The Seagulls Laughter

by Holly Bidgood

  Rasmus swallowed, pulled at his collar. He was sweating. He had been too embarrassed to remove his shirt as the temperature rose inside the hut. He thought about venturing outside for a breath of fresh air, but could not tear himself away. He could not keep his eyes off her.

  16

  Malik

  The relief I experienced at having, finally, a purpose to each day, was almost tangible. There was to be found comfort in simplistic routine, a set path on which to focus my mind, whose corners careered with the cacophony of thought, and whose voices were never quiet. I reverted back to my lifelong summertime habit of rising with the sun, though it is true that there arose with me a great number of anxieties that clouded my newly conscious mind and hounded me until the day’s end, like ravenous wolves in search of a kill.

  Each morning I attempted to drown out the sound of the creatures’ howling with the preaching of the wireless. I nursed a cup of tea at the kitchen table, bathed in early morning light, until the appearance of Judith would signal that it was time for breakfast. Always we would eat in silence, but communal silence at least, I with burning cheeks as sentence after sentence formed painstakingly in my head yet failed to make it past my lips. Sometimes I could not eat for fear that I would choke on the words that piled up in my throat. Judith would stir her porridge absentmindedly, attention fixed on the wireless, thank me when I brought her a cup of tea, shake her head at something she heard on the news, glance apprehensively at the rain that beat upon the window.

  Sometimes we would be joined late in the proceedings by Michael, tired and grumpy if he was required to work that day. As if sleepwalking, he would pour himself half a cup of tea from the dregs of the pot, take only one sip, then make himself a piece of toast which he would invariably still be eating as we left the house. I watched it go soggy in the rain and wondered what it was that so occupied his thoughts that even the simplest of tasks seemed to take him an eternity to complete.

  The choosing of the first record of the day was deliberated upon for even longer, yet it was in this particular undertaking and no other that he appeared entirely absorbed. He would listen just as intently, never showing any sign that he enjoyed the rhythms, the melodies, the noises, other than the slight bobbing of his head in time to the music. I strove to remember those records which most captured my imagination, so that I might retrieve one at a later date and, too apprehensive to set it on the machine myself – whether cautious of the technology itself or perhaps Michael’s reaction – prop it up next to the record player in anticipation that it might be chosen again.

  I could lose myself in the music, a welcome antidote to the slowness of the days and the uncertainty of where they would lead. The perpetual clouds of smoke that hung about the shop made my eyes water, my head reel; the bottomless cups of tea made me jittery; I tried not to think too much. I coveted the relative feeling of safety that the record shop offered, a cave set into the street and breached only by the outside world with the occasional tinkle of the bell above the door and a solitary, long-haired customer perusing its treasures.

  Nonetheless I looked forward to the day’s end, to returning to the house, to the kitchen where I could help Judith prepare the evening meal. Though, when at last this time came I invariably felt so awkward, and plagued once more by the nausea of my guilt, that I wondered what I had in fact been anticipating.

  How unbearable was the silence in which we ate.

  After three long, confusing weeks of this new focus of my waking hours, when we were again sat around the table over the remnants of a habitually hushed meal, Michael offered an unexpected invitation: would I like to listen to some records? He jerked his head upwards to indicate the proposed venue of his bedroom, to which he would generally disappear alone after each meal, if he did not instead vanish out the front door. I looked expectantly to Judith, for I had already risen with my empty plate, but she only smiled – as so many times before, her thoughts veiled behind this gesture – and took the plate from my hands.

  I followed Michael upstairs in the semi-darkness of the evening that had descended inside the house and stood blindly at the threshold to his room while he clattered about unseeingly and eventually succeeded in locating the lamp. As the low electric light seeped like treacle into each corner of the room, the scene that met my eyes was one of chaos. An unmade bed dripped with blankets, clothes spilled out of a wardrobe and draped themselves over every inch of the carpet; unwashed bowls and mugs lined the edges of the room, crept under the furniture. A musty smell hung about the air, as though the window, obscured now and perhaps permanently by garishly patterned curtains, had remained closed for longer than the occupant cared to remember. Eqingaleq, peering over my shoulder from the darkened hallway, balked at the sight by which he was greeted. Quietly, I muttered that the boy might feel similarly, had he instead entered the room in which I was staying as a guest, and there beheld the makeshift tent I had constructed, the hiding place in which I had chosen to reside.

  Michael seemed unperturbed by the disorder of his environment. With his foot he cleared a space amidst the clothing and crockery that littered the floor, and motioned that I ought to take a seat, next to the record player. How strange, I thought, that despite the overwhelming disorder of the boy’s bedroom, his collection of records alone was neatly, painstakingly arranged on the bookcase.

  Nervously I sat down on an orange pile rug uncovered by Michael’s shuffling, and rested my back against the wall; the clutter bore down on me from all remaining sides. Michael continued to clatter about the room and, having come up with a glass bottle, poured us both a drink.

