The Extinction of Snow Read online

  “And does it matter if it exists?” he asks.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Does it really contribute anything to human knowledge? Does it improve the world, or lessen it, or do anything to it?”

  “This or any art?”

  “I suppose I just wonder what knowledge actually is. What is it we want kids to grow up knowing? This is aimed at kids isn’t it?” I shrug. It’s for anyone. He goes on. “I just wonder what message this would give to any kid.”

  “To think and feel.”

  “But that’s not knowledge, not knowing. So what should we insist is the minimum of knowing? What could we extract from the sum of human knowing without catastrophe? Would a world without Plato, Maimonides, Descartres, Spinoza, Bach, Beethoven, the Bible and Talmud, the prophets, the Messianic idea, stuffed heads, shrunken heads, tiny heads, bullet heads, be any the worse off?”

  “It would be impoverished.”

  “Would it? Is this helping to feed the world, solve the problem of Palestine old and new, find a cure for disease, solve the problem of the environment? It smacks to me of laughing at people.”

  His final words are not playful anymore but angry. There is something destructive in his way of seeing. What he doesn’t trust he wants to wipe away.

  “Art teaches about the need for freedom and the consciousness of freedom. It is spiritual resistance.”

  He smiles broadly, and breaks away. He takes a few steps, angry steps to my mind, and then stops. He turns back, points at the hats and says: “I like them, I like the hats.”

  “Yes,” I reply, “I like the hats too.”

  “Does it mean anything?”

  “If you want it to.”

  He smiles triumphantly. “Take away the paraphernalia, the treatise, the supportive documents, the protestors, the champions, and there’s not much left, is there?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “I mean it makes a virtue out of obscurity, relies on obscurity. It’s a con, it really is. I think people deserve something better. This is fad and fashion, not art.”

  I should be outraged and I am, but I don’t want to fight. He is passionate in his rejection, his scepticism. I have to respect that, whilst disliking it. I am used to enthusiasm and complicity. This man is a challenge. His composure has been ruffled. His composure has fallen foul of distrust. It is comical. We have only started. We have the collection of modern art to see. I am outraged and amused. I take him by the hand. I am going to be brave. This is my world. I smile and say: “I think I could put up a good case for macramé, weaving, silk-screen, gouache.”

  “Of course, but they are skills.”

  “I’m teasing.”

  “I know you are. I like it.”

  I am pretty sure he doesn’t like it, but we have found a common ground, debate and discord.

  I lead him to the upper floors where I assume we’ll carry on in much the same vein. He stops at the top of the escalator and gazes at the skyline of Paris. He asks me if I find it beautiful or not. I think I probably do. He seems satisfied. He says that the one thing the French really know how to do well is to be French. I don’t understand, but I’m pretty sure I’ll find it offensive so don’t ask him to explain.

  He is rather more subdued and reflective viewing the permanent collection. He asks me questions of meaning and interpretation. He stops in front of the figure of a small squat statue that periodically strikes a gong. The thing amuses him, maybe even fascinates him. He says: “Do you know what makes this art?” What could I say, the inventiveness, the insistence on making someone re-examine space, line and sound making a totality, the play on looking, correspondences and context.

  “Because someone bought it, someone was willing to pay the asking price. As soon as it has a cost people think it matters. I actually like the little fellow.”

  “In many ways you speak like my husband, but different, more cynical I suppose, more pessimistic. Oh I don’t know. The same but different.”

  “Don’t get me wrong, I love mankind, it’s just that I rather wish I liked it as well.” He smiles broadly, so that I don’t know whether he’s serious or not. His sense of fun is peculiar, I think, personal and peculiar. Even if he isn’t serious I think he means something. Maybe that’s what it is about him. He loves himself but wishes he liked himself. There is a wound of some kind. Of course there is a wound. He told me he was a widower. I haven’t asked. That is remiss of me.

  “Tell me about your wife.”

  “My wife?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she was married to you. You chose to be married. I don’t know. I’m naturally curious.”

  “There’s nothing to say.”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to pry.”

  “I don’t believe you are, I just have nothing to say or explain. I don’t know which bits matter. We were happy, very happy. I know that.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Yes, I’m sorry too. But at least I know we were happy. But apparently I talk like your husband.”

  “No nothing like him.”

  “I stand corrected and don’t mind at all. Why isn’t he with you?”

  What do I say – because my husband has run away, immersed himself in work like the textbook says, leaving me to fend with the strangeness, the intolerable mirrors that reflect nothing but more damned mirrors? But then John knows nothing of this, the terrible stories of his son, the son he believed intolerant, a judgement he can’t forgive himself for making. John just isn’t here.

  “My husband is dead,” I say, my voice hushed, devoid of strength.

  He gives a barely discernible nod. To my horror I am sure a brief smile passes his lips. He suppresses it, ruthless with himself I feel. He steps up to me and embraces me, loosely, as friends might. He says: “I suppose we were bound to discover each other.”

  “Like you, I have nothing to say.”

  “Naturally, I understand that.”

  He throws up his hands, smiles expansively and says: “Come on, I’ve had enough of this, let’s go and eat.”

