Emma Richler - Feed My Dear Dogs

October 1935. Joseph Goebbels issues a decree forbidding the inscription of names of fallen Jewish soldiers on war memorials, men who fell for the sake of younger men who are now getting busy scratching out offensive Jewish names from tablets of stone with what you might call corrupt and frenzied enthusiasm.

Me, I turn away and weep.

Where did I fall, what planet is this?

I hear it, I see it, and I was not there, it’s a vision. I remember everything.

Under the influence of gravity, stars in orbit in an elliptical galaxy such as ours are always falling, always falling without colliding, and the greater the mass, the greater the attraction, and the faster a thing falls, the faster it moves in orbit, so the Moon, for one, is always falling towards Earth, but never hits it, and I like to think William Blake, b.1757, d.1827, would appreciate this, as he was very interested in fallen man, and for William, memory is merely part of time, an aspect of the fall, and the visionary worlds are the true regions of reminiscence, a realm wherein every man is uncrowned king for eternity and there is no need for memorials because, so he wrote, Man the Imagination liveth for Ever.

I hate to say it, but William sounds like a man talking himself out of reality and hard knocks and brushes with dark times, a place where, for him, memory and vision meet in the most colourful manner, though not without violence, no, and the glorious thing is what he knew, from maybe the age of eight or so when he had his first visions, that as long as he was bound by time, and striding across London in an impecunious state and an ailing body, in a world that largely considered him crazy, he was OK, he had found it, the means of escape, a kind of resurrection in the eternal worlds, this was his country. William dies singing and when he is gone, a close friend reaches out and brushes William’s eyes closed, a drop of a curtain, a small gesture of infinite grace in one touch of the fingertips. To keep the vision in, that’s what he says. Blake was always falling, never colliding, it’s a trick of gravity. Everyone has a home.

—What country, friend, is this? William Shakespeare, b.1564, d.1616! Do I have an obsession with numbers? Ben says I do. Said. Ages ago.

—What do you think?

—I asked you first!

—Mmm.

—Holmes: I get down in the dumps at times, and don’t open my mouth for days on end. Just let me alone, and I’ll soon be right! A Study in Scarlet , 1887!

—I don’t think that is what you want, for me to leave you. And if I leave, you won’t have to talk to me about your bandages today.

—A tiny accident! I am always falling.

I tell you a brief story about Eadweard Muybridge, b.1830, d.1904, and his obsession with speed and motion, and most of all, with photography, how he set up a row of cameras in a great field, cameras with tripwires attached so the galloping horse in his experiment would race by and take self-portraits in rapid succession, enabling Eadweard to capture this one moment he craved, the picture of a horse with all four feet off the ground, a moment passing too quickly for the naked eye, and proof that a horse at speed is so close to flight, achieving lift-off ever so briefly, in joyous defiance of gravity. What I cannot tell you yet, and I think you know, is how my tiny accident is also an experiment in speed and motion and photography, in my mind’s eye, how for a moment, in a desire for return, I find a means of escape, rising, not quite falling, a dangerous trick of gravity, I know it, I said I was sorry three times.

I do tell you, though, about a postcard I received from my mother, a card postmarked in another country, depicting two cherubim either side of a woman holding a chalice with an egg aloft, they are heavenly escorts. Triptych. The three figures are all white, statuary, and the cherubs are saucy and graceful, and the woman is draped in elegant folds with an expression on her face of surprise and fatigue, as if she has just packed off all the kids to school and now it is time, finally, Breakfast! Except that the title of this painting by Raphael is Faith , and in Christian art, of course, the egg is symbolic of Resurrection. It depends how you look at it.

From the very day my little sister Harriet and I thrashed out this business of fallen man on our way home from the convent one afternoon in extreme youth, clearing up a small matter of catechism arising from morning assembly we are forced to attend as civilians, not Catholics, just for the headcount so to speak, a morning I saw Harriet twist around on her class bench to gaze at me wide-eyed in a mix of alarm and mirth it is not always easy to tell apart, from that very day, she took to these two words, fallen man, with great glee, and particular delight. She has an ear for sayings and will not let go of them, so any time now that she sees Gus tip over, a regular occurrence around our place as Gus is a baby still and only recently up on his feet and moving around under his own steam, Harriet will say it, in grave and knowing tones.

‘Fallen man,’ she pronounces, soon giving in to the wheezy snuffly sounds of Harriet laughing.

On the day we first discussed it, she was not so breezy.

‘I don’t get the snake part.’

‘Forget the snake, Harriet, it’s a symbol, OK? It’s not important.’

‘Is important. She said, snake, snake, snake. Sister Lucy did.’

‘We are not Catholics. It doesn’t count, so don’t worry.’

‘Is it in the Bible?’

‘Yeh. Look, um, try Mum, OK? I’m not sure I get it either.’

I remember it, this morning, the sudden picture I had in my head, of soldiers flying out of trenches into gunfire, falling men, and of people ambling along all casual and keeling over, hurling themselves to the ground, they can’t help it, and there were cartoon images too, of people falling down wells, or off clifftops, or through holes in a frozen lake, hovering in mid-air for a full horror moment of realisation, unless, of course, the character is a hero, in which case he will be saved by a skinny branch on the way down, or land softly in a passing boat, and this is what is so depressing about the snake part in Sister Lucy’s story, and what I do not want Harriet to know, that somehow, due to the events in the Garden, according to nuns, not even an all-out hero can count on a passing boat, which accounts for that story from Mum’s childhood, about the very nice boy at her school who fell down a lift shaft by mistake. In my opinion, telling the fallen man story first thing in the morning at assembly is dodgy behaviour on the part of nuns, kicking off everyone’s day with this terrible news, and giving kids like my sister a doomy outlook on life when they are barely seven years old and have yet to face the facts. Furthermore, I am now deeply worried about lifts, especially as I forget, each time I step into one, to check first off that it is there. I give myself a very hard time about it so I will not step through the doors unawares again, but it is hopeless. I have been lucky so far, but I am only nine and have a long way to go. It is very weird, if you are not a forgetful type, to carry on forgetting the same bitty thing every time. Bloody.

‘So why is everyone falling, then?’ says Harriet, kind of cross.

‘Fallen.’

‘It’s silly.’

‘Right. So let’s drop it.’

‘BARKIS is willin’,’ says Harriet in a growly voice, using her new favourite saying from David Copperfield , a book by Mr Charles Dickens Mum is reading to us at present, which is great, because she does all the voices in a very realistic manner, the posh ones going, my dear, my dear, all the time, and the rough ones, such as Barkis. Harriet is very keen on Barkis. It is possible he reminds her of our dad, who is also a man of few words with a growly voice that is not scary once you get to know him.