Smoke and Mirrors (15 page)

lace petticoats, silks and satins. Ladies’

boots, and muffs, and bonnets: a treasure cave and dressing room—

diamonds and rubies underneath my feet.

“Beyond that room I knew myself in Hell.

In my dream . . .

I saw many heads. The heads of young women. I saw a wall

on which dismembered limbs were nailed.

A heap of breasts. The piles of guts, of livers, lights,

the eyes, the . . .

No. I cannot say. And all around the flies were buzzing,

onelow droning buzz.

—
Bëelzebubzebubzebub
, they buzzed. I could not breathe,

I ran from there and sobbed against a wall.”

“A fox’s lair indeed,” says the fair woman.

(“It was not so,” I mutter.)

“They are untidy creatures, so to litter

about their dens the bones and skins and feathers

of their prey. The French call him
Renard,

the Scottish,
Tod.
”

“One cannot help one’s name,” says my intended’s father.

He is almost panting now, they all are:

in the firelight, the fire’s heat, lapping their ale.

The wall of the inn was hung with sporting prints.

She continues:

“From outside I heard a crash and a commotion.

I ran back the way I had come, along the red carpet,

down the wide staircase—too late!—the main door was opening!

I threw myself down the stairs—rolling, tumbling—

fetched up hopelessly beneath a table,

where I waited, shivered, prayed.”

She points at me. “Yes, you, sir. You came in,

crashed open the door, staggered in, you, sir,

dragging a young woman

by her red hair and by her throat.

Her hair was long and unconfined, she screamed and strove

to free herself. You laughed, deep in your throat,

were all a-sweat, and grinned from ear to ear.”

She glares at me. The color’s in her cheeks.

“You pulled a short old broadsword, Mister Fox,

and as she screamed,

you slit her throat, again from ear to ear,

I listened to her bubbling, sighing, shriek,

and closed my eyes and prayed until she stopped.

And after much, much, much too long, she stopped.

“And I looked out. You smiled, held up your sword,

your hands agore-blood—”

“In your dream,” I tell her.

“In my dream.

She lay there on the marble, as you sliced

you hacked, you wrenched, you panted, and you stabbed.

You took her head from her shoulders,

thrust your tongue between her red wet lips.

You cut off her hands. Her pale white hands.

You sliced open her bodice, you removed each breast.

Then you began to sob and howl.

Of a sudden,

clutching her head, which you carried by the hair,

the flame red hair,

you ran up the stairs.

“As soon as you were out of sight,

I fled through the open door.

I rode my Betsy home, down the white road.”

All eyes upon me now. I put down my ale

on the old wood of the table.

“It is not so,”

I told her,

told all of them.

“It was not so, and

God forbid

it should be so. It was

an evil dream. I wish such dreams

on no one.”

“Before I fled the charnel house,

before I rode poor Betsy into a lather,

before we fled down the white road,

the blood still red

(And was it a pig whose throat you slit, Mister Fox?)

before I came to my father’s inn,

before I fell before them speechless,

my father, brothers, friends—”

All honest farmers, fox-hunting men.

They are stamping their boots, their black boots.

“—before that, Mister Fox,

I seized, from the floor, from the bloody floor,

her hand, Mister Fox. The hand of the woman

you hacked apart before my eyes.”

“It is not so—”

“It was no dream. You Creature. You Bluebeard.”

“It was not so—”

“You Gilles-de-Rais. You monster.”

“And God forbid it should be so!”

She smiles now, lacking mirth or warmth.

The brown hair curls around her fare,

roses twining about a bower.

Two spots of red are burning on her cheeks.

“Behold, Mister Fox! Her hand! Her poor pale hand!”

She pulls it from her breasts (gently freckled,

I had dreamed of those breasts),

tosses it down upon the table.

It lays in front of me.

Her father, brothers, friends,

they stare at me hungrily,

and I pick up the small thing.

The hair was red indeed and rank. The pads and claws

were rough. One end was bloody,

but the blood had dried.

