love the proletariat, the modern proletariat, drinking themselves to death in pubs that stank of piss and weed and stale beer instead of smoke; the proletariat without a job, drinking and smoking and marching against immigration and throwing bottles at store windows on a Monday morning. The proletariat who gathered outside the pubs only a few feet from abandoned bookmakers’ and a few feet more from the church, like they’d misunderstood which one was the place of worship, and winning a 5/7 bet on a friendly held the promise of divinity more than all the angels floating in their peripheral vision.
I stood up, finally, and walked back the way I had come. Almost two hours had passed, as I sat there and blinked in the sunlight and basked in the dislike of the queue. I felt out of place amongst the crowd; I didn’t carry the joy they possessed, and my weight was much heavier than theirs. I felt, simultaneously, weigh down by the meaningless, by the madness of my decision and, yet, buoyed up by the gravity of my rebellion.
I did not vote, because I refused to express my hatred in such a numeric, sexless and inhuman way; in such jaundiced, jaded and tired publicity. I did not vote because, in the end, I believed in something better than this, something greater than the potential of community and society – I truly, truly did.
And, behind it all, behind the love and the rage and the hope, amongst the vague sense of guilty unease that flowers in my chest and makes its home in the back of my throat, I could have sworn that I heard the Mychandra laughing.
XI
As the sunlight started to fade, the clouds seemed to make their move; they coiled above the town and replaced the tired yellow light that was panting the pavement with the grey half-light that the town itself was more accustomed to. The glittering floor faded quickly, and became a monotone, just one block of aggressive neutrality the spread out over the buildings and the rooftops and threw ungainly shadows through the windows.
I was sat on my windowsill, basking in the half-light. The street outside shivered and tried to shrink into itself beneath the rain, and I liked the look of the town through the water. The buildings across the road were distended, like caricatures of themselves, like nightmares from some esoteric artist’s midnight illuminations. I had the radio on, a rock station from Manchester that seemed to come and go according to the weather’s whims. It was playing something to itself now, a fast-paced metal song which sounded like all the rest, all screaming from the base of the throat and a fast, scattered drumbeat and a guitar tortured through so many contraptions of electricity that it could barely be considered an instrument at all. I preferred the sound of the rain, and I waited to hear the opening notes of that tune, waited for the clouds to unload themselves across the town, to try and wash us away or dilute us like a homeopathic remedy.
I felt uncomfortable, guilty, like I had committed treason against myself, like I could feel my future howling at me in rage; like I knew in my stomach that my affection was nothing more than apathy; like I had taken a step too far into freedom, accepted something that I had agreed to refuse, just by being born.
I couldn’t explain it to myself, I still can’t, but I felt like a murderer.
I wondered if I could leave my flat and walk the streets and fit in, if they could smell it on me, if my freedom made me something better, wilder, if it would make me walk like a panther, rolling from one step into the next with the desperate confidence that only the fear of liberty can provide. Perhaps, I smiled to the shadow of myself in the barely reflective glass, I was about to develop the swagger that makes a man a man, that I could move on from the narrow-armed motions, that uncomfortable, clipped precision that felt like my body was restraining me.
My leg ran crooked against the glass, and I rolled up my jeans as much as I was able. The denim caught just below my knee, but that was far enough. My ankle and lower calf seemed paler than normal, almost the white of marble, and when I touched it with my fingertips it was cold. I couldn’t feel anything below my knee besides an unbearable absence – I could, perhaps, feel the ghost of it; I was aware that the same blood pumping through my chest would, in just a few moments, be brushing against the walls of my veins and arteries in the numb areas.
It wasn’t in the blood, it couldn’t be; I would be rendered mute in moments, or eternally, as every muscle drew in the illness and lived it, breathed it, spat it through my skin and infected the air around me. I would rest in permanent catatonia, as my body moved on auto, as it repeated the same motions I have done, but with a scream of loathing in my eyes.
She came to my mind again, then; Victoria. I think I hated her, or was starting to; she didn’t exist, she was just a figment of my desire, my frustration, my illness providing me with some false-hope, some angel, an obvious metaphor; or, perhaps, she was death – modern death, Charon flapping wings over Styx, a reaper in her nakedness.
