The Blind Eye Read online

  She held her crochet up for a moment, throwing the full size of the lurid rug across the clutter that covered the counter. Sometimes it was necessary to look at the complete pattern in order to choose the next layer, and her eyes widened as she took in the sickly rings of pea green, mauve and fluorescent yellow. Silas waited, his gaze fixed in fascination on the pink pudginess of her fingers as she snipped the wool with a pair of rusted scissors and knotted on the next ball.

  She leant forward, her watery blue irises magnified beneath the thick glasses she wore.

  Have you seen them? she asked.

  Seen what? Silas brushed at a fly, his hand momentarily getting caught in the tangles of colour spilling across the teapot, teacup, sugar and cashbox.

  The snakes she keeps.

  He pulled back. Really?

  This was what he came for, pushing the heavy door open each morning, his eyes adjusting to the darkness, the stale sweetness of old sugar sickly in the air; he was eager for any information about her, and Pearl knew it, teasing it out, strand by strand.

  Hundreds of them, and Pearl sniffed. She’s immune to them. It’s the venom in her blood.

  Pearl was born out the back of the shop, and that was where she would die; and there aren’t many that can boast that. It had been years since she’d walked any further than the few steps to the street out the front, dragging the heavy ‘Open for Business’ sign that she insisted on displaying each day, its legs clattering across the pavement. Yet despite her lack of mobility, she knew whatever there was to be known and, like Steve, she enjoyed imparting her knowledge.

  Don’t think anything escapes me, she had once told Silas and he had nodded solemnly.

  I wouldn’t dare. He had winked at her.

  Cheekiness will get you nowhere, and she had rolled up a newspaper and taken a swipe at him.

  Personally, and Silas leant a little closer, knowing that any obvious display of curiosity concerning her comment about the snakes would only protract the telling of the story even further, I would have chosen a red, and he shook his head as he pointed to the orange she had begun to integrate into the pattern.

  Hmph. She pushed her glasses down to the tip of her nose.

  She was about to speak, Silas could sense it, and he waited, ready for the next tantalising piece of information, when the door of the shop opened, the bell jangling in the momentary silence.

  It was Mick, a can of Coke in one grease-stained hand, his money in the other. Silas turned to greet him, and was startled by the coldness of his glare. He had never noticed how green Mick’s eyes were, but then most of the time Mick had worn his sunglasses and when he hadn’t they had both been ripped, so it was not surprising he had failed to take in anything as mundane as eye colour. He let his hand fall to his side, stilled by the hostility in Mick’s face.

  It was Pearl who spoke. Just been warning him about the snakes up at Rudi’s, and she nodded in Silas’s direction.

  She’s been telling me tales, Silas added by way of friendly explanation.

  Mick just grunted.

  Pearl snorted. I’ve been telling him he shouldn’t spend so much time up there, and she held out her hand for the money.

  Mick let it drop, coin by coin, into her cashbox, without looking at either of them. When he finally spoke, the mutter of his words was so low, Silas was forced to lean closer. Could have told him that myself.

  6

  The first time Silas attempted to talk about the wounds on his arms, I am sorry to say the slightest flicker of agitation crossed my face. It was the frustration of being well into a treatment and realising there was still so much more to unearth. This is not uncommon, but with Silas, I felt particularly anxious about having failed to see what was, without doubt, the most worrying aspect of his condition.

  This morning, collecting firewood with Jeanie and Sam (who still insists on being wherever I am), I spoke a little of Silas. As we stacked the last of the kindling into the wheelbarrow, she commented, once again, on my distance over these few days.

  It’s only because I’m concerned about you, she said.

  Jeanie was once my teacher; she has also treated me several times and she knows me well. I have even stayed on her property, a small piece of land west of the mountains, where I amused her greatly with my complete lack of practical skills, only to make up for it with my ability to grasp the art of doing cryptic crosswords after only one brief lesson. She never fails to speak directly, and she is someone to whom I find it difficult to lie.

  I told her I had needed some time in which to think, that I had been working too hard for too long. I smiled. I guess I’ve forgotten how to relate to others.

  She just looked at me.

  And there is personal stuff, I admitted, but it was Silas that I told her about, not Greta, and as I described the wounds he had inflicted upon himself, she listened.

  Was it a desire for attention? she asked.

  I shook my head and said I didn’t think so.

  When Silas first told me what he did, it was as though he had rehearsed his statement – when the problem began, how often it occurred and how long it lasted. Unusually, he looked directly at me as he spoke, his voice was well modulated, and his words were carefully chosen.

  I listened without taking notes, and when he had finished, I asked him to tell me a bit more about his awareness, or lack of awareness, of the pain he was inflicting upon himself.

  The irritation was immediate.

  I told you, and his gaze was once again averted from mine. I have no idea what’s going on. I am asleep when it happens. This is pointless, and he crossed and uncrossed his legs. I would be better off seeing a psychiatrist.

  You could if you felt it would help.

  He was silent for a few moments.

