Steak Tartare
DAY ONE
Friday, December 12, 2006
The 08:20 flight from Dublin to Tenerife was delayed. A cold breeze circulated with the hot air of the cabin as we waited for the doors to close, the seat belt sign to ping on, and the relief of the aeroplane to push back.
My father, who I called Abba, father in Hebrew, dozed next to me in the aisle seat of row twelve. Now in his mid-seventies, he craved an annual dose of winter sun, hoping it would help relieve him of his tzores, troubles. My mother usually accompanied him on his pilgrimage to the Canary Islands. This year, she refused to go. I protested that I had better things to do, and suggested that he enjoyed his own company, so couldn’t he just go alone? But she insisted. She needed me to look after him. She told me he enjoyed my company. I was between jobs. I didn’t really have anything else on, so I finally agreed to be his chaperone.
Abba had removed his sandals and socks exposing his calloused feet and stretched out his legs. A muscle man sat in the window seat, bulky headphones on his head, his sharp elbow occupying the armrest to my left. I was squashed tight, in the middle.
Earlier, Abba had insisted that it was too far to walk to the departure gate, so I booked the airport buggy. The driver and other passengers though weren’t amused by his frequent toilet stops and detour through Duty Free to pick up a bottle of Jameson’s whiskey, where he also took the liberty of tasting a single malt that he managed to spill onto his smock. While he was drinking, I knocked over a bottle of aftershave with my backpack, an edge of the thick transparent glass chipping on the ground. No-one seemed to notice and pretending it wasn’t me, I kicked the splinter of glass under a counter, replaced the bottle on the shelf and re-joined Abba on the buggy. I told myself the damage was nothing as the buggy drove away, but the bottle was chipped, on the edge, a bit like me.
Half an hour after taking our seats, gusts of wind lifted the aeroplane through icy drizzle over Dublin Bay into heavy clouds, leaving my empty stomach behind. Abba laid his warm hand on mine, his wedding ring resting firmly on my knuckle. I closed my eyes, pushed my head back against the headrest, and wondered when it had last been cleaned of other people’s greasy hair. With every shudder the aeroplane made, I pulled my seat belt tighter, gripped the armrests and repeatedly read the instructions on the safety card that was laminated onto the back of the seat in front. How would I get Abba out in an emergency, I wondered. In his state, there was no way he’d be able to scramble through the cabin aisle to safety. Would I just leave him, alone, waiting to be rescued?
Ten minutes later, the seat belt sign chimed off. I climbed over Abba, went to the bathroom, and looked at myself in the backlit mirror. He often moaned that my posture was curved and that I should see his “marvellous” Feldenkrais practitioner
who would put me right.
I stretched my shoulders back until I stood straight, but they quickly sprung forward, as if my body preferred to hunch. My eyes were bloodshot and eyelids baggy behind my glasses. My forehead was creased with concern. I tried to freshen up by splashing some water onto my unkempt beard and running my wet hand over my balding head, but the tautness in my face remained.
A bout of turbulence shook the aeroplane, so I sat on the closed toilet seat in the cramped cubicle, one hand clutching the handrail until it passed. Rummaging through my wallet, I removed a piece of lined A5 paper I’d been meaning to look at. The sharp folds had nearly worn through the fibres, so I unfolded it carefully, stared at my messy handwriting, and silently read five questions I’d brought to ask Abba while we were away. I caught a few glimpses of how I might ask these questions; maybe over dinner, or during a drive, but the thoughts faded quickly. I was left thinking nothing much, apart from an image of my Imma, mother in Hebrew, waving at the taxi earlier that morning as we drove away from my parents’ house in Harold’s Cross in Dublin in the dark.
