True Faith

I never thought that I would come to live on the morning sun; I never thought that I would crave the night and sleep during the day. I never imagined a time when I would sleep a little after dawn and wake a little before dusk, and that I would live for a taste of the light. None of us ever expected, back when the world was old, and life was so crowded. ‘Us’ seems such a strange word now to use for more than two; but how quickly it comes back.

Those were bright days, and long, dark, starry nights, when we could scurry from street to street, and we would spend our money and laugh, and we would talk, and work, and life was complicated, and busy. The light was more intense then. The world seemed so old then, everything crusted in dirt and muck; now, it’s young again. There are none of the things that I remember from the old world, the shops, roads, railway stations, banks; there are just the fields, occasional houses set against the landscape, modest, detached, painted-stucco and crumbling, and dry-dirt roads. We have all we need; men come, sometimes, and bring us petrol, with which we fuel our pick-up truck, and we have a small vegetable patch outside the house.

We don’t seem to need to eat much. I am certain that in the old days we used to need to eat more. We do not become hungry when we do not eat, but it seems appropriate to me that we should eat, and Grey agrees that we should eat. We bathe, too, although I am not sure whether this is necessary. It is quite certain that Grey likes the water, although she will not douse herself in it as I do; she does not seem to need to do it and does not suffer discomfort at not doing so. I am not sure why I needed to do it either, but it seems like the right thing to do. I know something of why things are as they are, but not everything. I know now, that is.

The air is cold, although the sun is bright and the sky is light before I go to sleep and for a little while after I wake. It seems to always be a summer night, now, and I wonder why. We always sleep the days and see the nights; at least, I think this is the way things are. I do not know if the days ever come, or if we are truly seeing night; night seems very light now, and I have not been disturbed by excess sunlight during my sleep. The days and the nights blur into each other. 

I am not certain why we sleep during what I assume is the day. We have done it for as long as I can remember; it may be for our health, or, at any rate, for Grey’s health. She does not like the bright light, or the dark, but craves the mildness of the early morning and the early evening.

Other than the light, we are in good health, I think. I do not suffer from any pains and I do not have difficulty in completing any of the few tasks that I have. I seem to recall that Grey once had many pains, whenever she was touched, but now does not suffer from pains of any kind. We do not speak of it. I confirm my health by looking into the mirror and seeing that I am a colour I consider healthy. My skin is an orange-brown colour, my eyes a dark blue, and I appear to have clear skin. Although my facial hair does grow when not shaven, it never seems to grow long enough to become a beard. I am not certain why.

My house is what was once called a detached house. It seems somewhat appropriate now, detached as it is from people and society. I recall that in the old world there were rows of houses, all stacked up against each other, or one house divided into many. I remember one of these rows of houses all stacked up against each other, in the dark, with the sky black and the streets and the roads and the houses charcoal shades, with points of light of stars above and a disc of light of the moon. I still see the moon, sometimes, but I cannot guess where it will be and when it will appear. It appears against the blue sky, and appears bigger than it used to. Sometimes it is white, other times it is pink, and when I stretch my hand out in front of me it is bigger than my hand to my outstretched fingertips.

In my house there are a number of rooms, which seem hard and empty somehow. The floors are made of wood, except for a covering in one of the larger rooms downstairs which is made of a matted material, some kind of a carpet, albeit with a texture that I cannot quite describe. Grey likes the matted material and says that it is like the grass outside. Outside my house there is a concreted track and some soft soil, which I keep moist. On the soft soil grows the two surfaces which Grey likes very much, moss and grass. It is this grass she means, not the longer, harder, wider, grass that we see in the fields, with the heads of seeds on the top. I trim this grass with a knife to keep it fine and short. I like it.

There are three storeys to my house. The one at which we enter has five rooms, which we call the corridor, the kitchen, the front room, the back room, and the pantry. It has six rooms if we decide that the entrance to the cellar is a room, which it is not. On the upper storey, there are three rooms, which we consider two bedrooms and the bathroom. It is in the last that we store the water. We have little use for the room. I do not wish to speak of the bedroom. I do not know why.  The lower storey is the cellar. In the cellar there are many racks of green bottles, which are corked and empty. It seems to me that these bottles should contain wine, but they do not. I cannot remember what wine tastes like. It was part of the old world.

