Rumi and the Red Handbag Read online

  —You know I’ve worried about them. As human beings. Whether a tattoo was a good idea, whether they are kind enough to their wives, though I’m sure they are, I hope they are. Whether they will be forgotten, or ignored, or if they will be swarmed by paparazzi, or if they’re offered decent roles. I know, it’s idiotic, but I find myself hoping for them. For their fulfilment.

  —Someone, you see, before my Austen mania, gave me a copy of Tess of the D’Urbervilles. It overwhelmed me. I identified with Tess. I was Tess. I am. And I hated her for making me feel her sorrow and helplessness and for not explaining things properly to Angel Clare at the proper moments. And she named her baby Sorrow, which I will never forgive her for, never. Sorrow! Intolerable. The book ruined me, I’m not exaggerating; I had a nervous breakdown over this book, hovering over it as I did.

  —So you can see why it was necessary to escape. And why I had conversations with Jonny Lee Miller in my head. I suppose I picked him because he’d been both Edmund and Knightley. Both characters were excellent at passing out advice. Then I read that he was in a TV show where he played a lawyer for whom George Michael appeared and sang, “you’ve got to have faith.” It’s not as though I ever wrote him fan mail, other than in my head, because I’m not the sort to infringe on real lives with my fantasy one, you know, and I wouldn’t want to embarrass him. I imagine I would be an embarrassment to him, would seem quite odd! Hmm.

  The truth was I couldn’t see why it was necessary for her to escape. I mean, I thought I could at the time, we all needed to escape a bit, but it was a lot to take in at that moment—her earnestness, her sweetness, her very real concern, the endearing way she expressed herself, the interesting way she punctuated her sentences, drawing out this word and that one, and then punching up another. And of course part of me was just delighted by the description, by the anecdotal evidence, of this reader response that is often difficult or impossible to record in the university environment, since everyone wants to appear intelligent and would never admit to adoring vintage Harlequin romances and certainly not to holding conversations with fictional characters or worrying about the altogether toohandsome actors that played them. This all seemed very real to me. While Ingrid-Simone spoke, I recalled all those many breaks my colleagues and I had taken at the midway point in grad classes, outside the temperaturecontrolled Special Collections room, swooning under the worn marble staircase, leaning against the maple wood walls, where we talked about marginalia and how to decipher the early modern manuscript, and about access to print at a juncture of time when the manuscript was just as prevalent and more highly thought of than the printed word. And we talked about the circulation of commonplace books and what a beautiful process that must have been, copying out a poem and then passing it along to another to copy in their own commonplace book, and how words got transposed or changed or revised along the way, by accident or by intention. We drank our coffees and Diet Cokes and discussed Colin Firth. And laughed at how we had gone from talking of the ways in which poststructuralist thought could apply to 17th century polemical texts by women to discussing the merits of a movie star’s physique, the gloriousness of his accent, his ability to smoulder and in short, all his captivating charms.

  The first bits I recorded in a notebook that evening were: Jane Austen as an antidote for Thomas Hardy, and, interaction with fictional characters off the page, and, Austen as a balm for life, and, a note to myself, research strong reader response to Tess of the D’Urbervilles. I made a note to look up Jonny Lee Miller. I had down the word: tattoo, the word: sorrow. I scrawled down: faith. I noted such things as what Ingrid-Simone was wearing: high black boots with a moderate but showy heel, a pencil skirt, red tights, red shirt with tattoolike design emblazoned on the front but obscured by a flowing dark grey ruffled, almost Victorian, sweater. I noted: sweet but unscrupulous, and then wrote: hardly unscrupulous after it and underlined the word ‘hardly.’ I fantasized about going back to grad school and writing a dissertation about readerresponse, about romance, about a particular unnamed reader.

