Rosamund Kendal

Amelie

In choosing to name their daughter Amelie, her parents bestowed on her a certain, and not altogether happy, fate. Had they named their daughter Jane, she would most certainly have married an accountant and settled down and had four children. Had they called her Prudence, she might have devoted her life to running non-profit organizations and standing on school committees. But they decided to call her Amelie and so she had little choice but to become a poet and to follow a path of unrequited love. 

Amelie was not generally considered beautiful until her eighteenth birthday, on which date she had the braces on her teeth removed and got given her first, very expensive, push-up brassier. Because she had spent the first eighteen years of her life being vaguely gawky, Amelie subsequently required constant reminders that she was attractive, which became somewhat tiresome for her future lovers. But on that day on which she turned eighteen, on which day the dentist brought tears to her eyes as he wrenched the metal from her teeth and she later put on the silicone-enhanced salmon-pink bra that her eccentric mother had bought for her, she was delightfully ignorant of her beauty and quite comfortable in her own skin. It took forty years for her beauty to fade enough for her to regain the same lack of self-consciousness that had characterized her early youth. Perhaps that was why Amelie, as she lay in a hospice dying from a cancer that had crept from her womb into her liver and bones, thought back on the last fifteen years of her life as the most contented, and in many ways the happiest. Of course, in those last fifteen years she had also given up on Bruno, not on loving him, because she loved him until she breathed her final, lonely breath on the eggshell-cream hospice sheets, but on ever having a fairy tale ending with him. One of Amelie’s weaknesses- again most likely an attribute of her name- was the capacity to romanticize everything and so she had spent many evenings of her life in imagining ways in which fate would throw her and Bruno together. Her usual fantasy, and one that even she admitted was rather banal, was one in which Bruno’s wife ran off with a handsome quiz-show host, leaving a distraught Bruno to seek comfort in the arms of his childhood friend. The way in which Bruno sought comfort varied according to Amelie’s needs at the time: occasionally it was with rampant sex and at other times it was by declaring his undying love with a bunch of roses and a string quartet. Once, when she was in a particularly desperate mood, she had imagined that Bruno’s wife had died of cancer (later, she had questioned whether her illness was punishment for this miscreant thought) and she had stepped in to comfort Bruno in his time of misery. During the course of her comforting, he had realized that he and Amelie had always been destined for each other. Her favourite fantasy, and one that she saved for those times during which she was most unhappy, times when everything she wrote sounded sentimental and clichéd and she began to doubt her existence as a poet, was of receiving an aeroplane ticket to Naples from Bruno and a request that she join him there as a fellow volunteer on an archeological dig. They would never return home but spend the rest of their days wandering through Neapolitan orange groves and Florentine art museums. 

Another of Amelie’s weaknesses was watching quiz shows and she spent those nights that she was not fantasizing about Bruno, watching participants display their knowledge of trivia on television. As a result, as Amelie aged, she became a most interesting woman to have a discussion with. In every lull in conversation, she would mention some trivial fact. These were not always pertaining to the conversation and were, on occasion, blatantly inopportune. Amelie might, for example, blurt out that Beethoven’s ‘Eroica’ was originally dedicated to Napoleon Bonaparte while she was waiting for a friend to finish in a public toilet and on one occasion she had mentioned to a colleague who was mourning the loss of his daughter to drowning, that Lake Baikal is the deepest lake in the world. Most people found these interjections vaguely unsettling; a few found them randomly interesting. Bruno, an avid collector of facts, would have devoured them but by the time that Amelie had started watching quiz shows, she and Bruno had drifted apart. 

Amelie had known Bruno from before her birth. Bruno’s mother, Maria, had worked for Amelie’s mother as a personal assistant and friend. Amelie’s mother had needed a personal assistant because she had occupied the space and chaos of ten people and she had needed a friend because most of the people with whom she associated were materialistic and superficial and didn’t actually give a damn about Vivienne. Maria had dragged her reluctant two-year-old son, Bruno, to the Cartwright mansion with her because she was too attached to him to leave him at a nursery while she sorted out laundry and appointments for Vivienne Cartwright. And so the bored toddler had taken to speaking to Amelie’s mother’s belly, which was why Amelie had recognized Bruno’s voice on her return home from the hospital after her birth. After Amelie’s arrival, Vivienne had returned to the whirlwind social life requisite of an actress and personality and Bruno had continued to alleviate his boredom by talking to the infant left in Maria’s care.

