Feed My Dear Dogs

Watson: You have an extraordinary genius for minutiae.

Holmes: I appreciate their importance. Here is my monograph upon the tracing of footsteps, with some remarks upon the uses of plaster of Paris as a preserver of impresses!

I want to tell you, Mrs Rosenfeld, about something I read in the Book of Ruth, something concerning the transfer of shoes, and redemption, and how this offering of shoes is symbolic, it’s a symbolic act. With this shoe, I redeem you, I redeem her, him, this house, this debatable land. I am in a fever to tell you about it, I am not sure why, perhaps because Israel is your country, and it might be mine. I need to tell you this thing about shoes, Ruth 4:7.

Now this was the manner in former time in Israel concerning redeeming and concerning changing, for to confirm all things; a man plucked off his shoe, and gave it to his neighbour; and this was a testimony in Israel.

I am in a fever to tell you, but when I arrive and lie down, I think about lying down, how it is a symbolic act, a sign of grief, as is walking barefoot, I read that also. Then Job arose, and rent his mantle, and shaved his head, and fell down upon the ground. Job 1:20.

I remember it, how I walked barefoot, to and fro, to and fro, and how it happened, the thing I did, my experiment in escape velocity, and how I fell upon the ground, seeing stars. My hair was cut, not quite shaved and now I am here, because hope is still a problem for me.

—It’s very difficult for you to talk to me today. I wonder what’s going on.

—I am writing a monograph upon the tracing of footsteps!

—Ah. Do you want to tell me about it?

—No! I need to ask something. Did you choose me or was I assigned to you? Did you choose me? Did you choose me, did you choose me? I don’t see why you can’t answer that question.

—No, you don’t see.

—What if I die from this? I think I am going to die from this and no one can stop me, you can’t stop me.

—That is true. But you can let me try. I can try not to let it happen.

Then pluck off your shoe, Mrs Rosenfeld. Pluck off your shoe.

THREE

Holmes: How are you? You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive.

Watson: How on earth did you know that?

Holmes: Never mind. The question now is about haemoglobin. No doubt you see the significance of this discovery of mine?

If the brain can know one hundred trillion things, can a person ask one hundred trillion questions? That’s one. Here’s two. Why don’t you wear the red dress any more, the one I saw you in when I was born, the one you wear every Christmas until now, red you, falling snow, you’ve stopped wearing it, I want to know why. Red, white.

Whoa, the Moon.

The Earth has one natural satellite, the Moon, its twin, born around the same time, 4,600 million years ago. The Moon is almost all rock, with an iron-rich core, the haem in haemoglobin. It has no atmosphere, gravity at the surface being too weak, only one-sixth that of the Earth. Early in its lifetime, the Moon was bombarded by asteroids, so its surface is scarred and crenellated and distinguished by plains and seas. Birthmarks. Because tidal forces have slowed the rotation of the Moon, it is locked in orbit around the Earth and shows the same side always, completing one orbit every 27.322 days, at a distance of around 1.3 light seconds, showing this same face always. Are you there? Whither thou goest, I will go. Where thou diest, will I die.

A star the same mass as the Sun, at the end of its life, will collapse into a white dwarf, though a white dwarf is not really white at all, ranging in colour from blue to red, depending on the temperature at the surface. A star collapses because nuclear fusion at the heart of it can no longer sustain it, the white dwarf now an ember of itself, a stellar remnant, shedding the last of its heat into space, cooling and fading and compressing until its surface is so close to the centre, the beginning so close to its end, gravity at the surface is 100,000 times that of the Earth and light has to fight an uphill struggle to escape, and because light always travels at the same speed, it shows this loss of energy in increasing wavelengths, the light redshifting. Red, white.

One hundred trillion things.

According to a rabbi writing in fourteenth-century Spain, the Talmud states that the father ‘contributes the semen of the white substance’ that makes up the bones and sinews in a body, the nails, the brain, the white of the eye. The mother contributes the semen of the red substance that is flesh, hair, blood and the black of the eye. God’s contribution is the soul, but it is only on loan. The red and the white stuff dies with you, but the soul is up for grabs, or the Rightful Owner calls it in, no interest. It depends how you look at it.

