Darkmans (75 page)

As he leaned, a small portion of ash from the tip of his cigarette dropped on to the seat.

Bollocks

Kane quickly swiped it off with his hand – knocking it down on to the tarmac. As he swiped he sensed a vague shift in the atmosphere around him – a strange, almost indefinable sensation – as if the wind had changed direction, or the sun had passed – very briefly – behind a cloud. He frowned, glancing nervously over his shoulder –

Nothing

– then shrugged and straightened up –

Oh shit

He froze.

Perched on the steering wheel, directly in front of him, was the bird.

Kane stared at the bird. The bird scratched itself, vigorously (patently unconcerned by Kane’s close proximity), spraying an extraordinary quantity of fluff and skin-flakes into the surrounding ether.

Kane flinched, revolted. The bird responded with a sharp sneeze, then shook out its remaining feathers and hunkered down (for the
long haul, it seemed), its neck neatly disappearing into the black feather boa of its shoulders.

‘What do you want?’ Kane whispered.

The bird opened and closed its beak a few times, but without making a sound.

‘You’re guarding the diary, eh?’ Kane mused, noticing how the bird’s third eye-lid kept passing slowly across the eye, in between blinks. ‘Well, whether you like it or not,’ he continued bolshily (screwing his courage to the sticking place), ‘I’m still gonna
take
the damn thing…’

He reached out to grab the book and the bird instantly took wing. He cringed (automatically anticipating a physical assault of some kind) but the bird swooped gracefully over his head and out through the door, without so much as a sound.

No actual, physical assault as such – no – but he
did
feel…

Uh…?

– He definitely felt…

Kane glanced down at his crombie –

Jeeesus!

The bird had shat across his shoulder. Prodigiously.

You filthy little…

Kane reached up, snatched the diary, stuck it under his arm, carefully closed the Rover’s door –

Quietly…

Quietly…

– and scuttled back to the Merc, pulling off his crombie before clambering inside, unearthing an old tissue from under the seat and scraping off the worst of the mess with it –

Urgh!

He became so engrossed in this task that several seconds had elapsed (at least) before it finally dawned on him that the racket from the scaffolding had temporarily abated. He glanced over towards the house, alarmed. Dory was high up in the structure now, standing bolt upright, his hand shading his eyes (like a mariner in a crow’s nest searching for dry land).

Kane hurled himself down flat on to the back seat, covering himself with his crombie (struggling to hold his cigarette away from the coat’s fabric), thanking his lucky stars for the Merc’s tinted windows.

After thirty or so seconds he peeked out. Dory was inspecting his watch and frowning, as if to imply (Kane imagined) that he might be awaiting someone’s late arrival. Then he turned and calmly returned to work again.

Kane remained supine, quietly watching Dory’s progress as he finished off his cigarette. He was certainly impressed by the German’s dynamism, although still rather cynical about how much of an actual impact Dory’s frenzied repairs were having on the structure, overall. The scaffolding – as a whole – seemed increasingly unstable; so much so, in fact, that when at one point Dory straightened up and glanced around him (alerted by a distant sound, perhaps) the entire edifice seemed to wobble and Dory was obliged to grab on to the guttering (part of which came away in his hand) to stop himself from losing his balance and plummeting to the ground.

Kane sat up, shocked, almost preparing to leap from the car – ‘And do what?’ he asked himself, scowling.
‘Help?’

He stubbed out his cigarette and lay back down again just in time to apprehend the lunatic German clambering on to the actual roof and scrabbling along the tiles like some kind of crazed, alpine goat, apparently heading for one of the two small, pitched promontories which jutted out – like a pair of frog’s eyes – above a couple of the upstairs windows. Sure enough, when Dory reached the first of these, he hauled himself on to it, slinging his leg over (as if mounting a horse), sitting jauntily astride it and gazing around him; the king of all he surveyed.

Kane glanced down at the jotter, frowning. He opened it up, randomly –

Wow…

Dory’s writing was inconceivably tiny and ludicrously neat, so much
so that he’d managed to compress three lines of script between each of the printed lines on the page.

