Fragments of Kaspar Stuff

When his parents split, Kaspar was distraught. He tried desperately to put it in perspective; he had heard storied of, and indeed known, children who had suffered much greater pains than he; indeed, as he would come to realise and, to an extent, already know, Kaspar had led a remarkably untroubled, even idyllic existence, a charmed childhood untouched by violence or poverty or hunger or fear or even a threat of any of these things; but your appreciation of any emotion can only be measured against the scale of your own experience. While the abstract spectrum of life’s possibilities stretches ever more impossibly to each horizon, Kaspar knew only his own little patch, comfortably toward the happier end of the range; for him, the end of his parents’ marriage was like suddenly developing the ability to see into the infrared.

I met Kaspar in Hyde Park in the summer of 20--, as we stood side-by-side watching the sun set over the Serpentine from the bridge at its western end. The wavelets graded away from milky black under us to shimmering pinks and off-whites around the island and the silhouetted pedaloes, bisected by a broad spit of blind white.

Just before the sun fell into the bank of clouds, there to enrich them with rubies and gold, a seagull flew towards us, banked and turned in the near-lilac overhead, and swooped low, following the narrowing white line and rising, a black kite, just as the sun dropped. The line became shorter, burnished. Herons skidded in, their undercarriages bobbing gently beneath them, and now the lake was awash with lapping pink, blue, white; the sun held itself a moment, a blazing amber setting false fire to the landscaped treetops, and fell away over a flotilla of origami seagulls.

Peace

There is a place where angels tread, and it is between our world and nothing. Sometimes time gets stuck, and then I can see them walking between us and through us. Their movements have a grace that is just a little beyond human, but they are very much alive. They have wings and dress in white, and of course they glow strangely, because that is what an angel should do. Their eyes, though, are not marble, or frescoed plain, but sharp and bright with irises the colour of amethysts. Nor are they, as I had always presumed, asexual androgynes, but male and female, sensual, tactile, and perfumed, a little like warm lilies. They hold people in their arms and whisper, stroke their cheeks and smooth their brows. They are among us at all times, and mostly we cannot feel them or hear them, and it is a shame, because they could save us, I think.

When time stops, colours change: they feel bright and old, the sea in the sunshine, the shining skin of a grandmother’s hand in your memory of childhood. People, frozen thus, take on a ridiculous aspect, for human faces only make sense in perpetual motion. In the twilight where angels move I am surrounded by carnival masks, the macabre playthings of a childish taxidermist. The angels move freely, unnoticed, unhurried. Some talk to each other, though I can never hear what they say; some touch each other and smile, great shining smiles that speak of such a capacity for joy. I do not know if anyone else sees, or knows; no-one ever speaks of it, though I understand that it would make potentially embarrassing dinner-party conversation: ‘Well, there were a couple of angels in the office trying to calm James down, you know, James from Archives, only he was frozen too so I don’t really know if it was working’, you would say, and everyone would stare indignantly at their cutlery as if it had just asked them to turn the music down. Perhaps one day I’ll do that, raise the topic over the braised whatever, ask for the salt and talk of angels. Everyone should talk of angels.

The first time I found that the world had stopped, I could only barely see them. It was more an intimation of presence and motion, a religiously unfounded hint of unaloneness, glances of light in the corner of my eye, shadows. Each time thereafter they became a little clearer, resolving themselves gently; for the last few months they have been perfectly visible, violating all I once knew blatantly and unashamedly. Sometimes I think that they know I can see them; perhaps we are not supposed to, which is why, I guess, it so rarely comes up at dinner parties.

I do not know if time stops, or if I fall out of it; the effect is of everything halting suddenly. The length of each instance and the intervals between occurrences are unpredictable; the first time seemed days long, while on other occasions it varies from a few moments to several months. Once, and once alone, I felt frozen for something like years, decades; so long that I first gave up hope of awaking, and then gradually forgot that life had ever happened, that there had been anything other than this isolated thought before an interminable showreel of angels and mannequins. Still I struggle to divine what is memory and what is imagination from that lifetime of pause. Ah, but angels. Never can you fall out of love with angels once you have seen them. Faces of sky and hands of wind and eyes of stars, a touch like a falling leaf and a voice like music that sings through your bones and all the ages and a presence like the home you have searched unwittingly for through all the long years of your life, an unexpected Ithaca.

