Paradise Lost

By Pigwidgeon37

“I cannot do it. I simply cannot. Please understand, or at least try to.”

She looked into his eyes and saw that he was serious. “Very well,” she said, “Goodbye then. And may you never regret your decision.”

Usually, it was the sound of the door closing behind her that ended the dream and pushed her from the depths of sleep upwards into wakefulness. In a way, it seemed appropriate. Those words and her angry exit from the room had marked the end of an era which, despite of the very real things she had learned and experienced, had had something of a dream. Not always a happy one, on the contrary, the last part of it had certainly been more of a nightmare. But it had been so much more colourful and intense than anything she had ever encountered before or after. A shiny, precious dream that had lasted almost seven years, like the dreams people had in fairy tales, seven years in the enchanted mountain, to find everything changed when they came back outside, into their own world. Sometimes she wondered whether those fairy tales were stories of people who had made the same experience as she, faint echoes of a longing similar to her own, a craving for a paradise lost forever.

Lost… no, she had not lost it. She had left it by her own free will because she had been convinced that it wasn’t a paradise anymore. Were the grounds of paradise littered with dead bodies? Was Michael’s fiery sword a wand that brought terror, torture and death to the Garden of Eden? Did the god who had created paradise have red eyes, glinting with madness, was he a god of death who had destroyed everything so that Adam and Eve were not the first but the last human beings? Back then, her answer had been no. And so she had left, gone to the door, opened it, crossed the threshold without looking back, closed the door behind her and walked out of paradise.

During the first few weeks, she had felt nothing but relief, like the first big gulp of air after having been underwater for too long. The conviction of having undergone the painful but life-saving amputation of a gangrenous limb. Peace and sleep. If only she had been able to somehow conserve that feeling, which was so comforting although it had been born from an act of abnegation. But as after every amputation, phantom pain had soon set in, and with it the dreams had come, ambushing her in the dark that was behind her closed eyelids and pouncing mercilessly as soon as sleep had robbed her of her defences. She had fought the pain with clenched teeth, every inch of territory she had gained a small triumph, every second she did not feel that yearning a tiny victory. It had taken her years to push the enemy out of the territory of her life and into the confinement of her dreams, where he rattled the bars of his cage, roaring and staring at her out of glittering eyes, waiting for her to fall asleep and become his prey again.

Now, fifteen years later, all that was left of that distant paradise, during daytime at least, were blurry images she immediately chased away when they appeared. Sometimes, in the street or in the supermarket, or even in a movie she watched, somebody would laugh or speak or move in a way that reminded her of people she had met in paradise; once she had crossed a road together with a group of teenage boys on their way back home from a game of basket ball, and her brain had immediately reacted to the stimulus of sweat and excitement and laughter by producing the image of a tiny golden ball with silver wings, clutched firmly by a skinny hand. That night, she had been afraid of going to sleep, and rightly so, for paradise had come back with a vengeance. Ten times the door had closed behind her, ten times she had woken up, sticky and sweaty, her face wet with tears.

Had he regretted his decision? She didn’t know. She had cut herself from the magical world in order not to know. He could be dead, or alive… Today was Saturday, which meant that tomorrow, she was going to allow herself an hour, sixty minutes, three thousand six hundred seconds, and not a single second more, of thinking about her lost paradise. After fifteen years, she had felt it was safe to concede herself that Sunday treat. The distance from then to now was so immense that nothing could possibly happen. Although she did not like the eagerness with which she was looking forward to that carefully measured hour. Addictions started like this, and she knew it. She was a doctor, after all. Just a GP in a nice, quiet part of London, but a doctor all the same. She knew about medicines being turned into drugs. But then, she was strong and she could trust herself not to abuse of the opium she had allowed herself to take, in small, carefully measured doses. She was strong, and she was in control.

_______^_______

On the seventh Sunday, she thought she was strong enough to go to Charing Cross Road, just for a walk, a quick walk, no stops, no lingering and loitering, no skulking around, just a quick, brisk walk. She was like that, quick and brisk. Her patients appreciated it.

