Alva and Irva (3 page)

The stamps on this occasion were of various beetles.
¹
It was the least pleasant set of stamps mother had ever seen. When she first viewed the sheets of stamps, each holding a small beetle within perforated barriers, fifty beetles to a page, it did not take much imagination to see these beetles coming to life and scuttling and pattering beyond their perforated borders, away from the heavy stamp book in which they were all collected, infiltrating every inch of Mother’s counter and even wandering, tickling in an uncomfortable way, onto Mother’s person and going for an afternoon stroll beneath her clothes, about her skin. She did not like these beetles, she was happy when someone bought a beetle and she could pick up her official rubber stamp and with great energy crush it in an inky and official death.

And yet this collection of beetle stamps, Mother noticed, was loved by Father. He practically inhaled them. And once he had finally finished introducing himself to this new set, he very sincerely thanked Mother and even asked if he could come again. She agreed. And from that day onwards he would always come to Mother at counter twelve as soon as his rounds were finished. At first of course he had to crouch by her, for there was supposed to be only one person behind each counter and accordingly only one seat was provided. After a week of aching limbs father brought a wooden stool with him which ever after lived side by side with Mother’s plastic chair in the twelfth counter booth. Perhaps that plastic chair and that wooden stool were slowly falling in love too—they seemed somehow to belong to each other. Perhaps this abandoned child and this half-orphan were instinctively drawn together by a profound yearning for absent people. Perhaps each immediately felt the want that surrounded the other, and instantly closed ranks in desperation for a whole. But Mother would not tolerate Father just sitting beside her all day, silent and smiling. She offered father various tasks. Would he, for example, frank the stamps with her official rubber stamp or take the envelopes over to
the franking machine? ‘No, no,’ he said nervously, ‘I couldn’t do that.’ Would he, for example, tear out the stamps for Mother to give to the customers? ‘No, no,’ he said beginning to sweat, ‘I wouldn’t do that.’ Would he then be prepared to lick the stamps and stick them onto the envelopes for her? ‘Yes,’ he said at last, after much hesitation, ‘I could certainly have a go at that.’ And that was what he did, Father licked all Mother’s stamps for her (generally, the Entrallan Post Office Lick, as it was known to the employees, did not involve the act of licking at all but consisted solely of passing the stamp over a damp sponge, thus ensuring that anything as unpleasantly personal as a tongue remained hidden at all times). And as Father’s long pink tongue exposed itself in front of Mother, in front of the customers, Father imagined himself licking a tiny segment of Mother’s skin, approximately one and a half centimetres by one centimetre, and Mother too imagined herself being licked. Minute by minute she would imagine different one-and-a-half-centimetres-by-one-centimetre portions of herself being licked by Father’s large and, to her, irresistible tongue. At the end of the day she would believe that Father had licked every centimetre of skin on her sixteen-year-old body.

U
NHAPPY
G
RANDFATHER
, the postmaster, began to see his plans take on grotesque shapes. Orphan Linas, that motherless, fatherless, rootless man, as postmaster? Weak and dreamy orphan Linas as his daughter’s husband? Never! Generally he could combat his daughter’s inappropriate infatuation by calling her away from the post office’s granite steps where he would find her every evening sitting with Orphan Linas. But one night, some four months after Mother and Father had met, grandfather was unable to call mother away because he was in the City Hall
²
, at the official annual meeting for principal workers of the post offices throughout our region.

S
O
NOW
I
THINK
again of the bell tower and the baptistry.

W
HEN
G
RANDFATHER
left the City Hall late that night, drunk and red-faced, he looked across Napoleon Street to the Central Post Office and saw, lying down, in the shadows, on the top step, two people in post office uniforms. His immediate reaction may have been to leave them alone in their happiness, in order, perhaps, to enjoy the delight of publicly embarrassing them the next morning in front of the entire small army of his employees. But then he recognised his daughter.

I
SHAN’T TELL
of Grandfather’s screams. I shan’t tell of Mother’s yells and tears. I shan’t tell of the slap that Father received from Grandfather. I shan’t tell of the swelling that immediately began to deform Father’s face. I shan’t tell of the hair-pulling and kicks that Mother delivered to Grandfather after the slap. I shan’t tell of Grandfather sitting afterwards on a step crying like a five-year-old child. I shan’t even tell of the miserable night of sleeplessness that occurred at Grandfather’s residence. Nor shall I tell how things seemed scarcely better the morning afterwards. For these things are better left unsaid.

