Homesickness (14 page)

‘A distinct possibility,' his uncle nodded. ‘I've been travelling along a similar trail myself. I can't say on that evidence great minds think alike, but we're not light years apart. It's always interesting to discover someone thinking along similar lines. But of course we have a drop of the same blood.'

Indeed: the small face opposite seemed to be loosely draped over Borelli's mother's, like a mask here and there wrinkled and out of shape. Under the eyes and throat it was slack. A subtle yet major force lay in the shared bone of their foreheads, its breadth and slope. Those family shadows around his eyes made the old boy alert, an eagle's head; while with Borelli's mother it appeared more as a wistful bruising. Other smaller clues showed as the minutes passed.

His uncle had Borelli's nose in profile. And at the back of his head were a few once-dark curls.

‘How long have you been in bed?'

‘For years.'

‘I mean today.'

‘This is my desk,' the emerite yawned. ‘I'm up to my neck. The more I unearth the more complex it gets. You think you're close—zoosh—you're further away. There is always another side. It's a matter of cutting through and hanging on. No shenanigans, no holidays. It's all go.'

Some girlie magazines lay on the bed, true, but they were among the
Anatomy of Melancholy
and a new Arabic dictionary embossed with ivory demilunes. Ironically, a magnifying glass protruded from a red paperback of Dunne's
New Theory of Vision
. There was the Koran with notebooks and scraps of green paper, and by the pillow a pair of brass binoculars.

Borelli picked up
The Arabian Nights
and put it down.

‘I'm with a group. It reminds me of Africa, this. We went there first. It's not a bad group. We haven't resorted to cannibalism yet.'

‘And where does this group go to next?'

‘I think America.'

‘Much-maligned America,' his uncle commented.

Borelli paced the room, without his stick he limped a bit.

‘We wear sunglasses and cameras. I suppose we look like any other group. But who knows what we think? I was going to ask you: what should a person see in London if he could see only one thing?'

At the window he paused and—Good Lord! Jesus!—naked woman opposite. Combing her hair. She had small white breasts. The window box empty of geraniums made her legs short and thick. And in the window above a redhead passed wearing nothing but a black brassiere. Seeing him she stopped, legs apart, and waved. Borelli drew back. But others had seen him, including huge-breasted twins sharing one window, and the laughing West Indian hot mama one down and two along. The surface of the small building became alive with soft caryatids; waving, beckoning, mocking. Come on, come on.

‘I don't understand it,' his uncle was saying. ‘If you people stayed in the one place you would see more, a million times more. The biggest, the smallest, the worst, the best, the tallest, the most expensive. Such questions come from remoteness and emptiness. Then when you do see something extreme or rare you think you've
experienced
it. Which of course is not the case; quite the opposite. Incidentally, Karl Marx and Casanova de Seingalt lived in that street you see. Not together, of course.'

Returning to the chair Borelli still glanced at the window.

His uncle kept shaking his head. ‘Cocky overfed country. You've produced lantern jaws and generalisations. Tourists are a natural follow-on. You people are very demanding.'

‘Travelling,' Borelli waved his arms, ‘there is the time factor to consider. We, ah travellers, operate in a condensed unreal time. For us, even time is summarised.'

Not bad: but as he glanced for a reaction he shook his head and began laughing. It didn't matter.

Like Marat in the bath his uncle rested his head back in the pillows.

‘See if my socks are under the bed. There's something seriously wrong if they're not.'

And from a nail in the wall he lifted a greatcoat, surplus from one of the armed forces. Its outline remained on the wall, a lighter grey, as if the wall had been sprayed around it. His pyjama top was Garibaldi red and as he fitted a tie, added a scarf, and finally a beret, his appearance altered from bedridden pensioner in the bare room to bulky live-wire with penetrating stare and the clear skin of a child.

