The Museum of Doubt (3 page)

I wish you’d leave, said Adela.

Jack’s head lolled. He lurched forward and sideways, found the stool and sat down on it. He put his elbows on the table and rested his head in his hands.

I’m still not a hundred per cent, he said. Can you get me some tea?

I haven’t much tea left, said Adela.

Jack pushed the heels of his hands up into his cheekbones, looked at her from under his eyebrows and laughed, a tiny, wriggling, greedy laugh, like the body of a worm kinking through a salad. Then he sat up straight, folded his hands pentitently on his lap, found the laugh and killed it. He blinked, sniffed and pinched his nose.

I see, he said.

I’ve got enough for myself. I didn’t ask you to come in.

Yes, of course, said Jack. I’m sorry. It was selfish of me to ask.
I’ve behaved badly today. You can’t forgive me, of course, I don’t expect you to. Please – give me a moment, and I’ll leave.

I didn’t––

Please. Don’t speak: it’s my fault: I provoked you. A minute to collect my thoughts.

They remained like that in the kitchen for a long time, Jack sitting upright on the stool with his hands on his lap, head inclined slightly, gazing at the skirting board, Adela standing watching him in the kitchen doorway, resting her weight on one leg, gently rubbing the tips of her thumbs and index fingers together. There was no sound: no birdsong, no music, no engine, no clockwork, no running water, no wind. When Jack began to cry, Adela heard the tears moving, a noise like dust slipping down a shallow slope of brass. Jack’s back bent and his shoulders shook and he clenched his praying hands between his thighs.

Don’t do this, said Adela softly.

Tears dripped from Jack’s jaw and he rocked to and fro. His voice came lost from a roofed-in maze inside him. All the years, it said. All the days. All the hours. When Adela heard the words a memory of a dream she had never had came into her mind. There was a statue of Jack in the desert, up to his calves in blowing sand. The statue was made of soft, porous stone, deeply scored by the wind and the rain. Jack’s face was slashed with parallel diagonal lines and pocked with air bubbles. His hands were outstretched, perhaps offering some gift, but the gift had long since worn away and he looked like a leper appealing for help. Around him millions of figures wrapped from head to foot in twisted black rags were hurrying across the dunes, the cloths streaming in the wind. They carried smoking buckets of fine sand which they would dip into the ground to replenish, without stopping. Every so often one of the figures would fall and not get up, the drifting sand covering them.

Adela went to the clothes drawer, fetched a white cotton handkerchief and offered it to Jack, who took it and pressed it to his face with both hands. Adela sat on the edge of the table, looking out through the window.

My husband was in sales, she said. That was what he said to other people about what he did. It was what he told me the first time we met but he was looking at me in such a way that I thought about sailing ships. I’m in sales, he said, and I thought of him standing up in the rigging of a sailing ship with three masts and a hundred white sails, all hoisted and full in the wind, and all because of me. It was like Are you happy? Happy? I’m in sails! What he meant was he sold car components. He never said that. He said I’m in sales. Like trouble. Or debt. Or love.

I was waitressing in the daytime and clubbing at night. I had friends, good people. I was dead happy half the time. The only thing was I could never take the happiness home with me and enjoy it later, by myself, whenever I felt like it. It seemed simple enough when you had it but it wasn’t, it was complicated happiness, it had too many ingredients, the people I needed, the places I went, the right sounds, the right drugs. I did a little dealing myself and I met some people who helped me out, I turned into a restaurant manager, and I got a mortgage on a basement flat with a garden in a city. That was a change. It was painted and varnished and all the rooms were empty. I walked in the first day with an ornament I’d just bought and put it on the mantelpiece. It made the place look even emptier and I took a couple of days off work and broke the limit on all the plastic I could get. I got furniture, rugs, candlesticks, scatter cushions, little boxes. I had a passion for the little boxes. I had brass ones, teak ones, birch bark ones, laquered Japanese ones. None of them had anything in them. I wanted all the empty space I had hidden in pretty enclosures. And there were so
many candlesticks. Of course I had to get matching candles to go with them.

