Craig Harrison - The Quiet Earth

I do not feel able to think about the tricks of my own mind. All the cellular energies are being expended in defence, even when the future is an inconceivable blank in which the survival of the mind can serve no useful purpose. I would like to go on living to feel the sun on my face and to have the taste of good food and drink between my teeth; but not to be forced to think, and not to have any more dreams. I accept there would not be any love. As existence reduced to its essentials, this would be less than animal. The decision that it shall prepare itself as a possibility does not seem to be mine, to be made by me. It is merely there. It always has been.

We sit looking out over the city, the darkness so powerful that the dead tower blocks can only be detected by the high spaces of straight-edged black in the night where they blot out the stars.

The faces of our reflections in the window look at each other in the glass.

‘What the hell.’ He puts the torch on the table. ‘Your turn to switch the power off.’

I descend to the generator and make it silent; the lights fade, suck the darkness in; it compresses the yellow patch of the torch. When I get back to the suite on the eighth floor I find he has closed the connecting door between our rooms. I am not surprised. I suppose it is locked from his side. I gently press the catch on the door handle. It slides in with a click.

Now it is locked both ways.

The terror comes swiftly and simply. One evening towards the end of the second week as we are eating our evening meal at the hotel Apirana says, ‘What do we know, then?’

It’s the question which we have been avoiding by unspoken agreement and I know instantly that I have to face the demand that it poses. He has been patient. But he has decided to confront the truth and, in effect, call my bluff. I think he realises it will not do any good. Yet he feels he has to ask. I shake my head, spread my hands out.

‘I’ve checked almost everything…’

‘And we’re no wiser?’

‘No.’

The next question is the one which will not be asked: What do we do with our lives, then? In a way, it is already answered. He shows that he knows this, now.

‘You know that car I was telling you about?’

‘Yes.’

He had seen a car called a Lotus Elite in a salesroom a few days earlier. Apparently it has always been his dream to own one. I can hardly see the point. I know little about cars; I’ve never understood the attraction they hold for some people.

‘I think I’ll get it tomorrow.’ He looks away. ‘Think I’ll, you know, go for a drive.’

We sit silent for a long time. My appetite has gone. I drink a little wine but it seems bitter and metallic.

What he has said has enormous implications. It’s more than the abandonment of the pretence we’ve been enacting for nearly two weeks. He is saying that might as well stop; it’s useless. But he isn’t just going to lie on the beach in the sun and go to sleep. The car, in the terms in which he has described it, represents his ultimate wish; the last request of the condemned man. He hasn’t been so explicit. Yet I know what it means, and he intends that I should.

It occurs to me that I have not properly decided in the last two weeks how much we have been humouring each other in prolonging the charade, maintaining the illusion of purpose in what we’ve been doing. There’s no rancour or recrimination involved now. He isn’t trying to blame me, and I’m not going to accuse him of giving up too easily. I wonder if he wants to kill himself with the car. I don’t think so. No, it’s just one of his final options, to admit by stealing the beautiful car that the world of people with power of retribution has gone forever; and by driving nowhere and back, he will acknowledge futility. It is odd that this should appear to be understandable and frightening all at once. We confront it so easily. I had not thought it would be like this.

‘You want to come?’ he asks, as we drink coffee next day. The weather is still hot but the sky has gone blank, like paper. He has dressed in white corduroy jeans and a Cadbury-purple shirt. This must be how he has conceived it in his fantasies, to impress his friends and women.

‘No, I’ve got some reading to do.’

I know I’m expected to refuse. Should I ask where he’s going, or for how long? I can’t. The normal structures of those sentences are so commonplace they would reduce even this to bathos. He looks defiantly happy. It’s pathetic. I stare out of the window.

There’s an interval of half-waking on the border between consciousness and sleep when it’s hard to remember where you are; when dreams increase in power and clarity and what you know to be the real world seems to present itself as an unbelievable absurdity. Since this real world has become just that, these moments have increased, elongated, blurred the boundaries.

He goes out. I hear the sound of a car. It shrinks into the distance.

Gradually, as I sit there, the numbness which has fixed on my mind begins to fade and I start to think what I should do.

Now might be the chance to break open Perrin’s box. I could use some of the tools Apirana has collected in the basement car park.

After a few minutes I get up and go downstairs to get the key to the boot of my car from my room. I walk along the corridor and go into the room. Then I realise that although we have locked the connecting door between our rooms, we still leave the outer corridor doors unlocked during the day. I stop and go back into the corridor and pause. His door handle moves under the pressure of my hand. I enter his room slowly. And pause again. The curtains are drawn back. The bed is neatly made, army-style, all wrapped tight. Clothes hang to attention in the wardrobe. I walk forward carefully. What should I look for? I want a clue, something to tell me a fraction more about him than he has told me so far.

There’s a duffle bag, black with white stripes, a small suitcase, and an army kitbag, standing near the wall. If I disturb anything, he will know. I face the case and gently lower it flat to the floor. Then I press back the fastener clips. They spring aside. It’s unlocked. I life the lid. There seems to be nothing inside but some old pairs of denim jeans, maroon T-shirts, and paperback novels. Beneath all that, an LP, The Best of Feliciano , the cover frayed and inscribed in biro: Love to Api XXX Bubby .

I close the case and place it back precisely by the wall. I am sweating. Moving across the room I look over the dressing table. Various odds and ends: a plastic hairbrush, the white cord for an electric razor, a bottle of aftershave lotion, a small vinyl picture holder propped against the frame of the wall mirror containing a black-and-white photograph of a serious-faced Maori girl. The Gideon Bible, scraps of paper sticking out from the red-edged pages. A clip of bullets. A silver coin, foreign, possibly Malaysian, threaded onto a necklace chain of silver links. This is below the girl’s photograph. I look up and see my reflection tensed in the mirror.

The wardrobe door is half open. Inside, mainly shirts on hangers. The black trousers, neatly creased. A dark jacket. I put my hand into the wardrobe and swing the jacket carefully round a little. There is a wallet in the inside right pocket; I lift it out. Old, brown imitation leather. It opens to reveal some ten- and twenty-dollar bills, a driver’s licence, a plastic identity card, the photograph he showed me earlier of his girlfriend, possibly the same face as the other photograph but hard to tell; nothing else, except a few addresses on a folding calendar card bearing the insignia of an insurance company. I slip each item back. As I hold the wallet up to replace it in the pocket my fingers trace the edge of what seems to be another piece of card. I look closer. There must be another compartment. Yes. A zip is concealed under a fold. I unfasten it and take out a cellophane wrapper. It contains six coloured photographs; Polaroid, glossy.