Craig Harrison - The Quiet Earth

I can not whisper any consolations. It is never any use and the waste of words made in the past to people who never heard has drained a hollow inside me, of words sent into mute spaces and abandoned spirals. Hard to remember the time when I tried, and wished people to listen.

She begins to move her arms feverishly in small movements over the bedclothes. I put my hand down to hold her wrist but it pulls away. Her face frowns and tightens and I lean over and gently hold her arm.

I sense that I am being made to play a part. He has put that idea in my head, said it, in various ways, shown it, over and again. It was there, on the motorway, the feeling of being posed in a scene, the hills ranged around, the concrete ramp an immense stage or set and the silence waiting. The day before, he was alone, and given a warning. He came back with blood on the car. Then he made me drive with him. I had to be made accomplice to this.

The daylight seeps between the curtains. I reach up, pause for a moment, incomprehensibly stopped in the most normal of movements; then I pull the cord to split the curtains open. The light falls into the room in a soft rush like something which has been dammed.

I hear him returning. He will not have found any evidence to let us know who she is or how she came to be there. I can tell that we will not be able to find out. I am facing facts which seem to be part of a pattern of necessities. It demands that she remain as inexplicable as ourselves and the world we are in.

He is angry that the car has refused to provide clues. I think he must have almost torn it to pieces. Nothing.

‘Is she waking up?’

‘I think so.’

‘Is that good?’

‘She’ll be in pain.’

‘Get the morphine.’

I shake my head. ‘Not yet.’

An hour later when I come down from the dining room with food and coffee, she is moaning and threshing about, trying to say words. The fragments of syllables could be Samoan. Her dark hair spreads over the pillow and tangles across her forehead as she turns from side to side. Apirana tries to hold her down.

‘You know how to give injections?’ he asks.

‘Yes. But I’m not sure if we should.’

He looks impatient. ‘Give me the hypodermic.’

I hesitate. His lips compress.

‘Give me it.’

‘Do you know how?’

‘’Course I do.’

He says it flatly, cutting argument, holding his other hand out, snapping his fingers impatiently. I hand the filled hypodermic to him. He lifts it, tests for air bubbles. Yes, he knows how.

‘Hold her.’

I lean over and steady the arms. Very cool, he swabs a vein on her left inner forearm with antiseptic, throws the cotton wool aside and sinks the needle in. I look away.

I suppose his photographs don’t show all he did in Asia.

He is by her, smoothing the hair aside from her forehead as her movements slacken and the pain seems to disappear. And he is dabbing her face with a clean towel moistened with cold water. I watch him from the corner of my eye as I make the coffee at the far end of the room. His image is still the face in the photograph, smiling over human wreckage, the meat of dead people. What does he think he can do? Make this one come alive?

I have pocketed powerful tablets from the hospital. I stir his coffee, turning my back to him.

No.

The day over the harbour looks white and rainy and hard like a ceramic basin in the light of a bathroom, flecked with water. I take a bottle of whisky from the bar and go down the stairs to the room again. He wants whisky, not coffee. The room smells medical. Antiseptic and soap. The drug has stunned the woman to a new kind of rest. As before, it is deceptive; this time, a chemical parody.

He shoves some food into his mouth with his fingers and sits heavily in one of the armchairs. I sit opposite and sip the hot black coffee; he swills the whisky from the bottle, coughing, wiping his mouth on his sleeve and staring up at the ceiling. We say nothing. When he speaks, half the bottle is empty and he is speaking to himself.

‘There was no way I could have missed her,’ he says. Then, ‘Like she was hiding, and she just ran out.’

After a while, he says more quietly, in a slightly different tone of voice, ‘You know, they look just like us.’

This is so strange and disconnected that I stare across at him. He seems to be asleep. And then, in a few minutes, an agitation comes over him as though he had absorbed the convulsive movements of the woman. What is happening to him appears trance-like, cataleptic; he is involved in unseen events. I wonder how safe it is to be near him. My gun is in the next room. Should I—

He begins to speak to whatever he sees, evenly at first, but increasing in intensity. ‘There was nothing I could do. Shouldn’t be there. No. Request information. Vee Cee, sector one; repeat. No, it’s not them. Get out for God’s sake, get out . Oh Jesus. Jesus, no. No .’

He breathes faster and writhes in the chair, his hands and arms flexing in spasms, left hand clutching the bottle to his chest. Slowly the movements stop and his head comes forward, chin down. He draws his arms around himself and shakes his head, his voice so soft it becomes almost indecipherable.

‘Don’t want report. It never happened. No need you see, no need for that. Doesn’t make any difference, now. All of them? Look at this. Go on. What’s wrong? Can’t hurt you when they’re dead. Too late now. What they want to hide for, eh? Hiding, there. Ran out. Close range, rapid, seven point six two.’

There is a pause, then the tone changes again.

‘They look like us…Like the Maori…Look at them… look…’ Then, suddenly: ‘ Kill the bastards! Fire! Kill them! ’

There are still words, receding, repeated; finally they go away.

He stays asleep for more than an hour. I get up and move to the window to sit by the woman. The buildings outside seem to be crowding closer because we are on a lower floor, great blocks of wet stone compressing the space and silence. The threat I had felt from the piles of land out there has forced itself into the room. There is a scent of death, an unmistakeable compound of blood and rancid adrenalin, and something else beyond that, more bitter and frightening. I am aware of it. I shall be ready.

I move, and he wakes and looks around. He rubs his face in his hands, tensing his fingers against his forehead.

‘What did I say?’ he asks.

‘Just…there was nothing you could do.’

He puts the bottle on the carpet and leans forward with his head in his hands, wearily. There is another long silence. Then, ‘They say you should remember.’

‘Who does?’

‘The psychos. Head-medics. Shouldn’t hide what’s in your mind. Bad for you. Bullshit. It just plays over and over and you can’t change it. So what’s the fucken’ use?’ He looks up. ‘If you forget…you’re lucky. God, I know that.’

I walk across to the table by his chair to make some more coffee. And when he lifts his face up from the intentness of staring down at his clasped hands with the fingers tightly clenched round one another, I’m confronted by an expression almost like pleading. It struggles to keep its hold on his features as though other impulses are straining against betrayal. An attempt to pronounce what could be the word ‘please’, directed towards me, half succeeds.

I stand quite still, my features not reacting. At the heart of this disaster he wants me to rescue him, to make a gesture of redemption and unravel everything by reaching out with whatever words are needed to absolve and forgive him. Of course I cannot do that. I make no sign, give nothing away of understanding or even knowing.

The emotion goes from his expression, replaced by a twitch of self-contempt; then he turns and he gets up and blunders away to the darker end of the room. The bathroom door slams, as though kicked.