Уолтер Мосли - Odyssey

The blind man went over the scene in his mind again and again. The attack meant nothing but a mild headache. He had only a twenty-dollar bill and three low-limit credit cards in his wallet. The driver’s license was useless and his credit cards were now canceled. He was thankful for the attack because it meant that sight was possible.

He wondered if he should pound his head against the wall until he was either sighted or dead.

He even got up and walked to the wall that led from the open kitchen to the bedroom. He pressed his forehead on the plasterboard, then reared back and thumped it against the hard surface.

“I’ll break the wall before I feel anything,” he said.

And then he remembered something. When he was lying in the hospital bed, fully awake, the world wasn’t spinning. He talked and thought and lay on his back just like anybody else.

He took a deep breath and made his way back to the sofa. He sat down, pulled his shoulders up straight, and allowed his body to fall to the side. There was a breathless silence, a shuddering in the air around his head, and then slowly the world started to swing in a wide and ever-faster arc. Sovereign used both arms to catapult himself back up.

The last time he’d cried he was nineteen years old and his brother, Drum-Eddie, was gone forever, on the run from the FBI.

That evening Solar James said, “Drum is no longer a son of mine,” to Winifred, Zenith, and Sovereign. Four days later Sovereign was on a Greyhound bus headed for New York. Eddie had always said that he wanted to go there one day. Maybe, Sovereign hoped, he would, sooner or later, see his brother walking down 5th Avenue with two women on his arms.

“Mr. James,” a voice, a woman’s voice, said. “Mr. James.”

There was a gentle touch to his shoulder. Not a shake but merely the pressure of a hand. Not enough to move him.

“Yes, Galeta?”

“What happened to you?” the Greek cleaning lady asked. He felt her touch on his right ear, just below the bandages the doctors had affixed to his head.

“I fell,” he said, “tripped on the grating going around the building. Three stitches and a bump.”

“Are you okay?”

“Oh yeah. Good Lord gave me an extra-thick skull so I could make it down the street of hard knocks.”

“Can I do anything for you?”

“Just do what you do, honey. Get me my iPod and I’ll sit here listening to books on tape while you run that lionlike vacuum cleaner over the walls and ceilings.”

“It’s not so loud.” He could hear her smile. “And I only do the floors.”

She laughed and touched his cheek with her palm.

Galeta was a few years older than Sovereign, a Greek woman with dark olive skin and big freckles that had girth and texture. While physically strong she was emotionally fragile, and so he couldn’t bring himself to tell her about the mugging. She would have worried for days about him and also for her own safety.

But there was another reason he lied. He saw the attack, the flash of vision, and the woman who helped him as part of a private domain in his mind. The experience was like a secret treasure that he guarded over jealously.

So while Galeta ran the washing machine and dryer, dishwasher and vacuum cleaner, Sovereign tuned his MP3 player to The Hungry Tide , a novel by Amitav Ghosh. He loved the lush language and broad description wrought by the Indian writer. He got lost in the names and accents, places and belief systems. He listened for hours, seeing with verbal imagery and metaphor rather than rays of light. When the charge on his battery ran down he took off the sound-reducing headphones and realized that the apartment was silent. Galeta was gone.

He knew that there would be fresh milk in the refrigerator, twelve microwavable meals in the freezer, and instant coffee on the counter. New changes of clothes would be in the proper dresser drawers, and his bathroom would be set up with everything in just the right place.

He found the electric cord for his music device where it always was, plugged into a power strip on the high countertop. He sat there waiting for the device to rejuvenate, thinking about Toni’s ochre dress and the pain he associated with sight.

He enjoyed the ache festering on the side of his head. It was like the promise of something miraculous — a seedling sprouting against a large pebble, an unborn chick pecking at its shell. He pressed against the bandages, hoping to find a connection to his eyes or his repressed emotions.

What trauma had caused his condition? He wondered if it might have been the loss of his brother, or the fact that his parents never once came east to visit him.

He went to sit on the white sofa, unable to pierce the veil of sight or his emotions. He sat upright, imagining himself an ancient king walled up in a cave because of some arcane ritual that had to be enacted for power to pass along.

Who would replace him at Techno-Sym? Had he made enough of an impact to change the racial path of the company?

His mind drifted from one topic to another. This wasn’t an unusual occurrence since he’d become a patient of Dr. Offeran. One thought led to another and after a while his mind seemed to be working on its own rather than by his direction.

He found himself thinking about the day he told his father that he was leaving for New York.

“That’s where your brother always said he wanted to go,” Solar James said to his son, his tone hard and unforgiving.

“I’m not interested in UCLA,” Sovereign said.

“Did you help your brother plan that bank robbery?”

“I don’t believe he did it.”

“Because if you did,” Solar said, as if his son had not spoken, “I will tell the FBI in a minute. No son or sons of mine will humiliate me like that.”

“I plan to get a job and go to college,” Sovereign replied.

“I hope you don’t expect me to help you. Why, the money I give might go to harboring a bank robber.”

“That’s stupid.”

“What did you say to me?”

“I said that it’s stupid if you think Drum-Eddie would need money if you also think that he robbed a bank. If he robbed a bank what would he need with your little paycheck?”

“Get your ass outta my house.”

Those were the last words exchanged between father and son. His mother had written. His sister had not. Eight years later Winifred called to tell him that his father had died of a heart attack. That was the first year of his new job at Techno-Sym, then called Binatics Inc. Sovereign told his mother that he couldn’t take the time off, that they’d let him go, but this was when the company was just starting and he’d lose the chance to make something of himself in the corporate system.

“Okay,” Winifred had said.

“You fucking bastard,” Zenith told him fifteen minutes later on a separate call.

It was again two thirty-seven in the morning. Sovereign marveled at the perfect synchronicity of his sleeplessness.

“Please say a city and state,” the automated operator of the phone system said.

“New York, New York,” Sovereign James said.

“Private listing or business?” the soulless voice inquired.

“Private.”

“State the first and last name of the person you’re trying to reach.”

“Toni Loam.”

The lifeless intelligence seemed bemused or maybe bewildered.

After a few moments of silence it said, “Please hold for an operator.”

Sovereign almost hung up then. He was about to move the phone from his head when a man’s voice asked, “T-o-n-y L-o-m-e?”

“I’m not sure. It could be T-o-n-i because it’s a woman. And I don’t know the spelling of the last name.”

“Checking... checking. No T-o-n-i L-o-m-e.”

“Try L-o-a-m,” Sovereign said on a hunch.