Section Thirty Nine
-So. -All clear now. -This is it. -You bastard. -Everything falls into place. -Now I know why you didn't want me to read too much of this.
She dragged out the paper with its evil squinting little green letters. She smoothed out the crumples and inserted it into the book, keeping the place. The men were staring at her more intently now. They got up and left as a group. They stared at her as they passed her table by the door. Nothing surreptitious in those glances.
She wolfed down the pastry and swallowed the cooling cappuccino in one. She wiped the froth from her mouth with a hand that was now perfectly steady. She swallowed the water, rose to her feet and walked out, the book still in her hand. She heaved the rucksack onto her shoulder again as she came outside. A scooter burst by. She cowered into a doorway, clutching the book to her chest. She looked up. Saw the entrance to a funicular station. -Wonder where this goes? -Doesn't matter. -Escape. -Up. -Up. -Up up up.
She went into the waiting-room. Line after line of benches rose above each other, tracing the scope of the tunnel like a giant set of amphitheatre seats, set up to face onto the spectacle of the street.
Somehow she bought a ticket. Somehow money seemed to have left her hand and a ticket found its way into it. She had no recollection of the face of the ticket-seller.
The train was already waiting, its doors open. It was gleamingly modern, disorientating her expectations of the rackety rolling stock of before.
She stepped in. The warped dimensions of the train totally confused her again. -This slant. -This crazy slant. -Why are all these people so upright when the whole world's been cast askew?
The doors closed and the train ground to a start. It passed pillars which, like a negated lighthouse, cast stroboscopic beams of darkness, each shadow like a bar-line in a piece of music she'd had inflicted upon her, in a skewed box in a press-in of bodies in a rattling eternity of sweat and talking wheels taking up the beat of her internal chant:
FUNICULEE FUNICULAR FUNICULEE FUNICULAR
FUNICULEE FUNICULAR FUNICULEE FUNICULAR
got to go back pillar of salt pillar of salt pillar of salt
got to go back pillar of salt pillar of salt pillar of salt
FUNICULEE FUNICULAR FUNICULEE FUNICULAR
AND STOP.
But only the train stopped. The music did not. She could still hear the tune being whistled by the sleeping American as she stepped from the carriage.
She staggered out of the station, blindly reaching into the rucksack for her cassette-player, with all the while the damn Yankee shrilling in her hungover ears.
She released the book from her white-knuckle grip and dropped it into the rucksack. She placed the headphones in her ears, put the cassette back in the player and pressed 'start'. Instantly, the violin obbligato swilled out the residue of the whistling, driving funiculee funicular from her mind, and the alto aria poured in:-
Have mercy
Lord, on me, regard my bitter weeping,
Look at me,
Heart and eyes both
Weep to Thee
Bitterly.
She knew where she was. She knew where she was going. She continued to walk. The aria floated into the past. She halted. She switched off the machine, leaned on the brightly-coloured railings, and gazed at the busy, still, placid, dangerous sea.
-So where to from here, my little lamb to the slaughter? -Lost your way and no mistake. -Can't go home, dragging your tail behind you. -But what else to do? -I need help. -I need help.
She gazed across the bay at the twin peaks of Vesuvius.
-If I could think an eruption.
Nothing happened.
-No, I think you've proved how powerless you can be.
She stared at the sea. She was suddenly confronted by the sheer empty immensity it. It made her go giddy and breathless. -Oh Lord, don't let me die.
She held onto the railings, her head swimming, matching the churning of the water below. She thought she glimpsed the black outline of a body floating, breaking the surface, before swirls of treacly filth buried it from view. She closed her eyes tightly and counted to ten. Her head cleared. Her ears did not.
She looked at her hand. Iron-red-stained. She rubbed her fingers along the top rail. Although newly-painted, it started to flake off. -So, kid, you've really done it now. -Really crossed the Rubicon. -Thrown off the shackles with a vengeance. -Well, not a bad start. -No, not a bad start: more like the worst of all possible starts. -You dipshit! -Oh, mother, you were right: I've done it now and no mistake. -Well, it serves me right, I suppose. -You try to use someone and they end up using you. -Ah me. -Into the frying pan. -Into the fire. -Here goes the baby. -Here goes the bathwater. -Still, too late to stop now. -Got to go for it now. -But what to do? -Need a miracle. -A miracle. -San Gennaro, perhaps you can help me - save me with your Holy Blood.
