by Ian Orti
Henry squinted his eyes trying to focus on the shapes, which were slowly coming into view behind the marching people. Impossible, he thought. He squinted his eyes tightly to correct what he had seen but nothing changed; they were still there.
Mammoths.
Enormous impossibilities marching towards them one large impossible step at a time: elaborately decorated, fully tusked, long-haired mammoths. How many he couldn’t tell, but they were in rows of two, surrounded on either side by the people of the city. Their bodies swayed with each imposing step. Henry searched people’s faces for some explanation or at least a sign of terror, but he found neither.
Henry pulled L by the arm. “We have to get off the street or we’ll be crushed.”
“Aren’t they beautiful?”
Henry and L walked back to the café. He wasn’t sure if she’d seen what he had or if he was slipping into madness. No one seemed alarmed except for him. If he mentioned the mammoths and L had no idea what he was talking about, his madness would be confirmed. It was best to keep his mouth closed.
They decided to go to L’s flat. From there they would watch the never-ending procession. Besides, Henry wanted a close view of these prehistoric beasts as they passed. L took Henry’s hand and pulled him sideways. They lifted their joined hands above the head of a child walking between them and then huddled close together to duck beneath a giant banner. The door was at the next block and gradually, against the progression, they made it step by step until they finally reached the alley. But the passage was blocked, obstructed by a large snowdrift from the storm, so they walked to the front to enter. L pushed the door open. Once inside, Henry locked the door behind him. L took him by the arm and pulled him to the back of the café towards her flat.
There was a knock on the window.
Henry assumed it was one of the thousands of people walking past, and kept walking. It was L who turned to see who was knocking and it was L’s expression that struck Henry.
She was consumed with horror.
Her eyes widened. Her grip around his arm tightened. Her face, her legs, her arms, her entire body tensed. Henry turned to see the stranger. In his hand he waved a fistful of loose papers.
26
L LED HENRY UP THE BACK STAIRS as the front window shattered. Henry could hear the crunch of broken glass beneath the stranger’s feet as he pursued them.
Once inside her flat, L slammed the door. She slid the armoire in front of the door as heavy footsteps pounded on the stairs. The room was soon filled with the sound of the doorknob rattling and a fist against the door. L crouched against the armoire pressing her shoulder into it to keep the door from opening. Henry had never seen her sob this way. He had never seen anyone sob this way. It was uncontrollable.
Fear was devouring her.
Then the pounding stopped, and there was silence but for L’s restrained sobbing.
“What is it?” asked Henry.
“The other door!” she whispered. In the flat, the door that led to the café and the door that led outside faced each other with only a short distance between them. L moved to the bed, squeezed her fists around its frame and pulled it towards the other door. Henry pushed as she pulled, bracing the bed against the outside door, barricading them both inside. They crouched between the bed and the armoire, ready to add their weight to whichever side the stranger was about to enter. But there was no sound. Only silence. And it bore down on them like a train. They were two bodies tied to the same rails and neither could do a thing to free themselves.
“Do you smell that?” asked Henry. L shook her head. She could smell nothing. She could not possibly calm herself to a state that would allow her to process anything but the fear she was almost choking on. “It smells like a fire.”
Henry had smelled fires before; he had seen buildings burn and could remember with clarity the acrid smell and density of the fumes. This smell was different. It smelled simply of logs burning.
“There!” said L, pointing to the wall, terrified.
And there it was. On the wall behind where the armoire had stood, a small hole opened in the wall, encased by bricks slowly blackened by flames. There, logs sat inside, a grate protecting them, and brick by climbing brick, a chimney stretched up the wall until it reached the ceiling.
Crouched beside the bed, L sobbed into the blankets, squeezing the sheets in her fists as fire climbed the chimney.
“What’s happening?”
“The end,” said L.
“I don’t understand.”
“I wanted to leave...but couldn’t find a way. Then I thought I’d found a way, but now he’s changing everything back.”