Breathing deeply, I delicately folded the piece of paper and slid it back into my wallet, wiped the sink with a paper towel, and listened to the suds get sucked into the bowels of the fuselage. These days Abba just about tolerated flying. “If I must,” he’d say, like he was doing me a favour. “But what’s wrong with a good ferry?” He’d often recount tales of what he called “civilised travel,” in the 1950s and 60s. Long days of reading in the sun, usually Joyce, Bellow or Roth, eating steak for breakfast on the
QEII to New York, and black-tie dinners accompanied by a string quartet. He’d recall that for two shillings and six-pence, you could get a drink and a “pleasant” meal at Dublin Airport before flying to London in luxury. Now, there was nowhere to have a “decent” cup of coffee and the pubs were crowded with “yobbos” watching football. There was none of this queueing and “security nonsense” that he blamed on the IRA.
Back in my seat, I studied this man I’d known for thirty-five years. His pond-like eyes were closed behind his square rimmed bifocals. He’d taken off his corduroy flat cap, exposing blood blisters that dotted his bald head. A crescent of tightly shaved white hair ran around the back of his skull. His teeth, Sellotape yellow, were visible behind his chapped lips that were ajar. Two shaving scabs hung loosely on his bristly neck, which sagged like elbow skin. He refused to trim the twisted vines of his eyebrows that sprouted in all directions, possibly proud that something was still growing. Every so often, he’d reach under his smock, rub his grapefruit-sized hernia that protruded from the side of his abdomen, and hold it, like he was carrying an extra limb.
I nudged Abba awake as the drinks trolley arrived. The flight attendant raised her eyebrows at me. Her name Ludmila was embossed on a badge clipped onto her synthetic shirt.
Abba stretched his arms above his head. “A little whiskey?” he asked.
“We’ve got Bullseye, Irish whiskey. It’s four for two this morning,” Ludmila said, her accent Eastern European.
“We’ll take four.”
“It’s a bit early, don’t you think?” I asked.
“To hell with it. Come on. Join me.”
Ludmila dropped four squidgy sachets of Bullseye onto the tray table in front of me and passed me a coffee.
Abba found a twenty euro note among his boarding pass, credit card and tattered pacemaker document in the back pocket of his trousers and paid. While trying to rip open the sachets he muttered to me that this was all very well and good, but what was wrong with “good, old fashioned bottles”, to which the muscle man nodded his agreement. Unable to tear open the sachets, he threw one at me and suggested that I have a go. I bit the corner of one and squeezed half the liquid into a glass that shook in his hand, with the rest spraying onto his trousers and hitting my wrist. Abba dabbed the wet patch with a corner of his frayed handkerchief, where I spotted his initials LL crookedly embroi- dered in green thread. I recollected sewing the letters for him as a birthday present, hoping he’d use it for special occasions, but it ended up like all his other handkerchiefs, greying and stained.
“Is that all you’re taking?” I’d asked Abba the night before we left as I helped him pack his suitcase.
“Sure I only need one pair of trousers.” “And what if they get dirty?”
“Otherwise I’ll just have to carry more. You can always do laundry in the hotel, can’t you?”
“Can I now?” I mumbled. As well as his few items of clothing, I stuffed into his suitcase his beloved blue towelling dressing gown, a hard-back copy of Stefan Zweig’s The World of Yesterday, Isaac Bashevis Singer’s The Slave, a theatre script he wanted to read, a list of prescription medication from his doctor, his
favoured sunscreen Piz Buin, flip-flops so over-used that the heel had nearly worn through, sandals with Velcro straps, a bucket sun hat and a black medicine kit that was jammed with different coloured pots of pills, tubes of foot emollient, Insulin vials, anti-constipation powders, vitamins A, D and E, plasters, a Wilkinson Sword razor and blades, Shavex, nail file, menthol dental floss and, his Solpadeines. He didn’t take his camera.
“L’Chaim, cheers,” Abba said, raising his glass. “Thanks for coming.”
“L’Chaim… Jesus,” I said, sputtering on the acrid whiskey that ripped some skin from the roof of my mouth.
I emptied the remaining sachets of whiskey into our glasses, leaving them lying in a sodden heap on a paper towel.
