The Blind Eye (8 page)

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 softness 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.

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.