Alva and Irva - Edward Carey [41]
That night something else moved in the darkness. Someone else was there. But we didn’t hear anything then, we were completely deaf, too busy with ourselves to hear. But as August and I kissed, and as we pressed against each other, then, at that moment, just then, when I felt that August and I were all that existed in the world, yes, just then, just at that moment, there was a scream from the darkness, a wail of such enormous unhappiness, a cry of such absolute misery and hurting, so loud it brought the night-watchman running.
THE NIGHT-WATCHMAN, a man of supreme joylessness, didn’t like what he found in his station hall. Perhaps he might have been more understanding if there hadn’t been paint everywhere. But the combination upset him. There was too great an intimacy on the station floor and too much mess that went with it. He could not allow it to remain there, it was against the rules, there were too many people where he expected and wanted none. He shone his torch into us, rasping obscenities under his breath, he called the police on his radio, he stood by us with his torch until the police came.
The police, tired and angry, muttered and grimaced and ordered us to scrub the paint from the floor. But they never looked upwards, they never looked at the ceiling, never imagined that we’d been up there, August and I, and they never looked around the hall either to see if someone else might be hiding.
When we’d finished cleaning they took us to the police station, silent and guilty now and ashamed, even August was shaken for once, so shy suddenly that it was impossible for us to look at one another, because a shared look then might have shattered our spines.
AUGUST AND I WAITED on a bench screwed into the ground, we waited for such a long time, not speaking to each other, until finally I was ordered into an office.
A little desk and a little man who looked bored and sad. He gave me a long talk which came with a warning, only a warning for me because I had never done anything wrong before, a warning and a fine. I asked him what they were going to do with August, whether they were going to take him away. He said it didn’t concern me. When I left the office August was no longer there. His position on the bench had been taken by Grandfather.
Grandfather had come to pick me up in one of the post office vans. He didn’t say anything, he just drove, as if it were a package and not a person beside him. Poor grandfather, he must have been thinking about those panties he found one morning on the post office steps years back, he must have been thinking that somehow these two events were connected. Poor grandfather, he was always happier with matchsticks than with people.
Irva had come home hours ago.
FOR A WEEK after the Train Station Adventure I was forced in my disgrace to remain home. Grandfather came to Veber Street just to see me, to tell me that August had gone away to live in Canada. ‘Which is all for the best,’ he said, ‘since neither his parents nor his school can control him. He’s gone away to start a new life with his brother. He shan’t be coming back.’ ‘But,’ I protested, ‘that can’t be, it isn’t true. He told me that he’d never go without me. He promised me. He promised.’ ‘Well,’ said Grandfather, ‘he lied then, didn’t he?’
We hadn’t even measured him. How many centimetres made up August?
I stole a map of Canada from the map shop on Donkey Street, I slept at night with that map underneath me. Irva lay next to me with her eyes open. I said in my sleep, ‘Niagara Falls, Lake Ontario, Quebec, Toronto, Newfoundland.’
‘I’m going away,’ I kept saying to Irva, ‘I’m going away.’
She stopped talking to me and I never went anywhere.
I needed to mark myself from her, I wanted there to be a sign, something to prove that I had experienced other things, something to stop the sameness. I wanted everyone to see that there was such a difference