Freedom Island (4 page)

❊

It was Lucy’s first birthday at her new home. The gypsies seemed to assume her life had begun the first moment she had appeared to them, out of the thick of the forest, and it was rude to ask about people’s pasts anyway. There were more than gypsies in the forest: they warned her of a melee of cast-offs and runaways, drunks and outlaws; so she had been lucky. They brought in a cake with a solitary candle, and everyone cheered. Everyone seemed fond of Lucy: the old dears saw a granddaughter; the women knew a free sprit; and the men saw an object of lust. She recalled her arrival.
              The shacks were wretched: adobe walls mingled with corrugated iron and plastic sheets—the track scattered with trash, kids ran barefoot playing in the dirt, their faces smeared their hair matted.
              ‘What did you bring?’ they had all asked her.
              But they welcomed her and gave her a bed, daily tasks and a man. She rose early to cook and do the washing alongside the other women, or to watch over their children. Lucy would try in her own way to educate the kids, to teach them the alphabet and numbers, but this arose suspicion and occasionally fury from the other women. She alway responded in kind, as had become her nature, flashing her mane of copper hair and her big eyes in retaliation, until they slowly learnt not to tangle with her.
              Her man, a recent widower, had space available in his shack, and she was expected to appreciate his generosity—a fact the other women made very clear. Lucy’s initial terror was overcome by the greater fear of continued wandering and hunger, or going back to her father, and also, she quickly came to understand that despite his mass and fearful face, her man was a gentle giant who demanded nothing she was unwilling to give. He had waited patiently and hopefully, providing for her, until she was ready.
              The state turned a blind eye to these people living beyond the rules, who scattered all corners of the Union. They were considered intrinsically unproductive types, and it was better for them to die of disease, starvation, the cold and quarrelling than it was to intern them (for Rehabilitation was only for those of some value). Besides, they served as a warning to the obedient masses as to what may become of you should you no longer toe the line: and educated thus, people considered that the Outsiders deserved their lot, and so were able to continue their cocooned existences barely bothered by the suffering on their doorstep. It was only when outlaws robbed or murdered a country rambler, a mountain biker, or raided a village, that society seemed to notice them once again: Outlaws being once normal people who, having fallen from grace, had no idea of how to live from the land and so were reduced to thieving to survive.
              But the gypsies were different. They knew well enough how to live and survive, and they would not go hungry. Lucy’s man was responsible for defending the camp against outlaws, who would otherwise raid in their chaotic numbers, stealing chickens, knifing indiscriminately as they went, and he received contributions from the others in return. As she blew out her birthday candle he came over and gave her a bear-hug, and everyone cheered. He worshipped her, was enchanted by her, and Lucy had already come to care for him much as she would a brother.
              ‘Fetch some wine!’ she ordered him cheekily, as he released her.
              ‘Yes, Drabani’ he subserviently responded, for Drabani was the name the gypsies had given her. And the others laughed.

Gradually Lucy’s natural talents begun to reveal themselves to the gypsies, before they had even truly revealed themselves to Lucy herself. Her ability to relieve pain by the warm presence of her hands or the pressure of her dainty finger-tips, and her ability to combine items from the forest to treat a variety of maladies, purely on instinct. As time went on, she would watch over the children more and more, for she was considered best able to deal with any accidents and injuries, whilst some of the mothers hoped too that their offspring might pick-up her rarified accent and some of her other worldly ways.
              ‘She’s not looking after mine, the witch!’ It was Anna, one of the younger women who had never spoken to Lucy, although Lucy had often noticed her, staring alongside her also staring grandmother. But staring was not unusual here.
              ‘All those potions and tricky words. She’ll not get near my littl’un!’
            
 
Lucy was dumbfounded and irritated. How could her efforts could be interpreted in such a way? Four other women turned to stare too, with similarly menacing faces. Within a week—by the end of the month, she was brought before a Diwano—the elders—to explain herself and her devilish ways.
              ‘We are gypsies,’ explained the leader sympathetically, as though a Didikai could not be expected to understand, ‘and we are not averse to magic and natural talents. But your abilities bear the hallmark of evil.’