  I apologised for pressing the point again. What I’m trying to do is to get you to describe what happens to you – not what other people have told you that you do, but your impressions. I could see the consternation on Silas’s face. I’m not so interested in what’s caused this. I wanted him to understand me. It has some relevance but less than you would think. What I’m wanting is the particulars of what actually occurs from your perspective. That’s what I need from you if we’re going to make any progress.

  Silas rolled up a sleeve past the elbow, high until the folds were tight against his flesh, and then he pushed it higher. He held out his arm, the pale underside up. The bruises had yellowed and the cuts had healed over; thick scabs covered his wrist, lower arm, elbow and upper arm, the crust still new enough to reveal an open sore should he tear it away again without realising in the middle of the night. He did not look at the wounds and he did not look at me.

  They were bad.

  I told him it looked like he had been giving himself a difficult time, and my smile was rueful as I glanced straight up again. I do need you to try to tell me what you remember feeling, thinking, seeing, hearing – anything at all from these episodes. If there’s nothing, that’s fine, and I kept my eyes on Silas as I waited for an answer.

  This was not what he had rehearsed. Silas pulled his sock up and then pushed it down again. He did not like the territory we were entering and his discomfort was obvious.

  How can the cause not be relevant? he asked.

  I am more interested in the way your body has reacted, rather than why it has had this reaction. I could see he needed a better explanation. You and I might both eat contaminated food. You might have mild stomach cramps, while I might be violently ill.

  He did not follow.

  I reached for a book. It’s just a different way of looking at the world. A doctor would look at what caused my illness and then intervene. But your body has experienced little difficulty in adjusting to this outside influence, while my defence mechanism is producing certain signs and symptoms that doctors would call disease. That’s what I am interested in, more so than what’s caused the problem.

  I handed Silas a paperback and suggested he might like to read it.
It’s a lay explanation.

  Silas put it down on the floor. I remembered how he had told me about the books Rudi had always pressed upon him (you will need background information for your article), and how each time he had left them behind.

  I turned back to my computer. It might be easier, I said, if I asked you a few questions.

  I don’t know how much I can tell you. Silas looked at his hands, the nails bitten down, the skin scratched, and he sat on them, hiding them from view.

  It could only be more than what you already have, and I raised an eyebrow as I smiled. Do you have a sense that you are no longer lying in your bed asleep?

  Silas nodded.

  Tell me about it.

  What’s there to tell? It’s a sense, as you said.

  It was one of the few moments I felt exasperated by him. What kind of a sense? Do you notice a change in temperature, do you hear yourself shout, do you feel what you are doing to yourself?

  Silas shook his head.

  But there is something?

  He looked at his watch. The hour was just about up. I also checked how long was left, and I could not help but let out the faintest sigh as I, too, realised our time was almost over.

  I’m not trying to be unhelpful, Silas told me.

  I know.

  I find it hard.

  He turned to the window, fixing his eyes once again on the plumbing opposite.

  I could not extend the appointment any longer. I was already running close to half an hour behind schedule but as he stood up, I reached for him, my fingers touching the wound on his wrist, alighting there briefly, but with a sense of purpose that could not be mistaken because I wanted him to hear me, I wanted him to trust.

  You can’t keep doing this to yourself.

  And Silas just looked down at his feet.

  7

  There was a room in Silas’s apartment where he put everything he no longer used. It had originally been his grandmother’s ‘minor guest room’, for guests she did not really want to stay, guests whose continuing presence she did not wish to encourage. Small and dark, with only one window that looked out on another wall, it had housed a single bed, a chest of drawers, and a tiny sombre oil painting. Now it was filled with boxes containing various scraps of Silas’s life.

  Late one night, Silas unlocked the door. He had been fearful of sleep, he told me, and he had decided to stay up. He wanted to put all the different Silases that had existed into separate piles. The young boy who wrote homesick letters to his mother; the period in which he had wanted to understand why his parents lived as they did and his father’s unconvincing attempts at explaining how he had been wronged, each letter more deluded than the last; the documentation of his teenage rebellions – warning letters from the schools he had attended, expulsion notices, even a couple of court appearances for possession (both of which had been handled by his uncle, a QC); the love letters he had received; his school notes; his brief attempts at various businesses (importing carpets, jewellery, even setting himself up as an actor’s agent), all of which had been abandoned when the amount of work involved had become evident. Within an hour he had laid out thirty-four different piles.

  He sat on the floor and looked at them all.

  How can you not know who you are? Constance had once said to him.

  In the soft light of the garden, she had told him that this was who she was. This, and she had pointed to herself and then the plants that surrounded her.

  He had thought she had a wholeness, a unity between herself and her environment that he had always longed for, a sense of stillness that had always eluded him.

  Did she want more? He had no way of knowing.

  What about company? he had asked. Surely you must get lonely.

  She had blushed. He remembered. A slow, delicate wash of colour on her cheeks as she had turned to the wire fencing and stared, unseeing, out to the desolate country that lay beyond.

  8

  It was Eli who first commented on Silas’s smell, the sickly sweetness that he had somehow grown used to, that had perhaps become so masked by the pungent reek of the dope he had been smoking that he barely noticed it. But when Eli wrinkled his nose in disgust, giggling to Lucas as he passed, Silas remembered the faintness of that smell as he had stood under the rusted shower rose that morning, the brown water drumming against the tin bath; the cloying odour that he had thought was the soap.

