The Whispering Gallery, by Dan Bloom

DECEMBER

 

I answered her question in the restaurant that night using a relatively standard method, one which I’ve had cause to use many times in my short life. What I did is I thought, ‘Is there a chance that I’ll regret this?’, and it didn’t take me long, of course, to realise that there was, indeed, a great chance I could have done. So, naturally, I got back with my girlfriend and it almost felt like we’d never been apart. I don’t think I’ve had cause to regret my decision since, and I’m sure that she hasn’t either. In any case, the method I used, of considering things in terms of regret, which I’m quite proud to have thought up, is one I’ve exploited before. It’s the reason, for instance, that I’ve never once smoked a cigarette. I used to tell it to the older boys in school, and they’d be disgusted, and threaten to put it in my mouth and punch me in the stomach and force me to draw breath until I became addicted, or something. Still, I stood firm, and now I’ve nearly finished my dissertation and I’m nearly twenty-one and I still haven’t drawn a single drag of nicotine into my lungs.

Yet, I’ve almost been tempted to take it up, smoking that is, in the last few days, the dying days of this dissertation, just for something to do. It’s not long until the deadline, not long at all, a worryingly short time in fact, yet I still feel like Jack Nicholson putting a terrifying hole in the door (except my hole’s in the ceiling. Maybe all my ideas are falling out through it). Yesterday, when the weather was agreeable, for once, I went outside, carrying a textbook, and nestled the seat of my overcoat into the base of the long wall that runs all around the halls.

I haven’t been outside or seen anyone, except Beth, for days. It felt snug and protected reading there, more snug than I’ve felt for a long time with the wind whistling over the top of the wall, and the change was a welcome one, even though I could be sure I was being watched from the criss-cross of windows running up the building. Eventually it got too cold to read even in the low winter sunlight, and so I stood up and walked along the length of the wall, running my hands along the concrete and feeling its surface’s smooth, comforting shine, new and free of any weathering cracks. I looked out along its slow inward curve, golden in the late afternoon sun, and I was reminded of once, long ago, when I had visited the Whispering Gallery in St. Paul’s Cathedral. With Beth, I had joined the throngs of tourists in standing at opposite sides of the giant, circular marble wall and whispering against it in the vain hope she’d hear on the other side. She’d put her ear theatrically to the marble surface and giggled as I’d reeled off deliberately mundane things like our weekend plans and my shopping list. I’d then made her gasp in genuine shock as I throatily stage-whispered all kinds of dirty things for all the tourists to hear. An American mother had pulled her child from the wall with an angry look and Beth’s eyes had sparkled across the hall at me.

Now, absorbed, I lowered my head to the wall and listened carefully, almost expecting to hear again all those tourists’ lives played out in the busy, frenetic free-flow of whispered information. My ears pricked in shock as they made contact with the grey concrete. But of course, there was nothing: only silence. I spoke a few quiet words and they fell dead against the grey stone. The air was cold now, too, so cold, in fact, that after standing paralysed for a moment with my head still pressed against the wall, I was forced to lift myself up, shove my hands back into my deep overcoat pockets and head back for the safety of indoors.

I haven’t made much progress with the work since then but my ideas are much clearer, and I know that with time I can knuckle down and make something out of them.

The temperatures plummeted last night, so I knew that another walk outside was out of the question for today. It was a good day. I really set my affairs in order and I really am quite clear now what I want to write.

There was a little incident this evening which broke up the monotony of work, for a while. I was tapping the chewed-up wet nib of my ink pen onto the base of my desk light; one of those touch-lamps, so as I did it the light became dim, bright, brighter, then clicked off. Then again, dim, bright, brighter, off, dim again, bright, brighter, then darkness, bouncing a strobe effect off the walls that was hypnotizing to watch.

Eventually, this attracted the attention of a small fly. It flew in through the crack of open window that I’d left to air the room: they always find the cracks. It began circling the lamp as I played with my pen, and the whole time I was secretly watching the movements of the circling fly; this fly would occasionally land, on the piles of strewn-up paper, sweet wrappers, dirty tissues, teabags, scratched-off beer labels and chewed-up pens I had gathered around me over the past few weeks, but always jump off again too quickly for me to take action. It was as if it was afraid to land on the pulsating light, instead spiralling closer and closer without ever touching it. I stopped the cycle on the brightest setting and the fly landed. The hundred watt bulb blazed through the shade. I saw red. The feeling was bizarre and unexpected. This was my chance. Slowly, agonisingly, the fly lifted its wings and hopped the short distance onto the very top of the lampshade. There was a muted echo of a buzz. I silently lifted the textbook in my hand high into the air and with grace and style, at last brought it crashing down upon the offender.

