A World of Darkness

by Michael Dissieux

  The man in grave words narrated about an unforgiveable attack on the entire Western world, bemoaned deeply the misery of the people in Europe and condoled with them. There was no way one would put up with such a barbaric, scornful act against human dignity and civilization without proper counteractions. It had been too long that he as well as his predecessors in charge and their European colleagues had bowed to the rebellious behaviour of the Arabic countries and their religious ideas plus their political aims in the world. This policy of tolerance from now on had to come to an end. I can’t remember the exact words out of the president’s speech, but I still know that he had been talking about proper retaliatory actions and about that these were to happen soon. The USA and Europe would join and gather all their military power to let justice win the day and send the East into its boundaries. He never spoke of war – he never used the word.

  And after all it never came to a war …

  To my left side the drive up to the Miller’s house comes out of the dull morning light. Two old timber poles flank the way. Their black, weather-beaten colour resembles the blunt grey of dead skin.

  I stop the car at the roadside and startle when the monotonous squeaking of the auto body falls silent. It’s only the irregular rattle of the engine that breaks silence of the world. I suddenly become a weird part of this strange picture into that the hills and woods had changed.

  With my eyes narrowed to small slashes I look up the beaten sand path towards the small cabin, in which Cindy and Danny Miller have been living for about five years. They then had come from Los Angeles, searching for silence and inspiration for a book Danny wanted to write but as far as I know to date never finished. Cindy soon had found a job as a teacher in Devon, and the both of them got very involved with the little town’s church, for what old Father Morris was extremely grateful.

  I didn’t came across these two since the world has gone to the dogs.

  Only now I realize that for the last ten days I had been unconcerned about Danny and Cindy. That’s another aspect of human nature. In times of crisis one actually seems to care only for one’s own interests.

  “Everyone looks to himself first”, is not only a mere phrase. The way to the hut is covered by leaves. The bushes standing to both its sides look numb and cold. The screen door stands ajar, slowly swaying in the wind. As I am winding down the window of my Pick-up I can hear the hinges vibrate lowly. That’s the loneliest sound I heard in all my life.

  Nothing moves.

  I try to recognize whether the door behind the screen is closed, but the air is damp and the rain that had fallen during the night as a slight haze is rising from the front garden, so that the door is concealed. Perhaps I should take me some time and walk the sand path up to the hut? Just like I had done countless times before, when Cindy had invited me to relieve her of some of her home grown vegetables. She never had wanted me to pay for it but insisted on me preparing Sarah a hearty salad or a freshly pressed carrot juice – or something else of that kind instead.

  Most times I in return had brought Cindy some milk or a bottle of wine, which I had bought before at Murphy’s shop. It had always been my opinion that a good neighbourhood also meant to not brazen-faced take advantage of the good humour of such people. I don’t like the prospect that this morning I shall walk the way between the two rotten timber posts, shall breathe the air that seems to me strange and bad and at all shall remove myself from the security of my old car. Danny’s light blue Buick stands in front of the house, but the hut nevertheless looks abandoned. Perhaps the two of them had walked to town or dropped in to Murphy’s to buy ahead some food. Or they for days have been lying as dead corpses in their home, their pale bodies already beginning to decay …

  I close my eyes and shake my head. It isn’t difficult for me to get used to the modified circumstances while I’m in the security of my own house, with Sarah close to me, as grotesque that might sound. But in the middle of the street, smack in the middle of a world taken by something that the human mind isn’t able to conceive these thoughts squeeze all my breath out of me. Am I really going to lose my brain?

  I would certainly find Cindy and Danny in Murphy’s old fashioned little shop. Perhaps we over a good cup of coffee would even be able to restore the old system of things.

  Why is Danny’s car standing in front of the house …?

  I wind up the window and feel glad as the engine’s metallic clatter dies down to a low hum. Why did Danny not use the Buick to drive to Murphy’s …?

  Should I against my expectations not come across the both of them in the little shop I on my way back home would stop here again to look to the right. But this thought doesn’t soothe me as much as I hoped.

  The house looks strange and as it was far away. It just looks as if it had been uninhabited for a long time and as if it had never housed friends of ours. But I can’t manage to get out of the car and walk up the way. My legs begin to shake even when I only think of it.

  With a feeling inside my stomach, which makes me feel ashamed and in addition to that makes the day seem to be even a bit duller, I gang with a creak and continue my way down towards Devon. Just two more miles and I will have reached Murphy’s. And being there I hope for everything to be well again.

  Nobody walks two miles if he got a car standing ready to use in front of his door …

  But besides being ashamed I am also sure that nothing will ever be well again …

  “Harv, please stop here.”

  Sarah laid her hand onto my thigh and kneaded it gently. That was a touch, which even after five years could make my emotions run riot. I tardily slowed down the Impala at the roadside and put out the engine. The same instant we were enclosed by a hillside silence, which one probably wouldn’t be able to find nowhere else on earth. The only sound to hear was the low voice of the amazing Karen Carpenter out of the radio that accompanied us. I leaned to Sarah and took her hand into mine.

