A Cleansing of Souls (4 page)

“I think,” said Michael, grasping Tom’s left hand with both of his own, “I think that you and I are going to get along just fine, just fine.”

Tom withdrew his hand slowly but was unable to smile. The rigors of this, his first day of freedom as he perceived it, had left him overwhelmed and exhausted. So he rested on and off throughout the remainder of the afternoon, floating in and out of reality in this true garden of Gethsemane.

The sun gazed down in wonder upon the man and the boy, now and then peering closer. They seemed so incongruous – the young one with the countenance of an old and battered soul, the elder serene and youthful.

Whilst his young friend slept – and he was so very young – Michael’s mind was elsewhere, in another place, another time. So much had happened in his life and time was surely drifting from him now. He was just waiting, waiting for the next stage. At least he would be found in a place of calm and beauty. That thought alone sustained him for the present.

Michael tried not to dwell on past events, or for that matter, on the present, for he existed not upon our earth but deep within his own mind. He warmed his soul on the burning fires of his own innate faith. His journey was inwards, not outwards; inwards to the eternal world. Only seldom had he ventured beyond the walls of his own design and on each occasion he had returned butchered, helpless. All that was left for him now was this sanctuary of his where he knew he must remain. He had no choice. Not this time.

So he sat there on the bench as Tom slept. He let the glorious flowers and the towering trees wash over him. He watched tiny insects scour the blooms, gathering what they may from the most delicate of benefactors. The air was as clear as it was ever going to be and in a few short hours, the pale moon would be rising up to greet with solemnity the smouldering sun.

“Ah, awake at last,” said Michael as his young friend rustled into life.

It took Tom a moment to adjust. He had expected Michael to be gone when he awoke.

“What’s the time?” he asked, drowsily.

“Around six I think, Tom, although I couldn’t really be sure.”

Tom nodded and leaned back, yawning.

“Still on the tired side?” inquired Michael smiling kindly.

“I’ll be all right.”

And thus each man leaned forward simultaneously. There was a profound silence as their bodies, slightly hunched but perfectly still, shook within.

The sky is a perfect blue. The flowers, the grass and the trees have leapt straight from Vincent Van Gogh’s soul.

Man is so small, so slight.

Man is surely the thorn upon the rose that is this earth.

The afternoon had played tricks with Tom’s mind. During his sleep, a frightening vagueness of purpose had crept up on him, blurring his ideals, muddying the clear waters of his optimism. And he couldn’t shake it off. The sun and the burger had combined to add a feeling of nausea to his already unsettled state. As he sat there on the bench he felt fear and loneliness. He also felt a little foolish, but most of all, he felt alone, terribly alone.

Tom’s loneliness was compounded by an empty sensation within him, a dense void, and a heavy, indefinable pain that stung him with images of earlier times. He was in bed, wrapped in cold blankets on a winter’s evening, twelve years old, his homework still to be done and school again tomorrow. His mother had kissed him goodnight and walked to the door to turn off the light, leaving him in darkness and silence. And as she had opened the door to leave, he had closed his eyes, praying so hard that she would turn back and just hold him for a while. ‘Mum, mum just hold me please. I’m scared and confused. And I know everything will be all right if you just hold me.’ That was a long time ago now, but those feelings cruelly returned to him now. He just wanted to be held.

Michael was perceptive. He could see into your soul. For it was the very plane upon which he himself lived.

“Well, I’d best be off now,” he said, gathering his energy. “I’m going to the library. Bit of a read, you know, before they close. The papers, that sort of thing.”

Michael rose from the bench. He looked down upon the head of the young boy and put his hand upon his shoulder, squeezing it gently, massaging it almost.

“You can come too, Tom,” he said softly. “If you want to.”

Tom offered no audible reply. He just stood up as if he were being lifted, guided. And he could see himself from above, guitar in hand. For this crucial moment, every movement was scripted, written in parenthesis. There was nothing for him to do but to watch and let it all happen - to watch and to wonder at the heavy beating of his own heart.

The evening sun began to quail beneath the smoke and the fumes of Big Town. The visible cloud of pollution filtered the falling rays of sunlight until they were weak and dim, barely able to light the way of the man and the boy who wandered out of the park onto the ragged streets upon which they both were strangers.

The library was divided into two floors, the lower for borrowing and browsing, the upper for study and research. Books lined the walls opposite the entrance and continued down both sides of the ground floor. Michael led Tom to a spiral stairway in the centre and they both ascended to the haven of learning.

The door to the upper floor study area was heavy and stiff and Tom needed all his strength to hold it open whilst Michael slipped through, and just avoided the snapping jaws himself as the door slammed shut behind him.

Indignant eyes were raised.

There were twenty-four tables across the floor, aligned in uniform rows. Huge wooden bookcases rested against every wall and a small reception area, just in front of the door through which Tom and Michael had just entered, abounded with leaflets, posters and advertisements for various local community groups and activities.

Students, both mature and immature, occupied all but one of the desks, some there to study, others for more spurious reasons. The tables had been designed to comfortably accommodate four people – two either side of a low partition. But the ugly instinct of the learned had been at work. Open books and bags lay strewn across the desks, taking up space, ensuring that the lone occupant of each desk remained undisturbed by intruders, undefiled. The territory had been marked.

