At the Bus-Stop
By K. Overman-Edmiston
Copyright 2011 K. Overman-Edmiston. All rights reserved.
Published by Crumplestone Press at Smashwords.
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At the Bus-Stop is from the short story collection Night Flight from Marabar.
Paperback print edition (ISBN 9780646369693) published by Crumplestone Press,
PO Box 6546, East Perth, Western Australia 6892
** ** **
At the Bus-Stop
... Things which must shortly come to pass ... [Revelations 1:1]
Salek Bernard closed the door behind him, drew his coat closer around his body and shuffled towards the bus-stop. He held his guilt fast against his stomach. Cool in the warmth of his coat, his guilt contracted to the span of a small bottle. He threw his guilt out like a thread to the scene of betrayal, and he drew himself along. Such a gentle, conscientious man.
As he neared the bus-stop he saw his plans as snapped things. Three young women sat waiting for a bus. He looked anxiously at the shelter. It was always shrouded in semidarkness at this time of the day. The usurpers sat talking and laughing. He wanted to tell them there was no point waiting. No bus was due for well over an hour. This he knew as he had come to this spot every week, on this day, for the past two years. In guiltiness and silence he had come to this place with his small bottle, knowing no bus was due. Knowing he could sit alone in the shadows thrown by garden wall and bus-stop, and drink his wine. At the end of a seemingly colourless, blameless life Salek could sit alone and unchallenged and slowly savour a small bottle of red wine.
Salek had ulcers. He had had them since middle age and now he was a very old man. He knew his lasting was due, in part, to the care of his wife, Sarah. The bland but painstakingly prepared food, the safe tasteless drinks that had been set before him, the allocation of medication − all carefully administered by the loving but crushingly unimaginative Sarah. For over forty years Salek and Sarah had been man and wife, and she knew him now as little as she did then. A quiet gentleness was all she knew of her husband.
This all conspired to make Salek's weekly bottle of wine such a betrayal. Sarah would not have complained, at least not with words. But he would be made to die a thousand deaths for his sin.
Salek did not know what to do. He could not take the bottle home, there was not an inch of the house that would act as a hiding-place. All crevices would lose their shadows before the blazing sun of Sarah. And Salek had such need for a small shadow, a shadow to cover him up, take him in, give him comfort, dark solace, peace.
The three young women sat and talked. Every so often they laughed. Oblivious, they kept Salek from his shadow. He searched the surrounding area for sanctuary, his eyes everywhere at once. There was another bus-stop on the other side of the street. At this time of the day, however, as the sun was setting and lending his bus-stop a glory of shadows, the other was bathed in the light of that same setting sun. Salek continued to cast around for shadows. He had only one hour before darkness fell and he would be missed at home. As impossible as it was for him to take the bottle home so it was impossible for him to throw it away. In an adult life as uneventful as a salt plain Salek refused to forgo this one peak: not for Sarah, not for ulcers, not for the three women who unwittingly stole his shadows.
For every glimpse of heaven there is a little death.
He shuffled across to the other side of the road and made for the second bus-stop. It was swathed in sunlight. He walked around behind it. No bench. He walked to the side facing the road and sat down. For ten minutes he sat without moving. He could not open his coat, he could not take out the bag, he could not take out the bottle. He prayed that a bus would not come, and that he would not have to stand up and wave it on. He prayed that he would not be noticed. His hour was slipping away. And still he sat, motionless.
Salek-Would-Not-Could-Not. He sat in the palm of inertia.
His eyes were creased against the sunlight. The disc itself had dropped behind the silhouette of a house. He was losing the three women in the murk, in the shadows cast by the shelter in which they sat. And how he envied them. Fifteen minutes of his one hour lost to him.
The sky was now ablaze. Clouds picked up the light thrown off by the falling sun. Salek's heart beat fast as the minutes were torn from him. His medication was taking effect more quickly than usual. Desperate, he opened his coat, just a little, and took out the small plastic wine cup. He left the bottle in the bag.
Salek was not an alcoholic. He was an old man, an ill man, coming to the end of his life. He was a man tenacious of the pleasures left to him. One life, the only thing entirely his own.
Salek slipped his hand around the neck of the bottle; it felt cool and slender. 'Mustn't be just a series of automatic moves, rote speeches, pre-lived ideas and forms. This is mine,' he mumbled.
A wind picked up and threw noise from the trees before him. He started with fright. A small, barely audible voice, in at his ear, Behold, he cometh with clouds ..., he heard.
Salek looked up at the sky. It was blazing with light. His heart thudded in his ears. He fumbled in his pocket for the penknife. His guilt was now in his mouth, he could taste it.