I first met Grey in the cellar. I know that she lived there, for a time, that I never before then went and saw her. We have lived together for as long as I can remember of my new life.

I don’t remember when, or exactly how, the world changed from the old to the new. I have always felt as if I had retired and slept one night in the old world, and woken up in this one; I don’t remember this happening, and I was never sure that it happened. I know roughly what happened now, but I can still doubt myself. There was no evidence that it ever happened. I look out on the world as it is now, and there are some things I remember from the old. The fields, and the pick-ups, and the petrol, and the roads – they were part of the old world, part of the structure. But it seems that the world cannot be identified from the structure. I thought, once – I cannot tell you how long ago, because I do not keep dates – that it would be possible to prove that these pick-ups were part of the old world, and that there was once organisation dedicated to creating them, that there were once factories and workers and designs. I reasoned that nothing quite as complex as a pick-up truck could be created without the cooperation of men. So I looked at my pick-up truck, for what must have been a long time. Grey helped me, although as she does not share my memories of the old world, she is intelligent and wise, more so than I am. We looked for signs of manufacture such as hallmarks or maker’s marks, and we found none. We found, in fact, no text save for the generic. I still believed.

I would have asked others, of course, but there are few people in this world. Grey and I, we travel a deal. We walk on the dirt tracks sometimes. We usually walk after it has rained lightly, which it does some days; that’s the way Grey prefers it, as she enjoys the dirt tracks after rain. She does not always wear clothes, and she has never covered her feet. She likes the feel of the dirt on the soles of her feet.

When we walk together we sometimes talk. Grey and I talk to each other more than I have ever spoken to anyone else; but this is still not all that very much. Grey and I look at each other and there we share our feelings. Sometimes I look at her and she looks at me and we perform the same action at the same time, or we make the same expression. Sometimes, too, we touch each other. We look at each other and I touch her arm just as she brings her arm forward to touch. As we walk together sometimes she will hold my arm, when we walk on the occasional – very occasional – unsteady or rutted piece of land. She will not grab onto me, but slip her arm around mine. I like that very much.

We travel sometimes to lakes where we obtain water, but we meet nobody on the way. There are no ruins or artefacts. We travel sometimes to the coast, and we see no ruins. Aside from the pick-ups there are no other vehicles. I think that when I lived before, there were not pick-ups; the vehicles were somewhat cleaner, shiny, bright and plain, if equally large. The roads were different, too, in the old days. There are some roads which are reminiscent of the old roads, made of a hard, aggregated surface – tarmac, I think it might be called, or asphalt – but they have no markings or signposts. Grey finds them unpleasant to walk on. I wear boots, and so I do not feel the surfaces as sensitively as she does. I do not think that my sense of touch is as sensitive as hers anyway.

When I first met Grey we did not touch very frequently; as I said, she suffered pains when I touched her skin. But now she is better. I do not mean that her skin has changed. She finds it less uncomfortable to touch the skin now. I enjoy touching her skin. Sometimes we hold each other, but not too roughly as I fear it may harm her.

I remember a time when Grey and I stood in the mirror and we looked together into it. Grey and I compared ourselves. Grey looks different to me. She is a woman. Grey does not have any hair on her head or her body, unlike me. I have hair on my head, and above my eyes, and on other places of my body. Grey does not have any hair. Grey’s skin is a different colour to mine, more a colour of granite or limestone than of terracotta, like mine. Her eyes are a different colour to mine, too; they have the outer white tone like mine, but the iris is a different colour to mine. Rather than my iris of blue her iris is a stone-grey colour; her eyes are larger than mine. Her face is a different shape to mine, too, thinner with higher cheekbones; as is her body thinner and yet more curved than mine, curving in towards the middle of her body. Her skin is not completely of one colour, but is dappled, like some of the grasses; it has different shades of grey, some dark, some not. In places her skin peels easily, and it is this that she dislikes. Her skin is very sensitive. Sometimes it peels and falls.

