Cairo
Authors: Chris Womersley
First published in 2013 by
Scribe Publications Pty Ltd, Victoria, Australia
This edition published in the UK in 2014 by
Quercus Editions Ltd
55 Baker Street
7th Floor, South Block
London
W1U 8EW
Copyright © 2013 Chris Womersley
The moral right of Chris Womersley to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
The quotations on pp. 128 and 212 are from
Maldoror and the Complete Works of the Comte de Lautréamont
(tr. Alexis Lykiard, Exact Change, Cambridge, 1994). The quotation on p. 232 is from
The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud
and used with the permission of the Institute of Psychoanalysis, London. The quotation on p. 249 is by Ern Malley: lines from âDurer: Innsbruck, 1495' from
Collected Poems
(ETT Imprint, Sydney, 1992), courtesy the publisher and the Estate of Max Harris. The quotations on pp. 128 and 212 are from
Maldoror and the Complete Works of the Comte de Lautréamont
(tr. Alexis Lykiard, Exact Change, Cambridge, 1994). The quotation on p. 232 is from
The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud
and used with the permission of the Institute of Psychoanalysis, London. The quotation on p. 249 is by Ern Malley: lines from âDurer: Innsbruck, 1495' from
Collected Poems
(ETT Imprint, Sydney, 1992), courtesy the publisher and the Estate of Max Harris.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
HB ISBN 978 1 84866 391 6
TPB ISBN 978 1 84866 392 3
EBOOK ISBN 978 1 84866 393 0
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author's imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.
This project has been supported by the City of Melbourne through the Arts Grants Program.
You can find this and many other great books at:
www.quercusbooks.co.uk
Also by Chris Womersley
The Low Road
Bereft
For Reuben
Good artists copy, great artists steal
.
Pablo Picasso
I DREAM OF CAIRO STILL. THE DREAMS ARE SO VIVID THAT, ON
occasion, I wake sweating, disoriented, expecting to see honeyed light glancing off the floorboards and curlicues of dust pirouetting lazily through the morning air; to smell sweet, stale smoke and the tang of vetiver cologne; to hear the grumble of trams, and the
pock
of tennis balls being struck in the shady courts across the road. There is the acrid taste of last night's whisky in my mouth. The melancholy breeze of a simple piano tune trickles through an open window. I am filled with a sensation so much richer and more flavoursome than love, and it is this: love's ardent promise.
They are all present in the dream, as vital and alive as I remember them being in life: Max and Sally; Edward and Gertrude; James; Caroline and the awful Eve; even my Aunt Helen, although she had died some months before I moved into her apartment block. Maria is in the background somewhere, muttering her telegrammatic sentences, as is Mr Orlovsky. And there is Queel, turning, turning always with a glass in his hand.
Also apparent in the dream is a quality of both anticipation and foreboding, that watermark that can only be discerned in retrospect. These dreams are like dispatches from history; I almost cannot believe what is happening there, how fierce and how
beautiful it might be. To go back might be the best thing in the world, but it is probably the worst.
The dreams are all different, but in each of them there recurs one sequence: I am standing before a wall in what might be a dilapidated palace of some sort, on which is painted an exquisite mural, similar to that on the wall of the Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza. In my dream, however, the mural is of an archway, beyond which a dim and tangled forest fades into the distance. Arranged across the horizon is a line of mountains, a pink and dusky sky, clouds like puffs of smoke rising into the air. I stare at the mural in wonder for some time.
Gradually, I realise that a door (the size of a postcard) in the bottom left-hand corner is opening very slowly. Tiny fingers curl around the frame, fingers the size of a child's but simian in appearance; the knuckles are defined, and there is the hint of fur. The crowd of which I had sensed myself a part has fallen away. I am seized by dread. So slowly does the door move that I can't stand it. There is no sound. At last, the tiny door hangs open on its hinge. There is now no sign of the person or creature who pushed it from the other side, but it is clear to me, with the irresistible logic of dreams, that I am expected to pass through into the place beyond, and that what lies in store for me is in equal measure beautiful and terrifying.
Despite all that happened at Cairo, I am disappointed upon waking from such scenes to discover the dream was only that; a breath of a summer and winter long since past. I know that one can never return, but that doesn't prevent me from sometimes being overpowered by longing at the most inopportune moments. Only last week, when shopping for shirts in the city, I halted mid-conversation with a sales assistant (cuff of the potential purchase crisp and gently abrasive between my thumb and forefinger; young woman's kindly smile, a smudge of lipstick on her teeth) to
ponder what Sally Cheever might make of my choice â whether she would approve â before realising with a jolt that she left my life long ago. Years, in fact.
There are other things I remember, things so bizarre that even now, all these years later, I wonder if they happened at all, wonder if they weren't simply the product of a youthful, fevered imagination â forever associated with the smell of turpentine and oil paint; a recurring piano motif; a pistol shot; mocking laughter; my first disastrous love.
But now I am middle-aged. It happened suddenly, this ageing, almost without my knowledge and certainly without any effort on my part. I have tufts of black hair on my shoulders, mild aches in my joints. Most likely I have lived more years than remain to me. I reconsider my position on God, in case; a fumbling in the dark, like a child grasping for his blanket in the middle of the night, crying out for someone, anyone.
I imagine the three of us from a distance. Max, Sally and I. Sally stands clutching the collar of her red jacket at her chin as Max, with one arm draped over her shoulder, throws back his drink with obvious satisfaction and, perhaps, with triumph. Sally looks at the ground in front of her while Max's sweeping gaze takes in the red and orange lanterns from the previous summer that are scattered about like the seeds from a large and exotic tree; the tubs of mangy herbs; the tops of the elms in the park across the road. And there I am with my glass of champagne, stepping forwards to kiss Sally on the cheek and to shake Max's hand. The expressions on our faces are hard to read, and I'm too far away to hear what is said. There is laughter, Max's laughter, floating across the evening air.
There are times in life that score us forever, seasons or days that cast the die of our personalities so completely that it is against such periods the remainder of our lives is measured, just as there might only be a single photograph of us ever taken that captures
one's true essence. Now that I am older I find I am living two lives: my present one with its daily requirements of nourishment and warmth; and that other one, back there, when I lived with nothing and had nothing, but learned everything. I know I can never return and wouldn't wish to, were I given the chance. And yet, and yet.
Like paintings, people are taken at face value but contain a host of secrets for those who know how to tease them out; the task of the art connoisseur is akin to that of a trial judge sorting lies from the truth. There is instinct and there is science. Were you truly painted by so and so? In what year? With which materials? In essence: are you what you claim to be?