The Grey
Life, Chapter XV
After
we returned from the reservoir, I sent Anne to sleep in my room and
without so much as a word of explanation sought out Shanai. What I
had learned that evening, had obsconded from whatever native wisdom
there is behind the universe, had so filled me, so contained me, that
I could not keep it to myself, nor suffer to share it with someone
who had no capacity to appreciate it for what it was. There was
something profoundly simple I had found, something of my own to
believe in. I knew then that my instincts were more reliable than
what others told me, because my instincts are part of who I am, and
if I didn't trust myself then who else could I trust? Because human
beings are so easily misguided, and each one is acting in the best
interests of himself.
She
was awake when I knocked. As I walked past her into the tiny
apartment in which she fit so well - as if the damn place had been
made for her body - I was styled with a stern look, yet weary, as if
she were vaguely exhausted from all this nonsense. I headed without a
word for the bedroom to change my clothes, because they were dirty
and felt so suddenly vile to me, but she misunderstood. "Do you
really expect me to fuck you now?" she snapped.
I
stopped short, suddenly seething. Her vehemence seemed to betray the
very peacefullness I had somehow discerned in the midst of all this
whorish madness. The violence coursed through me as with my blood,
feeding into every cell of my body, like sustenence. "Do you
think I really want to fuck you now?" I snarled into the space
of the bedroom, leaving her to the ancient solidity of my back.
For
a moment there was silence, and she began to cry. Such soft,
vulnerable sounds they were. I tried to remain where I was, standing
with my back to her as in a cold and cruel denial, and only because I
didn't want to see that I had hurt her so much. But I could not. And
so I went to her, put my arms around her, and for a few moments at
least I held her. I wanted to tell her that everything was going to
be alright, except that I didn't believe it and I couldn't bring
myself to lie to her. She clutched at my back and wept as if it were
the last time we would ever be together. I was momentarily taken
aback at the strength of her emotion, so I just held her until her
composure returned.
Afterward
we fucked violently on the kitchen counter. Silverware and dishcloths
and a toaster were scattered about like wreckage on the floor below
us. We even managed to shatter a glass. My elbows were bleeding, and
Shanai at one point smacked her head on a cabinet, a wound which
later grew into a small lump. We did not say a word to each other
until we were in the shower, washing each other's bodies. Her touch
was delicate to my skin, almost ghostly, and for some reason it
frightened me. It was too easy to imagine that she wasn't there. But
when she felt my muscles tighten she wrapped her arms around my chest
and pressed her warm, slithery body against my own. I suddenly
realized how much I needed her, that it was wrong to have teased her.
She was the only grasp on stability that I had. Being so close and
naked and feeling this unexpected wave of love I was easily aroused,
and so I lifted her up against the wet tiles and we had each other
again.
"Was
she always such a bitch?" she finally asked me as we stood
resting comfortably against each other in the stream of warm water
that was descending upon us.
"No,"
I answered sadly. For some reason I felt guilty, was sure that I had
good reason to. Most of all, it seemed, I loathed with a twisting in
my guts having to talk to Shanai about her, as if thinking about all
the times Anne and I had screwed and how different it was with her
was actually the same thing as doing it again. "She used to be -
I don't know. Different."
"How
different? In what way?" She spoke into my ear, her arms wrapped
gently around my bare waist.
"I
don't know, just different." The sullenness must have been plain
in my voice.
Her
arms loosened slightly. "So what did you see in her, anyway?"
"What
do you mean?" I turned to look at her. Her hands slipped down to
my flanks. She was looking at me intently, seriously. Part of the
reason why I loved her so much, I guess, was that she was one of the
strongest people I ever knew, because she wasn't afraid to be weak.
"I
don't know. I look at her, and I look at me." She shrugged.
I
understood then, and I sighed. I pulled her close again, and told her
with as much honesty and truth as I could muster, "My memories
of our relationship are mostly happy ones. Sometime since then she
has grown bitter. Maybe it's the baby."
