IT WAS HERE THAT I LEARNED HOW MEMORY

Fold, unfold. Unfold, fold. I don't know what to do with it. I don't know what book Boris was talking about. And I don't know if I want to know. I thought about looking, but I just keep coming back to the pen and ink. I thought about looking but I just keep coming back. Fold, unfold. Unfold, fold.

He knew immediately that I was watching him, loneliness had sharpened his instincts. Orange trees and jasmine were growing in the courtyard and the arches were covered with vines. If life has no intention of doing you any favors, I’d rather go out where I can’t be expecting any. Selfsufficient and indifferent to the suffering of the rest of the world, with the unquestioning straightforward glance of an animal. She led me on along the littered slopes, past shattered china and bits of wire and broken springs and rusty pipes, all glimmering grotesquely in the moonlight. In a way you look older, and in another way you look younger, first one and then the other. It was here that I learned how memory can keep the diseased heart beating. None of it felt real, and for one paralytic moment I was sure that I was gliding away into another sphere of sensations. I feel a small electrical flash of love go out toward anyone I am in contact with, no matter who it is or where. The real remembrance lies in a momentary fragrance. It’s the thing hiding inside that gives us shivers. I knew he was awake, staring straight ahead as if he were gazing into a mirror, searching for something neither on earth nor in the sky. I began to hate him. Physical uneasiness can instil odd thoughts into the mind, thoughts frilled up in all their elaborateness, in all the bizarre intuitive fullness of a dream. But of course the truth is that intimacy and closeness were all an intricate hoax, an ingenious dream, a subtle but halfhearted mirage. Be fragile, be tender, humiliate yourself, and let the discolouration of dream close in on you. The reality becomes a cruel dream while the dream fades into a tender manmade reality. But all attempts at verbal communication he had surely dismissed as vanity years and years ago. A penetrating yet unseeing gaze, as if he were looking through me as through glass down corridors scarcely human. You remain alone, you can’t get inside the rest, they can’t get inside you. A million little spirits each with its own peculiar tastes, hopelessly far away from one another. But as I was beginning to doze off I heard a sound, a low buzz, steady and quite unexplainably frightening, the sound of time rolling past, and the world turning on its tiny axis. In my dream it appeared, among other things, that the oranges had dried out, had turned hollow and metallic, had changed into little bells.

TILL THE LAST TRICKLE

1 - JR - And how goes the camera? - The computer? - Hope they're working for you somehow - And I wonder whether you're doing any reviews - Or have left that malarkey behind - There is a pizza here that tastes as if it has been mysteriously transported straight from the best wood fired oven in Italy - Served by dark haired, dark eyed slender beauties - Kind, gentle - So gentle and kind - Susie is better off - For me monogamy at best has only ever had the slightest of holds anyway - Do you remember those girls when we were about 13 or 14? - Nicola something or another with me - Siobhan something or another with you - It was an Irish name at least - Even though she sounded as if she was mere steps away from ascending to the english throne - God we thought we were in love - At first -And I suppose in a way we were - I don't know about you but I felt in some kind of love with each of their friends too - Yes even Siobhan - There were about seven or eight girls in that group and I desired them all - And listen, I don't think much has changed

2 - No I don't think much has changed at all - There is an older man here at the hostel who says women will always be a torment till the last trickle of testosterone has left and packed up for new climes - Jesus it's a wonder I ever got married at all - Growing from a boy I would observe various men who had sworn loyalty and dedication and who knows what else to the woman beside them - White white white - At various functions - In hotels - Embassies - Wherever - And even before I first needed to shave they struck as belonging to either one of two kinds, as a result of marriage - Or if they were particularly unfortunate, both - Drunks or Idiots - And so I swore eternal bachelorhood - And yet - And yet, here I am - Stuck on the underside of the world - Looking for something likely no longer there - Likely gone, gone for good - Good

