Chapter 46

THE JOURNALIST IS NOT gone for more than thirty minutes before my blindness returns. I’m convinced now that if I can force myself to sleep, I will regain my eyesight far quicker than if I were to remain awake. Inside my dopp kit in the bathroom, I find the bottle of sleeping pills that I use on transatlantic flights to knock myself out. I take a pill with a shot of whiskey. Then I shuffle the twelve steps across the studio floor to the bed, and lie down on it. In no time at all, sleep takes over and I find myself in a different country altogether.

* * *

Climbing a gravel and sand-covered mountain, the dust flying into my mouth, through my scarf, my booted feet following a narrow path, I am alone, my troops having abandoned me. Off in the distance, across the wide valley, come the echoes of cannon and mortar fires. Overhead the sun shines brightly, just as it did for the Russians before us and the British before them and Napolean’s French before them. So bright and brilliant it stings my retinas even through the polarized sunglasses that wrap around my head. With each step I take, I hear the whispers and words of a million ancient souls buried in this Godforsaken, barren earth. The souls call out my name.

I climb, my M4 carbine strapped to my shoulder, pack on my back, a trickle of cold sweat sliding down my spine. When I come to the top of the hill, I can barely catch my breath. I’m getting too old for this war. I’m getting too old for war. With each step up the mountain, I get a little bit older and more fragile. Looking down at my hands, I’m surprised to see that my black gloves are missing. My hands have turned wrinkly and old, the muscle having deteriorated, the skin gray and covered in age spots. I really am old.

I struggle to walk. But the voices are speaking to me. The voices of a thousand battles fought before my birth. I am afraid of them and I need to escape them. So I walk.

Then I see him. A little boy of no more than two. He’s got short black hair, perhaps shorn with scissors, and green eyes that look a lot like small stones of backlit jade. He’s wearing blood red cloth shorts and he’s holding a rose in one hand and a heart in the other. A heart that is still pumping and bleeding. The more I struggle to climb and the closer I come to him, the more I can make out the smile planted on his pale face.

When he holds out his hands for me, the rose petals shivering, the heart pumping, dripping, I lose all my strength and drop to my knees. It’s then I fall to my knees and place my hand to my chest, feeling the gaping hole. The little boy is holding my heart. My ancient heart. Coming close, he shoves the heart back into the hole. Then he places the stem of the rose into the barrel of the M4. Now that his hands are empty, he sets them upon my face and wipes away my tears.

“I’m sorry,” I say, the words coming out as a hoarse whisper. The words of an old, dying man. A dead man.

“I know,” he says.

And then he disappears. Disappears into the sun, and the wind, and the barren earth.

* * *

I open my eyes. I can see. I’m staring up at the ceiling.

I can see but I cannot move.

It’s as if I am glued to the mattress, my limbs, head and torso impossibly paralyzed. I can breathe, swallow and I can feel my heart drumming against my ribs. But I can’t lift a finger any more than I can speak or shout. My voice, my ability to make any kind of sound whatsoever, has vanished.

I’m not alone.

There’s someone in the room. I can’t see him, or feel him, or speak with him. But I know he’s there, the same way a bird will sense the onset of an earthquake minutes before the ground opens up. At first, I believe I can see. But then it dawns on me that I am not staring at the plaster ceiling. I am staring at the inside of my eyelids.

The sound of breathing.

Then I hear, “I. See.” He pronounces the word “See” like, “Seeeezzz.”

I hear the words coming from the end of the bed. The smell coming from that direction is wormy and moldy. His presence is overwhelming. Like meeting my maker. Or in this case, my destroyer. My and Grace’s destroyer. I want to jump up, grab him, throw him down onto the floor. I want to slam his head on the floorboards, until he gives up the location of my Grace. Then I want to choke him until his heart and lungs stop.

I want to kill him.

Kill. Him.

But then, I feel myself drifting.

Falling and drifting.

Until I am once more unconscious.