Section Twenty Seven

She put the guidebook away. -John, my son, I think you were already three parts of the way gone when you wrote this.
She gazed around her at the vast austere cavity. Could she detect some offence in the echoing space, some resentment in the religious artefacts that lay clustered around?
A sound like an emptying bath echoed around her own Gothic emptiness. She felt the blood receding into her underwear. She looked down. Her jeans were clean - cleaner than before. The blood sucked up further, pulling her hairs tight - she bit her lip in pain. Her eyes watered.
There was a smell of violets. She glanced surreptitiously inside her waist-band. No sign of a stain. She was clean - white-clean.
-A MIRACLE!
-Be quiet! Keeping the rucksack in front of her, she edged to the corner, pretending to consult the map. She put a defiant finger down to explore. No string. Nothing. A miracle indeed.
-A NARROW ESCAPE, THERE!
-Go away.
She folded the sheets of paper and stowed them in the rucksack. She walked around the nave towards the altar, every footstep echoing.
The widow had evaporated. The nuns had melted away. The priest had been rendered down to non-existence. But she became aware that other figures had faded in from the street, behind her.
She took out her camera and took one photograph. The flash lit up the space, spinning hard contrasts to every corner, which were then plunged to a deeper darkness then before. She sensed disapproval all round. She quickly made her way to the door, keeping her gaze down at the marble slabs.


Outside, all was bustle again, the recent and far-off past sucked around and whisked off. Instantly, noise - a drenching ringing of noise - prevailed once more.
-So where to now? She blinked her eyes against the brightness, swayed her head from side to side to rinse the incense away, looked left and right, upstreet and downstreet, consulted the map committed to her mind and walked, the insides of the legs of her jeans scraping against each other.
She halted before a right turn. -Where are we now? Spaccanapoli.
She plunged into a tunnel of a street: it was like the lid had come off the swarm-jar. Life - metal-life and flesh-life - it came swathing past her as she dived into this Spaccanapoli, this clanging clamour of shutters, this rumour of voices, as she immersed herself in the pungent snarl of it, as she dived, twisted around in the thrust and gag and gloom of it all. They all seemed to accelerate. They were all flying towards past and almost through her; it was like floating through a belt of asteroids.
She felt like a ghost - ethereal but conspicuous. She tried to glide through straight, but they pushed her aside to a crazy slither down the street, and at every zig, every zag, she snatched a peripheral snapshot of the flesh-life:
ZIG...a clutch of youths, hanging around, exhausted with posing.
ZAG...a placid matron, gawping, knowing-eyed, standing two-flat-footed, not budging - not her! - never caught on the hop; looking through the eyes of a woman who left nothing to chance.
ZIG...little men grown old weaselling through the gaps between tyres and shoes, feet and eyes always on the move, immune in the inferno, gobbing out greetings through missing teeth to their cronies, the old men grown little.
ZAG...sparky little children flashing out from tiny side streets like fish from tributary streams.
ZIG...a dog stretching through its torpor among the gaudy bags of produce outside the shops, yellow teeth gleaming in the gloom.
...and always the metal-life, always the blare and hustle of scooters, slaloming at right-angles through the tack and tack of pedestrians, their riders raw-edged, making hairspring decisions, resting on their reflexes.
She jumped at the bray of their horns. She was forced aside. She skipped and side-stepped. She stayed on her toes, her leg muscles rejuvenated.
It was all just right. The isolation. Like a blood-surge to the brain. She needed it. Needed the swell and press of human bodies. Needed the feel of head-down diving to oblivion. She toed and heeled it down the lane in protest and bliss.
She passed the church of St. Lorenzo Maggiore. She rounded the corner of the church and entered a quieter area, passing underneath an arch bearing a bell-tower.
She started to puff and blow. She waddled. She felt fat as a goose. -Christmas is coming... -Christmas is always coming or just gone, even in the middle of this Summer. She looked up. A big sick yellow sun. She looked through the arch. There was an unreal brightness which, as she passed underneath, re-emphasised the exaggerated sharpness of the voices.
The smells of pine resin and woodsmoke and sweet cooking smells mixed and clung like a mucus cocktail to the inside of her nose. Via San Gregorio. The street of cribs.
The shops were full of them. Tiny terracotta figures. Exquisite but homely. Tasteful but gaudy.
She pressed her nose to the glass. Like a doll in a toytown sweet shop. She homed in on two figures. They seemed to have been disturbed. They didn't belong in any group. Two figures alone. A woman with blonde hair. A balding man. His back turned to the woman. Walking away.
She realised that her top teeth were embedded in her bottom lip. She turned, and looked for seclusion. She passed the greyed, honeyed stone of San Gregorio Armeno and took the steps up to a secluded cloister, the scent of lemon trees driving out everything else.
She found a stone bench - still cold, still sheltered from the noonday sun - and plugged in the headphones. Time for another despatch. A cat brushed nonchalantly past. She heard the cassette click into place. She pressed the switch and concentrated.
There was tapping on the microphone. Like the muffled background of machine-gun fire.