In alchemy, red and white are the colours of man and bride and they ought to be together, masculine and feminine, in one same person, between two people, in Nature itself, it is the best state of affairs, the union of the opposites as they call it, with far-reaching consequences otherwise, dark times, wastelands, the lot. What a palaver. This was Merlin’s subject also, red and white, his Grail, a mission that pressed him so hard in his role as Lightbringer, he simply fell apart, going through a very bad spell of lurking in the forest and acting up, more like a wild animal than a bringer of light, everybody said so. And then his sister rescues him, building him a house in the forest, a house like an observatory, with seventy windows and doors so he can indulge his passions for astronomy and prophecy, closing himself up, as Blake might say, seeing all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern. His sister does all the cooking and she pours the wine and Merlin teaches her the fine arts of astronomy and prophecy until, he tells her, she is his match.

Merlin does not forget about the Grail, he does not forget about Perceval, a knight who dreams much in his sleep, Merlin appearing to him in many forms, sometimes as a hermit all dressed in white.

‘I’ll never drink milk again. Never.’ That’s what I say to Jude.

‘Yeh, I know. You’ll feel better soon,’ says Jude.

‘When?’

Jude does not answer me. You don’t get a lot of answers from Jude who is nearly my twin, and hardly ever when you expect one. You could ask him a question and get an answer some three days later, when you are riding bikes together or coming back from doing a shopping message for Mum. I am used to it, but some types are spooked by it. Not me.

We are reading comics. Well, his is not really a comic though it has little pictures in rows running across the page in separate boxes just like in regular comics and is the same shape and size as the comics I like most, such as Victor, Valiant and Tiger but these are largely to do with war and sporting prowess and not so full of special knowledge as Jude’s, which is called World of Wonder and to which he has a subscription, or a prescription as Harriet would say. It’s quite special to have a subscription. Jude’s comic has ‘Weiss’ written in the top left-hand corner and he goes to collect it each week at the newsagent. Whoa. I would like a subscription to Victor, or to Commando, which comes in a very nice book shape and has long stories in it featuring commandos having hard knocks before defeating Nazis who throw their hands in the air and go Kamerad! but neither of these comics are all that serious, so I only get them once in a while, for a treat, or else Jude steals one for me, sliding it away with his World of Wonder, or just walking out with it under his arm all casual, like he paid for it of course, of course. I’ve seen him do it and he is very good, but I am not witness to all his thefts any more, being so stark-eyed watching him, that nowadays Jude makes me stand outside. He mainly steals for me and Ben, comics, sweets, that sort of thing.

I am reading a story in Jude’s World of Wonder about stars, etc. It has pictures of olden times scientists, Sir Isaac Newton and René Descartes, a man with a lot of curly hair like a girl, plus Einstein, and I’ve definitely heard of him, and also Galileo, a man from the seventeenth century in a big beard and a wee hat resembling a yarmulke, a hat worn by my dad and the boys on Passover, but not by me, due to sex and me being the wrong sex for nice hats. I don’t think Galileo was Jewish at all, it is just an Italian-type hat, and quite fashionable in olden times, as I suppose.

‘Jude?’ I say. ‘Light year. What is that?’

Jude is reading the latest World of Wonder and he is lying on his back holding his magazine in the air not far from his face, sometimes switching hands to avoid pins and needles, turning pages and breathing in and out without any palaver, no shuffling and rustling or unnecessary movements. Jude never flaps about the way I do, it’s nice to watch, how he is, how he moves. Answering my question might disturb his whole set-up, but I ask anyway, he always hears me, he’ll remember, and three days later, here we are walking home from the fishmonger.

Mum has rung up Mr Jarvis and Mr Jarvis has all the fish ready for Jude and me. I refuse to carry it, not having a big thing for fish, especially slimy fishies with heads still on and staring-right-at-you eyes, no thanks. We made a pit stop at the newsagent and Jude has stolen a packet of fruit gums, my favourite. Wait outside, he said.

‘Light year,’ he says, stepping out of the shop. ‘The space light can travel in a year. It’s distance, not time.’

This is hard. ‘Oh. Do I need to know this, is it important?’

Jude frowns as we stroll along and he takes another fruit gum from the roll. He is thinking. The fruit gum is red, my topmost favourite, so he passes it on and eats the next one, which is yellow and also pretty good if you are not in the mood for red. ‘Yeh. Important.’