            
 
‘Why?’ answered Lucy, confused to the point of fury. The visual impression of her shaking head, beaming eyes and swaying orange curls hardly helped her case, and one-by-one the families she knew stepped forward to report on the supernatural occurrences they had witnessed in her presence.
              ‘Only the gypsies can perform such things
. . 
. and the devil!’ and at that verdict, as dusk was falling, the villagers collectively rose and ceremonially threw her out of the village, back down into the mud of the vanishing forest trail from which she had emerged.

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I felt the light on my face, and I dragged open my eyes. My emotions were extraordinary. Confusion. Surging dream and horror, reality and fantasy. Disbelief! That yesterday I could have had such ideas, felt in such a way: an electric current blasting my nerves—what the hell had I done? Who was that man? I recalled he wore the standard grey suit of the Society and Family Company, and as I rubbed my eyes I saw the horrifying proof; the reality of yesterday whether I liked it or not, in the ruby blood itching in the crevices of my nails.
              I was beyond self-deception; I could not pretend I regretted it: that as an educated, employed, reasonably good-looking and financially comfortable white thirty-something male, with nobody to blame, I had murdered an innocent man.
              Fear flooded my frame. I would spend the rest of my life behind bars, in hell, rotting slowly, hated by everyone . . . but I didn’t hate myself—I felt refreshed, powerful, as though the dead man’s blood were now bolstering my own veins instead. I had to savour the moment; I had to reason, think, plan, hide. The air tasted fresher, the light seemed sharper: I could see the outside world beyond the walls of my apartment, which was no longer a prison but a haven, and everything would now be relevant—the cameras screwed to the buildings, the glance of passing strangers: the hunter and the hunted—a reason to live!
              I stood naked in front of the mirror, studying myself. My face was different, younger but at the same time more mature, angular and better looking, confident, totally, and my eyes stared strong and proud, determined. Surging in my blood an energy to live as if I were twenty again, my muscles instantaneously revived, strong and purposeful. I would hardly have recognised myself from just yesterday. Shocked, I took a step backward. I was happy, that was it, it was written all over my face! My eyes were smiling, my mouth, too: there was colour in my cheeks . . . I looked like another twin I had never had—similar yet absolutely different, contented yet eager. Now indeed anything the world could throw at me would be less challenging, more easy, less evil, wouldn’t it?
Other ‘forbidden fruits’ instantly within reach; gone forever that glass ceiling between the imagination and reality, desires and acceptability!
              I went to work. I must appear normal. A disturbing new thought struck me: what if I was arrested, put in prison? All the personal and embarrassing things lying around at home would be found by the police, by my father and my brother: my strange diary, letters to and from ex-girlfriends, pictures of naked ex-girlfriends . . . . So I spent that weekend scurrying about the flat, piling all those secrets into a bin liner that I prayed the homeless wouldn’t scatter in front of the building. I shoved it into the rubbish chute, then, unable to stop, I began frantically packing everything else so as to be ready to run at short notice, although I had no idea to where.
              By the Sunday evening, though, I’d begun to feel much better about it all. The police hadn’t come and the knife hung innocently again in the kitchen where it belonged.
              So I left for work on the Monday morning. But no longer was I the one looking at the ground, even if it did make me trip or accumulate dog shit. I stood waiting at a street crossing. Women normally stood as far from me as reasonably possible—I knew that—attempting to avoid me without the slightest recognition, but now they were closer, their faces tilted slightly my way rather than slightly the other.
              The girls in the office, too, who only last week looked straight through me now looked me in the eye. I felt the power as I stood straight, saw clearly: I had a feeling of higher awareness, as though I had awoken from a long, dreamy snooze in a beautiful garden with a fresh breeze on my face and green trees rustling above, filtering the sun’s orange evening rays. My misty eyes suddenly refocused, tasting, feeding my mind; the threat of danger thrusting me fearless into the present.
