Entertaining Death

Like a bad karma, waiting for her on every seventh day, Sundays always had the stench of melancholy clinging to them.  On this particular Sunday, Simone awakes early.  Climbs out of bed laboriously.  Not because of duty, rather out of habit.  Her latest book is finished and will be in the publishers’ hands in the morning.  It is the seventeenth book out of her pen.  The trill of finishing a book is not exactly the same after number ten.  Similar to most anything in life one gets used to the exhilaration.  What an utterly depressing thought, she considers, as she drags herself to the bathroom.     

Entering the bathroom, she tries to escape the mirror like a modern day Virginia Woolf but inevitably appears in the parallel.  Her long brown-blond hair looks lifeless, her eyes sunken into her face.  Alcohol is no beatifying serum.  Living alone brought numerous habits.  Coincidentally her drinking has stayed out of the public eye.  Not that it matters.  All worthy authors need at least one skeleton in their closet.  The last three years it has been the only way she could get words out of her pen, the only way she could fall asleep, the only way to survive.  Survive what exactly, she contemplates, as she inspects the crow’s feet next to her eyes.  The perfect life, right here.  The habit took a toll on her, once youthful looks.  She leans forward towards the mirror.

‘Happy birthday you old hag.  Didn’t think you would see forty eight.’

She rinses her face and the water wakes her out of the moment.  She opens the shower taps, puts the towel on the floor just outside the shower door.  So many habits.  She recalls how these particular little things irritated her so much years ago, all these little habits that only old people stick to.  She would remain young, she would be a free-spirit she thought back then.  Then life took over and made her what she became.  Not old, not young.  Finding herself in a strange no-man’s land in-between where she doesn’t seem to fit in at all. 

‘Forget it.  Today will be the day that I’ll break all these habits.  Damn-it I cant be that old.’

She closes the taps and hangs the towel back on the hook.  Walking to the kitchen she switches on the radio in the passage.  Hugh Masekele because its Sunday, but as the first jazzy sounds fills the house she changes to Edith Piaf just to prove a point.  Continuing to the kitchen she thinks of a movie she once saw on the life of the woman.  How love can ruin the heart forever.  But then again forever isn’t over yet.  In the kitchen she opens the cupboard for a wine glass, fills it with last night’s leftover Merlot and continues back up the passage. 

‘Stuff it.  I’m forty eight today, I can drink what I want, when I want.’

On route she lights up the first incense sticks for the day.  When she decided to get dogs and let them stay in the house she developed a phobia about the smell of her house.  God forbid her house to smell of dog, ever.  Another habit.  She lets this one slip and continues towards the study.

She enters and sits down on the hallowed author’s chair.  Looking out the window in front of her desk remembering that this window was the determining factor for her when she bought this house.  The view of the vast emptiness of the country she knew would be the muse for her writing.  And it is.  Many a book has been written in front of this window.  That is what she wanted.  Why then is her life filled with such hollowness?  A handful of people can say that they live out their dreams on a full-time basis, even less can say that they are well-known authors. 

Years ago she prayed for a miracle in her life - that she can live her dream.  The praying was so constant and she was so determined that she received her wish seven years after starting the struggle of the knees.  She wonders if God would forgive her for the dream she thought she wanted.  She has been living the dream for fourteen years now.  Travelling Africa and writing about it.  What makes her travel books so unique is the fact that they revolve around people living in places instead of mere areas on a map.  What wonderful people she has met in her live.  People who survived so much and could still say with conviction that this life is worth living.  How she wishes she could have an ounce of their faith.  On this particular Sunday even hope would be enough, faith can be worked on later.   

On the desk, her latest manuscript awaits.  She could never get used to writing on a laptop like all the modern writers of the day.  Writing to her still needs the romance of pen on paper.  On every Monday, her assistant, Jesse, would come to the house and type the written pages of the week. This also had the benefit of having some company in this huge house, even if it was just once a week.  Jesse was a young law student and he was probably the only man in all her life that bothered to make an effort to understand her.  There had been one other, twenty years ago.  It seems like another life to her now.  So many things have changed in these last twenty years since his supposed love broke her heart.  She looks down at her left hand.  The ring that she couldn’t get off still seated perfectly on her finger.  The irony.  Not only does the ring remind her that she experienced love once, she also has the added benefit of an excuse for any man who dared to get close to her.  The wall around her heart, till this day she herself cannot explain.  Another habit maybe. 

She places her wine glass on the coaster awaiting purpose on the desk, takes her cigarette and lights up the first one for the day.  She leans back and blows the smoke far up to the ceiling.  She turns her chair around and looks at the books surrounding her.  These are the companions she chose in life.  More often than not, it is fulfilling.  It is enough.  It is just on Sundays that the human factor in her craves for the security of arms surrounding her, a pair of eyes to speak to, ears to listen to her fears.  Her mind tells her that this yearning would become easier to quieten with the years, but the opposite is true. 