There is an angel that walks with me now, at my side at all times. She holds me and explains things and takes away my many fears, except the one that I might lose her. All the light of the world shines through her, and her hand lies so lightly. Her tread is a finger on your cheek.

I stood frozen where angels walk when she appeared directly before me and walked forward and brought herself close to me. Her hand on my face, her voice in my mind, her eyes in my heart. I know that you can see, her voice said, and that you fear. These were not her words, nor do they have the weight of what she said; they are merely a transcription of the meaning of what she spoke, a scribbled melody only vaguely redolent of the symphony from which it is taken. She spoke in my head with image and sound, soft and simple and infinite of meaning. Peace, said her voice, and my head rang with it, tolling a sound to calm the landscape of the whole universe.

She stroked my hair and the colours changed back, not in a snap as usual, but slowly, my foot falling to the ground as if cushioned, and the world swelling back to life.

It was strange not to see her fade away, through translucence to transparency and then nothingness, as the world phased to the fore, as the lens of my life was refocused. She simply stood before me, her hand on my head, her smile eclipsing those who passed and the buildings around and the sun itself, and peace, peace, the voice still echoing in my mind but now, gentle, in my ears too, a sound of the world, cutting effortlessly through car engines and vendors’ shouts, of the same stuff as them. Her hand fell to mine, and I had so many and no questions, because peace, peace.

We walked, hand in hand, like soft glass, her hand, for many hours, silent and smiling. Once, I pointed at a small beauty, the sun hitting the windows of an old building, and she laughed, a half-full wine glass tapped by a fingernail, warm and clear and soft, like a waterfall in a cathedral.

By the river, that day or another, as we stood wrapped in my thoughts, transfixed by water, I felt panic rise and silence break.

‘How do I know you are an angel?’

Her smile subsided only slightly and her eyes showed serene insight and affirmation and peace. ‘You do know. You have seen and you have felt. Doubt will pass’, and she smiled that wondrous smile and her skin was so soft. ‘I know you struggle with what seems new and untold, but you have seen us move and heard my voice, and you know’.

Warmth took me but I felt a rebel urge, spite and envy and fear. ‘Angels can fly’, I said. ‘Fly’. I hurled myself over the wall and into the water many metres below. As I fell and she stayed, I felt taught, overstretched. The water slapped me like an errant child.

I fought my way heavily to the surface to find her standing on the water, wavelets lapping her bare toes. The bricked channel built around the river rang with her beautiful laugh, and her eyes gleamed brighter than before; as she offered me a hand, I felt ridiculous and loved and weak and strong in her, and peace.

The Sea

The sea is grey and flat and there is no-one else here. You stand at the water's lapping edge, your feet half-drowned and your legs half frozen as the wind tries to undress you, tearing at your hair and your clothes with unseemly haste while your toes curl round pebbles and your left trouser-leg slips a little. Rearrange it or ignore it? Perhaps you should skim a stone as a child might, or maybe you could run along the shore and feel free, share a moment of trite liberation with no-one but nature and me. You could wade forth into the sea, ungainly but unbowed, caring not a jot for the trousers or the woollen jumper or your watch; maybe, at chest depth, you will discard them with an unconscious flourish, and swim out with no care for the return journey.

Or you could take a few steps back, dry your feet with your socks, pick up your shoes and tramp back to the car, turning just once to look at the flat unending sea reflecting a slate sky laden with black puffs of cloud, bizarrely threatening as cotton wool rolled in soot. You could open the door, pull on your shoes and swing yourself into position just as the rain came down, closing the door, turning the key, flicking on the lights and the wipers in one swift movement, forgetting the sea as you look over your shoulder to reverse out of the gravel car-park.

