Vertigo (2 page)

He has made an enemy of the first waitress. She will enjoy serving her enemy. Perhaps he too will enjoy this combat. I do not enjoy combat with waiters and waitresses although I am now, by association, also her enemy.

Now he is here, seated at the table that looks out at the sea. It is the table he indicated, the table he desired, from which he can see the sea the beach the seagulls the stork the mother the stones the toddler the seaweed the rubbish and, at the other side of the table interrupting his view of all these things, me.

He says,

“I want to leave.”

He says,

“Do you want to leave?”

He gets up from the table.

He sits down at the table.

He stands up and walks from the table to the nearest door of the restaurant, during which time the waitress brings the drinks.

Though I am able in some part to share his anxiety about the table the drinks the oysters I find, because he is so angry, that I can face their delay with complete equanimity.

The tables are each made from a semi-circular length of half the trunk of a tree set on wooden trestles. The high stools are of brightly colored powdered metal. Above the tables, the umbrellas of natural straw spell relaxation.

He is not keen to relax. He is keen to get on. He is already late for his next station of relaxation, for the beach, where we have an appointment to meet some friends of his at a strict hour. He is worrying that we will be late, that they will be anxious, that they, that he, will not be able to relax. He takes out his phone to check the time. We must be on time for the deckchair, the towel.

A speedboat drives directly at the restaurant from the sea, so directly that I can see neither its sides nor any perspective, only its prow and the foam it generates. On its prow sit two people, a man and a woman, perfectly tan in black surf suits, and for a long time it looks like the boat will not stop and will continue to drive toward the restaurant, arriving, unlike the people passing on the path on the other side of the restaurant by bike or on foot, through neither of the restaurant’s doors but directly through the tables, bypassing the queue entirely.

He gets out his phone and checks the time again. About this time my husband must be leaving for the city that is home to the woman with whom he has been thinking of sleeping. As I know my husband is unlikely to tell me the truth about whether he sleeps with the woman or not—though he may choose either to tell me that he has, when he has not, or that he has not, when he has—I have taken the precaution of being here in the oyster restaurant with this man who may wish to sleep with me. As my husband knows that I know he is unlikely to tell me the truth about the woman with whom he will or will not have slept, so that, even if he tells me the truth, I will be unable to recognize whether or not he is being truthful, he must believe that if he sleeps with the woman, he will sleep with her entirely for his own pleasure. I, if I sleep with the man who is sitting opposite me at the restaurant, though I will not lie about whether I have slept with this man or not, will be unable to tell my husband anything he will accept as truthful, so must also, by consequence, make sure that, if I sleep with this man, it must be entirely for my own pleasure too.

The speedboat has turned and the people in it, revealed to be six in number, all uniformly and perfectly tan and black, are either on the boat or in the sea beside the boat and are, with no hurry, doing something or not doing something, perhaps mooring the boat so that they can come to the restaurant to eat oysters, or not mooring the boat but doing something else altogether.

They are slim and tan and their slowness has kept them slimmer and tanner than the people who wish immediately to be in the restaurant eating oysters.

He says, “Perhaps they are mooring and are coming to the restaurant to eat.” At that moment, our oysters arrive and are eaten quickly.

All the time we have been at the restaurant there has been the sound of the waves quietly repeating.
Vagues,
I think, undulate:
on-du-ler
. The sound of the waves is pitched and modulated precisely so as not to intrude, distract, but so as to remain constantly audible:

perfection.

My daughter has made her first sacrifice to fashion. She has bought a short pink skirt with lace, which does not suit her and for which there is no suitable season or occasion. It will remain unworn, but beautiful. When she wears it, it stops being beautiful. When she takes it off, there it is, beautiful again. For this, she has given up her money.

This holiday was predicated upon spending as little as possible. That was the foremost requirement, beyond “having a good time.” It would not be possible to have such a good time without the satisfaction of having spent so little and, besides, expensive pleasures would surely be less authentic. To sit on the docks after the all-night ferry, now that is something that cannot be bought. And it is easier to combine the pleasure of being very strict, very stern about getting to where we are going, with that of being slowed by the cheapest route, spending very little, except time.

We had come to spend some time here.

Vertigo is the sense that if I fall I will fall not toward the earth but into space. I sense no anchorage. I will pitch forward, outward and upward. It is worst driving up the mountain to the guesthouse, where the road turns rollercoasterward, only avoiding an unseen drop by a corner, skirting logs scaled like the tortoises glued by gravity to the road.

At the turn of the road, willing the world to continue a little space, there is a man, a woman, and a child. They are not tourists: there are few here. From the outside, the man is greater than the woman, who is greater than the child. The child is brighter than the woman, who is brighter than the man. Of their insides, we know nothing, because we cannot understand the words that turn those insides out. I grasp at words in this language with other languages I know, languages other than the one I mostly speak, as though one foreignness could solve another.

Apart from the ascents, it’s the nights that are hard, under lead blankets. The dark leaves replay over the light, then night falls curtainwise. I say “falls,” weighted—nothing to stop it—outwards and upwards as well as down. No streetlights of course: no streets. Heat doesn’t linger. Cold drops with (like) the dark.

