Books Burn Badly - Manuel Rivas [240]
Which may have been why Mr Sada’s poet friend and I never met. Because of a lazy eye.
One eye didn’t fight for him. That may have been it.
‘What are you looking at?’ asked Pementa.
‘Nothing.’
I went red. This was in the Troubadour when Glenda, Pementa and I went out for a drink for the first time. Pementa had just started as a hospital porter. Before that, he’d worked in a psychiatric hospital in Epsom for years.
‘I was lucky,’ he told me. ‘I found the job as soon as I arrived. They even gave me accommodation. I hardly ever left. The patients left more than me. What for? There was a good library, with books in Spanish and Portuguese. I’d never read before, I read like crazy. I learnt a lot there. From the patients. Languages. How to play chess. How not to go crazy. I once went with a group of them to the races. A doctor said to me, “Mr Pementa, a group of patients has been invited to the Derby, would you care to accompany them?” They were all, we were all very elegant. The women in outrageous hats and dresses that looked like artistic grafts on the landscape. The men in suits, the suits of their lives. They’d been waiting for that moment for years. They soon caught the attention of people and the cameras, hats were as much centre-stage there as horses. And our group of Epsom aristocrats was the most visible. I was lucky to find that job. Then came that real lunatic with her government, shut Epsom’s mental homes down. It wasn’t paradise, but I was lucky.’
We were in the Troubadour and Glenda got up to buy another round.
‘Why are you looking at me like that?’ he asked.
‘I’m looking at you with both eyes. The lazy one and the other.’
I’d been lucky too. I didn’t want to come to London, to a general hospital. They’re not like mental homes. They’re much more complicated. More bizarre. Anything can happen. Mental homes are much more tranquil. People are polite and cultured. Here there’s stress all the time, accidents, sirens at night.
Repartee. Before Glenda came back, I had to say something funny.
‘I’m looking at you with both eyes. So that you don’t get away.’
‘Lucky me,’ said Pementa. ‘Ending up in this hospital.’
The night was hard. Pementa slept at the hospital, in a room for porters. No, he wasn’t on duty tonight. So I loosened my tongue and said why didn’t he come and sleep at my place? Tomorrow we’d go to the hospital together. Glenda protested. No way. Her place was much nearer. Besides, when we’d arranged to go out, she’d told Pementa – hadn’t she, Pementa? – there was plenty of room in her flat. Reality was on Glenda’s side. Her flat was half the distance. Less than half. A stone’s throw away. Pementa in the middle. Each of us tugging at his arm, without touching. ‘You’re right, Glenda. I’ll come with you! A night’s a night.’ Glenda, my soulmate, my fellow Godspellian Sunday mornings in Willesden Green, I feel so well with you, Take my hand precious Lord, lead me home. She pierced me with a look, silently cursed me. Jezebel, bitch. She would have killed me.
The two of us sleeping together, in bed. Pementa, on the sofa. Glenda and me with our backs to each other to start with. Embracing our own patch of darkness. Resentment sprawled in between. Pementa’s whistles as he slept, lucky him, like a steamboat departing in the night. So I turned and sought Glenda’s body. She moved away, but couldn’t go very far. I inched closer.
‘What is it?’
She spun around. Breathing heavily. Anger on her breath. She could have strangled me if she’d wanted. She was much stronger than I was. In life, she was a gentle, sensual creature. She taught me to appreciate sounds, colours, body postures. A second start in life. Rousing what was asleep. In return, I made her laugh. All those mantras, yantras, asanas, kundalini, latent energy, it’s not that they didn’t work, opposite, they worked far too well. Her body was excessively happy. Ticklish all over, including her eyes and thoughts. Glenda reaped much more than she sowed.
She was probably furious. I wondered what a furious woman would be like inside placid Glenda.