Free Where There's Smoke by Black Inc. Page B

‘It is sweet of you to say so, Helen, sweet of you to reassure me. Not a life wasted after all. Of course I am not convinced. As you say, if I could be convinced I would not be myself. But that is no consolation. I am not in a happy mood, as you can see. In my present mood, the life I have followed looks misconceived from beginning to end, and not in a particularly interesting way either. If one truly wants to be a better person, it now seems to me, there must be less roundabout ways of getting there than by darkening thousands of pages with prose.’
    â€˜Ways such as?’
    â€˜Helen, this is not an interesting conversation. Gloomy states of mind do not yield interesting thoughts, at least not in my experience.’
    â€˜Must we not talk then?’
    â€˜Yes, let us not talk. Let us do something really old-fashioned instead. Let us sit here quietly and listen to the cuckoo.’
    For there is indeed a cuckoo calling, from the copse behind the restaurant. If they open the window just a crack the sound comes quite clearly on the wind: a two-note motif, high-low, repeated time after time. Redolent , she thinks – Keatsian word – redolent of summertime and summer ease. A nasty bird, but what a singer, what a priest! Cucu , the name of God in cuckoo tongue. A world of symbols.
    *
    They are doing something they have not done together since the children were children. Sitting on the balcony of Helen’s apartment in the suave warmth of the Mediterranean night, they are playing cards. They play three-handed bridge, they play the game they used to call Sevens, called in France Rami, according to Helen/Hélène.
    The idea of an evening of cards is Helen’s. It seemed an odd idea at first, artificial; but once they are into the swing of it she is pleased. How intuitive of Helen: she would not have suspected Helen of intuitiveness.
    What strikes her now is how easily they slip into the card-playing personalities of thirty years ago, personalities she would have thought they had shed forever once they escaped from one another: Helen reckless and scatty, John a trifle dour, a trifle predictable, and herself surprisingly competitive, considering that these are her own flesh and blood, considering that the pelican will tear open its breast to feed its young. If they were playing for stakes, she would be sweeping in their money by the veritable armful. What does that say about her? What does it say about all of them? Does it say that character is immutable, intractable; or does it merely say that families, happy families, are held together by a repertoire of games played from behind masks?
    â€˜It would seem that my powers have not waned,’ she remarks after yet another win. ‘Forgive me. How embarrassing.’ Which is a lie, of course. She is not embarrassed, not at all. She is triumphant. ‘Curious which powers one retains over the years and which one begins to lose.’
    The power she retains, the power she is exercising at this moment, is one of visualisation. Without the slightest mental effort she can see the cards in her children’s hands, each single one. She can see into their hands; she can see into their hearts.
    â€˜Which powers do you feel you are losing, Mother?’ asks her son cautiously.
    â€˜I am losing,’ she says gaily, ‘the power of desire.’ In for a penny, in for a pound.
    â€˜I would not have said desire had power,’ responds John gamely, picking up the baton. ‘Intensity perhaps. Voltage. But not power, horsepower. Desire may make you want to climb a mountain but it won’t get you to the top.’
    â€˜What will get you to the top?’
    â€˜Energy. Fuel. What you have stored up in preparation.’
    â€˜Energy. Do you want to know my theory of energy, the energetics of an old person? Don’t get anxious, nothing personal in it to embarrass you, and no metaphysics either, not a drop. As material a theory as can