Moments of their secret life together burst like stars upon his memory.

James Joyce, The Dead

Page 2

2 July 1914

More than twenty years had passed since I had last visited the
Highbury House built by the great Joseph Chamberlain. Now as then
it is an elegant symbol of Joes wealth and his desire to show the ease
with which the world can be brought to order with the skill and more
importantly the force of mans hand. The soft orange brick and tan
stones, the ornate facades, the Italian Baroque architecture, exuded
warmth and a sophisticated charm. Joes one unfailing love was
horticulture and so the grounds were superb. Great trees lined the
drive and the garden was perfectly landscaped with banks of roses
and rhododendrons.
I let myself in through the great doors at the front of the house.
Stepping into the drawing room, I was greeted again by the familiar
gloom that has always pervaded this home.

Elaborately carved

marble arches, satin paper, rich hangings created a forlornly grand

appearance. Whereas the exterior was bright and inviting, the inside

Page 3
was dark, secretive; revealing nothing personal about the man, his
life, nothing could be easily gleaned from the dcor except perhaps a
dubious but luxuriant taste. The main drawing room was furnished
with satin covered furniture, heavy drapes, excessive wall decorations
and dark natural lighting that came through the heavily tinted
windows. There were no books, no musical instruments, no sense or
feeling of the human spirit, the atmosphere one of melancholy
meditation.

Then, as if a purposeful gesture of contrast to the

otherwise pervasive gloom, attached to the drawing room was a large

conservatory, with flowers in bloom and palm trees set around a
fountain, light spilling from the clear window panes in the second
story roof. The room and that light seemed far away, as if in a dream.
The maids and manservants paid no notice of me as I walked
through the rooms and down the great hallway where I was sure I
would find his bedroom.

The hallway was dark and cast with long

shadows, but towards the end I could see the light from an opened
door that I knew must be his room.

At this very moment, a maid left

that room, carrying an armful of linens. As she passed me I could see

her face was tired, her eyes wet with tears. I walked into the room.
The great man was reclined on his bed, neatly tucked beneath fresh
linens, his arms rigidly against his sides, palms facing upward, his
eyes tightly closed, his face set in an unnaturally taut expression of
expectation.

Page 4
Hi Joe, I said.
He cleared his throat, then spoke: Ah, I am ready.
Ready Joe? I asked. Ready for what?
Please be quick, he half-whispered, before anyone returns,
before she returns, before they have a chance to interfere.
What are you talking about dear? I asked. He shook his head,
his eyes closed.
Is it not Are you not No? I was expecting the
Who Joe? Expecting who?
The executioner, of course. I have been waiting, waiting sooo
goddamn long.
The executioner? Now Joe why would you expect that?
Look, look at my hands, he said clasping his hands together,
rubbing them, then pulling the skin on the back of one hand. They are
weak, the skin collects like tissue, I can grab it and it seems ready to
tear, these hands are ugly now, weak, good for nothing. I am a man of
business and I work with my hands, that is how I work. But how can I
work with such hands? My work will suffer, who will carry on with my
work. If I cannot work, then I cannot think.
Joe, can you see me?
He lay there, his voice but a vague mumbling: I cant see, I cant
hear, I cant walk, I cant even shit myself, I need help even there, a

Page 5
function a newborn can do quite well. Of what purpose is old age?
But a punishment it is. Purely a punishment.
Surely even age cannot get the best of Joe, I said.
Devolved. That report that came out a few years ago, he said,
what was it called, whatever it was called, well it was right.

The

British male is an enfeebled species. Devolved he is. We all are.

Dear Joe, I said, are you asleep? Are you dreaming? I would like
you to wake up, I dont have much time.
He then opened his eyes, looking first straight ahead and then
slowly at me.
I am awake, and it is you, my sweetheart, you are here. Finally,
he said sadly, after all these years. If this is indeed you
I know it has been some time since we saw each other.
Twenty years? Maybe more?
A long time, but something is happening that I well I was
worried about you. I came here to tell you something, Joe. There is a
storm
Please, he interrupted, please dont go spoiling this splendid
apparition by telling me some spat of bad news. I have people coming
and going all day and all night from my chamber telling me the news,
as if I, this wretched carapace of a man, could do anything about, as if
I care.

Page 6
You shouldnt be so hard on others, they look to you still for
guidance, for assurance.
Sure they do. One of my many mistakes, not allowing people to
think for themselves.

They dont fear the events, they dont fear

disaster, they fear making up their own minds. That is what terrifies
them most. That is their greatest fear: their own free will!
They rely on their free will to take responsibility for the smaller
things in their lives, like what to eat, what to say to their children,
how to bet on a hand of cards. They do not know how to expend their
free will on the world at large, the events of the world are bigger than
any of them by far. And so they need you.
Then it is all a farce isnt it?
Joe, what on earth do you mean?
Them. This. Looking to me for guidance, when it is I who is
more lost than anyone. But lets not talk about these things. Tell me
about you, what about you all these years. Look at you! You look as
beautiful as you did back then.
Thank you. I doubt I look like I did back then, but I am well.
How about you? You are still married to that wonderful woman I see.
Yes, Mary. Twenty years now. And yes she is. I could not have
married a woman who was more perfect for me, he said. I looked at
him letting him know I did not believe him for a minute. Unless of

Page 7
course I had been wise enough to marry you, he said. I laughed
quietly.
But what did I know back then? he said. Nothing, nothing but
escape, fleeing was all I cared about, burrowing into my own shell.
You must know I often regret many things, but few things I regret
more than letting my feelings for you get tangled in so many other
senseless things, the deaths of my wives, the affairs of the heart, the
vortex of politics.
Stop, I said, without those other affairs and without those
vortices you would not have had any feelings for me at all. I benefited
from your confusion. I am thankful, not regretful in the least.
You say that and while I am not so sure you arent correct, it
makes me wonder, what was our relationship? Who were we to each
other? he asked. It was complicated, I said. You were my lover, he
said, you were my mistress, you were my friend, in some ways you
were my wife, werent you? Heavens no! I said. But you were my
confidante, he said, my advisor
We were comrades, I said.
Yes, comrades.

As much as I distrust that word, if it had a

meaning, it was a meaning we gave to it. If there was one woman in

the world who was equal to me, that woman was you, you know that.
Not sure I care for that honor.

Page 8
Like it or not, it is true. Whether you like it or not, it is not an
honor you have to wear or bear. It just is.
Ah, the old authoritative Joe! How I missed you!
You know me well. Yet, I have come to realize that I know so
little about you. All these years, everything has been about me hasnt
it, about Good Old Joe. I never bothered to know the simplest thing
about the people who were most important to me.
Well, you know that they loved you, and that is what matters,
right?
Yes, but you see I have been awakened late in life, roused from a
monstrous dream, a nightmare really.
What was this nightmare about?
About power, or rather how I should lose that power, and how I
should never again have that power.

The nightmare was always

different in its imagery but always the same in its meaning. Those
dreams held me in a blinded fear of so many things that I never could
see the simplest things outside that dream, and the simplest things
are always the most pure, the most beautiful.

They are the things

worth knowing. I have come to think they are dreams about death, but
about a death that never comes, the most horrible of deaths.

You

wait, expecting it, told all your life that one day death would come,
but as that day is supposed to approach, it never ever arrives.
Sounds terrible.

