‘You should not waste another moment, doctor. You know, I’m sure, why I have come. Why I showed you what I showed you.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘To goad me. Toward an act. Well, hear this. I’ve no interest in revenge.’ In my vehemence I possibly convinced even myself. ‘Revenge is fruitless, I’ll still be down here in my hole, with my wound. Do you take me for a fool? Hurting him only admits what I’ve lost and can’t have back.’
As my words faltered, She leapt into my head.
‘What if, by “revenge”, you could redeem it all, and more? What if this body, doctor, were not your death? And you could feel again the fire, the vigour, the animating spirit, inside another skin?’
‘No, it’s impossible, how could I …?’
‘I will show you.’
I gripped the sides of my seat, for it felt suddenly as though my head were about to be wrenched off my shoulders. In a trice, I was elsewhere – sat in some bone-hard rocking chair, immersed in darkness. But my surroundings very quickly found focus for me – from the pages of Fine Art, no less – as MacCabe’s workspace, his ‘studio’.
Vukovara stood over a shrouded figure laid flat on a long bench. I stood, hobbled over to Her, knowing the figure was human even before She whipped aside the dust sheet to reveal MacCabe, stretched out and unconscious. With mirth round Her lips She held out to me a chisel and a club hammer. I kept my eyes trained on Hers.
‘Of course – as your mentor taught you – you are “forbidden to dissect living subjects”. Perhaps some other means to penetrate …?’
She grasped me by my wrists, forced my dumb hands down onto MacCabe’s sternum. And there beneath my fingers it was as if his skin were suddenly transparent to the eye. Just as I had been trained to ‘visualise’, only in three phantastic dimensions, I was seeing past epidermis to muscle, arteries, nerves, bones, viscera, lymph nodes. It was as if incision, the shining genius of surgery – that first fine shock of learning what lies behind the veil of the flesh – had only ever been a clumsy third-rate redundancy. Under my hands, glaringly apparent in the engine-room of Killian’s abdominal cavity, was the aorta carrying blood from his heart, and the vena cava, bulging and blue, bearing it back.
‘Wondrous, wondrous machine,’ She whispered. ‘Walls so strong, thick, elastic. Turgid with the health of rich red blood, coursing with every heartbeat. Life, doctor. Years of life …’
She slid a hand onto my shirtfront, Her fingers trespassing between the buttons – and I seized that hand, for fear She intended to slash me open just like MacCabe, unveil to me the pocked, corroded branches of my own aorta, the plodding beat of my own stony heart.
‘You see now? What I offer? Flight, from your body. Ownership of his. Do you comprehend? I speak of possession.’
Yes, I understood. And I laughed, bitterly, quite prepared to incur her wrath.
‘I see. I am to— kill him? And by killing him, become him?’
‘You will end his lease on life and inherit it. This will cause you no pain. You despise him, we know this. You and I, we have no secrets.’
‘And how can I kill a body I’m meant to— “inherit”?’
‘Fear not, I will know before it falls, the blow of yours that has force to kill. I will recognise your intent. You have heard, of course, the wives’ tale of the virgin who was got with child? One ray of potent sunlight, that crossed her mucous membrane as if through glass … Your great change will be just like so.’
The lunacy was so livid, I pushed Her away from me with every fibre. ‘Stop this, leave me alone, let me be.’
‘Oh, if that is your wish – it will be done as you decide …’
And I was back standing before my cheval mirror – gazing at a dying man, or so it seemed. Red-eyed, slack-skinned, beaten down and haunted by failure. I pressed my forehead against the cold glass, could feel it mist with my breath. Cold, then colder still. She was there, at my side.
‘But you must decide now, doctor. I will be with you, or gone for all time. As you wish it.’
‘I can’t. Can’t do it …’
‘Can’t do what? Say what you mean. In this moment of all, don’t deceive yourself.’
She was right. My true choice was already made. I could not walk away from it – this offer to stop the clock, invert the world on its axis, turn day into night and night into day.
‘What you propose … I have to leave everything behind?’
‘Leave what?’
‘The life I’ve had. Everything that is me will die, yes?’