One time I realised I hadn’t seen one of my best friends for a long time. We’d known each other for years, slept together a few times. I thought about it and decided I hadn’t seen him since I bought this monster bronze coffee table with a verdegris effect. I hadn’t missed him, either.

I was in a big pileup on the motorway in the fog. You couldn’t see the bonnet of your own car in front of you and we were all tanking along at fifty. There were three dozen cars and trucks went into each other. The cars at the front caught fire but I was close to the back and I stayed in my seat, hands on the wheel, watching the lights flashing at me on the dashboard with that ticking sound they make, listening to the screams and shouts from the fires up ahead. I turned the volume control on the radio to try to make them quieter. A man with a bare chest knocked at my window. He was covered in blood and oil and dirt and he was carrying a handful of cotton strips he’d torn from his shirt to make bandages. He asked if I was OK. He was going to be my husband.

He drove me home later in my car. I asked him to. I liked him. I could see he liked me. He told me he was in sales. I didn’t say much. I was in shock because my car was damaged and when it happened I realised that since I’d bought it, I hadn’t once gone clubbing, and it didn’t hurt.

I loved him. I loved him much too much. I loved him like dying of cancer. He didn’t feel the same. He was a good man and he loved me like a favourite dog. I mean he was really fond of dogs. But he never had one while we were together. For him it would have been like polygamy.

He was a collector, he was an enthusiast, he hoarded facts and gadgets. He collected Marvel comics, Motown records and
Laurel and Hardy films on video. He had to have them all. Carpentry was another thing. He got very good at that though he never made anything we needed. He kept adding extensions to the bird table. He called it the bird table of Babel. One day, he said, the god of birds would get angry with his work and destroy it.

There was this time I tried to sit down with him and explain the way things were. I told him about how I’d replaced one of my best friends with a coffee table and swapped going out clubbing for a car. I told him how all the nice things we had in the kitchen, the copper pans and the sky blue crockery, how they were taking up space where other things used to be, a walk, a date, a sky. And he said he knew what I meant, you change as you get older, your possessions get a hold on you, and you need to own more things to be satisfied. And I said well that wasn’t exactly what I was meaning, I meant that love and owning things and having a good time were all spaced out along the same spectrum and you couldn’t take it all in at once so you tuned in to different parts and right now I was just tuned in to him. He was like a radio station that played one song and all I wanted to do was listen to it over and over again.

And he said I know what you mean.

And I said Do you?

And he said Yes, even though it’s irritating for other people and they can’t stand it, all you want is the same thing over and over again. I’ve got all the Laurel & Hardy films on video but the only one I watch is
Sons of the Desert
.

And I said So what’s the point of having all the others.

And he said It’s the complete set.

And I said But you don’t need the others if you only watch one.

And he said I like having the collection. I like having it there. It makes me feel complete.

And I said So you don’t know what I mean.

I came back from the restaurant without a job after I tore up the menus and started asking the customers why they ate so much when they weren’t hungry. I began taking things to charity shops. First the candles, then the candlesticks, the boxes and the scatter cushions. It was a while before my husband noticed and when he did I said we don’t need them. I decided we didn’t need the pictures, the plants, most of the kitchen equipment and the gardening stuff. It was only when I took the TV and video away that he got angry. When I told him we didn’t need them he said there was more to life than need. He was a salesman, of course, like you. He said I was ill. That was a bad day. It wasn’t as if I gave the electrical stuff away for nothing. It got easier after that. I managed to get rid of his records and his comics. I thought he was going to kill me then, although there wasn’t much left in the house to do it with. What are you so upset for? I said to him. You didn’t need any of that stuff. You’ve still got me.

He left that night, after calling me a Jesuit, communist, Big Brother, fanatic, hermit, freak, nun, prude, evangelist, sanctimonious killjoy, Calvinist and bore. I said I loved him and asked if he really needed that other wristwatch? He said is there anything you need? I said I need you, and I took his hand and put it down inside my pants. He said I was a sex-mad Puritan who ought to be put away. He took what he could load into his car and left. It took me weeks to empty the house and sell up to get enough to buy this place and live on. The last thing I got rid of was that ornament I put on the mantelpiece. Then I was ready to open the Museum of Doubt.

