Resting Face
by Brian Howell
Dara was lying on her right side. She could never lie on her left, she always said, because it could bring on a migraine. That was a tried-and-tested, solid-gold fact of her life. As a result, Paul had to sleep on his right side, too, behind her, and try, through his positioning, to head off her turning over in the night. Of course, there were no guarantees for such a strategy, but it seemed a reasonable, usually pleasant, sacrifice, giving him what felt like permanent permission to cuddle to his beautiful wife. The only drawback was that he could rarely fall asleep facing her, now a rare delight which he was forced to access on other occasions, when they were not weighed down by the need to get on with the serious business of night-time sleeping. After all, there was something about seeing someone from this horizontal perspective that imparted a special intimacy. On top of this, to say that she looked like a Botticelli model was almost an understatement, for him, at least, though one of the ironies of her particular countenance was that her other face, her resting face, as opposed to her sleeping face, evidenced a disconcerting expression of sadness or depression, occasioning someone who didn’t know her so well, and sometimes even Paul, to think or even remark that she was unhappy. It was, more often than not, far from the case.
On this particular morning, their first in Valletta, he had woken, washed his face, and shaved while she slept on her good side as the sun’s rays stole across the ruffled sheets, left enticingly puckered up to only just cover her body. Who knows what a prying eye might see from that side? It was at moments like these that he thought of his favourite poem by Donne and almost wanted to berate the sun for spying on her. But that would, in the same moment, deny him sight of her, at least in natural light.
They had had a brief argument the night of their arrival about their schedule. Out of the blue, she had wanted him to come up with an itinerary when in actual fact Malta was her idea in the first place, and he had been somewhat indifferent, initially. To that end, she had bought a number of guides, and he had seen her researching the islands on the internet on several occasions. For his part, perhaps because of this, he had done little to prepare for the holiday, so a panic had set in when she had asked him to work on a schedule. He needed some space from her when she was in this mood and he suddenly thought of reception downstairs.
A younger, more accommodating receptionist was at the desk, as opposed to the more imposing, older one they had encountered the previous afternoon whose expression made Paul feel slightly uneasy as the man seemed to be observing the area like a chamaeleon on a wall, with a full view of everything either side of him. After some normally unnecessary explanations on his part as to why Paul needed help with his itinerary, Paul interpreted the younger receptionist’s silence as solidarity: My wife is going to have a nervous breakdown if I don’t get this done soon was one such sorry invocation. Saying nothing, the receptionist pulled out a small free map from a drawer behind the counter, the kind every hotel in a tourist area dispenses without demur and started confidently drawing circles around key landmarks and connecting them to purposeful lines to show different possible routes. Paul struggled with maps, sometimes even with points of the compass, so these kinds of doodles were rather comforting.
So now he had a plan and took it triumphantly up to their room with perhaps a prematurely unburdened mind. Dara seemed unimpressed but had no argument with it. Her reaction was almost disappointing.
With only five full days ahead of them, they knew they could only take in a given number of sights, so, reasonably, they deferred on a few of their days to using the available bus tours, even though it had not been included on his ‘itinerary’. These tours allowed one to step on and off at key sights almost at a whim.
On one bus excursion, at St Julian’s, they had to change buses, anyway, as it turned out, so they decided to look for a restaurant, a walk that took them along Spinola Bay in a fairly unpopulated area where there were plenty of restaurants, to be sure, except that these did not exactly seem to be clamouring for trade as in other areas. On the way, Paul stopped at a silvery statue that showed a pensive, unassuming figure, bearing no plaque with a name or anything to identify it. Perhaps it represented a Maltese who was so famous that it was thought to be unnecessary? In truth, what did most people in the world know about Malta who did not have a special connection with it, anyway?
He perhaps looked at the statue for too long, long enough for Dara to wonder if something was wrong. He did not voice what passed through his mind: he thought it might be a street mime, but then thought, No, in this heat? So few people around, no evidence of any donations. They walked on and finally found a restaurant.
But it was in the restaurant that he realised it was playing on his mind. How could he confirm it one way or another without seeming foolish? Perhaps the set of the figure’s face reminded him subconsciously of Dara’s, but she would hardly be flattered by such a comparison as in truth the figure was a little too serious, actually rather ugly. He would leave the subject alone, even if they walked back the same way afterwards.
As it happened, they did not go back the same way, leaving Paul to cast a regretful glance at the statue, unsure if he’d ever be able to check it again. He felt stupid for not taking a photo, which would have given him a record of the exact location through its metadata.
Over the next few days, he managed to push his concern to the further regions of his mind as they took in various key landmarks, the Grand Master’s Palace, the Co-Cathedral of St John, the fine arts museum, and another tour of the island, passing and stopping off at Mosta’s church of St Mary, as well as at a number of forts and cathedrals. Four days in, they had reached a point of equilibrium, and they could even make love without the usual distractions that hampered them at home and even discuss the idea of having a child.
