White and Other Tales of Ruin

“Do you think I’m attractive?” Jade asks, and there is a note of abandonment in her voice which brings an instant lump to my throat.

“I … yes, I do. But…” I point at her chest, realising the absurdity of the situation for the first time — an attractive woman, revealing her breasts to me on this hot afternoon, sweat already glistening on the small mounds. And my reaction, to point and gulp my disbelief like someone seeing a do-do for the first time in centuries. But maybe that’s what she wants.

“I wasn’t a few weeks ago.” Jade sighs, lifts her shirt back onto her shoulders and sits on the fountain wall. I see her mouth tense, her face harden, and she reaches for the bottle. But she cannot halt the tears. They are strange, these tears. They clean the grime from her face, but they seem dirty against her skin. Her mouth twists into an expression of rage, yet she seems to be laughing between sobs.

I step towards her and hesitantly hold out my hands. It’s a long time since I’ve held a woman, and I feel clumsy with the gesture. She waves me away and takes another swig of wine, spitting it into the dust when a further spasm of laughter-crying wracks her body.

It takes a few minutes for her to calm down, a time in which I feel more helpless than I have in years. She cries, laughs, drinks some more, but her initial rejection of my offer of comfort has hurt me. I feel foolish, being upset by this denial from a stranger. But I really wanted to help.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I’ve had a rough few weeks.”

“You could have fooled me.” I say it quietly but it makes her giggle, and that makes me feel good. After a pause during which a group of old women shuffle through the courtyard, and Jade procures another bottle of wine, I ask the question. “Will you tell me?”

She waves at a fly, wine spilling down the front of her shirt like stale blood. Then she nods. “I’ve been going to help you since I saw you on the harbour. It’s obvious why you’re here. Do you have growths?”

I nod. “The Sickness.”

“I had it too.”

I nod again, glancing at her chest as if I can see the smooth scar through her shirt. “So I guessed.”

“And, yes, String cured me.” Her American accent has almost vanished. As if she is speaking for everyone.

“He’s genuine, then? I’d heard so many stories that I’d begun to think he was a myth. A hope for the new age.” I look down at my feet and cringe when a spasm of pain courses through me, as if the Sickness itself can sense a danger to its spread.

“There is no hope after the Ruin,” Jade says, though not bitterly. “Not for mankind. There’s personal hope, of course. There always will be as long as there’s one person alive on the planet. Human nature, animal instinct, survival of the species, no matter what the odds. That’s why String does what he does. But mankind was fucked the minute the Ruin set in.”

“The crop blight?”

She shakes her head. “Long before that, I reckon. How about the fall of Communism?”

“Why that far back?”

She shrugs. “Just my personal opinion.” She looks at the front of my shirt, a glint of concern marking her voice. “You need to see him soon, I think.”

I look down and see blood seeping through the material, spreading like ink dots on blotting paper. One of the growths has split and started spewing my life out into the heat, and I have the disturbing feeling that our talk of cures and hope has encouraged it. My personification of the Sickness makes it no easier to accept.

“How does he do it?” I ask. It’s the question I have been yearning a positive answer to since the Sickness first struck me.

I see something then, a shadow of an emotion pass across Jade’s face. It is only brief, as if a bird had passed across the sun and cast its silhouette down to earth. If I knew her better, I could perhaps discern what that look meant, decipher from her tone of voice what sudden thought had made her blush and twist her hands in her lap.

She tilts her head slightly towards me, and I think of Della. “I don’t know,” she says. I nod, reach for the wine. Maybe later I can ask her again.

“Will you take me to him?”

“Yes.” The answer is abrupt, definite.

“Thank you.” I smile and feel a warm glow as my cheer is reflected on her face.

“But first,” she says, jumping up, “we eat. Then, we drink some more wine. Then, we sleep.”

“Can’t we go now?”

She shakes her head, motioning for me to precede her into the building. She slams the door shut behind me and flicks on a light, revealing one large room with bed, fridge, curtained bathroom area and an old computer monitor with a picture of a goldfish glued across its redundant screen.

“Why?”

“It’s nearly dark, one.” She holds up a finger to count the point. “It’s about twenty miles up into the hills, two.” Another finger. “People are hungry, three. It’s got pretty bad here. Last month they ate two Frenchmen.”