5

June 2016

Alex, Robert

Alex was sitting in the office of Robert, an expensive psychiatrist who’d been recommended by Jake, an acquaintance from his business projects. In London, you often find doctors and other specialists through recommendations from friends. You never know who you might end up with if you go to one of the state hospitals, even if it’s free, and the same was true of the private clinics if you didn’t know the right name. Jake had said that Robert was great to talk to, a professional, if you wanted to talk about yourself. And that was what Alex wanted, he badly needed to sort himself out. He was approaching middle age, but he hadn’t found the answers to the questions that were torturing him, and most importantly, he hadn’t made peace with himself.
Alex had been looking over the interior for ten minutes – it was all very austere, understated: three armchairs, two for the clients standing opposite “the chief’s.” A low coffee table with two volumes of Lacan on it. Next to them stood a gaudy cup of green tea. The cup was clumsily made, perhaps by a child. On the other side of table there was a glass of water that had been offered to Alex by the doctor’s attractive assistant. A large quartz clock was hung on the opposite wall. And that was it. Alex, who hadn’t said a word since he’d sat down in his chair, continued studying the low-key sequence of objects in the interior. He couldn’t keep himself occupied with that forever, though. He looked up at Robert, a dark-skinned black man, and spoke:
“I’m a journalist, talking is my profession. But now I don’t even know where to begin.”
Robert looked about 55 to 60, he had an open, straightforward look in his brown, trusting eyes, he had flecks of grey in his hair around his temples, and the attractive, ageing face of a man who had once been very handsome, and hasn’t been tempted by plastic surgery. He wore a dark blue velvet jacket, a shirt, well-worn jeans and trainers.
He answered Alex in a calm, low tone:
“Adult problems are rooted in our childhood - what were you like as a child? Who surrounded you? Start with a striking memory from your past. Tell me about it in the tiniest of details, everything that you remember about that moment.”
Alex gained confidence from the psychologist’s appearance; from the way he spoke.
“From my childhood?” he asked, not waiting for an answer before continuing. “All right. I was ten years old. It was March.” Alex paused for a second, and then went on. “To quote a classic, ‘when winter is still sprinkling snow on the asphalt, but every day the morning sun gives hope that spring will soon arrive. And it will be warm, and there will be new life.’ On that day, I struck lucky twice in one go.”
Alex smirked bitterly.
“I got an A grade in my math test – usually I found them tough. But best of all, I came first in a writing competition and was allowed to join the school theater. That was where the older, cooler kids, would hang out. The theater was where all the crucial, thrilling stuff at our school happened. I dreamt of getting in there, the way that some boys dream of getting into a football club. I was just an assistant to an assistant to one of the scriptwriters, of course, but I knew that it wouldn’t be long before I’d prove myself – I had so many ideas! I was incredibly proud of myself, I imagined how all my teachers and classmates would respect me. I didn’t run out of school that day, I flew, my winter coat not even done up, smiling from ear to ear.
“I ran all the way home with that smile and shouted out, ‘Mom, I got into the theater!’”
“Mom came out of the kitchen into the corridor, drying her hands on a towel, and just looked at me hard for a long time.
‘Where’re your hat and your scarf?’
“I felt this icy shiver. I was forever losing them. Four times that winter alone. Mom would always give me a really bad telling off. She’d call me an idiot, a moron, an ungrateful pig. And she hated the way they’d cut my hair, she said I had a moron’s haircut, the kind a ‘paedo’ would have, she wanted me to wear my hat the whole time, she didn’t want to see that ‘revolting’ fringe. The day before she’d threatened to superglue my hat onto the top of my head. And now I’d gone and lost it again.
“I could see my Mom’s face contorting, and she started wrapping the towel around her fist.
“I could hear her furious voice. “Right … go and find them. Don’t come back without them.
“I was sure I’d left my hat and scarf at school, so I ran back. But they weren’t there. And nobody had seen them. I went home and told Mom I couldn’t find them anywhere. Mom walked up to me, not saying a word, grabbed me by my shirt collar, like a puppy, and dragged and kicked me out of the apartment.