This Sunday should be reminding her of her life, her birth, instead it is reminding her of the sound of death calling her name. 

Nostalgia overwhelms her as her eyes focus on the bottom of the bookshelf.  All her journals from twenty years of living in solitaire.  How many photos carrying memories that sipped the ink out of her pen, how many moments of happiness, how many hours of despair.  Mostly her journals contained prayers, conversations with the Almighty followed by arguments with herself.  Questions of the soul never stilled.  She bends down and picks up the first pile.  She places herself on the cold tiles, arranging the books around her.  She picks up the first one.  1981 the cover confirms in embossed golden letters.  The year that changed it all.  She was twenty five then and the world still seemed like a wrapped gift full of unwritten happy endings.  Not once did she consider the possibility that she was so fascinated with her dream that she would have nothing left once she reached it.  To travel Africa and write about it was the only dream she had.  What came after never crossed her mind.   

She opens the book.  His face jumps up from the page.  She catches her breath in the privacy and security of her solitaire.  Her eyes move to her own face next to his, so young and free from worries.  A different woman completely to the one sitting on the coldness of the now.  How different she imagined her future on that beach years ago.  Yet only the photo remained.  Why he didn’t arrive on the day of their wedding he never said.  In her soul she knows that it was her obsession with the dream.  The books and the writing were always her first priority.  He could sense that, she knows now in the wisdom the years brought.  After that, he decided to arrive when he married another woman.  A better woman.  It is a wound in her heart that has no hope of healing.  She touches his face on the photo.  What ever happened to him?  How did the years change this face under her hand?  All that matters is that he found the happiness that she didn’t.  What would she tell him if she had a chance, that she regretted having the dream without him in it, that she would change it if she could.  Sitting here now in the stillness of remembering, she doubts if she has the energy to go back and change it? 

She leaves the book lying on the floor, stands up, takes her glass and paces her study.  Sits down again. 

Then, indecisively, takes her writing pad, positioning it in the usual slanted way in front of her.  This Sunday will be the last.  She picks up the pen.  Who shall she write to?  There is no-one that knows her soul.  The funeral will probably be publishers and media only.  Jesse would contact the family in Australia, but would they come?  Does it matter?  It’s been years since she last made contact.

She lets the tip of the pen meet with the top of the page. 

Dear Jesse,

He would be in just after eight tomorrow morning as usual.  Strange that the only person she could write a suicide note to is one that she doesn’t know at all.  She tries to recall if he had ever mentioned a girl friend, or where his parents stays.  She is always too busy with her own battles, her world, her books.

She forces her attention back to the pen in her hand. 

I have decided to end it,  reasons being...

She looks out at the emptiness on the other side of the window.  Which reasons should she choose to end this life?  She received everything that she prayed for.  She wants the solitaire existence in a house out of the city.  She wants to be a world famous author and spend her days writing.  What is it that she forgot to ask for that could fulfil her at this age? What is this yearning in her that she can never label?  This unhappiness with the way her life turned out? 

She lets the last sip of wine run down her throat and almost drops the glass as the doorbell shakes the quietness surrounding her.  She jumps up from the chair and mumbles to herself as she proceeds to the front door.

‘Who on earth could be this insensitive to disturb the writing of a suicide note.  Last piece of writing I will ever do and having to fight the annoying noises of a doorbells.  Imagine that.  Only my luck.’

She opens the door in a huff.  A strange face stares back without a word.  The man is wearing a black t-shirt with words printed in white: ‘Do I look like a people’s person?’.  Polo jeans completes the outfit.  A peculiar smell makes it way into her environment.  She tries to pinpoint it.  Could it be cinnamon?  No.

‘Yes.’ She fails to hide the irritation in her voice. 

Could it be vanilla, no.

‘You called ma’am.’ He says with such determination that she wonders if there is an appointment in her diary that slipped her mind. 

‘I called who exactly?’ 

Marzipan.  That’s the smell. 

‘Well, you called me.’  He says with an unnatural fortitude. 

‘And you are?’  Unease slips into her mind.  Here she is talking to a complete, psychotic stranger with nothing in between the two of them to prevent disaster from striking.  A middle-aged man smelling of marzipan can only mean...?  The fact that she cant analyse this fact troubles her more than the odd creature standing in front of her.

‘Death.’

The conviction in his lifeless eyes leaves no question in her. 

‘Well then, Mr. Death, might I say that you are rather ill mannered arriving at this hour, and that on a Sunday of all days.’  She keeps her brave mask on and holds eye contact like antelope would a lion. 

‘I apologise for barging in like this but things have been awfully quiet around these parts.  Living out in the country gives people no reason to call on me it seems.  You can imagine my excitement when I received your call.  You know what they say about idleness.  Don’t get me wrong, me and the devil had our moments, friendship even if you want to get that emotional, but as the song says, even lovers need a holiday, if you know what I mean.’