  She also talked about an extravagantly horrible dream she had on numerous occasions, which caused her to cease watching cooking shows before bed. She dreamed one of the gentlemen, sometimes Mr. Darcy (Colin Firth), more often Mr. Knightley (Jonny Lee Miller), rang her doorbell wearing forest green velvet tailcoats and riding boots, calling for dinner. And she was expected to make something out of the ingredients that she found magically in her kitchen. —The thing is, she said, —I don’t cook, hardly. Well, I do make excellent poached eggs. But am I to offer Mr. Knightley poached eggs and a Diet Coke? I’m in misery. It’s the worst possible dream. Besides, I don’t want to meet them, I can’t meet them. I know I’m ridiculous and my fantasy would be utterly ruined if I were to actually meet them! It’s a nightmare, not a dream; it’s a bizarre nightmare. I’m given scallops and told to pan sear them and assemble a watermelon salsa. I just can’t do that. I only have one pan for heaven’s sake. I only have two plates that I picked up at Value Village and one set of cutlery. Could I ask them to share?

  —What did you do, I asked?

  —Oh, the only thing I could do, I panicked so bloody much that finally I woke up!

  And here she laughed her sparkly etude and I thought of Chopin and white twinkle lights on late summer nights and sequins at a dull office party.

  ***

  Winter was all around. I want to keep reminding myself of that. The cold was like waves, coming to shore and retreating. Everywhere white nothingness. But how real. The air was biting and inhospitable at times but at others, bracing and enlivening. Brisk, quiet. There was time and space to be present to the beauty of snowfalls, so unpredictable. The store, too, seemed to breathe differently in winter. When the front door opened to let someone in, the store gulped in the winter air and when they left, it expelled. In the moment of the whoosh of air, sometimes I would hear the song of a winter bird and later I would approach the air and scratch bird tracks into the patterns of frost on the window beside the door.

  ***

  I’m not sure when she told me about her tattoo. I have tried to keep my notebook entries and sticky notes, the serviettes, bus passes, and bills, all in some semblance of order. But sometimes one slips out of the elastic bands I wrapped them in or I find it later in a jacket pocket, written while walking and therefore difficult to read. I’ve never been able to write legibly while walking. There’s no class or booklet that teaches a person such a useful skill.

  I caught a glimpse of the tattoo, actually. A word: “overdo.” I don’t think she was trying to conceal it, but as it was on her left shoulder and since it was winter, she had been wearing a multitude of layers, lots of sweaters and scarves. But that day she had a shirt with a V at the back, and as she was reaching for something, I caught a glimpse. Everyone had a tattoo those days, except me I’m sure, so it was not such a big deal. But I was curious as to what it is. A purse—a small red purse, with a 1950s feeling to it. Circled around it in a delicate script, with the word ‘overdo’at the top of the circle, as an injunction or instigation—

  “Do not overdo the bag, Winnie,” from Beckett’s play, Happy Days. It was relatively new, then, as I know she had only discovered the play not long after we met. And maybe that surprised me most. That she hadn’t murmured a word of it. Not that I expected her to tell me everything, and when I mentioned it, she was completely open about it. Pulled her shirt down over her shoulder so I could get a better look.

  —Oh, Shaya, the pain was unbearable! But I hummed through the procedure, which helped. It was worth it, though, to have that very moment in the play so close to me.

  —I had to go back to get the purse inked in red. And oh I know one day I’ll feel foolish and regret it horribly and go have it removed at great expense and considerable pain. Right now though, it makes me feel quite splendid and hopeful.

  She told me all of this when I mentioned the tattoo, so I don’t kn
ow why I went around feeling hurt that whole day. But I did.

  ***

  How do we get to know someone then? So much clouds our approach to one another, obfuscates the light that would ease through a window and engulf the two souls standing beside the sill. I thought about happiness, and how the degree to which we feel happy impinges upon our interactions, how intently we listen to another, how we interpret the gestures a friend makes in our presence. How our recent triumphs and infirmities come into play. And I was not particularly content; I was not at peace. I had even sunk to feeling I never could feel peace, would never quite be happy.

