Chapter Fifteen
The doorbell rang at seven, making him jump. He and Rambo went to the door. Ms Jones stood on the doorstep under the light of the portico. She had cut her hair. It was frizzed out in wild curls. Slightly more black than usual. Mr Smith stared open-mouthed at her. She was the epitome of gorgeousness.
“Well…are you going to invite me in, Mr Smith? It was this evening you invited me to dinner, wasn’t it?”
“Oh, I’m so sorry…I’m such an idiot. Please come in.”
He saw her look at her painting hanging on the wall.
“I can never thank you enough for giving me that. It was obviously dear to your heart.”
“Both the painting and the subject.”
“Is it a self-portrait?”
She laughed and he joined in.
“You’re too curious, Mr Smith. And no further questions.”
“Excuse me, I’ll get us some drinks and also put dinner in the oven—”
“You’re only now beginning to cook? Are we eating at midnight?”
“It only takes twenty minutes…and no, you can’t come with me,” he said, barring her from entering the kitchen.
“Yes, of course; I forgot, it’s a surprise.”
She smiled and sat down in one of the armchairs in the living area. Mr Smith went into the kitchen, read the directions the assistant manager had written out for him, and set the temperature to 450 degrees Fahrenheit. He took the snapper out of the refrigerator and put it on the counter while the oven heated up. He returned to Ms Jones with two glasses of Scotch.
“Cheers. Here’s looking at you, kid.” She raised her glass. Mr Smith raised his own.
“Of all the whisky joints in all the villages in all the world, she walks into mine." They both burst into laughter.
“Ah, you definitely know your Casablanca. In fact, you look a little like Bogart, only deeply suntanned.”
“And you’re more beautiful than Ingrid Bergman, only lightly suntanned. By the way, do you know what day today is?”
“Is this some kind of cognitive test, which if I fail I get no dinner? Anyway, it’s Thursday.”
“Correct. But which Thursday?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea, but I’m sure you’ll tell me.”
“It’s Maundy Thursday.”
“Monday Thursday?”
“No, Maundy, M-a-u-n-d-y.”
“Oh, I get it. The Thursday before Easter. I’m no longer religious but I do remember Holy Week from my childhood. Wait a minute! You’re not expecting me to wash your feet, are you?”
Mr Smith smiled and shook his head.
“No. I was thinking more about tonight being the Last Supper.”
“Okay, I get it.”
He went into the kitchen. The oven temperature showed 450 so he removed the foil from the fish, put it on the top shelf of the oven, hesitated, pressed the broil button, and set the timer. He poured two more drinks and returned to Ms Jones, handing her one.
“By the way, I think something’s burning.”
“Oh my God!”
Mr Smith lurched to his feet and ran into the kitchen. Smoke was coming from the oven. He grabbed the mitt, opened the oven door, recoiling from the heat and smoke, yanked the pan with the fish out of the oven and plonked it on top of the stove. It was charred beyond recognition. Little flames flickered on the surface of the fish. He stared in horror at the mess. Ms Jones pushed him aside.
“Let me handle this.”
She turned off the oven, turned on the vent above the stove, and, using the mitt, held the pan under the kitchen tap until the smoke vanished and the crackling subsided. Mr Smith staggered across the kitchen and leaned against the wall, sobbing.
“I’ve ruined everything…I was cooking a snapper…I stuffed it with all of your herbs…I thought I’d followed the directions the man in the supermarket gave me…I don’t know what happened…this was supposed to be our last supper…I’m just a fucking hopeless loser….”
“No, you’re not.”
She went across to him and put her hands on his shoulders.
Mr Smith, look at me. You suffer from dementia. These accidents will happen. I really appreciate the trouble you went to prepare such a lovely dinner for me, especially using my herbs in my favourite fish. That’s the important thing.”
She gave him a kiss on his cheek and wiped the tears trickling down his cheeks. “Now, let’s see what we can make together to replace the fish. I want my dinner, the dinner you promised me.”
