Unless something had happened to shut her up. Ahead now was the end of the lane. On either side were weeds and a stack of rubbish bags. It was a place where bodies were found, you saw it all the time; the guy sneaking along with his girlfriend, looking for a safe place for sex and suddenly there is a foot and it is a leg twisted in the undergrowth. Call the police. Coldblooded murder. That was television. But such things did happen. Maybe not much but definitely some of the time, they did. Most murders were in the home and the murderers that did it were known to the victim. It was not strangers you had to worry about it was the next of kin, the person that stood to inherit, if you were rich or even if it was insurance and if you were just an ordinary person and oh my God almighty the backpack, what kind of a fool I was such a fool, back along immediately, but just a fool, just fast walking. It had gone. Maybe not. I checked roundabout and everywhere, everywhere and everywhere all along, the edge of the building, I could not believe what kind of a fool. I was a very very stupid guy, very very stupid, just naive and so stupid and just a total naive idiot. Could ever I have been so daft! Never. Never ever. Never in my whole life.
Sometimes if you were dead, only if you were dead. People said that. I thought it myself.
Objects do not move by themselves, they do not walk, backpacks do not walk.
I was not a headless chicken. My essays and everything else, books from the library.
Anyway, I could calm down and just look, look for things, anything, calmly. Sometimes they get put to the side, if somebody sees it, a lost article, if somebody finds it, they put it at the side of the road, or like a glove or a scarf, they hang it on a railing so the person who has lost it can find it, so they retrace their steps and then they see the lost article.
I hunted around. Horrible bastard, dirty evil, just a horrible, horrible horrible. He would have been long gone. Probably someplace checking the contents, sorting through it all, maybe dumping stuff along the way, because it was just clothes and a lot of them were unwashed, and just old tee-shirts and stuff. That is what he would think. But some were good; especially the tee-shirts. It was not all crap, though maybe that was how he would see it, crooked coward. He would not bother about the books, or anything, essay notes, just dump it, they were not of value. There was nothing of value. What did he expect to find a bag of money! thousands of pound notes stuffed into plastic bags! People watch too much television, all these detective programmes. They go about seeing themselves involved in mystery dramas, the earphones in and the music playing, their music, people choose their own music, they do not choose the best songs, the ones that they like the very best, they choose the ones they see as soundtracks to their own sweaty lives. Pathetic. You saw them walking along the street, and even their voices, you heard their voices.
Unless it was for my benefit. If the woman was in it with the man and that was why she moaned like she had. Because that woman moaned I swear to God she really did. Really, she did. If so it was the very last time, never ever would I ever fall for such a thing again if ever it was a woman and she was in trouble, it would never ever happen again, that was me now, just finished. Imagine a woman and she did that moaning so people would be tricked.
I had stuff at home but it was for emergencies only; basics, old stuff. Even socks. My parents would loan me money, just give me it. If I asked. I would not ask. I would just sell something or else the pawnshop. They would laugh. Mum would be glad it was nothing worse. I would not tell them.
Except my essays and the books, library books, and where would I get them again.
I was at the top of the lane, and stopped. It was the second time I had reached here. I turned to stare back along, silence all the way, just nothing. I had to retrace my steps again. I did not want to, not again. But I had to. Although nothing would be there. My backpack was gone and the guy that took it, and the woman, if ever there was a woman, or just my ears playing tricks.
What else, but I just had to, just go back along the lane, that was all I could do because what if I saw it, it might be waiting for me right at the very end, I might see its shape, just sitting there waiting for me. How could I have missed it! How ever could I have missed it? It would be the strangest strangest experience ever and I would just get it up onto my shoulders and rush fast to get home, oh jeesoh, jeesoh, I so wanted home.
The Later Transgression
At this stage, when things appeared to be running smoothly, his transgression surprised me. Upon reflection it was no more and no less than I should have anticipated. His life may have been seen as one to emulate, to strive after or towards, but it was far from commendable. I knew that. He had not lived a perfect life. My friends respected him; young men like ourselves. It is safe to say that.
A companion of ours, a musician, did not survive though his existence exhausted itself in a similar way. When we three were together and smiling on how things had been, partly it was relief that we had survived at all. None among us pretended, none among us was the hypocrite.
In the ordinary ethical sense we had not lived just lives but nor had we pretensions toward the religious or theological sense of other existences, nor of existences yet to come. For myself I had no intentions of accepting a second existence. I grew weary of Lives to Come, a Life to Come, that Life to Come. As with our former friend I was one of many, content that those who follow should wield the baton.
Universals do not exist. There is no ethic, no code of morality, no moral sense at the inner depth of our being. From an early period I too was aware that the sensibility is unaffected by the violence or abuses perpetrated by one on another, even if the one is close to us. Yet I was perceived as ruthless. So too was our former friend. But did he fully understand what ruthlessness might amount to? Perhaps he did. When his grandfather died he rowed the boat that carried his ashes. His father and younger brother were seated at the stern. His younger brother unscrewed the receptacle and emptied the ashes midway across. His father could have stopped him. The following is hearsay, that he too could have stopped him.
Ingrained
I was not an artist and not a schoolteacher, I had never been a schoolteacher. People thought I was. That was a peculiar misjudgement. ‘Misjudgement’ was the word.
I was observing, even as I thought in this self-conscious, deliberately reflective manner, and the subject of my observation was the world about me. Here beyond the window, far below at ground level the rubbish piled high and overflowing although the rubbish men had come two days ago. What the hell had they been doing? All they did was stand there gabbing and sharing a smoke. Probably a joint; they pretended it was tobacco in case the rubbish police were spying from windows. I wanted to shout at them. It made me angry. Was that the way to do a job? Okay if it was a middle-class rural piece of suburbia but this was a slum man, a slum, s l u bloody m. Ordinary working-class people, these were brothers and sisters. We dont shit on them for heaven sake. So no wonder I got angry, living round here. It was just important. I thought so anyway, if no one else did. Lindsey did. Lindsey was shocked; truly she was. This was her first time in the city and the idea of bringing a baby up in such a place, my God. Where do the children go to play?