by Rhys Hughes
His next attempt was over the fields. In the late evening he picked his way through fallow lands, guided by the cables of power pylons, thick silver threads which audibly bristled as they crossed all hedges and ditches. Here was energy to direct him, and direction to power his stamina.
Soon he felt safe in the relative silence of the muted colours. He was not out of place among these tall grasses. Once he stumbled into an ancient furrow gouged by a ploughshare long since crumbled to flakes of rust. He was suffused with a sudden joy. But his ankles were not even lightly bruised.
Lurching over the crest of a sloping field, he was greeted by a river of light. He had reached the motorway. Further motion in this direction was impossible. He fell to his knees and regarded the world from his former perspective. The streams of traffic flowed smoothly, red and white blood cells in the cardiovascular system of the earth, exposed to view by geological surgery. There was no way across.
He had no choice but to turn back. His retreat was warmed by shame and intrusive thoughts of his wife. She had condemned him to this, but whether from love or cruelty he still could not decide. Yet he was safer beyond her presence and the vitality that radiated from it. Her lust for life and movement was oppressive. He forgot about her as he entered the hospital, for the smell here was of despair.
Marcel was still awake, sitting on the one comfortable chair in the lounge. He beckoned to Raymond and repeated his advice. The tallest tower was readily accessible. Three flights of carpeted stairs. But Raymond paced the room and pounded his legs with his fists. And all the while he cried out: “No, no, no!”
In the morning, his nurse came to see him with a visitor. Genovefa was slight and dark and the man she brought was hideously bloated and pale in comparison. He was a priest. She introduced him as Father Crouch and explained the instrument he held in his hand. It was a metal detector. The miracle had to be validated.
With a single flick of her practised wrist, she removed the blanket from the bed, exposing Raymond to the attentions of the device. Naked before her, he suddenly felt lonely, and this loneliness by itself was oddly exciting. With an enormous blush, Father Crouch extended his metal detector over the bare legs of the prone man.
The instrument remained silent. The titanium rods that held the bones together had vanished. The kneecaps were organic. Father Crouch checked the controls and made a second pass, sweeping the device up and down each twitching limb from ankle to thigh. The miracle was real after all. The priest sank to his knees and kissed the hem of the blanket.
Genovefa led him out and returned with a smile. She had unpinned her hair and undone a few buttons of her uniform. It was hot in the room. Raymond propped himself on his elbow and made a dismissive gesture. She sat on the edge of the bed and cast a glance at the clock on a table in the corner. It was still early.
“Surely I can provide something for you?”
He shook his head. He rose and dressed and went to fetch his own coffee. He took his cup outside and sat on a bench and thought about the motorcycle accident. These things happened. Sudden cures were absurd, but still he supposed they had to be taken into account. His could not be unique. But how can a man learn to accept a miracle? He was not religious and despised the idea of conversion.
The problem might be that he had lost faith in himself. This is what he wondered as he blew the steam from his coffee and kept blowing until it was cold. Then he inverted the cup and poured the liquid onto the gravel path. No, it was something else. He shrugged and strolled to the edge of the lake. The swans ignored him.
There was a shout from somewhere behind him, sharp but not urgent. He turned to stare at the hospital. Marcel was standing on a balcony, pressed against the railings, raising a hand to the side of his head, thumb and little finger extended. He was summoning Raymond to take a telephone call. Although his entire aspect was directed away from the building, his erect body seemed to point at the tallest tower directly above him.
Raymond walked back slowly. He picked up the receiver in the lounge and listened for almost an hour to his wife. Clarissa berated him softly for the mysterious extra expenses he had incurred. Then she revealed she was planning another holiday. She had booked a villa in a warm southern country. He wished her luck and forgot to tell her about the miracle. But there was a note of expectancy in her voice. It was possible Marcel had informed her.
During all the time she talked, Raymond wanted to ask her for an absurd favour. She was outside the grounds in a remote city. Now they were connected by the telephone line. His idea was to persuade her to pull her receiver hard, to yank him away to freedom. But he could not force himself to share this delusion. When she hung up, he listened to her absence for many minutes. The hum was more empty than silence.
He wasted the rest of the day staring at the pages of a book without reading a single sentence. Then he retired to his room. There was a knock on the door but he did not answer. It was Genovefa and she eventually went away. He lay on his bed with his arms folded across his chest. He thought about Clarissa packing her suitcases. Departure.
All manner of solutions came to him in the twilight before sleep. He could escape by a hot air balloon constructed in the workshop. He could murder Father Crouch, borrow his clothes and his authority and stroll confidently through the iron gate. He could burrow a tunnel like a gigantic mole. But the workshop was closed, the priest had already left and the ground around the hospital was too hard for one man and a shovel to penetrate.
The lake was the obvious answer. A raft would carry him to the opposite shore, wherever that was, and he might wade the last feet through duckweed to a new horizon. This was a plan for the daytime and a blue sky. Paddling over the reflections of clouds rather than stars seemed more efficient. He was at a loss to say why.
