Previously…
“Hey Mitke you moron, get out of the way.”
Joshua puts his hand out and steadies
himself against the gatepost. For a moment his eyes blur as a pulsing darkness
begins closing in on him, as if his reality is running away from him. It has
been happening a lot lately…this strange dizziness.
“You either come in or you go out but you’re
blocking the path.”
His schoolfellows stream around him in their
rush to get home and play, but he is glued to the spot. At first he feels light
headed and faint, and then something wells up inside of him, like a thousand
ghosts all trying to get out at once, and the world falls over on its side.
And now...
The soft hiss of oxygen seeped into the
quiet ward. It was after midnight before the last medications had been
dispensed and the lights finally switched off. Clara sat quietly in a chair
next to Joshua’s bed and watched him breathe slowly in and out. He’d been like
this, still and unmoving, for five days now. Samuel and Beulah had gone home
after the first few hours and had come back during visiting hours. They weren’t
allowed to stay all the time but wild horses wouldn’t have dragged Clara from
her son’s bedside.
Far away down the corridor she heard a
bleeping noise and the rustle of hurrying footsteps as some invisible nurses
tended to a patient in need in a ward nearby – but Joshua remained quiet and
unchanged, pale and thin beneath the white covers. He’d always been a sensitive
child, something his father was always trying to rectify. Always trying to
toughen him up…and look what happened. She had to bite down on that train of
thought before it got out of hand. No good blaming Samuel. It was just as much
her fault. She was sure she was being punished for her little foray into the
extramarital zone the other day. The doctors had no explanation for it. Scans
showed nothing wrong with him; heart, head and all his other organs seem to be
working fine. They even did an EEG but his brain function was absolutely normal.
The doctors had no idea. Some mysterious power had struck him down. They said
he could wake up in the next ten minutes…or he might never wake again. Some said
he couldn’t hear anything, others said he was listening all the time, just
unable to respond. Knowing this, she had spoken to him non-stop for the first
few hours until she eventually ran out of things to say and memories to
recount. Then she went and bought a few novels from the hospital kiosk and read
to him through the night.
Eventually though, his lack of response wore
her down and she just sat quietly by his side, waiting for him to return…crying
softly to herself. By now she was exhausted, constantly fighting to stay awake
in case he returned. She let her eyes rest for a while and leaned back in the
chair.
“Oh. Hello dear. I didn't know there was
anyone here.”
Clara opened her eyes to find an old lady,
dressed in hospital uniform, standing in front of her.
“Hello,” said Clara.
“I've come to do his room,” she said,
indicating her trolley with various dusters, mops and spray bottles standing by
her side.
“Oh,” said Clara. The thought flashed
through her mind that the lady was a bit old to still be working…but these
days, anything goes she supposed.
“No, don’t get up. I won’t be long. You
won’t even notice me, dear,” she said and smiled at Clara. “You just sit there
by your boy. Better still, close your eyes and get some rest. I’ll keep an eye
on him.”
‘Thank God for kindly old ladies,’ thought
Clara. “Thank you. I think I will.”
Clara leant back in her chair and closed her
eyes again.
*
The boy at the gate looks out into the
desert night; flames glimmer in the darkness behind him, lighting up the rubble
strewn roadways of the broken city. Somewhere in the shadows is the woman.
He relieves himself against one of the great
chunks of granite that had once been a proud pillar. The pillars have been
broken for as long as he can remember and the great gates have never been
closed. The boy feels like he has lived there forever…and yet it also feels new
and strange. He knows he has always lived at the gate. Well, not at the gate,
but close by, in the tower.
Magically the tower is still balancing
upright on the half toppled wall away to his right. According to the old lady,
people used to sing from the tower, but no-one remembers the songs anymore. The
people, what is left of them, are too afraid of calling the desert dancers
again. He’s never seen one, but he’s heard about them. They had come in answer
to the city’s prayers for help from a plague of snakes. The sand-dervishes,
holy men, had come out of the desert and were let in the gates. These beings of
light had come into a city of darkness and the people had gone mad. They hadn’t
been ready for them. Having lived in ignorance for so long, tied to their old
ways…they literally blew their minds.
The beings of light, believing they were
rescuing the people, swept through the city, spreading a terrible fearfulness
amongst them. Friend became suspicious of friend, neighbour attacked neighbour,
and family members lay in wait for each other. Soon nearly everyone was dead
and the city a wasteland. Word must have got out because no-one ever came that
way anymore, and those that remained kept to themselves. They were called ‘the
lonely ones’.
He always keeps an eye out for the desert
dancers on his frequent forays into the wilderness, looking for snakes and
scorpions to salt and dry. He loves the salt flats just outside the gates…wadis
of white crystals, glittering in the sun. He is always chewing on a piece of
salt rock as he wanders around. Even now, sitting in the darkness of the
gate…waiting for her – his lips wrinkled by the salt - like hers. But hers were
wrinkled from old age.
She had hissed at him when they first met,
right in his face. Her teeth were so real, stained with sex and violence. She
was…..dangerous, and therefore attractive to a young boy. And she smoked
cigarettes. There was a kind of beauty in the way she smoked - even to her
nicotine-stained lips and foul breath. He hungered for these things with
something akin to desire. Why? He couldn’t say. Maybe because it was real. She
was real. She had lived. It showed on every line on her face and body.
Then one of the lonely ones would come, a
man, and she would laugh and go off with him. Sometimes he would follow and
peek at them from behind the wall as they lay in the dirt, but she knew he was
there and carefully drew her cloak over them.
“Hello little worm.”
The cloth she clutches to her chest is
coarse. She is slippery and naked underneath. She has obviously been at it,
bartering her old bones for something to smoke.
“I got a snake for you,” he says.
“Oh. Is it a big one?” she says and laughs a
crazy laugh. But it is only a little laugh because she is kind and respectful
of him. “Please come and sit. Thank you for your thoughtfulness,” she says,
taking the salted snake from him.
The house has no roof and the walls are all
broken…just a threadbare blanket strung across one corner where her bed is.
They don’t need a roof because it never rains here anymore. They are sitting on
some rubble in the lounge. There is no shelter. It is very hot.
She looks at him. There are tears in her
eyes.
“You look just like her,” she says and
delicately touches his hair.
“Who?”
“Your mother.”
There is a long silence. They’ve had this
conversation before. He can’t remember his mother.
They sit together side by side, strange
companions. The old woman twirls her torn lace parasol every now and then, when
the flies get too thick. Her soft silence swarms around him like a blanket.
They complete each other. When they come together all their anxious thoughts
settle down, like the flies, and they feel comfortably at home.
She wraps her rags around her, but they
hardly cover anything. He looks at her wrinkled skin in amazement. He’s never
seen anything so beautiful.
“Did you know that the walls fell when you
were born?” She looks deep into the past. “They all came tumblin’ down. Just
like in Jericho. That’s how the snakes got in.”
He just looks at her. She sighs and shakes
her head.
“I don’t know what it means,” she says.
“It’s an omen, but I don’t know what it means.” She looks at the horizon. “We
must wait.”
They wait.
“I love you,” he says simply.
“I know,” she smiles, and lapses into
silence again.
“Do you want to come and see the salt pans?”
“I can’t. I can’t leave here. I can’t go
outside the gates.”
“Then why can I?”
“You’re different.”
He thinks about this for a while.
“I must go.” He picks up his rock of salt
and wanders off towards the dimly lit gate.
