The Memory of Water

by JT Lawrence

  “No,” I say. No. “I wouldn’t. Couldn’t.”

  She is heavy, she is squeezing me. I feel dizzy. Flashes of light on my brain. Pictures in fast forward. I see my violently scribbled notes, the mind map, the knife in my study. I see myself sneaking into Eve’s apartment in black gloves and balaclava.

  No.

  I see Eve’s bloodless face, the savage red ribbon on her chest.

  “No,” I say, “The police think I did it because I planned to do it. But it was only a plan. A concept. An experience, for a … story.”

  “The police think you did it, because you did it.”

  I try again to buck her but her strength is Amazonian.

  “Just like you did it before.”

  My spine turns to ice.

  I retreat as far as I can into my mind. Into the space where I am allowed to hide things. A safe corner of denial. I want her to kill me. I would rather die than listen to this. I wish I could die. God, I wish I could just stop existing. I wish I had never existed.

  “I didn’t do it before,” I murmur, more to myself than to her.

  “Why do you think your mother left you?” she snarls.

  I am slipping into a hungry pool of darkness. I try to think of something else, but the cold blackness is swallowing me whole: toes, ankles, calves. Knees, thighs …

  “She left us because she couldn’t stand it any more. She couldn’t stand our … mortality.”

  “After Emily.” she says. Anger shoots back into my body, makes me stronger, and we struggle.

  “How did you know about Emily?” I shout into her. She is my secret. My haunting. “How did you know?”

  I am filled with a sudden power and I am able to throw her off and stand up. She comes at me but I manage to swing her into the wall and she hits her head with a thunk. She is still for a second, then she stumbles for me again and we are two shadows wrestling in the dark. I kick her legs out from under her and as she falls, I pounce on top of her. Swift, stealthy, like a killer. Like I have done this before.

  “It was an accident!” I shout into her. I don’t want to hear another word erupting from her mouth. My hands are around her throat and I am squeezing as hard as I can. She is making sounds I don’t want to hear, so I press harder. “It was an accident!” I shout over and over, shaking her, causing her head to bounce on the concrete floor, until at last, at last, at last she is quiet.

  “The descent into hell is easy.”

  - Virgil

  43

  Rolling and wailing

  Now that she is quiet I can let go. Now we don’t have to fight. Now we can just go our separate ways and never look back.

  “Now you are quiet,” I say, touching her cheek. It is cold. My knees are locked. How long have I been sitting over her like this? I must be heavy. It must be hurting her. I climb off, taking her hand.

  “Get up now,” I say. “It’s time to go.”

  I sway her gently. I shake her shoulder. It’s time to go home. God, how I want to go home.

  I lift my hand to stroke her hair and as I do, I know she is dead.

  When I come out of it I am still beside her, rocking and moaning. I remember this feeling from when I was eight. On the riverbank. Coming to, rolling and wailing, wondering where I had been in my head and not glad to be back. I look at her black outline. I need to get rid of her body. I stand up, switch on a lamp. Start looking around. I need to get rid of it but I don’t know how. No more bodies in rivers.

  44

  Still Skin

  I find some flammable liquid in the studio. I am numb so I can’t tell what it is, but I know it will burn. I soak Denise’s clothes and then cover her body with them. Susannah’sclothes. Susannah’s body. Pour it in her hair. Empty it onto her. Drops bounce off her still skin.

  There is a thought that keeps knocking, but I try to keep the door closed. It starts like this … if I am capable of murdering Denise … and then I shut it out. It comes back over and over again. If I am capable of murder … and with it comes flashbacks of Eve’s ivory face, Emily’s marble body. The thoughts slow me down until I am still and I put my head in my hands and bellow as loudly as I can to drown them out.