Maria had embraced her expanded job description; so much so that Amelie had wept more on hearing of Maria’s untimely demise than when she had learnt of her own mother’s death from lung cancer. Amelie had often wondered whether she and Bruno would have had their eventual fairytale ending if Maria had chosen not to drive to the twenty-four-hour garage shop to buy chocolate milk for her pregnant daughter.

Amelie had never married. It was not only because the man she loved had married another woman that she had chosen to stay single: Amelie had never understood the allure of marriage. This was probably because her parents had not set a good example of marital bliss. They had not had a tumultuous relationship- Amelie would have admired that because at least it would have implied some sort of passion- but had rather shared the kind of relationship that two very distant, but well-meaning, work colleagues have. They had tolerated each other politely and, after sharing pleasant smiles, had rushed off to their respective lovers. Her father had taken as his mistress a librarian who was the antithesis of Amelie’s loud and space-occupying mother. Vivienne had had a string of lovers, not all exclusively. Amelie had made a decision, at a young age, that she would rather be a mistress than a wife. Which was why she had not been entirely devastated when Bruno sent her a letter informing her that he had got engaged. She had thought that his getting married might provide the opportunity for her to become at last his lover. But it never had. Bruno had always wanted to be a husband. Perhaps it was to do with the fact that his parents had named him Bruno.

Bruno

What kind of parent gives their son a name that means ‘brown’ or ‘armour’? There are few people cruel enough to condemn their child without good reason to the kind of fate that such a name brings, and a father or grandfather called Bruno is a very solid reason. Bruno’s name, and the way he came about it, explained a lot about the Vianellos. They were a hard-working, conservative family who declared all their income. The three daughters took ballet classes after school and spent Friday nights at the church youth centre and the two boys played soccer in their spare time and earned extra money as waiters at the Italian Club. It was the same Italian Club at which, years before, Maria had first met Amelie’s mother while Vivienne had been dining with one of her Italian lovers. Fate, or chance, had seated them next to each other and the two women, from completely opposite moral poles, had taken an instant and inexplicable liking to one another. From that evening, until Maria’s death years later, Maria had been in the employ of Vivienne. 

Although they had the common link of Maria, Bruno’s and Amelie’s backgrounds were quite different and it was inevitable that they would have differing life views. That did not necessarily mean that they were incompatible, though.

By the time that Bruno turned fourteen, he knew that he loved Amelie and that one day in the future he would marry her. Bruno, by virtue of his name, was not a romantic and he showed his love in practical and unsophisticated ways. Every time that Amelie’s chain came off her bicycle, which it did often, because she was gangly and struggled to master the skill of cycling, Bruno patiently replaced it for her. It was not so much the replacing of the chain that was a measure of his love for her but the accepting manner in which he repeatedly tolerated his mother’s scolding at the oil stains on his shirts and trousers and beneath his nails. Bruno always offered to carry Amelie’s bag home from school for her. This was not a mere act of chivalry but one of protection too: while carrying Amelie’s bag he could distract her and quietly remove the taunting notes that one of the pretty bitches in Amelie’s class liked to leave in the bag. Eventually, because her notes seemed to engender no response from Amelie, the brat stopped wasting her time in teasing Amelie and moved on to a more responsive victim. So Bruno’s love was displayed in a quiet and understated way, not with a flash of flowers and a proclamation of undying devotion. Perhaps if he had showered Amelie with surprise gifts and serenaded her from beneath her window, she might have realized that he loved her and their story might have ended differently but I suspect not. Ultimately, the ending of their tale was determined by words, said or unsaid, right or wrong, and not by actions. 