              The following day: the train. How many times had I sat like a sack of potatoes crying my soul into that seat, days so identical yet nevertheless different, pointlessly and so agonisingly different, searching for something new, some new tide of hope but always nothing. But now I looked into the eyes opposite and I would not let her go. A buxom lady, on the ridge between fear and fantasy. Raising the fingers on my right hand resting on my thigh I gave her a tiny wave which she saw without shifting her glance, then with the corners of her mouth curling a little she tried to repress a smile running beyond her control, as she looked away. With a familiar hiss, for the first time charged with sexuality, the train rested into a station and she rose to leave. This was not my station; I had never stepped-out in all those 844 trips, but now I did. I would be late for work. I followed her to the escalators rising to the street, stepping-up behind her and to one side she moved her head my way, looking down knowingly from the corner of her eye, swirling in the pupil a passion thick as oil or blood, unmistakable and primitive, thoughtless and hungry, twisting twirling deep and magical.
              ‘I saw you on the train . . . ’
              ‘I know,’ she said.
              The conversation travelled rhythmically with a string of words all meaning the same as we rose on our magical metal pathway, sharing humour I touched, her elbow, her middle-finger, she trembled, expectantly, the stairs rolling in slow motion it seemed and then as she laughed she touched my shoulder, and I said:
              ‘I want to kiss you, to go to a hotel with you—right now. To make today something worth remembering,’ she reddened, but I would not shrink, the escalator’s hidden trundling suddenly audible toward the moment where we would share a piece of each other forever, or not, and now she looked down at me as if I were a naughty schoolboy, knowing she should be angry:
              ‘Crazy question, crazy answer . . . yes.’
              Her eyes were mischievous. With her soft cheeks flushed and her eyes wide she led me bumping and rubbing and tripping up the stairs to our hotel room. Jammed into the corner in the gloom she giggled with confidence, I plunged my tongue deep into her mouth my fingers reaching-out like the roots of a flesh-eating plant as she let out gentle sighs of joyous surrender.
              It was a one-time thing; never again was she to kiss my chest as though she would suck my heart out, and I would never again wrap my arms around her so only my finger-tips would reach.
              But there would be more: from the supermarket; waitresses with no choice but to talk to me; sales girls in shops who had to engage me; hotel receptionists then innocent young girls handing out leaflets in the street, offering me advantage. I had women bawling their eyes out for their infidelity, unwilling to say no, and one who, in spite of loathing sex on the grounds of personal hygiene, permitted unprotected sex just so she could sleep easy for the rest of her days, knowing that she could.
              Sexuality had become obvious. I could appreciate the tall and the bony, the awkward and the unloved; I had come to love their eager shame, their inexperienced and desperate hunger, their passion free of vanity. The world had so many new dimensions, colours and textures I had no idea how I could have been blind to them before. Some women, with decaying teeth and the breath to match, would have their own colour; to me their breath warm and welcoming rather than foul, whilst hardened or stubbly skin and folds of flab could deliver a novelty that more than compensated for the visual deficit. The less serious the interest, in fact, the better the sex.
              But the thrill had already begun to die. I did in fact get a rash, breaks in the skin, and I felt generally unwell—sore throat, weight loss, headaches, enlarged lymph nodes . . . but that wasn’t it. The women were losing their flavour, becoming a habit. And immediately after the deed was done, I would be filled with the same self-loathing, just as before. I found myself wandering the streets again, dark and satanic, looking at the ground. My terrible old self creeping back out, dragging me down. This dimly-lit place that God left long ago back when the Union came, the murky underworld oozing up invisibly from the cracks in the pavement and stalking the streets: angst poisoning people’s minds and flinging them from windows, destroying relationships, breaking men and driving women to herbal remedies, yoga and adultery. But now it was different: now I knew what was missing. Not the women, not the sex as I might once have imagined, not even the blood: but the euphoria of the exceptional. The extraordinarily alive moment.
