Man or Mango? Read online

  For my daughter,

  Emily Firefly Gasquoine

  Of whales in paint;

  in teeth;

  in wood;

  in sheet-iron;

  in stone;

  in mountains;

  in stars.

  Contents

  Preface

  Part One England

  Eloïse

  George

  Eloïse

  George

  Eloïse

  George

  Eloïse

  George

  Eloïse

  George

  Eloïse

  Owen

  Eloïse

  Owen

  Eloïse

  George

  Eloïse

  Howard

  Ed

  Conclusion to Part One

  Part Two Connemara

  Eloïse

  Eloïse’s Grandmother

  Owen

  The Evil Doctor

  The 3 Old Biddies

  Ed

  George

  Eloïse

  George

  Eloïse

  The Doctor’s Wife

  George

  Eloïse

  George

  Venetia

  Eloïse

  Owen

  The 3 Old Biddies

  Owen

  Eloïse

  Ed

  Eloïse

  George

  Eloïse

  George

  Eloïse

  George

  Eloïse

  The Earth

  The Hotel Crowd

  Eloïse

  The Earth

  Appendix A

  Appendix B

  Appendix C

  References

  Preface

  Future historians will condemn us as the people who managed to live right after the Holocaust, who went about our daily lives — eating, sleeping, peeing, pooing as if nothing had happened, as if human affairs were still worth worrying about. As if the end of the world had not already come and gone.

  How do we carry on, stepping over the smashed babies’ heads? Whole herds of children and old men sent naked into the gas chambers, tricked out of their clothes, their families, their lives, told to breathe deeply to purify their lungs, climbing on top of each other in the effort to survive. People, lined up and shot, shoved half-alive and wailing into ditches by those about to die. Families duped into paying their own train fares to Auschwitz only to watch each other suffocate in the cattle trucks.

  All the lives that ended in those camps! It wasn’t just one incident that could become padded by forgetfulness: it was the final one. We bear their shock on our shoulders, unquenched, unappeased. Old women who’d expected to die in their beds, children who’d expected to live. It’s too late now to comfort them, too late. We have to live with that.

  The Nazis didn’t invent annihilation nature exults in it — but they were the best list-makers.

  Valuables handed over to the Nazis as of June 30, 1943:

  25.580 kg.

  copper coins

  53.190 ”

  nickel coins

  97.581 ”

  gold coins

  82.600 ”

  silver chains

  6.640 ”

  chains, gold

  4.326.780 ”

  broken silver

  167.740 ”

  silver coins

  18.490 ”

  iron coins

  20.050 ”

  brass coins

  20.952 ”

  wedding rings — gold

  22.740 ”

  pearls

  11.730 ”

  gold teeth — bridges

  28.200 ”

  powder compacts — silver or other metal

  44.655 ”

  broken gold

  482.900 ”

  silver flatware

  343.100 ”

  cigarette cases — silver and other metal

  20.880 ”

  rings, gold, with stones

  39.917 ”

  brooches, earrings, etc.

  18.02 ”

  rings, silver

  6.166 ”

  pocket watches, various

  3-133 ”

  pocket watches, silver

  3.425 ”

  wrist watches — silver

  1.256 ”

  wrist watches — gold

  2.892 ”

  pocket watches — gold

  68

  cameras

  98

  binoculars

  7

  stamp collections — complete

  5

  travel baskets of loose stamps

  100.550 ”

  3 sacks of rings, jewelry — not genuine

  3-290 ”

  1 box corals

  0.460 ”

  1 case corals

  0.280 ”

  1 case corals

  7-495 ”

  1 suitcase of fountain pens and propelling pencils

  1 suitcase of cigarette lighters

  1 suitcase of pocket knives

  1 trunk of watch-parts

  Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky.

  Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever.

  Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live … Never.