  I find more bottles and douse the rest of the place. I paint the wall with it. The white paper flutters and turns translucent. After the studio is done I move into her bedroom and soak everything in there too. The taped-up cardboard boxes; the near-empty cupboards; the curtains; the pillows. I hear sirens in the distance. They know I am here: they have tracked me down. I start looking for a lighter, or matches. I attack the kitchen drawers, hauling everything out and dumping it on the floor. My fingerprints are everywhere. Nothing in the kitchen, nothing in the passage cupboard. Back in the studio I pillage the drawers. Blindly I loot and sack and strip until I see something I recognise. Not a lighter, but a sheet of cream-coloured paper. My body wants to keep searching for fire but this thing stops me. I pull it out, feel it between my fingers. My senses are coming back. It is thick, textured. I take it towards the lamplight. The top centre is embossed with decorative circle: a bit like a wheel.

  45

  Headfirst Into Black Dew

  I am lost, but then I hear the siren again and that wakes me up, tells me I am in this place with a job to do. I crumple up the letterhead and add it to what will be the bonfire. I almost give up on the lighter but then I think: incense and candlelit baths. I walk to the bathroom and find a box of matches in the first cupboard I open. There are only a few in the box but they will do. I reach around to make sure that I have my bag on my back. The fumes are making me unsteady on my feet. I hear the wailing of the police car as if it is in the next room. I pour the last of the fuel down the entrance hall and up to the front door. I stumble around, my fingers are thick. I drop the matches, pick them up again. There are bright lights blocking out my vision. I need to get to fresh air or I will pass out. I don’t even bother to turn the handle, I just kick it open. Once outside I take a few clear breaths to make the stars recede. I see parts of the floor, parts of bricks on the wall. I put an arm out to steady myself. The siren arrives downstairs. The car brakes with a scream and crunch and the siren quits half-shriek. Doors open and boots hit gravel. Terse words are exchanged. It will take them less than a minute to get up here. I peer through the stars into the matchbox. I grab one but drop it on the floor. Another one. Then I take two and hold them steady against the flint-side and as it sparks, the wind is knocked out of me and I am pitched forward, teeth-to-tiles. The matchbox skitters across the floor. I forget about breathing and start crawling towards the box, but Edgar gets there first and picks them up in a neat collect. He glances backwards at me, white grimace in black hood, and takes off. Next thing I know I am up on my feet and chasing him. He darts down the narrow emergency steps and I follow. As we descend I can hear the cops ricocheting off the main stairway, in the opposite direction. Despite the assault, despite the blurred vision and bubbling lungs, I keep on going. We hit the basement floor and run through the parking lot. Edgar bounces off a station wagon, bounds up some concrete planters, rushes through a garden and out of the pedestrian gate. He is fast and putting extra distance between us. He is hard to spot in his dark clothes, and he runs like a pro. Trust me to get the athlete stalker. We corner the block, hitting a straight road and he picks up speed. I can feel my legs disappearing under me. I am just about to stop running when he makes a sound: a yelp. He has tripped over something, some sweet thing, and sprawls headfirst into black dew.

  He ploughs into the lawn on all fours and scrambles to get up. I reach him just as he manages to lift his knees off the ground and I land a clumsy drop kick into the washboard of his stomach. He lets out a howl like a wounded animal and I kick him again, this time in the ribs. He tries to get away, clawing at the ground and trying to get a footing but the grass is slippery and I have my foot on his back. He doesn’t fight back. Acid loathing makes me kick him once more: a heavy jump on his spine and he is flattened. I grab his shoulder
to roll him over and rip off his black hood so that I can see his face. I recoil at the sight: shiny pale plastic glinting in the streetlight. A mask. I dig my fingers underneath it and peel it off. The face I see topples me. He may as well have punched me in the face. I let go of him with an exclamation.

  “There are some things you learn best in calm, and some in storm.”

  - Willa Cather

  46

  His Strings Cut

  We sit on the pavement in identical postures. We have both had the wind knocked out of us and need to stay close to the ground.

  “Frank,” I say.

  “I can explain,” he says, his breathing heavy, one hand up in defence, the other on his ribs.

  I want to laugh. He says it sincerely, as if an explanation could make a whisper of a difference in this situation. As if it could undo terrible things. If only words could.

  “You’ve been trying to kill me,” I pant.

  “I’ve been … helping you,” he says, spitting out blood.

  The bastard.

