He fingered blindly in the string box because the drawer can never be opened all the way.
‘A little cookie, a nice piece of honey cake, there’s a whole box of macaroons?’
Ah! bright red.
The welts dance all over Lisa’s imaginary body.
‘Strawberries,’ his mother called like a good-bye.
There is a way children enter garages, barns, attics, the same way they enter great halls and family chapels. Garages, barns and attics are always older than the buildings to which they are attached. They have the dark reverent air of immense kitchen drawers. They are friendly museums.
It was dark inside, smelled of oil and last year’s leaves which splintered as they moved. Bits of metal, the edges of shovels and cans glimmered damply.
‘You’re the American,’ said Krantz.
‘No, I’m not,’ said Lisa.
‘You’re the American,’ said Breavman. ‘Two against one.’
The ack-ack of Breavman and Krantz was very heavy. Lisa came on a daring manoeuvre across the darkness, arms outstretched.
‘Eheheheheheheh,’ stuttered her machine guns.
She’s hit.
She went into a spectacular nose dive, bailed out at the last moment. Swaying from one foot to another she floated down the sky, looking below, knowing her number was up.
She’s a perfect dancer, Breavman thought.
Lisa watched the Krauts coming.
‘Achtung. Heil Hitler! You are a prisoner of the Third Reich.’
‘I swallowed the plans.’
‘Vee haf methods.’
She is led to lie face down on the cot.
‘Just on the bum.’
Geez, they’re white, they’re solid white.
Her buttocks were whipped painlessly with red string.
‘Turn over,’ Breavman commanded.
‘The rule was: only on the bum,’ Lisa protested.
‘That was last time,’ argued Krantz the legalist.
She had to take off her top, too, and the cot disappeared from under her and she floated in the autumnal gloom of the garage, two feet above the stone floor.
Oh my, my, my.
Breavman didn’t take his turn whipping. There were white flowers growing out of all her pores.
‘What’s the matter with him? I’m getting dressed.’
‘The Third Reich will not tolerate insubordination,’ said Krantz.
‘Should we hold her?’ said Breavman.
‘She’ll make a lot of noise,’ said Krantz.
Now outside of the game, she made them turn while she put on her dress. The sunlight she let in while leaving turned the garage into a garage. They sat in silence, the red whip lost.
‘Let’s go, Breavman.’
‘She’s perfect, isn’t she, Krantz?’
‘What’s so perfect about her?’
‘You saw her. She’s perfect.’
‘So long, Breavman.’
Breavman followed him out of the yard.
‘She’s perfect, Krantz, didn’t you see?’
Krantz plugged his ears with his forefingers. They passed Bertha’s Tree. Krantz began to run.
‘She was really perfect, you have to admit it, Krantz.’
Krantz was faster.
One of Breavman’s early sins was to sneak a look at the gun. His father kept it in a night-table between his and his wife’s bed.
It was a huge .38 in a thick leather case. Name, rank and regiment engraved on the barrel. Lethal, angular, precise, it smouldered in the dark drawer with dangerous potential. The metal was always cold.
The sound of the machinery when Breavman pulled the hammer back was the marvellous sound of all murderous scientific achievement. Click! like the smacking of cogwheel lips.
The little blunt bullets took the scratch of a thumbnail.
If there were Germans coming down the street…
When his father married he swore to kill any man who ever made advances towards his wife. His mother told the story as a joke. Breavman believed the words. He had a vision of a corpse-heap of all the men who had ever smiled at her.
His father had an expensive heart doctor named Farley. He was around so much that they might have called him Uncle if they had been that sort of family. While his father was gasping under the oxygen-tent in the Royal Victoria, Doctor Farley kissed his mother in the hallway of their house. It was a gentle kiss to console an unhappy woman, between two people who had known each other through many crises.
Breavman wondered whether or not he’d better get the gun and finish him off.
Then who’d repair his father?
Not long ago Breavman watched his mother read the Star. She put down the paper and a Chekhovian smile of lost orchards softened her face. She had just read Farley’s obituary notice.
‘Such a handsome man.’ She seemed to be thinking of sad Joan Crawford movies. ‘He wanted me to marry him.’
‘Before or after my father died?’
‘Don’t be so foolish.’
His father was a tidy man, upturned his wife’s sewing basket when he thought it was getting messy, raged when his family’s slippers were not carefully lined under respective beds.
He was a fat man who laughed easily with everybody but his brothers.
He was so fat and his brothers were tall and thin and it wasn’t fair, it wasn’t fair, why should the fat one die, didn’t he have enough being fat and breathless, why not one of the handsome ones?
The gun proved he was once a warrior.
His brother’s pictures were in the papers in connection with the war effort. He gave his son his first book, The Romance of the King’s Army, a thick volume praising British regiments.
K-K-K-Katy, he sang when he could.
What he really loved was machinery. He would go miles to see a machine which cut a pipe this way instead of that. His family thought him a fool. He lent money to his friends and employees without question. He was given poetry books for his bar mitzvah. Breavman has the leather books now and startles at each uncut page.
‘And read these, too, Lawrence.’
How To Tell BirdsHow To Tell TreesHow To Tell InsectsHow To Tell Stones
He looked at his father in the crisp, white bed, always neat, still smelling of Vitalis. There was something sour inside the softening body, some enemy, some limpness of the heart.
He tore the books as his father weakened.