  Over lunch, croque-monsieur in a nearby brasserie, I tell him that I intend to go to the village, see where the crime took place. He picks me up on the word crime but I stand by it. What else if not a crime? Is that not what the music is indicating, the certainty of falsehood, duplicitous acts, criminality.

  “Are you sure you should go?” he asks.

  “Of course, very sure.”

  “But what good will it do?”

  “To see. Seeing might reveal something.”

  “I think you should think carefully.”

  “There isn’t anything to think about. I’m here. It’s something I have to do.”

  “And if you get hurt?”

  “How do you mean, hurt? Who is there to hurt me?”

  “Joseph, seeing where the accident happened, putting yourself through that. I think Joseph can hurt you.”

  “I told you his name was Joseph?”

  “Of course.”

  “It is very sweet the way you care, but you would do the same, I know you would.”

  “All right, but I’m coming with you.”

  “No. No, thank you. I want to go alone.”

  We say no more. Our conversation suggests parting and I don’t think we’ve worked out the nature of that yet. Once again I am entering something as if it were already a memory, over before I know what has begun. But is it a good, bad or indifferent memory? At least there is still that to learn.

  Perhaps because I am so entranced, he doesn’t object or complain about anything in the Pablo Picasso museum. Maybe it is just the fact that he is in the presence of truly astronomically priced works of art. As an economic proposition it makes sense to him. Over lunch he insisted on wine. Wine at lunch time leaves me floating and remote. I wish I had refused. I want to feel and be concrete, my eye and mind unsullied in the presence of these works. I am immersed in line, colou
r and texture. They are like so many utterances coming together to form a whole. The work of a single artist brought together is so much more correct than single paintings displayed without context and connection. My looking draws patterns into being, possibilities. I don’t want to explain any of this to Bill, don’t want to admit to enthusiasm.

  I walk around quiet and subdued. I want nothing laid bare. The trouble is grief enters every level of being, prising things apart, exposing the soft underbelly that one tries to conceal. The fantastic visions of Picasso’s mind are intruded on with grief and found to be familiar. Every act of creation contains its negation. Creation is fragile. I love it for its fragility: I hate it for the same. Bill looks at my looking, conjuring something. It is inescapable. He smiles, pleased with my pleasure. It is a long time since I saw such an understanding.

  I move away, having acknowledged that smile, move away with a growing sense of self-satisfaction. This is art as revolution. And then just as quickly I am emptied out. I stand forlorn. With just a word Bill could snatch away my pleasure and label it sham. I am grateful that he chooses not to, grateful whereas once I would have stood my ground, but the ground is constantly being pulled away from me. Solid earth is a myth. I must have given up my own struggles. It’s ironic that Joseph should bring me to this. I always thought it funny how children abandon your struggles. You bring them up without God, but they are not anti-God. You bring them up to respect minority opinion, but they don’t campaign. We make something and lose something. I refuse to acknowledge that that is reasonable.

  John was always more optimistic. He said every generation eventually found its voice. It was arrived at through crisis and emergency. He refuted any suggestion that Joseph’s generation was any more materialistic or trivial than any other. They just have more he said, they don’t necessarily want more. I need his wisdom, his belief, his hope. Bill touches my shoulder. I shiver all over, the feeling is one of pleasure and pain. I turn and tell him I’ve had enough, enough of it all, art and artists.

  He suggests tea and a cake. It seems a wonderful idea. He knows a very nice tea-room in the Place Igor Stravinsky. From the tea-room we can see the brightly painted figures around the fountain. In Paris there is no escaping art. The fountain is one fabulous carnival. The tea-room is very English, cosy and quaint. The French are much more sophisticated with tea than the English. I point this out to Bill. He treats me to a speech about the quality of the French. I knew it had to come at some point. He admires the French ability to preserve a concept of being French, unlike the English who are so polite that they give up their identity without a struggle. He insists it is not a matter of race. Anyone can be French, if they are willing to be French.

  I don’t agree with a single word of this. I would snap all of the bonds and barriers that break us up into individuals and nations. But I say nothing. I have no spirit these days. I am an artist in recollection. I struggle to think what Bill finds of interest in me. I concede and give in so easily. There is no fight in me at all. A mummy through and through.

  In the evening we eat in Chartier, a restaurant on the Rue du Faubourg Monmartre. It is my choice. It has been there since 1896. It is a vast old-fashioned hall of a place, where the waiters wear aprons and write your order on the paper table coverings. It is a place of noise and excitement. Whenever I am here with John we always eat in Chartier. I know it is a risk to be here, there is so much invested in it, but I had to come. As soon as I walk in I am flooded and burdened with memory. I can see John. He is in every nuance, his pleasure large and encompassing. It is an error to be here. I am tempted to run, but I don’t have the legs for it. I am weak and dilute.