  As he had begun to regain his strength, he tried, several times, to walk out to Rudi’s. It had taken a week of attempts before he had finally got further than Pearl’s and it was not until a few days later that he actually made it all the way out there. Each day he had got up early, wanting to leave the house before Thai woke, knowing that if she called him over to where she sat on the verandah, he would stop, thinking that just one smoke would be okay, and one would lead to two and soon the whole day would be wasted; her, Steve and him, sitting stupefied in the endless heat, and that was not what he wanted.

  On that particular morning, Eli and Lucas were scratching a race track in the dirt, a great loop littered with makeshift Evel Knievcl stunts – mounds of sand, lakes of water in upturned garbage lids, perilous troughs, and a half-constructed ring of fire.

  He reckons you stink, Lucas told him, as if Eli’s pinched nose and wrinkled mouth needed a translation. Like a girl.

  Silas knelt down next to them and they pulled back in exaggerated disgust, the pair of them laughing now.

  Pearl also commented on the odour. As the door clanged shut behind him, she glanced up from the corner of the shop where she always sat, her nose screwed up in distaste.

  New aftershave?

  Silas told her it was the soap he had been using. Well, I’d change it if I were you, and she poured herself a cup of tea.

  He watched as she searched for some sugar on the counter, only to find the jar was empty. She heaved herself up, breathing heavily as she pushed through the narrow gap at the side of the shelves.

  Gone back to mooning around up there? She opened one of the packets for sale, spooned the sugar into her cup, and folded down the top before putting it back in the spot from which she had taken it.

  Haven’t seen the snakes yet, Silas told her.

  She leant a little closer. They obey her, you know. You cross her and they’ll bite.

  The venom in her veins; Silas remembered Pearl’s words.

  She reached for the biscuits and dipped one into her cup. Her mother was one of them. Hitchhiked out there just before they all started leaving.

  She licked the crumbs from the corner of her mouth, and Silas waited for more.

  Last time I saw her, she was four months pregnant. Next I heard, she was bitten by a snake. She dunked the biscuit again, pausing as she sucked on it. It was the shock that brought on the labour. Rudi wouldn’t get her to a hospital and that child was born to a life with no mother and with poison in her blood. Little wonder she’s not right in the head.

  Really? Silas reached for the fridge to get a can of Coke.

  She nodded, her chin disappearing into the rolls of fat on her neck. So you watch yourself, young man.

  I will, Silas promised.

  And get yourself a new soap, she curled her top lip as he handed her the money for the drink. Lux, she pointed to the shelf.

  Next time, Silas promised.

  The door slammed shut behind him, and he stood for a moment, his arm held up to his nose, and breathed in deeply. They were right, he did smell. He looked out across the street, empty apart from Mick’s dog, asleep under the shade of the bench outside the garage. It lifted its head lazily, noted his presence, and then closed its eyes again. In the dimness of the workshop, he could see Mick, and Silas raised his hand in greeting, letting it fall when he received no response. It was then, as the sweet smell lingered, thick in the heat, that he knew what it was. It was Constance, and he smiled to himself with the realisation.

  Can’t you tell? he asked her later, delighted to have found her, for the
first time since his illness, by the gate without Rudi. He was holding his hand out to her, but she did not bend her head to test whether she had, as he had insisted, got under his skin; she just locked the gate again and turned to walk away.

  Wait, and he held her arm, trying to stop her. She turned to him. I am going to Rudi, he promised. I just wanted a few moments first.

  She told him she had tasks waiting for her.

  You can stop for a little while, he urged, and he sat on the edge of a garden bed.

  She remained standing.

  Have you ever been swimming? he asked her.

  She shook her head.

  I go each night, Silas told her, wanting his words to keep her with him. I just float out for miles. Last night I imagined what it would be like to take you.

  I can’t swim.

  Silas was relieved to see she was smiling slightly. It doesn’t matter. It is so salty that the water would carry you. I could hold my hand, just here, and he curved his fingers into the small of her back, the fine ridges of her spine smooth beneath the cotton of her shirt, and that would be enough.

  She moved away.

  And the stars, Silas sighed. They are spectacular. The sky is alive with them. They shimmer, tiny pocket-holes of light reflected back into the black of the gulf, dancing above and around you.

  Her words were direct as she reminded him once again that she could not see.

  I’m sorry, he rushed to say, feeling the moment disintegrate, collapsing loose like powder between his fingers.

  There’s nothing to apologise for. It’s just the way it is.

  All that Silas wanted was for her to like him. But sometimes it seems I have never been so hopeless at anything, he told her ruefully. What am I doing wrong?

  She was silent for a moment, the violet in her eyes cool as she considered his question.

  I do like you, she said. Is there some reason why I shouldn’t?

  Silas did not know how to respond.

  It was like that most of the time, he once told me, and he sighed, his face perplexed as he remembered. She was always so matter of fact, so to the point, and I was such a ridiculous mess of emotion.