Alva and Irva Read online

  DALLIA GRETT, that’s Mother, worked behind post office counter number twelve. She was very young to work behind a counter, only nearing the end of her sixteenth year, and this made her early life at work somewhat strained. Some of the other workers were jealous and made unconvincing attempts to hide their jealousy. This meant that Mother had no friends at work and loathed the long day’s toil there. She had been awarded this job, as she was acutely aware, not by merit but simply because her father, our grandfather (sadly he’s no longer either), was the postmaster of our city and had decided, without consulting his daughter, that as soon as he could get away with it he would employ her in the post office. Grandfather was a frugal man and had determined, without consulting his wife, our grandmother (a bit part if ever there was one, long-long ago snuffed out), that he would have only one child. He was sure in his mind that his progeny would be male and would in turn become the next postmaster, and the moment Grandmother was confirmed pregnant he immediately ceased his nocturnal pokings. But fate is cruel, Grandmother’s efforts at bringing a life into this world proved too much for her (goodbye, Grandmother, sorry I never knew you), and it was with such a sad heart that Grandfather lifted the wriggling female lump from his stationary wife’s bedside in the hospital ward. He peeked between the tiny, plump legs. He sighed. No, there could be no confusion. A little slit. A girl.

  But Grandfather soon cheered up (always an onwards-onwards sort of man our grandfather): an idea had come to him, and the idea made him smile. Grandfather was not a man of many ideas, and generally he did not trust such extravagances, but this idea, it seemed to him, was a good one. His daughter would be employed, at the earliest possible opportunity, in the post office, and once inside the post office he was sure that this daughter of his would trap a sensible young man and that sensible young man would be sure to marry his daughter and become in time our city’s next postmaster. A son-in-law as postmaster was an acceptable compromise. That was the idea, and he was so pleased with it that it had scarcely altered when he sent his daughter to work at the age of sixteen, with a smile on his face. But Grandfather didn’t notice, as the sixteen years crept slowly by, that no one was going to put a hot iron in the fire in order to brand Mother beautiful. Mother had uneven teeth, a large mole on her right cheek and freckles all over her face. The mole was roughly circular and Grandfather used often to comment that it was by some surely meaningful coincidence the exact shape of our city. In fact, its shape bore a remarkable similarity to that of the old city of Culemborg in the Netherlands, even though Culemborg is a city Mother never once visited.

  MOTHER WORKED behind a post office counter, Father delivered letters, the post office was where they met and where they fell in love. I can boast no beautiful backdrop to their courtship; I will not pretend that the Central Post Office is or was in any way comparable to the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, Italy, where the great Dante fell in love with Beatrice. Rather, our post office was a large dusty hall, which no matter how often its floor was swept and mopped always somehow remained dusty, and remains dusty to this day. There were twelve counters—today there are thirty-two—and back then they were made of wood; today they are of metal and have glass divides between the office and hall. But customers wishing to thump a post office assistant in the old times could feel free to do so without any let or hindrance. And this, in fact, did occasionally happen.

  Grandfather considered the army of his employees, wondering which one his daughter would trap. Would it be Tomas, a fine boy but a little too headstrong? Or would it be Kurt, a bit fat perhaps, but undeniably a good sort? Or maybe Victor, serious and proud and never one to waste a moment of the post office’s time? ‘Dallia and Victor!,’ Grandfather shrieked to himself in his bath one night, spilling the water over the sides. That was it, it was certain to be Victor. And in these delightful contemplations he never once considered the weak and dreamy orphan Linas.

  But his daughter made little impression on either Tomas or Kurt. And Victor’s mind was far too occupied ever to consider girls or courting; he was simply too busy, and if the female form did ever enter his consciousness it was only when illustrations of women appeared on stamps, and in these instances he simply distorted their image with the aid of the post office franking machine and they were immediately forgotten.

