Snow

The phone woke me. It was winter, I think, and the beginning of the night. I climbed from the bed. I couldn't find the phone, I couldn't find the light. I knocked over an old chair, it banged. Good old wooden floor. I tried to follow the sound. I stalked around the room, upsetting ashtrays and piles of books. It continued to ring for a long time and I started to hate the sound. I pawed and dug, sifted and sorted. I'm probably going through the same things over and over again, I thought, not sifting or sorting at all but making it worse. I'm kneeling in the dark, ruining things. And the phone has been ringing for too long. Is there another phone, and who would call and what can I say? I don't know the things to say and it's probably plugged into the wrong thing. No one is there. It's a joke. It's the company calling to say everything must be torn down, torn out, torn- there! There. I found the phone, growling underneath an old coat. I hit it. I spoke carefully. I don't like speaking on the phone and when this call came I hadn't spoken to anyone for a long time. I can't come to the phone, I'd shout from the top of the stairs down to no one at all.

- Hello? That was the correct word.

- Hello. A girl's voice. I coughed. I walked around the dark again. I fumbled for the light, tapping and striking at the wall. Thuds, buried sounds, hollow groans and hisses from the pipes. She started to speak in a rehearsed voice. I thought of an actress talking to a mirror.

- It's Alice. We need something for the new book.

I found the light. The bulb faltered and then flickered on. Weak yellow light filled the room. My stomach hurt. I wanted to smoke. Alice is a browneyed name. I remember her- partially a bird, soft as a seal pup, smoking in the corridor, sobbing on the phone, sitting on her father's bed.

- But I don't- I shoved some bad work off the desk, looking for cigarettes. I gutted the old coat. I gutted another, found something in a pocket. I don't work anymore, I can't work anymore, I said. I had my cigarettes and my matches. I tilted the phone to strike the match to light my cigarette. It was disgusting.

- That's what Max said. I still don't know who Max is. But please, she said, her voice softening. The mirror disappeared. It can be very, very short. Tiny. A bit of a dream flickered behind my eyeballs: a river, a long black river at night, full of sludge and muck. This is my fallow period. Smoke poured out of me. I rubbed my eyeball into its socket. It began to hurt.

- Shhh.... she said.

I felt the river against my legs. And I think I hung up.

It was snowing. I rummaged through a few bags. No biscuits left. And no drugs left. My shoes will fall off in the snow, I thought, and my coat isn't thick enough. I remembered a film about an orphan dying in the snow and then someone coming and stealing his shoes. The light still worked, glowing happily in the ceiling.

It was freezing outside. Rubbish lined the streets- heaps of swollen black bags that no one can collect. Men with kits and masks came to my room after I refused to remove my rubbish. I was lying down and there was no reason to move. I told them to fuck off. I won't pay the fine, I can't. I'm poor. They took my TV which I didn't care about and wanted to get rid of anyway. When they came for my electricity and gas I moved into another room, which was empty, and stole that tenant's light and heat. Then I started moving all my old work into that room. I left my clothes because the other tenant had kept his there. If I'd moved into a woman's room I'd probably put on her clothes and swan around as a woman for a while, until I was beaten up or raped or bored. I could probably move from room to room forever and no one would know. I like my room so much, though, and I told Alice whenever she rang that all I wanted was another room, more rooms, bigger, smaller, emptier, older.

I walked to and from the supermarket. I only ate biscuits and I only drank milk. I really liked meat but I hated my kitchen. I watched endless sties of bacon sizzling in the pan and then, close to a seizure, hurled it at the window where it would settle, sticking because of all the grease. I like oil, too, I like the way it crackles. One of my shoes came off in the snow but I carried on trudging, holding it in one hand, watching my poor foot turn red and then eventually blue. I had no idea where my post-box was. I muttered like a character in a film, I know it's somewhere around here. I wondered if it was on the other side of the woods but then I started worrying about crows and ravens and wolves. If I walked through there, animals would devour me whole- at least, the little of me that was left. Snow made it impossible to tell where anything was. A blank, dead world, silent and without light, the sky and the earth the same colour: the earth of the sky entirely grey.

I think I was blind for a spell- the snow kept falling and swirling and went in my eyes. When my sight returned I was still struggling along the road. The light was no different and the snow went on swirling and falling. I staggered around, pausing to be sick and then to smoke and then to be sick again. I dragged my black foot through the snow, holding onto my shoe, and then fell down again. This went on for a while. Then the snow began to thin and the light weakened but I could walk again. Soon I found the building where my post was kept, a building exactly like mine. I trudged towards it but there was a hideous white dog blocking my way. It started barking at me, its teeth, all yellow and bared, barking over and over, sounding like the phone, a horrid black fuzz around its mouth and its useless eyes working back and forth. So I kicked it. It snarled and then started to quiver, as if it was plugged into a machine. It crackled. I walked forward and it leapt at me. It held onto my arm, making a very low throbbing sound. I struck it with the shoe until it fell away and then kicked it in the stomach, all the time very sad because I never wanted to wound a dog, even if it was white and hideous. The snow continued to fall. I stood there and smoked.Then slowly, softly the dog came to its feet. It rose like a marionette. It stared me. We entered the building together and fetched my post. I threw the dog a black biscuit and then, under the cold grey light, took a large, delicious dose. I like to feel the drug settling in my stomach, falling on me and slowing me down, wearing me out. Alice sent me a photograph of a chair. I walked back with the dog. I have no idea how long it took.

For the next three days I sat in my room and finished the package, gorging until it was impossible to move. My face and legs were totally numb, the light was dead and I was permanently half-asleep, caught on the narcotic drift. I would walk to and from the window, watch snow settle on the road, see the men work hopelessly at it with shovels, listen to the television talking in other rooms and count the red lights as they glimmered and danced in the dark. I would stroke the dog and let the room slowly fill with ash. The snow didn't stop and soon, the windows were impossible to open. Frost etched on all the glass. Children singing songs would drift past my door and I would climb back into my nest and feel myself floating on the big black broken glass of the sea. I can still hear the waves.

Eventually Alice phoned again. I surfaced, the drugs gone, the biscuits eaten, to that horrid skinny ringing sound. The dog feasted on the stuffing of my old chair as I sifted and sorted again, my feet tarred and sticky from all of his shit. I found the phone.

- Hello? I said, rubbing my foot into the wall which groaned.

- Hello. Do you have any work?

- No, I can't work. I kicked the dog to stop it stuffing itself. I was worried he would eat until his seams split.

- That's what I guessed would happen which is why I sent you the chair.

I muttered something, watching as the dog ate and ate.

- I'll interview you in my building. I can pay you.

- I only want another room, I said, again. A little room, a space, a kennel, because it's impossible for me to work anymore.

- Do you think, that old crackle covering her voice, you'd ever be able to work again?

- No, I'm finished. It's over. I read, I sleep, I eat, and all of that's hard enough, I can fatten up if I want. I can die. I don't want to work.

I hung up.

She still sends me photographs, cuttings and cassettes. They are in a heap next to the dog which ate until it was stuffed. She sent me a photograph of herself and sometimes I think about her, or masturbate, or she's the subject of an uneasy or desperate dream but it passes. We're always by that river, walking quietly, the cold tightening around our bones, our bodies shutting down. I closed the blinds and removed the lightbulb. Now I lie in the dark and smoke. I'm quiet. The snow continues to fall.