"Your
baby." There was nothing accusing in the chords of her voice,
but I felt accused nonetheless.
"Yes,
my baby." I felt as though I should cry, possibly because I knew
that Shanai was expecting me to, perhaps would even have been glad to
see it. But the solidity of what I was discovering did not permit
such weakness. Only obdurate strength like a barrier, shielding me
from everyone else, everything else, that could hold up against the
most towering tide of darkness.
"Yes."
Shanai's voice came to me slowly. "Perhaps it was the baby. It's
been hers for so long now - and she hates you for it, David. Maybe
that's why she came back. To stuff it in your face."
"She
has no right," I returned coldly. Now her arms were stroking my
back, playing with the stream of steamy water that poured down it.
"She
has every right. Not that I think she should blame you. I'll bet she
just forgot to take her pill one morning, or did it at the wrong
time, and didn't tell you, and just figured it wouldn't matter. Then
when she was back in France, all by herself, her life so suddenly and
permanently changed - and where were you?"
"I'm
never going to see him. That bothers the fuck out of me."
"You'll
have others."
"Others?"
I raised an eyebrow.
"There
was for Anne."
"No,
there could never be."
She
looked so suddenly hurt then and tried to pull away, but I held her
tightly - and realized that many women must have a very inherent fear
of physical power, or a stark need for it, because men are generally
stronger and can force themselves upon them as if the sanctity of
their will amounted to nothing - and forced her to look into my eyes.
"You misunderstand me. There could never be a replacement for
anyone who was ever special to you, because everyone is special in
their own way. Some, of course," I added, planting a kiss on her
forehead, "are more special than others."
She
smiled at me, and we got out of the shower and were dressed. We sat
together for a while on the couch in her compact living room, talking
about what I had seen and felt that evening. I described mostly what
I had learned about the universe, about all the stuff that is out
there and us sitting here prettily in our tiny little corner of the
cage, pretending there is nothing else. But she didn't seem to
understand, or I wasn't communicating very well, and she kept asking
questions that I felt I had already adequately answered. I came that
night to know the true handicap of language, that we try and explain
to others feelings, or experiences that involve feelings, as if the
other could truly understand what the feeling felt like. But humans
can only understand if they have actually felt similarly themselves
once before. And that is how we become so attached to others, because
there is safety and excitement in knowing that someone else is so
close to you, shares something incredibly important with you, and I
think these days we call it love.
I
remember one day in late February when the five of us decided to
trip. Over a month had passed of the new semester, and we hadn't
really ever gotten around to sitting down and discussing what it was
that was changing us so suddenly. We were almost all American men,
you see, and American men don't talk openly to each other about their
feelings. Anne's presence drove us apart like a wedge, and at weird
angles, isolated me until I felt more like a virus in some clear,
plastic container than a human being who could love. Salvatore and
Canine were constantly together, and Antonius was too preoccupied
with his social life to think about anyone else but himself. And
Shanai and I - well, we tried to continue along the path we had
chosen for ourselves. But there was always Anne, hanging around us
like moss, following me wherever I went. I asked Shanai to put up
with her, to just look forward, as I did, to those delicate and
intermediary times when we could be alone. Apparently, she didn't
feel the same way about it as I. But, so like her, she said nothing
to me, and as the weeks of January wore into February I remember
feeling her eyes less, as if I were no longer a major player in the
act of her existence.
Anne
even came with me to class, as if she were trying to protect me from
something. But as close as she and I were then, as much time as we
spent together, we could not have been farther apart. We rarely
talked in those days. She followed me from one social scene to
another, but kept herself as distanced from me as possible. And if
she were bored she would go off and find Antonius, flirt with him
ostentatiously.
Once,
I remember, she said to me, "Nicholas was hitting on me the
other day." I can't place where we were or who was there, just
that she was being deliberate and I was refusing to look at her. For
some reason, we were sitting next to one another, as if at a big
party and there wasn't much room.
I
shrugged. These petty games were, after all, somewhat familliar to
me.
"That
night at the reservoir. When we went off together." I could
almost taste the hurt packed into her voice.
