm of a hand against a bell, he is given my room key, he picks up my one bag. I do not follow him. I wait. I stand stock still, expectant. In that break of (the clerk’s) routine, a connection is made. It is then, after a moment’s hesitation and another glance at my registration card, that he turns to the pigeon-holed wall behind him and locates, to his right, a sealed manila envelope with my (false) name on it, which he hands over to me wordlessly. Once in my room, with all the locks and bolts in place, I tear open the envelope, extract an issue of the National Geographic, in whose pages I find the (coded) message from Coenraad. Inside is also a smaller envelope containing money in the currency of the country.

  This is the point I am driven towards — that exquisite instant when I receive word of our next meeting. I pack and unpack; find my way to airports, bus stations and railway terminals; shiver or swelter; go hungry or vomit in public toilets. Sometimes I travel half around the earth to decipher a message that instructs me to leave the next day for yet another distant destination.

  That night at the King Edward Hotel, between me and my envelope, stood a long line of people, a convention of some kind. Men in turtle-necks and pipes; women in slacks and shoulder bags, all wearing plastic-covered name tags over the left breast. Those not in line milled about, the women coming up close to the men’s chests to read their names, but men keeping their faces at a distance from female breasts, lowering their heads a little if necessary in order to read. A harassed clerk called for reinforcements, and from an office behind him, briefly glimpsed when the door opened, a young woman came to stand beside him. The line straggled. They were in no hurry to get into their rooms, these chatty men and women, mildly titillated by their (temporary) release from, I imagined, academic dust. Later I found out that they were botanists. Gradually I moved up the line. When, finally, the envelope was handed to me, I felt it to be alarmingly thin. To hide my panic I adopted an air of world-weariness, appearing to be bored with everything in sight, following the bellhop with my coat draped loosely about my shoulders as if it were mink.

  I stood inside the open door while he switched on all the lights, adjusted the (unadjustable) thermostat, pulled at the drawn drapes, turned on the television, pointed to the towels in the bathroom. With coins ready in my hand, I tipped him, bolted the door, turned off the canned laughter on the TV. My hands trembled as I tore open the envelope. The contents seemed to stick to the sides. With thumb and forefinger I extracted a four-page sheet, which I found to be a report on Dutch elm disease, reprinted from The Canadian Journal of Botany (Volume 6, number 4). On the front was a photograph of a lone, leafless tree, its branches stark against a barren landscape. Beneath the picture was the word Victim! The text was surprisingly emotional in its language, with allusions to death, dying, fatal fungus, deadly disease, wasting away, terminal state, in extremis, moribund, hopeless. In this welter of decay there was mention of a Saviour of the Elm not yet in sight. There was one note of hope: . . . new strain known as Quebec Elm . . . that resists the blight. . . .

  What was I to make of all this? Perhaps Coenraad was asking that I be alert to the problems of our situation and make proper interpretations. He admires my intelligence in this respect. For instance, in a Geographic article on the nomadic freedom of the Berbers of the Sahara, there was a picture of a little girl, aged about ten, absorbed in the quaint occupation of rocking a skin pouch full of goat’s milk into butter. I noticed she was blind, although the text made no reference to her plight. Interpretation led me to a clinic for blind children in Tangier where Coenraad was acting as a salesman for a pharmaceutical company. The question still remained: where, in the problem of dead elms, was his message for me? I counted words on a line, lines on a page; the number of Latin terms. Nothing was revealed. Fatigue diverted a rising dread. Perhaps my mind would be c
learer in the morning.

  Going alone to sleep I have been in the habit of reading the literature of our trysts. For one thing, using the National Geographic for a code ensured that I always had something to read the first night in a strange bed. For another, I was able to familiarize myself with the ambience of our rendezvous, so that if we were forced to stay under cover, as the expression has it, I would have stories of the region for his entertainment. In Bangkok, I told Coenraad that every plot of ground has a spirit. When you build a house, you mustn’t drive the spirit away or you’ll meet misfortune. So you give the spirit a house to live in, out of doors, in the east corner.