Grey does not like the mirror always.

It is difficult to speak quite as fluently as I believe I did in the old times. I do not have quite so much practice, because I do not speak to many people. I do not have much opportunity to read or write either, and so my language fails. This is not madness, nor pain, nor a tragedy. This is the way my life is, and the way I choose it to be.

One time I came downstairs from my bedroom – of which I will not speak – and entered the corridor-room which was adjacent to the front door, and when I entered I found a brown rectangle on the floor. On closer inspection it appeared to be an envelope constructed of heavy paper, and on the front inscribed my name, which I shall not here mention. Inside it was a sheet of paper, a letter to me, but the words had no meaning, and I shall not record them here, save that they were some kind of rhyming doggerel. The words made me feel uncomfortable and accused and guilty and I decided to hide the letter from Grey, to stop her from looking at it. It reminded me of the world that had passed, a world which I was not quite sure that Grey belonged in. As Grey was still sleeping, I pocketed the letter in preparation for burying it, and looked out of the front window.

All I could see was grass, flat fields, an endless, faint, pale-yellow-green landscape, hazed but not fogged, set against a blue-grey glowing sky. Between the old world and the new world something happened. I didn’t know what this was, what the change was, but I remembered little scraps of it. I thought perhaps that it had been predicted or foretold in some way; not in the way of being known, precisely, before it happened, although there were predictions of the end of the world – but somehow lurking in the background, threatening and brooding. I discussed it with Grey, on our walks, and she told me – often – that she did not remember the old world. She didn’t remember a lot. She didn’t remember her parents, although she must surely have had them. I didn’t remember mine, either, but I knew they were there – I remembered something my life which must have been my father, and something in my life that must have been my mother. Grey did not remember even these shadows.

As I gazed out of the window in these reflections, my hand reached to my pocket. I had momentarily forgotten about the letter, thinking about how Grey did not seem to remember anything that happened before we were together. I placed my hand in my pocket and found that it was not there. I checked my other pockets, and then stared at the tables and the ground where it might have been; it was nowhere to be found. I looked again. I could not have dropped it – it was not anywhere nearby, and I had firmly entrenched it in my pocket. It was nowhere to be seen. Grey remained in bed, and when I went up to her – I shall not discuss the bedroom or bed in any detail – she was sound asleep, and needed some waking up.

I was confused about the matter. I did not know anyone who might wish to write to me.  I did not know anyone aside from Grey; we have met one or two other people but we do not know their names and they do not know ours. There are no organisations or institutions, as in the old days, no banks, or some other such, who might write to us. There are no advertisers, nobody to routinely inform us that their items are not available in the shops. I could not understand where this letter had come from. Yet this rhyming doggerel I was given made no sense to me, had no logic in my mind; I found and I find it offensive; yet… yet it seemed so familiar to me, haunting me, and provoking me.

Sometimes I sang. Sometimes when we walked I sang, and sometimes I sung to Grey. Now, singing brings me great pleasure, but then, I experienced a great, deep longing, but I did not know what I am longing for. I felt that there was something missing. It felt as if a part of my body is missing, leaving only an empty gap; sometimes when skin fell from Grey, the appearance of the parts that are missing made me think of this feeling. I sung all manner of things, sometimes the noises left my mouth without my bidding, and many times I did not know the words. Sometimes when I sang tears fall from my eyes, and yet… and yet when I felt my face it was dry. Until recently I did not understand why.

Grey gave me a feeling of longing similar to the feeling I experienced when I sang. I did not know if I loved her. I had the feeling that I needed to say something of the nature, but I did not believe I had ever heard the word spoken. I held out the hope that the day would come that I would. I found myself wishing to speak to her many times in this way.

I was walking with Grey the… the day of the letter, and I was singing to her. She sang then, although she had never sung before. I joined in with her, and we sang a song, which felt like memory. The words had no meaning to me that I understood, and I did not realise that I knew the song, but we both sung it together. As we sang happily I suddenly stopped, and I felt the world fall away from me. I was cold, very cold, and I shrank.

