Master of the Smoking Mirror

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Late March 1953

It's one of those perfect early spring days, the sky that bright light blue and warmth in the sun at last. March is definitely going out like a lamb this year, and we have the window in the train compartment open, letting in the smell of the country.

It's so queer to be making this familiar journey with Al. I've been pointing things out through the window as we get close - the ruins of the castle, the chalk carving on the hillside, the field where they found the Roman villa last summer, still patterned with string fences. But I'm starting to feel a little nervous now, because - well. Al and my parents. And my house is hardly like his house, is it?

We're alone in the carriage, sitting next to each other, and I put my hand briefly on his knee to reassure myself.

[Open to Al]

Can't get used to this at all. It's the weirdest fucking thing.

When I saw the kid first, in the hospital (and ignoring Thiess' present for all I was worth), I didn't feel any great rush of paternal feeling. It was a weird color and slimy and its head was the wrong shape, and they still expected me to hold it. Freaked me the fuck out.

And yet...keep finding myself calling her up, asking if it's okay for me to come over. Buying stupid crap for the kid. Getting used to holding her, too - amazing how much heavier a baby is than it looks - though it still makes me nervous. What if I break her or something? Danika doesn't seem to be worried about that, though. She's tired, but she looks happy. I stay over, sometimes - sleeping on the couch - to try and give her a break.

But there's always the knowledge that I'm going to leave, underneath it. Every time I hold the kid, I feel subtly guilty. Jesus. Every time Danika smiles while I talk to her in Spanish and call her Brígida rather than Brigit. I know Danika's going to be a good mother, and fucking Thiess seems to be settling right in, but...hell. She's mine. Once I leave with Al, am I even going to see her again? There's times I catch myself wondering, just a bit, what would've happened if me and Danika'd got hitched after all.

Not saying I'd go back. Not saying I'd change my mind. But it's bitter, sometimes.

[Open to Al]

It's raining when I arrive, hot close drizzle. Stare out of the cab window; it's not the city I remember, and it is. Gives me a tight sick sort of feeling, like the beginnings of a hangover.

His apartment's in a better building than I expected, a solid middle-class neighbourhood. The super, short and broad and scowling, lectures me as she takes me up there, gives me the key: Everything paid up, she says, as if it's an insult, until the end of next month, and how can I let it? Who will rent it when a man has died there? When all his goods are there, still? I shut the door firmly in her face, lean my back against it as if she's going to break in.

The sparseness of it's too familiar, too like my own place. Nothing of the boy, the young man, that I remember. He was always neater than me, and he's gone about this like he went about most things, methodical, respectable. No clothes discarded on chairs, the kitchen clean. The fridge empty, though that could have been someone else. Bed against one wall, sofa against the other, tiny kitchen and bathroom. Almost a hotel room.

The bed's made up, hospital corners like my mother taught us. I feel my jaw clench hard.

I drop my suitcase to one side, my carry-on on the sofa. I'm tired and stiff from the flight, and I just want a fucking drink.

[continued in comments]

Leland: “And so all was, and is, in sorcery a kind of wild poetry based on symbols, all blending into one another, light and darkness, fire-flies and grain, life and death.”

The catfight!