A Jest of God (22 page)

He’s a hundred miles away. I haven’t even got his address. I could get it from his father.

– Nestor Kazlik is setting the white quart bottle down at the doorstep. She comes out and the old man looks up and smiles, recognizing through all the changes the child who used to catch rides on the milk sleigh in winter. “Mr. Kazlik, I’ve got some books I promised to send – and I seem to have lost his –”

I couldn’t write to him. What if his wife saw the letter? No. That’s not what troubles me. What do I care right now what
she’d say or feel, or how it would affect him? But I know what he’d say, that’s the thing. “You knew better than that, darling – you must have known better than that.” There is no reply to that one.

My elbows are on the red arborite booth table, and I’m breathing the smoke-saturated air of the Parthenon, and listening to the noise, the jazz, the din, then listening for it and realizing it’s not there. The bold children have gone, and even in here I’m by myself. It’s late, and from the kitchen comes the clash of cutlery and cups, as Miklos cleans up for the night. I don’t know how long I’ve been here. Mother will be worried sick. I rise, cough to call Miklos, pay, get another packet of cigarettes and remember the chocolate bar for her. I have to go home now. I must. It’s the only thing to do.

What am I going to do?

“Rachel.”

“Yes. I’m sorry I was so long.”

“I was worried, dear. I really was.”

“Yes. I’m sorry. It was a – it was a lovely night, so I walked around.”

“I thought it looked like rain. The wind was chilly, I thought. I opened my bedroom window, but then I closed it again. It’s very late to be walking, by yourself, Rachel. Didn’t you think it might look – well, just a little peculiar?”

Not – was it peculiar? Only – did it look so?

“Well, I didn’t go far. I shouldn’t have been away so long. I’m sorry.”

“Oh, it doesn’t matter, dear, but I can’t help worrying, just a little bit, when you’re –”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“Never mind, dear. It’s all right, of course. It was only that I –”

“Yes. I’m terribly sorry. I won’t do it again.”

“I know you don’t mean to worry me.”

“No. Well, it was thoughtless –”

“I suppose it doesn’t occur to you to think how I might feel, that’s all. Of course I quite understand that. It’s just that I can’t settle down properly until you’re back, and I suppose I thought you must surely realize that, by this time.”

“I do – yes. I know. I’m sorry.”

“Oh, it’s all right, dear. Never mind.”

Finally she is settled and I can go to my room. I put on my yellow nightgown and then I brush my hair as I’ve always done at nights. I turn out the light and open the curtains and window so I can see what’s out there, if anything. The air is very cool, too cool to rain now, and the wind has gone away. In the far distances, the unreal places beyond ours, I can hear a freight train. They’re diesels now and the whistle is sharp and efficient. When I was a child the trains were all steam, and you could hear the whistle blow a long way off, carrying better in this flat land than it would have done in the mountains, the sound all prairie kids grew up with, the trainvoice that said
don’t stay don’t stay just don’t ever stay – go and keep on going, never mind where.
The mourning and mockery of that voice, like blues. The only lonelier sound I ever heard was the voices of the loons on the spruce-edged lake up at Galloping Mountain, where we went once for the summer when Stacey and I were small and when my father still could muster the strength to go somewhere, not too far away, for a short time. People say
loon
, meaning mad. Crazy as a loon. They were mad, those bird voices, perfectly alone, damning and laughing out there in the
black reaches of the night water where no one could get them, no one could ever get at them.

I want to see my sister.

Stacey – listen – I know it’s been quite a long time since we’ve seen one another, and even writing to one another is something we only do after Christmas to thank for presents. But if I could talk to you, you would maybe be the only person I could talk to. Look – would you know?

Would Stacey know where I could go? If I wrote to her and said I was coming there, a brief visit, what would be so odd about that? The autumn term has started, and there aren’t any holidays now. She’d think I was off my head. And even if I could say, could tell her right away, just like that, what then? She’s been married for years. She has four children, all born in hospital and in wedlock, as the saying goes. What would she know of it? Her dealings in these matters have been open and recognized. She goes to her doctor, is given diet sheets and vitamin pills, attends clinics. She has a right to be doing what she is doing.

What does she know of it? She’d be sympathetic, no doubt, from the vast distance that divides us. She’d give me good advice, maybe, not needing any herself. God damn her. What could she possibly know?

