List of the Lost (13 page)

“Why did you kill Noah Barbelo?” jumped in Nails.

“Ah! I thought your flanks of beef were somewhat too good to be true,” said Isaac, not at all ruffled. He stood up and placed his empty glass on a side table. “Before I explain, do you mind if I have another? Another liver, that is, and I might as well pour myself a tiny triple whilst I'm at it …”

“We don't mind,” said Justy, and Isaac moved slowly to the drinks cabinet which spilled into the room from behind the lavish, deep couch of willowy propped cushions, and foolishly the boys took their eyes off Isaac for one sinister minute, which was all it took for Isaac to firmly grip two heavy Dom Perignon bottles at the neck and crash both with onerous impact onto the quartered heads of Nails and Justy, who barely moved on impact, who barely hummed a pained groan, and who took a second and heavier crash – each so deathly that both boys fell forwards in silent slow motion as if accepting holy communion. Preciously kneeling on the upper-crust carpeting, the boys were inexpressive and almost beloved, as Isaac managed a third and then a fourth deathblow that finished off both Nails and Justy with a cosy killer's cuddle. How on earth could it possibly have been so easy? Isaac summoned the strength from somewhere deeper than hell, and both Nails and Justy were far too trusting and paid the price. Removed from life, Nails and Justy entered a blissful illumination underneath – yet not inside – the mind, archangels of the soul in a forward march of time, having lived now-complete lives without ever having said what was very truly on their minds. Reliable, yes, but not always very wise, and now the absolute death awareness sounded in their inner ears as all physical vibrations understood with some awe, and there was a voice with a certain sound like a lovers' understanding; finally desire both ways. Hypnotic rhythm tapped into Nails' brain – where, after all, everything is recorded. Justy felt a strong articulation of feeling; stomach, breast, mouth, ears, each sinking into a lone cry of despair. Cardsharp Isaac stood above both boys as they lay together, their bodies closing down. “My strength, you see, is quite ridiculously underrated,” Isaac mumbled, “and who would ever guess that I scarcely know what I'm doing? But still, if you wish to attain your beloved God then … why not die? Why not rush to meet him? Why hang about here … where no one is ever willing to die … even at that moment when they are … unavoidably dying? Oh, just look at this mess … and my best carpet, too.”

A cool wind blows us back across town, where Eliza and Ezra remain a valid portrait of vibrating goodness and crushing love, flopped as they were around each other, with stark lighting immunizing the basement scene; and all of their being passed between them as cluttered school emblems wrinkled and crinkled on the walls, and bicycles and sports racquets crowded in corners. Warm though the basement was, it was not without small touches of freshly cut flowers and elegant side-lamps. Perhaps it's just another folksy Saturday night of warm cooking smells and one-line jokes as all the senses are ministered to, snugger than bugs in rugs. Their emotions deepen whilst together, and the rest of their race are lesser lights – never flashing, always socially unspoken, without craft, unable to correct themselves. Eliza and Ezra curl up on the couch ready to give whatever can be given, all open between them. Ezra has changed, though, a crack of duress and the sight of Noah Barbelo and the crippled flatfoots being neither police nor force; Isaac's suspicious-looking friends shielding him as if vocation taught them nothing else, for they shared his tastes in all things. Realism in abundance sustained Ezra and Eliza in equal measure, since they now knew and feared too much – the facts of life and death now dominated by a new moral obligation that doubled their thinking process; and all around them there is media praise for people who just did not matter, yet always-ready criticism for those who would dare suggest that life could quite easily be far more civilized. What
is
this terrible, terrible world? And how are we expected to behave within it? The doom of the universe all around us, yet the impossibility of touching the heart's desire.

“The United States Constitution says that all men are born free and equal,” started Eliza, “but no mention of women.”

“I think it's implied, men means men and womb-men,” said Ezra, without much confidence.

“But it doesn't say so,” Eliza bats back.

“No, but mankind means everyone, not just men,” replied Ezra.

“Then why not say so? Why not say ‘humankind' instead of ‘mankind'? For example, the Constitution doesn't say ‘all women are created equal' whilst assuming that we'd all understand this to include men as well as women. The word ‘woman' is never used to also include men, so why should we assume the word ‘man' to include women? We shouldn't, and it didn't and it doesn't.”

“Well,” laughed Ezra, “if I say ‘c'mon, you guys,' I'm not necessarily addressing just guys. I could be talking to guys and girls, but everyone knows I mean everyone.”

“I understand. But would you address the same crowd and say ‘c'mon, you girls'? No, you wouldn't, because men are insulted to be addressed as female, whilst women are thought to be delighted to be addressed as guys.”

