I Can See in the Dark

Chapter 11

If only I had a woman!

It gnawed at me, this desire, this longing to be part of a couple, but I’m no good with women. I continued to send Sister Anna long, lingering glances, even though I knew it would never lead to anything. I don’t arouse anything in women, bitter experience has taught me that; I’ve spent my whole life in total solitude. She was off work for a couple of days, but it couldn’t have been anything serious because soon she was back again. I was on the late shift and ran across her in the corridor. But she didn’t stroke my arm as usual, her eyes were distant, and she passed me without a word. Her indifference was almost unbearable. I was used to a smile and a passing touch, and now I got nothing. I carried on pacing the corridors like a pauper, numbed by my yearning for attention, for life is tough enough as it is, and I need some comfort.

At three o’clock we had a short meeting. Dr Fischer sat rubbing his temple as usual. He seemed distant as well, as if his thoughts were somewhere far away from the ward office. He was surprised, he confessed, that some of his many prescriptions weren’t having the desired effect. He could hardly have known that I was flushing the tablets down the toilet, and that occasionally, just for fun, I would swap them around, and give Waldemar Rommen the pills that Mr Larsson should have had, and vice versa. It wasn’t really of any consequence, but this small, mundane hoax gave me a frisson of excitement, because I was making a difference. Here, to explain these destructive tendencies of mine, I could say that my mother used to beat me with a stick. But it wouldn’t be true. In reality she was just taciturn and indifferent, only coming out with endless critical saws about how life ought to be lived. We’ve only ourselves to blame, she would say, you reap what you sow. You’ve made your bed, now you can lie on it. There was no end to them. But she never hit me. We never had much contact. She was always engrossed in the house, all the things that had to be cleaned and polished, watered and looked after. I think she felt more for her house plants than she did for me. There was something about her eyes and her hands when she held a flower between her fingers, a sudden tenderness. I’ve no idea what made her bring me into the world, presumably it was an accident. These are the tedious thoughts I struggle with as I walk up and down the ward’s corridors. With my predilections and my sharp nails.

In and out of the old people’s rooms.

Aged wretches, lying in the antechamber of death.

If only there were a bond between me and Anna. A line to Sali Singh, a thin thread between me and Dr Fischer, something that kept me right in the world. But I have no such link to others, no ropes holding me to the ground, no hawser to stop me drifting. Once I came across a dog on the road. I was just a small boy then, but the memory is so clear. It stopped to sniff, and I grabbed it firmly by the ears and peered into its yellow eyes, stood there holding it fast. The dog looked back at me with the intensity of a predator. And I discovered something far down there, in the depths of the black pupils which evoked a sort of resonance deep within me. That we were distantly related. But it was so fleeting. The dog pulled itself free and vanished, and I was no longer sure of what I’d seen.

Anna is the only one who brings out anything good in me. I follow her about the corridors like a puppy, waiting for her kindly hand, waiting for her scent, her slim feet in their white shoes. But now she seems distant. Something is distracting her, and I’m being excluded.

I often think that only I inhabit this terrain.

At the foot of this volcano, in the harsh, barren landscape where nothing grows.