The sea continued to lap and shift, thick and slow - as if it were blood-encrusted. -Blood. -Huh. -This blood is not so Holy! -Oh, you poisonous Yankee virus. -You really impregnated me. -I can feel you pulse through me. -Mingle with every drop of me. -I can feel you scabbing over in every space inside me. -I want you out! -Liquefied and out of me!
The sea crashed and crescendoed, splintering its cracking crust.
-You transatlantic tosspot! -Why did you do this to me? -Why did I let you do this to me? -What's in it for me now? -What have I got inside me? -Your poison blood-baby? -Some poison yankee dwarf set to crawl out when its time is up? -Oh, you: you've time-bombed me inside. -Wish I could clamp myself up. -Wish I could swab myself out. -You dumb-yank bastard - I was your host - you stole my blood - we made our own sick communion. -You scumbag. -You stole and bloodied all that was decent in me - what little there was - and now you've got your reward. -Now you've dragged me into your vendetta. -Now you can tear me up and pass me around in patronising anecdotes to all your cronies. -But I let you do it. -I let you into my bloodstream. -I invited you in, you fucking vampire! -So what now, my not so holy blood? -Oh, I can hear it pump through me.
-pump pump pump pump pump
-I can feel it drip through me.
-drip drip drip drip drip
-Oh, John, what shall I do? -I just can't get to grips with this bloody complicated thing called me. -It feels like all my organs are screaming for attention. -Feels like I'm at war with myself. -Where are you when I need you? -Where am I now you need me? -Poisoned, that's what. -Oh, John, I'm as far gone as you. -You were poisoned by sugar; I've been poisoned by this thick yank spunk. -Poisoned by my own stupidity.
"Don't be so hard on yourself."
She said nothing. The metallic buzz of traffic noise damped down to a dull murmur. Eventually, she asked the question. -Who said that?
"I did. Your time is here. Your time has finally arrived."
-Who are you?
"You know. I have been pulling you into me all this time. You have flown the length and breadth of me to fetch up on this shore. You have sat and watched my changing edge flicker on the sand. Now is the time for you to commit."
-Where are you?
"Look down."
She looked down again - a split-lens dimension - she could see every wavelet and spit of foam, even from her vantage point - she could zoom-in even to every particle of every wind-formed ripple in the sand, beneath the water. There was no sign of the body.
The dizziness returned. -But you speak English!
"Of course I do, because that's what you hear me in. Perhaps if you were truer to your convictions, if you were more dedicated, you would hear me in Italian."
-Please don't nag me. -I've had enough. -Jesus wept, I don't believe this. -Now I'm being nagged by the sea!
"You don't seem particularly surprised at any of this."
-Well, after you've had a conversation with a two-thousand-year-old statue, after you've caught your dead ex-lover or whatever the hell he is in flagrante delicto, when you've had a hallucination of your mother as God, anything goes. -I don't know what the hell's going on in my head, but I'm learning to live with it. -So I think I can cope with you.
Silence. Shingle shifting. The sounds rattling to form a voice. "Tell me, are you religious?"
-Me? -I don't know anymore. -Why do you ask?
"One of the reasons was, I wondered why you blasphemed so often."
-I don't.
"Yes you do. All the time. Especially when you're under stress. And more especially, when you're under pressure from your mother."
-How is this relevant? -What do you want from me?
"I need you."
-How?
"Because I am sick - sick from the pollution choking me. You said you were poisoned, but so am I. You dreamt you swam in me but you never actually did. You will never swim in me. I am too dirtied. I am almost too far gone, almost past filtration. I need an act of purification. Now. If you were to give yourself to me, it would be a religious act, it would be the one meaningful sacrifice you could make."
-No.
"Come, throw yourself to me - you won't survive here."