              I wandered into a dusty old collectibles shop, cluttered with old coins, tarnished medals for forgotten battles or causes and trophies for ludicrous competitions since flogged by descendants to buy food or pay for gas, their meaning lost, all mixed up with nostalgic bric-a-brac and antique junk. The shopkeeper had always found a place for one piece more, so that it was necessary to walk sideways, crab-like, avoiding stacks of abandoned treasures—forever terrified one’s coat or elbow might catch something and break the fragile peace. The shopkeeper sat dead ahead and gave that reserved welcome particular to shopkeeper–collectors, who love to buy and hoard but are loath to sell, particularly to the uninformed.
              I spent almost an hour in the shop working my way through the items. There were thousands, all different of course, so to a layman it seemed quite impossible to understand what was on offer—and the shopkeeper offered no help. But it was a pleasing distraction and my mood kept me impervious to the uncomfortable silence that would have pushed most straight back out the door whence they came. I resisted the temptation to ask questions. All the same, the items themselves left me with a calming sense of past, a permanence, a community to which I somehow belonged, at least on a genetic level, and about which I knew almost nothing. Put together, this shop of junk was a time machine, a monument, a stopped clock left behind by the world outside, storing memories lost elsewhere in death and the system. I’d fully intended to buy something to take home, but the confusion of the place made any decision impossible.
              I continued wandering. Feeling rather spiritual now, around through the streets of the old town—until I stumbled upon the second-hand bookshop at 54a East Street, that had opened a couple of months before. I’d walked past it daily, sandwiched between J. Richard’s electrical repair shop with its display of unidentifiable components and a cobwebbed but still intact umbrella repair shop, at the end of my street. After a moment’s hesitation, I made my way in for the first time, to the jingling of wind-chimes on the back of the door.
              Row upon row, stack upon stack of old books I knew would make me sneeze were waiting patiently for that one person who might conceivably be interested in something on
Early Canadian Pottery
,
Competitive Clay Target Shooting
or
Soda Glazing
, and who would be willing to crawl around the floor to find it. This amazing psychosis of the bizarre and banal filled my mind and lost me in a place where, just maybe, I could understand the minds of those people who sat down so long ago to write these books now forgotten by all, except perhaps the owner of this shop . . . My heart skipped a beat: before me in the corner sat a weary old man I hadn’t noticed, as much a part of the cluttered little shop as the dusty books themselves. And the bookseller, in spectacles and an old cardigan, was looking straight back. The smell of time lay everywhere, in the books, the walls, in the old man himself, but not in those eyes. Out of resigned politeness, I broke the gaze
              ‘I knew you would come,’ he said slowly, as if to himself. And for the first time since the Great Act, I felt vulnerable.
              ‘What?’ I looked directly back at him, the age difference gone.
              ‘What are you looking for?’
              I was lost; the bookseller’s intonation directed the question at me—personally. I had no answer and an uncertain silence then passed, before the old face softened.
              Smiling, looking slowly around his neglected kingdom, he went on: ‘Oh, the authorities check up on me from time to time; they wanted to close me down. Old books, they say, out of date, inaccurate, dirty . . . of course the problem is that old books do not tell people what they want them to hear. But in the end they’ll realise that no one comes here anyway, and they’ll leave me alone. I’m sorry to say that in these modern times there is no demand for old books. Did you know that all new books have to gain government approval prior to publishing?’
              ‘No, I didn’t . . . ’ I did, of course. But I didn’t want him to stop.
              ‘Old books, young man: read them and open your eyes; see the world for yourself, the contradictions, the traps. Books are not the past—they are about us, now, messages from another dimension,’ and he chuckled gently.
              ‘How did you know I was coming?’
              ‘No young people come into my shop. They are too busy working, finding partners, planning . . . old people come here, old people looking for a cheap book while they wait to die. That is what makes you special.’
              ‘What?’
              ‘I was waiting for you, or people like you.’ And before I could speak, he continued:
              ‘You came here in search of the truth, not in search of a cheap book—’ he was squinting, staring hard into my eyes again: ’you think you are a failure, but you can only find wisdom once you have lost everything; once you have learnt to suffer. Without it, people simply conform. There are only a few who can move forward: You are wise and young; that means you can change things.’
              I took a step backward, glancing nervously towards the door, but curiosity got the better of me. ‘Was life always . . . like this?’