I reached over, into his jacket, pulled the Dictaphone out. Turned it on. Put it between us. Sat back in my chair. He watched it, holding his breath, stifling the sound of tears.
“Two commandments,” I mused. “Know thyself, and know everyone else. Having no one else to know me, having no one to catch me or lift me up, tell me I’m right or wrong, having no one to define the limits of me, I have to define myself, otherwise I am nothing, just a… liquid that dissolves. Know yourself. But finding definition without all the… the daily things that give you shape — Mum, Dad, friend, sister, lover, work, hobby, job, home, travel — without the limits of place or society, I could define myself as anything. I am breath. I am mercy. I am the sea. I am knowledge. I am beauty. I am perfection. I am… anything at all. What am I, then? I look at the world and it seems like a distant thing seen through the window of a speeding train. A glimpse of a field where a woman sows, a child waving from the platform, a man fixing his car by the side of the road, I move and the world passes by, untouchable. But in the act of seeing, in the act of moving, I gather memories and they become me. Others do not remember me, so only I remain. You try to remember me by words, and you only remember the words, not me. I become formless. I don’t know what my destination is, but I keep on travelling, surrounded by other people’s stories, absorbing them, and in their way, though they are not me, they become me. I am just… travelling. Nothing more. I am me. I used to think there was no goodness in men, not really — just laws and fears. But you are a good man, Luca Evard. You are a good man.”
So saying, I stood up, turned off the Dictaphone, pushed it towards him, left a tip on the table, and walked away.
Chapter 88
Running.
A bad sport, really. Terrible on the knees — they say running is free, the cheapest sport there is, but good shoes cost a lot these days
the ancient peoples of Australia going walkabout, a rite of passage into manhood, barefoot, following the songlines, they didn’t need expensive shoes
what did Pheidippides wear when he ran to Marathon?
I run from
I run to
I run to be free
freedom from thought
Luca Evard’s hand wraps round my throat, and he weeps, and he forgets, and I carry the memory of what he did where he does not and that’s
fine
another part of the journey.
His journey, but I’ll take it for him, just this once. I’ll make the pilgrimage he doesn’t have the courage to take.
Look out across the lagoon.
Count my heartbeats
and stop.
Find that I do not need to count. Not any more.
Chapter 89
A monk sat on a pillar in Indonesia.
What are you doing up there? I asked.
I am a man on a pillar, he replied. I sit on the pillar to be closer to God.
How do you eat?
Every day I drop my basket down, and it is filled with food by devoted followers, and then I eat it.
How do you shit?
Should you be asking that?
I’m just curious.
I drop my pants and I shit over the side.
How do you sleep?
I balance carefully, and tie myself on. These days I find I need less and less sleep, though.
Why are you up there?
I said: to get closer to God.
What for?
To find a path to spiritual truths.
Why?
So I may go to heaven.
But down here there are people suffering and dying. Forests burn and the seas rise, why aren’t you helping?
I am. I am showing them the way. You should come and live on top of a pillar sometime soon, you know. Material matters only tie you to this life, and this life is suffering. How much better life would be if we all sat on top of pillars.
How much better life would be if we all helped each other build pillars together?
Exactly! Now you get it!
What about books? I asked, for I was going through a learning stage. Books are material objects. If I own books, am I suffering?
If you desire them, yes, they limit you!
But they contain the knowledge of the world. Who knows: one day someone may write a book about you.
I hope they don’t! They would be much better off sitting on top of a pillar.
I thought about this statement, then said, Drop your basket down to me, and I’ll give you some food.
No meat, he said, as he lowered the blue plastic bag. No fizzy drinks either.
I received the lowered bag, then reached up and cut the rope that held it, took the bag and began to walk away.
Hey! he shouted after me. What are you doing?
I’m not really sure, I called back. But I think it might be something good.
Pilgrimage: to journey to a sacred place.
Pilgrim: a traveller or wanderer, a stranger in a foreign place.
Crusaders: pilgrims with swords who attempted to conquer the Middle East.
Hajj: the journey to Mecca, one of the five pillars of Islam. Shahadah, Salat, Zakat, Sawm, Hajj.
Pleasant, perhaps, to say that I am a pilgrim, but looking at it, counting the swirl of white as the devout move round the sacred stone in Mecca, watching the fans scream at the movie premiere, listening to the old men sitting on their benches by the sea who report that everything changes, and that’s okay…
fuck me who isn’t a fucking pilgrim anyway?
I run, and my run takes me to the Hotel Madellena, and I think I see Byron out of the corner of my eye, climbing out of a river taxi, but when I look back, she is gone.
Chapter 90
Countdown to Armageddon.
Hard to make a convincing bomb threat when you’re forgettable. My first two attempts to convince the Venice police that I was a madwoman determined to blow apart the Hotel Madellena did nothing. Perhaps the person who took my call forgot the details by the time he’d rushed to inform a superior. Perhaps they get more crank calls than I realised. I wrote instead, a good, memorable typed message. Included detailed descriptions of the device I was building, and said, this is real, this is fucking real. If the 206 come here, I’ll kill them all.
They didn’t reply, and when I went to inspect the hotel the next morning, I saw no sign anyone was taking it seriously.
Gauguin was there, of course.
A message through the darknet:
Please desist in these antics. The event will proceed whether you wish it to or no. We will catch Byron if she comes.
Would that I had the time to weep.
I photographed the housekeepers and waitresses at the hotel; cut out the glam mag pictures of the fabulous and the perfect already arriving in the city. I picked the pocket of one of the security men, and found my photo in laminated plastic, and a piece of paper listing words to describe me, a commandment to memorise, if not my face, then at least the act of attempting to learn it.