ASIM_issue_54 (5 page)

The man is shuffled, mumbling, off the stage. I pick up my glass, but it is empty. With a sigh, I go to replace it. And am halted by the next questioner. He fills it from a nearby jug and then grins awkwardly as he holds out his hand. I sip in wonder before reaching out and slipping my old fingers into those warm young ones. He grips, a nervous gesture, but still he grips.

“Will I get a girlfriend by Christmas?”

The question is loud: the hidden microphone squeals. He is an agreeable teenager hiding uncertainty behind brashness. Cat-calls from the audience, and young girls shoot him dirty looks, intermingled with speculative ones. I take a deep breath, but it is unnecessary. I am gone. I open my eyes on another breath to the bewildered face of the boy. He is flushed, his grin broken, but he pats my hand as if to absolve me. The girls now smile instead. For once—for once—I turn my attention to the replay on the screen above us.

“Yes,” an old woman—is that me?—whispers, in a breathy monotone that somehow reaches the edges of the room. She is so small, so frail. “Her name is Callie. You’ll accept her because you are desperate and then she’ll mean the world to you. She won’t care why you said yes.”

I frown a little: surely that is only good? Love, and a girl who won’t kill you when she finds out you were just using her at first. Some things don’t change over the years. Teenage boys are still scared of their emotions. I take another sip from my glass, and the warm liquid rolls down my throat. The boy shuffles away, and I wait for the next question, still sunk in my own indifference. I wonder would it be different had I control over it.

“When will I get my next promotion?”

A confident young woman, her dark face aglow, one hand on the waist of her smart business suit and the other gripping mine. I breathe in. I am gone. And now she is ashen and the audience mutters, the organisers likewise. She tears away from me, shouts, no longer confident, shaking her fist at me as her face suffuses with anger:
stupid old biddy, how dare you?
And again I look to the huge colour television, replaying the answer.

“You won’t,” the old woman whispers, her face blank. “Your affair with the CEO is discovered, and you are instead dismissed in an attempt to save face.”

I actually shake my head, but I do not pity her. It is odd to find myself less indifferent than I thought, interested again, and listening to both question and answer. I touch my glass as the woman is hustled from the stage and the room. The crowd merges back into its solid mass. But it is an uneasy mass now: all are wondering if their questions are so simple. I sip my drink. A man refills the glass, even though it doesn’t need it, splashing water on my wrinkled and spotted hands. They are confused, the producers, the organisers. My feeders and keepers. They choose from the audience carefully. For the most part, only those they feel will receive favourable or predictable answers. They misjudged there. I smile. It is not my fault; the askers know there are no yes-or-no answers. I will tell them what they don’t want to hear.

“Will the drought break this year?”

A farmer, stereotypical in dusty jeans, a flannel shirt, and a craggy face. A safe question. I inhale, I exhale. I don’t need to look at the replay. Someone always asks, and the answer is always the same: no. Sometimes I predict it sooner than later, but never this year. The future is only as malleable as the present and sometimes not at all. I drink again. The faces revolve, spinning around each other. They are calm now; they congratulate themselves on not being the one humiliated. They have no affair with the CEO to come out. Their secrets are unrelated. They are safe.

“When will I get a divorce from my wife?”

A grossly fat businessman, his round face red and covered in sweat yet still triumphant, his hand clammy and overeager. A moment of shock: followed by a rush of conversation and sly titters. Not his submitted question, and I am gone with the deathly pale face of his middle-aged wife filling my sight as she waits by the stairs. I can’t hear the replay over the roar of betrayal, the smug satisfaction in the man’s face. I can watch the old woman’s—my—lips though.

“In three months. Your lover is pregnant.”

A short answer, but it doesn’t have to be lengthy to be deadly. I ignore my water now. Men and women in dark suits home in on the grinning, sleazy businessman. They talk into earpieces as they surround him. They try to quiet the shrill cries of the wife. I almost want to tell her: don’t worry, he’s obviously not worth it, you’re better off without him. But I don’t speak unless to answer, and she hasn’t asked the question. They’ll stop the session now, before it gets further out of hand. They’ll hustle everyone out before someone else can speak, and they’ll make their smooth apologies. They’ll close the exhibit for a few days: the animal is off display, while we upgrade her habitat. But I can already see it’s too late.