‘No. What was you will live again. Your death a second birth. Is that so strange? We have agreed your body is yourself – that has been the way of things. But I offer to break the chain. What makes you believe you are you? Think back on your life. Have you been One, or Many? Not, indeed, a succession of selves? You have changed before, you can change again.’
‘Your offer— is more radical.’
‘Radical, yes. A radical flowering of possibility …’
‘It’s a fantasy. A fool’s paradise, you’re fooling me.’
‘Oh, no paradise, no, be assured. I will not lie. You will make payment, in pains. To which all flesh is prey, but in your case, more so. We will have what is ours, doctor, such is our bargain. For you, new life, a new lease, a gift of time. For us, in turn, your submission.’
I credit her this much, she gave me that chance, to step back from the vortex. But I was already lost, had crossed a line, however deep the fog into which I had drifted. If Her designs were malign, it seemed nonetheless a malignity that had long been present inside me. She knew as much, and so She had come. Her very presence had shown me that this life, after all, was not all – She was proof made flesh of a theomorphic power beyond my ken. In the face of that, as a learned man reduced to backward awe – I could only submit.
I saw myself falling and I fell. And – I do say ‘Before I knew what I was doing’ – I was sinking arthritically to my knees, raking the floor with fingers splayed, bowing my wretched head before Her.
* * *
In that same instant – I had been sleeping, but now I was awake, albeit in gloom. I stood before the cheval glass, but not mine – rather, that in the rear room of Vukovara’s apartment. Nested in the palm of my hand was a scalpel blade. I heard myself breathing, heard voices – saw light – carrying through the bowed doors of the partition. I pushed them apart, and was met by the sight of Her and a tired, scruffily clad, put-out-of-patience Killian MacCabe.
‘Aw come on now …’, he groaned to see me. ‘What’s this?’
‘This is my associate, Mr MacCabe,’ She purred. ‘Doctor Forrest and I are in league and business …’
And with that She retreated, stood before the darkling surface of the cheval glass, reflective, as though She were made of the mirror. Clearly She awaited my decision, as if She didn’t know, as if She didn’t infest every thought in my mind. And MacCabe, my enemy – the apex of the triangle we formed in the space – he looked from Her to me – perplexedly, some veil of concern on his face. I saw his lips move: ‘Robert,’ he uttered, ‘this is all wrong, man …’ Nothing but wrong, indeed. I knew it, though. His fate was sealed. His, and mine. There was a din in my head and a blazing under my skin, commanding me – now! – to turn the tables, take as he had taken – cut him down, be done with him and claim his forfeit.
The scalpel was snug in my hand. I stepped in front of him, saw only the pulsing veins of his throat as he stared back. Then I flung out my arm in a fine rising arc, and barely saw him flinch before blackness fell on me. An after-image, though, stayed seared on my retina – his head thrown back, that blackness behind my eyes an arterial gout.
I experienced a vertiginous tipping and plummeting, the floor collapsing beneath me, and truly I plunged, falling helter-skelter and headlong into black, gathering speed, certain what came next would be the crushing of my skull, the utter pulverisation of my mind. Then it seemed as if I were travelling down a tunnel, a canal – rocketing,
seeking a tiny aperture of light, breaching it – and I emerged.
It had taken scant seconds, and now I looked out through alien eyes, swimming back to consciousness, as if reviving from general anaesthetic for the gravest surgery. There at my feet was Robert Forrest … my poor self, laid out on the floorboards like one pole-axed by a blow, inert and waxen as a mannequin, fallen to one side, one arm outstretched, its fingers stiff and claw-like as if trying to escape drowning or stop the fall of the coffin lid. I stood over what I knew to be the last resting place of myself, and the vantage was dizzying. I got to my knees, rolled myself over – and something gripped my gullet, the breath forced from me – tears squeezed out too. My old eyes wide and exophthalmic, my mouth torn open and twisted, as though the life-force had made its exit there …
I looked up and there She stood, black eyes shining in triumph, teeth bared in delight, a mien of high, vicious amusement. I clambered to my feet, thinking I would lunge at Her …
And in that moment, coursing through my new body was a torrent of sensory data. I roiled and I flexed, I knew straight away, I was shorter, fitter, younger, without a doubt, and in that youth was a lightness, a readiness, a capacity.