  ‘You liked Pink Floyd, yeah?’ He handed me a full glass of spirits. Nodding in response to this sudden question I failed to refuse the offering, then thought perhaps that a little of the stuff might not be all that bad. Eqingaleq raised an eyebrow. But before he had a chance to open his mouth to speak, the record player sprang into life. The music was a gradual crescendo of brass, drums, noise… Michael sat down on the rug and offered me a cigarette. I had at that moment chosen to brave a sip of the brimming glass of spirits, and spluttering, dizzy, failed once more to decline the welcome gesture.

  The guitar began to wail, hauntingly.

  Emboldened by the glorious warmth that trickled down my throat and spread its fiery fingers through my veins, I raised the cigarette to my lips as Michael lit it; though my eyes watered I could tell that he smiled, laughed as I tried to stifle a cough.

  There were other voices, too – a choir – sombre, sorrowful, passionate…

  I took another swig from my glass to soothe the burning sensation in my throat; another cautious drag on the cigarette. When the guitar spoke again I watched the reams of smoke rise and curl around its melody.

  The more I drank, the more of Michael’s rambling I found I was able to understand, for he grew particularly loquacious as the liquid in his glass rapidly dwindled. I listened as he spoke of the music, the story and the people behind it. Each record he introduced to me as one might introduce a friend to another, that I might understand the reason for its coming into existence, the meaning within its notes. Each time the bottom of my glass was within sight he refilled it, talking still of his passion so that I did not have the chance to decline. Recklessly, I asked him to repeat the words that I did not understand, and elaborate on the ideas that most caught my imagination. It was as though the room around me evaporated into the heat of the spirits. I felt only the electricity of the music; it wove stories and pictures within my head which disappeared into an excitable haze of imagination as soon as they were conceived. I grew light-headed, though my eyelids were heavy. When I tried to speak the words could not fit properly past my lips and spilled out in an indecipherable jumble of sounds. In my own language I apologised to Michael that I was not more proficient in his. He laughed, poured me another glass.

  The music again fell to silence. A blackness began to creep into the peripheries of my vision, and at once I noticed that Eqingaleq was
not in the room. I did not know how much time had passed. I struggled to my feet, onto legs that could barely hold my weight. I made my goodbyes, my apologies – Michael, sprawled contentedly on a beanbag, raised a drunken finger in farewell – and stumbled from the room and into my own.

  Within the shelter of my tent I caught a glimpse of Eqingaleq’s lantern eyes before the creeping shadows claimed the rest of my vision. I floundered in an unstoppable tide of material darkness, smothered and claustrophobic. I tossed and turned upon storm-ridden waves, adrift in the vastness of the ocean. Were the gleaming eyes I saw those of Eqingaleq, or did they belong to her: The Mother of the Sea, in all her power and all her sadness? I could not reach her.

  When I awoke in the morning I barely made it to the bathroom before the seasickness took its toll.

  Seasickness? Eqingaleq laughed, cruelly. I swore at him, and regretted it immediately as without another word he left the room, and I was alone, on my knees on the cold tiled floor.

  17

  Rasmus

  Ketty made love like a wild animal. Her skin was the colour of chestnuts; her hair smelt of summer moss and wildflowers. Her voice was the low moan of the wind over the arctic tundra. Her hands, when she ran them hungrily over his chest, felt rough and worn from a lifetime of use; the rest of her body was as warm and soft as the earth.

  Afterwards, he lay for a while beside her. Suspended in the moment, his relentless thoughts absent for now, he heard only the rushing tide of Ketty’s breathing. As his faculties began to return he smelled the rich smoke of the blubber lamp that smouldered on the table, and thought that he would light himself a cigarette.

  He carefully pushed himself into a sitting position and swung his legs off the side of the raised sleeping platform, enjoying the texture of the animal hide blankets on his bare skin. The hut was warm from the burning lamp and the heat of their bodies. He could just reach the box of English cigarettes he had left on the table without needing to stand up. He fiddled with the silver lid of the slim case, meaning to lift it open and retrieve the one remaining cigarette that he was sure was still inside. The lid was stuck; with a little force and a jerk of his hand he was able to open it, and a metallic object dropped out of the box and clattered against the hard surface of the sleeping platform.

  It was his wedding ring. The gold shone in the light of the lamp, a searching eye turned upon his crime: judging, condemning. He grasped it with shaking fingers, plunged in back inside the tin, and closed the lid.

  He had only removed it from his finger because he had been bothered by the weight of it, he told himself silently; he was not used to wearing such ornaments after all. He would wear it again once the expedition had come to an end, once he returned home: it wouldn’t get in the way then, and there would be plenty of time to grow accustomed to it...

  His heart sank at the thought.

  Ketty’s fingers played up his spine. He shuddered at her touch. He slipped the cigarette case into the pocket of his coat that hung on the back of the chair and re-joined Ketty in the bed, banishing all thoughts of the tin and its contents from his mind.

  18

  Malik

  I dreamed, each and every night, of the vast sea and its guardian; dreams of frustration and of unendurable longing. Each night her eyes grew dimmer. Within them welled another ocean from which I turned my eyes in fear, for I did not understand. Each night the horizons grew more distant.