-I've survived an entire day in this hell-hole.
"For that, you deserve congratulations. In this city, given your circumstances, surviving for twenty four hours is an achievement. But it is still not eternity. And things are only just beginning."
-Don't worry. -I shall continue to survive as well.
"But I need you."
-Sorry. -No can do.
"But it's my last chance. My tide's coming in. For once and all."
-Sorry. -No way. -Anyway, you're miles away. -I'd never get there.
The wind seemed to rise up, seemed to sheathe around her.
"Yes, but if you threw yourself to me, I would send my breezes and thermals to buoy you up, float you down to me, let me claim you for my own."
-No, sorry, I'm afraid I can't help you there. -No, I think I'll just throw myself into my work instead.
"Your work. Hm. So, will you continue to tote around your meagre possessions - your St. Matthew Passion, your guidebook, your book of recollections, your newly-acquired book of testimonies - around this city until you find him or give up?"
-I will never give up. -Never. -Not until I find out the truth. -I might have just lost forever, or I might have just got my hands on the key to the future, but either way, I won't give up until I know for certain.
"In that case, I will not lie to you. He is not with me."
-So, that wasn't...
"No. That was someone else. Someone else whose writing you're acquainted with."
-Oh, no. -Poor kid.
"Yes. Another victim. But, as far as I know, the one you seek is not. Yet. Though I could be wrong. The terrestrial is not my domain. But, if you will not join me, go and find him."
-Where?
"I don't know."
-Well, no matter. -I now have places to go to. -People to look for.
"So what will you do now?"
-Oh, I'll pick myself up brush myself down start all over again. -That sort of stuff. -Go and face the music.
"Are you ready to face the music, no matter how discordant it might be?"
-Yup. -Time to cast off childish things. -Time to be an adult at long last.
"In that case, good luck."
-Thank you. -Will you be OK?
"Yes. If you survive, I shall survive a little longer."
-OK. -Take care of yourself.
"You too."
A turn on her heel. A walk back into the tunnel of the future. A series of heel-clicks as the present echoes away
echoes away
echoes away to
Static.
She dragged out the paper with its evil squinting little green letters. She smoothed out the crumples and inserted it into the book, keeping the place. The men were staring at her more intently now. They got up and left as a group. They stared at her as they passed her table by the door. Nothing surreptitious in those glances.
She wolfed down the pastry and swallowed the cooling cappuccino in one. She wiped the froth from her mouth with a hand that was now perfectly steady. She swallowed the water, rose to her feet and walked out, the book still in her hand. She heaved the rucksack onto her shoulder again as she came outside. A scooter burst by. She cowered into a doorway, clutching the book to her chest. She looked up. Saw the entrance to a funicular station. -Wonder where this goes? -Doesn't matter. -Escape. -Up. -Up. -Up up up.
She went into the waiting-room. Line after line of benches rose above each other, tracing the scope of the tunnel like a giant set of amphitheatre seats, set up to face onto the spectacle of the street.
Somehow she bought a ticket. Somehow money seemed to have left her hand and a ticket found its way into it. She had no recollection of the face of the ticket-seller.
The train was already waiting, its doors open. It was gleamingly modern, disorientating her expectations of the rackety rolling stock of before.
She stepped in. The warped dimensions of the train totally confused her again. -This slant. -This crazy slant. -Why are all these people so upright when the whole world's been cast askew?
The doors closed and the train ground to a start. It passed pillars which, like a negated lighthouse, cast stroboscopic beams of darkness, each shadow like a bar-line in a piece of music she'd had inflicted upon her, in a skewed box in a press-in of bodies in a rattling eternity of sweat and talking wheels taking up the beat of her internal chant:
FUNICULEE FUNICULAR FUNICULEE FUNICULAR
FUNICULEE FUNICULAR FUNICULEE FUNICULAR
got to go back pillar of salt pillar of salt pillar of salt
got to go back pillar of salt pillar of salt pillar of salt
FUNICULEE FUNICULAR FUNICULEE FUNICULAR
AND STOP.