The sound of footsteps on the iron stairs grew outside. Its ascension was slow, methodical. L rushed Henry into the bathroom. “I’ll tell him you left the other way,” she said. “He’s not here for you.” L pushed him into the bathroom, and when he opened his mouth to speak she covered it with her hand and whispered in his ear to stay inside.
Outside the frosted window in the bathroom the figure was visible. Henry crouched on the toilet as L slipped out the door. Henry pressed his hands over the doorknob, pressing down slowly to peer inside the room. When he looked L was standing between the two doors. She tried to restrain the flood that was flowing from her eyes. She turned the locks on the door and fastened the chain. But the door crumbled and the locks fell with it.
“Going somewhere?” asked the stranger as he climbed inside. “Did you think I wouldn’t find you?”
From the bathroom Henry could only hear distorted voices, could see her crawling away from him, urging him to leave, but by the tone of his voice, his hunched shoulders and tightened fists, he knew the stranger was not above putting a fist through her demands and crushing her pleas with the weight of his body. With eyes closed firmly and a knot tightening in his chest, Henry dreamt of stabbing him, of gutting him, until silently his anger and his own two feet brought him closer to his ends. He crept behind the stranger who stood over L. As darkness broke beneath the cover of her eyes, as her irises expanded, she saw Henry standing behind the stranger with a pair of steel sheers in his hands, hoisted above his head. The stranger tightened his lips, turned around and caught Henry’s arms in his, then shoved Henry backwards. Henry’s legs twisted as he fell. L rose to her feet, spit into the stranger’s face and he didn’t wait to wipe it before sending her to the floor next to Henry. “See what you make me do?” he screamed above her.
“What do you want?” said Henry. “Anything, I will give it to you.”
“What the fuck are these?” The stranger slapped Henry with his notes. “Where do you think I found these?”
“You found them,” said Henry. “You have what you want. Just go.”
“And where do you think I found them?” The stranger hammered each word into Henry’s frail body with the tread of his boot. Henry clutched his stomach, unable to move or find air. L rose from the floor and pounded her fist into the stranger and again the stranger tightened his lips, closed his fist and punched her in the face.
Henry turned to see L, bleeding on the floor.
For a moment all was silent as Henry stared at L, and she back at him. She knew what he was looking at, why he was looking at her that way, and for those few seconds it wasn’t about the violence or escape or a way out or retribution or a plan.
Her blood was black.
L rose to her feet again. Her face burned where she had been struck and her lips were swollen, but again she spit in the stranger’s face and it was her black blood that dripped from his eye. Frustration. Anger. He held the pages he’d been missing for so long, and as the stranger tore the most recent pages, pages L herself had written, throwing them into the fire, Henry turned his attention to the crowd outside, hoping someone might hear them or see them, hoping someone would come to their aid. His helplessness was marked by the pounding in his chest, the uncontrollable rhythm, which accelerated as the stranger’s temper
grew. But nothing happened, and no one saw him, as pages caught fire, and smoke filled the street and buildings sparked into flames.
L closed her eyes. The noise from the street below filled the small flat. Though she could hear loud cheering, and though just minutes ago she stood with that mass admiring its ferocity, she knew it would now drown out her own cries. She tried to approach but the stranger held the entire collection of notes over the fire.
She could feel her flesh burn.
She fell to the ground in tears as the stranger withdrew the notes from the flames and dropped them to the floor. He lifted Henry and held him against the wall beside the fireplace with the sheers to his throat. Both men looked at her as the sheers passed deep into Henry’s throat, and were slowly withdrawn. Henry slumped to the floor, choking, gargling on attempts to breathe or speak. L crawled to him. It took less than a minute for his lungs to fill with blood, for blood-slick hands to slide along the floor, for his teeth to become dyed as choking turned to silence. But it only took a single second for Henry to understand exactly who she was. She had arrived in his life completely soaked, and alone. Her lineage began at the first utterance of her character, and passed no further than the blank margins surrounding her. So she had left. Or at least tried. Delivered herself from the pages of her former self, moved nothing and touched nothing around her, had only stood before the window as rain slid along the pane casting a shadow in the room, which made the other books and stacks of paper in the study of a stranger appear as visceral as she herself now was. From across the road, she had seen his sleepy place. A room almost empty: a bed, an armoire, a lamp. She had left, taking nothing but the remains of her former self.
