The Nine-Chambered Heart

скачать книгу бесплатно


I’m not sure where to start, but I head out. The guy at the reception is clueless when I ask if he’s seen you. The town is small, but feels endless when I step outside. I walk down to the main road, the one flanked by matchbox clothes stalls, still-closed restaurants, and women in shawls selling steaming dumplings. Maybe you were hungry and came looking for food. Maybe I’ll find you standing by one of these makeshift street-food vendors, eating momos. ‘Here,’ you’ll say, holding one out to me. Your eyes, as usual, will be rimmed by the kohl you didn’t clean off, your hair bundled untidily into a bun. Suddenly, your absence feels like a stab in my stomach. I must find you. Somehow my feet make their way to where we were last night. Up the stairs, to the rooftop restaurant, which is all but deserted apart from a group of trekkers eating breakfast. Oddly, I can’t remember where you were while I was playing the guitar. Next to me, of course. Or was that the lady with the dark blonde hair and the Tibetan jacket? She was very friendly. At one point, hadn’t she asked me to show her how to strum?

In half an hour, I feel I’ve exhausted all possibilities and walked that main road to death. I’m beginning to waver now, between anger and fear. Why the fuck are you doing this? What if something happened to you? I’m hungry and hung-over, and the weed has left a bitter, burnt taste in my mouth. I wolf down a plate of dumplings and then feel guilty. I shouldn’t waste any time. I must find you. When I think I’ve run out of options, I walk down the road that takes us out of town, towards the highway. Here too are shops and a sprinkling of small eating joints. I pass one that’s placed higher than the rest, on a raised platform, with outdoor tables and chairs.

Sun Moon Café it’s called, and I think that’s the kind of place you would like.

There’s someone sitting outside, reading. It looks like you. It is you.

I yelp in relief. You look up at me, and turn back to your book. ‘What the fuck,’ I mutter, as I run up the steps.

‘Where were you?’ I say. I realize it’s a stupid question even before you reply.

‘Here.’

‘Why did you leave like that?’

You shrug.

‘I was worried, man.’

I hear you mutter something.

‘Is this about last night?’

‘What do you think?’

I hate it when you do this. Turn the question back at me. I’m only trying to figure out what the fucking matter is. I care enough to do this. Why isn’t that good enough? I take a deep breath, trying to keep the glimmer of anger at bay.

‘Something about last night upset you … except I don’t remember much …’

You snort, in laughter, disdain.

‘What, man?’

‘So convenient.’

‘We drank a lot …’

‘Yes, we did. Except that still didn’t make me throw my arms around some blonde stranger.’

‘I was showing her how to strum!’

‘Oh, is that what you call it, you wannabe rock star?’

I am struck, at this moment, by how precisely we know how to hurt the ones we love.

It doesn’t go on for long, this argument. Mostly because I think we’re exhausted, or at least I am. And also, no matter what, I’m relieved to have found you.

We return to the city without a river. Something has changed. We are closer, yet further apart. That doesn’t make sense, but it does. Our quarrel revealed how much we care for each other, but it wounded deep. Here I am, a fucking contradictory wreck. I look to you to feel good, but I realize that if I give someone that power, they can also make me feel like shit about myself. You never say ‘wannabe rock star’ again, although other hurtful things are hurled around the room. We are knife throwers in a circus. Bring on the clowns, and the little dog in a big bow that jumps through hoops. Sometimes, I think I am all of them rolled into one.

It is worse because I have never seen you this way. Suddenly restless and complaining all the time about the city, your flatmates, your university. You feel it’s all a waste.

‘This is not what I’m meant to do,’ you say. And when I ask what it is that you do want, you don’t reply. You don’t know, and I think that’s what annoys you. I don’t know when you’ll snap next and for what reason.

The other night, I asked if I could borrow a couple of plates from you for a shoot in college. Some video project for class.

‘No.’

‘It’s just some plates, man.’

‘No,’ you shouted back, your eyes filling with tears. ‘You’ll break them.’

