The Possession of Mr Cave

by Matt Haig

  So I went inside, told myself you would be all right, and tried to feel the splendid glory of the place.

  I remembered the last time I was there, with your mother. Then, we had been moved with a mutual emotion that seemed as overwhelming as the architectural proportions themselves. That almost paradoxical feeling of diminished human scale, paired with a sudden swelling of the spiritual self, had been like nothing we had known on this earth. We had marvelled at the dome, and then climbed up to the lantern to see Rome as God might see it, a beige bowl of intersecting histories, rendered so beautifully coherent your mother had tears in her eyes.

  This time though, I stayed at ground level and felt the empty terror of the place. I just shuffled along with the other tourists, and paused for a short while in front of Michelangelo's Pietà, staring at the sculpture through a sheet of bulletproof glass. It still had an impact though. Indeed, the glass added another layer to the narrative. It seemed to suggest the distance between the dying Christ and the modern world, a distance brought about by the desire to protect.

  An equivalent desire was there in the face of the Virgin Mary, sitting strong and father-like, with the feeble-bodied child across her lap. I wished you had been there by my side to see it. The foundation of a religious faith expressed as a parent's tragedy. A parent whose son had gone away from her, out into a world that killed him. And then too late he was returned to the safety of the parent's lap. A safety that meant nothing now.

  I stayed there for a short while, as tears glazed my eyes. Tourists stood all around, with star-struck faces, ready to tick off another sight before moving on. Of course, none of them displayed any understanding of what Michelangelo was trying to say. They just made the same pleasant mumbles as they had when they stood in the Sistine Chapel, casting their eyes down from the ceiling through the Last Judgement and an underworld that stopped above their heads.

  Michelangelo's message to me, standing in front of the Pietà, was clear. Agony awaits if you let your child out into a world of lost souls. You must protect her, and you must never let her go.

  I walked away, without seeing anything else. No chapel, no altar, no memorial or papal tomb could steer me from my course. I went outside and took a moment to find you. For a second I thought you had gone. There were too many people to make sense of the scene, but then my eyes found the column, and the step, and you sitting exactly where you had said. I rushed over, and didn't notice the two American boys until the last moment. I can see that appalled look on your face as I approached. A shame so intense it spilled into hatred.

  'Bryony, shall we go?'

  You rolled your eyes, and the boy-pups laughed and said, 'See you later.'

  'See you later?' I asked, as we walked past the Egyptian obelisk towards the Via della Conciliazione.

  You shrugged, and said nothing.

  A figure of speech, I told myself, as I glared again at your bare shoulders. Nothing to sweat about.

  And yet, in that delirious July heat, it was impossible not to sweat. 'Right,' I said. 'The Forum's the next on the list. I don't think you'll require a cape for that.'

  I fell from the heavens through a night-blue sky, dropping fast as my body gained form and mass. It felt like an eternity, waiting for the flat earth to come into view. A dark carcass of land bleeding moonlit lakes and oceans. I was heading straight towards the water but landed in my bed feeling worse than ever. Knowing something was wrong, I got up and left the hotel room to go and knock on your door.

  There was no answer, so I tried again.

  Nothing.

  Try to put yourself in my shoes – although, to be precise I was barefoot – as I stood out in that hallway. 'Bryony,' I said your name softly at first. 'Bryony, it's me.'

  The silence scared me, so I kept knocking it away. Voices from other rooms told me, in numerous European languages, to shut the whatever up. I stopped knocking, went downstairs, and explained to the old man behind the desk that something could be the matter. He blew a long sigh, as though I were a regret he had just remembered, but eventually he gave me the key. When I got back upstairs and opened your door I sank at the sight of your empty bed. I scanned the room, and sent your name into every corner. There was nothing but clothes and magazines and all those other empty parts of you.

