of buildings, shearing the tiles from the roofs, smashing street signs and windows, opening up great ragged cavities in the walls. We watch, finally, the church spire in its last moments of tranquillity: the camera lingers there on its stillness amid the treetops for what seems like an eternity, until at last the mortar strikes; and though we are expecting it, it is still shocking, still surprising to see something so blameless be destroyed. A hole is blown through its centre and its slender top bows gracefully and then topples to the earth.
A friend comes to visit, someone I’ve known for a while though not well. But lately she has come forward. She has stepped out from the background and come towards me. She brings not food but a lavender plant, a scented girlish delicate-coloured thing whose smell reminds me of childhood.
I say to her, all my memories are being taken away. Nothing belongs to me any more. I have become an exile from my own history. I say to her, I no longer have a life. It’s an afterlife; it’s all aftermath.
My friend has a history of her own. She too was once married; she too experienced the breaking up of that image, saw it become a
pile of broken-edged pieces like the ones I carry everywhere in my hands. For a long time she lived the virginal life with her young daughter that I am living now. She was so thin you could have threaded a needle with her, had coffee flowing in her veins instead of blood, never slept because it was only when her daughter was asleep that she could live and breathe. Yet she would spend her evenings brooding and weeping instead of living. Friendship, she says, was what sustained her in that time. In Greek drama, the community shares the pain of war with the returning warriors. They come out, out into the streets to offer their love and their solicitude to those who have suffered the pain of battle. Marriage keeps other people outside, my friend says. In marriage you go away from other people, but at the end of marriage they come out to welcome you back. This is civilisation, she says. The worst thing that happened to you has brought out the best in them.
My daughters like this friend of mine. Whenever I say she’s coming to visit, their faces show pleasure instead of apprehension. They don’t fear her as they fear other people. When they look at her and her daughter, I suppose, they see the new reflection of themselves. Recently she got married again: my daughters and I went to her wedding and sat in the front row. My friend admits that she cried when she left the little house she shared with her daughter. She had recreated her own innocence there, washed away the bloodshed of relationship, rewound herself, spat out the fruit of the tree of knowledge. She clung, a little, to that recovered innocence; she stood at the altar for the second time in her wedding dress, trembling like a girl. I want to ask her whether it feels like real life yet, whether the feeling of aftermath can encompass even events of whose nature it is the consequence, but I don’t.
My daughter’s friend D has a birthday party. S and P, of course, are there. But when I turn up at the appointed time to collect her, it becomes clear that my daughter is the only one being sent home. S and P are staying the night at D’s house: the three of them are discussing the film that has been rented for their entertainment, and that will be put on as soon as my daughter leaves.
On the way home my daughter is rigid, white, silent, but eventually she can bear it no longer and I pull the car over while she sobs against my shoulder.
Why weren’t you asked to stay too? I ask her.
I don’t know, she wails. I think it was D – she only wanted the others to stay, not me. They got different invitations from mine. They were talking about it all week at school.
So you knew? I said.
She nods miserably. I am so angry, with D and the parents of D, with myself, with the world for its cruelty, that I am
A friend comes to visit, someone I’ve known for a while though not well. But lately she has come forward. She has stepped out from the background and come towards me. She brings not food but a lavender plant, a scented girlish delicate-coloured thing whose smell reminds me of childhood.
I say to her, all my memories are being taken away. Nothing belongs to me any more. I have become an exile from my own history. I say to her, I no longer have a life. It’s an afterlife; it’s all aftermath.
My friend has a history of her own. She too was once married; she too experienced the breaking up of that image, saw it become a
pile of broken-edged pieces like the ones I carry everywhere in my hands. For a long time she lived the virginal life with her young daughter that I am living now. She was so thin you could have threaded a needle with her, had coffee flowing in her veins instead of blood, never slept because it was only when her daughter was asleep that she could live and breathe. Yet she would spend her evenings brooding and weeping instead of living. Friendship, she says, was what sustained her in that time. In Greek drama, the community shares the pain of war with the returning warriors. They come out, out into the streets to offer their love and their solicitude to those who have suffered the pain of battle. Marriage keeps other people outside, my friend says. In marriage you go away from other people, but at the end of marriage they come out to welcome you back. This is civilisation, she says. The worst thing that happened to you has brought out the best in them.
My daughters like this friend of mine. Whenever I say she’s coming to visit, their faces show pleasure instead of apprehension. They don’t fear her as they fear other people. When they look at her and her daughter, I suppose, they see the new reflection of themselves. Recently she got married again: my daughters and I went to her wedding and sat in the front row. My friend admits that she cried when she left the little house she shared with her daughter. She had recreated her own innocence there, washed away the bloodshed of relationship, rewound herself, spat out the fruit of the tree of knowledge. She clung, a little, to that recovered innocence; she stood at the altar for the second time in her wedding dress, trembling like a girl. I want to ask her whether it feels like real life yet, whether the feeling of aftermath can encompass even events of whose nature it is the consequence, but I don’t.
My daughter’s friend D has a birthday party. S and P, of course, are there. But when I turn up at the appointed time to collect her, it becomes clear that my daughter is the only one being sent home. S and P are staying the night at D’s house: the three of them are discussing the film that has been rented for their entertainment, and that will be put on as soon as my daughter leaves.
On the way home my daughter is rigid, white, silent, but eventually she can bear it no longer and I pull the car over while she sobs against my shoulder.
Why weren’t you asked to stay too? I ask her.
I don’t know, she wails. I think it was D – she only wanted the others to stay, not me. They got different invitations from mine. They were talking about it all week at school.
So you knew? I said.
She nods miserably. I am so angry, with D and the parents of D, with myself, with the world for its cruelty, that I am
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