Lost in London
by Lev Raphael
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Table of Contents parts: 1, 2, 3, 4 |
conclusion
Late in the morning of my fourth day in London, as soon as I’d had a cup of coffee, I logged on to our department’s faculty-only website and found the phone number of Susan Liberato, the expert in 19th-century American Literature who’d taught a Henry James seminar last summer along with “London Lovers,” novels set in the city but written by foreigners.
“I wondered if you’d call,” she said when she heard my name. Her tone was warm but perhaps somewhat guarded.
“You did? Why?”
“Well, everyone from the Department over the years who’s taught in London has had some trouble... settling in.”
“Did you?”
She laughed and it sounded a bit fake, which surprised me because, in our casual chats in the mail room and before or after Department meetings, she had always seemed pretty straightforward. A broad-shouldered, athletic-looking woman in her fifties, she was the opposite of the academic stereotype; there was nothing cloistered, arrogant, or phony about her. Many of my colleagues at SMU smiled and acted as if they felt collegial towards me, but their eyes were as cold as if I posed some kind of threat. When Susan smiled, it was real.
“Well, yes and no,” she said. “It’s not, shall we say, the most appealing apartment I’ve ever stayed in. Despite all the antiques. Maybe because of them. The place has too much atmosphere, I guess.”
“Did you sleep okay when you were here?”
“Not at all, but then you have to remember that I was teaching Henry James’s ghost stories and I was certainly immersed in all that very delicious dread.”
This time her laugh sounded real but, before I could decide how to probe any further and ask why she hadn’t wanted to teach in London this summer, too, she said, “Listen, Paul, I have a call coming through. Keep me posted on how things go with your classes. It’s a lot of work, but the students tend to be very eager, when they’re not hungover, of course!”
Staring at the iPhone after she ended the call, I cursed myself for not having gotten right to the point with Susan, asking her if anything weird had happened while she was living in the flat. But then I wondered if she would have told me the truth, all of it. And then there was a worse possibility: she might have shared my question with hostile members of the Department who would talk about me as some kind of nutjob. I couldn’t risk that with academic jobs disappearing faster than glaciers in Tibet and Switzerland.
* * *
To clear my head, I went grocery shopping at Sainsbury’s which was a pleasant ten-minute walk away through what felt like a village to me, given that most of the buildings were only a few stories tall and the streets and uneven sidewalks were so narrow.
Thanks to high-powered AC, the store was ice-cold inside, and so I lingered in front of items I had no intention of buying, things like prawn-flavored crisps and sticky toffee pudding, both of which sounded and looked a bit nasty.
I bought more bottled water, some egg salad and watercress sandwiches for lunches, and a variety of microwavable frozen dinners for when I might feel too lazy to go out. The single malt whiskeys were the most inviting items, though much cheaper than back home, and so I bought some more from distilleries I hadn’t heard of before — Aberlour, Tamnavulin Speyside, and Old Pultney — because I liked the names and the look of the bottles. And it didn’t hurt to stock up for my nighttime “reveries.”
The grandmotherly cashier was patient as I fumbled with change. The coins were hard to tell apart after only a few days in England. Luckily nobody was behind me on line that early since I was also a bit clumsy at bagging my own items in the bright orange Sainsbury bags I’d purchased the first time I shopped there.
“Having a party?” she quipped, nodding at my booze.
I said, “I’ll let you know.”
She laughed, and I sauntered out after an hour of browsing the aisles as if nothing strange had been happening to me back at the flat.
The balcony was shaded at that time of day, and I decided on an early lunch out there. I was enjoying a sandwich and a glass of Perrier until a large black bird landed on the railing and started croaking at me. It was a raven or a crow, looked mean, and I grabbed my sandwich and ducked back inside, sliding the glass door shut. The damned thing wasn’t at all startled. It hopped onto the café table where I’d left my water, dipped its beak into my glass as if taunting me, and then flew off.
I could feel my pulse pounding in my ears as if I’d just stepped off a wild carnival ride, so I sat down on the blocky couch jammed into a recess of the wall right near the balcony doors. It was covered in a weirdly hairy purple material, and I’d avoided it after one try my first day, but I didn’t care right now.
I set the sandwich down on a small dark marble square in front of it that did duty as a table. When I looked up, I felt the baleful eyes of that awful portrait piercing me. I had a wild desire to rip it from its wall and stomp on it. My pulse beat faster as I imagined how satisfying that would be, but I closed my eyes and leaned back, the scratchy fabric of the couch restoring me to some sense of proportion.
It was just a damn bird. What was wrong with me?
