by Sam Taylor
But the world is not like that. People are not like that. Our memories, by virtue of their porousness, save us from the Hell of existence. Just as Ivan and Angelina were laughing and fucking within two weeks of my ‘death’, so I was able, if not to smile, at least to hope, to desire, to see through the vast dark cloud of mourning and self-hatred to the possibility, however remote, of redemption. In short, I began to daydream of Angelina. I remembered her: how it had been between us. The way she had made me feel about myself; the way she had drawn out that surprisingly large, colourful soul from my shy adolescent shell, and made me live. The almost telepathic closeness we had shared. The laughter, the tickling, the whispered gossip. It had not always been intense and serious, I recalled. My romanticism and my nostalgia had elevated the idea of her to some divine, impersonal status - frozen her image and stuck it atop a plinth - but the truth was that she was a real human being, with flaws, needs, desires of her own; the truth was that we had been friends. The two of us were suffering now, for, if not exactly the same reason, then something very similar. Perhaps, perhaps, we could be of comfort to one another. Perhaps together, we would suffer less than we did alone. Perhaps - and here, I confess, my starving imagination got the better of my common sense - we could fall in love with each other again, put everything back in its right place; could defy the laws of physics and metaphysics and actually turn back time. Of course we could not summon Ivan from the grave, but in some deep recess of my heart I was glad about that. Ivan, I told myself, had been the serpent. Now he was slain, there was no reason why the two of us could not recreate Eden.
In my defence, I was very weak at this point. Physically, I was close to collapse. I had some money left, but no will to go out and spend it on food; no appetite to swallow anything but water. And, like a man crawling across the desert floor, I began to see mirages ahead in the distance. The possibility of resurrecting my love affair with Angelina was the largest and most vivid of these. It was ludicrous - contemptible, even - but it also, I think, rescued me from the grave. Without the hope and desire that the memory of her inspired in me, I would probably have let myself starve to death that summer.
Instead, I began to eat, exercise, sleep, gain strength. A week or so after the idea first entered my head, I was well enough to walk to her house. That evening, I merely stood and watched. I’m not sure why; a combination of habit and cowardice, I suppose. I remember seeing a surprising amount of activity in the house - servants coming and going, carrying pieces of furniture, framed pictures and so on - but in my serenely hopeful state, I did not realise what this frenzy portended. It was only the next afternoon, when I screwed up my courage and actually knocked on her door, that I learned the truth. It was the maid, Jeanette, who told me. She recognised me, and her eyes flashed shock, horror, pity. ‘Reports of my death . . .’ I began, but she did not smile. Eventually, when she had calmed down and accepted (if not comprehended) the fact of my continued existence, I got it out of her that her mistress was leaving the country that very day. She could not tell me where Miss Vierge was going - ‘I don’t know myself, sir, it’s all very hush-hush’ - but she did let slip that Angelina had already left the house. Clearly distressed and confused, she said, ‘Please sir, you didn’t get this from me, but ... if you rush, you might catch her before she leaves. I heard the cook say that she’s taking the three o’clock train from Victoria.’ I looked at my watch - it was quarter past two - then quickly nodded my thanks to Jeanette, and ran as fast as I could.
By some miracle, I saw her, stepping down from a hansom into the crowd, and caught up with her at the entrance of the station. Perhaps she was merely numb, so deep in grief that nothing else could touch her, but it occurred to me afterwards that Angelina looked less shocked by my resurrection than her maid had done. Her face was pale, it was true, but her eyes barely flickered at the sight of me; almost as if she had been expecting such a sudden reappearance; almost as if she had never believed that I was dead. It was ten to three by now, and I knew she was in a rush to reach the platform, but she didn’t complain when I held her still by both shoulders and begged her to listen to me. Her servants came over and looked at me threateningly, but Angelina just told them to put the bags on the train and await her at the platform. When they had gone, she looked at me. Around us, people pushed and shouted, but it was as though we were inside a bubble. My memory of that moment is oddly similar to my memory of the time we sat and talked at the café in Regent’s Park - the way time pulsed slowly; the way we seemed cut off from the rest of the universe - except that, in mood, they are polar opposites: our first conversation and our last conversation; the beginning and the end. As her grey eyes swallowed me up, I realised that I no longer knew what to say. The words in my head evaporated, and I just stood there, biting my lip.
