Paradise

by A. L. Kennedy

  I’m even having different dreams. None of your Salvador Dali sub-texts and talking dogs, not any more: not even the average Naked in the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland anxiety trips—I spend every night wide open to the same, repeating parable: no diplomacy, no metaphors, just a Terminal Stage Warning, a great, big nocturnal shout— Hannah, don’t ever do this stuff again.

  The scene is monochrome, grainy to look at with the odd scratch curled in the air and then disappearing like an insect ghost. I am in a film—really inside the celluloid—and the flatness of this scares me, the gouging race of the projector’s sprocket wheels to either side, the certainty that I can never leave. At my back is a full saloon, wallowing in drifts of charnel-house dust, but still conducting its predictable business: the rigged poker games, the show of blousy whores, the hats and spurs and bandoliers and the pianist punching a keyboard wrist-deep in sand. He produces no sound beyond his fighting breath, but there is an attempt at music fairly audible from the shadows: the sad wavers of a blue-grass fiddle, but mainly a military drum, keeping time with a fat tap-tap.

  I am leaning at the bar, one boot on the rail, and dressed in the body and clothes of a powder-dry cowboy. Like everyone else here, I am playing my part. I set my Stetson on the counter, lick the salt caked round my lips and, as soon as I do these things, I’m aware that the whole saloon has been waiting for me, that I have set a process into motion and something horrific is on its way.

  The bartender, as I expected, sets up a shot glass of the perfect alcohol. It slips in smooth and sweet as milk and sparkles in my breath. It’s the warmth of my own true home and a welcome indoors, then the heat of an animal, last-hope, 3 a.m. fuck and then it stings with the tranquil, acid cool of death. And the taste is every good taste I remember and beyond them, more, skirting the undiluted flavour of paradise and into every cell and thought and wish it places the ideal degree of drunkenness.

  Even as I sip another, I know this drink is impossible, that nothing the waking world offers me can be as fine as this.

  “That’s the truth, isn’t it? That is the truth.”

  Beside me leans the suggestion of a man. When I stare straight at him, he fluctuates, as if he were reflected on molten metal, turbulent oil, but from the corner of my eye I can make out that he’s dressed as another cowboy: more dusty cloth, work-hardened palms, a dark hat shading his face. His fingers drum on the bar top in time to the music, producing a fat tap-tap.

  “Where did you bury her?” He has an accent I can’t place, but I almost recognise his voice. “Where’s the body? You can tell me.”

  And this is the terrible news that I’d forgotten, the finale the bar was brought here to receive. He’s quite right—I have killed someone. I have committed that last, unforgivable evil and am hollowed out by it, no more than a grinning skin stretched over the start of Hell. There is only enough of me left to be appalled.

  “Where’s the body?” I’m not sure if he’s speaking, or making me hear what he thinks. “You can’t hide it forever, you know that.”

  The bartender slides me one more shot and I pour it down, fast as I get it, in a single fist that reams my throat. Perhaps that will be the last drop, too, because we’re close to the end here: walls cracking beside me, dissolution gusting and clattering everywhere.

  Tap-tap.

  “Where is it?”

  Tap-tap.

  A beating in my neck, like evidence of a malign, new organ.

  Tap-tap.

  “You do know.”

  And the whores are laughing at some secret that I’ve told them and the pianist is gone and I wipe my face to be free of this suddenly monstrous heat and pick up a fresh glass in hands that are alight with blood.

  Tap-tap.

  My sleeves are crusted with it, heavy and stiff, my shirt front blossoming with tiny stains that swell, that coalesce, halt at my belt and my dirty jeans that seem quite usual until I finally have to search, the way that everyone knew I’d have to, until I finally lower my eyes for the source of that sound.

  Tap-tap.

  And watch my blood drip from my trouser cuffs down on to my boots, my red, red boots and the pool around them, the deep, bright waste of my life.

  “All you have to do is tell me. Just tell me where the body is.”