“Wait! I have a loaf of fresh French bread I bought this morning…and a fresh salad…and I have some Brie and Stilton in the fridge.”
“So…let’s party! Now you just open a bottle of red wine, pour us a couple of glasses, slice the bread and put the cheeses on the table. I’ll fix the salad.”
Soon they were seated at the table with, between them, sliced French bread in a basket, cheeses on a board, a bowl of herbs, and a bottle of red wine. Beside them were two plates of salad. They ate in silence for a while, both of them hungry.
“You promised to tell me why you chose to die in the Village. This is our last chance.”
“You know something, Mr Smith, this is turning out to be a better dinner than the fish might have been. Life is funny. Sometimes disasters turn out to be blessings. To answer your question, I’d decided I’d seen enough of life. Although I had no regrets, there was nothing more I wanted to do, nothing more I wanted to achieve. There comes a point as you age when the negatives of living begin to outweigh the positives. This was before I discovered my cancer had returned. When that happened, I knew for certain I wanted out.”
She emptied her glass of wine and refilled it. “I knew I could not commit suicide, though I’d thought about it and even looked at all the possible ways. I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I don’t know whether it was some deep-seated religious belief from my youth—I was born and raised as a Catholic—or whether it was a lack of courage. Doesn’t really matter. Then I found out about the Village. I got a brochure, which, of course, mentions nothing about ‘departing,’ merely says you can stay here free for three years. But I asked around and found out the truth. I realized this suited me perfectly. I could spend the last three years of my life in comfort and then die humanely. My doctor told me in confidence exactly what they do when you depart. You’re sedated, anaesthetized, and then given a lethal injection. Perfectly painless. Counterintuitively, my knowing the exact time and date of my death is comforting rather than frightening; though, to be honest, occasional brief panic attacks have occurred over the last three years.”
“Why is that?”
“Why is what?”
“Why does knowing the exact date and time of your death comfort you? Makes no sense to me.”
“Well…most of my life I have pursued the dream of being a ‘free spirit’ not knowing or caring what the morrow would bring, making no plans, taking each day as it came. It was all an illusion, of course, like much in our lives. Not quite a disaster, but close to it. So, for once in my life I decided I would determine in advance where and when the most fundamental event of my life—everyone’s life, in fact—death, would take place.
“Death has always fascinated us. We fear it; we love it; we run from it; we run to it. We hope to conquer it or at least put it off to way in the distant future. We invest it with elaborate rituals. The enduring signs of all cultures and civilizations are their sacrificial sites, tombs and memorials to the dead. Witness the pyramids. Our myths and sacred texts are obsessed with death. Our literature and art can find no more intriguing subject.
“Death is the greatest enigma of all. The enigma stems from death’s paradoxical denial and affirmation of life. Death as the end of life is always sad and often tragic. Yet death also affirms life. It’s the certain knowledge of our mortality that makes life so precious. We treasure every moment because it’s fleeting. Death not only lends life an edge but also complements it, giving it a sense of closure it would otherwise lack. Let’s face it: without death, life would be meaningless, even terrifying.”
“Oh, C’mon. Sounds like you’re saying that death is the whole point of life.”
“I wouldn’t go as far as that. But think of it, does knowledge of death destroy happiness? Or is death, paradoxically, the one thing that makes happiness possible?”
“God, I think I need another whisky.”
“Good idea. You get the bottle and I’ll get the glasses and ice.”
They went into the kitchen and returned with the bottle and glasses.
“You ever read Love in the Time of Cholera by Garcia Marquez?”
“No. I tried One Hundred Years of Solitude but never finished it. I got tired trying to figure out who was who.”