Testing. Testing.
I hope you're there. I hope you hear this.
Hello, outside world.
I wish I could greet you with a cheerful voice.
But, let's face it, I'm not well.
Here I am.
This is a bit of a sick joke, really.
Sitting here waiting for my man.
I can feel it.
I can feel myself getting strung-out - I seem to be all drink and piss - if he doesn't get here soon, I'm done for.
trying to describe this trying to get it all down for - posterity hah haha hah
I can feel every blood vessel in my body. Every single one. Every one feels like it's been stretched out way past its limit; it feels like a network of barbed-wire inside me.
Oh Lord, is this really me?
Pissing in the alleyway like a drunk?
Gulping down enough liquid for enough hang-over breakfasts for the rest of my life?
How long's that, though?
And what else to do?
I swallow gallons of this foul foul water and send it back out twice as quick twice as pure as when it went in.
I feel the ulcers mushrooming on my tongue.
But I know what it is.
Know what is happening to me.
The blood - is boiling inside me.
The sugar-blood man is taking me over.
The sugar-blood man is come for my guts.
My man, my man, why aren't you here?
Oh.
Oh, now there's a switch.
Felt it kick in.
Now I am blood-hot.
Switch to blood-hot.
Can't move a foot.
Can't stretch a foot to my rescue.
Can't seem to function to function to function function...
Oh, God!
Why does this damn thing inside me NOT WORK?
What's that?
Anyone there? No!
Huh.
Sorry, folks, didn't mean to panic you.
Just my pulse.
Useless thing.
Just one big galumphing monster
galumph galumph galumph galumph
Oh, Lord, make me well again!
I am your junky, not my own!
I AM NOT OF MY MAKING!
don't leave me now don't leave me to these gutter-wolves don't leave your son don't make me piss in this purgatory
So?
So?
So no divine intervention, then.
What is the time is it now?
Must be dawn must be must be must be dusk must be dusk I suppose?
That's the word.
Dusk.
The light not coming the light just going
going to come soon, I think.
I hope.
He must come be here soon now soon.
Come, my man.
Bring me my things my works my new found life.
Ah, what a life.
A life a life my life FOR A LIFE!
Oh, my ulcerated tongue, my bursting bladder.
Where am I?
Am I inside?
I am inside, am I?
Inside, then.
Inside.
Let's think.
The walls go round this way not round the other way the angles are all going inward all surrounding I'm hemmed in.
Hemmed in.
Enclosed.
Enclosed in all this torture.
So, inside then.
Safe.
Safe but dying.
No, no. Not dying. Not that.
Not that. No.
Can't go out on the street, though: they'll get me.
Where are you? Where are you?
I wish you were here.
Yes, you.
No, not him. You. You. You listening to this.
Listen to me. Listen to me.
No, not here. Not that.
Not like this.
No. I wish I wasn't here.
Wish I was well.
Hope I get well soon.
Hope to see you soon.
Want to see you again.
Wish I was out of this.
Where is he?
WHERE ARE YOU?
where you when you coming please let me hear your feet tread in from the street boot down the door if you have to give me white steel white steel push it in fill it up cram me with it fill me with the negative stuff push back the sugar fill me up my tank is empty I am too thin I am aching away I want to receive I want to receive...

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