‘Then stay away from my family,’ she bellows.
(Oh lovely. Just as a huddle of pretty nurses stroll by.)
‘Nothing would please me more,’ I snap back.
‘Good,’ she says (slightly put out by my compliance).
We stare at each other.
‘Let go of my arm,’ I say.
‘With pleasure,’ she says.
She lets go.
I pass her the book. I start to walk.
‘But what about Aphra?’ she yells after me.
I don’t look around. I just keep on walking
‘I know she’s not coming in. I know that you’re covering for her,’ she continues yelling. ‘She just won’t speak to anyone…’
It’s then–very neatly, and with the minimum of fuss–that I lift my right hand high and show her the finger.
Come on…
It was a joke.
It was funny.
And what about Aphra, anyway?
Moth killer.
Hmmn. Talking of funny…
Now here’s a really hilarious thing: I’ve suddenly noticed how when I’m passing the time of day in the general vicinity of Blaine lately–on my way to the shops, perhaps, or to the café, or on my walk home, maybe–whatever–and I’m just hanging out for a moment, soaking up the atmosphere, possibly having a quick chat with some passing stranger (some really normal, really amicable-seeming individual), that suddenly–out of the blue–they’ll just turn and say something like, ‘God, I just wish I’d brought those rotten tomatoes with me…’ And they’ll be staring up at Blaine with an expression of such pure, such condensed hostility. And I’ll turn and glance up at him myself, struggling to see the thing they’re seeing, struggling to remember that furious feeling I once felt, but all I’ll see is a coffee-coloured, black-haired man, quietly sitting there, smiling, waving, doing nothing in particular.
Just a man.
And I’ll look back at the person, and I’ll realise that I can’t tell. I just can’t tell any more. I can’t understand what’s going on inside of them. I can’t see what they’re seeing. I can’t comprehend where all that anger’s coming from. And–worse still–I’m not sure where mine’s gone (Where he be? Eh?).
Not knowing unsettles me. It baffles me. It’s disturbing.
So do I say anything (you’re probably wondering)? No. I say nothing. Do I walk away? No. Not at all, I stand my ground, I stay. I might even–for that matter–continue smiling and nodding and talking…
But inside–inside–something’s happening. I’ll be gradually closing off. I’ll feel myself withdrawing (almost as if a hatch has fallen). And then I’ll slowly feel myself rising (seriously). Like a bubble. Floating up and away…Bobbing around aimlessly on the river breeze, above everything, perhaps touching a hard surface occasionally–the edge of a wall or boat, or a random piece of masonry–then just pushing off (not bursting, never bursting). Just pushing off, and floating away again.
Kind of quiet. Kind of blank.
Just pushing off. Just floating.
Wow.
I mean that’s pretty funny, don’t you think?
Okay, so it’s not bellyaching stuff.
(Did I actually suggest it would be?)
It’s not tear-spilling, gut-clutching stuff.
It’s not…
Whoops. There I go again…Up, up, up…
God. Where’s my head at, lately?
Bly catches me, at four, fast asleep behind a voluminous office fictus.
‘Oi,’ she whispers. ‘If you’re actually serious about getting away with this, then perhaps you should be aware that your big feet are sticking out.’
‘Uh?’
I sit up, yank my knees in.
‘Shift over.’
She crawls behind the pot and joins me (although the hair–let’s face it–must be a dead giveaway).
When she draws in closer she smells of apples.
‘Granny Smiths,’ I say, yawning.
‘My shampoo,’ she says.
‘How sweet,’ I say. ‘Isn’t that how nice girls’ hair always smelled in the seventies?’
‘Wouldn’t know,’ she says, ‘I wasn’t a nice girl then.’
We sit.
‘So what’s happening?’ she asks.
‘Wha’d you mean?’
‘You’re sleeping behind a fictus,’ she sighs, ‘when everybody knows that the only sensible way to skive off properly in this place is by dozing on the toilet.’
(Oh. Do the girls do that too?)
‘Are you interrogating me about this,’ I ask suspiciously, ‘in your Human Resources capacity?’
She smiles. ‘Just try and think of it,’ she says tenderly (gently removing a fictus leaf from the close vicinity of my right eye), ‘simply as one evolved ape interacting with another.’
(Yeah. That works. Okay.)
‘So what’s wrong?’ she asks.
I try and think of something palpable to respond with, but can’t quite rise to the challenge.
‘Can you see Blaine from this angle?’ she finally wonders, craning her neck around to gaze through the darkened glass.
‘I was having a nice little chat,’ I say, ‘with this father and daughter, earlier. Just normal people from Hammersmith. Came straight down here on the District Line. Girl eighteen or nineteen, intelligent, slightly punky-looking. Dad really affable. In his early fifties. And they’re standing there together, staring up at Blaine, and we’re chatting about how the weather’s turned colder. Then all of a sudden the girl starts formulating wildly about Blaine, about what a fool he is, and how much she hates him, and the dad’s just standing by, nodding, smiling on…’
Bly’s staring at me, rather strangely.