He slept with the pillow between his knees. He dreamed that his bed was a boat and his own breathing was the slap of tiny waves on his hull. The walls of his room were sails. Where was he going? He opened his eyes and discovered he was back where he started. It was a familiar shock. But now he would cheat disappointment.
He spent the entire morning building the raft. There were empty oil drums in the attic. Marcel fetched them down for him. There was a broken bench inverted in a flowerbed. An old storm had flung it there. He cut this up with a hacksaw and used it to provide struts and supports. There was a laundry basket and coils of washing line to lash everything together. And he fashioned a crude oar from a broom handle and the lid of a wooden box.
It was impossible to maintain secrecy for this project. Marcel could be trusted, but the sounds of construction had no loyalties. Genovefa waited until he finished before coming to investigate. She stood with her hands on her hips. Rather lamely he explained that he wanted to go fishing. She winked at him ambiguously and turned away.
He pushed the raft into the water. It rolled and groaned and unnerved the swans. Then he waded out to it with his oar. Mounting it proved difficult. It threatened to tip over at the slightest shifting of his weight. But finally it stabilised and he sat with raised knees over its exact centre of gravity. He called goodbye to his nurse, a permanent farewell, but she glanced over her shoulder and shouted back:
“Bon voyage! See you again soon!”
He paddled carefully away from the shore. The lake was large. The far side was a forest of tall reeds. He supposed that liberty lay beyond these. He gave what he believed was a final wave at the hospital. Every window was occupied by a single face, staring at him, licking its lips and frowning. Only Marcel had angled his attention elsewhere, at the sky. His sockets were scanning for angels.
Raymond kept going into the ripples. Points of light flashed on the water like nerve impulses. What was the lake thinking or feeling? Already he was tired. He closed his eyes and drifted. He refused to open them until his raft shuddered to an abrupt halt. His fear was that he had simply moved in a wide circle and was back at his departure point.
This was not so. He had reached the tall reeds. But t
here was no firm ground here. The opposite shore was an illusion. The lake had become a marsh. He could not force his way through the vegetation. He paddled down the line of reeds until he found a channel. Entering the marsh was like stepping into a maze. A multiplicity of narrow passages gave him more choice than he wanted. Which way?
He chose a channel at random. His vision was now obstructed by the reeds. He turned corners so sharp they might be artificial. The water was almost black. The air was stale and unpleasant in his mouth. He soon accepted he was lost. The afternoon grew late but the marsh continued. It was vast. He began to perspire.
The channels became narrower and the reeds taller. He poked his oar into the water until it reached the mud below. This was very soft and very deep. It would suck him down if he jumped off the raft. He failed to free the oar from the slime. One side of the raft struck a clump of reeds and the vessel turned slowly. He continued to move like this, rotating and struggling to regain control by splashing with his hands.
The sun was no longer visible. It had dipped too low toward the unseen horizon. The idea of spending a night in the marsh terrified him. He opened his mouth to call for help. But he could not decide who to shout for, Genovefa or Clarissa. This pause gave him enough time to understand that neither woman could assist him. He was alone. Then he saw the tower.
It appeared just above the line of reeds, distant but massive. He swallowed its presence but could not digest its significance. He really had drifted in a circle, but one much larger than he had anticipated. Then as he continued to gently spin and the tower came back into sight he realised it did not belong to the hospital. It was not the tower that Marcel kept referring to. It was different.
There were similarities, but this structure was larger and older. The stones were badly eroded in many places. The windows were without glass. As he approached it, more of its bulk was revealed. At last the channel widened and opened out into another lake. Now the entire edifice was in plain view. The tower was merely one part of a greater whole.
An abbey. It stood on an island and a causeway led off into the gathering dusk. Half the building was a ruin. Blocks of stone littered one side of the island or gleamed under water. The other half was in good condition. Raymond was closest to the intact section. The causeway lay on the far side. He resolved to paddle around the island and wade onto this finger of hope. It must surely connect with freedom.
He dipped into the water with his hands. Then he blinked. There were reddish lights in the distance. Houses? They grew brighter but remained clustered in a small group. Were vehicles moving along the causeway toward the abbey? That must be the answer, for now he heard a low rumbling. A convoy was approaching. He stopped paddling and waited.
The vibrations made little waves in the lake. Masonry flaked from the tower. Whatever was coming was heavy. A line of trucks? But the lights were not strong enough to be headlamps. They were vivid but they flickered. They did not pour forth in beams. And some of them were too high. They were more like illuminated windows. Raymond frowned. A train? But there were no rails on the causeway.
Now a dark shape began to loom and with a profound shock he understood that his first guess was the right one. It was a house. But it was moving and was followed by others. A migrating street. But these buildings did not seem like natural neighbours. His raft had come nearly to a stop and for this small mercy he was grateful.
The houses slid along with difficulty, for they had no wheels, but they maintained a constant speed. Waves of heat rose from the friction of contact, oscillating the air and turning each building into a fake mirage. A mirage of a mirage. Raymond grinned at the paradox, but he felt miserable inside. The warmth slicked his face with sweat and evaporated the sweat of fear already there.
