She had begun to appear less frequently. She was fading, it had seemed to him. Each night she was less substantial, less there. Only at the full moon did she still seem solid, present – ‘She was a present,’ he said. ‘My present. I didn’t think in terms of past or future. There was only the moment, when she was there, in my arms, when I could hold her and comfort her and stroke her hair in the light of the moon…’
It had seemed to him more opium would help, but it didn’t. Instead, that other, imaginary world encroached more and more on his own, until he could no longer tell them apart. When walking the streets sometimes he thought he saw others who were like her, shades on the street corners, refugees from another place and time, but he never tried to talk to them. She was all he had.
‘And then she was gone. She was gone with the full moon as it set on the horizon. Her hair was spun silver. I held her hand in mine and it was translucent, I could see the blood vessels inside, bones like pale crystals. ‘I think I see them,’ she said. That was the last thing she said to me. The next night she didn’t appear, or the next, or the one after that.’ He looked up at Joe, but his eyes weren’t seeing. ‘I was alone.’
He waited the dark time for the new moon to be reborn. Yet when it was, she was absent from the night, and he knew she was not coming back. ‘That night I wrote the first chapter. I hardly sleep any more. When I close my eyes I see him, but always in the distance, like a cowled figure with clear cold eyes that are indifferent to me.’
Joe said – whispered – ‘Osama.’ The name shivered in the still air, seemed momentarily to assume a shape, a figure, then was gone.
‘Yes,’ Mike Longshott said. He shivered too, despite the heat. ‘My hero.’ He gave a laugh that was more of a cough. His hands shook. ‘Could you –?’ he said. Joe understood him. Far away he seemed to hear faint voices, whispering. He rose from the armchair and walked over to Mike Longshott, helping him to stand up. ‘It’s in the other room,’ the writer said. There was sweat on his face. Gently, Joe took his arm. They walked together slowly, the writer half-leaning on Joe’s shoulder, and when they arrived in the other room Joe helped Longshott lie down on the cot the man had prepared for himself long ago, and watched him settle, and something seemed to break inside him, like weak glass. ‘Could you –?’ Mike Longshott said and Joe, biting his lips to stop the mist that seemed to have descended on his eyes, nodded wordlessly and helped him prepare the pipe, rolling the ball of resin in his fingers though the smell made him dizzy. He placed the mouthpiece of the pipe in the writer’s mouth and lit the flame to heat the resin, watching as Longshott’s features slowly relaxed and slackened as he inhaled the fumes travelling down the pipe.
Stupor, Longshott had called it. Joe stayed until the pipe was done, and Longshott’s eyes, though opened, no longer saw him. Then, rising, he softly left the room.
folly
——
He knew she would be there, even before she appeared. In a way, he thought, she had always been there, waiting for him on the edge of vision, where light met water and allowed her to form. There was a film of tears on his eyes and he let it stay there. We are all shades, he thought – ghosts, the unexplained. We are bad omens that only appear under certain conditions. He thought of the beds he slept in. They were never disturbed when he woke up. He could never remember sleeping. He was just… he just wasn’t there. The realisation did not come as a relief. It was merely there, like the voices of the others, whispering far away. Through blurred vision he watched the distant mountains where nothing grew. A haze shimmered over red-brown dust, and through the haze she appeared, a small, vulnerable figure, all alone on that swathe of road, empty-blue skies behind her, and the mountains like signifiers of a burial.
‘I found him,’ he said. His voice sounded hollow, a lost small thing floundering in the open space on that hill above the quiet town. He fumbled in his pockets then and found the black card she had given him back in his office, in Vientiane, which now seemed little more than a dream. He made an attempt to give it back to her but she ignored the gesture and after a moment’s hesitation he let it drop to the ground, where it seemed to disappear in amidst the dust. It was no more real, he realised, then anything else – a prop, a fabrique, a folly. He said, ‘I found him,’ again, and hated the sound of his own voice, but she smiled. She said, ‘I knew you would.’
They stood facing each other across the chasm of the hills. In the background Mike Longshott’s house, a ruined castle, stood in a silence of its own. The heat was heavy on the land, as thick and syrupy as a dream. She said, ‘I missed you.’
‘No, no,’ he said. ‘You found me.’
She smiled at that, then frowned. A lock of hair fell over her face and she left it there. Joe had the urge to reach out and move it, held himself still. ‘Do you remember?’ she said. It was said, he thought, with some urgency. He said, ‘I remember you coming to my office. You hired me to find him –’ He gestured at the house. He knew that wasn’t what she was asking, but he was afraid of the other answer. Suddenly, he was deathly afraid.
The girl glared at him. ‘God damn it!’ she said. Her voice was like an explosion and it startled him. He took a step back and she advanced on him. ‘Me, you bastard! Do you remember me! Do you –’ she took a deep breath as if trying to steady herself. She looked very angry. He sensed then, or knew from somewhere deep inside him, that she had the kind of anger that could shake the earth and make mountains. And also, something inside him added, a voice he tried desperately to silence, she had that kind of love.
Joe
——
‘You love black and white movies and detective novels,’ she said. It all came out in a rush. The sun was falling smoothly down the sky. ‘You love rum and raisins ice-cream, sourdough bread, butter and not margarine, salads but not with onion.’ Her hands were bunched into fists. She said, ‘You hate beetroot and avocado, you’re indifferent to politics, you like to sleep on the right side of the bed as long as it’s facing the wall. You like to turn the pillow over at night so you get the cool side. You hate people who walk slower than you. You can iron but very slowly, have no idea how a washing machine operates, and like to leave your clothes on the floor so you can pick them up again first thing in the morning. You change your underwear every day but will keep wearing the same pair of jeans until they start smelling. You cried when your grandfather died, you like romantic comedies but you won’t admit it unless you’re drunk, you only drink socially and you smoke too much. Your name is –’
‘Joe,’ he said. ‘My name is Joe.’ There was an abyss around him, and the voices of the others chattered like birds far away. He had a sudden, desperate craving for a cigarette. ‘My name is Joe,’ he said again, holding on to the name as if it were a single tree-branch above rapid waters.
She said another name. The words had no meaning to him. ‘You like cowboy hats but won’t ever wear one outside,’ she said. ‘You think of yourself as a cowboy but you’re not –’
He said, ‘Hey!’ and she almost smiled, but didn’t.
‘– and you’d argue about if challenged. You like Humphrey Bogart, you re-read Sherlock Holmes stories, you hate it when people sit next to you in the cinema, you like eating chicken and chips and you don’t like exercise, you prefer a shower to a bath and you sing when you’re in a good mood. You don’t like the cold and you don’t like humidity. You drink too much coffee.’