The aeroplane dipped its wing, filling the windows with brilliant blue sky. I took the Berlitz Pocket Guide to Tenerife out of my backpack and looked for things for Abba and me to do, places to visit, restaurants to eat at, but the print was small, the layout confusing, the map code difficult to decipher. After a few pages my eyelids grew heavy and I lost interest, but the incessant tinkle from the headphones of the man next to me kept me awake. I flicked aimlessly through a well-thumbed in-flight magazine, spotting a feature about the Aran Islands off the west coast of Ireland, and thought of the last holiday I’d been on with Abba.
In my early twenties, Abba invited me to accompany him on a New Year’s weekend to Inishmore, the largest of the Aran Islands. “Go with him”, my mother pleaded, “he loves spending time with you.” I wondered what I would say when my friends asked me what I did on the biggest night of the year? But I didn’t have any other plans, and the thought of staying at home and watching the Late Late Show didn’t appeal.
Of course Abba knew the right place to stay, a youth hostel, owned by a former opera singer he’d met producing a television series on the best places to stay and eat across Ireland. Our bedroom, painted purple, was draughty and damp, the single mattresses unyielding, the sheets scratchy and blankets heavy. Brown water stains clouded the ceiling of our room, and outside rusty cigarette bins overflowed with sodden butts. He forgot that the hostel only served vegetarian food.
There was little to do on the island apart from read, sleep and walk. We’d usually head to the cliffs of Dun Aengus fort, neither of us saying much as our boots crunched on the rocky paths. Scrambling on our fronts, we liked to dangle our heads over the cliff edges and watch the herons and seagulls swoop through the spray into the sea for fish, our bodies vibrating as the Atlantic Ocean pounded the rock-face like a drum.
Sometimes we’d stop to take photographs of derelict cottages, split Karst limestone and silhouettes of ancient standing stones with Abba’s manual Yashica SLR camera, often experimenting with different lenses and filters. Forever the television director, he’d point and demand that I grab the shot “quickly”, or I’d miss the light. When he spotted a shot he wanted to take, I’d stand behind him and wrap my arms around his body to steady his shaking hands as he clicked and rolled on the film.
Every so often, horizontal driving rain would sweep in from the Atlantic, clouds racing across the sky. Despite my pleas to head back to the hostel, my eyes watery and ears painfully red, Abba would insist that we shelter against a drystone wall, gales blowing up our waterproof jackets like balloons.
“I’d love to live here,” he said, cradling a whiskey in a pub one afternoon after a walk.
“What would you do?” I asked.
“Sit, read, not talk to anyone,” he laughed. “Don’t be ridiculous, you’d be bored stiff.”
Abba took a long gulp of his drink and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Forget it, I didn’t think you’d understand.” I spent New Year’s Eve making vacuous conversation with an elderly couple and picked at smoked salmon blinis and plates of cheese. Abba sat quietly and swirled red wine around his glass, a semi-satisfied smile on his stained lips. “You OK?” I’d ask him every few minutes. “I’m fine. Why do you keep asking?”
The owner of the hostel led arias from West Side Story and The Threepenny Opera to laughter and applause. After a few songs, Abba asked a woman of a similar age to dance. I followed his movements in a mirror, one hand holding hers, the other lightly clasping her waist, their bloated bodies swaying to the music. At midnight, he kissed the woman lightly on her cheek, gave her a squeeze, whispered something in her ear and winked at me. I gazed at him through a shower of streamers and balloons and for a few seconds wondered if I should say something, ask him what he was doing. But he’d probably tell me to “relax” and “mind my own bloody business”. I decided to leave him be. After all, he seemed to be enjoying himself and wasn’t that what we all wanted for him? Soon after ‘Auld Lang Syne’ I went to bed without saying good night. We travelled home the next day, neither of us speaking.
An hour into the flight, Abba removed a copy of Philip Roth’s
Everyman from the pocket of his smock and started to read. “How’s Roth?” I asked.
“Marvellous,” he said, using one of his favourite words that he always pronounced languidly with his eyes closed, as if he was in a momentary dreamlike state.
“What’s it about?”
“A Jewish man who’s dealing with old age I suppose.” He paused. “Look, before you say anything, I adore Roth. I don’t care what the bloody feminists say.” This was how it began.“Your mother absolutely refuses to read any of his books. She won’t even try.”
