Human Traces

by Sebastian Faulks

  ‘He wants to fuck her too, doesn’t he? He’s always thinking about it.’

  ‘He is a disgrace.’

  Follow the seen-girl with the soft voice. Move and keep ahead.

  ‘You haven’t got your trousers on, love. That’s the way. Then we can go and have breakfast. Miss Sonia’s made some nice eggs.’

  Legs? Why can’t the seen-girl talk louder? The Carver. I can always hear the Carver. Or the Acrobat. Dear God, I can hear the Acrobat.

  I do not want to eat their food because the Seamstress told me they are still trying to poison me. I will throw this food away from me.

  ‘Oh well done! Now he’s broken the plate. It’s no wonder they won’t let him eat with them.’

  ‘He is a savage.’

  ‘A dirty savage. He smells like an animal. See how they all back away from him.’

  ‘He stinks. He never washes.’

  There are too many seen-people in this room, this hall. There is all this noise of wooden spoons on bowls, the clattering, the shouting, hurling, banging, outdoors horses, spades on stone, the people asking me, asking me questions. I want the waterfall that will drown their noise. I want the quiet.

  ‘Come on, Olivier. Do as Daisy says. Just eat a little bread and tea. Then it’s time for your appointment with Dr Midwinter. It’s Wednesday. You like talking to him, don’t you?’

  They are always asking me these questions. The Sovereign has explained the answers and will not let them take my thoughts now. I am going to be enlisted into the German army. They know that I have the secrets of the King of France. They know I know the day of his return. They want me on their side and have sent me here so I can be watched while my thoughts are taken from me. I do not want this. I am an architect, not a soldier.

  ‘Do sit down, Olivier. How are you feeling today?’

  ‘He shouldn’t answer him. He knows he’s a spy for the Germans.’

  ‘He’s not a real doctor.’

  ‘He knows about Olivier. He knows that he plays with himself when he thinks about the doctor’s wife.’

  I must try to hear what the Englishman is asking me. I will read his lips.

  ‘Read his lips? He thinks he can hear him above our voices!’

  ‘He killed his mother! Mother-killer, mother-killer!’

  ‘Why don’t you answer me, Olivier? I am trying to help you.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I am asking you some simple questions. Who is the President of the Republic?’

  What in public? Something in public? Present? I must say something. Try an answer. ‘I have no present.’

  ‘He is useless!’

  ‘He doesn’t know anything!’

  I must keep the walls away. If I touch the chair arms, touch my fingers – like this – I can hold them back.

  ‘. . . and so how old would that make you now, Olivier?’

  Cold? Me? What I must make sure when I leave is that the man with the hat, the man who has the horse and carriage, does not get me alone because he will take me. He is one of the Germans. And the Englishwoman who has married my brother . . . But my brother is a boy . . . He cannot be married. He is . . .

  ‘Olivier? May I ask again?’

  ‘His brother! Yes. He was the one they wanted, wasn’t he? They always liked him more.’

  ‘What good was Olivier? Good enough to fuck pigs in the stable yard, that’s all.’

  I must find the thread of myself again. I must breathe in and try not to dissolve in the world. I will breathe in.

  ‘Olivier?’

  He does not speak French properly, this seen-man. He is English. I cannot hear him. I must read his lips above the noise of the voices.

  He is not important. He is not loud enough. I wish he would go away. ‘Go away!’

  They are all like this, the seen-people. Not loud enough. They are not like the Acrobat or the Seamstress. I hate them, and the Carver and the others, but they are me. They are part of me. I did not choose them, but I deal with them because that is what I am given and I cannot choose any more than I could pick the colour of my hair. I do not like it, but that is the arrangement.

  I will go to the place by the lake where the stream runs in and makes a noise. This will drown the voices for a time. I will watch water.

  ‘Olivier, you are not speaking to me. I am your doctor. I am your friend –Thomas. You remember me. I am Jacques’s partner. We used to be such friends, you and I. Do you remember? You were sad when I went away. These days you don’t seem to talk to me any more. Do you know how long you have been sitting there now without speaking? Do you know?’