With a sudden flash of light and a deafening pop the lampshade crumpled and the bulb exploded, strewing broken glass across my notes and into my washing, interspersing with the piles of junk with which I had learned to surround myself and spraying in glittering shards across my carpet. I was plunged into a darkness that was almost complete, save for the streetlamps that lit the quad casting an orange glow on my ceiling that my eyes gradually adjusted to see. The dust settled, and I saw that the fly was dead. I sat there, and I looked carefully at the mess that I had made, in the half-light, for a few minutes, and then it dawned on me that I had shards of glass on my pyjamas. I went into the communal kitchen to clear myself up, and, sighing, made myself a fresh cup of tea. The old one probably had glass in the bottom.

I feel so helpless. It looks as if I’ll have to work without a desk lamp until the dissertation’s finished. And there’s no time to ask anybody to fix the ceiling hole, either. The nightmares have been getting worse. But I’m pouring myself into my work, at least for now. It seems like the most sensible thing to do under the circumstances. I can only faintly trust a larger hope that seems so hopelessly out of reach: that I’ll finish, and everything will get fixed and work out, and I’ll be home in time for Christmas so I can cook and bake and break bread with my family as if none of this term ever happened. Maybe that’s already true. I feel like I can hardly remember any of it as it is.

The Whispering Gallery, by Dan Bloom

NOVEMBER

 

I do get out sometimes, unbelievable joy though it may seem, but I’ll be the first to admit that tonight was the first in a long while. The work has been bogging me down no end. It’s been so long in fact I had to renew my bus pass, slumping down the four flights of stairs to reception and scribbling ‘Maryus, P.’ three times because they didn’t have any carbon paper. I took the 507 towards town and got to Beth’s so well in time that when I climbed the steps to her second-floor flat she was still getting ready.

 

I was completely dried out from the long bus-ride and the cold air so the first thing I asked for when I walked through the door was some lip balm, which she tossed my way before vanishing upstairs again to put on her face. I was grateful for the lip balm, applying it once and once again like a coat of paint, and as she began to take forever I found myself amusing myself by screwing and unscrewing the base – first into the open air, then into the empty plastic case, and then, with one eye closed, I carefully coordinated my movements so that I was moving the base of the lip balm backwards at the same rate as I was unscrewing it, and so the tip of the wax stayed level with the same spot on the wall while the casing and the rest of the world moved around it. I found the mathematics of my own movements totally hypnotic, and Beth took forever so I was able to carry on for quite some time. But before too long, the distant spot on the yellow living-room wallpaper on which I was channelling all my energy suddenly morphed into the out-of-focus threads of Beth’s green skirt. I looked up; she was eyeing me coldly and waiting to go.

 

The stars were out and twinkling just out of reach when we headed out of her flat and down along the canal. It’s the way we’ve always walked, and it was a beautiful evening tonight. I knew more or less where we were headed, but a vague niggle kept telling me that I was supposed to have chosen the restaurant in advance. I wondered which would be better: to offer Beth the choice of venue, or to turn up at one nonchalantly as if I had marked it out weeks ago. It was a difficult one; Beth’s almost as bad at choices as I am. Right now she was strolling a few feet to my right and talking about her degree. Best to leave her out of it, I decided. Best not to make her think about too much. I would just turn up somewhere I could guarantee wouldn’t be full.

 

We rounded a crumbling fencepost in the dark, and Beth moved on to talking about her family. She was methodically updating me on their movements. I caught through the breeze that Paul was doing well at the shop, and her mum was very proud; all the usual stuff; some distant relative had died, and everybody was sad. I sighed more or less inaudibly. I’m not a fan of small talk. A vague irritability began to fall on me when I remembered Beth knows that. I didn’t stop her. We were just coming up to Rina’s, anyway, a nice little Italian which I knew wouldn’t be overcrowded, and the hassle of going through the door and waiting to be served was ample reason to stop speaking to one another.