There is a dawning realisation: he asked, I answered. Even though he wasn’t meant to ask, I answered. They surge forward, pressing against the stage. The men and women with their suits and furious communication abandon the man and his wife to surround the stage. A group of young folk scramble up and are only held back because they get in each other’s way. And while the keepers deal with them, someone slips through and grabs for me.

“Will my father get well?”

A gorgeous blonde woman, her eyes red-rimmed despite the concealing makeup, desperation cracking her voice. She looks hopeless: she wasn’t chosen. She still doesn’t understand. I breathe in. I have to answer. Whether the man in the suit pointed to her or not. I answer. I dance.

“Yes,” I whisper, my pixelated face onscreen reflecting more life than it has for years. “He will be well enough to attend your wedding, and he will meet his grandchildren.”

She drops to her knees, a dazed joy entering her face and making her even more beautiful. Tears spill from her eyes, but she smiles. Her lips move without sound. I think it is ‘thank you’, and I almost cry myself.

Additional security has been called. Order must be restored. The audience doesn’t blur anymore. They are all distinct, all different with their hopes and fears and sceptical dreams. They argue furiously, back and forth:
she’s going to tell our secrets, only if you ask her, she can’t see everything only what’s related, she’ll ruin my life, are your secrets so terrible?
Back and forth, never ending. Soon the mutters will start:
it’s probably fake anyway, we don’t have to worry, other people will still believe her, though.

It was like that at the start. I feel young again, just hearing it.

More mutters, a rising tide, the security people ignored as a group finally breaks through. They surround me, knocking over my glass.
It’s not dangerous, you can ask anything, don’t be an idiot, you’re better off asking nothing, I’m not scared of what she’ll say, the future isn’t set anyway, you can’t avoid it, sure you can, you wouldn’t ask anything, sure I would.

“I could ask: when will I die?”

Silence.

Utter silence.

It ripples out through the crowd, mouths frozen mid-word. He didn’t mean it as a question, but he gripped my shoulder and it was one. I breathe in, I am gone.

I laugh and I cry at the same time as I turn to the television to watch my response. The man beside me snatches his hand back as if bitten. It is too late.

…Edwina Harvey

She was in a hospital. Her mind knew it was a hospital before her recalcitrant mouth could say the word. She hated hospitals!

The nursing staff talked to her as if she was an infant. Perhaps she was? Perhaps she was new born? Dreams, memories and images came to her, and it was hard to define one reality from another at first; all were blurred, mixed … muddy.

They spoke one word to her that almost made sense, repeated it so she came to understand she was no babe fresh to the earth. Stroke. You’ve had a stroke, love. You’re safe now. We’ll make you well again.

But she had her doubts.

At first she thought he was a doctor, hovering as he did at the edge of her vision. But the doctors spoke to her (brusquely, briefly) and talked to the nurses (some times rudely) before hurrying away.

He didn’t hurry away, but he didn’t speak either. He just hovered, shyly, at the edge of her vision, and seemed to study her.

Memories unfolded slowly like the petals of a flower. Those you had loved in life who died before you, didn’t they come to you as you died to escort you to the next world? That sounded right … but he was no one she could remember. Why would they send a stranger to escort her home?

She spat words like a toddler, learning to speak again, identify things, turn words into sentences, make herself understood. The well-trained nursing staff were patient, encouraging, even sympathetic to her frustrations on the bad days when progress pushed her backwards like a landslide. On those days she’d turn her attention to him, her guardian angel, and focus on him with the same intensity with which he studied her.

What are you waiting for?
her mind screamed at him.
If you’ve come to take me
away, take me now! How much more humiliation do I have to suffer?

“What is it, love?” the nurse asked, knowing her mind had strayed off their session.

A skinny arm, still oozing blood because they couldn’t get the anti-coagulant dose right, shook as she pointed at her silent observer. Carefully, as she had been trained to, she tasted each part of each word she wanted to speak, as if it was ripe fruit. “Can … you … see him … too?”

