All My Puny Sorrows (18 page)

I have a cleaning lady, Yo, said Elf. You have a very low-grade understanding of despair, by the way.

An amazing cleaning lady, I said, okay? You have a mother who thinks the sun shines out of your ass.

Yoli, said Elf.

Okay, so dad died. Whatever! He loved you! You have … What is your major fucking problem anyway?

Plus, said Elf, I have an amazing sister. But can you … shhhh.

I am not! I said. I’m a total fuck-up! Can you not understand that? Can you not understand that I need your help! That maybe you’re here for a reason which is to be a goddamn sister to me?

Yoli, she said. She sat up in her bed now and was whispering hard, livid. You do not understand a fucking thing, okay? You have had my goddamn help all along. I had to be perfect so you could fuck up and you were more than happy to do it. One of us had to show some fucking empathy, do you know that word, it’s a good one, you should learn it, one of us had to show some fucking empathy towards dad and all his acres of existential sadness. Who was that person? Was it you? Was it mom? No! It was me. Just so you could go waltzing around—

I don’t even know what you’re talking about, I said. Now you’re comparing yourself to Jesus Christ? You didn’t have to be anything. You chose to be on his team.

Because nobody else would be, said Elf.

That doesn’t mean we didn’t have empathy, I said. That means we chose life, or some semblance of it. You happen to be more
like
him than us—which is lucky for you in a million ways—but that doesn’t mean we didn’t fucking care.

Oh so you’re saying I’m doomed.

I am not saying you’re doomed! You’re saying you’re doomed. I’m saying you didn’t
have
to be anything. And since when do you swear?

Yes, I did have to be something, said Elf. Have you ever heard of family dynamics? And don’t you think I’m scared shitless?

Well then what is this all about? Why are you here? Some kind of preemptive strike? Do the thing you most fear in order to overcome your fear of doing it in the first place? I’m afraid of killing myself so I think I’ll just kill myself and then I’ll be able to go on living without fear … oh wait! This one’s a little different. The logisitics are a bit—

Yoli, I’m trying to explain to you this incredible pressure I’ve felt to …

Quit then! Stop being perfect! That doesn’t mean you die, you moron. Can’t you just be like the rest of us, normal and sad and fucked up and alive and remorseful? Get fat and start smoking and play the piano badly. Whatever! At least you know that you will eventually get what you want most in life—

What do I want most in life?

Death!

Yoli.

So why don’t you just wait for it to happen. Exercise some patience and all your dreams will come true. Guaranteed. What I want most in life is completely unattainable and everybody knows it.

What’s that? Elf said. Legalized marijuana?

True love, I said. And yet I’m sticking around unreasonably and knowing it’s impossible because who knows? I want to find out. I live
hopefully
.

Well, Yoli, your logic is skewed. You’re contradicting yourself. You are quite certain that your dream of true love, whatever that is, will never come true but on the off-chance that it
might
come true you will stick around to find out. I
know
that my so-called dream of death
will
come true so therefore, according to your own argument, I should be free to leave. There’s nothing to find out. No big surprises in the wings and nothing to hope for.

That’s not what I said!

I think it is.

Listen, I said. Don’t you think that mom has suffered enough with dad and all that shit and now, what, you love the perverse idea of a fucking encore?

Yoli, that’s so cruel. That’s beyond—

You’re just dying for a curtain call, aren’t you?

I’m not perfect, said Elf. I didn’t mean—

Yeah, I’ll say! I said. If you were perfect you’d stick around. See how life goes, how the kids do, do you ever think about Will and Nora and what this all means to—

Yolandi, shut up now, said Elf. Of course I do. I think about them all the time.

Bullshit! I said. If you thought of them, ever, just once—

Yolandi, stop it.

Stop what? I said. Stop making sense? Stop telling the truth? Sense drives you crazy?

You tell me, said Elf.

We stopped talking for a long, long time. A long time. Nurses came and went attaching and detaching things. Hundreds of thousands of babies were born while we weren’t talking. The continents continued to separate at the same pace as fingernails growing.

Yoli, look, she said finally. Can you just talk to me?

About what? I asked her.

Anything, she said.