 

I’ve always been a fan of Rina’s. It’s right in the centre of town so it’s convenient for pubs and bars afterwards, and it has the sweetest décor inside, all red and green and shades of proud Italian as if it’s Christmas all year round. The waiting staff are rude, but they always have exactly one funny thing to say, which against the odds they manage to somehow squeeze out by the end of the night. I couldn’t remember whether Beth liked the place, to be sure – I remember somebody, long ago, saying that they found the deep hues oppressive and stifling, but I don’t think it was her. In any case, I knew she’d be able to make do, and besides, I was too excited by the arbitrary thrill that always comes over me on an evening out to care.

 

By the time my beer and my soup starter came to the table she was talking about us. I remembered fondly as she spoke how I used to put on a high, husky voice and grunt “Great Mystery in Beth is!” when something she said on occasions like this used to go over my head. I used to put my arm round her and draw her closer, kissing her soft, downy brown hair while she laughed and I lay in awe of the second sex. Sitting at the table tonight, though, I began to wonder whether what she says actually does go over my head these days. There comes a point, I thought, in time, when the mystery goes out of things. As I avoided her gaze, glancing arbitrarily on my fork, which had a nick halfway down the second prong from the left, I supposed this was a good thing. It meant that partners understood each other better – listened to what the other had to say without spending half the time ducking out to consult the proverbial phrasebook. One day, I’ve often thought, I’ll try it with someone who has English as a second language, maybe their third. It would really put life’s petty misunderstandings into perspective and allow people to chuck the phrasebook out the window. But maybe I won’t have to, because for me, that’s something I never have to do nowadays – ‘check the book’. I instinctively know what Beth is saying at any point. She can communicate things infinitely subtle and manifold without even opening her pretty mouth.

 

I had nearly finished my soup by the time I had entertained these rather grand thoughts, and I began wishing I could be as intelligent as this with the dissertation sitting on my desk back home. For when I got back three hours ago I rifled through the stack of papers and through my dreamy, half-closed eyes I became Jack Nicholson’s horror-film wife, rifling through stacks of typescript which all say the same thing, All Work and No Play Make Jack a Dull Boy, faster and faster until I fell strewing papers through the gaping hole in the ceiling. It swallowed me whole and with a deep, booming laugh began to spiral and swarm round my body, enveloping first my arms, then my legs, and creeping inexorably it at last clasped its blackness around my neck. My world shrank down to subatomic proportions and melted and swam before my eyes which boggled at the sight and, with great force, tearing myself away from the scene, wrenched themselves open to see only the real hole motionless on the ceiling.

 

I shook my head to relieve myself of this terror, and it disappeared for a while, but now the image of falling upwards through space is running through my mind again and I can’t sleep. In any case, the whole thing gave me a taste for a film, so I slithered The Shining into the DVD slot and now I’m half-watching Jack wreak disproportionate havoc upon his family. Around the time his wife drags him into the deep freeze it dawned on me that my phone was in the other room, but by the time I found the missed calls and texts from Beth, which were numerous, it was far too late to ring her back – I shall contact her in the morning.

 

Back, though, to Rina’s, and away from my night terrors. I had been twirling my fork while Beth talked and quite some time passed before my main course arrived. It was fabulous. I sat for some minutes absorbing its fine aesthetic qualities, and sniffing it, while I waited for Beth’s food to come. When it did, it looked even better, and I told her so. For some reason she started attempting to offload her dish on to me – something she often does – but tonight I had to draw the line; her meal was just too good to share, no matter the size of her appetite. I told her to just eat and enjoy it.

 

Meanwhile, as I ate and the rich, heavy flavours churned about my palate, I took to looking out at the world outside, and counting the patterns made by all the strangers passing by the window. The pedestrians mimicked the little I knew of binary code: I saw a solitary stick figure, 1, and then miles of empty space, 0000, then two stick figures at once, 11, and then a small gap, 00, then three stick figures in a group together, all laughing at some shared joke. Some of them were women; most were men. Occasionally they would be black or brown; mostly they were white. I saw a Chinese girl and my eyes widened noticeably in mild surprise. The cars, as they passed, made a more steady rhythm than the people, thump, thump thump, as I saw it, thumping like the beat of a heart with the late evening rush hour, but even they were interspersed with white vans and mopeds going about their business, breaking up the pattern and making my daydreaming eyes blink. I had imagined that every car, every thump was a new letter from the keyboard into my dissertation, while the white vans were mistakes, and the mopeds were my clicking ‘delete’. I smiled visibly at the thought of this grand metaphor and at my obsession with work. Then, as if by magic, I looked up and heard my coffee breaks: the faint roar of aeroplanes every fifteen minutes from the city airport, the lights blinking over the front window of Rina’s then fading back into the night sky.