I
SHALL TELL
that the following morning, as Grandfather climbed the post office steps to begin his day’s work, he saw a pair of girl’s panties abandoned near the entrance door. I shall tell that seeing those panties removed any remaining doubts in his mind. I shall tell that picking up those panties before anyone else had a chance to see them was the saddest thing that this man would ever do in his life. I shall tell that as this man hastily thrust his daughter’s panties into his jacket pocket he began to die a little, and that his eyes would ever after see the world a little out of focus. I shall tell that a pair of panties in Grandfather’s jacket pocket meant an end to all dreams he had previously had for the future of his post office. I shall also tell that panties in Grandfather’s pocket meant that a marriage must be arranged. And I shall also tell that the marriage concerned one Dallia Grett and a certain weak and dreamy Linas Dapps.

Napoleon Street

D
ALLIA
G
RETT BECAME
Dallia Dapps in the small chapel of Saint Piter Martyr’s Church on the western side of Prospect Hill. Piter Martyr’s Church no longer exists; it fell down several years ago.
³

I try to picture Mother in her wedding dress, I try to picture Father standing next to her. I suppose Father must have been very nervous and probably stuttered until everybody wanted to say the words for him. And then I wonder how Grandfather reacted to the expansion of his daughter, already visible under the wedding dress, which the doctor had called ‘Pregnancy’. If it was impossible to imagine Grandfather at his home on Pult Street it might be assumed that he had registered the fact of his daughter’s metamorphosis only by the different way he addressed Father in the post office—no longer calling him ‘Orphan Linas’, but terming him instead ‘Potent Linas’. But Grandfather can be imagined in this building in Pult Street, I can even picture Grandfather sitting in his study, because I know the room so well. I imagine Grandfather at his desk back in those black and white days. I imagine him talking. Who are you talking to, Grandfather? To the ghost of Grandmother? No, Grandfather’s talking to his collection of matchstick buildings. Grandfather always talked to his matchstick buildings. He talked to them far more than to anyone living; he found their companionship preferable. Irva and I used to visit him often and he always liked to talk to the matchstick buildings far more than he talked to us.

Postmaster Grett, our grandfather, had been constructing matchstick buildings ever since his childhood, when he was plain master Grett. (How his parents, our great grandparents, would complain when not a single match could be found in the house to light the stove.) Grandfather was a patriotic man—he built replicas only of buildings found in our country. And when off duty he would attend various fairs and competitions for like-minded enthusiasts. He was moderately skilled at his construction with matchsticks and won three medals for his efforts (one for second prize, two for third). He proudly stored these medals in a certain silk-lined drawer, which he would visit often (particularly on unhappy days) and which he would show us too with great ceremony when we were old enough. The saddest day of Grandfather’s matchstick career came when the archbishop of Entralla commissioned the ordinary postman Marco Girge (who had won seven medals for first prize) and not Grandfather to build a matchstick model of our cathedral, even though grandfather was the senior postman, even though Grandfather was postmaster. It took Postman Girge, a solitary man who was himself built entirely out of patience, a man who could never do anything with any speed (including his post office rounds), nearly eight years to complete the model. And then, with a ceremony which included the archbishop’s blessing, the model was placed on a wooden plinth just by the font, with a collection box at its side.
⁴
And how quickly this collection box was filled. How the people loved the matchstick cathedral—more eager, it would seem, to relinquish their money if it might help to keep the matchstick model in good order, than to aid the vast and echoey religious warehouse itself. This is not uncommon; miniature things move people.

Grandfather stopped going to church.

He began to construct his matchstick properties only in private, for himself alone.

Postman Girge was sacked.

A
S
M
OTHER SWELLED
with her pregnancy then, Grandfather back at home undressed himself of his post office blue, approached his drawer of victories in his pants and vest and socks, such was the ritual, and taking out his three medals, carefully pinned them to his vest and, thus attired, having admired himself in his bathroom looking glass, he was finally ready to visit his study. With matchsticks Grandfather built his fragile defences against all the sorrows and difficulties of his life, with a little glue to bind them he was able to construct a kind of contentment. He sat down to make himself a matchstick model of the Central Post Office on Napoleon Street, which was, incidentally, his favourite building to miniaturise—he had made twelve matchstick central post offices already. Though this new model, unlike all the others, lacked any entrance steps.

M
OTHER, STANDING
on bathroom scales watching herself grow, was fascinated, though a little fearful, of her new shape: of what her body factory was producing down there, under the skin. Father, who was invited into the bathroom to note Mother’s biological progress through the increasingly large numbers the arrow indicated, was visibly appalled. When the swelling of her figure was first noticeable he pretended that Mother had been overeating, for it was an unassuming sort of swelling then—a swelling that seemed to mind its own business. But when the protuberance began to take on monstrous proportions, and when its every moment called people’s attention to it, and when Mother was forced to adjust the way she walked and sat and moved, then his only desire was to take hold of this immodest extremity and push it back inside Mother until it was out of sight.