  We differed at the deepest level once on the interpretation of the marriage custom in Botswana. Bared to the waist as a sign of humility, the princess dances for the bridegroom. An ox’s gall bladder is pinned to her hair to signify luck, and she grasps two slender spears and a knife, indications that she is prepared to enter another’s clan. As the setting sun colors the Mdzimba Range, the bride’s father, King Sabhusa, silently watches the slow-moving dance, which is accompanied by a haunting dirge. My lover said that humility in a woman was a good start for marriage; whereas I felt that the reference to a haunting dirge showed apprehension for the future. The day before a Chasidic wedding, I told him, women were hired to spend the day crying.

  After that I put to memory only stories of an impersonal nature. If he had met me in Tikal I would have repeated a story told by the priest of the village of Xcobenhaltun, who also practiced black magic. I was called by the gods before I was born. While my mother was carrying me, my father did an evil thing to her, and from the womb I struck him dead. And always, while reading the magazine alone in a hotel room, I could see Coenraad’s blunt fingers turning the very same pages, his eyes following the identical lines. I had visions of a pen poised as he deliberated over the passage with the message, then inserting the magazine into the manila envelope for me to pick up at our next rendezvous. The botany reprint in my hands tonight fell to the floor. I had no wish to read again of the death of elms.

  Now I was ready for the final part of my nightly ritual. Under a small ring of light on the night table was my pack of postcards, secured by a wide elastic band stretched to its limit, apparently, for it snapped as I removed it. First I shuffled the cards. Then I lay back against the pillows, closed my eyes and extracted at random three postcards.

  The first card I drew was a photograph in sepia of a statue of a horse and rider. This was the only card I had to remind me of the Paralelo Hotel in Barcelona. There had been a knock on the door in the middle of that night, whispers in the hall, and a gentle coercion that I hurry and dress, we must leave immediately. In our hasty exit, in the lobby I managed to snatch a postcard off a rack on the counter. Two prostitutes in Fellini tight skirts and blouses, with thighs and breasts revealed, coming in at that hour with their customers, stared in disbelief at my theft, and continued to stare, unsmiling, while the two men joked and laughed, until the elevator doors closed on their disapproving faces.

  Details of our short-lived passion in Barcelona are easily recalled but they give me small pleasure. Perhaps it was due to my discomfort in that seedy hotel. Water dripped down the walls; the bed clothes were damp. The war in Vietnam had not been going too well. I guessed that tighter security had been ordered, since we had begun to meet in working-class districts. In that airless, cramped room, with a cracked bidet opposite a sagging bed, I experienced a foreboding, a feeling as in childhood of something being wrong, or of some wrongdoing I was not aware of and of imminent punishment, in the course of which I would be apprised of my crime.

  – I want to bear your child, I announced.

  – Good God whatever for!

  – So that no matter what happens, I will have our child to remind me always of our love.

  – In Hiroshima you said it was an awesome act to bear children, terrible responsibility, things like that.

  – I had forgotten.

  The room was stifling. The lower half of the only window was blocked by an air-conditioner that didn’t work; the upper half couldn’t be pried open. The door, of course, was locked. And then Coenraad made me swear by the lives of the children I already have, that I was not, nor would I permit myself to become, pregnant. By him.

  – Now, don’t get upset, he added. Then standing back for a long look at me, he made a short speech about how women trapped men by having children. I think he used the words foist upon.

  All the same, Coenraad subsequently wore a condom, especially designed, he said, to heighten my pleasure. The exact description on the box was 148 raised pleasure dots and eleven rings. Sometimes I wondered if its true purpose was prophylaxis against betrayal.

  The rest of that short night was spent in the enjoyment of music. Coenraad rang downstairs and soon a young man appeared with a guitar. He strummed a melody as if asking Coenraad to savour the bouquet of the instrument. He continued to display his virtuosity for quite some time, then handed his instrument to Coenraad with a final surge of chords and a low bow. Oddly enough, the guitar was no prop, as the cornet was on a sultry night in New Orleans. Coenraad played beautifully, with rubato rhythms, controlling the melody with a seductive emphasis at the end of each phrase. Then he played Recuerdos de la Alhambra by Tarrega, entirely from memory, all the while holding my eyes with his, until I was brought to tears with the beauty of it all.

  At two in the morning, as if he anticipated that tap on the door, Coenraad told me,

  – It’s understood that if there is no envelope from me, it means I cannot meet you.

