An Evening at Joe's (27 page)

"Get aggressive with your cancer," she said to him one afternoon. "Don't put up with it, be outraged by it, get furious with it and then do something about it. Channel and focus that anger and, perhaps, and there are no guarantees, but perhaps, you have a chance. Treat it as a battle, plan your strategy, personalise your enemy if you wish, stage the battle in your mind and work to defeat it. Don't underestimate the power of your mind. Use the power of your brain and your imagination and give yourself a chance."

The staircase was different! It wasn't the beautifully carved Gothic masterpiece he had conjured up in his imagination during all his sessions to date. This was dirty and narrow, set at a steeply raked angle with rickety banisters, the steps themselves covered in a layer of dust. He started to breathe deeply, trying to calm himself while he decided what to do. He stepped very cautiously to the edge of the first step and looked down into the gloom below. There were more than ten steps! He couldn't tell how many as they disappeared into what looked like an unlit cellar. What should he do? This was unexpected, nothing had prepared him for the eventuality of more than ten steps, and this was a staircase he hadn't meant to imagine. And yet his spirit was strangely calm and determined today. "Don't be afraid of falling... you cannot fall, I will not let you fall, have faith in me."

He was floating down, now, sinking gently with each descent then pausing as his feet crossed and began the next. He eventually became aware that he had stopped counting. The last number he remembered consciously was fifteen and that seemed like a long, long time ago. The gloom about him had started to increase quite appreciably as if there was darkness and then this more extreme state of darkness visible. And then, quite naturally, he felt he had reached the bottom. It took his eyes a few moments to accustom themselves to the obscurity about him but when they did he thought he could just make out the outline of a door. Behind and far above him he thought he could make out a faint glow of light and then he heard the following words, whispered gently but urgently, inside his head. "Beyond this door is unknown... all possibility, all disappointment, all misery and all happiness lie beyond. Carpe diem... carpe diem... have faith and enter."

He hesitated initially, his hand hovering by the doorknob, shaking. And then, in one positive movement he grasped it and pushed. It wouldn't open! Evidently it had dropped in the frame over the years and the bottom edge was stuck. He hadn't come all this way, however, to be thwarted almost at the first hurdle, so he grasped the handle even tighter and gave the door an almighty shove with all his weight behind it. It burst open and he found himself looking once again at the wheelchair and the tarmac landscape. All was as before except for the bitingly cold, dry wind which was sweeping dust in diaphanous waves away into the distance to blend with the horizon. He knew he had to move, but in which direction? Perhaps the wind was a clue... to go against would be pointless. The wind was so strong he'd be moving just to stand still. Better to let the wind assist you, go with the wind. Taking out his handkerchief he folded it diagonally across the square and tied it over his nose and mouth, knotting it behind his neck. He reached into his shirt pocket for his glasses and put them on and then, his preparations complete, he climbed into the chair and set off.

Hours seemed to have passed, although he sensed that any reference to his watch would be useless. Earthly, corporeal measures seemed to have no relevance in this land with light but no shadows. His speedometer had recently edged towards two hundred and fifty miles an hour, but what thrill can you get out of speed without the sensations of wind in your hair and the landscape racing by? One thing occupied his conscious thoughts as his wheels spun, however. He had no impression of being chased as before, rather he felt that he was proceeding headlong towards his nemesis, almost as if he had become the hunter, that he was on the offensive. He began to be filled with a curiously exciting sense of anticipation despite the unrelieved monotony of the geography. There was nothing now to catch the eye. Even the rusting super-market trolleys had ceased to litter the racing ground beneath him.

