On the chopper’s bed I lie back and listen to the other wounded men. Where has this calmness come from? Sleep is a gloom, everywhere now, threatening with the siren’s call. Go on, I tell myself. What difference can it make if it is now or in an hour? I close my eyes and listen to the music.
Can it still be only morning, that morning I should have died? Where am I now? Saigon? At some China Beach Med Evac? Stateside? Any one of these seems vaguely possible, but surely I am not still banked along the Cam Lo River. Surely I am not still spread out in this fifty-acre cage of paddy, that rippled black corrugate ground, with its hollows sumptuous in stagnant rainwater, that empty plain punctured with the slashmarks of the plough.
Off in the background, the rotors keep their perfect tucka-TUCKA 2/4 rhythm and the cries of the other fallen men rise to meet them in a kind of Gregorian chant, and I know that if I open my eyes I will see those sounds swirl and spiral, and it will be the morphine for certain because isn’t that what morphine makes you see? But in the dark innards of the helicopter I just listen to the troubled jazz of the screams, weaving and sighing on the harsh breath and bass moans, a troubled chorus tardy against the wasting dawn.
A voice punctures the terrible morning lilt, ‘ALL RIGHT, DANNY. THAT’S THE LOT!’ and an engine roars like something wild, and then we are climbing and I have to swim back to the surface to keep from rolling.
A body jolts free of its stretcher and collides with me, and I open my eyes and see a creature contorted against his own end, the exposed bones of the ruined face a glaring yellow sunshine against the darkness. A smiling face, all perfect teeth exposed by the mortar fallout that I have seen before, the flesh and gum that used to be a mouth and lips hanging in ropes from the jutting chin. There are sounds, bubbling from his throat, but no mouth means shapeless words, bad sounds only. One eye stares at me, pleading for something that I don’t want to consider, and there is nothing to do but look away and try to think of any other thing but this and my own possible end as we, the damned few, tilt and roll and sail still skyward.
Gelman is right; the fighting for me is done, and all that is left now is to live or to die. The morphine is a pretence as the pain of my wounds begins to rise again.
The Hunchback
The sweet things were what kept him coming back, Marguerite’s casual way of leaving half a slab of chocolate on the yard table after it had grown too dark to paint outside. She liked to paint in the evening time, those couple of dusky summer hours after the day was done but with the night still holding back, and August was a perfect month for it, the mildest part of the season before the Atlantic brought its fall-time chill. From her back garden the land fell away, affording her a perfect view of the cove, the village with its small old multicoloured homes shaping a neat boomerang around the ceaseless press of the sea. She’d set up her easel after eating a light supper and paint until the light was all but lost, impressionistic oil-on-canvas studies of this island world that she was still, even after four years, striving to understand. Four years of trying to depict the many subtle shades of a domineering three-quarter length sky and the constant, irresistible ebb and roll of an ever-changing sea, and then sifting through the resultant chaff in search of the few that she deemed worthy of survival.
The first time she noticed him he was stooped among the briars of a hawthorn bush, and when she called out, startled, he panicked and ran. For a hunchback he moved with deft speed; his low bobbing head and the swaying cant of his shoulders looked clumsy, but he had an immaculate sense of balance, a skill surely perfected out of necessity. The evening she had first seen him, she watched as he tore from the hawthorn and charged headlong down the incline, and though her heart was beating a hard pulse up into her throat, being gifted those seconds to study him as he fled allowed her to consider and dismiss her initial fears. His right arm flailed as he ran, stirring the air and keeping him upright, and his body rocked from side to side, the great hump on his back obscuring his low-hung head.
When he slipped behind the flash of granite that poked upward from the tufted yellow grass some hundred yards or so below Marguerite’s garden, she knew she had him trapped, and she could picture him down there, crouched down and pressed into the hollow of the hillside, swallowing deep whoops of the cool evening air and probably shaking with the shock and adrenaline of having been discovered. Briefly she considered making her way down after him, just to tell him that it was all right for him to come and watch her paint, that he needn’t have run and that she was sorry for calling out, really she was. But while her fear felt tempered by the pity in her heart, it didn’t dissipate completely. She stood there in her garden, her arms folded across her narrow chest, and watched until it grew late enough for the shadows to merge and the hillside to grow indistinct, and finally she went inside, telling herself that he’d probably have made use of the darkness to get away and that her journey down would have been a wasted one.
‘Lucky you’, her friends always said, after the small talk had run its course. They weren’t really friends, not in any connected way, because Marguerite wasn’t the sort of person who cultivated genuine relationships, not any more. They were acquaintances, people she met through her painting, gallery owners or collectors mostly, wealthy women with too much time on their hands and bound by a certain lifestyle to rich, uninterested men. They tolerated her, she supposed, because she provided them with quality work, and also because she was far away. A few minutes of talking on the telephone every couple of months or so, and possibly an afternoon’s lunch in one of the better restaurants during one of her very occasional sojourns to London, or Dublin, was a price that they were willing to pay. She knew that they liked to be able to drop her name at really important parties and to speak about her in that intimate way of close friendships, and maybe they did see a certain amount of romance in the way she had chosen to live, even though they wouldn’t have swapped lives with her for the world. ‘Lucky old you,’ they always said, when ten minutes or so had passed, time filled to overflowing with the usual inane banter. ‘Throwing off the shackles, living in an island paradise.’