Outside he was recognised by the stallholders who waved and called out, and many girls in fur coats. To them all he introduced his nephew, twisting Borelli's head to point out the vague resemblance, and showing how they had both used the same walking stick without knowing it.

Borelli pointed across his uncle's chin.

‘What?'

Funny: a truck there waiting at the lights carried in its back two sets of traffic lights. And that young woman with a crippled leg. Attractive; but see how the leg had pulled down one side of her mouth; already a deep crease had established, by remote action.

His uncle nodded, and Borelli kept his head cocked listening.

‘One thing I've decided, after my years of study, is that we behave differently with women. You'll say everyone knows that. But it's a strange thing, isn't it? With women we subtract or multiply our faults.'

Borelli shrugged knowingly, ‘So?'

An iron ball passed through an empty building and a tall wall fell in a complete straight edge, as in World War Two.

‘Don't be stupid! Think of the change in your behaviour. By measuring it—measuring the falsity—you define your own character. Sometimes the results aren't very pleasant. I'm saying, if you care to, you'll learn more about yourself from women, than from men. It doesn't hurt,' he added, ‘to spend a lot of time with them.'

New districts, new intersections.

The bus emptied. They waited under an umbrella shop and caught another.

All the time which is through light and shade Borelli listened, sometimes putting in a question. He wondered where they were going. In times of world crisis English sales of fishing rods rise. Compare the English deckchair with the French wrought-iron seat. Gentle and accommodating is the canvas type, tracing the shape of national character; the other, the hard seat, makes the sitter aware of himself: wrought-iron provokes, is histrionic. The American bar stool implies can't-stay, gotta-go: like the fabricated vertical American cities. Conquering, looting armies destroy musical instruments but preserve mirrors. London proves that strange evolution of towns: human expansion is instinctively westward, leaving the east in poverty, dying on the vine. Could it be that our physiognomy is formed mainly during sleep? The frowns, smiles and hopes formed by dreams leave their mark. There is a reason for everything.

Looking over a long wall Borelli saw rows of faded submarines stored end-to-end for salvage and scrap, suburban submarines. His uncle signalled and they left the bus; followed the submarine wall for several hundred yards; a hag pushed a wicker pram filled with vegetables and a wheel fell off; but they didn't know.

‘What sort of passport do you have?' Borelli decided to ask.

‘What's that?'

‘I imagine you must be fairly English now. I mean, you've never returned home, have you?'

‘I've told you, I don't believe in maps, unnatural boundaries, rubbish of that sort. I think street directories are suspect. The travelling I do is all up here'—tapping his forehead.

‘You can say that because you've already been everywhere.'

They had turned into a small church.
KARATE
and
KUNG FU
master classes were advertised on the services board. Although protected with rusty mesh many of the stained glass windows were broken.

Old Hector led him around the back where weeds came up to their knees. Here was a forgotten cemetery. One of those Victorian tombs for a merchant and his spouse had marble elbows growing out from each headstone, clasping hands in mid-air.

Borelli turned. ‘Eternal love personified. You're saying I should find a woman?'

Leaning on his stick his uncle had one foot in a grave. He said nothing.

Another headstone consisted of a massive saxophone carved in the most exact detail. Pigeon droppings over the years had dribbled and solidified into a substance like Rosso wax, altering the instrument's centre of gravity, like the saxophone found at Hiroshima.

‘I need a hobby. Is that it?'

‘You're nervous. Why else would you be busy making a fool of yourself? For all your travelling about, the fancy hotel rooms, at the end is death. Travelling is postponing it.'

Borelli poked around some more, whistling.

‘Well, I don't know. This isn't so…'

His uncle followed as he left the cracked headstone of a parricide. All along, the largest tomb had been obscured by the octopus-oak, and now it could be seen against the side fence; indeed it was like stumbling upon the source of the Nile.

