The End of the Alphabet Page 3

  B.

  They sat at an outdoor table on the Unter den Linden. The sky was clear, blue, welcoming. The lime trees showed an early-spring green and offered comfortable shade.

  Nearby stood a brooding Brandenburg Gate, all heavy stone and column. Tourists and locals and friends and lovers were enjoying the morning, strolling through the gate as if it wasn’t there.

  Zipper Ashkenazi’s legs stretched from under her, her shoes off. She watched a street entertainer prepare for the day’s performance: unfolding a music stand, tuning a battered violin. She had passed a poor night, but on this morning and in this place she was content.

  Ambrose stewed. He knew he needed to be here. He knew he needed to get past this. He knew it would make Zipper happy. But still he fussed and squirmed in search of a comfortable place in his chair. He kept an eye on the gate and scowled.

  He claimed he was only thinking of his uncle, but Zipper knew there was more to it than that.

  At one time or another, Ambrose had spoken of his Uncle Jack. How he had taught an annoyingly inquisitive nephew the subtleties of life. The first gentleman I ever met, Ambrose would say.

  Every Remembrance Sunday, Jack came up to the city, wearing the same threadbare jacket and regimental tie he had worn the year before. His shoes always shone, he smelt freshly shaved, he stood whenever Mrs Zephyr entered or left the room. He had an unsure smile that matched his limp.

  One particular November young Ambrose asked his uncle about the war. What had he done? Where had he been?

  All over, said Jack. France, Holland, Berlin.

  That’s right. Germany.

  Wasn’t very nice.

  People weren’t very nice either.

  Didn’t like us, I suppose. They didn’t like a lot of people.

  They did. People they’d no business killing.

  Friends? A few.

  No. I didn’t help my friends. I was away.

  A few years later at his uncle’s funeral, Ambrose read about someone named Sylvia. She had died when an air raid blew up her house near Spitalfields. Jack had left her a note, apologizing for not being there. For not keeping her safe.

  Zipper knew that, with odd exception, Ambrose held a modern view of the world. He kept himself informed well enough, knew there was neither black nor white, believed what the BBC told him. Yet when she reminisced about her younger location-shoot days in Germany, she could watch his view become as black and blind as ash. With an unnerving Berlin at its centre.

  In its greyness. The weather always threatening, the streets always wet. The architecture all cold stone: large and hard and lacking in windows.

  With its inhabitants. Sour and stiff with permanently furrowed expressions. They spoke a jarring language: phlegmy, incapable of expressions of love. No one smiled. Laughter was faked. There never seemed to be any children.

  With its music. Unlistenable. Funereal. Loud.

  And its ghosts. Prowling, wearing uniforms, black, brown, grey. Lurking in doorways, dropping bombs on houses, burning Zipper’s books. Watching and waiting to steal her away.

  That was then, Zipper said. Jack was then.

  She pulled Ambrose to his feet and they set off to walk the city she knew.

  They made their way through the Reichstag. Once an asylum run by madmen, now through its centre an atrium of glass and mirror poured sky into the building and warmed Ambrose’s upturned face.

  They visited the zoo, where people had once eaten the animals left behind. On this day it was full of children, laughing at the monkeys, waving at the pandas, having their photographs taken by tired parents.

  Along more than one boulevard Ambrose and Zipper jostled past crowded coffee bars and neon dance clubs and persistent gypsy beggars; bored fashion models and charged young lovers and old people with old dogs; graffiti artists and boisterous hawkers and women for sale and men who smiled like cartoon spies and made Ambrose chuckle.

  They walked, perhaps a little lost, along Oranienburgerstrasse and through an ancient neighbourhood. They asked directions from a young man with a long and unkempt beard. He mumbled through his whiskers and pointed vaguely down the street. Zipper thanked him in the only Yiddish she could recall. The man grinned and shuffled Ambrose and Zipper along their way.

  As dusk came, they returned to the avenue under the lime trees. The street performer was calling for last requests. Ambrose watched a woman in tailored red trousers and a black turtleneck approach the violinist. She whispered in his ear. The performer bowed and played the opening notes of the woman’s request. She turned to her companion, a reluctant gentleman with greying hair, and offered her hand. The couple danced to a waltz composed by a German whose name Ambrose could not recall.

