The Blind Eye

by Georgia Blain

  He said that the initial remedy I gave him had not appeared particularly dynamic. The drops had simply tasted like sugar. He had felt no radical impact, although he did have to admit there had been an undeniable lessening in his heart pains, and he looked surprised, as though the realisation had not occurred until that moment.

  We could probably go on using it, I said. In fact, everything you have told me would seem to indicate that it is more than appropriate. But, and I smiled at him, I’m always open to stirring things up. A shake-up can sometimes work wonders.

  Silas shrugged. Whatever, and he pulled at the hem of his sleeve, trying to cover the fresh sores puncturing his flesh.

  I told him we needed to go back to what we had begun to discuss at the last appointment and I saw him scratch at his ankle, crossing and uncrossing his legs as though he could not find a comfortable position in which to sit.

  The most recent episode, it was last night? I glanced quickly at the notes I had made and Silas nodded.

  Did you see anything? Hear anything?

  He had already told me that he had not been surprised to find himself awake at four in the morning, inspecting the fresh wounds under the light of his bedside lamp. He had come home at midnight, agitated, anxious about sleeping.

  I had been out, drinking with Greta, he had explained. It was the alcohol, I suppose. It made me think I could ask her home, it made me forget what I do to myself. But she was in a strange mood. She had told me stuff. About herself, and he had looked away, his face betraying the discomfort he had suddenly felt in discussing her with me. So we parted.

  He had still not told me whether he had experienced any sensations prior to waking, and he knew it. He swallowed, his mouth dry as he finally attempted to answer my question.

  I guess I’ve been lying.

  In the stillness I could hear the clock in reception click over and, from the other end of the building, the soft thud of the heavy doors that lead onto the street. This was the time when we closed them. People who were booked in for after-hours appointments were instructed to ring the buzzer. Fortunately, I had made no additional appointments for the day, knowing Silas was last on my list and that we would need time.

  His voice was tight as he attempted to explain. When I told you that I don’t know, that was when I was lying.

  Know what?

  What I am doing to myself.

  It was the sweetness, the rich headiness of Constance’s flowers that he always smelt, somewhere in his subconscious. As he tried to describe it, I saw a trickle of sweat running down the back of his neck, and I watched as he wiped at it, agitated.

  So, you see, I am not entirely unaware.

  I nodded.

  And the thing is, I can stop it, at that stage, I can wake myself up. I don’t have to do this, he held out his arm. It’s a choice.

  And you choose this?

  He looked at the ground.

  Why?

  He shifted in his chair. Because I want to. He pushed his sleeves up and stared at the wounds.

  I did not speak for a moment. I was hoping he would continue, and I watched him as he struggled for an explanation. He bit his lip, the flesh white beneath his teeth. He scratched at his wrist. He closed his eyes. Finally, I leant a little closer.

  And do you see anything? When you are hurting yourself?

  He was about to shake his head, but then he stopped. There was no point in further lies. Staring out the window, he finally answered my question, and for a moment I did not understand.

  Myself.

  I looked at him. Are you watching yourself hurting yourself?

  Silas shook his head.

  Are you doing anything?

  No. I just see my own face.

  I waited.

  Silas’s intake of breath was sharp. It is hatred.

  I opened my mouth to speak but I did not know what to say. We looked at each other in silence for what was only an instant, a missed beat, but felt longer. I remember that I wanted to touch him, I wanted to reach out and hold his arm in my hand, wrapping my own fingers around the wide open sores, but I knew that if I moved, he would only pull away. I could see it on his face. All that he wanted was to go. He could see no point in any of this; there was nothing I could do. With his hands pressed down on the arm of the chair, he attempted to stand, and that was when I moved, laying my fingers across his elbow.

  So, what is it this time? Silas’s voice was tired. Another spider?

  I shook my head.

  A snake? As he uttered the words, I wondered at the disgust in his voice.

  I smiled. No. I tore the page off my notebook. This, and I pointed to Silas’s arm, is not a snake.

  Silas looked at me.

  I needed my voice to be gentle. A snake is too self-possessed to act in this way. I held out the page for him to take. I’d like to try Belladonna this time.

  Silas sighed. It can’t change what I did. Nothing can — poison, venom, plant, animal, what does it matter?

  I didn’t understand.

  I didn’t act quickly enough. I saw she had been bitten and I didn’t know what to do. I went to get help, but it was too late.

  It still made no sense. What he had done was not so bad.

  And that’s all? I asked, unable to hide the confusion in my voice.

  He did not reply. He was tapping his fingers on his knees, drumming them, trying to distract himself from the sudden desire he had to weep, because he knew how close we had come; we were standing right at the brink of the hole that was himself and he could not bear it.

  There was more to his story, that much was clear. Later, I would wonder at my inability to see what was obvious, but at that stage I simply wanted him to understand that we were not seeking to change the past. No one can do that.

  It is a question of being able to make peace.

  He looked at me.

  Being in a position to do that.

  That’s what I would like, and although his expression was one of doubt, it was as though he had suddenly realised he had been searching for the wrong goal.