“This is no hand,” I tell them. But the first

fist knocks the wind from out of me,

an oaken cudgel hits my shoulder,

as I stagger,

the first black boot kicks me down onto the floor.

And then a rain of blows beats down on me,

I curl and mewl and pray and grip the paw

so tightly.

Perhaps I weep.

I see her then,

the pale fair girl, the smile has reached her lips,

her skirts so long as she slips, gray-eyed,

amused beyond all bearing, from the room.

She’d many a mile to go that night.

And as she leaves,

from my vantage place upon the floor,

I see the brush, the tail between her legs;

I would have called,

but I could speak no more. Tonight she’ll be running

four-footed, sure-footed, down the white road.

What if the hunters come?

What if they come?

Be bold,
I whisper once, before I die.
But not too bold . . .

And then my tale is done.

Q UEEN OF K NIVES

The reappearance of the lady is a matter of individual taste.

— 
WILL GOLDSTON,
TRICKS AND ILLUSIONS

When I was a boy, from time to time,

I stayed with my grandparents

(old people: I knew they were old—

chocolates in their house

remained uneaten until I came to stay,

this, then, was aging).

My grandfather always made breakfast at sunup:

a pot of tea, for her and him and me,

some toast and marmalade

(the Silver Shred and the Gold). Lunch and dinner,

those were my grandmother’s to make, the kitchen

was again her domain, all the pans and spoons,

the mincer, all the whisks and knives, her loyal subjects.

She would prepare the food with them, singing her little songs:

Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do,

or sometimes,

You made me love you, I didn’t want to do it,

I didn’t want to do it.

She had no voice, not one to speak of.

Business was very slow.

My grandfather spent his days at the top of the house,

in his tiny darkroom where I was not permitted to go,

bringing out paper faces from the darkness,

the cheerless smiles of other people’s holidays.

My grandmother would take me for gray walks along the promenade.

Mostly I would explore

the small wet grassy space behind the house,

the blackberry brambles, and the garden shed.

It was a hard week for my grandparents

forced to entertain a wide-eyed boy-child, so

one night they took me to the King’s Theatre. The King’s . . .

Variety!

The lights went down, red curtains rose.

A popular comedian of the day

came on, stammered out his name (his catchphrase),

pulled out a sheet of glass, and stood half-behind it,

raising the arm and leg that we could see;

reflected,

he seemed to fly—it was his trademark,

so we all laughed and cheered. He told a joke or two,

quite badly. His haplessness, his awkwardness,

these were what we had come to see.

Bemused and balding and bespectacled,

And then the comedian was done.

Some ladies danced all legs across the stage.

A singer sang a song I didn’t know.

The audience were old people,

like my grandparents, tired and retired,

all of them laughing and applauding.

In the interval my grandfather

queued for a choc ice and a couple of tubs.

We ate our ices as the lights went down.

The
SAFETY CURTAIN
rose, and then the real curtain.

The ladies danced across the stage again,

and then the thunder rolled, the smoke went puff,

a conjurer appeared and bowed. We clapped.

The lady walked on, smiling from the wings:

glittered. Shimmered. Smiled.

We looked at her, and in that moment flowers grew,

and silks and pennants tumbled from his fingertips.

The flags of all nations,
said my grandfather, nudging me.

They were up his sleeve.

Since he was a young man

(I could not imagine him as a child),

my grandfather had been, by his own admission,

one of the people who knew how things worked.

He had built his own television,

my grandmother told me, when they were first married;

it was enormous, though the screen was small.

This was in the days before television programs;

they watched it, though,

unsure whether it was people or ghosts they were seeing.

He had a patent, too, for something he invented,

but it was never manufactured.

Stood for the local council, but he came in third.

He could repair a shaver or a wireless,

develop your film, or build a house for dolls.

(The doll’s house was my mother’s. We still had it at my house;

shabby and old, it sat out in the grass, all rained-on and forgot.)

The glitter lady wheeled on a box.

The box was tall: grown-up-person-sized and black.

She opened up the front.