Although Amelie believed otherwise, Bruno thought of her as often as she thought of him, even once he had married and had children. He would usually fantasize about her during the day, when he was working alone in the vineyards. The light of the rising sun might scorch the Autumn leaves of the vines and he would be reminded of her auburn hair and the way in which it curled in the nape of her neck. The deep red, almost purple, stains remaining in the cracks of his hands after harvest time would make him think of the smudge of her lips; lips that he had kissed only once but that had tasted sweeter than any grape he had grown. On occasion, especially during the late summer and autumn, when the days were crisp and golden and full of remembrance, Bruno would dream of Amelie. The dreams were hot and passionate and explicit and he would wake up hard and sweating. Immediately he would be consumed by guilt, guilt that he could think of another woman while lying beside his wife. Because Bruno did love his wife. He loved her with a constancy and a loyalty bred of respect and friendship. But she didn’t make him drunk, not the way that Amelie always had.

Once, while walking through a shopping mall with his wife, Bruno caught sight of a book in the display window of a quaint bookshop that specialized in rare and collectors’ editions. He did not know why his attention was attracted to the book initially because there was nothing eye-catching about the cover. It was only once he had stopped to read the title and the name of the author that he understood why his subconscious had brought him to a halt. He could not go into the bookshop because his wife was with him, pulling at his hand to hurry him up, but he returned to the shopping mall the following day, on the pretext of having to buy something from the hardware store, and went into the bookshop and enquired about the book. The bookseller opened the book to the cover page and enthusiastically showed Bruno the signature of the author but he might as well not have bothered. Bruno needed no incentive to buy the book. The bookseller wrapped it in brown paper before handing it over. Bruno took the book to a coffee shop nearby and slowly peeled apart the brown paper to reveal the inauspicious jacket. He turned the book over, hoping to see an author picture, but there was nothing. No biography even. He opened the book and traced the curves of Amelie’s signature with his fingertip. He knew her writing, remembered what the slant of her hand would have been, how her nails would have been white with the pressure of flesh on pen. Once, her hand had rested on this page. 

Bruno kept the book hidden behind another in his office. He would take it out when he was awake alone at night or in the early hours of the morning and read the poems and try to imagine what Amelie had been thinking when she wrote them; whether she had been thinking of him. There was a strange irony- and there would be, because love is filled with strange ironies- that the poem that Bruno read over and over again, that he preferred above all the others, was a misprint. The poem was a Haiku, and read as follows:

Love the illusion;

the freedom of Icarus;

the one left waiting.

It was tiniest of printing slips; the omission of a colon. 

Love: the illusion;

the freedom of Icarus;

the one left waiting.

Loved

Love stories are often derided by literary critics, passed off as second-rate drivel. They are seen as a sort of cop-out, in the same way that ending a story with “and then I woke up and it was all a dream” is. There is the assumption that love stories are easy to write, and perhaps they are. But to write a good love story? That takes skill. There are multiple pitfalls to avoid: the stereotyping of characters; the almost-obligatory Hollywood happy ending; the archetypal love-story formula; and temptations to resist: melodrama, sentimentality, hyperbole and cliché. I would even go so far as to say that one has to have more skill to write a good love story than to write the equivalent in any other genre because of the giant mountain of literary criticism that one has to overcome before the story is even considered. So why did I choose this verb? Why did I not rather write about Amelie killing Bruno, or Amelie summiting Everest with Bruno, or Amelie betraying Bruno. The answer, in short, is that none of these would have been true. Amelie loved Bruno, and somehow it fell onto me, a writer with no significant skill, to try to tell their story. 

It was a midsummer night, thick with humidity and passion and the song of frogs. A pile of scorched carcasses lay scattered on the wrought-iron table beneath the candle; insects that had been unable to resist the temptation of the flame. The heat was unbearable, the kind of heat from which it was impossible to escape. Sweat trickled down the crevice between Amelie’s breasts, making a damp spot on her sleeveless shirt. Opposite her, Bruno fanned himself lethargically with a magazine that Amelie had been paging through earlier in the evening. Amelie was twenty-four and doing an Honours degree in English literature. Bruno was working as an apprentice on a wine farm. He had brought with him the first bottle of wine from the most recent harvest- a straw-coloured Viognier that was far too young to drink, but they had drunk it anyway, sitting together outside on the patio of Amelie’s parent’s house. It was a house familiar to both of them, the home in which they had shared the first ten years of their childhood, but tonight there was something different about it. The overwhelming heat combined with the half-light of a freak lunar eclipse created shadows where there were usually none and turned familiar objects into strange, fantasy forms. There was an electricity in the air other than that of the imminent storm. This was the night, Amelie thought, towards which every moment of her life had led. This very moment was the sum of every decision she had made and choice she had taken. She stood up.