This means I have work to do and will need to go to Ben for more information, Ben who is patient and can do a lot of talking all at once without getting fed up. Suddenly Jude chucks our sweets right over the fence by the pavement we are walking home along.

‘Hey, Jude.’ Jude does strange things and if you get upset, his forehead bunches up and blue veins show at the temples, like railroad tracks. So I say it quiet. Hey, Jude.

‘Too many sweets. Bad for you.’

OK, Jude.

So that is one example of how long it can take to get an answer from my brother, three days in this case and something I do not mind because Jude is great and nearly my twin and it is why I don’t really expect him to tell me straight off when I will feel better, what does he mean by soon, and what is a light year, on the day we had the milk race and lay about reading comics, feeling mighty throw-uppy and pathetic.

I am in Ben and Jude’s room, I am lying on Ben’s bed, which is the top bunk of the bunk beds and Jude is down below on his bunk. He never wanted the top one because of all the movement involved, going up and down the ladder. I am crazy for going up and down the ladder, it’s like being an officer in a submarine in World War II. Cool. Jude and I have used the bunk beds for a lot of military situations, as a submarine, a Roman galley in wars against Egyptians, a tent in the desert war against the Afrika Korps and a hut in a Nazi prison camp before we dig our way out. We are happy that Mum and Dad bought the bunk beds and sometimes I even get to sleep in here with Jude if Ben is staying over at a friend’s house, though this is upsetting for Harriet, who will ignore me completely the next morning, building a wall of cereal boxes around her place so she won’t have to look at me, but spending the whole breakfast time peeking through the cracks and then quickly shutting her eyes and turning her head away if I happen to catch her, signifying her great disgust regarding me, and how I am the most boring and stupid person she has ever known. But I like sleeping with Jude because there is no end to our game and we can do night scenes if we are not too sleepy. It’s very realistic.

‘Jude, are we taking the bunk beds with us, do you think?’

‘Doubt it. Bet not.’

‘Too bad,’ I say.

‘Yeh.’

Things are kind of messed up in our house at the moment, what with items not in the right places and this feeling all the time of nearly being late for school even when it is not a school day, and my dad stomping around the joint with his hair all mussed and breathing hard, sometimes stopping short and scratching his head with both hands and a lost expression. This is because we are leaving this house soon, not only for a new house but a whole new country, my dad’s country, and it is his idea so I do not see why he is acting so huffy and puffy. I am not sure I want to go, I don’t know what they’ve got over there, do they have good things, maybe it will be fun, maybe not. When my dad gave us the big news one night before supper, like an annunciation meeting I guess, he said we could come right back home if it doesn’t work out over there, but he just has to go now, it’s something he has to do due to his roots. Roots. Like my dad is a plant or something. During the tidings, I kept looking at Mum to see what might show up on her face and she said nothing and just smiled and played with Gus, who was trying to pull the mats out from under the cutlery and plates in a spirit of scientific endeavour, I believe. He seems quite interested in the motion of things through the air ever since he can walk about by himself for great lengths of time without falling down drunk like most little kids, falling down and staring at the ground that hit them before going in for some howling and screaming. I kept looking at Mum because I thought I could tell if this were a good or bad thing we were about to do, go to my dad’s country, and in a ship, but it was hard to tell, as if Mum were not in the meeting at all, here and not here, and I got a racy scared feeling for a second, like when bike riding and my feet come off the pedals and the pedals spin wild so all I can do is steer away from large impediments such as trees and lamp-posts and other people and hope for the best.

One of the messed-up things around here at the moment is too much milk delivered by the milkman. Maybe he got it wrong or maybe Mum was too busy to put a note out saying how much milk, etc., I don’t know, but Jude decided we should have a milk race so as not to waste the milk and that is why we are lying around on bunk beds like sea lions at the zoo on a hot day, not budging much, even when zoo men are pitching slimy fish snacks at them. We lie on our backs like sea lions and keep our arms to the side because any pressure on our stomachs leads to a throw-uppy feeling. We stare at the ceiling and try to forget about milk, which is not easy.

