Antidote to a Curse Read online

  I sputtered as the fumes steamed the back of my eyeballs and speared my stomach. ‘What’s this?’

  ‘Homemade.’ Zlatko beamed appreciatively. His glass struck the laminate loudly. He held me with his unwavering stare, his thumb and forefinger cupping the glass expectantly. I lurched for the neck of the decanter, and in my enthusiasm I almost knocked it over. I poured the fine liquor with both hands, filling his glass first. He held it up and waited for my offering: ‘To Bosnia.’

  Zlatko seemed to like this; the corner of his mouth softened before he tipped the glass back whole. I followed in quick succession. I released my glass, expecting a reprieve, but he topped it up immediately, balancing the decanter in the grip of a single hand. In seconds the glasses were filled, with a mere drop wavering on the tabletop.

  ‘To …’ he held back, in search of an answer, answers. He sat expressionless.

  Dreamy fumes made me feel pliant, pleasant. He eyed me through slightly narrowed eyes. Realigning his focus, he asserted, ‘You’re Maltese.’

  The reverberation was a momentary shudder from an archer who had managed to split a bow with a direct aim. I could see that the alcohol had mustered his nerve, and my mind settled on an aerial view of the rocky island.

  I skulled my drink with a splutter that betrayed my determination. ‘Tiny,’ I hawked. I had taken water into my lungs, but when I surfaced gasping for breath Zlatko was there, his reserve unbroken, tilting his glass. Seeing me hesitate, he gave it an impatient tap. Unable to break the code, I filled the tumblers accordingly. My mood was light, and despite the alcohol’s unreserved burn, I felt surprisingly lucid.

  He held up his glass. ‘To health,’ he offered.

  ‘To health,’ I reciprocated, my glass colliding with his.

  Adahy was Native American and almost seven foot tall. He had silky hair that whipped the sides of his chin as he turned to close the door. He was nothing like a regular doctor. He wore Levi’s and his light canvas boots were stained. Though trendy, his outfit bordered on sloppy. He was relaxed. We made eye contact as he leaned across his desk. Normally, I would have looked away, but the glance through wavy hair felt strangely familiar, the recognition of a stranger looking through a branch.

  I recognised the profile I had filled in earlier. He studied the handwritten responses carefully, while I continued to scan his features for clues.

  I felt some warp in space or time, a feeling I had been here before. I had no recollection of Adahy whatsoever, but I wondered whether in my sleep I had mischievously traversed a dream of his, or whether he had traversed a dream of mine. I was convinced that a more meaningful reference to this man lay beyond these plaster walls. Though it was crazy it felt like this was a second run through familiar terrain.

  Perhaps this could explain my sense of heightened reality. Why now, all of a sudden, I felt compelled to read everything around me. I looked at the array of stainless steel trays, the coloured plastic screwed-on backs of syringe tubes, the clear plastic containers.

  I looked at Adahy reading in silence and heard leaves rustling, the breeze: Tell me the story, it whispered. I focused on the sheen of Adahy’s hair, the wind billowing around us. In London, the fashion for hair was short, almost skinhead short. The chic had their hair swept forward in gelled, precision-cut ridges. I focused until the voice diminished, a breath, lifeless.

  His chair skated backwards as he pushed himself away from his desk. Gesturing towards me he asked, ‘What’s up?’

  I told him.

  His expression, young and wrinkled, told me that the odds were not entirely in my favour.

  ‘The chances?’

  ‘It depends.’ He considered the sheet before him, my answers, before walking to the basin. He lathered his hands and with the back of one released a torrent. ‘There’s really no way of knowing until you take the test, and that takes time,’ he said, shaking the excess water off his hands before wiping them on the towel. ‘Statistically, the chances are really small.’ He noted my reserve and added, ‘But that’s all it takes.’

  ‘How long do I have to wait?’

  He leaned back against the basin. ‘There’s a large window period. You could seroconvert anywhere between five to eleven weeks.’ He stepped forward. ‘How long ago did this happen?’

  ‘Three weeks.’

  ‘Why don’t you take one now, a baseline check, and another in nine weeks?’

  I consented and asked, ‘Anything else?’

