Black Buddha Read online

  He asked the barman to put some music on and moments later what sounded like Jacques Brell had me tapping my foot and getting romantic ideas about being a struggling writer in Paris and meeting someone new. Needless whimsy. Problem with hitting forty is you start to lose your sense of romance - it’s like a wall of cynicism. You remember all the laughable notions you had about yourself as a young twenty-something - the young warrior, the great white hope, the womanizer… the bright young novelist. Norman Mailer was about twenty-three when he published Naked and The Dead, he became an overnight success and never had to struggle thereafter. And he got to cover the Ali/Foreman fight, lucky bastard. The rest of us muddle on.

  Next up Brell was singing Matilde and I got to thinking about her again, a queer, nauseous feeling sweeping through my abdomen. If I’d stood up my legs would have gone weak. She still had a hold over me, even in sleep. Every few weeks I’d dream of her, meeting her someplace we used to go, but she was cold, elusive, and the dream always left me feeling dispirited and abandoned. It would discolour my morning until I went to the gym to hit a bag for an hour.

  It had been eighteen months since the disintegration of our relationship; seven years down the toilet. There wasn’t a day went by I didn’t wonder what my Matilde was doing. The anger had cooled, the obsessive fascination of who she might be sleeping with - who’d taken my place - but I still felt the cold ache in my bones, the sadness for her when I sat on my own and looked over a microwave meal to where she used to sit forking Greek salad on to my plate. A month or two after we parted I bumped into a friend of hers on Carnaby Street and she said she thought she’d gone travelling round China then moved back to her parents in Oxford… that she wasn’t coming back to London. It could have been so different.

  Matilde said I needed to stop licking my wounds over the past, my father had been gone a long time and I had to accept that. But that wasn’t the real reason we parted, it was a little more black and white - we couldn’t have kids. Period. My tests came back okay, but Matilde had suffered an eptopic pregnancy, and that made things harder. We used to time our sex like surgeons with clipboards and calendar stopwatches, it soon became antiseptic, and I quickly stopped enjoying it. I wanted my son to be conceived on a surfing trip, or in some wood full of bluebells on a Spring day. Not in our bedroom in mechanical monotony.

  At first we made an effort, tried to look forward to her ovulation days. Matilde still believed we could do it back then. She’d dress up as a maid, affect a crappy French accent, pretend to do the dusting with no panties on. I bought an outfit for her from Ann Ann Summers on a stag do in Brighton. But the dressing up, the erotic possibilities, they withered in the face of failure, and soon it was a case of take your clothes off and get it over with. We were talking less, touching less. She even started staying out with people from work she didn’t even like, so as not to see me.

  It gnawed away at us every time a friend got pregnant and in the end she started resenting me. I loved her so much it hurt, and I felt her desperation, every ounce of it. She felt redundant, faulty. I could feel our relationship slipping over the cliff well before we could see the edge of the precipice. In a last ditch attempt we went the IVF route, but then after she got pregnant and then miscarried three months in, our chances ran out and I couldn’t afford to pay privately. I hoped her next victim didn’t live off a meagre income as a freelance writer. She said she wished I were a banker. Wanker, I corrected. Okay, then an architect, something steady, she countered. Architects are hand to mouth too I said. But the look was there, the look. I hate it when a woman you love turns into a stranger.

  Me, apparently I was a walking timebomb; dangerous to be around in the black times and good to be around in the sunny patches… but there weren’t enough sunny patches any more. And then her last one, the humdinger that dropped me to the floor like an upper cut from out of the blue – you’re an alcoholic, you wouldn’t have made a good father anyway.

  I finished my coffee, buttoned up my raincoat, and as I passed the bar the spider monkey stretched out a thin striped arm and grasped my jacket. The owner clicked his tongue, the monkey let go and scratched its head with minute finger-nails. An hour had passed, three to go. The rain was dying down but I could still see the branches of yellow-white lightning the other side of the city. I could smell ether, as if a storm was brewing. I walked past the accordion music up the hill, leaving the neon sex shops behind me. The streets grew narrower, the cobbles slippery underfoot. The shutters on the windows were fastened against the night and I wondered if any of the bars around Montmatre were still open. It was only late afternoon, there was bound to be somewhere I could buy a copy of yesterday’s Independent, grab a Kronenberg and watch the tourists with freshly drawn portraits of themselves scrolled under their arms.

