I’ve thought of writing to you many times, but could never decide how to
go about it. I don’t know your real name, to start with, or where you
live. I know you must live somewhere. I wouldn’t
be here otherwise. Live or
have lived – you could be dead, I suppose. But since you’ll never see this letter, it doesn’t make all that much difference.
I miss you.
I miss having someone to talk to.
I’d
like to know all about you: your friends, your house – children?
husband? boyfriend? I suppose that means you’d like to know more about
me, too.
That’s logical.
That makes sense.
It’s hard to know where to begin, so I’ll start with the thing that made me decide to write this letter: the party for His book.
*
My
job was to serve drinks and carry trays of food and (later on) to clean
up the mess. Marta told me what to do. Marta runs the gallery. It’s a
picture gallery, with paintings in it that she sells to people. Not
tonight, though, she said. Tonight was all about the man and his new
book.
“You’ll be wearing your black skirt and your white blouse
and your shoes and stockings, Eva.” (She always calls me Eva – not like
some of the others. Some of her friends. They call me other things. I
hate the things they call me). “You must be very polite. Speak only when
you’re spoken to. Offer drinks to people whose hands are free, and hold
the plates of food out in front of them.”
“Yes, Marta.” I said.
She likes me to call her Marta when we’re by ourselves, but of course in
public I call her Madam. Miss and Master are for children, Sir and
Madam for grownups. I used to make mistakes at first, but never now. Not
since the last time. Marta never whips me, but not everyone is Marta.
Some of them are cruel and not kind.
“No wine for the children – fruit juice or water for them. You remember? Wine is white or red, juice is yellow or clear.”
“Yes, Marta. I remember.”
I’ve done these things before, so many times, but she likes to remind me of the details. Marta likes to get the details right.
“Don’t jump if any of the gentlemen … admire you.”
That
she’s said before, too. She doesn’t think I understand about the men,
but I understand. This isn’t the first job I’ve been assigned to. Not
everyone is Marta.
“You’re a very pretty girl, you know. Some of
the men may want to … well, you know. Just smile, be courteous, move on
with your tray.”
The men get grabby if you let them. After
they’ve drunk some wine they like to touch you with their hands, rub
their bodies up against you if they can get you alone.
You’re a female, too. You must know the things they want to do, want you to do.
Marta is kind and good. Marta tries to defend me. But she can’t always stop them.
*
The
party day came. I wasn’t looking forward to it, exactly. Why should I?
Crowds frighten me, a little. Crowds of people, some of them good, some
of them mean, but somehow the good ones never stop the mean ones from
doing things like tripping you up when you have a full tray of drinks,
or running their hands all over you when you’re trapped in a corner.
Marta’s
not like that, and this was Marta’s party. Marta had asked me to help
as if it was a favour, not a job, as if I could say no. I tried to
imagine saying “No,” but couldn’t. I always agree with her, say what I
think she wants me to say, but sometimes it’s difficult to know exactly
what she wants me to do. That night, for instance.
The guests
started to arrive. We’d spent most of the day putting up posters and
laying out chairs and tables around the walls. There was one big table
for all the books: lots and lots of copies of the same book. It had a
dark cover with red lettering on it, and a picture of a woman behind the
letters. The words said:
THE ARABIAN NIGHTS AND COMPARATIVE LITERATURE
Marta said she’d explain them to me later, but she never did.
Everyone
was nicely dressed. The gentlemen were in suits, the ladies in evening
gowns. It was a hot night, and rather stuffy, so we kept the doors and
windows open to allow the air to flow through. I was kept quite busy
pouring drinks at first. Another clan, a man, was helping with the
lights and sound system. He wore a suit and tie, but I could tell. He
moved a step behind the other men.
*
The speeches started
half an hour later. First a big fat man stood up and told us what a good
friend he was of the man who wrote the book, and what a good book it
was, and how all of us should read it.
I wish I
was
allowed to read it. Marta doesn’t like seeing me with a book. She says
it’s lazy and there’s no good reason for it. What could I possibly hope
to learn that I don’t already know?
