The Blind Eye Read online

  The next time I saw him he wanted to know more. He was not interested in what it was he had been taking (he had read the label on the bottle), he wanted to know how it worked. That session, if I remember correctly, was also the first time he spoke of Constance.

  So, how are things? I asked, sensing his agitation from the moment he sat down.

  He told me the pains were a little less acute and not as frequent.

  But still there?

  He nodded. He was holding the remedy in his hand, rolling it back and forth. The click of the bottle against the table was louder than he had intended as he put it down between us.

  If this is what you say it is, then surely it’s poisonous? He pointed to the label and looked directly at me.

  It’s been diluted to such an extent that it has no toxic effects.

  Silas raised his eyebrows. Then how can it work?

  I picked the remedy up and then put it down again. Silas’s question did not come as a surprise. It is not uncommon for patients to ask me how it is possible, thinking that I am going to reveal a magic trick to them. As I attempt to give some form of understandable explanation, their eyes usually glaze over; it is not magic after all.

  We are all trained to see the world in a particular way, and Silas did not take his gaze from mine as I told him I needed him to think a little differently, to throw away notions he held as truths.

  The more diluted a substance is, and I held up the bottle, the more powerful it is.

  His stare remained fixed.

  And what is poison to some is antidote to others.

  He told me he had never liked riddles.

  I apologised. I had not intended to be obtuse and I sat back for a moment as I tried to assess the best way in which to give him an understanding of what we were attempting to achieve. I asked him to think of the body as a vibrating field, more complex than you can imagine.

  I realise now that Silas would have been reminded of the words Rudi had uttered, each time he had tried to describe Constance’s vision.

  Everything has an electromagnetic force, a particular frequency at which it resonates.

  Silas would have remembered the heat, the stillness of Rudi’s shack and the intensity of Rudi’s gaze.

  I continued: When you are sick, when something has affected your body – love, loss, a bacteria, heat, anything – to such an extent that the vibrational plane alters significantly, your body will react in the best way it can to restore its balance. It produces a defence mechanism, and this may manifest itself with stomach cramps, heart pains, perhaps nightmares.

  Silas was trying to understand.

  In simple terms, what I want is to find a substance that resonates at the same frequency as this defence mechanism. I want to boost the strength of the body’s attempts to counter what has gone wrong. The defence mechanism vibrates with a greater force when it is stimulated by a wave of similar frequency. I am trying to help the body to heal itself.

  Silas picked up the remedy and looked at the neatly typed label.

  This particular venom would produce certain symptoms in a ‘well’ person, very similar to the symptoms you suffer, because it has the same frequency, and I paused, hoping he had understood. And the more diluted it is, the greater force it will have. Actually, it has been diluted so much that there is none of the original matter left. What remains is the energy. Just the energy.

  In the cool calm of the clinic, Silas picked at a loose thread on his jumper. Have you heard of anyone actually being able to see this vibrating force?

  I looked at him a little curiously. There are photographs.

  Silas could tell I did not know what he had meant. I know, he said, impatiently, but have you ever heard of anyone actually being able to see it?

  I considered the question for a moment. There are healers, aura readers. Some are genuine and some I wouldn’t trust, and I nodded my head in the direction of the front door, to where the corridor branched out to the other rooms in the building, raising my eyebrows as I did so.

  I met someone. Silas faltered.

  When?

  When I was there, in that place.

  I glanced across at the computer screen, running my eyes down his notes. Port Tremaine?

  Silas nodded. He could see that I was weighing up whether to continue with the conversation or whether to direct it to a close. I was trying to assess the situation quickly, to ascertain whether we were about to delve into the roots of the matter or take a sidetrack that would only waste time for both of us. Silas knew this, but he could not bring himself to help in making the decision. He did not know if he wanted to embark on the subject that was opening in front of us.

  Do I continue with this? he held up the bottle, attempting to change the topic.

  I scrolled down the screen to the end of the last session’s notes and then turned, slowly, towards him. Tell me, I said, a little more about this person.

  Silas looked out the window. Constance.

  I waited.

  She died. He closed his eyes, rubbing his thumb gently across his forefinger, the pressure gradually increasing. Snake bite. He breathed in sharply. I couldn’t save her. It took too long to get help.

  He was silent. When he turned to look at me, his gaze was cool, remote. He looked back at the window, and I thought for a moment that he was not going to speak again, that I would need to ask another question, but then he opened his mouth, and his words were soft in the quiet.

  I loved her.

  I leant a little closer.

  At least, that was what I told myself. He closed his eyes again, his voice so faint now I could barely hear it. That is the excuse I have tried to use.

  3

  Port Tremaine is surrounded by desert country, great tracts so parched that even the saltbush struggles to grow in the sandy soil. It is country that sweeps in golden arcs towards the red ranges sprawling under a harsh blue sky, burning dust in the summer, freezing dirt in the winter. It is country that is coarse and bare, with the little vegetation that manages to survive sticking up like mangy tufts of hair on a hide that had long since been rubbed back to a worn leather.

