Being Here

by Barry Jonsberg

  Three days in the barn changed all that.

  Adam came while I was still sobbing from my beating. He had grown. His hair no longer stuck out at strange angles, but fell in a sleek curtain over brown, almond-shaped eyes. He knelt at my side and lifted my top which had stuck to my wounds with blackened, partly dried blood. I winced as the fabric peeled. When he glimpsed my back, I heard a sharp intake of breath. Then he took off his own shirt and tore long strips from the material. It was almost white, soft as gossamer. Even through the pain and the tears I noticed his body how firm it was, the flatness of his belly. A thin, pale scar snaked along his left side. I saw his form as it would be when sculpted by years to come.

  Adam took one of the strips and dipped it in the jug of water. His face was set, lips in a thin and disapproving line. He bathed my wounds one by one with a gentleness at odds with his expression. His touch stung at first. I flinched from contact. But he worked steadily, wringing out the material, dipping into the water, smoothing away the blood and the pain.

  ‘Talk to me,’ I said. I was scared of his silence as well.

  ‘What is there to say?’ he replied, his eyes never moving from his work, as though he was an artist and my back his canvas.

  ‘She loves me,’ I said.

  ‘I can see.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘You can’t.’

  We said nothing more until he was done. Then he found scraps of material, old sacking that he shook to remove the droppings of rodents and the dried husks of long-dead insects. Adam placed them on the floor and formed a bed fit for a fallen princess. I lay on my stomach, watched the twirl of dust in the bands of light and felt the slicing pain recede. He lay beside me and I buried my fingers in his hair.

  ‘It was my fault,’ I whispered.

  ‘No.’

  ‘I pried where I shouldn’t have. I sinned. God does not love sinners and I deserve punishment.’

  He sighed. His breath was warm on my cheek.

  ‘You seem very sure of the mind of God, Leah. I wouldn’t be. Your sin was small, your punishment out of proportion. Love played no part in this. Love does not tear flesh, nor glory in pain.’

  I knew how to counter his argument. I had heard it during drowsy mornings in church. I had heard it from my mother. I knew the answer.

  ‘God is love,’ I said. ‘But God is also vengeance. And that is right. How can we do good if there are no consequences for doing bad? I angered my mother and I angered God. That is why I brought the punishment on myself. If I had avoided sin, I would not have to suffer now.’

  There was a long silence.

  ‘God and your mother. Are you sure you aren’t confusing the two, Leah?’

  I jumped to my feet and the movement brought a fresh wave of pain. I felt skin tearing and I didn’t care. I paced through bars of light and shadow. Outside the barn, Pagan whimpered.

  ‘You should go, Adam,’ I said, but I didn’t look at him. ‘I don’t want you here anymore.’

  And he went. But not before I felt his arms around my neck. He kept his body away from the raw meat of my back. I stiffened with anger, but the touch of his skin on mine was a kiss.

  ‘I love you,’ he breathed into my ear. ‘And I will be here when you need me.’

  Then, nothing. I turned. The barn was empty except for a tangled mat of sacking and the play of light on a dark, fan-shaped stain against weathered wood. Pagan whimpered again and I felt an almost unbearable sense of loss.

  ‘I’m sorry, love, but you really must go. Leah tires easily these days. I’m sure you understand.’

  It is my nurse. I say she is my nurse, but of course that is not strictly true. There are dozens of people like me in this Home, and she, along with the other staff, has responsibility for all of us. ‘Home’ is a word frowned upon by the officials at this institution. Apparently, it has negative connotations. Strange. I always thought home was associated with happiness.

  This used to be a home. Now it is a residence. I am impressed with this sign of progress.

  Jane, the broad-beamed nurse, she of the flaming hair, the faint hint of an Irish accent and a husband who is wrong. This is a good day. I often forget her name. I look upon her as mine for reasons I can’t properly explain. It’s just the way she looks at me, as if she sees a person divorced from the wear and tear of unforgiving years. It is rare, that look. It is precious.

  The younger girl startles as if caught in an unspeakable act. She gets to her feet and turns off her machine, slips it into her schoolbag.