‘It’s only West Cork,’ she’d laugh, playing her part in the game, giving what was expected of her. ‘But it can be paradise when the sun is shining and the breeze is blowing just right.’ It wouldn’t have done to make mention of what was really in her heart, the truth that, far from being a romantic and carefree existence, the loneliness could at times be suffocating. Occasionally, one of them would ask, with all the crudity of their sort of friendship: ‘And what do you do for manly company, sweetheart?’ Unashamedly prying, with more than a hint of mockery in their tone. She had over the years developed a way of fielding such a question though, and she’d laugh it off, because that was a better response than examining the truth of her situation. Or if her mood was such, she often replied with something like, ‘You do realise that there are other people on this island, don’t you, dear? I mean, it’s hardly Robinson Crusoe, is it?’ Almost smelling the two or three glasses of afternoon Chardonnay through the telephone’s receiver, conscious of how the good wine tainted and slurred the interrogator’s breath, she’d try hard to keep from screaming.
Later, after her state of silence had been resumed, she’d think about the conversation, examine the various nuances of things discussed and inferred, and sometimes her loneliness grew to crushing proportions and she’d slump down in her favourite armchair and give in to the aching push of tears.
There were available men in the village, certain rugged middle-aged types, the only ones left who were not married or who had not run off in search of better, easier lives on the mainland. Men who still drew their livelihood from the sea, wrestling with nets and foraging among the waves in search of the ever-diminishing shoals of herring. Or, increasingly, men who had given up the fishing life to run pleasure cruises and harbour tours, who organised deep-water angling expeditions that were actually only pantomimes of reality, for the amusement and entertainment of tourists with
more money than sense. Marguerite often saw these men in the village, their rough clothes clinging desperately to their bulk, their windblown faces set with that familiar braced expression, and she had enough of an imagination to consider how their flesh would feel, how the smell of salt water would radiate from them, and how their rough hands would caress her, the rasp of their scarred skin in no way gentle but still, for all of that, companionable, and maybe compassionate. It was irresistible to fall for the stereotypical thoughts of a crudeness borne by the only way of life they had ever known, and it didn’t matter much that she knew they couldn’t be that simple, that they had to be much more than masses of hardship-bulk, that they needed to think and feel about the world just like the most sophisticated city dweller. Much better though, she had quickly decided, to ignore that sort of understanding, because it tended to complicate the fantasy. Just like knowing how a magic trick is really done, or the threadbare, uninspiring truth behind a favourite song.
The telephone conversations always ended the same way, the usual fluttered excuse from the other end of the line, a fair-weather friend consumed by the hectic excesses of a city lifestyle. ‘Well, it’s been lovely to chat with you, Margie, but I really must be getting along. I have an appointment for highlights at three, and there is still a world of things to do before I’m ready. We can’t all have it as good as you, I’m afraid.’ The gurgle of laughter that followed then was always a lie, and they both knew it, because that type of person had given up the free life in exchange for a big house, some well-addressed eight- or ten-bedroom spread with two or even more expensive new cars outside in the tree-lined driveway, a ridiculously generous monthly allowance, and a husband who, for all his lack of interest, still came home every night and still needed and provided the gestures of love. Such friends liked to say often that Marguerite had everything, the freedom to do and say whatever she wished and to go wherever the humour took her, but a minute after they had hung up the phone all thoughts of Marguerite and her island ways were forgotten until a month or two from now when her name would come up at some party to remind them that another call might be in order, or when they came into a windfall of money that needed flaunting and a new painting seemed like the ideal way to go about it. To them, freedom was one of those ideas that seemed better in theory than in practice, and in the end it was a simple matter of priorities.
Gradually, the giddy pleasures of their voices faded from Marguerite’s mind and the stillness of her small rundown living-room took hold, and she’d look around her, searching among the clutter of books, bric-à-brac and unframed, half-finished paintings for some small element of joy that would help her bear the stomach-blow of loneliness. Her old albums leaned against the wall beneath the window, and she played them constantly, not too loud, just enough to dispel the silence. Mid-1960s rock, some Outlaw country, and a smattering of folk; meaningful words offered in rich or weary voices, preaching truths even as they painted pictures. She treated the records well, carefully replacing them in their sleeves, or blowing dust from their surface and breathing their dark vinyl smell before laying them gently on the turntable. She knew all the words to the Creedence songs and usually sang along, though with the Beatles or Dylan she was more selective with her singing, not wanting to get in the way of what those songs had to say. As though there was some danger that she might actually have missed their message.
