Blindsight Read online

  It fills me with happiness and makes me weep. I want him to have memories to transport him there. But I don’t think he has a past any more, or any idea of the future; and if I exist in his mind at all it’s as a simple figure, standing still, and the shadow I make lies in a pool around my feet.

  We ate lunch at his place, then walked down Willis Street to the Roxy cinema, where I drew back.

  ‘No, Gordon. I’m not going to anything as stupid as that.’

  ‘Ah, come on. It’ll be fun. Marlene’s seen it. She says it’s great.’

  ‘Who’s Marlene?’

  ‘No one. Just a friend. She says this bloke gets smaller and smaller until he’s way down with amoebas and things like that. He has to fight a spider with a pin.’

  So we went to see The Incredible Shrinking Man. I sat through the early parts of it taking not much notice, thinking: Marlene, who’s she?, expanding the name into a person as the hero shrank. I filled in generosity, a happy nature, but could not endow her with intelligence – not on the evidence presented on the screen. Then the picture grabbed me. The hero, who began the story as a normal-sized man – I don’t remember his name or the actor’s name – shortens to only three feet tall, then his shrinking stops. He falls in love with a girl his own size. She’s not a dwarf, she’s perfectly formed. They’re standing together, they’re going to kiss. But yesterday he could look straight into her eyes. Today … Oh God, it’s started again, he’s shrinking again; and I felt myself getting smaller along with him. I felt his horror and despair, and took Gordon’s hand and hung on. After that he (the hero) lived in a doll’s house. He shrank to the size of a kewpie doll. The family cat tried to eat him. A spider chased him and he killed it with a pin. Finally he was outside in the grass and microscopic creatures moved by. We leave him there …

  ‘Gordon,’ I said in the street, still clutching his hand, ‘they should have found a way to make him grow again.’

  ‘Nope. He’ll be a germ. Maybe a cold germ, eh? Atchoo!’

  ‘Pictures shouldn’t end like that.’

  There are times when I dream – I nightmare – that I’m only half the size of a normal person but Gordon is always full-sized. Then I’m even more reduced, many-legged, my body flat. Slaters butt into me, their antennae feeling. Or I’m deep in a macaroni cheese of fungus gnat larvae, I’m bogged in their stickiness and greed, I’m suffocating, and I wake crying for Gordon but he’s never there. Sometimes I hear him laughing, as he laughed at me walking up Willis Street after the picture, and I think: It’s Gordon who’s the real one. I feel him in the room and turn on the light …

  ‘So Marlene liked it?’ I said, watching him cook spaghetti back at his place.

  ‘You might meet her tonight,’ he said.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘At the dance.’

  ‘Gordon, I’m not going dancing. I didn’t bring any clothes.’

  ‘What’s that you’re wearing?’

  ‘Don’t be stupid. I’ve got no shoes. I can’t dance in these.’

  ‘I guess you won’t meet Marlene then. Anyway, like I said, she’s just a friend.’

  I went up the ladder and laid out my good dress on the bed. I had brought it with me in case he took me to a restaurant. I’m always in fashion and always neat. It wasn’t made for dancing but it wouldn’t make me feel silly – just, I supposed, out of things. My shoes would do. I buy expensive shoes, featherweight, even for the street. I would only dance with Gordon once, see the real Marlene and come home. He wouldn’t be able to bring her back to his place afterwards.

  We ate spaghetti with meat sauce.

  ‘I’d like to see old Cyril with a plate of this,’ Gordon said.

  ‘Don’t. Don’t,’ I said. Picturing it made me feel ill.

  At nine o’clock we walked down to the Majestic Cabaret. We paid our money and went inside and I saw at once we did not belong. Our clothes were wrong. Our hair was wrong. It made me angry, not with Gordon and myself but with the people crowded into the hall, the girls in their flared skirts, the boys with their oiled quiffs and shaved sideburns and baggy trousers and pointed shoes. They brought my difference home to me – my seriousness, which was in my nature, not resulting from age. I wanted that weightiness for Gordon; I wanted him out of this trashy, cacophonous hell – and not back in his tin shack either, but where I’d placed him in imagination: in a house of his own, with a wife and family, and working at some job with a future. I knew Gordon could be serious like me.

  ‘Great, eh Alice?’ he said, grinning around.