Again
I shrugged, although now I could feel real anger beginning to stir in
my bowels. One day soon, I realized, I would have to knock Nicholas
down. Because a man will turn on you no matter who he is if he thinks
you have something he wants. Such situations can only be resolved by
a show of physical dominance. You see? We are nothing but pretentious
animals.
"When
we went off together, after you decided to lay down in the sand and
pretend the rest of us weren't there. You remember, don't you?"
Now
I did look her way. Her fatal eyes were livid with need. Almost for a
moment I took her into my arms, tried to explain to her how I wished
things could be like they once were, as if in a dream, but they are
not, so go home. But I knew it was just a trap, and the fiery goddess
of adamantine damnation would not go away. "So? You went off
together. Big fucking deal."
I
thought I saw the hurt pass across her features like a wave, and then
it was gone, hidden behind the cold facade. "You never noticed,
did you? Well," she told me, straightening her dress and
coarsely turning her head from me, "we fucked out in the woods.
And it was good."
But
I knew her game better than she did, knew that had never happened. I
also happened to know from some other girls that Nicholas was not
very good in bed, and they were expecting only average performance. I
knew what it took to satisfy Anne, and frankly I couldn't imagine
that he had it in him to get her off. So I just shook my head, stood
up, and walked away. Later on in the evening, I remember, she came
back up to me and told me the truth. "As soon as we were out of
sight from the rest of you he put his bloody hands under my blouse
and tried to kiss me. So I punched him in the stomach and told him
never to touch me again." Yes, I could understand her, and I
knew that as mysterious as I was she understood most of the important
parts of me, too.
But
that gentle understanding only made our little games far more
perverse than they ever needed to be, and now she was hitting on
Antonius just so that she could irk me. Of course, she understood
that I cherished the devout loyalty of my friends beyond all things,
which is perhaps why I have been so alone for most of my life.
Because everyone breaks that trust eventually. And Antonius so
clearly wanted her. I could see it in his face. After all, Anne was a
beautiful woman, and age had only sharpened her features. It is sad
how dependent some people are upon their own beauty. They use it to
manipulate, because it's a powerful weapon, and then when it fades
they are left with nothing.
So
around midnight in the heart of the deepest winter, after Anne had
given up on Antonius for the evening and passed out on his bed,
Antonius drew out a half sheet of acid from under the couch. "We
should split this up," to told the five of us matter-of-factly,
and began to cut the thing with a pocketknife.
Later
on, when it seemed that the foundations of the solid Earth were
crumbling beneathe my feet, I came to rely upon the very first, very
sweet shred of truth I had come to know that fateful evening at the
reservoir. I wasn't sure what it meant, or what I could do with it,
but the sure knowledge that it existed at all, and that it implied
other, more important things, far beyond the scope of my
understanding at the time, balanced me easily. I guess I had been
humbled, because suddenly the petty issues of my own life were
insignificant in comparison to the great mission that the universe
and all its constituents serve. Humbled, yes, and stricken.
An
infection, too, but the castigation of the mind requires more than
what we believe is holy. No, there are other aspects to consider.
Did
you know that somewhere there is a matrix of equasions that perfectly
describes the interactions of every atom, the state of every particle
in the universe, at any given instant? Unless, of course, you
consider the actions of living creatures and their relentless course
throughout the cosmos, but even the acts and decisions of these
things can by some means be predicted with one hundred percent
accuracy. People themselves are nothing more than the sum of their
experiences, limited perhaps by physiology, a long list of emotional
impressions that process the input to determine an output.
Human
organic machinery? Is that how I have come to view the state of
things? How exceedingly hopeless, how rancid, how incredibly plain!