She gestured to the mirror with a flourish, and I stumbled past Her, peered into its murk – confronting the impossible, at first afraid to touch, then putting fingertips to my soft, bristly cheek. I felt each wonder as I scrutinised it. The strong cheekbones. The fleshy lips. My fingers probing thick black coils of hair.
It was as if a deathly sickness had suddenly and gloriously flowered. The depraved sensation was so strong I wanted to cram a fist into my mouth – that it had been done like so, the sheer violation of it, the wanton exercise of power, that daemonic gift.
I turned back to Her and Her mouth was a line.
‘Leave now. The rest is mine.’
Did Her lips move or was Her voice in my head? I knelt once more, reached into ‘my’ coat pockets – a cold pick-pocketing – felt and found my keys, wallet … She, though, heard my thoughts.
‘No. Hear me. Get out. You are finished here.’
‘What’ll you do?’ This I heard myself blurting out in a South Dublin brogue. She merely bared those incisors, and in an instant I imagined a host of obscenities. But our business was done, I had made my bed, crossed my river, and so I did as I was commanded. I stole away.
Out the door, down the stairs, into the cloudless night and the streets glimmering by moonlight … my steps felt at first unsteady, then on air – the sheer outrage of the larceny was rushing through me like a narcotic. I was suffused with sensory newness, pressed onward as if by unseen hands. I’d felt this before only in the princely high of illegal drugs, but as moments passed I found a lucidity that was vital, clear, clean. I had taken on fuel, was holding a charge. It seemed as if I had powers in me over any passer-by, as if I could swat them aside or lift them over my head. (I swerved to miss crashing into a small girl and her grandma.)
I knew if I tried to reason through what I’d undergone then I would be insane. In any case my renewed appetite was such, there was nothing in my head or body that didn’t swarm with evil impulse. The disease had reached its full fruition, the corruption complete. There were sins, I knew, that were triumphs, that gifted a quickened sense of joy. I felt the spirit of revolt in me, and I believed my mistress would approve. What could I do now but revel in my fortune? New life was what I had wished for, and it was beginning.
My steps carried me unerringly to where I knew I’d find ‘my’ car, a green Alfa Romeo Spider. The keys bulged where ‘I’ kept them always: left jeans pocket. Climbing in, I knocked detritus from the bucket seat, pledged to clear it out, knew I never would. My feet nestled on the pedals, I saw my dark eyes in the rear-view, three-quarter profile in the wings. I pulled out.
And I knew just where I was headed – my home of four years, the home I’d opened to Malena – my love, surely waiting there for me. My old mother disliked her, I knew this suddenly. Ma reckoned her aloof as Lady Muck. But I thought my old mother a meddlesome hypocrite.
The taps were open, the vessel of self filling up in flood-like torrents. Two of us in here, but I much the dominant dog … I laughed, punched the tape player, from which a bar-room racket erupted.
‘Call me a feckless sinner and I’ll tell you ‘Go to Hell’ for I’ve taken all my sorrows and I’ve drowned them down –’
I swapped the tape, found something dulcet.
‘In the evening, under the moonlight, my spirits rise for you …’
Driving through Maida Vale I rushed a red light and a white van honked at me: ‘Aw get on with ye, ye ballox,’ was my involuntary response. It seemed an excellent riposte, only a version of what ‘I’ would normally come out with.
Up the garden path, the façade all climbing ivy, doorway set back under a stone porch, I turned the key, stepped into the hallway – felt the space breathe, inhaled it. To my left hung all my old coats, my old boots stacked below on some incongruous tubular Swedish rack. Then she was there in shadow at the top of the stairs – stairway to heaven! – then descending to me, and a wealth of care was in her lovely face even before she put her hands on my chest, brushed my lips.
‘You’re later than I thought, I was waiting for you. Did it go well? Will you come up and talk to me?’