  This is now, Zipper said, as she picked up a small stone and slid it in her pocket. The sky grew dark and the stars came out.

  Ambrose smiled and asked if she had said something. If she was safe. If she was happy.

  C.

  As the high-speed train crossed into France, its vending machines served Ambrose Zephyr a breakfast of stale croissant and muddy coffee. He checked his watch, took a measure of the fields whizzing past the window, and announced to his wife that an improved lunch would, with luck, be served in Chartres.

  Zipper declined breakfast for the apparent reasons. In silence she fretted over maths: days spent, days remaining, days to come. Couldn’t we just stay in one place, she thought. C rhymes with P. Which stood for Paris. Too many days away.

  She tried thinking of clever ways to rearrange the alphabet. Her brain refused the work. Instead she imagined a proper meal and a change of clothes; a nap in a quiet spot near the river, a view of the cathedral. At the least, food or fresh underwear or rest would pass the time while Ambrose attended church.

  He was fond of repeatedly telling the story of his best day in advertising. A day, so the story began, when Ambrose Zephyr informed a client that they didn’t need any advertising.

  The client was a little church in the midst of London. For a hundred years or more, it had served its congregation plainly and true. But times—as are their custom—had changed. The parish had retired to the country and filled itself with a more distracted demographic. Those who worshipped at all were doing so in a score of different ways. The little church had fallen on competitive days.

  A young priest was newly arrived in the parish and, in the way of the young and the new, saw an opportunity to make his mark. To put the arses, he whispered to Ambrose at their first meeting, back in the pews.

  Ambrose was vague on church business. As a boy, he had attended Sunday lessons perhaps once or twice that he could recall. He was cinematically familiar with a few biblical stories. But he knew well the first law of his profession: walk in thy client’s shoes. A tour of the little church was decided upon.

  It stood, small and quiet and tucked away at the end of a noisy lane, surrounded by office blocks of glass and steel and looming business. Inside, three pews sat on either side of the aisle. Each pew held a sprig of fresh flowers. Changed every other day, said the priest with much pride. Whatever the market had in bloom. On this day the nave smelled of lavender.

  A simple cross was placed on the altar, itself a plain wooden desk. A round window tucked among the rafters above the altar provided as much sunlight as could find its way between the office towers.

  Someone had painted a pastel blue sky on the ceiling. Here and there a cloud. Angels, cherubim, beams of light were nowhere to be found. Around the walls were twelve tiny stained glass windows. Those, boasted the priest, were new.

  Ambrose expected the windows to hold the usual scenes, rendered in heavy glass with thick colours and serious overtones. Instead they were as graceful as locket portraits. One depicted a young mother with a pushchair. In another a team of small boys played football. Here was a wedding party. There a lovers’ kiss. An old man walking in a park with his dog, a tearful goodbye, a welcome home. The windows were the stations of a life, but the life was anyone’s.
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  Ambrose spent a long time with the young priest’s windows, quietly moving around the nave and saying nothing. Finally the priest cleared his throat and broached the subject of professional opinion. Where do we begin? he asked.

  A party, answered Ambrose.

  A party?

  With a bar. Music, all kinds. Food, all kinds. Games for the children. Fun.

  A party?

  Any day but Sunday.

  Ambrose’s story always ended with the dashing of a young priest’s hopes. Television time and electronic billboards and colour supplements and celebrity endorsements were not the thing required.

  Sandwiches were the thing, Ambrose said. Together with a place where one can rest, gaze up at a blue sky with a few gentle clouds and take a breath. This place, Ambrose declared as he tapped his finger on the seat of a pew, is where the arses will go. Here is all the advertising you need.

  A charming story, those who had heard it too often would say, but hardly believable.

  Lunch, as promised, was improved. The waiter appeared with dipped madeleines. As madame prefers, he said. Zipper blushed at the discreet nods between her husband and the maître d’ as Ambrose left the café. Nibbling at the chocolate, she watched her husband turn in the direction of the cathedral.