‘It’s just a fucking shoot,’ I yelled back and left, slamming the door behind me. By the time I returned, you were in bed, the lights were off. I don’t know if you were asleep, but you didn’t speak.

One evening, we watch a movie. Something that had been screened in class that I wanted to share with you. We do this often. You recommend books, that I admittedly don’t read, and I bring back films in my hard drive, filched from friends at university. Within the first five minutes, barely after the opening credits, we are arguing. A shot of a woman lying on a bed in her underwear, from behind, and I remark on the camera’s ‘male gaze’. It’s something our professor had mentioned.

You roll your eyes.

‘What?’

‘The movie’s directed by a woman … so perhaps this is somewhat subversive.’

We don’t finish watching the film.

The night I almost hit you, we are headed to a blues bar hosting a live act. These are my favourite evenings in the city. Back home, the streets fold into themselves by six. Here, nothing begins until late. Even if I’m not performing, nothing makes me happier than being someplace where someone is. You seem all right when we leave. We get on my bike and head south. You seem all right even when we get there. When we climb the stairs and step into a dimly lit room. There’s the stage. The audience, with drinks in hand. The band is setting up. Sound check. The first number. They’re good. Not brilliant, but I don’t really care. You seem all right even when you meet a few people you know, and make conversation. When you sip your drink, and bob your head to the music.

See, that’s the thing, I can’t tell the moment when you’re not all right. It’s a switch that takes seconds.

Suddenly, you’re tugging at my sleeve saying you want to leave.

‘Why?’

‘I want to go …’

‘But they’ve just started.’

‘This place is awful …’

‘It’s fine … I want to stay …’

‘And I don’t want to.’

It carries on like this, and the band’s really getting into it now. Something strong and bluesy bursts into the air. I’m beginning to get annoyed.

‘You stay,’ you say, ‘I’ll go.’

‘No,’ I shout over the music. ‘We came together, we leave together.’

‘That’s ridiculous …’ you begin to say when I walk out. I only know you’re following when I hear your feet clatter behind me on the stairs. We step out into the evening. You’re saying something, but I can’t hear you through the throb of my anger. I feel something strike me on the side of my head.

‘What the fuck?’ I roar, turning. You’ve flung a magazine at me. For a second, I pause to wonder where you got it from. Strange, isn’t it, the things that occupy us even at moments like these?

Back at your flat, the argument continues.

‘It wasn’t a big deal,’ you yell. ‘You could’ve stayed … I could’ve left.’

‘We went together, we leave together,’ I shout back. I don’t know why, but I’m hung up on this line. It’s become precious to me, this idea. We are loud, and I’m sure people outside, downstairs, upstairs can hear us. I don’t give a shit. We shout at each other.

‘You threw that magazine at me …’

‘Because you wouldn’t stop and listen.’ Your voice is shrill and piercing. I cannot bear it.

It seems like you’re raising your hand against me. So I raise my hand too. Your eyes widen, your mouth rounds into a silent ‘O’ as the words die in your throat from surprise. And fear.

‘Look what you made me do,’ I shout. ‘Look what you made me do.’ I am the worst, most vile version of myself. I am crumbling like a pile of garbage. I am a pile of garbage.

With you, I am highest, and lowest.

It isn’t this, though, that breaks us up.

We continue for weeks, months. Over a year. Two. At a wedding you get pissed off because I’m chatting for too long, you say, with some other woman. Another time, you find an email exchange on my laptop between some girl and me, entirely innocent in content, but then why haven’t I told you about her? Back home, I’ve seen butchers dice meat, and sometimes pieces string together because the cut isn’t clean. We hold on like that too. Unhappy together, but what if we’re unhappier apart? I think, at times, we would be. Because, no matter what, we do have fun. We sing a lot, with me on the guitar. A bottle of whisky. You dancing on the bed. We still drive around the city at night, and eat ice cream, and go to gigs.

But eventually, all this is not enough.

