Indelible Acts

by A. L. Kennedy

  And Danny did, he understood. Conrad excused actions, he blurred the truth with lectures about propaganda, paranoia, political manipulation of the innocent. He praised the essential nature of humanity. Everyone pretended they agreed. But Danny knew, could feel, the essential nature of humanity, its real self, whenever he stood in the pit—that’s where it was. Then he could taste the murderers, their love. Conrad was like a child. He was very noble and admirable and a good, if pedantic, teacher, but he was still a child.

  “No one stop them …” Imre sipped at his vodka gently, “then they go on. They go on for ever.” His drinking was always controlled. “It is made for them.” He brought in the vodka once a week, took orders and hard currency: sold cigarettes, too, chocolate, condoms, tinned milk, Christ knew what else. “They are made for it.”

  Danny bought nothing.

  Nothing but condoms.

  Alone in somebody else’s expensive apartment, Danny tasted Imre’s voice and stretched, keeping position, his skin clinging to the glass, adhering, used to its place. Still, there was an ache between his shoulders that he had to stop. He couldn’t tell how long he’d need to stay this way and he didn’t want to hurt more than he had to.

  The necessary time would pass while he balanced inside his head, the way everyone did, doing or avoiding what they had to and watching the results. Human beings were built this way. They could only lose so much blood, only stand so much pain, only function within a defined range of abuse, and everyone had their own patterns of resistance. One individual might dodge what was intended, another might lean against it, and others might let it drive them along. The happiest would be driven, their whole lives effortless. They would have the space and energy to appreciate pleasing things.

  The condoms, for instance: in Chile, in Argentina, here: he bought condoms. He needed them. They were intended for him. Because there were always women without their husbands, without their children, pain stiff in their clothes like blood, and some of those women were also intended for him.

  Watch the angle of her hands, the way tiredness slows her, the collapse of everything but loneliness—it’s a kind of decay and you know about decay—and you walk towards her—like you walk in the dangerous woods—and you speak to her in words she may not understand, but softly, kindly, and she knows she has to go with you, because this is a part of her life’s shape: this is how it is.

  Pulling one down in the trees, behind the tents, or risking her in your accommodation, or finally, naturally, drawing one over beside what the night shows of a pit—whichever pit—and then having her angry beneath you, or like meat, or taking you for someone else. It was intended.

  Everything he did was inevitable, but he wasn’t strong, he never could fully let himself surrender to that part of being human. He stayed anxious, he struggled, and this was why he felt bad instead of forgetting his reservations in the shine of limbs, rucked cloth, the bared clench of their teeth.

  His prick thickened against the pane, knowing how it should be: held within the perfect limit, making him unforgiving as bone and driving, finding their heat. The women made him hard because he should be.

  But not this trip.

  Imre had handed over the first packs solemnly, knowingly, “Trojan brand. For the lovely wife.” Saying this as if it were not offensive. “Marriage a noble estate, yes, Mr. Dan?” His face impassive now, even bored.

  Danny grabbing the package, mumbling, “Yes.” Because he hadn’t thought of Niamh, he’d bought out of habit and now he realised, “Yes.” Niamh used a diaphragm. “That’s right.” They didn’t want children.

  So, while she was busy, down in the mortuary tent, Danny stole Niamh’s diaphragm. Then he threw it, along with its case, into the river. He also took a bracelet and her wedding ring—she never wore them to work—and those he buried beside a hedge. She found the thefts disturbing, but not unlikely. Danny offered her friendly silence.

  Niamh still didn’t like the thought of condoms, they seemed cheap, she said, they reminded her of disease.

  Danny coaxed, persuaded, pretended a lack of practice when he rolled the first one on. And they did make love, because they were meant to, but she didn’t bare her teeth for him and she didn’t forget who he was. He tried to like it.

  “Ah, Mr. Danny … So serious always.”

  It hadn’t been such a surprise when Imre turned up in Lucerne. “So serious, but such a pleasure.”