3 - Good - She's better off - Besides everything else, I got tired of terrorism too late - What in the end does it matter who did what to whom? - What the hell was I looking for? - Some secret - Likely in the end some silly secret - And then all of a sudden it's too late - Your world, your world in the end evaporates - And yet all the same I can't help but wonder what has become of my papers - Those I sent you - Way back when - And I wonder whether you took a stab at translating any of the ones I never got to - I mean, if so, you could have made Mr Dunnerly proud - Wherever he is - He was a good teacher - He was a good man - Melbourne's mighty cold - A different kind of cold - Wait, there's a Sudanese cab driver I know trying to catch my eye - Later - LA

KEY OF THE DOOR

Boris is dead. I found him. He was sitting in his spotted armchair. Not sleeping. Dead. Appearing to be asleep. But not asleep. Dead. He didn't come to bingo. He said he was going to come to bingo but he didn't come to bingo. We spoke earlier in the afternoon. He was working on another wall. I said it was that time of the month again, come on, let's go have a drink together, and just listen to the numbers as they come up, they might remind us of old phone numbers in our lives, that kind of thing, and bring up associated memories, and what not, who knows. He chuckled at the phone number idea but all the same said he'd come. But he didn't, he didn't come. Numbers were being called. I surreptitiously sank some sauvignon blanc and then snuck out the side entrance between the calling of numbers. There was no answer at his door. Boris, I said, between knocks. Boris, Boris. But still no answer. I knew he wouldn't have been outside, it was getting too late, the sun was setting, the wind was picking up, and history showed that he would have by now called it a day, he would have by now popped a stout bottle open and quietly supped from a glass (in the meanwhile) before his early evening comedy came on. Boris. Boris, come on, open up. So I turned the knob and found it unlocked. And there he was, upright in his armchair. I knew as much then as I ever would. The crux of the matter being that I had to get out. No, not the room necessarily, but the whole place. The retirement village. There was something wrong with the whole set up, the whole idea that these elderly live out their last breaths surrounded by one another, each in a lonely room, with framed photographs on the walls of family and better times. There was just the other day the man in 23 needing a lightbulb changed, and the handyman was away, so I said I'd take care of it. He was a teacher in times past. On the wall were framed photos of his family, as well as framed handwritten poems from his students over the years, and what looked like framed examples from students' exercise books. English composition. Spelling. Comments on Blake's Songs of Innocence. Earlier in the day I'd been talking with the woman in unit number 17 again. She'd mentioned how in Yorkshire during the Second World War she and her co-workers at the bank would take it in turns to go up onto the roof after hours to help keep watch for German planes. I want to fly away. I want to fly again. I want to fly away, Boris. Boris, look at you. In your lap a piece of paper, betwixt thumb and forefinger, unfolded, and the prominent creases reminding me of the streets in a simple well laid out city in which I might like to one day take a casual tram ride around, cold bottle of beer in hand, cute girl by my side, and a conductor checking tickets with the gab of one Harpo Marx. Boris, come on, wake up. But he wouldn't wake up, of course he wouldn't, he was dead. Come on, man, he's dead. Get it together. So I took the piece of paper from his lap and carefully folded it back up, put it inside my inside coat pocket and then went back to the recreation hall to go look for Mrs Shearer and let her know what had happened. She was in between calling out numbers again. I went up and whispered about Boris, and she nodded and then went about calling the next number. Then someone called out bingo. Motioning me with a tilt of her head, I followed her to the head office and she closed the door behind me. Are you sure? she wanted to know. Yes, I'm sure, I replied. They're not supposed to do that here, she said, and which I took to mean to die. They're supposed to be able to look after themselves, she said, they're supposed to be in better health than that, otherwise we would have sent them elsewhere. A hospital, or one of those places where there's a nurse to take care of your needs, feed you, wash you, if necessary, that kind of thing. Then her cheeks suddenly went red and she started crying. I was about to tap her on the shoulder and say 'There there', but something better immediately came along and told me to do otherwise, which meant to do nothing. And I had no idea if she even knew Boris.

