shrivelled with age and his face is grey with worry. For all that, his face remains relatively unlined; he had had an easy life, a life of meaningless worry, temporary panic and desire that hasn’t left a mark on him. His eyes were dull and the only glitter in them was the glitter of fear that the world would find him out, the world would see that he wasn’t struggling so much, that he could stand to lose so much more than customer interest; he even tilts his head, as though he too can hear the ghost of music in this room, in my room, my room by contract and by money. He is wearing a blazer, a little loose around the chest but quite new; I look rough compared to him, in a worn shirt and with bags under my eyes – what does he know of hardship? What does he know of the weight of thought?
‘Did you vote today?’
I stare at him, I hear myself reply, ‘yes’ in a small voice that doesn’t sound like it came from my throat, but from something else, from the coward in the morning, from the nervous little creature of sickness that I am.
‘Didn’t go for the Tories, I hope?’
‘No, no; it’s Labour all the way for me.’
‘Glad to hear it!’ He smiles, empties his mug again and lets the last drops of the bottle fall into it; it barely fills up a third of the mug. ‘Although, y’know, that Britannica’s making some good points; about immigrants an’ all that.’
‘Are they?’
‘Yeah.’
He drinks his wine and stand up.
‘Anyway, I’d better be going. I’m sure you’ve got plans for the night?’
‘Yeah, yeah; I’m thinking of meeting some friends of mine in town.’
‘Sounds good’ he walks towards the door, still holding the empty mug; he realises as he reaches for the door handle and places it on a side table, ‘listen, if you’re ever bored, y’know, we can always use an extra hand around the shop. I’ll even throw in a few music lessons, how does that sound? You wanna learn to play the piano? Guitar maybe?’
I say thank you, tell him I’ll definitely think about it. He leaves and I wait a few minutes before leaving as well. I follow the street in the direction of the bar. I don’t eat, but I drink more wine that I can’t stand the taste of. After only a few glasses I feel sick, the sweet fruit laying in my stomach like a tumour, cutting out at the muscle walls. I knock back another as I watch the television, on mute, as I watch three old men in suits with receding hairlines and a young woman with short blonde hair and a blue dress that reveals her collar bones. They’re talking about the election and the first votes roll in.
I walk back down the dead streets at around two in the morning; they waver at me, like the stones were branches shuddering in the air. I want to listen to my headphones but I’m too drunk, too sick; if I put them in my ears I know I’ll throw up.
A light cuts the street in half; it’s coming from the music store’s great windows, half-covered with posters and flyers and one-time offers that never ended and prove that time is all just one stretched out moment. I look in as I walk past, to the door that leads up the stairs and back into my cold apartment, into my tight-knit flat that overlooks the street and hums dead music to itself.
The old man is sitting there, at the grand piano, and his fingers are slowly moving along the keys. They seem hesitant, like they don’t know what they’re doing, they’re confused at the sound of the ivory, of the ebony; I almost scowl at myself; the keys are plastic, white and black plastic, no doubt, and that is all. He looks shrivelled, but his face is one of intense concentration; he’s biting his lower lip, sucking in air through the gaps in his teeth; his shoulders spasm, like he’s having a fit or preparing to fling himself into a great moment of action, like he’s cracking his mental fingers for the greatest symphony, the epitaph of the greatest composer, the final words of the unsung, unloved, unrecognised master.
As soon as his fingers crash onto the piano, I feel it, in my stomach; rising, rising like the scent of fruit in summer, rising like a fresh body in the salt ocean, rising like nothing else on earth. I throw up, hard, between the window and my door; I spit out red froth and lumps of meat and I can feel it in my nose, hot and wet and I draw it in again with every desperate breath, until I spit it out again.
When I wipe at my nose with the back of my hand, it leaves a long red streak on my skin. For a moment, I think it looks very fine. Then the music store light cuts out, and I can’t see a thing but the flashing lights behind my eyes, and the pounding in my skull attacks me again as I fumble in my pockets for my keys.