  Breathe in. Say something. All right. ‘I will watch water.’

  ‘I don’t understand. Watch water? Why?’

  ‘Daughter, no. No.’

  ‘He is such a clown, isn’t he? What daughter does he mean?’

  I didn’t hear him right because you were talking so loud.

  ‘Listen, Olivier. You have been sitting here for almost fifteen minutes without speaking. I want to help you, but you must talk to me.’

  I am trying to read his lips but the noise is too loud for me to concentrate. There are too many people here and the man in the garden outside with his rake on the gravel, and the birds in the trees and I hear them saddling up the horses so I cannot pick out my thought. There is a line in me, which is a thought. It runs like a thread from my feet up through my spine into my head. It is a true thought but I cannot grip it for all the distraction. Let me breathe, let me find it.

  ‘Well, Olivier?’

  I have found it. Here it is. ‘The Germans want me. They want to capture me because I know the movements of the French King. I know when he will return, when he will attack. So the Germans have sent their spies for me.’

  ‘Are the spies here in the schloss?’

  ‘The man with the hat. With the horses.’

  ‘Josef? He is just the lampman. The groom.’

  What is the point of telling the Englishman? He never understands. He cannot see truth. He always contradicts.

  ‘Olivier, do you remember last time, you told me that the Germans know you because your face is coloured black? I took a photograph and sent my camera off for the film to be developed. Here is the photograph of you. And here is one of me and one of Jacques. And do you see how our skin is all the same colour? You are no different from the rest of us. Look!’

  Touch the chair and hands together fast to stop the walls. Touch, touch, touch.

  ‘What do you say, Olivier?’

  ‘My skin is black.’

  ‘Scared now, isn’t he? Little coward.’

  ‘The mother-killer is frightened of the picture!’

  Picture is a fake. It isn’t me. They changed the colour. The Englishman is one of them. Lots of reasons. Take your pick. Which is true? It doesn’t matter. Show me a picture of a green sky and I still know the sky is blue!

  ‘So, Olivier, tell me what you think.’

  All right. ‘I think the sky is never green.’

  ‘Thank you, my dear Olivier. Our time is up. I don’t wish to tire you. Perhaps you would like to go out into the grounds. Shall I ask a nurse to go with you? You can do some work in the kitchen garden if you want. Whatever you would like, my old friend. Come along now. Let’s find Daisy.’

  ‘Follow the little bitch out then. Think about how you want to fuck her. In the mouth, is it?’

  ‘You made the doctor sad. Don’t you see his face?’

  ‘He wants to help you. But you’re no good.’

  ‘Why can’t you talk sense to him, pig-fucker?’

  ‘Shall we go to the lake, dear? Take my arm if you like.’

  ‘Why do you talk such shit to the doctor?’

  ‘He had tears in his eyes.’

  ‘You are a bad man. You cause such pain in other people.’

  ‘Don’t you see that pain?’

  ‘Didn’t you see that poor doctor?’

  I am tired by all this. All this trying to fin
d a thread. I am like some sea creature that can still just live on land. But it is too hard. It is easier to be back under the water, back with the voices, back in the hell-world.

  ‘Is this the place you like, dearie? Just here under the tree? I’ve brought your special book. The one you did the drawings and the colouring in. Here it is. If you need me, just call out my name. Call out “Daisy”. I shall be up in the flower gardens with some of the ladies. You can call me if you need. Goodbye for the minute, dear.’

  ‘“Some of the ladies.” He would like that wouldn’t he?’

  ‘They know that. That’s why they don’t let him near them!’

  Let me see the water now, where it comes down. I want to wash myself in it. I want to take some of my filth away.

  ‘He looks at their dresses but he’s thinking of their breasts.’

  ‘They know that. They know he wants to put his fingers in them. His dirty fingers.’

  ‘They would not allow his dirty fingers near their cunts!’

  ‘Don’t say those vile words. Don’t say that!’

  ‘He talks to us, now, does he? Talk to the air, pig-fucker. Talk to the Carver. He always listens.’

