Читать книгу Virginia Woolf in Manhattan - Maggie Gee - Страница 21

14

ANGELA

Zoos are always remarkably expensive. I don’t want to sound mean-spirited, but it didn’t seem to have occurred to Virginia that someone was having to pay for it: $40 is not nothing!

I’m not asking for much, just a ‘thank you’.

VIRGINIA

The zoo crouched close to Fifth Avenue. A short walk across a burst of green. The architecture was … suburban. Some of those people were staring at me.

It was frightening to see how much things cost. I pretended not to notice her paying. I had no money, no money at all.

This expensive zoo was small and old. This couldn’t be the future, surely? London Zoo was so much larger. Those iron cages looked Victorian. Again I thought ‘It’s just a dream.’

But the American voices were so loud and real, and the light was sharp in the woman’s wrinkles. Her mouth was tight as she searched for the dollars. There were fat children eating coloured ice creams. One of them looked at me and giggled.

I liked to know what I earned, as a writer. But when we went out together, Leonard paid.

ANGELA

‘Poor polar bear. So huge and yellow. It looks sort of … left behind. I can’t help feeling sorry for it.’

VIRGINIA

The woman was jumping to conclusions.

‘It would devour you. One swipe of its paw. Pif, paf! You would be gone.’

ANGELA

Thank you.

VIRGINIA

A second later, it had slipped into its pond, and an African keeper said ‘Hurry downstairs,’ where we found a wide window under the water, and almost before we had got used to the dark and the bright blue oblong of glass beside us, a massive turbine of white and yellow erupted against the stillness, and two pink paw-pads pressed at the window before the bear forged back up to the surface – immense power, effortless – a swirl of bright bubbles like a cape of minnows. I felt to my marrow the thrill of life. I was there, I saw it. I was alive.

And yet, that wall of glass between us. A line where two universes collide. The bear was totally indifferent to us.

Of course, I wanted to tell Leonard.

ANGELA

She was enjoying herself, I know. Her eyes brightened. She was walking fast.

We loved the underground viewing window for the penguins! I had only ever seen them above ground. Hobbity creatures with a comic waddle. Swimming, they were unbelievably swift – straight as an arrow, aerodynamic. So fast that when they shot up to the surface they took off out of the water like birds!

The first time it happened Virginia hooted, we stood there together and laughed with pleasure – a line of tiny planes taking off, kids shooting off the end of a slide. I thought, Gerda would love the penguins. And as I thought it, my iPhone pinged.

Guilt. Of course it would be Gerda. The email was short and to the point. ‘What are you DOING? I miss you, Fish Face.’

Darling Gerda. I emailed back, ‘Doing my duty. Are you in a lesson?’ I was going to add more, I really was, but when I looked up, Virginia was gone.

I found her outside in the late sunlight, watching a rocky island in a lake where two blond monkeys were pressed together. Delicate ears, bright pink faces. One moment wrestling, the next caressing. Maybe they were lovers, or brother and sister, or both, but they lived in a world of two.

Virginia didn’t acknowledge my presence. She watched the monkeys, far away.

VIRGINIA (still not looking at Angela)

‘I blame myself. I abandoned him. I thought he might work better without me.’

ANGELA (too quickly, wanting to help)

‘Leonard did work. Don’t torment yourself.’

One monkey leaped on the other’s back, mounting it, briefly, then stroked or cuffed the underling’s head. For a while they nuzzled and licked each other. All the time Virginia was watching them. Two strands of grey hair whipped across her face, blowing across her wounded mouth.

I felt protective, but her eyes flashed back at me.

VIRGINIA

‘What do you mean? What do you know? Why are you calling my husband “Leonard”?’

(The woman dares to know more than me, she knows everything about my husband –

I’m a wicked woman. I left him, left him)

ANGELA

‘I know – Mr Woolf – wrote many books. And – people loved him.’

VIRGINIA (sighing)

‘So he did go on. He did his work. I wanted nothing more than that.’

(And yet, that furious stab of hurt.)

This stupid, unfamiliar place. The poor monkeys, on their barren island. Yet they are happy because they are two. Grooming each other, chattering, tickling, playing at tag – so once did we.