  They’d walked out of the café, Danny and Niamh together, heading towards the Water Tower and there had been Imre, crossing the road to meet them, not at all as if he’d stood and waited for them, but with his timing so exact that he must have done. “Such pleasure.”

  The only other way to be so right, so properly placed in time, was to give yourself over completely to your intentions. Imre who travelled too much to be honest, who made too much money, who had at least one other name—Ivo something, Ivo Hemon—Imre who might have done terrible things, you could tell he understood intention and how to be pleased by humanity.

  “You have had lunch?”

  Niamh nodded and Imre faked a frown, nudging in beside her.

  “Then I will ask you both to have dinner at my expense. Fish. Perhaps fish?”

  And then they had strolled, as if this had been arranged, beside the quais and Imre had brought out a bag of stale bread, gulls mewing as soon as it left the pocket of his overcoat. “If you will allow …?” his eyebrows raised to Danny, confirming permission, rather than asking it and his arm steering Niamh over the gravel pathway, to the fat stones at the lakeside and then the water and the jostle of gathered birds. They’d bent, side by side, Danny a few feet behind them, and Imre had offered the bag and Niamh had scattered out the crumbs, as if this were their ideal configuration, the one that nature had favoured all along. Imre and Niamh, hands making no contact—the rhythm forming perfectly between them without a touch.

  It had never occurred to Danny that if he could fuck other people, so could she. Fancy that. It seemed obvious now.

  The bread finished, Niamh had dusted off her palms and fingers, then brushed briefly at Imre’s—his skin being an extension of her own. She hadn’t paused after, hadn’t even thought to blush, only returned to her husband, smiling, assured.

  “See this, Mr. Dan? We feed the swans, we feed the ducks and then tonight we will eat ourselves. Everything has its turn, yes?”

  And Danny had given him his only possible answer, “Yes,” and felt the rush of purpose round him, irresistible. The human beings who had purpose, the ones who could hold it, ride it, they could take anything they wanted from anyone.

  Niamh would be with Imre now: Imre had brought them both here for that. Danny had spent years digging, examining, trying to believe that he was working for what was right, was helping to make what was right become clear. But what was right was this—was this here—this man was supposed to fuck his wife, Imre was supposed to fuck Niamh, and he was supposed to not be in their way.

  He’d been invited to the dinner, but he wasn’t meant to accept—it was his place to make things simple. And, anyway, he couldn’t have moved himself through the front door if he’d tried—too much resistance.

  Staying here, this was his purpose—what he had to do—it was human and necessary for him to keep braced against the glass and ready, pointlessly naked, for when Niamh might come back—perhaps with Imre, perhaps not.

  She ought to be the one to notice him, she ought to look up.

  He didn’t know what should happen after that.

  A Wrong Thing

  I would prefer not to open my eyes, not this morning. In the end, I know I’ll have to, but I’ll do it against my will. I would much rather not co-operate.

  And the insects, they don’t help. They’re outside, I’ve no clue how many, but apparently a lot, and all of them are making these hot, unpredictable scuttles of noise: like loosed wires sparking, like tin toys breaking up: there beyond the walls and windows, thousands of tiny instincts signallin
g they want to kill each other and have sex.

  That’s fine, though, because they’re not in here with me, at least I don’t think so. I have no desire to check.

  But I would like to know why my mouth tastes of rust, which means iron, which means blood. I hope I’ve just eaten rust and forgotten about it; hardly likely, but I’ll try to think so, anyway. Last night, I must have swallowed something rusty, or licked it, and now I don’t recall, can’t yet recall. And I think I had a dream with metal in it: perhaps it’s possible to save a flavour you’ve known in your sleep.

  I have definitely saved a bad feeling of some kind, another aftertaste, and both of my eyes are still shut, because I am nervous about them being any other way.

  Even so, it will be OK, not unpleasant, completely familiar, when I break out into my first look at the day. I can do that: it isn’t a threat, shouldn’t be a threat, there shouldn’t be anything untoward about it.

  Shuttered windows, slicing jabs of light, the bed beneath me bobbing briefly like a dinghy on a lazy sea. Which is wrong, definitely.