  I watched him, the awareness flickering across his face, and as we stared at each other, I let the pain go, because it was only in that instant that I realised I had been holding it in my own flesh, the hard hatred of the wounds I had been touching, there in my own body, and I breathed in, slowly and deeply, desperately needing the sweetness of the air fresh in my lungs.

  7

  The night after Silas attempted to tell Constance that he loved her, he came back to Thai’s to find them all on the verandah: Steve, Jason and Mick. Not one of them looked in his direction as he passed. In his room, his belongings had been pulled out of his bag and hastily repacked. He had not bothered to hide the little cash he kept on him. It was there, next to his bed, underneath a pile of papers, but whoever had searched through his room had missed it.

  He sat on the floor, the dry, bare boards creaking beneath his weight, a single fly buzzing loudly near his head. From outside, he could hear the shattering of glass as Steve threw another empty bottle onto the pile. Silas put his head in his hands, the dirt caked into every crevice of his skin, and closed his eyes. Tonight he would pack. Tomorrow he would tell Constance that if there was no place for him out there with her, he would go.

  He had sat through lunch, trying to eat the roast duck Rudi had served, the fat congealing on the enamel plates, the meat sinking heavy and indigestible to the pit of his stomach. He was aware only of her opposite him, and the realisation that he had meant what he said, he wanted to be with her, he needed to be with her.

  It was Rudi who had done all the talking.

  Everything you eat, all of it, he had told Silas several times, has no poison, no chemicals. See how good it is, and he had smacked his lips in pleasure at the taste. Look at my daughter, this is what she eats; see her skin, her eyes, and his own eyes had softened as he had looked across at Constance. This is good health. This is how it should be. But do they listen? and he had no
dded in the direction of Port Tremaine as he had repeated his old refrain. Not a word. And then they wonder what is happening to their country, their town.

  Silas had looked across at Constance but her attention was, invariably, directed elsewhere. It was shyness, that was all it was. He had said too much. He had scared her. She would have had no experience with men. He had to be more careful, more gentle. This was what he kept telling himself in an attempt to convince himself that the truth was as he would have liked it to be.

  He had watched as she’d cleared the plates, amazed at the ease with which she had moved around the shack, without any apparent need to feel her way past obstacles. Sometimes the veracity of Rudi’s claims concerning her vision seemed undeniable, and as he had stood up to help her, he found himself staring at her. It was then that Rudi had doubled over for one brief moment (Indigestion, he had tried to explain a few seconds later), and she had turned to him in alarm, despite the fact that he had not uttered a sound.

  It is nothing, Rudi had insisted, and she had not taken her eyes from him, seeming to assess something not visible to anyone in the room but her.

  There had been no opportunity to talk to her after lunch.

  We have work to do, she had told him.

  It was Rudi who had urged him to stay, and he had done so despite Constance’s apparent discomfort at the idea.

  In the still heat of that one room, they had sat around the table, Constance talking and Rudi taking down her every word, his writing scrawling across the scraps of paper he used as he had recorded her responses to his questions, leaning forward eagerly, nodding in excitement as she had attempted to tell him how each aspect of her physical, emotional and mental being had responded to the remedy they were proving.

  Watching them, Silas had been aware that his presence was no longer even noticed by either of them. Witnessing the intensity of their communication, he had been drawn into the strength of their belief, the importance of each detail as Rudi had probed further: what was it exactly, that slight ache in her left temple as the sun went down; the dream she’d had of flying; the aversion towards the afternoon winds that swept up from the gulf; could she describe it further, with more detail, and she had tried over and over again.

  We must be painstaking, Rudi had once explained to him. We must record everything, no matter how small, how unimportant, before we can even begin to see the total picture. What is this venom, that is what I am asking. What is it?

  That evening as he lay in his room out the back of Thai’s, a bottle of vodka on the floor next to his bed, Silas closed his eyes and tried to see her. She had sat facing her father, still and calm, and she had given him everything he had wanted, each intimate detail, believing, as Rudi did, in the importance of what they were trying to achieve.

  He has done extraordinary work, she had told Silas once. If you listened to him, you would know.

  But I do listen, Silas had protested, uncomfortable in the face of her disbelief.

  Before the others left, there were enough of us; people took note of our results.

  Why did you stay? Silas had asked her and she had shrugged as though his question barely warranted an answer.

  He does not keep me here, and she had pointed to the keys in her pocket. He is my father, and she had shaken her head in wonder at his stupidity.

  Watching the pair of them after lunch, Silas had seen the care she had given to each of her responses, until, as Rudi had come close to the end of his questions, she had pulled back.

  She had known what Rudi’s request was before he had even spoken it out loud; his whole body had been bent towards her, his large hands outstretched. There was no point, she had said. How can I? and she had folded her hands in her lap.

  It was what she saw, that was what he wanted to know; a tiny glass bottle containing the venom clutched in one hand, he had begged her to tell him. What is it? he had pleaded, all of him believing that if she could just paint him a picture of what it was that danced before her eyes, he would know, he would be able to see.

