The Cairo Pulse

by B. B. Kindred

  I’m a boy, sitting in the kitchen reading Treasure Island while my mum makes the tea. It’s one of those late September Indian summer days, where even as a child you instinctively feel the promise of the wind and cold it carries within. I feel slippery and salty and ravenous after tearing around the rec on my bike with Billy Parker. I revel in my muddy legs. It seems like the last time I’m happy.

  My dad’s face is ashen when he tells me my mum’s dead. All the calm has gone out of his voice. She fell down the stairs, there was nothing anyone could do, but I see what he saw; her feet at the bottom of the bed, a body, gradually revealed. Sky blue dress hoisted up, covering her head, blood over her thighs, arms, crusted in her fingernails, scratches and bruises, I can’t see her face, I don’t want to see her face. The bedcover is half on the floor, ornaments smashed, a chair tipped over.

  I ask for a biscuit.

  My mother was raped and murdered.

  Blank. Everything is blank.

  I’m encased in matted, snarled feeling. Unable to breathe through the winding sheet, I tear at it.

  *

  Sitting in the melted ice water feeling like I’ve wet myself, I want my mum and I’m ashamed of it. I don’t want to cry, I’m not a little boy, I’m a grown man, it’s undignified and ridiculous. Real men don’t cry for their mummies, but I blub like a baby all the same. Did I know? There must have been detectives, reporters – reports. Did they catch him? The television stayed off, I had to stay in, there were no newspapers in the house. After the funeral, we went away for a couple of weeks and then we moved to Medlock. But some people must have known, at least pointed or stared when they saw me. What don’t I remember? Has la, la, la, I’m not listening always been my modus operandi?

  Playing out on the street, I’ve fallen and hurt my knee. My mum hears me crying and runs out to pick me up, stepping over the puddle next to the pavement and pushing the gate open with her knee. She smells like washing powder and baking. She carries me back to the house and gives me milk and cake.

  I’m in the ring, facing Jason McNulty, one of my pre-boxing tormentors. The first punch sends him reeling, but I don’t even pause in the quest to pulverise him, determined to inflict revenge for every occasion he’d smacked me one. I think it will make me feel better, but it doesn’t.

  I must have been about seven when I cottoned on that other people couldn’t see the things I saw, so I learned to keep it to myself. It’s difficult to know if I recognised they were other people’s memories, but I believe they were accepted as a kind of truth. There was no real understanding of what happened to my mum, just a knowing it was terribly wrong. The secrets of human life were mine long before they made any sense and now they return, lives uploaded in seconds, the repository of unlimited events seen through the eyes of a child.

  Flash. Uncle Jim ruffles my hair. He’s in a back alley, beer breath visible in the chill, segs in his work boots tap, tap, tapping as he saunters towards the shadows. A young man appears, hands in pockets, grinning. They kiss and sink into the dark.

  Zap. My mum’s friend Sarah puts me on her knee. She’s with her husband, there are smiles and tears as they hug each other. ‘I thought it would never happen.’ She says, as they both pat her stomach.

  Bang. I’m with my mate Danny. His father’s just come home. Danny’s hiding behind the sofa, but his father pulls him out like a rabbit from the warren. He punches and kicks him. I can’t do anything.

  Crash. Mrs Derby, the diminutive elder who lives next door says hello and offers me a sweet from the pocket of her check wool coat. She catches the fifty-two into the city, bus pass and all. She stalks the streets in a flowered headscarf and steals purses from other elderly ladies who look equally inoffensive.

  I see through crackled, broken glass. Snatches of newspaper headlines, televisions suddenly turned off, conversations ending when I walk into the room. The perpetrator – some psycho working on the house next door, yes, the pointing and staring, the murmurs, my father’s eyes burning through the accused as he stands in the dock with his five-o-clock shadow and raw-boned stoop and dead stare. My father, pale and numb except when he looks at me, his hands always cold to the touch. He’s younger than I am now and it soaks me in sorrow. The burden he’s carried. We’d talk about her like she was still there. In time the light comes back into his eyes, a practical man, he moves on. I blank it, la, la, la, I’m not listening, until I never see any of it again. Until now. I will not think of my father, for the sake of others, I must not sink into it. I will not think of the bastard rapist, I will not. If I think of him, I might find his memories. I don’t want to find his memories.