The words we were singing were the words of the letter. I could not speak, I could not think, I was only afraid. I must have been standing still for a while, as I looked up and found that Grey had fallen silent and was looking at me with dismay. She asked me why I had stopped singing. I was angry and I accused her of stealing the letter. She started crying. I felt dreadful and spent some time apologising to her and comforting her.

Later on I explained the letter to her. She had not seen it, she said. She was somewhat defensive in this matter, as though afraid of what I might say. I felt ashamed. I had never before had an argument with her – there were no catalysts to arguments, after all, there being no material needs, and there being no other people around to cause jealousies or introduce disharmony. She accepted my apology, but still I felt guilty. She did not recognise the doggerel, and said that she did not know the song before singing it.

I was somewhat puzzled, as I had sung the song too, but I had not encountered the words outside the letter. The song had, as time passed, come to me to symbolise an accusation. I explained this to her, and I explained what the accusation was, and that it frightened me.

I had always been able to talk to Grey and tell her of my fears. I had some fears, most of them relating to how I found myself in this world. I was happy, as I had Grey in my company, but there were some things which disturb me. I did not understand why I did not seem to need to eat, and I did not understand why I did not have dreams. I understand all these things now, and I understand the accusation.

The time passed and we relaxed a little, and went out on another walk. We went on a walk we had performed several times, of a few miles, I think, which wound through what seemed to be open country along one of the dirt tracks, moist soft dust, underneath trees, near long, soft grasses. I seemed to remember that there were no trees not so long ago. We stopped after a while and sat down in some of the grass. Grey and I sat next to each other, and talked in a desultory manner. I touched the ground, and looked down on it, and something seemed wrong. I seemed to remember that it was once bare country, and that the grass was not in the earth, but almost floated on top of it. Rootless grass. Now the grass was rooted, heavily, and the earth was small, intricate, a mess of pattern with grass growing within. I looked at Grey and showed her the grass and the soil, and she looked at me blankly. She did not understand the significance of it.

I looked around. After a while, we got up and continued walking. I held back from walking a little, and I walked rather more slowly than I usually do in order to observe Grey walking. She looked back at me and smiled. I love her smile very much. I watched her walking. This particular day she was not clothed at all, and so I could examine her walk in great detail. Her hips swayed from side to side. As she walked, her arms swung by her sides as pendula, and her head bobbed gently. Her walk was very delicate; she lifted her heel, and the light grey of her arch showed and wrinkled, before she picked up her foot, showing the whole of her sole, and placed it forward. She strode her way across the landscape, confidently but not knowingly so. I watched her walk, and something occurred to me.

I asked her why she did not wear clothes. I realise now that the thought of a woman who wears no clothes on a routine basis may seem somewhat bizarre, almost sexually deviant, but at that time, it didn’t occur to me. It didn’t occur to her either. She was most surprised at the question, and replied that sometimes she did indeed wear clothes, albeit rarely. She said that there was no cold and nothing to injure, and so why should she wear such things? She added that there was no need for footwear as the ground was soft and pleasant. I agreed. The ground was soft, powdery and damp… there were no loose stones or pebbles of glass as I had once thought streets to contain.

Over the next few ‘days’, more letters and enveloped arrived. I did not tell Grey anything of them, wishing not to lie to her. I usually preferred – and prefer – to tell Grey all of my thoughts and deeds, but in this case I did not discuss them. I lay the letters on a shelf and Grey did not acknowledge them. I wished I could discuss them, but it proved very difficult to find the courage to speak to her about them. I silently wished that Grey would take the letters and talk to me about them. I did not know what I should do. Increasingly I placed the letters in more available places, but she still did not take them. As I fretted and worried about these letters, I found that their contents were more and more frequently echoed in our conversations. Each time I was silenced and shrunk away from the conversation.

