The buzzing finally stopped and silence descended over the apartment. He rolled over on the bed, rested on his elbows and stared deep into the crystal eyes. ‘I want you so much,’ he whispered softly. ‘So much.’
‘Then give up your claim to the past,’
The voice came from nowhere. Soft, feminine, it filled the room.
‘But how?’ he asked.
‘There can be no others.’
‘There’s not. There’s only you.’
‘Prove it.’
‘How?’
‘You know how.’
Marcus shuddered as the answer was revealed to him. He rolled over onto his back and closed his eyes. Sleep came quickly.
Cassie sat on a small padded stool in front of the dressing table in her old bedroom, dabbing at her face with a wad of cotton wool soaked in cleansing lotion. The make-up was removed quickly, leaving her face naked. Without the cosmetic mask she looked young, barely more than a child – which was exactly how she felt.
Coming back home, and staying again under her parents’ roof had stripped away all illusions of adulthood, of apparent sophistication. She was thirteen again, wrapped up in a world of soft toys and pop music posters. Her parents hadn’t decorated the room in her absence and it remained as she had left it several years before. Their reluctance to change anything, to let their little girl go, gave her a strange sense of comfort – like crawling back into the soft and safe sanctuary of the womb.
Her mother’s assurance that her father would be pleased to have her home proved hollow, and dinner was a sombre affair, with her father barely speaking as he shovelled his wife’s steak and kidney pudding into his mouth, chewing the food with tight-lipped reticence. He’d made small talk after the meal, but the conversation was stilted and awkward. It appeared that neither of her parents wanted to talk about her break up with Marcus and the subject was ignored like an unpleasant smell in polite company. By nine o’clock she’d had enough. Pleading a headache she went up to her room.
A little later there was a tap at the door and her father entered carrying a mug of steaming cocoa. ‘I thought this might help you sleep,’ he said. ‘How’s the headache?’
‘Going, thanks,’ she said to his reflection in the dressing table mirror.
‘I know she goes on a bit,’ her father said, squatting down next to her, ‘but she means well.’ He set the cocoa down. ‘I thought it best to bite my lip tonight.’
‘Dad, if you want to chew me out then please go ahead. There’s nothing you can say to make me change my mind. Marcus is history, and if that disappoints you, or mum, and if you feel I’ve let you down then I’m sorry, but in life you have to make choices, and I’ve made mine.’
‘Good,’ her father said.
‘Pardon?’
‘Good riddance to him I say. I only met him the once but I saw enough to know you can do better. He might have the flash car and the smart clothes but basically the bloke’s a prat.’
She turned to her father with a smile. ‘You mean it, don’t you?’
‘I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t mean it.’ He pushed himself to his feet. ‘Stay as long as you like. You’re not in the way. Lick your wounds and resolve to find someone better next time. And don’t let your cocoa get cold.’ He kissed her hair and walked to the door.
‘Dad.’
‘What, love?’
She was going to thank him, but the words lodged behind the lump in her throat.
He smiled at her. ‘It’s what dads are for,’ he said. ‘Truth be told, it makes quite a change to feel useful around here.’ He left the room, closing the door quietly behind him.
Cassie picked up the mug and sniffed the rich chocolate of the cocoa. She had a feeling that everything was going to be all right.
Swish.
She was walking through the pine forest, listening to the sound of the undergrowth fold under her feet. She reached the clearing. The chalet was as it had been the night before, but now there was no sound except for the soft swishing that accompanied each of her footfalls. The door swung inwards as she approached, and despite the frantic pleas from her conscious mind to turn and run her dream-self moved inexorably forwards.
She entered the chalet and the door closed behind her, pushed by unseen hands. There was a small entrance hall with a table and two wooden chairs. The furniture was covered in a thin film of dust. She ran her finger across the table and studied the dust clinging to its top. It was grey but crystalline and it glittered in the pale light filtering in through a shuttered window at the end of the hall.
