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Can hear it gathering in the mountains. Oddly numb. More words. Dark amassing
clouds for crowns. Still breathing. A certain darkness at the summit. Rudolph. Riduff.
Rid of.
That is you crying, I believe. Comforting words from the lieutenant. I am still trying
to speak because there must be things to be said. I think my eyes are open, though not
because I believe I can see anything. I think I can see. I would certainly like to.
Aware of many people. The room seems very red, as though observed through a mist
of blood. You on the bed, huddled, being held; tended. Plaster on the floor, blood dark
upon the bed. The lieutenant, sitting on the bed, pulling on a boot. Hissing light, some
old gas powered thing. There is a rug beneath me, soft soaking. Voice I recognise; a
servant's, shouting, imploring, a room away, then hurried discussion, orders given and
more shouts, the servant's voice protesting, quieting, going, disappearing. The storm
is still coming though; its roar is loud against the castle's hollow walls.
I am wondering who screamed. Was it you, my dear, or her? Or me, perhaps? For
some reason it seems important just now, this knowledge of who it was who
screamed, but I know only that somebody did. I can remember that scream, recall its
sound, play it back inside my head even over the roar of the storm, but from that
memory it could have been any one of the three of us. Perhaps it was all of us at once.
No.
' ot here!' a voice says. But whose?
An aftermath dark roar consumes me. Now is the storm come. The thing I hear last is,
'Not here, not here. Not '
Chapter 17
Castle, I was born in you. Now again you see me like a helpless child carried through
your devastated C halls. By the same litter that displaced our shell I am conveyed past
the soldiery, their temporary conquests and our servants, all standing gawking. The
debris I walked amongst and the sleeping forms I passed, alone animate, solely erect
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r r
and balanced, scornful of their noisy lethargy only minutes ago, now drunkenly
witness my expulsion, swept out impotent and disarmed. A candle apiece, that
congregation watches me, like some annual virgin paraded in her garish tawdriness
through the usual pious squalor.
The lieutenant spreads her arms as she strides past, forcing on her jacket. She quiets
the crowd, telling them to go back to their beds, squeezing past me and my bearers,
adjusting her collar as we tip downstairs. Blood rush to head. No, no, an accident.
Help will be found. Know where there's a medic, found the other day. The lady
wounded too but slightly. Both look worse than they are. To bed; get yourselves to
bed. Sleep on. All will be well.
Do I see another face, calm, pale but composed at the stairhead as we go clattering
down (white fingers on torn, dark wood, the other arm swaddled in bandages, cradled
to your milky breast)? I think I do, but then the steps, in flights, turn the sight and take
it from me.
The hall, level again. I see an armoured figure standing near the door, a black opera
coat around its shoulders. I make to touch its hem as we pass by, arm going out in
supplication, mouth working in the attempt to produce words. My arm flops down,
brushing the floor, knuckles hitting the door step, cracking over it as we step outside
and into the courtyard. The door is slammed on further enquiry. I hear boots running
across the cobbles, then shouts and cries.
Not the well again, I try to say. I am unwell, and not long welled up. Have pity.
(Perhaps I say it, I think, as they bundle me off the stretcher and drop me in the
footwell of a jeep. No no, not the jeep, I'll have no truck with that; I shall travel in the
van. They look at me strangely.) The bottom of the jeep smells of mud and oil.
Something cold and stiff is thrown across me, over all my body, cutting out what light
there is. The vehicle's suspension dips, words are muttered, a distant rattling noise is
overwhelmed as the engine cranks roaring into life and starts the steel beneath me
shaking.
Springs creak, air hisses; two heavy pairs of boots find footing on me, pinning my
head and knees. The engine coughs and revs, gears grind and then we jerk and jolt
away. The courtyard cobbles shake me, the passageway amplifies the engine's blare,
then we're outside, beyond the walls, arching over the bridge a few more shouts and
a single, flat shot and heading down the drive.
In my mind I try to follow our route, attempting to combine the map of memory with
the blind movements of the jeep; here my head is forced against the sill, here the
boots that rest upon me weigh more, or slip back, or slide forward. I thought I knew
the lands about here well, but I believe I lose the way before we even leave our
grounds. We turn left out of the drive, I think, but I am still confused. My head is
hurting, and my ribs. My hands, too, still ache, which seems unfair, as though their
wounds belong to a much earlier time, and ought by now to be long healed.
They mean to kill me. I think I heard them tell the servants they were taking me to a
doctor, but there is no doctor. I am not being taken to be helped, unless it's to be
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r r
helped to die. Whatever I was to them, I have now become nothing; not a man, not a
fellow human being, just something to be got rid of just stuff.
The lieutenant believes I wanted to kill her, or you, my dear, or both of you. Even if I
had the power of speech, there's nothing I could say to her that would not sound like a
sorry excuse, a hopelessly contrived story. I wanted to see; I was inquisitive, no more.
She had taken over our home, taken over you and yet still I did not resent, did not hate
her. I only wanted to watch, to have confirmed, to witness, to share the tiniest part of
your joy. The gun? The gun just presented itself, promiscuous in its very being, a
casual pick up, inviting the hand it's designed to fill and then in my damaged state,
stuck to it, stuck with it easier to retain than to abandon. I was leaving, you would
never have known I was there; luck, simple fate decreed my downfall.
Not here. Not here. Did you really say that? Is that what I truly heard? The words
echo in my head. Not here. Not here ...
So cold, my dear. The words, the meaning so matter of fact, so pragmatic sounding.
Did you too think I came like some covetous swain in a bitter rage to kill the two of
you? Has our shared life not taught you what and who I am? Have all our judicious
indiscretions, our widespread pleasurings and reciprocated liberties not convinced you
of my lack of jealousy by now?
Oh, that I should have injured you, that even now you nurse that wound, however
minor, at your breast, thinking that I meant it, and worse. That is what hurts, what
injures me. I wish I could take and suffer the wound I so carelessly inflicted. My
hands clench, beneath the stiff tarpaulin. It would seem that my hands have become
my eyes, and my heart; for they both weep, and ache.
The steel floor beneath me hums and judders, the tarpaulin ripples and beats , one
flapping corner continually tapping me on the shoulder like some manic boor trying to
attract my attention. The noise of air rushes all around, eddying and reverberating,
tearing and roaring, ferocious in its meaningless intensity and creating a calm more
determined than mere stillness could have pretended to. My head buzzes, infected
with all this resounding emptiness.
My right hand lies near my forehead; I find the control to move it closer, and the
tarpaulin shields the movement. I touch my temple, feeling wetness, the pain of raw,
scored flesh; a long, still slowly bleeding wound in a crease, a ridge along the side of
my head, extending from near my eye to past my ear. The blood drops from my brow. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]