Ah,
but there is more. None of this sillyness really matters once you
understand the true nature of existence and creation - all this talk
about life and death and true freedom of choice. Gazing up into the
vast emptiness that fills the ludicrous gaps between the stars, past
these into the immense expanses of nothing that fill the space
between the galaxies - past who can say? who knows where it will
begin, or where it has ended? - I gained a true sense of self. As if
in the midst of all that nothing, with the sudden feeling of loss of
place, of standing in that ephemeral abyss, I could find the strength
to bow down to the powers that be and rest contented. That whatever
it was which created all this beautifully simple and yet so viciously
complex, wonderful machinery - for do you not perceive the simple
genious that the fucking thing works at all? - doesn't really care
the least bit about what individual people do on this little planet
or how they interact. Morality and ethics are entirely human
inventions, rules we set for ourselves so that our lives among each
other may be led a little easier. This Genious, this inventor of the
universe, whatever it be, is far beyond anything so petty in the
awesome presence of creation than caring whether or not it is wrong
to smoke a joint.
Creation.
There was once a time when we held it in awe.
But
now, so suddenly, present, back in my room. Canine has found a small,
black box under my bed, hidden by some crumpled and stained kleenex,
has brought it out now and is asking me what it is. Instantly I
recognize the little black box the battered veteran handed to
Antonius that one night so many years ago, it seemed, when all of
this was just getting started. I am momentarily struck by the power
of the recollection, from a time when I still felt safe and
comfortable within my own head, when I was still so subtly happy and
happily ignorant of what fear really is. Even now I cannot say
exactly who taught terror to me or why it is a bad thing. Some
things, it seems, will always remain a mystery to men. It is the
fault of their individual answers, of course, but then again, who can
expect to understand everything. Because here everything is an
approximation. Through our senses were try and discern what is going
on around us, but we never know exactly. Some humans are more correct
about some things than others, perhaps, but there is no absolute way
to judge, and the mere fact of belief precludes an answer.
"What's
inside?" Canine has asked of me. He's staring at the thing as if
it were a relic, studying the way the simple black sides seemed to be
writhing in pain.
"Why
did we come here?" I ask him in reply. For a moment, Fred's
empty bed and the hulking television are the only things I can see.
And neither gives me any comfort.
"Cigarettes,"
Canine has answered me, still holding the tiny box, eyes glowing
intently. Staring at it, as if waiting for the thing to come alive in
his hands.
Yes,
cigarettes. I walk over to my desk, see that the light on the
answering machine is blinking, realize that I don't really care.
Darkly, I begin to search for the tabacco. I know it's here somewhere
- a new pack, in fact, of white Luckies - but it doesn't seem to be
materializing in front of me.
"We
should get back, man," Canine has informed me impatiently from
the doorway.
"Yeah,
I know. Wait a minute." The search goes on. It's difficult, you
must understand, to try and locate a stubby white pack of cigarettes,
no matter how plainly in sight it may lie, when the colours of vision
are all bleeding into each other. After a few long, frantic moments,
after I have begun to think that perhaps I lost them and would have
to go through this trip without a pack of my own, Canine approaches
and puts his hand on my shoulder.
"What
are you doing, man?" Something clicks inside my head, and for a
long moment I can hear echoes of my friend's voice fading into the
distance. I turn to face him with a question on my face, wondering
where his voice has escaped to, as if he were not entirely ther with
me but someplace else as well, or as if he had never been at all. But
his eyes are so hard, engulfing, that I force myself to look away.
The fear he had so loved and needed was gone now, had advanced in him
like cancer to the point of excruciating need. What is it, I must
wonder, that brings him so solemnly forward to meet the crux of the
crisis? And what is there in the crisis that needs resolving?
"Looking
for my cigarettes," I tell him, peering back at the rumpled desk
and all the papers drenched in sweat.
Deftly,
my friend reaches down and - I must have been looking there a minute
ago - lifts up the new, unopened pack of Luckies. The circular emblem
branded on its flanks seems to leer at me as if from afar as he
passes them into my grasp. "We should go." And so he turns
and leaves, still clutching the black box, and, of course, I follow
after him.
"So
what's in the box?" he asks me on the short walk back to the
North Way. "You never told me."
I
shrug. "I don't know. Some guy gave it to me one night. I was
wasted, I guess, came home, threw it under my bed. Forgot about it,
you know."
