I’m sat in the communal area at the back of our basement flat in North London. We have a small, concreted patio immediately outside a windowed double doorway leading from the main living room. Because of the angle of our four-storey building, the patio only catches the sun between three and five in the summer months, so it doesn’t lend itself to ‘sitting out’ too often. However, a narrow staircase on the right-hand side of the two-tier wall gives us access to the shared space approximately ten meters by fifteen. It is a blazing hot morning on April Bank Holiday Saturday, so Bea and I have taken a couple of garden chairs up the staircase and set them on the pebbled walkway that sounds and crosses the space. We’ve had breakfast and now intend a leisurely stint of reading and writing. The availability of this space has, of course, taken on a more acute sense of value during the lockdown, particularly during this unseasonably warm period coinciding with the Bank Holiday. As I write this I’m reflecting on the privilege and fortuitousness that access to a private outdoor environment reflects, albeit one that is functional rather than picturesque with not much to look but the surrounding flats set from the rear facade of our building. Yet, in the balmy air, with a couple of tall, sparsely leafed trees overhanging the space, this feels like a relative luxury that so many people would be envious of.
There are twelve flats in our building all of which have access to the shared space and I’m surprised that it hasn’t been more heavily populated over the preceding days. This morning the couple in the basement flat adjacent to ours have come out enjoy the sun. They have brought their cat with them, a handsome ginger tabby with a white neck and paws, which I assume they have only recently acquired. I saw the two of them outside with cat the other morning, following it around diligently, making sure that it didn’t escape over the six-foot fence that encloses the shared area. Naturally, the cat had other ideas and decided to exercise its autonomy by climbing the fence and traversing it with carefree insouciance - despite pleading calls and a range of enticing, non-specific animal sounds emitting from the cat’s ‘owners’ - before leaping into the unknown jungle of next door’s garden. The male ‘owner’ proceeded to climb up and over the fence in pursuit. After a bit of anonymous rustling, man and cat emerged and with graceless clamoring managed to renegotiate the fence, landing back in safe territory. Clearly lessons have been learned because this morning the tigerish feline is now attached to an extra-long retractable dog lead. It’s looking over at me right now, the lead ensuring that a safe two-metre range is maintained. Its twitchy eyes have a look that says: “please tell these idiots I’m not a dog.” The ‘owners’, as you might expect, seem more relaxed, and have moved on from animal sounds to a more conversational approach, but in an infantile, praising tone. “Who’ s a good boy” has a strange, surrealist effect when spoken to a cat. Clearly, this feline is headed for some form of trauma, some anthropomorphic version of split personality disorder.
The other visitors to our communal space this morning are a mother and her son. He is about three or four I think and I saw him in the yesterday afternoon for the first time; I watched through the window as he ferociously circumnavigated the pathway with maximum effort - legs and arms operating chaotically - but lacking the implied speed. A football appeared and the boy shifted from out and out sprinting to the classic kick and chase. His mother was in tow, cajoling with good-natured but protective insistence. I remember being momentary put out as they appeared, with timing that suggested a predetermined intention, at precisely the moment I had prepared a late afternoon gin and tonic and was ready for a solid hour’s reading. But running around in youthful abandon has just as much validity as Chekov’s ethical dilemmas in “The Duel” (the latest installment in my attempt to scale the mountain of Russian literature) so I decided not impinge on this playtime, settling for the settee. The micro-politics of social spacing in playing out in many forms across the globe.
But this Saturday morning I was in my reading spot, mentally chewing on the dilemma is happiness in freedom or obligation. Old Anton proving indubitably relevant to our current malaise. Beside me, Bea was engrossed in Jane Smiley’s “A Thousand Acres” (on my recommendation), and the pet ‘owners’ and the cat, sunbathing on the opposite side of the space, in front of their own flat. The cat, like all of us, was coming to terms with new limits of their concept of freedom. When the mother and son appeared the football had been replaced with a new form of entertainment: a toy snail with a green body and yellow shell at the end of a rope, which waddled amusingly as the boy pulled it along. As there are now several bodies in the space, the boy is moving with more circumspection than he did when he had full authority over the environment, deciding on a back and forward patrol of the centre pathway. The cat had frozen at a safe distance but stared intently at the unfolding drama. Was that a look of curiosity, or more satirical and mocking? Actually, it looks more like a profound empathy for this tethered plastic invertebrate. “I know how you feel mate” is the subtitle I envisage.
A few spoken exchanges between mother and son are in Spanish. She sets out rules of movement for the boy in a deep but gentle voice. But the boy is now getting more adventurous. He runs towards us, across the centre path. Blue T-shirt, faded blue shorts and well-worn trainers which lightly crunch the pebbles as he moves. He slows as he gets near us then turns to look at back, testing the boundaries of his movement against the patience of his mother. The boy’s dark hair is wavy and thick. He looks just like me at that age. I’m momentarily transported back to my own childhood, a young self of innocence and freedom that has long since disappeared (along with the hair). He inches closer, a mischievous smile placating this transgressive behavior. Suddenly his mother, sitting on one of the weather-worn benches at the back wall, calls out to him, but reverts to English: “Stop”. The clipped instruction has an instantaneous effect. “Here” (not aqui) says the boy. “Yes, and no further”.
The boy looks back at us, seemingly trying to decide whether he had actually reached the invisible boundary only his mother could define. Without another word he turns and skips back towards her leaving me to muse on this sudden change of idiom. Maybe it was for our benefit as much as the boy’s, a subtle demonstration of parental responsibility for the childless neighbors. Perhaps, English is applied unconsciously, or even deliberately, as the language of structure and admonition. Spanish on the other hand, the language of play. I wondered if this is because of the different rhythms, tone, and cadences that lend shape, mood and emotions beyond the meaning of words uttered. Or was it more to do with English being the language of the current environment, both in terms of this immediate, small theatre of existence and the wider context of city and nation.
The boy knows the answers already, better than I ever could. It is implicit in his effortless bilingualism. At four years old, or whatever age he is, his brain adapts to instantaneous shifts in dialects; he adapts and processes language in a way that mere translation doesn’t adequately explain. His mother conversing in Spanish and English in parallel, without clunky mechanics of explanation, not only forges the boy’s cognitive function across two languages managing to keep them separate, but shapes his very subject being in relation to the world. This child already has access to a “Spanishness” and an “Englishness” that I have always wanted. I am a half-Spanish but as a child of divorce, I was not brought up bilingually and therefore missed the vital phase in which two languages could have been embedded in my brain simultaneously. I have attempted to learn Spanish at various points in my life but have only every gained a very basic level of fluency, one that lacks any feeling for nuance or depth. Witnessing the fleeting exchange reminds me I’ll never truly have access to a part of myself that I feel exists but I can’t articulate. The boy runs up to his mother and she collects him in her arms. He whispers something to her which I could not hear.