A couple of days before Chernobyl went up, making a large world into a small one, by reason of our common fear of radiation – the invisible enemy, the silent murderer, that which, like age, creeps in the dark – in this case consisting of a myriad, all-but-immortal particles, too small for the eye to see, of one man-made radioactive isotope or another (selenium, caesium, strontium – you name it, we invented it) flying through the air and causing death and decay wherever it fell, at any rate in the popular imagination – I, Joanna May, read of another strange event.
A girl in Holloway, doing three years for cheque offences, plucked out her eye. The technical term for this is ‘orbisecto de se’, and very nasty it is, for those who have to clear up afterwards and put flesh and head back together. The human eye, if you regard it without emotion, is a glob of light-sensitive jelly attached by strings of nerves and muscles to the convoluted tissue mass of the brain, in itself a fine ferment of electrical discharges. But it works, it works. The ‘you’, the ‘me’, the ‘I’ – behold, it sees! The soul in the dark prison that is the flesh looks out through the senses at the world: the senses are the windows to that dark prison. And what the soul longs to see is beauty; smiles, grace, balance – both physical and spiritual – love in the maternal eye. It longs to see evening light over summer landscapes: crimson roses in green grass: birds flying, fish leaping, happy children playing – all that stuff. Yes, all that stuff.
What the contemporary eye gets to see on a good day is Mickey Mouse: it can just about put up with that, some joke is intended in the ugliness. The white lacy Terylene of a wedding dress makes up for a lot. A nice strong erect penis, viewed, can reconcile a lustful girl to some grimy back alley. But three years in Holloway! What is the eye, the I, to make of that!
Three years in Holloway, three years of grey concrete, the stuff of anti-life, the stuff that keeps radioactivity in (at least temporarily) or out: three years of looking at old Tampaxes in corners and cigarette stubs and grime and grey tins holding the brown slime of institution stew, and any sane person would be tempted to pluck their eye out, let alone the mad, who more than anyone proceed by punning. The word in action. The deranged pursue their sanity down the only alley known to them: giving language more meaning, more significance, than it was ever meant to have.
If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out. And quite right too. Broadmoor’s a handsome place, set grandly in the wild hills: a great sweep of dramatic sky; old bricks not new concrete. One eye in rural Broadmoor’s better than two in suburban Holloway, any day. She plucked her eye out and got transferred to Broadmoor. That’s where one-eyed girls go.
I wanted to write to Carl to say, ‘Carl, Carl, did you read about the girl in Broadmoor who plucked out her eye?’ but how could I? I had betrayed Carl, spoiled the achievement which was his life, made of him a murderer (how could one doubt Carl’s hand in Isaac’s death: as well believe that Kennedy’s assassin – and his assassin’s assassin, and his assassin’s assassin’s assassin – all died of random acts) and Carl May had divorced my mind as well as my body – of course he had. And that was the hardest thing of all to bear.
Instead I rang for Trevor and asked him to fetch me the Yellow Pages. I turned to ‘I’ and there found Investigation Agencies, and ran my finger down the list, passing by the Acme and Advance and Artemis (they cluster their names in the A’s, these places, and advisedly) all of whom I had used in the past and from whom I had sucked all possible juice of entertainment, and presently came to Maverick Enquiries, an agreeably innocent name, I thought – and dialled their number. It is my experience that the cool appearance of any Investigative Report, the comings and goings, contacts and activities of the investigatee neatly and impersonally described, acts like antihistamine ointment on a wasp sting to soothe the obsessional and tumultuous mind, if only – like the ointment – for a time.
I did not report to Oliver what I had done. Oliver thought I should just forget Carl. Oliver thought such a thing was possible – of course he did. Oliver was a nice guy, and young with it. But I had been married to Carl for over thirty years, and Carl was intertwined in my mind and body like the strands of dry rot fungi in the damp bricks of an empty house.
Let Oliver say as often as he liked, ‘Forget him, Joanna, as he’s forgotten you,’ the simple fact was that Oliver had not been alive as many years as Carl and I had been married. But I liked to hear him say it. The young find everything so simple. That is why their company is refreshing. The young, moreover, see it as their duty to be happy and do their best to be so. I was brought up to be happy to do my duty, and so tend to equate happiness with boredom.
I would say to Oliver (or words to this effect), ‘If Carl May has forgotten me why hasn’t he found himself a wife, or even a girlfriend; why does he stay celibate?’ and Oliver would reply (or words to this effect), ‘Because he’s so busy making money.’ Oliver was kind. He could have said, ‘Because he’s in his sixties; too old to get it together,’ but he didn’t, in case I was reminded of my own age, and suffered. Isaac was kind, in the same way as Oliver. He too tried to smooth the path that ran before my thoughts. Too kind, when it came to it, to live in the same world as Carl May. My fault.
If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out! I wait for the arrival of the soothing ointment, the person from Maverick Enquiries. I want to be told, as I have been told so often in the past, that Carl still lives as a celibate, in memory of me.