But
Canine only cries out in delight and runs ahead of me, holding aloft
the package he bears as if in offering to the sky and crying out
ruthlessly into the cold, winter night air, "He's doesn't know!
A true mystery!" And he bounds toward the future. Or the past.
You never really can tell. "He doesn't know!"
Grim,
faceless determination is all I have now. Because you see unlike the
first time I went through this I know what's going to happen. You
must understand, I am approaching the point of critical mass, of
devastation. Of Apocalpyse. No need to heed all the echoes of
judgement in the air. The juggernaut is coming, and you can't stop
it. Believe me, I've tried.
"Oh,
I remember that!" Shanai breathes when Canine tears into
Antonius' living room.
"Hey,
man, quiet!" Antonius tells him, but his eyes, too, are
plastered on the black box. "You'll wake her up."
I
walk into the room after him, through the open doorway, see that
Antonius and Shanai have gathered around Canine as he places the box
on a table, and come to a stop just inside, watching.
"What
the fuck is that?" Salvatore, sitting on the floor playing
Streetfighter, barks.
"David,"
Shanai says, turning to look at me. But I can only grimace when I see
how large the blackness in her eyes has become, expanding, undeniably
to swallow her whole. "What's inside?"
I
open my mouth to answer, but surprisingly enough, it is Canine's
voice that emerges from my throat. "He doesn't know!"
"You
never opened it?" Antonius asks me quite seriously.
"No,"
Canine answers, eagerly playing with his hands. "So let's do it
now."
A
fractional frown slips over my face at the words, because it seems
now that I am there and yet I really am not, that I am nowhere, or
everywhere, because the people I am perceiving are all having my
conversations for me, with no intervention on my part. What, is there
not room enough in this troubled little universe for my own
inconspicuous will? And Shanai isn't there anymore. Her back is to me
as she watches Canine lift the lid of the black box. I feel suddenly
chill standing there in the doorway watching them, feel like I'm not
needed or that I hardly matter, that if I walk out of the open
doorway right now they would instantaneously forget that I ever
existed, and if I were to ever return we would be nothing more than
strangers. The calm confidence in the mission and structure of the
universe has fallen away from me, leaving me feeling vaguely
betrayed. And afraid.
There
they stand, the three of them, eagerly prying open the compact chest
with its straight, black, metal sides, cool and cold and simply
inviting invasion, like bait, the focal point of their eyesight
locked rigidly onto Canine's hands, playing with the tiny latch. And
then, as I stand watching, barely breathing, the spring snaps and for
an instant I see Canine gasp and leap backward, a tiny dot of blood
on his forefinger because you see the chest was trapped. But, of
course, there is no such thing. The lid pops magnanimously open. Even
Salvatore is watching now, has risen and stands not far away behind
them, looking carefully on with dull, grey eyes.
"Cocaine?"
The word escapes Antonius' lips like wonder. How highly he must
regard himself, to think that his gods favored him so.
"No."
Canine's voice is unnaturally sure. I try to peer between their backs
to catch a glimpse of the cold canister's seedy innards, but the
thing is so damned tiny and their backs are so damned broad, and for
some reason my feet are attached to the floor. It is almost as if I
am afraid to approach. No, I am afraid. There is no doubt when the
world seems to close in on one particular event, something so small
and seemingly insignificant you wouldn't have thought twice about it.
For some reason it is only in the aftermath that we can detect the
terror we should have felt. Nightmarish reality. After all, who can
say what is real and what is not with any certainty?
Canine
leans forward, is moving his hands toward his face. He appears to be
smelling something. "No, definitely not coke." He holds up
a sample of something white and powdery for Antonius to smell. But
Antonius only shakes his head and frowns. "Gunpowder,"
Canine informs both of them. Eerie jitters, now, from the audience of
angels at my back. I can see Salvatore smiling horridly somewhere in
front of me. What, am I the only one who could perceive the blasphemy
on his face?
"Gunpowder?"