I stole a long look in her eyes – so open, with her hair tied back – before saying what I knew I had to. ‘Aw, didn’t happen, babe. Didn’t work. What she’s after, I couldn’t do it, even if I wanted …’
She frowned. Instinctively I crooked a finger fondly under her chin. The frown deepened, I realised the gesture was too much ‘Robert’. I took her hand, she led me up. She was dressed like a dancer, choice items from her clingy, minimal Dane wardrobe, black leggings and top with crossover neckline. The bedroom was un-aired yet perfumed, sheets crumpled, clothes on the floor, ransacked glossy magazines by the bedside – piles of letters, tubs of hand-cream and neglected hand-tools strewn over the dresser. God, I had missed this mess.
As she turned to me I only smiled (as to say ‘Why ever not, my dear?’) and kissed her mouth, once, twice, soft kisses – found her hungry for them. Desire’s creeping vine was rising like my spirits – for me, a long moribund force resurrected. I wrenched off my jumper, felt a sensual surge just in baring my chest, then lay back on the bed and pulled her onto me. She tugged the black jersey over her head, her face disappeared, and when it returned the cherries in her cheeks and the purse of her lips were joy to my eyes: the rosy flush of carnality. She unhooked her bra and flowed onto me, my hand went down her belly into her waistband, found her good groove, warm and wet as a wound. Her sweet breath was in my face as she freed me from my jeans, I found her face with my hand, she took my fingers in her mouth.
What ensued was a powerful tussle – I couldn’t help it, I wanted to bite her, devour her – yet it was well matched. Her on top of me was something of a twist, I confess, never my preference, nor had I thought her much fussed. But she responded fervently, ‘Oh kill, oh kill …’ and for some hallucinatory moments I believed we were partners in crime, before I realised she was calling ‘my’ name. It could have crushed my fledgling spirit, except that something in me was sure it was my intensity – mine – that was transporting her. Can’t you see me? my mind was shouting as we stared at one another in passion’s close grip.
Was I in a trance? Could I truly suppose this was Paradise? Even as our peaks neared, for one flashing moment I saw again the shell of my old self, ghastly, broken and lifeless on Vukovara’s floor. And yet the powerful pleasure was driving out all else. So was that, indeed, all it took? The sensations were so strong, my sense of the thief’s delight so sweet and suffusing … I should have felt the evil in it, yet I was sure what was pouring out of me was love for her, all of my love. Had any man loved woman more? And that love was much too great, my crime far too passionate and flagrant, for remorse.
* * *
I woke in bed the next day as
never before – or, at least, unlike anything I could remember. No stagger, no hangover’s sour trace, the heaviness of limb and pangs of the gut banished. Strength was replenished through my organs. I flexed and stretched like a rowdy bantamweight newborn, finding myself pleasingly semi-erect. If I was proportionally a little reduced, nonetheless I felt entirely virile in this tight-packed frame.
Malena was moving around the room, still undressed, turning to ask me something, hand on hip. I drank her in. All was now open to me, just as it had been slammed shut by her disapproving postures in our bleak final months – her eyes uninterested, cloudy with other concerns.
She wanted me to say honestly if I thought So-and-So was talented. Those vestiges in my stolen head instantly told me So-and-So was the painter-turned-filmmaker whose upcoming movie, about Mexican anti-capitalist guerrillas, was a project she was minded to document in photographs from start to finish.
‘Aw, you know, darlin’,’ I told her confidently, ‘it’s not the talent you’ve got but the way you use it. The whole package, if you like.’ I laughed. ‘I don’t mind, you decide, it’ll be for the best.’ She scowled, but not really, and I kissed her. ‘On my mother’s life, I don’t mind,’ I cried, thinking this the lightest vow I’d ever laid down.
I didn’t try to stop her heading into town. A day’s privacy felt luxurious. First she brought me tea in a chipped mug celebrating Dun Laoghaire rugby; then I had the curious experience of sitting alone in the jacks over another man’s stink. I dressed – no wardrobe to speak of, all my gear deposited unruly on a rickety chair. But MacCabe’s scruffy wardrobe proved a delight to me, everything worn soft but clinging, the denims, the stretched and faded rugger shirts and tees, cardigans and coats that hung off the shoulders with punched-out pockets, the stained and spattered dungaree trousers baggy and full of intriguing small items. I pushed my feet into battered leather moccasins, hardly believing they would fit until all was snug. Then I climbed up to my studio, found it just as Vukovara had revealed it to me.
The Possessions of Doctor Forrest Page 27