The ritual began. He pulled the blade from the body of the knife and in two swift moves cut an arc around the lead casing and lifted it. He flicked it off into the bag. In his mind he pulled down a fine but impregnable veil that shut Sarah and her disapproving looks out. He swung the corkscrew on its pivot and plunged it gently but firmly into the yielding cork. He began to twist metal into wood. Quickly at first then slowing the rhythm he took the corkscrew to the point where no swirl of metal could be seen. All this he did without looking. His kingfisher eyes were open and lost in the brilliant colours of the sky above and before him. In one deft move he pulled the cork from the bottle and lifted it to his nose. The smell closed his eyes to the light. In the darkness the voice, again.
I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the ending ...
Salek moved the cork to the other nostril and gently drew its purple aroma along the membrane of his nose, back of nose, throat. Finally he swallowed the scent; an aperitif in itself.
He opened his eyes. The light swam in, taking away his ability to locate himself. He faltered. As his eyes adjusted to the brightness they took in the clouds rising from behind the house, above the river, in columns of livid pink and gold. He counted them.
I saw seven candlesticks ...
As he did when a child, Salek looked for figures in the clouds. He saw a man from whose right hand flowed seven stars, from his mouth a two edged sword. Salek put the neck of the bottle to the lip of the cup, and slowly poured. The noise, a blend of click and glug, fell like spheres. He filled the cup two-thirds, and lifted it to his nose. The wine shuddering from liquid to fume filled his nostrils, rasped sleekly past skin.
I will give thee a crown of life ...
Salek sat for a full minute, savouring the perfume. He continued to draw the sky in through his eyes. Before him the clouds hung on to the light of the sun, transforming it into the essence of colours. Aprigold to burnished orange, pinks to smoking maroons. Above him night was stealing in and, here and there, a star appeared.
And I will give him the morning star.
Without the tremor, without the trembling that had characterized the past decade, Salek lifted the glass to his lips. He sipped.
'Is heaven up there?' he whispered, 'Is heaven in me? Is heaven round and about us every second and in the spaces between seconds?'
He sent the fume along the back of his throat, up along the back of his nose, expelled it through his nostrils. The wine was moved languidly across his tongue, swept through the palate. Full at almost every sense, Salek knew that within minutes, pleasure and the physical effects of the wine would be transporting him in a chariot.
I have set before thee an open door ...
Salek took another sip, then another.
... Behold, I come quickly ...
Salek watched the drama of the skies. Monumentally beautiful, one pillar of cloud drifted off and joined the fragments dropping to the horizon, off into darkness. By the second glass he was rising, a pillar himself.
Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple ... and I will write upon him the name of my God ...
Salek became parchment, a sheet written upon.
'I am pale,' whispered Salek, 'I am a man of non sequiturs.'
He took another sip, humbled his face about the cup. A surge within him, a quickening of heartbeat.
'And yet everything is significant to me. I have lived a life in which everything has had meaning, everything is more than it seems. I have been full, engaged, but only at centre. My extremities seem pale, tepid.' Salek lost his position on the seat. He fell on to one knee. He dropped the bag from his coat, scrambled to save it, succeeded, and set about pulling himself back on to the wooden slats of his seat. One of the women sitting at the bus-stop across the road saw what had happened.
She nudged the woman beside her, 'Pathetic, isn't it?'
Her companion agreed. And they set about consolidating their friendship with a joint tirade on people who didn't, people who did, people, people, anyone apart from themselves. Hidden from the sunset, cut off from the apocalyptic scenes just behind the bus shelter, the garden wall, they banded together against the world, as people do, and carved out a niche just for themselves. Full of warmth and vitriol, glued companionably by their shared bigotries, they scooped out a handful of dirt, nestled themselves into the hollow, and missed out on the paradise just behind them. They faced each other, they faced ignorance, and they outfaced heaven at their backs.
They contracted to serration, cut through the old man across the road from them, then snapped in tight upon themselves. Friendship: infrangible, clasped, exclusive. Welcome to my territory. Bring all your terrors, your bigotries, your dreams, and we will share them.
Salek regained his position on the seat. He felt the bag, the bottle, to make sure there had been no breakages. He looked down at his hands, spread out his fingers, clenched them tight to hide their paleness in white.
I know thy works, thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot ... So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.
Salek looked up, terrified. Frightened that he would be judged cold; fearful of setting the record straight.
Clouds reared up, they drew in and alchemized the light thrown off by the sun. Twisted the light, tormented it into colours, crushed it into molten pours, cast it off into livid pinks, terrors of gold, mauves wild with pain.
'It is upon me,' whispered Salek, terrified, 'it is upon me,' and he gulped his wine as a potion, a charm.
Behold I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.
Salek lifted his cup slowly, tentatively, deliberately. And still it had not, would not, finish.