Sure, I said, but you ask me to talk like you have some kind of hidden script you want me to follow and then when I veer from it—because I don’t even know what it is in the first place—you’re like no, no, don’t talk. You don’t want me to talk about the past because it’s too painful because there were good times, there was life, and it might persuade you to change your mind and you don’t want me to talk about the future because you don’t see one and so what—okay, I’ll talk about this second. I just inhaled. The sun moved behind a cloud. I exhaled. You’re in bed. A second is passing. Another one. Oh … and another one! I’m inhaling again.

She put her hand up and I took it. I held it, like we were champions of something stupid but hard-won, like a whistling tournament, but at a World Championship level. Just then Claudio appeared at the door carrying an extravagant bouquet
of flowers. Ciao! He was wearing a patterned blue scarf, folded flat into his woollen coat. His black leather shoes glistened. Yolandi, you look beautiful! (I love Claudio.) He kissed me on both cheeks. Elfrieda, my darling, and he kissed her forehead just above the new scar. Claudio, I’m so sorry, she said. He spoke to her in Italian,
ma cosa ti è successo, tesoro
, but she shook her head, no, don’t, as though the language of her heart had no place here or that it reminded her of beauty and love and laughter and those things were bullets now, sharp teeth and shards of glass and cheap plastic toys you step on in the nighttime.

Elfrieda, we are together here, that’s all that matters. He put the flowers on the side table and took her hand. You rescued me from Budapest, he said. He said he liked the way Budapest was beautiful and elegant and crumbling, decaying, plucky and sad, but when he spent too long there, everything started to depress him. And he said he had meetings, lunches, dinners, and he began to feel crumbling, decaying, and sad. He told us he sat in a warm hot spring that exploded from the ground, the way he had as a young man, surrounded by art nouveau architecture, it was like bathing in a cathedral. The sky was pink. The scent of lilacs filled the air. Fat Russian gangsters in tiny bathing suits played chess while their bleached blond wives hung scowling from their necks and arms festooned with gold and silver. Barbarians!

Claudio spoke English well, only a faint trace of his Italian accent. Those Russians are the descendants of the guys who slaughtered the Mennonites, I thought. Now they wear bikini trunks. Then he told us he had been standing on one of the bridges over the Danube and looking down he saw a guy sitting
on the riverbank. Is it blue? I said. No, it’s filthy I’m afraid, and not at all blue. Is it beautiful? I asked. Well, yes, it could be described as beautiful.

That’s true, Elf said.

Well there was this tramp, or—do you call them hobos?

Do you know that
hobo
is an acronym for Homeward Bound? I said to Elf.

Yes, she said. From Woody Guthrie. I’m surprised that you know that.

I also know that there’s a Hobo Museum in Britt, Ohio, I said. I love reading their newsletter, especially posts from Nowhere Man and Mad Mary. When somebody dies they say he caught the Westbound.

Elf smiled. Curious, she said.

Hm, well, Claudio pressed on, I look down at the man who is just sitting there on the riverbank staring at the water, at the sky, at the things around him. He’s holding a can of beer. Then he gets up and picks up an empty bottle lying next to him and walks down one cement stair that goes right into the river, the bottom of his pants are getting wet, and he looks around as if he’s making sure nobody is watching. I thought he was going to jump in and drown himself, but he didn’t go any farther. He leaned over and filled the bottle with some of the river water. Then he went back and sat down again, where he was. I was so relieved. My heart was pounding while I was watching all this from the bridge. But then I thought, oh dear, he’s going to drink the river water—but he doesn’t. He simply sits there for a while, with his beer can and the bottle with the river water, and stares some more. Then slowly he takes the bottle and pours a little bit of it into his beer can. And then he drinks from the beer can. I
was watching this and I thought, how awful, don’t drink it. Of course he did, and for whatever reason it upset me deeply and I wanted to get out of Budapest.

He drank the river water? said Elf.

Yes, he added the dirty river water to his beer to make it last longer, Claudio said.

And you thought that was pathetic? said Elf.

Yes, just terribly sad.

He could have drowned himself instead, I said. Do you think that would have been better?

Of course not, but I certainly didn’t want him to have to drink river water.

