What I Tell You In the Dark (11 page)

I decide that what I need to do now is go and look at myself in the mirror. The physicality of this body has become much more centre stage with me since I got dropped by the Big Man. I kept noticing, for example, during that conversation with Natalie how different parts of it would light up and react to things she was saying, to changes of temperature in the room even – it's non-stop. But whereas before all of that was just stuff I noticed, as you might come to grow familiar with a car you are driving, say (maybe a little more than that, but you see the point I'm making – there's a separateness), now it's actually a part of my intellectual landscape. My thoughts, my feelings, all of it, have become attuned not only to this body but also to the atmosphere around it.

Strange though, because the face that confronts me in the mirror shows no sign of the self-possession and calm that I feel inside. Its appearance is agitated and gaunt. Older too, I fancy, from when I last looked, just after my bath. Vital minutes, a matter of hours even, have been confiscated from me since then.

‘Need to shave this stubble off,' I mutter as I start looking round for the things to do that with.

It's not something I've ever tried before – as you may recall, JC had a big glossy beard, not to mention lovely thick hair and dreamy brown eyes (you can see how he got on the shortlist for possible frontmen) – and, I have to admit, it's not quite as easy as it looks. But bit by bit I get the hang of it and pretty soon I'm enjoying the rasp of the razor (particularly during the parts near to the bottom of each ear, when the rasp becomes richer, more of a rolling something heavy across gravel sound). It's hugely rewarding to see the bristle-flecked globs dropping into the sink and being washed away by the running tap.

The mirror itself forms the front of a cabinet and when I'm finished shaving I open it to reveal an inner pharmacopeia. I have a closer look at a packet of pills I find stuffed towards the back of the top shelf, dated October 2010, exactly two years ago –
Olanzapine, atypical, prescription only, one tablet three times daily
. This must be what that HR woman had been referring to in our meeting this morning. No, hang on, was it this morning? Can't have been. Whenever it was. She had alluded to some previous episode – I'm sure that's what she had called it because I remember thinking at the time how amusing the implication was, that anything out of the ordinary must surely be part of some series of events. This constant suspicion that there are other, less reliable, more frightening forces at play in the world whose episodes must be suppressed at all times, whatever the cost, lest they develop into a series.

There can and will be only one reality. Words to live by in this quick-killing time.

I pull out from the olanzapine box a leaflet warning of possible side effects: tremors, fever, akathisia, confusion, uncontrollable twitching, uncontrollable eye movement, sores, itching, swelling, numbness, loss of vision, loss of speech, loss of balance – it goes on. Much more interesting, though, is the way in which these ailments are announced, between brackets, in a thick slab of text separated from the rest. It is only as I run my eyes down this list that I suddenly understand something about my own situation, so strikingly similar in structure to what has been neatly contained between these curls of ink. Finitude, in a word. In order to understand this mess of mine, I had to bracket it in mortality – inception on one side, death on the other. Just as mathematicians set numbers, I have delimited my own troubled bio into something a little more time-constrained. It makes perfect sense. Chunking is, I believe, what the computer geeks who are building your future like to call it. (On a side note, it is also
occurring to me that I could even use this method to explain, at some later stage, the wider mysteries of the shape and substance of His universe, as in the formulation { } or the empty set. By definition, of course, a set cannot be empty, it cannot contain nothing, so this formulation can therefore be used to express the substantiation of nothingness, which is the key to understanding and, ultimately, embracing the natural genius of His design.)

I'm getting a little hot again.

My armpits and neck and hairline are damp with sweat and my vision has become what I can only describe as melted at the edges. It's not an aggressive heat like before, with the fever, but I do still feel like I need to simmer down a little. Maybe I got too cold outside or maybe it's a lingering after-effect of the syrup. Either way, my mind is over-processing, which in turn is running the body too fast and too hot. I need to watch out for that. It's no different to a petrol engine or a computer in its casing. Everything needs fanning.