  He walked to the bench by the side of the room and put on his gloves. ‘Not really. No. I don’t usually recommend testing unless there are symptoms.’ He noted the silence. ‘Is that the case?’ he asked, looking towards me.

  ‘No symptoms.’

  He screwed on the needle, and after taking a cursory glance at the cylinder suggested, ‘Let’s do a screen.’

  He continued to scrutinise me as I rolled up my shirtsleeve, eyeing the pattern of veins as a fortune teller would eye a palm. ‘One exposure?’ He pulled my arm forward and got me to make a series of fists as he cupped my fingers in his formidable grasp.

  ‘Yes.’

  He swiped the vein clean with a methylated pad.

  I could feel the blood running under my skin, a pleasant tingling. I rolled over and wound myself up like a mummy. I placed my hands over my ears and listened. I lay in my bed, an intruder listening for signs of ambush. My hand answered with its own pulse, a light syncopated skip. My palms were sweaty, though I felt calm, rested. I felt like I was about to start something new. I tied the sheet around my waist and looked in the mirror. I detected a ruddiness that indicated health. It was only my third week and according to Adahy it was still too early to seroconvert. I stood, an intruder listening for signs of ambush: the rustling of a branch, the snap of a twig. Henry had not arrived. The garden was still, peculiar. I stared at the gazebo’s impressive spire, eye level, distant, able to detect the faint scent of methyl. Lately, I couldn’t sleep for more than four hours at a stretch. I first woke up at 5.27. The figures of my electric clock hummed transparently in the silence. I switched on the desk lamp and continued with an application for a job at St Mercredi. I seemed well qualified for it. I licked the seal and stamped the envelope shut before going back to bed.

  Three boxes of books lay stacked by the foot of the bed. Nancy, who owned the house, had asked me, a few days back, why I still hadn’t unpacked. I told her I had to buy a bookcase first. I had unpacked my dictionaries and reference books, one of them entitled Fatal Flight: The Maltese Obsession With Killing Birds. I thought there was something ironic about revisiting this book, considering I was now living in a house with an aviary.

  Hovering over the top box, she also asked, ‘Can I?’

  ‘Sure.’

  She dipped into the box, as if blindfolded, running her hand over various covers before pulling out Sir Thomas More’s Utopia.

  She gave the cover a cursory glance. ‘Can I?’ she asked again.

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘I could get Henry to unpack them,’ she said, as she walked out the door waving the paperback curled in her hand.

  The hammering and sawing that had marked a tumult of industry for five consecutive days abated in an unexpected and welcome calm. ‘Henry.’

  In the sky, a torrent of dark clouds revealed a glaring eye at its centre. Nancy Triganza’s project was almost fully fledged. Complete with a rusted spire that crowned the dome like a syringe. From the start, it was obvious that it was a gazebo. The octagonal form of the concrete base gave the project away. Lattice sheets of mauve glass shimmered resolutely.

  Peering through one of the open windows, I approached. ‘Eager to finish?’ I pursued.

  Saliva poured from the crack of his mouth. ‘If you lay a single print …’

  Varnish, I thought, eyeing the tip of the stained four-inch brush. I took a step back, appraising the handiwork.

  ‘I’m getting into business,’ he offered, lapping the belly of the sanded plank. I buttoned up my denim
jacket, impressed by the height, the intense scent. ‘Enterprise,’ he persisted. He repositioned himself a rung higher. He dipped and pulled, whirling his brush round till it was free of the glutinous mass.

  ‘What enterprise?’

  He gave the underbelly of the plank a good stroke. I looked at the woodwork, admiring the glossy finish.

  ‘Rabbits,’ he boomed. My eyes came to rest on the man in the spattered overalls. ‘Can’t milk Owl Eyes forever,’ he muttered harshly.

  ‘You’re going to breed rabbits?’

  His brush came to rest inches from his face. ‘What’s it you do?’ He looked straight at me, his mouth partly open, his lower jaw misaligned. I think he may have been genuinely interested.

  ‘I write, Henry.’

  ‘Ah, that won’t pay,’ he said, resuming his stride. ‘You should join me, go partners. Not fifty-fifty, of course. Not equals.’