They turned it round and banged upon the back.

The lady stepped inside, still smiling.

The magician closed the door on her.

When it was opened, she had gone.

He bowed.

Mirrors,
explained my grandfather.
She’s really still inside.

At a gesture, the box collapsed to matchwood.

A trapdoor,
assured my grandfather;

Grandma hissed him silent.

The magician smiled, his teeth were small and crowded;

he walked, slowly, out into the audience.

He pointed to my grandmother, he bowed.

a Middle European bow,

and invited her to join him on the stage.

The other people clapped and cheered.

My grandmother demurred. I was so close

to the magician that I could smell his aftershave

and whispered “Me, oh, me . . .” But still,

he reached his long fingers for my grandmother.

My grandmother must have been, what? Sixty, then?

She had just stopped smoking,

was trying to lose some weight. She was proudest

of her teeth, which, though tobacco-stained, were all her own.

My grandfather had lost his, as a youth,

riding his bicycle; he had the bright idea

to hold on to a bus to pick up speed.

The bus had turned,

and Grandpa kissed the road.

She chewed hard licorice, watching TV at night,

or sucked hard caramels, perhaps to make him wrong.

She stood up, then, a little slowly.

Put down the paper tub half-f of ice cream,

the little wooden spoon—

went down the aisle, and up the steps.

And on the stage.

The conjurer applauded her once more—

A good sport. That was what she was. A sport.

Another glittering woman came from the wings,

bringing another box—

This one was red.

That’s her,
nodded my grandfather,
the one

who vanished off before. You see? That’s her.

Perhaps it was. All I could see

was a woman who sparkled, standing next to my grandmother

(who fiddled with her pearls and looked embarrassed).

The lady smiled and faced us, then she froze,

a statue, or a window mannequin.

The magician pulled the box,

with ease,

down to the front of stage, where my grandmother waited.

A moment or so of chitchat:

where she was from, her name, that kind of thing.

They’d never met before?
She shook her head.

The magician opened the door,

my grandmother stepped in.

Perhaps it’s not the same one,
admitted my grandfather,

on reflection,

I think she had darker hair, the other girl.

I didn’t know.

I was proud of my grandmother, but also embarrassed,

hoping she’d do nothing to make me squirm,

that she wouldn’t sing one of her songs.

She walked into the box. They shut the door.

he opened a compartment at the top, a little door. We saw

my grandmother’s face.
Pearl? Are you all right, Pearl?

My grandmother smiled and nodded.

The magician closed the door.

The lady gave him a long thin case,

so he opened it. Took out a sword

and rammed it through the box.

And then another, and another,

and my grandfather chuckled and explained,

The blade slides in the hilt,

and then a fake slides out the other side.

Then he produced a sheet of metal, which

he slid into the box half the way up.

It cut the thing in half. The two of them,

the woman and the man, lifted the top

half of the box up and off, and put it on the stage,

with half my grandma in.

The top half.

He opened up the little door again, for a moment,

My grandmother’s face beamed at us, trustingly.

When he closed the door before,

she went down a trapdoor,

and now she’s standing halfway up,
my grandfather confided.

She’ll tell us how it’s done when it’s all over.

I wanted him to stop talking: I needed the magic.

Two knives now, through the half-a-box,

at neck height.

Are you there, Pearl?
asked the magician.
Let us know

—do you know any songs?

My grandmother sang
Daisy, Daisy.

He picked up the part of the box,

with the little door in it—the head part—

and he walked about, and she sang

Daisy, Daisy,
first at one side of the stage,

then at the other.

That’s him,
said my grandfather,
and he’s throwing his voice.

It sounds like Grandma,
I said.

Of course it does,
he said.
Of course it does.

He’s good,
he said.
He’s good. He’s very good.

The conjuror opened up the box again,

now hatbox-sized. My grandmother had finished
Daisy, Daisy,

and was on a song which went:

My my, here we go, the driver’s drunk and the horse won’t go,

now we’re going back, now we’re going back,

back back back to London Town.