There a place in the artist’s heart where all things are bearable, no matter how terrible, where experience is sifted through, consecrated, hallowed and transformed into something we call art.
The soft purring of the telephone woke Rose from a deep, middle-of-the-night sleep. It was her sister Sophia with the news. ‘Five minutes ago. The nurse has turned everything off. He’s gone…at last.’
Although it was a summer’s night, Rose pulled the doona tightly around her thin body and sat on the edge of the bed, unmoving until dawn. Above her bed hung a gold-framed print of Leda and the Swan, mirroring her pose. The early morning light was harsh and bright and the singing of the birds seemed bleakly incongruous on, this, the morning after her father’s death.
The sun was high in the sky when the phone rang again. The funeral was arranged for Friday Sophia said, and of course Rose was expected to be there. She was expected to read the eulogy as she had promised. Her brothers would be there and Nick was making sure that it was going to be a big occasion, a day to remember, a day to honour their father. ‘You have to be there, Rose. Don’t worry about Nick and Spyros,’ said Sophia.
Strange how the writing the eulogy had taken on such significance. She felt pressed to finish it even though he had still been alive and now, for some elusive reason, she felt a burning urge to read her piece. Glancing in the dressing table mirror she looked at her pale drawn face and smoothed her thick unruly hair. I’ve got his hair, she thought. I’ve always had his hair. Rose began packing her suitcase.
At the airport, the two sisters hugged. They drove home through the dark suburban streets, detouring past their father’s house, now unlit but tomorrow they would all be there for the wake. The family home, a neo-classic mansion in the heart of suburbia, with its pillared portico was like a cenotaph for all that her father held to be important in the world, a momento mori of a kind.
Rose remembered how the aroma of her father’s cigars and the expensive smell of the perfume mingled in the summer night air, especially after he committed her mother to a nursing home. Rose detested the smell of cigars, still.
‘Are you up for a few drinks?’ said Rose.
‘Not too many. Nick and Spyros are picking us up at nine o’clock for the viewing.’
‘Viewing?’
‘A private viewing of the body. Dad’s body, at the funeral parloiur,.’ said Sophia.
Morning came again as mornings do, but this particular morning had a sharpness; everything seemed clearer, the colours more intense than usual. Loud knocking on the front door made Rose jump, her hot black coffee splashing on the carpet as Sophia opened the door to her two suit-clad brothers, Nick and Spyros. They look like undertakers thought Rose. Two bloody undertakers! Nick had slicked his hair back into a ponytail and Spyros had done the same. Spyros who had always been several inches smaller than Nick looked like a carbon copy of his older brother, only smaller and rounder.
Nick walked toward Rose, still talking on his mobile phone his expensive aftershave filling the room. She winced at his approach, but he smiled at her with his perfectly capped teeth and Spyros nodded to her. Relieved, she smiled back.
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