by Glen Duncan
“Will you marry me?” he said.
Harper’s cell phone rings and seduces Augustus out of semi-consciousness. You struggle up from under heavy soft folds and too late realize you should have stayed where you were. Same trickery every time. His memory’s in chaos. He knows he’s given up information but can’t remember what. Instead other bits of his past are vivid, as if his life’s been exploded and all its moments surround him in floating fragments.
He doesn’t hear what Harper says, indeed slaloms in and out of deafness. The mustached guard’s absent but his colleague’s on the chair in the corner, cigarette in one hand, the other hand massaging his neck. The guard eases his head forward, turns it slowly as if searching for a particular alignment. Augustus imagines the wife at home later with her fingers on him in the dark, pressing and asking: There? Is that it?
The room’s wadded with heat. Inés had kept saying: It’s not too cold for you, is it? Because there was his thin-skinned chest and scribble of gray hair. Poor thing, she couldn’t disguise what an old man she thought him!
Harper gets off the phone, pockets it, approaches the guard and speaks quietly to him. Augustus goes under again, resurfaces. It’s as if a hand gently pushes his bobbing consciousness under dark water, holds it, lets it up. He’s come to see it as a last beneficence, this force that gently dunks him out of time. But here’s Harper’s face again, close. Somewhere in the darkness they lowered him back into the chair only now his hands are cuffed behind him.
“I’m genuinely curious,” Harper says. “What are you holding out for?”
Augustus can’t sit up. The guard has him by the shoulder to keep him face to face with Harper. Pain’s no longer something that happens to him; it’s a dense mass in which what’s left of him forms a small suffocated kernel. Individual pains need distinctive personalities to make it through. A punch now would be like someone knocking on a door half a dozen rooms away.
“Didn’t think I was,” Augustus says, but his speech is full of interference.
“What?” Harper says. “Say again?”
“Not. Holding. Out.”
“Elise Merkete,” Harper says, lifting up the headshot. “Elise Merkete. Come on.”
When Elise walked up to him on Las Ramblas in Barcelona he hadn’t seen her in twenty years. It was two weeks after the department store bombing. He’d spent the days since it happened wandering the city or lying curled up on the floor of the hotel room. He drank himself into warm numbness, a salving inability to form thoughts. Then in the shade of a beech tree on the street’s pedestrian spine a shadow falling on him and Elise saying, in a surreal echo of Selina: My God, I thought it was you. (It was a measure of his derailment that this second synchronicity didn’t register. He’d entered a continuum of absurdity. It wasn’t that the bizarre was more likely, it was that the bizarre had taken over.) He told her everything that had happened and she stayed with him that night. There was no desire between them, not even the kind that rises as an amoral palliative to grief. They lay in silence and she stroked his hair until he fell asleep. In the morning she said: Last night you said you couldn’t stand to do nothing. If you still feel that way in a month, call me at this number. There are things you can do. Not overnight, but eventually. He hadn’t imagined he would, not because he doubted the durability of his feelings but because he doubted there was anything he could do. But the month passed, and he called her. I belong to an organization, Elise had said. We can’t discuss it over the phone. I’ll leave a message for you at the hotel desk. Go down and pick it up in twenty minutes.
They’d met in a bar converted from a wine cellar, oak casks, candled alcoves, bare brick, cool to the touch. I belong to an organization that believes in justice. It was what she was doing in Barcelona in the wake of the bombing. When something like this happens the people closest to it see the world afresh, what it’s become, what’s not being done, what needs to be. She said it without passion, as if continuous exposure to the truth of the proposition had exhausted her. Through the deadening blaze of his purpose Augustus saw she’d acquired a patina of ghoulishness, recruiting from carnage, turning trauma into agency, saw too that this was the latest mutation of the rape, the shape it had long-windedly assumed. He didn’t care, or at any rate could ignore the remnant of himself that did.
“Look at the picture,” Harper says. “Elise Merkete. You’re saying you don’t know this woman?”
Augustus is very tired. Selina said that when she was about thirteen the Crucifixion acquired in her imagination an awful realism, the length and heat of the afternoon, the accrual of seconds to minutes, minutes to hours, a centurion removing his hot helmet, the static sky, the relentless sordid violence from which at any moment the victim could have extricated himself. She said it was around then she started to be disgusted by it.
