The Museum Of Doubt. James Meek
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I don’t care who else does.
A second sun put its head above the ground and ducked back. Yellow light splashed Adela’s skin, cycling to orange and red. A hammer of air cracked the glass of the window in half with a single vertical line and the Museum of Doubt trembled.
You car’s just exploded, said Adela.
They went to the doorway. There wasn’t much left. There were no flames. The frame smoked for a few moments and then the smoke blew away, like a blown-out candle. The frame and the wheels collapsed inwards into a neat pile.
Propane gas canisters and that line of self-igniting chemical heaters, said Jack, shaking his head.
It began to snow, rubbing white into the black star burned in the night’s fall. Jack walked to the nest of entwined metal, reached his hand into its oil-roasted depths and pulled out a new toothbrush in a cardboard and cellophane box. It was all he could save. By the time they went back inside, there was a snowstorm.
Adela lit the fire in the bedroom and they sat on the sofabed, watching it.
I could walk down the hill tonight, said Jack.
Best not to, said Adela.
I was wondering what I’d need to open a branch of your museum.
What you wouldn’t need.
Yes. But after I got rid of everything I wasn’t sure I needed, what would be left.
Adela looked away from the fire and turned to him. What would be?
Jack reached into his pocket and held out the toothbrush.
Adela smiled. Is that it? I think maybe you must be planning to stop in someone else’s museum.
Jack raised his eyebrows. Look, he said, beckoning Adela to move closer and examine the toothbrush. It had a blue plastic handle and white plastic filaments. The word Colgate was written on it.
Look, he said again, when she was next to him, looking down at the toothbrush, held in his two outspread hands like an offering. When you eat, you use the brush to spear the food – he gripped it brush-end up and made a downward stabbing motion – spindle it, or brush it towards your mouth. When you sit down, you use it to brush the ground clean. When you want something to read, you use the word Colgate as an index for the things you know by heart. C is the Code Napoleon, O is Orlando Furioso, L is for Little Lord Fauntleroy. That’s the way it goes.
You can’t sleep under your toothbrush when it’s snowing, said Adela. What do you do then?
You hold it up in front of you like this, said Jack, go and knock on the door of somebody you know, and ask for help.
Adela laughed, looked away and looked back into his face, still smiling. She stayed where she was, close to him.
You didn’t have to call it a museum, said Jack. You must have been wanting people to come. You don’t doubt you need visitors, do you?
No, said Adela, shaking her head. Her eyes were deep and bright and looking into his, where she was falling from altitude towards an unlit continent, self-eclipsed, falling and knowing nothing of the forest canopy about to catch her, only certain it was warm and filled with prey.
D’you know what I need?
Maybe I do. I don’t know what I need but I know what I feel like.
Jack reached out an index finger and placed it between her lips. Adela opened her mouth a little and stroked the finger moist in a pout. A message of salt travelled into her and the answer was raw hunger. She closed her eyes, the moon rose and she was high with longing to wound a creature. She opened and closed her jaws and pressed her teeth into the finger, wanting to meet bone, wanting the knuckle to break. She felt blood run down her chin and the hunger stopped. She opened her eyes and saw Jack’s head hung back, his finger unharmed and unmarked. There was no blood.
Oh, your finger, she said. She took it in one warm fist and squeezed it, kissed the tip. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I wanted to bite your finger off but I didn’t want to hurt you.
Jack raised his head. You didn’t hurt me any more than I wanted to be hurt, he said. Stand up.
Adela got up and Jack unfastened her jeans and took them down. He touched her vagina with his lips and looked up at her. I’d like to fuck you with my tongue, he said.
Yeah, go ahead, said Adela.
When they were tired they lay overlapped on the sofa facing each other, boy-thigh girl-thigh boy-thigh girl-thigh, elbows propping them up at either end.
I’m in sails, said Jack. With an ‘i’.
What is it you sell? said Adela.
I sell as much as anyone can ever get.
And how much does that cost?
It doesn’t cost anything. It’s just Life.
I don’t get it.
Life. Guaranteed to last a lifetime. All you can eat, all you can drink and all you can wear before you die.
But you’d get that anyway.
Would you? You haven’t.
I haven’t got life? Do I not seem alive to you? You thought I was alive enough when you cried my name a minute ago.
Jack looked away. His body slackened and tensed and his face closed, as if he was preparing to reshoulder an intolerable load after a moment’s rest. He said: You are alive. You’ll die one day like all the rest but you never got what they call a life. That’s what they’ve got, life. But you’ll live till you die. It’s not the same. You’re alive.
Adela shook her head. D’you want something to eat?
Jack shook his head. You can’t spare it.
There’s soup. You’ll have to have some.
Only if you let me pay.
Don’t be stupid.
Here, said Jack. He reached into his jacket and took out a small box. He held it out to Adela. This survived. Take it. For the soup.
Adela looked at the box for a while. OK, she said. She got up, put on her jeans and sweater, took the box and walked towards the kitchen.
Adela, said Jack. What was that last ornament you got rid of when you left your old place?
A gull. A grey and white porcelain gull with a yellow beak.
Some time later Adela went to call Jack through for the soup. He was gone. She looked in the morning for his tracks in the snow, but they had been covered up by the freshly fallen.
She opened the box and took out a grey and white porcelain gull with a yellow beak. She went up behind the house to the tall rocks, laid the gull on a flat place, took a heavy stone and pounded it to powder. By evening the weather turned and rainclouds crossed the ridge. Rain fell and washed the powdered porcelain off the rock, where it mixed with the melting snow and was carried away to the river on the floor of the glen.
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When I see Arnold I remember the woman who could walk. I think about Jenny too of course, not that she looked anything like her dad. I haven’t seen her for a long time now. That was why I stopped the woman who could walk, to find out when the healing would be over and Jenny would come out. I didn’t go inside. I had nothing that needed healing then. Nothing that you would stand up and say you believed in Jesus for, or that you’d know if you’d been healed of. Praise the Lord! I can love the ones I didn’t love before, and stop loving the ones that didn’t love me! Hallelulia! I walked up to the hall entrance slowly, early, and I was reading the curved red letters on freshpasted white paper