The Blind Eye (17 page)

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
.