  ‘And where …’ Henry lived in a block of flats a few streets away. He had worked for Nancy for years. ‘Your apartment?’ I queried.

  ‘Ah, it’s planned. It’s all sorted out. Charlie, he’s given me space.’

  I felt a vague sense of encroaching queasiness. ‘Charlie?’

  ‘That’s right, Fitzroy.’

  ‘You mean the cemetery!’

  ‘Why not? Plenty of space.’ He dipped his brush, sedate, as if staring into a well.

  ‘Cannibalism.’ I mouthed the word lightly.

  ‘Business,’ he stressed.

  Over the last month I had become accustomed to his presence, a restless spirit, coming and going. Hard-working and stubborn, he often brought ambitious jobs to a close within weeks or days. He often mumbled to himself and I didn’t believe half the things he said. I looked up at the cloudy sky, the persistent glare.

  ‘I hope I get to use the gazebo,’ I said, my farewell gesture.

  ‘Why not? Owl Eyes said it’s for birdwatching.’

  ‘And reading?’

  ‘And reading.’

  I drove past the flower shops, the bakeries, video stores, milk bars, clothes shops, and veered onto Plenty Road. The street became wider, the housing blocks larger; further along the retail hubbub was replaced by factory outlets, car yards, garages, family restaurants. I drove on until I felt the flatness recede, the land undulate, as the asphalt and concrete reaches of the city broke up and lawns banked on either side of the road. I drove past a caravan park, a high school, a golf course, a football ground and a green stone-littered cemetery. The road here dipped and I couldn’t help exceeding the speed limit, gravity took over, made me speed, the meter nudging 100 all the way.

  The La Trobe University library was modern, the three floors set on a rectangular floor plan, furnished with small courtyards. There was an impressive music collection and a separate seating area with private rooms that I often booked. The windowless rooms were the best. I could give the music my complete attention. They had different recordings of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, including a live video recording by the Biarritz Ballet.

  Up on the first floor, I tucked myself into a carrel set beside a narrow window that faced the Northern Stream out towards Car Park 8. I used my nails to shred the cellophane wrap. It looked like a plastic cassette holder, except it was a promotional kit by Ansell: 1 coloured condom. An electric-pink ribbon stood out against a background of bold colours.

  I opened the box. Behind the condom was a tiny booklet prepared by Ansell for its Mates range:

  Now … it’s very unlikely, but if a condom breaks in the middle of making love, stop. Pull out immediately, take the condom with you, and don’t ejaculate. You can always put another on and start again.

  I looked back in the box, but there was only one. Could this have made all the difference? I crinkled the glittery blue wrap before snapping the box shut. How does one start again, work their way back to the beginning? The idea shimmered in a tantalising way as it spoke of infinite possibilities, infinite outcomes. I contemplated the implausibility of time forming a loop, turning back on itself. Even if one believed in the many interpretations of quantum physics regarding the six coexistent possibilities of rolling a single die. How could one refract space and time to find oneself standing right at the very start, able to pick up one of those possible threads?

  I felt a blind surge of anger swell within me. The thought of a re-enactment had engaged a dark fantasy of luring a partner under false pretence, feigning attraction, sex, closeness, the same pretence that had lured me to the club in the first place, only to let that lonely wolf rip from my body to strike its anger on his.

  That night, after, after rinsing my face of soapy water, I leaned over the rim of the basin allowing my face to drip-dry. The paper towelling was coarse. The drops ran down the inside crevice of my eyelid, of both eyes, perfect synchronism. I stared back at my fluttering reflection, my brown eyes seemingly transparent in the dim light, spectral, opening to their full size as the water ran down my thin, stubbly cheeks, along my goatee: eye contact. I leaned away from the mirror. I noticed a clear sticker stuck to the bottom right-hand corner. The clear backing allowed the words to stand bold: A TYPICAL PERSON WITH HIV.

  For weeks I walked around quiet as a librarian, harbouring the burden of a secret. ‘Positive?’

