Authors: Morrissey
List of the Lost (14 page)
Ezra's eyes lowered at the coming of nightfall, with all of its secrets of anonymity. A light from the yard at the back of the hospital threw darting shadows, yet anything recognized by Ezra tortured him, for his body had now absented whilst wondering why it hadn't been allowed to die, and who is it that keeps forcing me back? Figuratively he had indeed already died â our great stylist of the track leaned into a rolling and groaning Harri trembling with exhaustion after a lengthy run and now lying flat on his back on the sun-soaked track, and Ezra kissed him softly on the head and Harri looked up with eyes that shed a gentle melancholy at an affection so unexpected and one that moves different people in different ways. The body at unguarded moments is fully alive to accept more readily, and will not be guided by jealous advice.
“May we never be apart,” Ezra sensitively murmured to Harri, knowing that love could never be experienced without risk, or without a voice with a certain sound. There were days when ⦠all we needed to do was accept, irresponsible acts meaning not very much at all, a disassembled life with a head full of music and a heart full of hope.
“People reveal themselves only when they make love,” mused Eliza, chewing on a pencil in Ezra's memory, “and never at any other time. Which is not something you can raise a toast to, unfortunately. I wonder why we're all so lifeless? This humdrum civility ⦠what is it? All of us crying to be let out! Well, I have a theory, of course ⦔
“Somehow I thought you might,” came Ezra with a pretend sigh, but so happy to spread out on the lawn at his parents' house, the half-asleep sound of mating doves in evening discourse without a single false note.
“Well,” began Eliza, “once you finally know someone intimately ⦠they no longer have any defense against you ⦠and you suddenly have power over them ⦠the power to hurt them quite viciously ⦔
“But why would you want to?”
“Well, that's the heavy burden of heavy petting, isn't it?” she said, gibbering now into Ezra's dreams, where he no longer needed to keep his sanity unclouded as he felt the pull of the earth. A shivery touch brought him back ⦠back to where everyone lived permanently on the point of apology, and a physician's voice chattered and chirped with sharpened senses of noisy self-deception. Oh, the limited human mind, smiled Ezra. How it cannot keep pace! How we scamper about, trying to manage our lives properly ⦠we little ripples ⦠who go, and try our measly best to drag everything with us.
“You can tell everything about a person just by looking at their hands,” offered Nails, one distant genial Saturday at Ledger's Bar, yet no convincing account followed. I was there, thought Ezra, and I loved, and I welcomed with gratitude, and I cracked the female mystery wide open, and the love of my friends lived rent-free in my heart, and I ran on that track like a whole person â never asking for more than there was ⦠ice-cold mornings made me laugh, so happy was I then. True friendship is a miracle; âyes' is always a smile, but events outstrip us all sooner or later, and what happens when you are unable to call out? Who, even, to call to? Tonight, Ezra had exhausted himself knowing that his frail walk to this very bed had been his final walk to anywhere. Oh, let me sleep now, without any chance stirrings, without the pointless yap of EMTs, this heart exhausted and resolved, and it wants its turn of a replacement for life, no longer awaiting answers, too psychologically wounded to bother with questions, no longer disputing the Death Card already dealt. The lazily scrubbed hygiene of this little white room! Yet what of the spiritual hygiene approaching? The stove has died quietly, the palms of the dying are open flatly, and this murderous planet of criminal nations is a joy to leave behind. It is always Saturday in my mind's eye, he thinks, as his breathing now comes from somewhere deeper than his chest, all lust and trust behind him, but happy to be giving in to something stronger than himself â just for this one time. How many doctors does it take? Why do I now remember things that I never actually knew? Come on, that's enough for now. Close your book in this faltering light, for your eyes are pinkish and tired, little man. There is school tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after, and the day after. Destiny, now, has nothing to do with you, Ezra â all responsibility shredded and shed. Yet there at the foot of his bed he could clearly see a full materialization of the phantomic wretch; the stumbling unearthly midget whose life had been ended by one concentrated punch of self-defence from Ezra ⦠that richly mind-swilling day in the woods as we all lived our small lives. Yet here he was again â at the foot of the bed, like a barking dog ⦠like a smiling and shadowy disembodied seething mess, watching Ezra slide away, the wretch with a look of order and meaning upon his boiling face of inscrutable threat, with all the superior rectitude and militancy of a priest administering the last rites. Ezra applied final will to fully recognize the spectral sheet, as maddening midnight church bells provided their harmonized soothing dullness, asking only that we remember with kindness.
UK | Canada | Ireland | Australia
New Zealand | India | South Africa
Penguin Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at
global.penguinrandomhouse.com
.
Copyright © Whores in Retirement, 2015
The moral right of the author has been asserted
ISBN: 978-0-141-98297-7