Well, said Elf, I guess he made—

Yeah, a choice, I said. I get it. I think that he shouldn’t have had to make that choice.

I don’t want to drink the river water, said Elf.

I’d rather drink the river water than drown in it, I said.

I understand that, said Elf.

So you’re saying you have pride and I don’t and that a person with deep character, integrity, all that, would absolutely throw himself in before he resorted to drinking river water? What about the courage you need to understand and accept that you need the beer and you have to make it last longer? What about the grace you require in order to accept the gift of life?

Claudio apologized and said he hadn’t meant to upset us, it was only something he saw.

Elf said she had let everyone down.

Not at all, said Claudio. All the musicians already have other, what do you say, gigs and everyone sends you their
love … Antanas, and Otto and Ekko and Bridget and Friedrich.

How is Friedrich?

Oh, the same, trouble with women, money … Claudio laughed but looked stricken.

Is everybody very upset with me?

Of course not! I’m taking care of everything, Elfrieda. You needn’t give it another thought. We’ve got insurance for these things, as you know, it’s nothing more than a small inconvenience, and one that is of no real concern in the grand scheme of things. He made a gesture. Pfft.
Non è niente
. He offered a few more reassurances and then said he had better go. He had to get back to the airport. When he leant to kiss Elfrieda on two cheeks she grabbed him for a hug.

I’ll walk you out, I said.

Ciao, Claudio, Elf said, and it sounded like a sob. Ciao, ciao.

Claudio and I stood in the hallway next to a large canvas sack filled halfway with bloody sheets.

Let’s walk a bit? I said. He put his arm around my shoulder briefly and asked me how I was, really.

Oh, don’t ask, I said. I’ll cry. But thanks. How are you? Let’s go down to the main floor.

Well, considering … I’m so sorry, Yolandi, I’m just sick over this.

Yeah … She’ll probably be okay, I said. I mean not for the tour but—

No, I suppose not, said Claudio. What a shame. I mean for her, for everybody.

Yeah.

Anyway, Yolandi, you needn’t bother yourself with it. As you know, Elfrieda and I have been through many trials and it is to be expected. It’s nothing.

Sì. Va bene
.

Ah, you would like to speak Italian?

No. I mean yes, but …

No, no, I understand, he said.

We walked slowly past doors with numbers on them. In one doorway an old woman in a nightgown stood clutching a large round clock. She had a green handbag wedged under one arm. What time is it? she asked us.

I’m sorry? said Claudio.

What time is it? she said. She showed us her clock.

It’s nearly half past four, said Claudio.

What? she said. What?

It’s four-thirty, I said.

It’s four-thirty? she said. It’s four-thirty!

Yes.

Is this your husband? she asked me. She pointed at Claudio.

No, I said.

Your father?

No.

Your brother?

No, I said. He’s my friend. Claudio introduced himself and held his hand out to shake hers but she was holding the clock tightly with both hands so couldn’t follow through.

You better not be thinking of stealing my purse, she said. She backed away from us into the shadows of her room.

No, no, of course not, said Claudio. I took his arm and pulled him gently away from the woman.

My house key is in this bag! we heard her yell. She had come back into the hallway. She was still holding the clock. Claudio and I turned around, nodded and smiled, and then kept walking. A nurse told her to hush, Milly, hush.

She’s never going back home, I told Claudio.

No? Why not? he said.

Because it’s been sold, I said. Her nephew told me. From here she’ll go to a nursing home.

But she keeps the key to her house, said Claudio.

It’s the only thing in her bag, I said. She never lets go of it, or the clock, even when she’s sleeping.

Yoli, said Claudio. We will find a replacement for those last concerts, there’s still time. Please tell Elfrieda, again, not to worry about anything. Nothing at all. Claudio stopped walking and put his hands on my shoulders and told me he was sorry. Yolandi, he said, your sister is a rare individual. She is like no other person I’ve ever known. You must keep her alive. You must try everything. Everything.

I … yeah, I will … we are … Claudio was wiping tears from his eyes. I patted his shoulder. It’s okay … she’ll be okay, I said. I really think she’ll be okay. I smiled hard.