Jack had stopped crying. He was sitting with his shoulders still bowed, looking up at her, listening. He looked younger.
His eyes were full of wonder and attention, like a child at the theatre, and his face had a cast of wisdom without experience. You’re right, he said.

Adela smiled out of one corner of her mouth. I’ve convinced you, have I, she said, looking out of the window.

I was always convinced, said Jack. It only needed someone to say it. I don’t have to ask how you live without music. You listen to yourself instead. You read the same five books over and over again. The world in daylight is your television.

You’re making me sound like a mad hermit. I am a hermit. I’m not mad, though.

Jack frowned and stood up. I’m wondering whether we really need this stool, he said. He sat on the floor with his back against the wall.

The floor’s cold, said Adela. I don’t like to be uncomfortable. I thought you were a salesman?

I was until today.

What happened?

I met you.

Adela sat down on the stool, leaned her elbow on the table and looked down at Jack. Not so funny, she said.

When I began to sell, it was good. It was paradise. It was my calling. I never thought of it as making money. The money thing was an obstacle in the way of me handing out gifts to people. I’ve walked and ridden and driven the roads for a time. For a long time. I’ve seen the clients’ homes get bigger to make space for the things I gave them. The homes are brighter now, especially the kitchens. I brought those small, dark homes so much light, space and music. I brought them so many cameras, so many motors, so much food. Why did it take so long for me to understand they didn’t really need it? Nobody turned me away before you did.

First you make me out to be a hermit, now you’re turning me
into some kind of preacher, said Adela. I just live this way. I don’t care who else does.

A second sun put its head above the ground and ducked back. Yellow light splashed Adela’s skin, cycling to orange and red. A hammer of air cracked the glass of the window in half with a single vertical line and the Museum of Doubt trembled.

You car’s just exploded, said Adela.

They went to the doorway. There wasn’t much left. There were no flames. The frame smoked for a few moments and then the smoke blew away, like a blown-out candle. The frame and the wheels collapsed inwards into a neat pile.

Propane gas canisters and that line of self-igniting chemical heaters, said Jack, shaking his head.

It began to snow, rubbing white into the black star burned in the night’s fall. Jack walked to the nest of entwined metal, reached his hand into its oil-roasted depths and pulled out a new toothbrush in a cardboard and cellophane box. It was all he could save. By the time they went back inside, there was a snowstorm.

Adela lit the fire in the bedroom and they sat on the sofabed, watching it.

I could walk down the hill tonight, said Jack.

Best not to, said Adela.

I was wondering what I’d need to open a branch of your museum.

What you wouldn’t need.

Yes. But after I got rid of everything I wasn’t sure I needed, what would be left.

Adela looked away from the fire and turned to him. What would be?

Jack reached into his pocket and held out the toothbrush.

Adela smiled. Is that it? I think maybe you must be planning to stop in someone else’s museum.

Jack raised his eyebrows. Look, he said, beckoning Adela to move closer and examine the toothbrush. It had a blue plastic handle and white plastic filaments. The word Colgate was written on it.

Look, he said again, when she was next to him, looking down at the toothbrush, held in his two outspread hands like an offering. When you eat, you use the brush to spear the food – he gripped it brush-end up and made a downward stabbing motion – spindle it, or brush it towards your mouth. When you sit down, you use it to brush the ground clean. When you want something to read, you use the word Colgate as an index for the things you know by heart. C is the Code Napoleon, O is Orlando Furioso, L is for Little Lord Fauntleroy. That’s the way it goes.

You can’t sleep under your toothbrush when it’s snowing, said Adela. What do you do then?

You hold it up in front of you like this, said Jack, go and knock on the door of somebody you know, and ask for help.

Adela laughed, looked away and looked back into his face, still smiling. She stayed where she was, close to him.