In that moment I realised, at least partly, just how beautiful and perfect it all was. It didn’t matter what I did or what I refused to do, the great, structureless comings and goings in the street and in the sky and in the restaurant would remain constant, reliable. It didn’t matter how long I absently twirled the last scrap of cannelloni on my fork; I would still either eat it, or it would be thrown away, and nobody, anywhere among the billions on Earth, would ever cast a thought to it again. And if I did no work, ever again, I could hide from the world for months and months and never be found, because nobody would ever find a use for me. And at the same time as all this, I knew my world was shrinking to an almost inscrutable vanishing point, where nobody would cast a thought to me, and I wouldn’t notice, but it wouldn’t matter, anyway, because it was all so beautiful and so perfect, and I would simply disappear. It’s hard to explain, but the power of this thought shot through me so hotly I lost the ability to speak.

 

I looked up at the slender, rose-coloured candle that sat in the top of an old wine bottle between us. It had burned half-way down by this point and was beginning to droop. I watched it weaken at the base until a slight crack began to form, and I watched the crack grow bigger and bigger until it swallowed me and the rest of the restaurant, and the ceiling hole and my dissertation and Jack Nicholson’s wife, all into the great abyss for ever and ever and ever, and then the ceiling hole closed up, plunging me into darkness that was at once enormous and microscopic, and I knew that I would be trapped in the tiny, huge darkness for eternity, never to wake up, shaking with terror, and that’s when, at the last moment, I reached out and steadied the unmoving candle, and I realised that my breath was short. I panted slightly from the mental effort. As I controlled my breathing and steadied myself, I ran my finger gingerly down the length of the rose-coloured candle, and my eyes collided into Beth’s for the first time. I found myself realising that she had been talking to me for the whole meal, and that she was still talking now, looking into my eyes. In fact, she was crying. Suddenly, I became aware that I was completely arrested by what she was saying.

 

“Crawling back, Phil. I’m crawling back.”

 

She paused, and the tear that I had seen in her eye welled over the brim and began to trickle down her left cheek.

 

“I hope you’re happy, because I hope one of the two of us is happy, and I’m desperately unhappy.” She waited. “Can’t you see that I’m desperately unhappy? I was desperately unhappy with you, and I’ve been desperately unhappy without you.”

 

“I’ve changed, Phil, so much, and I’ve realised that I need you, so – very – much. So I don’t want to split up, now, Phil, okay?” She breathed. “I’m crawling back – okay? I’m desperately unhappy. Will you let me crawl back? I love you.”

The Whispering Gallery, by Dan Bloom

October

There’s a hole in the greying plaster of my ceiling which I peculiarly dislike. It sits just above where I lay my head to sleep, and I can lie back and look at it and waste away hour upon hour while I try to avoid my dissertation. I lie, and I think, and I flick a blunt pencil between my thumb and forefinger, and I count the rotations until the movement hypnotizes me and sends me, ever so softly, to sleep. The work’s due in a couple of months now, and I didn’t put in as much hard graft over the summer as, now, I sometimes wish I had. You never can atone for lost time, so to speak, but you can do your best to make up for it, and that’s what I plan to do now.

If only I could atone for making the ceiling hole before they take away my deposit. It happened in a stupid moment. Last time a fly was in my room it skitted on the ceiling above the bed, darting from perch to perch, an unsightly speck in the corner of my vision, until eventually I’d had just about enough of the buzzing, so I squared it up with a hardback book and threw, up. The fly got away as did a modest hunk of plaster, so there you go. And now if I squint hard enough and long enough at the ceiling hole, its edges start to blur and fade, and with a rush of stars it changes into all kinds of wondrous black shapes, shrinking and blooming close and far away at once until I blink and snap out and realise I’ve actually been asleep for hours on end.