“I don’t think it’s her kind of thing.”
“I don’t give a damn if it’s not her ‘kind of thing’, there’s no harm in trying.”
I sighed.
“I’ll borrow it when you’re done and tell you what I think,” I said.
“I’ll buy you a copy.”
“Can’t you just lend me yours?”
“I like to have my own,” he insisted.
It was a pointless discussion. Every so often, I’d surreptitiously borrow one of Abba’s books and take it back with me to London. He’d quickly discover a gap in the shelf, as if he’d catalogued the location of every book he owned. There’d be a phone call on the landline, and a demand for a postal return. I’d refuse, jokingly,
but now and again he’d remind me like a strict librarian of the items that were overdue. Reluctantly, I’d agree.
As the plane descended, Abba drank some water from a plastic bottle that I held to his lips so it wouldn’t spill. Unbuckling his seat belt he stood up.
“Please. Sir,” Ludmila said, running up to him, “you need to sit down, we’ll be landing in a few minutes.”
“I have to go to the bathroom!”
“Sir!” she said firmly, “the Captain has switched on the seat belt sign. You have to sit down.”
“Cabin crew, five minutes,” the Captain announced.
Abba lent on the back of the seat in front to steady himself, pushed past Ludmila and shuffled down the aisle in his bare feet.
When he returned, I noticed his khaki drawstring trousers were darker at the crotch.
The aeroplane landed with a thump a few minutes later, and sped along a runway surrounded by a landscape of scorched grass and palm trees.
“Ahhh, the sun, finally. Beats the bloody weather at home,” Abba said, his bifocals darkening in the blistering sunlight as we stood at the top of the steps to the aeroplane. He hooked his arm around mine. We descended towards the tarmac one step at a time, and boarded a stuffy bus.
“Christ, it’s hot in here,” Abba said, and started to take off his smock.
“What are you doing?” I whispered.
He ignored me, and continued to remove his smock as his book, sachets of Solpadeine and a used insulin vial fell out of the pockets. I helped him lift it off, exposing his hairy chest
and breasts that drooped out of the side of his vest. Some of the other passengers gawked at him. One parent pulled away a child that stood too close, and another shook her head. I thought of wrapping him up in his smock, but instead, placed an arm around his shoulders and held him tight.
“Two drivers?” the Assistant asked at the Hertz car hire desk. “Yes please,” Abba responded.
“Just one,” I interrupted, and quickly initialled the forms for a Cinquecento.
“I can drive you know.” “I know…”
We drove along a dual carriageway towards the resort of Playa de las Américas, on the southern tip of the island. At some stage during the drive, he explained to me in detail that it was great that the car had no electric windows, and that he hated electric windows, as you couldn’t open them just a tad, and what was wrong with a perfectly good old-fashioned design, and why did things have to change all the time, and the reason he hadn’t had the electric windows on his car at home fixed was because the parts weren’t available and anyway, it would cost two hundred euros to fix, so my mother and him would have to drive with a closed window for the time being until the parts came in from Japan, and he hated driving with the windows closed, and so a manual window handle would have been a much better idea all along. I only half listened.
Located in the centre of town, the Hotel Optimist was surrounded by a couple of high-rise office blocks and a supermarket. Palm trees sent long afternoon shadows over an oval swimming pool in a central courtyard. Flecks of white paint scattered the pavement outside reception, and inside a smell of pungent aftershave filled the lobby. A set of digital LED clocks showing the time in Tenerife, Dublin and New York hung on the wall behind the welcome desk. We waited to be served.
“Eh, excuse me,” a man behind us said. Abba and I turned.
Somewhere in his late-twenties, his eyes were hidden behind round reflective sunglasses. He was wearing a ‘Sun-Seeker Holidays’ sleeveless t-shirt with ‘Here to Help’ printed on the front, a baseball cap, knee-length football shorts and sliders. His skin glowed sunbed orange.
“Are you the…” he said, running his finger down a clipboard, “Lentons?”
“Lentins,” Abba said curtly. “That’s us,” I said.
