“Privet dedushka.”
My grandson Atticus, the little blighter must have been at War and Peace again. But, as ever, a pleasure to see him despite the ridiculous name.
“It could have been a lot worse, Titus Pomponius Atticus” he once explained. Atticus is good at explaining, especially as he knows better which he has for most of his nine years on earth. I am probably the only one he knows who can stand listening to him.
I once said how much I still enjoyed the sky on a clear night.
“There’s nothing there, dedushka.”
“Are you telling me I cannot believe my own eyes?”
“Yes.”
Typical Atticus, setting me up, I don’t doubt.
“What are all those bright stars then?”
Surely this time the little know-all was waiting for a fall.
“Those are the light from stars that blew up thousands of years ago. The light is still travelling but they are no longer there.
As usual, Atticus had the last word.
I wanted to change the subject so I stupidly asked about school.
“It’s all rubbish. They were talking about Pythagoras and the sides of a right-angled triangle.”
Even I had heard of that in my half remembered past. I fell, as usual, into the trap.
“The squares on the sides of a triangle …” I started.
“The what?”
“A triangle. You know, triangles.”
“No such thing.”
“What nonsense.”
“Show me one then.”
I didn’t have any paper on me or a stick to poke into the sand but gestured with my hands.
“That’s not a triangle. A triangle is an image on a flat surface. The lines on a triangle do not have any width. There is not a completely flat surface anywhere on earth. It is another of your ghosts.”
Atticus is devoted to ghosts. I can’t see an old film on TV without his telling me that all the actors are long since dead and are now celluloid ghosts. If I say anything about my childhood or school days he will say that the names I mention are now also all dead and are ghost memories in my head.
I blame the parents. On second thoughts, they are my own children and I won’t have them criticised. Except by Atticus who does it full time.
“You must think I am the stupidest person you know” I once complained.
Of course I was instantly corrected, “No dedushka, you are only the second most stupid person I know.”
Not true, the class of second most stupid people Atticus knows is legion.
“But you are getting better”, he added kindly.
Where did it all come from? I asked my daughter-in-law if there had been any Nobel Prize Winners in her ward when he was born, Atticus had been particularly irritating that day. Might there have been any regrettable mix-up errors, I asked. She remembered there had been one exceptionally bright woman but though that could have happened the woman she was talking about was also black.
Atticus had once been blackmailed into Sunday school by a free balloon which he erroneously thought was a weekly treat and not a once-off recruitment ploy. He didn’t last long and was thrown out after too many questions about the Holy Ghost.
“Nobody has ever seen him, he has never talked to anybody. We don’t know if he can read or write. Does he go to the lavatory?”
That last got him sent out of the room, but I found it difficult to supress the tears of laughter that were running down my face.
Today he was concerned about gravestones. He said he didn’t like his.
“You’ve got a long time to go before you have to worry about that”, I told him, “and anyhow you won’t be around to see it”.
As usual I was contradicted.
“You didn’t come to my funeral, don’t you remember?”
That was a long supressed painful memory I still haven’t processed.
Atticus likes talking about ghosts. He thinks they are interesting and have better things to do than go around saying boo to people.
“So you are a ghost then?”
Atticus sighed.
“Of course I am. And even you can’t have forgotten, so are you. They all said you died as an act of solidarity with me. You are definitely my best ghost.”
Martin Tucker