White and Other Tales of Ruin

of course. There always will be as long as there’s one person alive on the planet. Human nature, animal instinct, survival of the species, no matter what the odds. That’s why String does what he does. But mankind was fucked the minute the Ruin set in.”

“The crop blight?”

She shakes her head. “Long before that, I reckon. How about the fall of Communism?”

“Why that far back?”

She shrugs. “Just my personal opinion.” She looks at the front of my shirt, a glint of concern marking her voice. “You need to see him soon, I think.”

I look down and see blood seeping through the material, spreading like ink dots on blotting paper. One of the growths has split and started spewing my life out into the heat, and I have the disturbing feeling that our talk of cures and hope has encouraged it. My personification of the Sickness makes it no easier to accept.

“How does he do it?” I ask. It’s the question I have been yearning a positive answer to since the Sickness first struck me.

I see something then, a shadow of an emotion pass across Jade’s face. It is only brief, as if a bird had passed across the sun and cast its silhouette down to earth. If I knew her better, I could perhaps discern what that look meant, decipher from her tone of voice what sudden thought had made her blush and twist her hands in her lap.

She tilts her head slightly towards me, and I think of Della. “I don’t know,” she says. I nod, reach for the wine. Maybe later I can ask her again.

“Will you take me to him?”

“Yes.” The answer is abrupt, definite.

“Thank you.” I smile and feel a warm glow as my cheer is reflected on her face.

“But first,” she says, jumping up, “we eat. Then, we drink some more wine. Then, we sleep.”

“Can’t we go now?”

She shakes her head, motioning for me to precede her into the building. She slams the door shut behind me and flicks on a light, revealing one large room with bed, fridge, curtained bathroom area and an old computer monitor with a picture of a goldfish glued across its redundant screen.

“Why?”

“It’s nearly dark, one.” She holds up a finger to count the point. “It’s about twenty miles up into the hills, two.” Another finger. “People are hungry, three. It’s got pretty bad here. Last month they ate two Frenchmen.”

I am unsure whether or not she is joking, but the implication of what she has said is so shocking that I can’t bring myself to question it. Instead, I sit on the edge of the bed as she goes about preparing some food. She does so in silence, only occasionally humming some vanished tune under her breath. I watch her moving about the room; lithe, confident, her body echoing her surface personality. Underneath, I am sure, there is still a lost person.

We eat. Old salad and a sausage shared between us, but I am ravenous and the food tastes gorgeous. I wonder where I am going to sleep.

V

In the dark, memory fails me.

For a whole minute I believe that the hand caressing my stomach belongs to Della. I cannot bring myself to talk. I fear that this will taint our friendship with jealousy and resentment, but I want it so much, have always wanted it. Della must know that. I cannot lie to her, and even lying by omission seems impossible.

I have never mentioned my love for her.

I know I should turn away, but it feels so good. Since the Sickness struck two years ago I have chosen to distance myself from sex with women, taking matters into my own hand. I acted before I was ever turned down, unable to bear the humiliation, preferring voluntary abstinence to enforced sexual solitude.

I sit up, turn away.

“Oh please,” a voice whispers, fighting through tears which I can just see as floating, glinting diamonds in the dark. “Oh please, don’t reject me. It’s been years, so many years. Feel!” A hand grasps my wrist and I remember then where I am, whom I am with. Jade forces my hand to her chest and drags my palm across the smooth scar tissue between her breasts. It is cool, like glass.

“Gone now, it’s all gone now.” I cannot ally the voice with the feisty, arrogant woman I have known for only several hours. Tears do not suit her. Her beseeching words make me blush in the dark.

“What about me?” Old fears shrink my penis in her hand, sending a flush of heat through my diseased chest. I twist the sheets beneath me, trying to hold back the tears. I feel something touch me, stroke the growths, and I cringe back.

“Okay, it’s okay,” Jade sooths. “Wait.” Her weights leaves the bed and then there is light. She is standing by the door, hand on the light cord, proud and beautiful in her nakedness. The pale white patch on her chest is almost attractive, set against the light tan she has picked up in the last few weeks. She catches my eye, then looks unselfconsciously down my body, eyes resting on my groin and causing a new stirring there.

“Nobody has loved me for years,” she says. She is crying again, but her voice is strong and I wonder whether they are really tears of anguish anymore. She comes back to the bed and sinks her head into my lap.

I close my eyes and think of Della. And my overwhelming emotion is a sense of relief that it is Jade here, and not her.

Jade is wild. Our lovemaking is fast and furious, passion-filled and almost violent in its intensity. By the end we are both crying. She remains sitting astride me, wiping tears from my cheeks, and I kiss her salty eyes and whisper that she is beautiful.

“How could you, when…?” I ask, half-pointing to my chest with unwilling fingers.

“You’ll be beautiful too, soon,” she says. Nobody has ever called me beautiful before. I like it.

In the morning we wake late. Passion seems to have fled with the dark, and although we smile and kiss it feels more as friends.

vi

“String is in the hills.” Jade is tightening the straps on her rucksack, checking the lid is screwed onto her water bottle, rubbing sun cream onto her bare legs and arms. She hands me the bottle and I smear my balding scalp with cream.

“How will we get there? Last night you said twenty miles. That’s a long way to walk, and I’m not so strong lately.”

“Maybe we can hitch a ride with a Lord Ship,” she smiles. “Come on.”

It is even hotter than the previous day, and before long sweat has pasted my shirt to my sickly body and soaked through to darken the material. I can feel the sun working on my arms and trying to find a way through the cream, and I guess that I’ll end up getting horribly burnt whatever measures I take to prevent it.

Jade has changed. She’s still the no-nonsense girl I had met the previous day, but she seems somehow more relaxed in my company. There is still an undefined tension, however, a distance that I cannot help but feel sad at.

After last night, I would have hoped for more.

PART TWO The Trappings of the Flesh