Orbit 7 - [Anthology] Read online

  “We’ll get rid of his things tomorrow,” she said after a while.

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  * * * *

  The Pressure of Time

  by Thomas M. Disch

  They were learning all about history, the holy martyrs and Rome burning down and if you didn’t burn incense for Jupiter you had to go into the Colosseum while the pagans watched. Jupiter is a false god, but we believe in one god the Father Almighty. There was a little girl in the picture too, with a white dress for purity and white flowers in her hair, and Sister Augustine said the holy martyrs should be an inspiring example for every boy and girl.

  They had waited all day, because the smallest children went last, but at last the Public Health man came and talked to Sister. He had a white dress with gold buttons, and his hair was gold, too, like tiny gold wires, because he was English. So they put on their sweaters and went outside to wait in line beside the medical unit in the wet gravel with puddles everywhere. Emma was the monitor. She stood at the end of the line in her red sweater and her little red polly boots, fingering the pink health card with her name on it. Her first name began with E and her second name began with an R, but she was slow in Reading—all the little letters looked the same. But if you don’t learn to read, you won’t know what the signs say on top of stores, you won’t know what street you’re on if you ever go to Dublin, and you can’t make a shopping list.

  She went in the door and the man with the gold beard took her card and jiggled it in his machine, and then Mary Ellen Poorlick screamed like a banshee. The man who stuck the needles in tried to talk to her, but with his funny accent you couldn’t understand a word. Jamie Baro was next, then Emma, and she couldn’t look away from the needle, as long as her own middle finger. If she had to be a holy martyr, she knew she’d have run away when the lions came out of their cages instead of singing along with the others, but the door was closed behind her now, and the man said, “Try and relax now, Emma.” He was a fairy, because fairies have gold hair like that, and in any case all the English are bent as a pin. That’s what Leonard said. He put something cold on her arm, while the needle filled up with more white stuff, and she clenched herself tight all over, and he stuck it right into her arm.

  She knew the very next thing after that that she must have done something wrong then, because she was in the Principal’s Office, and Sister Mary Margaret was putting water on her face, but worse than that her Cousin Bridie was there with one of the babies. Bridie was saying, “Oh, tension! Her mother is another great one for tensions.”

  She tried to sit up in the day-nap cot, but Sister Mary Margaret pushed her flat again. “You’d better rest a minute, my dear. You’re not well.”

  Emma touched her arm where it hurt. There was a band-aid on it.

  Cousin Bridie said, “We’re taking up your time, Sister,” and Sister Mary Margaret said, “Nonsense,” and handed Emma a cone of water to drink.

  “Say thank you,” said Cousin Bridie. Emma said thank you.

  “You see, it’s all over now, and there wasn’t anything to fuss about, was there? The pain is always in the waiting, not in the thing we’ve waited for.”

  Cousin Bridie sighed and rocked the baby. Her lips were unhappy, the way they got when she was cooking dinner, but when she listened to music her face was pretty, or when there was a funny show on the telly, and when she was like that you could talk to her and she was nicer than almost any other grown-up. But not when her lips were like that.

  So she rested and then Sister Mary Margaret said, “Emma, your cousin is here to take you home with her for a little while. You have to promise to be very good. Sister Augustine tells me you’re one of her best-behaved children.”

  Emma looked down at the band-aid. “Did I do something then?”

  “What do you mean, Emma?”

  “Something wrong—out there?”

  “Oh, this is nothing to do with the polio shot. We can’t help things like that. It’s because your grandfather - or rather your great-grandfather, I believe?”

  “Yes,” said Cousin Bridie.

  “Your great-grandfather has finally passed on, as we all must, and you’re to stay with your cousin during the wake. Only three or four days. We’ll all have to say prayers for him to help him out of purgatory, though I’m sure he won’t need many. He was a very good man.”

  “He was a patriot,” Cousin Bridie said. She began to cry.