“Don’t know her,” he slurs. All he wants now is the benevolent hand to dunk him under again. The night in the safe house in Washington, D.C., Elise had talked in her sleep. She’d sat up in the dark and said, quite seriously: “Future generations will thank the elephant,” then lain back down in silence. He’d had to stifle his laughter not to wake her; but also it brought her loneliness home to him. She was dreaming, and as far as she knew that was reality. It was awful for him to know she’d have to wake up, that this was reality. Hearing her talk in her sleep he’d wanted to put his arms around her, cherish her however clumsily, but he was afraid of waking her. She murmured, turned over and slept deeply again.
He senses rather than sees Harper make a quick gesture to the guard—then suddenly there’s cold metal pressing the corner of his left eye.
Augustus had two theories about Selina’s pregnancy. The first was romantic: she’d felt greedy love demanding it of them, more life through which it, greedy love, could maraud. The second was pragmatic: it was the last act in the drama of cutting loose from Michael. Either way it was officially “an accident,” a phrase neither of them could utter without subliminally conceding its falsehood. Selina had “forgotten” to take her pill. She and Augustus went through the disaster motions—What the fuck are we going to do? What about school? Your parents are going to fucking freak—but caught themselves exchanging looks of reckless delight. It was a disaster, but it was also their generation wrenching the future away from their parents. There were moments—opportunities—for forcing the world forward quicker than it would otherwise go. But more than that a new version of themselves, a thing of weird unignorable authenticity, had established itself. Now it was in them—now it was them—there was no going back. They were calm, euphoric, scared and certain. They were going to disastrously have a disastrous baby and make a sort of glorious calm disaster and in spite of everything the world would make room for it. None of this was spoken aloud. They were still getting used to it as the truth, as the way things were going to be.
Selina said: “My dad’ll want me to get an abortion.” The word had to be admitted and got out of the way. She and Augustus were sitting opposite each other at a table in the window of a Second Avenue coffee shop. Winter sunlight bounced off the morning traffic, giving Augustus a feeling of the world’s hurry and himself a part of it. The coffee shop too was full of urgency, chrome and Formica and the doorbell tanging and people getting things to go. The espresso machine sounded like a thing being throttled. Selina’s eyes had met his for “abortion” then flicked away. Her hair was pulled back into a high ponytail, which revealed the delicacy of her skull and jaw. A capillary showed faintly at her temple. Augustus felt for the first time the precise degree of her strength, the finite wealth of weapons, defenses, energies, strategies with which she could go up against the world. She was great but not indestructible and since she had a child growing inside her now that fact introduced a new level of realism and fear. He was afraid too, but thrilled at the change in her, the sudden different womanhood, her mix of embarrassment and pride. He studied her as she stared out of the window and felt the familiar inarticulable urgency and desperation
—for what? For her. There was no other way of saying it. He wanted her without reservation, would forgo everything and endure anything. He had these moments of romantic overflow, was capable of recognizing the absurdity of his own excess but powerless to avoid it. Do you love me? she’d ask him sometimes, when out of nowhere fear of losing him gripped her. The genuineness of her uncertainty gave him a feeling of sweet panic that she should have to ask. He had to control himself, make a joke of it: I love you madly. But she’d make him look at her, force him to see she was really crazily afraid—which frightened him. You’re my life, he said to her once, surprised at the vast simple truth of this.
She turned back to him. He could see her forcing herself to keep a little doubt in reserve in case he agreed with her father about an abortion. He noticed the fine silver chain she wore around her neck had broken and was lying on her scarf. Its pendant was a single pearl. She’d had it since she was twelve, never took it off: one of her superstitions. If he hadn’t spotted it, it would probably have later fallen off undetected and she would have been upset. It was a pleasure to him that he could spare her that little loss.
“I’ll tell you something,” he said. “This kid’s going to be fucking beautiful.”