  ‘I do not think that way of the women. Once there was a girl in Vannes, that is all.’

  ‘Of course he doesn’t. He prefers boys.’

  ‘Sodomite. Why don’t you end it. You never get it right, do you?’

  ‘Kill yourself.’

  ‘No, no, no! It is a sin.’

  ‘He is in hell already. He is dead and gone to hell.’

  Watch the water, listen to the streaming, white bubbles, grey bubbles, jets beneath the surface, eddies, surge and currents. See it settle, see the surface of the lake is always flat. Why does it never slope? In lakes there are no valleys. What is a water hill? Where are the landscapes of my lake? By the rivers of Babylon, we sat down and wept when we remembered thee, O Zion. Even where it runs at steady pace, the shape of the flow is always changing. The trees cover me with their shadow and the willows of the brook compass me about. Behold I drink the river and I haste not. I pour tears into the sea. O hadst thou hearkened to my commandments! Then had my peace been as a river and my righteousness as the waves of the sea . . .

  But I did hearken to your commandments, Sovereign. I heard your voice when I was alone. I thought everyone heard your voice. I heard you speak to me loud and clear and I did what you told me. Break his collection of little animals. Smash his room. Break his heart. I did what you told me, but you did not bring me peace.

  ‘. . . and end it now, you coward . . .’

  ‘. . . and thinking of their bodies underneath . . .’

  ‘Be quiet! I shall lift up mine eyes unto the hills from whence cometh my help.’

  For my help cometh even from the Lord . . . I see his miracle of water foam and white splitting. Does it never end? Does the rock throw out water from inside the earth and does the earth suck it back from the clouds? Never ending, never end. What lies inside a drop? A million smaller drops. And what lies inside each one of those? There is peace in them because they join. They make softness flow.

  God speaks his thoughts through me because I am His son. And I once could read His will in the paper of the book, between the printed lines. I can make sense of this world because I use my brain. Why then do others always tell me it is not so? Your hand is not black, they say, but I knew that it was. I could see it! Just as I know the sky is blue. Why pretend? It is so tiring, so wearing, all this nonsense they talk in their soft voices.

  ‘A great war is coming to the world.’

  ‘And it is his fault. It is Olivier’s fault.’

  ‘The mother-killer carries the sins of the world.’

  ‘In his name ten million will die.’

  I will take the special book and stop the war if I can shade the letters of my name again and again. Take my pen here and shade out the ‘o’, every time I see it in every line of the book and the top of the ‘e’, like this, and that will save the world from this catastrophe. But my name has too many straight lines, like the ‘l’ and the ‘v’. I can cover in the valley of the ‘v’, but that still leaves the ‘i’ and the ‘l’. My name has too many straight letters, but if I can keep going with all the spaces I may spare the world this tragedy.

  Once I wrote a book, didn’t I? I wrote the Bible. I wrote a book, I drew a book – drew a book that showed how people like me might be housed better. I did draw that book. I have good writing. I can draw. I made beautiful pictures in it of many rooms with plumbing and electrical lights and I showed how all the pipes connected to carry out the filth below the buildings. I made that book in another place. In a big house which had nuns in it . . . Why did I live with nuns? With nuns and madmen in cages . . . I . . .

  I like to write books, so then I wrote the Bible because the Sovereign explained it to me. But I do not like the way he shows my thoughts around. I see them laughing because he had showed them the inside of my head and what I am thinking, and it is true that I am thinking of the women and I know that they can see that I am thinking about fucking her, the one with the little reading glasses and the freckles, I am thinking about her cunt, it is true and I can picture its colour, the soft blonde hairs and the pinkishness of it all puckered on itself and I wish the Sovereign would not show my thoughts abroad, like the finger writing on the wall for all to see.

  I must keep moving, try to drag the true thought up through me like the line they drop for building – the plumb line for the bricks.