  Twenty-four

  When dealing with a structure of decrepitude, the first thing to do is stabilise it. This provides a breathing space in which you can consider whether to renovate or demolish, knowing that no one’s going to get hurt in the meantime.

  I’m in my office, wishing that Arlo would walk through to mull over the plans and point out the things I can’t see. Instead, Harry sits opposite me. He picks the shark’s teeth paperweight up and holds it in front of his eyes. I’ve never been so pleased to see a seven-foot talking monkey.

  “Harry, am I correct in assuming there’s no time here.”

  His gaze remains firmly on the paperweight.

  “There’s a small amount of time here. You don’t have the concepts that can create explanation. The world you first came from is in a different time frame and Another Place is different again.”

  “Things are happening sequentially, aren’t they?”

  “You’re ordering them sequentially.”

  I knew if I started thinking about time, I’d go nuts.

  “Okay, let me put it to you this way, if I spent a long time in memories, would a long time have passed for my friends?”

  “No, very little time at all.”

  That will do, I suppose.

  “Harry, I’m going to think about a person and I want you to find the memories that belong to them.”

  He puts the paperweight down. I can see he’s intrigued.

  “How will this be done?”

  “By accessing my contents. You’ll connect to them through me as I recall them. It will be different now, like when I was a child. It shouldn’t be a problem if we work together.”

  “Harry understands.”

  I attempt a gentle immersion in my memory of the Buddhist Centre; the compelling stillness, scent of incense, the grainy wood panelling and rows of spiritually uplifting bookshelves. The good-natured absence of raised voices. I stand before the photograph of His Holiness, The Dalai Lama.

  It isn’t like I think it’s going to be, though I don’t know I have expectations until they’re confounded. I expect a soft landing in red and yellow vibrancy, perfumed air, dulcet textures, distant sounds of chanting and percussive prayer wheels, but most of all, peace. I expect to be the shadow swimming in the lake, following, watching how His Holiness attends to his life. I expect he’ll sense me and our eyes will meet and I’ll be within. It’s not like that at all.

  I’m a speed of light cannonball, shot down a tunnel of instantaneous encounters which infiltrate my very essence with experiential memory. Barely a second has passed. A lifetime has passed.

  *

  Harry sits cross-legged on one of the many scarlet silk cushions within our temple. The red and gold that adorn the walls and pillars are warm and lush, the face of the Buddha, uplifting. Harry isn’t a monkey anymore, in fact, he looks a lot like me, except for the saffron robes. The air is warm, fragrant and still.

  “Maybe I should call you Harry Krishna.”

  He looks puzzled, then laughs. It’s disconcerting. Nevertheless, his demeanour radiates inner peace. Now the Dalai Lama has freed me from the prison of my thoughts and memories, I can exercise a degree of control over my environment and quell the fear of what I might creat
e. Once all that can be known becomes known, I’ll be in a much better position to decide the next course of action.

  We work in easy tandem until the memory contents are no longer merely from my own experience, but the experience of all. I allow my intuition free flow and return to Carl Jung. A train of association is set in motion; Carl Jung to Carl Rogers, Rogers to Carl Sagan, Sagan to Richard Feynman, Feynman to Arthur C Clarke, Clarke to Isaac Asimov. Scientists, authors, philosophers, leaders and even a few, random and previously unknown characters are thrown into the mix. A life isn’t even a pinprick on the universe and yet what’s contained within it is a universe; a life is nothing – and everything. With each shred of knowledge, our library of experience increases exponentially until it becomes apparent that there is only one possible answer. Really, I think I’ve suspected that for a while.

  “You see what must be done, Harry.”

  “Yes, Gabriel. I understand.”

  “What will happen to you when I go?”

  “It is of no matter.”

  “It’s been an honour, Harry.”