  As I prepared myself for the final steep climb by the vernicular ride, I turned around with the sense of being followed. But the road behind me was empty, coppery leaves blowing in miniature waltzes. I snuck behind the trunk of a tree and waited for someone to come - an only child’s good at this sort of thing. I was actually hoping there would be a Follower, a man with a scar down his cheek stalking me with a Beretta - something to plunge a knife into the belly of my torpor. A minute passed, I stepped from the tree feeling foolish and pressed on toward the Basilica.

  The café was warm and candle-lit, old pages of Le Figaro pasted to the walls. Why was Nana being so secretive? Perhaps she’d lost some of her faculties. She’d always been a little eccentric; even when I was a kid she had hiding places for different things. One time she’d taken me to the corner of her brick walled kitchen and removed a small chunk of masonry behind the oven. Behind it was a tin box from which she produced a 10 franc note and gave it to me with a whisper. It was a lot of money in those days. As if I knew in my young bones that my already small family would be further depleted, I kept it even though it could have bought me a hundred Bazooka Joes or a box of Space Dust.

  The waiter was sniffing when he returned with a sugared crepe and glass of Coke. The place was almost empty but for a few artists with empty pockets and miserable expressions, forced from their livelihood by the advancing storm.

  I’d ask Nana if I could take a look at her old picture albums, see if I could find traces of myself in Dad. It troubled me but lately - maybe it was being off the booze - I couldn’t picture him, and memories of us together that had once been clear seemed to be fading fast. Jacques, my old man, fought the men of Ho Chi Minh and lost. After the battle of Dien Bien Phu in ‘54, when the Legion was broken like a tired beast at the hands of the Vietminh, he became a mercenary and was later asked by the Americans to advise them in their own efforts to neo-colonise that country. Before he started his work for the Yanks he met Mum, I was born in ‘69 and he came home to be with us - for good. There’s your abbreviated synopsis, and we all lived happily ever after. Or should have done. You see, another call came and away he went, this time forever. Vietnam, that far away place of sea mist and people in black pyjamas, it took him unto its breast and with him the last shreds of my childhood.

  7:45pm. I set off down the hill to get some cigarettes from a tabac on the corner in Pigalle. Even in a rainstorm people still needed sex, the place was swarming. Strange for such a refined old dear to be living among the dens of the unwashed and the desperate; the pink vibrators, the transvestites and shifty-looking Algerians. I looked up at her apartment mid-stride and stopped, the window was open, the light turned off. That was a bit odd, then again she said she’d need to put her make-up on, and maybe that involved getting out of bed? She didn’t seem well enough for that. I fumbled with her keys and let myself in.

  The living room was cold, must be the open window, I figured. Maybe she likes to sleep with a breeze? But it bothered me, I don’t know why, atavistic hairs on my spine standing up. Hadn’t I locked the window? And why turn off the light and go to sleep if you’re expecting someone? Then again
, she had had a stroke, and she wasn’t making much sense…

  I went down the hallway to her room, almost knocking the irises from their table in the dark. ‘Nana?’ There was no reply. I crept in, the muslin curtains flashing with neon from the opposite side of the street. She lay still, encoffined in shadow, her hands felt cold to the touch and when I leaned in, there was no sound from her.

  I held a small mirror from her dressing table to her mouth, parting her lips so the air could travel to the glass. I’d seen it in an old film. I waited for the glass to cloud a little, but the wrinkled reflection of her mouth was left undisturbed. Her eyes were shut, arms laid by her sides as if arranged in death. No, that was absurd, I’d been here just a few hours ago.

