David Flusfeder - The Pagan House

‘And Edward. You look so much like your father, you know. Would you like a chocolate milk, or are you too grown-up for that sort of thing?’

Delighted at being identified as looking like his father, Edgar replied that, yes, he would love a chocolate milk and, no, a straw would not be unwelcome, and after Warren had brought in their bags, he made the tea and poured Edgar a glass of chocolate milk, which Warren suggested and Edgar agreed was the perfect thing after long plane and car rides in the height of summer.

Fay took them on a tour of the house, which passed slowly, because she needed to sit and rest at least once in every room, and Edgar, unconsciously, until Mon pointed out what he was doing and made him too embarrassed to continue, would position himself behind his grandmother’s shoulder, like a servant or a guard.

Edgar had been given the sleeping porch whose ceiling and outer walls were made of glass. It jutted from the house at the back, looking over the rose garden.

‘We thought it might be fun for you to sleep here,’ Warren said.

‘Warren has moved out into Frank’s room.’

‘We’re so sorry to have put you to all this trouble.’

‘It wasn’t much of a move,’ Warren said.

‘He cleans up after himself. He’s very tidy,’ Fay said, and Mon looked meaningfully at Edgar to remind him of his house-guest responsibilities.

In the corridor, Fay sat on a chair after failing to make it quite to the picture window.

‘On a clear day you can see all the way to Onyataka Depot.’

‘Oh,’ said Mon.

‘Good,’ said Edgar.

‘You can see the Company building from the corner of the window. The Administration building, not the factory. That’s in Creek, of course. And across the way is the Mansion House. They have regular tours. I’m sure you’d find it interesting.’

‘I’m sure I would,’ said Edgar, politely unconvinced.

‘But tell me, what would you fancy doing in your time with us?’

The wording of the question intrigued Edgar in its imputation that he might operate in a world of fancy rather than necessity. It supposed an alternative Edgar, foppish, with a butterfly mind, who went where things took him, who carried a battered brown-leather suitcase covered with faded stickers of faraway countries and who might even own a unicycle that he had disciplined himself to ride. The real Edgar was driven by imperatives. Imperative number one was to further investigate his capacity the first chance he got. This was not a subject to share, except he was looking forward to a moment of companionship with his father when he might somehow imply his new state, maybe eating burgers at a lunch counter, men of the world together, two guys.

‘I’m not sure,’ said Edgar.

‘You only have to say. Supper will be in the kitchen. Warren has put out towels in your rooms. I’m so glad you’re here.’

Edgar, in the bathroom, splashing water on his hair and pulling it casually into spikes, listened to his mother and grandmother in the corridor.

‘Who is Warren?’ his mother asked. ‘How long has he been here?’

‘I don’t know where I’d be without him,’ said Fay.

When Edgar went downstairs—after lying on his bed and flirting with his capacity, which he abandoned and zipped away when he heard footsteps going past into Fay’s room next door; and after gazing out of the window and wondering what Onyataka Depot might be and whether he would be here long enough to make the acquaintance of the blonde girls strolling past, who looked so unapproachably healthy and complete; and after sneaking into his father’s old room to run a finger along the spines of the science-fiction paperbacks in the bookcase; and after looking into the Music Room to examine some of the record albums, the glowering 1970s faces—Mon and Fay and Warren were already in the kitchen. His mother was wearing a black T-shirt with red Asian script printed on it that Edgar hadn’t seen before. Her hair was hidden beneath the turban of a bath towel. A large ginger cat snored in a basket by the stove.

‘What do you think of the house?’ Warren asked.

‘It’s really nice,’ Edgar said, somewhat gruffly, because he preferred his voice to err towards brusque manliness rather than the shrill castrato it sometimes became.

‘You must be exhausted,’ said Warren. To which Mon was about to protest but stopped when she realized that he was talking to Fay, who performed her astonishing smile again.

4

Edgar awoke in light. Foreign dusty smells, his penis gripped hard in his hand, the taste of night and linen in his mouth. He encouraged this moment of utter unfamiliarity to stretch, with him growing inside it—and that first, good, moment was succeeded by one even better, when he remembered where he was, a new-found place.

At home, he would hear traffic in the main road, the groaning of water-pipes, the drone of his mother’s radio on those days that Jeffrey wasn’t staying over, all the rumble of a London morning. Here, in Vail, there was birdsong outside and frogs croaking, and a rustle of leaves, all of which were delightful at first and then unnerving. The dawn light pouring through the glass walls and ceiling of the sleeping porch made the room seem shipboard, the sky turned to sea. He stayed in bed, stretching, yawning, waiting for the voices and clatters of a usual day or the reassuring sound of his mother, until hunger drove him out in search of food.

Edgar, starving for carbohydrates and fruit juice, in his new chinos and T-shirt, stepped out on to the landing. He had expected the business of the morning to be transacted all around him but he seemed to be the only one up. There had been voices; now he heard only the creak of the corridor floor under his feet, the squeak of the stairs. On the ground floor he could walk more freely and soon was joined by an imaginary companion, a mincing European, maybe Italian or French, could even be Spanish, who wore flamboyantly long white sleeves with lace ruffs and carried a clipboard and assiduously noted down all of Edgar’s instructions.

‘I think we’ll need to move the kitchen from here to here,’ Edgar said commandingly. ‘And the bathroom, of course.’ He felt a slight pang for both rooms, which had done him no harm, but he must be ruthless, make his stamp of ownership plain. ‘And I think we’ll lower that ceiling and raise that one, and maybe that floor ought to become that wall, and do you think two indoor swimming-pools are too much …?’

He paused, tilted his head, cocked his ear, allowed space for his flouncy architect-designer to offer his highly cultivated, overpaid, artistically considered response, which lordly Edgar merely brushed aside—

‘… or not enough at all?! I want four swimming-pools thank you very much. Ha! And I want a snooker room they-ah , and a games room they-ah , and my father will be in his study, there …’ and here Edgar lowered his voice, squeezed his chin flat to his chest and waddled as if he were the fattest man in the world into his grandmother’s living room, narrowly avoiding the early-morning boy-trap of a wire magazine rack, ‘… and here, and here-ah , what are we going to do? Hmn? What are we going to do with you? What in the world are we going to do with you? What in the whole—’ Edgar shot a nervous look around before continuing ‘—fucking world are we going to do with you? What do you think, Alfonso? What’s your considered opinion now, my friend? Answer me Alfonso. Answer me, right now! Oh God, I’m so bored with your ideas, is that what they teach you at the Sorbonne? You’re fired. That’s right. Fired. I shall draw up the plans myself. Goodbye.’

The rejected architect-cum--designer threw himself on his ex-employer’s mercy. He was losing all dignity: he cajoled, threatened, pleaded, he wept. He poured down curses on Edgar, then repented, blessed him, his family, his mother, who reminded him of his own, after which ensued a long impossible-to-follow story set in a hillside village, involving a donkey, two gypsies and the winter wind, and Edgar had had quite enough. This display, quite frankly, sickened him.