  Silas sat on the sand and looked in amazement at the world lying beyond the cyclone fencing. It was, he told me, jewel-encrusted. It was, he said, surreal.

  China blues, shimmering scarlets, bitter yellows, crimsons that throbbed against forest greens, ivory creams that twisted silken against soft pinks; Silas told me that he stared like someone who had been starved of colour, who wanted to gather it all into his arms, heap it and crush it and bury his face in it, and as he pressed his nose up against the padlocked gate and looked at the twists and turns of the paths that led through the garden to the shack in the centre, each one thick with flowers, he wondered what it was that he had discovered.

  Unnatural, Pearl had told him when he had gone to her after leaving Thai’s hoping she would direct him to Rudi’s. He had held onto that one word from the moment she had uttered it, wanting a story, a tale to lift him out of the state into which he had been descending.

  Sitting in the darkest corner of her shop, crocheting one of her rugs that never sold, Pearl had not looked up as the door had swung shut behind him; she had not glanced in his direction until he had finished recounting the boys’ attempts to describe the quickest way out to the garden.

  It sounds unbelievable, he had said, wanting to encourage her to create with him a picture of whatever it was he was hoping to find.

  He had watched her select the next colour for her design, holding up balls of wool against the pattern, and he had wondered for a moment whether he might faint. Despite the fact that the sun did not penetrate beneath the tattered canvas awning that hung across the street, the lack of air in the room made it almost unbearable. He could see the damp sweat under her arms, staining the floral print of her frock, and the loose folds of her flesh, waving slightly, as she clicked the crochet hook in and out of a purple wool.

  Visitors aren’t welcome, and she h
ad leant forward to make sure Silas was listening. He takes a gun to people who sniff around.

  Silas had pulled back. Why?

  A fly had buzzed near her head and she had reached for a rolled up newspaper to swat it with. The slam had slapped through the stillness.

  When’s the repairs starting? and she had nodded in the direction of his mother’s house.

  Soon, he had told her, knowing that any attempt to lead her back to the story would only fail, and he had watched in fascination as she stood up, her weight forcing her to take it step by careful step, the squashed fly balanced on the edge of the newspaper, constantly threatening to topple off as she had lumbered, heavily, towards the bin.

  Suppose you’ve been organising the builders for the past Jew weeks, and she had snorted as she sat down again.

  Silas hadn’t bothered to correct her.

  You know he has a daughter?

  He had leant forward, his smile wide and cheeky. Locked up?

  Pearl had winked at him. Beautiful as the morning and blind as the night. She’s the one that grows everything. Poisons, the lot of them. Wouldn’t let your dog go up there, if you had one that is. Doubt whether he’d come back alive.

  He had assured her he would be careful and he had been surprised, for a moment, at the flicker of fear he’d felt, tinged with a new excitement, sharp and quick in his blood.

  Sitting outside that cyclone fencing, mesmerised by the spectacular vision in front of him, Silas found the one thought that kept returning to him was the word Pearl had used: unnatural. A strange description for a place that could not have been more abundant with nature.

  He was, conceivably, still ripped. He was, perhaps, still far from himself, still as gone as he had been each night on that verandah with Thai, because what he saw here was, quite simply, impossible. He did not understand how it could exist and yet there it was, right in front of him, and he pulled himself up, leaning his entire body into the fencing.

  Hello, he called out, not seeing her, not immediately. Hello.

  She was standing right there, only fifty metres away, and staring at him. He forgot that Pearl had told him she was blind, her gaze seemed so focused on him, and as he raised his hand to signal a greeting, she stepped forward: Constance, tall, poised and more exquisite than any of the flowers that clustered around her.

  I wouldn’t come any closer, she warned, and she nodded in the direction of the shack, back towards Rudi, who was making his way down the path towards Silas, a gun in his hand.

  4

  I know there is a small part of me that wanted to see what Silas saw. When I drove to Port Tremaine, I went to find out whether he had returned, but this was not the only reason for my detour. I wanted some truth to the vision he had attempted to describe for me, I too wanted to see it, extraordinary and beautiful, spread out in front of me.

  Was I delusional? Silas once asked me, and then he stared out the window, aware that I was unable to answer his question. I had smoked so much dope, I was such a mess, he searched for a reason and then lapsed into silence.

  He did not know. He would never know.

  Greta did not go to the library on the weekends, and nor did Silas, usually, but on the Saturday morning after he first spoke to me about the garden he was there, without the distraction of her in front of him.

  The reading room was almost empty and he took a seat, the scrape of the chair loud in the silence. He found a blank piece of paper and laid it on the desk, determined that this time he would get somewhere.

  Dear Rudi

  He wished there were a better way of beginning.

  I need to tell you what happened, but each time I attempt to I am overwhelmed by how impossible it now all seems.

  pearl

  Calcarea Carbonica. – – . . . a trituration of the middle layer of oyster shells.