On and on he went, swept on by an unrelenting wind, up and down the gently undulating asphalt. He must have dozed off because the next time he opened his eyes the wheelchair was at a standstill and the wind had dropped ever so slightly. At first he couldn't quite believe his eyes. He took off his glasses and wiped the dust from the lenses with one of the tails of his shirt and having replaced them, he took a second look about him. The gently rolling hills of tarmac had been replaced by a landscape paved in huge slabs of very pale yellow stone. So perfectly uniform were the edges of these stones that you would have been hard pressed to fit a cigarette paper between them. So intently was he looking at the ground he almost missed it. But, there it was, moving languidly before his eyes on the ground. A shadow! A shadow! That meant light, didn't it? Light, goddamn it! He peered up and his eyes were greeted by an intensely blue sky, a brilliant sun and a small rain-laden cloud about fifty feet above him. The cloud and he were being blown in the same direction by the wind and as the cloud started to move away from him he felt a desperation to stay in touch with it, to keep up with it, as if his life depended on it. Mask back in place he set off again in pursuit of the cloud. And now he didn't feel so alone. Every so often he would look up at the cloud and smile as if reassured. He had heard of men in solitary confinement befriending insects but this cloud, constantly altering, seemed to have befriended him and was leading him who knew where?

For a little while now the wind had started to die down and he had had to propel the wheelchair with his hands. But just a moment ago the wind had died completely, and as the cloud had stopped, he did likewise. The sun shone but with the fresh warmth of an early spring day as he and the cumulo-nimbus waited... strange... he had the impression that the wind had died down for a reason. Something was about to happen, he could sense it. He scoured the horizon for signs of movement but all was as before. The sky remained empty except for his companion and apart from the hum of the wind and the beating of his heart in his ears there was no sound. And then... without warning he began to hear the isolated splats of heavy drops of water hitting stone. Slightly disorientated by the noise at first he finally looked up and there he saw the cloud, its dark grey belly pregnant with its watery load, unburdening itself upon the flagstones below. A curious sight to behold for the rain fell on a very confined area not more than thirty feet in diameter while all about remained arid. He was desperate to feel the water cool upon his dusty face and to open his mouth and to feel its pure, fresh trickle run down his throat but something told him that he was not there to participate but to bear witness to something important... perhaps something with meaning for him alone. And so he maintained his respectful distance and watched. The rain fell heavily, drenching the slabs below and a miniature rainbow arced across the space and shimmered there for several minutes. And then... it stopped... as abruptly as it had started and the rainbow was no more. The cloud above had not changed its position and the horizon was as empty as before. Nothing moved except for the gentle mists of vapour steaming from the sun-warmed stone. Seconds passed then minutes and still he daren't move.

When it happened he nearly jumped out of his chair, so shocking was the sound in such a profoundly silent world. It was a crack as loud as that from a bullwhip and every bit as dramatic. He looked here and there but all was deserted about him. And then his eye was drawn to one of the stones. Wheeling his chair over to get a closer look he noticed that the stone had suffered a jagged break running diagonally from one corner to the other, both portions slightly raised along the line of the break as if pushed up from below. His mind was racing now as he tried to imagine what could have such force to break a slab of stone over seven inches thick. And then, so slowly it was difficult to swear that it moved, a snub-nosed, pale green tip appeared between the broken slabs. Up, up it pushed, disclosing more of its bullet-shaped tip before finally the darker green wrappings became evident. These began to fill with sap and straighten out as the single stem with its swollen tip continued its upward progress. After about twelve or fourteen inches it appeared to halt and then the tip, encased in papery onion brown began to flower. The cloud's gift surged through the microscopic sap-laden capillaries as the magnificent yellow trumpet burst forth its petals and searched with its face for the approval of the sun.

Some hours must have passed because he awoke cold and shivering. The daffodil had disappeared as had the cloud and all that remained of the sun was an afterglow below the horizon. "No time to waste," came his inner voice. "Remember this, learn the lesson... and now pass on... we must return soon and there may be more to discover before the light is gone." And so his aching arms turned the wheels once more in absence of the wind and he continued along his way.

