“I haven’t got a disguise,” Primo said, somewhat plaintive.
“Nonsense child,” said Wilmot. “Every human disguises himself throughout life. Your vanity was in thinking that you did not. You simply adopted the image others had blessed you with, determined to embrace it in all its vile discolouration.”
“You said it was self-loathing, not self-loving,” remembered Primo.
Wilmot appeared quite suddenly, in gloriously vibrant monochrome. He was crimson, from the tall peak of his hat to the curly points of his sequinned shoes. An amazing variety of charms and amulets were strung around his neck and jangled tunefully as he moved. At one point they played a jazzy version of the Star Spangled Banner, followed by a sprightly Yellow Submarine. His cloak, virulent but silent, swirled in crimson silk, painted with a shimmer of many stars. Across his chest a pair of comets chased each other, one eventually darting under his arm. On his hat the moon, crescent but smiling, rose from the brimless crown, orbited a few times, and then yawned before sinking at the back. His beard was not crimson but jet black, and jutted from a square and officious jaw. “Now then,” said the wizard, “where were we?”
“Self-image,” sniggered Primo.
Wilmot tapped the two errant comets with his very long bejewelled fingers, and they subsided in a desultory fashion to the hem of his cloak. Their smoking tails fizzled out in a green puff with dangling crimson silk threads. “Indeed,” Wilmot answered. “Self-loathing and self-loving became synonymous within whatever you referred to at the time as your brain. You must finally unravel the mystery.”
A tiny emerald viper was peeping from Wilmot’s top pocket. The harpy opened one eye and hissed, then, offended, turned its back. “You want me to sleep again?” sighed Primo.
The wizard nodded, carefully holding onto his hat. He then fished up his right hand sleeve and withdrew a long silver wand. “It is nearly over,” said the wizard, and waved the wand.
Chapter Forty
“You took your time,” said Cinzia. “I’ve been waiting ages.”
Francesco gazed at the small rounded face and the gentle brown eyes he’d loved nearly his whole life. He smiled, a little embarrassed. “I got held up,” he said. “I’ll tell you about it later.”
“I knew you’d find me eventually,” she nodded. “You always have.”
“It’s what I’ve been praying for ever since I lost you,” he said.
“You didn’t lose me,” said Cinzia. She had been so cross with him at first. It had taken time to adjust. “You lost yourself. All that fury about how we died. But I see you’ve got over that. Perhaps the prayers helped.”
“I got over the anger before the praying,” said Francesco, reaching for her hand. It still felt warm and plump in his. He was deeply grateful that such physical things did not fade immediately after death. “The prayers wouldn’t have meant much if I’d still been bitter. I’ve just spent a long time in hospital. I went in the gates on the third, and came out here. What plane is this anyway? They don’t exactly have numbers on the doors.”
Cinzia laughed. “No. It’s not a lift with numbered buttons. But we’re on the fifth. Fancy you starting on the third. That must have been exciting.”
“You don’t mean that. You know it must have been ghastly. You know I must have been ghastly to have gone there.”
Cinzia smiled and gripped his hand even more warmly. She wasn’t used to this unprecedented humility. “Perhaps not entirely ghastly, but certainly wretched,” she said. “You were tied to that terrorist, weren’t you? You couldn’t let it go.”
“I learned a lot very quickly,” said Francesco. They had started walking. “You know, this is all so much huger than any religion has ever come close to imagining. It’s a shame we don’t get more clues while we’re alive.”
“I think we get what we’re ready for,” said Cinzia.
They were walking along the river side, stepping across the white splashing shallows on mossy pebbled mosaics, watching the small fish darting between and beneath. The clustered willows dipped careful roots, high arched, into the swirl of waters, their branches feeling for the perfect place to leave their reflections.
“Parts of the third plane were beautiful too,” said Francesco. “I suppose all the planes of the Summerlands are, even the first, but we muck them up ourselves. This is certainly more peaceful.”
