The Blind Eye (29 page)

That was the night Silas knew he wanted to go back.

Later he told me that he had not gone home. Knowing he would not be able to sleep (and it was not fear at what sleep could bring but a strange nervous release that kept him awake), he walked up and down the cold winter streets, staring into shop windows, stopping in bars, eventually ending up at an all-night cafe he used to frequent on his regular drunken nights out.

He took a table right at the back, where he was almost lost in the folds of the faded red curtains that acted as a door leading to a dingy outdoor toilet used by junkies to shoot up, and he ordered a coffee.

The woman at the table next to him was nodding off. The cigarette in her hand was burning down, unsmoked, the tip dangerously close to both her chipped fingernails and her long, peroxided hair. He leant over, trying to slip it from her grasp without disturbing her, but she jumped, starting at his touch.

What the fuck do you want?
Her words were thick and slurred.

Silas told her he hadn’t wanted her to burn herself.

She stared at him through mascara-smudged eyes for a moment and then smiled, the sly, lazy smile of someone who has floated away from the world, adrift in a better place.

I know you
, she said.

He was about to tell her that he didn’t think she did, but then he realised she may have seen him here, years ago, or in one of the other places he used to go to.

Yeah
, and she was grinning as she nodded at him, clearly remembering something that amused her.

Where from?
Silas lit a cigarette from the end of hers, curious now.

Her eyes narrowed a little further as she leant forward to examine him more closely, swaying slightly as she did so.

I reckon we fucked
, and the smile on her face was sly as she said his name,
Silas
.

The cafe was dark. With only a single light, shaded by a bubbled yellow glass ball, it was impossible to see anyone too clearly, unless they were right there, in your face, but even that proximity would probably only lend a distortion of its own. Silas didn’t recognise her, but he couldn’t dismiss her claim as impossible.

She was still looking at him, shaking her head, the last of the ash from her cigarette finally crumbling into the brittle petals of the plastic roses on the table.

What happened to you?
She leant a little closer, almost falling off her seat as she did so.

He turned back to his coffee, the bitterness of each sip settling uncomfortably into his stomach, when she spoke again.

What’s this?
She was pointing at his arm, the fact that her question had remained unanswered only just having registered.

Silas told her he had got into a fight.

Yeah?
She peered so closely at the scars, Silas felt the brush of her hair, the ends brittle and dry, along his skin.

With myself
, he added, not sure why he was giving her this extra detail without having been asked for it.

When it came, her laugh was raspy, and as she opened her mouth, the smear of lipstick cracked at the corners of her lips leaving dry flakes of red clinging to her skin, and Silas could see that her teeth were rotten; the holes were visible, even in the darkness of that room.

No shit
, she finally said, her eyes narrowing. There was a cunningness now as she sized him up.
Got a few bucks you could lend us? For another coffee?

Silas gave her what he had, which wasn’t much, but clearly far more than she had expected. When he left, she was still looking at the fifty-dollar note, turning it over in her hands, before glancing back at him, quickly, furtively, uncertain as to whether he had made a mistake and would turn back and snatch it from her.

As he walked down the street at the back of the cafe, skirting the bulging garbage bags and wheelie bins filled to overflowing, he wondered at her story. He did not like to think he could have had that level of intimacy with someone and be left with no memory of the event.

Standing outside Greta’s block of flats, he looked up to the darkness of her window for a moment and then turned towards home.

He had spoken. He had never thought he would, but he had, and he was exhausted now. In an hour or so it would be morning. The few people who were still out would stumble onto the streets, their faces ashen, the brilliant colours in which they had adorned themselves fading in the coldness of the dawn, the trees shivering with the freshness of the early breeze, the first light grey and unforgiving in that brief moment before the sun began to warm the sky.

He let himself into his apartment and turned on all the lights. The piles of paper, the attempts at categorising himself, were still stacked in boxes by the front door. He could not remember how many bundles he had made. It did not matter.

