Chapter 21: Looking Down at Heaven
Descending from wherever good sex took me was a journey with its own pleasures. Radiance from nirvana still attached to me, like tendrils of golden paint after I’d touched the viscous liquid with my brush tip. No doubt my Kirlian Aura was brilliant, capable of powering the entire city. My pulse was sending aftershocks of sweetness to my limbs, like listening to choirs singing, ‘glory, glory, glory,’ over and over.
Languorously, and with several detours, my mind resolved itself to be that of Cyn Sweetwater.
Not wishing to disturb Daniel, who may or may not have fallen asleep, and whose ear was pressed to my heart, I remained still. What would a painting look like which captured this journey? Immediately, I saw the answer as an elfin woman, pale hair drawn away from her beatific face. She looked at the viewer without shame or guile as she touched the petals of a pink flower to her red lips.
Thank you. I assumed that Celine had answered me. We would paint this picture next.
When at last I did have to move, fully grounded in my body once more by the messages from my bladder, Daniel rolled away onto his back and took a deep breath.
‘And great was the moaning of the lover for his love. And hallelujahs filled his ears as the warrior ascended.’
I kissed Daniel’s wide forehead, behind which formelted worn-out sentences in order that they be reconstituted as poetry.
Later – minty-mouthed and clad in silk – as I picked up the DreamAds hood ready to sleep, Daniel touched me near the knee to get my attention.
‘You don’t have to do that anymore.’
‘I’m not afraid of it. Celine and I can cope with the incursions…’ Beyond that pragmatic statement was a deeper truth I wanted to express to Daniel and myself. I tried to put it in words. ‘In fact, I like it. This hood has changed me for the better. I’m more aware of the inner me.’
‘Like Neo said in his speech?’
‘Did he?’
‘That exact phrase. The inner person.’
‘Well, he’s experienced it too. Our conscious selves are the shadowy project. The real self within is so much more... intense.’
‘I’d like to try it…’ Daniel looked up into my eyes. ‘Only, even if I could get a hood, I’d be afraid to put it on. I’m afraid of my inner self.’
‘Don’t be. Celine knows him and loves him.’
Long and gentle though the look from those hazel was, Daniel said nothing more. So I encased my head in the soft embrace of the hood and lay down.
Dunnes Stores really is better value. All around me are perfectly shaped fruits and vegetables. Had I wanted to paint a still life demonstrating the gifts of nature at their peak, then I would have filled a bowl from the produce in the green plastic containers on either side. And the yellow price labels are displaying such good prices, unmatchable by Aldi, Lidl, Supervalue and especially Tesco.
‘How tedious,’ sauntering towards me in her familiar form as a female Oscar Wilde, Celine picks up an orange and contemplates it. ‘If you want to be a grocer, you will invariably become it: that is your punishment. If you never know what you want to be, if you live the artistic life, if each day you are unsure of who you are: that is your reward.’
‘It’s good to see you, Celine.’
‘Let’s go somewhere more interesting. What are you most afraid of?’ Without waiting for an answer, Oscar pulls on the handle of her cane, to reveal a blade. This she draws across the bright, hard tiles of the floor as easily as though she were cutting cake. Then she kneels down and puts both hands deep into the wound she has made, until her arms are up to the elbows.
‘Bit of help.’ There is exertion in her voice.
Immediately, I step towards the channel and reach downwards into the dark, feeling nothing until my fingers are deep enough to grasp at what seem to be ridges of cloth.
‘Scrunch it up.’ Celine catches my eye and smiles.
Pulling, pulling, pulling the stuff together, pulling some more. It is difficult at first but becoming distinctly easier all the while. And now I can see what we are doing. The entire supermarket around us is collapsing, as though it were only a paper backdrop at a theatre and two determined women were pulling it down. My capitalistic dream landscape flows into our hands, faster and faster, falling into a black hole of our creation, until the streams of colour abruptly come to an end with a silent implosion and Oscar Wilde stands up, tossing what seems to be the same orange from hand to hand, but which I know is an entire dreamiverse.
‘We must counter-attack,’ she says.
‘Now?’
Oscar looks about in every direction. Blue is the sky and brown the path that leads away from us up a mountain. ‘For all the merits of your current dream, there’s no connection to Neo here. When you wake up, bring us to his lair by visiting it in person. There, I shall find a way to prevent him from inflicting such tedious experiences upon me.’
‘Like Beowulf following Grendel to the underwater cave?’
‘I was thinking more Una Thurman in Kill Bill.’ She examines her nails. ‘You did promise me you’d watch it again.’
A memory. I was in yellow, slaughtering… chess players?
‘I mostly forget my dreams on waking, sorry. Try to prompt me. But not tomorrow. I want to go to the studio. How about we put aside Saturday for the raid on the headquarters of the evil mastermind?’
‘Fill our days as though they are years. And as much as possible each day pursue art, the secret of life. Saturday will be fine. You should ask the woman you kissed for advice as to how to get in.’
