Meatloaf in Manhattan (15 page)

And that's how it all happened. I'm not sure what it all means. This planting of the lemon trees. Maybe putting something back that was taken away. Something whole and solid and real. But I do know one thing for sure. Whenever I smell lemons, or even hear the word said, I can feel you lifting me up to the tree, that very first time, outside our old farmhouse. The strength in your arms, the warmth of the sun on my face, and the lemony smell of my girlhood.

MONSIGNOR DI VINCENTE & THE HEARTMAKER

Monsignor Di Vincente is a changeling, a chameleon. In his darkest moments his hands are flames, torches; his heart is black and broken. He tries dancing and filling his room with the mosaics he found on the walls of the temple in the valley beyond. He writes postcards to his friends and buys a new hat from the market place. He sits in the picture-house, watching old black-and-white movies to hide from the dusk. But none of it helps much for the darkness is a chasm in his heart. It gnaws at his soul. All he touches smoulders and burns. He moves from place to place, his world shifting and sliding beneath his feet.

Monsignor Di Vincente comes to town on a stagecoach. It is by far his preferred mode of transport, though he does like trains. He also likes walking. Walking, he often, says is cathartic and healing, but a stagecoach is travel. He steps from the carriage and straightens his waistcoat. It is his second favourite, the one with the Dungarvan tartan and silver braiding, with a slate-grey back made from silk. He checks his pocket watch that tells him the time is right. He looks down the length of the deserted street. It is hot, not far away from noon. No doubt most of the townspeople are behind doors, out of the sun. Lying on beds, fans competing with the buzz of the insects. He takes his large travel bag from the back of the coach, tips his hat to the driver and begins singing softly to himself.

In the near distance, somewhere behind the hotel he hears the clang of an anvil, imagining the sparks shooting from the blow of a heavy hammer. He walks up the steps, through the revolving door into the foyer of the reception. He nods to the bellhop and ascends the wide, winding staircase to the floor above. He knows where to go. They are expecting him. His room is ready. Crisp white Egyptian cotton sheets are turned back on the bed. ‘Oh for the Nile, the wings of the Nile,' he whispers to the wind which enters the room as he opens the door to the balcony. He breathes deeply and looks out over the street. First one way, then the other. ‘Just dandy,' he thinks. He takes a chair from the room, then moves it out onto the balcony to the exact spot where he will be able to survey the full length of the main thoroughfare. ‘I will be able to see them coming and them going,' he says to himself. ‘In the morning and in the evening.'

He tries the chair for size, straightening his back, not hunching forward, swivelling his head from side to side. ‘Toast and blackcurrant jam in the morning with some milky coffee. Madeira cake and Earl Grey tea in the afternoon. A smidgen of honey in the coffee and no bergamot in the tea. Just the job.' He sees a single kestrel hovering in the sky in the distance, enticing his eyes towards the broiling sun. The static bird is stark against the washed and wavering blue. He sits back in his chair, the slightest of breezes stroking his cheek. Slowly, he dozes off to sleep.

After a while, as the sun plummets down, he wakes from his afternoon dream. Monsignor Di Vincente leaves the balcony and returns to the room to unpack his case. There are two beds. On the one furthest from the window he lays out his clothes for the evening. The midnight blue dinner jacket with flowing tails and matching trousers. The satin waistcoat with embroidered pearls and silver buttons given to him by the Emir on a previous visit. The lily-white shirt with the sumptuous ruff. As if he is giving a Valentine gift to his special lover, Monsignor Di Vincente caresses the white shirt with a succession of silk bow ties, until he finds the one that suits his mood. At the head of the bed he places his new black top hat and, with a flourish, he lays a pure white glove at either side of the jacket.

In the bathroom he stands in front of the mirror. The sad eyes of his reflection remind him of sorrow. The grey hair that reaches to his shoulders tells him he is past his prime. But he looks kindly at himself and smiles in spite of it all. The lines around his mouth and on his forehead he sees as the marks of age, and of that he is reconciled. He lathers soap on his face and shaves with the cut-throat razor he carries in his leather wash-bag. The water in the shower is lukewarm but refreshing. Back in the bedroom he dresses, choosing the lapis lazuli cufflinks from his ivory box of jewellery. Rummaging in his travel bag, like the magician he is, and has always been, he pulls out his silver-topped cane. Balancing it on a fingertip, running it through the palms of his hands, Monsignor Di Vincente dances around the room until the gong from the hallway downstairs announces dinner is about to be served.