‘I wish we could take the bunk beds, do you think they have bunk beds over there, Jude?’ No answer. ‘Jude? I was talking to Sister Martha – I told you about her – and I must have said something about you, some football thing, and she went, Jude. Patron saint of lost causes! and kind of laughed. In a nice way, not a bad way. But still, what does it mean, how does that work, patron saint, is it the top saint, and what is that, lost causes? And are you named after him? I wish she hadn’t said that, it’s weird.’

‘We’re Jewish, we don’t have saints.’

‘What do we have then?’

‘I don’t know. Rabbis. No saints. Anyway, I’m named for a book,’ says Jude, and I can feel the bunks sway, meaning Jude is rolling over. Meaning Jude is getting better and can take the pressure. Possibly my time for feeling better is coming up too. Coming soon. I hope so.

‘What book?’

‘You don’t know it.’

‘I might. I might know it, tell me,’ I say, a bit hurt he maybe thinks I am a dummy due to getting less homework than he does and being at a school with lots of nuns and girls where the books are thinner and have a lot more pictures inside them. Illustrations. Sometimes Jude comes right up to my homework stuff splayed out on the oak table or outdoors on the white wrought-iron table near all those statues Mum has of Italian people with not a lot of clothes on and one hip poking out to the side in a relaxed manner, Italian people carrying maybe a flower or a bunch of wheat or some fish or something weird. Where are they going? If I had a fish to haul someplace, I’d do it quick sticks and not in a relaxed manner with hips swaying side to side, or I’d make Jude do it like when we collect them from Jarvis for Mum, when I refuse to carry the bag even. A fish never looks properly dead to me. It’s a problem. Jude comes right up to my work and fingers the books, flipping pages and going mmmm and waltzing off with this private decision he has just made about my homework and my mental capacities and how I might be losing my mind because of nuns. He thinks my books are a bit sissy, I can tell. I feel bad when he does that and I would like to go to Jude and Ben’s school and peruse heavy tomes with small diagrams in black and white, and wear a blue cap like a cricket cap the way they do, and grey shorts down to the knees and so on, but I cannot because I am a girl, I am Jem.

I also wear school hats, two types. In winter, Harriet and I have navy-blue beret hats and my dad says we look like U-boat officers and when he sees us traipse in from the convent, he salutes and goes Heil Hitler! and wanders off, shaking with mirth. He never gets tired of this joke, not ever. In summer, we have to wear flowy dresses with blue-and-white up-and-down stripes and the skirt part flies all around in the merest breeze unlike the winter tunic which stays neat and close to the legs, making it hard in summer to run with a football, for instance, without stripy material flapping in the air and your undies showing. Bloody. Whenever outdoors, a girl has to wear the summer hat, a creamy white straw hat with a hatband and a metal school badge in front and turnups like on a bowler hat except for the gruesome white elastic running under the chin to hold it all in place which gives me a choky feeling if I concentrate too hard on it, suddenly conscious of every single swallow going down my throat so that I start gulping like baby birds do when the mother is feeding them and you see it all happening, the entire voyage down the throat of the little worm bit or whatever and that’s when I get throw-uppy and have to sit down for a while for some recovery time, same as today, for different causes, for milk-race causes.

‘Jude the Obscure,’ says Jude.

‘Oh yeh,’ I say. ‘What’s obscure again?’

‘It’s Latin for dark, obscurus. Or strange. Difficult, I mean. Hard to see. See?’

‘Think so. Anyway, I’ll read that book then.’

‘No,’ says Jude, quite firm.

‘Why not?’ I roll over, feeling a bit better now, and I hang over the edge to peek at Jude, my hair dangling his way.

‘It’s bad at the end and you’re not ready, I’ll tell you when.’

‘OK.’ I flip on to my back and I think about it, how Jude looks out for me, knowing what is good and bad and when I am ready for things, even if he will not explain it in a lot of words when I want him to, because he has tons of things on his mind at all times. He is busy. ‘Jude, will you tell me about lost causes?’

‘Later.’

‘You might forget. Please. Just a bit.’

