Read Online Peripheral Vision by Paddy O'Reilly - Free Book Online Page A

opening onto the side passage that traverses the west wall of the building and enters the small backyard beyond a rickety lattice gate. At different points along the route you can look inside and see what is happening to the residents.
    If someone were to look in through the kitchen window this morning they would see him and me facing each other across the table with a pot of tea between us. There are books on the table, stacked at the end abutting the wall.
    It is summer. We have an extra hour of daylight in the evening, and an extra hour of darkness in the morning. Right now the sun has risen and the heat is already radiating from the stone buildings. This is the fifth day of the heat wave. In a city accustomed to snow, we cannot cope. The tetchiness that started with our discomfort has escalated into panic and erratic behaviour.
    The house has absorbed not only the heat but the smell of the heat. A whiff of rotting garbage and curdled milk, of the city unable to cleanse itself. The sour smell of overheated skin, of dried sweat, the dank water sitting in the bends of pipes. The deserted buildings, the drains, the abandoned dogs, the scorched leaves of trees, the nearly empty cafes on the boulevard serving jugs of iced water, the thwomp thwomp of distressed ceiling fans and the rumble of a few shop air-conditioning units straining and soughing and dripping their wastewater into grubby white buckets.
    The morning light casts his skin in a papery hue. Almost transparent. Sometimes I feel as if I can see right into him, that his skin is tracing paper and all I have to do to examine his bones is press the skin up against them. Further inside are his organs, purple and maroon and crimson, shiny kidney bulbs and flaps of liver, the firm steady muscle of his heart. At night I hear his heart. The waves of blood beating through his body, the air whispering in and out of his lungs. He is still asleep when he rolls over and pulls me to him and his dry skin meets my damp hot body, weary from turning and tensing and fretting until even my cells are invaded with coiled strings of worry. He pulls me against his calm body and we enter the deep peaceful slumber that for a few years fell over our land.
    Today he will go to the army. The same army that borrowed him for a year in his youth. They will ask him to remember the shape of a rifle in his hands. How to load the shells into a rocket launcher, how to focus his eye through the sights, how to brace his thin shoulder against the recoil of the machine. They are almost upon us, we are told. Knotted voices on the radio warn us to prepare. Our enemies want to destroy our short history of peace, split us apart again. Nothing will ever be the same.
    I want to go instead of him. I want to pick up the rifle and press the stock against my cheek as I aim into the heart of my enemy. With my steady grip I would not miss, if only I could be sure who was my enemy and who my friend. I have examined the map of the human body, counted the fifty-four bones of the hands that hold a gun. In my surgery I have opened the mouths of other humans and peered inside, sewn their bleeding wounds into a purse of skin, pressed my fingers against their throats at exactly the point I would insert a knife to kill them. I do not know whether tomorrow those people will forget me, or provide sanctuary, or hunt me down.
    He lifts the teapot and fills my cup. White cup, rosy black tea. Thick china. I hold the cup in both hands, my elbows en pointe on the tabletop like a ballet dancer’s feet. The smell of the tea is bitter and even before I taste it I can feel the astringency on my tongue. We have no food here, no milk. The house is almost empty. We will abandon the last of the furniture and the books.
    There is a knock at the door. His hand grasps mine across the table for a moment, our bones crushed together, then he rises. He shoulders his bag, his future and his past, the unasked-for weight of our nation’s troubles.