One evening, after a fight about I don’t even remember what, I storm out of your flat and go to my friend’s house to spend the night. We drink. There’s meat being cooked. We sample some weed from the hills. Some time just before dawn, when I’m lying awake in an unfamiliar room, I send you a text. It’s the coward’s way out, I know, but maybe that’s all I am.

I say I can’t do this any more. That it’s over.

You don’t reply. Not then. Maybe you never will.

I stare at the screen. The light fades, and it finally dies into darkness.

THE CARETAKER (#u0c166341-01c0-53c2-991b-abf528b6181c)

YOU’RE HALF MY age, maybe younger, but I see you and I want you.

I’ve felt it before, this kind of want. It’s raw and easy, and instantly recognizable, like hunger, and as uncomplicated – mouth to gut. With you, though, I’m afraid.

At this time of night, it might be the alcohol. How much have I had to drink? Always one too many. In my head, that familiar lightness, and the hall in which this gathering is taking place has taken on a certain hazy glow.

I see you clearly as you step into the room. You stand uncertainly for a moment, glance about you, and walk across to where the door opens towards a small lawn. You stop just beyond the glow of the wood burner. Why would you do that? It’s December, and cold, and your dress – if that’s what it can be called – won’t do much to keep you warm. It’s a cross between kimono and lab coat, with sleeves that swirl like windmills. On my wife it would look like an eccentric bathrobe, but you it suits, that touch of the dramatic. You seem to be a woman to whom something is always about to happen.

I watch you from a distance; sip my whisky – both in unhurried pleasure. I am called to your face. That nose, that sweep of brow, something about your chin. Your hair is long, but swept deliciously away from your neck, piled on top. You are pleasingly – not conspicuously – tall. As a child you must have been awkward, gangly, I’m certain of it, but not now, not any more. And if I were a poet I’d find a way to describe your body as it deserves to be. All that comes to mind is a tree, a cypress, whose leaves shimmer in the sunlight.

I watch as you gaze into the wood burner, your face indecipherable. Are you thoughtful? Bored? Dulled by your surroundings? Quietly contemplating setting the place on fire? For the moment, nobody joins you; you stand alone while the people around you ebb and flow. It doesn’t seem like you know anyone and no one else knows you. In which case, why are you here? I edge closer, and am accosted by acquaintances. Hard not to run into somebody I don’t know. It’s a large gathering, teeming with fat journalists and faded writers. All right, that’s unfair and untrue. It’s a nicely cultured lot; some who’ve known each other for years, and pride themselves on their perspicacious social contacts and good intentions. This is some book launch or the other, I’m not sure. More like an excuse for all of us to gather and drink middlingly expensive alcohol, eye each other’s partners, check out the new youngsters on the scene. You can spot them a mile away. They’re eager, and they smile a lot, and say things like, ‘Yes, I’m a poet.’

Perhaps you’re a friend of one of these youngsters, for somehow, you aren’t quite … indigenous. You seem – and I’m not prone to using the word – unreal. Suddenly, I grow afraid you’ll walk into the shadowy edges of the lawn and I’ll lose you. If I don’t speak to you now, you’ll step away from the fire and disappear.

So I walk up and ask why you don’t stand closer to the burner.

‘It’s pointless.’

‘To keep yourself from freezing to death?’

‘Perhaps. Only it’s much worse to warm just your hands, don’t you think? Or your – back.’ I think you almost said ‘ass’, but maybe I seem dignified (read ‘old’), and you haven’t drunk enough wine yet. Besides, for now, we’re strangers.

‘I’d rather be cold all over.’

‘Or warm all over.’

Did that sound cheap? I took care to say ‘warm’ instead of ‘hot’.

You turn to me.

Your eyes fall on my neck. I’m certain you’re thinking, ‘Oh god, he wears cravats.’ I’ve always felt they suit me; that a tie is a touch too plebeian. Although maybe to you, it makes me look ancient. I’m barely past fifty, but at twenty-something, that must seem light years away.