“What about us?” a voice at the edge shouted. No-one heard.
And where would Jay go?
I’ll hop between the three, he’d offered, a noble glance at those around.
And that was that. A cheerful murmur and three tents later, there we were. The new tent for the minors was smaller, and at that moment quiet and subdued as we waited for Jay with the drink. I waited by Burberry—people were still staring at us, still whispering about us. What was there left to say? We could hear Jay’s voice from the least tent, already speech-slurred and sloppy.
We were all huddled together, squashed into a group. I was pressed against Burberry and someone with black hair who smelt vaguely of smoke. It was too cramped to play games and so we waited for the drunken man with the drink: our only entertainment.
“Should we get him?” someone asked.
“Would you?” asked another. “If you want to go into the least tent then go ahead.”
We heard laughter, then a voice from the other tent—Frederick?—who told Jay he’d better move along. Our tent was filled with a sigh and a chuckle of relief. Jay step-stumbled in through the opening.
“Jay,” everyone said in unison. He looked drunk, dazed and startled, and began to make his way back out again until a hand—Tanned’s hand—dragged him back inside.
“Come on then,” Tanned held up his glass. The woman by him giggled. Jay nodded and filled his glass, then made his way around, pausing every few seconds to down a deep swig from the bottle.
Each chipped mug and glass was filled, emptied, and filled again until the room carried a healthy murmur. Burberry chatted idly away to someone whose face I couldn’t see, and I leant my own face against the fabric of the tent, letting it caress my cheek.
“Go on, drink it,” Jay instructed me, spilling bitter-cream alcohol into my glass and almost standing on Burberry’s shin. I obeyed, raising the glass to my mouth and letting the thick gloopy liquid slide downwards into my stomach, hoping it would ease the knot of anger.
The tent grew hot, too hot, the murmur was a roar, the tart and bitter stenches of sweat and perfume and booze clogging up my lungs, which heaved and gasped for air. I threw myself from the mass of bodies.
Outside it was chilly and clear. I lay on the ground, head on the flagstones, gulping at the night air. When I had had enough I listened for familiar voices, but the conversations were so loud they all blurred into one.
How could he stop me?
How could he keep me from the book?
Couldn’t I go right then if I wanted?
So I did.
Since the beginning no-one had knowingly committed a crime: sex-criminals had never had inappropriate sex, the violent ones had never harmed anyone, the disruptives lived by the rules and no thief, like me, had ever taken anything that wasn’t theirs. To live up to the burden of the crime you carried would be to expose yourself. If anyone saw—if people knew—it would be terrible.
I was on my way to steal time with the book. No-one would be there. It wasn’t my turn and if Pilsner had his way it never would be, but I would go to the book.
I hurried to my triangle hut for a candle. Everyone was still in the casino tents, but at every corner of the world their voices would be heard. A roar carrying the occasional burst of searing laughter. They were cheering me on, a hearty approval of my transgression. I found a thick candle under my bed and hurried back through the noise-encrusted night.
I made my way to the book’s house. Glimpses of tin rusted in the candlelight. The noise of the tents found their way in through the doorway and round gaps between the wall and ceiling, bouncing from wall to wall. In the centre of the room, where it always lay, was the book. By night its blue covers were black, its pages grey and yellow. What was I going to do?
I was going to read. Wasn’t that what I always did?
The book seemed heavier, first the covers and then each page weighted down by memories, none of which would ever be mine. It was too dark to read from a normal distance, the words a steady smudge, so I moved the candle nearer, then my face, a warm glow toward my forehead and age-ripe pages under my nose.
They’re not memories. They’re inventions. Stories. Creations. People think they’re real.
Burberry’s messy scrawl. It was wrong.
There was a scream and then a guffaw from each of the walls, which died into the usual murmur. I skimmed my eyes over the blue ink, the red ink and black, moving my face away each time I needed to turn a page.
It doesn’t really matter, does it? We’ve got no way of knowing.
Burberry again. How could it not matter? How were we ever to find who we were if nothing we remembered was real?
Pages flicked between my fingers, brittle as thinly-sliced bone. Where did I fit in here? I had lived in a house, with a living room and a husband, not a hut. Where was I?
You want to rebuild everything, all we have, all by yourself.
Pilsner. The words were red as heat. Of course I wanted to rebuild, wasn’t that the point? That was the book, that was its purpose.
A yelp and more laughing, the vibration of tin. Songs and dancing and crimes. I couldn’t keep my eyes clear, and they flooded, my throat swelling, my breath a gasp.
What we have now is fragile, more fragile than you realise.
And the pages were blurred, but I could see them, as always, unfocused but clear. I saw desperate people huddled over blank squares of paper, needing to leave a mark, to leave something behind, something, anything to prove that they had once existed. I saw a girl writing her mundane memory of a weather report, her hands shaking, I saw a man forming words on soup, seasoned with salt-water from his eyes. I saw a rush of them all crowding inside the hut wanting to last forever. Anything, anything, anything but to disappear again.