Page 9
It is horrible.
Then you should think of other things.
You are right. Please, tell me something.
What would you like to know?
Tell me who you are.
But you know who I am, of course.
Of course! Some things. Come closer, bend towards me.
I leaned over him as he closed his eyes. Yes, I remember how
you smell. I remember how you feel. But beyond that, you are but a
ghost. I dont want to know the ghost of you. I want to know the real
you. Where did you come from? Who were your parents? Start there
and tell me the story of you, because you have to understand that is a
story I have been dying to know. Please indulge me.
Are you sure you want to know?
I must know.
Well, I was born in Kiev. My father was an engineer
He was a smart man?
A brilliant man.
Ambitious?
He was a man who had dreams of his own, dreams of building
things that climbed tall into the sky, of electrical locomotives that
raced across the mountains and plains, of cities that were designed in
cooperation with all the elements of the earth.

Page 10
Is he still alive?
Sure.
Has he achieved his dreams?
In some ways maybe. In some ways he is still searching for a
way, for a way to achieve them. That is what he lives for.
And your mother?
My mother died, when I was young.
So you know death.
I know of it.
And who was she?
Joseph, I am afraid
Please finish, tell me.
Well, what I know is that my mother was a seamstress, my
fathers brilliance was not accepted or understood in Kiev, so she had
to work as my father was often without employ. But I dont remember
much about my mother, because in Kiev when I was little something
happened.
What was that?
I am no longer sure what really happened or if I only have
dreamed what happened.
Dreams are made to be forgotten. If you cant forget it, then it
must be real.

Page 11
Perhaps. There was a mob that took to the streets one night,
breaking down doors, smashing windows, destroying everything. We
lived in an upper story flat and through a crack in the shutters I
remember watching this violence, as if I were watching toy-sized
people running about with torches and clubs, I remember thinking
how can people so small and toy-like be causing so much harm, there
were men shouting, women screaming, children crying, horses and
dogs I asked my father what was going on.

He said that it was

storm and it would be over soon. My mother told me to be silent. But

the terrible noise grew louder and so I started to cry as well.

My

mother, I remember, tried to quiet me, but it was too late. Our door
was knocked down and even before my father turned to face the
intruders they had knocked him down like some rag doll. My mother
then tried to grab me but they grabbed her first and she disappeared
down that stairway of smoke and fire. Perhaps the angry men did not
notice me. Through the shutter, I saw the men take my mother and
drag her down the road until I could see her no more. When my father
awoke, he looked first at me, then he looked frantically around our
small apartment, he went from room to room, twice, thrice, mumbling,
grunting to himself like a lost animal, and then he let out a squeal,
that is how I remember it, a squeal like a pig, like some stuck pig, and
he collapsed to the floor. I had never seen my father cry let alone be
in such a state as this. His face was covered with thick blood, his eyes

Page 12
wild with blackness, from his nose dripped long strands of mucous
and the entire floor was wet with his stink.

I could not breath it

smelled so bad. From then on he frightened me. I could not go near

him.
I am so sorry. That was not the story I was
What? Hoping to hear?
No, that is a terribly sad story.
My father well for many years I could not forgive him. But I
was just a child, so what was I not forgiving him for? For my mothers
death? For not saving her? For not killing those men? For not dying
instead of her? For pissing his pants? Still I went with my father and
we came here, so from the age of seven I have lived here.
And now?
And now, my father is still at it, still working, building his
dream.

He is building the most important and the most fantastic

building on earth.
If so, then why have I never heard of him? he asked. Because he
is building this masterpiece for Russia, I said, he could not find the
support for it here.
I see. A utopian I take it.
You could call him that and he would not be insulted.
Are you back in relations with him.
No, not really, he would not approve.

Page 13
Would not approve of what?
Of me, I said. Is that what he told you, he said. No, I said, but I
know what his reaction would me if he knew who I was.
Do you think he will build this monument of his?
No, honestly, I dont.
Why?
Time will not allow it. His building was designed for a timeless
epoch. It will not survive the constraints we live under, the flux, the
disasters that come one after another in our confusion.
Is it such a fragile monument?
It is a fragile concept.
Hmm. I admire men who can look so to the future. Not care if
they are accepted. Some of us plow through time as if that is the only
way to get to the future, by digging through what is in front of our
noses. Others look and see, far and away. You must be proud of your
father. You must forgive him, he said.
I have, I said.
Because you realize he said, you realize he did the bravest
thing he could for you. He kept his dream. He showed you that life
does not need to tear us apart, to tear us down. As horrid as life is
here on this earth, he showed you in one clear and personal example,
that the will is more powerful.

Page 14
He showed me that we can forget, but I dont know what it all
says about forgiveness.
Then you misunderstand your father.

And you are losing a

wonderful chance to know something for yourself. You cannot forget a

thing like that. You will never escape that night. Yet he found a way to
survive, he found a way to live, and he found a way to strengthen his
conviction, his inner being. He showed you that, that was a gift he
gave you.
I am afraid you are drifting back to dreaming, Joe.
No, but I am old. And I know things now I did not know before.
It was so easy to believe in ones melancholy, to allow ones self to
slide beneath the shadows of self pity. How easy it is to adopt the
attitude that the world is a cruel and bitter place, meaningless and
shorn of any redeeming element at all! Heaven knows, I did that long
enough. But when you are old, you dont look simply at the past, no,
when you are old you begin to look at history. History buries quickly
and buries out of sight what is cold, what has no warmth, no passion.
History is easily bored, history yawns on those who are rigid in spirit,
cold in heart, those who are passionless whether they are right or
wrong.
Joe? I interrupted, you have not even asked me why I am here.

Page 15
It does not matter. I should be asking why you have never come
before, but that too does not matter.

What matters is that you are

here, that is what matters.

I am here because I have something to tell you. Just then the
door to his bedroom opened wide and the maid came in to check his
chamber pot. The maid did not even look at him as she straightened
the pillows behind his head, pulled up his bed sheets and tightened
them about his feet. She left without a smile.
She is a good woman, he said. Been here for more than thirty
years. You mustnt judge, I see the look on your face, she acts this
way because she is sad, not because she is cold.
So Joe
Wait, you must finish.
Finish what?
Telling me who you are, I need to know who you are, you told
me about your life up until the age of seven, there is so much more I
do not know.
My childhood is not very interesting, I am afraid.

And like I

said
Please.
I must be quick then. Ok, well, I was not good at my studies and
so my father was forced to send me to a school where I could learn
the womans arts. But even that I had no aptitude for. I had no desire

Page 16
to be a lady, not a working lady and not a gentlemans lady. When I
was young, I ran off and married a soldier, but he was killed shortly
thereafter.
See you never told me you had married a soldier, but then you
had your other husband as well, and there are parts to that story I
often wondered about but never could ask you.
Joe, I really dont think this is a good time.
What would be a good time?

Please, you have no idea how

important this is to me. Tell me about him, how did you meet him,
what was he like, who was he?
Well, you know some of this.
I never paid attention back then. I was a selfish old fart. So you
need to tell me everything, as if I was a simpleton.
I was working in an accounting pool. Anyway, there was a man
who worked there as well, a man who came in each day without a
word to anyone, as if he had no friends, not a single acquaintance in
the place. A good looking man at that. So I took notice of him one
day and I became curious. I watched him from afar. He always had a
book with him which he would read in snatches from time to time
when he wasnt punching away at the numbers. At certain times you
could see a change come over him when he was reading, a change in
his posture, in his expression, a smile maybe, a look to his eyes which
seemed to indicate that he had come across something of great

Page 17
interest.

I got bolder and began to follow him after work.

To my

dismay he often went right to the pubs, took a seat at one of the
tables, ordered a beer and some bread and would read for a hour or
so until he had had enough drinks and then suddenly a different man
emerged out of that carapace that he wore all day at the accounting
office.

