Читать книгу When in Broad Daylight I Open My Eyes - Greg Lazarus - Страница 8

Six

The next day, Monday, there is no time to deal with Claudia’s computer. Bar half an hour for lunch, her patients came one after the other, back to back, from nine-thirty in the morning until five. Usually, six patients is her maximum; anything more strains her capacity for empathy – but Sharon, who has been in therapy for almost five years now, phoned unexpectedly between sessions. Maria could barely hear what she was saying through the sobbing, twice asking her to speak a bit louder. They scheduled an emergency session for two that afternoon, typically the time Maria uses to write up her morning notes.

On arrival, Sharon slips off her boots and leaves them at the door. In the short walk from door to chair Maria senses the young woman’s despair, and braces herself physically, her spine becoming erect, her body still; patients get easily distracted. Sharon sits cross-legged on the chair, knees climbing the armrests, head bowed, silky brown hair draping her face; already she is regressing.

“What does it feel like? Give me an image,” Maria says.

“Like a vase that’s been pushed to the floor and shattered into a million pieces.” Maria leans forward to hear better through the crying; Sharon’s hand, beneath the curtain of hair, shields her eyes. A crude barrier, and unnecessary, as weeping is Maria’s currency. She thinks sometimes that if laughter produces an expansion of gesture, sorrow mostly brings contraction; the sad are like soft-bellied creatures who have lost their shells.

Maria feels for her patient’s loss. Sharon’s first great love affair, three years in total, has ended badly: a cheating boyfriend, a fight ending with two sharp smacks across the face. “Red handprints like this,” she holds up her palm, fingers spread, “on his cheek. I’ve never hit anyone in my life – I’m not a violent person.” Maria nods, not in agreement, but as an invitation for Sharon to continue. Physical violence, she believes, comes more easily than we care to admit.

Sharon has with her a photograph of her boyfriend, Marcus. It’s not unusual for patients to bring something along: a poem, extracts from diaries. One man, a bodybuilder, even had Maria admire his body. In shorts and a vest, he turned poses in her office, having propped the photographs taken during competitions on the table next to him. Strangely, she remembers the veins running like earthworms beneath the bronzed skin more clearly than the inflated muscles.

Sharon offers her photograph shyly to Maria. She and Marcus are at the beach, his arm draped around her shoulders, hers around his waist. She is in a yellow bikini, and he wears blue board shorts, the shade of the summer sky. Wherever possible – hips, thighs, chests, the sides of their feet – the two press into each other, forming a single unit. Maria hears the instruction as clearly as if Sharon had spoken it: make it possible for me to endure the loss of this image. It will take time, but the girl is young, only twenty-three, and she has time in abundance. Maria feels confident. A photograph’s power can lessen; a broken vase can be glued back together. There’ll be cracks, she thinks, but we can live with those.

Fortunately the next day is quieter, with fewer patients and no emergency sessions. She has time to phone Zac and arrange to see him about Claudia’s laptop.

That morning she drives slowly up Kloof Street, her mother’s machine on the passenger seat. The loading zone in front of the Ocean Basket is the only space available. A car guard in a luminous orange vest plants himself in the narrow space, twirling a hand towards himself while she tries to reverse. “Come, mama,” he says, as she avoids him but hits the pavement. He tells her he’ll watch the car in her absence; she mustn’t worry.

She walks towards CATS – Cape Town Shoots, a film school where Zac maintains computers, stop-motion cameras and editing machines. She knows the school from giving therapy there a few years back, a couple of hours a week. Late adolescence is a speciality of hers. There were many problems, mostly substance abuse. She pushes through the students clustering around the double front doors. Right outside the entrance, partially blocking the way, is a pair of skinny white legs. They belong to a girl dressed in black, wearing the shortest mini Maria has ever seen. She’s covered in piercings: nose, lower lip, a thin thread of studs up her ear . . . where else? Maria steps over the legs carefully while the girl flashes a surprisingly warm smile at her.

“Have you come to audition as an extra?” she asks. “For our movie.”

“What’s the role?”

“A witch, you know, like a magician. A sort of Wicca thing,” the girl snakes her hands through the air as though casting a spell herself. Is she kidding? Maria looks closely – part of her training, to look for the meaning behind the words – but the girl’s face appears guileless, innocent.

Maria smiles: “No, sorry. I don’t do witches. I do a good psychologist, though.”

“Awesome,” the girl says to her departing back. “But witches are more fun.”

