Paradise and Elsewhere by Kathy Page Page A

the office, I am compiling biographies of our politicians. There is to be a brochure, issued to everyone in the country, detailing their professions, family status, and beliefs as well as a symbol for the party they stand for and a photograph. And at night, I read about economics and make summaries—this is for my Diploma in International Relations: it is no use being only a historian. Neither is it much use, in my opinion, having a government of poets forever. Besides, if they stop writing we will have no literature!
    We need a new kind of politician, I tell Liia over supper. She has forgotten to take off her reading glasses and they steam up in the heat of the soup. The ingredients are much better now. We can savour what we eat, make it last with talk as they do in Europe, in novels. Yes, I say, we need a new kind of man, one who has an overview, and not served under previous conditions of course, because old habits—not so much of thought but of behaviour—die hard. I study her as I speak.
    My wife is a very elegant woman. The cloth we have here is not of the best quality, but she wears the things she has made as if they were couture. She is slender, her hair the colour of winter sunlight, her skin, though it suffers a little at this time of year, is smooth as the finest paper. Her grey-green eyes call to mind the sea, the flecks of gold are sun on the waves: she is beautiful, there is no other word; no one like her. Myself, I am not handsome and I am older, ordinary. I have a potato face, but she has told me often that she loves it.
    Visitors find us inexpressive, and this may be a result of the long years when to preserve one’s self was to conceal it. But we two read each other well enough and I see a tremor pass over Liia’s face as I talk about government—the faintest of frowns, just for a second as she bends forward over her plate. I have not yet told my wife that I see myself as a statesman eventually, an ambassador perhaps. Of course, it may not be possible. But I think I am as qualified as anyone else, and am beginning to build up the connections. Only last week I drank a beer with the Minister for Foreign Affairs.
    I’ll do it then? I say, meaning the dishes, which I also do on weekends. Toomis, why ask ? she says. Then I am angry. She and I have run through gunfire across the Town Hall Square, and hidden in a cellar until morning. We have suffered countless indignities and wiped them away from each other in the night with words and caresses. We have not gone through all that, become free, in order to argue over greasy dishes. I want to tell her this and other things, I want to talk of the future, of international relations, of the possibilities, the right way to proceed. But she is not there. She has slipped away and back to her damned books. I almost want to take her by the shoulders (but they are so very thin) and shake her and say—
    But I am not sure what, and I plug the sink with the bit of rag and fill it. We are making our own washing-up liquid now, faintly scented with something like lemons. The bottle is bright yellow plastic, with a picture of bubbles on it, though not so many come in reality. I search my mind for things I have read which might bear on the situation and I find nothing. Then I think that it is all over in five minutes and that if I can one day be an ambassador, to have gone to market and stood with my hands in greasy water on weekends will be neither here nor there. So long as I can take my place, I think, and this is a new feeling for me—I was before a medium and a repository for ideas, a memory, never a man of action. I realize that I am reading differently now: not all books interest me equally as they once did. I examine them for their use, their application. I see that I have already bypassed who I was, even though I seem to be the same and even though my circumstances are lagging behind me.
    She works late in her room. I get out the bed and