“Hang the innocent!” struck Ezra. They both kissed, but Eliza was impatient to return to the conversation.

“Do you think Elizabeth Barbelo is watching us now, and if she is, why doesn't she appear?”

“I ache in every muscle when I think of that night,” said Ezra. “The question wasn't … answerable … I'd been shoved past my limits … I know that. Do you think I haven't cried every single night? Something corrupt happened to all of us, and it began that day in the woods with that schizo hobo. We didn't mean to kill him, but that would be a lame confession to any jury. It's between me and God Almighty now, I know that,” and with this Ezra's tears lightly reappeared. “I don't understand anything any more. I've never been a party to violence of any kind, and now I've killed a man and hidden his body in the woods … and then I dig up the body of a young boy murdered twenty years ago, and I'm unable to manage the truth to anyone … walking around in a hypnotic state … hearing Harri's voice wherever I go. Edgar Allan Poe couldn't concoct this. And in the midst of it all I was meant to lead a relay team to national … televised victory!”

Cautiously, Eliza unwound herself from Ezra and stood up. A trance switched her expression to shock.

“What – are – you – talking – about?” She towered above coiled Ezra. “You have … murdered someone?”

“Yes. He attacked me, and then my punch was too forceful and he … just … died … hidden in ferns and fauna and woodland shit … never discovered.”

“Which is … a good thing?” Eliza asked in disbelief.

“Eliza, don't. I can hear it in your voice. Don't scrutinize … you know me as someone who is personally good, and I did what I had to do, please believe me, and I've cried myself to a state of exhaustion every night since. Nails, Harri, Justy – they weren't to blame, but they stood by me, and I'll never again know mental rest. Yet I have no understanding of why what happened took place. There's no answer. Yet it had to be done. There's a point at which you do what you must to protect yourself, and there isn't time to consider im­-plications or tolerance or holy scriptures or nineteenth-century laws … it's all there in the pit of the stomach, and you articulate whatever it is you're feeling, whether it be with words or actions, and to hell with the Pope – who, in any case, isn't there, isn't facing whatever it is you face, and we must make the best of what we feel. Eliza, you are looking at me with gunfire in your unendurably beautiful eyes, yet you and only you have saved me through these recent weeks. We all have only one chance at living. Please don't seal away our chance of happiness … if there could be any changing of your mind now –”

“But you have done to this hobo precisely what Isaac did to Noah! You killed someone and hid the body! Are you insane? I've protected you, yes, but without knowing any of this!” Eliza was now shouting.

“Eliza, don't! If you stand in opposition to me then I'm finished. The two situations have no similarity whatsoever.”

“But two people are dead, and their murderers are intent on getting along undiscovered … Ezra, what gives you this utopian spirituality? What is so superior in your defense against this hobo? And what do you even know about Noah Barbelo … that he wasn't a sly boy who coaxed Dean Isaac into some blackmail act of opportunism? You read of these cases and the adult is always thought to be at fault … but these kids … they're not all purified little tender angels … they know what sex is and how to use it and they know how adults are trapped and guilty and doomed as soon as the whistle is blown. Kids know all these consequences, and they know how to bow their heads and tremble in a courtroom … the gaze fixed down, the confused blink of the eyes, the pursed mouth of confusion.”

“You're wrong! You're wrong! I saw this boy's mother! Her predicament had destroyed her, and mothers know their sons!”

Eliza collapsed into an armchair and wept. Sammy suddenly burst in. Ezra threw an atlas towards Sammy's head that directly hit the target, and Sammy withdrew, impaired.

“And I thought I was entangled in enough, but now you've told me this I become … a conspirator, a schemer … unless I blab to the flatfoots.”

Ezra knelt before her. “Your emotional permanence is all that keeps me level. I only learned to love because you showed me that I could. Nothing else in life is enough. I will give you no trouble for the rest of our lives. I beg you to take me as I am, with the knowledge of all that's happened. The agony will only be sharper if we separate. Unless I am with you I shall never be where I belong. Together we can recover, and we can live a happy life. There is no one but you for whom I feel this love. I'd endure any pain in order to spare you from it. Your love is beyond price. I am so heartily sorry for all that has taken place, but I am spared further self-hatred if I can turn around and there you are.”

“Yes, there I am … co-conspirator,” she is now calming her anger.

“Don't make this our parting moment. I can't bear anything more than I already have. Life has been … disgusting … no point and no purpose. I am puzzled, I am repulsed, my brain doesn't stop this inane chatter … I am guilty, I am innocent, I'm relied upon … and all I await is for your arm to come around my shoulder, and love streams out of me. I've done nothing wrong.”

