Forget Yourself

by Redfern Jon Barrett

  “We haven’t spoken in quite a while, have we?”

  “We haven’t.”

  I could have found out the details of his life, his giddy excitements and slow, long heartbreaks, but the conversation trailed and there was nothing worth knowing. Sooner or later he’d have mentioned her name, or I would, and there was the risk that everything would collapse, that the walls would fall down but they’d fall in on us, that everyone would be buried in an endless crush of rubble, falling ever inwards, until finally it mashed us two here in the centre of the world. It wasn’t worth it. I wished him well and, with a glance around, even kissed him on the cheek. He was alone, he’d have time to think. Perhaps he’d even copy her and drop to death. But there wouldn’t be any talking.

  He left for the land of the minors.

  I was in a different place, and I couldn’t see the farm anywhere. Who was I now? I looked down. I had clothes on: that was something.

  A tattoo spread over my arm. Pilsner. It had been a joke at my expense, a drunken stag party gesture.

  I was pacing the room, from chintzy china ornament to tacky glazed decoration. The walls were wood-brown, and I was surrounded by tiny faces, hand-painted and sold in magazines. I was waiting for the door. Where was she? Where was she?

  There it was, there was the chime. I knocked over a girl, her face and her parasol shattering on the floorboards. Fuck fuck fuck. I pulled the door open, almost hitting myself in the face. What did my face look like? There was a mirror in the hall, but no time to check—

  “Minos,” the post-woman greeted.

  “Helene,” I replied, my voice heavy and solid. “Helene, how is he? How is Hermee?”

  “I don’t know if I should tell you,” she answered.

  Was she joking? Was she?

  “Helene.”

  “If he’s not responding to your messages—”

  “Helene.”

  I tried not to cry, I tried not to let my eyes fill with water and burst in front of the post-woman, but I couldn’t help myself. “He’s my brother, Helene,” I managed to choke out, “He’s my brother.”

  She ignored my outburst. She was good like that. Helene had an honest face, and was the first delivery person I had ever spoken to. Usually delivery people were invisible, there one minute and gone the next. You could never ignore Helene.

  I took a deep breath and wiped at my eyes with a used tissue.

  “Would you like some tea, Helene?”

  “Oh all right. I could do with some tea. People are sending one another lead boxes for a joke, I’m telling you.”

  We made our way to the kitchen. I made the tea in silence, silence aside from the whine of the kettle, and she waited with equal quiet. Porcelain figures stared down from the shelves at the top of the walls, right near the ceiling.

  I needed to hear about Hermee. There had been nothing from him in so long. I hadn’t meant for us to be on bad terms—I’d just wanted him to be safe. The farm wasn’t safe, the farm was being monitored. I had told him that he could still see the others; he just had to be discreet. He had told me that there was nothing more important than living the life you chose. The world had changed but he hadn’t.

  We had still been speaking, even after he’d left, but I’d wasted my messages trying to convince him to come back. You can love everyone you want, Hermee, but you must keep quiet. The world is watching. Eventually he had grown sick of my nagging and stopped responding entirely. I couldn’t blame him for that.

  I worried about him.

  I poured the tea into two delicate cups—ordered from the other side of the planet, no mean feat—and placed one by her, the other at my place on the other side of the table.

  She took a sip of the tea before she spoke.

  “They’re going to remove them. You knew that’d happen, Minos, you don’t need me to tell you. That’s just what they’re doing. That’s life.”

  I covered my face with my hands. I must have knocked my cup off the table because I heard it burst over the varnished floor. That’s life. I wondered if I could convince him to leave, if it wasn’t too late. But I couldn’t. He would stay, he would stay until the very moment they came and took him away, along with all the others. Hot tears stung my hands. My lungs burned.

  When I looked up Helene was gone. She had finished her tea.

  “The world is unravelling, Blondee.”

  “Is it, Tie?”

