Things We Say in the Dark Page 7

  Outside the corrala, the sky is flat and blue. She has tostada con mantequilla and café con leche perched on a stool outside the cafe. She’s already too hot in her too-short dress and too-tight sandals. Everyone passing wears cardigans and jeans and boots and they don’t look hot at all. They glare at her as they pass, thinking terrible and complex things about how sweaty and out of place she appears. Her coffee is strong and small and too quickly finished.

  She works alone in an empty library. Before she came here, when she explained to people at home about the head librarian job, she felt the need to clarify: yes, the library is currently empty of other staff members and of potential readers, but it’s also empty of books. It’s her, and a mile of empty shelving. Everything is white or glass. Outside the glass, the sun is bright and white. The empty place where the books will go is lined with white shelves, the windows canted at angles to let in light but protect from direct sun the books that aren’t there yet. These book-saving angles mean, unfortunately, that she is constantly on show, framed perfectly by the huge windows.

  From the square outside, the sounds of music and laughter and traffic are constant. She is always aware of the people outside and how they can see inside and what they must be thinking about her. She goes about her working day in a constant state of double-think: one mind on her tasks, the other imagining how she looks to everyone watching. Sometimes she gets dizzy and feels she will tip over and shatter straight through the windows right in front of everyone.

  Suspended in the centre of the empty white library is an empty glass box, which will some day house the collection of the city’s most famous dead writer, whose body was never recovered after his murder. It contains special shelves: glass ones, so the books are visible from all angles. But these books aren’t here yet either, so it’s just empty glass shelves in a glass cube above the empty white shelves.

  Several times now she has drafted an email to her bosses asking when they think the books will be delivered, or what they would like her to do in the meantime. But each time she deletes the email without sending it. If she asks them what she should be doing, then maybe they will ask her what she’s been doing so far, and she will have to tell them that she has been doing nothing. Each day that passes without her asking what she’s meant to be doing makes it less possible for her to ever ask.

  She walks through the library, holding a clipboard to show everyone watching her through the windows that she has a purpose. She is in a silent one-woman play and the entire passing city is her audience.

  She tells herself it’s peaceful here in the empty library. She tells herself it’s healthy to have such a developed sense of self-awareness. She tells herself over and over and over and she locks the door behind her and runs through her empty white glass-walled office and goes into the toilet, which she doesn’t need to use, but which is walled in solid white with no glass so no one can see inside. She stays in there for so long that she thinks people must be wondering what she’s doing in there.

  She goes into her glass office and sends her bosses a report full of enthusiasm and elision that makes it seem like she has been very busy. Then she posts on all her social media accounts, where she is mostly followed by strangers; the bright lights in the library make it perfect for taking selfies. Then, while she’s at it, she sends a quick and breezy mass-cc email full of exclamation marks and self-deprecating humble-brags to all her friends and family. At home, they will want to see her. She needs to stay visible.

  She wakes at 6 a.m. feeling like a loud sound of fireworks or drums or guns or a suitcase has just stopped, the echo of it. In the shower she notices marks on the insides of her thighs. They’re smudged, but look like they could have been handprints. She scrubs the smudges off, then has to get back into the shower again halfway through brushing her teeth when she finds the same marks on her breasts. As she scrubs at the marks she realises she is crying. Even in her distraction she makes sure to cry quietly so her downstairs neighbour doesn’t hear. She gets out of the shower and stands on the tiles, dripping, rubbing at her wet face. She knows someone has been coming into her room. Someone has been coming into her room and touching her in her sleep. Before leaving her room she checks the window is barred, even though she won’t be in there if someone does get inside.

  All morning she wanders around the empty library with her clipboard, performing her play. At lunchtime she goes outside to eat her tortilla. She walks down a narrow white alley, the walls blinding in the sun. She coos at a dog, sitting obediently in the dry gutter as its owner fiddles with a bicycle. There are so many dogs here and they’re so well behaved, rarely a lead to be seen – in fact yesterday she’d seen something so ridiculously adorable: a dog that was on a lead but holding the end of it in its mouth, walking itself.

  She’s about to turn down another blindingly white alley – even with her sunglasses on she has to squint, and the Spanish people rarely seem to wear sunglasses; how do they stand it, how can they see anything? – when there’s a sudden cannon of barking, and she thinks nothing of it until she hears a woman screaming something in Spanish, and she looks behind her to see a cat, panicked and pinballing between four snapping and barking dogs, the cat leaping an impossible ten feet up a wall and falling behind a metal grate covering a window. A passing man, sandy-haired and freckled, speaks to her in Spanish, tries to touch her shoulder, to scoop her along with him, and she speaks nonsense English phrases at him until he leaves her alone.

  The cat’s owner is weeping and shouting at the dogs’ owners, reaching her skinny arms between the bars, trying to pull the cat out, and for a moment it seems the cat’s owner is reaching for a corpse and not a cat any more, the dogs stilled now, barks subsiding, and she can just hear a low miserable yowl under the woman’s sobbing and then she’s sure that the cat is alive but stiff with fright, refusing to come out. She turns down the alley and walks away in case she’s wrong. The cat is still making noises of distress, so loudly she can feel it in her throat; then she realises she’s making the noise herself, a low yowl, and she forces herself to stop.

