Granny Rena’s two children were born in the sinister 1930s. Years of painful exile for her, persecution and terror for all the Jews of Europe. If she nursed her children, they can only have drunk down anxiety and bitterness along with their breastmilk…
That’s how destinies get forged, Subra says philosophically.
Rowan and I were Lisa’s Romulus and Remus, I know that. Remus was an afterthought, a usurper, an impostor, I know that. In the first sculptures of the She-Wolf that symbolises Rome, only Romulus crouches beneath her, sucking at her teat, I know that… Yes, I’m familiar with that scene now. Rowan told me about it last summer—first laughing, then in tears.
Tell me, Subra says.
I’d gone to Vancouver to help him celebrate his forty-ninth birthday. He didn’t want to make a big deal about his fiftieth like everybody else—’Why do people always celebrate round figures?’ he asked me over the phone. ‘I mean, it’s completely arbitrary, isn’t it? I’ve never liked round figures and I see no reason to celebrate them. My own lucky number has always been seven, so I’ve decided to throw a big party for my seven-times-seventh birthday. Please try to come, Rena…’ So I made the trip.
It’s about eight thousand kilometres from Paris to Vancouver. I flew all that distance just to see my big brother’s eyes light up—those beautiful green eyes we both inherited from our Australian mom. Some fifty friends of his—musicians and actors of both sexes, mainly gays and lesbians—had converged for the celebration, which was heavily laced with gin, cocaine and a number of other magic potions. When we finally found ourselves alone together at around three in the morning, Rowan suggested we go on celebrating for a while and I said yes, I said yes, I’ve always said yes to my older brother. ‘For me it’s already twelve noon,’ I told him. ‘I can’t possibly be tired.’ Rowan laughed. So we talked for another three hours—or rather, since gin loosens his tongue, Rowan talked for another three hours, and by the time dawn started whitening the sky he was telling me about my arrival in his life when he was four.
‘You took Lisa away from me,’ he said. ‘One day, I remember, she was nursing you and I tried to drink from the other breast but she pushed me away. She had eyes only for you. I wanted to kill you, you know? I mean, it wasn’t personal or anything,’ he added, laughing. ‘I had nothing against you personally. I just wanted you to disappear and for things to go back to the way they were before. Was that too much to ask—that things should go back to the way they were before? I think it was a completely reasonable thing to ask. The idea was to do it very gently. No bloodshed or anything. Just to keep you from breathing, so you’d go back to wherever you came from.’ Again he laughed. ‘So first I held a pillow over your face while you were asleep, but you woke up and started crying and Mommy ran in looking horrified. “What’s the matter? Rowan, what’s the matter? What’s that pillow doing in Rena’s crib? I told you babies slept without pillows, didn’t I?” “Yes.” “No pillows for babies. Right?” “Yes.” “Will you be sure to remember that next time?” “Yes.” “Rena doesn’t like sleeping with a pillow, she’s not big enough yet. For you it’s different, you’re a big boy. Do you understand?” “Yes…” So I went on to my second plan—strangulation. I fetched a scarf, slipped it around your neck, tied the two ends together and pulled with all my might…But again Mommy woke up. And what happened next was awful.’
Tears were reddening his eyes now, his cheeks were grey with stubble and his features were twisted into a grimace of pain; my usually handsome brother looked ugly at that moment, exhausted, inebriated and ugly in the pallid light of dawn. ‘I’ll…never…I can’t ever, ever forget it. How Lisa’s face came right up close to mine. Scarlet with rage. Deformed by hatred. Her mouth open, and her lips—those sensual lips I so loved to kiss—all sort of stiff and square. She was screaming at me. “Ro-o-o-o-wa-a-a-a-a-a-an! How could you do-o-o such a thing? Do you reali-i-i-i-ise, Rowan? Rowan, you almost killed your little sii-i-i-ister!” I couldn’t stand it, so I turned off the sound. I could tell she was still screaming from the way her mouth was moving but I couldn’t hear her anymore…and then…in that silence…she started strangling me…She probably did it…so… so…so I’d realise what I had done…so I’d see what it felt like not to be able to breathe…“But Mommy,” I wanted to say to her…“But Mommy, it’s just because I love you so much!” What could I do to make her love me again? “I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry, it’s because I love you, Mommy! I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry…”’
Rowan was sobbing softly, his head on the counter. I came and put an arm around his shoulders. Does he strangle his lovers, too? I wondered. Or ask them to strangle him? I’d be moved but not surprised if the answer was yes…‘Hey, bro’. It’s all over now…Listen, it’s getting late, I’m going to put you to bed.’