Here was a large tent, as grey and weathered as the paling fence, a traveller's tent. Nothing about it moved the way tents move; for it was concrete, solid through. It was as tall as a man. Carved to be partly opened, its ‘flap' revealed nothing but black impenetrable stone. So it exerted a force through its density, a silence, overwhelming. Where it peaked at the front someone had fixed a Moslem star.

At his shoulder Borelli's uncle breathed, ‘This is Burton's tomb. As you know, the translator of
The Perfumed Garden
.'

Walking slowly around, Borelli tapped it with his knuckles.

‘It's like a stone bird.'

‘Something like that,' Hector nodded. ‘It's immovable yet it's a monument to a great traveller. That's the paradox; one that you won't forget. Think about it.'

‘From you,' Borelli turned, ‘who dismisses tourists.'

Tight smile there from his uncle. ‘I've always said “traveller” never “tourist”. Burton explored literatures and languages, religions, fauna, rivers and women, and other things we don't know about. It's an object lesson. In those days they didn't have fancy sunglasses. And all you can say is “terrific” and “fantastic”.'

Often Borelli had trouble matching words to sensations, especially when travelling. When the words came out he often felt stupid. The words sounded dead.

‘I often get excited, or hasty.'

‘It could be a form of tiredness.'

‘I know what you mean,' said Borelli. ‘I mean taking photographs gives the impression of getting around the problem. I suppose it's one of its apparent advantages. Mechanical literacy: ideal for travelling.' Borelli stood back from the tent and shook his head. ‘But this would test them out. A photograph, especially in black-and-white, would simply look like a real tent.'

His uncle began grinning. He didn't know much about photography.

‘I'm afraid I need a piss,' said Borelli pulling a face.

‘Richard Burton was broadminded.'

They were pissing down one corner of the tent, one on either side.

‘We're like dogs,' Borelli called across. ‘It means we'll be back here one day.'

His friend shook his head.

‘Few people know about this place.'

But Borelli noticed some words appearing on the concrete surface: his piss seemed to act as a catalyst. They grew in focus and stopped.

CAPT. COOK
BURKE AND WILLS
CRAP ALL OVER BURTON

And to one side, smaller (a footnote):
AUSTRALIAN DESERT BOOTS

Borelli looked across at his uncle.

‘What's the matter?'

‘Nothing. Doesn't matter. You right?'

They left. In the long time it took to zigzag into central London they didn't talk much, each one left to his own thoughts; though after Borelli mentioned the mystery of women, dismissed as a simplicity by his uncle, the psychology of uniforms was briefly discussed. As for his uncle he wondered how certain Moslems could bear to have themselves buried in ornate but unidentified graves; to be buried nameless. Neutron stars sighted in outer space have a tremendous density. According to reports a tablespoon of material would weigh several thousand tons. Borelli mentioned it. The memory of Burton's tent must have reminded him.

On their visit to a stately home Doug and his wife had been unable to penetrate the ivy. They'd fronted up to where you'd expect a door, and parted the leaves. Mrs Cathcart stepped back and hoisted her bust to be as venerable as the house. ‘Yoo-who?' she called out. Doug ran his tongue over his teeth. Some of these places have the front door round the back. They walked all around, which took a time, deliberately talking loudly. Mrs Cathcart remained grim—respectful. Even slowly panning his German binoculars, as she waited at his elbow, Doug couldn't locate an opening or even a clue, and after several more circuits they lost their sense of front and back. The ‘house' was a featureless mound at least two storeys high, shaped like a loaf, teeming, dripping, literally shivering with the leaves in the slight breeze. Sharp corners and cornices, the manorial straight lines, had long been strangled. The sole human touches were the silver television aerial at one end, and smoke from an invisible chimney. Six bumps along the top or the ‘roof' could have been eaves or mansard roofs; it was difficult to tell. But it was also true that the victorious vines had grown as deformed and as stagnant as the mansion underneath. Close up they were arthritic, hairy and mad: they'd turned in on themselves, devouring and twisting. With nowhere else to go it was a pyrrhic victory.