The Glass Ocean(116)

            • • •

            I am barely through the gate when he says, You got to see this!

            Again?

            Yeah. You got to see.

            This is how it is with us, it is as if no time has passed since the last time. Time with Hip is a single blink, or several parallel worlds he is interweaving. Only he can see the thread.

            What is it?

            Of course he will not tell me. He never tells. Surprise being of the essence. I know this, in itself it is no longer surprising. The thing he shows me, that is what will surprise.

            Come on!

            He touches my hand lightly, ghost tap on ghost flesh, distantly apprehended.

            Naw. Hold up. It’s too cold. I don’ wanna go.

            C’mon. Why not?

            I don’ wanna, that’s why.

            Nonetheless, of course I’ll go. This is what I do, what we do, he and I, together. Beneath us is the Esk, boiling and freezing simultaneously, dousing us with its cold contempt.

            At the corner of Bridge Street we turn, head down the hill single file, unspeaking. He grows indistinct in the sleet, as if vanishing behind a scrim. Then pausing to wait for me he grows solid again at my approach, a veil is lifted, it’s like a game, molecules flying apart, coming together.

            I can depend on this.

            • • •

            I won’t tell him she has gone. In this way she can accompany us, a ghost among ghosts. I feel her absence at my back, it is loyal, like a thing on a leash, tugging lightly, playfully, though Hip can’t see it.

            He senses it, perhaps, my silence giving shape to that which is missing. I know this but can’t help myself, having nothing to say.

            Fortunately he is magnanimous, has no wish to unmask me.

            So we will descend, three ghosts together, into the warren.

            • • •

            The sleet is so thick that today even this is abandoned, mean figures and mean, low buildings emerging darkly from ice and wind, then sinking away again, the streets narrowly turning back upon themselves and each other in a circuitous dream of stucco and stone that has for its accompaniment the rhythmic, angry music of the sea.

            • • •

            It is right below us here. The ground trembles with it. We are a heartbeat away from the wave that could dash everything to pieces, all of it, all of us, ghosts then, in the sea.

            Instead we turn another corner, and another, this is Hip’s territory, the sea’s an impersonal menace, it does not care about us, and I myself am lost, getting in deeper with every turning.

            Imagining her there, on the sea. Distance growing greater.

            Though at the same time she is with me.

            My mother is and is not on the sea.

            Come on. This way. Over here.

            How does he find these things? When has he the time? His master, if there is such, is certainly a lenient one. Somehow Hip has memorized these streets, follows them by touch or smell or some other sense uniquely his own, by the cobbles beneath his feet, perhaps, the cant of them, the curve, the rough and smooth spots, or, like a jungle creature, by a trace he left the last time he was here, undetectable to all but himself. Me he leads with gentle touches, hand on wrist, hip, shoulder, this is palpable enough.

            I haven’t been here since she carried me inside her. She has dislodged me at last, I suppose. Having held her grudge longer and better than I ever could have imagined, she has left me her ghost only, to carry with me from now on. This is another of her inversions, I left to bear the weight of nothing, an empty space that, as it cannot be emptied, will only grow heavier with time.