There is so much to learn.

There is so little that can be taught.

Silence returned to the library, though the slamming door could still be heard reverberating dully against every wall. And those eyes that stared at Tom and Michael on the moment of their arrival and continued to stare at them as they stood before the reception area, those eyes were
SO COLD.

The librarian appeared from below the counter like some slow motion jack-in-a-box, wavering slightly as he gained his full height. He was a tall, thin man wearing a beige suit that had perhaps been designed for somebody slightly shorter and slightly larger. He had large, sad eyes and a voice that sounded like wood cracking.

“How may I help you?” he asked.

“I would like to see the newspapers, please,” replied Michael.

After a suitably studious look at the two men before him, the librarian turned and walked slowly to the rear of the cramped booth. He came back after some moments with a stack of newspapers, his sandals slapping on the tile floor and his head bobbing up and down in sympathy with the agonizing oratorio of his life.

“Well, Tom,” said Michael as they sat down opposite each other at the vacant table, “what do you fancy?”

He lined the newspapers up for Tom, presenting them to him as if they were great sketches.

Tom shrugged his shoulders. He didn’t care. He was just glad to be around people. He was glad of the light and of the normality of the place. He took a newspaper anyway and began to flick through it with little interest.

Michael gathered the rest of the newspapers together and arranged them neatly on top of each other on his side of the table, taking care not to take up too much room. He then reached into a canvas bag, his only accoutrement, and took out a small notepad and pencil. After a moments thought, he rose, scanned the bookcase behind him and returned to his seat with a small hardback book. A final flash of sunlight reflected off the book’s laminated cover and dazzled Tom’s eyes. He was thus provoked into watching what Michael was doing.

Arriving at the page in the first newspaper with the crossword on it, Michael used the pencil and the spine of the hardback book to transcribe the crossword grid onto a clear page in the notepad. Once the grid was complete, he flipped over to another clear page, took the next newspaper, found the crossword and repeated the process. It was only after Michael had drawn the third grid that Tom noticed no attempt had been made by Michael to either number the squares or copy out the clues. It was just the columns and rows of black and white that seemed to matter, particularly those black squares that Michael shaded in with such force.

Only once had Tom been
to a library before of his own volition. He had skulked amongst the shelves during school hours but his first willing foray had been when he was sixteen years old.

Between the ages of thirteen and seventeen, he had fallen in love so many times. He had loved each girl more than the last, and each in turn had repaid him by being more and more oblivious to his undying affection. In his mind, he had gone through all the stages of love, from initial infatuation to eventual disenchantment. In his mind, he had experienced warmth, loss, longing and desire. In reality, he had barely spoken to any of these girls. He had just made them too big, too special even to approach. They had become angels in his eyes - and why not?

Ah, what a woman can do to a man.

Rebecca had been Tom’s last and fondest love, preceded in this most tortuous of adolescence, by Paula, Natalie, Gaynor, Juliet, Ruth, Susan and Charlotte. But they had been as nothing compared to Rebecca. They had been the prelude, she the finale.

He had loved Rebecca for her pure and natural ways, her innocence and her charm. She had possessed none of the petty affectation of her classmates. She had been gentle and kind.

Tom had followed her home once, from a distance, in the cold rain. He had followed her through the park and out onto the street where she lived, waiting there until she had gone into her house. He had resisted the temptation to do it again, but to have tasted just a part of her life, to have walked for just a moment where she had walked, seen what she saw every day, had been beautiful to him.

Rebecca had worked in a shop on Saturdays that sold records, tapes and videos and Tom had become a frequent, if furtive, visitor. He would roam the aisles, searching,  and having located her, would gaze at her from behind the records. The snapping of that price gun in her hand mesmerized him. Bang. Bang. Bang…

But one day, he had been unmasked for the lovelorn fool he was. That fateful day, he had been unable to find Rebecca in her usual place on the ground floor, so he had made his way cautiously up the stairs to the first floor where the videos were displayed and sold. He had never been up there before and had been struck by how much quieter and more open it was. He had been in the process of concealing himself behind a display of videos when he saw her, not five yards away, talking to a customer.

To his eternal credit, he had not panicked, and to his huge relief, he had been sure she had not seen him. But what was that? Footsteps coming closer and closer!

Clack...Clack...Clack… beautiful perfume wafting nearer and nearer. He had known instantly that it was her. No one clacked like she did. Thinking frantically, he had decided on the casual approach. Be cool. Be the tall, dark stranger in town.

So, there he had stood, legs wide, feet firmly on the ground, hands clasped manfully behind his back - at ease, sir. And as Rebecca had come around the corner to say hello to that sweet boy in her class that she was so secretly in love with, there he had been – COOL – SHARP - and gazing in abject horror at row upon row of naked women sprawled across the covers of the pornographic videos before him, all huge breasts and red lips…

It had been that afternoon that Tom had felt the need to visit the public library. He had needed a quiet place to think. For a re-appraisal of strategy had seemed in order.