Suddenly here was a man who was full of mirth, boisterous

even, within no time he would have a following around him and they
would carry on for hours.
A Jekyll and Hyde it seems.
He was a drunk, is what he was. I saw that right away. And so
decided to forget about this man. Only trouble comes from that.
But you did meet him at some point.
Sure. He came in the next day just like he always did. Book
under his arm, not a word to anyone. He worked the ten hours and
then he was gone. Well, I thought I had forgotten about him when one
day I noticed he was not there. The next day he was not there either.
For whatever reason, I decided to go to that public house after my
shift and have a drink. He was not there, but I stayed to have a drink
anyway. After about an hour or so, in staggers who else and a few
drunken buddies, shouting to the bartenders to open the kegs,
shouting to the ladies to pick up their skirts and shouting at each
other to never forget this day in history. Of course I was disgusted
and upset with myself for having spent the time considering this man

Page 18
in anyway. But then the pal he was with, drunk as a sot, stood up and
made a speech.
This is getting interesting.
The pal began this speech by apologizing for their rude and
obnoxious behavior.

But they had been celebrating and so they

wanted to apologize a second time for not allowing the good folks in
this pub in on the celebrations. There was a great round of cheers
that went up of course. And to apologize further for not more readily
and expeditiously informing this good public that the world indeed
was going to change and it was going to change for the better. There
were a few hoots but mostly a few men shouting out: You mean youre
goin to buy us all a beer! Buy em all a beer! the man giving the
speech shouted and the hollars went up again through the crowd. But
no mates, he continued on, that is not whais goin to make the world
better, ah mean itll make it better fo a moment, fo an our maybe,
but were awanting to share wit you all a revelation thatll make your
life better fo ever! You mean beer forever! some men shouted. No!
we is talking about the real future ere, the speaker said, real change!
Something thatll forever make a difference in each o yer miserable
fucking lives!

You see, this gentleman ere, come on ere mate,

standup, you see e does not want you all to know this, but me I feels
it tis our duty to let our public know, so comon, stand up, yes you
see, this man ere as been bending me ear for the last two r three

Page 19
days e as been educating me, e as been taking me through the
perambulations of his great an vast an penetrating mind, explaining
to me ever so patiently this ere thing about this great new discovery.
For crying out loud, someone cried out, what is the bloody thing your
spouting off about! Planaria! the speaker said to the hushed crowd.
Planaria? one asked another. Yes, planaria, he said, tis but a worm to
some, but to others tis the key to longevity.

A worm!!! the crowd

cried, what you mean a bloody worm! old it mates! the speaker said,
tis but a worm but a worm that you can cleave wit your knife and
never kill it. So its an evil worm! someone yelled. Tis a devil worm!
another shouted. In fact, the speaker said, cleave it with your knife
and one planaria becomes two! Cleave it again and it becomes three
or four as the case may be! What the bloody Jesus is this! someone
shouted, nothing lives when you cut it in two! This ere is satanic talk
men! Jus listen you bloody pinheads, the speaker said, as Darwin as
done shown all us, a planaria is made up of the very same spit and shit
as you an me. It may be a worm, but we are all of the same basic
substance. And so what this planaria knows about regeneration that
we dont know well by Marys sweet arse we will know. And what we
is talking about is none other than immortality mates! Shut down that
drunk! someone shouted. Listen mates! the speaker said, how about
this? No more caring about losing your fingers in the mills! No more
worrying about losing your legs at sea! he shouted.

No more lost

Page 20
pricks to that cursing knife-wielding wife of yours! You mean I can
get me peepee back? A man shouted. Yes Timmy! It will grow back,
just like new! Maybe even bigger than before! Listen to im! someone
yelled, h thinks hes Jesus he does! But the speaker continued: And
this man ere is going to deliver that god like quality to us all! Go n
cut off a leg now an lets watch what appens, someone shouted, lets
watch im regenerate another one!

Cutin out is tongued be even

better! someone else yelled, n if it don grow back who the ell cares!
Then someone picked this time to throw an empty tankard which hit
the speaker up along the head. Without a second of hesitation, the
man from my office pointed a finger at the man who threw the tankard
and in a voice as loud and determinate as I have ever heard he
ordered the tosser to step outside.

The crowd grew silent for a

moment then suddenly whooped and hollered for there was going to
be a fight and I drifted along with them, a certain excitement running
through me, I have to admit, as the two men took off their shirts and
tried to stand amidst the wobbling circle of drunks who surrounded
them. The man from my office had a strong chest and two guns that I
have never seen beneath his work clothes. He was not cocky but
simply sure of himself. The bloke, egged on by his fiends, took the
pugilists stance and kinda crabwalked towards his challenger, hitting
him once or twice in the stomach and ribs and then feeling some
misplaced confidence launched a punch into the mans jaw.

The

Page 21
crowd cheered and the bloke kind of laughed and well that was the
last time you saw those mucky ivories as his challenger dispatched
two quick blows that sent him face first into the mud.
And you enjoyed watching this violence?
I was enthralled.
So what did you think after all that?
Me? I had fallen in love.
The door opens and this time it is his wife, Mary. I stepped back
as she walked up to Joe and gently touched his hair. He looked like he
was sleeping.
Bertha tells me you are talking to yourself again, Joe. Is there
something you need? Something I can help you with? She touched
him in the simple way that spoke of a deep love. Ah, Joe. Who are you
dreaming about?

Is it Beatrice again?

What conversation are you

having with her after all these years?

No, Mary, he said with his eyes closed, I was talking with an old
friend, a dear friend, much more dear to me than Beatrice could ever
have been.
Is anyone more dear to you than me? his wife said with a smile.
Of course not dear. Never.
She adjusted the blinds and walked back out of the room.
So you were in love, he said to me, then what happened?

Page 22
I was drunk myself, drunk a little on beer but mostly drunk on
this man, a man who had an intellect yet could fight as well as any
wild animal. A man who read and thought and so probably felt things,
but a man who could hurt and punish with a sense of justice that had
no connection with compassion whatsoever.

I watched from the

periphery as the crowd broke up, as the last few people who had bet
on him tossed his winnings, a few coins and notes. As he was putting
his shirt back on he was all alone. So I went up to him and said hello.
You were courageous, like going up to an injured dog, Id think.
You should have seen his face, his eyes.

I had never seen

anything brighter, darker, more alive, more mysterious, more familiar

yet more foreign in my life. He allowed me to come with him and we
spent the night together. I left before he awoke, hurrying back to my
flat so that I could get ready for work, ready to see him now for the
first time, for him to see me, I wanted to look fresh, to look ready. I
took my seat and waited and watched for hours as his seat sat empty.
Finally nearing our first break, I heard a few people gasp then a loud
crash.

He had come into the accounting room, drunk, he was

staggering through the passageway, hitting first this table then that.
Finally he came to his desk and collapsed upon it, apparently asleep.
Then in a few moments he raised his head, he opened his ledger and
he went to work just like the rest of us.
looked at me.

And never once he even

Page 23
Strange fellow. Since I know how this ends I am intrigued all
the more.
You dont know the full story. Anyway, I soon discovered that I
was with child.
So then you must have told him.
I could not. Months had passed and he had never even so much
as looked at me. I could not bear the thought of approaching him. It
was my fault, not his, my responsibility and so I had to bear it.
I never knew you had a child.
I told you there was much you do not know. Shall I go on?
You must. You must not stop.
Well, one day I noticed that this man had not come into work,
and from that day on he never returned. He had not been fired as his
desk sat empty for several days. Had he been terminated a
replacement would have been placed in that chair immediately. So he
had disappeared on his own. But I had other things to worry about, I
was about to have a child. It was not an easy pregnancy and I had to
quit work myself for several weeks as the doctors told me I could not
leave the bed or else I could lose the baby. The baby was born, not
without drama, and when I looked at it, I knew immediately something
was wrong.