It was when he was sitting in the leather armchair that had once belonged to his father that he realised his vague thoughts of returning to Port Tremaine were no longer just a possible course of action to consider. He wanted to see Rudi, he wanted to at least try to explain.

I need to face him
, he told me when he saw me next, and when, once again, I failed to understand the need he had to atone for a wrong that still made no sense to me, I asked him why he felt this was necessary.

With his face turned towards the door, he just said that he needed to apologise, to say he was sorry, and he did not explain any further.

5

When Greta received her second-last payment for the work she had done, she realised she finally had enough money to go to New York.

This was what she had wanted, she told me, for as long as she could remember, but now that it could actually happen, she felt uncertain. She booked the ticket before she lost her nerve and rang her friend who had moved there some months ago, knowing she would only encourage her to go.

But I haven’t paid yet
, she said.

Well, make sure you do it
.

And she promised her that she would.

Each day, she thought about ringing Silas, or even visiting him. She would let him know of her decision and he would be pleased for her, he would tell her she should go, and they would look at each other, his slightly wolfish mouth twisted into an embarrassed smile as she told him that it was all right, they were aware of the worst in each other and it was all right. But days passed and she still hadn’t picked up the
phone or stopped off at his apartment. She just wasn’t ready. She wanted to be, but she wasn’t.

Late one afternoon, as she was walking back from the final meeting with the academic for whom she had been working, she paused, as she always did, at the intersection leading to Silas’s street, and then turned towards his building without giving herself a moment to change her mind.

The front doors were open, as was the door to his flat. A woman in a dark grey suit, her blonde hair piled up in a French knot, stood at the entrance with a folder in one hand.

You’re here to look at the apartment?
she asked, passing Greta an application form.

I’m actually here to see the owner
, Greta told her.

Through the doorway, she caught a glimpse of several couples, opening cupboards, looking into rooms, the women’s heels loud on the parquetry floor, the men nodding in agreement as their partners expressed their approval at various aspects of the place.

It will be furnished?
one woman asked.

That’s what I gather
, the real estate agent said.

Greta had not been to Silas’s apartment since the night she had stayed with him. She had a dim recollection of the size of the place, but she was still surprised by how large it seemed, how grand the furniture was.

Obviously the clutter will be cleared
, and the agent smiled as
she pointed to the boxes stacked in one corner of the hall.

Has Silas gone?
Greta asked her.
The owner?

The woman looked across at her briefly.
I believe he goes in a couple of weeks. That’s when the place becomes vacant
, and she took an application form from one of the men.

I’m very interested
, he told her.

Someone else pressed another form into her hand. Three women waited with forms and references ready to hand over.

We all are
, one of them said, clearly irritated at the man’s assumption that first in would lead to first served.

Greta left. Outside in the cool of the evening, the street lights were coming on, flickering for a moment, spilling a white light across the pavement. She turned towards home.

She was surprised he had not told her of his decision to leave, and as she admitted to herself that she was also hurt, she knew she didn’t just want to let him know of her own imminent departure.

She remembered Silas standing at her door, ready to flee, and as he had turned to go, he had urged her once again to try to make amends with the past. She did not know he had been lying when he had told her that I wanted to talk to her, and she wanted to know what it was, exactly, that I had supposedly said when I had mentioned I would like to see her again.

I wanted to be sure
, she explained,
that you did want to hear from me
.

Catching a glimpse of herself in a shop window, her cheeks flushed from the cold, she told herself it was time she just did it. She would ring tonight, as soon as she got upstairs.

6

The last remedies that I prescribed for Silas were Cactus Grandiflorus and Lachesis. I wished him well as I gave them to him and I urged him to contact me if he felt the slightest need.

So that’s it?
he asked.

For now
, and I smiled at him.
But who knows? We clear up one thing and another surfaces
.

He had told me that it had now been almost six weeks since he had hurt himself.

And the heart?
I had asked.

Silas had placed his hand on his chest.

Still there?

He had grinned as he had told me that the pains had not completely gone.
It is like it is always pulled a little too tight. But it is not nearly as bad as it was
.