“Well, it seems beauty is a translation of love,” said Cinzia, “so being gorgeous must be inevitable. Waiting for you, I’ve been discovering a great deal myself. I fly a lot. Do you know we can fly, if we let go all the weight of anxiety and expectation? Sometimes I fly out over the ocean and lie basking on the breezes. I think the sea is the most spiritual place of all.”
“You’ll have to show me that,” said Francesco. They had reached a bend in the river where the ground rose to higher banks and Cinzia led him up across a small wooded area thickly covered with acorns and fallen chestnuts, as if some giant squirrel used it as a storeroom.
Cinzia laughed. “I’ve never seen a giant squirrel over here. It’s the nuts themselves. They get together by choice. Friendship perhaps, or just so they don’t feel too alone once they’ve been adventurous enough to leave their trees. But I’m not sure of the reasons. I’ve never spoken to an acorn before.”
“That sounds even more ridiculous than giant squirrels,” said Francesco. “And how did you read my mind?”
“There’s a lot I’m going to have to teach you,” smiled Cinzia. “It’ll be fun to be the teacher for a change. Will you mind?” He grinned and shook his head. Cinzia put her arm around his waist. It was easy to enjoy a newly humble husband.
As they walked, Francesco was aware of the exhilaration and the pleasure his body seemed to absorb from the sun. There was no breathlessness as there would have been when alive, and none of the suffocating airless panic he had felt on the third plane. Now he felt he belonged. “So it seems the fifth is my natural place,” he said. “Have you come just to meet me, or is it your place too?”
“I have a home on the sixth,” said Cinzia. “It’ll be your home too, unless we stop feeling comfortable together and decide to live separately. In fact, I assume we’ll soon move on up to the seventh plane together, but my guide sent me down here to meet you, so I suppose after the big leap from the third you need a gradual acclimatisation. We’ll walk all through the fifth until you’re too fast for it. Then we’ll arrive at the fogbanks and fly through them to the sixth. You’ll like our house. I’ve already got the coffee ready.”
Francesco shook his head and grinned. “It’ll be boiling over by now.”
“It doesn’t work like that,” said Cinzia. “Even time is different over here. It all takes such a lot of getting used to.”
“I know that much,” said Francesco. “While I was on the third, I even talked to a medium. That was a strange time, and I did strange things. Strange things happened.”
“What happened with the medium?”
“Voices came over,” nodded Francesco. “Seemed to clock onto me, in my head and in the air. There was this contact with my cousin, who was calling through some psychic kid he must know. Do you remember Romano? He and his brother have that vineyard near Siena, and he used to live with an English woman half the year. We weren’t ever close but you must remember him from our wedding.”
“Of course I remember him.”
“Well, I talked to him. Not that anything much happened and I never got a proper answer. He was never especially communicative.”
“So you’ve done lots of things I haven’t,” said Cinzia. “We’ll have plenty of amazing stories to tell each other once we get home.”
It was a long walk. Francesco thought perhaps it took all day. It might have been several days. Neither night nor tiredness, diversions of weather nor hunger, interrupted them. The air carried a sense of joy in its glimmer and the sunshine was never less than wonderfully invigorating. Sometimes the silence was so amazingly huge it inspired both awe and the
desire to stand, to listen but not to breathe in case he sullied its perfection. It was as he stood and listened that he realised he could continue without breathing, and that breath was only a habit and not a necessity, and that silences like this could not ever exist on a plane of living humanity. Death was holy after all, with an essence of utter glory. “It’s majestic. Is that the wrong word? I don’t know a word that fits.”
“Yes, the silences are enormous,” said Cinzia. “But so is sound. Everything has its own music here. Listen again.”
There was bird song, and the melody of breeze. Then Francesco heard other harmonies, the rustle of the trees was in tune with the clouds, and the halo of rainbow the sun scattered across the stream waters sang with its own voice. “But no people,” said Francesco at last. “We’ve been walking for miles and miles and we haven’t seen a single soul.”
“Oh, that’s just because we’ve been happy just being together again,” said Cinzia. “We only wanted each other. If you think of other people, you’ll see them. Look, there’re houses over there.”
