Read Online Where There's Smoke by Black Inc. - Free Book Online Page B

do away with yourself. Fall on your sword. Blow your brains out. Yet as soon as I say the words you want to smile. I know. Because I am not serious, not fully serious – I am too old to be serious. Kill yourself at twenty and it is a tragic loss. Kill yourself at forty and it is a sobering comment on the times. But kill yourself at seventy and people say, “What a shame, she must have had cancer.”‘
    â€˜But you have never cared what people say.’
    â€˜I have never cared what people say because I have always believed in the word of the future. History will vindicate me – that is what I have told myself. But I am losing faith in history, as history has become today – losing faith in its power to come up with the truth.’
    â€˜And what has history become today, Mother? And, while we are about it, may I remark that you have once again manoeuvred me into the position of the straight man or straight boy, a position I do not particularly enjoy.’
    â€˜I am sorry, I am sorry. It is from living alone. Most of the time I have to conduct these conversations in my head; it is such a relief to have persons I can play them out with.’
    â€˜Interlocutors. Not persons. Interlocutors.’
    â€˜Interlocutors I can play them out with.’
    â€˜Play them out on.’
    â€˜Interlocutors I can play them out on. I am sorry, I will stop. How is Norma?’
    â€˜Norma is well. She sends her love. The children are well. What has history become?’
    â€˜History has lost her voice. Clio, the one who once upon a time used to strike her lyre and sing of the doings of great men, has become infirm, infirm and frivolous, like the silliest sort of old women. At least that is what I think part of the time. The rest of the time I think she has been taken prisoner by a gang of thugs who torture her and make her say things she does not mean to say. I can’t tell you all the dark thoughts I have about history. It has become an obsession.’
    â€˜An obsession. Does that mean you are writing about it?’
    â€˜No, not writing. If I could write about history I would be on my way to mastering it. No, all I can do is fume about it, fume and deplore. And deplore myself too. I have become trapped in a cliché, and I no longer believe that history will be able to budge that cliché.’
    â€˜What cliché?’
    â€˜I do not want to go into it, it is too depressing. The cliché of the stuck record, that has no meaning anymore because there are no gramophone needles or gramophones. The word that echoes back to me from all quarters is “bleak”. Her message to the world is unremittingly bleak. What does it mean, bleak? A word that belongs to a winter landscape yet has somehow become attached to me. It is like a little mongrel that trails behind, yapping, and won’t be shaken off. I am dogged by it. It will follow me to the grave. It will stand at the lip of the grave, peering in and yapping bleak, bleak, bleak !’
    â€˜If you are not the bleak one, then who are you, Mother?’
    â€˜You know who I am, John.’
    â€˜Of course I know. Nevertheless, say it. Say the words.’
    â€˜I am the one who used to laugh and no longer does. I am the one who cries.’
    *
    Her daughter Helen runs an art gallery in the old city. The gallery is, by all accounts, highly successful. Helen does not own it. She is employed by two Swiss who descend from their lair in Bern twice a year to check the accounts and pocket the takings.
    Helen, or Hélène, is younger than John but looks older. Even as a student she had a middle-aged air, with her pencil skirts and owlish glasses and chignon. A type that the French make space for and even respect: the severe, celibate intellectual. Whereas in England Helen would be cast at once as a librarian and a figure of fun.
    In fact she has no grounds for thinking Helen celibate. Helen does not speak about her private life, but