A SOLITARY PERIOD

A letter from Louis arrives, it's there waiting in the cold metal mailbox when I get back from another day pulling out ivy cascading down a rocky embankment. It's written over three postcards, numbered, and placed in an envelope.

1 - JR - The entries in the journal I've been keeping - Since coming here again - To look for Susie - Have been getting shorter and shorter - And it's not a matter of finding the time - Oh there's time - I'm still at the hostel, and there's an arrangement now for board in return for helping clean the rooms - Vacuum the halls - Sign in new guests - Oh there's time - But still the entries are getting shorter and shorter - So I've stopped - Stopped before I make an entry under a date that has nothing more than a question mark - Or maybe not even the squiggle of a question mark - Just a period, a solitary period - She's gone - Susie - I don't expect to see her again - Or at least anytime soon - Maybe she's somewhere in London after all - I don't know - It doesn't matter - Too late - And yet still an old scene plays over - As I hand over a room key to a couple of Swedish girls in shorts and long shiny tanned legs

2 - An old scene - Back in London - Before all this unfolding - This unravelling - Leaving our London flat one night to follow a lead - A meeting in a hotel - When Susie wanted me to stay and talk it out - Sort it out - But there wasn't time - I had to go - They were waiting - No she said - Something's not right - There's too much left unsaid - Something's awry - Awry she said - Her fine senses kept speaking to her - Prodding her - They wouldn't shut up - She yelled after me down the hall - We haven't finished talking she said - Don't walk away we haven't finished - But to me nothing looked as if it was going to be resolved - It's hard enough to argue with a woman at the best at times - Impossible when time's against you - Everything has to be explained - Clarified - Laid out fully - But the cab was waiting - She yelled after me some more - South Kensington I said to the driver - And left - And the following week I was on a plane to Sydney - Susie was staying with her parents - Or that friend in Clapham Common - I don't know - She was somewhere - It was hard to say - There was no note - And no answer when I called

3 - I thought keeping a journal would help me find her - I was looking for an answer - But I should have listened more carefully on that first day when I wrote that first sentence - Outside at a pub on a headland in the dot town of Tathra - Overlooking the sea - The great heaving sea - The great heaving silent sea - I should have known right then - I should have let it all go - Go over the edge - Into the great heaving silent blue - When I wrote down those first words - Never never never never - That's what I wrote - Shakespeare it wasn't - But it was a start - And I drove on from there - And now here I am months later in Melbourne - Washing sweeping wiping mopping - Smiling - Making do - Like a determined monk - LA

MAN ALIVE

Maida Vale, Marylebone, Paddington, St John's Wood, Queen's Park, Victoria, Westminster, Paddington, were the libraries most frequented by Boris on his walks around London. It had been a while since he had seen her, and then suddenly there she was again, sitting at a table across from him in Paddington, reading the same edition of the International Herald Tribune. He couldn't help but imagine that she was reading the same page as him, and not just the same page but the same article too, and not just the same article but the same part of the article, the same line, the beginning of the same word. Everything seemed to stop then. The light in the library took on a hue more akin to a dream, or at the very least a balmy dusk, when it was in fact midmorning. He knew he had to act. Now was his chance. He knew, but he did nothing. And he still curses, even now, his behavior that day, although the distance of time has, of course, made it all a lot easier. He can, in fact, actually laugh about it all now, and thereby proceeds to demonstrate. Ha ha. Ha ha. But yes, it still haunts him, like a hungry ghoul sometimes, he says. The ghoul can go get out of here. Go on, ghoul, go on. It's funny, he can remember the girl clearly, he says, and the day that his brother arrived in London too, and even how the city smelled that particular morning, whether at the airport or inside the library, but when it comes to trying to recall that book he was reading, that book whose lines still come to him every now and then, no, he cannot recall the name. At best he can scramble after a line once it appears in his thoughts and try with all his might to hold on to it, reach for a pen, if able, and jot down what he can, before it disappears once again into the aether. Then Boris changes the subject and says he hasn't seen me around much of late. I've been working on the other side of the village, I tell him, ripping up ivy which has overrun the garden beds near the hospital, climbing up and sucking the life from some of the surrounding trees. It's been a monotonous slog. And there's a resident nearby, I tell him, who doesn't appear to approve of me sitting under a conifer tree to eat a sandwich during lunch break. I overheard her the other day hanging out some towels to dry and saying as much to another woman, and that I shouldn't be entitled to a lunch break anyway, but that even if I was legally entitled to one, the least I could do would be to stand and eat my sandwich, if I insisted on being in view, for the residents of the village are, after all, helping pay a percentage of my wages, and by sitting under a tree it makes me look as if I'm lazy, which reflects badly on everyone, don't you know. Boris seems to know the woman in question, laughs, and shakes his head. German she is I'd say. So don't let it worry you. Some of them are still smarting from losing the wars.