  ON THE HISTORIC DAY Linas Dapps, our tall father, approached desk twelve, where our mother, our short and squat mother, worked, it was not love that was in his mind, but stamps. Some men love power, some men love women, some men love boys, some men love cars, some men love firearms, some men love matchstick buildings; well, Father was one of those men who love stamps, a small breed admittedly but a breed nevertheless. On the day he approached Mother he was concerned only to glimpse the new set of stamps that had just been issued and he knew that he would not be welcomed at any of the other counters. During his one and a half years at the post office he had slowly worked his way from counter one to counter twelve, bothering each of the workers in turn, pleading with them to show him a set of new stamps.

  At first the employees behind the counters had tolerated him, even laughed at his demands—particularly Marta Stroud of number three, an unfortunate woman with a disease called psoriasis. No one else in the post office showed such enthusiasm for stamps. But after a time the yearning of this orphan boy had become tiring to them. They shunned him, they pushed him away, they complained that they were busy, that he would see the stamps in due course on his delivery rounds. This was true—soon Father would have as much time as he desired to linger over each new stamp as he went about the city, from house to house. But those stamps, Father would protest, had been franked; they were no longer the pure virgin stamps that could be found at the post office counters. Oh, he would sigh, there was something magical about those unused stamps arranged neatly in blocks, still with their serrated edges untorn and their glue unlicked. They were the nearest thing, he believed, to innocence. Father absolutely had to see the stamps on the first day of their issue, he had to be by them when they were first shown to the world, he had to make their acquaintance before the ink of the franking machines sullied them. But these post office clerks were harsh, principled people.

  So Father came to Mother, and Mother did not send him away. He asked her politely if he might view the new set of stamps, and she, innocently, and despite the chuckling that could clearly be heard from all the other counters—particularly from Marta Stroud at number three—allowed him. Father bowed his large head over the new stamps, so that his nose was just millimetres from their surface; he carefully studied the complete pages of stamps one by one, with his eyes and with his fingers, sighing and purring all the while.

  The stamps on this occasion were of various beetles.1 It was the least pleasant set of stamps mother had ever seen. When she first viewed the sheets of stamps, each holding a small beetle within perforated barriers, fifty beetles to a page, it did not take much imagination to see these beetles coming to life and scuttling and pattering beyond their perforated borders, away from the heavy stamp book in which they were all collected, infiltrating every inch of Mother’s counter and even wandering, tickling in an uncomfortable way, onto Mother’s person and going for an afternoon stroll beneath her clothes, about her skin. She did not like these beetles, she was happy when someone bought a beetle and she could pick up her official rubber stamp and with great energy crush it in an inky and official death.

  And yet this collection of beetle stamps, Mother noticed, was loved by Father. He practically inhaled them. And once he had finally finished introducing himself to this new set, he very sincerely thanked Mother and even asked if he could come again. She agreed. And from that day onwards he would always come to Mother at counter twelve as soon as his rounds were finished. At first of course he had to crouch by her, for there was supposed to be only one person behind each counter and accordingly only one seat was provided. After a week of aching limbs father brought a wooden stool with him which ever after lived side by side with Mothe
r’s plastic chair in the twelfth counter booth. Perhaps that plastic chair and that wooden stool were slowly falling in love too—they seemed somehow to belong to each other. Perhaps this abandoned child and this half-orphan were instinctively drawn together by a profound yearning for absent people. Perhaps each immediately felt the want that surrounded the other, and instantly closed ranks in desperation for a whole. But Mother would not tolerate Father just sitting beside her all day, silent and smiling. She offered father various tasks. Would he, for example, frank the stamps with her official rubber stamp or take the envelopes over to the franking machine? ‘No, no,’ he said nervously, ‘I couldn’t do that.’ Would he, for example, tear out the stamps for Mother to give to the customers? ‘No, no,’ he said beginning to sweat, ‘I wouldn’t do that.’ Would he then be prepared to lick the stamps and stick them onto the envelopes for her? ‘Yes,’ he said at last, after much hesitation, ‘I could certainly have a go at that.’ And that was what he did, Father licked all Mother’s stamps for her (generally, the Entrallan Post Office Lick, as it was known to the employees, did not involve the act of licking at all but consisted solely of passing the stamp over a damp sponge, thus ensuring that anything as unpleasantly personal as a tongue remained hidden at all times). And as Father’s long pink tongue exposed itself in front of Mother, in front of the customers, Father imagined himself licking a tiny segment of Mother’s skin, approximately one and a half centimetres by one centimetre, and Mother too imagined herself being licked. Minute by minute she would imagine different one-and-a-half-centimetres-by-one-centimetre portions of herself being licked by Father’s large and, to her, irresistible tongue. At the end of the day she would believe that Father had licked every centimetre of skin on her sixteen-year-old body.