  It’s a wonder I get any rest with that sort of show running, night after night. I sit up at random points in the darkness, dripping with nerves and needy, stiffened with lack. And somewhere in my subconscious, I must truly believe I’m too stupid to grasp the risks of drinking without having them painted in adrenalin on the back wall of my skull.

  I blame Thoreau.

  Lovely Thoreau.

  In through the squeaky door—kept that way to make irregular entries plain to everyone and especially the nurse on duty—and here’s the first of many corridors, festooned with mindless placards and slogans—

  THINK, THINK, THINK.

  HOW IMPORTANT IS IT?

  WE ARE ALL GOD’S CHILDREN.

  No wonder I have jags of nausea, now and then—not to mention this mental infection in my nights—simplistic drivel is contagious, that’s an established fact. That’s why I don’t vote.

  TO SEE OURSELVES AS OTHERS SEE US.

  THE WORLD IS AS I AM.

  DRUNKENNESS INCREASETH THE RAGE OF A FOOL TILL HE OFFEND: IT DIMINISHETH STRENGTH AND MAKETH WOUNDS.

  MIND YOUR HEAD, IT’S OUT TO GET YOU.

  Although that last one is plainly true. Your head waits until you’re unconscious, then moves in and gives you a kicking you can’t duck— revenge for the years of hangovers you’ve brought it.

  Up the wooden stairs and I pass IF YOU SPOT IT, YOU’VE GOT IT, before I can face Room Five which is where I stop.

  THIS IS HANNAH’S AND ——’S ROOM.

  We’re not intended to enjoy the peace of single occupancy, but there aren’t enough girls to fill the rooms, just now, so I’m by myself. Waxed timber floor and a rag rug, one narrow pine window, over the narrow pine porch, two narrow pine beds, two narrow pine bedside tables, one narrow pine chest of drawers and one narrow pine wardrobe (gosh, what character-forming knife-fights I could have had over sharing those) and one utilitarian bathroom with toilet, sink and shower, none of them narrow, or pine. Opposite the window there is a badly framed picture of a thin man propped up in bed, two healthy men talking to him in a kind way and a spider of light above them, suggesting that something religious is taking place. In between room inspections, I turn it to the wall.

  It’s looking out at me now, though, as I take the plastic goblet Nurse Chiselden dodges in to offer me. Then I go into the bathroom and try to produce a test sample on demand.

  I passed, no pun intended.

  This isn’t surprising—rumour has it there’s no booze of any description for several hundred miles in all directions. We’re told they don’t even have surgical alcohol, which doesn’t say much for their health-care credentials. The nurses also search us with unpleasant efficiency when we first come in and so, as I’ve never been one for cooking up boot black and those kinds of tricks, it’s been easy to keep my bodily fluids pure.

  Still, temptation would be resisted if it arose. I can promise that.

  “I wouldn’t take a drink if you gave me one, if you put it in my hand.” I’m saying this to Mr. Hitt, which is almost the same as saying it to no one. Nurse Forbes has explained to me, with admonitory glee, that Hitt suffers from Korsakoff’s syndrome—alcohol-induced dementia—so he begins each day as himself, but with many key events and circumstances missing. This failing breeds a peculiar, gullible eagerness to please. He will accept anyone’s explanations for why he has turned out as he is.

  “I fell from a hot-air balloon.”

  This one is Eddie’s—I recognise it. He must have slipped in the rough outline over breakfast.

  “I was with my fiancée on a jaunt. Her grief at my many injuries turned her hair white in a day.”

  We are standing, Hitt and I,
beside the pool, feet sunk in a combination of slush and pillowed moss. I watch the swan patrolling, his mate nervous in the shallows at the far bank, and I’m smiling, almost giggling, with the assurance that I am purer now than any test can show. This place, the slow, green air, the cloak of water: I couldn’t have borne it if I weren’t clean. Now I’m a smoother fit with it each day. I can be comfortable in nature—it approves of me, is glad to have me back. Even the swans are less wary, the male’s wings sleeking back eventually, his glances growing curious, contemplative.