If only you were here, my love. We could walk out and face them arm in arm. He would take my hand, if we were alone, and we would walk under the elms together. Somewhere, perhaps, we are walking still. If I had woken before he died, I know I could have found him again, just a little older, a few years sadder …

I will not deign to ask her about him, this yellow-haired, vulgar-looking, fat-breasted woman with her harlot’s painted lips and eyes. How did I get trapped with her? She has nothing to do with me!

Where are my friends, who understand? Who would have helped him after I …

But they are gone, if he is gone.

And oh, Vanessa. Lytton. Vita. Even poor old Ethel, and Clive. Dear familiar names and faces. Must I be thrown among common strangers?

Another, separate, point of pain. For oh my Angelica – beloved niece, fairy child with a mouth like your mother’s – it is not bearable if you are dead.

When I left her she wasn’t even a woman. Pixerina, with her fairy kisses. Angelica. Are you gone, my dear? Just for a moment she’s here beside me, sunlight on her cap of pale hair, blue eyes wide and far away, she could never sit still, she’s tugging my hand.

Child, did it go well for you?

The pain again: that her life should end. That girl in white, dancing in the garden. Running to me in my chair for a hug. Her arms round my neck like a wreath of pale flowers. We threw sugar lumps down for the big-rumped horses from my balcony in Gordon Square …

No, every fibre of my soul refuses.

‘Why did I come back? Couldn’t they leave me be? I want … I want … I want to go home – ’

ANGELA

‘Let’s just see the sea lions. Then, I promise, I’ll get you home.’

I only meant ‘to our hotel’. But as I said it I remembered my promise, my foolish promise in the Berg Collection. The thing I had whispered under my breath, and the next moment, she was there. ‘Virginia, I’ll take you home …’

Was that the hook that had hauled her up? Had I just wanted to feast on her?

‘Please come, honestly, you’ll like the seals.’

She didn’t say ‘Yes’, but her shoulders sagged and the wild look vanished from her eyes. She walked beside me to the sea lions’ island, a barren rock in the middle of water. Close up it was entirely artificial, a man-made hill of fake golden-brown sandstone, built with a spiral track to the top.

Did they keep two different species of sea lion together? We saw one massive yellow-gold gleaming creature, a bit like a legless elephant. It sat on the shore, unable to move. Then there were two slick dark ones – no three slick dark ones – streaking like submarines through the water, slim and playful, black princes of speed. The light dripped off them as they climbed from the water, muscular flippers scything the sand.

We watched, Virginia and I, as the sun began to leave the hill. We watched the seals climb after it. Soon the black princes had outpaced the band of shadow that seeped up to eat the sunlight, lolloping up like three black rubber brackets, squeezing, unsqueezing, unstoppable. Now they were performing yoga twists to a clapping human audience, necks swinging round like oiled silk, heads pointing back to the dark behind them. I was excited. I joined in the clapping! Then I looked at Virginia, my own neck turning a little stiffly – I’d been neglecting my personal training – and saw her face was strained and grey. I stretched my hand out without thinking, I’m almost sure I didn’t actually touch her –

VIRGINIA

‘Get away from me! You’ve – kidnapped me.’

ANGELA

American heads stopped watching the seals and turned to stare. She had really shouted. Some of the faces looked accusing. Instantly I too got angry. ‘It’s not my fault. You just – appeared. You just showed up in the Berg Collection. It’s actually a restricted library. You didn’t even have a ticket.’

Absurd of me, of course, to reproach her for intruding in a library that’s mostly famous for having her books. Hers and Nabokov’s.

‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I didn’t mean …’

Then something quite surprising happened, as if she realised I was all she had.

‘I too am sorry. I should not have shouted.’

There was a pause. We both breathed deeply. The sea lion acrobats were still performing, tireless, youthful, competitive.

VIRGINIA

‘The library – yes, I remember that. But there’s something before. Long years of – something. Everything’s dark. I can’t focus.

‘And suddenly, you’re always here. I do not mean to be ungrateful. But I never knew you, did I, before?’

ANGELA

Now Virginia’s voice was low, and her lips (so beautiful, that sculpted curve, and she, unlike me, was not wearing lipstick) were almost back to their normal colour. The look she turned on me was beseeching. Yet she was saying she didn’t trust me.

‘I’m just a reader. I was in the library. Your manuscripts are there, for people to study. I was reading you, or trying to – ’ (when I said I was reading her, Virginia looked up) – ‘that library doesn’t make it easy. I wanted to read you so very badly – ’

VIRGINIA

‘People still read me? You still read me?’