  “Comfort yourself, Mrs. Anckers. I’m sure death came as a blessing. He was an old man and he suffered great pain. Pray to Our Lady. Think of the sorrow that must have been hers. We must all expect to lose our fathers and mothers, but she lost a child, her only child, so that He might pay the price for our sins.”

  Cousin Bridie stopped crying.

  “Now, if Emma is feeling well enough, I must be getting back to my class. Your family is in my prayers.” She touched a finger to Emma’s arm, close to the hurt, and smiled and left.

  Bridie put the baby in the pram that was standing in a puddle outside the door. The wheels made snaky tracks on the dry pavement. You could hear a classroom, inside, singing Old Black Joe. Emma loved Music best, taking after her father in that. Her father was dead.

  Cousin Bridie took her hand crossing the street, though she didn’t need to. Emma was six going on seven and walked home every day by herself or sometimes with the Kramer boy.

  She asked, “How old is Granny?”

  “Eighty-six.”

  “Is that old to die?”

  “You might say so. In Ireland.”

  “But not in England?”

  “Who’s been talking to you about England?”

  “Nobody.”

  “Your mother?”

  “Sister Augustine says you don’t have to die in England, because they’re all heretics there.”

  “I’ll bet your mother has been saying things to you.” Cousin Bridie made one of her faces. She didn’t get on with Emma’s mother. The Anckers were poor and lived on O’Connell Street, while Emma and her mother lived with their grandfather above the flowershop,Tauter’s Ageless Flowers. Mr. Tauler was a Jew, and handled the commercial end. Emma’s grandfather made the flowers, but he was too fat to look after the shop, so Emma’s mother did that now, and Emma washed the flowers with Fairy Liquid, first a capital F, then a capital L.

  The Anckers lived in two rooms in the basement with the three babies, Florence, Christopher, and Angela. One whole wall was covered with the books, old books from before the Plague some of them. They were Leonard’s books. Leonard was Cousin Bridie’s tragedy. He had a degree from Trinity College and he was supposed to make houses except he didn’t, so when you visited them you had to eat Public Health food from Unesco, and right before every meal Cousin Bridie would say, “I hope you don’t mind the way we eat.” It was better food most of the time than the food from stores.

  After the babies’ formula Cousin Bridie sat down by the telly, Sunset Serenades. Leonard was out at a Conservative meeting, and Emma, being careful, took out one of the tall books. A woman was laying down on a bed without any clothes and there was a fat nigger-woman behind her carrying flowers. Then there was a boy dressed up like an Irish National Security Agent and playing a flute. Then just some flowers. Then a sort of mess with a boat in it. Then the woman who looked so much like Emma’s mother that they all agreed it was a miracle. She had a parrot too.

  Leonard came home drunk and said he damn well did think it was a cause for celebration, and Cousin Bridie said he was disgusting and there are some things you shouldn’t say.

  And then Leonard said, “Well I say fuck him and fry him, the old bastard.”

  You should never say fuck.

  And Cousin Bridie said, “Little pitchers.”

  And Leonard said, “Jesus Christ, why didn’t you tell me we had company!”

  Then they had dinner. Dinner was soup with cabbage and bones, then some fried protein and veg, then a nice fortified pudding, though Leonard took most of it on his o
wn plate. Cousin Bridie said, “I hope you don’t mind the way we eat” four different times.

  After dinner you always have to watch the telly, first Newsflash, which never made much sense except about superstars, then Looking Back, about the First Famine a hundred years ago, and that was fun but it only lasted ten minutes, and then This Emerald Isle. Tonight it was only a panel discussion of teenagers about kissing. A month ago Sean Kramer had kissed her and she’d shown him her bottom and he showed her his bottom with the peewee on it. It was a secret. The discussion was moderated by the Right Reverend C. S. Marchesini, S. J., who was very much in the public eye lately and talked about. Sometimes kissing was a sin and sometimes it wasn’t, and the best policy was to ask your confessor.