  “Why, thank you, Gabriel, likewise. I guess I’ll see you soon enough. And remember, we’ll always have Cairo.”

  “Why Harry, I do believe you made a joke.”

  “Well, you’re not the only one who’s changed, Gabriel. You once asked me what my purpose was. Do you remember?”

  “Yes, Harry, I remember.”

  “I understand my purpose, now.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “You know what my favourite C. G. Jung quote is, Gabriel?”

  “Tell me.”

  “I am not what has happened to me, I am what I choose to become.”

  “Very appropriate, Harry.”

  I stand in the centre of the structure, a renovation from ruin, an architectural phoenix rising from the ashes of my former self. A hint of church, temple, medieval hall, rustic barn; all of these things and yet none of them. Perfect in proportion, the walls glow with soft, tranquil light and the beams which brace the structure, substantial and yet aqueous, make it seem as if the roof is floating. Milky starlight pours eloquently through the crystal windows. It’s playfully beautiful. Great architecture enters you, fills you with joy and wonder, elevates the human spirit without you even knowing it. If I’d spent half as much time thinking about what I was designing in my interior world as I did the one on the outside, my work would have been all the better for it.

  The door where I came in stands at the bottom of the room, humming with molten energy. I guess that’s that, then.

  I walk through the door.

  Part Three

  Twenty-five

  “Cairo? Cairo?”

  That must be me. I was Cairo Shore. I was speaking but no words came out. I tried again, hoarse, whiny. “I’m Cairo Shore.”

  A face in front of mine, craggy, but pleasant featured, smiling calmly. A uniform, military. A clean, efficient smell. “Yes.” He said. “We need to get you out of here, Cairo.”

  “Water, I need water.”

  He offered an open container from a broad hand, holding the bottom like a baby’s bottle while I drank.

  Smoke, shattered casings spewing their innards of wire and metal and far beneath, a hint of the sea. A gripping sensation.

  “Where is this? What’s happening?”

  “You’re in what’s left of the MRI suite at the hospital.” He said, matter-of-factly. I sensed others and looked around. Electric in my chest as I saw them crumpled around the narrow floor space.

  “Is anyone dead in here?”

  “No-one is dead, everyone’s going to be okay.”

  “What time is it?”

  “It’s one-seventeen p.m.”

  Nothing made any sense.

  I wanted to go home, home to a cocoon where I could make tea and curl up in bed with a cigarette I’d found in the back of a drawer. Where I could binge-watch films while eating snacks plumped by fat and salt. After a check that nothing was broken and everything functioned, I was hauled out of the narrow space. Burying my head in the soldier’s shoulder, I was held fast by testosterone and certainty.

  “You’re okay.” He said, stroking my hair. “It’s going to be okay.”

  There’s such love between the rescuer and the rescued.

  I was whisked into an ambulance sapped of all will, shut down inside myself, barely aware of anyone or anything but the engine’s growl and the lurching sway of this way and that. We landed at the Salford Howell, where I was stretchered off to a side room before you could say pulmonary oedema. I felt violated and murderous as two young, female medics in scrubs undressed me, invaded orifices for samples, veins for blood, poked, prodded and checked my body. Their manner was so bland they could have been robots. The scent of sterility revolted me. I threw up bile and water, but didn’t feel like apologising. It energised me, like I’d exercised control over my environment.

  “What happened to sweet tea and a sympathetic ear?”

  Smiles, but no reply from the masked, plastic features. I longed for the attentive arms of the soldier, thinking that must be what it’s like when you’ve got a dad, or at least a nice dad.

  “What the hell’s going on? I don’t know what happened or where I am. Do you know how dislocating this is?”

  “It won’t be long now.”

  “This is not the way things are supposed to be done.”