  She’s almost at the library when a man, smiling and brown-eyed, takes gentle hold of her arm and speaks at her in Spanish, trying to lead her down the street. She smiles back and says no gracias, and the man still smiles and gently tugs on her arm, and she feels the sound of distress clawing its way up her throat, and when the man smiles his canine teeth overlap the others like a dog’s, and she tries to pull away from him and go into the library, but then she thinks that she shouldn’t let him know that she works there in case he comes in – he can, it’s a public space after all, even though there’s no reason for the public to go in there, nothing for them to see or do or think about except her. She stands still and looks at the paving slabs, doesn’t speak or look at the man, pretends she’s a statue – a particularly stupid statue that doesn’t speak Spanish – until he leaves her alone. She goes inside and posts on all her social media and then emails her bosses a report. At her desk she maintains good posture – shoulders back, stomach in – for the benefit of everyone watching.

  She wakes at 6 a.m. and showers redly and scrubs smudged fingerprints from around her throat and collects her blue tickets and drinks her coffee and sees some dogs and ignores a man until he leaves her alone. The sun shines through all the glass. She takes a selfie. Dogs bark. She sends a report about what she has been doing. She posts the selfie.

  At lunchtime she goes into the square to eat her tortilla and watch a dance performance. It begins with five women dressed only in underpants, screaming, lit from below by red lights and from above by the white sun. It ends with the women, fully clothed now in fuzzy brown fabric that looks like dogskin, making animal noises and running in a circle.

  She doesn’t like the performance, and she turns away from it to look at the reassurance of the suspended glass box in the library. But the angle of the windows and the bright sun mean she can’t see inside. She stands up and walks across the square to see the library
from another angle. But she still can’t see inside. The windows, covered in some kind of dark coating, are utterly opaque. She sees the reflected square, full of people talking and eating and walking and laughing and living. She sees herself, standing looking at herself.

  She goes into the library and straight to the toilet. As she washes her hands she looks at the space above the sink, expecting a mirror, but there’s nothing there. She stares at the blank white wall, letting the water flow over her hands. She stays in there for so long that she thinks people must be wondering what she’s doing. Then she remembers that there’s no one else in the library, and no one can see in, and no one will notice or care whether she spends her days hiding in the toilet or napping on the bookshelves or smearing the walls of the glass box with her own shit.

  In her room at the corrala, she opens her window and lies on the bed with too many pillows propping up her head so that she doesn’t fall asleep, because then someone will climb in and she won’t be able to stop them.

  She lies awake all night thinking about the cleaners, who are so angry to find her stained towels that they are all complaining and cursing her name right at this moment;

  about all the various day porters, who are annoyed that she still can’t speak Spanish and that they have to supply her meal tickets, and who are probably sitting with the cleaners right now complaining about her, but who await her arrival every day, eager to see whether her Spanish has improved even if only to later complain that it has not;

  about the people who are paying her wage at the library, and will be discussing her work or lack of it in day-long meetings, scrutinising photos of her face, debating all the ways she is failing to be worth the money they pay;

  about everyone at home, all the friends she has been too busy to individually email, all of whom must be trying to call her old number because she doesn’t have a new Spanish number, who must be worried about her, talking about her, deciding even now who to contact to check on her;

  about the dogs and the men, which endlessly follow her and only her all around the city, constantly yapping and chasing and nipping at her heels with their sharp teeth, desperate for her attention;

  about the stalker coming into her room at night, who seems to only want to touch her, to feel her soft skin and hair, not to hurt her but only to be close to her;

  about her downstairs neighbour, who must be able to hear her walk and cough and brush her teeth, who must be unable to sleep because of her proximity, who must be lying awake right now wondering when she will next make a sound. She thinks about going, now, to his door, tapping gently, letting him open it, letting him take her inside.

  At 6 a.m. she is already awake and there is no noise. She runs down the stairs and her steps sound to her like fireworks or drums or guns or a heavy suitcase. She echoes.

  After the first flight she stops. She walks down the corridor, which is almost exactly the same as the one above but with the pot plant in a different place. She knocks on the door below her room. No one answers. She peers in the window and the room is empty; the bed stripped, the desk bare. It doesn’t look like anyone was ever there. She feels suddenly cold. The knowledge that she is alone, was always alone, settles on her like stones in her belly.

  She leans over the stone wall and looks down into the courtyard. It is empty. She walks the square of the corrala, peering in every window into every empty room.

  The cleaners are not there. At the empty desk, the day porter is not there, and neither is her little blue meal ticket. There are no dogs following her and no men. Her emails will bounce back unread. At home no one is waiting.

  She feels weightless, smoke-like. She could turn to nothing and float up to the sky and no one would know, no one would see, no one would care. She is nothing.

  She looks down at her sooty hands, at the marks she has left on herself.

  It is her, always her, only her.

  PART 2: THE CHILD

  * * *

  ‘Let us not desert one another; we are an injured body.’

