My mother had had a billy goat brought over to service Nutmeg, and this had caused no end of trouble with my father. Something odd occurred with my mother when it came to her goats: a kind of maternal instinct would gush from deep within her, making her capable of standing up to my father. Whenever that happened, he always looked like a teacher outdone by their student. Mouth open, he vainly sought a comeback. He knew that every passing second depleted his authority a little more, like a wrecking ball taken to a building blighted by dry rot. His open mouth would twist a little, producing a kind of growl that smelled like a skunk’s burrow. At that moment, my mother would realize she had won. She would pay for it later, but for now that little victory was hers, although she didn’t appear to derive any particular joy from it, and simply returned to her amoebal activities.
* * *
Nutmeg was in kid and Sam and I were overexcited by the imminent birth. We watched for the slightest sign announcing the new kids’ arrival. He giggled as I explained how the little ones would be born:
“They will come out of her privates. It’ll look like she’s pooping, but instead of poop, two baby goats will come out.”
“But how did they get into her tummy?”
“They didn’t, she made them with the billy goat. They were very much in love.”
“But he was here for less than a day, they didn’t even know each other, they couldn’t have been in love.”
“Oh yes they could. It’s called love at first sight.”
-
IF YOU CROSSED Little Gallows Wood then went through the field without being seen by the farmer, you got to the big slope of yellow sand. And if you went down it, hanging onto plant roots, you entered the labyrinth of broken cars. There, too, you had to make sure you weren’t seen.
It was a vast metal boneyard, and I really liked the place. As I stroked the cars’ shells, I would imagine them as a heap of creatures, motionless yet sentient. Sometimes I talked to them, especially the new ones. I told myself they must need reassuring. Sam would help me. The pair of us could spend whole afternoons talking to the cars. Some had been there a long time, so we got to know them well. There were those that were virtually unmarked, and others that were slightly damaged. And then there were those that were totally wrecked, hood ripped open, body shredded, as if chewed up by some huge dog.
My favorite was the green car devoid of both its roof and its seats. It looked as though it had been scraped clean at hood level, like foam on a glass of beer. I wondered what could have sliced it like that. Sam liked the “Boom-a-roller,” as he called it. We would imagine that this funny old Boom-a-roller had been put into a giant washing machine, but without water. It was dented all over. Sam and I would get inside and pretend we were in the washing machine along with the car. I would take the wheel and cry “Boom-a-roller! Boom-a-roller! Boom-a-roller!” while bouncing up and down on the seat to make the car shake. And Sam’s magic laughter would climb all the way to the top of the slope of yellow sand. At which point we knew we had to skedaddle because if the owner heard us, it wouldn’t be long before he turned up. The labyrinth was his domain and he didn’t like anyone coming to play there. The older kids in the Demo had told us he set wolf traps to catch children playing close to his cars. So we always looked carefully where we put our feet.
Whenever the owner heard us, he would arrive yelling “What’s all this?” and we would have to scram before we got caught, climbing back up the slope, hanging onto the roots, fighting the fear that made breathing difficult, and run a long, long way from the shouts of “What’s all this?” Being fat and heavy, the guy couldn’t climb very far up the wall of sand.
One day, Sam grabbed hold of a too-slender root, and it broke. He fell straight down, landing a few inches from the huge hands that were trying to catch him. He leapt like a cat, I caught him by his sleeve, and we barely made it out of there. Once up top, we laughed in fright. We went to see Monica beneath the ivy to tell her about it. She laughed too, but warned us not to have any hassle with him. She said it just like that, in her voice that sounded like an old car horn, and with her beachy scent: “You know, kiddies, there are people you shouldn’t approach. You’ll learn that. There are people who’ll darken your skies, who’ll steal your joy, who’ll sit on your shoulders to stop you flying free. He is one such person. Stay well away from people like that.” I giggled, imagining the owner of the wrecking yard sitting on Sam’s shoulders. Then we left for the Demo because we heard the music—Tchaikovsky’s “Flower Waltz”—coming from the ice-cream man’s truck, bang on time, as he was every evening. We went to ask our father for some money.
Sam always had two scoops, vanilla and strawberry. I chose chocolate and stracciatella, with whipped cream, even though whipped cream was forbidden: my father didn’t approve, I don’t know why. So I quickly gulped it down before we went home. It was a secret I shared with my little brother and the nice man in the truck. He was very old; he was bald, tall, and slender; and he wore a brown velvet suit. He would always tell us, in his gravelly voice and with a gleam in his eyes, “Eat it fast before it melts, kiddos, because it’s sunny and windy, and there’s nothing worse for ice cream.”
-
ONE SUMMER EVENING, my mother had made peaches stuffed with tuna, which we ate on the blue stone terrace overlooking the garden. My father had already left the table to settle down in front of the TV with his bottle of Glenfiddich. He disliked spending time with us. I think nobody in our family liked gathering for the evening meal, but my father imposed this ritual upon us, as much as he imposed it upon himself. Because that’s how things were. A family takes its meals together, whether they enjoy it or not. That’s what we saw on TV. Except that people seemed happy on TV, particularly in the commercials. They chatted, they laughed. They were beautiful and loved each other. Family time was sold as a reward. Along with Ferrero Rocher, it was supposed to be the treat you were entitled to after long hours working in the office or at school. Our own family meals seemed more like a punishment, a big glass of piss we had to drink daily. Each evening proceeded according to a ritual that bordered on the sacred. My father would watch the TV news, explaining each subject to my mother—on the principle that she was incapable of comprehending the slightest bit of information without his enlightenment. The TV news was important to my father. Commenting on the news gave him the impression of having a role to play in it. As if the world depended upon his reflections in order to progress in the proper manner. When the end credits boomed out, my mother would yell: “Dinner’s ready!” My father would leave the TV on, and everyone would sit down to eat in silence. When he got up to return to his couch, we felt something like a liberation. That evening, too, like all the others.
Sam and I had left the table to go play in the garden. The sun caressed the fading day with a light that bore the sweet scent of caramelized honey. In the hallway, my mother was cleaning Coco’s cage. I had tried to tell my mother that it was cruel keeping a parakeet in a cage. Especially as the garden was full of them—which was a problem, in fact, because the parakeets ate the food of the little birds such as the sparrows and chickadees; not to mention our cherries, which they devoured before they had time to ripen on the tree. The reason we had parakeets around was that there had once been a small zoo several miles from the Demo. But it went bust when an amusement park opened nearby and drew all its visitors away. Most of the animals were sold to other zoos, but nobody gave a damn about the parakeets, and transporting them would have cost too much. So the director simply opened their cage. Perhaps he thought they’d die of cold. But they didn’t. On the contrary, they adapted, built nests, and had young. They always moved as a group, forming big green clouds that flew across the sky. It was pretty. Noisy but pretty.
I didn’t understand why that poor Coco had to stay in a cage and watch the others having fun without her. My mother said that it wasn’t the same, that she’d come from a store, that she wasn’t used to it. But still.
So my mother was cleaning Coco’s cage. It was “Flower Waltz” and ice-cream time. The truck had stopped alongside our house, by the hedge. The old ice-cream man