  Zipper found a ladies’ atelier and slipped into a new outfit of black blouse, red silk scarf and white calf-length skirt. She remembered the restorative effects of French clothes. At a flower shop she bought a small bouquet of spring blooms. She walked down a steep cobbled lane and chose a quiet spot by the river with a clear view of the cathedral.

  She opened her journal and thought of writing. E is for Eiffel’s tower, standing in Paris. L is for London and home. Z is for Zipper. T is for terrified. H is hopeless.

  The journal remained blank. Shadows lengthened as Zipper made her way up the lane to the cathedral. L, she thought, is for lost.

  The day’s crowds had thinned and Ambrose was easy to find. He stood near the middle of the nave, at the centre of a labyrinth inlaid in the stone floor seven hundred years earlier. A few pilgrims traced the labyrinth’s penitent paths. Zipper was unnerved by how cold, how dark, how threatening the huge space was.

  All around Ambrose were the cathedral’s famous windows. Windows that poured blue light into the black and frigid gothic space; that told stories and offered answers and provided comfort; that beckoned locals and pilgrims and tourists, the committed and the curious. And had been doing so long before television and billboards and supplements and celebrity.

  Zipper hovered near the door, memorizing the view of her husband gazing around the cathedral whilst old women circled him on their knees. He spun this way and that, not knowing where to look next. He caught sight of Zipper and smiled.

  Truly, thought Zipper. It had been one of his best days in advertising.

  Nearing midnight, the hum of Zipper Ashkenazi’s mobile raised a sweat in the small of her back.

  On the line: the publisher of the country’s third most-read fashion magazine. A sour-candy woman named Pru. A yeller in the workplace, a screamer on the phone.

  WHERE ARE YOU?

  The sound of Pru’s voice turned Ambrose away from watching Normandy scroll past the train. He checked his watch and cringed sympathetically to his wife.

  In France, replied Zipper.

  THE ISSUE IS CLOSING. Photo needs another page. Your page? BLANK. Fave Books of Fab People. Really, who bloody cares…WHERE?

  I meant to call.

  WORLDS ARE CRASHING, ZIP. Subs down. Ads cancelled. Printer wants for payment. Have you resigned or something?

  I should have called.

  HOW BLOODY RIGHT YOU ARE. I’m tired of keeping this rag afloat. Sick or something?

  I needed some time.

  BE MY BLOODY GUEST. Meanwhile, what am I supposed to do?

  Give photo the page. I wish I’d called. Honestly. Sorry.

  NOT HALF AS BLOODY SORRY, Zip, NOT HALF.

  Something came up.

  SOMETHING LIKE LEAVING? If you jump I bloody swear…

  I need a month. Give or take.

  NOW IS NOT the time. Ring when you get back. THE BLOODY SEC—

  Zipper closed the phone.

  Ambrose borrowed his wife’s phone and placed a call to D&C. Someone would be there. Greta was always there.

  Grets? Ambrose.

  France.

  I know. Sorry.

  Nothing. Something came up.

  Sorry, no. I’m not leaving. Not exactly.

  It’s more personal. I’ll explain later.

  Yes, I should have called.

  The client will be fine. Storyboards done, shoot booked, talent hired, wardrobe enroute, print ads on my desk.

  Yes, I’m sure. Wrote them myself.

  The pitch? You do the pitch.

  Can’t. Sorry. It should be you anyway. It’s your agency, your client. I’m just the help.

  The client does not hate you.

  He does not hate Germans.

  Get the account lads to lend a hand. Threaten the sack. They’ll understand that.

  I’m okay. Thanks.

  How Long? A month. Maybe less. I’ll let you know.

  You’ll do fine in the meantime.

  I’ll call if I can.

  D.

  On their fourth day from home, Ambrose and Zipper sat in comfortable beach chairs watching the English Channel. It was a bright afternoon, the sun was high, the offshore breeze chilled a day more winter than spring. But for the time gone by and the time of year, they could have been any honeymooning couple.