  Why did I so desperately want to get to know her? I see now that this was one of my goals, though I wouldn’t have put it so at the time. I had studied English literature for eight years, continually asking myself how authors create convincing characters, how is it that they make us understand more about ourselves as we come to understand a fictional character? There had been a length of time when I came at these questions more esoterically, through a veil of theory, which of course has its uses. What secrets does the text hold for the reader willing to make creative and wild connections? I was interested in the revelation of character by observing the language they used and the words used to describe them. I monitored the action and admired the scenes where I gained more insight about them. What did the presence of a lamp in a drawing room signify when placed near the hero, for example? I prided myself on missing nothing, on understanding. I excavated the author’s original manuscripts and searched their marginalia, the edits they had made, earlier versions of their text. I noted where changes had occurred, been built upon. But this pertained best to fiction and when I kept trying to translate my rather menial existence as shopgirl, using these esoteric tools I had acquired in academe, well, I’m not sure I managed terribly well.

  ***

  On a day off, especially if it were particularly cold out and snowing, I stayed in my bachelor apartment, wrapped myself in a blanket and laid down on my chaise longue. I had only the turquoise chair by the door and the scrolled chaise and that was all besides my futon, which was in the area behind the BandAid coloured plastic screen. The screen fit into metal grooves and could be shoved into a compartment in the wall to make the space appear larger, but I always left the screen unfurled, open. I didn’t want to see my unmade bed, the white duvet, the white Egyptian cotton sheets, the long white voluminous nightgown that I dropped in the centre. Too tempting. I knew I, Shaya Neige, could live there, in my bed white as snow, staring at the seafoam blue walls, that I would never want to leave, would rather wander around all day in my bachelor apartment, dancing and spinning, in my nightgown that was like a skin, I knew it so well. Pretending I was free, as angels must feel in their infinite levitation. Collapsing onto my bed and relinquishing myself to the wonderful, soft and pleasing energy of dreams.

  I forced myself to rise, and dress, and comb my hair and put on lip gloss. I ate my bowl of cereal on the rough, red velvet chaise longue, which I had claimed from a sketchy back alley when I first moved out. One of the legs had broken off, and I had stacked five or six novels to replace it. I read this book, and that one. I scribbled notes in my notebook. I often wrote about Ingrid-Simone. I jotted down random things she told me before I forgot them. Not for the purposes of making up a story about her but because recording them seemed important. She had her toast and tea in the bathtub while reading a novel every morning because it not only saved time but she liked the feeling of being simultaneously efficient and selfindulgent. She liked the way paper lunch bags felt, the coarse exterior, the waxy interior, and used them to carry everything. Books, sandwiches, loose change. She kept one folded in her coat pocket nearly all the time. And she loved sandwiches. —The one thing I’m really good at, she said, —is making sandwiches. I hardly ever make them though because they require too many ingredients to have on hand all at once. I like them because they’re cold and layered and never just one thing.

  ***

  Today I let her look at the contents of my purse.

  I wrote this on a sticky note, a pale yellow one, the ordinary kind. I didn’t date the note. But when I read, “today I let her look at the contents of my purse,” I was there. After that line, I scrawled: Stein, I scribbled: Freud. I probably said to Ingrid-Simone, —there’s a bit by Gertrude Stein in Tender Buttons, but I cannot recall if I did. I might have said, —oh, just think what Freud would say about this, and winked.

  Stein said, “A purse was not green, it was not straw colour, it was hardly seen and it had a use a long use and the chain, the chain was never missing, it was not misplaced, it showed that it was open, that is all that it showed.”

  Later I received a miniature green Stein purse proclaiming that it was not green or made of straw and it had a long chain and was lodged open.

  There was an openness between us but also the understanding that we didn’t need to reveal all. For there must have been a pocket or a concealed and zippered section of my purse that was not divulged. Perhaps it was the pocket that held a pad of sticky notes, random scraps of scrawled upon paper. I hid these from her. Which seemed reasonable.