Shanai sounds disappointed.
"Yes,"
Canine laughed, and slammed the top of the box closed. "Gunpowder."
"What
are you going to do with it?" Salvatore whispers, but I do not
want to hear the answer, do not want to hear anythig, in fact, from
any of them, so I flee, run out the doorway and head down the beady
corridors. I do not know where I am going, just away from there, away
from them. There is such exorbitant need in the strained lines of my
face, if only I could see it, in the clapping of my feet upon the
earth, that perhaps it can be said that I am seeking to escape
myself. But it's hard to tell when you aren't removed from the
urgency of the situation.
Later
on, I find myself in the street. I don't think I even know my name in
these dark, late hours of the night, or where I was going. The only
thing that keeps me from snapping, from surrendering to the eternal
and hopeless horror to which those demons disguised as friends are
leading me, trying to push me over, is Shanai's name, her face. And
the tattered phrase, echoing shrilly in every sound that touches my
ears, from some time long ago, almost forgotten: Is there ever due
punishment?
I
remember being dimly aware of trees, of ancient solitude and
bereavement buried deeply in the darkness, but even that soft
melancholy is twisted for me now. Everything is evil, or waiting to
be corrupted, and all thoughts just aspects of insanity. I know
nothing of the lecherous cold, or of the icy fingers that are gaining
a hold over my limbs, just that I so desperately need a resolution, a
completion - anything. But I cannot stop running, cannot prevent
myself from stumbling about in the splotched darkness or smacking
into the solidity of the trees, as if my consciousness were entirely
separate from my body. Distantly, detatched, I am watching myself
freak out, bellowing, screaming madly into the winter air and
stumbling onward, forever onward, not with a thought of destination
but of escape, as if it were more than a dream. I am watching it
right now, in fact, and it is terrible.
Yes,
when the reality assumes the aspects of the nightmare.
There
is not even the slightest shred of a memory of anything that went on
before, for we all know that madness has no past, never changes.
There are no people, no things, except two: Shanai, whose tattered
face seems too thin and frightfully pale in the shifting sides of the
darkness, and judgement, for which there is no image.
Is
there ever -
And
then, in the heart of the deepest night, I emerge from the din of the
madness into perfect silence. It is darker here, too dark, a deeper
shade even than black, as if somehow I had stumbled through a gap in
the fabric of time and space and escaped into a great nothingness in
which I would be forever trapped and alone, a place into which all of
our insane find themselves so suddenly and inexoribly tossed and
forgotten. The silence is oppressing, maddening, careening, sharp -
and suddenly I am truly alone and there is nothing anywhere. Above me
the same deeper-than-midnight upon which my battered feet trod. I
come to a suddenly halt, breathing in the foul, cloying air, and my
true self collides with my body with the sudden weight of invocation,
and once again I am whole, but still oddly possessed, wicked - filled
with the sudden urge to laugh hysterically in the face of so much
terror.
Alone,
did I say? Perhaps not, because dimly at first but then ever
stronger, until it seemed I could see it coming from the pores of my
skin, I perceive somewhere nearby something so vile, so evil, so
putrid and malevolent that the tattered laughter is shorn from my
lips, replaced by the sudden urge to start screaming again. And the
worst part is that I can't see it. I know it's there, but I can't see
it.
And
before it can raise itself against me, before that deathly sick smell
can really get a grip, I turn and hurl myself back the way I have
come. But quietly this time, filled obsessively with the singular
need to flee, but to do so undetected, to run through the woods and
hope it can't catch up with me. But not horror, or terror, or any
quixotic combination of both. The forest, dark as it is, seems
suddenly filled with so much light and life after the empty and
devastating desecration I had chanced upon. And it sustains me,
brings the panic to a level I can endure and still be myself.
Somewhere,
very distant in the back of my recaptured will, I wonder that I still
exist, have not been mutated beyond recognition from what I once was.
And what has happened to me? Ah, the answer is not clear to you yet.
But do not worry. It comes.
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Adam Wasserman.
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