When I wake up from this kind of doze I have curious mixed feelings. I’m irritated, not angry, but annoyed nonetheless, for allowing myself to slip into a mindless reverie and abandon my work. However hard I try to make up for the lost time, it’ll inevitably fail. I’ll sit at the desk and look out of the window at the slowly darkening sky and slip into an even deeper daydream than before, counting the birds as they fly past the window against the industrially grey background across the quad. When I wake up from a daydream, I’m too sleepy even to reprimand myself. So there are two things I usually do. I have a shower, or I cook myself a meal. That way I wake up, perform a useful function, and by the time I’ve stuffed or dried myself I’m ready once more for action.

This happened not long ago. Like Alice, I found myself plummeting down into the ceiling hole – or up, as I suppose it could be – late yesterday afternoon. I opened my eyes only to see the real void above my head, leering at me and mocking my eyes which were all bloodshot and crusted-over. I blinked, and it was still there. I got out of bed with a groan of springs and muscles and I woke myself by jumping through the arch of clear perspex in the next room into the shower. I gasped as the rush of cold water hit my body. I had forgotten to allow time for the pipes to heat up, but I was in now, so I made do.
As the water began to pour into my hair and trickle down my chest, I picked up the light weight of the shampoo and gave it a firm punch against my outstretched palm. While the last drop in the bottle ran into my hair I catalogued my various body parts: the dirt behind my ears, the hairs under my arms and in my navel and in my behind – the sleep in my eyes, the white scum of dead skin on my heels and along my arms, the spots on my face, flecks of skin all washing clean away and breathing again with the rush of clear water. I looked across and could see the mirror beginning to steam up. Into the grey-white was disappearing my own reflection; my hair was getting a little too long now, and the blond streaks the sun had imparted over summer were beginning to fade. My face was more spotty than before, too, and my pale skin was flayed red by the blanching effect of the water. I tensed my diaphragm ever so carefully, as always, and I could make out contours where my torso had just been, giving the impression of muscles and definition on my otherwise flat, blotchy frame. I gasped for air and the muscles vanished. The human body is not an altogether unattractive thing, I thought. I smiled to myself as I vanished under a layer of condensation.

When I came out of the bathroom the clock on my wall read nearly half past six and it was getting dark in the quad. The streetlights had clicked on and their pale yellow glow was glimmering on the ceiling. It struck me that I had wasted most of the day again, and I thought with a shudder what would happen if this cycle repeated itself for the next two months.

‘Got to make a plan’, I thought. I made a mental note to draw up a schedule, got dressed, cut my nails, and then drew one up. I’ve allotted the mornings for research, while the afternoons will be for writing and all the other things like checking emails and phoning tutors and family. I finished it off using a jumble of coloured pens I found in the chest of drawers, then stood back and admired my handiwork for a few moments before going to forage for supper.

I usually head downstairs to the canteen with everyone else from halls, but lately the workload’s been so great I’ve decided to save time and be more flexible by cooking for myself, up in the kitchen. It’s not so bad. Because everybody else on the corridor eats together I more or less have the run of the place, which is nice, and I pretty much never bump into any of them. They’re so invisible, in fact, I kind of wonder what they all while away their days doing. But last night I made myself a brilliant meal – bought in some ingredients and improvised a carbonara, just a carbonara, but a really good carbonara. It took ages so I cracked open the bottle of wine Beth left last time she was round and I had a self-involved gourmet experience back in my room. I felt bad for abandoning my work for so long, so obviously I tried to work on the dissertation for a bit after the meal. But by the time I’d finished cooking, eating, washing and wiping, it was already fairly late, so I managed to plough through some of it, but before I could get very far it was already two in the morning and I could do nothing but collapse, exhausted, into bed, where I still am now.

I’m not unhappy, really, but at the same time, I can’t help thinking that my life is turning a smaller, tighter circle with every passing day – as if the walls are closing in around me, to put it rather too dramatically. Maybe they’re being sucked in by the ceiling hole.

…

Coming Soon…

 

November 7th – November 21st

 The Whispering Gallery by Dan Bloom

 

December

The Kingmaker by Christopher Bernard Leahy & Tom England