“Let’s go swim,” she said, pulling Bruno up by his arm. It was a statement she had made innumerable times before, an action unremarkable in its commonality. But on this particular night it was different, loaded. Bruno followed her, as he had done so many times in the past, to the swimming pool. The water was dark and the ripples on the surface looked dangerous and oily. Amelie stood where she knew that the last crescent of moon would illuminate her and slowly, consciously, removed her clothing. Her skin was dusky in the bloody light of the eclipse, the only contrast the patch of black darkness between her upper thighs. Bruno felt his eyes drawn, as though by a spell or hypnosis, to that triangle of shadow as she walked towards the edge of the pool. Amelie lowered herself over the edge of the pool and slipped her legs into the water. They disappeared and for a moment she could have passed for a mermaid. She let her arms go and submersed the rest of her body. Bruno had known Amelie since she had been born but it was the first time since puberty that he had seen her naked. He felt a hunger rise inside him, an instinctive and primal force and he pulled off his clothes and jumped in after her.    

They kissed in the water, a crushing of lips so forceful that it drew blood. Bruno felt as though he had been winded, as though he had fallen on the soccer field and had had every ounce of air knocked out of him. He pulled away from Amelie, gasping, trying to make sense of what was happening. Amelie, on the other hand, knew exactly what had happened; she had imagined the scene a hundred times before; anticipated the taste of Bruno’s blood, the feel of his nakedness against hers. 

Bruno felt a trickle of air down his throat. “I want to marry you,” he gasped. 

Amelie felt her body tense up, whip away from Bruno’s grasp. This was not what she had imagined. It was an aberration from the script that she had written over and over again in her head. 

Bruno saw the closure in her eyes. Knew the answer.

Amelie extricated herself gently from Bruno’s grip and swam to the steps. She covered her naked body with her folded arms as she walked to the pile of clothes that she had discarded so carelessly earlier. Bruno remained in the pool while Amelie dressed herself. He knew that something had gone horribly wrong but was unable to identify what it was. All he felt was an overwhelming humiliation.

The rest of the evening was tedious; awkwardness poorly disguised by the semblance of normality. Conversation was kept to what was safe: university, wine, the weather. Bruno made an excuse to leave early and hurried home, still ignorant as to exactly what had transpired in the pool. He thought that perhaps Amelie had found the way that he had kissed odorous or that she had realized, once he had touched her, that she did not really love him. He swore that he would never subject himself to the same humiliation again. He would never again breach the line of friendship with Amelie.

Amelie spent the rest of the evening pacing the patio. She knew that she should speak to Bruno, that she should pick up the telephone and explain to him what had happened but something, some sort of instinctive knowledge, kept stopping her. The fact that Bruno was oblivious to what had happened was significant enough for her to realize that they were too different, or perhaps too familiar, to be lovers. And because she never picked up the telephone then, on that fateful night, the moment was lost forever. It flew too close to the eclipse and was burnt. 

You see, Bruno had made a simple mistake; a mistake easy to make for someone who came from the background from which he came. Bruno had used the word marriage synonymously with love. For him the two were synonymous: marriage was an alternative word for love. But for Amelie, the two words were worlds apart. They had their own, specific meanings and could never be substituted. She had realized, at the moment that Bruno had uttered that fateful statement, that their differences were too great. That Bruno was looking for a wife and she was looking for a lover and that neither of them would ever be able to compromise.

Who knows whether, if Amelie had picked up the telephone that heady night and spoken to Bruno, their love would have survived. Sometimes I think that it is the love that remains forever a promise, the love that is never tainted by the practicalities of everyday life, that is the love that survives the longest. Perhaps the purest love is unrequited love. Amelie loved Bruno. Bruno loved Amelie. 

