Dada 168

How could I know anything about that? Apart from our bodies there was nothing to remind us of each other. His fear of being caught and labelled was greater than his love for me and it was me who was the most disengaged in the first place. Maybe this is all part of the illusion where nothing seems as it seems and nothing is about what it is really about. Suppose Mo was dead. His memory would move to another place. We always regard the dead with more affection than the living. I suppose that’s quite right. Their time has gone. There is nothing more to say, no more wriggling or squirming with the messy daily business of life. I could not feign an interest. This seemed to me quite normal. People would soon forget me when I was dead. I could not even say this was hard to stomach. There is no idea alive that you can’t get used to in time, not even the fact of your own oblivion. My thoughts had reached this point when suddenly the door swung open and the chief of the holy ones appeared. He opened the door with his own key and without guards or judge. He approached me directly. He awoke me from my reverie. I gave a jump. He told me not to worry, it was natural. I reminded him again that his presence was only required when they came to walk me to the gallows What was he doing here if it was not time for the grim visit. I noticed the beads in his hand and gave out a groan. ‘This is just a friendly visit’ he said. It had no bearing on any outcome of my refused appeal. He sat down on my bed and asked me to raise myself and sit behind him. I refused and he looked hurt. He had a soft kindly face and I felt bad ignoring him but then thought, fuck him. He was the one imposing on me. He remained quite still at first, his arms resting on his knees, his eyes fixed upon his hands, as keen as a little sea bird. They were slender but sinewy hands that looked like they had spent time in the garden. He gently rubbed them together and laid them on his face as if gathering them for energy in the task ahead. The beads clacked. I could picture him tending his green garden and vegetable patch much like my Dada. Maybe there was a black hut on the borders of his path like the one he kept for his assignments. He stayed so long in this position and I was so busy imaging all the parts of his allotment that I quite forgot he was there. Suddenly he sprang up and I heard the beads dance. He looked down upon me. ‘Why’ he asked’ don’t you let me refresh you?’ ‘Because I don’t need you’ I said ‘Are you really so sure of that’ he said I told him about my surge of freedom, the unquickening of the noose and the end of my appeal. ‘They are the things that concern me ‘I said. ‘Whether I believed or not wasn’t really the point’. ‘I cannot answer you’ he said He looked away and without altering his posture asked if it was because I was utterly desperate that I should act like this? I answered that it wasn’t. I was scared enough, that was true but wouldn’t anyone be in my position? ‘In that case he said, God/ Allah/The Almighty Buddha can help you. All the ones I have seen in your position have turned to them in their time of trouble.’ ‘They are at liberty to do so’ I answered him. If they wanted to be helped then let God help them but I had no time to work up any interest that did not concern me. He fluttered his hands. Then drawing himself up, he smoothed his clothes, just like the detective when he gave me the once over in that brown afternoon what seemed like years ago. It was not because I had been condemned he said that he spoke to me in such a personal way. In his opinion every person on earth was under sentence of death.