  “Helping me?” I shout.

  “Guarding you,” he grimaces. His eyes glow. “You can’t see that now, but you will.”

  I wind my arm back and punch him in the face as hard as I can. There is a simultaneous crack, as my knuckle breaks his nose and breaks itself in the process. He is KO’d, sprawled like a dummy on the ground, his strings cut, blood pumping out of his nose. I shake my hand out. I see figures in the distance, running. I bolt, leaving Frank to bleed.

  47

  Skinless

  They’re persistent, I’ll give them that. I hurdle over a low wall and land on the soft ground on the other side. My bad ankle twinges. I hear their hurried footfall just metres away. I remember trying to outrun the cops in Bangkok and hope that this time I will have better luck. I charge down to the spruit where I am whipped by willow branches and splash in, wading thigh-deep in the murk to get across then up the oily hill on the other side. They have torches but not dogs. I look for a way to get into one of the properties on the other side but the walls are all so high and the electric fence lines glimmer hostile in the moonlight. All I can do is keep running, even though I can feel them gaining on me. Eventually there is a wormhole: a house under construction has a sharp, square hole in their temporary entrance of ramshackle tin. I drop my bag and push my body through, tearing my clothes and scraping off a good layer of skin as I go. Once inside I find my way through the maze of walls and punch-outs for windows, making the wrong turn twice before finding the exit. Blinking in the dark, trying to see where to go next, I hear a whistle. Involuntarily I look in the direction of the noise and something behind me knocks me out.

  I come to in the police van, handcuffed and lying across the backseat. It smells like petrol and sweat. They are speaking their ambush language, boasting about their catch. Every now and then the radio crackles to life but they ignore it. The back of my head is blazing from where they hit me, and my broken knuckle is throbbing. I feel a sense of downward resignation and traitorous relief. I won’t die tonight, I think. I have escaped. Other thoughts are hammering but I try to hold on to this one for the feeling it gives me, but then it is gone, and so am I.

  I come to again and my vision is crossed with lines. I am lying on top of a grey mattress in a grey jail cell. I recognise the walls from my previous visit. Is the main block of cells full up? Why am I always relegated to this spare building? I sit up too fast and my head fills with sparks so I sit still for a long time until I feel that I can stand up. My ankle is stiff and swollen and it hurts to breathe. Panic fills my chest. I limp to the bars, rattle them and shout for someone. I do this over and over but no one comes, so after a long while of shouting and trying to catch my breath I lie down again, to try to forget where I am.

  When I open my eyes, Sello is standing outside the cell.

  “Detective,” I say, swinging my legs off the bed to sit up.

  “Hello, Mister Harris,” he replies, more polite than usual.

  I touch the lump on the back of my head. It has stopped bleeding.

  “Was it really necessary for your boys to pistol-whip me?”

  “Apparently so.”

  “Seems like a violent way to deal with someone you know isn’t the murderer.”

  “On the contrary,” Sello says, shifty-eyed.

  On the contrary? I think they must have switched Law and Order for old reruns of Sherlock Holmes mysteries.

  “We have found all the evidence we need.”

  “I can explain that,” I say. Sello shakes his head. “The time for stories is over.”

  “Do I get a phone call?” I ask.

  “If you wish,” he says, “I advise you to call your lawyer.”

  He unlocks the door with a clang that resonates through my body, and walks me down an abraded linoleum corridor to a pay phone.

  Still cuffed, I pick up the receiver and balance it between my ear and shoulder. The machine wants money before I dial and I don’t have any. Sello fishes in his pockets and slips a shiny R5 coin into the slit. I nod my thanks and dial my father’s number.

  It rings for a full minute before he answers. He sounds distracted, annoyed.

  “Dad!” I can’t help the emotion that pushes the word out of my mouth and down into the receiver.

  “Slade?” There is feeling in his voice too, as if he never expected to hear from me again. I stumble, not sure what to say.

  “God, Dad, I don’t know where to start.”

  “Do you need help?” he says.

  “Yes,” I say, “Yes, I need help.”

  Both of our voices are unsteady.