At first, the idea that someone was watching her felt a little frightening. She was thirty-seven years old, and while her looks had given up the refined honing demanded while living in a city, what pushed through, after such trifling things as make-up and skin care products had been abandoned, was a sort of earthy beauty. She could look at her reflection in the mirror now upon rising and no longer cringe but actually take pride in the first creep of crow’s feet spreading from the corner of her eyes or the hairline slivers that meshed the skin around her shrinking mouth. This reflection felt like the real her, the person she was without the mask that she had worn for so many years, a mask always endured for the benefit of others. Well, men hadn’t fallen for the mask, never for any significant length of time, anyway, and there was relief in being able to abandon such a façade. It felt like the island’s welcoming gift to her.
Here on the island there was no need to try impressing anyone; she could be the person she really was. And it felt as though a great weight had been lifted from her shoulders. In the village, walking down by the pier, she pretended not to notice how the men looked at her as they worked snags from their fishing nets, and they never bothered her though she knew that they probably talked behind her back. She was still a stranger, after all. And she only went down by the water when she was feeling good, not trusting herself when the loneliness reached desperate proportions. When that loneliness closed in she stayed at home and listened to her records or, if the evening was fine, set up her easel in the back garden and painted whatever type of sky lay spread out to the west. Trying to work away her sense of disillusion.
An art critic had once written a well-received thesis for one of the more established art journals on her ability to infiltrate every human emotion into the singular setting of a skyscape, and though she wasn’t always aware that she was even doing it, reading those words did ring true with her. The sky changed so much over the island that she had reached a point now where she never needed to paint anything else. Bloodstained sunsets, pale summer dawns, the ochre looming of a building thunder storm; the muddy slop of her oils on canvas channelled all her pleasures and her pains, and the gaping sky played psychiatric Rorschach games, always searching for some better understanding of her own internal world.
She was shocked to find the hunchback watching her from the hawthorn.
A few nights after the first encounter she caught sight of him again, detecting just a slight unnatural stirring in the hawthorn bushes. This time, she used all her willpower to ignore it, and when the evening had grown too dark to paint she packed her things and went inside, purposely leaving the half slab of chocolate on the table, along with an untouched pint of milk. And once inside it was she who became the voyeur, crouching low beside the kitchen window and watching for her admirer’s approach. He made her wait until it was completely dark, the better part of an hour according to the slow pulse of the wall-clock, and her hamstrings ached and began to cramp from stooping there so long, her balance kept by her narrow shoulder set against the wall and the tips of her fingers pressing a steel grip on the whitewashed sill. Her heart pounded with every uncertain stirring or sound, and a dozen times or more she was almost on the point of giving up, telling herself that this was ridiculous, that surely he was gone by now because no one would stand in the middle of a hawthorn bush for this long in the darkness. There’d be spiders, maybe even rats. But another voice in her head persuaded her otherwise, insisting that she could afford five more minutes now that she had waited this long, and really, what else had she to do apart from sitting in her living-room or lying in bed struggling to get interested in some trashy novel. If waiting here by the window could set her heart to beating this way, then was that really so bad? Surely she could put up with the hardship of a few aches in exchange for a flush of excitement that made her feel so alive.
When he did finally move, she almost missed it. By then the night had grown so dark, coming on for midnight and with what little sliver of moon there was limited to timid flashes through the cloaking oaks that skirted the southern boundary of her garden, she felt certain that it was simply her mind playing more of its tricks. But by the time he reached the garden table her eyes had adjusted to his shape, and she found better focus still when the cracked moon crept into view, its glow spotlighting him enough for her to see how he had to further contort his body’s posture in order to drink the milk, how raising the bottle to his mouth forced his hump leftwards and down in a way that made her gasp with a sense of pity. Through the thin glass she could hear his laboured efforts as the milk wrestled against his breath, and though the details were hi
dden she felt that in the asthmatic efforts of that sound, she had come to know him. The last of the fear in her heart gave way and became something else, something close to understanding.
The darkness gave him courage, and when he had finished the milk he lay the empty bottle carefully down on the table, put the piece of chocolate in his shirt pocket, and set about exploring the garden. Cautiously, but as someone comfortable with the techniques of stealth. There were no lights burning in the house and hadn’t been for the better part of an hour; Marguerite hoped to give the impression that she had gone to bed. From the lowest corner of the window she watched him move away from the table and across the yard. The moon cast its glow from behind, making a blackness of his face, and she couldn’t tell if the lurching movement was simply a feature of his natural walk or if he was repeatedly stealing glances at the upstairs windows, frightened that he was being observed. He had such an ungainly walk, and yet she couldn’t ignore its rare and obvious fluency, a rhythm to his swaying almost musical in its tempo.
When she realised that he had veered his wandering and was now moving directly towards the window, she dropped abruptly to her knees and pressed herself hard against the wall. Her pulse raced and she was convinced that he had seen her, that her movement had been too sudden and that even in the darkness it must have caught his eye. Within seconds she could feel him above her, leaning against the glass, cupping his hands together as a shield against the moon’s glare and peering inside. The glass squeaked in its old frame, but held. Sweat streamed from her dishevelled hairline, caressing her temples and then her cheeks. She held her breath; the night had grown unaccountably cool.
In Exile Page 16