  ‘Oh, wow. Sorry. I didn’t realise the time.’ The words rush from her, a jumble of sound. I wonder if she believes speed of movement and words is atonement for unspecified sins. ‘Sorry.’

  I don’t argue with Jane. She has the vitality of youth with all its unshakable conviction. And to tell the truth, I am tired. It is only when I stop talking that I realise how tired.

  The girl crouches in front of my chair. She smiles and I’m afforded a close-up of the grill that fences her teeth. I must ask her about that. She rubs my hand and it feels pleasant.

  ‘Bring in a photo of your boyfriend next time,’ I say.

  ‘Josh?’ she says. ‘I’ve got one on my phone if you’re really interested. Hey, I’ve got dozens.’

  She rummages through her bag and pulls out a phone. Her hands dance and soon there is a photograph on the screen, but I have to squint to see it. Of all the symptoms of the body’s decay, it is the loss of eyesight I resent most. Hearing is something I can do without most times. Television is better without sound. Deafness spares so much unnecessary pain.

  The boyfriend has a lazy smile. He is good-looking, knows it, is relaxed with who he is. He holds a guitar, his head turned slightly towards its neck. There is an abstract design tattooed on his left arm. The boy has a moustache and beard that join to frame his mouth. I think of Spanish conquistadors or Hollywood pirates. He wears his youth with pride. I manage to get him fully in focus when the screen blanks and he is swallowed in darkness.

  ‘You don’t have a proper photograph?’ I ask.

  The girl frowns. ‘I might have one in my purse somewhere. A passport photo he didn’t need. Hang on a moment.’ She unloads her bag, piles up a mass of hair clips, lip gloss, scraps of paper. ‘Here we go.’

  She hands me a small, dog-eared photograph. It’s frayed at the edges. I know how it feels. The boy this time is face-on to the camera. He is serious. It’s a photograph the police might take.

  ‘Can I borrow this?’ I ask. ‘Just until the next time you visit.’

  The girl hesitates. She is weighing things. The photograph is personal and she scarcely knows me. But confronting age also makes the withholding of anything a source of guilt. I am harmless and I am old. Denying the elderly makes one feel somehow soiled.

  ‘Sure,’ she says, though she doesn’t sound it. ‘I’ll come back tomorrow after school, if you’re up for it.’

  I feel very good. In my mind, if not in my eyes, everything is sharply focused.

  ‘I suspect I will still be here.’

  She turns at the door.

  ‘Hey, Mrs C. You said something about killing.’

  ‘Ah yes,’ I say. ‘I did. My mother the murderer. It is part of the story and I will get to it. In time.’

  She laughs and it is sunshine.

  ‘You’re like one of those people who write thrillers. My English teacher is always going on about it,’ she says. I almost expect her to wag her finger at me. She doesn’t. ‘What’s it called? A cliffhanger.’

  ‘The hook is always what happens next,’ I say. ‘The oldest and crudest element of story. But effective. You just need to keep turning my pages, Carla.’

  ‘Carly,’ she says.

  After she leaves I think about turning pages. The girl has gone to a part of her life that is closed to me. Her family. The brother carrying the burden of extravagant hopes. The father who develops property. What does he look like? I see him as overweight in an expensive suit. He mops his
brow constantly with handkerchiefs that his wife irons for him. He is good with computers.

  She is overweight also, unhappy, tells impossibly cheerful stories to cross-legged children and wonders where the time goes. The girl’s parents glory in a shared history and are reconciled to a shared future. It is a burden they both carry. Passion is a memory, dog-eared like the photograph I still hold. There is pleasure in this, creating fiction out of real people’s lives.

  Death. Yes. There are two deaths to come. And I am responsible for one.

  I wonder what the girl would have thought if I’d told her that.

  I’m glad I didn’t mention it. Sometimes there can be too many cliffhangers. It is so easy for the exhausted reader to slip and fall.

  * * *

  Dusk comes early or maybe I have lost track of time. Jane says goodnight at the end of her shift, as she always does. Through the darkness-smeared window of the lounge I see her husband waiting in the car. He drums his fingers on the door. His face is in shadow, which suits me. I don’t like his face.