But only the train stopped. The music did not. She could still hear the tune being whistled by the sleeping American as she stepped from the carriage.
She staggered out of the station, blindly reaching into the rucksack for her cassette-player, with all the while the damn Yankee shrilling in her hungover ears.
She released the book from her white-knuckle grip and dropped it into the rucksack. She placed the headphones in her ears, put the cassette back in the player and pressed 'start'. Instantly, the violin obbligato swilled out the residue of the whistling, driving funiculee funicular from her mind, and the alto aria poured in:-
Have mercy
Lord, on me, regard my bitter weeping,
Look at me,
Heart and eyes both
Weep to Thee
Bitterly.
She knew where she was. She knew where she was going. She continued to walk. The aria floated into the past. She halted. She switched off the machine, leaned on the brightly-coloured railings, and gazed at the busy, still, placid, dangerous sea.
-So where to from here, my little lamb to the slaughter? -Lost your way and no mistake. -Can't go home, dragging your tail behind you. -But what else to do? -I need help. -I need help.
She gazed across the bay at the twin peaks of Vesuvius.
-If I could think an eruption.
Nothing happened.
-No, I think you've proved how powerless you can be.
She stared at the sea. She was suddenly confronted by the sheer empty immensity it. It made her go giddy and breathless. -Oh Lord, don't let me die.
She held onto the railings, her head swimming, matching the churning of the water below. She thought she glimpsed the black outline of a body floating, breaking the surface, before swirls of treacly filth buried it from view. She closed her eyes tightly and counted to ten. Her head cleared. Her ears did not.
She looked at her hand. Iron-red-stained. She rubbed her fingers along the top rail. Although newly-painted, it started to flake off. -So, kid, you've really done it now. -Really crossed the Rubicon. -Thrown off the shackles with a vengeance. -Well, not a bad start. -No, not a bad start: more like the worst of all possible starts. -You dipshit! -Oh, mother, you were right: I've done it now and no mistake. -Well, it serves me right, I suppose. -You try to use someone and they end up using you. -Ah me. -Into the frying pan. -Into the fire. -Here goes the baby. -Here goes the bathwater. -Still, too late to stop now. -Got to go for it now. -But what to do? -Need a miracle. -A miracle. -San Gennaro, perhaps you can help me - save me with your Holy Blood.
The sea continued to lap and shift, thick and slow - as if it were blood-encrusted. -Blood. -Huh. -This blood is not so Holy! -Oh, you poisonous Yankee virus. -You really impregnated me. -I can feel you pulse through me. -Mingle with every drop of me. -I can feel you scabbing over in every space inside me. -I want you out! -Liquefied and out of me!
The sea crashed and crescendoed, splintering its cracking crust.
-You transatlantic tosspot! -Why did you do this to me? -Why did I let you do this to me? -What's in it for me now? -What have I got inside me? -Your poison blood-baby? -Some poison yankee dwarf set to crawl out when its time is up? -Oh, you: you've time-bombed me inside. -Wish I could clamp myself up. -Wish I could swab myself out. -You dumb-yank bastard - I was your host - you stole my blood - we made our own sick communion. -You scumbag. -You stole and bloodied all that was decent in me - what little there was - and now you've got your reward. -Now you've dragged me into your vendetta. -Now you can tear me up and pass me around in patronising anecdotes to all your cronies. -But I let you do it. -I let you into my bloodstream. -I invited you in, you fucking vampire! -So what now, my not so holy blood? -Oh, I can hear it pump through me.
-pump pump pump pump pump
-I can feel it drip through me.
-drip drip drip drip drip
-Oh, John, what shall I do? -I just can't get to grips with this bloody complicated thing called me. -It feels like all my organs are screaming for attention. -Feels like I'm at war with myself. -Where are you when I need you? -Where am I now you need me? -Poisoned, that's what. -Oh, John, I'm as far gone as you. -You were poisoned by sugar; I've been poisoned by this thick yank spunk. -Poisoned by my own stupidity.
"Don't be so hard on yourself."
She said nothing. The metallic buzz of traffic noise damped down to a dull murmur. Eventually, she asked the question. -Who said that?
