The Leper's Companions by Julia Blackburn

Author:Julia Blackburn [Blackburn, Julia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General Fiction
ISBN: 9780679758389
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 1999-04-01T04:00:00+00:00

18

As I finished speaking I felt the weight of the anesthetic pulling me down and down until I had lost the leper and the people who were with him and there was nothing left to see or hear or hold on to. Even the dizzy whiteness of walls and sheets had dissolved and disappeared.

Time passed and there was no way of measuring it. When I finally floated back to the surface of the world, I knew that the threads which had been holding me were cut. I was ready to leave the village.

Everything I had grown accustomed to would soon be changing. I was going away and once I had gone I could probably never return even if I wanted to. In the silence I could hear the methodical thump of my heartbeat and the gentle inhalation and exhalation of my breath.

And so, over the days of convalescence while I lay in bed and drifted in and out of sleep and wakefulness, I began to say goodbye to the place which had been like a home to me for over a year. I walked as slow as old age along a road that was imprinted in my mind. I stood and gazed with a lingering tenderness at the line of crooked houses which had offered me shelter when I needed to escape. I peered wistfully through windows and open doors.

A few of the rooms were occupied by men and women and children, but most of them were already empty, with broken ceilings and rubble on the floor. Nevertheless they were all still redolent of the stories they held and in each contained space I could see the memory of the people who had been here and the lives they had lived.

This process of valediction was sometimes joyful and sometimes painfully sad, but there was nothing I could do to stop it from following its course. Although the thaw, which had started while the leper was telling his story, had by now melted most of the snow, the weather was cold. The sky was a clear, transparent blue and there was no wind.

I made my way past the church and the yew tree and down to the rickety hut by the shore where I had sat with my back to the wall on the first day I came here. Once again I felt the crunch of shells breaking under my feet and when I looked out towards the horizon, where the air and water merged together in a shifting haze, I was brought as near as I could ever be to a sense of eternity.

Farther along the coast I could just distinguish the wavering line of the sand dunes where the shoemaker and his wife had sat together among the whirring of dragonflies. In the other direction there was the flat expanse of muddy sand and a black stone marking the place where the mermaid’s hair was buried. The little boat in which the old fisherman had set out across the North Sea was pulled up on the shingle, tilted to one side, its nets spread out to dry.

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