  It was eight o’clock when Emma’s mother came by; she was late. Cousin Bridie said, “Mary, you look just beautiful! Leonard, doesn’t she look beautiful?”

  Leonard said, “Yes.”

  Her mother said, “I dug it out of Ellen’s trunk. It was the only thing I could find.”

  Cousin Bridie said, “It’s just beautiful”

  And it was, Emma thought, very beautiful. Her mother was always beautiful, more than anyone else she’d ever seen.

  It was going to be a lovely funeral. People would be coming from Dublin to be there. The Council had voted a monument. Leonard had to laugh about that. He showed them the drawing he’d made, using the true and only limestone of Kilkenny that God put there. Leonard didn’t believe in the new materials. Her mother said after all you can’t tell the difference. Leonard said he could tell the difference. Her mother said she supposed a man in his line of work would have to, but it came to the question of money, didn’t it? Cousin Bridie said she thought there were times when it wasn’t a question of money. Some things are sacred. Her mother said, “Well, well, I suppose Bridie is right.” Cousin Bridie made one of her faces.

  They went for a walk, Emma and her mother, down O’Connell Street and up Cathedral Street and along the iron bars that fenced St. Stephen’s Cathedral where Leonard wouldn’t go, instead he went to Immaculate Conception on the other side of town, even on Christmas and Easter, and then in by the broken gate. Her mother explained about the wake and all the visitors and having to stay with the Anckers, because they were their only relatives now. You couldn’t count the Almraths or the Smiths. But it wouldn’t be for long.

  “And then . . .”

  “And then we’ll go away?”

  Her mother laughed the way she did when they were all living together and she lifted Emma up and hugged her into the chilly silk of Ellen’s dress. Ellen died, and then Emma’s father in the fight, and now Granny. They were Catholics and Catholics have to die. Someday Emma’s mother would die, and someday Emma would die, too, and it can be a beautiful experience if you are in a state of grace.

  “Yes, we’ll go away. We will go away. But you mustn’t talk about it, darling. Not even now. And if your Cousin Bridie tries to talk to you about England, or about me, you must say that you don’t know anything about what I’m going to do with my share of the money. It’s our secret. Do you promise?”

  “Yes. But will you tell me about London?”

  “London-oh, London is going to be wonderful, Emma. When you see it the first time you’ll think you’re in a dream. London is the most beautiful city in the world. Dublin is just a dustheap by comparison.” She gave Emma one more squeeze and lowered her. The grass where they walked was so long that it tickled her legs over the tops of her boots and made them wet.

  “There’ll be music in the streets and sunlight all night long, or as good as sunlight. The buildings are all fresh and new, not scabby and full of mice, and there is a park there as big as all Clonmel that’s filled with flowers, real flowers growing in dirt. And there are towers so high that on a cloudy day you can’t see to the top, because the clouds get in the way. And the people will be different there. So much happier. The people are beautiful; they’re young. No one is resentful or afraid. No one is poor. In London you can live your own life for its own sake. You don’t have to lie to yourself or to anyone else. You can’t understand what a difference itwill make-to be beautiful...to be free.”

  “Will we have to be pagans, too, if we go there, and never die?”

  Her mother stopped and squatted so her face was on a level with Emma’s. She smiled with her mouth open, and her hair was blowing across her eyes. She looked beautiful.

  “Darling! darling!” And she laughed. “It’s not as simple as that. They can’t help it that they don’t die, and we can’t help it that we do.”

  “Why?”

  “If I could answer that question, Emma” - she brushed her hair back, dark brown like Emma’s, and stood up— “then Ireland would cease to exist.”

  They walked back to the gate on the path. A priest was standing by the second Station of the Cross, saying a rosary, swaying.

  “Good evening, Mrs. Rosetti. So the end has come at last. He was a good man. The world will seem a little smaller now.”

