Tallow
Sur Salvu stopped again. It’s easy up the steps, just stop at every twelfth step. I can lean against the wall. Every ninth step. The washing on the balcony, just as when I came off the ships. The ships.
He finally discovered his key to the outside door. An effort to turn it in the ancient lock, rusty. The green paint. Who had painted it green? Surely it must have been her, after the wedding. Or Michael Ciantar, who went to Australia. Or Eddie . . .
Now past the front door. Up the stairs, six at a time. First floor, left Mrs. Briffa. Right, the Vellas. Vella’s bike on the landing. Stop and breathe more easily. No more coughing.
Now the second floor, Louis de Brincat, old Mrs. Cutajar. All that talk of a lift, but that would have been more than twenty years ago. When the Colonel was in number 4, with his racing pigeons rustling and cooing on the roof. The old colonel who told so many lies I ended by wondering who I was and why he fell in a heap so far down in the middle of San Duminku . . . . .
The pain never gets better. Don’t be so theatrical, of course it gets better who are you trying to squeeze sympathy from? The third floor, let’s see. Mrs. O’Riordan, nee Micallef, the bad girl, dear Doris. Is there a worse fate than wanting to be bad and nobody cares? Yes, oh yes, for a man to be left by his wife because he’s out of work.
The door opposite opened. An apprehensive little face. “Oh, Sur Salvu, I heard whispering. I wondered who it was on a night like this”.
“They’ve gone. All of them”.
“Are you all right?” The girl was about fifteen, thin and worried, with a grey jersey and jeans.
“I’ve a cough. It’s worse in the winter, that’s all. I’ll manage”.
“Goodnight”. Little Karmen closed her door again, leaving him in the darkness of the stairs. ‘It’s as near to Calvary as makes no difference. But Judas is a woman.”
The last stairs ended in indecision. He let his hand reach for one of the doorhandles by instinct rather than the other, and fumbled for a candle on the table in the middle of the room. He became still as his old terror of the dark in this house returned. The tallow felt exactly like the cold, smooth flesh of his father’s cheek on the night when he came to kiss the strange old man goodnight and found him cold.
He shook the matchbox, but it was upside down and the matches fell on the table and on the floor. Sur Salvu coughed louder. A door slammed downstairs. Who was going out? Why? Why should anyone go Out? Why should anyone come in? Why should he be there, and afraid to bend down for matches, afraid of making light and staying dark? “San Duminku, ora pro nobis”.
A drip from the invisible water-tap reminded him that he had not eaten or drunk for many hours, perhaps all day. Where is the storehouse of the hours I have lived already? Who is the blindfolded miser ‘who will run his hands through them as if through a heap of glittering gold sovereigns? Where is the promised ship? The girls of Strait Street avoid looking at me, now, they do. Ever since I finished on the boats. And even Marija went away. All, everything, even Marija.
He had bent over to find a match and found two. The first he struck lit the ‘wick but the flame dwindled and died. The second met the wick truly and the flame rose like a morning sun over the plain table. A draught from the window made it flicker. He bent down to find the other matches, coughing quietly. A night’s work. The bread yes two cents five the milk four cents diluted with goat’s milk and water you can taste it, it’s not the same. He coughed loudly, irritated.
They’ve diluted my life. It’s very clever. If you pay three men six pounds instead of one man eighteen pounds you’ve trebled the workforce at no extra cost. I wanted a wife and all I have are wishy-washy memories like the view down the street in seamist. I wanted, I wanted. He coughed as though he would choke. The chamberpot under the bed. “Marija! Marija!”
A knock on the door. But Marija had not yet arrived. Karmen looked in. “You want anything, Sur Salvu? The chemist?”
“A doctor. Better get Dr. Bonello”.
She ran downstairs.
Where could he go now? Not back to St. Luke’s with all the incontinent old men, all the hopeless cases. If he could get that banana boat to Ecuador, or a job in Australia . . . If only the pack had been shuffled differently. If Marija had had the sense to be patient. Which of them had been impotent? Why hadn’t she been satisfied with a sailor’s wages, like all the other women?
Nothing had gone right, ever since the wedding. Marija’s dad invited three hundred guests to the wedding, the cars, the drinks, the photos, the endless food, the band, that was what had infuriated him in front of them all. The damn band falling about drunk at his expense when how was he to know how long he’d be unemployed?