  I pulled out an article that I had folded into my wallet and read the highlighted section:

  A study of gay men in four cities (Baltimore, Chicago, Los Angeles and Pittsburgh) concluded that one third of currently uninfected 20 year old gay men in those cities will seroconvert by the time they are 30 and that the majority of queer 20 year olds will eventually seroconvert.

  I was twenty-nine years old.

  The article read like an undistilled prophesy. I wanted to deny its haunting attraction, deny the risk of making any form of eye contact with any conceivable self-reflection that might vaporise through the watery transparency of a dream and surface among the readable print. Such words had to be avoided at all cost. I believed reading the words alone would be like making eye contact in a mirror. I believed that such a potential reflection waited for all of us. The trick was never to make eye contact.

  A hemisphere away in my thoughts, I unwittingly stared right into the pupils of my own reflection before reading the black print.

  The words had surfaced. The sex had nothing to do with it.

  The building was old and inconspicuous. From the outside it looked like an abandoned warehouse. The streetlight was not working properly; the electric filament sizzled in its defining yellow haze. Only the leaves of the elm tree falling against the light were green. The area seemed run-down, dark, with only a few lit windows. The lighting in the stairwell was dim. I walked in and climbed the steps until I came face to face with a twelve-foot steel door, my silhouette, and a handle as large as a ship’s wheel. Despite its size, the door gave with the slightest push but closed behind me with a sepulchral thud. The door was cut from a plate of polished steel – the surrounding wall. I handed my money to a guy with a nose stud waiting behind the dividing bars. Peeled Tom of Finland cartoons decorated the worn ledge.

  ‘Concession.’ I flashed my ID below the lowest horizontal bar.

  The guy nodded ‘Eight, thanks.’

  On the other side of the service area I could see the bar, the seating area, the pool table. Even though it was a Friday night only a few guys seemed to be milling around. ‘Safety box, thanks.’

  He handed me a box the size of a paperback and pulled out a small piece of white paper. ‘Password.’

  I wrote: Ludovico.

  I slipped the paper into the box and deposited my wallet and keys.

  He slipped the box back into its slot, turned the key and handed over a number. I pinned it to my coin pocket. He pushed a safe pack towards me as well, which I refused. I pulled out the blue condom from my pocket.

  ‘Enough?’

  ‘Enough.’ I held it as if it were a charm. I pushed through the doorway and walked up to the bar. There were a few guys milling ar
ound the pool table. I lounged around, whirling a glass of ice and soda pop. I cast a few cursory glances at the noticeboard and made a few more tinkling sounds with my drink before abandoning it whole. I riffled briefly through the magazine rack and took the stairs to the basement, a step down into a large room, but couldn’t see the adjacent walls. The lighting was faint, but this only heightened my awareness. I walked through a door and pulled through a fringe of thick rubber. I looked at the home cinema, garish Technicolor. I cast a few glances at an outdoor scene that seemed at odds with the club’s lighting. I watched long enough to establish roles, but walked back out without any sense of the story. Besides the distant ethereal pulses, the breathing, I could detect music, symphonic music. The texture of the sounds, the varying sources, made me feel like I was wading through water.

  ‘Looks like you’ve crossed the line.’ Damien lit a cigarette and exhaled a lungful of smoke that hung in the air around him.

  ‘Yes,’ I admitted, leaning back.

  ‘Are you bored?’

  ‘Hell no,’ I declared. ‘I meant to come.’

  He seemed removed; the white of his eye, marble. He walked on before coming to rest a few steps down the corridor. He looked towards me. I eyed him hesitantly before deciding to dismiss the encounter. I wanted to ask but realised there was little point.

  Upstairs the traffic was similar. I couldn’t help but wonder what sort of rapport Damien had with the students he taught, or how he managed to fit in his acting and modelling career. He also had a boyfriend, worked out and … he seemed OK with it all.

  For some reason I kept thinking about Damien. Now that I’d met up with him it didn’t even feel like a coincidence. In fact, meeting up with him felt of no importance whatsoever. I was thinking about this when a fair-haired man wearing a white shirt walked past me. As he walked by he gave a slight nod, the faintest sense of recognition, but it was the strands of hair flittering over his left eye that hooked my attention. I traced the relaxed fit of his Levi’s and followed.