  Knocking over the vodka, the last drops spilling across the floor of his room, Silas searched for his phone among the mess of clothes littered across the top of his bag. He tried each of the numbers that he could somehow still remember, grinning to himself at the ludicrousness of being able to hear friends’ voices disembodied on answering machines, hanging up each time the message came to an end. He even attempted to ring his mother, forgetting for a moment that she had died, wishing that he could speak to someone, anyone, and then suddenly, to her in particular, only realising that this was impossible when he heard the operator’s recorded voice tell him the call could not be connected.

  The last number he tried was Sarah Lipscombe’s. She had been Rachel’s best friend, until Silas had slept with her. He was surprised when she answered, and when she asked him what he had been doing, he did not know what to say. Sitting with his back against the rusted iron bed, he closed his eyes to the dim light of the single bulb overhead and tried to describe Constance and the garden.

  She’s unbelievable, he said, hearing the slur in his voice, and he opened his eyes briefly to the slow sickening spin of the room. A witch — tames snakes, sees auras, heals with plants.

  He knew that his words had failed to paint Constance in the manner in which he wanted and he tried to stand, slowly pulling himself up on the chenille bedspread, only to crash to the floor with the effort.

  Are you all right? Sarah asked.

  Silas laughed.

  You’re drunk, she said.

  Silas didn’t deny it.

  It’s bloody weird here, he told her, and he was suddenly overwhelmed by a desire to go home, knowing that he was spinning now, untethered and out of control.

  He heard her sigh. Maybe you should call when you’re sober.

  I guess, and Silas looked out the window at the night sky, a spread of stars too numerous to count.

  I don’t know why I hoped you’d get it together while you were away. Her tone turned to one of irritation. Why do you waste your life? And she was silent for a moment. Forget it. It’s none of my business.

  As Silas let the phone fall to the ground and lay back on the floor, the sound of Thai and Steve’s fucking carrying through the heat of the night air, it was Rudi he saw; the desperation in his eyes as Constance had told him he was asking for the impossible, a description of something he would never be able to see. She had turned to the window, her expression unreadable.

  Besides, she had muttered, her voice barely above a whisper, it’s mine.

  And Silas had watched as she had wiped at the tears with the back of her hand.

  the direction of cure

  Cure proceeds from above downward, from within outward, from the most important organs to the least important organs, and in the reverse order of appearance of symptoms.

  Constantine Hering (1800–1880)

  1

  There is a thick white mist this morning, dense enough to obscure all vision from the small window next to my bed. I sleep on the mezzanine, and when I wake it is always the sky that greets me first, just the sky.

  I lie here, knowing the others are still asleep, and as I close my eyes again, it is the track that I see, the path that Silas described for me, a spidery trail of yellow dirt pockmarked with sharp stones, weaving through the low-lying scrub that stretches between the town and Rudi’s.

  Silas told me that when the idea of returning first came to him, shortly after he commenced taking Belladonna, it was that trail he saw. In the days that followed, he would picture himself, standing where the road petered out into dust, the last house on his right, the paleness of the gulf waters on his left, the thick brush, steel grey, in front of him, and through it, the track he had worn.

  The trail he had made had, of course, long since gone by the time I got to Port Tremaine. Pearl attempted to explain how I would find my way out there, but it was Steve who drew me the map, any hostility he might have felt towards Silas and those wh
o knew him quickly overcome by a more powerful desire to talk.

  His kids rode their rusted trikes over the drawing he had scratched into the dirt as soon as he finished it.

  Twins, he told me proudly, and I noticed that they were, indeed, alike.

  He drew the map again, grinning as he wiped over what remained of his previous attempt.

  You know there’s nothing there now? He looked at me quizzically as I tried to explain that it didn’t matter. I just wanted to see it for myself, to picture what it had once been.

  Steve also told me where Mick had gone. I had seen the closed garage, boarded up, the sign advertising repairs barely legible now, the rust corroding the black painted letters so that they bled into the yellow background.

  Poor bastard, and he ran his fingers through the thick wiry hair of one of the boys, now clinging to his jeans. Should have told us, he shook his head. But you know how it is. Still waters. He picked the other child up, taking a last swig from the stubbie in his free hand.

  Shel. His voice was loud, and I saw the woman, heavily pregnant, come to the door of the house behind us. Get us another, would you, darl? He held the empty bottle up, and the flyscreen slammed shut behind her.

  Mick had not spoken to any of them, not until afterwards. When Steve told me where he had gone, I thought about driving to the town on the other side of the gulf and attempting to talk to him but there really wasn’t any point. I already knew what little there was to know.

  It was not until the night before Mick left that he finally revealed it all to Steve. The pair of them had sat out on the end of the jetty, chucking their empty bottles into the swollen evening tide, and he had cried.

  Like a baby, and Steve had shaken his head in wonder. He didn’t get there until a month after it happened. Couldn’t walk, couldn’t drive. His foot was broken. When he finally made it out there, the old bloke was drunk. Said he’d buried her himself. Had no idea why Mick would care. Why Mick wanted to know.