Fusion

by Kate Richards

  ‘Wow!’ says Wren, grinning, clapping.

  Christ, guitar in one hand, arms out wide, bows to us, the smile on her face the widest and best we’ve ever seen.

  Silence for a moment.

  Then we nod.

  And we grin wide and say, ‘Memory

  o!

  muscle memory – we read about it

  in the book of nerves, it’s a kind of memory laid deep in your muscles and bones

  yes

  so you can do things you’ve practised time and time before like a reflex

  yes a reflex.’

  Wren says, ‘Doesn’t matter. Keep singing.’ And she does –

  The water is wide, I cannot go over

  Neither have I wings to fly

  Give me a boat that can carry two

  And both shall row, my love and I

  A ship there is and she sails the sea

  She’s loaded deep as deep can be

  But not so deep as the love I’m in

  I know not if I sink or swim

  The water is wide, I cannot go over

  Neither have I wings to fly

  Then she stops and says, ‘Dance with me.’ Her eyes are closed. A tremor moves through the whole of Wren’s body and he stands up, flushed, but Christ, when she opens her eyes, is looking straight at us. ‘Come and dance.’

  We say, ‘O no

  no, we don’t dance.’

  ‘Course you can,’ says Christ, ‘if I can – with one and a bit legs.’

  Breathe. The smile in her eyes like the song.

  We say, ‘No – thanks but no

  no.’

  Christ is still and the air hangs and then she shrugs her shoulders and plays some more, the same chords and a new chord and she gives Wren the guitar and shows him how to fingerpick a chord instead of strumming it and then she takes it back and plays us a ‘chord progression’ and we hear the shift from something comfortable and cheery, ‘D major,’ she says, ‘then D minor, A, F-sharp major, B minor, E major, A.’ And so it ends with sorrow ringing right through, catching hold of something deep and painful inside us.

  ‘Another song!’ says Wren.

  In our whole life we’ve heard very little music, apart from our own attempts at singing ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot’. Music frightens us – its power unleashes things in us, emotions we didn’t know we had – longing, for one. Yearning. Hymns sung on Sundays in the Hope Home chapel unstrung us and made us shivery and we cried unbidden, though we learned quickly to grit our teeth and we would stand at the back of the chapel and interlace our fingers – they went from dark red to blue and then white and we only let go when the hymns were over and we were allowed outside again and our fingers were quite numb and branded nearly through to the bone.

  After the guitar and all the singing and the words of the song going round in our heads there’s no chance of sleep, so we go to the kitchen to find something to do with our hands. Light a kerosene lamp and half-fill a jug of water, add a sachet of wine yeast and some sugar and the juice of a lemon and stir everything together and set it aside for the night till the yeast awakens.

  Quince skins are downy-soft and they smell like the citrus perfume on the neck of a woman we once passed in a town. Underneath the skin, the raw fruit is hard and sour, but if the quinces are baked or stewed you can taste the fragrance and their colour changes from a lemon-green to one unlike any other fruit – we call it translucentpinkygold.

  Quinces grew in Persia – this we learned from our second-hand encyclopaedia. They grew all through the Middle East and along the Mediterranean and the Romans called them golden apples. The tree of knowledge in the Garden of Eden was quite possibly a quince tree.

  From our quinces, we make wine and liqueur. Once bottled, the wine needs storing for at least a year, though three years or four are better. We keep a bottle or two for ourselves and Wren sells the rest to Sammy Whistle for the farmers’ markets. Apple liqueur and apricot sell much better but we didn’t get enough fruit this summer.

  Tiptoeing back to our room, we look in on Christ. She’s lying on the couch. The living room is alive when she is in it. Flickering light from the moon everywhere as clouds cross under it and pass on. Warmth and soft and flickering. All of our blood, the flush and heat and the beat first thing in the morning. She looks up from her book – our book – of Pablo Picasso’s drawings.