  There you are, though, seeing—no problem, nothing to worry about.

  Except for the bed and the light, which is far advanced, the kind that you only get when you’ve missed the morning and I didn’t think I had. It also hurts, which it really shouldn’t. Deep in the meat of my brain, something I can’t identify has become extremely sensitive and, tucked away beneath all this, my teeth feel unfamiliar and my tongue is, somehow, in the way.

  My bed bobs again.

  I wish it wouldn’t.

  But this is not a problem: it is a solution, in fact, because now I understand the bobbing, the bad feeling, the trouble with my eyes, the rust: I am not well.

  I am not well and in a foreign country.

  So I should think about insurance and if I took any out and what class I might come under—negligence, poisoning, infection, act of God—I’m not exactly sure how I will qualify.

  I don’t want to see a doctor.

  I’m almost certain that I dreamed about a doctor, one I didn’t like. Sleeping or waking, there’s no way to tell here if someone truly is a doctor, if their needles are clean, or necessary, if what they say they’ll do to you is safe. So I’ll go without.

  But I am in a foreign country and sick.

  My legs are sticking to the sheets, I notice, everything about me showing obvious signs of being overheated, feverish.

  Nice word, feverish. You couldn’t guess its meaning.

  I did think I was cold, but apparently I’m not. Skin under sweat, it’s meant to look attractive. It doesn’t—it blotches and drags, seems furtive, unclean.

  This will be the photograph they use, post mortem—distasteful areas boxed out under black—and then there’ll be the holiday snap—here she is, when still living—the unwittingly poignant smile. The papers will show them both for contrast. Or maybe I’ll only make it to the internet, uncensored.

  Anyway, I don’t have a holiday snap. I don’t take them. I don’t want to see and no one else does, either.

  A pressure fingers underneath my heart and my mouth fills with saliva. Swallowing is difficult and doesn’t help, I have to wipe my lips which I find are now oily and vaguely obscene. I reach behind my head, unsteadying the edges, the corners, the meeting places of the ceiling, walls, floor. I catch at the air conditioner’s control and turn it. The mechanism jolts and then begins to grind out a minor disturbance in the padded warmth above my face. Without intending, I picture vast wheels milling, hidden by the plasterboard, crushing the limbs of something, wet tufts of hair, lodged and oozing in the cogs.

  No, imagine nice things, kind things, happy things, cool water, cut grass.

  Frost. Frost on a field: a meadow, better word, meadow: and a little, frozen river under trees, well-intentioned trees.

  The pace of my saliva relents and the weight in my stomach shifts, sly, but then settles, not unbearable.

  I could lie on the river, roll out flat, naked, cheek to cheek.

  I have a clear, soothing sense of frozen water, the slowly melting nubs and flats of it, moulding to me, and my panic is resting back, dwindling, until the idea of ice reopens last night’s dream.

  I was ill there, too: in a hotel room, a bathroom, the bathroom I have now: grubby white tiling walls, truncated tub, everything the same. Trying to sit up in the bath and the ice chips sinking underneath me, creaking when they shift, lifting my hands which are thick with cold crystals, brownish pink.

  The mirror opposite me seems to fluctuate and pitch. I may have brain damage. I may be hallucinating. I may already be entirely unable to tell which.

  Then I hold still and everything else does, too.

  Somebody told me this, or I read it: the story where you wake up in an ice bath and, taped where you can see, there’s a note which says you shouldn’t stand, shouldn’t even try to, that everything is over and done with, no point in being alarmed.

  “Good evening. Service.”

  Out in the corridor, a pass key fidgets at the lock.

  Good evening, what?

  Louder, “Good evening. Service,” the door sweeping open and, almost immediately, jolting to a stop. I’ve left on the security chain—being a nervous traveller comes in handy, now and then.

  What time is it, though—I mean the real time? The staff here say the same thing to anyone English-speaking, night or day. Here it’s both good and an evening perpetually.

  “Service.”