The Sunday Paper

The Sunday Paper

The harsh bleeping of the alarm on Herman Luthuli's cell phone woke him up at two-thirty in the morning. He stretched his arm over the edge of the mattress and felt on the floor for the phone, cursing under his breath as his exploring fingers pushed it further away from him instead of drawing it closer. He didn't want the noise to wake the rest of the family, especially since his wife had been up earlier in the night with the twins, who were both sick again. 

This relentless early-morning waking separated him from his family, from the muddle of bodies bundled onto the double mattress. For a brief moment he wished himself back in bed but almost immediately felt guilty for his thoughts. He didn't want to appear ungrateful for the job, even if it was only to those who were able to read his mind. He knew with an animal knowledge (the aching cramp of starving stomach; the heart-rending wail of pleading infant; the silent, shaking tears of hopelessness) the scarcity of employment.

None of the other drivers had arrived yet but he knew that they all had the safety of a contract tempting them to stay in bed a few minutes longer. Herman pressed the remote and the beep of the alarm immobiliser cut into the morning air setting off a cascade of barking from the dogs guarding the next yard. He climbed into the van and turned the key in the ignition.

The roads on the way to the printing house were deserted, factory shops and warehouses asleep over the weekend. Herman knew it would be different once he reached his delivery area, near the university. There, the roads would be cluttered with drunk students; the heave of bass would shake the air and neon lights from nightclubs would throw flashes of luminous colour onto the pavements. But for now, his were the only headlights picking out the hulking silhouettes of shut-down buildings.

He was the first driver to arrive at the printing house. He knew the stillness of the exterior belied the activity inside the building. He rang the bell and the gate opened for him.

`First one here again,' a man in blue overalls said to him as he got out of the van. 

Herman dipped his head slightly in recognition of the greeting. `I need the job.'

At each subscriber's home, Herman jumped out of the van and placed a freshly rolled newspaper into a post box or between the rails of a gate. Some of the delivery vans had two people working them: one to drive and the other to dispense the papers but the company was short-staffed and, because Herman was the most junior employee (not even an official employee yet), he had to work alone. Herman didn't mind it at all. He liked the silence and the time the driving gave him to reflect. He liked turning the heater in the van on full blast until the windows misted up and letting the radio drone on in the background, just loud enough for him to pick out the familiar tunes.

Herman wove his way between the neatly manicured verges until he reached the main road. There, the face of the landscape changed and the nature of his deliveries with it. The road became crowded with shops, restaurants, clubs and garages and, instead of delivering single newspapers, Herman delivered twine-bound bundles of twenty-five or fifty papers. He pulled up at an all-night garage and ran into the attached shop to drop off two stacks of fifty newspapers. He contemplated buying himself a cup of coffee while he waited for the manager to sign for the papers but decided against it: it was a luxury he couldn't really afford. Next there was a twenty-four hour burger joint that needed four papers and then a Seven-Eleven (still dark inside) that needed fifty. Herman left the copies for the Seven-Eleven outside the door, of the shop as he had been shown to do when lie did his training rounds with one of the more experienced drivers. 

Herman drove past a coffee shop that was still closed and then past a club that vibrated with the heavy beat of popular bass. A group of youngsters emerged from the door and made their way unsteadily to a neighbouring twenty-four-hour fast-food joint. Their faces were flushed and their voices loud with alcohol and endorphins and Herman smiled sardonically to himself and shook his head slowly, envying their almost impossibly carefree youth. One of the group, a young man wearing jeans and a T-shirt with a print of Fidel Castro on the front, caught Herman's eye and waved cheerfully to him. Herman lifted his hand in response. The innocent forthrightness of the youth's smile disarmed him; wiped away the niggling of resentment and jealousy that had started to blossom in Herman's chest.