The rain doesn’t ease off. Eventually Augustus knows he has to eat, which means either forcing the girl out into the elements or offering her something too. Not offering isn’t an option. An annoying surprise, the durability of manners. There are these perversions, the survival of negligible things. She’s remained on the floor by the fire, legs tucked under her, hands in the leather jacket’s pockets. It must be hurting her knees and shins but she seems oblivious.
“I have to eat,” Augustus says. “Do you want something?”
She looks up at him out of a fire trance. There’s a smudge of smut on her chin. Her face is small, he sees as if for the first time. Young. No more than twenty, he’s sure. Again he feels the slight force trying to knit between them. The force is a habit of mind. Instantly he burns through it to emptiness and just the facts of the room.
“You’re gonnie cook something?”
“No, I’m going to open a can. Do you want some?”
She takes her hands out of her pockets, rests them on her thighs. “I’ve still got some of that money,” she says.
“What money?”
“That fifty pound.”
“Look forget the money, will you? I don’t need it. Now do you want something or not?”
“No, I’m okay thanks. D’you not care I was gonnie thieve your gun?”
“Apparently not.”
His stick’s by the stove but he doesn’t want to ask her to pass it to him. Instead he grits his teeth and struggles up from the bed unaided then limps to the doorless cupboard next to the sink. Heinz ravioli. Heinz baked beans. Heinz scotch broth. John West yellowfin tuna chunks in brine. Plumrose hot dog sausages. Must have eaten the creamed chicken. A small disappointment reveals another perversion: your animal heart still sets itself on things. In a knotted Costcutter carrier bag are four wrinkling apples and half a stale sliced white loaf. His chefs would shudder. Augustus stokes the wood burner, adds two logs, opens the beans and the ravioli and tips them into the pan. Out of the corner of his eye he sees her wince slightly.
“What’s the matter?”
“Eh?”
“Are you in pain?”
She shakes her head, no. “Need the loo. Sorry.”
“It’s through there. Don’t expect the Ritz.” Woeful under-statement. By some miracle the toilet’s survived the croft’s vandalization with only seat and cistern lid missing. It flushes, but the little room’s icy and stinking, its one narrow window long since smashed and only half boarded up. Augustus sits on the rim without the seat, it’s nothing to him, but when she closes the door behind her he realizes she’ll have to squat and feels a twinge of pity for her at the image it conjures, her bent awkwardly trying to hold her skirt and underwear clear of the floor, trying not to touch anything.
She’s in there a while. He wonders if she’s got her period. Thinking of a woman getting her period gives me a funny feeling in my own insides, he’d said to Selina, as if I had a womb in a former life. Maybe you did, she said. What kind of funny feeling? Like a bud being snapped from a stem, a small weird pain that can make you double up or puke if you think about it too long. It’s not like that, Selina told him. Buds and stems, that’d be nice. Try like being slowly bayoneted.
By the time the girl comes out he’s washed the tin plate and the tin bowl and his one spoon and one fork. The stale loaf’s on the table. She emerges drying her hands on a wad of toilet roll, looks around for a bin, tosses it on the fire instead where it blooms brilliant yellow for a moment then disappears. Selina used to say: Metaphors for brevity are everywhere. It’s not like God’s not dropping plenty of hints.
“It’s up to you,” Augustus says, “but there’s enough if you want some.” The croft smells of the heated food. Now he’s faced with it Augustus isn’t sure he can eat. His leg wounds are full of tiny movements. The heat suddenly gets to him. He goes to the door, opens it, looks out. Cold steady rain and the fresh smell of waterlogged turf, one fishy waft from the beach. Maddoch or the boy must have been down with the dog to move the sheep. The land’s empty. He turns back to see she’s taken a seat on the upturned crate, leaving the chair for him. When he sits down and begins serving himself from the pan he feels embarrassed. After two or three mouthfuls he stops eating.
“What’s your name?” he asks her.
“Morwenna,” she says. “It’s not Scottish. It’s Welsh. My mum.”
Augustus nods, slowly, fearing a rapid unraveling of information he doesn’t want—but it doesn’t come.
“You’re Mr. Rose?”
“Augustus.”
“Okay, right.”
“Who’s after you?”
“What?”
“You wanted the gun. Who’s the enemy?”