At Wied iź-Źurrieq, they ticked off another item on Paul’s list, a visit to the Blue Grotto. This tiny inlet was approached down a steep slope of wide steps with various boats parked next to it. Tickets bought, they continued round a path to something of a party atmosphere, as if they had stumbled on a secret gathering that only its current inhabitants knew of. In reality, they were all tourists. Mainly Italians, he guessed, coming in and out very swiftly on small motorboats that came perilously close to swimmers all using this same narrow inlet.
Dara hadn’t brought her swimwear but as she had on just short cut-off jeans and a cheap loose T-shirt that carried the ambiguous words ‘Lift Off’ (it always brought a smile to his face), he managed to persuade her to get in the water. They would take the boat after a short swim, they decided.
Once she was in the water, she came to life. He was immediately aware at the same time how her nipples stood out under the shirt, and he thought of the younger boys finding it attractive. A memory came to him of the time he had swum in Lake Constance in Germany with his pen pal and her boyfriend. On that occasion, one nipple had slipped out from her top and this was surely embarrassing for her and shocking for him. On the greater scale of things, it was nothing, but he always remembered it. It wasn’t long, however, before he realised how much less self-conscious Germans were about nudity.
Nevertheless, his solution to that embarrassment that he now felt on behalf of his wife was to encourage her to dive, which he knew was unfair as only he had his goggles. But she went along with it.
‘Look out for the boats. They’re not taking any prisoners today.’ He said this having seen one middle-aged guy get shouted at earlier by one of the boatmen who steered the small motorboats.
‘I’ll be OK, Paul. Don’t worry.’
They made their way further out than he had first intended. At one point, he saw what he thought was a cuttlefish. It was impossible to forget that when he had first met Dara ten years earlier, she was a keen scuba diver, unlike him, for whom snorkelling was the apex of his diving prowess. He prodded her but she motioned to surface.
‘Can’t see a fucking thing,’ she let out.
‘Sorry.’
‘What was it?’
‘A cuttlefish, I think.’
‘Give me them.’
There was nothing jokey in her demeanour. She didn’t really believe in niceties, but he was still sometimes taken aback. He could have joked and said, ‘If you ask nicely’, but he knew it would only have elicited a surly stare.
She dived.
Though the water was undeniably blue, right now she was just a fuzzy, if pretty, mass of shimmering, zigzagging tesserae that reminded him of the paintings of Egon Schiele, one of Dara’s favourite artists. He was not thinking of the stark, contorted nudes, but rather of his more nature-based works.
How long could she stay under? he eventually thought. It was getting a bit long.
A boat full of tourists passed by very close. He looked at them looking at him and wondered if they thought he was odd.
There was a small column of bubbles at first, climbing to the surface, and before he realised what it signified, she had broken through and emerged like some sea goddess, an effect achieved partly by the goggles.
She pulled on his hand.
‘You’ve gotta see this, it’s fucking great.’
This was followed by, ‘Here, take the goggles. I’ll make do.’
They dived together. He was thinking whatever it was, it would have to come into view very soon. He didn’t know how long he could hold his breath.
He saw it almost straightaway. It was much closer, too. He could see it was a cuttlefish, not very large, somehow wise-looking, almost all face or head, if one included its tentacles as part of the head, which was by its nature tilted down. It had a constantly moving frill like the hem of a skirt all around its lower body, almost like tickertape on a display board.
He turned to Dara for a sort of confirmation and saw again that serene resting face, as if she were in another place, completely happy but distant from him and the world.
Then they were back on the surface.
‘Wow, you were right. Cuttlefish?’
‘You bet.’
After this, they thought actually visiting the Blue Grotto on the boat would be an anticlimax, but it wasn’t the case, though, at least for him, it was hard to put the experience to the back of his mind.
They had one full day left now, so inevitably they came together more as they focused on what they could do in the time left. Their initial spat was long forgotten, but then came a nagging feeling. He realised the undefined thing that had been playing on his mind: he had to go back to that statue. But when? They had already discussed having a break from each other for a morning or afternoon on their last full day, to do their own shopping, so it shouldn’t present a problem, he thought.
Without any friction, they agreed to split up the next day after lunch and meet back at the hotel. After saying good-bye in town, he could not help but take an extra glance back at Dara, as if he were guilty of some deception. He scolded himself for feeling like this because they were free to do what they wanted, weren’t they? He was hardly having an affair. She would probably laugh it off to know he was going back to St Julian’s just to check on a statue. They weren’t in the habit of interrogating each about their movements, anyway.
After locating the bus at the terminus not far from their hotel, he was on his way. He felt a little distanced suddenly. As an adult, he had never shrugged off the feeling of wanting to be with someone in a new place. It was childish, he knew, but he felt a hollowness there which he could not put down to anything in particular. He wondered if he would be like this in his fifties and sixties.
The place where he got off was somewhat seedy. He hadn’t noticed it before. It was all a little run down, with cigarette butts carelessly deposited along the edges of an island of trees and bushes by the bus stop, and men hanging about in restaurant doorways in a way that reminded him of the less salubrious area around the train station at Finsbury Park. Not that he felt threatened. He just did not expect to have to worry about such a thing, not here, not on holiday. Naïvely, perhaps.