I felt her beneath my stomach and swore; frustration! Perhaps it was all just frustration! I couldn’t stand it anymore; I couldn’t waste another day, couldn’t waste my conscious hours when the Mychandra was approaching, inevitably, limping from moment to moment all the time, always drawing closer; always breathing through my muscles and hauling itself upwards with my flesh. I moved to the couch and switched the television on. The channels flickered every time I pushed the button; news stations, screaming cars, running women, handsome men in black suits and whiskey, a rich blonde girl crying next to a disgusted refugee, a few celebrity appeals for Africa; nothing.
I heard a knuckle connect with my door and opened it almost instantly. It was the old man who owned the music store, with his back half-turned to me as though we were about to run away.
‘Hello?’
‘Hi; um, you’re not busy are you?’
‘Not really no, why, what’s up?’
‘I was wondering if you’d give me a hand? I’ve got to lift a piano into the back of the van; it’s just Ian’s off sick and it’s a bit of a bitch to move it on yer own.’
‘Erm, sure yeah, yeah; I’ll just grab my coat.’
‘Thanks, this’ll be a really big help; it’s just I’ve gotta deliver it today an’ I’m already running a little late with the damn thing.’
He moved away from the door in the direction of the stairwell and, after shrugging my jacket over my shoulders and stepping into my shoes, I followed him.
He talked to me, nervously, explaining that he wouldn’t normally have asked but he didn’t have another choice and he hated to bother me and he’d definitely find a way to pay me back and I didn’t know what a big favour I was doing him.
We moved the piano; I nearly dropped it a few times, as the wood bit into my fingertips, but I stifled my laboured breathing until my head swam and the piano slid into the back of the van, a white van with a guitar sprayed alongside it, beneath a telephone number that I had seen a hundred times or more.
He waved at me as he drove away and I went back to my room, closed the door, drank coca cola and watched the TV until I fell asleep.
XII
My door shudders in place and I stand up. I stare at it, and it does it again; it growls, it shifts, it vibrates against the confines of its prison. It moves closer, and it takes me a few seconds to realise that I’ve walked towards it; I’m standing in front of it; I can see my hand reaching out to undo the deadbolt, to turn the handle.
There is an old man there, smiling nervously and holding a bottle of wine. I smile at him, he smiles at me, and I ask him if he’d like to come in. He does, and I close the door behind him. He asks me where the corkscrew is, and I don’t know. I guess and tell him the kitchen and he vanishes out of my sight for a second, but then I turn my head and there he is, rifling through one of my drawers.
I see his eyes flicker over the state of my living room, my kitchen, even the disorder of my blinds, but he doesn’t say anything. He asks me where I keep my wine glasses, and I tell him there are mugs in the cupboard. He laughs, sits down and uncorks the wine. He doesn’t say anything as he’s pouring it, but he passes me a mug w
ith a map of Norwich city centre on it; I don’t know where the cup has come from, I’ve never been to Norwich. He takes a plain mug with a half-handle and fills it himself.
‘You know; I’ve owned the shop for thirty-four years.’ He took a long drink.
‘No; I didn’t.’
‘Thirty-four years.’ He says it slowly, stretches it out, smacks his lips like he isn’t drinking the wine, he’s drinking the aged air. I taste the wine; it isn’t very good, but I take a mouthful anyway. ‘In all that time, you know, I’ve never missed a delivery. I’ve never ran late. Sure, I’ve knocked on doors and gotten no reply, but I’ve always left a letter saying that I got there when I was supposed to.’
I don’t say anything, and he empties his mug and refills it as he talks.
‘It’s a holy thing, you know, being on time? It’s a covenant. It’s an agreement. You gotta, gotta live your life by your word and your watch, y’know? That’s what makes a man a man.’
I don’t say anything, but I want to; I want to laugh in his face.
‘Anyway, I just came to say thanks. You really, y’know,’ he hesitates, looking around the room, ‘you really helped me out today.’
He looks so small; I can’t believe I’ve never noticed before. His shoulders are slight and