  ‘I can’t dance to this sort of music.’

  ‘Yes you can.’ He tried to drag me on to the floor but I resisted.

  ‘Gordon, I won’t. I can’t. I’ve never learned that stuff.’

  He saw that I had set myself and that I was more than reluctant, I was fierce.

  ‘OK. Just stand and watch a bit. You’ll get in the mood. I’m going to find Marlene.’

  The music went on gyrating, hitting me with punches and slaps. Blunt and thick one moment, sharp the next, and always insistent, it forced its way into me, a kind of rape. The dancing seemed orgiastic. The girls’ faces, everyone’s faces, were, I thought, both eager and closed, exhausted and used. Yet it was only a few minutes after nine o’clock. What would this place be like at midnight?

  A boy asked me to dance.

  ‘I’m waiting for someone,’ I said.

  ‘Who’d want you anyway?’ he sneered, and went away.

  I moved into a corner behind tables and sat on a bench. I knew who would want me but I did not wish him here; I wished myself there. Richie Ayres strengthened his hold on me, and Gordon faltered, then my love for him picked up and moved on in a different gear, though seeming to have a missed beat after that. I could not choose for him or make him happy. But, I told myself, I could point and tell.

  I saw him through an alleyway in the crowd, dancing with a girl in a lolly-pink dress. She’s no good, I thought, she’s not right. I knew it from her face, which was breathless and silly. I sensed that she was damaged. She danced energetically but was intentional, not free. Gordon was not free either, in spite of the way he rolled her on his hip and slid her between his legs and pulled her out again like a baby born. It was clever stuff. I would not have thought him capable. Yet he was treating her gently and weaving a net of safety around her – and I thought again: There’s something wrong, if that’s Marlene.

  I came out from my barrier of chairs and waited for them at the edge of the dance. The music increased its bullying sound but I refused to let the knocks and blows stupefy me. All I wanted was a closer look at this half-finished girl and a word with Gordon, then I would go home to my own hemisphere and find grown-up people and the peace and pleasure that lay ahead for me with Richie Ayres.

  The music burped like a drunkard and collapsed. My brother brought his girl to me in his branchlike arm.

  ‘Alice, this is Marlene. We work at the hospital together.’

  They were breathless and sweating and both as happy as could be. I wanted to turn my back on the girl. She had cherry lips, plump cheeks, innocent eyes, a wanting look. I sensed that she was corruptible.

  ‘How do you do?’ I said.

  ‘Oh, hold me up, I’m going to collapse,’ Marlene cried. She loosened her knees comically, pushing herself more tightly into Gordon’s arm. ‘I thought I was never going to make it,’ she said.

  ‘You were great. We were both great. What do you reckon, Alice? Weren’t we great?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Very professional.’

  ‘Now I want to see you two dance,’ Marlene cried. ‘Brother and sister dancing. I bet you’ll be good.’

  ‘I don’t do jiving,’ I said. ‘Gordon, can I have a word? Then I think I’ll go home.’

  ‘We’ve just got here.’

  ‘It’s not my sort of place. And I’ve got a headache. I know where the key is. You can stay as late as you like. If you’ll just come out in the street for a minute �
��’

  His judging look again, and a weighing movement of his hand – and I knew I was in his palm, bulking large and awkward there, but that he felt little weight. I was enraged, and said: ‘Gordon, now.’

  ‘Hold on, Sis. I want to get Marlene a drink. Stay and talk to her. I’ll be a sec.’

  He backed away, then turned and vanished around the edge of the new dance that had started. Marlene put her hand on my forearm.

  ‘I’m sorry you’ve got a headache. I’ve got some Aspros if that’ll help.’

  Her hand was damp, unpleasant, monkeyish. I dropped my arm, leaving her suspended. She smiled at me and tried again.

  ‘He’s only being polite. You can’t get a drink until supper. What he’s doing is gone for a wee. He just didn’t like to say. But if you do need Aspros you can swallow them with water in the toilet.’

  ‘No thank you,’ I said.

  ‘Gordon is the nicest boy I’ve ever met. He’s the kindest. It must be wonderful being his sister.’

  ‘Gordon can be anything he likes,’ I said.

  Marlene looked at me with fright.