  The world as we know it:

  Earth (core, crust, mantle, magma)

  Dirt, rock, sand, sediment, fossils, petrified forests, bees stuck in amber

  Seas, lakes, lagoons, rivers, rivulets, estuaries, springs, pools, brooks, waterfalls

  Air, ozone, atmosphere, black holes

  Clouds (cumulus, cirrus, stratus, nimbus), smoke, fumes, mists, fogs

  Rain, snow, sleet, hail

  Barometers

  Icicles, icebergs, slush, igloos

  The Titanic

  Thunder, lightning, tornadoes, hurricanes

  Volcanoes, geysers, sulphurous pools of mud

  Bermuda Triangle, Atlantis, Pompeii

  Electricity, radiation, magnetism, mesmerism, gravity

  Plutonium, uranium, hydrogen, oxygen, carbohydrates

  Trees, bushes, grasses, ferns, mosses, algae, seaweeds

  Roses, peonies, camellias, freesias, poppies, gardenias, foxgloves, lilies-of-the-valley, snapdragons, wallflowers

  Rhododendrons

  Pomegranates, persimmons, guavas, mangoes, kumquats, papayas, bananas

  Potassium

  Bugs, slugs, snails, reptiles, amphibians, birds, fish, sharks, spiders, mammals

  Ghosts, leprechauns, angels, fairies, witches, monsters, ogres, ghouls

  Carbon

  Minerals, gases, elements, atoms, particles, laser beams, solar flashes, cosmic rays

  Lava, Lycra

  Gold, copper, silver, coal, iron, steel

  Porcelain, plaster of Paris, papier mâché, glue, gum

  Flotsam and jetsam

  Dugongs and manatees

  Hairdressing salons

  Sun, moon, stars, planets

  And humans, who make it all hell

  The earth should spin a little faster on its axis, fling us from the trees we’d cling to, hurl us into outer space. Nature is cruel but the cruellest seam runs through us: we dream of apocalypse.

  Part One

  England

  3rd January, 1876.— I immersed an ant in water for half an hour; and when she was then to all appearance drowned, I put her on a strip of paper leading from one of my nests to some food. The strip was half an inch wide; and one of my marked ants
belonging to the same nest was passing continually to and fro over it to some food. The immersed ant lay there an hour before she recovered herself; and during this time the marked ant passed by eighteen times without taking the slightest notice of her.

  Eloïse

  A plump and cunning baby hangs in the crook of her sister’s arm. The older girl looks out to sea. She wants to wipe her nose but can’t: in one hand the plump and cunning baby, in the other the bag of worldly possessions. In one hand, a sack of family history (Russian baubles and heirlooms), in the other a living breathing squawking baby. Elsewhere, an itchy nose.

  Fine-looking gentleman steps up. Sees her predicament. Offers to hold something. Dilemma: whether to hand over the compact prescient baby wrapped in her ancient shawl, or the bag, their life-line in the New World. Uncertainly, the girl swings the heavy bag forward. Within seconds, no sign of the bag or the gentleman amid an undulating crowd of untrustworthy folk. There will be no carriage costs for their belongings at Ellis Island — no belongings!

  The boat, the bag and the baby. That baby was my grandmother who hates blacks, Catholics and Arabs, thinks all supermarket chickens have cancer, bakes her own chollah bread, boils up her own yoghurt, does daily eye exercises, brushes her teeth in salt water, stores plastic bags in the washing machine, hides banknotes behind the wallpaper, keeps a glass of water by her bed in which to drown wandering insects at night, and writes excruciating little ditties about giraffes and flamingos on the back of animal postcards. She has reached a horrendous age in the damp of Connemara (they were on the wrong boat) whilst threatening us continually with her imminent demise. Given the choice between Grandma and the bag of worldly possessions … well, I’ve always been curious about that bag.

  Reverberations of the trick played on Eloïse’s great-aunt travelled down the generations: Eloïse’s father suspected theft whenever he lost anything, and Eloïse too thought she was being swindled at every turn. But wasn’t she? Aren’t we all?