She looks down at her hands. Opens her mouth but doesn’t speak.
“I don’t actually care,” Augustus says. “I’m just…In fact never mind. Maybe it’s time you left.” These seem the first unthought-out words he’s spoken in a long time. Some quick current’s shot him into them. It brings him out in a sweat. She reaches down and slowly lifts her shoulder bag onto her lap, waits a moment, gets to her feet. Slowly, he supposes, to give him time to change his mind. Or maybe she’s worried sudden movement will trip his lunatic switch irreversibly. He forces down another mouthful of food. There’s an increasing claustrophobic irritation, as if he’s just realizing that all day he’s been wearing a too tight shoe.
“Sorry,” she says. “I thought you—”
“Jesus what is it you want?” His aggression surprises him—and her. She flinches as if there’s a blow coming. He’s between her and the door, feels the space between them filling with her calculated bolt. He forces himself to untighten, puts his fork down, leans back in his chair. “Sorry,” he says.
“’S all right. Best be off anyways.”
“It’s okay, forget it. Sit down. It’s still pouring.”
“Yeah, but you said—”
“I know but forget what I said. Sorry.”
The shock of his outburst resonates but a practical part of him nonetheless notes the timeliness of Maddoch’s roof repairs. They’d be afloat by now otherwise. As it is he wonders how long the water will take to climb the shallow front step and creep like an eclipse across the floor. Has it been raining for two whole days? His education’s wrecked matrix endures, erratic synaptic firings that right now give him among other things antediluvian deluge flood ark new covenant water baptism water water everywhere he blesses the water snakes and the albatross drops from his neck and suddenly he can pray this if she’s the water snake is the opportunity to bless or would have been but that’s what would be what’s supposed to happen. Thinking like this the old thing of making connections only connect is again like the phantom limb reaching out because
of course under all the connections is nothing.
“You sure?”
“I’m sure. It’s fine.”
She remains on her feet, uncertain.
“Now I’ve made this I can’t eat it,” he says.
Slowly she resumes her seat on the crate, slides the bag off, lowers it to the floor. She bends, searches in it a moment, straightens up with rolling tobacco and lighter in hand.
“I’ll go outside,” she says.
“No need.”
“’S no bother for me.”
“No I mean there’s no need because I smoke. I’m out though.” He watches her unpack the idiom. He’s out: He’s none left.
“Will you have one of these?”
It’s a long time since he’s rolled a cigarette. He doesn’t want to lean close for a light but it’s unavoidable. You’re still a man. Don’t make me take that away from you. Harper’s a disease he’s got for the rest of his life. Harper flares up. You lean close to share a light and there he is, as if in an instant your body’s web of veins burns and shows.
“Hang on.” Augustus gets up and brings a bottle from by the stove, Glenfiddich, half full. But only the one tin mug. His scalp prickles again. As soon as you start having dealings with—then he sees a solution. He pours half the scotch into the mug and gives that to her. He can drink the rest straight from the bottle.
“Could you not have poured me a large one?” she says when she sees how much is in the mug. “There’s enough f’ra week in there.”
“Just drink what you want,” Augustus says.
After the loss of his eye he tells Harper everything. You think you know the universe, its amorality, its unjudgmental accommodations, its fundamentalist adherence to the religion of cause and effect—but you don’t. Not until someone gouges your eye out with the scalloped handle of a stainless steel spoon. They put the metal there, apply force, intention, and what must follow follows. What can the universe do about it? Nothing. The universe is compelled to supply effects on causal demand. You think in spite of all available evidence to the contrary the universe will draw the line at your eye, which has seen your whole precious waking life, but the universe is in no position to grant exceptions. The universe is the perfect ideologue. If this is a scalpel and this pressure then this is an optic nerve—cut. Language cooperates. Language astonishes with its fidelity: my eye. Disbelief keeps surging: How can it be your eye if they’ve forced it out? How can your eye suddenly be an object first and your eye second? How can the attachment between the words and the things endure? But your eye’s part of the universe so obeys the universe’s laws. Together the universe and language radiate brilliant innocence. They’ve gouged my eye out. Your beautiful magician’s eyes. And God has not yet said a word!