The Blind Eye Read online

  Jason knocked over the can at his feet as he attempted to stand and Mick just kept smoking, his eyes fixed on the darkness of the road.

  Rudi Weiss, Steve began, lighting the new joint. Lives out of town. Set up a fuckin’ commune with a group of wackos who poisoned local stock as soon as they saw a hoofprint on the place. Said they were killing the country, and Steve shook his head in amazement, cattle, killing the country, and his eyes closed as he let out a thin stream of smoke.

  Silas took the joint that Thai held out for him. What happened? The dope was sweet and thick in the back of his throat, and as he stared out across the darkness of the yard, he realised he had failed to complete his question. To the others?

  Steve tilted his head back and took a long swig of beer. Got tired of living in la la land and left.

  Mick was standing now, looking as though he was making a move to go, but not quite getting it together.

  But Rudi stayed, and Steve shook his head again. Moved out to the tip and planted a fuckin’ garden.

  Silas felt the heaviness of the dope flood him and he closed his eyes as he leant back against the verandah post. That was something he wouldn’t mind seeing. He would go there, he thought, when he got it together; that’s what he would do.

  He must have drifted off to sleep. He couldn’t remember. But when he woke, they were gone, Thai, Jason, Mick and Steve. He pulled himself up, the roughness of the post scratching his hands, and he stumbled into the lounge room. He had to pick his way over the still bodies of the kids, he had to feel his way in the darkness to where he knew his bed was, somewhere out there, somewhere in that cottage out the back.

  3

  It was Valentina and Semyon Kirlian who invented the technique used to photograph the electromagnetic field that surrounds all we can see and touch. The images are like thousands of flares of light, dancing and moving, a galaxy within a galaxy.

  The discovery that these photographs could reveal an ailment before it had manifested itself was an accidental one. Holding his hand up before the camera, Semyon found he could not get the usual pattern of emanations to appear. It was not a fault in the equipment; he checked and rechecked it, each time finding that there was nothing wrong. The problem was an illness, a change that was already there in his body, although it had not yet revealed itself. That was what caused the alteration to the image, a sickness that was not to strike him until some time after he took the photograph.

  This was how Constance saw the world, or at least that was what Rudi had told Silas.

  Not the object itself, but the force that surrounds it. That is what she sees.

  Silas would look at his own hand, wanting to see what lay beyond the flesh in front of him. If Rudi had spoken the truth, Constance may have seen the changes in him before the ailments from which he now suffered had begun to manifest themselves. With his palms open on the desk in front of him, Silas wanted to know when the change had occurred, when the rot had begun; was it after he met her, or had he gone to her with it all set in place, there inside him before he even laid eyes on her?

  With his fingers pressed tight against his eyelids, he still saw her. He always saw her. Constance, there in that garden, next to the peppercorn tree.

  4

  We all have selected intimacies we like to reveal, but they are usually far less personal than they appear. They have been used often, they have been shaped and worn, and that is why we choose them. They are intended to reveal our own fragility, to draw another in, but they usually reveal very little at all.

  Greta was, and may still be, less careful than most of us in what she will tell. She wants to truly show herself, hoping that this inner core will be accepted, her wide blue eyes bright as she opens herself up yet again, regretting what she has said soon after she has said it. This is how I remember her, and in some ways, when I met up with her again, it seemed that little had changed. She told me everything about her and Silas, but perhaps these revelations were simply a product of nervousness. She was, at first, skittish, pulling back from the prospect of talking about us, telling me about him instead because he was, after all, the only thing we now had in common (except, of course, the discomfort we each felt about our past).

  However, when it came to discussing the details of the time she spent with me in her conversations with Silas, I know that she was, at first, somewhat more circumspect about what she revealed. From what I could gather, it seems she initially said very little. As they walked home together, Silas began to open up to her, not about PortTremaine (he, too, was cautious in the revelations he chose), but about his father’s demise in the business world, the extent of his wrongdoings, and about his own inability to deal with it.

  I have always just thrown my hands up, pretending that there’s nothing I can do, he admitted, ashamed at his ineffectualness. It seemed too hard. I don’t know how to even begin to right some of the wrongs.

  She listened to him, and he, in turn, listened to her, as she told him about her mother’s death when she was five years old. Her father could not cope, she said. He left her with her mother’s parents and returned to Sweden, remarrying within a couple of years.

  And you never see him? Silas asked.

  She shook her head.

  Greta told Silas she had always been in trouble. By the time she was fifteen she had run away five times, once hitchhiking interstate, another time stealing a neighbour’s car. She slept with other girls’ boyfriends, even the local librarian’s husband, and once the maths teacher at high school.

  Silas smiled. Not the best way to behave in a small country town.

  She didn’t argue.

  I was a mess, she admitted. I probably still am.

  One evening, as they both watched an ibis pick its way delicately across the darkening parklands, she attempted to ask Silas what I was like now, hesitant about touching on the subject, but curious all the same.

  When Silas asked her if we had been together for long, she told him that our relationship was fairly brief.

  But it took me a while to recover.