  “Isn’t that wonderful” she whispered, looking out of the front shield with her eyes shining.

  We both had leaned a bit forward inside our seats for being able to admire the matchless sight of a hillside sunset. The world outside my old Chevy was immerged into a golden brightness giving the air a delicate haze. Above the treetops of a nearby fir forest one could see a faint glow that extended downhill till Devon like honey floating down the hill. I peaked at Sarah who was just sitting there, holding on to my hand and marvelling the sunset.

  We had been living for four years here in the hillside above Devon. I had built his first house we had together according to our own ideas offside the road. For us nothing else had ever come into question. Neither of us could take to the hustle and bustle of any city, because we had both grown up in the countryside and knew very well the smells and sounds of a flock of cows being walked down the country road towards its meadow in the morning.

  When we four years ago had been searching for a place to call our own, Devon had been our first choice. The prizes were low, the surrounding nearly perfect.

  As time went by I had got used to the indescribable manifestations of nature that could be seen here in the hillside. But to Sarah each day seemed to have something new to explore. Even a sunset like the ones we had been marvelling dozens of times from our porch or from my Impala always held some new colours and smells for her.

  Her eyes gleamed like the eyes of a child at gift giving on a Christmas morning. That was the reason why – if I only had Sarah at my side – the hills had always resembled even me to be of a shining beauty. She used to give me some of her childlike joy and her ability to see things that were banal to everyone else. This is why I still loved her just the way I had at our first day and even then had been sure that this feeling would never die away. Not even in forty years to come.

  “Do you think it’s all by the purpose of God?” she asked looking at me.

  “What do you mean?”

  She pointed her arm onto the entire wind shield.

  “Look,
I think nothing on earth could be more beautiful. Perhaps that’s how God tries to tell us that not all is bad. That there also are moments in life, in which all that counts is a sunset, with all the evil on earth fading at the edges of our sight field.” The expression on Sarah’s face became grave. “I wonder if we would be able to enjoy the sunset in the same way if we were in living in town.” She again looked at me and I recognized that she was absolutely serious about this question.

  This was one of the moments in life, in which a man could only say the wrong. But I was in the enviable situation that I was feeling exactly the same as Sarah. That’s why we had got together five years ago. And that’s why I absolutely understand what her question was suggesting.

  “No”, I said in a low voice, attracting her to me and holding her cheek to cheek. The last rays of sunlight began to bedazzle our eyes. The mountain tops beyond of Devon had got blown over by a reddish haze, which was slowly creeping down the hills. “I don’t think that there even are sunsets in town. Towns are grey. Where from should one take such a lot of colours? Besides…” I attracted Sarah even closer, touched her chin with my fingertips and turned her face to me. As she looked at me I could see that her eyes were shining just the way they were, when she had been watching the sunset before. “In addition to that people in town wouldn’t be able to see the sunset at all. It’s because in town they don’t have a Sarah to show it to them.”

  She smiled and I kissed her. “You’re just one-of-a-kind and you are here with me.”

  Memories can be the most terrible feelings to have.

  I shake my head to get my thoughts clear. The memories of Sarah and the times we had been sharing raid me like a lurking beast, ambushing me suddenly and unexpectedly out of the shadows of the woods. Each time I drive the way to Devon or to Murphy’s shop I’m made to think of incidents that after all those years had nearly fallen in oblivion. I often addict myself to them, because these thoughts now are my only possibility to get a bit closer to my wife and to cuddle up to her – and might it just be for the time a ride takes. Waking out of these unpayable dreams always hurts me. But in these days, in which the world makes every location that had ever remembered me of Sarah a dark, foul spot, even the memory itself hurts.

  While normally Sarah is the last visualization of my memories and I even see her sit beside me in the car for some minutes, today the greyness of the new day brutally snatches her visage from me.

  I am on my own, driving through a country that now seems to be inhabited by me alone. I keep my eyes bullheadedly fixed onto the grey and torn street belt. The steady buzzing of the infirm engine and the protesting squeak that escapes the car body whenever I drive through a pot-hole or over branches fill my mind like swarming insects. They seem to mock me with their chirping and babbling, eating up the rims of my mind and making the hills look like dark outgrowths.

  Although it’s early in the morning the day is wrapped into dark shadows. The mountains and fields besides the street duck beneath the grey clouds that seem to hang deeper than they had done at other days. Perhaps the sky is really falling onto earth, in doing so erasing every trace of life, I think, looking over to the passenger’s seat. My right hand touches the worn to threads cushion, whose seams already burst open. I can’t even preserve Sarah’s visage like had been storing it inside my memory. The place beside me is empty; its cushion is just as cold as everything else that surrounds me. My hand instinctively searches its way to the radio. Just as I want to switch it on, and might it be only to hear some random and whistling noises coming from it, to my left side appears the departure leading to Murphy’s shop. The sight of the narrow asphalt street, which curls down between two high grown hedges towards the hut, tears me out of my thoughts. I brake much too abruptly, so that the car comes to a halt with a rocking motion of its wheels. The gun slips completely into the shadows of the leg area, the torch following it with a rumble.