For a lack of anything more substantial to say she merely utters,

‘I’m sure your duty has it’s challenges.’  Her mind is rapidly racing through all the events of her life.  The memorable moments, others not so worthy of remembering, all while trying to buy time from the one man who can take all that away in one moment. 

‘Indeed ma’am, more than you know.’  He looks awkward suddenly, and she feels strangely sorry for this lonely creature standing at her front door.  She starts reasoning with herself:  at least she has the dogs, she has Jesse’s company also, she has the publishers and the media and alas all those books she still has to read and somewhere across the ocean she does have family still even though she denies it out of an undeniable matter of sour grapes.  What a predicament this is. 

‘You ready to go?’ 

‘If you put it that way, what can I say, it seems so final.’  Even in death the indecision will haunt her like a shadow. 

‘No better way to explain it.  This is, as they say, it.  End of the road, eternity,  point of no return.’    His selling skills are lacking and he realizes that she picks up on the weakness.  He tries to save himself.  He looks up at the clouds as if recalling a list of activities while counting them down on his fingers.  ‘But there’s lots to do on the other side.  Free boat trips, we can organize take-away meals from anywhere in the world, Mexican’s my personal favourite.’ 

He glances her way to see if she is buying into his sales pitch.  She makes sure to yawn behind her hand in time for him to catch the sight of boredom.   

‘Sounds deadly dull to me.’

He returns his gaze to the clouds and blinks quickly, almost fish-like.

‘ But that’s not all,’  He tries to force out a smile but fails horribly and looks like a misplaced clown.  ‘For the young at heart, like yourself, we have outlandish decade-end functions that is rather rowdy.  The last one we threw caused a Tsunami which you must have read about in the newspapers.’ 

‘Let me ask you sir, do I look like the type who attends those kind of parties?’  She starts to take firm control of the situation and becomes entertained by the desperation of Death wanting her buy in. 

‘As a matter of fact, you don’t look like the type.  My mistake.  If I had to guess you are more of a classy type.  Live entertainment would be my guess.  There is no lack whatsoever.  We have Mr. Presley on a Tuesday night at The Suede Inn, and on a Thursday we have Nirvana, unplugged (excuse the pun).’

His eyes revisits hers for a signal of corroboration.  She lowers her eyes to the ground knowing that she wants more than ever to live.

‘Look, Mr. Death, I understand where you’re coming from but let me explain...’

He takes a last stab at it.

‘The accommodation is to die for.’

‘I’m sure that you have a lot of offerings, but you know that sometimes, like now, life seems like the better option.  We have many good things here still, just sometimes we forget to look at them and also to appreciate them.’

He stares at her more blankly than before.  She starts to realize that he is in fact unable to show any type of emotion.  He starts rattling off speeding up his talk.  This must be him being agitated. 

‘I am always weary of a code 676 and there you proved it once again. Before you ask, code 676 is a middle-aged person, mostly female if I can be so blunt, writing suicide notes and then decides not to go through with it after all that.’  He lifts his right knee and brings his foot down relatively hard to the tiles underneath it as a full-stop to his statement.  Simone wonders if this could be his unhappy face as it remains unchanged.

‘In my defence Sir, I am a writer and my portfolio includes varied writing skills, one of which is suicide notes.  Yes you can be sure to believe me.  Very lucrative business I might add.  I charge 10% of the value of the will to the writing of one of these.  So being out here making small talk to a complete stranger is costing me money and loads of it.  If you don’t mind, I need to get back to work.  I suggest that you do the same.  Maybe try a different location.  First rule in business, location, location, location.  Try the cities.  I have a feeling that you might have an array of prospects in those regions.  Was good to meet you.  Good bye for now.’  She shuts the door swiftly before her courage gives way under her.  Leans with her back against the door as if keeping it in tact against the monster outside.  Her eyes shut tightly like a frightened child.  In the darkness she finds herself in, she sees a tiny spec of light right in the centre of her shut vision.  Could hope be a tiny spec of light?  Or is that what faith looks like?

After she manages to breath again, she opens her eyes and starts walking slowly towards her study.  As she walks past the bedroom she sees the dogs still fast asleep on the bed. 

‘Bloody useless you are.’ 

She walks on shaking her head. 

As she gets to her desk she opens the left top drawer.  Takes out her telephone book, opens at T for travel agent and starts dialling. 

‘Susy...Hi Simone here.  All good thanks.  What’s the chance of organizing me a trip to Perth?’

She picks up one of the diaries lying on the floor and lets it fall in the bin.  Life is indeed too short to be wasting it on the past.  She made bad decisions before, but today she will make better ones.

‘As soon as possible.  Family visit, yes you are right.  Haven’t seen them in years.’