RED RAW

He could barely meet her eyes. He was so, so timid then. Terribly timid. Often he'd shed weight in shame, it was really that bad. Such a strange, strange sense of self disgust. Often a run, only a run, a wild silly run, would do the trick. He would, afterwards, feel sort of clean again. So strange. Run run run. But never enough, to ever escape. Are you, Boris wanted to know, aware of the relationship between the word timid and the word intimidate? It was a horribly excruciating time, he said. Do you know what it means to be lonely? I mean lonely. I knew menus better than men, and yet I had nothing to pay. Eventually I forgot how to speak. Women looked at me like an untamed dog. And I never knew that that could be an advantage of sorts, not until it was too late. I was simply hungry, that was all. Clueless, and hungry.

WAS SHE WORTH IT?

One day, at Paddington, Boris spotted a  dark haired beauty, who he guessed must have been an Italian. Yes, she must have been a student of English, an Italian student of English who thought that the best place to learn the English language in all its glory would be the English capital itself. London. Of course. How could she go wrong. Oh. Oh. But he never knew for sure, no, Boris never knew for sure, he simply guessed, yes, she looks Italian, she's Italian, that's what she is, that's what she must be, Italian, yes, Italian, unless proven otherwise. 

MAKE THEM WAIT

I tell Boris he's the first Boris I've ever met, and ask if there's any Russian blood in his lineage. No, nothing at all, he says. Apparently his mother had a fondness for the works of Boris Pasternak. He was also close, he tells me, to being called Leon. Boris is a strong sounding name, I say, and I remember watching as a boy Boris Becker win Wimbledon at the record age of seventeen years old. Yes, he remembers that too, watching the match surrounded by two of his daughters, eating turkey pies and mushy peas. After a tea break, I watch Boris from a distance working on a wall. He's seated on a plastic milk crate, rolling a piece of rock around in his hand. Then he stops and reaches into his shirt pocket and takes out a pen and a piece of paper, which he unfolds carefully, as if it were a treasure map. He jots something down, recaps the pen, and folds up the paper again, and puts it away out of sight. A small smile comes to his lips, and then a slight shake of the head. I finish my tea and think about approaching him to talk, but something in me makes me think to leave him alone, I don't know why exactly, but there's something incredibly private about the way he's sitting, pondering, and wondering, and trying to imagine, I can't help but think, the next place to place his latest piece of rock ... He looks as if he's reminiscing, or in some kind of meditative state more akin to a monk. And then it's like he all of a sudden comes back again, it happens just like that, all of a sudden, from a private world of a dream to the public world of being - just being - and I seize my chance and walk up to him, and as I do so, I can't help but try to think of something suitable to say, and silly thoughts such as how much has he seen since coming here, to these parts, to this retirement home, come to mind, how many different people have come and gone, that kind of thing, and then, as I get closer, he seems lighter, younger, and I say as much, and for some reason add that he looks as if he's just found out that he's picked the right lottery numbers. That's nothing but another tax, he says, the stupid tax I call it. He tells me he's thinking of his brother again, he can't help it, it just comes, just like that. He remembers picking his brother up from the airport, Heathrow, or Gatwick, he can't remember which. And he remembers a book his brother brought with him, a book highly recommended that he should read. But Boris, for the life of him, can't remember the name of the book, no, it just won't come. He can, however, remember, and easily, what his brother was wearing, for instance - brown jacket, white shirt, red scarf - and the bags he brought with him too, just the couple, if he remembers rightly, one beige and leather, the other a dark canvas  ... But no, not the book, not the book at all ... Not the book that Boris can recall reading in one sitting once he had it in his hands, the book he felt as if he'd almost devoured, once it was in his grasp, no, not the book.