‘And I’m just thinking “Why?”’ I glance over at her, furiously. ‘“Why?” Then suddenly I’m tired. I’m very tired.’
Even as I speak I feel my eyelids drooping.
‘The problem,’ she says quietly, ‘is surely that there is no real reason to hate him.’
I frown. ‘How’s that?’
She shrugs. ‘Because he’s a blank canvas. He’s transparent. He’s clear. So when people look up at him they don’t hate what he is. They project everything they’re feeling on to him. They vent their hatred–their conformity, their rage, their poverty, their fear, their confusion–on to him.’
She pauses. ‘And it works in exactly the same way for the positive people. Blaine becomes everything that they aspire to, everything they admire. He’s like a mirror in which people can see the very best and the very worst of themselves. That’s the simple genius of what he’s doing. That’s the trick. That’s the magic. See?’
Good Lord. Think she might actually have something there.
‘Loving your work,’ I say, then I squeeze her arm, warmly, and retreat to the toilet.
Seventeen
Got a great little system going with Good Nurse.
Here’s how we do it:
As soon as Brandy’s final visitors have said their fond farewells, she rings me on my mobile (I’m hanging around in the train station, trying to chat up the girl on the photographic counter of the all-night-chemist), she tells me the coast is clear, and I barge straight on up there.
‘Pepper Schnapps?’
‘Fuck off.’
We’ve finished the Spencer. In fact we’ve finished A Corner of a Foreign Field: An Indian History of a British Sport, by Ramachandra Guha (and I loved every second of it). Now we’re on Erich Segal’s The Death of Comedy (You currently find me miserably hacking through a dense maze of iambic pentameter in chapter Sixteen, ‘Shakespeare: Errors and Eros’).
I’ve observed–just in passing–how much more erratic Brandy’s note-taking has become over the last few nights. More than once I’ve seen his pencil move on to the surface of the table below the notebook, but still continue writing there, or I’ve seen the point break, and watched him scribbling on–lead-free–for literally pages, with nothing but the
flattened stump.
I mention as much to Good Nurse (Day 36, a Friday night) on my brief excursion to the toilet.
She gazes at me, in open astonishment.
‘He’s blind,’ she says.
‘What?’
‘Since that night I sent you home. Didn’t you notice?’
I shake my head.
‘Did he not mention it to you?’
‘No.’
My voice sounds hollow.
‘Then say nothing.’ She squeezes my arm. ‘Just pretend.’
So that’s what I do.
He’s never asked why Aphra doesn’t come. But he’s asked about the food.
‘Did she bring the food?’ he’ll gasp.
And I’ll say, ‘Of course she did.’
Then I’ll open the containers and describe what she’s prepared.
‘So we’re looking at a strange, hollow green thing, like a tiny courgette. Seeds in the middle…’
‘Okra, you tit.’
‘With whole red chillies…’
‘Mustard seeds and coconut…’ he takes over, grinning behind his mask, as he recollects.
‘And in here…Uh…a strange kind of pink slop…Looks like…’
‘Strawberry mousse,’ he sighs. ‘Try some.’
I dip my finger in.
‘Describe,’ he whispers.
And I’ll describe it in the best way that I possibly can.
Sometimes I’ll tell him exactly which shoes she was wearing when she made the delivery (If I got close enough, at any point, to take a proper look), and he’ll smile and he’ll nod.
Death is close upon him now. The room feels full of Death’s strange, sweet breath. It vies with the scent of the perfumed candle. Death makes the bedsheets crackle. He makes the chair squeak on the lino. He knocks the cards over and forgets to pick them up again.
Death is here.
Even the nurses feel his tingle.
Let’s not talk about the pain.
Let’s not think about the pain.
Nothing to be gained by that, eh?
Look–
Here’s a turn up: the table next to the bed is almost bare now (the books are all read). The suitcase by the window is completely empty (the little note books are all full). And no new cards have arrived, lately, with their uplifting little messages, insisting that he Get himself Well.
Yesterday, when he reached the last page of the notebook he was using, I took it from him, walked over to the case, opened it, fiddled around inside it for a while, then brought him back the exact-same one.
He took it from me, frowned (when he felt the rough texture of the pages with his thumb), then nodded, smiled, and continued writing.
‘Absinthe?’
Long pause.
Long pause.
‘Makes the heart grow fonder.’
I laugh. He laughs. Then he coughs (tears pouring down his cheeks. Feet curling up).
Was it then?
(I’m struggling to remember.)
Was it then that the lights went out?
I read for another hour.
I complete the chapter.
I close the book.
I stand.
Death pulls the chair back for me (very obligingly).
Death sighs, then taps his foot, then checks his watch, officiously.
It’s time for the Family.
I grab Shane from the bedside table and stick it in my pocket. Then I take it out again and hide it under his pillow.