  A butterfly, a pig, a pretzel, a windmill, a marble-topped washstand (complete with jug and basin), a potato, a hammer, a poodle, a bell, a boat, a monkey, a book entitled The Spirit of Scotland (Vol. I), a gun, a telephone, a mermaid, a cockerel, a sack of money, a huntsman, a beer barrel, a golf bag, a hand: Eloïse’s father collected bottles that didn’t look like bottles, bottles that look deceptively unlike bottles, bottles that do not seem fully aware themselves that they are bottles. Bottles designed to be mistaken for jestful souvenirs of foreign travel or merely tasteless trinkets. He was forever retreating upstairs to these bottles, to escape his undaughter-like daughter (a quality Eloïse shared with daughters everywhere).

  Eloïse eventually inherited the bottle collection — along with some money, several trunks and suitcases full of sodden family papers (kept in the garage awaiting organization), and the tiny box freezer her father had used for his home-made ice cream, which came in two flavours, coffee or vanilla (strawberry didn’t seem to work). She also inherited his car, a fancy one he’d bought himself as reward for a lifetime’s labour (a lifetime’s despair) before realizing how close he was to death. He was the hero of his own tragic tale.

  Eloïse did not deserve these things but took them, as one does. To her dead father’s fancy car she added a cheap radio and, in consequence of that, a car alarm, ruining the smooth lines of the dashboard: she was a bad daughter. In deliberate defiance of the instruction manuals for both appliances she had the box freezer hoisted up on top of her own fridge, and stocked it full of ethnic dishes from Sainsbury’s so she’d never have to cook again. She spent her father’s money on this exotic fare and a picturesque Tudor cottage in which to eat it (thatched roof, rose bushes, small ancient asparagus bed, defunct outhouse for rakes, coal and flowerpots, Aga, flagstoned floors, inglenook fireplace, beamed ceilings like the inside of a whale’s rib cage, small leaded windows with views over blue hills only partially obliterated by neighbour’s lurid green garage), spent his money on a style of life suited to her situation, age and temperament, spent it all on lifeless lovelessness in fact, half-alive hermitude, spent so much that if she didn’t inherit from somebody else soon she’d have to get a job.

  Her father’s bottles filled every darling black and white niche of her tiny cottage. Some were attractive enough but Eloïse found herself staring more at the ugly ones, garish caricatures of politicians, monks and milkmaids (sales gimmicks for Lourdes water or whatever). Petrified forests of these figurines stood about in resentful groups on window sills or menacingly surrounded the phone. What they all had in common was that their heads came off, or some other bit, to reveal that while they might look like useless household ornaments they were in fact vessels capable of bearing liquid. Under her father’s devoted care they had retained some dignity but now, in undisciplined retirement, lonely and liquidless, they frequently fell to sorry ends when Eloïse reached for a new loo roll or wound the clock.

  Everyone would reinvent the world if they could. Eloïse had tired of watching the multitude commingle, overblown insects each with its own Me. Most people seemed to her worthless (herself included). She had tired of death and disappointment, her own guilt and sorrow, and the distress of others. She had tired of the speed with which things happen. She had tired of boring human busy-ness, human requirements, human bodies. She had tired of streets, buildings, farm produce, ‘romantic bathrooms’. She had tired of the News! She had tired of her species. So she set off to construct for herself the illusion of a less populated world, in which no one knew or cared who or what she was and she in turn was free to care about no one.

  She practised a decorously inconspicuous form of hermitude, designed to attract the least attention, the least need for explanation. She told no one (there are surprisingly few people to whom one can usefully impart the news that one is a hermit). She was polite, but her friendliness lacked all sincerity: most of her time was spent reeling from windows, barely breathing in shadowy corners of her house in order to avoid suspected visitors or merely the innocent glances of passers-by. She even hid from helicopters! Outside, catching sight of someone on the path ahead, she would stand sideways behind trees, very slowly changing her position so as to remain blocked from view as the other person unwittingly strolled past. But, some days, even the possibility of being seen from a distance was too much for her: on those days she could not go out at all.

