Stark Raving Sanity

Claris? Clarissa? Claire?

The last time I saw Fereshteh was distressing.

Aaron had just returned home, crumpled, too thin and absurdly handsome. Within minutes he was racing down the stairs again, clutching a leather box in his right hand and rubbing his cheeks in a gesture of distress. I was afraid he might fall, and moved, (too quickly?) in front of him, offering to drive, waving the car keys to prove my bona fides, but after the briefest, (startled) glance towards me, he muttered something about a taxi and disappeared from view.

I wondered why he didn’t take the lift, but I suppose a mad dash is more appropriate than a smooth ride in such circumstances. Panic does as panic will.

It seemed inevitable that at some point Aaron would have to return alone, and he would surely then prefer the company of a neighbour above a taxi-driver, a breed who either talked too much or too little but never struck the balance. As I stood on the landing, rippled by his slipstream, I realised that I could be that person, that one person who could elevate the appalling moment into something memorable; that after the immediate grief had passed he might remember the kindness I had shown him and become, given time, a more grateful protagonist.

Ovarian cancer, poor thing. By the time it was diagnosed it was too late. She had been home occasionally in the past month, once notably when the lift was being serviced and he carried her up three flights of stairs. I nudged the door open just a little as he passed my floor with her in his arms, and wondered what measure of love it was that made her so weightless to him. I had an unwelcome image of him carrying her to the window, out of breath, like Heathcliff with the dying Cathy, looking not upon the Yorkshire moors but at the Tesco store and the flat roof of the Gala Bingo Hall, whispering such terms of endearment as I could only imagine in unscripted dreams.

Those were my thoughts as I drove to the hospital in the taxi’s wake. I also felt conflicted by which expression I should adopt and how I should behave when I got there. Should I be brisk and practical or dewed with empathy? I could only hope that the director of my destiny would guide me, would rearrange me, in pursuit of its ends.

I was told that I could wait by the window. There were several other patients in the ward, but all the focus was drawn to the tableau surrounding Fereshteh’s death bed. She lay mute with a cannula through her nose. Her startling blue eyes were closed. A gathering of jejune nurses wept as Aaron played his flute with rococo exuberance, as if willing her back from the underworld, but Hades would not be beguiled. This was not a funeral recital but a plea to the gods. As I watched, ghouIishly fascinated by the unfolding scene, I could not believe that Fereshteh’s personality had summoned the tears. The skilful playing of the maestro would have drawn them out whatever the circumstance, and so all was not as it seemed: all eyes were on him and not on her, and in that moment I felt a stab of schadenfreude for all the times that Fereshteh had ignored me.

When they finally pulled a sheet over her body my only thought was that here was the end of the beginning, the end of all those times when I had tried to catch his eye and he had averted his because Fereshteh was just so …. so fucking all-consuming.

He did not accept my offer of a lift home.

Della, the Cheese Plant and the Mute

Della Demetriou’s return home coincided with the flautist’s from the top floor. As she was turning her key in the door of her first floor flat, aware that he had been impatiently behind her on the stairs, he flew past her and carried on climbing. Word had spread that Fereshteh had cancer, and his ragged sobs and air of private catastrophe led her to assume she must have passed. Poor thing, she thought, making the cross on her flat chest. Sad as it was, Fereshteh’s aloof manners had never endeared herself to the Lambeth Mansions community, and so her thoughts were more broadly resolved around the terrible nature of grief rather than the specific object of it. She crossed herself again for thinking it.

The apartment was as spotlessly clean as she had left it. Her husband Ari was watching TV, immaculately turned out in waistcoat and tie, but wearing no pants.

‘My sister’s fine,’ she said. He looked at her and nodded. ‘I only married you because it made me alliterative,’ she went on. He nodded again.

Della flounced into the kitchen and banged doors before flicking the kettle on. Two days with her garrulous sister had reminded her how much she missed an endless spill of conversation, and how she hated her husband for denying her even a syllable since his stroke. The doctors had told her it was very mild and there should be no lasting consequences, yet whilst Ari walked as normal, dressed as normal and went to the pub as normal, he could not seem to speak. She felt that Ari was pulling a great big bluff, and her sister agreed. She suggested that Della threw it right back at him by driving him insane - so when she sat down with a cup of tea, she started talking to the cheese plant.