  I lay down beside her and closed my eyes, trying not to think about the overwhelming urge to go back to the Black Windmill. I noticed the photo of my father turned to the wall. Perhaps she’d turned it away from her? I’d never been next to a dead person before, I didn’t know how to react. Then I guess I was crying.

  Call the Police.

  No you need an ambulance, she died of natural causes…

  But why’s the window open?

  Simple, she started having a stroke, went to open it to scream for help then made it back on to her bed and carefully arranged herself for the ferryman to take her to Hades.

  It didn’t add up.

  Maybe I should have been more disturbed being in that room, but for some reason it was peaceful. Halfway to the phone in the hall I stopped. There was a new smell in the flat, not the scent of old irises but something stronger… aftershave lotion; the kind a man in a rough pub wears on a Friday night. He’s probably called Wayne, lives in a caravan and beats his wife. Jesus, it smelt like Brut. Splash it all over, Henry.

  Someone had been here between my trip up the hill and my return.

  Les visiteurs, Alain…

  I checked the latch on the window near the fire escape stairs wondering if there could still be someone there. The lock had been forced, twisted in on itself.

  And still I couldn’t decide whether to call the Police or the Paramedics. Neither option made sense; she was somewhere else now, perhaps with the one-eyed cats that stalked the tombs of Pere Lachaise, or with her son as she’d always wished. Instead, I called my mother. Immediately she knew something was up, mothers are like that. According to Matilde, I’m a mummy’s boy.

  ‘Are you okay? You sound shaken?’

  The moment caught up with me, I was stuttering. ‘Nana, she passed away while I was here, well not exactly, I went out you see.’

  ‘Oh Al, I’m so sorry… I don’t know what to say. Where is she?’

  ‘She’s in bed where she was when I arrived. I spoke… I spoke to her before she died. Shit, what do I do?’ My face looked like a closed fist in the mirror.

  ‘Just stay calm. There’s an emergency number you can call, the Ambulance service… I can’t remember the number but call the Operator, they’ll give it you. Do you want me to catch a flight out?’

  ‘No, it’s okay, I’ll deal with it.’ The walls seem to close in, the lingering smell of the aftershave making my skin crawl. If there had been someone besides me in the flat, I decided not to say anything until I was certain. I didn’t want to be. Perhaps they also coveted this secret she’d intended to give me?

  ‘Ask for the Ambulance service and they’ll send someone to collect Nana’s body. Then call Madame Raffele, your Grandmother’s odd job woman - remember her? She’ll help advise us with the funeral and deal with the death certificate. I think her number is by the phone in Nana’s address book.’ Her voice was calm, sure-footed. Maybe this was her chance to finally take things ‘Deschamps’ into her own hands, the last page of a long and lonely story in which she’d always been at the mercy of another’s actions.

  ‘I’ve never organized a funeral. I don’t know who her friends were, and my French is shit – I mean I’m going to have to go through the address book and call people. How am I going to organize all of that?’

  ‘We’ll do it together.’

  I bit my fist. ‘I loved her. I didn’t think -’

  I wanted to tell her about the lock on the window, the footsteps on the roof and my sense of being followed but I couldn’t, it sounded ridiculous. I hung up and located her phone book. Just as Mum said it was by the phone.

  The emergency services said it would be at least an hour before the Paramedics could collect her body. I sat on her bed holding her shrunken paw in mine; it felt stiff and icy to the touch. We had an hour left, how could I do it justice? Should I start putting her things away in boxes?

  I stopped sniffing and studied my father’s photo, willing him to divulge what had happened in my absence. She’d felt obligated to tell me something, give me some sort of information. She’d waited, as prescribed by Dad, to give it to me when I turned forty. I kissed her cold forehead and whispered to her. When I was certain my intention was not motivated by personal gain, I steeled myself and set about finding whatever it was she’d wanted me to find.

  I went through her hiding places as well as I could remember them, beginning with the space between the four-legged bath and floor. It yielded nothing, as did the recess beneath her tea chest at the foot of the bed. I felt as if she was hovering over me impatiently, as I rummaged around not knowing what I was looking for.