“I decided to go back to school, but very slowly, looking around the whole way. I had to find my scarf and hat – they might have fallen out of my coat pocket as I was running, and someone might have picked them up and hung them on a bush, or a tree, or on a bench. I spent about an hour getting back to the school, instead of the 20 minutes it would’ve usually taken me. The sun had already hidden behind the clouds, and a cold wind had blown up. I was frozen to the bone and starving.
“There was nobody there by the time I got to the school. I looked round the empty classrooms that had already been cleaned and tidied up. I woke up Nina, our school cleaner, and although she threw every curse she knew at me, she agreed to open up the assembly room – the base for the school theater.
“I searched on the stage, backstage, in the dressing room, the wardrobe room, I looked under every single chair in the auditorium, even though I’d only been there five minutes that day and didn’t go beyond the corridor. Obviously, I didn’t find the hat and scarf.
“Nina told me to go home, because it was already 7 in the evening, the sun had gone down ‘and kids shouldn’t be wondering around the cold streets on their own, especially without a hat and scarf.’
“But I knew that I couldn’t go home. Even if I begged for forgiveness, Mom would be angry and she’d definitely give me a painful hiding with Dad’s belt, she’d regret having given birth to me and wasting so much love and energy that I didn’t deserve.
“I went out into the street. We lived in a council house on an estate. The school, as I said, wasn’t far off. You probably don’t know about living on an estate…?” Alex asked, suddenly breaking off from his story.
“No,” replied Robert. “Only secondhand. But I can imagine. Dirty streets, cheap shop windows, streets packed with takeaway joints, cheap alcohol, snickers and cigarettes.” Robert continued without taking his eyes off Alex. “People hurrying to get the bus or tube, or just loitering, dubious, unpleasant groups of men, high, women soliciting on the streets of the capital. Not the best place for a ten-year-old boy.”
Alex noticed that Robert’s calm voice and his way of slightly stretching out his words inspired him with an uncanny sense of trust, and a wish to carry on telling his story. “It’s like giving confession,” he thought, before going on.
“I went back out into the street and headed the opposite direction from home. I didn’t know what to do or where to go. First, I wandered about in the alleyways around the school, and when I got really cold, I tried to get into a residential block; it’s entryway was beautifully lit. But a couple of heavies kicked me straight out – they must’ve been guards for some rich guy who’d bought himself some more real estate right here in the center of town.
“At some point I decided to go and see my class’s form teacher, maybe because it was the only address I knew. So off I went. She lived at the next tube stop along. I didn’t have any money for a ticket, so I went on foot. It was already about nine in the evening when a nasty, fine sleet added itself to the piercing wind. I couldn’t feel my ears or nose from the cold.”
Alex again stopped his story.
Robert, realizing that Alex needed a break, waited calmly for him to continue his story.
“Miss Greaves, our form teacher,” Alex began again, “was about 40, but life had tired her out. She was in a dressing gown and hair curlers when she opened the door. She was amazed that I’d managed to find her, she listened to my incoherent story, never stopped arguing with her husband for a second, gave me some old scarf which I could’ve entirely wrapped myself up in, and said she’d phone my parents if I didn’t go home immediately.
“On the way home a pack of stray dogs started following me. I could hear them pitter-pattering along after me in the empty, quiet night alleyways, occasionally barking at one another. I did everything I could not to look back and not to speed up, because I knew I shouldn’t run. If you run, they’ll jump you and tear you to pieces. That’s what I’d been taught. I walked and wept from fear, but I lost them. Crying, I ran all the way home.
“Lights were on in the windows. And in that moment, standing about a 100 feet away from the house, I finally understood that I couldn’t go in, and that I had nowhere else to go. I just stood there in the middle of the street, and as luck would have it the door opened and Dad came out with the rubbish in his hand. He came up to me, put his free hand on my shoulder and said: ‘Let’s go and throw the rubbish out, and then go home!’
“He appeared in an instant; it was like a fairytale where everyone gets saved right at the end. My Dad! It felt like his heavyset build was warming the air around me, because I suddenly stopped shivering from the cold and followed my father. Then we went back, and I summoned up all my resolve to tell Dad what I’d done, and how I’d angered Mom.
“I wanted to tell him that I couldn’t go in there with him, that she wouldn’t let me come home. But I was afraid that he’d go, and leave me all alone in the street. In silence, we went up the stairs and entered the apartment.”
Alex stopped again to get his breath back and take a couple of sips of water.