Day Five
XIII
I couldn’t stop my leg from shaking, whatever I did. I could feel it, I could feel it perfectly; feel every atom, every molecule of my flesh and blood and muscle shudder, independently of each other – it was like an orchestra of nervousness, with every different piece an instrument, coming together and adding to the great crescendo that was every motion.
I was sat in the corridor, staring down at the floor as I felt the scrutiny of the nurse behind the desk fall upon me. It was cold, and hard, and I felt weak against the solidity of that place – a place of life and death, a place of health and illness and of people kept alive longer than they had any right to; it was the cement of machinery and the roll of wheels in the night; the cries of old men echoing through the hallways in the silence – I had a vision of hearing my father’s voice crying ‘Nurse, Nurse, Nurse; I’m dying; Nurse, Nurse, can I have some water Nurse?’ and scoffed at myself.
The nurse behind the desk only had one eye, and her fluorescent red hair was cut at a ragged angle to hide the fact from obvious view. Her face didn’t quite match and, as it had aged, the skin had grown more limp and ragged and her red flesh now seemed little more than a highlight of her hair, an afterthought. Even when I had entered the room and given her my name, I had found myself addressing her hair.
A tall, handsome man walked past in his scrubs; her hair lifted immediately and they talked for a few moments, their hands animated and excited before he moved off down the hall again and she sank back into her seat looking defeated.
I heard someone else call my name, and Bernard was approaching me with a wide grin on his face. The nurse looked up at his warm tone, but when she saw me stand she turned back to her computer. He looked very fine, like a lord come amongst his people, and the entire hallway didn’t seem so cold; he had that talent all doctors have, I thought, the ability to put you on the spot, to make you uncomfortable even though they smiled and opened their eyes and held their head in just the right way. As his fingertips touched my palm, I suddenly felt an intense disgust; I couldn’t trust him, could I?
‘How’s it going man, you ready?’
‘Yeah, yeah; I’m just looking forward to getting this over with; we’ll just have to hope she’s as good as you say.’
‘Don’t worry; she’s the best at this kind of stuff. She’ll get in there and sort you out, no problem.’
‘Well, I hope so; never thought I’d say this, but I’d love to go back to work.’ He smiled and shook his head, remembering all the times I complained about the office, about the small co-workers with their small lives and their hopeless dreams and their novels, destined to go unfinished. ‘What time do you finish tonight? I’m thinking of heading out for a couple of drinks tonight; you know, depending on how this goes.’
‘Yeah, maybe mate. I’ll be here for a while yet, but I’ll swing by again in an hour or so, if you want someone to chat you when you get out? I doubt you’ll be in there that long, but it depends how much she can get out of you, I suppose.’
‘Okay, cool; I’ll hang around then, when she kicks me out early.’
‘Did you bring your notebook for her, by the way? I know she really wants to see it.’ In response, I tapped my bag on the floor with my foot. ‘Alright, that’s good; that’ll really help her out, you know?’
‘Yeah, hope so.’
‘Alright, well; I’ve gotta be off, but I’ll see you later, yeah?’
‘Sounds good doc,’ that made h
im smile; ‘see you later’.
The nurse looked at me with interest as I sat down again, but when I looked at her she looked away.
To kill time, I opened my bag and pulled out a piece of paper; there was a notepad in there too, but the notes were just as scattered across individual a4 pieces of paper, the backs of receipts and anything else I had been able to find around my apartment. I scanned the page; it wasn’t good – it wouldn’t win any awards; in parts, it didn’t even make sense but that didn’t matter. She wanted honest pages, she wanted thought; I’d done my part of the deal.
The page I’d chosen was written in my scruffy, tightly-wound style which was illegible in parts, but halfway down the page in darker, more jagged script, read the question: What Is The Mychandra?
Beneath it, just as hard and ragged and cold, it continued: The Mychandra is a distance, a distance in the vaguest of ill-defined terms; the distance that is the separation of the mind and the body; the distance between now and then – the Mychandra is the thing that smells the moments between moments, when the water actually moves and I am not human, not really alive – just a breathing thing, just a bellows and a pump.
I couldn’t show her that, could I? Couldn’t show her my insanity? I imagined myself, laying in a hospital bed with restraints around my wrists, leather straps to