Much later that night, after the last light in the town is quenched and the dogs stop barking, Monsignor Di Vincente takes the small calling card from his wallet and holds it to the rays of the moon that shine in from the window. ‘The Heartmaker', it reads in gold-leafed italics. ‘Maker of hearts'. Lying on his bed he fingers the embossed lettering, feeling the weight of the thickness of its edge against the skin of his fingers. ‘Would I cut myself, would I bleed,' he whispers, ‘if I gave in to the sharpness? If I gave the intent no heed?' But he is tired from the travelling and the heat of the day. He soon drifts off into a creamy sleep.

The next day comes with the usual and expected regularity. The band has been parading up and down the high street since early morning. The majorettes, the trumpeters, the big bass drum, rumperty tump, trala, tralee. The bunting hangs along the sidewalk like stranded seaweed. The small triangular flags blow in the breeze, waving at the passing carnival. Monsignor Di Vincente sits in his chair on the balcony, a jug of fresh lemonade on the small table beside him. Next to the jug is a plate of fondant fancies. Pink, yellow and white icing glimmering in the rising sun.

This is what Monsignor Di Vincente has been waiting for. The day the circus comes to town. As he watches the circus trucks pass by he sings happily to himself, letting the sweet icing melt on his tongue, as if he were the priest, the recipient of his own Holy Communion. In keeping with the mood he sings himself an animal song.

‘The animals came in two by two hurrah, hurrah, the animals came in two by two hurrah, hurrah, the animals came in two by two, the elephant and the kangaroo, tidlee boo de do de boo.'

Children sit on their fathers' shoulders, everyone is dressed in their very best bib and tucker. As his own song begins to fade in his ears and mind, Monsignor Di Vincente catches sight of one small girl who stands holding her mother's hand by the barber's shop, directly opposite the hotel. She has strawberry-blonde hair, wears a white dress patterned with large red hearts. In her other hand, the hand not clutching her mother …. ‘What does she hold?' ponders Monsignor Di Vincente. He sits forward in his chair, his elbow on his knee, his chin on his fist. The object she clasps reflects in the sun like a mirror. She holds it tight in her hand, a small revolver with a rounded ivory handle. It once belonged to her uncle, the gambler, who plied the paddle steamers on the great Canadian lakes, the gun always loaded, always ready against any eventuality. Maybe no one else sees it, thinks Monsignor Di Vincente. Maybe he is mistaken. But at that moment she looks up at him, above the crowds, above the hullabaloo. She sees him, Monsignor Di Vincente in the maroon waistcoat and top hat, eating cakes and drinking lemonade on the balcony of the only fine hotel in town. Just then a firecracker explodes and a horse being ridden by Buffalo Bill rears and turns on a silver dollar.

‘Whoa boy,' says the trooper, his rawhide, tasselled jacket flowing in the wake of his stallion. ‘Whoa boy,' he soothingly whispers into the alert and pricked ear of his charge.

When the commotion subsides, Monsignor Di Vincente turns and looks back down to the street. The girl is gone; the space she leaves is filled with the red-and-white twist of the barber's pole. A question mark, an asterisk. By then the procession is in full flight, the crowd enraptured by the pantomime passing before their eyes. The acrobats spin and twist like tumbleweed down the dusty street. The strongmen with their waxed moustaches and singlets dangle dainty dames from their fingertips. Seals, shimmering like new born placentas, balance red, blue and white beach balls on the ends of their upturned noses. And clowns, with tears big as the biggest pearls painted on their whitened cheeks, fool along the perimeter, stepping in and out of time, spraying the yelping and ducking crowd with buckets of polished rice and confetti.

Monsignor Di Vincente pours himself a long glass of lemonade, picking out two pieces of ice from the silver bucket by his chair. The tang of lemons tickles and tantalises his throat as he drinks the juice. Out of the corner of his eye, refracted through the crystal glass, he sees, for the first time, the amber-orange, black and white flash of the caged tiger. It is pulled on a wheeled truck by the largest of African elephants, whose magnificent tusks stretch like lances of knights-of-old to the ground below. Atop the elephant, dressed in a ringmaster's uniform with golden epaulettes on his shoulders and a tasselled fez, sits a Pekinese monkey, as small as the elephant is large. In their wake, the large wooden wheels of the truck turn noisily over the uneven and unpaved road. Imperious, lordly, assured of its birthright, the tiger moves like a snake, like a wave, from one end of the cage to the other.