  ‘Only we wondered

  wondered

  going to pick the quinces for wine and if umm

  if you

  would – like to come.’ Us coughing, flushing.

  She frowns and puts the book on the floor and her hair long and straight and brushed and gold and the glow in her eyes and she says, ‘Would I like to?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Come quincing.’

  ‘Quincing?’

  ‘First to pick them. Not too far. By the apples. But only if you want to only if you—’

  ‘Yes. I do.’

  We help her up and go out together, Christ using the crutch Wren made for her under her left arm and our left arm under her right and our shirt slipping off her shoulder.

  Quince trees are squat – short with broad limbs and lots of fruit hanging from an easy-picking height. We spread a blanket on the grass and Christ settles on it with both legs out straight. To begin we make a little pile of quinces next to her hip and show her how to rub the downy fur off the skin and she puts them one by one into the woodbox Wren has left us. The woodbox reminds us of him and of last night and the words to the song Christ sang and the dancing and how happy Wren was, how alive and how whenever he looked at Christ, he lit up even more – he shone. We don’t know how to feel about it at all.

  ‘Are your eyes different colours?’ asks Christ, suddenly.

  ‘Blue, greenblue

  greenblue and green

  eyes see differently.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘If we close three eyes and look at a flower with our blue eye, it’s different

  different shade and light and sheen

  from if we see it with our green eye

  but then

  but then

  we all see colours and shapes differently

  quite possibly

  yes

  we mean, quite possibly your red isn’t our red

  mmm

  it’s not just what we see but how we see that matters, see?

  the light within as well as without.’

  ‘Oh,’ she says.

  That’s all. Just o.

  So we go on picking quinces and when the box is full, we say, ‘We can go in now if you’d like.’

  Christ doesn’t move.

  ‘Are you coming?

  we’ll teach you – to turn fruit and water into wine

  if you’d like.’

  ‘No. You go. I’ll stay here awhile.’

  It is usually meditative, the peeling and coring and shredding of the quinces before they go into the saucepan for stewing. At the side of the house we get more wood for the wood stove so the quinces can cook until they’re deepest darkest pink – the colour of ruby with the sun shining through. We will not go to our room while they’re cooking to look at her through the window. We will sit at the kitchen table and read and her face will not be glimmering in front of the words on the page.

  Once the quinces are cooked we mash them up with chopped raisins and sugar and we mash and mash and mash and mash and mash and mash and mash and mash and mash and mash and mash and mash and mash and mash and mash and mash.

  It’ll be three months before we’ll know if this batch is any good, if the yeast has the right amount of sugar for fermentation but not too much so it spoils, if there’s enough acidity from the lemon juice, if, provided Wren racks it often enough, the colour shines through the bottle bright and clear, if it’s true that we can turn fruit and water into wine. Christ limps into the kitchen with Wren’s homemade crutch supporting her left side just as
we tip the whole lot into a wooden barrel. The perfume steams up and over us to fill the room. She looks at us and nods and we smile our double-smile and it does feel good and our breath returns to a regular in-out-in. What is it about an aroma of warmth and perfume that soaks us and floods us with memories that are generational? Is it the magic of imagination expanding through centuries of living? Our learning adding to our ancestors’ collective unconscious? Standing here in the kitchen next to Christ – with her face changing and her eyes softening, opening up, boundless, luminous, and our hands and her hands warm and perfumed together – is the stillness around us breaking time.

  ‘Listen – a song in the rain

  shall we

  walk then, listen

  feel it, yes, on our skin

  careful through the tussock grass or the bog will get us

  stop!’

  Heads back, eyes to the sky, wind singing, love love and rain answering, love love. Air full of water. Bite down. Open mouths, tongues, wet. Mouthing, laughing, rain spinning on our skin. Us.