  John Henry Clarke, A Dictionary of Practical Materia Medica

  Of the whole [mollusc] family, the oyster has the most undifferentiated body and possesses no limbs whatsoever. The animal is completely encased in its shell and absolutely immobile, since it is attached to a rock. Its only visible life expression consists in the slight opening and closing of the shell . . . Calcarea is standstill, passivity, immobility, clinging, restraining, peripherally enclosing, restricting, in going, the negative or holding-in receptive principle.

  Edward C Whitmont, Psyche and Substance: Essays on Homeopathy in the Light of Jungian Psychology

  1

  When Silas returned from PortTremaine, the few friends he ran into would occasionally ask him what he had been doing while he was there.

  Nothing much, he usually said, not once making mention of Constance, her father, or the garden in which they lived.

  As the weeks passed and the change that had occurred in him became inescapably obvious to everyone who had known him, Silas was no longer faced with the possibility of having to discuss the time he had spent away, and he was relieved. It was not until he saw Jake, about eight months after he had come home, that the topic inevitably came up, once again.

  Jake had also been out of the city.

  India, he told Silas. Studying Ashtanga.

  Jake was the first person to ask him whether he had fallen in love. He had followed Silas into his apartment building but when they reached the lift, Silas had told him he was only going up for a few moments, he had to go out. Even though the relief that sex might bring was tempting, it was never really a possibility. The aversion he had developed to any kind of closeness was too strong, and, unable to express this, he had simply made up an excuse.

  Did anything happen to you out there? Jake looked at Silas curiously. He had always prided himself on his ability to read people, he said he could see the energy flow, a phrase that Silas found as irritating as Jake’s tendency to do the splits at every given opportunity.

  Did you fall in love? Jake asked.

  Silas shook his head. No, he assured him, his response emphatic.

  Greta also asked him the same question when he first spoke of Port Tremaine to her. It was on the night they slept together, when they were out drinking, that Silas told her he had not always been a recluse. He had changed, he said, after that trip. In the haze of the alcohol, he thought for a moment that he had mentioned Port Tremaine to her previously.

  What trip? she asked him, and he gave her only the barest details.

  What happened? She grinned. Did you fall in love?

  His response was similar to the one he had given Jake.

  Out there? He laughed. God, no, and he butted out his cigarette with short sharp jabs, even though he had lit it only moments before.

  When he told me that he had been in love with Constance, I could sec that he was surprised by his own words, and that he was immediately aware of how ambiguous the truth of that statement was.

  For many of us, the mention of love brings with it a myriad of qualifications; we use the word and then we start trying to hedge it in, to shape it, to give it some kind of definition.

  This morning, walking with Larissa as the sun was burning the frost off the short grass that covers the plains, she told me that she and her partner had decided to marry. I was pleased for her. I know the difficulties they have had, and I know they have worked hard to resolve them.

  In the distance, a group of kangaroos watched us. Pausing in their grazing to assess whether we presented a threat, they sat up on their hind legs, all eyes on us as we made our way towards an outcrop of boulders on the highest point.

  She asked me if I was in a relationship, if I was in love with anyone.

  Not at the moment, I told her.

  It has, in fact, been just over a year and a half since Victoria left. She is pregnant now, an issue that was a cause of considerable contention between us, and she is, I believe, happy.

  I have not met anyone since we separated. I have not even slept with anyone, and I shake my head as I realise this.

  Any reason? Larissa asked and she glanced across at me, ave
rting her eyes almost immediately.

  I smiled at her. There isn’t one in particular that I can pin-point. It just doesn’t interest me much.

  She apologised for asking. I shouldn’t have. It’s only because we are here in this place. You know, not in the clinic.

  I told her it was fine, that I didn’t mind at all.

  Look. It was the kangaroos that I was indicating to her and I watched as they bounded away, arcs of white frost shimmering behind them with each enormous leap they made.

  It was only when they were gone that I realised her eyes had in fact remained on me, and in that brief moment before she turned away, I was surprised to see that her look was one of mild curiosity, almost sympathy, as though I was a being she could not fathom.

  2

  Silas told me that it took him five minutes to convince Rudi to unlock the gate. One look at Constance had been enough for him to know he wanted to go in. She was, he said, more beautiful than he would have believed to be possible. Her hair was thick and dark and it fell, black and smooth, to her shoulder blades. Her skin, and he searched for the words, was like the palest petal, touched pink and stretched taut across the fingers. But it was her eyes that stilled him: they were violet, deep and pure, the colour of the dusk after a perfect summer day. Standing just outside that gate, his floundering heart wide open to it all, Silas wanted only to be on the other side, there with her.

  He had not, of course, heard of Rudi’s work; he had no knowledge of the recognition he had once achieved, albeit obscure. It was, therefore, simply a matter of luck that he chose to tell Rudi he was interested in writing an article about the garden, the lie he had stumbled upon working almost immediately.

  When he saw the old man’s grip on the gun loosen slightly, the blood return to his knuckles and the muscles in his arms relax, Silas pressed on, telling him he had heard of the community Rudi had set up, that he wanted to know more, that he would not take too much of his time.