After dawdling a while in a shop full of trinkets (he had to buy something to justify his visit) where he bought a bottle opener bearing a Maltese cross, he orientated himself with his phone down a hill back to Spinola Bay, an altogether much pleasanter area, though he walked with slight trepidation towards the statue, if it was a statue. He had not completely decided how he would react if the figure was gone, except that it would surely have justified his trip. If it was still there, it could of course signify two things and yet remain an inconclusive phenomenon. Unless he were in some way to attempt communication with it.
As he reached a bridge that continued over the main road along the side of the small harbour, he was inclined now, as he turned left into a passage with an arch that obscured from view the place where the figure had been, to wish it were actually gone, so when he arrived and saw that it was there after all, he was somehow overcome. He was not Catholic but the closer he came to the figure, the more he felt as if he were going to confession.
He sat down on a bench opposite the figure, waiting, hearing the occasional tourist giggle as they went by in pairs and groups. Were they giggling at him? How could they know his singular purpose here?
Gaining confidence now, he maintained a constant gaze at the small figure, and it became clear to him that it must be just an ordinary bronze statue painted silver. Still, he would not approach it quite yet. What did this slight, balding figure have to say to him, beyond the fact that it looked a little like an old university friend who had always looked old before his time, someone who had affected a persona somewhat repulsive to many of their fellow students and yet who had turned out to be his best friend.
Paul was on the verge of leaving and he finally moved to stand up when a slight rustling emanated from the figure, yet unaccompanied by a visible movement. One could miss such a small movement in any one or any thing, he reasoned, if you weren’t looking constantly at it. A slight gust of wind, perhaps? Then, the figure lifted its head from its downward pose and looked straight at him. Its small, narrow mouth opened, as if expecting or beckoning to Paul to speak.
‘Why did you come back?’ it said. The figure was still an ‘it’ to him, until he could be sure.
‘I, I wanted to know what you were. Just . . .’ he tried to reply.
‘Hah!’ the figure burst out.
Paul looked around, self-consciously, as if someone would overhear, or see, this astonishing exchange, but the area was empty for the time of day and year.
‘You still don’t know if I am real, do you?’ it said.
‘Well, I think I do now . . .’
‘Oh, I don’t think so. Try to touch me.’
Paul approached and touched the figure on its arm. It was cold and hard. His finger didn’t leave the slightest concavity in the material of the figure. It was no mime, to be sure.
‘But that’s not why you came back, is it?’ it pursued.
‘Well, maybe not. I wanted to be sure of . . .’
‘Your wife?’
‘Yes . . . maybe . . . before we have a child. I want to make sure she is OK, I guess. If she can handle it.’
‘You’re just talking to yourself, really.’
‘Am I?’
‘You have doubts. It’s natural.’
Paul didn’t reply. After a pause, the figure continued, ‘You’ll be fine. Go back to her. But take my advice: be firm with her. Not rough or violent. Just decisive. She’s on the edge.’
‘How do you know this?’
‘You ask me, an inanimate statue?’ it laughed. Then it continued, ‘Well, to tell you the truth, you know, I’ve been here decades and I observe. You can get away with a lot being a statue that people barely notice, you know. Sure, you have to suffer the occasional indignity.’
It looked up at a bird flying over as if the animal’s appearance had been orchestrated.
‘And people touching you. In all kinds of places. And . . . and . . . you can’t reply. But you see so many couples, often passing to and fro in different moods, over days, sometimes, to and from a restaurant, how their relationships change even after some insignificant tiff or misunderstanding, or strengthen . . . sometimes after years when they come back to these islands for more. I just observe and listen.
‘I saw you two, and this is what I observed: a man and woman both uncertain of themselves, insecure, to be sure, but with great potential if they don’t let trivial things derail them.’
‘What kind of trivial things?’ Paul asked.
‘Now that would be telling. It’s not my place.’
The statue hesitated, as if aware of an unintended pun.
‘Oh, I’ll throw you a bone, then. Buy her flowers sometimes, things like that. It’s clichéd but you’ll be surprised how well it often works. Don’t persist with touching her in . . . places that make her feel uncomfortable, maybe.’
‘But how . . .’ Paul almost asked the too-obvious question here, but decided not to pursue it.
Gradually, he noticed a change in the air, almost as if the air pressure itself were palpable. He was also conscious of the time, too, and decided he had to leave. As he did so, he heard the statue whisper, ‘Don’t come back, and good luck, fellow.’
He could not help but take one last look. In the waning sunset, it seemed as if the figure had disappeared, but perhaps it was the sun shining off the silvery object and blowing out the image like an overexposed photograph.
Brian Howell is an author and teacher living near Tokyo, Japan. He has published three novels and three short story collections since 1990. His collection, The Man Who Loved Kuras, was published by Salt, in 2022. Recent short story publications include The Forest Has Ears and The Field Has Eyes in The Ekphrastic Review (online) and All-over in Fiction on the Web (online); his chapbook short stories, Pictures of Yukio (Zagava, 2024) and The Two Keisukes, (Zagava, 2025); and the chapbook short story, In The Garden, Raphus Press (2025). His novella and short story collection, The Study of Sleep and Other Stories, is due from Raphus Press this year. Howell loves cycling, art, movies, TV, and listening to podcasts (a lot).
