Carol Birch - Orphans of the Carnival

He crossed a couple of canals, rambled this way and that, slid into a tavern, ordered a beer and closed his eyes. His heart was beating hard and fast as if he’d just done something very brave and dangerous. The room was full of babble and laughter, and he began to feel afraid because his mind was full to bursting, not with thoughts or ideas so much as impressions and currents of sound. One hand was in his pocket, in amongst the notes and coins.

Someone jogged his elbow. A long-haired whiskery vagabond of a character, someone he’d drunk with. ‘You know what you look like, old man,’ this fellow said, ‘like you’ve reached that seen-better-days point in life. I know it well.’

‘There are no better days,’ Theo said, ‘they’re all one.’

‘All one, are they?’

‘And all mine.’

‘All yours?’

‘Mine.’

He downed his beer and ordered another.

‘All one and all mine.’

‘But look,’ said the man, ‘What about me? I have my moments too.’

‘The same. All the same.’

‘Ah well,’ the man said, ‘if you say so.’

‘I do.’

He wasn’t sure. This was curiously dream-like. The tavern glowed. The people, the eternal frightened kindergarten of mankind, trembled outside in the dark. His mind was quick and fluid.

‘I am an articulate man,’ he said.

‘What?’

He laughed.

‘You are what?’

Theo went on laughing.

‘If I were an articulated man,’ he said.

‘A what?’

‘Artic-articulate man.’

‘Oh.’

‘An articulated man!’ he shouted, clapping his hands loudly and suddenly bellowing with laughter. As one, the people on the other side of the room stopped what they were doing and looked at him. What’s the matter with them all? What are they looking at? ‘If I were an articulated man,’ he said, still laughing, ‘I would tell you what my bones know.’

He stood up, and felt as if he was on a stage. He was young again, the old Theo, with the charm and the quickness. Then he realised tears were dripping from the end of his chin and his nose was beginning to run. ‘Only what’s known in the bones is true,’ he almost shouted at the room in general.

‘Sit down, old man,’ said his vagabond friend. ‘No need to get so upset. It’s only life.’

Theo sat down, wiping his nose on his sleeve. The tears confused him. He had no idea where they’d come from, he wasn’t even feeling upset.

‘Give us a song,’ someone said.

‘I will,’ said Theo.

‘Go on then,’ his friend said.

He tried to sing ‘Lorena’, but it came out wrong.

‘What a miserable dirge,’ some old woman said. There was a piano over by the door, and she waddled over to it and sat down and started playing some jolly bawdy old rubbish that everyone joined in with. The tavern-keeper, expressionless, wiped a glass behind the bar. Theo felt like dancing, so he got up and set about the fandango, the one Julia used to do. There was a cheer and someone shouted, ‘Bravo!’ Then he went to the piano and sat next to the old woman and started hammering away alongside her, drowning her out and making a horrible racket.

They began to boo and he turned, laughing. The old lady gave him a push.

‘To hell with you all,’ he said.

Out in the bright sunshine, he forgot where he was. There was money in his pockets, he was drunk, his energy had returned and it was good to be alive.

Slowly, he meandered home, breaking into snatches of song every now and then, stopping here and there to buy things, sweets and pies, whatever he saw, for himself, Marie, Oscar. Some stupid friend of Marie’s was there when he got home, an awful woman called Marfa Nicolevnya who looked like an old witch and never stopped moaning, yak yak yak all the time. Marie gave him a strange look. This awful Marfa Nicolevnya didn’t even pause to say hello when he came in, not that he wanted to say hello to her, stupid woman, stupid stupid woman. She just raised her eyebrows as if he was a fly buzzing into the room, then on and on about nothing, while Marie walked about straightening things in the room, nodding patiently, saying yes yes I see, and oh really and oh dear, a charade of patience and sympathy he knew she didn’t really feel. Stupid woman kept saying she was going. ‘Ooh, I must be on my way in a minute,’ she says, then fills up her coffee cup and yak yak yak, on she goes. Theo wanted to kill her. Scream. Leap from his chair and hurl her out of the window or down the stairs.

He stood up. ‘Go away,’ he said.

Marfa Nicolevnya looked at him as if he was mad.

‘Stupid droning woman,’ he said. ‘Go. Just go.’

‘Theo!’

Marie stood holding the poker, about to prod the fire, a look of mortal embarrassment on her face.

‘Stupid woman,’ he said, hovering in a vaguely threatening way towards Marfa Nicolevnya. ‘Why aren’t you going away?’

‘Theo! Stop it!’ Marie advanced on him, still holding the poker as if she was about to bash his brains out with it.

‘I’m sorry, Marie,’ he said, ‘I just can’t stand to listen to that voice or look at her hideous face a second longer.’

Marfa Nicolevnya was gathering up her things, a look of stunned misery on her already miserable face. Marie threw the poker into the hearth and ran over to her. ‘Oh I’m so sorry, Marfa Nicolevnya, I’m so sorry, please don’t feel you have to go, he’s been drinking.’

‘Oh good good good,’ Theo said, rubbing his hands together. ‘She’s leaving, the old witch is leaving.’

Marie turned on him. ‘Are you mad?’ she yelled. ‘How dare you!’

‘I dare!’ He laughed.

‘No no, it’s not you, Marie,’ said the wronged woman quietly, at the door. ‘I don’t blame you.’ She stared at him mournfully, and he grinned back at her.

‘I told you the truth,’ he said, savouring the moment. It was full of gall, grim delight and bitter shame at the sight of the stupid woman’s pale, desolate face.

As her footsteps died away down the stairs, Marie advanced upon him. ‘How dare you!’ She was trembling with rage. ‘How dare you speak to my friend like that!’

‘She’s an idiot,’ he said. ‘And you’re an idiot for having her as a friend.’

His head was hurting. He tried to hug her.

‘Get off me!’ She pushed him away. ‘What’s got into you? If you wake Oscar, I’ll kill you. You can’t speak to people like that! Poor woman, nobody likes her. And you say a thing like that! You’ve got cruelty in you. Cruelty.’

He swaggered. ‘How can the truth be cruel?’

‘Don’t be stupid! The truth is cruel. Any fool knows that.’

‘I’ll show you truth,’ he said,’ and began hauling all the things he’d bought that afternoon out of the sack and spreading them about the room, a fancy parasol, spoons, a Mongolian cushion and a wooden Noah’s Ark with half the animals missing.

‘What’s all this?’ she said.

‘The stuff of life.’ He laughed, covering the table and the bureau with more and more things they didn’t need, china ornaments broken from their journey, cakes crumbling in his hands, drawing trails of fluff with them as he dragged them from his pockets.

Her face grew sharp. ‘How much have you spent?’

‘Oh, I don’t know.’

‘For God’s sake, Theo!’

‘Look,’ he said, swinging his arms, ‘I got you all this.’

‘I don’t want it.’

‘You have no gratitude,’ he said. ‘Whatever I do, it’s never right for you, is it?’

‘Calm down, Theo. Stop it.’

‘You don’t care. You don’t care. She cared about me. She loved me, she did. You don’t.’

‘Shut up, Theo. You’re making yourself ridiculous.’

‘ She never thought I was ridiculous.’