  ‘See you tomorrow, Leah,’ she says. Her smile looks as if it’s been freshly applied. I admire her uncrushable spirit. At the same time, I’m saddened by it. She deserves better than fingers drumming on metal. Good temper can blinker your perception of unhappiness. Or increase your tolerance of it. There’s danger in that.

  ‘If God spares me,’ I reply.

  ‘Sure, get away with you. You’ll outlive us all,’ she says, buttoning her coat.

  I cannot remember when I heard a prediction so profoundly depressing.

  Dinner is awful, as always. Everything is soft. I hate this topsy-turvy childhood, where you shovel in mush at one end and need assistance to get rid of it at the other.

  If I were to define the tragedy of age, it would be this: the impossibility of achieving dignity at the very time you are convinced it is the only thing worth saving.

  Afterwards I talk to Lucy.

  She is my best friend and, unlike me, her mind never wanders. She remembers the name of the current Prime Minister. I forget what we had for breakfast. Lucy has visitors. Her daughter comes once a week and she brings me a present on my birthday and at Christmas. I like her consideration, mainly because it is so unfashionable. Lucy and I sit in too-soft chairs in the residents’ lounge, like ancient bookends.

  ‘How are you feeling, Leah?’ she asks.

  ‘Sharp as a tack,’ I reply. ‘It’s funny how it goes. I’m like a camera lens being constantly altered. One moment, everything is fuzzy. The next I’m crisp, with amazing depth of field.’

  She laughs.

  ‘You’ve read too many books,’ she says. ‘Sometimes you use words in ways I can’t imagine.’

  ‘You can never read enough books,’ I reply. ‘It is an enduring loss that my eyes don’t allow me to anymore.’

  ‘Well, what about large print editions?’

  I snort. ‘It’s like being shouted at. It gives me a headache.’

  ‘There are audio books.’

  I wave a hand. We have had this conversation before.

  ‘Audio books don’t smell of paper and the sweat of the writer,’ I point out. ‘Reading is partly the weight of the book in your hand, the feel of a page as you turn it. It is not an experience you can approximate.’

  ‘You are sharp tonight, aren’t you?’ she says.

  ‘I intend to enjoy it while I can.’

  We sit in silence for a considerable time. Only friends can do that and not feel uncomfortable.

  ‘Lucy?’ I say. She turns her damp eyes to mine and I have the strangest feeling I am looking into a mirror. Her hair is thin and white, like mine. Wisps stick out at odd angles and I know she can do nothing to control this. We have clouds for hair, subject to their own cosmology. Her skin is loose and there are dark circles around her eyes. Her hands are knotted with arthritis. But her eyes. They are what remain of youth, a wet reminder of the way we were.

  I realise I have lost the thread of what I wanted to ask. She waits patiently.

  ‘Do you think we would have been friends in the past?’ I continue. ‘Or is our friendship now just another consequence of ageing? That we share the same space and have no choice.’

  She thinks about this. Another thing I admire about Lucy. She won’t give the unconsidered response. She knows I deserve better.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she says finally. ‘Maybe not. Does it matter, Leah?’

  ‘No,’ I admit. ‘Probably not. It’s just that I get strange thoughts, Lucy. I get such strange thoughts.’

  She considers me for a moment. ‘I told you. You’ve read too many books.’

  Yes. I have read many. My mind drifts and I am reminded again of Adam, how he appeared to me in the barn all those years ago. He wore clothes I had never seen and therefore could not imagine. Adam talked in ways I had never heard. He used words as old as time. How could I have created that? If we spin fiction, we must do so out of materials we have to hand, and my reading then was in its infancy. They were my salad days of literature. Looking back, Adam appears to me now as a transfigured boy from the fiction of the fifties. But when I brought him into being, the words that gave those boys life had not been written.

  So how can I explain him?

  I have a theory and it is plausible. As far as it goes.

  I view the past through the strange kaleidoscope of time and see it distorted, as we all do. Yet I know I was a child driven and derided by loneliness. It is natural to fill our particular vacuums with the stuff of the imagination. I made Adam out of need. I made him well. And he survived, became someone who didn’t need my belief to continue his existence. He chose his own path. He was like a child who had grown and taken on his own identity, his own independence, as children must.

