* * *
He’s awake again before Daniel comes for him. He can hear food being prepared next door. In a moment he’ll be back there, once more to suffer the unfathomable confrontation with those memories. He must interrogate those memories thoroughly while there’s still time. In the first, what exactly is the woman doing? He closes his eyes in an effort to recapture the elusive fragment. Yes, there: she’s fighting her way past him with one arm covering her face. So, what then are the objects she’s dodging? Again he tries to run the sequence, but it’s impossible to tell; he can only guess it must be household objects. What does the woman look like? He can’t see her face because it’s covered. Okay, but is she old, young, short, tall? And what is she wearing? He doesn’t know – something dark; she’s slim. Describe the room. Is it really the same as the kitchen next door? And where is he viewing from? There’s a door and a table behind her, a window lighting her from the left. She’s coming towards him and passing on his right, like he’s standing at the sink. Everything fits. But he’ll need to check it again when Daniel comes. Can he see the person who’s throwing things? No, they must be behind him, where the cooker is. Is there anyone else there besides the three of them? Nobody he can see, but maybe, in the next room, maybe even with her. Thinking through that memory, he knows how he feels now, but how is he actually feeling in the memory, is it the same? Hard to say. It’s easier to feel the memory than to remember the feeling. But no; the picture in his mind’s eye sickens him, but in the memory itself he senses anger and betrayal.
And this whole thing about being held captive, about being kicked and beaten. Well, the latter happened alright: he has the injuries to prove it; those injuries had put him in a bloody coma for two weeks. But what does he actually remember beyond the boot in the face? Is it the same incident as the one with the girl? The same perpetrator? And was it just the attack? Was the whole incarceration thing just in his dream – a blatant metaphor for his paralysis – being plumbed into intensive care, imprisoned within his own body?
The room in the dream did look like the room he’d caught a glimpse of beyond the kitchen. But a dream is just a dream; a dream surely means nothing. It was any old bedroom, with a bed and normal bedroom furniture.
Except it had bars on the windows. Why the hell does Daniel have bars on his windows?
Ten minutes or so later, he’s returned to his chair and taken back to the kitchen. Lunch is laid out ready. Such a benign domestic scene; so hard suddenly to connect to those other scenes of violence. But the bars to the windows remain. Daniel catches him staring and follows his gaze.
“Those? Oh, yeah. Landlord’s idea, stupid git. Right pain in the arse, and probably illegal. Death trap if there was a fire. And all because of one break-in. But at least they’re on the outside; the windows still open enough to let the air in.”
And the other things? The table, the window, the door to the bedroom, and what he can see of the bedroom itself; they all agree with the memories – more or less. Only, there seems to be more space, more depth, more separation between objects. Crucial question. Is this the same place?
Not necessarily.
A thousand identical flats: he’d said it himself when they’d pulled up outside. Every flat in this block has probably the same floor plan, and every block in this part of town perhaps built to the same specs. Admittedly, coincidence has already been stretched beyond reasonable limits in explaining how he and Daniel had been living so close by, each oblivious to the presence of the other, but to suggest that they – two identical twins – had been living in two identical flats pushed the limits of that coincidence almost beyond belief. It hardly sufficed as an answer, but Alex discovers that he wants to let it go nonetheless. What matters is that with Daniel he feels safe: the safest he’s felt since waking up in the hospital. He’s desperate for this arrangement to work. Daniel is doing all this for his benefit, and Alex wants nothing other than to feel protected.
In the bathroom after lunch, propping himself up against the toilet, he catches sight of his reflection in the open cabinet mirror above the washbasin. The swelling to his cheek is now all but gone, but there’s a red stain on the side of his forehead that he hadn’t noticed in the gym; presumably where he’d struck his head when knocked out. As his hands become available, he leans over and ruffles his hair for a closer examination. A fainter mark just shows on his scalp – another old injury perhaps, maybe just a natural pigmentation of the skin, though the colour is not unlike the pale brown darkening the nurses had found on his stomach when they first showered him. Scalding from hot liquid they’d suggested. All in all a pretty sorry inventory of misadventures – or misdemeanours. He blows through his lips, draws back from the mirror, pushes down twice on the large flush handle and tidies himself up.
For the rest of the day he stays put in his room. Daniel keeps himself busy; there is little exchange between them. The TV rings out from the bedroom; something about Saddam Hussein and the authority’s bungled efforts to hang one of his henchmen causing him to be beheaded. For some reason Alex is more than repulsed by the report. It stirs other emotions that seem inappropriate, of rejection and inadequacy. He nudges the door shut with the chair’s front wheel.
The television is still blaring away when, some hours later, the door pushes open again. Expecting Daniel’s face to appear in the widening crack, Alex misses exactly what it is that comes padding in across the short stretch of floor. Something reddish brown. A throaty cry and asthmatic purring tells him the rest. A scrawny-faced, ginger cat emerges from behind the sofa and approaches with an inquisitive but cautious nose. Meeting Alex’s stare, its face opens up into a yawn of pink and black blotches. Alex can only think of salmon skins. The cat threads in and out of the chair’s wheels, stiff on its feet, but no less hell-bent on making the jump. The springboard of a footrest and a set of hooked claws into Alex’s shins help him achieve his goal. A sniff of trouser, and a pointless circling of knees, and the cat is ready to belly-flop down for its nap, the back briefly arching and tail lifting as Alex lets his hands wander over the ragged fur. The instant attachment between them is as disarming as it is unforeseen, almost as powerful as Alex’s first meeting with Daniel in the ICU. Here again, it feels like being granted the return of a long lost friend. The brittle sound of purring pricks something in his heart. As his hand continues to stroke – thin, rounded bones rising and falling beneath his fingers – Alex’s delicate touch reports the tragic news. This poor animal is mortally frail. He suffers a sickness that causes him constant pain, and stops him from eating. It leaves him with insatiable thirst and a tongue too parched for washing. Life is to be a matter of weeks only; a life that for all the love and attention heaped upon him by a doting carer has become sickeningly cruel. Death at least will be kinder – a quiet end, while sleeping. When it happens, Daniel will find him peacefully curled up in his basket. But the discovery is still set to break his brother’s heart.