I shove the box back in the cabinet and take out something that should help cool me down: a blister pack of yellow and turquoise capsules, fifteen mils of slow-release Valium. Every morning I watched Will rise raw and nervy from the sleepless hollow of his mattress and pop one of these into his mouth. It always seemed to help him calm down; worth a try now, then. Without it there'd be little chance of sleep, and sleep is what I need right now if I'm to head out of here tomorrow and fulfil my promise to Natalie.

I crack one of the pills into my hand and wash it down with a slurp from the tap. I wait a few minutes, then I decide to take a second one. No point going at it half speed.

Back on my mattress I notice on Will's phone that there are new emails, must be from Natalie, she said she was sending some, and several missed calls, voice messages too, from the last few days. I dial in to pick up the messages. Two are from HR
Karen, executing her corporate responsibility of pretending to care if I'm okay. The others are from Natalie, pre-dating our conversation just now, and essentially irrelevant, but I listen to them anyway. I lie down with the phone between my head and the pillow. I am supremely comfortable.

They all say things like,
Will, hi, it's Natalie Shapiro. Give me a call when you get a chance
. The two later ones also include phrases like
hope you're okay
and
surprised not to have heard from you
.

Each time, her voice flitters through me. That Maryam thing.

I start thinking about her (Mary). Lazy thoughts, drifting through like music from a distant room. My dusky little temptress. Not, by the way, that I ever touched her, not like that, but I drew great strength from her physical presence. Even when I was making a spectacular mess of everything, she was there for me. It was love in its purest form – but just like everything else, it has been sullied by my celebrity. I find it hilarious that people assume the tabloid mentality is something new. When I think of the generations of prurient Christians who've pored over every last scrap of information, each tiny detail they might be able to construe as evidence of the brief and frankly inglorious life of Jesus. They're no different from the gossip mongers who drive your princesses to their deaths or hound your politicians to ruin and despair. All celebrity is toxic, and my little Magpie became tainted by association. And whenever I'd start to think that maybe finally it was all dying down and her name might actually be left to rest in peace, they (and no, I'm not being paranoid – it
was
them) would throw some new morsel into your path. The spite never dies. They would roll back a stone, say, like they did in Nag Hammadi, and expose some faded tractates. Who was it with that Egyptian stuff again? … I lose track. Philip? Or was he in with the Dead Sea codices? Whatever, it's irrelevant where they happened to ‘turn up', the fact is that the maunderings of Philip … It was him, by the way – of course it was – prancing
Hellenophile, always sounding off just out of earshot somewhere. Anyway, where was I? Yes, Philip and his codices, too boring for the fire that destroyed the others (there was some cracking stuff in that earthenware pot they found out there, incidentally), were idly tossed into your path so we could have a fresh bout of speculation about Mary and me, based on his nincompoopish observations (with a few key phrases mysteriously nibbled out, naturally). What was it now?
The Saviour used to kiss her often on her
– then a strategic blank, neatly excised – by ants, I think was the consensus of the archaeologists who unearthed it.
On her what?
People wanted to know.
Kissed her where, Philip? Do tell
. And so on it goes, with the ant-eaten blanks eagerly filled in by a gormless fraternity (because it
is
only men who care about this stuff) of Madonna/whore obsessives.

Ants – I ask you. My poor sweet Maryam, she deserved better. She was no angel, I'm sure (join the club) but whether she was an actual working prostitute before I met her, who can say? Certainly not that old masochist Philip. She never spoke a word to me about any of that, not about her life in Magdala, not about what she did when she wasn't with me, and I never thought to ask. Why? Because, to be perfectly honest, it couldn't have mattered less to me. And nor should it to anyone else. Shame on those who care. What
does
matter is that we found each other and we shared something, something transcendent. Everyone else can just go ahead and think what they like.

I extract the phone from where it's wedged in my pillow. The moment I lift it up, it goes dark in my hand, a candle that's just blown out.

‘
Mē mou haptou
,' my mouth says, addled and sideways.