Several years ago it had been delivered in a box no bigger than a cheap Easter egg. Now it would fill a Fed-Ex van, and although the other plants she ordered had subsequently died, this monstera displayed all the symptoms of a growth hormone abnormality. She stroked a giant, leathery leaf. ‘Since the Greek tragedy over there ain’t talking, I thought you and me could get better acquainted …’

When she had finished telling the cheese plant all about her visit to Margate, and had extracted and relayed the minutiae of every conversation she’d had whilst there, she turned triumphantly to Ari only to realise that he had gone out. She only hoped that he had remembered his pants.

Claris? Clarissa? Claire?

He is the most beautiful man I have ever seen. He is too good for this world, which is why I sit at the top of the stairs every night with a bottle of wine so I can hear him play and know that he still breathes. The gods have deserted him but still he advocates. I wonder if, when all appeals go unanswered, he will switch to the bassoon.

I have not seen him since that terrible day. If he goes out it is when I am attending a lecture. If he eats, it is delivered in the early hours of the morning. He has a peep hole but, of course, I am on the wrong side of it. I wonder if he watches me, with my bottle and my two glasses.

I have had confused thoughts about the role of Cerberus, chained to the gates of the underworld, preventing the living from entering and, more pertinently, the dead from leaving. Beyond all else, Cerberus was faithful to his master and that is my duty to Aaron, but does my guardianship at the top of his stairs prevent Fereshteh from leaving? From leaving his thoughts? Am I to be rewarded for my fealty, or shall I merely be tossed a doggy biscuit for my trouble?

I have asked my lecturer but she gave me an odd look and suggested I branch out and not dwell exclusively on the underworld. It is generally a course taken by aspiring archeologists or those with more money than sense, and as I do not fall into either of those brackets, I think she wonders what I am doing there. In fact today she asked me outright, but I have no idea if she was referring to the course in general or my vigil at the top of Aaron's stairs.

Della, the Cheese Plant and the Mute

‘That girl who lives upstairs, what’s her name? Claris? Clarissa? Claire? Mad as a box of fucking frogs!’

The irony that she was talking to a cheese plant was lost on Della. It had become a comforting habit, often more rewarding than talking to Ari, but that did not mean that she wanted Ari to be silent forever. Her sister had reminded her how much Ari hated it when Della swore, and so Della had been swearing a lot lately to try and get a reaction.

‘The postman delivered a letter by mistake this morning,’ she went on, ‘for that flutist up the top - Aaron-something-or-other. Eastern European name … woj-tow-whizz.’

She could feel Ari bristling from his chair. He would know exactly how to pronounce the name but his long and inexplicable silence prevented him from correcting her. Della felt a frisson of satisfaction surge through her chest.

‘So I’ve just been up there to put it through his letterbox. And who’s up there with a bottle of wine and two glasses? That Claris, Clarissa, Claire, reeking of cheap perfume, perched on the step like a dropped bag of rags that’s been run over by a tram. I say to her, ‘What in gawd’s name are you doing?’ and she tells me she’s waiting for Aaron to come out. Fucking nut job!’

Ari turned the TV up. He had another week to go before he won his bet down the pub. £250 for six weeks of not talking to Della, and they would know if he cheated because Della speaks to Teddy Smethwick’s wife every day on the phone. It wasn’t a king’s ransom but he wanted to treat Della on their anniversary - and beyond that marital nicety, it was eye-opening the things she said to that cheese plant.

She is actually called Cleo

It has been weeks since Fereshteh died and he is still as mournful as ever. Lately he has played only five tunes, those which speak most acutely to his state of mind, I suppose. I have come to realise, albeit slowly, that his love for her is too strong. If he surrendered to me, as I feel sure he eventually would, I would only be a comforter, a soft toy that someone is fond of until that person grows up and discards it for more glamorous diversions, like Puff the Magic Dragon. I cannot compete with Fereshteh’s supple grace and chilling indifference. I might sit here for years while my back creaks and my liver dissolves and it will all be for nothing because when Aaron is ready, a man like him? He will just find another Fereshteh.

