 |
|
| Liquidambar | Other writing | Order it | Reviews | The Bumper Book of Lies | Links | Poems |
Winter it was, a brittle Hamburg daybreak shrouded in frost and all the gravestones huddled under hibernating rhododendrons. Unexpectedly came hurtling out of the mist, dragging two figures by their hair, the statue of a woman, a grotesquely pensive woman, with a curved pattern of ice veiling her naked body. I stopped my bike to take a closer look. She stood on a rough pedestal in front of a spray of ferns. One of the figures she was dragging was a young boy, the other the girl. Both faces bore tortured expressions. The sculpture radiated an emotive burden of distress and the air around me felt weighted down by it. I could not imagine what nadir of grief could have generated such a stony vision. * I had moved to Hamburg from London in December 1987. I could not take any more of Margaret Thatcher’s economic miracle; characterised for me by standing in a snaking queue at Chiswick Post Office waiting to cash my social security cheque. I came to live with my German girlfriend, Opal Hush, on an estate whose buildings are cracked like chunks of stale gingerbread in memory of the Royal Air Force air raids, situated on the main road to the airport. Next door is the cemetery. The estate, when built before the war, was considered to be a model. A model of what I am still not quite sure. I had met Opal Hush about three years before. She had been the lithe, good-humoured assistant in the optician’s shop where I bought some glasses during a particularly strenuous business trip. Either through vanity or absent-mindedness I had left my own in London. My short-sightedness was worsening rapidly with each session at the computer monitor, in inverse proportion to my soaring conceit. I remember the German exactitude of Blickkontakt, the shop where she worked (‘Eye Contact’!), the vanilla scent of her breath and the closeness of her face as she checked the frames for their fit around my ears. “What do you think?” she asked as our eyes met. “I think you’re beautiful,” I admitted. “Perhaps you need stronger lenses after all.” For a time, life with her was as modest and straightforward as our first conversation. So much so, that I did not even notice I was living it. I took for granted that it would go on forever. Now I can’t remember exactly what it was I thought we had. I keep telling myself: no more thinking — just be there. But fate is unavoidable. It is the school timetable of life and, as it turned out, Opal Hush was just waiting for her destiny to be completed. *
Recommended Listening
|
