EDVARD TUSK: without his face

A Novel by Pablo D’Stair

[Part 7]

There was no heat on in my room, but just the sense of enclosure gave it the constricted feel of a furnace, oppressive (combined with my aches, I felt as though I was being chewed in some ponderous maw) my legs began to go sideways on me while a sense of sweating chill scaled my back and I bent in staggers to my knees.

The mechanism of the room heater was ridiculous, the knob that would allow the temperature to be set missing, leaving just a slit in the protruding bit of metal (this would need a coin or key inserted to screwdriver to a new position).

I didn’t want to be warm, didn’t want to be cold - and in that moment, I felt, intensely, wholly, both at once, a stinging sensation clamping my left ear that touch aggravated and open air sharpened into piercing spots (it was as though liquid was trying to worm itself violently out through pores) had me roughing it to my raised shoulder top, every contact resulting in a wince, saliva coursing from my cheeks coarsely into gulps that landed swampy in my gut and seemed immediately begin their crawl back up me.

“Well, you’re honestly ill,” I coughed to myself, given up, spread armed, leg crossed over leg on the floor, fully dressed, my view beneath one of the two beds - what seemed to be a candy wrapper and a small child’s coin-circumferenced rubber ball visible in what little light snaked along from out of the half opened bathroom door - snorting phlegm I’d no choice but to swallow back (that or let it drool down over my cheek, which I did not feel like letting myself be reduced to). “So, take that, Justine—your brother is sick as a dog.”

Satire

My muttering this made me giggle—earnestly, as though there were some slapstick or satire to the words presenting themselves, irresistible humour delivered with deft grace—and (after how long I’d no idea) I realised I was singing, aloud, to an approximation of a childhood song “Sick as a dog on a frog on a log on the hole at the bottom of the sea” this concluding in a giddy fit of laughter that had me writhing painfully where I lay, but which also finally prompted me up and to slovenly get out of my clothes (the burden of fabric to skin had become excruciating).

It might have been my thinking of how my illness would allow me to legitimately call off the whole remainder of my trip which had me staring at the hotel phone (some vague idea of telephoning Justine—that moment, no more waiting—which, of course, in reality I would do from my cellphone) but this consideration seemed odd (pointedly, felt odd to find myself staring at the phone asking “Why are you staring at the phone?”).

I shook myself out of a reverie asking, now aloud “Why am I looking at the damned phone” only to, that instant, focus harshly (it felt like hands clapping, applauding brutishly, a set at both ears) on the indicator light about the word Messages.

And as I stared at that, my attention was pulled to the sound of the electric typewriter in the room next door, clacking along again merrily, almost too insistently, too steadily, as though the writer had a device which did not need to be reset at each full text line with a harsh ding or a programmed chug and snap.

Surprise

I took up the receiver, surprised that the dial tone in my ear was not jarring—in fact, I thought the word “Dulcet,” would have started purring like a cat were I able to, even in playful mimic (an image of myself seen as though from room ceiling, sitting with long tail flicking bed-top to carpet floor, toyed around in my thoughts).

Dialling the appropriate number—three—to have whatever message was there replayed, I scooted up to the headboard, arranging pillows to my lower back as a voice came on the line: “Edvard. Two two four.”

It was a woman’s voice, no particular tone to it (business like, if anything, an even clip of syllable, clear pronunciation, a sense the words were being read from a card or from memory long ago drilled in by rote) and after the words were three prolonged breaths, as though the speaker was get her breathing back to even after swallowing a drink of something.

I reset the phone connection, dialled three again and listened.

“Edvard. Two two four.”

Then I reset and listened again and I reset and listened again and again (reset, listened, reset, listened, again).

When I finally hung up the receiver, for a moment I seemed in such a place of cotton quiet, my body not a separate entity from the still tight tucked comforter I sat on, I was certain I was about to sleep, then muttered “Naw naw naw” without thinking, abruptly standing, lurching to the bathroom faucet where I cupped palmfuls of water, splashed them to my face, swallowing as much as I could with each toss.

Reflection

“I’m really ill, Justine,” I said to my reflection and made it mouth back, “Some excuse—just spring for the plane ticket then,” this becoming a full on conversation : “What about my car,” “Who’ll get me at the airport?” (her especially snide “Take a damn cab, Edvard!” snapping me out of it).

I hadn’t meant “Edvard”, of course, flicked on the light switch and ended the delirious debate with “Edvard or otherwise—I rest my case!” a vulgar gesture accompanying this but one so clumsy my limp fingers wound up striking the wall with great violence.

I ran water for a shower, but just sat on the closed toilet, nuzzling my thoughts inside the water’s his—too harsh to concentrate, just innocuous enough not be lulling. In this make shift numb, I found myself starting sentences, repeating the starts (engine of any thought failing to turn over) until I said—tapping my fingertips together to the words (knees digging very hard down into the fronts of my thighs)—“Edvard Edvard two two four Edvard Edvard two two four.”

The timbre of the sound from the shower changed, I became acutely aware that the water was cold—which made me feel tight, harried—so shut off the flow, retreating from the bathroom (back-peddling) shutting the door hard, the slam cackling into strict silence so immediately it almost served as a prolonged echo.

Attention

I stood at beleaguered attention in the quiet (any moment I expected to have to trade blows with an intruder, someone who had been in the room with me since I’d arrived but, through deft side steps and crouching, had managed to stay out of my line of sight).

This sensation passed and as it did—just as I was getting accustomed to how silent the room was—the typing through the wall started up again. Staring at the framed picture on the wall, I felt instinctively certain the typing had stopped when I’d slammed that bathroom door.

“He’s listening. He’s listening to me.”“No”—I corrected this thought, mocking tone at myself—“he’s typing. He cannot be listening and typing at the same time”.

This seemed such an important point to get through to myself that I carried on with the explanation: “You slammed a door, he stopped typing—nothing else happened, he heard nothing else, so he started up, again.”

I nodded and nodded, shook my face, started to move toward my clothes on the floor until the groaning reality (which had not seemed present just the split second before) of my miserable body, shivering and sallow, got all over me and I tilted to one side, reaching for the wall (not finding it) only avoiding falling flat by going to my knees with such force my eyes watered, shut, and would not open.

Control

The typing had stopped again by the time I was in control of my faculties enough to even think about standing, but I then all at once was to my feet, back in bed, going for the telephone receiver, dialling three to rehear the message yet again.

“Edvard. Two two four.”

Again.

“Edvard. Two two four.”

Again. Again.

I let the receiver slip away from my ear, rest draped in my armpit where the touch to my flesh felt nice—like skin peeling after a sunburn—and I stared at the ceiling, drawing lines between this spot and that with movements of my eyes (I’d done this for hours as a child—done this every night, the nocturnes of my childhood spent listening to Justine breathing, asleep, and to the soft sound of her small radio while I traced polygons, endless zagging lines along the twilight ceiling) traced lines, connections, until my eyes were swimming in uneven swirls of themselves while I said (or at least gave sighs in approximation of the words) “Edvard two two four, Edvard two two four.”