I ushered him to the operating room, nearly collapsed onto the mattress of the Eschmann table, and watched from recumbent as Cal scrubbed his hands, sunk a needle in the ampoule, withdrew it then flicked the spike deftly. Lolling back, I hiked up the skirt of my dress, bared my thighs and pressed with fingertips to locate a vein. As I did so, the hat fell from my head. And then, I believe – under the unflinching angle-poised light of the theatre, in what Cal could now make out of the ruined landscape of my face and thighs – he felt the enormity of what we were engaged in, the true horror of my person. He bent his troubled face down to mine, as if to identify me finally as an impostor.
And there, so close up, I recognised anew the faint purplish scarring on his left cheekbone and by the left eyebrow, the warrant of my cares for him, the protective impulse I’d always had for this bold, venturesome boy. His breath was sweet, however hard his eyes. I put my hand on his chest, as if to withstand the attack …
And, with a lightning surge through my diseased fingers, I could feel him – feel as if to see all the good life inside him. Life! Strong, thick walls, elastic, turgid with the health of rich red blood …
My own pulse was sinking to sludge, my breaths hoarse and heavy, vision blurring, of a piece with the crushing pain in my head. I understood I was going, being sucked and torn out of the world, torn into pieces, this the near-death moment I knew better than a friend.
‘Your— rash,’ I heard Cal, as if from a great distance. ‘It’s spreading.’
It ought to have completed its work, eaten me whole. But what was inside me, that which had demanded more, was once again impossible to suppress or withstand. I had fallen before, was falling still – but the spirit’s uprising couldn’t be stopped.
The tremors in my fingers were resolving, not to calm but, rather, a morbid rigidity. I groped to the instrument trolley at my side, felt for the tray of sterile carbon-edged steel, my claw-fingers found and closed round a right-sized blade. Cal’s eye had followed my hand, his brow creasing. With my left hand I reached and touched his face – my goodbye, my pentimento. He flinched, and I flung up the scalpel in my right, let the blow fall down on his neck sufficient to bury it.
* * *
I revived to find I had toppled backward and a few yards clear of the operating table. The crown of my head was tender, had sustained quite a crack – conceivably I’d been unconscious for a while. When I stood, newly tall and rangy, seemingly full of force, all I could see on the table before me was a foul black stain-like matter, as if burnt down to powder by the fiercest furnace-like heat. A vague, acrid vapour seemed still to linger in the air. But when I leaned close to read the runes of that stain I believed I could make out what had once been fingernails, hair, teeth …
Her life-cycle appeared complete – also my own. I could glimpse my shadowy reflection in the glass surround of the theatre doors, and so had confirmation I was masculine and vigorous once again – renewed, refined, finally and irrevocably condemned.
I did not hide, but hung my head, accepted my punishment, as had been decreed. I drove that fast car all the way back to its berth, stepped across the threshold of hearth and home, saw in the drawn faces of my parents how deeply and dearly I’d been awaited. And from those loving, forgiving looks I had to turn my face, since every inch of my skin felt on fire, burnt as if by the nuclear furies of the sun.
Pointless to prolong my account – attempt contrition, seek redemption, when I’ve played that hand and lost. The way back was shut to me at the same instant I crossed over, to the other side of the mirror. I failed to acknowledge it, I now believe, because for so much time it seemed as though my eyes merely studied the terrible things my hands did. In that way I could see myself not as malefactor but victim. Now I am moved to awe at the evil I’ve done; moved to wonder if it was always in me; to fear how much more I’ll be made to pay for it.
I deserve to burn – ought to burn myself. I did attempt that form of atonement, since I didn’t believe I could live out another day in the body of a child – a child beside whom I’d sworn always to walk, to watch over, shield from deceit and the corruption of evil. I let myself dream – a dream is all it was – that by self-destruction I could still, somehow, be saved. But my ‘father’, with every fibre in his being, wrenched me back onto the side of life. He would always do so, such is his virtue, blind to my wickedness. And he will always be too late. No one can be saved, not now.
But I sense I have done as She always intended – I have found ‘the form that fits me’. My business with Her is closed, albeit not yet concluded. So, once again, I will take to my heels and run. If the death-pains come again, will I let them finish their work? No, I haven’t got the guts for the noble Roman way, the honourable seppuku. I am alive, and afraid, and in that fear I will live on until the life is torn from me.
The password, Grey, is selvaoscura. This and much more you must know. ‘Midway upon the journey of our life I found myself within a forest dark.’ I have abandoned all hope. And yet, still, I exist.