The stranger wiped his hands and turned to L as Henry’s vision faded and his breath finally settled to a full stop.
L pressed her face to Henry’s before she felt the stranger’s fist in her hair. Beside Henry lay the steel scissors, coated in his blood.
Revenge.
Destruction.
The words were sweet in her mouth. L took the scissors in her hand and lunged at the stranger but it was no use. He’d expected this and quickly lowered his fist into her chest. L dropped the scissors and felt her ribs crack beneath her skin as she fell to the floor between Henry and the fireplace. To be dead was one thing. To be alive and incapable of breath was a torture even the dead did not endure. She opened her mouth for air but could get none. Again the stranger took her by the hair and lifted her. If he had to drag her by the hair, he would drag her by the hair. L rose to her feet. He could hear her scream but knew this was not the scream to match the pain of being lifted by one’s hair nor the pain of broken ribs forced into action. It was far more severe.
She had reached into the fire.
Her palms seared as they cradled fistfuls of glowing coals, which she pressed into the stranger’s face. As he moved backwards she pursued, never letting go of the coals she held against his flesh. She pressed her feet into the floor, pushed until the stranger reached the top of the stairs and then fell backwards. She nearly fell with him but braced herself at the top against the railing, and now watched as his body rolled, then settled at the bottom of the stairs where he lay motionless. Again she reached for the scissors on the floor but she was unable to close her hands. So she reached for the pages on the floor instead and a thin stick of charcoal that had fallen from a tin cup on the armoire. With her feet she pushed the blankets and sheets from the bed into the fireplace.
Outside, sleet and smoke. Inside, Henry’s extended arm, the sound of footsteps and the echo of the iron stairs outside.
27
WHEN WORD REACHES HENRY’S WIFE that he has been found dead she will react as those around her will. Her face will mirror theirs. She will be strong and reason that the only way to overcome the pain is to eliminate the memory. Form new ones to replace the old. She will say it reminds her too much of him, sell their home and move into a new one, something smaller, something closer to the city centre, something easier to manage. Her colleagues will console her, offer her a bed to sleep in until the things are moved out of her old house. In hot baths, with wine glasses balanced on each other’s limbs, they will talk about rising crime rates, immigration and the weather. Inside, she won’t allow herself to be torn anymore. She has watched what she perceived to be the gradual declination of her husband’s mental faculties, listened in denial to his telling, his retelling of the same stories. She has listened silently over dinners, with a knot that grew in her throat like a tumour, to Henry’s accounts of days, of events recalled with such clarity that she was unable to tell, and unable to ask, if they were events which had passed in a time before her or if his mind had conjured up these images the way a desert offers images to the lost.
After a time, after that knot had found permanent residence in her throat, she decided that Henry’s real life had become his own mirage. His mind was comprised not of sand or rolling dunes but walls of iron and bricks, grey hues and streets with no end and no beginning, which tightened around the city, around his mind and around her neck. If her existence had grown into his hallucination consisting of periodic episodes which arrived with no cause and no forewarning, then so too had her own substance waned with each passing episode. She had grown angry, because her anger was easier to manage. Easier than the pain of slowly dissolving before the man she had loved and endured. Her anger gave her substance. She too could regress to the back alleys of her own past, or her past with Henry: their first holiday overseas, looking across the bridge of a scenic town, unable to discern where buildings ended or began behind the glare of the sun’s reflection. She could remember the old song played by old musicians on old instruments as wind cut across their faces. If she wanted to, she could remember holding on to his arm, the walk back to their tiny flat, and if she wanted to she could walk through the entire night, each word and each touch.