The nurse looked over her shoulder, acknowledged her Guardian Angel with a warm smile. They weren’t
supposed
to do that, were they? She expected the nurse to say ‘Yes love, that’s the one who’ll take you home when you die. Won’t be long now.’ But the nurse didn’t address her at all. Instead she said, “It’s alright. Come closer if you want.”

And shyly, hesitantly, he did.

The gentlest smile curved his lips upward as he looked down at her. “Hello, my love.”

My
love, he’d said. Not just “love”, the generic title the nurses used. My love, as if it were personal. And the look in his eyes said that she meant a lot to him. But who was he?

“How are you feeling?” he asked her, as he tentatively touched her hair.

“Like …” Oh damn it all, it was like trying to catch a fish with your bare hands sometimes! Not in a barrel, but swimming in the ocean. You plunged your hand into your vocabulary and all the words just skittered away!

But he was looking at her anxiously, expectantly. Clear grey eyes, a rarity these days. She tried again.

“Like … I’ve been …”—
put the words together, make the connection
—“hit by a bus.” Yes, that was it, dredged up from somewhere in her grey matter, the last spoken all in a rush. That’s what she’d wanted to tell him.

And he smiled, and stroked her hair again, and she thought she’d walk through hell in her bare feet to see that smile once more … but why couldn’t she remember him?

“You’re doing very well.” His words were a breeze tickling her on a hot summer’s day.

“Take … me … home,” she implored, though she had no idea if she meant her spiritual home or her physical home. Did she
have
a physical home? She must belong somewhere. Another door was unlocked, a slide presentation of rooms carouselled through her head. Winter sunlight spilt like runny cheese into a room with a desk and leather bound books. Something comfortable stirred within her.

“Of course, my love; when you’re better.”

“You’re well on your way,” the nurse reassured her.

She nodded and tried to stifle a yawn, suddenly very tired.

“You’ve had a busy day,” the nurse told her.

He took the nurse’s hint. “Catch up on your sleep,” he suggested, and he bent to kiss her lightly on her brow. Her heart fluttered at this simple caress. She had no doubt now that he loved her … but who was he?

She closed her eyes, imagined her mind as a computer, tried to get the relays to interconnect, make the web that freed the memory. He
must
be in there somewhere! But why couldn’t she remember?

The night nurse’s name was … Margaretta? No. Mary? No. Maria? Yes! She was married, and had three children: a boy and two girls. Yes, her mind could unscramble and work normally sometimes.

And her own name was Eliza. Or so they told her. It sounded familiar, right. Like the room with the books and the sunlight, it suited her.

She knew she had a dog and cat waiting for her back home, and that she drove a … that she drove a … oh, bother what was it again? Her car. An electric/solar hybrid called a …? Called a …? Think of the dog. Blob, no, Bob. Think of taking Bob to the beach. He jumps into the back of the
Tessler
. Yes, that was it, she drove a Tessler. Amazing how her brain worked out its own detours, sometimes took the scenic route, but got her there in the end …

She pictured the cat sitting on her lap, could feel its warm weight on a cold winter’s day. An overfed tabby, sleek and content. And the cat’s name was … Frog? Matty? Mog! The cat’s name was Mog. They’d be missing her right now. Who was feeding them? Surely he’d be doing that, wouldn’t he? But no matter how hard she tried, why couldn’t she grasp some hint of him in her memory the way she could her dog and cat? The way she could the night nurse’s name? Who had drilled a hole in her brain and sucked out all memory of him?

After that introduction he was not so shy. No longer hovering at the periphery of her vision, he would loiter by her bed, help her dress, attend the physio sessions with her, cheer her on. Buoyed by his angel wings she made a good recovery, reclaiming her mobility; her power of speech; her memories—save the one of who he was. Finally she decided the specific amnesia didn’t matter. He was in her life now, and felt so comfortable there that he must have spent a long time her familiar, close at hand.

When she no longer oozed blood, she was infused with a cocktail of—hitch-hikers? … parasites? … road-cleaners?—a microscopic workforce that swept through her veins carrying out repair work, reinforcing thin walls, kept the platelets moving along, made sure clots didn’t form. Nanobots! And when she was finally given the all clear he offered her his arm to steady her as he took her home.