The infant was terrible malformed, his head large and

knobby, his jaw tucked away leaving his mouth open in a terrible
gape, his ears were large and without lobes, veins pulsed and wormed

Page 24
across his thin skull. He had six fingers and six toes, each of them
long and heavy knuckled like a lizard and his back was curved over, he
was more of a beast than a human being. He frightened the nurse
who had come to cut the umbilical cord so that she accidently cut off
one of his six fingers as he was flailing about. The only good thing
was that he did not cry, he never made a sound. And when I went to
look at him the next morning, I could see that my nightmare was still
there, that terrible opened mawed face, those black eyes, and six toes
on each foot, and six fingers on each hand, including the one that had
grown back during the night.
I must say, I never knew any of this about you.
I could not see a way to keep him, I did not love him, I could not
love him. I was going to put him into an orphanage when my father
interceded.

My father insisted on taking the baby, saying that he

would care for it, he would hire a nurse, and of course the agency was
more than happy to see that grotesque infant child removed from
their sight. And so I did not see him again, not for many years.
That seems to be against all instinct, all of what motherhood is
about. Had you none?
Whether there is a maternal instinct, and I assume there is, it
was not meant to overcome all obstacles and sometimes for a childs
survival it is better that the mother abandons him rather than care for
him poorly out of a sense of duty.

I cannot say what might have

Page 25
happened had I felt forced to raise him. But I do know that that baby
has grown into a young man now, and he has done so because I was
not his mother.
You are still his mother.
Of course.

But you understand what I mean, or perhaps you

dont.
All these years and I never knew.
See, had you known you would not have had all these years of
perfect fantasy to keep you happy.
I cant say I would have been less happy had I known. It hurts
me to hear these things, but it does not diminish you in my eyes. If
anything, I am feeling sad that I never knew you had these
experiences and so then acquired these qualities.
You mean the qualities that allow a woman to sleep with a
drunk, that allow a mother to abandon her baby?
No, the qualities that allow a woman to live and develop with
such strength. But something else must have happened, because you
married this man, this man who disappeared. This man who was the
father of your son. So please go on.
Yes, yes. I thought I could forget this man but I could not rest
until I found him. I took to the streets and I walked them, all of them,
stopping under lighted windows wondering if that was him reading,
moving through crowds at a disturbance hoping I may find him at the

Page 26
core of that mob bruised and bloody. I searched the public houses,
the gin houses, the opium dens, I wandered the docks. But he had
vanished. Until one morning I was on my way to work when I saw a
man lying face down in a gutter. And I knew immediately who it was.
I picked him up and took him back to my place. I washed him off and
even gave him one of my first husbands old suits. He did not have
the slightest recollection of who I was. And yet he did not show the
slightest bewilderment when I told him he could stay with me. And I
was not in the least bit surprised to find out that he was the sweetest,
smartest, most gifted man I had ever met. And I fell in love a second
time.
I was working in the Municipal Bureau and since I knew he had
the skills I got him a job there. There we worked together for some
time, but I knew he was bored and I knew he would get fired, he still
carried with him a book, he now had taken to collecting all sorts of
facts and recording them in a tablet he kept in his pocket. He told me
freely whatever I wanted to know. He saw things all around him, all
around us, things that I could not begin to see or even understand.
He saw patterns in the way water moved, in the air, in the way trees
grew, how clouds formed. He did not see the big obvious things that
you and I would see, he saw things in a different way, in a way that
got to the inner core of their beings, the inner workings of these
things like water, air and clouds. He would say that there was music

Page 27
in everything and what he meant was that all things repeat
themselves, not exactly but in oscillations, around and around and
back and forth. As music repeats itself, it is not the same verse but it
is the same song, it is never the same rendition but it is the same
song. You can sing it higher and you can sing it lower, it may sound
different but it is still the same song.

That was the stuff of the

universe, he said, all these things that seem different but are all the
same, the things you cannot see but you cannot avoid seeing once you
know they are there.
You have told me all this before. This must have been when you
asked me to get him a new job.
Yes, I wanted him to do something that took advantage of his
potential. And so I asked you to help him and you did.
He did not help me much though.
No I am afraid he didnt.
Got me in a bit of a bind a few times.
Yes, like when he was working at the Bureau of Trade and
discovered your family was shipping arms to Africa while you were
lobbying against the war, I suppose that was not very good for you.
Indeed it wasnt.

And the time when he demonstrated that

Lombrosos charts on degeneration were nonsense. Criminals could

not be exposed by the shape of their nose or the spacing of their eyes.
We wasted all that money trying to modernize the police force with

Page 28
those techniques. That was hard to accept, and the resultant black
eye I had for promoting it was tough to take as well.
But what he found out was true.
So it seemed.

But remember the truth neednt always be

rushed. Sometimes it is better to keep the truth tucked away until

just the right time. There may be a chance to squeeze a bit of profit
from things before you expose their falsity.

Unfortunately your

husband had none of those qualities to keep things to himself.

No he did not.
But you never told me about his drinking, nor about his fighting.
Did he continue with those as well?
Not that I know of well not for a long while. He stayed away
from drink and fights for many years. Until I left that is.
After you and I
Yes.
And then?
And then I dont know what happened to him. Some bad things
happened to him I think.
He had an idea, I remember, to build a certain machine, a
machine as I remember that was made up of people, am I
remembering correctly.
Yes, you are.

Page 29
You brought him one night here, we sat down with Carnegie and
Pierpont and he told us about this thing, this
He called it an Oscillator.
Thats right, the Oscillator. A queer idea that was. What did he
estimate that it would cost to build?

Only a few hundred million

pounds. That was your husband right? The only one who didnt laugh
about it after the two of you had left was Pierpont, I remember. We
asked Pip if he was thinking of stealing the idea and taking it back
with him to the U.S. You never know, Pip said, and if I do it wont be
the first time I take something from your dying empire and bring it
back for my own use. Pip had no sense of humor whatsoever, now did
he?
His wife again enters the bedroom. She seems startled that he
is awake and alert, his head up towards her.
Joe I was hoping you would be resting. We need to be ready at
five oclock, she said, are you sure you feel up to going? And remind
me of tonights grand occasion, he said wearily. The King and Queen
of Portugal are here. Ah, Portugal he said, again the Moors. They are
not Moors dear, she said, and I hope you will not say anything about
the Moors to the King or to the Queen.

What could I possibly say

about the Moors that they have not already heard? he said. It doesnt
matter how many times they have heard things about the Moors, she

Page 30
said, all that matters is that they do not hear about the Moors from
you. What have you against the Moors? I asked.
I have nothing against them, nothing at all! he said, the cradle
of civilization they were, arithmetic, language, tolerant too! But I do
want to know how the Moors got themselves all the way to Ireland.
How they managed to skip our grand island and dig themselves into
the hills of Hibernia, that is what I want to know.

