Fire in the Unnameable Country (43 page)

Zachariah wanders the corridors, pulling on doorhandles, screaming high and grinding his bones into the walls, let me out I have been here for a century. He puts his head low to the ground and listens for a thread. Low voices. Vibrato. A beautiful chorus part in the distance. He lifts up his head just as a sword is about to lop off.

He awakes with a start. His bed is drenched with perspiration. The putrefaction of onionskin. The smell of burnt coffee beans. The dark shape of silent books. What happens if one wants to resign from the Ministry of Radio and Communications. Undoubtedly there results a complex bureaucratic process, several periods of interrogation and bullying, signatures on page after page confirming one will not reveal— no, that one is unaware of—departmental secrets if one gets so far, and probably then the intense surveillance for years after being granted dismissal. There is only one direction in the maze. Time only flows toward greater disorder. And yet there remained on Zachariah Ben Jaloun's bitter breath a lingering taste of the future, something beautifully grey that succoured all the alien dust and desert corridors, but he could not quite recall its name. Perhaps it had never possessed one.

So far she has only been referred to as the woman with the grey eyes. Time has come for us to set down Zachariah Ben Jaloun. Let us leave him to his solitude of the inscrutable page, to think through his decision
to hatch the blank verses and to wonder about his future within the hallways and rooms of Department 6119. In his absence, and perhaps even in his presence, as time will tell, Grey Eyes, I claim, is the onetrue hero—or heroine if you prefer—of this story. (Her name, therefore, warrants revelation.) My father (or the man the story makes me call my father) would probably insist on the following version of things: the only reason to mention Zachariah Ben Jaloun at all is because he leads us to his mother, the woman with the grey eyes, my perhaps-grandmother. So many possible genealogies, birthparents, foster homes, prison wards, faulty endings, and halfway-voltefaces. Let's see, where to start, then: the tale of my young grandmother and her mistress of the many shoes is as fine a place as any.

SHOES
FOR
THE
SERVANT

Once upon a time, and this is true, in another country, lived a widow, a mistress of a palatial inheritance, who was old and whose house was dilapidated old, who burned for her youth through brocades and necklaces, long outmoded dresses dragged carpets behind the wearer, and above all, shoes: patent-leather pumps and high-angle heels, pyramidal shoes with long throats exposing much the wearer's feet, shoes from Continental Europe with sharp toes and thin cones for support, ballet shoes, aerobic dance shoes, tap shoes, long-lace black boots that augured glamour seven decades prior, opera shoes she had gathered before a singing performance during a recent visit to the boot island, singing baby slippers that jingle-jangled with the wearer's every step, suede shoes, cloth shoes, ankle wraps, monk straps, cross-straps, gladiator sandals, fashionable side-tie shoes, chappals for walking, cavalier shoes with the lace frills of a prior century, formal eveningwear shoes, shoes for cocktail luncheons not to be worn with incorrect saddlebags, bejewelled lachrymal shoes that seemed to weep in the light as they walked, shoes that bicycle pumps injected with cushions of
air, cross-country ski boots and their alpine variety, shoes, shoes on the stairs and the landing, spotted on the dining room table and scattered in the drawing room, shoes for long outings, for quiet nights by the gramophone, abundant shoes, choice shoes for every occasion in an echo palace whose mistress hired costume artists and sports stars for in-house pageants featuring her clothes, especially her shoes. She changed shoes by the hour, and after draining a pair of freshness with wear, she handed it down to her servant. One could imagine why the girl might not take such care in the shoes' upkeep as she did the china and silverware, the rugs, teak coffeetables, and the expensive linen, since she would inherit them in due time. It was the single calculated failure in her job, and important to the story.

After six years of indentured service, roundtheclock rain-or-shine care of the palatial home, shared by the mistress with her several thousand doves, which must daily be fed, whose droppings must be cleared, who live in an aviary and sleep in spacious dovecotes, who exist for neither breeding nor consumption, who are bought at great expense and stationed in luxury until they die of natural causes, the girl commits a life-changing error. It happens on the day the mistress announces that the Archbishop of Bethlehem is coming.

While more often than not distinguished guests fail to keep their promises to come to dinner, there have been surprises: during an August sandstorm, Laurence Olivier had arrived as pledged, eaten a whole meal without speaking once or removing his hat, and with the solemnity of Death himself, had risen and toasted the mistress of the house. Then he had fallen asleep in the front hallway, inebriated and leaning against the coat-rack. One never knew for certain, is the point.

The chef has his hands full, and asks the girl to take care of the custard. She prepares the recipe and lets it cool. The floor shines after her mopping, so not even a small-minded Vatican clerk could discover
fault. Though the curtains are washed and the carpets hoovered, the rats caught and roaches exterminated, the house still exudes its characteristic sulphuric odour. But this, she sighs, I cannot change, I have laid traps for the devil and he is smarter than any rat.

She looks to the aviary where the thousand doves await her arrival. Come on, she bangs on her pail and throws their fibrous seeds. Something seems different: most don't seem to be eating, and curious discomfited, she enters, leaving the latch behind her unloosened. The birds rush about her as if they had been planning this very mutiny, as hundreds peck at her skull and scratch at her body bloody senseless before every one of them escaping through the hatch ajar.