The Bio Café is packed with students banking a mid-morning shot of caffeine. She looks around for Zac – late, as usual – while watching three young men play pool. One of them is clearly much better than the other two, and his aptitude has seeped through into his swagger. He sinks one ball after another, somehow making her think of Lionel. They haven’t spoken since the incident at Kalk Bay two days ago. Maria checks her phone often, holding back on the desire to call him. In fact, she has hardly spoken to anyone these past few days, but for her patients. Maria tends to be skittish, shying away from friendships, especially female companionship; perhaps her difficulties with Claudia have made her suspicious of intimacy with her own gender. Almost always, apart from her patients, there has been a man, and this seems sufficient. There’s a tap on her shoulder. It takes her a moment to recognise Zac.

“I can’t believe it. Wow, look at you.”

“Sixty-five kilograms. Half of me is gone,” he says.

“How did you do it? You look amazing.” It’s true and it’s not: he’s slim, sure, but he has suffered – sunken skin, dark rings under his eyes. Even his black hair, always thick and curly, looks less lustrous, or perhaps it’s because he has clipped it close against his head and there’s no bounce left. He looks shorter, Maria’s height now, as though his great girth had added stature.

“Extreme makeover, man. People hardly recognise me any more.” He’s smoking (clearly the Bio Café has no rules against this), drawing deep drags, tapping the cigarette at intervals so that the ash falls to the carpet. “I was doing this rich guy’s machine. Lives in this mansion up in Camps Bay. He couldn’t believe the change – he said, ‘You’re not a fat slob any more.’”

“Nice.”

“It’s true, M. I’m not a big fat slob any more.” He slaps his lean stomach aggressively.

“Incredible. I’m so impressed.”

He reaches for the machine: “So, is this the baby that’s giving you a hard time?”

She nods. “You think you can crack it?” She wonders if she’s trying too hard to use his lingo. She’s at least fifteen years older than any of the students here.

“You know I can do anything.” A lazy grin, and he puts the cigarette, still burning, on a nearby table. She hands the machine over and he balances it on his palm, levering the top open with his other hand: “Why don’t you have a quick coffee and I’ll see what I can do now.”

“Okay.”

“My advice – go next door. This place –” He shakes his head.

She passes a bin choked with rubbish, a black fly busy around its perimeter. Outside the film school, another young woman sits with her legs stretched out in front of the door. Passing her, Maria can hear the repetitive beat of the music from the girl’s earphones. She is grateful to move away, even when she finds the coffee place next door almost full. She sits at a table on the pavement, preferring the bustle of the street. The coffee is strong and aromatic, and a large outdoor heater warms her back. Perhaps a short SMS to Lionel, just to see how he’s doing, would be okay. She extracts her cellphone from her handbag and begins to tap.

She had met Lionel at a gathering for reformed addicts who were now sponsors, helping others to overcome their dependencies. The meeting took place at the counselling centre, directly opposite Christ’s Kitchen, a self-service restaurant for the reborn. Frequently, people went straight to the restaurant afterwards, ex-addicts finding religion as enticing as a new drug. Maria had been part of the programme, providing guidance to the sponsors, for a few years. The structure of the meetings was always similar: an expert in addiction, the label loosely interpreted, would give input on some topic, but most of the time was reserved for sponsors to discuss issues relating to the people they were helping – a kind of case supervision. There were always a couple of psychologists, sometimes a psychiatrist as well.

Typically for these monthly affairs, the room had too few chairs. This scarcity of resources created an edge of aggression, causing people to mark their space with briefcases and handbags. The fluorescent lighting sucked colour from faces, reducing the attendees to uglier versions of themselves. It was a functional venue, allowed to go to seed as a mark of its integrity; even the armchairs, fundamental equipment for any psychologist, needed replacing. Their seats, made from a brown synthetic material, had worn away in places from so much sitting: a hazard of the job. There were about thirty people there that night – two psychologists, the rest sponsors, most of whom Maria knew – and about half had nowhere to sit.

She stood by an open window, not willing to struggle for a chair. The room was stuffy on this hot summer’s night, and she sensed that she was flushing. The skin felt tight above her cheekbones, as though it had been pulled and stretched to cover the bones in her face.

Already Maria felt sluggish and irritable from the heat of the room, the lack of planning with the chairs. As she waited for someone else to sort out the chair shortage, she idly stretched across a long wooden table to scoop up a handful of peanuts. The tips of her fingers grazed the edge of the bowl.

“Here. Let me help you.” A man picked up the bowl and moved to her side of the table. Average height, stocky, a touch of grey at the temples, a flattened nose like a boxer. None of the puppyish need to please shown by some of the other sponsors. Instead, he peered at her over the top of his glasses, which were pushed down to the bridge of his nose – the look of an exasperated teacher. “Lionel Lightly.” He offered a hand. “Yes, I know, I should have been a singer.” She let his powerful fingers squeeze hers.