  Perhaps I should have started in the kitchen to begin with. The slab of masonry slotted free from the brick wall as if it were a piece of a jigsaw, just as it had done thirty-five years before. Within the tin box were a handful of yellowed letters, a diminutive Moleskine diary and a clutch of faded photos. Among this was a key, peculiarly ornate, off-colour brass, ridged in curlicues and intricate arabesques. The teeth at the end were shaped like a dragon’s head opening its mouth; it was beautiful. I took it all back into her room and turned on the lights.

  My dad’s handwriting was hard to read, scrolly and full of superfluous curls. The photos were so faded I could barely make them out. Some kind of garden party with a family line-up on one, my 10 year-old Dad stood on the end with a cowboy hat; another with him at around 20, maybe older. He looked lethal in his army fatigues and absurdly square Legion hat. Then I found a small scrolled map.

  It was fragile parchment, and seemed very old. There was lettering and coloured illustrations upon it. The writing looked like the characters off a Tibetan prayer wheel or something. Perhaps this was what she wanted to give me - something from your Father, she’d said. I can’t pretend I wasn’t more than a little disappointed.

  It reminded me of old nautical maps you find in antique shops around Greenwich, except there was no sea in this, nor illustrations of monsters devouring schooners. There was however, something more interesting. A sketch of a key with a dragon’s head. An arrow pointed to one of the mountains shaped like a street cone, at the tail of this arrow was a smaller cross-section box; a series of tangled lines with dots drawn upon them, denoting some sort of labyrinth.

  I took the key out of my pocket, placed it next to the illustration. Identical. But what did it open? On the back of the map was written: ‘Alain, Always know that I did it for you and Mum. Black Dragon Mountain, northeast of Luang Prabang. The birth of the Buddha. The eyes and the nose. Dad X.’

  Great, give me a sodding map then tell me not to feel angry about you disappearing because you did it all for me.

  On the first page of the Moleskine diary were half a dozen names with accompanying telephone numbers under the heading, ‘Bangkok.’ I would have discarded it but for the fact he’d written at the bottom of the page, ‘Call these numbers if you have to.’ Was that meant for me to read? Why couldn’t he be more transparent?

  I looked at my watch - they’d be here in less than half an hour. After Nana had been taken away I resolved to leave immediately - I preferred the comfort of a cold bench
in the Gare du Nord to staying in the apartment till morning. Besides, I didn’t much fancy waiting for the visitor to return. When it came down to it I was as scared as the next bloke. It didn’t matter my father had been a soldier, nor that I’d won thirteen out of fifteen fights as an amateur boxer; when real trouble descends we feel it under our skin like white heat, and the best and only thing to do is to remove yourself from its path.

  Outside the rain had stopped, so too the accordion music. I ordered a cappuccino and hurriedly chained my cigarette into another. After the dark of her flat, the yellow lights of the Tabac burned holes in my eyes. I finished the coffee, dogged my smoke on the wet street and against my better judgement went back up to the roof of the apartment block, this time with her kitchen knife in my coat’s pocket. The lights of the city had taken on a sickly pall, no longer resplendent, romantic; all I could think of were the catacombs on which the metropolis was founded. Down below an ambulance turned off the sullied strip of Pigalle onto Rue des Fleurs.

  As I began my descent from the roof down the iron stairs, I noticed something on the third step - a book of matches. Their red cover read: ‘Ravens Bar, Vientiane, Laos’ with some sort of military symbol below on a shield’. Something about them struck me as odd - they were completely dry. Only ten minutes ago it had been pissing down furiously and they would have been sodden. Like it or not that spelt an uncomfortable reality - they’d been placed here by someone who knew I’d left the flat… someone who knew I would return. Who could have been that composed? My heart skipped a beat.

  Even if my imaginings were nonsense and Nana had died that evening because she’d waited until her grandson was present, there was something specific Dad had wanted me to have - the map, the telephone numbers. Sounds strange but some of those faded memories started coming back, I was thinking of us sat together in Richmond Park, him doing handstands and making me laugh when the siren wailed and broke my thoughts.