Ice, why hollow? – She wrote, from quibble to pun. And back again. Just for fun.
This is how she remembered it, in hospital, drifting in and out of consciousness, under the influence, it seems, of sister morphine:
As a special treat, after dinner, she was allowed to disturb her grandfather up in his observatory. The telescope was angled through an open window in the roof. Even in summer it was cold, and her grandmother would tell her to put on a coat over her pyjamas.
When he had finished his observations or consulting his charts, her grandfather would ask her to fetch the bottle of sustenance from the medicine chest. With a tumbler in his hand, he began:
“One day, Fe was coming out of the changing rooms of his local baths when he saw Ce standing in the shallow end tucking her long black hair into a white bathing cap.
As Fe came through to the pool, he must have startled Ce. She jumped into the water and swam up to the deep end.
Fe dived in and swam the length of the pool. When he looked up, Ce was down at the shallow end.
They carried on swimming back and forth until a school party came and spoiled everything.
Fe worked in a computer office on the fifty-first floor. Fe wrote poems between bites. These poems, dedicated to the nymph of the pool, the white capped bather and the lithe swimmer, he left in the changing room for Ce. But when Ce did not acknowledge his poems, Fe became depressed and stopped writing. Moping by the pool like a lovesick teen.
Ce came up to him and poked him in the belly:
“Where are your poems, ninny?”
This seemed to break the ice. Fe made up a new poem on the spot called the Speechless Poet and the Dried up Devil of Words.
Soon they were dating. Fe would write his poems: good, bad and indifferent. Ce was moved one way or another, giggling or reduced to tears. They fell head over heels in love.
One day, on the way home from work, Fe was approached by a stooped Italian with plucked eyebrows called Serafino.
Serafino invited Fe to a bar and offered Fe a drink and some olives. “The barman here makes the best spritz in town,” he said.
While Fe sipped his spritz, Serafino told him about the watchers’ decree.
Fe was confused. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t get it.”
“There is nothing to get,” said Serafino. “That is the way it is. You have transgressed the laws in the eyes of the watchers.”
“Well,” Fe said, “that doesn’t seem to be fair…” He and Ce were in love, and nothing was going to stop their love.
Serafino was adamant; the watchers had decreed. Fe suddenly felt indignant. If there was sin or transgression in this, they did not know it. For how could they know they were transgressing laws when all felt natural to them?
Since they were not Catholic, or even religious, Fe and Ce got married in a registry office. They invited all their friends to the party afterwards in Fe’s office on the fifty-first floor. Fe’s boss made an unfunny speech; Fe riffed on the wedding party and his new wife and his boss’s unfunny speech. They popped open the champagne and handed round the cupcakes. Needing to relieve himself, Fe made his excuses and went to the bathroom.
In the mirror above the washbasin, while inspecting his teeth, Fe thought he caught sight of a stooped figure. Was it Serafino? What was he doing in the bathroom on the fifty-first floor? But there was no time to speculate. Fe was needed to hand round more cupcakes and he soon forgot all about it.
Moved by all the commotion and good cheer, Fe made up a poem in rhyming couplets on the spot. Everyone clapped. “Bravo, Fe!” His boss declared his poem on the theme of cupcakes, though not technically a speech, a fine addition to the difficult art of matrimonial address.
Fe and Ce went on their honeymoon. They’d put all their savings into going somewhere wild and exotic, most probably Vietnam. Fe riffed on their jungle paradise. They visited great temples with fiery gods and inscrutable Buddhas. They ate spicy food with chopsticks and they took rides in rickshaws and pretended they were colonial tourists.
“It could not be more perfect,” declared Fe as they were walking in the long grass.
Ce agreed:
“It could not be more perfect, my love.”
Fe stooped to kiss Ce. Ce clung to him to receive his kiss. As she did, she collapsed.
Fe rushed Ce to hospital, but it was too late. Ce had been bitten by one of those poisonous snakes that kill you after a few hours. Ce died in Fe’s arms.
Fe flew home and sank into depression. He could only think of that bitter asp that had taken Ce away.
He went to the bar and drank himself silly, though he refused the barman’s spritz. He turned up at work two weeks late and fell asleep at his desk. When he woke up, everyone had gone home but for a stooped figure. “Serafino,” he cried. “What has happened to Fe? – You must help me find her.”
Serafino was moved to pity. “Come on,” he said, “we have no time to lose.”
They took the lift and travelled from the fifty-first floor down into the underground basement below the underground car-park…
Ce was sitting at a desk with her back to him. Fe called out to her, but she did not see him. He took out a poem and read it to her, but she did not hear it. He called to her:
“My love, hear my singing voice!”
He read the poem again. But Ce was equally deaf to his words. Serafino whispered to him. “Go back to the lift. Go up to your office on the fifty-first floor, but whatever you do, do not look back.” Fe stepped back in the lift. The lift began to ascend. Although he remembered Serafino’s words, Fe could not help it. He turned round.