I have a theory

about this, of course. A theory that came to me not from study or fact
but from intuition. They say great minds begin with intuition, from
there they form an idea, an idea that must then be subjected to fact,
must stand up to fact, and as it fights to stay alive, it grows stronger.
So would you like to hear.
Not now, Mary said.
Of course, I said.
Our world is divided in two, he said. There are two halves to
our world that cannot be joined: there is our half, the Western half,
and then there is the Oriental half, the Arabs. These two halves will
never see eye to eye you know. As much as people would like to think
this synthesis is possible, it will not and cannot happen. Our world
will be ripped asunder some day on this division. And if you look at
others areas of strife, a strange but related coincidence begins to
appear. Look at our Hibernia here. An insolvable mess, isnt it? But
why is that?

I have often, so often racked my brains on the

Page 31
fundamentals of that question.

Why must the empire be divided

between people of the same race? And that was my mistake! I was
mistaken to think, to believe, to assume that we are the same race as
the Irish. Look at the word Erin. Erin, Iran. Coincidence? The Irish
are Oriental in origin, the Celts of Arab blood, that is my theory. And if
correct, my theory goes on to say that we will never bring British and
Irish together, just as we will never bring British and Moors, British
and Arabs together. It simply will not happen.
Except for dinner tonight, I said.
Ah, with King Manuel II?

King Manuel Maria Filipe Carlos

Amlio Lus Miguel Rafael Gabriel Gonzaga Francisco de Assis

Eugnio de Saxe-Coburgo-Gotha e Bragana to be exact. With his
wife, Queen what is her name?
Augusta, Mary answered.
Both here in exile from their miserable little country, he
continued. But did you know that the name Portugal derives from the
Roman meaning the Port of Celts? How about that? The country was
populated long ago by the Celts, then by the Phoenicians, and finally
conquered by the Moors. I have another theory, one that says that
when the Muslims were defeated and the kingdom of Portugal was
created, those Celts and Moors, pressed to the shore, had only one
choice, and that was to flee to the ocean and so on their boats found
passage to Erin. You see it all comes around, in a circle of sorts.

Page 32
In between his bouts of excitement he seemed to retreat into a
near death like sleep. His chest barely moved beneath the sheets.
Claudia, Mary called out, will you get a bath ready for Mr.
Chamberlain? Mary walked out of the room in pursuit of the maid.
So he does not know you had his child, he said, you husband,
you never told him.
He did not need to know.
Hmm. Remember how we met? he asked.
Sure.
Remind me.
You know very well.
Tell me.
Beatrice introduced us.
You were her window on the world back then as I remember.
She was studying me, as a working woman, I was one of the
papers that she was never to write.

Many had asked her to write

about women, working women

About you.
About me, but she never did. I think the reason is clear enough.
And that is?
You stole away the subject of her study, Joe.
Me?

Page 33
Yes, you took me away from her, you asked me to come to your
house. Your intentions as blatant as your charm.
And what were those?
You had no interest in my mind. Nor in hers.
I was reduced to trembling at the thought of her mind.
And so you asked me to come see you, alone. Right in front of
Beatrice, you asked me to come pay you a visit.
Yes, I did.
And you knew how she would feel about that. You knew what
that would do to her.
I meant nothing sinister.
Yet you paid me to keep you company. You paid me to allow you
to be near Bea without having to be with her. You paid me so that you
could love her without loving her.
Come now! Why make me out to be so devious! None of that is
true.
So it is not true that you loved her.
That is true.
And so is it not true that you were afraid of her.
That would be one way to say it. But my dear.

We are

descending into an ugly gloom. We cant do that. We cant allow our

few moments to be tainted with such melancholy. So lets change the
topic.

Page 34
Yes, lets. I have something I desperately need to tell you.
OK, tell me! But tell me first, who was the finest lover in your
life? he asked. Joseph, please, I said, you know that is neither fair nor
proper to ask. Anything is proper, if asked properly. I did not ask who
fucked you best, I asked you who loved you best. My husband loved
me best, I said. And he was your best lover too. No, he was not my
best lover, but yes, he loved me best. Better than me, he asked. Even
better than you. He must love you dearly, he said. Very dearly, I said.
And so this still leaves a mystery as to who was your best lover. And
so that mystery shall remain I am afraid. I am an old man about to
die, you cannot afford me an answer to this last questions. I would if
it were the last. Then make it my last, he said, tell me your answer
and then cover me with this pillow, I am too weak to fight you off. I
would love to be snuffed out on the answer to that question. Well I
shall not snuff you and I shall not answer you. Was it Leonard Woolf?
Oh god no! I said. He had a fancy for you, Joe said, they all did. He
was quite queer Joseph, I said, through and through. Poor Virginia,
he said. Poor Virginia nothing, I said, poor Woolf. How about that
Jew, he said, Herzls friend, what was his name? Nordau, Max
Nordau? No, not even close. But closer, he said. As close as you will
get. That fellow from the Paris Salon, what was his name? Maurice
Princet? Ah-ha! Nope, I said. Id say Strauss but he truly loved his
wife, he said. He was a wonderful man, I said. And it wasnt Pierpont

Page 35
Morgan, Ol Pip was it? he said, no, you could have never looked that
closely at his nose, poor fellow. Not Pierpont, I said. Come on, he
said, tell me! Was it Wells, he asked, that free-loving lecherous little
conniving imp? No. How about Shaw then. A long and pompous no. I
heard rumors about Strindberg, he said. That would have been
suicide. King Edward? For Christs sake Joseph. You are telling me
you wouldnt sleep with King if he asked you?

Not that buffoon!

Spencer? Too old, too crotchety. Huxley? Too neurotic. Carnegie? Too
Scottish.

Houdini? Too hung? Too what? I meant too Hungarian.

Churchill? Too much a worm. OK then, he said, we have exhausted the

list of men, and I am sure you could weave quite a story out of the
men in your life, but how about women? Did you sleep with any
women? Perhaps, I said. Perhaps? he asked with a bit of a squeal. It
was in vogue for a while, I said. I heard it was in vogue, he said, was
it with someone I knew? I know what you are after, I said, with some
one such as? Ha! he laughed, with Beatrice! You did, didnt you!
I will let you die, I said, with that question unanswered. Would you
really be so cruel? he groaned. Absolutely, I said. No thought would
make me happier you know, he said, the mere possibility makes me
happy. So you have? he asked. No I havent. You need not tell me the
truth, he said. Sorry, I said, I already told you the truth. Now I will
die sadder and more alone than I had thought possible. He seemed to
begin to fall back to sleep. With his eyes closed, he continued: So it

Page 36
was someone I dont know, he said. I didnt say that. But everyone I
know is completely incapable of proper fornication. We all were. You
werent bad, I said. No, I had my moments didnt I? A few shining
ones, I said. But I was not the best though was I? I didnt say you
werent. But you wont say I was. Not until you die, I said. But we
had fun though didnt we, he said. We did have fun. The best time of
my life, he said. One of the best times of my life, I said. He looked at
me with a sad face. One of the very best, I said.
How about her?
What about her?
Did she ever sleep with anyone? he asked. Beatrice? I asked,
you mean other than Sidney? Sidney does not count, he said. No, she
did not, I said. So she was truly a virgin, he said. Other then Sidney? I
asked. Sidney does not count, he said.
She was waiting for you, I said. All that time she could not stop
the thoughts that maybe either she would give in to you or you would
give into her.
It was truly that bastard Spencers fault you know?
Herbert Spencer? The one who said that you were a man who
may mean well, but who did nothing but mischief?
Yes, the crooked old fart. He got into her mind when she was
young, filled her with all those thoughts about individualism and
laissez faire. She was brainwashed by him.