The shock when she spotted the entrance to the small pub, dingy as always and unchanged, just like it had been twenty-two years ago when she saw it for the first time… The shock was almost too much and she fled. Arrived at home in a state of total dishevelment, not quite sure how she had got there. She had experience with drugs and alcoholism, with addictions and denial thereof, and thus the first thing she did after having kicked off her shoes was to empty every bottle of wine, every rest of liquor, all the pills and even the perfume into the toilet. To look at the brightly coloured capsules swirling madly in the vortex of the flush caused her deep satisfaction. She had outwitted herself, had been the omniscient doctor who would never let any harm come to his patient, even if the patient was he himself. But she felt she had to work on this. Nothing in the world had the right to cause her such a reaction, so she would fight it with claws and teeth. Confront it. At the first possible occasion.

On Monday, after she had dismissed her last patient she took the Underground and went to Charing Cross Road. The pub was still there and the shock stabbing her heart and mind and guts, kicking her violently in the hollow of her knees so that she almost fell, was maybe even heavier than yesterday. She arrived home, light-headed with lack of sleep from the previous night and with adrenaline that was still coursing through her body, broke down on the carpet right behind the entrance door and fell asleep. Like a poisonous mantra, those last fateful sentences were pronounced again and again, the door fell shut, then the sharp crack of her wand being snapped into two halves—she had done that as meticulously as she had always done everything. She woke up some time in the middle of the night and dragged herself into her bed, fully dressed and torn between the leaden desire to sleep and the galloping fear of her recurring dream.

She was not so sure anymore that she really should try this kind of therapy. Maybe it would be better to just return to the status quo of seven Sundays plus two days ago and banish whatever had to do with the enchanted-mountain paradise to where it belonged, deep down in her mind where it had power over her dreams but not over her life. That would be the easy path, though, the path of defeat and cowardly acceptance.

The daily pilgrimages to Charing Cross Road and subsequent breakdowns cost her a lot of strength and energy. She was not a mirror person and hardly ever felt the desire to look at her own image; and when one day her reflection jumped at her from a shop window she did not recognize herself at first and when she did she was horrified. Now she understood why the steady flow of patients had become a small trickle. A doctor who had become his own spectral shadow was not likely to attract those who could afford to go elsewhere. People wanted to be treated by tanned, healthy-looking doctors, not by a haggard skeleton. Not that she really minded, she had loads of time now to work on her problem. She could go to Charing Cross Road whenever she wanted, at every hour of the day or of the night, and if she fancied passing the entrance of the small, dingy pub a hundred times she could do so. She was free. No need to observe petty rules anymore. She was allowed to think about paradise and those who had peopled it whenever she felt the desire to do so. It was better like this, far better. No more repression, no more restriction, everything was now on the surface of her consciousness where it belonged. The only way of getting over it all was to confront it—she knew that now. She had finally understood it.

She felt that she had reached the greatest possible freedom when she returned to her flat one night after a particularly successful therapy unit—one hundred yards up and one hundred down Charing Cross Road, five hundred times, without a single hitch—and the key didn’t fit into the lock of her door anymore. She would have liked to take some clothes, maybe an additional sweater or two for it was getting cold, but then recognized that freedom was also possible without warm clothes. Maybe it would even be greater like this. She dumped the key into the next dustbin and returned to Charing Cross Road. Tomorrow she would begin the next step of her therapy: she would try and touch the handle of the pub’s door.

She was very happy with this decision and with her newfound freedom. It was an inebriating feeling that went directly into her brain, like strong liquor. Intoxicating. She felt very young suddenly, and stronger than she had in a long time. Her strength had returned full force, she could feel it. She spread her arms and drew a deep breath. She could already see the pub, maybe fifty yards away, across the street, and in a rush of joy she ran towards it, arm still stretched out, like running into the embrace of a lover.

When she opened her eyes she saw anxious faces hovering above her, they were speaking but she couldn’t make out the words. A double-decker bus was standing so close that from her supine perspective it seemed as high as a house, and its headlights cast an eerie bluish-white blaze over those faces, sharply illuminating one side and leaving the other in the dark. It was difficult and, above all, useless to keep her eyes open, for it cost too much strength. So she closed them again, trying to figure out what had happened to make her lie sprawled on the asphalt with so many faces above her.

The shadows from the enchanted mountain had stopped rattling the bars of their cage, their angry howling and roaring had ceased, and one by one, they exited their prison, the doors of which had magically opened, and slowly walked towards her, smiling, waving…

So the therapy had been successful. Tomorrow she was going to enter the pub and maybe, just maybe he would be sitting there. Waiting for her, as he had been for the last fifteen years.

THE END