Age of Iron

I took two of the new pills. Again the miraculous draining away of pain, the euphoria, the feeling of being restored to life. I had a bath, got back into bed, tried to read, fell into a confused sleep. In an hour I was awake again. The pain was creeping back, bringing with it nausea and the first edge of the familiar shadow of depression.

The drug over the pain: a shaft of light but then darkness redoubled.

Vercueil came in.

'I have taken the new pills,' I said; 'They are no improvement. Slightly stronger, perhaps; that's all.'

'Take more,' said Vercueil. 'You don't have to wait four hours.'

A drunkard's advice.

'I'm sure I will,' I said. 'But if I am free to take them whenever I like, why not take them all together?'

There was silence between us.

'Why did you choose me?' I said,

'I didn't choose you.'

'Why did you come here, to this house?'

'You didn't have a dog.'

'Why else?'

'I thought you wouldn't make trouble.'

'And have I made trouble?'

He came toward me. His face was puffy, I could smell liquor on his breath. 'If you want me to help you. I'll help you,' he said. He leaned over and took me by the throat, his thumbs resting lightly on my larynx, the three bad fingers bunched under my ear. 'Don't,' I whispered, and pushed his hands away. My eyes swam with tears. I took his hands in mine and beat them on my chest in a gesture of lamentation quite foreign to me.

After a while I was still. He continued to lean over me allowing me to use him. The dog put its nose over the edge of the bed, sniffing at us.

'Will you let the dog sleep with me?' I said.

'Why?'

'For the warmth.'

'He won't stay. He sleeps where I sleep.'

'Then sleep here too.'

There was a long wait while he went downstairs. I had another pill. Then the light on the landing went off. I heard him take off his shoes. 'Take off the hat too, for a change,' I said.

He lay down at my back, on top of the bedclothes. The smell of his dirty feet reached me. He whistled softly; the dog leapt up, did its circle dance, settled between his legs and mine. Like Tristan's sword, keeping us honest.

The pill worked its wonders. For half an hour, while he and the dog slept, I lay still, free of pain, my soul alert, darting. A vision passed before my eyes of the child Beauty riding towards me on her mother's back, bobbing, staring imperiously ahead. Then the vision faded and clouds of dust, the dust of Borodino, came rolling over my sight like the wheels of the carriage of death.

I switched on the lamp. It was midnight.

I will draw a veil soon. This was never meant to be the story of a body, but of the soul it houses. I will not show to you what you will not be able to bear: a woman in a burning house running from window to window, calling through the bars for help.

Vercueil and his dog, sleeping so calmly beside these torrents of grief. Fulfilling their charge, waiting for the soul to emerge. The soul, neophyte, wet, blind, ignorant.

I have the story now of how he lost the use of his fingers. It was in an accident at sea. They had to abandon ship. In the scramble his hand was caught in a pulley and crashed. All night he floated on a raft with seven other men and a boy, in agony. The next day they were picked up by a Russian trawler and his hand was given attention. But by then it was too late.

'Did you learn any Russian?' I asked.

All he remembered, he said, was xorosho.

'No one mentioned Borodino?'

'I don't remember Borodino.'

'You didn't think of staying with the Russians?'

He looked at me strangely.

He has never been to sea since then.

'Don't you miss the sea?' I asked. '

'I'll never set foot in a boat again,' he replied decidedly.

'Why?'

'Because next time I won't be so lucky.'

'How do you know? If you had faith in yourself you could walk on water. Don't you believe in the doings of faith?'

He was silent.

'Or a whirlwind would arrive and pluck you out of the water and set you down on dry land. And there are always dolphins. Dolphins rescue drowning sailors, don't they? Why did you become a sailor anyway?'

'You don't always think ahead. You don't always know.'

I pinched his ring finger lightly. 'Can't you feel anything?'

'No. The nerves are dead.'

I always knew he had a story to tell, and now he begins to tell it, starting with the fingers of one hand. A mariner's story. Do I believe it? Verily, I do not care. There is no lie that does not have at its core some truth. One must only know how to listen.

He has worked at the docks too, lifting things, loading things. One day, he said, unloading a crate, they smelled something bad and opened it and found the body of a man, a stowaway who had starved to death in his hiding-place.

'Where did he come from?' I asked.

' China. A long way away.'

He has also worked for the SPCA, at their kennels.

'Was that where you got to like dogs?'

'I always got on with dogs.'

'Did you have a dog as a child?'

'Mm,' he said, meaning nothing. Early on he decided he could get away with choosing which of my questions to hear, which not to hear.

Nevertheless, piece by piece I put together the story of a life as obscure as any on earth. What is in store for him next, I wonder, when the episode of the old woman in the big house is over with? One hand crippled, unable to do all its offices. His sailor's skill with knots lost. Not dextrous any more, nor fully decent. In the middle years of his course, and at his side no wife. Alone: stoksielalleen: a stick in an empty field, a soul alone, sole. Who will watch over him?

'What will you do with yourself when I am gone?'

'I will go on.'

'I am sure you will; but who will there be in your life?'

Cautiously he smiled. 'Do I need somebody in my life?'

Not a riposte. A real question. He does not know. He is asking me, this rudimentary man.

'Yes. I would say you need a wife, if the idea does not strike you as eccentric. Even that woman, you brought here, as long as there is feeling for her in your heart.'

He shook his head.

'Never mind. It is not marriage I am talking about but something else. I would promise to watch over you, except that I have no firm idea of what is possible after death. Perhaps there will be no watching over allowed, or very little. All these places have their rules, and, whatever one may wish, it may not be possible to get around them. There may not even be secrets allowed, secret watching. There may be no way of keeping a space in the heart private for you or anyone else. All may be erased. All. It is a terrible thought. Enough to make one rebel, to make one say: If that is how things are to be, I withdraw: here is my ticket, I am handing it back. But I doubt very much that the handing back of tickets will be allowed, for whatever reason.

'That is why you should not be so alone. Because I may have to go away entirely.'

He sat on the bed with his back to me, bent over, gripping the dog's head between his knees, stroking it.

'Do you understand me?'

'Mm.' The mm that could mean yes but in fact means nothing.

'No, you don't. You don't understand at all. It is not the prospect of your solitude that appals me. It is the prospect of my own.'

Every day he goes off to do the shopping. In the evenings he cooks, then hovers over me, watching to see that I eat. I am never hungry but haven't the heart to tell him. 'I find it hard to eat while you watch,' I say as gently as I can, then hide the food and feed it to the dog.

His favourite concoction is white bread fried in egg with tuna on the bread and tomato sauce on the tuna. I wish I had had the foresight to give him cooking lessons.

Though he has the whole house to spread himself in, he lives, in effect, with me in my room. He drops empty packets, old wrapping papers on the floor. When there is a draught they scud around like ghosts. 'Take the rubbish away,' I plead. 'I will,' he promises, and sometimes does, but then leaves more.