Café Scene, with Girl By Kathy George

Transcription

1 Café Scene, with Girl By Kathy George Poppy chooses a chair and table in a quiet corner of the crowded gallery café, and slides her cappuccino, her ham and cheese croissant, off the tray. This is not where she sat with Pete, but she remembers him being here, and can imagine he s here again. If she looks hard perhaps she ll find the shape of the back of his head in the crowd, or his profile, and it will be enough. She looks at her lap to steady herself, control the threatening tears, before she sips her coffee. She grew up watching cricket with her family, and then with Pete, and she thinks up cricket commentary as a distraction: Broad bowls to Warner, who flicks the ball away to silly mid-on and snatches a run She s no idea who the Aussies are playing this year. She s too far away. For the moment, she s lost touch with what s happening in her country. For all she knows they may have yet another prime minister. She picks up the thick warm crockery and holds it in cold hands as she stares out of the huge windows. Down below, between the gallery café and the museum, a child in a red puffer jacket runs across the path of an oncoming green bicycle. The bicycle wobbles, straightens, and goes on, while the child stops to pick up a gravel chip and consider it. A Jack Russell lifts a leg to pee against a shrub. His owner cups his hands to light a cigarette. Such uncomplicated lives, she thinks. Excusez-moi? She looks up. Her French is limited but the woman with the beret and elegant silver-grey bob is clearly asking if it s okay if she shares the table. Sure, Poppy says, moving her gloves aside. You are English? Australian. The woman puts down her cup, drops her small rucksack to the floor, and unbuttons her camel-coloured coat. Her slight figure is dressed in navy slacks and jumper, and wound around her neck is a scarf of sea-greens and blues, matching her eyes. Très Chic. Poppy remembers some French. 1

2 First time? The accented voice is soft and low. The woman, settled in her chair, is stirring her coffee. No, Poppy tells her. I ve been to Amsterdam before. Oh, yes? Over a year ago. And you are back so soon? I needed to come. The woman pauses to sip at her coffee. To the museum? Or to Amsterdam? Poppy shrugs. Her fingers play with the flaking pastry of her croissant. Both, she says, thinking one was not possible without the other. You have a favourite painting? The woman s elbows are on the table, the cup poised delicately in her hands. It s evident she wants to talk. Oh, yes. But it isn t here, it s in New York. Ah, The Starry Night? That s your favourite, too? Oui. I love them all. Smiling, the woman displays a gap between her two front teeth, and Poppy feels the tug of her mouth responding. She can t remember when she last smiled. And you are here all alone? Poppy nods, then glances away, not trusting her emotions. And last time you were not alone, I think. Yes? The statement is true, but no less hurtful. Poppy frowns. You are also alone! she blurts out. Ah, but I am always alone. I like to be alone. I how do you say? I like my own company. The woman pauses to wipe the corner of her mouth. In time you will find this, she murmurs. I can t imagine I ll ever get used to it to his not being with me. Poppy breaks off a corner of pastry. The woman leans forward. When you walk through the gallery, she asks, you look at the pictures? Or you look for him? 2

3 Poppy blinks rapidly. She sniffs. Broad to Warner, dancing down the pitch like Pinocchio on steroids She raises her head. I keep thinking I keep thinking I see him. Up ahead, there, somewhere in the crowd. He is gone for how long? Nearly a year. You do not know exactly? One day blurs into another. All I know is I was wearing a summer dress when he died. Poppy sits on her hands. She closes her eyes and tears seep between her eyelids. Oh, Cheri. Car accident, Poppy says thickly. She retrieves a tissue from her coat pocket, blots her eyes, blows her nose noisily. What is his name? Pete. Pierre, the woman says in her French accent, giving the name a romanticism of its own, something Peter was not; he was not romantic. He was practical. Solid. Big. When he held her, she felt petite. Poppy finishes her coffee, quashing the instinct to run her finger inside the cup and lick it clean. Mine was suicide, the woman says, although some say it was accident. That he did not mean to kill himself. Poppy draws in breath. I m so sorry. The woman smiles her gap-toothed smile. You, along with half the world. He died a long time ago In my country. 1890? He is Vincent. Vincent van Gogh. I am in love with him all my life. Really? Poppy smiles weakly. This woman is so much like her mother. A little crazy. A little off-kilter, but then, she is French. The woman reaches across and covers Poppy s hand with her own. Her palm is as soft as a kid glove. She wears one ring. A thick gold band. 3