  For indoor use she had developed a gormless daffy-duck walk to emphasize her distance from humanity. She played Bach’s unaccompanied cello suites on the cello her father had bought her when she was young and supposedly musical, played in the frenzied manner of someone unsure of hitting the right note, played badly but so sadly it often brought a tear to her eye.

  She was losing touch with humanity. To hold on to language she listened gravely to the radio (sometimes falling into the hermit’s trap of thinking celebrities were her friends). One day Paul Theroux was mentioned and she realized she’d forgotten he existed. If they hadn’t said his name on the radio she might have forgotten for ever Paul Theroux! But why think about him? She hid like a lump in her fortress, her underworld, trying to forget everything (for every memory was painful).

  She had had some trouble buying a house. It isn’t easy persuading people to sell their houses to one so strange. They all want them occupied by people similar or maybe even a little superior to themselves, not some twitchy female attesting a mysterious solvency, cash deals, deep desires. Not some loner lady mumbling about the resemblance of the master bedroom to a whale’s insides. Nor did they have any faith in her gardening abilities. People were not comfortable having her fall in love with their houses. After taking a good look at Eloïse the second time she came round, one couple suddenly remembered their daughter’s A levels and decided not to move that year after all. Another pair, to whom Eloïse had offered thousands more than the asking price, said they would have to think about it. What they were thinking about was Eloïse: a classless, raceless, rootless, restless, reckless, feckless, orphan
ed outrage.

  But who is loved?

  George

  Strikes me there aren’t enough burglars to go around. Why haven’t I been burgled yet? How do they manage to make a LIVING, these lousy good-for-nothing English burglars? Every tree its nest, every acorn its squirrel, every bus its drunk, every factory its toxic waste, every block its McDonald’s, every house its burglar! What’s happened to the NATURAL ORDER of things?

  Those gerbils gay men stick up their asses. What does the gerbil THINK? The stink, the moist closeness, wedged tight between those dark enfolding walls … Must think it’s being EATEN.

  But I guess it’s no worse than fucking chickens (and all the other barnyard love objects favored by heterosexual farmers). Somehow my HOMOPHOBIA’S getting mixed up with my ANGLOPHOBIA but for Christsakes, the country’s full of wankers and cross-dressing! Shakespeare started it half his characters are in drag. And then there’s the little matter of the Dark ‘Lady’ of the sonnets and the ‘second-best bed’ which faggoty actor pal got the BEST bed? And all those PUTRID Xmas pantomimes that you have to be born and bred here to be able to STAND: most of them can surely only be of real interest to transsexuals! The favorite British comedians are all female impersonators. Single-sex education has its CONSEQUENCES: all the English seem to think about is sexual stagnation or ambivalence. NOBODY BOTHERS TO FUCK THE WOMEN! (How does the race survive?) A land of safe but wasted women.

  I wish I could help them, those overdressed gals wheeling out their peaches ’n’ cream complexions and rusty flirting techniques. But I came here to sober up, to find peace in a cultured land where, among like-minded folk, I can finish my epic poem on ice hockey. OK, so they’ve never heard of ice hockey. I’D never heard of sticking gerbils up your ass before I came here — but I’d support anybody trying to write a poem about it.

  The English are not supportive, they’re reserved. This has nothing to do with some kind of endearing and comical shyness. It’s a brutal and senseless DETACHMENT FROM THE WORLD. They’re simply unwilling to fully endorse anything, unwilling to ENJOY anything. They’d rather DIE than please you. They never even SMILE. Try speaking to one of ’em at a bus stop they act as if you ought to pay them a GUINEA A WORD! ‘This bugger thinks we’re gonna talk to him for free? Thinks he has a right to a little human contact, does he? Who does he think he is, the Queen?’