  – You mean, something will have happened to you!

  – Not necessarily. Whatever the reason, it will simply mean I cannot see you.

  – Cannot, or will not?

  – It is the same.

  The rider pictured on the stolen postcard was demanding my attention. On the reverse side, in three languages, it said he was a Catalonian king, Ramon Berenguera. He sat astride his mount, erect and imperious, cloak thrown back, holding the reins with one gloved hand, the other upraised in command. The sculptor had carved onto his face an expression of superiority over all he surveyed. That noble mien, I knew, could twist suddenly into rage. He reminded me of Zbigniew, my husband.

  Quickly, I drew another card.

  As I contemplated the second postcard, I wondered if I ought to continue in this manner of gambling on a night’s sleep, since each card pointed to desolation. In looking at the picture of the house where Christopher Columbus spent his childhood, I recalled my feelings about Genoa. In the shabby alleys I had passed sombre men and women. Even the children on their way to school walked with a slow, serious gait. And in my hotel, the chambermaid, clothed in black from neck to toe, kept her face averted from me, her head bent over an armful of linen. Still, I knew she was onto me. I suspected she had examined the contents of my suitcase. My extra black dress would not have impressed her: she who had to wear black. Poor, overworked, supporting Lord knows how many, returning home at night to unmade beds. I offered her a pair of nylons. She took them out of my hand without a word, her face indifferent. I cannot bear indifference from anyone.

  I pandered with perfume; she saw through me: I was lonely. Moreover, she sensed that I didn’t have enough money or class or whatever it takes to be her superior. In Italian, I asked her name and told her mine. She continued making up the bed, replacing smooth clean sheets with smooth clean sheets, never raising her head. I felt I was in her way, even though I sat in a corner on a chair with my feet up. In the bathroom, the sample bar of soap, already dwindled to a sliver, was left to lie in its puddle. I told myself, you haven’t guts enough to buy yourself a regular-size bar of scented soap to show your independence. Tonight you will struggle with what’s left of the hotel soap, lathering with it as best you can, using your hands to wash yourself, since the towels were removed and not replaced. You have been left with one small
piece of linen for the bidet. You deserve no more, since your lack of authority encourages the poor girl to steal your share of the allotted soap. Why do you not assert yourself, demand what is coming to you, so we would both have more respect for ourselves? Instead, I pretended to read.

  The morning after Coenraad’s visit the same maid lingered in our room. She smiled and looked up every once in a while as she changed the wrinkled stained sheets. Rapid outbursts of information. I did not answer her, because I was at the window, unseeing, deaf to everything but the echo of last night’s endearments. I was led by her to a chair and eased into it with the gentlest of touch. When she left, she walked backwards, her arms cradling the sheets. In the bathroom were two wrapped bars of soap, two washcloths and four large towels. Too late. I wanted to hang on to all the juices and all the odors. I wanted never to wash again.

  The last postcard for the night was one of Aberdeen Harbor in Hong Kong, showing its waters as a mass of junks and sampans and two restaurants, painted vermillion, all ostensibly floating. I recalled I just had time for a five-minute ride on a sampan, ferried by a small, thin woman of indefinite age who concentrated on the watery space she opened up for herself and whose small children huddled in one corner so that I was drawn again and again to stare back at the three pairs of accusing eyes. Although it was a brief experience, I feel I know a great deal about people whose entire lives are spent on a tiny open boat. In fact the young man in charge of the eleventh floor of our hotel was born and raised on a junk. He had many stories to tell me in the idle afternoons when we sipped tea at his station opposite the elevators.

  It was at the Hong Kong Hilton that I made another attempt to gain a more secure place in Coenraad’s life. One night we were arm in arm at the picture window, high above the harbor, watching the red and green and white lights of the ferry boats and steamers and the American Seventh Fleet. I was thinking particularly of Sundays at home when Zbigniew comes back from the stables, hangs up his riding crop beside the mantel-piece and settles in with the week’s newspapers. The memory of what follows, every Sunday of the year, year after year, made me shudder. I announced to my lover then and there, at the window, that I was willing to move to Boston. Perhaps, some day . . . he and I could . . . ? He turned and looked at me through slitted eyes, the palms of his hands together at his chest. He bowed.