The Blind Eye Page 4

  It was Pearl who had told him that the house was on the sea front. Finding the pub empty when he woke, he had gone to her in search of food. The chips he had bought were so stale as to be inedible, and as he scattered them to the gulls, he noted the dilapidation of each place he passed and braced himself for what he would find.

  From the gate, he could see a caravan with ‘Tricia’s Treasures’ painted on the side, the house beyond slowly crumbling into the garden, the caravan itself leaning lopsided into a ravine. He could only presume that someone had squatted there, and he struggled to push the gate open, the pathway beyond almost completely overgrown, the weeds sticking to his calves as he made his way towards it. When he peered through the ruffled daisy curtains, he saw clothes still hanging on the racks, sheets on the bed, dishes in the sink, all coated with fine yellow dirt. The cactus garden that bordered the track to the house was overrun with prickly pear. Tiny bleached bones that looked like they belonged to rats or feral cats crunched beneath his feet as he hastened away, past the unused well now choked with brambles, and up to the deserted building beyond. His mother’s house.

  There was a bath. It was out the back in the open air, and over one end was draped a flannel. It looked as though it had just been used, as though the person who lived there had just gone, wanting only to get out of the place, not caring what was left behind, and for one moment Silas wondered whether he was, in fact, intruding.

  Suddenly uneasy, he ran back down the path, over the bones, the gate falling off its hinges as he opened it, the rust staining his hands, his breath short as he stumbled onto the emptiness of the road.

  He had no idea why he had come to this place. He sat in the gutter and wondered at the strangeness of owning a house that meant nothing to him. It must have been where his mother had gone for holidays when she was young. He could not imagine her as a child; he could only see her as his mother, always adoring, always in a slightly inebriated haze, the ash from her cigarette crumbling into her drink as she pressed him close and recounted his latest antics to whoever happened to be there for lunch.

  It was his father who had done the deal, selling off the station and all its holdings shortly after his grandfather’s death. Somehow this place must have slipped through the net. He looked back at it. This was to have been his project. That’s what Silas had told his friends, and he had painted a picture of a rambling seaside home where they could all come and stay, anyone, anytime.

  I, too, saw the house and I smiled to myself as I remembered how Silas had recounted picking himself up from the gutter, wiping the grit from his hands, determined to convince himself that it was not impossible, no, not impossible at all.

  What a place, Silas told Pearl, standing by the cool of the refrigerator.

  Not the way it always was, and she shook her head as she peered at him through her thick glasses, taking his measure, up and down, with an unfaltering stare.

  But not completely irretrievable.

  She just grunted in reply.

  Crossing the road in front of her shop, he saw Mick at the entrance to the garage. I’m Silas, he said, trying not to step on the tools that littered the floor of the workshop.

  They clasped hands, awkwardly, and he could see the question – Silas, what kind of a fuckin’ name is that? – there on Mick’s face.

  Stayin’ a while?

  Think so, he told Mick, as he would tell evervone who asked.

  He could hear his own footsteps as he walked the streets, peering into empty buildings, trying to see through the gap in the curtains, the rip in the blind, fascinated by the extent of the desertion, and he began to walk a little faster, down towards the jetty, not wanting to admit that he felt strangely vulnerable by himself, as though he were being watched. It might have been that car he had seen on the first night, slowly circling the back streets, leaving a trail of dust in its path, the windows wound up high, the engine a deep throttle, slowing down as it approached him, passing in a cloud of smoke and then nearing closer again, this time from another direction, another road.

  Just Steve, Thai said when he asked her about it later. She was wiping the snot from the nose of her youngest child with the back of her hand.

  She had a cottage at the rear of her place. Martha had told him about it when he had returned to the pub at the end of the day. She was microwaving a plate of grey roast lamb in the cavernous pub kitchen, built for an era long past. He had looked at the food longingly because, unappetising as it had appeared to be, he had not eaten for two days, and as she sat and ate it in front of him, he had asked her if she knew of anywhere he could stay for a while.

  Matt and Thai Wilde. End of the main street and turn left.

  There had been no need to give further directions, even a street number. Theirs was the only occupied place on the block, right next to his mother’s in fact, the front yard littered with chickens, broken-down cars and rusted toys, a parched vegetable garden out the back and, beyond that, the single-roomed house that Silas could have for five dollars a night, ten if he wanted food.

  Saw you walkin’ round, Thai said when he came to ask her about the room.

  When she grinned, he saw that she had probably once been attractive. He watched as she brought in the washing, her still-taut body visible beneath the batik dress she wore, and he wondered what she would be like to sleep with.

  When he offered to help her, she looked at him like he was mad. She had the transistor radio propped up on the verandah steps and, unable to maintain any semblance of stillness, he picked up the youngest child, a girl who was only just beginning to walk, and danced her round the clothesline.

  Where the fuck do you get your energy from? Thai asked.

  Silas dipped the child down low and deposited her into the basket of dry clothes. Don’t know, he grinned. I was born with it.