  Is that possible?

  It is a good question.

  Increasingly, I believe that when I have poured my story into the child, I will find the answer.

  Perhaps.

  CHAPTER 4

  MY DREAMS ARE THIN.

  I see Adam step down from the cross above mother’s bed. His forehead is dotted with crimson. The dog. What is the name of the dog? He twitches, then is still. It is an electrical charge. There is a burning smell. Drool, thick as syrup, stains my dress. An apple. Green and polished, reflecting the sky. I have to look closely to spot the worm. It wriggles like my thoughts.

  Arms stretched to the side. A diver gathering himself. All the world spins into that moment, the split second before the plunge. A spin of images. The face of a woman. She is dressed in black. Features are sharp, carved by severity. Only the eyes. Only the eyes. Something is there, a memory of what used to be. This woman is everything to me and I am something to her. She fades, churns, becomes lost in the maelstrom.

  Faces, places, sounds. Some are now. Some are then. I cannot sift them. One face looms above me. It has red hair and I should know it. I’m sitting in a dusty corner, reading a book. The words don’t make sense. That is Mrs Hilson over by the table. She is old. One of us is old. She looks into my eyes and her mouth moves, but if there is sound it is blotted by the air. Red hair. Something snakes from my arm. There is a container above me. Snakes. The garden. Apples. Green and polished, reflecting the sky. I have to look closely to spot the worm. It wriggles like my thoughts. There is a book.

  ‘It’s okay, Leah. You’re fine.’

  Whose are those words? Are they directed at me? Leah. That is my name. I grab hold. My name is a life jacket, or a thin strip of wood afloat on the choppy seas of my mind. I must keep hold. But there is a whirlpool and it sucks me down. I cannot resist it. What is the name of the dog and who is the boy and there is a woman and there are fingers around her throat and she chokes and is afraid …

  * * *

  A different woman, with clouds for hair. I lie in a bed and she holds my hand. I think she is my friend. I hear words.

  ‘I am here, Leah.’

  ‘You are going to be fine.’

  ‘Can you t
ell me my name?’

  There is much more. Sometimes I try to reply, but I don’t know where words have gone. They are buried and though I search and search they elude me. I think days pass. There is also the woman with red hair. Most of the time I stare at the ceiling. It has stains that make patterns. They appear to be telling me a story, but I can’t identify with the characters. I am so tired …

  ‘Do you remember me, Mrs C?’

  I have to think for a while, but it comes to me.

  ‘You’re Carly,’ I say. ‘You’ve been listening to my story.’

  She smiles. I remember the bright braces, the flash of blue and the dog-eared photograph. They were part of the cascade and tumble in my mind, but now I separate them, see them in context.

  ‘You had me worried for a while there.’

  ‘You shouldn’t worry,’ I say. My words are emaciated. While I’ve been away, everything has lost weight. ‘Worry about the living.’

  ‘Hey, Mrs C. Feeling sorry for yourself?’ Her voice scolds, but I’m too old to be punished by people anymore. Particularly by a child barely out of the womb.

  Memories are a different matter.

  I suppose feeling sorry for myself is the way it would sound. But it is not self-pity I feel. It is exhaustion. And something more. Impatience. I am a shadow in the land of the vibrant. Time will not lend me substance. It will relentlessly strip it away. Why? Why bother when what I suffer from cannot be cured, can only degenerate? They say that when you face a momentous journey, the anticipation is worse than the travel itself. That it is better to get it over with.

  For once, they do not lie.

  ‘I’ve been rambling,’ I say. The girl doesn’t reply, but then it wasn’t a question. I’ve been lost. Now I’ve returned, but the journey has made both the present and the past vaguely unfamiliar. I’m caught between two worlds and can’t fit comfortably in either. ‘How long have I been gone?’

  She twists the metal in her eyebrow.

  ‘Not sure. I think … three days.’

  ‘Prop up my pillows, please,’ I say. She does and I catch the sharp smell of young flesh. It reminds me of apples and salt water. She offers her arm as I wrestle myself into a more comfortable position. My neck hurts. Most of me hurts. Carly lifts a cup of water to my lips and helps me drink. It softens the sharp edges of my throat.