Maggie Gee - Where are the Snows

The rich went mad over the millennium. The rich love parties; count me in. The mega-rich and mega-great competed to hold their parties in places that symbolised richness and greatness, the Eiffel Tower, the Taj Mahal, the Pyramids, Ceausescu’s Palace — all of them had their parties planned. The Millennium Society hired ultrasonic aircraft to chase the dawn of the year 2000 around the world on a cloud of champagne. Millions of bottles of the stuff were selling, far too many for them all to be real. I suppose the poor who knew no better must have bought inferior imitations.

Isaac was on a drip by now. He hadn’t eaten solids for several weeks. He lay there, inhuman, frighteningly human, the merest contraption of skin and bone, but in his eyes was burning will. It was no longer possible to read his emotions. All you could see was fire. His remains — they were already his remains, the emaciated husk of him — were held from the edge of death by that single blaze of will and fear.

Christopher had finalised our plans. Perhaps they were corny, but all the millennial ideas were corny, the idea of celebrating is corny — we have to do it, though, or else we die… Chris had booked for the party in the Statue of Liberty as soon as it was clear we couldn’t leave New York, for Isaac would never leave New York, Isaac would be buried in New York. Every place had been taken for over two years, but Chris paid five hundred times the going price.

We asked Isaac if he would like us to stay with him. He said there was no need. We offered to take him anywhere he wanted; all of us knew what that offer meant in terms of the medics, the drips, the machines which would have to come with us on any expedition; all of us knew it was impossible. Isaac declined impatiently. ‘My friend Benjamin’s coming back. He’s been away painting for months; I’ve missed him. I’m going to give a little party. I’ll just drink some champagne,’ he gasped, in the peculiar, rasping voice which had started to take over from his proper one. ‘A thimbleful. So what if it kills me. Not through a drip. The regular way. With my friends. My friends are all coming round. They’re my family. They won’t desert me.’

I was terribly relieved that we didn’t have to take him. My feelings about Isaac were changing. At first it had been easy to love him ill, because I knew the demand wouldn’t go on for ever. But his dying was terribly long. How could he look so ill and still not be dead? There was nothing left of him, yet he was still here. Angry, triumphant, elated by turns, insisting that we listen.

Feelings I’m not proud of surfaced. There was a terrible monotony about his voice, rasping, coughing, yet still roaring on, trying to talk himself into the future. The room had a familiar, sickening smell, sickening because I spent so much time there, rubber, disinfectant, more disinfectant, ecological air-fresh, orange-juice, and if the nurse hadn’t taken the bedpan away, urine and shit; all life was here. I felt claustrophobic in that room; he felt the cold, so all windows were shut; his was the most powerful face in the room, and I was fascinated and appalled by the glaring gargoyle which stared at me. My name is death it said. Hallo. Once you didn’t believe in me.

Most shamefully, I became afraid of infection, though I hadn’t been afraid all through his illness. Though I knew intellectually there was no risk, though I know what the doctors worried about was us infecting him. As his body collapsed further into itself it was as if all the barriers that kept us separate had melted away, leaving me utterly exposed. When he spat out words, I watched the drops of spittle spraying out in the bedside light. When he wiped his nose on his hand I blenched, because now he liked to hold my hand, after resisting my touch all through his illness he suddenly needed to hold my hand, he lay there gripping it, roaring at the darkness, long rambling monologues about the past.

I gave my hand like a long-ago present. I never complained. I sat there and listened. I was glad that at last I had something to give. I paid the old debts, day after day.

But another part of me didn’t hear a word. Another part of me longed to get away. I was thinking about babies, and the twenty-first century, and what it would mean to be fifty years old, and whether I would ever take another lover, and what I would wear to the Statue of Liberty. This other part of me wanted him to die…

No, all of me wanted Isaac to die; he should be released, he had suffered enough; I should be released, I had done my best.

— I longed for December 31st. I wanted to forget every depressing thing. I wanted to drown myself in Guerlain. I wanted to drape my still-girlish body in flame-red taffeta, ready to dance. I wanted the music to pick me up and fly me over the towers of Manhattan, diamanté strips against the roof of the night, whirl me up and around the globe, over all the places where we had been happy, and perhaps I should start to love Chris again… I wanted to be in love again.

I was bubbling, high, as I dressed for the ball. Christopher and I were high together, the occasion was bigger than our misery, the pain dissolved, we could laugh again. We stepped into a taxi and fought our way through the honking crowds with their millennial streamers, banners, hats to the queue for the boat. The Statue of Liberty had been lit up with rainbow lasers for the occasion; it looked vulgar, actually, a little unreal, a cartoon version of its statuesque self. It’s the whiteness we love, the startling whiteness. But everything had to be dressed for the party; money had to be seen to be spent, given the money they were charging us.

The whole waterfront was alive with people who couldn’t have afforded to join our party; every stone was trampled by dozens of feet, every lamp-post and litterbin and seat was leant-on, the bottles and cans were open already and the dry surfaces were damp with life, breathing, kissing, drinking, spilling. There were shouts and bursts of singing in the foreground, cabs honking, vendors yelling, people with hotdogs and popcorn and balloons and masks and drugs and sex to sell, faces and accents from all over the world, all the countries that we had visited, people I would normally never have noticed, because there’s no time to look at them all, they pass down the margins of one’s life without ever attracting one’s attention — but tonight everyone felt special; everyone was shouting ‘Look at me’: I looked, since the chartered boat still hadn’t come, and was amazed at first by how many they were, the faceless masses I usually ignored, how many faces they actually had, how boldly they seemed to look back at me, how many of them looked carefree and happy, how they surged back and forwards like the sea, as if they were all part of each other… the queue for the boat remained a little outside, trying to keep a space of our own since there wouldn’t be room for everyone to join us… the larger crowd had shining faces, shining with sweat, black pores, red lips, smoke, onions, sudden leaping bursts of jazz from a wireless but no, it was a jazz band playing their souls out in the middle distance, oblivious to everything, faces contorted with effort and joy (and sometimes I wish I had worked at something, worked my heart out like those trumpeters, I wished it, briefly but painfully, then…)

The foreground noise was deafening but all the same I made out something else in the background. Something like music, but without a tune, a kind of communal sighing, or whispering, something like prayer but without any words, a sigh like the corks coming out of champagne, millions of corks, millions of bottles. Then I realised what it was. It was all the earth’s people holding their breath, laughing softly, sighing with excitement, standing together, chattering, dreaming; Chris said there were armistices in so many wars, they would end tomorrow but tonight there was peace, and this distant whisper was infinitely peaceful…