In fact …

In fact, I have come to realise that If I hear the Chaminade Concerto just one more time I am going to throw this bottle of St Émilion at his fucking door. And then the glasses, and then my own body until it bleeds. I am going to scream through his letter box and tell him what a FUCK PIG he is. And all of this, ALL OF THIS, because of a fucking —

Ah! And there it goes again ..

Della, the Cheese Plant and the Mute

Della bustled past Ari as though he didn’t exist and plonked herself down on the chair next to the cheese plant. Of course, she was up with all the gossip from last night after it all kicked off with Claris-Clarissa-Claire-Cleo up on the top floor.

‘You’ll be wanting to hear this,’ she said to the cheese plant, ‘seeing as you can’t get about much.’

Ari moved slightly forward in his seat, so Della lowered her voice almost to a whisper. ‘Of course, Ari will be all ears,’ she confided to the alpha leaf. ‘He couldn’t really join in last night, with him being mute and all ..’

Ari compressed his lips.

‘Saffron lives opposite the girl upstairs, and it turns out she’s got form for this sort of thing. The girl’s father had given Saffron his number and told her to call him if things ever got messy, but by the time he arrived the police were already here. You see, Aaron ain’t been in his flat for weeks. He’s off in the South of France playing his flute. Before he left he put some recordings on a loop and installed a tiny little camera in the potted plant by his door. He told Saffron it was a deterrent against burglars but mostly it was to keep an eye on crazy-girl. He had filed a harassment complaint but didn’t want to do anything unless it escalated. Which it did!' she finished, with a smack of lurid satisfaction.

She made a cup of tea and the minutes she was away would have been agonising for Ari, who was ten times the gossip that Della ever was. Knowing this, Della made sure to brew the teabag for longer than usual.

‘Of course, the poor fool,’ she resumed, ‘had got everything mixed up in her head, which doesn’t surprise me because she was doing a course in Greek myth at the university and anyone who involves themselves with anything remotely Greek is fucking certifiable! A fuck, tit, shit, prick, cunt, arsehole, in fact!’

She gave Ari the side-eye. Ooooh! he’s close, she thought.

‘Anyway,’ she said, leaning further into the foliage, ‘the poor thing got herself all twisted up with jealously about Fereshteh, about all the years they’d lived together and how she couldn’t compete .. and she started camping outside his door every night until eventually he decided to get out the country for a bit. And, of course, it can’t have been easy for him, surrounded by all those memories … the cat litter tray, the—’

Ari exploded. ‘That sneaky bloody Persian who left a headless vole in my slipper that time? That was Fereshteh?’

‘Who did you think she was, dear?’ she asked, as if five weeks of zero verbosity had escaped her notice.

‘What kind of a madness is that?’ he grumbled.

‘A hopeless dreamer in love with a man beyond her reach, Ari. A girl so lacking in confidence that a dead cat, albeit a rather beautiful one, was both a threat and a means to open the door for her. I have no idea what you call that. I just hope they’ve got tablets for it.’

She stood up and patted his knee. ‘I know about the bet, Ari. I’ve known for a couple of days now.’

‘Teddy Smethwick’s wife can’t keep a secret,’ he observed.

‘Nobody can,’ she said, ‘but she won’t split. She wants us to have the money.’

‘So you can stop talking to that bloody cheese plant now?’

She looked at him and then leaned forward, right up close to his crabby old face. ‘You jealous of a cheese plant, Ari? Now what kind of a madness is that?’

Later, sat side by side on the settee, Della kissed his cheek.

‘What was that for?’ he asked.

She took his hand and held it the way she used to before he stopped talking. ‘I know you’re a man of honour, Ari, and a bet’s a bet, but …. 250 quid’s a nice drop of money for our anniversary.’

‘So what are you saying, Della?’

‘I’m saying there’s only a week to go, so I won’t say anything if you don’t.’