  “Well, it’s lovely that she cares so much, Mr. Hitt.” I’m not uneasy about this lying—it puts a dash of romance through his day, and tomorrow it will have disappeared completely. Of course, he gets tormented sometimes: inmates have told him about dead children, motorway tragedies, rapes—it’s only human nature. He’s in good hands this afternoon, though. I mean him no harm.

  “I’m sure she’ll come and visit you, maybe on Friday. Isn’t that her usual day?”

  “Yes . . .” Mr. Hitt blushes experimentally towards his shoes and is convinced. “Yes, I suppose that she might turn up again on Friday. She is very fond of me.”

  “Hopelessly in love.”

  Hitt pushes for detail, embellishment: which proves that he must like this, “When I’m better, we can marry?”

  “She asks the nurses every week.”

  He nods, quickly complacent. “I know.” And starts us strolling again. “Naturally, I ask them, too.”

  “Naturally.”

  What remains of Mr. Hitt will never leave here and he will never be able to care. It’s almost appealing, his condition—a new past laid out for you each morning, like a fresh suit of clothes: no cause for regrets, or longing, nobody to miss. Not unless someone lends them to you, and even then, they’ll only last until you sleep.

  “You and I, we come here together each afternoon.”

  Sometimes Hitt says things as if he remembers, but he’s just guessing.

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “We are old friends . . . I knew your father.”

  “That’s right. You worked together, in the university.” He looks as if he’d be at home in an ivy-covered quad, a study, so why not? “He is continuing your research. It’s going well.”

  “Really?” Hitt tugs at his lapels, more academic with every step. “I’m glad to hear it. Although, I thought . . .” And perhaps here there is a murmur of whatever way he did earn his living, a hint of argument. “Still . . . research . . .” But he isn’t dogmatic. Other people have known better for so long that he’s content to relax and rely on anyone. “No, that is good.”

  We have reached Hitt’s rock. This is where I’ve been told to crouch behind him and stay still while he scrambles in his good, soft trousers and his hand-sewn overcoat and sits himself down on the lichened stone, crossed-legged on its lap, his face and hands overhanging a low, sharp drop that hides its roots under the water.

  Hitt leans forward and makes a coughing grunt in his throat. The swan was on his way, in any case: first in a ruffed and stiffened display and then a slowing glide. They’re used to each other, these two, but— either for my benefit, or as a point of honour—the swan has to demonstrate whose pool this is. After which he halts, as smooth and calm as cloth, and cranes up his neck to Hitt, who has drawn out a bag of bread and places the first Good afternoon dab of it into the bird’s opened beak.

  “Now, now . . . we were only talking. I’m sorry I’m late.” The swan siphons water up to wash down its snack and coughs approvingly. Hitt murmurs to me over his shoulder. “Always bites my thumb, if he’s feeling temperamental . . . never a real bite, of course . . . never anything that’s impolite. There now . . . there now . . .”

  And hand to beak they sway and chuckle and grumble between themselves and the swan eats and his wife slides closer, tremulous, takes morsels from the water and mutters softly.

  “Ah, we have good times, don’t we? Lettuce tomorrow. Too much bread wouldn’t be the thing, would it? Although it is nice.”

  Possibly this is the only new information that he has remembered since he drank himself out of his mind: the trust of birds and how to speak to them.

  “The pen is looking broody, don’t you think?”

  “Mm?”

  The male glances at me, neck feathers shifting as he considers my intrusion and then finds it unimportant. I keep myself low to the ground, although the halted blood is aching in my knees.

  “The pen. She seems . . . that way inclined.”

  And I recall the lists my mother taught me: that larks come in exaltations and owls in parliaments, that little hares are leverets, that asses are jack and jenny, that swans are cob and pen. She wanted me to have that— the unnecessary beauties among words.

  And as I uncover his name, the cob is setting his great, black webs down on the silt, levering himself to stand straight, oddly thin and face to face with Hitt, who breaks bread and offers it, breaks and offers it. “Now, there’s no need to rush.” Hitt crouches back slightly, respectful. “Shhhh.” And the swan is satisfied, sinks to the water’s surface again and drinks.