Your mousy hair is criss-crossing your eyes when the rain starts and the sky cracks above you. You pull your arms around you and feel the drag of wet wool on the skin of your upper arms. Laugh just a little as your sinking trouser-leg completed its descent and plops gracelessly into the water. Your legs are sharppained now as you shake with laughter and drops sting your cheeks. Have you ever swum back stroke with the rain on your face? Let’s. You turn and walk backwards into the sea; you can just see the car, there, through the downpour. Stumbling a little, you wade back until the water is at your waste, your breasts, your neck, then roll your head back, bring your legs up, try to wipe the hair from your face, close your eyes, and start to swim. Open your eyes from time to time, it’s hard in the rain but it’s worth it. Keep a steady pace, stay with me. Don’t rush, you’ll tire and find yourself stranded in sight of land. Breathe. Gentle. Rest your arms and legs each as needs be; if you’re tired we can stop and float a while. It should have stopped raining by now, eased off a little. The water’s still so calm. Can you feel me? My hand, there. Stay. Hold my hand and we’ll float awhile. Don’t look back, don’t. What are we doing? Like stupid rubber ducks. I wonder how deep it is here. Is the wool too itchy? Are you too cold? Let’s go again, stay close. It’s letting up a little, you should be able to keep your eyes open. Don’t look back, please, it will make this so much harder. Come here. You do the legs and I’ll do the arms, keep your head on my belly. Your hair tickles, don’t laugh, I love you, don’t look back, I love you, keep kicking.

Kaspar's Dream

On the day that he would discover that he was dying, Kaspar sat in a park, reading and feeding pigeons and trying to think of anything except the possibility that his own cells were in revolt. It was early spring, and in three hours time he would be told that there was hope, that he had a good chance, that perhaps he could live for several more years. He was 61, and the pigeons’ iridescence flickered delightfully in the clean light.

He thought of Aleanna, at home and unaware that in six hours her husband would return to her to not tell her that he had cancer. He thought of her now, reading undoubtedly, occasionally raising her eyes to the strange silver light of those days as it glowed against the window, wondering whether and when and what to eat, and thinking of him, ignorantly thinking of her well husband as if he still existed. He hunched over his book to hold the pages down as the wind rose, and felt tiny prickles of rain against the back of his neck. He thought of Aleanna not feeling this feeling as he raised the curls of hair from his nape and exposed the skin to the wind, the drizzle, and the warmth, and wished she were with him to feel this and to hold his hand, and wished that he could bring himself to tell her that his body was a traitor and he would have to go soon.

He remembered a dream from many years before. In the dream, he walked into a living room – theirs, but not theirs – to find Aleanna sitting on the couch, reading an old leatherbound book. She lifted her head from the book, looking straight ahead, and then turned her face toward Kaspar – one movement, slow and fluid, no extraneous motion, like a brand new machine – looking at him with grey eyes. She said ‘I can’t read this anymore,’ and opened her mouth wide to reveal a 20 pence piece on her tongue. This she removed and offered to him, before returning to her book, once again in that single slow movement, a divine crane moving without hesitation. Thereafter she would periodically remove a 20 pence piece from her mouth, placing them gently beside her on the sofa as she read; some came forth easily, others were coughed up; she started to look as if the effort were making her ill; she raised her head again, nervously this time, and her eyes were bright blue but bruised, and she opened her mouth despairingly and it was full of twenty pence coins, and she vomited them and vomited them, wretching so much that a rupture seemed inevitable, and he rushed to her but she could not stop vomiting the coins over him; trying to sob but only bringing forth shower after shower of twenty pence pieces.

Cheap Wine

She's tall, taller than me,

With that little stoop that so many tall women have –

A little stoop, and one knee brought up slightly,

Allowing the foot to rest on its toes,

The hips swung to accommodate –

That makes her height seem almost attainable.

Her sweet, open face

Is prone to a look of happy shock,

Like a teenager in a first flirtation;

Her hands are slender and nimble.

We played backgammon

Over cheap wine,

Her fingers sliding graceful and quick across the board,

Counters clicking to some eternal rhythm,

Mine counting moves

Step by step.

Later, in the slip of orange light

Breaking from a streetlight through the curtains,

Those hands were such slight weight.