'I was just a small boy,' whispered Salek, the door ajar, 'I was just a child.'
Now the clouds threw down arms, tore light from the sun, tore it up and hurled strips through and past their own substance.
... behold, a door was opened in heaven ... I will show thee things which must be hereafter ... a rainbow about the throne, in sight like unto an emerald ... twenty elders clothed in white raiment ... crowns of gold ... lightnings and thunderings and voices ... a sea of glass like unto crystal ... beasts full of eyes ... lion ... calf ... flying eagle ... holy, holy, holy ...
'I was just a child,' Salek sobbed, 'you can't do that to children. You mustn't damage the soft ones, mustn't damage the gentle women, the gentle men, the gentle children, the little ones,' Salek tried to whisper, but his words came out as water.
And still the clouds kept tearing light from the sun, pitching it off into darkness: gold, mauve, deep blue, burgundy. And the blue of Salek's eyes darkened, and in them storms brewed.
... in the right hand of him who sat on the throne a book written within and on the backside, sealed with seven seals.
The storms within Salek grew, came in on a front of fury.
The seals, one by one, were broken.
And when he had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour.
Salek sat noiseless. The three women − tired by talk, laughter, vehemence − sat silent. The clouds, the sky, each star in its set path, moved silently. In silence roared trumpets, in silence the stars fell from their arcs, in silence rose smoke and fell locusts.
'Do you know what I did for my father?' said Salek to the skies, 'I collected the blows.
'When he was hurt by other people − I collected the blows.
'When he was ashamed of his own nature − I collected the blows.
'When he was held up to the angels by his dream in adolescence, and saw himself a weak, dissipated thing − I collected the blows.
'When he promised me the world, came as a god, and gave me only his hurt − I collected the blows.
'When he began to hate himself, was neutered, was shorn, he turned his fury on me − and I collected the blows.
'I was not yet full, I had no covering, I was a small boy who tried to please. I tried to be quiet even as I collected the blows. I tried not to cry, so I wouldn't upset him, as the blows fell. How much is a child supposed to do, how much is enough when you are a small uncovered thing, not yet full, a small vulnerable part of a thing not yet strong with maturity? How many blows would ever make an ending? When were they going to stop?'
One woe is past; and, behold, there came two more woes hereafter.
'They didn't stop falling upon me even when he died,' whispered Salek, 'he set up reverberations that tormented throughout my life. I ate books and my belly was bitter and sore.
'How do you free yourself from such damage? I am a weak man, desirous of protection. And what have I protected − softness, fineness? No, I have protected a fury, I have protected a rage. He bequeathed me a ferocity at injustice that has rendered me useless. In order to live a life, I have hidden myself away. I am solitary. My pleasures, my pains, are solitary. My sharing? I have shared only with myself. I do not connect. I do not hurt. I do not let myself be hurt.
'I am all on the inside.'
The second woe is past; and, behold, the third woe cometh quickly.
'Life moves past me. And I watch. I make comments. I do not engage. It moves past as a series of tableaux, and I look on. Detached, outside, dislocated, I watch from beyond. I do not commit, I am lukewarm.'
... there was seen in his temple the ark of his testament: and there were lightnings, and voices, and thunderings, and an earthquake, and great hail.
'On the inside?' whispered Salek, 'I am maelstrom.'
And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars.
'Once I was so frightened and small,' said Salek to his cup, 'I twisted the button on my blue dressing gown so much it came off. And mummy, she threw herself at the bottle.'
And there was childbirth, and dragons, and wildernesses, and wars and, finally, a Lamb.
'But nobody,' said Salek, 'nobody has ever, will ever, accept a blow from me. I do not cause hurt. I have withdrawn into the core of myself. And no-one, not wife, nor child, nor friend, nor enemy, gets near the core of me. This is a gift, a mulct, for myself. It is all my own.'
And sins will be worn on the forehead. And we walked through Babylon. And there were pits, and perdition, and famines, and torment. Then an angel with a key on a golden chain casting the dragon into the bottomless pit, and setting a seal upon him that would endure for a thousand years.
'Every day I get up from my bed,' whispered Salek, 'and gather up my storm clouds. I gather my rage up to me. I tense myself, I keep it in, I protect everyone else.'
And the book of life was opened, and all were judged.
'I protect everyone else. I absorb their blows. I accept their disappointments. I take in their slights, their unhappiness, draw them in to my density. All this pain to carry off at my death.'
And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire.
'The density,' said Salek, 'gravity upon gravity, slips out, seeps out through ulcers, through the unnatural rhythm of my heart. But still I take on the flaws of others, hold them in, let them walk away relieved of their burdens, their spites, their needs.