My thoughts are woozy, scattered on a warm wind. A zephyr. I say it,
zephyr
, blowing the sound warm and soft as the thing itself, through my teeth and into the pillowcase. I hum a tune I heard once –
zefiro, zefiro, torna, zefiro
.

One half-open eye shows me Will's electronic appliances winking their little lights of standby from the shadows.

I am the commander of a vast army, gazing out at a blackened horizon, where signal fires send messages of victory and allegiance.

I am change.

I am love.

So eager was I to be awake that not even the ballast of those pills could hold me under for long. I watched the sunrise from a cold, hard perch on the kitchen counter, my legs drawn up against me, inspecting every detail of the street beneath my window. The transfusion of colour into the monochrome dusk, announcing by degrees the presence of a crimson Coke can in the gutter, the sharp blue lettering on the side of a parked van. Even the smudged brickwork and roof slates of the houses revealed veins and glints of new shades. Brought to life from darkness. I wept a little – joyful tears – at the sight of this new day being born around me, for me, with me.
Fiat lux
.

Now, having stepped out of a long, hot shower, that joy has hardened into something more substantial. An earth-riveted certainty of belonging surges through me now as I roam through these rooms, towel around my waist, still beaded with water. My chest is full, barrelled, armoured with light. My arms are knotted twists of sinew. My mind is a limpid pool.

I stop and howl at the top of my lungs, like a wolf does, chin up, mandible jutting.
How-how-hoooo!

It is so intoxicating to be in this second then tilted into the next and the next. I keep on moving and howling and growling and beating my chest, until I decide to stop on the kitchen lino and sprint on the spot. The room shakes with my efforts and the house keys and water glass drift on these vibrations towards the edge of the table.

That's when I realise that I need music. This energy must be structured, it must be guided. All I have to do is dock Will's iPhone into the little speaker cradle and … voilà!

What comes blasting out is simply delicious. I have no idea what it is called but its languorous rhythm soon builds into something more assuredly percussive, pulling me away from the snake-hipped gliding of my first dance into an atavistic trance. It is while I am stomping in this ape-like funk that I hear the sound of Alice Sherwin hammering on my door. Almost immediately, as if responding to this intrusion, the music reverts to its early tempo, sleek and sinewy, and I find my body mirroring the change, unjointed, eely in its contortions as I slither and slide towards the door.

The cold draught that comes with the opening of the door makes me realise that I must have lost my towel somewhere in the flow of my dancing. Unabashed, and unable to remain still, I continue gyrating. The Sherwin woman seems unable to find her words. The most she has yet managed is the syllable
I
. Shimmying a half step towards her, one hand at waist level, the other reaching for her shoulder, I invite her to join me in my celebration of music, of life itself.

She draws back but does not, this time, turn away. She looks determinedly at my face, but in a way that avoids any contact with my eyes. Her attention is focussed on a spot in the centre of my forehead.

‘You are ruining my life,' she says so bleakly that it stops me in my tracks. It is a sentence shorn to the bone.

The music continues to pound but I find myself suddenly motionless in the doorway. Her face is arid, drained of all expression.

The door remains open as I hurry back inside and stop the music. I pick up my towel from the floor and re-skirt myself. She is still there, a dry cactus of hatred.

‘I am so sorry,' I tell her as I approach, respectfully this time, cautious of the despair I/Will have been causing.

I want very much to hug her. There is something profoundly vulnerable about her primly belted dressing gown. Perhaps my expression or my stance betrays these thoughts because she takes a definite and exaggerated step back from me. A parlour game in reverse, with me, the shamed and chastened Mr Wolf, left to drop my head and stare at the splay of my toes on the floorboards.

She says, ‘I am keeping a diary of your behaviour.'

I have no reply. It is clear that she is beyond my reach.

‘For the police,' she states tonelessly, for the record, before departing the scene.

I find my tongue again only after she has gone and I have heard the vague sound of her own front door being quietly closed.