  Was it strange that I should have been writing a dissertation, had abandoned it, to write random jottings in pursesized notebooks and on myriad pale sticky notes about a young woman I barely knew? But it seemed real to me. What is that line from Rilke about his friend, Lou AndreasSalome, “you alone are real to me?” All that winter, she was, Ingrid-Simone, my young friend who in some ways was a mirror of my younger self, a self that I couldn’t have been but dreamed about even so. The dissertation didn’t choose me, but this other method of writing did.

  I think now that she expected that I would say no. I could never ask to look inside anyone’s purse. Maybe this was a generational thing. I wanted to say no, the word no was in my head, but the thought of slighting her was unbearable.

  —Do you know there are people who believe that the contents of a purse reveal the soul of the one who carries it? I asked her.

  —Oh, yes, I know I know, she said, with that devilish gleam in her eyes that was always delightful to witness, because of her ridiculous sweetness.

  —You will find my soul to be rather dull, I’m afraid, said I.

  What was in my purse that day? The usual conglomeration of softly worn, wafered notebooks, light blue lined postits, a few of the yellow ones too. These rattled around in the open, the ordinary blank ones. Once I wrote on them, I stuffed them into the side compartment where they emitted a glow. My Covergirl compact, Revlon lipstick number 002, pink pout. Detritus.

  Usually I carried a candy bar, a coconut one. There were long, narrow packets of Starbucks’ instant coffee because I had read that Clarice Lispector mixed coffee with CocaCola when she needed to be extremely awake, though I might be misrepresenting this because I can no longer find the passage. I kept the packets of coffee to pour into my cans of pop that I sometimes brought in my lunch. There was a cocktail napkin from a wedding I had been to that had the names of the bride and groom, the date of their ceremony, and the implausible words “eloquence, sublime, Rumi” scrawled on it. Ingrid-Simone looked at this and laughed, but said no more.

  She was arrested by a copy of Simone Weil’s Waiting for God, which seems to me now to be a strange coincidence, an eerie one, but then it seemed utterly reasonable, inevitable, a coherent piece in the puzzle that was our lives. Before then, I had never noticed, never connected their names, maybe because Simone Weil was for me, simoneweil, and Ingrid-Simone was always Ingrid-Simone.

  She extracted Waiting for God from what I came to think of as my soulspill. There was a feather I had found when I left the building that housed the English Department, fleeing the person who I was not. Blurrily, I had noticed, a peripheral glance, a feather calling to me from the grass beside the sidewalk. It must have fluttered a little. I had hardly slowed down as to pick it up and continue. I had broken into a run,
my hand outstretched, befeathered, Daphnelike, for a few short steps before resuming my selfconscious, poised gait.

  Feathers followed me, I later learned. But then, Ingrid-Simone plucked this feather from my belongings, from amid the dollar coins, the Trident gum and the Bounty chocolate wrappers. She held it in her hand, twirled it, fluttered it along her chin as she perused. When she saw the book, she immediately set down the feather. —Simone! She said. A small postit note had become affixed to the cover on which I had written, “What are you going through?” page 115. Which is where she flipped to directly upon reading my cramped and unusual script—half writing, half printing.

  I had put dark brackets around the paragraph that began, “The love of our neighbour in all its fullness simply means being able to say to him: ‘What are you going through?’” Weil was talking about the Grail quest, about the king afflicted with a terrible wound, experiencing excruciating pain. She was talking about suffering. The Grail was said to belong to the one who is compelled, feels the compassion, knows to ask, and, most importantly, has the courage to ask the king, “What are you going through?” Which seemed a very easy thing to do, but of course this is complicated by those cold and sometimes necessary distances we keep from one another as human beings, by our reservations, by our worries about what might be appropriate, by protocols, by hesitation, by overinterpretation of who the sorrowing suffering Grail king might truly be.