At least Lisa nursed you, Subra points out.
Yeah, I was glad to learn that, says Rena. It’s something, anyway, isn’t it?
They move together into the hall of mummies.
Mummia
Penumbra. They’re all alone in the enormous room. (The conformist crowds can keep the Duomo and the Uffizi!) Profound, disturbing mystery of the swaddled dead.
Oh, the Egyptians! Peerless embalmers! Unsurpassable technicians of the Passage…
As they move past the sarcophagi with their magnificent painted effigies of the departed, they notice some of them are open, their contents visible. The ancient strips of cloth, though still impeccably twined, are tainted and tattered. The presence of human corpses is palpable.
‘Brrr,’ says Ingrid.
And Simon: ‘Do you think they really believed their slaves would go on working for them in the Great Beyond?’
And Rena (still humming her no-point-in-having-an-opinion refrain): ‘I mostly think we can’t project ourselves into the minds of pharaohs.’
And Simon: ‘Really? Why?’
And she: ‘Well, I can’t, anyway. Maybe you can, because—like them—you believe in the soul’s immortality.’
Though Simon Greenblatt is a scientist and a rationalist, there’s a whole section of his brain set aside for metaphysical mysteries.
Tell me, Subra says.
He flabbergasted me by not laughing his head off when, in the spring of 1996, his idol Timothy Leary started making preparations for his death. First he made arrangements with a company called CryoCare to have his corpse frozen. Then, before his body rotted completely from the mind-boggling quantities of nicotine and narcotics he’d been pumping into it over six decades, he figured maybe he should commit suicide ‘live’ on the internet. Finally he requested that his ashes be rocketed into outer space—and his preposterous request was granted.
‘Don’t you think that’s bananas, Dad?’ I yelled over the phone. My tone of voice upset Thierno, who was doing his homework next to me in the living room. At twelve, Thierno was hypersensitive to conflict; the faintest stirrings of a quarrel would plunge him into a state of panic.
Maybe because you and Alioune were fighting non-stop at the time? Subra suggests.
Could be. Anyway, just as my father in Montreal said, ‘Why bananas?’ into my right ear, my son came over and whispered into my left ear, ‘Why are you yelling at Grandad?’ ‘People do all sorts of things with their dead bodies,’ Simon went on. ‘Why is it sillier to put them into orbit around the Earth than to donate them to worms or vultures?’ ‘Daddy, I can’t believe my ears!’ I yelled. ‘Are you telling me there’s a little glass bottle up there in the sky with Leary’s name on it, and he’s counting on extraterrestrials to come and wake him up twenty million years from now, and you don’t think that’s bananas? Come off it!’ At that point, Thierno put a hand over my mouth and I had no choice but to drop the subject.
Today in Florence, though, I suddenly feel very lonely. On their
side, believing or having believed in the soul’s immortality: mummies, Bach, Michelangelo, endless multitudes of human beings from that handsome hunk of Cro-Magnon down to my sweet Aziz. On my side, the materialistic side: Lucretius; maybe Shakespeare; a handful of modern miscreants.
Ah, whispers Subra. But retain this instant, in the shadowy silence. Look—two thousand years after J.C., three living people lean down over dead ones dating from two thousand years before. May they rest in peace, in peace, in peace.
Rena holds the instant…then it dissolves.
Straightening, the living leave the darkened room and move towards their own deaths.
Why hurry? Oh, whatever is the rush?