Good book for a journey, eh?
Eighteen
I find Aphra where I knew she’d be.
It’s almost dawn. But not quite.
I sit on the wall, a few feet along from her.
‘Houdini,’ I murmur, ‘was close to his mother.’
She says nothing.
‘His father was a rabbi, but very traditional, and when they emigrated to America his views were considered a little old fashioned for the New World. So things got tough for the family. The father moved away to work. Houdini was only about twelve at the time, but his father made him swear to take care of his mother. And he did. From that point onwards he worked tirelessly–almost maniacally–with that single aim in mind.’
She says nothing.
‘Blaine felt he never got that opportunity; to care for his mother in the ways he felt he should’ve. He believes that the only real love is the love between a mother and her child.’
She says nothing.
‘But there’s this strange conflict within him,’ I say, ‘because when Blaine first found his wings in the world of magic and performing, when everything finally came together for him–both creatively and ideologically–when he cut his hair and grew his goatee and started dressing in black; when he became ‘David Blaine, Street Magician’, basically; this transformation corresponded, almost exactly, with the death of the one person he loved most in all the world.’
Still nothing.
‘He’d taken this trip to France, lived the high life in St Tropez for six months with the extremely wealthy Steiner family. When he came back, though, his mother was dying. He felt like he’d let her down–when she’d needed him the most–like he’d betrayed her.’
She finally turns to look at me.
‘Did he?’
There’s an unexpected urgency in her voice.
I can’t answer.
‘He says her last three words, before she died, were “God is Love”.’
I clear my throat. It’s tightened up, for some reason.
‘But when he was standing on that ninety foot pole, in the middle of New York,’ I continue, ‘a whole eight years later–Vertigo, May 2002–he had this strangely powerful revelation in which he suddenly realised that life was just a series of sunrises and sunsets. Nothing more.’
‘Does he still think that?’ she interrupts.
‘Maybe. I don’t know. But what I am sure of, is that at some level he believes that magic took his mother from him. Magic is his life’s other great love, see? But it seems destined to be a tragic one.’
She shakes her head. ‘No. Now you’re just being ridiculous. This…’ She points. ‘This is all about living. The closer to death he draws, the more alive he becomes.’
I shrug.
‘His friends apparently despair of him,’ I say, ‘they get furious with him when he pulls these stunts. They do everything they possibly can to try and stop him. But once his mind’s made up, there’s literally nothing anybody can do to make him change it. And it’s only a grim awareness of this fact which finally makes them supportive. Blaine might be in physical danger, but he holds the people who love him emotionally captive. That’s a very cruel transaction which he seems perfectly at ease with.’
She frowns.
‘Imagine that,’ I say, smiling, ‘having the whole world standing by, utterly helpless, in the thrall of your self-destructiveness.’
She kicks out a leg. She’s wearing a crazy pair of Greek-style sandals in pale grey leather, the laces of which criss-cross up her shins to the hinge of her knee, concluding there in a loose, leather bow.
‘Like them?’
I give this question some serious consideration.
(What? Absolutely not. They make her look like some kind of low-rent, Roman serving boy.)
‘Yes,’ I answer, ‘I think they’re lovely.’
She gives me a straight look then turns away.
‘Barely worth all the chafing, really,’ she says, with a sigh.
That’s probably the last time I’ll ever see her.
There are some things you just know, huh?
But I stand on the bridge and watch the sunrise that morning.
And it’s a perfectly adequate one. Nothing too spectacular.
I walk home. I make myself some toast. I have a shave. I take the dogs to the park. I watch some kids’ TV. I fall asleep. And when I awaken, it’s early evening. The TV’s still on. It’s an ad-break. There’s an advert for shampoo, then one fo
r car insurance, then an image of Blaine flashes on to the screen.
Blaine.
In his box.
From the front–from the side–from the front again.
‘Staying in this autumn?’ the voiceover enquires coyly, then proceeds to reel off a choice selection of programmes from the channel’s autumn schedules.
But I’m not listening. I’m staring at Blaine. Blaine on TV. I fall off the sofa and draw closer to the screen. Must be old footage. Because he’s so much fatter. And I’m seeing all the buildings around him, locating him, between the trees, and the sky and the river.
I’m feeling the bridge (I am), I’m feeling it–that huge, overmediated landmark, that monolith…
And suddenly it just…it just resonates.
It does.
It sings to me.
Because it’s not great or old or grand or historical any more. It’s just…just there. It’s real. It’s dimensional. And I own it. I’ve landed. I’ve taken hold.
I’m shaking all over, my eyes are tearing up, I’m gasping and laughing…
And in the heart of all this leaf, this sky, this masonry? Slap bang in the middle of them? One man, one ridiculous man, so transformed.
I reach out my hand to the screen and feel the stiff buzz of static there. And suddenly I’m crying. Weeping uncontrollably. Because I’ve fucking arrived. I understand. I’m there.
Then Solomon walks in and finds me.
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