  In telling him her stories, Greta probably wanted to let Silas know that her distance with him was not just due to the strangeness of his behaviour. She was no good at relationships, she would have tried to explain, wanting to take some of the blame for the nervousness they both felt in each other’s com pany, wanting, rightly or wrongly, to make him feel better. She liked Silas, more so as they spent time together, and she wanted to rewrite what had happened between them. She wanted to recast the story, to wipe away how troubled he was. She was a mess and that was why she was being careful. Unfortunately, it was not so easy to forget the way in which she had found him, sitting in the darkness of the kitchen, his complete absorption in inflicting pain upon himself both terrifying and confusing, and with each step that she took towards him, there would always be another one back.

  Reaching the park gate some weeks after the night they slept together, the first of the evening lights flickering across the harbour, she searched for her phone in her bag. She had to go. Normally, they would have walked up the twisting hill that leads past the docks, parting on the corner of his street, but tonight she was meeting a friend. She was about to tell Silas she would see him next week, when he reached for her, awkwardly, and asked her if she wanted to have a meal with him.

  I know it’s Friday night, and you’ve probably had something organised for months, but you just look so beautiful in this light, and he grinned shyly at her.

  Don’t, and she wished her surprise had not given a harshness to her voice that had not been intended, because even though she had been wanting this interest, she found herself floundering in the face of it.

  She could see that Silas felt like a fool, and she tried to apologise. Maybe they could go out next week, she suggested, and when they parted, she kissed him, clumsily, on the cheek.

  As she walked up the road that leads past the art gallery and into the city, Silas watched her disappear into the darkness. There was a s
oftness around her, a lilac haze, and for one brief moment it seemed to him she was a part of the deep purple of the evening sky.

  He hailed a taxi, wishing he had said nothing, and as he remembered the look on her face he could feel it beginning, the tightening that started in his heart and pulled in along his entire left side. He winced as he gave his address and closed his eyes in preparation for the onslaught of pain.

  Are you all right? The driver looked into the rear-vision mirror as he pulled away from the kerb.

  Silas nodded. It was all he was capable of doing.

  spider

  Tarentula

  Clinical. – – Angina pectoris . . .

  Characteristics. – – . . . Nunez is our chief authority. He instigated the proving and collected much outside information on the action of the poison. ‘Tarantella’ is a dance named from the city of Tarentum. ‘Tarantism’ is a dancing mania, set up in persons bitten by the Tarentula, or in those who imagine themselves bitten. The cure is music and dancing . . . Francis Mustel, a peasant, was bitten by a tarentula on the left hand, about the middle of July, as he was gathering corn. He went home with his companions but on the way fell as if struck by apoplexy. Dyspnoea followed, and face, hands, and feet became dark. Knowing the remedy, his companions fetched musicians. When the patient heard their playing he began to revive, to sigh, to move first his feet, then his hands, and then the whole body; at last getting on his feet he took to dancing violently, with sighing so laboured that the bystanders were almost frightened . . . Two hours after the music began the blackness of his face and hands went off, he sweated freely, and regained perfect health.

  John Henry Clarke MD, A Dictionary of Practical

  Materia Medica

  1

  Silas told me that it took about three weeks for his dope supply to run out. He couldn’t be certain, in fact he had no firm idea of how long he spent wasting his days on Thai’s verandah, but that was his guess.

  It was Thai who first noticed, reaching into the bag, only to find it empty. The plants she and Matt had grown had long since died, but she was sure Steve could fix them up. He knew someone in the town on the other side of the gulf. The problem was the money, and her eyes had narrowed as she had looked at him.

  Silas had just nodded, but when he saw her reach for the phone, he knew she thought he’d agreed to pay. He opened his mouth to speak, and then decided against it. He didn’t have the energy to argue with her.

  Stepping out into the hard glare of the morning, he saw the dirt choking the yard, the ruin that had once been his mother’s place, the pot-holed road, the few desert oaks hanging limp in the heat, and beyond all that the undulating roll of those ranges, baking under the unrelenting sun. His mouth was dry and his skin clammy as he surveyed the scene, not wanting to see what was undeniably there in front of his eyes.

  The night before, as he had attempted to stretch out on his single bed, he had let his mind float, luxuriating in images of how wild and inhospitable this country was, how empty, how unaccommodating to even the most basic of human needs. With his neck against the iron bedstead and his feet hanging over the edge, he had been amazed at the change he had made in his life. He was here and he liked it. He would start on the house soon, and as his thoughts had rolled lazily across the possibilities, he had heard the huskiness of Thai’s laughter as Steve had slammed the bedroom door shut, the whole house shuddering for a moment, and the peace in which he had immersed himself had vanished as quickly as it had appeared. Wanting only to sleep, he had found himself remembering one of his last conversations with his mother. They had talked as they had always talked, Silas knowing she was half listening, the alcohol blurring all he said so that his words had simply formed a pleasant cloud to be shaped as she pleased. It was only when he had been about to hang up that he had asked her, uncertain as to why the question had suddenly come to his mind, whether he had been a difficult child.

  She had been silent for a moment. When she had finally spoken, her voice had been small.

