Janita Lawrence - The Memory of Water

A pressure starts building up in my chest and I am finding it difficult to keep my breathing quiet. I wonder if it is the beginning of a panic attack and, if so, I have to get out from under here before this woman hears me. I lift myself up on my elbows and begin to inch my way out, leopard crawling with the stealth that comes with being an ex-soldier. For a moment I sense she has heard me and I freeze there on the carpet in the middle of the room, in plain view were she to turn her head. She starts moving again and I am able to slither out of there.

In the passage I almost knock over a pile of boxes that weren’t there earlier, just miss tripping over a suitcase. I see the handbag and am tempted to look for ID but am spooked by voices outside. Perhaps a new shift is starting. I try to look under the front door to see if I can figure out an exit plan but I can’t tell what the shadows mean.

I tiptoe towards Eve’s studio, thinking there must be a way out there. The place is filled with huge windows with no burglar bars. Closer, I see why: the drop down is so high no burglar would chance trying to climb up to break in. I squint in the bad light to see if there is anything I can climb down on. The last window on the eastern side is near a tree and I consider trying to jump onto its branches but am dissuaded by my memory of a) bad luck with climbing trees and b) a particular scene in First Blood, when Rambo ends up with a branch through some part of his body and resorts to stitching it up himself.

I try the back door of the studio kitchen. It is locked, but I have extra keys on the ring Eve gave me and when I turn one of them in the lock it works. The back door leads out onto a narrow ledge used for drying washing and storing rubbish and I have to feel my way along in the dark. At the end of the row I find a metal staircase leading into the underground parking lot. From here it’s plain sailing: I walk out of the pedestrian gate at the entrance and I’m home, free.

As I walk to my car, parked on the next block, I shake my head at the vast amount of trouble I have caused myself in the last few days. Any normal person would not be in this position. Then again, I have done a lot to ensure that I am not a normal person, so I guess I have to deal with the consequences. Usually I am okay with this: as long as I am fucking up my own life, I’m fine with it. But this is different.

This has gone too far.

Today is Eve’s funeral. A relative I never knew she had called yesterday to invite me. The cremation is to happen in a grimy little place in Braamfontein (not Eve’s style at all) and then there will be drinks at the unknown relative’s house. Distracted, I wonder who has arranged the funeral.

The same details are listed in the newspaper obituary I hold in my hand. They ask for donations to Eve’s favourite charity (the Teddy Bear Clinic) in lieu of flowers.

Fuck that, I think, Eve deserves flowers.

I arrive at the crematorium early so I can look around. I’ve never been to one before. I watched a funeral pyre in India once. It was colourful, poignant, fragrant, life affirming: nothing like this cave. I walk to the front and deposit the enormous bouquet I bought on my way here. It is an over-the-top arrangement of dozens of Eve’s favourite papery cream-colored roses. It looks out of place in this downmarket dungeon.

The room is small and airless, with a tangible sense of impending doom. There is a balding velvet curtain like in the movies, just not as glamorous, and wooden fold-up chairs that wouldn’t take the weight of anyone over 100kg. A rugby player’s grieving entourage wouldn’t be welcome here. I’m not a small man so I sit down with caution, trying to not reduce the thing into matchsticks. It seems I have done enough damage.

I know about cremation. I know that Christians didn’t come around to the idea until the nineteenth century. I know the furnaces are heated using gas, diesel oil or electricity. It takes about two hours, at a temperature ranging from 700 to 1,100 °C. The one I’m sitting in now is gas-operated (may as well do your bit to fight global warming on your way out) and probably gets to around 900°C. That’s nine times the heat of boiling water.

I’d have thought Eve would have preferred a ‘greener’ burial, like having a tree planted in her honour, or something like that. But I guess she didn’t have much say.

I wonder what they’ll do with the ashes.

I’ve always thought the idea of keeping someone’s ashes bizarre. I feel suffocated just thinking of being stuck in a hand-painted flea-market urn on a mantelpiece. I much prefer the poetry of graves and graveyards. If I could choose where to be buried it would be in Père Lachaise in Paris. It’s not very patriotic I know, but then I’d be dead, so no matter. Imagine being buried in the same soil as Jim Morrison, Stuart Merrill, Colette! It’s haunting, with its ancient trees and cobbled lanes, a grand place with a kind of rich, earthy gravitas. A place that Takes Death Seriously. They don’t have gravestones as much as they have monuments to the dead, many with tended gardens, crowded with grass and roses and fat purple irises. I visited it for the first time in 1990; after escaping the monotony of school I was on the first plane to Anywhere, which turned out to be Holland. From there I spent the next two years on trains, backpacking through Europe, doing odd jobs when I needed the cash and writing all the while. I used to post my bursting journals home to Dad when they got too heavy, and he stored them in the room he always kept open for me. I discovered Père Lachaise by accident. New to the Metro (and French), I got off at the wrong stop and it was just there, like an omen. I spent hours exploring, lost in the drama of the moss-stained cherubs and slabs of marble. It is as wistful as cemeteries come: a host of cinnamon daffodils; Oscar Wilde’s lipstick-coated art deco tomb and a little girl carrying a red rose, which I could only imagine was for the Little Sparrow’s grave. Having ‘La Vie En Rose’ play over and over in my head as I tried to find my way out. Only afterwards did I realise how much the experience affected me. I would keep seeing the winding paths, feeling the coolness of the trees, running my fingers over the names engraved on the stones. The memory burrowed inside me and now I can’t go to the city of lights without paying my respects.

The ginger-haired pastor is well meaning (as some Men Of God are) and says nice things about Eve, but you can see right through his speech. He may as well be selling Chinese herbs on television. He has a paint-by-numbers template which he follows, cutting and pasting where appropriate, like Eulogies for Dummies. I imagine him going through his questionnaire with Eve’s family. (“Was she kind?” Tick. “Was she religious?” Cross. “Was she beautiful?” Tick. “Was she in love?” Cross.) Then the questionnaire is fed into a machine and within seconds it spits out the funeral speech, like the novel-writing machine in Roald Dahl’s imagination, called the The Great Automatic Grammatizator.

I find myself staring at his agitated mustard moustache for most of his one-soul-fits-all tribute. Jesus liked a bit of facial hair. In fact, I think you can go so far as to say that he was quite a fan. I, on the other hand, don’t trust people with moustaches. I look around at all the strangers perching on their fragile seats. Eve never talked about her family or her past. Not a word on childhood sweethearts or leering teachers. Acting as if she was born into this world as a gorgeous twenty year old with a life all set out for her. Like someone had dreamed her up out of nowhere, or off a picture in Hello magazine. No one in the room looks too much like Eve. Perhaps she was adopted.