  I didn’t know if that was true: the world was simply going through a change. ‘Things change’, that had been written somewhere in the book, and that was the rule we had broken the most. Nothing had ever changed, not really, not before the magazine. We changed the world, Frederick had said. He was wrong, it was me: he had been innocent.

  Now when I wandered from hut-to-hut in the lands of the least, the minors, and the moderates, I did so without Frederick. He said he was going to the courtyard, but when I hid and watched from a distance he was never there. There was Green, there was Fluffed, and Tanned, but no Frederick.

  He was away with Pilsner, that much was obvious, and the right thing to do would have been to break down Pilsner’s door—and then?

  Instead I explored.

  The world was quieter: many of the huts were now empty. The others were louder, raised voices and accusations. It was the same in each of the lands—least, minor, and moderate. Accusations of penises in foreign vaginas, foreign mouths, foreign arseholes. Defensive manoeuvres: questions, counter-accusations, pleads.

  “The world is unravelling, Blondee.”

  “They just need to get used to it, Tie.”

  Of course they didn’t argue in every hut: some were quiet but clearly had people inside—some were at peace. Each of the three lands was the same—only the size of the huts really differed.

  But there was one more land, the land of the severes, where they lived all in one hut, the hut made from the dregs of the world. There they lived together.

  Had they married? Had they heard my advice from afar?

  I needed to see.

  “Leave them be, Blondee.”

  “I’m only going to look, Tie.”

  “You can do a lot of harm just by looking, Blondee.”

  I went anyway. I took my best shoes, ones which almost fit my feet, and my best bag, filled with some of our choicest rations. I took the long way around the courtyard, and journeyed to the land of the severes.

  The usual dusty concrete. No trees, no huts. A glint of the metal fence at the far side. the sun was setting but only my body threw shadows.

  There it was: there was the hut, a new mound of earth beside it, marked with a small row of broken bottles. There was no-one around; they were all inside. I took off my shoes and placed them into my bag, padding my feet as softly as I could over the concrete. There was smoke rising from the hut. They must have built it around a fire tap, clinging to the wall.

  I reached the hut. I pressed my ear to it. It vibrated.

  It vibrated with a half-dozen conversations. There was an argument, one which stopped my heart, and I listened for words, ‘unfaithful’, ‘betrayed’, ‘matrimony’, but they were fighting over nothing, a fight they would forget in a matter of moments. There was a laugh, someone telling a joke, a multitude of chuckles, together a roar. There were quiet murmurs.

  I had to see them.

  I could see a gap in the wall, high on the hut, and so I climbed it: I climbed over parts of old bikes and rickety planks of wood. My body was light and the hut stayed strong. I peeked through the opening.

  There was the fire, in the centre, and there they were: clustered around; some eating; some sewing. They were clung in groups of threes and fours, threes and fours and not twos. Three of them were naked, running their fingers over one another, the middle one trembling. Another crawled over to join them.

  They were different.

  “The world is unravelling, Blondee.”

  “Not all of it, Tie.”

  I walked back home, over the concrete. I wan
ted to dance.

  IT WAS WARM. Should I take off the fuzzy purple pullover? There wasn’t time. I could see him—him across the street.

  I was talking to Norna, miles and miles away, through fibre-optic cables. The world is a funny thing, it is.

  Norna enjoyed watching her neighbours too.

  I was giving a running commentary. This was our game: we would watch our neighbours and we would report on what went on. People lead the most interesting lives, much better than the kind of things that were broadcast. This was real. People have dramas, and you don’t even need to hear them to be a part of the experience: you just need a window, and the quick-wits to glance away if they suspected you were watching. Watching events can influence them, that’s a rule of science, it is.

  It was my turn. She had spent all of last week talking about the young family who lived across from her, and nothing even happened. They just had breakfast and did the same day-to-day things anyone did. Norna wasn’t very good at picking neighbours to watch. Norna wasn’t really very good at anything.