  I’m going to start bleeding somewhere, if he keeps up that noise.

  “Come back.” I have to swallow again. “Later.” My voice sounding masculine and strangled. “Please.”

  “Service, good evening.” The door nudges in again experimentally, but gets no further.

  What the hell is “Service,” anyway?

  “I am not well. Come back. Tomorrow.” My stomach cramps slightly, teasing.

  He’ll understand “tomorrow,” surely to God.

  “I clean room now, please.” The voice doesn’t sound insistent, only certain of how things are done.

  “No. You clean tomorrow. TO-MOR-ROW.”

  God, I sound like a racist. Bellowing things, demanding. I mean, I respect other cultures, I try, but I do only have this one language, which is a failing, but what can I do. I want to sound agreeable, that is completely what I intend.

  “Service. I clean today.”

  “OH, WILL YOU JUST FUCK OFF!”

  Jesus, I’m sorry, I’m absolutely sorry, I totally am.

  There is a wounded silence in which I do not audibly apologise. Well, I didn’t ask for “Service.” Then the door flinches shut, the lock clacks, and I don’t feel remotely relieved because of this kicking which blossoms through my torso, and raises a fresh, throbbing sweat. If I don’t reach the bathroom before I exhale, I will vomit in my bed.

  Funny how you always want your mother when you’re throwing up. No matter what.

  Funny.

  And let’s do this properly, first time—clear and finished, please. Get rid of the lot.

  So think of the note, the dream of the note—

  You see yourself, you’re shivering and reading that surgeons have taken out both of your kidneys, they’ve drugged you and stolen the pair, and then sewn you up, empty and dying and packed round with bloodstained ice. You haven’t been murdered, your body will kill you: slowly, because you’ve been chilled.

  Oh, dear God.

  And this works like a nasty charm, clears more than everything. While I shake through the last, hard coughs I move my hands to check my unaltered back. I’m still complete.

  Tim was there in my sleep, too. I remember now, seeing him turn his head, as if I’d called. He was sheepish and excited, at the edge of smiling: the way he’d always be while he waited to see if I knew that he’d done a wrong thing: when he wanted to check we were both going to like it, make it allowed.

  My throat feels ragged. But the spasms have turned drowsy and subsided: I do seem be
tter.

  I finish the last of the bottled water, rinsing my mouth and then sipping. Avoid dehydration—it creeps up. Beyond the windows, I hear thin, repeated screams from what I guess must be a bird, something anxious and predatory, ascending to my left. Walking evenly, as if I might spill, I go back to the wreck of my bed and then lie down gently.

  Tim would have enjoyed this.

  Not that Tim welcomed illness for itself, he just wanted to take care. It’s what pleased him: padding about with aspirin, hot-water bottles, snacks.

  He would take off his glasses and we would understand that I was just better enough. He would take off his glasses and put them beside the lamp, pull the covers back. He would take off his glasses and blink, be free then to lower his head, his clever mouth.

  I am breathing through my teeth, trying to keep the memory angled away and to have no feeling. This isn’t a time when I can afford to be disturbed.

  Sometimes I would just pretend, go upstairs and draw the curtains, fighting fit and waiting for his mouth.

  This is unwise. This is not a time to think.

  When Tim was ill himself, though, he preferred to be left alone—like a cat, he said. Then I found him on a Sunday morning, early, in the kitchen, and I told him he didn’t have flu, that it was serious, and then the first doctor finally arrived and talked to me as if I was a child, said house calls were reserved for emergencies, but after that, Tim was trying to walk and falling and talking, shouting, at nobody, and then I made a second doctor come, with an ambulance on its way, because I’d described Tim’s rash again and made them understand that he had meningitis and might die.

  Might die.

  But I knew he wouldn’t.

  They shaved his head and trepanned him to let the pressure out. In three places, they drilled through his skull and he was alone with them when they did it. But, when it was finished, I sat by his bed, stayed there talking, saying his name for days while he was still. I kept calling him in. I was sure he wouldn’t go, that he couldn’t leave me.