‘You look nervous,’ Angelina said. There was compassion in her voice and eyes. I don’t remember how I replied. Indeed, I remember almost nothing of that conversation, except that the sound of her voice and the look on her face opened me up, and that words came flooding out of me. I think I tried to explain to her how much I loved her, how much I missed her, how no one else in the world had ever made me feel the way she did. I said I wanted us to be together again, but first there was something I had to confess. And then I told her what I’d done. The hauntings. I confessed that I was his killer.
Do I remember a tear in her eye, or do I only imagine it there now? She was silent for a few moments and then she told me, in a calm, deliberate voice, how much I had meant to her. Only fragments of those words have stayed in my memory. I don’t know why. Perhaps the emotion I felt blurred them all? Perhaps I wasn’t really listening, but going over in my head all the other things I wanted to say to her? In any case, I can recall no more than a few phrases: ‘You were like a drug to me: the more I saw you, the more I wanted to see you . . . I have never told anyone else the things I have told you, and I doubt that I ever will . . . Nothing will ever harm my memory of our time together; that will remain sacred ...’
I heard all this and a wind of exhilaration and ecstasy blew through me, and yet, deep down, I knew that something else was coming. Something bad. Those final words reverberate within me even now.
‘But, John, what you’ve done ...’
She didn’t need to say any more. The earth opened up and swallowed me. The flames of shame incinerated me.
I nodded, trying to dam my tears. She turned and walked towards her platform. For several seconds, I just watched her, my heart breaking. I would never see her again. Finally, just before she went through the ticket gate, I ran after her and called her name. She turned and I saw that she was crying, the tears rolling, unstopped, down her cheeks. I said her name again. She took a few steps, until she was standing close to me, then leaned up and whispered something in my ear. At the same wretched moment, a steam whistle shrieked, and one of her words was lost in the blur of noise. How many times have I relived that moment, trying to hear what she said, but always part of the line is missing.
‘I really . . . . . . love you.’
In more optimistic moments, I hear the word ‘do’ above the train’s scream. At times of depression, of course, what I hear is ‘don’t’. Now, after all these months, having thought about it over and over, I am almost convinced that what she said was worse than either of these. Worse, because it opens up the one wound that can never heal: regret. What Angelina said, I believe, is:
‘I really did love you.’
I dreamt of her last night. It was a beautiful dream. Normally my dreams of her are horrible - she disappears into a crowd as I run, desperately, failingly, after her; or she hates me, or is coldly indifferent to me; or she is kissing someone else, or worse - but last night’s was different. It seemed more real. It was as though Angelina herself had made a guest appearance in my mind; returned for one night only to end the torments, calm the waters, remind me of the unblemished memories she herself has of us. In the dream we were in a cable car, travelling up some sn
ow-covered mountains. There were other people around us in the cable car, but we took no notice of them. We were inside our bubble: the two of us sitting close together on a little leather bench; her leg brushing mine; her head leaning lightly on my shoulder; and she was talking away cheerfully, confidentially, like she used to do, while through the windows of the cable car we watched the white mountains rise into the clouds. It was into the clouds we were going, or so it seemed to me. Higher and higher, until the mountains were far behind, the earth too, and all the other people. Until it was just the two of us, and whiteness.
I do not believe in Heaven, but it did occur to me, when I woke this morning, that my dream was a vision of Paradise; a kind of afterlife of the soul; an eternal dreaming, where hopes and fears melt away and all is relief. My reason tells me such sweetness can last no longer than it takes the brain’s electrical impulses to stop functioning, but even if I only dream of her for a minute or two, after dying, is that not better than remaining pointlessly alive in this dry, hard, Angelinaless world, with only my heartache for company? Before this dream, I had been resolved to die, but afraid. Now, I no longer feel afraid. I am ready. There is only one episode left to record.