I know that Grey was in turn worried about it. She was normally so calm, almost docile, thinking much and speaking little, and sleeping soundly. Each movement of hers was deliberated, her careful walk the exemplar. Now she troubled herself over each conversation, and she paced often. Her movements were nervous, and more than once I found her walking around at the middle of the day, where she normally sleeps. The evening and the early morning, usually the times at which she was most awake, were sleeping times for her now. She woke often, and sat at the foot of the bed, looking at me thoughtfully. I too woke and saw her once or twice doing it.

Eventually the tension was too much for me. I had to speak to her about it. My speech came slowly and haltingly, and I repeated myself often. Grey comforted me, and placed her arm around my neck as I explained. As I told her the accusations, she cooled, and uncertainly moved away from me, removing her arm from my shoulder. She silently left the room, and the house, and I remained alone with my thoughts. I sat down and waited, and noticed that the envelopes had gone. I closed my eyes and drifted off to sleep, a fitful and disturbed sleep, with the shadows of what might have been dreams in them; dreams, but not meaningful ones.

When I woke, I saw Grey standing over me. I admitted that I knew the accusations to be true. I told her that I wanted to remain as I was, with her; and I told her that I loved her. She warmed and smiled, and she told me that she loved me too, but she would not allow me to stand aside and do nothing. I repeated that I couldn’t do anything that would involve me leaving her. I told her that this was my life, whether it was illusory or real; that illusion was my reality. I told her that this was the only life that could remember.

She moved towards me and she spoke, and she repeated the accusations that I’d heard so many times before; I’d never expected to hear them from her. She shouted wildly at me. She told me I was wasting my life, ruining everything, and throwing it all away. At first I tried to ignore her, make the accusations go away, but she wouldn’t have it, she wouldn’t listen. She made me look at her. She made me look in the mirror at her so that we should be seen together. She made me see her grey skin, she made me see my orange-brown skin, and I hated my skin, to not be as grey as hers. I hated that she was perfect in the way that she was, perfect for being her, and I could not approach it. I moved slowly towards the mirror and I touched it, I touched it. I wanted to be sure it was really me, and really her.

The glass was cold to my touch; I have always known glass to be cold to the touch but I have never before experienced that it is, and so I recoiled in shock. I moved my face towards the glass and pressed it close. I drew my head back a little, a foot or so, and Grey pushed my head into the mirror. My head smashed into it, and I felt the blow; a sudden burst of pain in my head, the warm trickle of blood in my hair – things which I had never yet felt before. I felt the glass smash around me, the glass tangle in my hair, and I felt my world swim around, I closed my eyes and I saw something different. I dreamed by closing my eyes, and woke by opening them. I opened and closed my eyes a few times involuntarily, before I fully closed my eyes and drifted off to sleep.

That was the way that I viewed it at the time, although I quickly learned the truth. I dreamed of waking up, finding myself in a bed quite unlike my own yet strangely familiar, with a bright light streaming through my eyelids. I could feel warm steam on my face, carrying the smells of coffee and bacon, and I could hear a rattle. I could hear a beep. I could smell, as if distantly, the smell of disinfectant, and a vaguely uneasy smell of decomposition. It was a hospital. I heard low-level chatter, words, words, words. Words addressed to me, telling me dark confessions, promises, expressions of love. I saw a pink glow, and stared through it. The words resolved into sentences, and I understood where I was. I remembered. The accusations were true, and I had a choice. I plunged myself away from the world in which I lay, withering slowly in a coma, back into the world in which I had my love and my own, isolated freedom.

The knowledge of my situation gave me something of the power to change it; I convinced Grey to stay and allow me to stay; and I rebuilt the world around Grey and me. I suppose some might consider living in my mind while my body withers to be cowardice; but here I am happy. I live the life I wish to live.

The smoke curled rapidly from the chimney of the power station, against the sky of deep orange; around it were fields and pools of water from the rains; clouds crowded around the construction, moving in parallax, showing their arrangement; while the smoke spewed from the chimney, the cooling towers’ steam lay still, as if caught in time. Behind me, and above the power station, the sky’s west pinked in the brightening of the light. Grey inched towards me, and her arm cupped my body, and she rested her head on my shoulder. In the distance, the runway lights of the air-base blinked on; and we watched the coming of the morning sun.