ANGELA

‘And then you just materialised. And the librarians threw you out.’

It sounded brutal. She looked offended. I changed the subject, hastily. Perhaps it was time to talk about me. An enormous man in an anorak had planted himself in front of me, blocking my view with his wide grey back, his fat pink neck, carroty curls.

‘I’m not just a reader, in fact. I’m a writer.’

Was Virginia listening?

The man walked backwards to take a photo, planting his elbow in my stomach. ‘Excuse me, ma’am.’ His face was unlined, genial.

VIRGINIA

‘People still read me in the twenty-first century?’

ANGELA

‘I was just saying, I write too. Of course, you won’t have heard of me …

‘Never mind. I read you, yes. You ought to know that everyone reads you.’

VIRGINIA (not listening, turning away)

‘My last book was a failure, a disaster.’ Leonard denied it but I saw it in his eyes. I knew that my worst fears were true –

ANGELA

‘Between the Acts. Of course I’ve read it. Generally considered a masterpiece.’

And her eyes brightened. Such beautiful eyes. The afternoon sun intensified the colour: grey and green, green and gold –

VIRGINIA

‘Between the Acts? A masterpiece? How strange. So – it was published.’

(I loved that book when it was just an essence, a wisp of pale silk, frost on the downs, their long spines reddened by the sunset. A pageant … something as light as its name, Poyntz Hall. I wanted to stipple it like Seurat, make it short & musical, & the world could be distilled in the gaps, aerations between the bright points of the brush-strokes.

But then it grew long & dragged at my heart & I knew the execution couldn’t match the first image. And then the clawing fear began. And darkness ate in around the edges. Then they started to lie to me, telling me it was good enough to publish – I knew it wasn’t. And so did Leonard. Although he denied it, his face declared it

the strain puckering his dear deep lines

How often I gave poor Leonard worry.

– Is it possible that we were all wrong?

‘Did you say they are calling it a masterpiece?’

ANGELA

‘Some people say it’s your best book. I think it brings all your themes together.’

For the first time, then, she looked at me. It was a long, assessing stare.

She looked at me. I looked at her. I dared to meet those startling eyes, their shocking hunger, their intelligence. Around us other beings surged. Families wailing like cats mating: hordes of busy animals. But we were human. We saw each other.

With one accord, we looked away.

I fixed my gaze on the narrowing band of sunlight on the sea lions’ island. While we were distracted, everything had changed. Unnoticed, the great pale sea lion elder had heaved its vast yellow bulk up the mountain, pushed past the black balletic young and surged on rolls of fat and muscle up to sunbathe on the very summit. Old, solid, surprisingly strong. Late sunlight gilded her.

VIRGINIA

‘Of course I don’t care at all about the critics.’

ANGELA

‘Of course.’

VIRGINIA

‘I never gave a fig for their opinions.’

ANGELA

‘No.’

VIRGINIA

‘What kind of thing exactly do they say?’

ANGELA

I tried to give her what she wanted. ‘That you were trying to link art to the people – ’ But a little devil made me go on. ‘Whereas Bloomsbury became a byword for, you know, snobbery. Art for art’s sake, and all that stuff.’

VIRGINIA

‘Snobbery? Bloomsbury? We are socialists! Leonard is always out canvassing!’

ANGELA

‘Sorry, sorry. Yes, I know. Your husband was remarkable.’

I watched that past tense give her pause. Her long arms wrapped around her body, her head went down, then up again, her eyes burned, she was formidable.

VIRGINIA

‘Did you hear me? We were socialists. Anti-imperialists through and through!’

ANGELA

I wouldn’t let her hector me.

‘Perhaps that message didn’t reach your public.’

VIRGINIA

‘The public can be ridiculous …’ (Brightening) ‘But I have a public? – Still? – Now?’

ANGELA

‘You do.’

There was a pause. Something shifted between us. For another brief moment, we looked at each other. Sunlight, or hope, gave her skin a faint flush. Yes, she was very beautiful. (But Edward called me beautiful, too. I was still young, and she was old.)

Her brows lifted. A secret smile.

VIRGINIA

And in that moment, life poured through me. My new ‘now’. My American now! The particular. That apricot sunlight. It was just on the point of leaving the island, intensifying as it yielded to night. The vault of the sky was indigo violet, making love with the apricot. The animals straining up into it.