  I could see the people opposite, sitting in my chair by the window. My neighbour was sitting on a sofa, reading a book. “He’ll be interesting though, Norna,” I’d told her, “just wait.” I knew because he had all these ornaments, all these little figurines all over his walls. What kind of man had figurines all over his walls? That would be worth a watch. I was good at picking which neighbours to watch, see.

  Norna had said it was all down to luck, but that’s Norna for you. She daydreams. “How can you pick your neighbours?” she’d asked. I told her it was an important skill.

  I could see the post-woman arrive, her van stopping on the street outside. I told Norna. She said that was no more interesting than what her neighbours got up to. Her voice was echoing, and arrived too slowly: her connection was bad. Norna couldn’t get anything right, she couldn’t. I was even prettier than her—I have long dark hair and big eyes. It’s a hassle—men chase you. I never trusted men.

  I told her to wait. I checked my messages: I’d no new messages. Only things from Norna. Norna could be a good friend, when she wanted to be, even though she lived so far away.

  The post-woman arrived at the first floor of the building opposite and pushed some letters though the box. The neighbours there had their curtains drawn. What were they trying to hide?

  The post-woman arrived at the second floor, but there was no mail. That was too bad: the old woman inside had heard the footsteps in the hallway and looked up, expecting a visitor. I could see, even though her windows were grubby. She didn’t have any letters.

  I don’t pretend I’m popular and important, but I have Norna.

  The post-woman arrived at the third floor, his floor. I could see her rat-tat-tat on his door. He ran to the door and opened it quick enough. The woman below him turned on her television.

  I told Norna, I said, “he’s talking to the post-woman” Norna didn’t seem very excited: she could never sense when something was coming, one of her faults.

  “He’s crying, Norna, he’s crying,” I told her. I must have shouted it. I could hear her breathing fast, she was excited too. This was more than her boring neighbours had done. My neighbour was crying: what kind of man cries at the post-woman?

  “She’s ignoring it,” I told her, “but she’s not leaving either. What do you think they’re talking about?”

  “It’ll be an affair,” Norna said. She could be daft sometimes. That man wasn’t having an affair with that big old post-woman—he’ll be a homo and she’ll be lesbian. “You should know that, Norna.” Norna said she couldn’t even see them, so how could she know? I didn’t answer such a stupid question.

  There was a crackle and Norna was gone. Her bloody connection.

  It was time for a ketamine break. She had recommended it—she had even bought me a t-shirt with the word splashed across the breasts. She thought it was funny. After a few minutes I disconnected and reconnected, just in case, waiting to hear her voice. It broke through, tinny and smooth.

  I repeated myself, told her again what he’d done. “He’s making them both some tea now—who has the post-woman around for tea? It’s a strange old world, Norna. Maybe they were up to something: he’ll be thinking of the mischief they could get up to, him and the post-woman—not an affair but something just as devious.”

  Norna said I didn’t know that. She told me I should stick to what I could see, and I couldn’t see inside their heads. She said I was crazy. She was no judge, she hadn’t even left her house this month. I had, I’d gone out to get milk. And a paper, even though it was too expensive and it never said anything interesting. Of course I’d been harassed by a guy with a tacky tan: that’s men for you.

  “Norna,” I said, “Norna! He’s crying again, he’s got his face in his hands and he’s bawling his eyes out!”

  “What’s the post-woman doing then?” Norna asked.

  “She’s just drinking her tea like there’s nothing the matter at all, like she’s by herself in her own kitchen. Did I tell you he had his ornaments in there as well? It’s a strange man collects ornaments, I can tell you that right now. There’s something afoot.”

  I was winning the game, but then I won every game Norna and I ever thought of. She wasn’t very good at games, but she liked losing and I liked winning—that’s companionship, that is. Two people fitting together, even if they’ve never met in person. Especially if they’ve never met in person. Who wanted to deal with people, with all their smells and strange noises? I feel sick whenever I talk to the newsagent—I can see the spit foaming in his mouth and the gunk in the corner of his eyes.

  “Oh, Norna, she’s leaving, she’s gone, the post-woman’s left.”