"I did. Your time is here. Your time has finally arrived."
-Who are you?
"You know. I have been pulling you into me all this time. You have flown the length and breadth of me to fetch up on this shore. You have sat and watched my changing edge flicker on the sand. Now is the time for you to commit."
-Where are you?
"Look down."
She looked down again - a split-lens dimension - she could see every wavelet and spit of foam, even from her vantage point - she could zoom-in even to every particle of every wind-formed ripple in the sand, beneath the water. There was no sign of the body.
The dizziness returned. -But you speak English!
"Of course I do, because that's what you hear me in. Perhaps if you were truer to your convictions, if you were more dedicated, you would hear me in Italian."
-Please don't nag me. -I've had enough. -Jesus wept, I don't believe this. -Now I'm being nagged by the sea!
"You don't seem particularly surprised at any of this."
-Well, after you've had a conversation with a two-thousand-year-old statue, after you've caught your dead ex-lover or whatever the hell he is in flagrante delicto, when you've had a hallucination of your mother as God, anything goes. -I don't know what the hell's going on in my head, but I'm learning to live with it. -So I think I can cope with you.
Silence. Shingle shifting. The sounds rattling to form a voice. "Tell me, are you religious?"
-Me? -I don't know anymore. -Why do you ask?
"One of the reasons was, I wondered why you blasphemed so often."
-I don't.
"Yes you do. All the time. Especially when you're under stress. And more especially, when you're under pressure from your mother."
-How is this relevant? -What do you want from me?
"I need you."
-How?
"Because I am sick - sick from the pollution choking me. You said you were poisoned, but so am I. You dreamt you swam in me but you never actually did. You will never swim in me. I am too dirtied. I am almost too far gone, almost past filtration. I need an act of purification. Now. If you were to give yourself to me, it would be a religious act, it would be the one meaningful sacrifice you could make."
-No.
"Come, throw yourself to me - you won't survive here."
-I've survived an entire day in this hell-hole.
"For that, you deserve congratulations. In this city, given your circumstances, surviving for twenty four hours is an achievement. But it is still not eternity. And things are only just beginning."
-Don't worry. -I shall continue to survive as well.
"But I need you."
-Sorry. -No can do.
"But it's my last chance. My tide's coming in. For once and all."
-Sorry. -No way. -Anyway, you're miles away. -I'd never get there.
The wind seemed to rise up, seemed to sheathe around her.
"Yes, but if you threw yourself to me, I would send my breezes and thermals to buoy you up, float you down to me, let me claim you for my own."
-No, sorry, I'm afraid I can't help you there. -No, I think I'll just throw myself into my work instead.
"Your work. Hm. So, will you continue to tote around your meagre possessions - your St. Matthew Passion, your guidebook, your book of recollections, your newly-acquired book of testimonies - around this city until you find him or give up?"
-I will never give up. -Never. -Not until I find out the truth. -I might have just lost forever, or I might have just got my hands on the key to the future, but either way, I won't give up until I know for certain.
"In that case, I will not lie to you. He is not with me."
-So, that wasn't...
"No. That was someone else. Someone else whose writing you're acquainted with."
-Oh, no. -Poor kid.
"Yes. Another victim. But, as far as I know, the one you seek is not. Yet. Though I could be wrong. The terrestrial is not my domain. But, if you will not join me, go and find him."
-Where?
"I don't know."
-Well, no matter. -I now have places to go to. -People to look for.
"So what will you do now?"
-Oh, I'll pick myself up brush myself down start all over again. -That sort of stuff. -Go and face the music.
"Are you ready to face the music, no matter how discordant it might be?"
-Yup. -Time to cast off childish things. -Time to be an adult at long last.
"In that case, good luck."
-Thank you. -Will you be OK?
"Yes. If you survive, I shall survive a little longer."
-OK. -Take care of yourself.
"You too."
A turn on her heel. A walk back into the tunnel of the future. A series of heel-clicks as the present echoes away
echoes away
echoes away to
Static.
© 2006 by Adrian Benson
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