Amanda. That is a good suggestion by Celine. A woman prepared to murder Neo to save the world should be willing to help me bring Celine to Neo’s headquarters.
‘Now, we need some music.’ Celine sets off on the hike and I follow, the soundtrack to our journey begins with the bold chords of Epic by Faith No More.
Presently, my attention is roused by seeing a young woman running, as if for her life, across a bog near the pathway; she leaps over the ditch and is upon the path in an instant. She seems startled at first, at the sight of us; but, looking at Celine, she smiles and says, 'All's safe!'
‘Pray, my good friend, may I ask what that is you have in your hand?’ I ask.
‘Plase your honour, it is only a Bitcoin, which I've just caught out yonder in the bog; and I'm carrying it in with all speed to Neo the Edge, to shew my discovery, that the jantlewoman may benefit by the reward; I expect Neo Money to make me a compliment.’
‘Walk with us, as all paths lead to Neo Money,’ says Celine.
‘Thank you kindly—but better this direction!’ says the woman; and continuing past us, runs again as fast as possible over peat and heather and between large gorse bushes.
‘Reward? Compliment?’ I ask.
‘Neo is accumulating Bitcoins and gives a reward to those who find them. Our friend kindly offered you the compliment of sharing in this reward.’
I laugh. ‘I should not have thought that you, Celine, would be helping Neo get richer.’
‘Oh, plase your honour!' says Celine, smiling archly, 'would not I give Neo a lift, when in my power?’
Scarcely has she uttered these words, and scarcely is the Bitcoin-finder out of sight, when across the same bog, and over the ditch, comes a man, a half kind of gentleman, with a red silk handkerchief about his thick neck, and a silver-handled whip in his soft hand.
‘Did you see any woman pass the road, friend?’ says he to Celine.
‘Oh! Who would I see? Or why would I tell?’ replies Celine, in a sulky tone.
'Came, come, be smart!' says the man with the silver whip, offering to put half a crown into Celine’s hand. ‘Point me which way she took.’
‘I'll have none a’ your silver! Don't touch me with it!' says Celine. ‘But, if you'll take my advice, you'll strike across back, and follow the fields, out to Killogenesawee.’
The ruddy man sets out again immediately, following a field boundary to our left.
‘I think I understand,’ I say, when the man with the whip is too far away to hear me. ‘The woman didn’t find the Bitcoin in the wild, she’s stolen it! And the sturdy gentleman is an employee of Neo and furious too, though he tries to hide his temper in the low pitch of his voice.’
‘Onward then,’ replies Celine, ‘with no fear that the weight of guilt from having turned informer to Neo might weigh us down.’ She pauses, hands on hips. ‘Did you decide upon your greatest fear?’
‘I did not. I couldn’t think of one.’
‘Very wise, my dear companion. For that which we fear will inevitably come to pass. We shall therefore climb the mountain for no other reason than that it is before us.’
‘Can you change the dream soundtrack to something else?’
By way of answer, I hear the first sixteen notes of Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony. On the cusp of uttering an objection to this choice, I change my mind. After all, there are clouds in the sky now and I realise that ever since thinking about my fears, a melancholy lake has been welling up in my heart. My worst fear has already happened. I miss mum and the music helps, somehow.
Waiting for me to come up to her, Celine puts an arm around my shoulders. ‘March on, dear love. Though the path be hard. You’ve never walked alone.’
The top of the mountain is rocky and for the last part of the route we have to use our hands; not exactly climbing, more clambering. Then the far side of the world is ours to survey. The scene below us lacks particulars, as though I have become shortsighted, everything is somewhat blurred or pointillistic. Yet the overall sense of it is unmistakable: we are looking down on heaven.
‘I’ve been here before, haven’t I?’ I’m sure of this.
‘Several times. The first time was after you learned to ride a bike. It was the interval of the All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship and even though you were enjoying the game, you decided there was enough time to take the bike out. You rode down to the river and along the tarmac path there. A man – he seemed to be a man to you but I knew he was only seventeen – with a leather jacket, patches of metal bands, and long hair asked did you have the time. You wanted to help but didn’t have a phone or watch. ‘I do not,’ you said, ‘it’s half time in the All-Ireland.’ He looked angry. ‘I don’t give a shit about the All-Ireland,’ he answered. You wanted to explain that he could work out the time, approximately, given that the throw in was at 3.30pm. With scorn on his face, however, the man had turned away and so you turned the bike around – you still had to haul it to do that – and cycled home. That in-between place, with an unpleasant cloud behind you and the promise of pleasure ahead, that’s where we are now.
‘I remember. I remember that dream! There was a van at the start of the path, which had people in it that I didn’t like.’
‘Where are our enemies now Cyn?’
‘Do I have enemies?
‘More than you realise.’
‘That way.’ I point back down the path.
‘And where are you heading.’
‘That way,’ I point to heaven on the other side of the mountain.
‘Then it’s time to wake up and have sex with Daniel again.’