The Chemistry of Tears

could not be opened by anyone but his parents, and when they both died ten years later the lawyer could not find a letter, only a will which had never been amended.

Thus the unfilial son inherited the sawmill.

During our conversation Arnaud continually ordered whatever dish he liked. He cut white cheese into exceedingly thin slices and I watched him nip them with his small rat-catcher’s teeth.

Arnaud said that no one was in a better position than himself to help me. He intimated that he was far more powerful than he might appear.

So, I thought, as he ordered one more small beer, he is a spy for some Baron perhaps. He began to whisper about Frau Helga. Well, let him gossip if he wished, although I told him frankly that the woman was of no importance in my life. But yes, it was Frau Helga’s foolish husband, M. Arnaud revealed, who had taken little Carl to witness the “victory” of the workers in their so-called revolution. Thus he was shot dead before her very eyes and the bullet, before penetrating the husband’s heart, severely injured the baby’s leg.

Being a member of that cruel race of fairytale collectors, he was very pleased by this disaster. He pursed his lips. He sliced his cheese. I was so angry that I could not pay attention to the story until the mother and orphan came to Furtwangen where she had an uncle who had once been kind to her. Unfortunately, the fairytale collector said, on the day before her arrival, the uncle dropped dead in the middle of the town square.

Unfortunately? I thought. But is this not exactly the type of nastiness valued by your guild? The child is orphaned. The child dies. The child is lost in the forest. The child walks with a limp forever.

Small men are the cruellest. He told me how Helga had been given shelter by the priest, and I thought, good heavens, thank the Lord at least for that, but of course the priest then threw her out.

I thought, you are a miserable little dung beetle, forever collecting the misery of the poor.

Then or soon thereafter I thought, to hell with you. Do not presume that I will pay the bill. I walked out of the inn and of course I went out the wrong door and then had no idea where I was. Lost again, lost always. Great buffoon. The little fellow found me and led me home, his mother was a cat. What will happen when we die? Who will ever tell the truth?

Henry & Catherine

I WAS A RICH MAN, Henry Brandling wrote and Catherine read, and therefore attracted the usual pests. And yet my past and present fears and agonies were nothing in comparison to those suffered by this poor German woman.

Catherine understood that Henry was referring to Frau Helga.

She and I, wrote Henry Brandling in 1854, both knew how a child could sing to your soul and twist your veins and fill you with continual dread and trepidation. I had seen her lay her hand upon Carl’s shoulder, cup her hand around his golden head. This was something M. Arnaud could not know.

What conceit, thought Catherine Gehrig, in London, 156 years later, off her face with rage and cognac. How truly pathetic, his pompous discrimination: the love for a child is better than the love for an adult. How could it be?

The poor dull blind posh fool had never guessed his reader would be a woman with no children. Please don’t tell me that I don’t know love, or that the love I know is of a minor kind. I am eviscerated by love.

I threw the book across the room. It flew into the kitchen, its acid paper pages shattering like dead leaves.

Let Matthew see what he has done to me.

After the catastrophe with the book, the only undamaged paper was a receipt in which Sumper was titled Monsieur Sumper. It recorded the purchase of a large amount of silver.

It was intolerable that these crooks should rob Henry in this way, but also it was offensive, if understandable, for Henry to go on with this nonsense about children. He did not quite say that parental love was superior to other loves, but it was clearly his assumption. Of course I wished him no unhappiness. I pitied him. But it is true, in general, that these child lovers make themselves deaf and blind to the likely conclusion of these relationships which so often end in heroin, suicides, boredom or estrangement. All those awful fights are waiting for them, when all the poor dears wanted was a perfect love.

When I saw men Matthew’s age and older, I hated them for being alive. Yet I had never expected we would live forever, the opposite. Each morning I was given Matthew I held him, contained him like a prayer, filled my lungs with him, his leg between my legs so I brushed him—what other word to use?—to be clearer would be vulgar— brushed him ever so gently and he would rest his nose just by my eye, just there, adjacent those intensely complicated factories, the tear glands, I love you, I love you, I love you every morning, every night.

I had seen my father die. When you have spent days in intensive care you do not easily forget how the body works and how it fails. Afterwards you easily imagine the oxygen-rich blood, the colour of the fluids which swim all around you, inside me, inside him. I had seen Matthew’s eyes narrow in passion, the beloved face, the tall rough tender body, the hard silkiness of him, I would have drunk him dry.

We both were conceited about our ecstatic pragmatism. We had no souls but we were in the moment, like an ocean wave, like animals we would have said, how perfect we were, we thought, glowing with our love. How unfair we had no souls.

Near Beccles, in the summer, with the silver early light playing off the insulation foil, he would want me from behind and then he would cup his hands around my stomach and I would think, he wants me to be pregnant.

He had his own children all safely tucked in boarding schools where he could write them love letters. Sometimes I lost weekends, when he brought them up to the stables to work with him, two precious days excised from my life. I loved him for how he loved them, but sometimes I would think they were spoiled brats. When the mathematical son complained he was bored by Beccles I was indignant, but very, very happy I could have my place again.

Perhaps, I thought, Matthew’s love for his sons was a superior love, sometimes. But there is no end to what I thought. For instance, I had dreams there was a woman’s body buried underneath the floor of the stables. In my dream I had murdered her and then forgotten.

I should never have thrown Henry Brandling’s notebook across the room. No one, not Matthew, particularly not Matthew, would believe me capable of it. No one would believe any conservator in any situation would ever do such a thing. It launched into the air, fluttering, beyond the reach of technical salvation, breaking apart even as it flew. It died in mid-air and when it hit the floor it became like the wings of so many moths and I cried, knowing what I had done, not as a conservator, but as a poor drunk woman in a rage with a decent man.

I found the vodka where I had hidden it from myself. It was probably after midnight, I thought. I wished I had cocaine. I would have liked to half destroy myself with rot and pleasure and as I drank the vodka I thought Herr Brandling has not bothered to explain the copper cables and I may never get to the end of them. But then I thought, Henry you are thick as a brick. Really, what an extraordinary man to come to a sawmill in the Black Forest and to describe COPPER CABLES like tent ropes, going from the roof into BOXES on the earth and not once (not so far) had he asked a soul what these cables were for.

I remember you, my Matty T. I remember making love with you. I remember your grey eyes, slitted at first then opening so wide, and the pink lovely tunnel of your mouth. You had not one single filling. My mouth was filled with black amalgam. I remember your cries pulsing inside my body. I remember you held me on the station at Waterloo while I sobbed and shouted. I remember you made me still and calm. I remember you left me in the taxi and I thought that I would die.

I forget you are dead. I forget Henry Brandling is dead. I sweep up his crumbling ashes in the clever little Oxo pan. I thought it so beautifully designed. What a banal life I have lived, being happy about a dust pan, never knowing that I would use it to sweep up Henry Brandling’s bones and ashes and dump them in the bin.

HERE IS ALL THAT remains of Frau Helga’s history as relayed to Henry Brandling, as arranged on my kitchen table in north Lambeth in April 2010.

Frau Helga had not been working at the inn two days when the priest (said) she could not stay under his roof