ALL THE FEATHERS

Unlike Boris and his cockatoos, the sound of a lawnmower, for me, is starting to sound like the end of the world. The upside, apart from the smell of freshly cut grass, is how you notice the slightest sound once the machine is shut off. It is the end of autumn here, some of the last of the fallen leaves get caught in a slight breeze, emitting dry, crunchy whispers as they hit up against and swirl around the corner of a wall. The lawn is mown again, likely one of the last times before the onset of winter and the sleeping of the grass. Hopefully the last. I keep checking the machine but can't figure out why the catcher isn't working properly, the result being that lines of grass are left behind, that remind Boris, he says, of the lanes in a swimming pool in London that he used to frequent, where most mornings he would swim lap after lap after lap. Looking back now, maybe I visited that pool so often in the hope of meeting some pretty girl that I otherwise never would have had the nerve to approach. But now there was an opportunity, we had swimming in common! Strange how such things can suddenly come back to you. He says he was in France for a while too, and starts to speak in French, to which I reply 'Oui. Ca va?' and he laughs like he's heard one of the funniest things in the world. He taps me repeatedly on the shoulder and then says he's going for a beer, before adding: Mind those birds, my boy. Today could be the day. 

GATEWAY TO HEAVEN

Boris has been a resident of the village longer than anyone else. He secured one of the units soon after completion, way back when, he says, around the beginning of the eighties. So he lives in number 2, having been beaten to number 1 by a whisker. A cat's whisker, as it turns out, for pets were forbidden, and it took Boris a little longer than expected to find a home for his moggie, since each of his four children spread around the country were reluctant to receive a fluffy ginger addition to their household, a daughter finally acquiescing on condition of a sufficient monthly financial incentive. She'll ask for it now one way or another. A cheque here and there. That first day just got the ball rolling. And the cat's now been dead for donkey's. But at least I get photos of my grandchildren. One of them could pass for my wife, she really could. Unless the weather is particularly foul, Boris can usually be found somewhere on the grounds, working on one of his dry stone walls. His inherent modesty prevents him from detailing his achievements, but according to Mrs Shearer, whatever wall you come across within the boundaries of the village, chances are Boris built it. He tells me that he was never a builder before coming here, that it was just something he picked up, bit by bit, as he found all kinds of rock left behind following the village's construction. A lot of it he moved too, bit by bit, to the unused space beneath his building. And then, bit by bit, he would start making little walls here and there. Something to accentuate a garden bed perhaps, or to add a little texture, or counter balance the boredom of the tarmac with some nicely arranged stones. It wasn't rocket science, he wanted me to know, but what was, apart from rocket science? Usually he'd just set off anywhere and start fiddling around. He'd pick a piece, roll it around in his hand, get a good feel for it, and then take it from there. He'd familiarize himself with the edges too, and essentially, he said, in the end, it was just like a giant jigsaw puzzle, except that, more often than not, there was always more than one place to go for any particular piece. And so it became second nature after a while, a part of his day as important as washing his face with cold water in the morning, before a strong cup of tea. Besides, he didn't want to agitate himself with the superficialities of the newspapers or the nightly news anymore. The world is always ending. I may as well build a stone wall in the meantime. Often he lets the screeching cockatoos late in the afternoon signal the end of his day. They made him think, he said, of the sky tearing open in two, and he half imagined shiny brass horns to follow, almost as if announcing the final meeting of the world above with the world below. And then we would all be able to see how his walls held up.