The Promise

by Damon Galgut

she gets woken by a kick. At home in Menlo Park she doesn’t share a bed with Ockie, who lies twitching beside her like a hit-and-run victim, waiting for medical assistance. What a thought, Marina, sis on you, but you can’t help what you think, it’s only human, and far worse has gone through your mind, oh yes it has. Her husband’s foot touches hers, she pulls her foot away. Terrible to flinch from what you once, briefly, loved, or thought you did, or wanted to think you did. But are shackled to, regardless, for life.

The chaplain wants to see you. The chaplain? He’s never spoken to the chaplain. It can only be, he thinks, that the man knows what he did and wants to talk to him about it. His sin has somehow transmitted itself, he has taken a life, he must pay. But I didn’t mean to. But you did. She was throwing a stone, she bent down to pick it up, a flash of rage passed through him, concomitant with hers. He didn’t think, he hated her, he wiped her away. All in a few seconds, an instant, over and done. Never over, never done.

She peered at Amor out of the mirror not long ago, though what she was really gazing at was the scene of her final exit, a fact she finds hard to take in. It’s not uncommon, the dead are frequently unable to accept their condition, they resemble the living in that respect, but they have forgotten what they’re nostalgic for, much is lost in the crossing over, and when they see you they do not know you.

Tojo the Alsatian observes her coming and going without difficulty, because he hasn’t learned that it isn’t possible.

She touches down where her spirit was once thick, but she’s no longer solid, a watercolour woman.

Every surface in this house is made of some expensive material, steel or marble or glass, and if a bit of wood shows here and there it’s been sanded and varnished into smooth submission, and Astrid wants it, she wants the whole world to be made of fine, sculpted surfaces like these. Makes you realise how rough everything is at home, how full of sharp edges and angles. Authentic, Pa would call it, but who needs reality? This is much better. Astrid trails her fingertips over the wallpaper, feeling the raised ridges of its patterns.

The threshold seems like the place to be, not here or there, not one thing or another.

Want a drink, sis? Nope? Is that another of life’s pleasures you deny yourself? More truthful to feel the pain? No, she says, sitting on the sofa. Just more painful.

That’s the trouble with the world, it’s not original, no surprises up its sleeve, it repeats itself like some old auntie with dementia. Same stories over and over, so tired of it. Did I ever tell you about, Yes, you did, actually, so shut the fuck up.

So why does he not do it, the sensible thing? Dunno, just always been like that. Can see the right action and will not perform it. Performs instead the other action, the wrong one, in order to vex you, and himself. Besides, never cared too much for town.

Desirée doesn’t blame herself for much, she never has. The natural order, as far as she’s concerned, is that the world is there to try to please her, and she is there to feel disappointed by it.

No, she says. But refusal only works on other people, on fate it has no effect. You may have noticed it yourself, protesting at destiny is a waste of breath, what happens will happen regardless of your No. In the end it’s a fact as neutral as the weather that this morning your husband got up and went outside with his shotgun and contorted himself into an impossible position in order to blow his head off, just because.

She thinks that, she will think it, over and over, till she reaches the point where she must deny it, even when nobody has accused her of anything. No, no, I didn’t fail Anton, I have never failed anybody, he’s the one who let me down!

Middle-aged Amor in her bra on the roof. There she sits, at the centre of her story, not the same people she used to be, nor the ones she might yet become. Not old yet, but not young any more either. Midway somewhere. The body past its best, starting to creak and fail.