  For your tenth birthday I had bought you a selection of films. Whistle Down the Wind. The Railway Children. Meet Me in St Louis. And your mother's favourite, Roman Holiday. It became your favourite, too, and I saw no problem with that at the time. 'Suitable for all' was the advice of the British Board of Film Classification. Now, though, I hold Audrey Hepburn at least partially responsible for your antics in the Eternal City. A young princess escaping her responsibilities by heading off into the Roman night, to find love and freedom and Gregory Peck. The message of that film clearly infected your vulnerable mind. Why else would you leave your hotel room in that same city to search for whatever adventure you thought was out there?

  I walked those ancient streets without direction, for how could I know which direction to take? You could have gone anywhere.

  I remember heading down the Via Condotti, where mannequins in designer dresses stared out from dark windows.

  A girl about your height turned the corner and I called your name. She was coming towards me, a walking silhouette, but didn't answer. My heart died as I realised it wasn't you, but a grubby-faced street urchin carrying a baby. Not even the baby was real. A plastic doll, which she threatened to throw towards me. She hissed at the same time, and then said something in a language I'm sure wasn't Italian.

  'Money,' she clarified, realising I couldn't understand. 'Mun-eeee.'

  I kept on going, at a quickening pace, while the ragged gypsy girl stood in the street hissing curses, snake words, to poison my luck.

  I alternated between a walk and a jog as I trod those streets, feeling a rush of hope at the sight of every moving shadow, at the sound of every new footstep, only to plunge into deeper despair when you were not the source.

  This went on for hours, this jogging after every new hope, asking drunks and homeless emperors and men stocking up newspaper kiosks if they had seen you. Of course, it was all futile. Really, I should have returned to the hotel and waited for you in the foyer.

  Light came, and the city slipped slowly into its daytime colours. The jaundiced yellows of the old and dying.

  I had to head back to the hotel. I knew that. But I also knew that if you weren't there I would fall into a nightmare beyond all imagining. 'Bryony,' I called, down every deserted street. What despair your name contained when it was unanswered!

  What if you had been kidnapped? I know this sounds ridiculous to you now, and maybe even to me, but I did not know where you were. There was no note in your room to explain where you had gone, and in the absence of explanation the mind torments itself with all manner of horrendous things.

  I walked back slowly, as time and hope were equal partners in this, through the Piazza di Spagna, passing the deserted Spanish Steps and the house where Keats wasted away. As I walked by the fountain I sensed his ghost, alone and palely loitering at the window, trapped for eternity in the city he thought would heal him. But not even Keats, that great interpreter of the human soul, could offer me any clue or comfort.

  I returned to the hotel and asked the man behind the reception desk if he had seen you.

  'I am sorry, sir, but I am only just beginning,' he said, as oblivious to my pain as to the strange poetry of his words. He was a younger man, a less obvious misanthrope, but such was my delirium that I had thought it was the same one as before.

  I was, by this point, quite dizzy with fear, and again my mind was beginning to fuzz and tingle.

  I must have muttered some kind of thanks and then climbed the stairs up to the third floor, as an ashy darkness tinged away at the periphery of my vision.

  If you were there, in your room, I was going to hug you and kiss your forehead and stroke your hair. I was going to tell you 'I love you'
and you were going to tell me 'I'm sorry, I didn't mean to worry you' and I wasn't even going to think about telling you off. The relief was going to be so much, so perfect and so complete, that it would be impossible to scold you. It is peculiar, isn't it? The way our minds bargain with fate when every future possibility still hangs in the balance.

  I knocked on your door, as the darkness crept closer. Were you asleep? The seconds ticked by without you answering, and I felt the corridor tilt under my feet. I had to steady myself by placing a hand against the wall. I knocked again. 'Bryony, are you there? Petal? Bryony?' This time no one told me to be quiet, although I doubt I would have been aware if they had. The rest of the world could have slipped out of space and time and I wouldn't have noticed. The only thing that mattered was concealed behind that door, 305, and I was about to go back down to the reception desk and get the man to give me the key when I heard something. You. Your feet padding across the carpet. 'Bryony?' The door opened and you were there, rubbing the dreams out of your eyes.