  I glanced over at Norna’s emulated face. She was nodding, up and down, up and down. As though she were simple. There was nothing going on between them, he was too much a coward to be doing any plotting, and the post-woman was too sensible. “Norna,” I told her, “she’s left and he’s still crying—who’d have thought it?”

  “He should pull himself together,” Norna said. It was the first sensible thing she’d said in ages.

  I drifted in the darkness between that world and this, in the space where neither was real and nothing true. In the space without the weight of the past. Without anything. For once his ghost was not with me.

  Rebels on a farm, the anxious brother, a lonely neighbour watching and watching. I knew their faces, their bodies, their smells.

  I slowly returned to my bed, my husband snoring to my side, a long-lost ghost in the corner.

  SHE SCREAMED FOR ME: she screamed for me from the rations. I found her, in the corner amongst the furniture. Frederick had said he should go to the rations alone, but I told him that, just this once, I had to go with him. And there she was.

  The stone woman.

  Just as I had seen her. She was poised in the corner of the big metal rations box, a hands-length tall, dogs at her feet and arrows at her back. When I picked her up she stopped her screaming: I had found her. She could watch over us.

  She wasn’t all that came with the rations—there was a new drink: Antee-Freeze. This was the new booze, Casio had announced it. It smelled sweet. That night would be a casino night.

  I changed into a newly-made green silken dress whilst the stone woman watched me with her stern eyes. I stared back, trying to sense if she approved, or even if she knew about my strange memories from so many different lives. Either way, she was keeping her thoughts to herself. Frederick ignored her entirely.

  The casino night was cool and dry, though my armpits were warm and wet, and I wanted to shake my soft green dress to let the air in. Instead I walked without moving my legs too far apart, wondering what the booze would taste like this time. There was a rapid chatter—not only had it been a long while, but some had said it might be the last time at the casino, that booze should be saved for weddings. There were still some unmarried, and they would be the real cause for celebration. I didn’t hea
r anyone disagree.

  Jay was actually sober. There had been a large amount of juice with the rations and, he said, the booze would be better with it, it was obviously strong. Try not to drink too much of the juice, he said, there’d be little enough left for the minors, and none for the moderates—they would have to drink it neat. Ketamine stood by his side, her arm in his.

  People were placed in pairs. It had been dark early the evening before, but that night the clouds were only starting to darken as we gathered two-two-two. The lessons may have stopped, but I was still the centre of attention. They were happy, they told me with their looks. Each was happier than the other, and they could prove it.

  Jay was busy slinging back his head and draining the Antee-Freeze down his throat. He retched and tilted his head back again. He didn’t offer any to his wife. A man with curled hair grabbed at his collar and held up his glass, which was already half-filled with juice. A bottle was thrust into my hand and Frederick took it from me, carelessly slopping pineapple liquid into my glass.

  Jay began his journey step and semi-stepping around, weaving between chairs with women sat perfectly cross-legged and men poised anxiously, holding up their glasses.

  I only got a small splash of the booze, and I was going to complain before I composed myself. If anyone should complain for me it should be Frederick, and he hadn’t noticed, he was busy rubbing his knee and telling me how it ached. I raised the glass to my mouth and stabbed at it with my tongue. It was sweet, sticky and sweet.

  “Pace yourself dear, you don’t want to look unwomanly,” Tie uttered, his voice a wet whisper. He was making fun, but he was right. The other women were sipping theirs, watching with unheard envy as their husbands gulped from their glasses and held them up for more.

  Jay made his rounds and staggered out of the tent, Ketamine following behind. They were greeted by a roar of applause from the minors. He had left us with most of the juice, but had taken a little for the minors as well. Dice appeared, green mats were laid and cards were strewn about between us. Frederick placed our spare rations—which were better than the others—into the middle of the group. The tent was grand, with enough room to lie down if I wanted. One or two of the men did, or rested on their elbows. One or two wives glanced over at me, wanting to know if it was acceptable, but I kept my eyes lowered.