Oh Marina Girl Episode 38

IThe only thing you loved in William was your reflection and the intimation of immortality he represented

couldn’t bear to listen to his character assassination a moment longer. “What gives you the right to judge me?” I demanded, frustrated by the ease with which he, an obviously deranged and quite possibly dangerous (certainly to himself ) fantasist, had contrived to seize the moral high ground.

“What does any of this have to do with you anyway?”

“I’ve got every right to judge you,” he replied in a tone which suggested that he’d anticipated just this interruption, “because this has everything to do with me.

“Your autobiography’s a work of fiction, testament not to the tragic truth but to the vividness of your imagination and the pathos of your self-deception.

“The premises upon which it’s founded — your love for Lisa and William — are false.”

“That’s a lie!” I protested, but he proceeded without hesitation.

“Lisa never loved you, and you never loved her.”

“That’s a lie!”

“Is it? Explain to me just how you can beat and rape someone you purport to love?”

“That’s a lie!” I interrupted for a third time.

“And as for William: you claim to have been devoted to him, but the fact is that you wanted him aborted for fear that he would take your place in Lisa’s affections — not realising that she never truly loved you anyway — and you harboured a festering resentment against him for having displaced you ever since.”

“That’s a lie”

“The only thing you loved in William was your reflection and the intimation of immortality he represented.”

This really was too much.

“Lies! All lies!” I proclaimed as, unable to contain my fury at his pseudo-psychobabble any longer, I lunged at him.

He evaded my clumsy attack all too easily and, with a single strike, sent me careening across the room to crash against a bookcase and slump to the floor with books tumbling around me.

I was disconcerted to discover that the books were all identical. They were all copies of Original Harm.

“Lies, all lies,” I mumbled beneath my breath.

“It’s your autobiography that’s the lie,” he maintained.

“And what about yours?” I hissed. “What’s your story?”

“At last,” he said, in a sarcastic tone. “I was beginning to wonder whether you’d ever get round to enquiring after me.”

“I’m enquiring now,” I said, cradling my bruised and battered face in my hands. “Do you know who you are?”

“Thanks for asking,” he said. “I do — though I admit there was a time when I wasn’t quite so sure.”

“When was that?”

“When you stopped replying to my letters — those letters might not have meant much to you, but they meant a great deal to me.

“I’d grown to depend on them — they gave me something to look forward to and, until you stopped sending them, they told me who I was: I was your confidant.

“I felt privileged to be the sole recipient of your candid confessions and, secure in the status this prerogative afforded me, the regular flow of your correspondence gave me sufficient self-confidence to inspire my first steps towards self-exploration until I learned to raise my line of vision from contemplation of my navel to contemplation of a vista crowded with possibilities.

“I took succour from your candour and sought to emulate it through my own experiments in self-expression, resulting in A Halo Ring Rim, my one and only attempt at writing a roman-a-clef. Your response to these overtures? You cut dead all lines of communication.”

I was unsure what, exactly, he was talking about. It sounded to me as if he was skirting around an issue he felt compelled to impart; as if he hoped that by broaching it indirectly, I might be able to infer his meaning without forcing him into the awkward position of having to divulge it explicitly.

If this was his hope, then it was in vain.

Despite the accusation that culminated this preliminary bout of soul-baring confession, his voice had grown more reflective and less vindictive and I felt obliged to modulate my own accordingly.

“I’m not sure I follow,” I said.

“I thought you might find it difficult,” he said, “but you weren’t interested in my torments then, so you’ll understand why I’m not predisposed to spell them out for you now. Suffice to say that they weren’t as trivial or as commonplace as your own. It’s what happened after your letters stopped arriving that should concern you.” “What happened?”

“I decided that words are no substitute for action.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning I felt I needed to meet you in person.”

“Me? Why?”

“I needed to clarify something with you.” “What?” I asked.

“It doesn’t matter now.”

“I’d like to know.”

“It doesn’t matter now,” he repeated, in a tone that told me that any attempt to discuss this particular matter further would prove futile.

His obfuscation was becoming exasperating. I sighed with frustration.

“So what happened?” I asked. “You didn’t find me, so you returned home?”

“Not immediately.”

“What d’you mean, ‘not immediately’?” “I mean ‘not immediately’. Which part of ‘not immediately’ don’t you understand? I didn’t find you — but I found Lisa.” “You knew Lisa?”

“Biblically,” he said, just like that; then, tangentially: “D’you know what day it is today?”

“No,” I said, still trying to figure out whether he meant what I thought he meant by his confirmation that he had known Lisa.

“It’s the tenth anniversary of your tragedies,” he said. “You’d have thought that date might have etched itself in your memory.”

“What does the anniversary of ‘my tragedies’ have to do with you?”

“Everything.”

More tomorrow.