I thought I was close this afternoon. It’s my fault, really, we had to leave; and because of the class being today, I deliberately declined my lunch. I am starving now. Thirsty too. I want a break; I want a holiday. That trip to see Patrice, that would have done nicely. But it scares me somewhat, the depth of my feeling of utter passivity; what I mean is, I get the notification I’ve been unsuccessful with my application. Do I fight? Appeal? No; I say, fuck it. I’m not bothered. I’m disappearing into lethargy, I swear I am. Endeavouring to do something positive, I pray again—this time kneeling more comfortably on my bed. Beads in hand; hands together. It is sacrilegious to recapitulate the exact words—and the covenant, anyway, is shattered by such an action—but I can tell you I drift far. I float through distances—great distances. Using only what material I have managed to locate in the Library, I picture a desert—the combed dunes, a token camel. But something tells me I’m not being authentic. Or rather, someone does: Dott is with me. How long has he been here?
You’re thinking in clichés, Billy, he tells me. Don’t create it—it doesn’t need creation; it’s already there. Just remember it.
That’s easy for you to say, Dott!
You can do it. Kill off everyone else. Kill off everything. It’s only you and me. Jigsaw pieces of land; vast; separated by cracks. Can you see them?
Yeah, I can!
Can you smell it?
The aroma is as large as the eye can see. In any direction—I am flying now, over the baked void—I can sense the desert’s smell tickling my nostrils.
Noor? Why did you want to get beaten up? I ask as I move.
To get to hospital, he says.
The voice is close enough for the yoot to be in the same cell as me. It’s not like it’s in my head anymore.
I don’t see the connection, I tell him. How’s getting twisted up gonna get you back to the desert?
Not the town of Hospitaclass="underline" the hospital. Accident and Emergency.
He is not in my head, but he’s not talking to me either. This is something new. It’s an awareness of Dott’s comportment; it’s his energy, present, transferred into sound for my ears—but I’m reading his mood and not listening to words.
Why? That powerful word: why?
An outside view? A change of scene? he replies, rhetorically. But most of all because I knew you would have to follow me. There’s no choice now, Billy-Boy. You would follow anywhere. To the ends of the earth if necessary.
Am I following you now?
Or I’m following you. It doesn’t much matter which, does it, Billy?
I suppose not. Where are we going?
Where do you think?
The oasis the boy found, of course! Where you grew me.
Indeed. Where I grew you. Where I was dead. Until I grew you—yes.
So is everything dead until nature in some form takes hold?
I was only your nature, Billy. There’s nothing offhand about it.
Whizzing now! Faster and faster! God’s speed! There are words on the wind but I cannot make them out, I am travelling too swiftly. I’m losing focus; I’m getting hot—I’m hearing Dott’s voice, but I don’t know if the words are coming now or if they were in my ears from before, or from the future or from where they are.
But it was my mistake, he is saying—repeating? I needed bad things to do. Bad things.
I know.
Very briefly he pauses. I helped you with the bee-stings, he says.
I’m twisting the air behind me in a corkscrew trail; I feel like I’m going to burst.
I shouldn’t have. I should’ve smeared raspberry jam all over your face, Billy, to give them a feast.
That’s no way to talk to your king, Dott, I sort of joke.
Why do you think I lived so close to you for so long? Dott is saying now. Why do you think I got myself sent here to this dump? I thought a trip to the hospital might excite.
Like you had a choice, you mean? I ask.
I had a choice not to hurt those women.
But you need to do bad things to keep getting older, don’t you?
Bad things. How cute. I could have killed any one of them.
But you didn’t.
I should have.
Loops of discussion; are all of them real and true? Am I inventing any of them? The big question looms of course, and I ask it to the wind.
Dott sniggers and the air in my cell ripples like heat haze; the walls deliquesce, albeit briefly. He is scorning me and he is scorning my query.
You don’t think I’ve tried that, Alfreth? he shouts into my face. You don’t think I might just have bought enough headache tablets to floor a pissing elephant and swallowed them all at once with two bottles of vodka?Give me some fucking credit. It didn’t work! All that happened was I started again.
From the beginning?
From the very beginning, Billy! Dott replies.
There below! I see it! The patch of grass, as out of place as a squashed fly on a sheet of blank paper. It shouldn’t be there, but it is. Either with Dott or flying solo (I’m not positive which) I swoop lower, towards it.
If I see the desert, must I be dead? I wonder. Am I losing this time? Is it being sucked from bones, like meat off a chicken? Where will I be when I wake up? Call it illusion; call it reality. Call it something slipped into my drink. What I observe induces the gut reaction of more than a dream. The grass feels familiar; the small patch of roses—this patch feels familiar as well. The roses are climbing and winding around two small trees. Seeing them clearly, as I do right now, atomises any effect they once had upon me. These trees, I am sure, are the Amnesia Trees; by floating down into their orbit, and now—by touching them gently, the suppression in my head is neatly lifted.
When the screw comes to check on me, he finds me sleeping soundly on top of my covers—or so he thinks. I am resting. In an unusual move, he uses his baton to rap on the cell door.