A little further down the road, lounging outside a bakery to which Herman delivered a few newspapers, was a homeless man. He was lying on a bed of flattened cardboard boxes and had half raised himself onto one elbow so that he could more easily make eye contact with passers by. His body was partially covered with a soiled brown blanket. Herman thought that the man's position was cleverly chosen; customers to the bakery, exiting with their warm croissants or fresh, yeasty loaves of bread, could not help but feel guilty. And, of course, the easiest way to assuage that guilt would be to reach into their wallets. Herman knew that, were he in the man's situation, he would do the same thing and he also knew how easy it was to become like that homeless man. Were it not for this job, he thought, it might well be him begging from beside a bakery somewhere.

The club was pumping. Bodies writhed beneath the strobe lights in a series of black-and-white photographic stills. The humid air condensed on the walls and clung to T-shirts and foreheads and napes of necks. Elbows knocked together and feet trampled each other. Everywhere was the smell unique to pubs and bars: that particular blend of eau de cologne, cigarette  smoke and spilt alcohol that seems to infiltrate hair and clothes indiscriminately, so that by the end of the evening everyone leaves with the same signature scent.

Parrot caught the barman's eye and ordered a round of beers for himself and his friends. He had forgotten whose turn it was to get this particular round but he had finished his beer and, since he was getting another for himself, thought he might just as easily buy a drink for everyone. `Keep the change,' he said to the barman, handing over a hundred-rand note. Parrot's generosity wasn't the result of his intoxication; he always tipped well.

Beers held high above his head to prevent them from being bumped too much, Parrot made his way back to his group of friends. As he handed out the drinks the clanging of a bell interrupted the music.

`Last rounds! Bar closes in fifteen minutes!' the barman shouted. 

`Shit, should I go back and get another round?' Parrot volunteered.

`Nah, boet, don't stress,' one of his friends replied. 'I've got to go after this one anyway. My girlfriend's probably worrying about where I am.'

`That's exactly why I don't have a girlfriend,' Parrot laughed. It was meant as a joke but there was a ring of truth to it. Parrot didn't want the hassle of a girlfriend; didn't need the complication that thinking of another person's feelings and desires and needs would entail.

By the time that Parrot had finished his burger and coffee, the sun was making its appearance on the horizon. The grease and caffeine had done little to soak up the alcohol in Parrot's stomach and he was starting to feel that it was time for him to make his way back to his university residence. He said goodbye to his new friends, promising to look them up on Facebook if he could remember their names when he was sober, and began making his way home. As he walked along the main road, he reminisced over the evening, thinking what a success it had been and how much he had enjoyed himself. Parrot's good mood manifested itself in a jaunty swagger and tuneless whistle that somehow mocked the portrait of Fidel Castro on his shirt.

His way home took Parrot past a bakery and, as he approached the building, the aroma of fresh bread assailed his nostrils. Despite the burger he had wolfed down earlier, Parrot was still hungry and he thought it would be a good idea to buy a bun or two to eat on his way back to his residence. He knocked on the bakery door but one of the bakers, rolling out dough on a table in the shop, shooed him away indicating that the bakery was still closed to customers. Disappointed, Parrot turned away and almost tripped over a bergie lying next to the bakery entrance.

`Please, baas, a little money for food,' the beggar whined.

Parrot knew that the money would be unlikely to be spent on food but, drunk as he was, he could hardly judge the man. He gave him a twenty-rand note, the money he had taken out of his pocket to buy the buns with.

Parrot took a short cut, one that he didn't usually take, down another road and walked past a cafe. He noticed a pile of newspapers, held down with half a brick, lying outside the door and the beginnings of a brilliantly drunken idea began to poke at his consciousness. It would be such a laugh, he thought, if he took the pile of papers back to the residence with him and then delivered them to his friends, as though he was a delivery boy. He would get himself a cap from his cupboard (or perhaps even borrow the scruffy tweed beret that the residence's caretaker wore) and then knock on each of his friends' doors and throw a paper into the room. He chuckled to himself thinking about what their reactions would be. And if he woke them up, it would serve them right for not waiting for him.

Parrot waited until he was sure that there was nobody around to see him then wrapped the pile of newspapers in his jacket They were heavier than he had anticipated and he was glad that he was close to his residence. Had he had to go further, he would probably have given up on the idea; it wouldn't have been worth the effort.