by Flynn
I was beginning to get the hang of this "I am" stuff. Considering how important it was to Mister God, I was finding it not too impossible to cope with. The tricky bit was looking inside yourself to see what bits of the works were missing. Once you'd overcome that hurdle, the rest was fairly simple. My first real peek inside myself caused me to slam the door in a hurry. "That's me in there!" Holy cow, I looked more like an overgrown Gruyere cheese—full of holes. Anna's remark that You're full up, Fynn, I now saw as an encouraging statement rather than a factual one.
After getting over the shock, I opened the door a crack and took another peek. It wasn't long before I was able to identify one of the holes. It was shaped like a motorbike. What's more, I recognized that hole. It was an exact fit of the motorbike in the shop window down the High Street.
After some practice it became more and more easy to identify the holes: a rather super microscope; one of these newfangled television things; and a clock that told you the time in Bombay, Moscow, New York, London, and a few other places, all at the same time. There were bits of me all over the place, leaving identical holes inside me. I was, to say the least, spread out a bit. Somewhere down the line it had all gone wrong. I was certain that I hadn't started out with these holes. It was those damned banners that kept on cropping up: GET ON, GET AHEAD, A MOTORBIKE MAKES YOU SOMEONE, A CAR IS EVEN BETTER, TWO CARS, AND, BROTHER, YOU'VE HIT THE JACKPOT. I had fallen for it, hook, line and sinker. The banners were inside me and they were rooted in pretty fertile soil. The more banners inside me, the more bits of me were outside me. "Most of a person is outside." You can say that again.
There was no overnight miracle, no sudden flash of revelation. It crept up on me unannounced, and I'm still trying to work on it. Like a child learning a new word, I found myself straggling with "I want to be me," "I do want, I really do want to be me." It wasn't so difficult to open the doors these days. I now knew where I was. The motorbike hole was still there, but it seemed to be flickering a bit, like some faulty electric light bulb. Then one day it went out. The hole was no longer there, a good-sized bit of me had come home. I was on my way at last. A couple of peeks inside me and I realized that I was beginning to fill up. The world was an all right place in spite of the war.
* * *
eleven
It was a beautiful sunny day. The street was full of kid noises. Laughter drowned the sounds of marching feet, when suddenly the world fell to pieces.
One scream killed the laughter. It was Jackie's. I turned around in time to catch her in my arms as she hurled herself at me. Her face was a white mask of horror.
"Fynn! Oh Christ! It's Anna. She's dead! She's dead!"
Her scarlet fingernails dug into my chest and the ice-cold water of fear flooded over me. I ran down the street. Anna was lying across the railings, her fingers clinging to the top of a wall. I lifted her off and cradled her in my arms. A flicker of pain narrowed her eyes.
"I slipped outa the tree," she murmured.
"All right, Tich, hold on. I've got you."
Suddenly I felt terribly sick. Out of the corner of my eyes I had seen something, something that in a curiously distorted way was even more terrifying than this injured child in my arms. Her fall had broken off the top part of one of the railings. A broken iron stump. A few years ago nobody could see that, now it was clear for all to see. This iron stump, these crystal mountains, were now red with shame and horror at its part in this dreadful thing.
I carried Anna home and put her to bed. The doctor came and dressed her wounds and left me with her. I held her hands and searched her face. The pain flickered across her eyes but was chased away by a grin that slowly blossomed over her face. The grin won; the pain was hidden somewhere inside her. Thank God, she was going to be all right. Thank God.
"Fynn, is the Princess all right?" Anna whispered.
"She's fine," I answered. I didn't know if she was all right or not.
"She was stuck up the tree and couldn't get down— I slipped," said Anna.
"She's all right."
"She was very frightened. She's only a baby kitten."
"She's fine, she's all right. You rest. I'll stay with you. Don't be frightened," I said to Anna.
"Ain't frightened, Fynn. I ain't frightened."
"Go to sleep, Tich. Have a little sleep, I've got you."
Her eyes closed and she slept. It was going to be all right. I knew it deep down inside. For two days this feeling that it was going to be all right grew and took over my fears. Her grin and her excited conversations about Mister God made me doubly sure. The knots inside me were coming undone. I was looking out of the window when she called me.
"Fynn!"
"Here, Tich. What d'you want?" I crossed to her.
"Fynn, it is like turning inside out!" There was a look of amazement on her face.
An ice-cold hand gripped my heart and squeezed hard. I remembered Granny Harding.
"Tich," my voice was too loud, "Tich, look at me!"
Her eyes flickered and her smile spread. I hurried to the window and flung it up. Cory was there.
"Get the doctor quickly," I said.
She nodded, turned on her heels and -ran. Suddenly I knew what was going to happen. I went back to Anna. It wasn't time for crying, it was never time for crying. The cold dread in my heart had frozen the tears within me. I held Anna's hand. My head pounded with the idea that "whatever you shall ask in my name...." I asked. I pleaded.