“I think Love is a better novel. But anyway, it’s a beautiful romance: the story of the lower-class illegitimate boy, Florentino Ariza, and his love for the beautiful Fermina Daza. It follows the classic 71 formula: boy meets girl, they fall in love, complications ensue, but love triumphs in the end. The main complication is Fermina’s marriage of 51 years, 9 months and 4 days to someone else: the upper-class doctor, Juvenal Urbino, with whose death the novel begins. Florentino faithfully waits. Kind of. While he refuses to marry, he has sexual encounters with 622 women. Okay, so he’s free with his phallus, but he keeps his soul pure for Fermina. In fact, when he and Fermina finally have sex, he is 78 and she is 74. As Garcia describes it, ‘her shoulders were wrinkled, her breasts sagged, her ribs were covered by a flabby skin as pale and cold as a frog.’ She tenderly gives him enemas and brushes his false teeth. The novel, set in a fictional Caribbean city of Colombia at the turn of the 20th century against the backdrop of continual outbreaks of cholera, is one of the most profound meditations in literature on love, ageing and death.
“In the symbolic finale, they set off to cruise up-river in one of the river boats of the company that Florentino now owns. For the first time in his life, Florentino casts off his sombre black garb and appears transfigured in a white suit. They journey through a landscape stripped of all vegetation and animal life. Cholera corpses bob in the current. Amidst this utter desolation, the river becomes the mythical Styx, leading them into the realm of death. Florentino instructs the captain to hoist the yellow flag of cholera to avoid taking on any passengers so he and Fermina can be alone. They came to realize, I quote, ‘that love was always love, anytime and anyplace, but it was more solid the closer it came to death.’ ‘And how long do you think we can keep up this goddamn coming and going?’ shouts the frustrated captain. The novel ends with Florentino’s response: ‘Forever.’”
Ms Jones took a swig of her drink.
“Sorry, I tend to get carried away on the subject of death.”
“That’s the understatement of the century.”
“Anyway, getting back to my situation, I was determined to not let cancer take me when it wished. I would outwit it. And thank God I did, because cancer is rushing back as if it wanted to thwart my design and show me who’s really the boss. So, that’s my explanation. It’s probably a rationalization, but I don’t really care. The interesting thing is I was probably consistently happier in the last three years than in my previous seventy. I painted Vagina a year ago. It’s probably not my best painting but it was my most fulfilling. I know you will treasure it. You know something, meeting you and getting to know the complex Mr Smith, who is full of surprises, has made my last three months here almost perfect.”
“And you have totally wrecked my life—for the better.”
By now they were both drunk and lapsing into fits of uncontrolled giggling.
“Why are we laughing? You’ll be dead the day after tomorrow.”
Mr Smith’s question provoked even greater hilarity. After a while, they dried their eyes and looked at each other wryly.
“Hey, I just remembered. I have some Suriname cherries in the fridge. I’ll get them.”
Mr Smith came back with the cherries in a bowl and put them on the table between them. They ate the purple fruit in silence, dropping the pits into the empty salad plates, the mood now having turned sombre. Ms Jones wiped her mouth with her napkin.
“Let me do the dishes and then I’ll go—”
“No, no, no. Leave the dishes to me. I insist.”
“Okay. This was a wonderful evening. I will always cherish the memory of it. You have been a great friend to me. You’ve made the last three months of my stay in the Village most enjoyable. To paraphrase the immortal last words of Bogart, ‘Mr Smith, I think this is the end of a beautiful friendship.’ No…don’t say anything…just remember what I told you about the herbs and the painting. Destroy them before you go.”
“Let me walk you home….”
“No. I’ll be fine…no, really…what with all the lights and security cameras. Farewell, Mr Smith.”
“Farewell, Ms Jones.”
Ms Jones stepped unsteadily into the dark pierced by the glare of the CCTV camera lights.
*
Mr Smith slept fitfully that night. The next day, Good Friday, he spent sitting in his house doing nothing. He could not summon the energy to take Rambo for his walk. At midday, he went outside and walked around the herb garden. The scents did not console. The cloudless blue sky was remorseless.
The forest surrounding the Village was sullen. Exhausted, he went back inside and reclined in his armchair with Rambo in his lap. He spent the rest of the day in a cloud of unknowing. He went to bed early, fell into a deep refreshing sleep, and when he awoke the next morning around five, he knew exactly what he was going to do.
The House that Disappeared is available both as paperback and ebook on Amazon.