Still she moved forwards ignoring the voice urging her to flee. Ahead of her an oak door stood ajar. She pushed it wide and stepped into a large room filled with ancient machinery. There were benches holding flat grinding wheels attached to belt-driven spindles. In the corner was a table with a filthy white enamel bowl filled with milky-grey liquid; beside it a small leather mallet and a selection of tools, the purpose of which she could only guess. Also on the bench was a large quartz crystal, six sided, twelve inches long and eight wide. It was translucent, beautiful, reflecting the dim light in the room, glowing with a lambent iridescence.
Swish.
The sound came from behind her and she turned, knowing who would be standing there.
He was dressed as she remembered, the worn cord trousers heavy with quartz dust, the leather jerkin buttoned up to the thick beard. In his hand he held a long blade, curved and wickedly sharp. But his face was unclear and she had difficulty focussing on it. The features seemed to shift, as if some mad sculptor was kneading the flesh, trying to create something recognisable.
For a long moment he stood watching her, saying nothing, then slowly he raised the blade.
Her eyes travelled from the edge of the blade back to the face, now fully formed and familiar, despite the thick black beard. ‘Marcus,’ she breathed.
‘Beautiful,’ Marcus said and brought the blade scything down.
Cassie’s mother knocked on her daughter’s door. It was eight o’clock in the morning and she had made a pot of tea for her husband before he left for work. Almost as an afterthought she made one for her daughter and took it up to her. There was no reply from within so she knocked again. The silence told her Cassie was still asleep. She turned the handle and opened the door.
When she saw the blood she screamed, and was still screaming when the police and ambulance arrived later.
Jeremy stood outside Marcus’s apartment block. The response to the intercom was the same as the previous evening, but this morning the residents of the block were leaving for work, and it wasn’t long before the front door opened and a young couple emerged. Jeremy caught the door before it could swing shut and went across to the lift. He stepped inside and pressed the button for the top floor.
He pounded on the door of Marcus’s apartment with his fist, and when that failed to elicit a response, started to kick at the door with the toe of his shoe. Finally he heard a bolt being pulled back and the door opened.
‘God,’ he said to his friend. ‘You look like shit.’
Marcus was dressed in a towelling robe, his feet were bare and there was a day’s stubble on his chin. His hair was unkempt and judging from the bags under his eyes Jeremy guessed he’d been up all night.
‘You shouldn’t have come here,’ Marcus said as Jeremy pushed past him into the flat.
The room was a mess. The floor was littered with cigarette butts, and three empty liquor bottles explained the stench of alcohol that filled the room. Discarded clothes obscured the couch and in the corner of the room was a pool of vomit, adding its own pungent aroma to the miasma.
‘What the hell has happened to you?’ Jeremy said.
Marcus had followed Jeremy in and now stood between him and the bedroom. He said nothing but kept shooting nervous glances at the bedroom door.
‘Clayton wants your balls on a plate, but I expect you realise that.’
Marcus shifted from foot to foot, like a
schoolboy caught cheating in an exam. He glanced again at the bedroom door. Jeremy sidestepped him and grabbed the door handle, throwing the door open.
She was naked, sitting on the bed with just a sheet covering her legs. Jeremy’s eyes moved from the small firm breasts, to the exquisitely featured face. She was smiling slightly – a faint, enigmatic smile that hovered on her lips like a memory.
Jeremy reached in and shut the door.
‘Does Cassie know?’
Marcus nodded his head, saying nothing.
Jeremy gave his friend a look of contempt. He was struggling to control his temper. He thought the world of Cassie, and to see her betrayed in this way made him feel cold inside. ‘Well I just hope she’s worth the price you’ve had to pay for her.’
Marcus still didn’t speak but the corners of his mouth creased in a pale imitation of the smile worn by the girl in the bedroom.
Jeremy shook his head. ‘You bastard,’ he said and left the apartment, slamming the door behind him.
Down on the street he checked his watch. He would have to run if he wasn’t going to be late for work. And then he remembered the shortcut.