  They disappeared, clicking the door locked behind them. I didn’t even know the doors had locks, presumably they only worked from the outside, or mayhem could ensue in receipt of the frightened or deranged. Maybe they had to check I wasn’t infectious. That must be it – there must have been an outbreak at the Royal. But if that was so, why weren’t they wearing barrier suits? What could the means of transmission be? And why did the MRI suite look like a war zone? A terrorist attack? But why would anyone blow outpatients up? It made sense, though. We’d be unlikely, but potential suspects, they’d want to know if one of us was gamekeeper turned poacher. I lay back on the bed, but every time my eyes closed I was assaulted by a dream I’d had the night before, at least I thought it was the night before. In the dream, I lived in a cabin on the beach and woke to thunder. Vik had rushed into the bedroom telling me I needed to get dressed, the cabins were falling apart. We grabbed the others; Gizmo, Bentley and Joe, I think, but when we got outside, there was a hurricane blowing. There were metal statues crunching and twisting, chunks of a vast, white structure crumbling into the sea, the whole world falling and splitting while churning sand and salt water whipped and spat. The man called Joe had stopped halfway, his voice half-stolen in the screaming wind. “I’m not going without him.”

  Holding his face in my hands, I’d said, “We have to trust him, Joe.” I grabbed his arm and together we fought our way on to the wooden deck, the place we believed we should go and we were right; it was the eye of the storm. Gizmo was next to me, pale and shaking in the strobe of lightning strikes. I put my hand over hers before sticking my head down. I muttered through the rasping sand, ‘There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home.”

  It was like one of those mornings when you got paralytic the night before and can’t remember anything about it when you wake up. Then, between brushing your teeth and brewing coffee, the fog starts to lift and you get flashes of said night until the flashes connect and you remember all the things you did, even if it’s jumbled up. And you remember that the dream wasn’t a dream at all.

  Rivulets of anxiety and claustrophobia seeped through my forehead. Tearing at the fluid drip and heart monitor, I yelled at a camera fixed high in the corner of the room. “This will not do.” Why was there a camera in the room?

  A couple of minutes later, a man and a woman came gliding through the door. I guessed she was the psychologist, all sympathetic sm
ile, around forty, smart casual, probably came from the right stuff even though there was an angular coarseness to her features. He was younger, probably around thirty, super-ambitious, super-expensive suit, superior manner, looked like he might play the devil in a Hollywood blockbuster. Not a flicker of warmth; he’d be the bad cop. The prospect of a duel gave me focus.

  The guy introduced himself as Dominic Collins. He didn’t offer a job title, but possessed the air of hostile suspicion that always accompanies staff connected to security, like those obnoxious officials at the airport who treat seventy-year old holidaymakers like they’re Doctor Evil, based on the spurious notion that treating the public like career criminals will weed out terrorists. He asked me what I remembered. I said, nothing. He asked what was the last thing I could recall. I said I didn’t know exactly, maybe giving a lecture about Serotonin depletion at the university. He asked what I was doing in the MRI suite. I said I didn’t know. He asked who was with me and I said, how the hell would I know if I didn’t remember anything. He asked me if I remembered Gabriel Meredith and there was difficulty in keeping it together at that point. I said the name was familiar, maybe a patient. Why was he asking? He didn’t tell me. Were the others okay? Yes, they were. Could I see them? Soon. He at least had the wit to realise I wasn’t going to offer anything juicy and handed me over to the psychologist, Lucinda, who didn’t impress. I’d hazard a guess she was intimidated in the presence of the great Cairo Shore. It must be wonderful to be the great Cairo Shore – I’d like to experience it sometime. It was easy to manipulate her into spilling information, much to the surly Dominic Collins’ displeasure. They could discuss technique later, what did I care?

  Turned out there’d been an incident around the MRI suite and I’d been trapped in there for three days. It had taken the form of an electro-magnetic storm and nothing like it had ever been previously observed or recorded. An undisclosed number of people who were in the vicinity at the time of the event were missing, although the search was still ongoing. I’d been found, along with Gizmo, Vik, Joe and Bentley. Tired, hungry and hanging on to my sense of self by way of a thin gauze, I was sure I’d been away for considerably longer. I considered mental health issues at that point, but did my best to park it. At least they’d given me what I wanted – their account of events. I wanted them to go away, then I could get out of the paper gown and escape. I prayed the others had kept quiet, had understood that this confusion should not be shared under any circumstances.