And I am here. Life has come back.

Indigo, violet, the pigeons circling, each vane of their wing-tips sharp on the glow.

The electric shock of life thrilled me, shivering in an instant across the tiny stalks of hair on my skin, the back of my neck, my hidden places. I was alive. And I had a public.

ANGELA

A low whoosh, then another, and another. And finally something like a thwack-whoomp. All four sea lions were back in the water.

VIRGINIA

‘Let’s go back out on the streets and walk. You say we’re in America?’

ANGELA

‘New York. But it will soon be dark.’

VIRGINIA

‘Of all places. I never went there! Never went to America. I never cared to, I loved Europe …’

I did want to go. I was afraid. Part of me wanted to stay in my room, never going out, writing, writing. Another part longed to see the world. I loved our car. I was safe inside. Leonard, me, and Mitz Marmoset, and Europe floating past outside the window …

We knew Europe, all our friends went, but America seemed a world away. I imagined the cars in endless ribbons, dozens abreast, streaming into the future, indifferent to me, a vast indifference … Terrifying. I would not exist.

In this American now, was I a different person? The night was coming, but I wasn’t afraid.

On the other hand, I had no luggage. What did they wear, these new … New Yorkers?

‘I have no clothes. Just these old rags. More to the point, I have no money – ’

ANGELA

‘Nothing at all in your pockets?’ (I had seen it, clearly, a bulge in her pockets.) ‘Alas, I’m not exactly rich.’

VIRGINIA

‘ – and nowhere to live. Where will I live?’

After all, one had to live somewhere.

Just for a moment, I felt simple pleasure. Somewhere to live. A new place. The fun I had had at Monk’s House. Finding the perfect bentwood chair, glimpsed through the window of an antique shop. Yes, I would have to find somewhere to live!

But is anyone allowed those pleasures twice? Would they suffer me to … begin again? Whichever hell-hounds had let me go.

Maybe I was just released for the day.

ANGELA

‘As I said, I’m not rich. Not rich rich. But maybe I can tide you over.’

Virginia was staring at the gravel. We followed the thinning crowd through the gate. The sun had slipped behind the towers that ringed the park like gate keepers. Would it be fun to walk through the park?

Very soon we were just two shadows, silent companions in a world of shades. Every now and then she stepped off the path to touch a plane tree. Her fingertips lingered, digging her nails into the bark. Once, I noticed she wasn’t there and saw her clutching the ordinary black railings, clinging on as if she’d never let go. She came back making small contented noises, tilted forward, smiling and nodding. But not at me. She was on her own.

I thought, if only the others knew – the tired humans walking home, the writers, students, advertising people, eyes on the path, shoulders hunched – that this tall shadow is Virginia Woolf. And she’s with me! I breathed in deep.

We were only five minutes from the gate when she suddenly said ‘I’m tired.’ She stopped. A light through leaves made her face cavernous. She was surely paler than before. She tried to say some more, but couldn’t. I found a seat. It felt cold to the hand, the wooden slats uncomfortable. She sank down with a muffled groan.

‘Virginia, are you all right?’

But she didn’t answer. She gathered herself, as if she was bringing herself back from the darkness, pulling her shoulders back like a soldier. With the faintest sigh, she was on her feet. And in a second, she’d set off again.

‘Virginia, you’re going the wrong way.’

Back on Fifth Avenue, the headlights had come on and the shop windows glowed like stained glass. Every so often she stopped and gazed. Those features, indescribably familiar, suddenly grown intimate. In lit close-up, astonished, pleased. How could it be – it couldn’t be – that face shone out from my own blue coat, those white hands gestured from its wide blue sleeves? Above my collar, the mauve veins of her temples. I thought my eyes would eat her up.

(They hypnotise us, those images. Woolf, Auden, Nabokov. Monumental, moonlit, deaf. Now she had come to live amongst us.)

VIRGINIA

‘So much electricity.’ We had paused in a wash of lemon light from a window where giant pastel easter eggs circled the air. ‘It’s dazzling. My eyes are tired. This city must be very expensive …’

ANGELA

After all, she did write A Room of One’s Own. She knew you couldn’t live without money.

VIRGINIA

‘Every so often, I’m tired to death.’

ANGELA

‘Virginia, we’re nearly home.’