  A breeze herringbones the lake and I catch the musty, warm bedlinen scent of the bird. I could like him and he could like me and, in the end, I could come and feed him for myself. It would do me more good than the endless groups, the vivisection. The questions they ask are never to the point: Forbes and Ogilvie, Ogilvie and Forbes: nothing about larks, about my soul.

  Tomorrow morning, I’m supposed to go off and have my skull cracked by some consultant, let him fumble around when there’s nothing left for anyone to find. I’ve been professionally groped here for over a week: whatever thrill there was in it has gone. I’ll tell him my dream and he’ll grill me about masturbation or fetishes and then try to make me feel abnormal. This doesn’t suit people like me—or Hitt. We need something gentle.

  The cob stands, this time deep in the pool, unfurls himself upwards and stretches his wings, shudders and claps them with a din like sailcloth and a barking cry. The pen eyes him, indulgent, and then they drift until they are together, heads ducking quietly in time, piercing the water and then rising, shaking off drops of light.

  Also tomorrow morning, someone called Martha Rocco is going to be put in my room. I will be spending the rest of my time here, sleeping next to a drunk, with no further chance to do anything personal that might help me relax.

  Clear Spring doesn’t have my best interests at heart.

  “Mr. Hitt?”

  “Ah?” Hitt’s free of the rock and standing, brushing his hands for crumbs and mildly dishevelled—the schoolboy who couldn’t help playing in his nice, new uniform. “Yes?” He glances back at the water with the sort of private content that leads me to believe he is thinking of his wonderful, fictitious fiancée.

  “There’s no hurry about this or anything . . .” My lips have difficulty with the syllables here, they are turning heavy, slippery. “None at all . . .” and breathing has lost its rhythm. “But that money you owe me . . . it would be good if you gave it back.”

  “Oh, that . . .” The mirage of her tears at parting, their first tryst and who knows what more, has faded and Hitt becomes fully and decently concerned. “You see, I forget things, I—”

  “I know, I do know that, too. It’s not a problem.”

  “I’m terribly sorry.”

  “No, it’s fine.” I could almost stop this, not ask again, and leave him be. “It’s perfectly all right.”

  “But I’m sure it’s not—how could it? You must tell me how much. I only carry a little with me . . .”

  I haven’t a clue what “a little” might mean to Hitt and I am unable to tell him a number, a sum: my throat won’t let me. But he reaches into his overcoat and pulls out a well-glossed, healthy wallet. From this he plucks a colourful thickness of Canadian notes—I barely understand what they mean and restrain myself from peering.

  “Four hundred?” He eyes me, politely quizzical, and for
a sick moment I can’t tell if he’s checking how much I will need, or how far I will go. Am I really about to rob him?

  Well, no I’m not. Not in any genuine way that he will notice. This won’t cause him a moment’s distress.

  And he isn’t remotely aware of anything untoward, I’m only reading his expression wrongly.

  “Five?”

  Not that I’m an idiot—I can calculate the moral costs involved. If there were any other path that I could take, I would have picked it. I just need to be gone before they break into my brain and my bedroom and expect me to thrive. I couldn’t stand any of that, not without a drink. And that was the point of my coming here—to keep me away from drinking. I have to leave to keep my peace of mind, which is beyond price.

  But I will have to mention a figure soon.

  I wipe my mouth.

  What kind of money will it take?

  The first stage, I’ll be hitching, have to be—that’s free. Bus tickets? Train tickets? Changing the plane ticket—or is it open? Can they be open? I didn’t look. Take the small bag, the holdall, only that one, it’s all I’ll need.

  “No, no, of course it wasn’t five. So . . . ?” Hitt falters, unsteadied by my silence and the blank spot that I’ve lied into his brain. He doesn’t know what to give me. So he simply holds the money out in front of him and allows me to steal just as much as I like without having to say a thing.