Chimera
Their bodies stay close together as they inch down the broad, sunlit corridor filled with Etruscan art—ah, astonishing grace in bronze, tall thin figures, leaping acrobats, funerary urns—but their thoughts scatter in all directions. Each of them mixes the museum’s contents with that of his or her own brain. Facts gleaned over the years, memories, moods, associations…
Okay, Rena is telling Subra. Okay, you’re right, there was no article in the Gazette. The stagnation of Simon’s career wasn’t the Gazette’s fault. As for ‘Australia’…well, that’s a figure of speech. When I say native land…When I say my mother abruptly decided to return to her native land…
‘Rena, look!’ Simon cries.
She whirls around and sees—right there in a glass cage, smack in the middle of the corridor—she’d missed it, moving from case to case along the walls, her mind elsewhere—a chimera. Called the Arezzo Chimera because it was found in the vicinity of that city, but dating from long before its foundation. Etruscan, fifth century B.C.; Greek influence? A lion is poised to leap; its tail is a snake that rears up to attack the horned antelope bursting out of its back…
Simon and Rena stand rooted to the spot, stunned by the creature’s violent beauty.
‘It’s like a prefiguration of the Freudian psyche,’ Simon says. ‘Ego the lion, Id, the antelope, Superego the snake.’
Rena nods. We know all about the struggle of self against self, don’t we, Daddy? You against you and me against me…
But Ingrid interrupts: ‘It’s five-thirty already. I’m famished!’
So they retrace their steps—bronze figurines, tattered mummies, Hathor giving suck to Horemheb, great stone staircases, ancient jewellery, and then—a mandatory stop, after the bathroom but before the exit—the postcard stand. Suspecting that Simon and Ingrid will take a while to make their choice, Rena forces herself to study the cards. Which of the objects contained in the museum will the curators have deemed worthy of reproduction?
Despite her own resolutions and Aziz’s good advice, she herself is taking fewer and fewer photographs. Both her art and her eroticism wither and die in the presence of Simon and Ingrid; she’s reduced to living in reality and, at the same time, deprived of what makes reality liveable for her.
Her eyes scan the postcards. Hey…what’s this?
A smiling, perfectly preserved polychrome maidservant, forty-two centimetres high, dating from the Fifth Dynasty, kneeling on the ground and kneading dough…
Aziz’s grandmother still makes bread that way, in her village in the Algerian district of Chelef: she kneels down and bends forward, almost in praying position. Aziz once told me why Muslim men and women have to pray separately: the faithful stand shoulder to shoulder, he said, to prevent the evil spirit from slipping between them. And a man wouldn’t want his wife, mother or sister to rub shoulders with a male stranger, now, would he? Nor would he want male strangers in the row behind them to see their rear ends sticking up in the air as they prayed!
How did we miss that little statue? Rena thinks. And what should I do now? Rush back up to look at her this very minute, all by myself? For who knows when (or if) I’ll see Florence’s Archaeological Museum again?
And you do want to see that perfectly preserved statue of a little smiling slave, murmurs Subra. Don’t you?
Feeling like a coward, Rena buys the postcard. She’ll tell Aziz she saw the statue and that it reminded her of his grandmother.
What, after all, is seeing? she says to herself. By the time it gets projected onto our retina, even the real statue is an image. Seeing a photo of it is basically just another way of seeing it, right?
Subra has a good laugh.
Disputatio
They find a convivial greasy-spoon for their early dinner. Unfortunately, the only free table is right next to the toilet; there are incessant comings and goings in that corner and most of the customers forget to close the door when they come out…Still, Rena chooses this moment to return to the subject of the soul’s immortality.
W.C. versus the Great Beyond? The abject versus the sublime? But that’s exactly what is at stake. The very dilemma Michelangelo ran into as he prepared to paint his Last Judgment frescoes—what do people’s bodies look like after resurrection?
‘So tell me,’ she says, stabbing at her tomato and mozzarella salad, ‘just what is this belief you both believe? Can you explain it to me? You, dear Ingrid—tell me, I’m all ears. You say the soul is eternal, but…starting when?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Yes, when does the soul’s eternity begin? At conception? At birth? Or is it whenless, being eternal—extending to infinity both in past and future? Before conception and after death?’