  I stare with squinted eyes at the narrow street that leads down to a small parking lot. Murphy’s old Ford stands directly in front of the timber stairs leading up to the shop. Brown leaves swirl lazily throughout the site, which apart from that is empty. The stair that leads up to the shop is covered by the brittle branches that the wind had ruptured from the birch trees, which surround the hut with their deep shadows. The door is closed and the two big windows besides the entrance are nailed up with large wooden panels.

  This sight lets me lose my hope on having a chat with Murphy and at the same time makes me aware of what a fool I had been to come here at all. At home there is Sarah, lying all alone in her bed; and she surely needs me more desperately than old Murphy, who never had made great demands on the help of other people.

  Some say he was a queer odd fellow, whom it was best not to tangle with. Most people come to him just for the shopping purpose. Only very few people stay a bit longer to have a little chat with Murphy. I must concede to the people, who don’t want to deal more than necessary with Murphy, because if one concerns oneself a bit closer with the old man one soon learns that he got his very own sight on life and isn’t especially fond of his fellow men. But people, who – like me – got to know Murphy for more than forty years also know what made him such a crab. Because I don’t think that it is his fellow men, which he tries to avoid, but that it’s rather that he broke his believe with God. I for my part had known Audrey very well, appreciating her as if I had known her for all my life. She had been a charming, quiet person and her heart had been the greatest and kindest heart one could ever imagine. I am very ashamed to confess that I sometimes had thought if I hadn’t met my Sarah, I surely would have liked to have someone like Audrey at my side. I indeed never shared these thoughts with anyone, neither with Murphy nor with Sarah. They wouldn’t have managed to do anything from it. Murphy’s love for Audrey had been boundless. He once confided me that his only reason to found the shop had been to give his wife a better life as the one he could have provided her if he had kept on working as an ordinary dispatch rider. He wanted Audrey to be happy and had done everything for reaching it.

  In past years the four of us had often drove to Devon for a dance or to eat out; or we had enjoyed ourselves at the biannual fair that used to take place at the foot of the hills. That had been happy-go-lucky moments, in which only to see our wives laughing and babbling had been a great enjoyment to us.

  Murphy had been different then. I can’t tell precisely in which way. Perhaps he then had been more forthright, his head being not so full of crazy ideas about God and how he was trying to make life miserable for his creatures. Most of all he hadn’t known deeply felt pain and burning grief then. We both hadn’t. His life with Audrey and his little shop had always resembled him a blooming meadow, whose grass was gently moving in the wind and which was always lighted by a sun that made the dew on it sparkle. He never thought that someday night could fall over this meadow. Why on earth should he have done so? Murphy and I had been two fools in love who had hit the jackpot of their lives. No wonder that we hadn’t admitted dark thoughts to our minds then. Yet one day fate had had been ready to deal Murphy an extreme blow; because one can’t be happy without some day paying for it. And Murphy had to pay damn. It has been nearly eight years now that he one evening had come into the shop to find Audrey behind the cash box, dead, with cricked limbs and a wound at her forehead that had had the size of a child’s fist.

  Someone had knocked her down, in doing so having used one of the big candy bowls. The cash box had been open, red and yellow candies being scattered all over the floor and Audrey’s blouse. Almost all of the cigarette packs had been lacking from the cigarette shelf. Audrey’s blind eyes had been staring up to the ceiling.

  When Murphy that evening had found her that way something in him had broken. He never again had become the man he had been before, which is a fact that I understand completely, for I know what Audrey had meant to my friend. Since then he often resembles me like a complete stranger. Murphy had withdrawn himself from everything an
d everybody, including even Sarah and me. Whenever Sarah had visited him in that time to look after him or simply to talk to him she came home frustrated. Even I, who still could call me Murphy’s best friend then, hadn’t really been able to relate to his grief or to tear down the wall of isolation behind which he had enclosed himself – and might it only have been a bit. We never drove to Dover again. Murphy became more and more of a loner, who often held his eyes set onto some distant prospect and never spoke more than absolutely necessary. Thinking about all of this now, I believe that back then Sarah and I had been the only persons, with whom he once in a while still had a cup of tea after finishing the shopping at his store. But he didn’t speak much then. He answered our questions or talked about one or another pettiness. We all the three of us avoided to speak about Audrey.

  Later on, when Sarah hadn’t still been to accompany me to the shop, Murphy had addressed himself a bit more to me, though never opening up more than he himself had wanted to. Perhaps he only had only done so because he had been able to sympathize with me. He only knew too well how it felt to lose the most important person one had in life; how it felt when the sunshine over the blooming meadow suddenly became overcast by dark clouds.

  That time we had become something like friends again. Although this friendship wasn’t been as deep as it had been to the time when we had visited the fairs in Devon, when the sparkling lights of it had been mirroring themselves inside our amorous eyes, but it nevertheless was deep enough that I could confide my pain to Murphy and that he listened without embarrassedly looking away.

  That is what I’m reminded of when looking at the hollow parking lot in front of the shop. His Ford looks as if it hadn’t been moved for days. Around its tires has centered a high heap of leaves; which are almost tenderly dancing on the blowy rubber.