After I had watched Angelina run to the platform and disappear into the train; after I had watched the train pull away from the station and felt my poor heart crushed beneath its wheels; after that, I went out into the streets of London and wandered in a daze. I drank a few pints, but not much: just enough to soften the pain. I may have fallen asleep in a doorway; I can’t remember. What I do recall clearly is buying a loaf of bread just before dawn and overhearing two women in the bakery talking about the ‘terrible train crash’ the previous evening. I knew instantly it was her; that she was dead. After that, I remember walking through Regent’s Park with the loaf, still warm, tucked beneath my arm. I was hungry, and had intended eating it myself, but when I came to the café where Angelina and I had first talked, and noticed the ducks on the pond, I decided to feed them instead. A sacrificial offering, somehow.
As I stood at the edge of that dark, calm water and began tearing pieces from the loaf and throwing them - watching the white arc through blue into black - I realised that it was over. I was the only person on earth with any memory of the tragedy; with any memory of the joy that preceded it. It was, I saw, my responsibility to tell the story as best I could. To confess, before I killed myself. After all, I was already a dead man in the eyes of the world; it would only be a small step to finish the job. I thought all this while feeding the ducks and, as the sun rose through the trees by the edge of the pond, I felt a kind of strange relief, a lightening. Having made the decision to confess, having sentenced myself to death, the weight of the guilt was lifted from me. I was free.
That was the end of June: six months ago, almost to the day. Six months. Twice as long as my stay in Paradise.
Heaven and Hell. They are, I have discovered, real places. And they have nothing to do with death.
No, death is what comes after. Death is what comes next. I open the window and look down to the garden below. It is time. Goodbye indifferent world.
POSTSCRIPT
As this ink in my hand attests, I am still alive. Several hours have passed, and I have stood at the open window, staring down, willing myself to jump, but . . . I couldn’t. Fear again? Mere cowardice? I must plead guilty. And yet, it was more than that, I believe: something finer, or at least less despicable. It is a beautiful morning, and as I stood there with the garden swimming vertiginously below me, I felt the sunlight on my skin, I saw a cat curled up on the grass next door, I heard the birds singing from the treetops, and some animal pleasure rose up inside me. If it was fear, then it was the fear not of pain or hellfire, but simply of no longer existing. The choice between sun and no sun; between air and no air; grass and no grass. Being or nothingness. What kind of choice is that?
Now, if only I could wipe away the last three years, like chalk marks from a blackboard, I think I might almost be happy. If only I could forget. But only time can make the memories fade, and even then not entirely. In a hundred years, perhaps, science will have developed some fantastic means of erasing or suppressing the unwanted past, but for now, in this dark century soon ending and in the century to follow, I have no choice but to live on in a world befouled by stains. Oh well. The window to the next world is always open. I must remember that. Somewhere she is waiting for me, in the eternal dreaming of the soul. Until then, I must steel myself, become cold and invulnerable and unthinking like all the others, and re-enter the labyrinth.
James finished reading, then looked out of the window. He wiped the tears from his eyes. That was it, he thought. That was what had happened. For the first time, he understood that Confessions of a Killer was simply Memoirs of an Amnesiac under a different title, in a different genre. It was the unwritten chapter - Chapter 3 - the blank at the heart of his life story. Only it wasn’t blank; it was in code. He also knew that he had written it himself, even though he could not remember having done so.
Obviously these were not the facts, but they were something more important than facts. They were the truth. He could read the diaries, of course, and discover all the facts, but he had a feeling he would only be disappointed. Besides, there was no need to read them because the wave was coming. Any moment now, his memories would return. Oddly, the prospect no longer filled James with dread. Even guilt and regret are better than nothingness, he thought. Even being a killer is better than being nobody.
And at the very moment that he thought this, the wave broke.
During those few seconds of revelation, James remembered everything. It was as though a million butterflies swarmed out of the black box. They flew around his face, briefly filled the room, and then poured through the open window and away, never to return. This took only seconds, though to James it seemed like years had passed. Afterwards, he was left with only the vaguest impression of what he had seen. And yet, during the moments when the butterflies were before his eyes, he saw every single one; not as a blur of colour, but in impossibly perfect detail.
He stood up and looked out of the window. Below him the garden was shining in the sunlight. A single butterfly flew in crazy circles near the apple tree, then disappeared. James took a deep breath: the air smelled of earth, grass, tarmac, nectar, bacon, tea, petrol fumes. He noted with relief that the buzzing sound in his head had now stopped. A moment passed. I stood behind him, watching, curious. I could feel the thoughts moving through his mind. He felt sorry for Ian, and for Anna, and for James. She was alive, of course, he knew that now, just as he knew he would never see her again. As for Ian . . . well, who knows why people kill themselves? No suicide note can ever tell the whole story.