Glossary
p. 10 la signora nera – Italian, ‘the black lady’
p. 18 dreich – Scottish, dialect, ‘dismal, wet’
p. 20 padrino – Italian, ‘godfather’
p. 54 mia fica – Italian, vulgar, ‘my vagina’
p. 54 mi hermana – Spanish, ‘my sister’
p. 58 ‘un nuage funèbre et gros d’une tempête’ – French, ‘a black cloud presaging a storm’, from Charles Baudelaire, ‘La Béatrice’ in Les Fleurs du Mal
p. 59 ‘le bois sombre et les nuits solitaires’ – French, ‘the sombre woods and the solitary nights’, Baudelaire, ‘Femmes damnées’, Les Fleurs du Mal
p. 105 ‘Comme les anges à l’oeil fauve, je reviendrai dans ton alcôve’ – French, ‘like wild-eyed angels, I will return to your bedroom’, Baudelaire, ‘Le Revenant’, Les Fleurs du Mal
p. 110 ‘O! Che caro galantuomo!/ Vuol star dentro colla bella! / Ed io far la sentinella …’ – Italian, ‘Oh, what a gallant man! / He’s inside with his conquest / And I am the sentry …’, Mozart, Don Giovanni, Act 1 Scene 1
p. 210 ‘Voici le soir charmant, ami du criminel …’ – French, ‘Behold the sweet nightfall, friend to the criminal’, Baudelaire, ‘Le Crépuscule du soir’, Les Fleurs du Mal
p. 303 ‘Humani nihil a me alienum puto’ – Latin, ‘Nothing human is alien to me’, Terence, Heauton Timorumenos, Act 1 Scene 1
p. 303 mi frater – Latin, ‘my brother’
p. 327 ‘avec les yeux d’un autre, de cent autres …’ – French, ‘with the eyes of another, a hundred others …’, Marcel Proust, La Prisonnière
p. 336 Mund të më ndihmoni mua? – Albanian, ‘Can you help me?’
p. 336 gde si bio? Mi smo bili u potrazi za vas – Serbian, ‘Where have you been? We’ve been looking for you’
p. 349 seppuku – Japanese, ‘stomach-cutting, self-disembowelment’
p. 349 selva oscura – Italian, ‘dark forest’, cf. Dante, Inferno, Canto I, line 2
Acknowledgements
This novel has been cast within the Gothic genre, and here and there pays homage to some of the most famous novels of that style – some of these among the best-loved novels ever written. So I very much hope my various small thefts will strike the reader as respectful/affectionate, that being the intention, rather than merely larcenous/outrageous.
The actual landscape of London, north London in particular, has been used and slightly abused for the story’s purpose, with the changing of some names and slight topographical modifications.
Dr Jonathan Lohn, Dr David Briess and Professor Charles Brook responded very kindly and helpfully to various research enquiries of mine. Obviously they bear no responsibility whatsoever for the fanciful uses I made of information given.
The therapeutic technique used by Steven Hartford on Eloise Keaton is an incompetent variation on Dr Francine Shapiro’s renowned Eye Movement Desensitisation & Reprocessing (EMDR). It is not identifie
d thus because Hartford’s deployment of it is, as he admits, half-understood, ‘improvised’ and unprofessional. I’d wish no imputation whatsoever to be drawn from this fiction as to the actual effectiveness of authentic EMDR.
The cold-therapy surgical recovery mask supposedly ‘invented’ by Robert Forrest is a product actually invented by others, and widely available in the market, though not in black leather.
At Faber and Faber I owe a huge thanks to Lee Brackstone, the most patient, incisive and altogether canny of editors; also to Walter Donohue, Lisa Baker, Kate Ward, Kate Burton, Eleanor Crow and Rachel Alexander. I’m grateful also to Neil Titman for his careful copyediting and to my agents Kevin Conroy Scott at Tibor Jones and Christine Glover at A. P. Watt for their support and advice.
About the Author
The Possessions of Doctor Forrest is Richard T. Kelly’s second novel. His debut, Crusaders, was published in 2008. Eclipse, his first script for television, aired on Channel 4 in 2010. He has also written several studies of film-makers: Alan Clarke (1998), The Name of this Book is Dogme 95 (2000), and the authorised biography Sean Penn: His Life & Times (2004). In 2007 he edited Ten Bad Dates with De Niro: A Book of Alternative Film Lists. He blogs at http://richard-t-kelly.blogspot.com
By the Same Author
fiction
CRUSADERS
film
SEAN PENN: HIS LIFE AND TIMES
THE NAME OF THIS BOOK IS DOGME 95
ALAN CLARKE
as editor
TEN BAD DATES WITH DE NIRO
Copyright
First published in 2012
by Faber and Faber Ltd
Bloomsbury House
74–77 Great Russell Street
London WC1B 3DA
This ebook edition first published in 2011
All rights reserved
© Richard T. Kelly, 2011
The right of Richard T. Kelly to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly
ISBN 978–0–571–27912–8
The Possessions of Doctor Forrest Page 35