  Later—

  ‘Dancing, phhtt!

  mmm

  if we had one mind then maybe. But we are so much more – it isn’t straight away easy

  it’s just dancing

  and our own kind of neuro – neuro-plastic-something. Four eyes and four ears and two whole minds for gathering ideas but only two arms and two legs to act on it all, right? Such a fragile balance, yes, the sharing of skin. Our equilibrium. So delicate. How long did it take us to learn? All those years of pain. We got strong for a reason. Remember? And the mystery, yes, the mystery of our brainwaves humming at the same frequency. All the things we’ve learned to do together are perfect. This is why we must be careful. No-one understands us except us. This is why we must be careful. Otherwise we’ll end up in Hope Home or someplace even worse and they’ll hold us down and inject us and experiment on us because they’ll say we’re Spawn of the Devil and it’s a miracle we are still alive and then when they are finished with the experiments, they’ll operate on us, they’ll try to break us apart like our mother was broken, they’ll rip us open and spill our blood and they won’t care

  of course they won’t care, Sea, we know that. This is different – what if – if we—

  yes?

  had a friend.’

  The very, very, very cold.

  Blue fingers, blue toes.

  Hearts a myriad of thrumming.

  ‘We have us and we need no other

  forget about it then

  but Serene – we never forget.’

  And we are in the dark now. Echo the dark. See rain in the dark, see dark through the rain. Leaning forward just the right amount, our fingers feeling for a hold on the mountainside. Gasping, the cold air giddy in our lungs. Find a cavern in the rock face. Kneel. Soft here, warm here. Quiet so as not to wake the ancestral spirits. Hold hands and smile, together forever for always and forever, amen. Lick rain from our lips, brush it from our eyes, hear a water-song in the rain and smell it too.

  ‘Yes?

  yes.’

  Christ is in the kitchen making coffee and all round her and on the table and all over the floor are quince peelings and chopped raisins and brown sugar and the whole house smells of warm things fermenting like we imagine the inside of a bakery or a winery or a perfumery might smell.

  ‘Sea, do you want coffee?’

  Nod, smile.

  ‘Serene?’

  Nod, smile. Sit down at the table and pull a pile of books closer.

  Christ says, ‘So like … help me out here – how do you two decide who decides?’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘How do you decide what to do, where to go, when to sleep?’

  ‘We do.’

  ‘Taking turns?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But – you’re not – you’re not – the same – I mean – how do you figure – what you want. You’re two. You’re two different people. Sharing – a lot – I mean – almost everything, sure. But – so – you must disagree sometimes, right? That’s how we know who we are. It’s human nature.’

  ‘Before we were born everything grew entwined in us that wasn’t already fused solid. Our lifeblood is the same. After we were born we entwined even more. En-twin-ed. Our thoughts are the same thoughts hence our choices are too and our choices become the things we do. We grew one mind, see?

  one

  one mind

  double.’

  Now to find our hands under the table and hold the trembling in them tight, press our thighs together to keep our feet still.

  ‘Hang on a minute,’ says Christ. ‘No-one knows another person’s thoughts, not really, or feels the same feeling at the same time or hates all the same food or falls in love the same or even – cares about the same things the most. No-one. Unless, I don’t know, they’re trapped in a cult and brainwashed.’

  ‘Don’t – no—

  don’t understand what you mean

  yes – no – it’s not like that.’

  ‘Tell me what it’s like then.’

  ‘We’re not crazy

  no not.’

  ‘I never said you were crazy.’

  ‘Or in a cult or brainwashed

  no

  see, once we fused our thinking

  all our

  feelings

  feelings followed.’

  Christ tips her head to the side like a bird considering the call of another bird. She says, ‘Doesn’t feeling come first and thinking follow?’

  ‘No

  no no no

  the mind is the

  most mysterious thing on earth

  no-one knows

  we don’t know exactly how

  we can only wonder

  why does thinking have to be linear?

  we think

  feel in

  in four dimensions

  yes

  so

  anything is possible

  anything

  have courage enough

  hold on as hard as you can

  don’t give up no matter

  how long

  no matter how long

  even lifelong

  one heart, one desire, one being

  is us – et cetera.’ Glee shiny pink in our faces.