I’m not letting you near the book.
The walls sobbed, over and over, tinged with laughs and chatter. The whole book an ink-black blob, a stain, a mistake.
I scrubbed my eyes and cheeks with my fingers, shaking angry hateful droplets to the floor. I turned the book to its first pages. Ink and pencil together told me how to love, who to love, when and where and why. Tin huts and lost-lover agonies, two weeks of pain and a fresh start, a lifetime of proving who you were to someone else. The words scraped against the flesh of my eyes, hard, sharp, and it would tear me apart, it would tear me into hundreds and hundreds of pieces, there would be nothing left, only the fragments desperate people could bear to pick up and rearrange. The tin walls snarled, and with one sharp rush the first page was gone. It lay limp and powerless in the tremble of my hand.
I was outside the book-hut, the smoke from the candle crawling up my nose. So I was a thief. They were right. More than minor though, oh, I was more than that. A moderate, perhaps even a severe, I had stolen one of the most important things in the world. The first page of the book. I had stolen some of the world’s memories.
Standing in the cool gulps of air I felt nothing but concern—what they would do when they found what I had done? Fingernails scraping earth, I fixed that problem.
I buried the page in a circle—by my triangle hut, where no-one would ever find it.
THE RAIN HAS DIED A LITTLE; I think I can hear footsteps.
I cannot tell. Perhaps, perhaps not. I’ll shout anyway.
No, nothing.
So I stole: I am indeed a thief.
But I wanted to give also.
If you are prevented from giving, then what is left but to take?
Doing nothing was not an option. Doing nothing is death.
And now I’m doing nothing.
THE BOOZE-BROUGHT HEADACHES of the night before had kept everyone in bed, and there I was, at Frederick’s, sitting quietly amongst the sleeping world. His back was pressed to my breasts, and I kissed his neck, wondering if he too slept.
“Frederick?”
There was no answer, but his head turned and lips met mine, soft, and again, soft. He ran his hands down my linen-coated
arms, almost reaching my fingertips, nails caked in soil—dirt from my crime. The worst crime in the world. I pulled my hand away and ran it through his hair instead. He gave a light moan.
And the world jolted awake with a cry.
Mangled and anguished it called. At first they were garbled sounds, but soon they formed words.
The book, the book, the book.
Frederick rose, all I could see was his arse as he stepped toward his door.
“What was that?”
“The book,” a wordless voice cried.
“The book? What about the book?” his back answered.
“It’s broken, it’s been damaged, it’s gone—” the breathless voice called.
“Gone? Damaged and gone?”
“A page, the first page, the very first page, it’s gone.” The voice melted away, ready to spread the awful news to the far walls.
And at that Frederick turned, confused, as I tried to wipe my nails on my clothes. He stared at the coloured shards of ceiling.
“That doesn’t sound good,” he murmured. “You should go back to your hut. Better not give anyone any more reason to talk.”
I nodded and I too stepped toward the door, an innocent kiss on his collarbone.
People paced to and fro. What have you heard? What have you heard? I waited for one to patter up to me, to ask what I knew. No-one did, and I was glad. I reached my hut to find Burberry standing outside.
“What’ve you heard?” She looked at me, her face tense.
“Someone’s damaged the book, torn out the front page.”
“That’s what I heard.” She sounded disappointed and stepped inside the hut, motioning me to follow.
“They’ll be asking who did it soon.” As soon as the words fell from my mouth I wondered if I should have said them.
“Do you know? Do you know that?” she asked, excited once more.
“No.”
“Oh.”
And we watched the world as it paced to and from outside the hut. ‘Something should be done,’ someone called. Then another, then another. ‘They’re ours, they’re our memories, no-one should take them away from us. Not again.’ One or two of them were crying, running from hut to hut. At first Burberry’s eyes shone, then as the hours crawled on they faded into dull boredom.
“So what’s the fuss all about? It’s a page.” And she stood to make some food. “Olives and rice?”
“Burberry—”
I decided to tell her—after what she had said, about the memories and the book, it would be safe. I could trust Burberry, she saw things differently to the others. So I told her, starting from my arriving at the book’s hut, lit by my candle, about my rage, about my fingers flicking flicking flicking, then tearing. Her eyes grew wider, her tongue curling over her lower lip.
“But why did you do it?”
I didn’t tell her about the reason for my rage, about what I saw on those pages, about the memory of my husband: she wanted something else—something more noble. Something vague.
“I had to.”
And that was enough. She hugged me tight, told me that she would tell no-one, and that I must do the same. We couldn’t know what would happen now—this was new. We had to trust one another.
It wasn’t long before there was more calling: meet at the courtyard meet at the courtyard meet at the courtyard. Now.
And so everyone did. In ones and twos they ran to the centre of the world.
The least, minors and moderates gathered; we joined them.
“Be quiet.”
“Look, just shut up, just for one minute, right?”
“He’s talking.”
Pilsner cleared his throat, ready for a monotone barrage.