  ‘He does stupid things,’ I said. ‘Like working at the hospital.’

  ‘But he loves it there,’ she said.

  ‘And he’s not a boy. He’s twenty-seven. Did you know that?’

  Marlene’s eyes looked for escape, going here and there. ‘Why don’t you like me?’ she said.

  ‘I don’t know you,’ I shouted, for the music was deafening. ‘I’ll go mad with this noise. He needs someone grown up.’

  ‘I am. I am,’ she said, starting to cry. Then she whimpered – and perhaps I imagine it, but I believe she said: ‘Where is he? This is Cherry Stones. I wanted to dance Cherry Stones with him.’

  ‘Tell him I’ve gone,’ I said.

  It was pity for him that made me leave. His sister had made his girlfriend cry – he would not know what to do about it. I imagined him sliding back and forth, and saw a bend come into his frame – love pulling on love. It was a horrible moment, which made me turn and make a cat-spit of rage at Marlene, and then made me run from the hall. I understood Gordon would love her. In her helpless way she was perfect for him.

  I had gone only twenty yards up the street when he caught me by the arm. I jerked away. ‘Go back. She’s crying,’ I said.

  ‘What did you say to her? What is it with you, Alice?’

  Again I was judged, and it maddened me. I felt so certain, so solid, so right.

  ‘You call her a girlfriend? She’s a dumby,’ I said. ‘What do you think she’s got in her head except pop songs and ice-cream and babies and baking cakes? You’ve got a brain, so what are you doing with her? You know how you’ll end up? Stuck in the suburbs with six kids and a mortgage and a wife who wants a new perm and nothing more than that.’

  ‘It sounds all right to me,’ he smiled. But I saw he was sad – and sad for me.

  ‘Oh, go away. Ruin your life,’ I said. Tears ran down my face. I was nowhere with him.

  ‘Do you want me to tell you about Marlene?’ he said.

  ‘No, I don’t. You couldn’t. There’s nothing there.’

  ‘She’s been sick.’

  ‘What with?’

  ‘I can’t tell you that.’

  I guessed something female or maybe an abortion and I felt myself sink deeper into loss of him.

  ‘I’m helping her, that’s all. She’s getting better.’

  ‘She’ll marry you. That’s what she’s after.’

  ‘Maybe,’ he said.

  ‘Oh Gordon, don’t do that. You can be whatever you like,’ I cried.

  ‘I work at the hospital,’ he said.

  I looked back at the hall and saw Marlene outside the door. She was alone. She was forlorn.

  ‘Well, work there,’ I said, ‘if that’s what you want. But I’m not coming to see you again. I can’t, Gordon. I can’t watch you do this to yourself.’

  ‘Do what?’ he said.

  I made no answer but shook off his hand and walked away. Cyril Handy first, and now Marlene. I loved my brother deeply, and to distraction, as people say, but he had stepped down, and away, and I could not reach him any more – although he reached me always, was always at my side. I went to his shack in Ghuznee Street and packed my bag. I left the key hidden in the pile of bricks and walked to the YWCA and persuaded them to take me, and in the morning I caught the ferry to Nelson and Richie Ayres.

  Richie Ayres and Marlene. We made our choices. But Gordon had ways of seeing not open to me. I had thought I was the active one while he stayed passive.

  I was wrong. There are more ways of being than that.

  When I told Adrian about meeting Marlene I glossed over my cruelty. ‘I was stupid,’ I said. ‘I was a snob.’

  ‘You still are,’ Adrian said.

  Chapter Five

  ‘I never saw Gordon again after that night.’

  My lies are coming harder while my glibness improves. Adrian’s interest subsides while mine increases. He has kept his promise to his father, as far as he can, and put it aside. For me, though, Gordon has come out. I balance each lie, each misdirection, with the repeated truth: I love you, Gordon.

  I have seen him twice in the last week, walking in Molesworth Street. His head goes before him like a tortoise head. No, that’s wrong, for tortoises keep their eyes front. Gordon’s don’t lift from the pavement. His long step is reduced to a shuffle. His sneakers, not a pair, loll their tongues. His face … I don’t wish to describe it. Keep to the filthy quilt he trails over his shoulder and the plastic bucket in his hand. There’s a beanie, like Adrian’s, on his head. If he ever looks up it will fall off. The black and yellow colours belong to the football team called the Hurricanes.