  I loved you.

  I know, he had said.

  It was a hard time.

  Lying on the bed out the back of Thai’s, Silas had recalled the peripatetic nature of their lives and how, through it all, his mother had never thought to leave his father. Even when she was hopelessly drunk, her misery at their homelessness palpable beneath the taut surface of her inebriated joy, there was a softness in her gaze, a visible easing in her tension whenever his father had entered the room, whenever he had looked at her with adoration in his eyes, always completely unaware of the wrongs he had committed, always choosing to believe that one day he would be vindicated, that his version of events would be believed. She had loved him. She had seen him for what he was and she had not stopped loving him.

  As he had tried to sleep, Silas had felt his aloneness, and he had wanted, more than anything, the warmth of another body beside him, someone to affirm his existence in the strangeness of this place. He had closed his eyes, only to start, visibly jerking as he had felt his body falling, and there was pure panic as he had wondered why he had come here and what he had to go back to.

  Now, in the morning, the dryness of the heat was harsh on his back and shoulders and the emptiness crushed him. He glanced briefly at the ruin of the house next door and then closed his eyes. For a moment, the possibility of going over there and lying down in the midst of its collapse crossed his mind. He would clear a small space in the rubble and filth and curl up. He shook his head and swiped, yet again, at the flies, his entire body agitated by the stillness at which he had once again arrived.

  Thai’s kids were stacking old tyres in a heap, forming a tower next to a pile of rubbish at the side of the house. The oldest boy, who was about nine, was ordering his younger brother to bring the next one over. Silas watched the boy sweating, every muscle in his skinny body strained as he tried to carry it to the indicated spot. He had never noticed until now that the older one didn’t talk. Each of his instructions to his brother, who was clearly the slave in this architectural feat, was mimed with a strange mixture of hand signals and urgent mouthing.

  He was bitten by a dingo, the younger one explained. A lizard flicked through the dirt and he bent down to grab it, quick and sure, the tail coming off in his hands. He held it up proudly, a worm twitching between his fingers. Hurts him to open his mouth. It’s his jaw, and the older brother tilted his head up to show Silas the long jagged scar that cut around the base of his chin.

  Really? Silas asked.

  Really, and they both nodded solemnly.

  Silas glanced at the tyres stacked next to the piles of garbage and, without thinking, told them he wanted to go to the garden, the one in the rubbish dump. The sudden realisation that this was what he would do filled him with an overpowering sense of relief, the strength of the sensation almost making him nauseous as he reeled back from the possibility of the fall that had been dogging him all morning.

  The younger boy pointed one skinny arm towards the right of the jetty, the lizard’s tail still dangling between his fingers. It’s that way, and he sniffed, the snot disappearing up his nostril, only to run down again, thick and yellow, moments later.

  The older one shook his head furiously and started scratching a drawing in the dirt, the chickens pecking at the edges of the marks he made.

  He’s drawing you a map. He says it’s past two stone places and then there’s a tree.

  No. The older boy stamped his feet angrily, kicking up a cloud of dust, the hens scattering and squawking.

  The sudden loudness of his voice shocked Silas. Rubbing at the grit in his eyes, now mingled with a slow trickle of sweat from his forehead, he looked at the two of them.

  He can talk when he wants to, the younger one explained. It’s just that it hurts, and he attempted to grasp Silas’s arm as he turned to walk away. It’s true, he protested.

  As Silas swung each leg over what remained of the gate, as he tried to shoo the chickens back inside, he could still
hear the younger boy: Don’t you want to know how to get there? To the garden?

  He just shook his head and walked on.

  2

  Tarentula. It was not a difficult choice for a first remedy. It had, in fact, sprung to my mind when I first saw Silas, and I had to be careful that the questions I asked did not simply guide me to the conclusion I had already formed. I had to keep an open mind, while not ignoring that immediate hunch.

  This is the way it sometimes is with patients. When I first treated Larissa (one of my provers), she immediately struck me as a person who would benefit from Aurum. From the moment I saw her in the waiting room, sitting in a shaft of sunlight, I had a sense. There was something in the dullness of her eyes, the heaviness of her expression, and as she began to tell me of her depression, that she had no heart for anything, that the light had gone from her life, I knew that I had been right.

  It is not always like that (rarely, actually), and I have found that it usually occurs when I have some kind of affinity with the patient. After Larissa left, I realised there was a sadness in her smile that had reminded me of my mother and that even some of the phrases she’d used had been identical to the way in which my mother would try to describe how she felt when she had a breakdown, wanting me to understand that it was nothing I had done, her tone insistent each time she saw the doubt in my eyes.

  In Silas’s case, this affinity was less tangible but perhaps closer to home. The extreme change in his life, the extent of the isolation he had now chosen disturbed me. At the end of our sessions together, I would sometimes catch myself staring out the window, my own reflection looking back at me, and I would wonder at what I had become and why.

  Silas did not ask me what the remedy was when I gave it to him. He just glanced briefly at the instructions I had written out for him, seven drops, morning, noon and night for three days, and made another appointment.