A Jest of God - Margaret Laurence [8]
My God. How can I stand –
Stop. Stop it, Rachel. Steady. Get a grip on yourself, now. Relax. Sleep. Try.
Doctor Raven would give a few sleeping pills to me. Why on earth don’t I? They frighten me. What if one became addicted? Does it run in the family? Nonsense, not drugs. It wasn’t drugs with him. “Your father’s not feeling well today.” Her martyred voice. That sort of thing is not physical, for heaven’s sake, not passed on. Yet I can see myself at school, years from now, never fully awake, in a constant dozing and drowsing, sitting at my desk, my head bobbing slowly up and down, my mouth gradually falling open without my knowing it, and people seeing and whispering until finally –
Oh no. Am I doing it again, this waking nightmare? How weird am I already? Trying to stave off something that has already grown inside me and spread its roots through my blood?
Now, then. Enough of this. The main thing is to be sensible, to stop thinking and to go to sleep. Right away. Concentrate. I need the sleep badly. It’s essential.
I can’t. Tonight is hell on wheels again. Trite. Hell on wheels. But almost accurate. The night feels like a gigantic ferris wheel turning in blackness, very slowly, turning once for each hour, interminably slow. And I am glued to it, or wired, like paper, like a photograph, insubstantial, unable to anchor myself, unable to stop this slow nocturnal circling.
This pain inside my skull – what is it? It isn’t like an ordinary headache which goes through like a metal skewer from temple to temple. Not like sinus, either, the assault beginning above my eyes and moving down into the bones of my face. This pain is not so much pain as a pulsing, regular and rhythmical, like the low thudding of a drum.
It’s nothing. How could it be a tumour? It’s nothing. Perhaps I have a soft spot in my head. This joke doesn’t work. I can’t hold on to the slang sense of it, and its other meaning seems sinister. Fontanelle.
Something meaningless, something neutral – I must focus on that. But what? Now I can’t think. I can’t stop thinking. If the pain is anything, then I’ll see Doctor Raven, of course. Naturally. It wouldn’t hurt to go in for a check-up soon, anyway. It might be a very good idea. I can’t afford to let myself get run down.
I can’t sleep.
– A forest. Tonight it is a forest. Sometimes it is a beach. It has to be right away from everywhere. Otherwise she may be seen. The trees are green walls, high and shielding, boughs of pine and tamarack, branches sweeping to earth, forming a thousand rooms among the fallen leaves. She is in the green-walled room, the boughs opening just enough to let the sun in, the moss hairy and soft on the earth. She cannot see his face clearly. His features are blurred as though his were a face seen through water. She sees only his body distinctly, his shoulders and arms deeply tanned, his belly flat and hard. He is wearing only tight-fitting jeans, and his swelling sex shows. She touches him there, and he trembles, absorbing her fingers’ pressure. Then they are lying along one another, their skins slippery. His hands, his mouth are on the wet warm skin of her inner thighs. Now –
I didn’t. I didn’t. It was only to be able to sleep. The shadow prince. Am I unbalanced? Or only laughable? That’s worse, much worse.
I feel myself sinking at last into the smooth silence where no lights or voices are. When the voices and lights begin again, in there where I am lying, they are not bright or loud.