Caul follows Paul into their house and for the first time in a long time the two of them are alone together in each other’s space. Slowly the imminent morning is closed out as Caul draws shut the mustard curtains. Then he turns to allow the soft ambience of electronic sounds to bounce off the enclosing walls.
Paul meanwhile runs his lips over the gummed edge of a rizla tucked full with grass. He seals it quick and tight and then puts it between his lips to light. After doing so, they pass the toke between themselves, inhaling it in silence. Having finished, each falls slowly back into their respective sofas as Paul starts talking.
“I’ve been less than open with you of late.”
Caul stares coldly back. “You’ve gone on without me.”
“Does that surprise you Caul?” A tiredness mixed with anger quivers Paul’s voice. “You gave it all up when Mae married Gary. I didn’t.”
Caul rubs his face vigorously with his hand, shaking his head as one in disbelief.
“Maybe that was meant to happen. It’s not like my mother cared about her marriage to have me. You had no right to go interfering.”
Bending forward, he whispers with annoyance at Paul. “These things have their own timing, their own rules and you can’t change them. You are not the superior craftsman.”
Caul watches as envy washes its sheen over Paul’s face. Not moving, Paul answers.
“You are dead, are you not?”
Caul freezes within, wondering how Paul could know that. But he neither denies it nor confirms it under Paul’s scutinising eyes. Paul carries on as if the death is affirmed.
“Then, the time is now, and there were some things that needed taking care of.”
Caul remains silent, not wanting to betray his fears of Paul usurping him, not wanting to betray his knowledge of Paul’s still strong hatred for him.
“So then Caul, it’s time I brought you up to speed.”
Caul hides his relief of Paul having seen nothing.
“It’s time to get rid of Janice. She’s played the whore long enough, don’t you think?”
Paul draws a box of cigarettes from his jacket pocket.
“I know she tempts you Caul. I’ve watched her trying to drive a wedge between us, thinking she’ll be able to swing you into making her your consort.”
Cigarette between his teeth, he lights, then speaks from between them. “But I know you detest her.”
With the cigarette between the fingers of his left hand, Paul exhales.
“My three stooges hate her as well. Let her screw around a few months longer.”
Paul’s mind drifts with mild irritation to Audrey slipping from his grip, realising he’ll have to be quick in regaining her. He looks back again at Caul with confidence.
“The list of men and women whose faith Janice can whore with has run out.”
A wide, excited grin breaks on Paul’s face, but instead of dispelling the envy locked there, it only serves to bolster it.
“It’s almost time for us to put this persuasive method behind us Caul. The uprooting has mostly been done, and we can just let the violence rip. Then they will be at our mercy. We can start celebrating the mysteries freely over their dead bodies.”
Paul sits up and looks at Caul with his fixed, poised and ravaging smile running across the contours of his mouth.
“This is what you and me have been waiting for Caul. Don’t let it get away from us now. Let Jude alone. You know we need him. Don’t confuse him. Just concentrate on drawing Mae. Then everything will work out fine.”
Caul in reply turns confusedly from his listening elbow and soaks back into the foam-picked sofa.
“Are you sure?”
Paul gets up to stand over Caul, to whom it feels as if a menacing shadow has crossed him.
“Yes Caul. I’m sure.”
The shadows departs as Paul goes off to his room. Caul closes his eyes, annoyed with the uncertainty and lets his consciousness sink away into its depths, helped by the submersing ambience of music around him. But cracks of dawn light have begun to pierce the drapes. They enter his glazed eyes, refusing him the chance to dive to deeper waters and there hide from the fear that is sending his consciousness diving. Instead, it is as if the light has driven a rift between his mind and body, and allowed his soul to surface. His soul comes like the gaping mouth of a serpent ready to swallow his self back into the abyss of its own incommunicability. But before it can enclose its mouth, what surfaces in his mind is Jude’s remembrance that once upon a time by God’s Word, the waters deluged the earth, destroying the ungodly from the world except for Noah. Caul searches his own memory for the story an old lady told him once coming home from school, and remembers that in the days leading up to the deluge, Noah preached to the people while he built the ark of God’s plan to flood the earth, so that anyone who believed through Noah might be saved. On that thought he rests his growing hope despite his uncertainty, as the serpent slides unfed back into its abyss.
Wasteland Mix: Fragment 4