"Fynn," she whispered, and the smile lit up her face, "Fynn, I love you."
"I love you too, Tich."
"Fynn, I bet Mister God lets me get into heaven for this."
"You betcha. I bet he's waiting for you."
I wanted to say more, a whole lot more, but she wasn't listening anymore, just smiling.
The days burnt up like giant candles, and time melted, ran, and congealed into useless and hideous lumps.
Two days after the funeral I found Anna's seed pouch. It gave me something to do. I went to the cemetery and stayed for a little while. It just made things worse, that much more empty. If only I had been nearer at the time—if only I had known what she was doing, if only—if only. I tipped the seeds on the freshly turned earth and hurled the pouch from me in misery.
I wanted to hate God, wanted him out of my system, but he wouldn't go. I found God more real, more strangely real than ever before. Hate wouldn't come, but I despised him. God was an idiot, a cretin, a moron. He could have saved Anna, but he didn't; he just let this most stupid of all things happen. This child, this beautiful child, had been cut off—cut off and not yet eight. Just when she was------Hell!
The war years took me out of the East End. The war dragged its bloody boots over the face of the world until the madness was over. Thousands of other children had died; thousands more were maimed and homeless. The madness of war became the madness of victory. Victory? I got good and drunk on VJ night. It was a good way out.
I had been given a bundle of books sometime previously, but I hadn't bothered to undo them. There didn't seem much point. It was one of those idle moments; I didn't know what to do with myself. Those years had made my eyes tired with looking and my ears ache with listening. Some sign, some vision, just for a moment. I picked up the books. They didn't seem all that interesting. Nothing seemed very interesting. I flipped through the pages. It wasn't until my eyes fell upon the name of Coleridge that I stopped the pages of the book slipping through my fingers. For me Coleridge is at the top of the heap. I began to read:
"I adopt with full faith the theory of Aristotle that poetry as poetry is essentially ideal, that it avoids and excludes all accident, that its...."
I turned back a few pages and began to read again. Out of the pages of that book Old Woody appeared.
"The process by which the poetic imagination works is illustrated by Coleridge from the following lines of Sir John Davies:
Thus doth she, when from individual states
She doth abstract the universal kin
ds,
Which then reclothed in divers names and fates,
Steal access thro' our senses to our minds."
The smoky fires of the nighttime people came drifting through my imagination: Old Woody, Convict Bill, Old Lil, Anna, and me. A few lines further on my eye caught one word, violence.
"The young poet," says Goethe, "must do some sort of violence to himself to get out of the mere general idea. No doubt this is difficult, but it is the very art of living."
It slowly began to make sense; the bits began to fall into place. Something was happening and it made me cry; for the first time in a long, long time I cried. I went out into the night and stayed out. The clouds seemed to be rolling back. It kept nagging at the back of my mind. Anna's life hadn't been cut short; far from it; it had been full, completely fulfilled.
The next day I headed back to the cemetery. It took me a long time to find Anna's grave. It was tucked away at the back of the cemetery. I knew that it had no headstone, just a simple wooden cross with the name on it, "Anna." I found it after about an hour.
I had gone there with this feeling of peace inside me, as if the book had been closed, as if the story had been one of triumph, but I hadn't expected this. I stopped and gasped. This was it. The little cross leaned drunkenly, its paint peeling off, and there was the name: anna.
I wanted to laugh, but you don't laugh in a cemetery, do you? Not only did I want to laugh, I had to laugh. It wouldn't stay bottled up. I laughed till the tears ran down my face. I pulled up the little cross and threw it into a thicket.
"OK, Mister God," I laughed, "I'm convinced. Good old Mister God. You might be a bit slow at times, but you certainly make it all right in the end."
Anna's grave was a brilliant red carpet of poppies. Lupines stood guard in the background. A couple of trees whispered to each other while a family of little mice scurried backward and forward through the uncut grass. Anna was truly home. She didn't need a marker. You couldn't better this with a squillion tons of marble. I stayed for a little while and said good-bye to her for the first time in five years.
As I made my way back to the main gates I passed by hordes of little marble cherubs, angels, and pearly gates. I stopped in front of the twelve-foot angel, still trying to lay down its bunch of marble flowers after God knows how many years.
"Hi, chum," I said, saluting the angel, "you'll never make it, you know."
I swung on the iron gates as I yelled back into the cemetery.
"The answer is 'In my middle.' "
A finger of thrill went down my spine and I thought I heard her voice saying, "What's that the answer to, Fynn?"
"That's easy. The question is Where's Anna?'"
I had found her again—found her in my middle.
I felt sure that somewhere Anna and Mister God were laughing.
WHEN I SHALL DIE
by
ANNA
When I shall die,
I shall do it myself.
Nobody shall do it for me.
When I am redy,
I shall say,
'Fin, stand me up,
and I shall look
and lagh merry.
If I fall down.
I shall be dead.
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