But she would not.
Instead, she would be a mason and build with her anger brick by brick the walls thick enough and high enough to cage the pain brought to her like a bouquet each day. And if ever these walls weakened and cracked, as walls are built to do, and if ever these memories crept out, she could seal them back in as she knew best. With wine and contempt. She was used to starting over. She had met Henry when she was starting again. Moved into his life and he into hers.
She will look at the men across from her and know she will never give herself to another man. She has learned from Henry that though the body could be in one place, the mind could be elsewhere. And she has learned from him that one needn’t be dead to cause another to die of loneliness. And when loneliness scratches along the walls that house her pain like a prisoner, she will scratch the backs of lovers and pull them deeper inside. Her passion gives her meaning, fills the emptiness, creates a space for her to control, a space for her to be found and be lost. If she wants to, she can be anywhere, they can be anyone: the first boy she made love to as a teenager, the creaking of the ceiling as her parents walked unsuspectingly upstairs. She can feel anything she wants to. And if she wants to soak herself in pain, as she feels people are unexplainably apt to do, she can imagine it is Henry across from her. She tries to avoid doing this, but there are instances, moments when she opens her eyes and thinks she can see his face, but she then fiercely closes them, appearing to her lovers in immense pleasure while trying violently to exorcise the pain and anger the image conjures.
She treated Henry with contempt because it had become too difficult to love him, to give and get nothing back. She could have thrown him out or sent him on his way. But he was still able to function, his body able to carry him through the motions of living the way a horse carries a dying rider back home. He still had his favourite places, places she once used to visit with him, but it was a habit that died over time. It was easier to be coarse with him and block him out, or at least her feelings for him, and when she couldn’t expel her feelings, it was as easy as building bricks around them.
“Do we have
enough time?” her lover asks, sitting across from her in the bath.
She looks at the watch lying on the pile of clothes by the bath. “Not much.”
“Should we wait?” he asks, but she shakes her head. These overly compliant lovers inspire her very little and when she grows tired of these types, she plays games with herself, focusing her pleasure on the false proximity of being caught.
The pair embrace, sucking on each other’s tongues as she runs her fingers along his abdomen, tracing the lines from past to present, twisting hair between her fingers. Their voices resonate, fill the room, until the action culminates with the smashing of the wine bottle on the floor as it falls from the edge of the sink. She walks naked through the house as he dresses in the bathroom. She returns with a broom, sweeps the glass. Throws a towel on the floor, mops with her foot, drops the shattered remains into a box in the kitchen, throws the towel in a basket in the closet. She checks the watch on the floor. The approximate threat of his arrival used to arouse her, when she believed his absence from their relationship derived from a lack of interest, when his absence from his own body was interpreted by his wife as the mental divorce from her.
In the past, they went to bed together. In the past, they slept together. In the night, when their bodies once touched, they shared the same heartbeat. They were the same body. Now, in the night, a desert divides them. And time, measured in the relative distance between the atoms of which they are comprised, a memory of the space where their bodies used to touch. When he stirs in the night she chides him for waking her and gives him nothing but the hard tug of a blanket as she rolls to her side.
She hears footsteps but disregards them as the sound of the house settling. The first guest does not arrive until three quarters of an hour later. By then, the table is set, a white tablecloth thrown over the mahogany table. The smell of pork fills the kitchen. Her bath-time companion sits with legs crossed and arms sprawled across the top of the crimson settee, running his fingers gently along the surface. In his hand a glass of wine whose contents swirl inside and she interprets, as she is prone to do with the physical gestures of men, the posture of his body with his arms across the settee, as a posture of conquest, and as she watches his eyes scour the room as if taking personal inventory of newly acquired goods, she thinks to herself how dreadfully invaluable he is. His status in the room, his value to her, is no greater than any of the objects he runs his eyes across. His role was merely to tend to an empty well.
