‘Rounder than a wheel?’ said Jachin-Boaz.
‘You’re forcing it, poppet,’ said the tightly furled man. ‘Just let it happen.’
‘Don’t be a snob,’ said Jachin-Boaz.
‘Look who’s talking,’ said the tightly furled man. ‘Him with his lions and his traveller’s cheques and his cameras. Obesity is the mother of distension. A bitch in time shaved mine. Take the bleeding castles apart and ship them home stone by stone for all I care. Piss off, you and your lion both. Tourists.’
‘There’s no need to take that tone,’ said Jachin-Boaz.
The tightly furled man began to cry. Kneeling on the bed, he bent forward, burying his head in his arms, thrusting out his bottom. ‘I didn’t mean it,’ he said. ‘Let me pet the lion. He can eat my dinner every day.’
Jachin-Boaz turned away, lay back on his bed with his arms behind his head and stared straight up at the ceiling, attempting to find silence and privacy in the space over him that was presumably as wide as his bed, as high as the room, and his personal domain. The sunlight said, Once you begin to doubt you will lose everything. Begin now. ‘No,’ said Jachin-Boaz to the curtains. You will perish, said the red, said the yellow-and-blue flowers. We abide. Many have come and gone here, said the smell of cooking. All have been defeated.
Jachin-Boaz became aware that someone with mental-hospital-doctor feet had arrived at his bed. He had sometimes heard clocks whose tick-tocks became words. When the doctor spoke, his words became tick-tocks unless Jachin-Boaz listened very hard.
‘How are we tick-tock today?’ said the doctor. ‘Ticktock?’
‘Very tock, thank you,’ said Jachin-Boaz.
‘Tick,’ said the doctor. ‘Ticks will tock themselves out, I have no doubt.’
‘I tick so,’ said Jachin-Boaz. ‘Tick all right last tock?’
‘Very tock,’ said Jachin-Boaz. ‘No dreams that I can remember forgetting.’
‘That’s the ticket,’ said the doctor. ‘Tock it tick.’
‘Cheers,’ said Jachin-Boaz, making an upward gesture with two fingers.
‘You do it the other way for victory,’ said the doctor.
‘When I see a victory I’ll do it that way,’ said Jachin-Boaz.
The doctor’s feet went away, and the doctor went with them. Civilian feet appeared. Familiar shoes.
‘How are you feeling?’ said the owner of the bookshop. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Not so bad, thank you,’ said Jachin-Boaz. ‘It’s kind of you to come.’
‘How come you’re here?’ said the bookshop owner. ‘You seem the same as you’ve always been. Was it the dog-food-eating hallucination?’
‘Something like that,’ said Jachin-Boaz. ‘Unfortunately a police constable saw it too.’
‘Ah,’ said the bookshop owner. ‘It’s always best to keep that sort of thing to yourself, you know.’
‘I should like to have kept it to myself,’ said Jachin-Boaz.
‘Things’ll sort themselves out,’ said the bookshop owner. ‘The rest will do you good and you’ll come back to work refreshed.’
‘You don’t have any reservations about taking me back?’ said Jachin-Boaz.
‘Why should I? You sell more books than any other assistant I’ve ever had. Anybody can come unstuck once in a while.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Not at all. Oh, there was an advert in the trade weekly. Letter for you at a box number. Here it is.’
‘A letter for me,’ said Jachin-Boaz. He opened the envelope. In it was another envelope, postmarked at his town, his town where he had been Jachin-Boaz the mapseller. ‘Thank you,’ he said, and put the letter on his bedside table.
‘And here’s some fruit,’ said the bookshop owner, ‘and a couple of paperbacks.’
‘Thank you,’ said Jachin-Boaz. He took an orange from the bag, held it in his hand. The paperbacks were two collections of supernatural and horror stories.
‘Escape literature,’ said the bookshop owner.
‘Escape,’ said Jachin-Boaz.
‘I’ll stop in again,’ said the bookshop owner. ‘Get well soon.’
‘Yes,’ said Jachin-Boaz. ‘Thank you.’
29
Only you, said the black water rushing past the ferry in the night.
‘Only I what, for God’s sake!’ said Boaz-Jachin. He saw no one near him, and spoke aloud. He leaned over the rail, smelled the blackness of the sea and cursed the water. ‘Every fucking thing talks to me,’ he said. ‘Leave me alone for a while. I’ll talk to you some other time. I can’t be rushed all the time.’ He walked aft to the stern, saw flights of white gulls rising and falling in eerie silence above the wake. Out of the darkness into the light. Out of the light into the darkness. Boaz-Jachin shook his fist at the gulls. ‘I don’t even know if he’s there!’ he said. ‘I don’t even know if I’m looking for him in the right place.’
You know, said the white wings silently rising and falling. Don’t tell us you don’t know.
‘That’s what I’m telling you,’ said Boaz-Jachin leaning out over the rail. ‘I don’t know.’ He saw no one on the afterdeck, and he began to talk more loudly, to shout into the darkness and the wake. ‘I don’t know! I don’t know!’ Two gulls slanted towards each other like eyebrows, became for a moment a pale frown following the boat. Boaz-Jachin put one foot on the bottom rail and leaned farther out, staring at the darkness where the white wings had crossed and separated.
He felt a hand gripping his belt from behind. He turned, and was face to face with a woman. His turning had brought her arm halfway around him and their faces close together. She did not let go of his belt.
‘What’s the matter?’ said Boaz-Jachin.
‘Come away from the rail,’ she said, still holding his belt. Her voice was one that he had heard before. They moved towards the lighted windows of the lounge, and he saw her face clearly.
‘You!’ he said.
‘You know me?’
‘You gave me a ride. Months ago it was, on the other side, on the road to the port. You had a red car with a tape machine playing music. You didn’t like the way I looked at you.’
She let go of his belt. Under his shirt his flesh burned where her arm had been around him.
‘I didn’t recognize you,’ she said.
‘Why did you grab me by the belt?’
‘It made me nervous to see you leaning out over the rail that way and shouting into the dark.’
‘You thought I was going to jump overboard?’
‘It made me nervous, that’s all. You look older.’
‘You look kinder.’
She smiled, took his arm, walked with him along the deck past the lighted windows. Her breast against his arm made it feel hot.
’Did you think I was going to jump overboard?’ said Boaz-Jachin.
‘I have a son about your age,’ she said.
‘Where is he?’
‘I don’t know. I never hear from him.’
‘Where’s your husband?’
‘With a new wife.’
They walked the deck all the way around the boat, then around again. Hearing her say that her husband was with a new wife was not the same to Boaz-Jachin as the word divorcée that had been in his mind that day on the road.
‘You’ve changed,’ she said. ‘You’re less of a boy.’
‘More of a man?’
‘More of a person. More of a man.’
They drank cognac in the bar. In a corridor a group of students with back packs sang while one of them played a guitar. Honey, let me be your salty dog, went the song.