  Had you been asleep, or were you just pretending? Was that delay in answering a part of the act? Were you aware that I was aware? Oh, the heavy weight of trivial questions!

  'Dad?'

  I can tell you, in all honesty, that I have never felt so much love for you as I did inside that moment. To see you standing there, alive and intact, was all I had wanted. And there you were, in that baggy Picasso-print T-shirt, yawning like a baby. I know this must be hard for you to believe, given how things progressed, but I swear it is true. I wanted to hug you, I wanted to thank you for being such a miracle, but then I said it.

  'Where were you?' and I kept saying it, the question backing you into the room. 'Where did you go?' My head was heating up, the mental bonfires raging away at my being, and the sunlit room was sliding into shade. I felt something rising within me. A violent force that weakened me, causing me to lose control.

  'Nowhere. I've been here. I've just woken up.' Your lies, your lies, your lies. 'What are you on about? You're mad. I've been here. I've been asleep.'

  I caught it, on your breath, something corrupt beneath the toothpaste. 'You smell of smoke. And drink.' Then you laughed. You shouldn't have laughed, Bryony. And you said a profanity, which I will euphemistically put as 'go away', the word I cannot write so ugly and vile in your mouth that when I did it, when I struck your face, I wasn't really striking your face but the word on your tongue, this alien thing that had got inside you, this new presence that wanted boys and didn't want your father. And the fuzziness cleared, along with the dark, as though the outside force that had been pressing in suddenly fled like a villain. And I know this was it, I know this was the pivotal moment when the wind swerved in our story, and even now I can still hear your sobs and see your hand on your reddening cheek and I said it then and I'll still say it now, 'I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so, so sorry,' but I know these words are worthless healers and cannot restore a single thing.

  *

  Oh, this is useless. I should stop right now. What is the point? I can see that look of sickened disdain on your face. If only I could put my soul into these words, if only I could make you feel precisely what I felt, then you would see the truth.

  I suppose I expect too much. Every writer, every artist since the first cave painters has been trying to find a way to articulate their experience and are we any closer to seeing ourselves as we truly are? No. The distance we have to travel is exactly the same as it always was. So how can I expect to do what no writer has ever managed?

  People say that humans are the superior species on this planet because we have minds that are conscious of their own existence, and therefore we have the capacity to create a culture, to create an art. I look at sheep, at peace on the moors, and wonder exactly how much of a delusion are our arrogant souls prepared to share?

  There may be no bovid equivalent of a Michelangelo but there is no need for one. They accept their existence in a way we never will. They do not try to build artistic mirrors – books, paintings, orchestral symphonies – by which to capture and reflect their own nature. Even if they could, they wouldn't. They have that understanding in-built. All these human things, all these arts, these religions, these sciences, what are they really but ways of trying to make up that difference? If we could accept like animals then there would be no Sistine Ceiling, no Madame Bovary, no Fantasy and Fugue. Out of our mistakes, out of our pain, arrives everything we love in this world. All that humans create serves solely to lessen the terror of existence. The terror that Beethoven and Keats and Van Gogh and every supreme artist has ever felt, the collective terror of a humanity that still stumbles around, looking at dark and untrustworthy shadows rather than true reflections.

  If we found a perfect art, a perfect mirror to reflect our plight, one which helped us see ourselves from every angle, then it would mean the end of all creative endeavour. Art would have killed itself. Or it would live on in the way it lives in horses and cats and sheep. The art of living, and letting live, that our human souls have yet to learn.

  It was a week after Rome that I first met Imogen. I say 'met' although I realise this is somewhat of an overstatement. It would be more accurate to say that I spotted her in various locations around my house, the way a birdwatcher might spot a chaffinch in his garden. Every time I got closer, trying to identify her chief characteristics, you both immediately took flight.