Cassie Stewart. That was the girl mother told me about. She had twins, twice as bad in Mother’s eyes. If I could go into the hardware store and speak to her, that might be a good thing. But it isn’t possible. Cassie is ten years younger than I, and I’m Miss Cameron to her, and if we spoke it could only ever be politely, nothing given or gambled on either side. She’s kept the children. But her mother looks after them while she works. Whatever it may have been like, or however her mother regarded it, Mrs. Stewart takes charge of the twins while Cass
works. The thing one doesn’t know before is that the process doesn’t end with birth. It isn’t just that, to be reckoned with, explained, faced, brazened out. You’re left with a creature who had to be looked after and thought about, taken into consideration forevermore. It’s not one year. It’s eighteen, maybe. Eighteen years is quite a long time. I would be fifty-two then. All that time, totally responsible. There would not be any space for anything else – only that one being, and earning enough to keep you both, and hoping you could find someone who could look after the child while you worked.

Mother wouldn’t. That is certain. Even if she could bring herself to, which she couldn’t, she wouldn’t be able to. Physically, she’s not up to it.

It can’t be borne. I can’t see any way it could be.

It can’t be ended, either. I don’t know where to go.

I don’t exactly know when I bought this. Perhaps a week ago. I don’t recall details well, these days. I put it in the top part of my cupboard. I take it down now, the known brand of whisky, and then I see I haven’t a glass.

Mother is sleeping. I can tell from the way she is breathing. The bathroom glass is blue plastic. Her sleeping capsules are on the top shelf of the medicine cabinet. Quietly, quietly, Rachel. There. Everything necessary is here, gathered together in my own room.

How many? As many as possible in order not to take any chances. She’s had a new lot only last week from Doctor Raven, so the bottle is nearly full. It isn’t necessary to count them.

I pour the brown fluid into the blue plastic tumbler, and juggle a little while with the blue and crimson capsules, rolling them in my hands. They are incredibly small. They take up practically no room at all. And then I find I’ve counted them, despite myself. There are fourteen.

Enough?

One is enough for a night, so surely these will be all right, with the other. I swallow some of the whisky. I thought I would hate it, straight, but I don’t. It is like swallowing flame which burns for a second only and then consoles. It’s all right. It’s going to be all right. There is nothing to be afraid of.

Actually, it is very simple. Anyone could get down a few capsules – this shouldn’t be difficult in the slightest. And this liquid – anyone can open their throat and drink, if they’ve decided to.
Firewater.
This makes me want to laugh. The Indians, or so we’re told, used to call it firewater. How accurate they were.

Half the glass has gone down. But no capsules. That remains to be done. All right. One at a time. One. That’s the first. Thirteen to go. Unlucky number, but after the next it will only be twelve. Come on, Rachel. Only a little way to go, and then everything will be all right.

Oh Christ.

Time must have stopped for a time. What have I done? And now I see that what I’ve done is that I’ve taken the bottle of my mother’s barbiturates and have emptied the crucial and precious capsules out of my window, zanily, on to Hector Jonas’s trimmed lawn beneath. The whisky is not gone. It is still here. Something prevents my pouring out good whisky. I’m my father’s child, no doubt. Niall Cameron would have dropped dead at anyone who poured out a bottle of whisky. Let us give respect unto the dead. I turn the cap on to the bottle and put it again among the other relics in the highest cupboard.

How can I have this lightness? It’s temporary, a reaction. It won’t last.

At that moment, when I stopped, my mind wasn’t empty or paralysed. I had one clear and simple thought.

They will all go on in some how, all of them, but I will be dead as stone and it will be too late then to change my mind.

But nothing is changed now. Everything is no more possible than it was. Only one thing has changed – I’m left with it, with circumstances, whatever they may be. I can’t cope, and I can’t opt out. What will I do? What will become of me?

The floorboards are splintered here, where the rug doesn’t reach, and their roughness makes me realize what I am doing. I don’t know why I should be doing this. It is both ludicrous and senseless. I do not know what to say, or to whom. Yet I am on my knees.

I am not praying – if that is what I am doing – out of belief. Only out of need. Not faith, or belief, or the feeling of deserving anything. None of that seems to be so.