He did it on purpose I

Page 37
believe, his goal was to have her be his scribe, to write his story. The
conceited old fart. It wasnt until years later that she saw the truth.
And if she had seen the truth early, if she had been of more stable
mind, we would have seen eye to eye. And oh, things might have been
so different. But I could not be a father to her like Spencer was. I
was not going to educate her, re-educate her. But that was why we
could not see our way together, at the beginning anyway.
She loved you and you turned her away.
She did not understand me you know, he said. And you did not
understand her, I said. Two people can try to achieve understanding
at the same time, he said, but it does not always happen that way.
Someone has to be the taker and that would have been me, he
continued. And she would have had to be the giver, I said. Yes, he
said, but then at some time the roles surely would have reversed.
Perhaps she was afraid they would never change, I said, the roles
would never change.

In some relationships they do not, he said,

unless one or the other one fights for it. Then it gets ugly, I said. But
in a relationship of equals, he said, you change, you change roles if for
no other reason than to survive. In a relationship you discover your
weaknesses, he continued, you discover that you are mortal, you come
to realize that you are pathetic actually.

That all you knew and

thought you knew was nothing. You discover that all the good you had
done was done for reasons that now make you physically ill, he

Page 38
continued, you discover that you had no real morals, you set course on
a direction and tried to reach that destination, getting there was all
that mattered. In a real relationship you constantly face how weak
and pathetic and undesirable you are. She did not have the time or
the strength or the desire to see that through, to live out that other
form of misery, he said. Misery? I asked. Yes, he said, sure, what can
be more miserable than constantly discovering what a fool you are?
Misery is living without love, I said, it is living with someone who
despises you. Misery is always being told how great you are, he said,
how important were the things you did, how right, how goo, how
magnificent. That is real misery, he continued, misery is not fighting
to survive, misery is not constantly being challenged.
Misery is never falling down, I said.
Beatrice was always looking for her religion, wasnt she? he
said. In many ways, I said, yes. She thought it was God, he said, then
she thought it was science.
thought it was socialism.

Finally let down by all of them, she

What she did not realize is that as she

fought down that path, that was when she was most alive. She died
not as a living creature but as a person, he said, when she thought she
had found her stopping point. She needed someone to challenge her,
to force her to get up and keep moving. She needed me, he said. She
chose someone who was willing to worship not challenge her and
there she found a comfortable place to die, I think. Why do you say

Page 39
this? I asked. Because I did the same, he said, and we were each the
lover in the others life, the one that was to be, that had to be, that
never could be.
(Perhaps it was because of the strength of the sad relationship
between Beatrice and Joe, or perhaps it was because of the ties I had
to her for so many years, as sisters, as friends and perhaps as Joe
would like to believe, as lovers, perhaps it was both of those elements
brought together in this room, but I could swear her presence was
suddenly here with us, as if she could not bear to have us talk for her.
As if suddenly we could hear her words. )
Tell him how he revealed my desire to be dominated and had he
said yes, I would have succumbed, given it all away. Instead he left me
aware of a certain deformity overtaking me.
I did not turn her away! he shouted. It was all the language, we
did not share a language. We were of different strata, different folk,
different tongues. I had set my mission, I could not stop what I had
started. I wanted men to change. She wanted authority to change.
She wanted answers through thought, I sought answers by doing. We
could not talk with each other.
She imagined conversations with you daily, hourly, I said.
She wanted to study men, he said, she did not want to
understand them. She was afraid of understanding them. Her goal
was to control them, not talk with them.

Page 40
Tell him how I never saw such a place, and in such streets, that
I can only liken it to the trembling mass of maggots in a lump of
carrion.
she wanted to study you
She had no idea of me, he said, just as she had no idea of this
thing called the working man.

She was an upper class snob.

She

spent a month living with some village folk and came away from that
with a sentimental commitment to find the principles behind this ideal
village. Those are for her the working class, not the people of the city.
No, the urban working man she thought them of as little more than
vermin, they were best swept away, killed off, so that the better
specimens of human can breed.

She thought of the people at the

lower levels of humanity as less than valuable, less redeemable than

animals.
she was struggling to make sense of what seemed
unfair, I said, what seemed too terrible to accept as a way of life...
She feared that this industrial capitalism would breed a
creature all its own, some Caliban that might issue and crawl from the
cramped and squalid dwellings of the urban working class, that would
emerge like rats from a sewer and destroy the system that had
created it. That is what she feared.

Page 41
Tell him that I am seeing more and more that it is useless to try
to help the helpless, that the truly kind thing is to let the weak go to
the wall and get out of the strong peoples way as fast as possible.
she was a woman who had been inculcated with the doctrine
of the survival of the fittest
She feared the wild races of the East End, the tribes of darkest
England. She feared them as much as she was fascinated by them.
They were her studies as you say.
she sought to combine that with her own religion, she sought
to meld science and feeling and fear into one
But she never could leave that village behind.

She could not

find her way in the city, not past that grime, that dirt, the filth. She
sought and found her own ideal. And when she discovered her own
form of socialism, she was inert to love.
she was still deeply in love with you. Until
I received the news with a gasp as if one had been stabbed
and then it was over.
you had married another woman, this Mary. That nearly
I felt as if I had been horribly wounded and the scar can never
leave me.
killed her.

Page 42
I knew my marriage would hurt her, but you too had left me. I
had been deserted, left alone as I know we all are. Still I could not
face it. What was I to do?
Tell him that when I heard of his marriage, I felt it like a bit of
cold steel in my heart.

I spent the afternoon of his wedding in

Westminster Abbey, listening to the steady rhythm of the prayers, I

took Holy Communion at St. Pauls.
you did what you had to do.
I harbored a sadness about life, an emptiness that I could not
carry myself. This too frightened Beatrice.
It could be no more painful than to be a woman. The music of
that slow withdrawing of the ocean swell from the pebbled beach, a
sound

of

infinite

sweetness

and

sadness,

like

the

inevitable

withdrawal of a lover from a mistress he loves; the bubbling and

gurgling of the tide in the case of the rocks beneath me, the spirit of
children not yet born to life.
she had her own sadness to bear
And so we would have wearied each other down into nothing.
We would have buried ourselves in that misery.

We would have

destroyed each other, we would have destroyed us. Surely she knew
that was well.
and she knew that as well...

Page 43
Tell him that he created in me a tortured state which cannot
long endure. Perchance some current riding with the whirlpool will
take me outward towards a calm, but the water roars about my ears
and I feel myself being suck inexorably towards the vortex.
What does she think of me now?
I watch his life with feverish interest, tracing with horrible
ingenuity those qualities that pained me, undermining the public
usefulness of his life I observe narrowly from all the tiny details I
could gather from newspaper paragraphs and person gossip the effect
of his marriage on his character.
She tries not to, I said.
Can she not think of me?
She cant help but think of you. But when she does she thinks
she sees someone who is but a shell of himself, someone who gave up
his passion, who lost his way. She sees a man who found complacency
with a complacent mate and so lost the fire to live and do and be and
fight.
I still fight. I still fight even now, I still fight.
She tries to be thankful that she never married you.
Bah! Come now! What does she really think! Tell me, please.
Tell him that the memory of my last visit to see him, before we
parted, that memory shall always consider this day as sacred: a
sacrament of pain fitting me for a life of loneliness and work.

Page 44
She thinks, I said, well she thinks that she gave up life because
of you. She gave up womanhood, she gave up motherhood, and you,
the one man that she truly loved will forever be tied to that sacrifice,
to that loss. She seeks a child but knows not what form it will take, it
will not be a fleshy form.
And what does she think of me?
She thinks that you gave up your chance for greatness by not
marrying her, by seeking a path that would lead you nowhere, by
embracing complacency you lost eventually the will to fight.
So we both lost, he said. But she is in love now, right? To this
Sidney Webb?
She believes in Sidney, she loves you. She will carry out her life
work with Sidney, while she left her life when she left you.