Jude rises and ambles over to the big bay window with the piano in front of it that Ben can play, and he sits on the piano bench and stares out the window. Jude won’t take lessons in piano, just pausing when Mum asked him if he wanted to and saying no thank you, very politely, and that was it. Harriet and I have piano at the convent. Harriet never studies and I study hard and then we sit with Mum who helps us practise and when it is Harriet’s turn, my sister flies all over the keys making some pretty fine sounds though I am pretty sure not one is in the piano homework she is supposed to do. She sits up straight and makes this whole rush of sound, whipping her head from side to side in a dramatic fashion and turning round now and again to grin at Mum. It’s all very unusual. When Harriet is keen to stop, never wanting to practise long, she shuts the piano lid and scoots across the piano bench to lean into Mum, resting her head there, like she has just been on some long journey and not everything she saw was good.

I myself have some piano problems and the solution to my piano problems is not in sight. I note that it is possible to overcome human failure in some fields and this is quite cheering, but it is not a rule and I am not foxed by my occasional prowess in those fields where I suffer from human failure. Bike riding for one. I am not all that good. I get by. However, I did a feat for Jude the other day when we were riding with Zach and Jeremy, a feat I have never done before and will not try again by myself, but the other day I did it just like that, no problem, because Jude wanted me to and it was important to him, plus he told his friends I could.

‘Jem can do that,’ he said meaning push-start the bike with one foot on one pedal, flinging the other leg over while the bike is careening ahead before settling in the saddle, cool as anything. And I did it, I did it for Jude, no crashing, just as I would like to overcome my piano problems for Mum, but I simply cannot match the notes in my book to the keys without taking a lot of time and then poking at the piano with stiff fingers and it’s awful, because you are supposed to string the notes together to make a tune, not let a lot of time pass between them and this makes me so edgy I can hardly see any more, I know I’m taking far too long and thinking about that makes me even slower, and the sounds I make are downright bad and give me a sick heavy feeling. I look Mum’s way and she smiles that smile, but we both know it’s all up with me, I’m no piano man, nowhere near.

Unlike my mother. I just know it, how she can play this piano though I never see her play this piano, and how she can do it without books, easy, something I am sure of while knowing also not to ask her about, sure of without ever being told, like I heard it in my sleep. There is some stuff you can count on in dreams as real and true, even when you know it is a dream thing, such as eating peanut butter sandwiches with Jude and he says 1942 was the year of the Great Raids, and you wake up thinking I know he said that, but you cannot tell which came first, the sleep time or the real-life time but it doesn’t really matter, because it’s a true thing and has some bearing on life. Other stuff in dreams is not so reliable. I rule out flying, for instance. If you are flying without an engine or glider wings, there is usually no head-scratching in the morning as to when and where it happened, and in which realm did you do it first, the sleeping one or the waking one. Forget it.

I know she can play, it doesn’t matter how I do. And I know not to ask her to play, or why she never touches the keys, not ever, even when she is helping me practise, sitting there at the far edge of the piano with her hands in her lap, sometimes counting out beats for me in a soft voice and when it is very bad, she will reach my way, gently shifting my hand to the right keys, her long fingers covering mine and I can hear the music in her, I swear it, like she is playing, no hands, and all the sounds come out right, beautiful, the kind of tune that makes you down tools and stop breathing because you may never hear it the same again, a sound like everybody you are crazy about calling your name all at once. This is the only good thing about piano practice and why I stick with it for now, all because of Mum and this feeling I get, making me forget my trouble with clefs and joined-up notes and one notes, and pedals I slam like a racing driver, I can’t help it, and most gruesome of all, my non-nun piano mistress who stabs me in the hand with a pointy pencil when I make a mistake, going in for fisticuffs when I get slouchy, winding up like a boxer before crashing her fist into my vertebrae and smiling at me in a shifty manner thereafter. Once, when I came through a whole tune no problem, she gave me two sweets, one green, one yellow, boiled sweets in see-through paper, the kind I hate, but never mind, I was so surprised, I stared at them in my palm for a while before saying thanks, still quite depressed by stabbings and thumps and thinking about secret agents captured by Nazis, fingering suicide capsules in their pocket, coloured capsules perhaps, wrapped in see-through paper. This woman definitely comes low on my list of favourite persons in life, and I am very glad Harriet has prowess in piano and a fine posture, and an improving effect on people in general, no doubt bringing out the sweetie handout mood at all times. I don’t tell Mum about piano mistress because it will upset her and anyway, pretty soon piano mistress and Jem will be in separate countries, no goodbyes, and Mum has too much on her mind right now, everything is messed up in our house.