Maggie Gee - Where are the Snows

‘Yes. I’m lucky.’ I thought I was.

‘Got any kids?’ She was curious.

‘No. Yes. I don’t know.’

‘Got problems with ‘em? They teenagers?’

‘One of them died,’ I said. My aborted son, my lost one. I don’t know why it came out like that, I had never said that to anyone before. Perhaps I assumed she was Catholic. Her eyes, which were very dark, very Spanish, looked vast and sad in her wizened face.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

‘Yes. One of them I had adopted.’ Her face changed, shocked, less friendly. ‘I was only twenty-two. Too young. Now I miss them.’ I think I wanted her to like me, though why I should have bothered I still don’t know.

‘I got six,’ she said. ‘Four boys.’ She was proud to tell me that she had a life, she had something I would never have. I had Benjamin, but she had sons. ‘One still at home. One going through college. Six bright kids.’

‘Uh-huh.’

— I wasn’t going to admire her. I should have done out of sheer politeness, but it hurt too much, that casual boast; she had six kids and she was ordinary, and I was special, and I had none. It was my fault for getting into conversation, nothing could be gained from such conversations, as we went round the world I had made a rule of not wasting time gossiping to servants; sometimes one needed to talk to them, to find out certain things about the country one was in, but even then they would often tell one too much or not enough of what one wanted to hear; better to keep one’s distance. Better for them, better for us. Yet lately I had grown lonely.

— I thought she was triumphing over me, and I wished her harm, I admit I did, but then Benjamin came springing through the door, her smile widened into a beam and I realised I was imagining things.

‘Mr Ash.’ She reached behind her and picked out the key. ‘Your regular room.’

‘Thanks, Consuela. You’re looking great.’ (She looked tired, and old, and ordinary.) ‘How’s everything?’

‘Good, sir. Good. Well, except for my daughter…’

I wanted to fuck. I wanted it now. I didn’t want to hear about her daughter. ‘I haven’t got much time,’ I said to Benjamin, cutting across the receptionist, only registering her words as I stopped speaking — ‘She’s going blind. Some germs from dogshit. Dogshit! I ask you, Jesus… You can’t get away from it in this town. She’s fourteen years old. She’s a great kid. It’s kinda hard to take, but we manage.’

I thought about the daughter I had had adopted. In my head she was still a teenager, though actually she would have been nearly thirty. I imagined her going blind. I said, ‘I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.’ I meant, I’m sorry I had horrible thoughts, I’m sorry life can be so horrible, I’m glad nothing bad ever happens to me. ‘That’s terrible.’

‘We’re doing OK.’

We smiled at each other, a real smile, not the formal grimace I usually gave her. She started to explain to Benjamin. Benjamin was a wonderful listener. I stared out of the door, no longer impatient, the glittering windows across the street, the flash of a yellow taxi passing, the blue sky, extravagantly blue in the chasms between towering clouds, bluer from inside this dark narrow building where Consuela sat all day. The light before a storm had the stagey quality of sunset light, melancholy, golden, making the ordinary brownstone walls of a warehouse facing the hotel as rich and red and remarkable as any of the wonders I’d seen on my travels. I could see all this. I was very lucky.

We went upstairs. I tried to forget her. Going upstairs with Benjamin, the excitement of his big young body, walking behind him, watching him, his thick soft hair which smelled new-washed, the tang of fresh sweat, his hard buttocks… He ran without thinking, eager to get there, and I ran too, but not quite so easily… Not quite so easily as before.

It would have been better if she hadn’t liked us, better for her, better for me. Better for him, for Christopher.

Why did I think we were important? That tired woman was all that mattered. And I thought they didn’t matter at all, people like her on the fringes of life. We were the centre; I was so sure.

We had just unlocked our little room, the one we had used on our very first tryst, with the daring window over the street, the window that seemed to let in the world, the opening that said we could go anywhere at all as long as we could be together, places where Christopher had never taken me, younger places, freer places…

(See what a betrayer I am. Christopher and I were once young and free.)

We hadn’t long unlocked our little room when theatrical clouds piled over the sun, leaving the heat, taking the light, except for the occasional long golden lance which pierced the blackness, flickered, died. I think our mood changed with the weather.

There were sirens in the streets. Something had happened. The noises were different from before; no bells, no children, just the sirens wailing and angry cars using their horns. There was a smell of something burning; rubber? flesh? I was going to close the window, but there wasn’t time.

‘Take off your clothes,’ said Benjamin. ‘I’m desperate for you… I’m dying for you.’

That day Isaac’s breathing had changed in some horrible way, long labouring in-breaths which took for ever and then violent, explosive out-breaths. The nursing staff were grave; they warned us we were near the end. Benjamin and I and Herbie and Ken, who ran what had once been Isaac’s favourite restaurant, sat there together on the edge of hysteria, for Isaac had turned into some clockwork toy, his parts agitated by something outside him, and I knew that the force which was driving him was no longer a life-force, it was death.

Herbie and Ken had to go back to work. We sat there for hours; nothing changed. The nurse had said this could last for days. Our eyes kept meeting over his body. We had to make ourselves forget. We had pawed each other in the taxi, frantic.

Benjy pulled off my t-shirt and pants. I saw myself in the narrow mirror of the antediluvian dark wood wardrobe. My red hair hung below my shoulders, my breasts hung down but they were full and pale, I still had a girl’s indented waist. Benjy stood behind me; he made me look small. Taller than Christopher; I like to look small. My face looked haunted, full fifty years old. His young brown hands slipped over my breasts.

I could feel his erection nudging at my buttocks. My nipples contracted, hardened, darkened, stuck out at our reflection like tiny guns; my cheeks had flushed into excited life. I was ready for him, I wanted him, I wanted his beautiful cock inside me, I needed his hand between my legs, I groaned with pleasure as he played with me, oh I wanted to die doing this with him, oh come inside me, Benjamin, come…

Then someone was hammering at the door. We stood immobile, a photo in a frame, watching our faces exposed in fear. Unfocused fear; we were in New York; it was full of maniacs with knives and guns; we were in a sleazy, shabby hotel…

All the same, my fear was nine-tenths guilt. I should not be here. They had found me here. Fate had come hammering at the door.

‘Who is it?’ called Benjamin. I tried to hush him. No one must know he was here with me. His voice wasn’t his own; he was frightened. I knew he would be brave, but he was frightened now. He tried to put his pants on; they stuck out, absurdly. No answer, but the hammering intensified, it was definitely someone insane, the whole door shook with the force of the blows…

— The door splintered. The door crashed in. My heart stopped beating. Someone was screaming, hideous screams going on and on, it was I who was screaming and holding my breasts, Christopher, it was Christopher, he had kicked the door in, he stood there panting, old, triumphant, terrible. He looked at me in my nakedness, his eyes were on mine, we saw each other, I saw he knew me for what I was, a cheat and a liar, our life was over, he was trying to speak, he went red then pale, I thought perhaps he was having a stroke, the sirens wailed for another murder down in the street where I longed to be, and then I saw what he had in his hands and my bowels turned to water.