  I sit on the bench by the Appeal Court and watch college girls step out of his way. What does he make of their shrieking conversations? What does he make of the woman on the bench? Perhaps he sees only my ankles and shoes. They’re Ferry ankles, Gordon. Remember how Mother described them: aristocratic. It’s no wonder one of them broke so easily in a West Coast creek. But look higher. Please Gordon, look at me. You’ll see that other Ferry possession: love.

  What do I know about Gordon? Hundreds of things. And I know nothing. I don’t know where ‘nothing’ comes from. Or remember now the source from which I collected ‘things’.

  A thing: was it 1968 or several years later? Was it Lyndon Baines Johnson or Spiro Agnew? One of the American oafs came on a visit. Wellington was full of his protectors – crewcut secret servicemen in natty suits. Johnson / Agnew took a ride on the cable car. Gordon – oh Gordon, what did you look like then? – was sitting in the little park halfway up, minding his business. Suddenly Americans surrounded him, cutting off his sun: big men, scrubbed, shaved to the bone. ‘Who are you, buddy? What’s your name, buddy? What do you do?’

  Gordon looked at them calmly. The storyteller, whoever it was, says that he smiled. ‘Sometimes I eat scones,’ Gordon explained.

  They gave him to New Zealand security men, who gave him to the police, who kept him in a cell for an hour, then let him go. They knew Gordon. They saw him around the streets all the time.

  I want to tell Adrian that story but I can’t.

  I’m not telling him about Richie Ayres either.

  Richie, thick-bodied and thick-armed. He was, in stance, as upright as a post but inside he leaned towards himself – always, in all weathers, in extremes of anticipation and completion and in acts of generosity. He rubbed his chest, a kind of frottage, while pleasing me – I don’t mean in bed, I mean with a word or smile or simply with his coming into the room.

  Richie followed avidity with indifference but could, if it seemed called for, overlay those primary behaviours with good humour and intelligence. It was called for on meeting, on getting to know, on setting up. After that? Richie knew his women and knew they wanted more of him. I was no different. I lost myself while seeming to gain him.

  He had hair on his shoulder
s and down his back. I rested my cheek on it like a cushion. His spatulate fingers crept on my skin, exploring wherever they pleased. His eyes, his mouth, his long, long anthropoid arms …

  There’s no whole Richie, just bits like that. I could go on and he won’t exist when I’ve finished with him. But there’s a love story too, and how can that be when there’s no one with a proper sense of being on either side?

  The most I can claim is that I did not let him invade my work beyond what is normal when a person is in love. He did not damage my concentration but existed like an electrical charge strengthening it: he hummed in me. Then, with my task over, he possessed me again. But I’ll say for myself that without my work setting up a humming of its own, I would not have had a self to present to Richie. It saved me, in the end, from dissolution, and grew by steady accretion, like a pearl, until I possessed the knowledge, in middle life, and beyond – I have it now – that Richie was an irritant, no more than that, a piece of grit around which my proper life has grown. That’s not to say my proper life is happy or virtuous, simply that it’s mine, not someone else’s.

  Have I said yet that he was only twenty-four? I conceal it even from myself. Just like Gordon, he taught English and social studies and, like Gordon, commercial practice and physical education. He mastered those two subjects by instinct and aptitude. Richie was a better teacher than Gordon, less on the side of his pupils but more on their wavelength.

  One Wednesday afternoon I took an hour off work and drove to the school in the little car I’d bought. I parked where no one would see me – Richie did not want me ‘hanging round the school’ – and watched the staff play the second fifteen in a rugby match. Richie was a forward. He tossed boys left and right like straw-filled puppets and bullocked over for a try, leaving his torn jersey in grasping hands. ‘Hey, Gorilla Man, hey King Kong,’ boys on the terrace shouted. Richie shook his fist in mock rage. He beat his chest. They cheered and whistled. Late in the game he barged at the line for a second try but opposing forwards halted him, forced him in slow motion to the ground and piled on top, all seven or eight. The backs ran in and joined them. A mountain of boys lay on top of Richie – and the mountain heaved, he forced his way out, head and arms, and lobbed the ball to one of his team-mates, who scored. The boys ripped Richie’s second jersey off.