  “What can I do?”

  “Can you come down to the police station? I’ve been arrested.”

  “Arrested?”

  “Never mind that, I just need to talk to you. I need to tell you something.”

  “I’ll be there in half an hour.”

  On the way back to the cell I ask Sello if I can have a shower and some clean clothes. Anything to avoid the darkcloudconfines of the cell. He slams the door shut. It is obvious there is no other way to close cell doors.

  “No,” he says. “This isn’t a hotel.”

  I think he still holds the offer of cappuccinos against me. We are on his turf now and he wants to make it clear there will be no cappuccinos. Back in the cell I feel I am disappearing in all the grey. My mind is blank: grey. I lower myself onto the mattress, play steeple with my fingers, and wait.

  When my father arrives they let him into my cell. He smells like shaving cream. We hug for the first time in as long as I can remember. Like two bears with sore heads. When we pull away, his eyes are shining. I offer him the seat of the bed opposite mine and we sit. It is a small cell and our knees are almost touching. We are quiet for a while.

  “I need to tell you something,” I say. My voice is not to be trusted.

  He shakes his head. Tries to talk, then gives up and shakes it again.

  “It’s about Emily,” I say.

  “No,” he says, clearing his throat. “You don’t need to tell me … anything.”

  “That day … by the river,” I start.

  “I know you blame yourself, son.”

  He called me son.

  “But it wasn’t your fault. It was an accident. Everyone knew that … except you.”

  My face is wet.

  “And look what it did to you.”

  Am I an empty shell because of that day? That precarious minute?

  “You’ve been punishing yourself ever since. Pushing everyone away, trying to get yourself killed. Angola, Nigeria, Thailand. And now you’ve finally committed a crime that vindicates your punishments. You’re like a goddamned Kafka character. You’re stuck in your own twisted novel like a fly in amber.”

  I blink at him, wanting him to say more and therefore postponing the words that will have to leave my mouth.

  “Your mother couldn’t stand it,” he says, “She couldn’t stand your mortality. She
told me that when you were born it was like some part of her was cut open, never to heal. Every bruise you had hurt her, every scratch. It was like walking around without skin.”

  I have heard this a hundred times. Every time I asked where Mom had gone in the year after she left, I heard this speech. Skinless. She couldn’t stand it, he always said. But I knew it was because she couldn’t stand me. Couldn’t stand the memory of that day, of what I had done.

  “That’s not the reason she left,” I whisper, head in hands.

  “Of course it is. She told me so. She was so … depressed. She’d go days without changing her clothes, or washing her hair. She wouldn’t talk. Do you remember that? It got to the stage that I didn’t know if she would … survive … her grief. There were warning signs. Extra bottles of pills, Minora blades in the bathroom, sitting in her running car in the middle of the night. That’s why I let her go. She wouldn’t have survived the life she had with us, with me.”

  “That day,” I stammer, “At the river. I pushed her under.”

  Dad looks at me, not understanding what I am saying. “I pushed Emily under and Mom saw it happen.”

  48

  A Monument To Lost Causes, Revisited

  It was my idea to swim. I knew that we weren’t allowed to, that it was dangerous. At first Emily said no, she didn’t want to get into trouble. But I jumped in, told her how cool it was and called her a chickenshit. She always hated that. She sat on the bank for a while with pinched lips and watched me while I did tricks for her: backward roll, dead man floating, walking handstand. She crept closer and closer, edging down onto the slippery rocks until, splashless and without a ripple, she was in the water. We laughed at how the cold water made her breathe too fast. Her summer dress floated around her body like a giant lampshade and we giggled at that, too. I tried to teach her how to backward roll but she got a nose full of water the first time and didn’t want to try again. I was always trying to teach her things. She was my baby sister. Then I thought of a new game. We could go to the deeper part, just a few metres away, and dive down for jewels. Whoever got the most jewels would win. We were pirates on a dangerous mission – going to the deeper part would mean that we were just in view of the family holiday house – and if we got caught we’d get a really good thrashing, or not be allowed to go to the beach the next day, or both.