And the third person? For the first time in his life, James Purdew saw the young James Purdew not as some ur-version of himself, but as a stranger. Another being. Poor him, James thought. If only I could go back in time and whisper words of comfort and wisdom in his ear. If only I could hold his hand and guide him through the labyrinth. But time travel only happens in books, James knew. In real life, you are always marooned in the present, always alone. Then he turned around and looked me in the eyes. And slowly, almost unbelievingly, he smiled. And began to laugh.
In that moment, I ceased to exist. I had thought I was dreaming him, but when he started laughing, I understood that he was dreaming me.
For the briefest of instants, my mind is a blank. I know the details of the present moment: I am climbing a bright, wide staircase; the air is warm, close, sour-smelling; my right temple aches. But none of these facts gives me any clue to where or when this is happening, or even to my own identity.
I stand still, breathing heavily, and a hundred vague staircases swim together in my memory. Have I been here before? It looks familiar, but then a staircase is a staircase. That smell reminds me of something, though. What is it? Drying blood. Warm sweat. Human faeces. I listen closely and hear the faint hum of traffic; someone coughing from behin
d a door. A drop of sweat trickles down my forehead and into my eye. It stings. I blink. And, in the time that it takes for my eyes to close and reopen, it all comes back to me.
Reality. The present. My self.
Relieved, I begin climbing the stairs again. Halfway up, I hear a harsh, urgent, familiar sound. I start to run, taking the steps two at a time. Near the top, I miss my footing and almost fall. My right ankle hurts a little, where I broke it once before, but luckily there is no damage done.
Still the sound continues, high-pitched and imperative. I open the door and see Ingrid, naked and unconscious on the bed; next to her, twisted up in blood-stained sheets, is something small and purple-skinned and alive. Instinctively I know what it is. The consequence. The solution to the puzzle. The real mystery: mysterious reality. The blank page upon which I, time, the world will soon, ineffaceably write. The exit of one labyrinth and the entrance to another.
Full of hope and full of fear, I walk towards the screaming child.
Thanks for the memories . . .
Tim Adams, L’Ancien, Adam Ant, Beverly Armin, Mr Ash-ton, Pedro Calderon de la Barca, Joel Barish, John Franklin Bardin, Anna Barsby, Richard Bates, Rafael Benitez, Tibor Bejczy, The Black Bull, Jorge Luis Borges, Lee Brackstone, Jane Buttery, Mr Buxton, Jonathan Cainer, La Cantina, Nick Carraway, Adolfo Bioy Casares, Rupert Christiansen, Jean-Baptist Clamence, David Clarke, The Coach & Horses, Lisa Cull, Kenny Dalglish, Richard Davies, Arthur Conan Doyle, Ingrid Drijver, Alicia Duffy, Greg Dulli, Olivier Durette, Stéphanie Durette, Mr Earnshaw, Claire Eddison, Sandra Elissen, Barbara Ellen, Nathalie Esterbrook, Jane Ferguson, John ‘Scottie’ Ferguson, Field Mill, Robert Forster, Jean Fourcade, Lizzie Francke, The French Horn, Alex Games, Christian Gaze, David Godwin, The Golden Frier, Yakov Petrovitch Golyadkin, Mrs Gretton, The Gunmaker’s, Luke Haines, Charles Hammond Jr, Matthew Hatton, Paul Hedley, Mr Hill, Peter Hobbs, Victoria Hobbs, Phil Hogan, Rachel Hunt, The Hutt, David Icke, The Infinity Bar, Vicki Jagello, Andrew Jaspan, L. B. Jefferies, Philip Johnson, Mary Keane, John Kessel, Nastassja Kinski, Philip Larkin, Alexander Lennox, Lexington Avenue, Lisa Litchfield, The Little John, Vanessa Lodi, The Lookout, Simon Lumsdon, Alexander Luria, Vanessa Matkin, Richard Manley, Eric Maycock, Carol McDaid, Grant McLennan, The Mint, Mitch’s, The Mitre, Eiji Miyake, Bill Montgomery, Chris More, Josephine