  UNHAPPY GRANDFATHER, the postmaster, began to see his plans take on grotesque shapes. Orphan Linas, that motherless, fatherless, rootless man, as postmaster? Weak and dreamy orphan Linas as his daughter’s husband? Never! Generally he could combat his daughter’s inappropriate infatuation by calling her away from the post office’s granite steps where he would find her every evening sitting with Orphan Linas. But one night, some four months after Mother and Father had met, grandfather was unable to call mother away because he was in the City Hall2, at the official annual meeting for principal workers of the post offices throughout our region.

  SO NOW I THINK again of the bell tower and the baptistry.

  WHEN GRANDFATHER left the City Hall late that night, drunk and red-faced, he looked across Napoleon Street to the Central Post Office and saw, lying down, in the shadows, on the top step, two people in post office uniforms. His immediate reaction may have been to leave them alone in their happiness, in order, perhaps, to enjoy the delight of publicly embarrassing them the next morning in front of the entire small army of his employees. But then he recognised his daughter.

  I SHAN’T TELL of Grandfather’s screams. I shan’t tell of Mother’s yells and tears. I shan’t tell of the slap that Father received from Grandfather. I shan’t tell of the swelling that immediately began to deform Father’s face. I shan’t tell of the hair-pulling and kicks that Mother delivered to Grandfather after the slap. I shan’t tell of Grandfather sitting afterwards on a step crying like a five-year-old child. I shan’t even tell of the miserable night of sleeplessness that occurred at Grandfather’s residence. Nor shall I tell how things seemed scarcely better the morning afterwards. For these things are better left unsaid.

  I SHALL TELL that the following morning, as Grandfather climbed the post office steps to begin his day’s work, he saw a pair of girl’s panties abandoned near the entrance door. I shall tell that seeing those panties removed any remaining doubts in his mind. I shall tell that picking up those panties before anyone else had a chance to see them was the saddest thing that this man would ever do in his life. I shall tell that as this man hastily thrust his daughter’s panties into his jacket pocket he began to die a little, and that his eyes would ever after see the world a little out of focus. I shall tell that a pair of panties in Grandfather’s jacket pocket meant an end to all dreams he had previously had for the future of his post office. I shall also tell that panties in Grandfather’s pocket meant that a marriage must be arranged. And I shall also tell that the marriage concerned one Dallia Grett and a certain weak and dreamy Linas Dapps.

  1INCIDENTALLY—national insects drawn by our very own artists of entomology.

  2SITES OF INTEREST. THE CITY HALL. The Banqueting Hall, within the City Hall, with its magnificent painted ceiling, can be made available to tourists to view by polite enquiry at the porter’s desk or may even be booked for business conferences at a very reasonable rate—regrettably, all five city hall porters speak no English.