  We smile (our special double-smile).

  Christ doesn’t smile.

  Now to find our hands under the table and hold the trembling in them tight, press our thighs together till they hurt and hold tight to the tears flaring behind our eyes lest they fall. She puts two cups of coffee on the table before us and sits down opposite and there is no dawning comprehension in her deep-as-a-sky eyes and she aims them left and right into our eyes two at a time, back and forth, and she says, ‘I don’t believe either of you.’

  Now that her leg is healing so well, she can get around without our help, but she still has night terrors during which she crawls into the hallway in her sleep, restless and wraithlike, searching for something without a place or someone without a name, and we find her there on the floor in the morning – goosebumped, confused. Whenever she’s very drunk she has flashbacks too, and these times she curls into herself on the couch, rambling about he and him and you and sometimes she curses him and growls, you bastard rot in hell, and sometimes she rocks back and forth, crying for him, murky and muffled, shivering and a little wild, here here hold me shhh shhhhhhhh I love you it’s all right I love you hush now. We’re troubled that she doesn’t have any recollection of these incidents by morning and we don’t know how to speak about them with her – we’re scared even to begin.

  These late autumn evenings we all like to sit by the outside fire on old tree stumps worn smooth from our backsides and share a slab of cheese Wren swapped for some weed in town, and the oatmeal biscuits we try to make but don’t ever seem to bake quite right and a bottle of Wren’s twenty-per-cent apple liqueur from two or three years ago. We let the earth turn us round. Before language and beyo
nd language are things like the mesmerisation of fire, the dark sky and the Milky Way – a firmament hung above us – a vast, unknowable aura. There are no words for these things and they have no need of words. We are quiet and still while the earth turns us round.

  Burning. Shadows coming towards us and then slipping away. No words. Listening to the infinite deep. Still. Flames in our eyes, burning, shining.

  Christ says, ‘I hate the dark.’

  We shiver. ‘O

  but

  the Dark is a forever friend

  forever, for all these many years the Dark is our best friend

  if you trust

  instead of resisting

  trust, surrender

  let your eyes relax into its rhythm, let go

  let all the rest of you follow

  the Dark covers you like the softest cloak and keeps you safe

  it doesn’t matter who you are or what you look like

  the Dark finds the truth in you

  but it doesn’t judge

  the Dark hears your voice and knows your fear but it doesn’t judge

  the Dark gives refuge to everyone who needs refuge

  free in the Dark

  free.’

  We sit for a long time seeing each other in the firelight but not seeing. Spinning with the world and dying but not knowing we are spinning. Together – yet.

  Quiet.

  Then Wren says, ‘Out here in the night, well, sometimes this rush, rush of air and this rustle of things in the beyond and um you’re pretty much blind to your body and the ground but – when you look up—’

  ‘The stars!

  the stars.’

  ‘They’re cold though, aren’t they? Cold light,’ says Christ.

  ‘Memory – so many millions of years of memory

  mmm

  look up, see something new

  mmm

  and the stars speak

  we listen

  we hear them

  telling us our place in the world

  our place is small

  mmm how very very small we are in the world.’

  We sit for a long time. Christ has Karma’s guitar. Though she doesn’t know her own name, she remembers how to tune it and she plays us a gentle fingerpicking folk song. We listen and let the earth turn us round. Then she has another swig of the apple wine and begins to sing – about old friends, about giving everything away and not knowing much about life – and though we don’t know the song or anything about music, the way Christ plays we feel the heart in it and the warmth and we can’t help smiling and the colour and the soul and the beauty in her voice carry us carry us carry us and little currents run from our lower back all the way up our spine to our scalps and then down our arms to our fingertips. Wren nods in time and we can tell he’s trying to sing along, mouthing the words though his lips hardly move.