She knew Lionel Lightly, or, more precisely, she knew of him. Who didn’t? He seldom came to these meetings; she’d seen him only once previously, and then he’d been involved with a group in another room. But everyone had read in the newspapers about his coke addiction – “a minor experimentation”, as he called it. Unfortunately it had skewered his chances of becoming Minister of something or other (perhaps Health, she thought), and he’d checked himself into a private clinic. That was a few years back, and now he had returned to politics as an ANC MP, more popular than ever. Who can’t help but admire someone who has beaten his demons, and wasn’t that what Lionel had done? He was often in the papers, outspoken and charismatic, as comfortable in Bishopscourt as he was in Manenberg. If she remembered correctly, he’d grown up outside Malmesbury, the son of farm workers. Part of his legend.

“Do you sing?” she asked.

“Only in the shower. I’m full of bravado when there’s no one around to watch me. I’m pretty good then.”

Someone had finally located more chairs – office seats – and people were wheeling them in, two at a time. He went to fetch one for her, hoisted it above his head and plonked it down next to the open window. “Getting hot as hell in here. I’m up front tonight, otherwise I’d join you. If it gets too boring you can always walk along here.” He pointed to a wide ledge located right outside the window. “Climb down the drainpipe and make a dash for it.”

“How far will I get before I’m caught?”

“Pretty far, I reckon. But if I see you doing that, I’m going to give chase. With this heat and my talk, I’ll probably be the only one active enough. We’ll be a sleepy lot tonight.”

He was wrong. She was fascinated by Lionel, observing the effect he had on his audience, how alert people were when he spoke: their sidelong glances to neighbours, the vigorous head-nodding, their laughter that was a touch too loud. A charismatic speaker creates a sense of unity within the audience, she thought; he bonds them to one another.

He spoke about how, when he came out the addiction clinic, after he had been given the “all clean” (two thumbs raised), he took up squash. “Boy, did I play hard,” he said. “I was a lean, mean . . .” Here he paused, allowing the audience to fill in the missing words. Maria’s eyes swept over his body: he sat with thighs spread, elbows resting on knees, leaning in towards his listeners. “. . . squash machine,” he finished, to a titter from the audience. “Believe me, no sex, I wasn’t in a space to have a lover. Of course now, seven years later, things are a little different.” Again laughter. “The point is” – he paused, held up a finger – “once an addict, always an addict. You need replacement activities, and for a long time, squash, instead of . . .” – here he closed a nostril, sniffing loudly and animatedly – “worked. Still does. The thing is,” he repeated, before pausing, taking his time, knowing the audience was enjoying his show, “that as sponsors we have to help our sponsees find those replacement activities to take their minds away from the drugs. That’s why I’m here to introduce Dr Alexander Voget, a psychiatrist, with a strong interest in music therapy, and how it can help us with our addictions.”

Maria doesn’t remember much about Dr Voget apart from his eyebrows: bushy and grey, voluptuous, overflowing the upper wire rim of his glasses, reminding her of a river in flood. But one line from Voget’s talk, which was rambling, far less adept and playful than Lionel’s had been, struck her: “The brain that engages with music is changed by this engagement.” This intrigued her. She had been reading about early attachment and its neurological effects, how poor attachments could affect the underlying structures of the immature brain, making later stable attachments sometimes impossible to achieve.

When Lionel spoke again she kept her face turned to him as much as she could without making it obvious, dropping her gaze when his eyes met hers. Could the power dynamic in their relationship have been worked out as early as that? Possibly. Right from the start, Lionel led and Maria followed.

During the break – a plastic cup of overly sweet apple juice and a jam biscuit (it intrigued her to see how ex-addicts enjoy their sugary treats) – he returned to her side. He was wearing a blue tie-dyed T-shirt, half-moons of sweat flashing whenever he lifted an arm. She liked it that he did nothing to hide the stains. He must have seen her eyes straying to his underarms: “Look, I’m sweating,” he said. “You make me anxious.” That was the moment she knew something would happen between them. “You didn’t jump.” He tapped the window frame. “I take that as a good sign.”

“I was worried I might lose a shoe if I squeezed myself out that window.”

He looked down at her black boots. “I would have picked that up and looked for the foot that fitted it.”

“How sweet. And if I turned into a pumpkin?”

He laughed and patted her shoulder in an easy gesture. Through her shirt she could feel his warm palm cupping her upper arm. “Let me show you something,” he said. She followed him, still holding her cup of apple juice, to an adjacent room. “Did you train at this place?”