“You had me worried there for a while. I thought you’d gone home or something. I waited for you and you at the airport,” he said, pointing at Abba and me. “You delayed the coach,” he said accusingly. “I was told you were getting the bus with everyone else.”
“We hired a car,” I said.
“Sure you don’t need a car around here. Everything you need is here, in Playa,” he said, opening up his arms.
“I’m not sitting here all day,” Abba said, sniffing loudly, “I need to get some sun.”
“You’ll get loads of sun here, it’s been lovely and hot today.” “I need the bathroom. What room are we in?” Abba asked.
“I’ve put you in the mini apartment, three, zero, four,” he said handing me two key cards. “Listen,” he continued, “let me know if you plan to go off somewhere, OK? While you’re here you’re my responsibility. I have a duty of care and all that, health and safety you know.” He paused. “Are you joining us for dinner?”
I started to back away, keeping one eye on Abba who was walking towards the lift.
“It’s Mexican night tonight,” the man continued, “so you get two chicken fajitas for the price of one, and they throw in a few shrimp. Oh, and then there’s karaoke. Do you like singing?”
“We’ll, eh, think about it.”
“Well if you need anything, ask for me, Richard.” He held out his hand, and as he squashed my fingers I noticed a gold cross hanging from his neck, and the name Mary tattooed on his shoulder.
The carpet of the apartment was threadbare, the walls magnolia, the pendants dusty. A thick smell of furniture polish filled the air, as if it was trying to mask another odour. The tabletop fridge in the kitchen gurgled, and a red light blinked on the telephone. “Meh. The agent told me there’d be a view,” Abba said, looking
out of his bedroom window.
“Of what?” I asked from the lounge that was filled with a leather sofa and a low coffee table.
“A view, a view. You know, something to look at, the sea perhaps. The place I booked last year for your mother and me had a view.”
“Well, I can see a supermarket and the car park,” I shouted from my room, drawing the heavy curtains.
Abba spent some time unpacking, neatly arranging his books on his bedside table. I dumped my bag in the corner of my room, preferring to leave it unpacked.
Sometime later, he leant against the frame of my bedroom door and stretched his arms wide. “I’m whacked,” he declared, “I’m going for a snooze. Wake me up when it’s time for dinner.” Sitting on the tiled balcony that faced onto the swimming pool,
I opened my book, lit a cigarette and downed two paracetamol, enjoying the sugar coating of the tablets. A few holidaymakers had crammed their sun loungers into a corner of the pool area, offering their already seared bodies to the last rays of sun for the day.
Over the past few months, I’d been picking my way through Abba’s copy of Saul Bellow’s Herzog. The cover, creased and frayed at the edges, had a picture of a scrunched-up ball of paper with messy handwriting and was inscribed with the words, ‘the half-drunk author, best wishes, Saul Bellow’ from a book signing Abba had attended some years before.
Every time I opened it, I couldn’t help but think of a conver- sation I’d had with my shrink. Week after week for the past few months, I’d sit in her chintzy living room, in semi-darkness on a sunken couch that was matted with cat hair. Her coffee was instant, the milk sometimes off, her shelves filled with the spines of books such as I’m OK – You’re OK and Staying OK. I was there to talk about Abba and me, but often said nothing, until I told her one week that I had agreed to accompany him on holiday and was reading Herzog.
“It’s an interesting choice of book to read,” she said, looking at me over her glasses, smiling ponderously, bits of parsley stuck
between her teeth. It was the first time she’d smiled at me, as if she knew that I was only reading Herzog to impress Abba, to give us something to talk about, to distract us.
I shrugged.
“Are you enjoying it?” she asked. “Suppose.”
“If you’re not enjoying it, then why are you reading it?” I didn’t respond.
“There’s no harm in stopping you know.”
I sank into the couch knowing she was right, but there was something about Herzog’s ramblings, disconnected obsessions and letter writing that made me want to continue.
It was no longer day as we sat on high stools in the crowded hotel bar. A group of men huddled together watching a La Liga football match on a plasma screen. Children ran amongst parents’ legs, and families gathered around tall bar tables littered with packets of crisps.
