And then, encoded, immediately after,
No More A-Roving.
Terror, alone in the night. I locked myself into my motel room, sat down with a new mobile phone, counted backwards from one hundred, cross-legged on the end of the bed, and looked up the words of the poem, “We’ll Go No More A-Roving”, by Lord Gordon Byron, 1788–1824.
I read the words, and finished the words, and nothing happened, though my heart was racing fast, so fast, not even breath, not even counting my breath could slow it. I put my phone down, went into the bathroom, washed my face, my hands, cold water, stared at my own reflection in the mirror, found it ragged and grey, stood up straighter, defiant, proud, glared my face into submission, looked down at my phone and saw that washing had taken nearly two and a half hours.
Shaking on the bathroom floor.
fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckGETUPfuckfuckfuckGETUPNOWfuckfuckfucketyfuckfucketyfuckfuck
The desert.
The train.
And what is worthy, and what is justice, and what are words, at the end of the day?
Fucking get to your fucking feet, Hope Arden. Fucking get this done!
I crawled back to the end of the bed, drank a sip of water, I am warrior, I am runner, I am professional, I am discipline, I am freedom, fuck you all, searched for the poem on YouTube.
Various people had done readings; I chose one by a woman who’d recorded it for her son as part of a family festival on Skye.
“We’ll go no more a-roving,” she said, and her voice was untrained but her meaning was clear. “For the sword outwears its sheath, and the soul wears out the breast,”
and I was sitting on the floor by the TV, and had been crying, though I didn’t know why.
Hours, lost in a second.
I listened to the poem again, and this time I held a rubber band around my wrist, and snapped it hard, burning against my skin, and the reader said, “The soul wears out the breast…”
I was on the balcony outside my motel room, watching Route 101 rush by beyond the pines, and my wrist was red and raw, and only thirty minutes had passed.
Again.
Again.
I pinched my skin hard enough to cry out with the pain, and she said, “The soul wears out…”
and I was on the floor, gasping for breath, and I’d clearly turned the TV on, but that was okay, because only fifteen minutes had gone by and on the screen a man said, “So two hundred bucks and we’ve turned that into six hundred and that’s skill, my man, that’s expertise, that’s us rising to the occasion when the pressure’s on…”
Again.
Again again again until it’d done, again, getting this thing out of my head again again again!!
I listen to the recording and now
on the bed, silent, eyes open, lying flat on my back, I’m at forty-three counts of my breath and appear to be counting downwards from one hundred, who knows where the last fifty-seven breaths have gone?
Again, the soul wears out the breast and
reading the Bible, calmly now, calmer, though the impression of my nails in the palm of my left hand has raised a hard red lump, and there is bruising around the tops of both my arms where, perhaps, I clung too tightly to myself but
again
the heart must pause to breathe
and the sun is rising, beautiful California day, not grey, not like home, not a sunrise of mists and shredding clouds, but goddess-golden, a thing to worship, Amaterasu, Bast, Bridgit, driving out the dark.
Again
I sing along to the words, tuneless, dancing round the room, “The soul wears out the breast oh yeahhhh!”
and stumble, but do not fall, dizzy, head aching, head killing me but fuck that, fuck this, screw you all, I am Hope, I am Why, I am a thief, I am forgotten, I am me, I am fucking me and this is now, this now I dance and I sing again again again
Again!
“The sword outwears its sheath…”
Barely a stumble this time, barely a gasp, I press myself to the wall for a moment, wait for the moment to pass, then turn and turn again, dancing on the spot, wild, limbs flailing, breath shaking, knees bending, the sword outwears its sheath and I am dancing, dancing, dancing, my body is stone, I am dancing stone again!
“… the soul wears out the breast, and the heart must pause to breathe and love itself have a rest HEY MACARENA! The soul wears out the breast hey Macarena!” Words replacing words, fuck this dancing fuck this the soul the breast replace repeat repeat until it’s done Macarena! “The heart must pause to breathe and love itself fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck fuck fuck Macarena!”
A hammering on the door, dawn light through the sheer polyester curtain. “What the fuck is going on?” screams the manager of the motel and then, when I answer the door, gleaming with sweat, laughing, shaking, wheezing, “Who the fuck are you?!”
“I’m Hope!” I exclaimed, holding back a shriek of laughter. “I am Hope!!”
Chapter 71
A question for the floor, asked by the man waiting for the bus back into San Francisco: “How do you know if you’re mad?”
He’s maybe in his early thirties, but with a hunted innocence in his eyes that makes him seem much younger. He clings to a single sky-blue suitcase, and wears a grey sweater with a hood, and torn shoes, and says earnestly that he used to study philosophy, but the philosophers missed the point, that it wasn’t about the rules, it was about the absences, the places where the rules broke down, that was the truth of it, the truth of the universe.
“We all pretend we’re not mad,” he whispered, “but that’s because we’re afraid!”
A question I mulled over on the bus, clutching my meagre travel bag close, my clothes dirty, hair wild, face set. How do you know you’re not mad?
How many lives had I touched, who now considered themselves insane? My parents, slowly forgetting their own child, papering over the wallpaper in my bedroom, something they’d always meant to do. People I’d stolen from, the police in the interview room — she walked right up to you, she spoke to you, how can you not remember her face? Princess Leena in Dubai. Gauguin, who’d held a knife on me; people I’d robbed and people I’d bought. A passport forger on a boat in the Sea of Marmara, a girl playing video games in Tokyo, a lover drunk on the bed of the one-hour hotel. Men whose bodies I’d pressed close to mine, Parker in New York, a maths teacher who’d wondered if I counted cards, company, warmth, association, companionship — discipline.
Am I mad?
I have discipline to protect me. The discipline of thoughts questioned, of company sought, another pair of eyes, a different outlook on the world, they are my discipline, humanity is my discipline, Luca Evard is…
… a lapse in judgement.
I know that, have always known that, see it very clearly now. Not discipline. Anti-discipline. A burst of irrational obsession which, having nothing long-term to measure the term against, I called love. How I needed him now. How he must hate me, if he remembered anything about who I was.
I counted, until only counting remained.