And

Sidney will destroy her. She will have a long and happy and probably
forgettable marriage with Sidney, while she will always seek a way to
forget you. But she will finally be destroyed.
You know, he said, she has wasted away to nothing, a sliver of
what she was. She is hoping to vanish I think, to disappear without
anyone noticing.
She lives with a certain illness, one that manifests itself in many
ways, in the ribs that show, in the eczema everywhere on her body, in
teeth that are rotting and gums bleeding, in the diarrhea and

Page 45
flatulence that tortures her it all stems from that same place, a
broken heart.
Tell him on the worst nights I read and reread Job.
We would not make good bedfellows he said. I have sores, a
rash on my arse, my mouth is like a dry rag. When you come to the
end of your life, you have nothing else but the opportunity to look
back, and so you wonder what difference would it really make right
now to look back and see one thing or to see another?
I feared extermination, being forgotten, having my pages ripped
from a book, worse yet, never writing down the thoughts that are
forgotten so quickly.
Beatrice lived so that she could write about life, he said, that
was her sole and solitary purpose. Now I can only look back, you can
look to the future if you like. I can only look back.
And so, I said, so I am the one who has to watch this all vanish
as if it had no role, no purpose. I am the one who has the most painful
task to bear. I came here today Joe to tell you something. There is
another storm approaching, and when I saw it rise up on a distant
land and begin its march towards us, I knew that you would stare as
deeply and as desperately into that black mass as anyone, and I
worried what you would think, what you would do
Politics is the emptiest of professions, like smoke, what you
think you are fighting for last as long as it takes the wind to blow it

Page 46
away. A war won, a dictatorship toppled, colleges built, those have
lasting value, but are those the things one looks back and thinks
about. Money made, deals brokered, houses built, but are those the
things one looks back at with pride? Supposed I had written a book,
painted a panting, and suppose that never left my drawer or the
studio of my own house. Would I have felt something of that?
There is a great storm approaching, Joe.
It really comes down to the most cruel of sentiments, that is
what you are left with, and that is love of course. Not the love that
you had, but the love you never had. That is what looks back at you, a
face, a song, a time in a park, a day on a lake, a chance that you relive
over and over.
It is the apocalypse, Joe.
Politics, the footsteps you leave are as if they were left in the
sand, and someone immediately after you have gone flows up to
sweep them away, not a trace left.

Beatrice and I, we wasted our

lives, we gave up life, we gave up the carnal for the political, thinking
we were reaching for immortality when in effect we were ensuring
that we would be forever forgotten. What is more ephemeral than the
political, what is more wasted on a mans soul?
We cannot stop it this time, Joe.
I was a man of business and so I approached problems as a man
of business. Some people say I lacked a heart, that I was as cold as

Page 47
nails. Even today I look at what many call the mistakes of my time
and I see failures to profit not failures of principle. The Boer War, had
we kept that to less than a year, we would have profited mightily. But
we let it drag on and with time our profits flittered away. So many
wars can bring great benefit, great profit if only managed properly.
And on this I bet Beatrice would have agreed.
This is it, Joe. This is the end, Joe.
When does history take its shape? When is it safe to assume
you are part of history? History is built on catastrophes, it is built on
tearing down the great men, bringing them down. Smaller men are
not hard to bring down and they offer nothing.

But the great men

when they come down they come down with all their weight, with the
weight of all their convictions, their values and the weight of their
actions, the promises. That is all we did, that is the game and sport of
politics. We made game by pulling down men bigger than we were.
Parnell and Gladstone I got the better of them didnt I? Gladstone
had a great faculty for ruthlessness, a gift that any politician must
envy.

Gladstone was bigger than us all, but we pulled him down.

Parnell was a great man despite his limitations, what a Samson he

was, trying to give his nation a soul, yet we brought him down as well.
And so I feared for you. And so I came for you.
You do not make history until you come falling down. But to fall,
you must fall heavily and to fall heavily you must carry with you the

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weight of conviction, and I have grown thin and weightless, I have
none. In a way the worst thing that you can do is never fall, is to go on
living. That is probably the worst failure of all.
You are not listening to me, are you Joe?
Beatrice and I, we were the opposite of partners, we were the
antinomy of lovers. We both lived our lives apart as passionately as
lovers live them together. We repressed our desires when most seek
to explore and enjoy those desires.

We both cast our coldness all

about us, chilling everyone who was in our proximity.

We created

roads of ice and we froze oceans of time by and between us. We were
cajoled by our ideals, our work into believing such things as progress,
such as progression, such as destiny, such as evolution.

We paint

order where there is none, we sketch in rationality when none is to be

found. History buries what is cold, he said, and so both Beatrice and I
will be forgotten.
That is not possible, I said, all you have done, all the great
things you accomplished, you were no other than the leader of the
world during the time when the world was worth leading.
We will be forgotten, both of us.

And what I did was paltry

compared to her, and yet she will too be forgotten.

History yawns

upon those who are rigid in spirit, history is easily bored, and once it
looks away never looks back.

But it is as if we both wanted to

disappear into that ignorance, as if we both chose this life, we were

Page 49
wed to the same destruction, to the same nothingness, the same
vanishing. If they remember either of us, they will remember us both,
as the couple who wasnt, the love that did not, the passion that
couldnt. But you, he said suddenly looking at me as if I had done him
some terrible wrong, who were you?

No! who were we? If I was

married three times, yet always wed to Beatrice, what would you have
called you and I?

Comrades, I answered. Comrades, huh? I suppose

you were my good friend, my very good friend. But before you were
my friend you were my mistress were you not? I suppose you could
say that, I said.

And before you were my mistress you were my

whore, were you not? That was a long time ago Joseph. You were, he
said, my whore, my slut, I paid you to fuck me, I paid you to do things
to me I would never ask anyone else to do. Joseph, I said, I dont think
we should talk about this.

And so we should talk about what? he

shouted, should we talk about Parnell! That bastard, Parnell who did
nothing but fuck his partners wife and so because of that, because of
his fucking infidelity will be remembered forever as some hero while I
made laws, I saved countries from ruin, I kept the empire standing tall
and proud, I built schools, I helped build and filled libraries with
books but who gives a fuck about all that! So I want to talk about
fucking you!

If that will get me remembered then lets talk about

fucking, lets yell and shout and scream about how we used to fuck
here in this house, here in this bed, on the rug in the sitting room, on

Page 50
the sofa in the waiting room, in the gardens, in the dirt! We fucked so
madly that that I tore a muscle in my abdomen, do you remember?
Joseph, I said. Do you, he shouted, do you remember? I was so crazy
about fucking you that I pulled a muscle in my abdomen and that
bloody thing took months to heal, remember? Yes I do, I said. It was
my copulatory muscle, he laughed, do you remember that we used to
call it my copulatory muscle? Yes I do. We called it that because I
could not copulate without it, no matter how I tried, from the front,
from the rear, upside down, right side up, this way or that, I couldnt
copulate until that muscle had healed.

My copulatory muscle.

wonder where it is now? What would happen if I pulled it now? Could

I pull it now?
His face was sweating in his agitation, but softly he laughed.
Ahhh you know who you were dont you? he asked. I beg your
pardon, I said, what do you mean? You know who you were for me, he
said, I could not have Beatrice, but I could have you. As you yourself
said, I could not bear to have Beatrice and so I substituted you. You
protected me. Without you she may have had me. She had passion
once. She had a fire that I probably could not have resisted. But not
with you there. You were my guardian, my guardian whore. And if
you think about it, Beatrice is the one who introduced us right? Yes,
she did.