They had been following a ridge of high ground from which they could look across the magnificence of valleys and rivers, lakes and meadows, hills, gorges, forests and pastures, a hundred thousand acres of rich plenty up to the great wonder of the far distant mountains and their blinding snow peaks. “No horizons,” nodded Francesco. “If I want to see, I can. Is it all to do with readiness? Desire? Needing?”
Cinzia said, “We’ll have to start learning together.”
From the ridge on which they stood, the ground sloped downwards into a gentle hollow where birches in the shades of all four seasons interwove their arms, but opened their embrace for the passage of the sunshine and the murmur of the winds. Within the sun-trapped glade were several cottages, peak roofed. There were distinct signs of busyness, of comings and goings, and of partying.
“Well, there’s some of the people you seemed to think were missing from our travels,” Cinzia pointed. “Do you want to see who they are?”
Francesco stopped, looked, and smiled. “We know one of them already. He was on our bus.”
“Heavens,” realised Cinzia, “it’s young Sven. And that other woman is so shiny. She has a brighter aura than ours. She must be from the seventh.” Cinzia waved. The small group beside the cottages looked up, waving back.
Recognising them at once, Sven marched over. “Hey. Funny, but I was thinking of you just a little while ago. That’s some coincidence.”
“I don’t believe there’s any such thing as a coincidence,” said Cinzia. “Any more than there’s such a thing as a mistake.”
“Well – over here that’s probably true,” Sven nodded.
“I expect it always was,” said Cinzia. A bustle of anticipation that smelled of excitement surrounded them. “Anyway, looks like you’re on the move.”
“This is my friend Rita,” Sven introduced her. “And her daughter Georgia. Georgia comes from the seventh.” There was a pride in saying it, a claim to have friends in decent positions. “And we’re just making the move up to the sixth. Tell the truth, we aren’t quite sure whether we should just take off, or maybe walk it more slowly. After all, there’s the fogbanks to get through. I’ve heard they’re thick.”
Cinzia shook her head. “We’re going the same way. The fogs are only thick if you’re not ready to pass. Once you’re ready then they’re warm and rosy. They even smell sweet. I’ve a house waiting on the sixth. We could fly together.”
Rita walked over, linking her arm through Sven’s. “That’s what my little Georgia keeps saying, but I like to be sure about things. No good rushing decisions, regretting at leisure and all.” She regarded the two dark strangers. “So you were on Sven’s bus?” she said. “That must have been ever so dramatic.”
“Too true,” said Francesco with a faint sense of accomplishment. Humility was a hard act to sustain. “I mean, one minute I was just sitting there watching the scenery. I’d just lit a cigarette and I remember seeing a hawk fly over the cliffs. That was the last thing I remember. Bang. Pouff. And the next minute I was dead. No pain, no tunnels, no seeing my life flash before my eyes. None of the things I’d been expecting. Just a breath, and then no breath. Halleluiah!”
“Gosh,” said Rita with dutiful astonishment. “What a shock. My Sven says he couldn’t believe he was dead for ever such a long time.”
Georgia, who had been sitting on the cottage doorstep waiting for her mother to settle her doubts, finally came wandering over. Rita had been nervous. “What if I’m not really ready and they send me back? What if they’re all snobs on the sixth and I won’t be happy there? What if Sven meets someone else and leaves me all alone in a strange place without friends?”
Now Rita said, “Look sweetie, new neighbours. Let’s all fly together.”
Georgia smiled. “It’s time we did something. No point prevaricating any longer.”
“Well, it’s a big step,” insisted Rita, “but I suppose if everyone else is just waiting for me? But it’s been such a nice little house. And romantic too. Now it seems funny not packing up a suitcase to take with us.”
Georgia nodded, enjoying the mother-role instead of the dutiful daughter-obedience. “You can pack up your romantic memories and bring them with you. But anything new you want when we get there, you can just visualise and summon up anyway. Anyway, your home here will just gradually fade away after you’ve left.”
“Well, we’d better hurry,” frowned Francesco, “or Cinzia’s house will start fading too. She’s been gone ages.”