After perhaps an hour (although it was impossible to tell) the ground seemed to rise in front of him. It was such a slight inclination it was hard to be sure but the chair's wheels were demanding greater effort for less return and each time he looked at the horizon it seemed set at a steeper angle. After another fifteen minutes or so the gradient had become very hard work indeed but he had become filled with a determination to get to the summit of this hill before he had to return. His breathing became laboured now, the muscles in his arms and shoulders were screaming for relief and sweat dripped into his eyes and from the ends of his nose and chin. "Just a few more yards," he muttered to himself through gritted teeth. "Come on... just a few more yards!"

Without warning he reached a plateau but the effort of the last push had been accomplished with his eyes closed, his face set in a rictus grin of pain. He just sat there panting, concentrating on gulping in the cool dusk air and waiting for the pain to relax its grip. Finally he opened his eyes and the sight that greeted him sent his head spinning. Before him and below were the white stones of What appeared to be an amphitheatre, but unlike anything in size or concept he had ever seen before. Imagine a Coliseum set into the crater of an enormous volcano. A structure made of pure, almost unnaturally, white stone but perhaps twenty miles in circumference, composed of an immense series of elliptical steps at the inverted apex of which was an arena, perhaps a mile below. His mouth hung open and all he could do was blink at the sheer size of it. The wind had begun to pick up and somewhere behind him a lone bell tolled. Here, far, far below, he sensed he was meant to stand and fight and strive for the right to live.

Two days had elapsed since his last hypnotherapy session and he was still trying to figure out what it had all meant. It was as if the waking part of him had been hijacked by his subconscious and it had left him not a little rattled. Over the last few weeks he'd followed her advice to the letter. She'd encouraged him to develop the ability to create pictures in his mind and to "do exercises" with the images. He'd started by imagining a grey cube floating in space... and then rotating it through 360 degrees. Once he'd mastered this he progressed to writing things on pieces of paper and then watching them spontaneously combust. He could take himself for a walk down country lanes he hadn't visited since he was five years old or fly across the Alps without getting cold. As he got better at it he pictured himself standing on the beach and then moving around himself as if with a floating movie camera seeing his body from the back, the side, extreme close-up, profile, etc. He eventually came to see it as a game he enjoyed playing... well, it was better than television after all. He'd become quite the amateur film-maker with the luxury of his own "head cinema" to screen his efforts in. Shows twice daily with matinees on Sunday. Under her guidance he eventually was ready to develop what had turned out to be a highly effective strategy against his illness. After the twenty minutes of relaxation he'd drift down the staircase, walk through the door onto his beautiful beach and lie down. And having closed his eyes he'd focus on the tumour. He'd learned to vary the method of attack, too, first of all visualising it as a huge black balloon and seeing himself take a pin and puncture it and watch it slowly deflate. On other days he would characterise it as a shoal of black fish swimming and devouring all the plant life in the sea and then he would imagine an enormous white whale opening its huge jaws and eating them all up. He'd even managed to get away from monochrome. Dr. Gueritoimeme had shown him the colour scans so he could have some visual link with the enemy. The invasive growth showed as a red blotch attached to one of his lungs surrounded by a sea of blue. Taking this image he'd imagine a technicolour screen and he'd visualise the red area being invaded bit by bit by the blue until in the end it had disappeared entirely.

But now he was afraid. Afraid of the unknown he had encountered, as if there might be another, more frightening adversary to be fought and beaten. He'd rung Helena the day before.

"What do you think it all means? You know, all this wheelchair stuff. That was not my staircase, you know. My staircase has a beautiful Turkish runner with polished brass stair rods and, above all, it is clean. This one didn't have a carpet and didn't look as if it had been dusted in years. It was filthy. And the banisters didn't look that safe either. Oh, yes, and there were more than ten steps.... Perhaps I was hallucinating. That bloody chemotherapy can be quite debilitating, you know."

There was no response from the other end of the line. He thought he'd been cut off. "Hello, are you still there?"

"Yes, Mr. Morris, I'm still here, just give me a moment to think this through." About half a minute elapsed and then she came back. "Mr. Morris? Hello?"