* * *
To truly clear my head, I called for an Uber to take me to the Tate Britain to see the Dante Gabriel Rossetti paintings and the Henry Moore sculptures. I grew up in Manhattan, and museums had always soothed me when I was upset about anything at all, whether they were crowded or not, as comforting as a long silent rest in a steam room and as sacred in their own way as churches. People there were also often hushed and reverential, perhaps aware that they had crossed into a different space, a different reality. Museums so often gave me room to breathe.
The Uber ride to the Tate was quick through the growing heat, but I hoped the city would eventually cool off enough for me to stroll there since it was chockablock with art that I wanted to encounter. Google maps said walking would take just fifteen minutes.
Though I’d seen photos in various guide books and online, the façade of the Tate’s late Victorian building blew me away with its bold columns and statues, its wide grand stairs. Admission was free, and I was soon inside. The air conditioning more than adequate to combat the muggy day outside.
I breezed through the gorgeous, light-filled rotunda with its black-and-white marble floor, heading off to contemplate Rossetti’s The Beloved in a gallery blazing with Pre-Raphaelites. Inspired by the Song of Songs, it had verses from that poem inscribed on the gilt frame: “My beloved is mine and I am his” and “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine.” This was my sister’s favorite painting because she believed she looked like the main figure, and I dutifully took a photo on my phone to send to her.
The woman at the center of the lush, crowded canvas is wearing an ornate rich green robe that contrasts sharply with her lush red hair and pale complexion. She has the sweetest, dreamiest green eyes. Reproductions I’d seen before hadn’t captured the quiet compassion that wells up in them, and I felt transfixed, as if staying there long enough could heal the anxiety and worse that seemed to afflict me at the flat.
There were very few people in that long, airy, high-ceilinged gallery. I lingered for a full fifteen minutes or more, gazing at and communing with this remarkable painting. Eventually, I broke the spell of those eyes; I was starting to tear up, it was so beautiful! I would have plenty of time to come back and see the whole collection of Pre-Raphaelites in the sprawling gallery trimmed with green and gray marble; relishing this one canvas was enough for today; there was no need to be greedy.
It was time to head off to the other side of the museum to visit the Henry Moore sculptures, some of which I knew from books or documentaries. I was most curious to see the Draped Seated Woman up close. I had read in a guide book that she was considered “monumental” and weighed close to 1,200 pounds. The figure was seated with legs stretched sideways on a multi-level white platform, staring off into the distance.
Except she had no eyes.
Quite suddenly, I couldn’t bear looking at this statue I’d admired for years in photographs in books and online. Her face felt like some sort of grim warning. It terrified me and I didn’t want to decipher its meaning, because I could feel sweat breaking out across my face. Blushing furiously, I stumbled out of that gallery and hurried from the museum, shoving my way through more than one startled and angry group of tourists to sit down on the stairs outside and compose myself.
Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.
* * *
When I calmed down enough, I called an Uber and despite that horrible painting and whatever was wrong with my flat, I somehow felt safer when I got back there than I had felt at the museum. But it didn’t last. I kicked off my shoes, pulled off my socks and padded up and down the stairs to calm myself, but the movement only made me feel more agitated, and there was something grotesque and punishing in the rough feel of the carpeting under my feet.
I couldn’t get the image of the statue’s blank face out of my head. In photographs I’d thought the statue beautiful; in person, it was a nightmare.
Desperate for relief, I poured myself a few fingers of whiskey even though it was barely 4:00 and settled onto that torturous couch, closing my eyes between sips of the whiskey whose intensity seemed, finally, to clear the haze in my head.
That’s when the phone chirped, and I had to put my drink down. It was my therapist Dr. Fetterman calling from Grand Rapids.
“How are you doing, Paul? You missed our scheduled phone session, so I called. Are you getting out at all before your classes start? Remember, isolating yourself can be problematic.”
“Yes! I went to a museum today. And I go shopping for groceries.”
“Are you eating regular meals?”
“Oh, for sure, and there are a bunch of good places to have dinner or lunch around here and the neighborhood is very nice.” I didn’t mention the sinister mountains of trash across the street.
“And are you taking your Thorazine?”
I said, “Of course,” since I knew that had to be the right answer, but I wasn’t really sure: was I? Best to change the subject. “My sister called and we had a great talk. She’s so happy now, so calm. I’m really proud of her.”
There was a very long silence, and then Dr. Fetterman said slowly, “Paul, we’ve discussed this before. Your sister died in a car crash two years ago. She killed herself by driving into a tree. You had to identify the body at the morgue.”
“But that’s not possible, I just talked to her, like, yesterday, I think.”
“Paul, she’s dead.”
“Are you sure? Are you really sure? You wouldn’t be making that up, would you? You’re lying! Why are you lying to me? There’s a dog under my bed!”
Copyright © 2023 by Lev Raphael