  It is too hard to think one of those thoughts. I would have to close down everything else to give myself the peace to think it. Like a householder at night, I would go into many rooms and close the shutters, blow out the lamps, lock the doors, close down everything, one by one by one, stop the shouting and the talking in every single room until at last I had the peace to think my one clear thought – a thought like those that are thought by the seen-people, like the Englishman or the girl called Daisy. It would be a simple thought, a quiet thought, full of reason, spoken softly, not against the clamour of competing voices, but spoken into silence.

  But I cannot get into all the rooms at once to close them down. I cannot be upstairs, downstairs, in the cellar, in the courtyard all at once with my keys and breath to blow out lamps and my gags to shut the voices down. How can a man be in fifty places all at once?

  So it is easier to be in pieces, in the Babel. It is easier to live in fragments. So long as I keep some edges, do not lose the edges of myself.

  I will lie beneath the tree and listen to the wind in the leaves. What kind of tree is this? Is it a poplar? Or a willow? By the side of the water here. Not an oak or a pine, but a tree with little leaves of grey that rustle in the wind.

  So let me hear the wind.

  ‘It is his fault. Ten million men will die.’

  I will listen to the wind.

  ‘Stable boy. Pig-fucker. Why won’t he kill himself?’

  One leaf rustles on another.

  ‘He is too much of a coward.’

  It is like the faintness of cymbals.

  ‘It all adds up. It all makes sense. His evil has caused it.’

  I will not hear you in the wind. Cannot hear you, I am lost in the leaves, in the hiss, in the sound, in the green and the grey in the big perfection because the wind is perfect, as the water is perfect, you could not make it better, it could not be more beautiful or more watery, not like the things men make, which could always be better, you could not improve the wind, this sound that rings and whistles softly in my head; and all the other voices, all the sounds are mingled in me and I am the centre, chosen, centre of the world through which the harmony is made and in the grey whisper and soft clatter of the leaves I hear the mountains of the east, the sands of Arabia, brown-skinned men playing music, girls dancing with clinking cymbals in their fingers, carrying me and my million thoughts and pictures each one of which carries a million more I do not have the time to catch or see as they ride by
in the branches over me, a shadow on a brick wall in a garden, splash of silver fish on the quay inVannes, wail of women, thrust of green and smell of grass, root and finger, bone and blood, and all in me spinning and whistling, blown and hissing in the wind.

  ‘Why is he denying it? It is his fault. A child can see that.’

  Your voices will fade in the rippling leaves.

  ‘Kill yourself. Only that can save the world.’

  I can hear the colours of the leaves, the green on grey, the grey on green, the smooth metallic rustle, each sound distinct, each part of a greater whole we cannot see. Cannot see the wind. Cannot see the wind, they say! But I have always seen the wind. When I was a child I saw the wind. I saw it in the apple trees. It was not difficult! Like water made into air, that’s all. But lovely in its sound, like Saul and Jonathan, they were lovely and pleasant in their lives and in their death they were not divided.

  ‘Kill yourself.’

  The leaves weigh on the twigs and the twigs lift the branches and the sounds are all around me as I lie here on the grass beneath the tree . . .

  ‘Kill yourself, coward. That will save the world.’

  I am very sorrowful for the pain I see in the madmen where I live. It tears at my heart. I know it is my fault.

  . . . as though the leaves are tiny cymbals being kissed by the wind . . .

  ‘Kill yourself.’

  . . . am submerged in this heavenly sound that whistles and rustles and beats like my heart, like butterfly kisses on my face that no one has kissed since . . . I do not know when someone kissed me last.

  ‘Kill yourself, you coward.’

  ‘Kill yourself.’

  ‘Olivier? Where are you? It’s me, Daisy. Where are you? We are going to see the railway. Olivier! There you are, you funny boy. You’ve been out here for hours. I thought we’d lost you. You are to put on your coat and come with me and Miss Sonia and Miss Kitty in the trap to Wilhelmskogel. Dr Rebière and Dr Midwinter went ahead and they are having a little ceremony at the top to mark the first truck going up, or some such thing. Come along now, Olivier. It’s going to be such a lark.’

  I do not want to go with the man in the hat. The horseman. He is working for the Germans.