The Blind Eye (20 page)

I was momentarily surprised when Silas told me he had been married, that he still was in fact, and then I realised it was not so out of character as I had thought.

He said he had married Rachel after knowing her for only three days. It had been a habit of his, falling in love whenever he was in an alcohol or dope-induced stupor.
Which was most of the time
, and he shook his head as he remembered.
Rachel and I were out of it from the moment we met. We thought it was a great joke. We were married in a registry and we had everyone we knew back to my place for a week-long opium-smoking binge. I didn’t even remember we had got married until about a month later
. He smiled.
I had even forgotten I’d given her my grandmother’s wedding ring. I woke in the middle of the night and saw it on her finger and wondered how she had ended up wearing it
.

As he spoke about Rachel, Silas recalled how he had thought he’d found perfection. He had loved the way she talked too much; he had loved the chaos that always surrounded her, the wild scatter of shoes, bag, matches,
cigarettes, clothes that she would leave in her wake; the way she would lie back on his grandmother’s chaise longue and open a bottle of wine at eleven, the ashtray overflowing next to her, and forget whatever it was she was meant to do that day; the too-dark lipstick she always wore; the pile of half-finished books she would leave on the floor; the lies she told without even blinking, her bright blue eyes steadfast as she recounted impossible stories; he had loved it all.

And I thought I loved her
.

But you didn’t?

I don’t know. I have no idea what I thought or felt
, and Silas smiled.
Sometimes I think that you can convince yourself of anything, that nothing is real
.

There is truth to what he said.

When I first slept with Greta, I did not think I loved her. Loving someone was not, for me, a prerequisite for sex. We were younger then, and when you are young, you sleep with people, and then you suddenly stop sleeping with them and you are never particularly good at articulating why you have done one or the other, nor do you think all that much about how your actions will impact on another.

So I did not think that I loved her and I didn’t think, all that much, about how she felt. Despite all that, I probably whispered all the words that you whisper; I probably told her she was beautiful, I probably even made plans for what we would do, maybe hitchhiking down the coast together,
perhaps a holiday overseas, I don’t remember. I tried to convince myself that it was, for her as well, just sex, but later I had to admit I had been lying. I knew Greta well enough, or at least I should have known her well enough, to realise she had a fragility that should not be taken lightly.

It is still difficult for me to sort out how I felt or what she believed I felt, but I do know I would never have instigated meeting up with her again, preferring to forget rather than remember. I also know she only contacted me because of the lie Silas had told her, and that I went reluctantly, only agreeing to see her because I did not know how to say no when she suggested it, not because I had any positive desire to make amends with the past.

When she finally began to talk about what had happened all those years ago, she said that she was not sure why she had told Silas what had happened when we were together.

I hadn’t told anyone before. I suppose I just felt I could. I guess I thought he was such a mess, he wouldn’t judge me
.

She said that she had shown him a photograph of the two of us.

From that time we went to a photo booth – you know the ones?
I didn’t but I nodded.

She told me she had felt like an idiot as soon as she had brought them out for him to see, that she had grimaced as she had laid them out on the table and that Silas had laughed,
that he had said it wasn’t that bad, that everyone had terrible hair then.

But it wasn’t that; I could see it all, right there in my face. I was such a mess
.

When she had asked Silas whether he had ever behaved in a way that still made him feel sick with shame, he had not answered her.

I told him that night
, she said,
I told him everything, and it was so hard to say it out loud, to recognise that person as myself
.

I looked at Greta, sitting across the table from me, and I could still only see her as she was then, over ten years ago, when I first moved into her house with her. She had advertised the bedroom at college and I was looking for somewhere to live. The room was big and cheap, and she seemed somewhat calmer at home, so I took it, and we went out for a drink to celebrate.

In those first few months, we were in that house alone. It was summer, and we would sit out in the courtyard talking, the nights hot and still, the scent of frangipani syrupy in the evening air, stray forks of lightning chasing each other across the sky as Greta told me about herself, and I listened, fascinated.

It was a car accident that had killed her mother, and she had seen it all. She had been there, in the back seat. With her knees drawn tight to her chest and her eyes wide, she would remember, bringing out new details for me each time she
told the tale: the terrible thud as the car finally stopped rolling, the taste of blood in her mouth, the coldness of her mother’s skin, the stupidity of the police as they tried to pull her away. I could not comprehend the enormity of the devastation she must have felt, and I would listen, astounded by her ability to speak of what seemed to me to be an immeasurably appalling tragedy.

Other nights, she would bring out photographs to show me, pictures of a beautiful woman with long honey-coloured hair. She would smile as she told me about the mud-brick house her father had built for them, and how they never wore any clothes, and how disapproving her grandparents and the rest of the town were, because it was all just too Scandinavian, too like a Swedish art-house movie. I could tell she had loved her father, before he left her, and that her mother, who had been a naturopath, was someone she still idealised, so much so that she had enrolled in a course, years later, that was so patently unsuitable for her, because she wanted to be just like her, just like her.