  And yet I did not set out in search of its shores. When Michael and I drank and smoked together in the music-infused confines of his bedroom, I often felt the swell of determination rise within my soul, the rush of elation: I would set out at first light, I told myself, and not rest until there lay stretched before me the great, calming plane of the ocean. I imagined its grey fingers reaching for my feet, welcoming – soon I would be home. Yet as the evening progressed and the drink flowed I was gradually overcome by lethargy. A sickening fear began to sink its wolverine teeth into the back of my clouded conscience. By the time the fingers of dawn pulled me from my hounded sleep I was overpowered by nausea and fatigue. I would not seek the ocean; I could not. I was terrified of becoming lost, for I had no bearings in this place where every street was the same. Were my senses able to guide me correctly, I was more afraid of the watery eyes and sharp beak of the one who might await me there.

  Instead I resigned myself to fate – a pathetic act of hopelessness: I would be led to the ocean if that was the direction of my intended path. Did Eqingaleq call me a coward? I was unsure whether the word had passed his lips.

  There was a strange security to be found in the relinquishing of responsibilities and the resignation to remain in one place. I would tread the same paths each day: the tent to the kitchen; the kitchen to the record shop; the record shop to the kitchen again, and so back to the tent to see out the day, if not to the record player in Michael’s bedroom. The wolves, too, knew my route, and trailed me untiringly, tongues lolling, saliva dripping in anticipation of the moment at which I would drop to the ground as carrion meat. They howled continuously, so that even when I dared not look I knew they were there. I turned up the record player to drown out their yowls and squeals.

  One evening, however, they nearly caught up with me.

  I was ambushed, perhaps, for I had taken a different route, deviated from the set paths of daily routine. When Michael laid down his knife and fork that evening he did not slope wordlessly upstairs, nor did he beckon me to listen to a new record that I really ought to hear; to my surprise, and apprehension, he informed me that we were to go out. He did not say where. My stomach twisted horribly, my heart began to palpitate. Leave the house? Again? Why prolong the day when we were so tantalisingly close to its end?

  Michael did not appear to expect an answer; indeed, no question had been asked. He poured us both a drink, and I knocked it back as though it were water and I a man dying of thirst, seeking comfort in its giddy arms and the blanket stupor that would throw the wolves off course. By the time we left the house I could barely walk in a straight line. The streetlights seemed so bright it could almost have been daylight, though still I stumbled as though I could not see. Eqingaleq followed in my shaky shadow, striving to point out landmarks and street names so that we might find our way back, in case Michael were not there to guide us, in case we must run from the wolves or from the White-winged One, in case…

  The bar smelled of alcohol and of sweat. In the low light it seemed as though the room were filled with shadows; spirits and demons screeching and chattering within these enclosing prison walls. Michael and I were surrounded by people, by greetings and laughter; my name was mentioned, others exchanged but none remembered. I think I smiled but did not feel it within my soul. I wished I had not had so much to drink, so that I might think more clearly, that I might be on my guard. Yet already there was another glass in my hand that I had not requested, not refused. And I drank to quench a thirst that would not be slaked.

  Who was this young woman standing before me, where Michael had been a moment earlier? Where are you from, she wanted to know. I told her, but could not tell whether her interest was genuine, or nothing but a social convention. She had never met anyone from Greenland, she said. She seemed soft around the edges, long dark hair that framed her face, fell over her forehead and almost into her eyes, which were ringed with charcoal. Her lips were full and red. I found myself wondering what it would be like to press my own against them.

  It is not the sort of place that is easy to leave, I told her.

  But you – she said – why did you leave?

  I had to, I said.

  You had to?

  I had to.

  She touched me on the shoulder; the clatter of the melee of bracelets on her wrist was drowned out by the music. You’ll like it here, she said. I did not believe her.

  The wolves howled more loudly over the volume of the music and my own voice was hoarse with the strain of making myself heard. The record was one I recognised – a small comfort,
something on which to concentrate. Some people danced, others tapped their feet; Michael’s head never stopped bobbing when the music played. He nearly spilled the drink that he passed to me, so enraptured was he in his own interpretation of rhythm. Eqingaleq murmured a caution in my ear as I set down my empty glass – how well Michael could anticipate! I raised the replenished one to my lips.

  It’s the only way I can get through, I replied – did I mean the chaos of the evening or the insistent fog by which I was surrounded? Perhaps I meant the path that I was required to take in order discover the very reason for my following its course. Whatever its meaning the truth felt good upon my alcohol-stained lips. I said it again. It’s the only way I can get through.

  Through the haze of consciousness I felt a longing for the quiet and solitude of my blanket tent, yet I feared the stillness that lurked there and the thoughts that would make themselves known in the absence of this cacophony and distraction. By the time we did leave for home I had lost all track of time, and all coherency; my head was a nightmarish jumble of howling, panting and heavy footfall. I stumbled after Michael. The wolves came after me from each and every direction: I was surrounded, hemmed in from all sides by hot, rancid breath and lolling tongues, red as blood. To run would be futile. Instead I stopped at the side of the empty street and was sick – waves of shame and of hopelessness, the swell of the tide. Afterwards I found that the creatures had pulled back somewhat, though not so far that I could forget their chase.