  Despite her squinting and her husband’s pointing, Zipper could not see England. Just there, Ambrose kept insisting, jabbing his finger northward. Zipper could see the row of vacant bathing tents stretching along the beach, gaily striped for the coming season. A small girl in blue gumboots playing with a large dog at the water’s edge, a calm sea beyond. A few working boats idled in the middle distance; a few heavy ships ploughed the lanes farther out. But there was no far shore in her sight. Past the ships, said Ambrose. At the horizon. Just there.

  Zipper gave up and lay back in her chair, annoyed. She knew the story. The Curious Talents of Ambrose Zephyr, or, The Business of Seeing Things Just There. To a disinterested listener, it might have been another tired story of the imaginings of children. To Zipper it was a story a concerned parent might quietly slip to his new daughter-in-law, just before he and the missus waved their happy children off to a wedding weekend in Deauville.

  According to Mr Zephyr’s story, at the age of eleven, perhaps twelve, Ambrose announced to his parents that he possessed a talent. The announcement occurred during the family’s annual motoring holiday. They were on the Cornish coast.

  I can see better than anything, young Ambrose said.

  Any one, said his father.

  Better than animals.

  That is something, said his mother.

  Better than binoculars.

  You don’t say, said Mr Zephyr.

  I do say.

  And how did you come by this talent? asked Mrs Zephyr.

  Ambrose shrugged.

  Indeed, said his father.

  Ambrose’s face began to glow.

  He was standing on the last cliff of England, squinting as boys do, and seeing America. A soft blue lump, right at the horizon. Just there, Ambrose insisted, jabbing his finger westward. The Manhattan skyline emerged through the low ocean mist. His parents apologized for not being able to quite make out the details. They blamed the time of day and the angle of the sun.

  Two summers later. On a tour through northern Europe Ambrose asked his mother to stop the car before each border crossing: could he walk the last few metres and stand on the frontier? At one such stop, recalled Mr Zephyr, his son’s left foot stood in Belgium, the right in Luxembourg. Ambrose then peered along the line (invisible to the senior Zephyrs) as it crossed the road.

  On the same holiday Ambrose also announced he could see the differe
nce between one country’s soil and another’s. The difference (and the talent to see it) was never defined. There was, young Ambrose said, just…something. Denmark was…browner, he offered his perplexed parents.

  And the air too. From one country to the next, Ambrose could detect a change in the smell of things. Sometimes cleaner, sometimes mustier. France smelt like apples, Germany like freshly cut grass, Holland like wet socks. Ambrose declared he could smell it the moment he stepped over each border. Hopping in and out of Luxembourg, he explained: flowers…dogs…flowers…dogs…flowers…dogs.

  As Zipper and her new in-laws stood on the platform waiting for the groom to return with the cross-Channel tickets, Mr Zephyr’s hushed story continued. His son’s curious and increasingly annoying talent extended beyond the here-and-now. He could see the past. Events great and significant, faces grand and notorious, battles won and lost. The further back in time the better, apparently. With the proper amount of squint, explained the boy, he could see what had happened or who had walked on the ground where he stood. Ten, a hundred, a thousand years ago.

  Young Ambrose offered proof: the time he had emerged from the underground near the Tower of London and there was the Duke of Norfolk’s piked and dripping head, as if the Virgin Queen herself had pruned it the day before. Or the summer he saw William the Conqueror wading through the sunbathers on the Hastings shore. Or the party of Druids he watched at Stonehenge while Mr and Mrs Zephyr read the visitor pamphlets. They were just a work crew, Ambrose assured his parents. Squaring a few lintel stones.

  The end of the story came when Mr Zephyr mentioned that he and the missus had once spent a lovely picnic afternoon watching their boy gaze across a flat and empty field in Flanders. He just stood there, said Mr Zephyr. For hours. And I have no doubt, he added with a wink, the boy was in mud to his knees. Ah, here’s your train.

  Ambrose Zephyr gave up. Can’t seem to see it either, he said. He lay back in his chair. After a moment or two of watching a few clouds pass overhead, he told his wife what he remembered.