  – Jane Austen

  There’s something I didn’t tell you before. When my wife and I returned from our honeymoon, back to our new house, we started trying for a baby, and before long my wife got pregnant. She’s pregnant as I write this, and while I’m happy and grateful and excited, I don’t mind telling you that I’m also scared.

  I’m scared of my wife’s body.

  I’m scared of the pinprick of child inside it.

  I’m scared of what will happen when that child is much bigger than a pinprick and we have to get it out of her body without damaging either of them.

  I’m scared of newborn babies, of holding them and cleaning them and not letting them die.

  I’m scared of when it’s my turn to get pregnant.

  So here I am, telling you about being scared, in the hope that it will make me feel it less.

  My Body Cannot Forget Your Body

  First Fear:

  At first I felt a swelling, a tightening of skin. I thought I must have eaten too many cream cakes, or had too much milk in my tea. I switched to skimmed and resolved to take the stairs. Every morning I lay on my bedroom floor and did a hundred sit-ups. But the less I ate, the bigger I grew.

  When my belly had swollen so big I couldn’t clasp my hands around it, I noticed a split in my skin. The gap was small; not even large enough to slide a coin in sideways. With a torch, I tried to look inside, but all I could see was darkness. I thought I saw something twitch, though it was too quick for me to be sure. The doctors sewed me up and told me it was tight now, it was good; I would be doing sit-ups again in no time. My skin strained against the new stitches. I was overripe fruit. I was shifting tectonic plates.

  I stopped doing sit-ups for fear of ripping the cleft wider. Undressing for the shower, I sometimes caught a fleeting scent of damp earth coming from my discarded clothes where they had pressed against my belly. I told myself it must be coming from the half-open window; a split in my body would surely smell of nothing but my own self.

  As the stitches stretched I saw wet purplish flesh beneath them. I went back to the doctors with my belly held in my hands, my gait unwieldy, my shoes slipping on the rain-oiled pavements. They peered inside me with pencil-sized torches and tutted. They used bigger needles and sewed the stitches as close together as they could without splitting the raw edges of my skin; the stitches started out as thick as prison bars, but they stretched thin as parcel string.

  One morning, as I was stirring honey into my tea and gazing down at my swollen body, the little finger appeared. It was just the tip, down near my belly button. The finger kept curling round, the white crescent of a fingernail making long red scratches along my skin. I pushed the finger back in and tried to hold the edges of my flesh together. I could feel the nail nicking against the inside of my body as it tried to push through the gap. I couldn’t hold myself together forever; when I let go the finger emerged, the nail doing its long scratches.

  I went back for more stitches and more assurances: it was tight, it was good, there would be no escape. After the fifth stitching I realised that they couldn’t make it stay in. I feared asking them to take it out. What would I do if they said no?

  I could not do sit-ups. I could not climb stairs or drink tea or sleep. I could not go to work or see friends. I could not do anything except hold my body still and feel the scraping of the fingernails.

  Maybe it wasn’t trying to escape. Maybe it just wanted me to know it was there.

  But oh, I know it now. I know when it grumbles through my broken sleep, when I wake to its nails scratching my flesh, when it reaches up and grabs food out of my hand. The thinner I get, the smaller its prison shrinks; but still it grabs the food, still it throws it to the ground. It tries to grow, but my skin can only stretch so far. The stitches press against its flesh, and I see the marks they leave: red lines across its shins and arms, string around roasting meat. I do not go back to get it stitched in again.

  I si
t in my kitchen in a tiny patch of sun, and I feel my bones pressing against the wooden chair. I sit for as long as it will let me. I think that if I can eat silently then maybe it will not realise, will not grab and throw. I think that maybe it will forget that I am even there. I think that maybe I will forget too.

  My skin cannot stretch any more, and so it grows upwards into my body. I feel its elbows pressing hard against my spleen, its knees prodding at my kidneys, its eyes opening and closing on the inside of my collarbones. My heart still beats and my lungs still inflate, but only just.

  Sometimes I think about snipping the stitches – snick, snack, snick, as easy as exhaling. It would tumble right out of me, my liver clutched in one bulging fist, my intestines tangled around its gasping throat, my heart still pumping between its teeth. It would choke on me as I turned inside out.

  I sit on my chair, and I stare at the food I cannot eat, and I feel my bones pressing harder. I hold the scissors tight in my fist.

  Second Fear:

  You’ve heard that when you give birth, the baby can come out in a variety of forms, but there’s really no need to worry about it. Whatever emerges, eventually it will all come together and make a baby. You might give birth to a quartet of mango-sized objects. Or maybe a whole big bunch of grape-sized objects (painless, but takes a while). Or, if you’re unlucky, a pair of blood-orange-sized objects (which you haven’t seen, but imagine is a bit of a struggle). You’ve heard of women delivering things like runner beans, like carrots, like kumquats. However the baby comes out, it will all be fine in the end.

  Your friend Edith births five equal-sized lemons. She says it was awful, just awful, but in the post-birth photo she puts online she’s wearing lipstick and her forehead isn’t even shiny, so you’re unconvinced. You think you’d quite like to give birth to lemons, if you can’t have runner beans. You don’t get a choice what grows inside you, of course, but you can still hope.