The Blind Eye (18 page)

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
.

Silas had been obsessed before, each time he fell in love in fact, but this was different.

I was at sea with it, completely out of my depth
, and he looked away, the expression on his face one of shame.
I believed them
, he said, not looking at me.

What?

Those stories of Pearl’s. That Constance had something, something that other people don’t have, that I was ensnared, trapped
, and he grinned in embarrassment as he shook his head.
I mean, I didn’t, not really
. He rubbed his forehead with the back of his hand.
But I guess I did
.

9

All that I know of Rudi does not amount to much. In fact, until I met Silas, I did not even know he had a daughter. If, as Pearl told Silas, she was born shortly before the others started leaving, it would have been around the time that Rudi stopped publishing, otherwise he would, no doubt, have written about her and the vision she supposedly possessed.

His writings were, to say the least, eccentric, his beliefs unorthodox, and at the stage in my life when I discovered them, I thought they were extraordinary. I had just left medicine and even though my father thought I was a fool (he forgave everything except a lack of intellectual rigour, a deficiency that was defined, always, by his own standards), I felt my decision had been unquestionably right. I had discovered a way of thinking that made sense, and I wanted to take it to its outer reaches, to the places from which Rudi was writing.

Jeanie told me that she remembered recommending his articles. She always told her first-year students about them,
and she always knew who would be amazed by them and who would find them barely worth the paper on which they were written.

It was like a game I played with myself
, she smiled.
Working out those of you who were truly passionate, and those who weren’t
.

She, too, had read the story of the redback spider. Apparently one had bitten Rudi, and the first thing he had demanded of the friend who found him was that he let him be; he wanted the venom to take its course and he wanted his friend to act as witness, to write down everything he said or did. Although the dosage was obviously toxic, the sensations he described were remarkable in their similarity to a recent orthodox proving of the spider that was conducted about a year ago.

You know he believed that simply holding the correct remedy in front of the patient could be enough?

I did.

And then he took it further. He tried to conduct trials to show that thinking of the remedy alone would suffice
. She smiled.
He was absolutely obsessed, mad on one level, brilliant on another
.

As we wheeled the barrow back up to the house, I told her how I had gone out there to find him.

And did you?

I shook my head.

It was Pearl who had told me he had left.
Guess he didn’t
want to stay
. She had rubbed her glasses with the cloth of her dress.
Not once she was gone
, and she had lifted a newspaper from the shelf near her and slammed it hard on the fly that had been buzzing, circling her head, while we talked.