Help me.

Help – if You will – me. Whoever that may be. And whoever You are, or where. I am not clever. I am not as clever as I hiddenly thought I was. And I am not as stupid as I dreaded I might be. Were my apologies all a kind of monstrous self-pity? How many sores did I refuse to let heal?

We seem to have fought for a long time, I and You.

The ones who do not have anyone else, turn to You – don’t you think I know? All the nuts and oddballs turn to You. Last resort. Don’t you think I know?

My God, I know how suspect You are. I know how suspect I am.

If You have spoken, I am not aware of having heard. If You have a voice, it is not comprehensible to me. No omens. No burning bush, no pillar of sand by day or pillar of flame by night.

I don’t know what I’ve done. I’ve been demented, probably. I know what I am going to do, though.

Look – it’s my child, mine. And so I will have it. I will have it because I want it and because I cannot do anything else.

I
can’t go to the doctor’s. He’ll ask about things that are none of his concern. “Have you told the man, Rachel? Would he be willing to marry you?” Or else he’ll say, “It’s going to be a pretty bad shock for your mother, Rachel, and with that heart of hers –”

Mother’s heart. I’ve only just thought of that. What if my telling her did actually bring on another of her attacks? It would be my fault. If it was fatal, it would be all my fault. I can’t. I can’t tell her, or Doctor Raven, or anyone. I’ll have to go away.

I can’t go away with no explanation. That would be impossible. Anyway, where? I have to get away. Where am I going to go? Stacey’s? No, not there, not ever.

I won’t be able to work, at least not as a teacher, once it shows. What will I do for money? I can’t see how I will be able to live.

There is only one thing to do, and that’s for me to get rid of it. By myself. No one will know, then. I was out of my mind to think I could have it. There’s only one thing to be done.

How? A knitting needle? That’s the favoured traditional way. Nobody knits, here. I’d have to buy a set for the purpose.
How odd. Or a straightened wire coat-hanger? When I think of performing it, my flesh recoils as though hurt already. And if it all goes wrong, what then? Who would be there, to do anything? I wouldn’t only have killed the creature – I’d have killed myself as well. Barbiturates would have been kinder, if that’s what I’m really after. What am I really after?

– She is in the bathroom, and the door is locked, and she cannot cry out. The pain distends her; she is swollen with it. Pain is the only existing thing. On the floor, all over, and all over herself, lying in it, and even on her hair, the blood.

No, I won’t.
That I cannot do. I refuse.

Maybe it wouldn’t happen that way. It would, though. What do I know of my own anatomy? What I need is a good book. Do-it-yourself. How to be an angel-maker in one easy lesson. Oh Christ, it’s almost funny, isn’t it? Isn’t it?

Steady, Rachel. There is no time for letting go. Not now. You’ve got to do something. If I were very careful, perhaps it would be all right. How could anyone be calculatedly careful about a thing like that? They’re surprisingly difficult to kill. I’ve read that. No delicate probing would ever dislodge it.

Dislodge. It is lodged there now.

Lodged
, meaning it is living there. How incredible that seems. I’ve given it houseroom. It’s growing there, by itself. It’s got everything it needs, for now. I wonder if it is a girl or a son.

– She is conscious. She has refused anaesthetics because they sometimes (she has read) damage the child. She sees the boy at the moment of his birth. He has black hair, and his eyes are faintly slanted, like Nick’s.

I am not going to lose it. It is mine. I have a right to it. That is the only thing I know with any certainty.

But where will I go? What will I do? The same questions,
over and over, and never any answers. If only I could talk to somebody.

Nick – listen –

No. Don’t do that, Rachel. Everything only hurts more than before, when you leave off talking to him and acknowledge that he hasn’t heard. I have to speak aloud to someone. I have to. But I don’t know anyone.

Yes, I do. Only one person. And I’ve avoided her, gone to see her only rarely and only out of conscience, all of which she knows. Since school began again, I’ve hardly spoken to her. She doesn’t drop into my classroom any more, bringing potted plants or the other quirky gifts she used to place on my desk – once it was a tin tea-canister with scenes of New York, that she’d got free with detergent and thought I might like. Now she knows I don’t want them, so she stays away. Yet she’s the only one I can think of.