At the end of the procession comes an old gypsy caravan, pulled by a chestnut mare with flowing mane. The sides of the caravan are decorated with signs of the zodiac. Above the open window in bold letters reads: GYPSY ROSE LEE, SEVENTH DAUGHTER OF A SEVENTH DAUGHTER, MYSTIC. As the caravan passes by Monsignor Di Vincente fancies he sees the silhouette of a woman leaning over a crystal ball. All this he takes in at a glance, before the glass leaves his lips, and he notes well the moment.

The procession is at its end, Monsignor Di Vincente watches the crowd growing smaller as it follows the parade over the crest of the hill at the far end of the high street. He watches and listens until the last child and balloon disappear from sight, the rumpy-tump of the band fading into the distance. For the whole day long he sits on the balcony, reflecting, aware that some things have been well met. Soon enough he catches the sparkle of the stars, the fresh stir of the evening breeze, and shudders back to the moment, realising it is time for bed.

This night he dreams his dream of old. The one he always forgets until he dreams it again. He is walking in a forest. The sun is bright and it is a dry, hot day. Looking to his left he notices a clearing. There, standing in full view, is the tiger. Neither he nor the tiger express surprise or alarm. The tiger, its fur a tinge of Maltese blue, turns and looks at him, as if it has been expecting him all the while. Then, as always, his dreaming self looks beyond the clearing to the ridge of a hill. Walking towards him is the woman, hooded and faceless. In her hands she carries a crystal that catches sparkles from the refracted rays of the sun.

No one has ever doubted Monsignor Di Vincente. In spite of his troubles he embraces the world. He has a certain presence that makes the doorman say, ‘thank you sir', after he passes by. He always gets the most sought after tables in exclusive restaurants, the best seats at the opera. It is, in part, his attention to detail, the cut of his clothes, the angle of his hat. The way he consults his timepiece, then flips it back into his waistcoat pocket. His demeanour, his aura, his assured way of walking through life, the silver tip of his cane tapping against the cobbles on the pavement. So when he walks to the marshlands where the circus has pitched its tents, the Pilgrim Geese overhead squawking their way northwards, no one challenges him as he makes his way to the compound and the circus caravans.

To all intents and purposes the main action is taking place by the canal, in the big top, silhouetted against the star-filled sky. As Monsignor Di Vincente walks between the rows of vans he hears the explosion of the man being shot from the human canon, the whoops of delight from the crowd as he lands in the safety net. The cymbals clatter and the spotlights shine through the striped and coloured canvas to compete with the stars in the sky. The arc of light illuminates the caravans and Monsignor Di Vincente spots the one he is seeking. There sitting in the open window is Gypsy Rose Lee, the flame from a candle lighting up her face. She looks at Monsignor Di Vincente as if she's been expecting him all along.

‘Come up,' she says as he approaches. ‘First, you must cross my palm with silver and then we shall see what is to be seen.'

He walks up the small wooden steps to the open door and enters the sanctum. The old gypsy, young and ancient by turn and refraction of light, beckons him to sit down opposite her. He opens the strings of his velvet purse, takes out two silver sovereigns and gives them to the gypsy. She touches his hand, then grasps his fingers and turns his palm over. She stares intently, almost trancelike.

‘You are a traveller, one who is worn down by life. I see a great sadness, a broken heart. I see a man on a pilgrimage. A seeker of redemption, one on a quest for reconciliation, repair, one eager to make amends. A man seeking peace of mind.'

Yes, the old gypsy is right. Monsignor Di Vincente is a seeker, an adventurer; one who has traversed the continents, sailed the seas and oceans of the world. He often feels the need to be somewhere else. At night, whilst others sit down to their dinners or play boardgames, he draws the blinds and dances with a grace that belies his rotundity. His hands becomes candles, flames lighting up the room, casting his shadow on the ceiling. Every now and then, towards the full moon, a peculiar brand of melancholy overtakes him. It begins with the dream of the gathering storm, far out to sea, where the whirlpools spawn, where the thunder begins to roll and rumble. Then, as always, his firstborn son appears, his drowning face clearly distinguishable beneath the water's surface.