He vaguely remembered the other boy they told him about: how the boy took an extra dose of rat poison before running away from home, how they searched for and found him two days later and he wasn’t dead. They took him to a hospital and admitted him into the psychiatric ward, and he began covering his face with his shirt after that to hide from people...
Another time, everybody laughed in a taxi when a friend was telling him how, in his old neighborhood, they had brought back a man who had stepped on a land mine on the battlefield. Everybody laughed when he explained how they had taken him home in a bucket because he’d been blown to pieces. They brought him home because he loved his mother and refused to die without seeing her. He was dead serious when he told the story and was trying to make a point that the debt of death must only be paid when one is ready and not when it is due.
7:30 p.m.
He wanted to call somebody but he had nobody that he could call. Everyone he wanted to call was either dead or from his imagination. Now the memories were becoming vivid, like he was watching a movie made especially for him without a beginning or an end, a movie intended to drive him wild with regret. It played inside the deep recesses of his soul, with scenes powerful enough to remove him from reality. It was a movie he couldn’t choose to walk out of, and the movie’s score was Rachel’s terrific laughter.
He decided they were in love. Rachel knew all the sounds that ought to exist, and it was those sounds, that voice, that would not let him be. They kept lingering even after she was gone, and prevented him from sleeping.
Henock could never sleep. He had gotten a desk job at some office as a clerk. Mornings were horrible for him, but he got there on time and slept while working in snatches. After lunch he chewed khat and would be like Lazarus, resurrected back from the dead.
Even as a kid he’d never slept as soundly as he should have. He almost never slept without a nightmare. There was always something picking up his bed or dropping him into a bottomless pit, or hairy spiders chasing him or cold hands holding his feet, sliding him down through the grills of the bed.
He wanted to be his old self again and be with the girl, wanting to hear her laugh. He also wanted to rinse his mouth with a gulp of gin that stung on the tongue and ate away his brains when it was supposed to make his memories go away. He wanted to forget. He knew that once he could forget, he could get some sleep.
8:50 p.m.
In the bar while he waited for sleep to come, he had to drink quickly to slow down the movement of the people around him. His nose cleared suddenly, sharply, making the air he breathed in feel like acid, bringing tears to his eye. There is no single reality, something inside him thought, as there is no single truth, or meaning to life or love or God.
“Why can’t I yawn?” he said aloud to himself. He feared he had forgotten how to do that as well. He remembered his grandmother’s meek voice, her humming the gospel ringing in his ear. To drown the voice out he clanked the ashtray with a glass, but it didn’t work. The waiter came and he ordered another drink.
His stepfather’s mother was of a different sort. She was always in constant motion: visiting people, helping around funeral homes, comforting mourners. She was a sociable old woman, but that wouldn’t thoroughly describe her. She was known for doing things that seemed to completely contradict each other but would be normal in her eyes. She once helped some people move their fences over to their rich neighbor’s lawn so that they could have more space. When the neighbor returned and wanted to know who was behind the debacle, she helped him by telling the truth and even went to court to testify against herself and the others. After they were fined and her neighbors deemed her as untrustworthy and two-faced, she still went on being their friend and would go out for coffee with them. Or, in another case, she would always say that she hated Henock’s blind grandfather. Yet she would spend hours after hours in his company and would prepare his meals. Once, she gave him his food on a plastic pan that children would sit on before learning how to use the toilet. When Henock asked her why she would do such a thing, she said that it was because the pan had never been used, and besides, a blind man could never tell the difference.
9:00 p.m.
He wanted to be his old self again, playing the role of a younger and better Henock. Perhaps if I play the part well enough, he thought, some of it might actually rub off. He would clench his jaw, grind his teeth, and force his bad habits to go away, but he knew he had neither the will nor the anger to do it. He would never get his old self back.
10:07 p.m.
He was getting drunk now. He felt a yawn coming but sneezed instead. He left the table and went to the toilet. There was a mirror on one side of the wall where he saw his reflection. His heart skipped a beat — he didn’t realize that he had let his health decline this much. He felt the drunkenness leave him and he was stone-cold sober and alone — very much alone.
It was late when they left that night. Rachel was drunk and happy. Henock thought she was pleasant when she was drunk — it was the first time he had seen her drink. They reached his house and found more to drink. They were talking nonsense the entire time, blabbering and laughing about things requiring no real intelligence. Then they quarreled. She raised her voice to a crescendo and he dragged her to the bedroom, locking the door so that they wouldn’t disturb the neighbors. He expected her to cry but instead she made a lot of weird noises and rammed against the door, so he let her out. He begged, trying to cool her down, but she continued to sound like a trapped animal hammering its head against a crate. He was stupefied. I shouldn’t have made her drink, he thought. She started talking about how he was beginning to neglect her and how she thought he might have women on the side. He calmed her down after a lot of pleading, but when he got her to sit on the bed, she started all over again. She ran to the door and demanded to be let out. He thought of throwing a cup of cold tap water on her. When she picked up the bottle he wasn’t sure what she was going to do, but then she flung it and hit him on the head. It bounced against him like a billiard ball. He stood for a moment as though he didn’t know where he was, leaned against the wall, then advanced toward her. Rachel tried to evade him but he held her by the hair, twirled her, and knocked her against the wall. Rachel slid to the ground and started convulsing. He kept on kicking her while she lay writhing on the floor, a pitiable mess. He massaged the spot where the broken bottle had hit. She got up from the floor and dragged herself onto the bed, sobbing silently as she took off her clothes. When he called her to him, she sullenly obeyed; her hands and legs were like tendrils that were made to cling to him. She stopped crying when he started to respond to her. The bed was soft and submerged their bodies, and she whispered Jesus Christ into his ear every time she felt him coming closer to her. Once the seat had dried, she felt the cold like a splinter going through her bones. Henock was sleeping with his mouth agape. Careful not to wake him, Rachel gently pulled the blanket from under him and covered him so he could stay warm. Then she laid beside him, pulling his hand around her and squeezing it to bring herself closer. She ran her fingers over his chest that was covered by a smooth down of hair, counted his teeth, studied and kissed his hands. She prayed and cried a little before she finally went to sleep.