The alleyway seemed narrower than when he had last gone down it, and the buildings of the square seemed to tower higher than ever, closing him in, making him feel dwarfed and insignificant. He reached the narrow cobbled street and hurried down.
It was only when he reached the antique shop that he paused. The obese proprietor was sweeping some old cameras out of the way to make space for another item; a carved, life-sized crystal head.
Jeremy slowed, looked closely and then hurried on. It was just fancy of course, his mind playing tricks on him because of recent events, but for a moment, just a moment, he would have sworn the latest exhibit in the antique shop window bore a striking resemblance to Cassie.
CAVISO GAMO
When he was young, still at school, he remembered painting a sunset in art classes. Nothing special, he had no talent, but the teacher put it on the wall for the parents’ evening so that the other boys’ parents could comment on it, as his parents would have done, had they been alive.
It was a painting he had started casually, as befitted his temperament, and yet he had added to it, carefully and patiently, until even a heart as phlegmatic as his, as carefully defended, began to whisper emotion. He thought back now to that afternoon and how the art class had seemed to stand still in time, so that no matter how long it took him, he would be able to complete the picture.
At first he had ladled on as many colours as he could find in his palette. All the cliché colours of all the bursting suns he could see in his mind’s eye he slapped onto the grey paper. Layer upon layer, colours merging into each other like faulty memories. Yet as he added more colours, and the new oranges blended in with the old reds, so the pattern of the rays of the sun took on a life of their own. As russets were painted over yellows so the texture on the page grew, and the dappled effect added shadows. The paint began to dry in places and the depth of the colours began to expand, with the darker colours complimenting the lighter ones, the reds fading into the whites, as night seemed to be actually approaching in his picture. As he added more paint and the sunset was taking a physical shape now on the paper, so heavily was it applied, it did seem as if the painting was becoming reality, as if the encroaching night was waiting impatiently to be drawn onto the page. To be added to the scene as naturally as the sunset will slip away as darkness becomes king.
His heart had been defended as if by a castle wall since early childhood. The death of his parents, the disappearance of his brother, the misery of his upbringing, all had conspired to lock away in the highest tower of his soul the pure thoughts that would mould the boy into a different man.
The sunset painting had intruded into his thoughts after so many years, and it was as if he could still see, still feel, the mound of paint he had created, and the vivid way it had encapsulated all the sunsets, all the end of days he had known. The real sunset, the one he could see from the Air Africa window, was a copy of the one he had painted. It was just as vivid, like a raw scar in the blackening sky. It was what had triggered his school day memory, clearly, but it was remarkable nevertheless how true to the image he had painted this real life image was. A different continent, a different life, and yet each was linked by the colours and feelings they projected.
As the aeroplane slowly banked ready for descent, the remarkable colours dodged behind his field of vision, to be replaced by the imminent impenetrable black of night that truly surrounded them. The seatbelt sign was on and the passengers were tensed waiting for the rush of fear and excitement that was the landing. It had been a long, uneventful flight, not unlike most of the annual trips he had made here.
The elegant cabin staff had been efficiently helpful, and the people sitting next to him politely aloof. He was already eager to be there, in his mind was already inside, and no amount of human courtesy would compensate for still having a few days travelling to endure.
They landed safely, noisily, and the lines drew up behind the slow, unsmiling immigration officers. Paul White was already standing outside the cave, frightened to enter, but anxious to be engulfed nonetheless.
The cool rarefied atmosphere of the plane was a distant pleasure. Here in the airport reception space the first reminder of the Africa of his dreams taunted him. The heat was as a beggar in the street, slightly uncomfortable to experience, and seemingly as unrelenting. The humidity clung to his clothes, soaking them within minutes, so that he stood there casually dripping, the damp clothing emphasising his tourist status, his sense of not belonging. It was so hot he felt it like a tight band around his head, pounding in waves upon his shore of resistance, frothing sweat into his eyes, causing soreness, instant discomfort.