“Yes, but it looked different in my day.”

“Okay. So do you know about this other room?” She did, but made as if she didn’t. He pushed open the door for her to enter first, and flicked on the lights. They spluttered for a few moments before the fluorescent globes caught and lit up white. The room had an unpleasant odour of damp, overlaid with lavender-scented air freshener. There was one large internal window, which faced the room where the meeting was taking place.

Maria watched an elderly woman examining a poster about child development. The woman removed her glasses, letting them swing freely from a gold chain around her neck, to stand with her nose practically touching the pictures of crawling infants and walking toddlers. The poster showed the development of children, from one-day-old to adolescence, an echo of the evolution of human beings.

Afterwards, the woman straightened and faced the window; it was clear she could not see inside. Maria enjoyed watching this unknown woman who had no knowledge of being observed.

“One-way mirror?” She kept up the charade of surprise.

“Quite right, Maria.” A shock of pleasure – she didn’t remember telling him her name. “You see him?” He tapped on the glass. “The guy with the yellow jersey? Asshole. I know for a fact he’s still using, and he’s sleeping with the woman he’s meant to be helping. She came to see me afterwards, in a state. What should she do? Should she report him? Felt guilty because she enjoyed it, not that she said so.”

“Did she?” Maria felt a quickness to her breathing, her heart beating a shade too fast. Such indiscretions.

“What?”

“Report him.”

“No, she thought it must have been her fault. She had come on to him, been too provocative.”

Before she could stop herself she looked down at his left hand, which was resting on the table. No ring, but he caught the gaze and reached for her hand, turned it palm down: “Share alike, Maria. And, no, I’m not married, nor am I involved with anyone. Not yet.”

He leaned forward then and kissed her gently, only their mouths touching briefly. Behind him there was movement in the main room: silent, less urgent, because they couldn’t hear it.

“You’d better be getting back. Are you up front again?”

“Stay here. Watch me.”

“Here?”

“Yes. Behind the one-way glass – it’ll give me a kick. Make it easier to get through the rest of the evening.” He flipped a switch, and immediately she could hear everything in the other room: the shuffling of people sitting down, muted conversation, a woman’s high-pitched laugh.

“Okay. I’ll watch you, Lionel Lightly.”

Should she have walked out then? Gone back to her seat and left immediately after the meeting? In retrospect, that is precisely what she should have done. Even after Lionel had resumed chatting to the audience, she could have stood up, walked out of the observation room and left the building, got into her car and driven home. There is a point in any love affair when both options are open, to leave or to stay, neither choice fraught with difficulty. That hour, though it felt much shorter, sitting behind the one-way glass, watching Lionel, was the window period for her escape – intact, free from hurt. Maria should have been wiser and less impressed by his authority, his charisma. She should not have been taken in by the covert glances through the one-way glass towards her, the discreet wave, the wink directed her way. Any man who insists you watch him, admire him, even when he cannot see you, can only be trouble.

She finishes her coffee. Still no Zac, nor a response to the SMS she sent Lionel. Her next patient is due in forty minutes. As she’s dialling Zac, she sees him coming towards her, holding the computer under his arm. She stands to meet him.

“No luck, I can’t crack the bugger. You sure you don’t remember the password?”

She hesitates: “It’s not actually my machine. Belongs – belonged to my mother.”

Zac raises his eyebrows in mock surprise. “Can’t say I’m shocked,” he says. “I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been asked to hack into other people’s machines. Anyway, let me keep it a few more days, I’ll give you a call.”

She thanks him, turns to go.

“Shit, M, hang on, I almost forgot to give you this,” he says, slapping his forehead. “Losing my brain. If it wasn’t screwed in –” He hands her a silver disc with no label.

“Here, found it in the computer. Reckon it’s your mom’s. I’m gonna spend some more time with this baby. I’ll ring you, M,” he says, waving a hand as he leaves.

The car guard appears pleased to see her again. “See, mama. Everything is alright.” She roots around in her bag, finds a coin and puts it in his cupped hand.

Her fingers are trembling slightly as she slips the disc into the car’s CD player. The first communication since Claudia’s death. What is she imagining – that she’ll hear her mother’s voice saying goodbye, and explaining why she jumped to her death? It’s probably not even audio, but only a blank CD, or perhaps birth charts – for clients desperate to receive good news. There is half a minute of silence. Then it starts up, the notes rising and echoing, discordant and creepy. Rothko Chapel. Kristof’s music. What the hell? Her hands are slippery on the steering wheel, but she forces herself to listen to the entire piece, hearing it as if for the first time. The instruments make sounds like trapped screams, reaching out from far, far away.