Then another man stood up and
said that he’d published the book because he was sure that it was going
to be a great success. There was quite a lot of talking going on during
the second speech, so I couldn’t always follow what he was saying.
Twice he had to call for them to hush. There were some women near the
door, not so well-dressed, who seemed to be arguing with the men by the
door. I could see that Marta was drifting in that direction, too. It was
her party, and she wanted it to run smoothly.
She’d said that to
me so many times during the day, that I understood at last she must be
nervous about the success of her party. I’d never thought a thought like
that before. It made me feel a little strange – not worried for myself
but worried for
her.
Now the man who wrote the book
started to speak. He said he’d read us some parts from the book, and I
wanted to listen to him. I had to keep serving drinks, though. Every
time one of the speeches finished people would cluster round the table
to get more.
The noise by the door was getting quite loud, now.
Suddenly I heard a voice shout: “Wife-killer! You fucking murdered your
wife …” It was a woman who’d sneaked right into the middle of the crowd.
She looked quite young, about my age, but she was dressed in pants and
halter, not a dress. She was waving her arms about, and when the men
tried to grab her and calm her down, she started to kick and struggle.
The
noise by the door suddenly got worse, and a group of other women pushed
by us into the hall. They were all shouting things like “
Woman-hater!” “
Murderer!”
I
didn’t understand what they were saying, or what I should do. One of
them crashed into the drinks table and knocked a lot of glasses and
bottles over, so I stepped back to avoid being cut by broken glass.
Just
then a glass came sailing into the room. I don’t know who threw it. I
suppose one of the people by the door, but it fell right into the middle
of the floor in front of the book table and exploded like a bomb. The
man who wrote the book fell down. I thought I ought to see if he needed
help.
The women had mostly run away or been pushed out the door
by now, and the party had become a lot of small groups of people
shouting at each other. No-one seemed to notice at first that the man
who wrote the book had fallen down. I was the first one there to try and
help him up.
I knew not to try and wipe away the blood around
his face and eyes, because there could be bits of glass in it, and they
might go deeper into the wound. Instead I sat down next to him and asked
him how he was.
“Who’re you?” he asked, very faintly.
“Eva,” I answered.
“What’s happened? Something hit me – my eyes …”
“You
were hit by a glass. Someone threw it into the room,” I said. “Please
keep your eyes closed, sir. You might cause further damage if you try
and open them.”
His eyelids were gummed shut by blood, so I didn’t think he’d be able to, in any case.
“I tried before and … I couldn’t see anything, Eva. D’you think that means anything? D’you think they might be … hurt.”
He reached out his hand, but it wasn’t to touch me the way men do. He wanted to hold my hand. I held his hand.
“Will I be all right?” he asked me.
“I don’t know,” I replied. “I hope so, sir.”
“Don’t call me sir, call me …”
Someone
hit me on the side of the head, very hard, and rolled me to one side.
There was an ambulance crew with stretchers and a bunch of other men
standing behind us. He disappeared underneath them.
All the
others were filing out by this time, dishevelled and worried looking.
Even the other clansman had gone. There was nothing left of the party
but the boxes of books and the P.A.-system.
As they carried the
man away, I heard him call my name. He kept on shouting it as they put
him in the back of the ambulance. Then the doors closed and the sound
abruptly cut out. They jetted away.
Marta was too upset to speak
to me, but I knew she’d want to forget it all as soon as possible. It
took me three hours to sweep and scrub the floors and walls, stack all
the chairs, and gather up all the glasses.
Then I went back upstairs and climbed into my cupboard.
Love
your sister Eva
Inheritor of silence / shall I be? / Black mass below us / above us only / sky ...
Wild geese draw lines / across an amber sky / Fish bask / in frozen rivers / generators die
2 comments:
This is freaky stuff! These are pictures of Eva Braun and her sister ... I dunno how that fits in with the rest of the stuff on this blog, but I don't see how it can all be for real.
wait and see, wait and see -- all will be revealed.
The sister's name was Gretl.
Post a Comment