  But eventually the heat got to even him, and early that evening after dumping his belongings in his room, he walked out into the stillness of the gulf, his body drained by the fierceness of the sun. The sand was cool beneath his feet as the water lapped against his ankles, licked his calves, and seemed to progress no further until, far from the shoreline, the slow lick finally reached his knees, his thighs, his waist, and at last, he could submerge himself. Taking another joint out of the plastic in which he had wrapped it, he floated on his back, and that town, with its decrepit buildings and, behind them, the darkness of the ranges, was a surreal vision.

  Incredible, he whispered to himself, momentarily aware that he couldn’t remember the last time he hadn’t been stoned.

  the field

  The first striking evidence of electromagnetic fields associated with the human body came not from research but from observations of unusual cases in which the field was exaggerated beyond normal experience:

  Perhaps the most impressive of these cases was that of a fourteen-year-old girl in Missouri, who, in 1895, suddenly seemed to turn into an electrical dynamo. When reaching for metal objects such as a pump handle her fingertips gave off sparks of such high voltage that she actually experienced pain. So strong was the electricity coursing through her body that a doctor who attempted to examine her was actually knocked onto his back, where he remained unconscious for several seconds. To the young lady’s relief, her ability to shock eventually began to diminish and had vanished completely by the time she was twenty.

  Quoted in S Krippner and D Rubin (eds),

  The Kirlian Aura,

  reproduced in George Vithoulkas,

  The Science of Homeopathy

  1

  I am wary of being consumed by my own thoughts, my memories of Silas and all that I associate with him. I have been trying to make more of an effort to spend time with the others and not just be on my own but as each day progresses, I invariably find I have drifted off by myself, yet again.

  Jeanie, one of the other supervisors, has brought her cattle dog, Sam, with her and Sam seems to have become my main companion. On our third day here, I took a burr out of her paw
. I had seen her limping down the path that leads to the wood shed, and I ignored her growls as I took her leg in my hand and felt the soft pads of her feet. Since then, she has taken to sleeping on the end of my bed and coming for walks with me, some misshapen stick always gripped in her mouth. The hopeful expression on her face is always enough to make me relent and throw it for her even though I know that if I give in once, she will be still more persistent, dropping it at my feet every few metres.

  She normally doesn’t like people, Jeanie told me last night as she watched Sam stretching, preparing to follow me up to my room. Maybe she senses that you’ve become even more of a loner than she has, and she looked at me quizzically before turning back to her crossword.

  Conscious of her comment, and slightly shamed by it, I tried a little harder this evening, staying up with some of the others to play a game of Scrabble by the fire. In the brief time we have been here, people have already begun to relax with each other; tonight there were even some joking attempts at guessing what it is that everyone will be taking. Neither I nor the other supervisors should, strictly speaking, encourage this, and the others knew it, grinning at me shame-faced as I told them their guesses were as good as mine.

  The truth is we could be testing any substance, absolutely anything, and that is because everything has within it the possibility of producing a wide spectrum of varied symptoms, and hence of being used in treatment. Conversely, it is also possible to poison using any substance, provided it is given in sufficient quantities; even the most everyday foods, such as salt or starch, can be toxic if they are given in large doses over a long period of time.

  Obviously, the testing we will be doing is not crude. If a substance is administered in toxic doses, we will see a reaction, but what we see will probably be of little use in later treatment. What we want is the finer picture: the highly refined and specific symptoms that are produced when minute doses are taken. This is what will allow us to determine the resonant frequency at which this particular substance vibrates. The people who are here must therefore be capable of describing the most subtle changes that occur in each plane – the physical, emotional and mental. That is what they will need to record in their diaries.

  Sitting at the kitchen table, Larissa and Matthew (the two provers I will be supervising) are writing up their notes. Every so often one of them pauses and looks up at the ceiling. They are searching for the word they want. It is an intense form of self-examination, and in a small group like this, such continual navel-gazing could have its problems. We all know this and we are careful, because each and every one of us has a faith in this process and a belief in its importance.

  Rudi Weiss often wrote about the power of a common faith in holding a community together. When Silas first mentioned his name to me, I did not tell him that I had actually heard of him, that he had been one of my heroes when I was a student. I had read about the alternative lifestyle he and a dozen or so others had established on the outskirts of Port Tremaine over thirty years ago. They had wanted a community that was sustainable, one that was based on respect for each other and for the land on which they lived. I was inspired by their work, and I am not just talking about the developments they made in the process of cure.

  These articles were all written some time ago. I did not know what had happened to their group until I met Silas and learnt that there was only Rudi and his daughter, Constance, left out there. The others had gone. It was, like so many small utopian communities, a place that lasted for a while and then, for reasons I can only guess at, disintegrated rapidly. Perhaps our own faith, our own belief is not always enough; we need others to confirm the visions we create for ourselves if we are to have any hope of sustaining them.

  2

  Silas told me that it was Thai who always did the rolling.

  It was her thing.

  She would lick the paper flat and twist the end with a business-like efficiency; small, skinny joints, one for each of them.

  She had guessed he was loaded, and when she had asked him if he could spare a little, to get her through the day, he had shown her the stash in his bag and told her to help herself.