  A NEWLY MARRIED COUPLE

  ONCE PLAYED HUSBAND AND WIFE

  ON NAPOLEON STREET

  Napoleon Street

  Napoleon Street, a major thoroughfare of our city, does not only extinguish itself into Cathedral Square, does not only contain our Central Post Office, but is home also to our Opera House and our National Theatre, and is perhaps the most cultivated street in our city. However, various other buildings with far less colourful purposes also operate there, among them Police Central Office and Tectonic House. The street is named after a certain celebrity of diminished stature who is rumoured to have entered our city once with his dishevelled and retreating army and even to have slept one night here, on the stage of our Opera House, where Wagner and Rossini and Mozart have passed so many nights. Historical evidence to support this has not yet been found, but the search has not been entirely abandoned, and we daily live in hope.

  DALLIA GRETT BECAME Dallia Dapps in the small chapel of Saint Piter Martyr’s Church on the western side of Prospect Hill. Piter Martyr’s Church no longer exists; it fell down several years ago.3

  I try to picture Mother in her wedding dress, I try to picture Father standing next to her. I suppose Father must have been very nervous and probably stuttered until everybody wanted to say the words for him. And then I wonder how Grandfather reacted to the expansion of his daughter, already visible under the wedding dress, which the doctor had called ‘Pregnancy’. If it was impossible to imagine Grandfather at his home on Pult Street it might be assumed that he had registered the fact of his daughter’s metamorphosis only by the different way he addressed Father in the post office—no longer calling him ‘Orphan Linas’, but terming him instead ‘Potent Linas’. But Grandfather can be imagined in this building in Pult Street, I can even picture Grandfather sitting in his study, because I know the room so well. I imagine Grandfather at his desk back in those black and white days. I imagine him talking. Who are you talking to, Grandfather? To the ghost of Grandmother? No, Grandfather’s talking to his collection of matchstick buildings. Grandfather always talked to his matchstick buildings. He talked to them far more than to anyone living; he found their companionship preferable. Irva and I used to visit him often and he always liked to talk to the matchstick buildings far more than he talked to us.

  Postmaster Grett, our grandfather, had been constructing matchstick buildings ever since his childhood, when he was plain master Grett. (How his parents, our great grandparents, would complain when not a single match could be found in the house to light the stove.) Grandfather was a patriotic man—he built replicas only of buildings found in our country. And when off duty he would attend various fairs and competitions for like-minded enthusiasts. He was moderately skilled at his construction with matchsticks and won three medals for his efforts (one for second prize, two for third). He proudly stored these medals in a certain silk-lined drawer, which he would visit often (particularly on unhappy days) and which he would show us too with great ceremony when we were old enough. The saddest day of Grandfather’s matchstick career came when the archbishop of Entralla commissioned the ordinary postman Marco Girge (who had won seven medals for first prize) and not Grandfather to build a matchstick model of our cathedral, even though grandfather was the seni
or postman, even though Grandfather was postmaster. It took Postman Girge, a solitary man who was himself built entirely out of patience, a man who could never do anything with any speed (including his post office rounds), nearly eight years to complete the model. And then, with a ceremony which included the archbishop’s blessing, the model was placed on a wooden plinth just by the font, with a collection box at its side.4 And how quickly this collection box was filled. How the people loved the matchstick cathedral—more eager, it would seem, to relinquish their money if it might help to keep the matchstick model in good order, than to aid the vast and echoey religious warehouse itself. This is not uncommon; miniature things move people.

  Grandfather stopped going to church.

  He began to construct his matchstick properties only in private, for himself alone.

  Postman Girge was sacked.

  AS MOTHER SWELLED with her pregnancy then, Grandfather back at home undressed himself of his post office blue, approached his drawer of victories in his pants and vest and socks, such was the ritual, and taking out his three medals, carefully pinned them to his vest and, thus attired, having admired himself in his bathroom looking glass, he was finally ready to visit his study. With matchsticks Grandfather built his fragile defences against all the sorrows and difficulties of his life, with a little glue to bind them he was able to construct a kind of contentment. He sat down to make himself a matchstick model of the Central Post Office on Napoleon Street, which was, incidentally, his favourite building to miniaturise—he had made twelve matchstick central post offices already. Though this new model, unlike all the others, lacked any entrance steps.