His speech now over, Ezra lowered his head and Eliza softly placed her right hand upon it, reassuringly, for she now has little hope of anything at all, but she has nothing to gain from leaving Ezra.

“I wasn't attacking,” she said, “I was trying to clarify.” Ezra looked up, elated to the point of tears, for he had heard understanding in her voice.

“I didn't murder that mutant … I was simply defending myself against what he was about to do to me.”

“Perhaps. But you know the courts of justice, and only a fool could have faith in such bird turd. Justice and the law are two entirely different things.”

If true love takes the bad days in the same spirit as the good days, then the love of Ezra and Eliza now faced its final test. At ease, they rocked gently together, resuming their love. With her wish to spend the night in her own bed, Ezra drove Eliza the few drowsy blocks towards her parents' home. Although they had nothing to say to one another, what was not said indicated a return to hearts possessed, for their past pride and joy had always indicated a love that could last longer than life – alas, one of the imperialist tricks of romance. The quiet streets were sleepwalking with secrets, the night resting with an inability to whisper, the traffic lights changing without any sign of traffic – their reds and greens talking to no one, fresher air creeping in to disadvantage the impurities of the deadened day. All quiet, all still in this decent and pleasant atmosphere of slumber and repose, where lush houses of beddy-bye shut-eye snoozled in sleepland; a smiling sleep of dreamland. In the middle of a cross-street the hypnotic sedation exploded as an automobile self-propelled itself from nowhere and cannoned into the passenger side of Ezra's car with a sledgehammer smash that folded Eliza into the warped dashboard as she died instantly, head bowed into shattered glass. Ezra fell out of the wreckage and crunched against concrete, as the running feet of the slayer driver were heard darting away from the smashup; that tone, that sound and the silence that surrounded it, the shabby soles of shoes, evidence to be denied, Eliza no longer in possession of thought or those gifts and gestures bestowed at birth. Muscles, voice – all gone, Eliza denied of her revenge, drifting out of this world and no longer in anyone's way, as permanent twilight called to her like the next dance step. But the cheated victim was Ezra once again, condemned to life.

The true origin of the word ‘hero' does not carry connotations of either honor or virtue. A legend is something that might be true or false, and a conundrum is an answer that provides a joke, but generations shift word-definitions in order to suit whatever suits. In a listless dream state, catatonic Ezra is bedded for the unforeseeable narco­tized term at the University Hospital following excessive psycho­­somatic treatments. The transient trackster's pleasures roll speedily through his incapacitated mind, for he has fallen to the reality that very few can bear – of being enfeebled to a desensitized and spiritless resignation. Traumatism has left him frostbitten and chilblained, feverous and flushed, fiery and felled. Delirium has lowered his resistance, and wired-up to the constant blips and blips and tings of surgical machinery his soft face leans sideways … staring out of the window towards the full extent of freedom. As long as he can see out there he is not in here. Attending examiners burst into the room, and nursing sisters whip around Ezra's bed with their certain perspectives and their reams of stress tests and scribbled diagnostics, yet oddly saying nothing at all if asked for information. Ezra's playful days are over, and blood-counts replace them; time, once a gift, is now a punishment. What you have been saved for has had its curtain call. Everything begins in the mind but ends with the body. These, now, are the weakly peaky backroads – under the weather and out of sorts, as white as a measly sheet. No computer-assisted tomography, no heat therapy, no sweat therapy, no urinalysis … nothing, now, can save the airsick slide of the suicidalist. He was once important only because the life within him had importance … but when lack of safety is suddenly nothing to fear? When the will finally gives out, and wants no return? No further tears against the dying of the light, as the quiet exit becomes the logical perspective. The practical nurse of title (but no apparent function) pounds noisily about the room, checking numbers and speaking loudly, not allowing Ezra any sleep, yet his nothingness has already taken him far away from medical examinations and sodium drips and the morbid aspect of badly paid caregivers with their podgy blue hands and their tense understanding – momentarily funny, yet without a breath of tolerance. How to rescue the soul? We suffer only because we believe we are alone, but how to get through without faith in life? Why should Ezra wait any longer – seeing Eliza's smashed face before him and Harri's grave beside him … and the missing Nails and the lost Justy, neither ever seen again on a landscape of far too many strange shadows. As Isaac settled down with a frothy Mimosa, the Lausanne sun warmed up considerably and he at the very least felt grateful for the black-hand syndicate that secured his protection. Here in Lausanne he would begin his memoirs, as most do when all's been done. There were solitary figures idling by the Ouchy bay, and surely the law of averages would prompt at least one of them towards an assenting nod, if only as a basic half-amused act of human kindness.