4 She indicates the croissant on Poppy s plate. You will eat this? Poppy shakes her head, more in confusion than anything else. This has happened before, this sharing of her grief with utter strangers. With an elderly man in the park. Once, outside the station, with a busker who was playing Never Tear Us Apart. She gave him fifty dollars. She pushes away her chair and stands. I should get going. Where are you going? She shrugs. She hasn t thought that far ahead. In all likelihood she will spend the day wandering aimlessly along the canals. Weeping intermittently. As she did the day before. Until the cold forced her back to the apartment. Ah, so you do not know where you are going. This is good. The woman rises too, and slips on her coat. I am Yvonne. Poppy. Yvonne pauses to rearrange her scarf. Your mother, she loved also Vincent? She names you for his paintings of poppies? She was a bit way-out, my mother, but I loved her, and she taught me to love him. Yvonne indicates the museum across from the café. If you have no plans I will take you, and we will look at the paintings again. Together. Without the shadow of your Pierre. And you will learn he is not somewhere ahead of you, but following close behind. After four o clock and they stand before the last of the Van Gogh Museum paintings. Yvonne s coat is over her arm, her beret stuffed inside her backpack. Standing at Poppy s elbow she has softly explained what she knows about almost every painting, why Van Gogh painted it as he did, if it was for anyone special, and what his mental state was at the time. The Starry Night, she told Poppy, was Van Gogh s view from the mental asylum where he admitted himself after he mutilated his ear, and he did not consider the painting to be of any special significance. And although Poppy says nothing, she feels it yet again: this incredible sadness that Van Gogh died without knowing what a 4

5 genius he was, how loved and revered he would become. Yvonne can quote him, too. What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything? By the time they part company outside the Rijksmuseum, Poppy is exhausted, but quietly exhilarated, too. Thank you so much, she says. C est bien. Yvonne is scribbling on the back of a shopping receipt. She thrusts it at Poppy. This is my number. Call me if we can meet again. Thank you, I d like that. Putting the note into her pocket, Poppy fingers it. She doesn t want to lose it. Yvonne leans forward and kisses her the European way, first one cheek, then the other, and back to the first. She smells faintly of roses. Au revoir, Poppy. Poppy strolls back along the cobbled Prinsengracht to her apartment, under the polished afternoon gleam of sky. Her cheeks tingle with cold. It grows gloomy, and the tall narrow gabled houses glow from within. Way above her head a jet leaves a trail of snow. She thrusts her hands deeper into her pockets as she passes a small street café filled with people talking, laughing and drinking. Light and warmth radiate from the open door as someone exits. It is all strangely familiar. It could be a Van Gogh painting. Drawn by something she does not understand she never came here with Pete she stops and steps across to push on the café door. What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything? She s gone nuts. Bananas. It s obvious there won t be anywhere for her to sit, and she will have to walk out again, looking awkward. But wait, there are two bar stools in the far corner against the wall. Her heartbeat steadies. If she takes off her coat and scarf and hangs them on the coatrack along with everyone else s, she will be able to squeeze through the tables and reach the stools. And then what? What will she drink? Glühwein. It seems obvious. Warming, but not too intoxicating. A touch of the festive. The waiter brings it in a tall glass with a spoon and a slice of orange, peel and all, on the side. She plops the fruit into the glass and swirls the orange 5

6 into the rich rusty-coloured Glühwein and warms her hands around the glass and thinks of another Van Gogh quote. I would rather die of passion than of boredom. Today is the first day in a long time that she s not died of boredom boredom with her own sad self, with her own excruciating existence. She thinks of Pete. Of how he died on the open road on his motorbike, going too fast, but dying, yes, of passion. To Peter, she murmurs, raising the spicy drink to her lips, and this time her eyes do not fill with tears. As she sips at the Glühwein she thinks of when she was a child, and she stood in front of Van Gogh s The Starry Night and felt as if she d been there in the painting which was weird, because she was only ten and had never been overseas. But all the same she felt as if she d walked amongst the cottages with the Cypress trees in the foreground. With the chapel and the steep spire and the moonlight silvering the roofs of the houses. And the turbulent night sky aglitter with eddying streams of stars. There were eleven stars, her mother told her, but it seemed as if there were many more, spinning and sparkling. And she had seen the hills rising and falling like waves, and the breeze shifting the edges of the trees. That was the trick to the painting. That Van Gogh made it appear as if it were alive. That was what it was all about, wasn t it? Being alive. Mon Dieu. Poppy remembers some more French. She smooths out the shopping receipt, about to put Yvonne s details into her phone, as the barman leans across the counter to pin a note to the corkboard beside her on the wall. Hoi. He smiles. He has grey-blue eyes and a beard like Vincent s, only his is dark like his hair. The note is typewritten: WANTED: ENGLISH TUTOR FOR DUTCH STUDENTS, it reads. Qualifications necessary; Must have references; and Accommodation provided; are in dot points. At the bottom is a phone number. Poppy stares at it for a long time. Then she opens Notes on her phone 6

7 and begins to tap in the information. It may amount to nothing, and it may lead to nowhere, but it is a gift, and one she s going to reach for with both hands. 7