  Bill orders as he did the night before. He is making this place his. It doesn’t conform to his standard – the food is basic and traditional, though high quality – but it is French. It conforms to his understanding of French identity, so he will accept it on those terms. He smiles a great deal as if there is something celebratory about our being here, celebratory because it is my choice. I am sure he thinks I am drinking in that spirit, whereas I am drinking in pain. When the first bottle is empty – of which I’ve drunk the greater part – he takes out his mobile phone and suggests we ring the girl. He pronounces the intention as if it is part of the celebratory feel, something reckless and spontaneous. I drop my head. I will not have my tragedy misconstrued, made into a party game. He sees my disgust, if not my distress, and apologizes. We have never really broken the habit of apologizing. We eat in relative quiet, surrounded by eternal noise.

  Later, after more wine – I don’t know how many cafés – we hesitate outside my room. We have spoken little all evening. I feel adrift. I can’t imagine the picture I project. I am a spectre. I am betraying John. I have time on my hands. I am bereaved. Who am I kidding? I want to be fucked. I invite him in. He asks me if I’m sure. I hate him for that. He is making me the main actor. I have to tell him that I’m sure. I unlock the door and lead the way. Much to my surprise the room is warm. It won’t be difficult being naked. I take his touch with gratitude and longing. The sex is a struggle, a fight and a victory.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The first thing he says in the morning is that he wants to help me. I find it offensive. It smacks of male arrogance. He evidently fancies himself the saviour and hero of the story: having bedded the widow he’ll now sort out the tedious drama of the mother’s grief. Well that is not his role. He and I are using each other. He doesn’t have a singular desire for Louise Tennant. His desire is habitual. He is an athlete. For him performance is everything. And he’s good. I can’t complain. He could never comprehend that at times John and I have simply touched, fearlessly wanting to give pleasure, not knowing where body and mind ended. Bill rears up on his arms like a flesh eater. I feel great force, power, but no wonder, no surprise. But John has equipped me for this encounter, taught me trust, this compromise. We do it again, proving it was no fluke, not just the wine. He groans loudly and I wonder why, wonder who it is he wants to overhear. I’m sure for him it is another demonstration of his help. If my counsellor were here, an invited guest sitting at the foot of the bed, he would applaud and say there is strong evidence that I am moving on.

  Over breakfast he asks what I want to do today. For a while I don’t answer. My mind rests on so many things at once. Breakfast, the act of eating, takes me to John. He is so fastidious. If he were here he would eat so carefully, letting his crumbs land on the napkin, leaving nothing for the woman to collect. Having so little interest in the hotel guests she wouldn’t even know he had been here. Bill on the other hand is messy, entirely indifferent to the flaking croissant. It is someone else’s concern. If I asked him why he is so lax he would tell me that he isn’t the cleaner. He will believe in a definite division of labour based on income not opportunity. Bill navigates the world he sees; John lays bare its construction. I am used to deconstruction. Except, when it is down to me I prove cowardly. I should have rung the number I was given on day one. I have waited. I have been a tourist. I have found myself in a holiday romance, moving on before the story was ready for it. I have failed my duty.

  In truth, I have considered the call many times, rehearsed it in my head, planned the first sentence, an efficient French allo followed by the bold statement that I am ringing about Joseph Tennant. But from that moment I will have no further control. No amount of rehearsal can see me beyond that basic beginning. What if I am met by complete incomprehension? Would that mean that my trip is over, everything done, the mystery to remain just that? Or what if she is to tell me more damning facts about my dead boy? Can I take more revelations about him? Of course that is why I haven’t yet rung. I can’t face the consequences. I don’t want the story to finish here, but I don’t want to hear any more bad things, and I’m not ready to go home. The latter thought is a terrible admission.

  Is it possible that I have never known my own son? I have always seen him with my features, my blood, my thought, but there is so much more in the
mix, so many noughts and crosses, things ingested, contaminants, flavour enhancers, insecticides, pesticides, altered DNA, my falsely fuelled boy. For all those years of mother and son was he humouring me, treating me as just another person to dupe, a part of the problem and not the solution. Growing up, of course we never think our parents understand us, neither us nor the world we have no choice but to occupy. We always assume it a more complex, difficult world than theirs. And yet we think we have the right to understand them. My father, the flawed pitiful bully, my mother, the self-effacing victim. In the latter years of her dreadful, doomed marriage she discovered reading, at first romances but then nineteenth century classics. As she read she removed herself, immersed in nineteenth century concerns of legitimacy, inheritance, poverty and wealth. In a solitary, lonely world of her own she discovered so many things, but the more she discovered the more she discovered she didn’t have. Any possible joy she felt in her reading was cancelled by joy’s absence. Maybe she entered marriage with a younger man playing the role of romantic heroine, one that she had dreamed of for years but never thought could exist and when she miraculously had it probably regretted that it had come so late.

  Of course all this is speculation. We never confided like that, never had the shared vocabulary to do it. It was all going to be so different with my children – which for reasons unknown turned out to be only one. We were to be friends and trust in each other. As a parent I was always self-conscious of my own thinking. When I worried I had to be worried for him, not me; when I was disappointed I had to be disappointed for him, not me. He only ever had to be happy. That was the mantra. If he had turned round and said that school was not for him would I have condoned his decision knowing that his options would be reduced? And would it have been right at all? Maybe they have the right to be unhappy as well. Besides, who wants to be a friend of their parents? I was his mother. It is a job. A job I still have to do.