In her convalescent chamber—her bedroom with bandages around her face—she points eyes to the bedside lamp and the teak-wooden chair with its definite shadow, the calcified walls smell of flight near feathers still fluttering, to her pair after pair of hand-me-down shoes. Her bedside mirror has news: claws for her face and bird-implacable red. Her insides have new hungers biting clamouring for another place. She counts again her pair after pair of second-hand shoes leaning against the walls. Shoes, she thinks, for flight: a new beginning.

Her wounds heal, though she will always bear a scar above her right cheekbone. She wanders briefly, pawns the shoes pair by pair, which allows her to pay for board and room in various cities. She buys a crisp, recently owned dress, in which she interviews successfully for a typist's job at a telegraph company.

She is diligent and warm and charms her employer, gains the jealousy of her gossiping office neighbour, who threads news of his affections to others, and eventually his wife. To fend off his advances to retain her job suppress rumours and retain her stolid guard: these are
irreconcilable desires. No other potential employment in sight, and she is reluctant to dip into her shoe savings. What can she do but sink into the hollow of his embrace, nocturnal dust of the shared bed where his arms snap like dead branches and his face turns into a scarecrow's, his pupilless eyes like coal and incapable of.

Some years pass. They carry on in front of others as if nothing at all, using a nearby flat where they meet regularly. She always feels the need to scrub the floors afterward. Eventually, he befriends a Portuguese woman poet, supposedly a friend of Victoria Ocampo, who suggests, as the three of them gather over tea one afternoon, that he should try the Mexican surrealists of their generation.

He pauses for a moment before proclaiming Mexico a lost nation of the world; Marxism, he says, is the reason Latin America will never produce great literature; it is a handicap, because any ideology or dogma cripples the imagination.

He does not look at the girl when he pours her tea, and she finds the steaming atmosphere intolerable, his arrogance reprehensible, the poetess's nose so sharp it could cut the thick scent of play between them. She leaves her cup while muttering an excuse or an apology.

She never returns to their flat or to her job. He sends her letters: she is the wife of a notary, her contact is invaluable for expansion of the company, and be reasonable, she is a friend. After several attempts, however, he informs her in a terse communiqué her typist's position has been replaced. Thereafter, he doesn't seek her out.

I suppose, she wonders one evening while staring at the everyday commotion outside her window, if this is how love ends: like a frail kitten, a litter-runt that dies on Christmas Eve, mewling and warm and close to the hearth.

On a map she finds in a bric-a-brac store, in a map of the world like none other, she locates a previously unknown country in the map of the world, its name crossed out with a pencil: an unnameable country.
Paradise, she thinks, beyond names. I will sell the remaining shoes and cut a ticket.

Paradise has its bureaucratic processes, however, its forms, psychological assessments, job applications. Through an agency, my grandmother manages at long last to find a customer service position at a shoe business, which sends her keys to an apartment in a company building and a membership at a local swimming pool.

The steam vessel of her journey sways across channels and oceans, hugs a continental coastline, rocks in strong winds bleak waves through which my grandmother keeps cool, endures chatter with fellow travellers, their sickness unexpected early births dizziness spells walk invisible through ship's hull into vast water return to night rest chattering teeth and doctor's order bedrest and fluids.

From docking ship to lock and key of her new front entrance, her new life's sole contents of clothes, travel documentation, and meat preserves secure safely in one suitcase through winding streets via taxi.

Baffled by all the cinema stuff on the streets, the cameras and people/ what's the show, she asked. The driver pointed at the spools of magnetic reel streaming from the staircase landings, at the boys carrying pails of clean drinking water for the staff. When the taxi stopped at an intersection she heard cameramen arguing about film formats and what had the Director said about each of them.

What's the movie called, my grandmother repeated her question. They're all called
The Mirror
.

Why.

Beats me, he replied, but that's what they say about every godforsaken show.

Huh.

Longest movie in the world, he grinned.

She turns jammed lock presses whole weight against a door surrenders, gives way to her new home whose bed is a thin mattress, whose
walls and ceiling and floor are mirrors, and whose electrical circuitry is crossed with its ventilation system so that turning a switch sometimes releases a gale-force via vents whole weightless apartment and belongings.

My grandmother paced around her house, grew thin and tall in a reflection, squashed and wide in another mirror. The lights in her home fell villainous shadows on her face, made her up to shine on other occasions. She laughed at her image, she gasped, this is me, she wondered aloud.

Cinema is in my home, she shouted. Already, my grandmother was beginning to understand the tenuous demarcation between meatlife and movie world in the unnameable country.

After cooking her first breakfast the next day in the communal kitchen, my grandmother travels to the address of her shoe company job to discover an edifice of trolleys of spilling tape reels, their wiry pushers with eight limbs' tasks to do at once rushed to reorder magnetic minds scattered on hallways, tumbling from storage shelves, classified for the wrong containers.

She reaches a desk with an employee furiously reciting a data sheet for the day's entries, figures upon pages pushing volume. Excuse me, my grandmother ventures. A clanging metal container and a pigeon's flight in the room add weight to her intrusion and the woman at the desk lifts her head. Your name is listed, my grandmother hears, but your job is not to sell shoes.

My grandmother hears descriptions of windy hallways, of the respective tasks of assemblers and collectors, appropriable mental functions of the average suspect mind, and for a moment considers returning to her servant's task of shoekeeping. But the mere thought of a return ocean journey defeats her surprise and indignation and she signs page after page of contractual agreements that lead finally to her first pair of peering headphones hearing people's thoughts.