“Shall we do Shabbat?” Abba asked. “Here?”
“Lama lo, why not?”
“It’s not exactly the right place, is it?” A man reached over me to pay for a pint. “With what anyway?”
“I don’t know, whiskey, and maybe you can find a box of matches.”
“Can’t we just take a break from it?” I sighed. “It’s Friday night. I’d like to do Shabbat.”
Reluctantly, I ordered two Jameson’s and a bowl of spiced cashews from the barman, and asked if I could borrow a cigarette lighter. Abba and I stood against the bar. I sparked the lighter, held it high in my hand, and began to mumble the shabbat blessing for lighting the candles.
“Baruch, ato Adonai, elohenu melech…”
“Hey, señor, no smoking,” the barman said, pointing to a sign above the bar. His name, Raul, was sewn onto his sleeveless shirt. As he spoke, a gold front tooth shone in the spotlights, and a scar glistened on the side of his face.
“Oh, no, sorry, it’s for a prayer, you know, Shabbat. God, how do I? God, you know… God, we’re Jewish,” I said, pointing to a Star of David hanging from my neck.
“Oh, OK, but no smoking.”
Raul stopped to shine a glass and studied us from behind the bar as I blessed the whiskey and sanctified the nuts. We drank, and Abba started to belt out the hymn Le Cha Do-Di at the top of his voice.
“Do we have to sing?” I interrupted him.
Abba continued, getting the Hebrew all wrong. After a verse, I joined in, if only to help him with the words, and sang along while staring at my drink. For a brief moment, he stopped itching and rubbing his hernia. His hands were still, his voice clear.
As we finished singing, I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned and in front of me was a woman with a peeling forehead.
“Hi,” I said.
“I just wanted to say that I think it’s great that you’re singing with your dad in Irish. What song was it?”
“What song was it?” I asked confused. “Oh, no, we were signing in Hebrew.”
“Oh, is that like Jewish?”
“Yeh, well, it’s the language that Jews, I mean, it’s the Jewish language I suppose. We use it for prayers.”
“So what are you doing singing?”
“It’s Shabbat, Friday night, I mean the Sabbath, so we sing songs, you know, to celebrate.”
“Oh. Well. Lovely. That’s lovely. Ahem, nice to meet you, and your dad.” She scurried back to her table, and whispered to a young girl who was digging her hand into a pot of Pringles.
Abba wiggled his finger at Raul. “Señor,” Raul said.
“Where’s decent to eat around here? I feel like a good steak.” “Try the Vegas Grill. You go to the main road and up the hill.
You’ll see the sign. It’s easy to find amigo.”
I felt like driving fast, longing to enjoy the warm evening breeze on my bare arms, but the Cinquecento struggled to get up the steep hill.
“For God’s sake, don’t leave it in third,” Abba said.
I pressed the accelerator to the floor. The car didn’t respond. “Your mother always leaves it in third.”
Night fell as I parked the car. A man singing The Wild Rover carried in the wind. A sweet tropical smell emanated from jasmine and bougainvillea bushes that covered the entrance to the restaurant. The singing got louder as we entered the open-air space, lit up with signs of Las Vegas hotels. Long tables were tightly packed with holidaymakers who wore bright shirts and tops that glowed like fluorescent light bulbs against their tanned skin.
A waitress gestured for us to follow her. We walked around the front of the stage to a table by the side of the dance floor.
“This OK?” I asked Abba as we sat down.
“Ah, it will do,” Abba said, as he cleaned his glasses with the corner of his shirt.
“We can go somewhere else if you’d like,” I shouted over the music.
“Ze beseder, it’s fine,” he said, flicking through the extensive leather-bound menu.
The waitress returned with a basket of bread.
Groups of diners sang in unison, swaying from side to side, bingo-wings wrapped around each other’s shoulders.
“Two steak tartares,” Abba declared. “What?” I asked.
“Come on, your mother doesn’t cook red meat anymore, it’s my treat. Ah, wait, has the meat been hung?” Abba looked up at the waitress.