“I stood in the corridor and looked at the door into the room. It opened. Mom came out. I thought I wouldn’t cry, but I bawled my eyes out. I begged for forgiveness, I said that I was to blame, that I wouldn’t do it again, and that tomorrow I’d find the hat and scarf, definitely, I just needed to spend the night at home, and in the morning, I’d go straight out and find everything.
“Mom listened to me, she didn’t interrupt, she was totally calm, she even had a slight smile on her face – that happened sometimes, her anger just passed, and then she turned round and took my ‘lost’ hat and scarf off a hanger. I’d left them at home in the morning.”
Alex fell silent.
Robert didn’t break the silence for a while, and then asked:
“You were only beaten by your mother?”
“Yes,” Alex replied quickly.
“What did your father do? How did he behave?” asked Robert.
Alex gave a deep sigh.
“Father? Father earned for two by doing three jobs. Mom, essentially, didn’t work, and he didn’t get involved in her ‘housekeeping.’ He left early in the morning and came back late in the evening. He saw the bruises from the beatings on my body, but he chose to believe that a mother would have boundaries, and that it was all part of bringing me up.”
Alex closed his eyes for a few seconds and shook his head, as if he himself couldn’t believe what he was saying.
“He loved me, of course,” he continued, “but when he tried to express his opinion, Mom would get hysterical, put on a whole show for him, she’d hurl heavy objects at him – he had a great constitution, and that was the only thing that saved him. He was a big guy and he didn’t like scandals. She did what she liked with him. You know, even when I was a kid I was amazed at how they’d ever got married.”
“Often, love can’t be reduced to any formulas,” Robert said quietly.
Alex looked at Robert attentively, and then continued.
“Just imagine. He was an unattractive, overweight man, a peace-loving, agreeable wimp, an introvert and a serious scientist. And mother was a delicate angel, had been to a ballet school, a prima in London just getting started, all grace and bearing, a woman of incredible beauty, hungry for fame and recognition.
“He was madly in love with her, of course, he fussed over her, they got married, they had me, and they were even really happy for a time. Dad was doing well in his job, his works on molecular physics got published in international scientific journals. Mom went back to work after maternity leave too and she was determined to get back into shape and to get back on track in her career. They left me with my grandmother, Dad’s mother, for the most part – she was still alive. They said that everyone was happy, up until there was a tragedy.”
Alex could feel a lump rising up in his throat. He had to make a real effort to continue:
“A tragedy that began it all. And I don’t know how it will end.”
Robert could see that Alex’s glass was almost empty. He took a bottle of Perrier from the table, twisted the lid off and poured the water into the glass. Alex gave a nod of gratitude.
“I was a year old,” he continued. “It was my birthday, and Mom was hurrying home from our walk, pushing the pram, so that she could hand me over to Grandma. Even then she didn’t like to spend a lot of time with me on her own. It was rainy and wet in the street, she slipped, fell and broke her leg in three places. That was the end of her ballet career, she was too young to be a choreographer, she was only twenty-two, and she thought that being a mere dance teacher was beneath her. So, she just stayed at home and channeled all of her raging fury as a failed genius into my upbringing.
“And it seems that that was what really disappointed her in life. First it turned out, at just three years of age, that I ‘lacked any feeling of rhythm’, and my movements were ‘clumsy and painfully rigid’, which really upset her. By the age of seven she was blaming me for having lost her figure because she’d had to stay at home and bring me up. By the age of ten she didn’t even need a reason to hate me.
“Mom was always disappointed by me in every way imaginable, and she was forever comparing me with Susan, my cousin, who lived in her hometown of Manchester. She was my age and did better than me at everything. Secretly, I hated my goody-two-shoes cousin who wasn’t really to blame. I envied her – her parents, particularly her mother, loved their daughter. They just loved her.” Alex sensed that he was about to cry, but he finished his thought: “The parents loved their daughter. It’s so simple.”
Alex could sense tears welling up and rolling down his cheeks.
“I was brought up being forced to eat soup that had gone off because I’d forgotten to put the pot in the fridge, and being made to kneel on peas in the corner because I’d got a bad grade at school.”
Alex slowly shook his head, as if to himself.
“I can’t remember,” he said, “how old I was when insults and humiliation stopped being enough for her, and she started beating me. I think it must have been fairly early.”