These were very ornate houses. Tall and imposing and wealthy. Balconies in the rococo style, with rich curtains tied back with golden cords. And beyond the windows, sumptuous rooms with large beds and antique furniture, lanterns glowing on tables with curved legs. He saw everything. They were not typical homes. There was an air of decadence about them, of commerce and jaded desires. The first one reached the end of the causeway and entered the abbey through its shattered side.
Now the others followed, one at a time, vanishing from Raymond’s sight. He was still facing the tower and the intact walls. Soon all the houses had entered. There was silence. As he drifted very slowly closer, he thought he heard a low mumbling. Father Crouch had spoken to him in the same deep tones. Then he fully grasped what he had just witnessed.
“Brothels on their way to confession!”
The instant he uttered this absurdity, he knew it was true. The houses, each one a den of iniquity, had travelled to the abbey to unload their sins, those acts committed on their premises by anonymous men on bored girls. These confessions would take a long time. There were many secrets to reveal, some mundane and ridiculous, a few very dark. He waited but they did not emerge. And the mumbling continued without a pause.
It was time to make a decision. If he landed on the causeway he might hurry along it until he was out of the marsh completely. But what if more brothels were on their way? Then he realised something dreadful. He knew he had not escaped after all. His oppressors would come for him, all of them, without needing to give chase.
He remembered Genovefa and the extra services she had provided. It had taken many months to persuade her to trade her favours for money. Clarissa unwittingly paid the bill. As his appetite for this illicit contact had grown, so Genovefa increased her price. Only after the miracle did he cancel this special arrangement. Health had perversely destroyed his lust. But all the same he had succeeded in turning his nurse into a whore.
Now he peered into the darkness. Was the hospital coming down the causeway to meet him? Had it skirted the marsh to intercept him at the abbey? As a brothel it must also be in need of confession. And if he lingered, he would hear his shame mumbled aloud. It did not matter whether he turned and paddled back the way he had come or simply waited for the hospital to collect him here. The result was the same.
He found Marcel in his usual place in the lounge. Marcel lifted his hand and Raymond waved back, but the blind man was pointing at the ceiling. There was no need to argue this time. The stairs creaked as he ascended them. The room that occupied the tallest tower was bare. Raymond stepped to the window and opened it.
False dawn was on the horizon. Only the brightest stars still twinkled, but without much magic. Strange how buildings must feel guilt too. Raymond sighed. From here he saw that the marsh was endless. The causeway went on forever. And escape was impossible in every other direction too. The hospital was perfectly sealed.
He heard a distant roar and looked up. An angel was carrying his wife south again. He blew her a hypocritical kiss. Then he climbed out and jumped without any fuss. Big miracles leave a permanent mark, but small ones can be reversed. The wheelchair was taken out of the attic and the easy life returned.
The Quims of Itapetinga
Daniela loved her own jealousy. She hated this love, but it excited her. She was sexually aroused by the idea of betrayal. Her fantasies involved losing an imaginary husband to other girls, especially to her friends, her sister, even a future daughter. She dreamed that her marriage was unhappy and her days ventilated with the scars of lies, in the same way the markings on a clock are sliced by its moving hands. Unbearable but essential. Her heart worked like this. It needed reliable pain to function.
Her masochism left no visible marks, no bruises or welts on her skin. It was internal, emotional. She kept her feelings secret for many years, but one morning her friend Ivan called round. He had been out of town for several months, visiting a dead relative in Belo Horizonte, a relative that everybody had forgotten about, an old uncle who died alone in a chair and completely decayed while sitting there. Ivan had a key to his apartment and discovered the perfect skeleton coated with dust.
Ivan had said nothing to the bones because he found it socially awkward. He
pretended nothing was wrong, lived in the apartment briefly and returned home as usual with only trivial news.
Daniela enquired after the uncle’s health. Ivan had come to shave her. He licked his lips and said, “He was very quiet.”
“Taciturn?” asked Daniela.
“Not exactly. Relaxed is a better description.”
“That’s a word I don’t like.”
“Why not? But I find it distasteful too.”
Daniela sighed and closed her eyes. She concentrated on the blade of the razor moving over her skin.
“I prefer to be agitated. Is that strange?”
Ivan had no real idea what she meant, so he shrugged and hoped this gesture would satisfy her, though she was unable to see it. But the sound of his shoulders moving had always been louder than expected, a physical disadvantage he had come to respect.
“I have a perversion,” she added.
“Well, I know that already. But who doesn’t?”
And he hid his slight embarrassment with the shiny blade, which reflected her brighter blush. This was the tenth year of their friendship and few secrets remained between them. Only truly important ones were left, certain mysteries of eroticism and death. Ivan guessed that Daniela was capable of fusing both enigmas and he waited with mounting anxiety for the coming revelation to be born through her lips, keeping his eyes on her lower lips to avoid meeting her viridian gaze and discouraging her.
He had intended to shave her pubic hair into a heart, but now he saw his design more closely resembled a deformed skull. So he skilfully altered it to a smaller shape, a bright sunburst. Daniela rarely asked for anything specific. Later she might show it off from her balcony, a traditional display for the cooling evening, while palm trees waved gently below and the sound of traffic became surf on a concrete beach.