  Now I was close-up, I didn't like what I saw. What had happened to your other friends? What had happened to Holly, for instance? I used to enjoy hearing your mini string section when you practised together. Or what about that girl from the stables? Abigail, was it? That good old-fashioned hearty girl, who loved looking around the shop. I always thought she was lovely.

  These were studious, freshly aired girls. The type of friends that justified your school fees.

  Imogen was something different. How different, I couldn't quite tell, but I needed to find out.

  'You must be Imogen,' I said, to the face behind the fringe, when I cornered you both on the stairs.

  'I must,' she told the carpet, and then you gave me that unforgiving stare you had recently cultivated, as if I had violated some secret pact simply by identifying your friend.

  Did she know about what had happened in Rome? I have no idea what you had told her about me or what you said to each other in your room. Your music drowned out your voices, and that was probably its point.

  Did you ever read the book on philosophy I bought you for your birthday? If you did you might remember the section on Plato's cave. Well, let me tell you that to be a parent is to be permanently confined to that cave, forever trying to understand shadows on the wall. Shadows that only half make sense, and may be easily and disastrously misunderstood. You can never understand what really goes on in the world your child keeps from view. The reports you hear from her mouth are the shadows against the rocks, shadows that can't be interpreted without stepping outside, into the light.

  'Terence?' Cynthia was calling me from the shop. 'Terence? Terence?'

  You see, that is what I had decided to do. Ever since Rome I had decided to stop trusting your mouth and start trusting my eyes.

  'We're going out,' you told me, that Wednesday afternoon.

  'Oh?' I said. 'May I ask where?'

  'Terence?' called Cynthia, her voice rising now to a theatrical pitch.

  'In a minute,' I called back. Then softer to you: 'Where?'

  'Around the shops', you said, in the minimalist fashion I was becoming used to.

  'Fine,' I said. 'Fine.'

  You expected more, I could see that. Some kind of obstruction.

  But I gave you nothing.

  'We'll be back,' you said. 'Later.'

  'What time?' you expected. But I gave you: 'Fine.'

  The defiance that had creased your forehead softened into blank confusion.

  'Okay,' you said, almost as a question. 'See you . . . later.'

  'All right. See you later. And see you too, Imogen.'

/>   You left and I watched you walk out of the back door, into that fearful day.

  I ran into the shop.

  'Cynthia, can you look after everything here for a bit? I won't be long.'

  Your grandmother gave me one of her unforgiving looks. That tight, crinkled mouth offset with those tough eyes that once had her cast as Hedda Gabler. 'Terence, where have you been? I was calling you. Mrs Weeks came in wanting a word.'

  'I was upstairs. Listen, I've got to nip out.'

  'But, Terence –'

  And so I left the shop and followed you, out of Cave Antiques, out into the light. I followed you down Blossom Street, through the city walls and down the length of Micklegate. I held my distance when you disappeared inside a clothes shop. I held my breath when you crossed over the road, turning your head in my direction. You didn't see me.

  You carried on, over the river, on to Ousegate. I bumped into Peter, the vicar, and he blockaded me with mild smiles and charitable words. He asked how we were bearing up.

  'Fine,' I told him, although the anxious looks over his shoulder probably gave a different story. 'Honestly, we're getting there. We have our bad days but . . .' I saw you turning left, heading out of my view. 'Listen, I'm terribly sorry, Peter, but I'm in a rush. Another time.'

  I ran towards Parliament Street and saw two crowds of youths loitering around the benches near the public toilets. The nearest group was made up of boys sitting on stationary bicycles. Or standing: eating chips, sucking on cigarettes or typing into their mobile telephones. Boys wearing the kind of clothes Reuben always wanted. Trainers, tracksuits, their faces shaded by caps or hooded tops. The warm fuzziness inside my mind returned for a second.

  I recognised one of them as the small boy I had seen vomiting his innards out onto the pavement the night Reuben died. He nudged his friend and nodded over to the other group. The boy had his back to me but turned, smiling. The smile died as he looked across. It was him. It was Denny.