“Señor?”
“Hung. All meat should be hung.” She looked at me quizzically.
“Abba, I don’t think she understands,” I shouted.
“Hung, you know, hung,” Abba said. He pushed his hands into the table and stood up while grabbing his napkin in his fist. He lifted his arm high, bent his head, opened his mouth wide, stuck out his tongue and closed his eyes. “Hung,” he cried, startling a few other guests on the next table.
“For God’s sake, sit down,” I said.
“I’ll ask the chef, OK?” the waitress said.
“Relax, it’s just a little joke,” he said, sitting down. “To hell with it. I’m sure it’ll be fine.”
The music stopped for a while. The waitress returned and mixed the raw minced beef with capers, shallots, Tabasco, chopped gherkins, salt, pepper and a raw egg. She dolloped it onto our plates. Abba tucked into his helping, but quickly reached over and dug his fork into my plate of food. We picked at the meat that was tough and had a sour tang, as if it had recently been defrosted in a microwave. As he ate, Abba raised his wine glass to his mouth using both hands, but couldn’t avoid a few drops sprinkling his shirt like tiny specks of blood.
“Welcome back, the one and only, Irish Amigos,” an announcer bellowed through a microphone.
“Thank you,” the lead singer said and started singing Suspicious Minds. The crowd joined in loudly.
“Shall we go?” I asked, but Abba palmed his hand up and down, one of his signals that he was in no rush. He settled back into his chair and continued to swirl his wine around his glass as we knocked off a bottle of Merlot. I watched a few couples dance, thousands of sparkles reflecting from a disco ball onto them as they swung their tubby bodies, kissed and laughed with wide grins and snuggled up to each other’s necks. At some stage Abba went off to pee and bumped into a couple, knocking them slightly off balance, and for a split second I thought I’d have to retrieve him from an altercation with another man he’d bumped into, but he quickly disappeared through the strobe lights towards the bathroom. Waiting for Abba to return, I tore at the label on the bottle of wine with my nails, the paper curling and sticking
to my fingers.
*
Later that night, I saw Abba through a gap in the door to his bedroom sitting on the edge of his bed in his vest and y-fronts. He swallowed a few tablets with a glass of water. When I was six, I’d unlock his medicine cabinet that hung on our bathroom wall and steal his various pills. I hid them in my rabbit hand puppet which I left under my pillow. The clear ones, where I could see the contents, were my favourites. Every time I pinched another pill, I counted my collection and wrote down the number on a piece of paper I kept. Eventually, I’d gathered more than thirty. My mother found them one night and screamed. I promised my parents I hadn’t taken any. I told them I wanted to be a man, like Abba.
“Laila tov, good night,” I whispered.
“Laila tov maestro,” he said, briefly raising his head to me.
He hardly ever called me that anymore.
I sat on the balcony, lit a cigarette and tried to read Herzog in the dim overhead light, but couldn’t concentrate. A mosquito buzzed around my ear. There was a chill in the air. The laughter and yelps from the karaoke drifted across the wind from the hotel bar. I vacantly watched a few people jump and push each other into the pool, big lads doing cannonballs and girls following them with sparkly sandals still strapped to their feet.
Instead of coming on holiday, maybe I should have taken Abba out for a meal in Dublin to discuss my questions. I pondered this as I inhaled deeply on one cigarette after another, extinguishing the burnt tobacco onto the brickwork of next door’s balcony. I tried to remember what I’d written on my piece of paper, but for some reason all I could think about was the shard of glass that I’d kicked under the counter in Duty Free. I wondered if someone would cut themselves on the chipped bottle of after- shave, and for a brief moment I saw a person with a bleeding thumb remonstrate with the check-out assistant that a bottle they’d taken off a shelf had split their skin and they were bleeding, they had a plane to catch and for god’s sake where was the first aid kit and why was a broken bottle on the shelf anyway, and did they know that they had a holiday to get to and now their clothes were stained with blood and who was going to pay for the dry cleaning, and that would be my fault. But it was done. I was here. On holiday with Abba.