  “Yes, a tragedy,” Mrs. Rosetti mumbled, hurrying out the gate.

  “Good evening, Emma,” the priest called out.

  “Good evening, Father.”

  She watched him flickering through the bars and holly prickles, as her mother hurried her along on the walk. How did he know her name was Emma? She’d never seen him before in her life.

  His name was the Right Reverend C. S. Marchesini, S. J., from Dublin, and he gave the funeral sermon, Death, where is thy victory? St. Stephen’s was filled almost like Sunday with just a few pews at the back empty. Emma sat between her mother and Mr. Tauler, the Jew who handled the commercial end, right at the front. St. Augustine said you shouldn’t call them Jews if they were baptized, but everyone did anyhow.

  Emma had a black dress too today, but the hem was only tacked because the babies were teething all night and Cousin Bridie got drunk. When her mother came in the car, there was a quarrel. Leonard said he’d be damned if he’d set his foot in that travesty, and her mother said it would come as no surprise to anyone if he was. Cousin Bridie started crying and kept it up all the way to the church.

  Just before the last hymn everyone had to go look inside the coffin. Her mother lifted her up. He was wearing lipstick and smiling, and she thought he looked nice, because usually he didn’t smile. He wasn’t as fat either, and he didn’t have his cane. Unless he was laying on top of it. He used to grab her with his cane, when she wasn’t careful, slipping the crook around her neck. Her mother said that when she was a little girl he did the same thing to her. It was the sort of thing you had to put up with. Emma kissed him on the cheek. It was hard, like a doll’s.

  They rode in a car to the Rock, twenty miles, and when they got there the wind was incredible and the wreath almost blew off. There were fewer people out here, fuel being what it was. The Right Reverend C. S. Marchesini, S. J. The city fathers and the Archbishop. And of course all the relatives—Emma and her mother, Cousin Bridie with Florence, her oldest, and the Almraths from Dublin and the Smiths from Cork. Old Mrs. Almrath was Emma’s great-aunt and sent her a holy card every Christmas that was blessed by the Pope. She had two, a Virgin and a Sacred Heart blessed by Innocent, and one, St. Peter, blessed by Leo. Someday, Mrs. Almrath said, she would get Emma an audience with Pope Leo.

  They put the coffin with Granny in it in the hole and covered it up with dirt. Mr. Smith said, “He was a great man, a great man. They don’t come in that size anymore.” Her mother was holding Cousin Bridie around her waist, and Cousin Bridie was crying. The Anckers weren’t getting any of the money, and that’s what the fight had really been about. Bridie said she didn’t care, but Leonard said he cared. He hadn’t put up with the old bastard’s shit all these years to have his nose rubbed in it now. Her mother said Leonard couldn’t lose a game of draughts with any grace and everyone knew it. She was sorry for Bridie and the babies, but Bridie had made her mistake four years ago, and she’d said so at the time.

  The
last thing they did, they all gathered around the monument to admire it and to find a nice place to put their weather-sealed floral tributes. The monument was six feet tall and rather fat and there were hundreds of capital letters all over it.

  It was dark and Emma was the ghost. She didn’t know if she should run when she was bleeding, but she ran. Down the row of cattleyas, shimmering behind their curtain of air: no one. She glanced up at the holly, where the decorative soldiery of ancient Rome celebrated their eternal triumph. Of course they couldn’t be hiding there. It was an illusion, something to do with light waves, she couldn’t remember. She made a scary noise—Whoo! No one answered. Maybe they were all home safe. She went back, stood within the shadow of the vent, alone. Below and above Hampstead and the sky arranged themselves in geometries of white light. Each little star was a sun, far away, burning. She had seen them depart in cars like sea-shells, though she had not understood then where they were bound. Tau Ceti. All the stars have foreign names, and the planets are Roman gods. Her own name was foreign. So many languages, you’d never learn all of them.