Rita, clutching her new hat, roses around the crown, now glared at Georgia. “You never told me it worked that way before. They fade away? Goodness, I’ll be scared ever to go out shopping.”
Hot dust, the tired smell of endless insidious boredom, the consistent futility of a colourless afternoon. Primo was back in the car.
He’d slept in the desert that night, found dew rich condensation in the bottom of a discarded beer can, slept with the taste of it on his tongue. He opened his eyes on the usual knife slice of dawn horizon and found the momentary chill pleasant. Nothing else pleasant about the God-forsaken rubbish dump, nor the vile dreams he’d shrugged off minutes before. So send the depression back into its greedy shadows, switch to fast rev, gear up the piss-proud awakening with a few succinct memories – the squeeze of a woman’s thighs, undoing buttons – better one by one, or to rip them and the cotton altogether – breasts, belly, buttocks. And then the neck. Sweet, soft skin and veins like pale interesting threads, bluish streams below the surface, pulsing blood. The power of life and death. The snap, which still haunted him.
So the day had started as it usually did with the stink of monotony and the retreat into fantasy, only now he was in this old lady’s car and feeling dopey as fuck.
They were not, however, alone. Primo’s ghost was crouched, biting his left thumb nail, in the back seat. There was also the voice of Wilmot, who was, he suspected, although invisible, sitting on the roof.
“I’m just glad,” said Primo’s nervous ghost, “really glad, that I didn’t kill the old dear. One day I’ll go back and tell Daisy how much I liked her sandwiches. It was trusting of her to give lifts to scruffy looking idiots on the side of the road though. Old ladies ought to know better. But thank fuck I didn’t do her in and thank fuck I didn’t die in the electric chair. Shit. I can almost smell burning now. But we keep coming back here. I can take a hint. So I suppose it was a car accident. Simple as that? Her and me, drinking bitter fucking lemonade and talking crap, and I can see it coming. I mean, she’s probably as blind as a bat. Ought to be wearing glasses. So what are we doing here now? Waiting for the oncoming truck?”
“Waiting for death,” nodded Wilmot’s voice. “As we tend to do, ever since birth.”
“What a cheerful fucking foreboder of doom you are,” smiled Primo. “Are you really sitting up there on the roof rack, still dressed as a fucking scarlet wizard?”
“Crimson magici
an,” corrected Wilmot. “And there isn’t a roof rack.”
Momentary doubt made Primo pause. “You are sure, aren’t you, that I never actually did do her in? I mean, looks like we’re about to die together.”
“I do not remember ever informing you of this, one way or the other. I believe it is you who have decided you could not have done her in.”
Primo gulped. “You did. You said I only ever killed one person in my life. And it wasn’t Daisy.”
“I never said you didn’t try,” Wilmot pointed out.
The living Primo, sleepy with the long miles, had lapsed once more into the usual dreary revelry. Plotting murder. Primo’s ghost blushed furiously. “Fuck. Don’t listen to that. I mean, I was just plain miserable. I don’t think I ever knew properly what I was thinking about anymore, it just happened. Now it makes me sick.”
“A charming temptation,” admitted Wilmot from somewhere.
“Well, I fucking suffered every fucking hideous emotional avalanche, didn’t I?” Primo muttered. “I was just sodding battered. And I so much didn’t want to be bland. I wanted to be someone. Nothing ever happened and the whole fucking world was so shitting dull and I just seemed to spend every fucking day waiting for life, but life never turned up. So I dreamed of my own sort of action and of making things happen. Things I controlled. I thought God was this sickly sweet rosy perfumed opium, so I chose the other end.”
“Yet it was opium you chose,” said Wilmot. “The drug of forgetfulness.”
Primo nodded miserably. “Can’t we leave this alone now? Isn’t it enough?”
Wilmot said, “Certainly not,” and appeared, rather suddenly, sitting squashed beside Primo’s ghost in the narrow back seat. He pushed the picnic basket aside and leaned against the split and flaking back rest with its protruding wadding. “Concentrate on the matter in hand.”
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