'The weakest have always hurt me the most ferociously.'
And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.
And Salek raged. Salek rose up, as a pillar. Against the darkness, against the shadows, against the light. Salek raged. In softness, in silence, Salek raged.
'You crush a small boy,' he whispered, 'you produce a small man. You damage a gentle boy, you damage a quiet thing, you make a closed, tight man, a man who hides, a man who is silent, who steals away in silence and shadows. Damage an open, gentle boy, and you produce a man condensed by fear into a shadow seeking shade. You turn a life in on itself, a black hole each successive year growing more and more condensed, more intense, only less alive than a scream. No movement on the outside − a life quiet, still, a series of hesitant movements held together by the desire to protect, no energy left to embrace, take in others, become bigger on the outside by comprehending other lives. But what fury on the inside, what ferocity at centre.
'I believe the greatest damage is done in silence, the worst lies told without words. The most damaging of actions are carried out privately; misinforming, half-truths, un-informing,' mouthed Salek, noiselessly. 'Goodness is propelled by energy, as is evil. The greatest evils are allowed to occur by enervation, apathy, a lack of energy. The most damaging of actions are completed when no-one steps in to stop them. Evil thrives when no-one raises a finger to stop it, hold it back, protect the weak and defenceless.' Salek began to cry. A thousand year old man crying at a bus-stop.
Salek defied the sun. Salek defied the terrifying clouds, the disturbing colours.
'Do you know what made me feel more alive, than anything, ever? Falling over in a field in Ireland, under a black sky laden with stars. Lying face down in a field wet with dew, lying with mud at my palms, grass at my face, the smell of animals and germination, of seeds and life, the smell of those stars above me, the sound of those clouds. It was me, you see, the clouds were me, the stars were me, the winds tossing it all were me. I am the mud, I am the constellations. I was nineteen years old and I felt more alive, more at home, than I ever have.
'I was born under a sentence of death, we all are. It is a fait accompli. So why have I always been so fearful?
'I am going to die. I will cease. So, how can anything else frighten me, why do I let anything scare me?'
Salek thought of his father. Salek looked up at God the Father, through the blaze of His Son.
'When I was uncovered, when I was innocent, unprotected, impotent, a child, You set the terrors of hell upon me. And now You think I will be frightened by the Four Horsemen? Compared to the hurts meted out when I was powerless, War, Pestilence, Famine and Death are but bogeymen.'
Salek defied his own nature. He threw up his eyes, two shrieks of blue. He defied the Four Horsemen. He defied the angels in their serried ranks. Salek looked up to the Son of God and, in sheer incomprehension and torment, defied Him with a pain dredged up from his very core.
'To what end?' Salek demanded, his mouth closed, words wrenched from him in fearless silence, 'A small, bruised boy − to what end?'
And Salek fell from his seat. From his life. Up to spirit. He fell.
The old man lay, sodden in drink and medication, a heap of humanity at the kerbside: a pile of flesh and clothes bent double by ulcers. A life that was too furious for a fragile human frame, a hurt too big for one body.
A woman, a man, a child: too small for the visions, the requests made, the needs seeded. Too small on the outside, too big on the inside. Salek released the life-force.
A great horse galloped across the riot of clouds. The pale rider, his horse not missing a beat, bent down and picked up the heap, threw it back in his wake. Salek, much slower than movement, cut his own arc across the scenes of apocalypse. And then, as slowly as he rose, he fell. Death was finished with him. The ritual was completed.
The Son of God gathered Salek up from his pile of clothes. The Son of God slipped His hands like water into Salek's centre, took out the core of rage, pain − all the more terrifying for its childishness, its absoluteness − and let Salek drop to existence, a spirit of sobs, a spent force. The Son of God wiped Salek's tears away. The Son of God comforted His creature.
Salek was free. And Salek became Salek.
*****
About the Author - Karen Overman-Edmiston
People’s motivations and their interior life are at the core of Karen Overman-Edmiston’s writing. In addition, impressions and experiences gained while travelling have had a strong impact on her work. These factors are strongly evident in her 2010 Nautilus Award-winning novel, The Avenue of Eternal Tranquillity, as well as in an earlier publication, Night Flight from Marabar, a collection of short stories. Both titles are available in bookshops and online.
Karen Overman-Edmiston was born in the United Kingdom. Educated in the U K, Ireland and Australia, she gained a Master of Arts at the University of Western Australia. Having previously worked for the West Australian government, Karen runs her own consultancy business as well as continuing her writing.
Karen has written for the stage and has had competition-winning plays performed, including at the Festival of Perth. She is also a prize-winning short story writer who has had stories published in several magazines.
Find out more on the publisher’s website: http://sites.google.com/site/crumplestonepress/