And then the conversation would darken, and the photographs would be put away, as she told me about her father, unable to comprehend how he could have left.

She would pour herself another wine as she said he had never even told her he was going and when she finally heard, she had made herself ill, vomiting to such an extent
that she was unable to leave her bedroom and the coolness of the flannel her grandmother put on her forehead.

She lit another cigarette as she recounted receiving the news of his second marriage, and how she had jumped off the roof of the barn, only to succeed in breaking her leg.

It wasn’t the first time I’d tried
, she said.

And as the thunder cracked across the sky, and the first rain began to fall, I tucked her long blonde hair behind her ears and I kissed her.

You know I lost my virginity when I was fourteen
, she whispered.
To the local doctor
.

I didn’t.

I’ve had four terminations
, she added.

And I just kissed her again, never really listening to the truth behind all she was saying, never really thinking about who she was, never really seeing all that she was trying to reveal.

The first time we slept together we were so stoned the room seemed to float around us. That much I do remember. The second time, I was surprised. I had thought it was just one of those things that probably wouldn’t be repeated. The third time, she told me she loved me and I laughed;
you don’t know me
, I said.

And she told me she did.

Sometimes, thinking I was asleep, she would lie leaning on her elbow and look at me. When I caught her, she would turn away, embarrassed.

Sometimes she would ask me why I was with her, if it was a mistake I regretted, and I would swear that it wasn’t.

I remember the extent of her need when we made love, and the extent of her withdrawal when I was not interested.

I’m too tired
, I would tell her, and she would turn her back to me and not speak for hours.

I remember the extravagance of the gift she gave me when we had been together for a month – a collection of texts that I knew had cost her far more than she could afford.

I remember the slight uncase I felt as she clung to my arm when we were out together, kissing me passionately in front of others, claiming me as her own, sullen and unwilling to communicate if I did not give her all of my attention.

I remember the times she listened in to my phone conversations, the times I caught her searching through my letters, the tears and apologies, and the terrible feeling that I had become involved in something I was unable to end.

You have never loved me
, she would say and I would usually end up lying, thinking that somehow this would all work itself out, she’d had countless lovers, she would move onto someone else, it would be all right.

Had I been older and wiser I would have attempted to extricate myself much earlier than I did, I would have realised that need does not equal love. But that’s not the way it was. In any event, the brief time of living by ourselves
came to an end when Victoria arrived, and I suppose I thought it would change with someone else in the house.

Victoria was Greta’s best friend from high school. She had been travelling in Europe and when Greta had heard she was coming back, she had promised to save the other room for her. I came down one morning to find her there, in the kitchen, home a week early, and I remember thinking ‘Thank God’, because I was, by then, in a permanent state of anxiety. I had to end it, I knew that, I just didn’t want to leave her alone, and I didn’t want to have to deal with the consequences, not by myself. ‘Victoria will help’, I thought, ‘Victoria will help’, and I smiled as I told her who I was;
Daniel
, I said, and she grinned as she kissed me, once on each cheek;
Victoria
, she told me, and I said that I knew, that I’d heard all about her, that I was pleased she was back.
Really?
she asked, one eyebrow raised;
really
, I smiled.

When I saw Greta again, I was afraid she would ask me whether I had ever loved her, but she didn’t. Nor did she ask whether there was any truth to all she had accused me of; her references to our past were far briefer and more honest than I had expected.

She told me that she shouldn’t have tried to hurt me in the way that she did, that I had always been kind to her, that was what she remembered, and as she looked straight at me, I felt only shame at my own dishonesty, but still I did not
speak, still I did nothing to ease some of the guilt she felt, and when she reached for my hand, I pulled away, scratching my arm, pretending I was unaware of her gesture.

3

Silas told me that once he had started the task, this division of who he was into different categories, he found it difficult to stop. The piles began to spread out across his grandmother’s Persian carpets, placed to map out the links that lay between each person he had been. When he finally finished, he counted 227 in all.

I was amazed
, he said,
at how fractured one life could be
.

Kneeling on the floor, Silas looked again at the divisions he had created; all the aspects of who he was before he went to Port Tremaine. As he began to gather the papers, uncertain as to what he would do with them, he realised he had nothing to mark who he was now.

He stopped for a moment, a few sheets clutched in his hand, the latest scars on his arms right before his eyes.

In his bedroom he found the notes on Kirlian photography that he had made in the library, the countless attempts at a letter to Rudi, the lists he had written, and he gathered them up, placing them neatly in the centre of the maze. This was where it had all led to, he thought. This was
what he had become, and he looked at it, complete now, before gathering it up, all of it put in boxes out in the hallway, ready to be burnt.