The coughing made him red in the face. That bandleader Carlo, so he was Italian, so he was goodlooking and knew how to dance. Why should Marija have danced with him at the party, with him alone?As If Carlo didn’t wink at the bride every night of the weddings. The music still in my ears and the shame. The men were there for the drink, the women to dress up and remember, the children to have a night out, but my God what was I doing there? And Marija?
Where is Marija? Why doesn’t she bring the doctor back? Doctor Borg! Why can’t we have children?
“Karmen?”
“Good evening, Mr. Vella”.
“Are you going out?”
“Yes, Mr. Vella. I’m going to fetch the doctor”.
“Is your granny taken ill, then?”
“No, it’s Sur Salvu. He’s coughing and he seems very weak”.
“Why don’t you come in here and wait till the doctor gets home, and then we’ll call him. He’ll have left the surgery by now and you’ll only waste your time. Half an hour and we can go together. You don’t want to go down Strait Street alone”.
She waited uncertainly. “Mrs. Vella is at Rabat with her family for the weekend. She’s left me feeling very lonely”. He allowed himself complete licence with his eyes and voice.
“I must go out, Mr. Vella”.
“Goodnight, darling. Come down when you’ve finished your errand”.
The small kerosene heater is dying for want of fuel. Sur Salvu coughs several times, harshly, like a judge wearing the black cap. It Is the other side of the earth that is turned towards the sun. Bread and milk.
Outside Salvu Spiteri’s room, George Vella is listening. He waits for a minute, and then pads like a predatory wolf down the old stone stairs that are worn in the middle. Old Mrs. Cutajar emerges from her rooms on the second floor with her plastic bucket of rubbish. “It’s old Salvu, murmers George Vella, like a conspirator. “He’s not so good. I’ve sent Karmen out to get the doctor”. Old Mrs. Cutajar says nothing. She is accustomed to the lies and deceit of George Vella.
Outside, in Strait Street, the boys from the British ship have money to spend. One night for them is a week’s housekeeping to us. Karmen counts the mils in her hand without looking at them and hopes she will find Dr. Bonello in his surgery, for there is not enough money for a phone call.
His surgery is closed up and dark. “When did the doctor leave, sister?” An old nun, her eyes ablaze with Infernal warnings, shakes her head and hurries across Archbishop Street into Palace Square. A policeman holding up the traffic explains patiently to a tourist that his car is not specially licensed to enter Valletta. Two drunken youths giggle in a doorway. A ghostly hoot on Grand Harbour announces the departure of what? A tanker from French Greek.
“Where does Dr. Bonello live?”
A louder hoot from the tanker reaches the ears of Sur Salvu, prostrate on his bed, his chest heaving with pain and memories jostling impatiently to be recalled while there is still time. The past is hanging on his windowsill by its fingertips, trying to get in. “Don’t do anything without remembering the bay of Rio and the girls of Curacao”. Is he a thief or did the records lie? More precisely, are we not all thieves, differing only in the measure of our guilt? Receiving stolen goods or stealing, nothing makes any difference to the copper seeking promotion. Where is Marija with the doctor. Where is the rest of my life, the beginning and the end?
“I can’t breathe. Why should bronchitis be so painful. It’s only bronchitis. Marija!” He has called out at last, and had done with it. The shout was not as croaky as he had feared it might be. “Marija!”
In Floriana police headquarters, yes we’ll call Dr. Bonello, sinjurina, don’t worry. If he’s not there, we’ll call someone else. What number, San Duminku? All right, darling”.
Why not go back to George Vella, granny would never know. He’s not bad-looking. It would be one in the eye for his bitch of a wife.
Old Mrs. Cutajar sewing lace by the light of a hurricane lamp has heard it. The scream above.
Karmen runs up the last flight of stairs with her clothes still dishevelled. She has the policeman’s word that Dr. Bonello will come. Or someone else. It is just a matter of time. A question of being patient. A little longer.
She opens the door. “Sur Salvu”.
“Marija” is all that he can say. Karmen or Marija or a girl in Curacao holds his hand. To her touch it is cold as tallow.
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