Ingrid is uncomfortable. Though raised a Protestant, she stopped attending church when she married a Jew, reassuring herself with the vague idea that they saw eye-to-eye on important things. Now, avoiding Rena’s gaze, she butters a piece of bread, folds three slices of mortadella onto it and takes a big bite. ‘All I know,’ she says with her mouth full, ‘is that I’ll return to meet my Maker when I die. It’s simple.’
‘And…are humans beings the only ones to be so lucky? Of all the possible creatures in all the billions of constellations, we and we alone, on our tiny planet revolving around its tiny sun in the tiny Milky Way…What about you, Dad? Do you, too, think we’re so unique?’
They hear the toilet flush. An old lady comes out of the bathroom and a powerful effluvium sweeps across their table.
‘I can think of better places to have this conversation,’ says Simon as he rises to shut the door. ‘And frankly, Rena, your tone of voice is a bit offensive.’
Don’t worry, says Subra. He’s smiling to let you know he’s proud of you just the same. You’re his daughter, his disciple. He taught you philosophical fencing. He sharpened the blade you’re needling his wife with right now.
‘Sorry, I don’t mean to be offensive. I just want to understand. Okay. Only humans, then, but…starting when? With Neanderthal? Yes? No? Or that Cro-Magnon guy we ran into the other day—was his soul immortal, too?’
‘Let’s drop the subject,’ Ingrid splutters. ‘You don’t respect anything…’
‘I do. I respect you, believe me. Only Homo sapiens, then, not Neanderthal. I think we can all agree on that. And not animals, of course.’
‘Well, I don’t know about that,’ Ingrid says pensively. ‘Sometimes when I look deeply into Lassie’s eyes, I could swear she’s got a soul… Right, Dad?’
Simon nods. Having grown up between a catatonic mother and an overworked father, he has always appreciated the company of dogs.
‘Dogs, then. What about cats? And horses?’
‘Yes, I would think they had souls, too,’ Ingrid says, attacking a plateful of gnocchi. ‘Right, Dad?’
Simon lifts a hand as if to say, why not?
‘But not mosquitoes, right?’
‘Rena!’ Ingrid says, reddening. ‘To you, everything is a joke!’
‘No, she’s right,’ says Simon. ‘I mean, we wouldn’t want to itch and scratch up there in heaven, would we?’
Again the toilet flushes and a heavy-built man comes out of the bathroom, zipping up his fly. Rena thinks of all the flies she has undone in the course of her long love life, all the penises tha
t have entered her body, here, there and everywhere, all the men who have bellowed as they poured into her what Dr Walters called their ‘half-children’—yes, crying out in fear and rage and loss as they hurled themselves over the cliff’s edge, tumbling head over heels into their chromosomes, thrashing about in the tangled threads of their DNA, releasing in a violent spurt the magic potion of their future, a liquid teeming with their offspring, their immortality, returning momentarily to their earlier bodies, their animal, child and savage bodies, their nothingness bodies, passing on the splash of sperm so as never to die, and dying as they do so…
‘I’m not joking,’ Rena tells Ingrid with an ingratiating smile. ‘I’m sincerely trying to understand what a soul is, and on what condition, under what circumstances, it becomes immortal. Okay, then, not mosquitoes. Maybe the soul depends on warm blood? Sorry. All right, we can forget the whole animal issue if you like…but will it have a body?’
‘What?’ Ingrid says in bewilderment.
‘Your soul, when it goes to meets its Maker. I mean, what does a soul actually look like after death? Is it a vapour, an ethereal essence, or does the flesh resuscitate as well? When you get to heaven, will you have a body and all that goes along with it—blood, lungs, toenails, digestive tract—or will you be a pure soul?’
For once, Ingrid feels she’s on firm ground. ‘The Bible says we’ll rise up from the dead on Judgment Day with our bodies intact. Right, Dad?’
‘Absolutely.’
Snippets of Bible passages go floating through their memories.
‘Ah. Now we’re getting somewhere,’ Rena says. ‘And how old will our bodies be, in the Great Hereafter?’
‘We’ll rise up with our bodies in their prime,’ Ingrid says jubilantly. ‘It’s written that the body will recover all its limbs, and that not a hair will be missing from its head. Good thing for you, Dad—you’ll get all your hair back in heaven!’