The noise was another reality he had forgotten. Everyone seemed to want to speak at the same time, loudly, and expressively. The local language was a mixture of tribal patterns and modern colloquiums so that even had he been able to recall some of the guidebook dialect he had failed to learn he would not have been able to penetrate far into any meaning. Even the women had deep voices, bass rhythms that spoke of history and troubles, of ancient kings and rites of the night that haunted the new century. Voices echoed all around him, bouncing from the damp glass ceiling, reverberating along the body crushed corridors and seating areas. There were no discernible words so far as he could tell. Merely layers of sound laid one on top of the other like the layers of paint he had been remembering from his past. Voices lay thickly upon one another, the cadences blending as one, the volume seemingly rising as each moment passed by.
‘Passport.’ The voice was thickly accented, arrogance spoken and reflected in the watery eyes. The large hands, black with pink undersides, flicked the pages of the document idly as the eyes never once left Paul White's face.
Paul tried to stare back neutrally but he knew the man was waiting for the first sign of insolence, and then he would silently signal to a colleague and the police would be called to open a small side room for the Englishman to explain himself. This was a country where the past was in control, and the present felt incapable of interference. The future has been stillborn.
The wary eyes flicked over the fading ink on the stamps from previous visits, took in the annual dates. Never exactly the same month, never quite the same length of stay, but a general pattern that revealed he was a frequent visitor, a fact that might need an explanation.
Just then a squabble broke out near the baggage reclaim. Two local men were staking ownership of a well-worn attaché case that threatened to burst open as they tugged and argued over it. A movement in the crowds of people showed where the soldiers were approaching.
‘Take it.’ A now impatient official thrust Paul’s passport at him. The ensuing argument, and its resolve was clearly more interesting than the reasons why a white man approaching middle age should want to re-visit this troubled country.
Aware of the dangers of delay or app
arent disagreement he took the passport and slipped it quickly into his jacket pocket. Then he picked up his small suitcase and moved to the exit. He glanced back into the crowded airport lounge, but flinched away from the sight of raised rifle butts. The doors closed behind him and he stood in the naked heat of the equatorial evening.
His dreams had ladled on as many colours as his memory could find in his thoughts at first. All the cliché colours of all the Africas he could see in his mind’s eye. Colours merging into each other like they might be real. As more colours were added, and the rich oranges blended with the deep reds, so the pattern of the recollections took on a life of their own. As greens mingled with yellows so the myth grew, and the only intrusion was the shadows. He tried to add more colour with each memory, but the shadows were taking on a physical shape by now. He knew there was colour to this country and this continent, this vast kaleidoscope of peoples and animals, this assortment of landscapes and mood, but all he would find now was the darkness of the other side.
Although he knew it was nearly nightfall he vainly hoped that he might rediscover the colours he had once known. He shut his eyes and waited. All around him he could hear movement, of cars, of people, and of indistinct shuffling that he knew existed elsewhere. He could feel the choking heat as a constant companion. In his mind he could see the colours of the carnival, the purples, the pinks and reds, the blues, greens. The fabrics of the markets worn by the people, silk, cotton, linen, flowing and soft, showing movement even when the body was still.
Then he opened his eyes and all was blackness. The sunset was gone, the colours were sucked dry, and all that was left was the noise of the night. As well as his memories and the task ahead, and neither were a welcome diversion.
He hailed a taxi and explained where he wanted to go. The driver nodded and drove him through narrow streets that were almost deserted. Dust flew up from the wheels, coating the pinching doorways of the houses with a sheen of grey. Thin dogs sniffed at corners as if looking for the people who were suddenly absent from the streets. Despite being so near to the airport Paul might have been a million miles from any vestiges of civilisation. The buildings had quickly changed from the Westernised apartment blocks and offices to a more simple, basic and indigenous series of dwellings. Wood smoke rose from cooking pots at the front of some of the houses but no one stirred the contents.
Falling Into Heaven Page 15