LITMIR.BIZ

       4

      Jan is dreaming. In the dream he takes the pipes and he can play. Runs his lips along the bamboo openings, and breathes into the hollow canes. The sound that returns to him is the one he recognises; the sound of mountains and wind and his own soul. A love song and yet one of longing. His body echoes with it, as if the instrument was his own hollowed bones and he was playing himself.

      He has dreamed this dream many times. And, though it would break his heart, he longs for it. Feels that if only he could come to the end of the dream, the end of the song, he would understand. More than this, he would be healed, though he is unsure of his wound. But, though he would play to his last breath, the end never comes. He is always interrupted.

      “Veron.”

      Today, it is the girl. The girl from the bridge. She strides right up to him, stands full-square in the dream, and says: “Veron.”

      And then he’s awake. Thrashing on the bed. The song in pieces. Veron.

      This is his name. And not his name. He first saw it on the scrap of paper that did for a Chilean birth certificate. Jan Veron Veron. Written in swirling black and, next to it, a tiny thumbprint. His. They must have inked his baby hand and pressed it there. Jan Veron. He exists. He gives his permission for whatever you are about to do to him.

      In Chile a child is called after both father and mother. But his father would not put a name to him, so he got double his mother’s name: Jan Veron Veron. Sometimes he thinks even the “Jan” is a mistake. That they were careless at the registry (for what did it matter? What did he matter?) and so changed his forename, changed him, with a slip of a pen, from Spanish “Juan” to Dutch “Jan”. But there again, maybe “Jan” was the gift of his mother, a special name that meant something to her? How can he know? All that is certain is that he has moved continents and his name has changed again. Now he is Jan Rupert Veron Spark. Is this what the argument is about? Is this what caused his mother (his English mother) to cry?

      He thought he put it kindly, he thought he’d said it so she’d understand.

      “I just want the Veron part of my name to be my surname.”

      “Instead of Spark?” The fear was white around her eyes.

      “No. No.” He is aware of what he owes. And besides, he loves his English mother. She must know that.

      From under his pillow he takes the stump-armed Worry Doll. Violeta. She has not performed her miracle. She has not removed his worry. But that is, maybe, because she is the worry. Violeta Veron, his Chilean mother. He holds her in his hands. He searches for her everywhere. Not the doll of course, the mother. He looks at every Latin woman in the street, on the bus, in the cinema. He has never seen a picture of his mother, no one thought to take a photograph. But he has a picture in his head. Violeta. A violet violated. A Chilean Cinderella, dark and utterly beautiful and dressed in rags. He wants to stop searching, but he can’t. She is always there, just out of reach, just around the next corner. He thought maybe if he carried part of her name, with his name, if he could become Veron-Spark, then maybe there would be some peace. It was only a hyphen he was asking for. Not a big thing, he thought.

      “It would be,” said his mother, “as if you were turning your back on us. Your family.”

      And of course they are his family. Susan Spark and her husband David. They have cared for him since he was three months old. Susan Spark has held him in her arms and poured love into him. She has sat by him nights when he woke screaming with terrors he couldn’t communicate. She has never lied to him. “You are an adopted child,” she told him as soon as he was old enough to hear. “Your father and I love you. We chose you. Wanted you – want you – more than life itself.”

      And what could his life with Violeta have been? If they had lived, that is. For nothing and no one would have guaranteed those lives. Another mother and child dead on the streets of Santiago. Who would have cared? Who would even have noticed? But perhaps they might have scraped a life, her as a maid (though his father, a white lawyer, would not have employed her in his house any more) and Jan perhaps making shoes from old tyres or, as he grew, offering his services as a male prostitute. No, he is under no illusions. But Veron is his name. That is all. Is he asking for anything that isn’t his?

      “Only she won’t have another child,” he says to his English mother (even though he knows he is not Violeta’s firstborn and therefore unlikely to be her last), “and then her name, then she … she’ll die.”

      “No,” his English mother cries, “please don’t ask it, Jan.”

      So he will not. Not again. He won’t say a word. He will lock Veron inside him though it screams to be out.

      He gets out of bed and picks up the panpipes. Puts his lips to the bamboo. Blows. A thin sound returns. A weak, reedy, hopeless noise. But some part of the dream is still in his head, and he is determined. It is a long while now since he bought the pipes and at least he can make a sound now. Before there was just spit and breath. He doesn’t like to play in the house, which is why he goes to the bridge. Some of the sounds he is searching for are up in that loneliness. But tonight he has no choice. It is one in the morning and he cannot go to the bridge. Besides, the song is in his head. Or fragments of it. There may not come another time like this.

      So he takes the pipes again, wets his lips, breathes evenly, tries one of the longer canes, for these are more mellow, easier to play. They do not squeak and complain at being played by Jan Rupert Spark. But the music is not as it is in his head, it’s just reedy noise, and he feels the anger rising. As though the pipe is resisting him, refusing him. And all the while Jan Spark’s guitar looks at him from the corner of the room and laughs. No one taught him where to place his fingers on these strings, he just took the instrument and played. Simple chords, a simple strum, and the songs were right. What need you of the pipes, says the guitar, when you have me? Aren’t I enough for you? I who sing so sweetly to your tune?

      Jan puts down the pipes and picks up the guitar. Maybe, just maybe, if he could pick out the notes on these strings, if he could fix that haunting phrase, see where it was leading … He begins to pluck, moving his hands, finding his way. He is intent, his fingers mobile and a tune comes. It’s an alluring tune, but it is not wild enough, high enough, it does not contain mountains. He tries again. And again.

      “Jan.”

      Has he woken her?

      “Jan …” His mother comes to his bedside.

      Is she still angry? He looks up at her eyes. They seem hunted. Perhaps she has lain awake all this time. He is ashamed for the argument they have had. Ashamed for the hurt he has caused.