She probably knew what she was doing, ah, she was so

clever that way, she must have known that I would use you to hold in

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front of me, to keep her from me.

She was too weak you see, I

thought I was weak, but I only took what she handed to me and put it
between us. I used you to cover my cock so that she could not have it.
Had I not done that, had I not taken what she had given me, had I not
had you, had I not stuck you on my rigid cock I would have given in,
oh god I would have given in.
Joe?
Did you ever imagine what place you would play in other
peoples lives.

Honestly, I dont. You were the one who survived,

didnt you. Beatrice and I, well we are dead, we were dead long ago.
Like so many we chose death rather than chose life. We choose death
and then decided to live life as dead people. You on the other hand, I
have always been amazed by you. Earlier I said, I have always
wondered if there was a woman who was equal to me, yet at the same
time I have always feared meeting a woman who was equal to me.
But looking back, I can say now that if there was such a woman, that
woman would have been you. You embody the new woman. You grow
while others fade. As you grow older, you take on more, you become
stronger, only a goddess would be capable of such a transformation,
only a deity would be able to survive as you have survived. And if the
world were to end, I truly believe you would be the one person who
would survive, I believe that, I do.

Page 52
Joseph, your words are startling to me, they are neither kind nor
are they sincere. You are tired and yet I am afraid that I have to now
tell you what I have come to tell you.

To tell me something?

You

mean you had something to tell me all this time and you have said
nothing? I was sure you already knew, I said, I came here actually not
to tell you but because I was worried about you, worried how you
might be should you have known, if you had known. Known what?
The door opened flooding us both again with light as his wife
walked in and up to his bed, ignoring me, holding in her hand a
newspaper. She was distraught.
todays paper, she said.

Joseph darling, she said, I have

Yes, dear, Joseph said with a faint look of

puzzlement, looking at her then over at me. What is it Mary? Well,

Joseph, she said, it seems apparently they shot the Archduke Franz
Fernandez.
Where? In Sarajevo. Who? A Serb.
I did not say a word, but I could see by the look in Josephs face
that he too had been shot, the blood raced from his cheeks and jowls,
poured out completely onto the floor, he grew pale and leaned back
onto his pillow and began to close his eyes. Is this too a dream? he
asked. No, it is not a dream, I said. This is what I came here to tell
you.
What does that mean? he asked.
I dont know, Mary said.

Page 53
It means the world will end, I said.
Does that mean the world will end Mary? he asked.
Yes, I said, this is the end.
Of course not dear, Mary said. But I am afraid we will have to
cancel our dinner with the King and Queen, she said. I thought if you
wanted me to I would read you the details, it is time that I read you
your paper anyway.
It is all over, I said, for all of us. We had our time Joseph.
I am afraid Mary that it is all over, he said, we are too feeble it
seems, we can never win such a fight, we can never assume such a
battle.
Stop you old fool, Mary said, Im sorry I brought you this news.
I knew you would have heard about it anyway. But you rest. I will get
you some tea.
It is all over, I said, no one will truly survive.
Mary? he asked.
Yes dear.
No matter how terrible it becomes, he said, someone will
survive. Someone always survives. And from there the world goes on.
I know dear, she said.
To me he turned his age spotted jowls: So tell me, did you ever
go back to him? To who? I asked. Your husband. I never left him, I

Page 54
said. I see, he said. So you still love him? he asked. Finally, I said,
yes, I do. His wife walked back out of the room.
Please put this pillow upon my face, he cried, now is the time!
Please! Do not let my dear wife care for me until I am but a leaking
scab upon these sheets. She needs to be freed as I need to be freed.
No more jokes, please cover this mouth and extinguish this useless
breath, there is no need for me to consume precious air, let me fall
into a rent in the ground before that ground is blasted back apart, let
me be of the detritus of the ideas and influence that ripped this all
asunder. That is where I belong. How horrible to think I will be gray
and ashen on some cold cot listening to others whimper and cry,
wondering what brought this hell, not knowing that the old decrepit
man who lies there like a corpse beside them was one cause of it.
What will happen to all the people? Will we drown them like whelps?
What designs will we place on the race? Will our burdens be trash
that must be destroyed and buried? What will our children think??
What will their ideals of father, mother and mankind be?
Joe
And what about you? What will happen to you?
You dont need to worry about me, I said. I never have, he said.
I have a place to stay, I said, a place to be. And that is with him? he
asked. Yes. You have stayed with him all this time, all these years,
through all through so much of everything.

Page 55
Yes.
No man could know your life and still love you.
I suppose you could say he and I were indeed two elements in a
solar system, I said, at times he was the sun and I the planet, at other
times the roles were reversed, but our paths were inescapably
dependent on each other, we strayed but only as far as natural law
would allow.

Eventually the forces would bring us back into some

kind of dance, some kind of orbit together.

Was it love?
I never thought so, but now I know that it was more than love.
While others regret their lives, fear the unknown, are terrified of what
lies ahead, regret what they did not do, what they might have lost,
what they destroyed rather then enjoy, we share in none of those
destructive feelings. We did many stupid things, we did many things I
would never do again, but we were human beings, and we discovered
the most human part of both of us was to keep coming back, again
and again. We discovered that life is not a straight line, but a vortex
that oscillates upon itself, taking you around and in and out of the
world, giving you a chance to see things again, from a different
vantage point of place as well as time.
So you found love.
Yes, Joseph, I found love, true love.
found it any other way.

And I would have never

Page 56
I walked out of the bedroom down the hall and into the main
room. Mary walked past me and sat down on a sofa. I sat down next
to her and I watched as her weight changed, as her shoulders stooped
and her head fell towards her spine. Then she began to sob. There
was nothing I could do. She stopped crying and looked up.
I know you are here, she said. I know you are here and I know
there is nothing I can do. I dont know who you are and I dont want
to know. There is much I dont know about my husband and much I
wish I never knew. But for one year before we got married I know
something happened, someone was in his life, when I found out it was
not Beatrice, I realized there was a secret, a hole in this man that I
would not fathom, that I would never understand. Years ago, I stopped
thinking about this as something that should concern me and I started
thinking about it as something that I worried would affect him. When
we grow old, when we die, those empty places in us grow wider, grow
deeper, and can, as I have seen it, envelope you, consume you, and I
know Joe, he has tried to fill that emptiness with everything
imaginable the war, the empire, free education, the university the
only thing he would not throw in there was me, I was not allowed to
enter, and so I fear I not only will never know but that all I was to him
would be consumed, that when he died he would pass without a
thought about me. But now he has nothing left, nothing to fill that
emptiness. So yes, I am wondering who JC is thinking about in these,

Page 57
his last moments, surely they are not thoughts about me. Oh, I am so
unprepared for death, for anothers death, for his death. What does
death carry with it? a last thought, a last image? Where will he go?
Perhaps to heaven, perhaps into nothingness, and when he goes will it
be without a thought about me in his mind, and so will I too be gone,
forgotten, forever?
Suddenly Joes voice thundered through the vast rooms.
She is here! She is here!
What Joe? Mary cried out as she ran back towards him. Oh Joe!
Who is she?
The executioner! he shouted. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
I walked outside. The moon cut cleanly through the trees. A
wind rustled across the roses that bobbed colorless along the lane. A
thousand orchids lifted their throats to drink the ink of the midnight
sky.