  Her eyes had lit up. Jesus fucking Christ, and her intake of breath was a slow whistle of amazement. It had been a while since she had seen anything as good as that.

  Later, when Silas thought of Thai, it was her skinny brown arms that he saw, her silver bracelets, the dolphin tattoo on her shoulder blade, and the torn dirty dresses she always wore; that was what he remembered, that and the sharp blue of her eyes as they narrowed with each inhalation of dope, until eventually she just sat there, lids heavy, oblivious to the kids’ screams as they knocked over each other’s towers, tore each other’s drawings, broke each other’s toys.

  When Silas told her about the house, and his plans for fixing it up, she said she’d wondered why he spent so much time walking around that place.

  So, when are you going to start? she asked.

  He drew back on the joint. Don’t know, and he grinned because suddenly it all seemed too much; it was far easier to just sit and imagine what it could be.

  No date, hey?

  He tapped his feet on the rotten verandah and looked out towards the gulf, amazed for a moment at the sense of peace this amount of dope seemed to be giving him. Guess not, he grinned again and they both started laughing. One of her boys was standing opposite with his hands on his hips as he imitated their laugh with his own, ha ha ha. The other kids soon followed suit, until they were all around him, the fakeness of their laughter sharp and harsh in the heat, the flies thick on their scabby knees and runny noses.

  Piss off, and Thai waved her hand at them as you would wave at insects; pointless putting too much energy into getting rid of them when they would be more than likely to return.

  Thai told Silas that she and Matt had been in the town for four years. It was the only place where they could buy not just one house but two. They were going to have a bed and breakfast, they were going to be self-sufficient, they were going to get back to the land; there was a lot they were going to do, problem was she couldn’t remember much of it anymore.

  Silas told Thai he was going to take photographs, portraits of the residents, or perhaps he would paint, maybe draw, and he would glance up at the great curve of the ranges, the sheer sprawl of them, and wonder how he would capture them.

  Yeah? she would say without looking at him, and she would roll another.

  Matt was rarely there. He was working on a station, trying to pay off debts. On the occasional nights when he returned, he would sit next to Thai and take the joint she offered him, the youngest girl curling up to sleep in his arms while he smoked in silence. Silas would sit with them and listen to the gentle lap of the tide slipping out, far out, and he would close his eyes, the last of the day’s heat still lingering in the early evening, soft and warm.

  He once asked Thai who Tricia was and he waved his hand in the direction of the caravan. She stubbed out the end of her joint without looking at him, her bracelets jangling as she ground the tip into the verandah, while Matt got up without a word and went into the house. Silas didn’t ask again.

  He also asked who Rudi was, but it was not Thai who told him, it was the others: Mick, Jason and Steve. Word of his stash had got around by then, and at night they would pull up in Steve’s car, Mick in the back, Jason in the front, all of them in identical jeans, flannel shirts with the sleeves ripped off, beanies and black sunglasses, ready to get down to the serious business of wasting themselves.

  Steve had come first, without the others, the low throb of the engine dying to a splutter, the dust settling as he slammed the door and raised a hand in greeting.

  Gidday, and Thai had the paper laid out flat on her lap before he had even crossed the dirt that had once been a flower bed.

  He didn’t acknowledge Silas, not until he had drawn back, deep and hard, and then he turned in his direction.

  Not bad, and his look was one of grudging admiration.<
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  Later, when he brought the others, they would all sit on Thai’s verandah, the kids inside, asleep on the lounge-room floor, the black and white television a fuzz of light in the darkness of the house. In the soft purple dusk, Silas would tell them what an amazing place this was. Look at it, and he would raise his arm in the general direction of the jetty. Stoned and effusive, with the heat of the day gone and the slow drowsiness of the evening’s smoke thick in his blood, he was in love with it all.

  Mick was the only one who responded. Yeah? He turned away. Try living here.

  In the quiet that followed his remark, Silas heard a neighbour’s flyscreen door creaking as she opened it to call the cat; Sootie, her voice quavering, the tap of the spoon against the tin of food a sharp punctuation to the repetition of that one word.

  Sootie, they all called out in unison, Steve, Jason and Mick, and Thai just watched and grinned as Steve stroked her arm; here pussy, pussy, his voice a whisper now as she pretended to purr.

  There were things going on in that town that Silas hadn’t even begun to guess at, and he let go of his idle fantasies of curling up next to Thai’s wiry brown body. He stood up slowly, his legs heavy and tired from sitting for too long. Perhaps he would just go for a swim, there in the black water, he would float out on the slowness of the tide, alone, and as he contemplated the idea he dangled one foot over the edge of the verandah.

  That was when he saw him for the second time; the old man he had noticed on the first night, illuminated for a moment as he walked out along the shore, his gait unsteady.

  Where’d he come from? Silas asked.

  Steve shrugged his shoulders as he sucked hard on the last of his joint and let the butt drop onto the dirt below. He took the smoke that Thai had ready for him. You don’t want to know him, and he checked to see that Silas was listening because he wanted to be recognised as the source of knowledge, the one with authority, the protector, even to an outsider. It was clearly a role that deserved respect, and Silas knew he had to somehow muster a serious look on his face.