‘Day 23’ –
Kane read –
‘I am trying to concentrate on the inner ear. I am drawing the channels of the ear together. They are certainly “soft and deep” now (as Rosen suggests). Svatmarama claims that after only two weeks’ practice it is possible to hear subtle sounds in the “yoga ear”. I am hearing these sounds. I have not heard clouds (or horns, for that matter), but I did hear bells, the sound of the sea and the buzz of a fly. With the sea comes nausea. With the bells? A sense of excitement, a longing, a strong pull…And the fly? I don’t know…A cruel mix of things. Boredom? Dread? Frustration? Fear?

Rosen says that indolence is one of the biggest obstacles for any serious student of this particular discipline. My fly is certainly indolent. It makes me doubt. It distracts me. I follow it around inside my mind. It wears me down. It exhausts me. This feeling is apparently familiar to the yogis. They have a special name for it. They refer to it as “Tamas”…’

Kane’s eye moved a little further down the page:
‘I watched a real fly the other day,’
he read,
‘rotating in a crazy circle underneath the light fitment in the kitchen (attracted – no
doubt – by the bowl of dried dog food which Elen always insists on leaving out). It moved in a most hypnotic manner – two, maybe three circles in quick succession (just under a foot in diameter) then a dramatic drop. Two circles, three, then a drop. This “dance” went on for almost seven minutes, without pause. From what I could tell, there seemed to be no earthly point to it.

‘Elen once told me that we humans actually share some of the same DNA as a fly. She read it in a copy of the
New Scientist
which she found hanging around in the surgery (she said). We came from the same place, originally (she claimed), crawled from the same swamps. At first I thought this might just be yet another of her pointless fabrications, but increasingly I am convinced by it.

‘The fly inside my head is not an appealing proposition. It is an erratic fly. A dirty fly. A persistent fly. It pesters and molests me. But through practice I am learning to deal with it. Through practice, I am learning to embrace what horrifies me most about it. I now see, through practice, that in many ways I am the fly, that we have an identical energy
…’

Kane grimaced. He turned to another page: ‘…
because if it can now be scientifically proven that water has a memory,’
he read,
‘then why not the blood? Why not the bones and the hair and the muscles?
My practice allows me to accept the idea that “I” am nothing more than a random accumulation of sense-impressions, hastily tied together like a bundle of firewood. I see that the whole world dwells within me, passes through me. I am a million voices, crying out, all at once
…’

Kane turned several pages on:
‘I always tried to ignore it (him) before. I forced it away, I pushed it aside (I just cut out, blanked out…), but my practice is gradually removing all those boundaries (slowly but surely – one at a time). Now there’s almost a conversation, a dialogue, what you might call “an exchange”, of sorts…The Witness seems to actively encourage this new “relationship”. It counsels me to embrace this…this…What is it? What do I call it? My fear? My punishment? My affliction? My cross? Does it matter? Does it even need a name?

‘Both Elen and Beede are determined to make me stop (of course). Elen, because she is obsessed by it (him) and how can she possibly hope to continue their degraded (degrading) flirtation while I stand close by and calmly apprehend?’

Kane frowned, pulled himself up into a sitting position and slowly re-read this last paragraph. He shook his head, perplexed.

‘And Beede?’
he soon continued.
‘Because it serves his “purpose” to keep the two of us apart. And she has bewitched him, of course. She has brought him to heel. She has “reached out”. She has invaded him. She has inhabited him in much the same way that “it” inhabits me. And how could she not? It’s such a convincing act, after all. Poor, sweet Elen! So quiet, so modest, so loyal, so sensible. And all in the face of such terrible adversity! How wonderfully accepting she is! How marvellously resigned! How infinitely patient and sympathetic and understanding!

‘(The whore playing the martyr? What a joke! What a travesty!)’

A small gap in the text followed, and then,
‘Travesty: trans – over
+
vestire – to dress.

‘I still sometimes find myself using words which I can’t understand.’

Kane scratched his head. He turned over. The following page was empty except for one short paragraph which’d subsequently been crossed out. Kane pulled the diary up closer to his face –

‘But what if HE
is the fly?’ Kane slowly deciphered.
‘What if Elen pushed this thought on to a hook and then dropped it, like bait,
inside my head? And what if I am feeding on the bait, gorging on it, without even realising what’s hidden within? What then? Will all hope be gone?’