Dinner? Only for the interruption of the boredom that replaces blank space in which I would usually make the family food, and which is now filled by drink. Beer first, not wine; I will get drunk more slowly. Drunk. Something that happens to you, like a glass of water, and that happens in the past tense, even as you are drunk in the present, as the action taken to provoke the state was taken in the past. You drink and then you are drunk. That’s all there is to it. But I drink more slowly when I become used to bridging this space, like you. You do it every day.

I turn discretely to take the last of the wine dregs filled with something like tea leaves.

The red lead blanket with white crosses, a disaster blanket. I like to have it near me.

People forget how far things are. When we returned in the evening, the owner of the guesthouse was disappointed that we did not walk to the limit of the ruin. At first we feel disappointing, but then we notice how old she is. She is tough, but she cannot have walked to the limit of the ruin, or not for a long time.

At the ruin, the light-colored people do different things from the dark-colored people. The light-colored people sit in the debris of the ruin. They look, from there, at other buildings in the ruin. I cannot tell whether they are happy or not. Sometimes they take out a bottle of water, some bread, some tomatoes, some salty sheep’s cheese, some crisps, some olives, and spread these out beside them on the stones.

The dark-colored people sit on plastic picnic chairs between the ruin and the hut. They do not enter the ruin; they do not look at the ruin. They work there. Sometimes they sit with things they are selling, sometimes with glasses of tea or (or, and) cigarettes. They do not eat, or if they do their food is on a plastic table, not balanced on a rock.

The light-colored people wear light clothing that does not cover their bodies. The dark-colored people wear dark clothing that covers their bodies entirely and sometimes also their heads. The dark-colored people do not acknowledge the strangeness of the light-colored people, in fact they do not acknowledge them at all but dwell by them as peaceably as by the sheep or cattle that also sit, and eat, in the ruin.

From the middle of the ruin a whisper can go anywhere.

We sit in the ruin, each reading a book, or three of us read out of four. Three different voices speak to us. We have taught the children to read again this week. Here, where there is no voice, apart from ours, they are desperate for any other. They will even sing to themselves, sometimes. The boy whistles. He makes his voice croak. He sings the same thing again, but breathing in. A bird echoes the first notes of Vivaldi.

I wish you hadn’t told me about the stone. Of course I also wish it had been me. I had already dreamed of a piece of acanthus leaf, unobtrusive egg-and-whatever carving, a perfectly single pebble, pocketable among the ruins—but I’m not the one who found it. As I searched, my glance purposely turned to smaller stones, to twisted wood. The ground here has an air about it, a purpose: it focuses on the fallen. It’s to do with vision, seeing straight. My eyes turned away from my mind’s purpose—or toward it, which may also have been away from it. My mind does not tell me everything it thinks.

My mind thinks, furiously,
you must know I will have to leave you, will have to go with the children when they catch you, my duty to go, at the gate here, at the airport. You are a fool. You will risk yourself for it, the stone, and you do not belong to yourself. You will risk yourself selfishly, for you are also yourself-in-us.
My mother catastrophes in me. I hear her shrill: “They will throw him into a dirty foreign prison!”

You will probably get away with it but I will know that you have risked all that.

The people working in the field beside the ruin come and go. We can see them because they wear dark colors: the men always at a distance, carrying something, the women, brighter and more complicated, stooping over by the buildings, sweeping or cleaning.

Would it matter if you took it? Would they ever miss that stone? The pillars are laid out in rows in their field hospital. In this section the stones have tumbled, are frozen, falling. When will they follow? They will choose their moment.

“Don’t touch,” I tell the children. My mother says in me: “Prison! They will fine you.” Out loud I say, “THOUSANDS.” The children say, “No, hundreds. They wouldn’t charge that much.” They are right. I am ridiculous as her, a fool indeed. My own children told me I must be wrong, and I was. I am ashamed to have thought anything so stupid, to have thought it without thinking, but there it is. I am a good cook, and I can keep the house clean. I have a job, even. But, sometimes I see no more than is in front of me. There are times I should just keep quiet. That’s what the younger generation teaches me. They take the words out of my mouth, which I tasted for such a short time after I snatched them from the generation before. I’d thought the words were mine. My children have reminded me I was wrong.

The boy shouts wordlessly: “O Tannenbaum” (or “The Red Flag” if you prefer), “The Blue Danube
,
” Vivaldi’s “Spring.” He’s heard them on the adverts.

The men who studied mothers and sons, had daughters. Freud was a case in point. Did he study her? No, he pretended she had not occurred.

In any case love must be passed on with no return. Not even with feedback.

It is cruel to expect me to be both mother and daughter—such different expectations. My daughter tosses her hair. I see it from far away, as someone who does not know her will see it, a man. She is twelve years old. It is the same gesture she used at nine, at ten. One day it will become sexual. Is it yet? I don’t know. Why am I frightened by this progress? It will happen. It must happen. And it happens in only one direction. She will gain power, but it is not much. This is power with no balance. I can weigh nothing against it. She cannot stop becoming powerful. She is not powerful yet. When she becomes powerful, it is not a power she will know what to do with. There is not much that can be done with this power, not by its possessor.