The Chemistry of Tears

release me soon.

It is clear now that Frau Helga has let the villagers see the laughing Jesus. It is my fault that she sold it, but is the price enough for my own purpose? Certainly I saw Frau Helga counting money in the stable. I saw the fair down on her arms. Once I dreamed I might kiss her. Long ago.

I was at the stream washing, naked, teetering on razor shale which can amputate your toes. When Sumper touched my shoulder I jumped in fright. My private parts shrivelled like gizzards in a stockpot. He was armoured in his leather apron, a beak in his hand, but I did not know that then.

He said, “You will have been responsible for something far finer than you could ever conceive.”

“I wanted only a duck.”

“You were not born to have a duck. You were born to bring a Wonder to the world.”

And then he turned away and left me in my nakedness.

That night the mother threw the mashed potatoes across the floor. “You have no right to steal my son.” There was more of it, all very distressing, particularly to watch the Holy Child wring his hands, his long warty white fingers. In the lamp light his chin looked long, his knees high and these fingers entwining like a nest of baby eels.

“I have not come so far to hurt this boy,” said Sumper. “He is a Genius.”

“You shall not hurt him,” she said. Yet she surely knew what dangerous situation she had created at the inn where they had presumably witnessed Jesus rolling across the floor and laughing. “He is just a little boy.”

“He is a Genius,” repeated Sumper. “Here,” he said, “read this.” And from the pouch of his apron he produced the ebony beak on the underside of which I saw there was silver script inset in the coal-black wood.

“I cannot read.” She drew back from it. “You know I cannot.”

So he thrust the object to me.

Those awful eyes were upon me, waiting for me to understand the meaning.

I am a dunce, I thought, a total dunderhead.

“Quite,” I said. “Exactly.”

Catherine

ANNIE HELLER KICKED ME out at seven with the final pages still unread. I walked down the narrow Danish stairs, all golden at that time of day. Outside there was a warm wind lifting vagrant pamphlets in the air.

I arrived at the Annexe studio five minutes before lockdown, and there, in what we called the “Ikea box,” the swan’s beak was waiting amongst all those odd screws and washers, the mostly leftover pieces from our reassembly. Why I had treated it so offhandedly is a question for a psychiatrist. I had not even assigned it a catalogue number. M. Arnaud’s handiwork was exactly as I had last seen it, black as black, on a bed of cotton wool, inside a small cardboard box, with the word BEAK in magic marker on the lid.

Contrary to Henry’s account, nothing was written on the beak itself. I found this extremely, even excessively, disturbing, as if I had been lied to by a lover. Then I understood the obvious: Arnaud had inlaid the words in silver which would now be silver oxide, that is, the words would be black on black. I could have taken the mystery to the window. I could have used the raking lamp, but it was lockup time and I was agitated and frightened of being caught with my secret. So I wrapped the beak in Kleenex and popped it in an envelope and belted out of the building as if I was late for some grand, imaginary event.

It was a very strange evening, far too hot, with a strong dry wind that suggested Buckinghamshire had turned to desert. At Olympia, as at Lowndes Square, there were papers everywhere adrift, the Evening Standard wrapping itself with a nasty slap around the lamp post. AMERICA’S MESS NOT OURS. One could easily read it upside down.

There was an odd ammoniacal little pharmacy in a side street where I had already bought deodorant and shampoo. There was no cashier or shop girl, only the grey stooped little pharmacist who had a nasty cold. It was a shambles of cardboard boxes, electric fans and menstrual pads, and it took him a while to locate the cotton buds and methylated spirits.

“No bag,” I said, and tried to grab my purchases. But apparently a receipt must be written. When the old man spiked his yellow carbon copy I thought of my father, changing batteries, then upstairs to have a dram.

Finally I was in the street, and the Rose and Crown was just ahead, occupying its renovated corner with its blue tiles and bright green umbrellas and a surprising clustering of drinkers outside—English skin, sunburned half to death.

I attracted some attention which was a little bit OK. That is, one did not wish to be sexually invisible just yet. On the other hand there is something very nasty about a braying pack, and it was this sound that followed me up the stairs of the “Residence.”

I opened the window of my room and set up on the sill—it was quite wide enough to accommodate the meths bottle. I unpacked the cotton buds and laid them on a tissue. I sited the beak beside the buds. The rest was hardly brain surgery. Within three minutes the meths had revealed the silver inlay on the under-beak.

Then I understood why Henry had written “Dunce.”

Faced with Illud aspicis non vides I also was a dunce.

I sat on the slippery synthetic quilt and wondered who I could call on to translate. It was then, staring at those framed pink and pale blue prints one finds only in hotels, that I realized I really had no friends at all.

For years and years I had lived in the lazy conceited happy world of coupledom, something so deliciously contained by private language and its own sweet intolerances of everyone outside. I knew a lot of people, of course, and was habitually affectionate with many, but I had locked the door when Matthew died. I was a sudden spinster. My mother and father were dead. My sister would no longer talk to me.

Illud aspicis non vides.

In all those years of being a secret mistress, I had fancied myself at home with solitude but I had never once felt this stone weight of loneliness inside my throat. There was now no one to call but he whose kindness I had abused already.

When Crofty answered I heard music, something rather difficult, I thought, by which I meant—beyond my education.

“I’m sorry,” I said when he answered, but of course I was much relieved.

“Hang on.”

The music was turned down. He was slow in returning.

“I interrupted you. I’m sorry.”

“My darling,” he said, “there is nothing to interrupt.” I remembered that he had once been part of a couple too.

From my open window I could see two men support a very drunk young girl, a poor wobbly creature with silly shoes, plump legs, short skirt. Jesus help her. I could not watch.

“Where are you? Not still at that bloody pub?”

“It’s what they call Happy Hour.”

There was a pause. Crofty said, “Would you like me to come and sit with you?”

It would have been such a great relief. But of course I could not.

“How is your Latin?” I asked.

“Rusty.”

“But probably serviceable?”

“Possibly.”

“What does this mean: Illud aspicis non vides?”

“Where is the beak?” he asked and I realized he was slightly squiffy.

“You know where the beak is,” I said. “And I would be astonished if you had not read it.”

“Do you know, my dear,” he said, and it was clear to me that he was topping up his glass. “Do you know, I find the notion that mysteries must be solved to be very problematic. You know what I mean? Every curator finally learns that the mysteries are the point.”