Kane pulled away, confused. He turned several pages on: ‘…
because it wasn’t fated,’
he read,
‘(I know that now), it isn’t meaningful. It’s just arbitrary. It’s pure coincidence. There were holes, gaps, rough edges, and this “energy” simply inhabited them for a while, clung on to them. But I am filling these holes with a different kind of energy now. I am filling these holes with light. I am letting go of all the chatter (citta). I am filing down the rough edges. I am becoming smooth. Discovering that the boy isn’t mine – that I am, in some senses, his – was a struggle at first, but increasingly I realise that it has made this entire process so much easier. I have not given in, no, but I feel myself giving up. I am finally floating free of all earthly ties. I am quietly rising above all the confusion, the anger.

‘Let it (him) find refuge elsewhere. Or let it stay. I no longer care.’

Kane’s eye ran down the page a way to a section of the text which had been written entirely in stark capitals:
‘…I DO NOT HAVE AN AGENDA HERE! I DO NOT HAVE AN AGENDA! THEY ALL DO –
EVEN THE BUILDER!!!
BUT I DO NOT.
THERE IS NO AGENDA. I AM SIMPLY THE CHANNEL, THE BODY, THE VESSEL…NO! NO!! STOP!!! CALM DOWN! MUST NOT LET THIS IDEA THAT THEY HAVE A PLAN, THAT THEY ARE PLANNING…MUST NOT LET THIS IDEA…NOT HELPFUL. MUSTN’T KEEP TURNING THIS WHOLE THING IN ON ITSELF – LOOKING FOR ORDER WHERE THERE IS NONE. CAN’T. MUST MEDITATE. BREATHE. MUST BREATHE. OR JUST…JUST RUN…JUST ESCAPE.’

Kane’s eye lifted to the paragraph directly above this section:
‘Beede said the coffee was fine, even though I had poured five sachets of sugar into it. A test! HE FAILED! (Or was it just pity? Does he pity me? Is that how low we’ve sunk?) I explained about The Witness, the Pranayama, and he pretended that he knew nothing about it, even though I know he has a copy of the book on his table at home. Elen accuses me of paranoia, but these are important clues, surely?’

Kane turned several pages on, to one of the final entries:
‘…so very tired. If I can’t just blank it out (NO! MUSTN’T SAY THAT – THAT’S NOT WHAT I’M DOING AT ALL! IT WAS HIM!!! HE MADE ME THINK THAT!) then the facts will just keep on piling up and eventually they’ll start to obliterate…No. Am confused. The past keeps on piling up. Yes. But that’s only normal, surely? Sometimes I wonder
if I am the only one who sees it, if I am the only one who sees the same tree – the same old book, the same wall, the same piece of road – as thousands of eyes have seen it before, and who feels the weight, the terrible weight – the actual weight – of all this apprehension. As if I am the only one who feels history, who sees the storm of pure emotion raging away behind everything. The buzz and clash of the atom. This awful friction. This urge to truth. This urge to destruction. This urge to vengeance. Oh God! Where does it flow from? Why? For what?! And how much longer can I possibly be expected to hold it all back?’

Kane’s chin suddenly shot up as a vehicle pulled on to the road and drove along it, at speed. He watched through the back windscreen as it roared past, mounted the pavement and squealed to a sharp halt directly in front of Dory’s home. The vehicle in question was vaguely familiar to Kane – an extravagantly customised 4x4 Toyota Hi Lux. The driver’s door flew open and out sprang Harvey Broad –

Ah
…

– still talking animatedly on his phone – ‘I already
told
you the address, Kell,’ he said, ‘just keep ya bloomin’
wig
on, will ya?’

Harvey strutted confidently down the garden path (oblivious to everything bar his conversation) but was soon obliged to interrupt his call as one tile – two tiles, three, four – began smashing on to the ground in a savage arc around him.

Kane peered up at the roof, shocked –

Dory?

Was that…?

Dory sat there, hands neatly clasped, smiling quietly, as before.

‘What the
fuck
?!’ the builder exclaimed, leaping back, almost dropping his phone.

Kane saw Dory’s mouth move, in response, but he was unable to work out what the German was saying, so he took hold of the door handle, gently squeezed it, and pushed it open by a couple of sly inches.

‘You did that on purpose!’ the builder was bellowing. ‘That’s
assault.
I swear to God! I’m callin’ the police! You’re fuckin’
barkin’,
you are!’
‘Isn’t it quite extraordinary,’ Dory chuckled, grinning down benignly at Harvey from his vantage point on the rooftop, ‘that on the
very
day I terminate your contract you finally get around to gracing us with a visit?’