Casio spoke instead. I kept my face hidden behind my hands, pretending grief, willing myself away from the chaotic chatter. Burberry held on to my arm.
“Everyone’s heard about the book. None of you need telling then, but today it was noticed that a page was gone.”
“Who noticed it was gone?”
“Who was it?”
“We can’t tell you that,” he ordered.
“It was me.” A small woman’s voice.
“What did you see?”
“Why were you there?”
“It was her turn with the book.”
“Yes, it was my turn,” her small voice called amidst the crumble of others, “I got there and the book was open. The first page was gone. It had been torn out. There was a little bit of it left. It was ripped.”
Gasp groan shudder.
“Did you see who did it?”
“Did you see anyone?”
“No, there was no-one with a turn before me today. It was empty,” she replied.
A jumbled silence a heartbeat long.
“Who was last yesterday?”
“Who the fuck was last then?”
“It was me.” The voice belonged to Pilsner. He was above reproach.
“Who before you?”
“The page was there when I was in there yesterday.” Monotone.
“It seems the page was stolen last night.”
A murmur, and some minutes before I could pick out a single voice. Everything looked velvet-purple between my fingers. Suddenly everyone was suspect. We were all criminals, after all.
“... only left the tent for a minute, I had to piss. It was the booze.”
“Yeah. Okay.”
“Hey, I had to leave as well. I had to leave twice. If it could have been her it could have been me.”
“I’m not saying it wasn’t you.”
“You’ve got a lot to say about this, were you there the whole time? I didn’t see you.”
“Me neither.”
“Fuck you, both of you.”
“Will you guys be quiet? Casio’s trying to talk.”
A yelp and a roar. The sound of feet moving and bodies jostling.
“Just fucking listen!”
“Look,” Casio’s voice. “Last night we were all at the Casino—”
“I know who weren’t!”
“What?”
“The severes! They weren’t at the casino. What if it was them?”
There was another pause, a low grumble. They weren’t often mentioned.
“You know, it might have been.”
“You don’t know that.”
“We’d have noticed them, I know I would have.”
“And me.”
“Look,” Casio again, “Did anyone see anything? Did anyone actually see anything?”
“I heard something from over there, from the severes.”
“When?”
“How should I know when?”
Pilsner cleared his throat again, before lifting his voice. “We don’t even know when it happened. We won’t ever know who did this. There’s no point in blaming anyone. No—” a bleat from someone somewhere, “No. We remember what’s on there. We can write it again.”
“What on?”
Hostile murmurs.
“Does anyone have any paper?”
A smaller rush of feet, away, a breath, then back again. My face was hot beneath my hands.
“Here.”
“Right.” Pilsner’s flat voice resumed. “We’ll write it all down, right now. I’ll read out what I’m writing. If anyone knows it as different, call out.”
And so he read as he wrote. Voices carried through the air, uneasy, waiting for a chance to ignite. I looked up at his face, which flashed in and out of view between arms and chests and breasts. His face was crumpled, concentrating, his throat steady. Some people left. He remembered every word, word for word. My legs were light and my arms heavy, the cartilage of my knees trembling, my body sagging to the flagstones. I carefully sat down, resting on my elbow.
The new page looked uneven. It was larger that the others, and it was whiter—aside from a brown stain which chewed at the upper-right corner. It didn’t fit, and a lot of people had noticed. I caught angry shudders of conversations, ratt
ling against Pilsner, or the severes, or Casio. Once I even heard someone blaming ‘that one with her two’. I hurried away before I was seen.
“Has Pilsner noticed?” I asked Frederick. He had told me earlier that day that he and Pilsner were talking again. I hadn’t asked if their words had melted into slow and languid sex.
Frederick and I were in his cave-like hut, rolling a small rubber ball to one another.
“Noticed?” He caught it between his thumb and point-finger.
“People talking.”
“I haven’t asked. Probably, though. People talk a lot.” He rolled it back to me, it bouncing into my knee and nestling against my shin.
“About the page.”
“About it. Yeah.” He caught it once more.
“Have you heard much?”
Frederick kept his focus on the ball as he rolled it back to me, his lips stuck shut.
“Frederick?”
“Of course. I’m not—I’m not sure there’s much point paying attention to it.” He nodded to himself and caught it once more. I wasn’t aware it had left my hands.
“Have you heard them talking about me? About you and me? Me and Burberry?”
He nodded, gently bouncing the ball toward me. I missed it and left it to rest against the wall.
“I might have thought so,” I uttered.
“I wouldn’t worry.”
“Why not worry?”
“There’s—there’s more talk about the trip than about us.” He nodded again.
“Trip?”
“The trip. To the severes.”
I stared at him so he continued. “You know—a lot of people are angry at them. They say they did it, they’re the ones with the worst—you know. They—they say they’re going on a trip.”
“Who do you mean ‘they’?”
“They. Everybody. Some angry people.” He caught the ball again.
I was with Burberry when I saw ‘they’ leave.
We were at the courtyard—we had been waiting to see what would happen. At first we had been alone.
Forget Yourself Page 11