Emma Richler - Feed My Dear Dogs

Wot v. to know.

Now she tells him. Now he knows.

It’s all very interesting, and goes to show two things. First, how when you are a recluse your behaviour may be open to question, a recluse may lose touch with the niceties of behaviour and conversation, that’s one thing, and the other is how valour and dreaminess in a knight can go together, how dreams are not sissy or anything, and all the knights are apprised of this. This is why Merlin, or a passing gentlewoman, a complete stranger even, can step up and talk pretty freely on any manner of extravagant issues, such as God and dreams and symbols, etc., boldly interrupting some knightly chat, perhaps, about sports and jousts and war injuries and so on, and no one is embarrassed or annoyed. This is how it is when the Queen of the Waste Lands, who has lost touch with the niceties of regular conversation, addresses her nephew quite suddenly, and out of nowhere, it seems, on several pressing matters regarding the Round Table, such as why it is round / why he is sitting there / why his mother died waving goodbye to him when he left home to sit there / why there is an empty place no one can sit in / and why he has to go on a quest for the Grail which will heal the Lands, so they are not Waste Lands any more, whereupon he is expected to come back and sit in the special empty place. It’s an awful lot to take in in one go, and it’s symbolic, so Perceval listens carefully, though he is a bit young for symbolism and is no doubt wondering, is his auntie blaming him about his mother, and how much should he pack for the journey and how long will he be away, how many days, how many pairs of pants and hankies should he bring? Perceval is counting, instead of thinking about symbolism, and he is in a tizzy. He has a lot to learn, but he listens carefully. It’s a start.

‘Also Merlin,’ begins the Queen of the Waste Lands, ‘made the Round Table in tokening of roundness of the world, for by the Round Table is the world signified by right, for all the world, Christian and heathen, repairen unto the Round Table; and when they are chosen to be of the fellowship of the Round Table they think them more blessed and more in worship than if they had gotten half the world …’

When Ben first read this part out to me, when he said, ALL the world, Christian and heathen, I had a second thought to do with nuns. It was about Mean Nun and the creatures speech, with heathen meaning dodgy, i.e. Jews and Africans and aardvarks and maimed types. Since I corrected her on that little matter of countries and religions, Mean Nun will sometimes say LOST SHEEP OF ISRAEL instead of Jews, thinking she can fox me with this line about runaway sheep in Israel when I know full well this is merely code for Jews, because I checked it out with Jude who is very learned in many departments, something not many people are aware of, seeing as Jude is not forthcoming, he is more the silent type. I drew up a list of his departments of learning so far: history / inventions / explorers / Latin / prejudice and wars / mythology / pollution / football / rugby / brass rubbings / Roman digs / criminals / spies / trains and locomotion. Oh. And boxing, I forgot boxing.

Anyway, the round business is very interesting and Ben says it is a holy shape and astronomical also, the table with all the knights around it akin to the Earth in a firmament of stars, and he says round is symbolic of wholeness, the way a straight line is not, because a circle has no beginning and no end, and everyone is equal around it, all the world, Christian and heathen, etc., and I think how my dad would hate that, as he needs to sit at the same place always, at one end, and he would be downright confused at a round table.

If you sit in my dad’s place, he will pull up short and look at you like this is the wildest thing he has ever seen, same as if he went upstairs to bed at night and you are lying in his bed next to Mum, ruffling up a newspaper and saying, What, dear? That’s how weird it is for him. No one sits in Dad’s seat, not even in extreme circumstances such as illness or temporary loss of mental faculties.

Another reason I thought that’s enough knights, no more knights! is that my dad needs about three or four people’s worth of space everywhere he goes, though he is a regular-sized man and not very tall. I watch him walk along in our big house, and he will get tangled up in things like books or shoes or one of his kids lying around on the floor, in spite of the fact there is plenty of room for him to step in, reminding me of Westerns again, how a sheriff, or some top important cowboy in a Western, my dad’s favourite type of film, walks straight down the middle of a main road if he feels like it, even if there is tons of traffic. When he strolls into a saloon for a wee drink or a spot of steak and beans, and coffee in a tin cup, everyone nearby shuffles over, no problem, no protest. They know he is a top important cowboy and needs all this space. They make room.

The whole journey up the stairs to Mum and Dad’s room, my dad keeps batting us away and running his hands through his hair in a ragged manner, nearly ready to fall apart in his effort to protect Mum from us, though he is the one in need of protection and a lie-down in a quiet room, it seems to me, not Mum who is calm and smiling, and once we all make it to the bedroom, she perches on the end of the bed and lays the pink bundle down.

‘Say hello to Gustavus,’ she says.

Suddenly we are shy and helpless. We don’t know whether to move in close in a single huddle like Roman legionaries locked tight with oblong shields overhead in what is called a turtle formation, or to nip in one by one, single file, and Dad is no help, looking cross without meaning to, merely trying to get everything right and protect Mum. It’s a hard time for him.

‘Shake a leg!’ is all he can think to say, one of the two things he might yell at us in the morning when we are messing about with duffel coats and satchels and pieces of toast, not really in the mood for school. The other thing he yells is Make tracks! I hope he does not do so now, as it would be a bit rowdy in the circumstances. You have to be quiet around a baby. Settle down, Dad.

Gustavus. How is it the last of the Weisses has a weird name, a centuries-old name with a strange sound of snowy countries, countries with kings at the helm, a name too big for a baby unless you know he is headed for kingship of a snowy kingdom? Gustavus.

‘He can’t see you. Not yet,’ Mum says. ‘You can come closer,’ she adds, turning to Gus and reaching a long finger towards him and slowly pulling the pink blanket away from his head so we can get a better view. Gus is definitely bald. ‘Hello, Gus!’ she says, which is kind of an invitation for us to get going with the greetings and stop standing around all shuffly-toed and pathetic.

Ben gives Harriet a little shove, a tiny one so Harriet will keep her cool and not have one of her unusual reactions to very usual things, a small shove, a slightly raised voice, minor events that will send my sister reeling as if she has just been shot by firing squad, or stumbling about in a desperate fashion in the manner of Oliver Twist’s mother at the beginning of that black-and-white film. Oliver’s mother is pregnant and lost in a storm at night. She has been abandoned or some such thing, and is on the run and has to give birth in a workhouse, the only pit stop on that stormy night, and Oliver is of unknown origins forthwith, because his mother dies from childbirth moments after kissing him gently on his bald head, falling back on her pillows with a sad and painful sigh, whereupon her identity locket is stolen by an old woman who is suffering from poverty and grave human failings, and now Oliver is in for a lot of hard knocks, all because of this sleight of hand, this one small flutter in a darkened room, passing too quickly for pause.