Free The Blind Eye by Georgia Blain

fifty metres away, and staring at him. He forgot that Pearl had told him she was blind, her gaze seemed so focused on him, and as he raised his hand to signal a greeting, she stepped forward: Constance, tall, poised and more exquisite than any of the flowers that clustered around her.
    I wouldn’t come any closer
, she warned, and she nodded in the direction of the shack, back towards Rudi, who was making his way down the path towards Silas, a gun in his hand.

     
4
    I know there is a small part of me that wanted to see what Silas saw. When I drove to Port Tremaine, I went to find out whether he had returned, but this was not the only reason for my detour. I wanted some truth to the vision he had attempted to describe for me, I too wanted to see it, extraordinary and beautiful, spread out in front of me.
    Was I delusional?
Silas once asked me, and then he stared out the window, aware that I was unable to answer his question.
I had smoked so much dope, I was such a mess
, he searched for a reason and then lapsed into silence.
    He did not know. He would never know.
    Greta did not go to the library on the weekends, and nor did Silas, usually, but on the Saturday morning after he first spoke to me about the garden he was there, without the distraction of her in front of him.
    The reading room was almost empty and he took a seat, the scrape of the chair loud in the silence. He found a blank piece of paper and laid it on the desk, determined that this time he would get somewhere.
    Dear Rudi
    He wished there were a better way of beginning.
    I need to tell you what happened, but each time I attempt to I am overwhelmed by how impossible it now all seems
.

pearl

    Calcarea Carbonica . – – . . . a trituration of the middle layer of oyster shells.
    John Henry Clarke,
A Dictionary of Practical Materia Medica
    Of the whole [mollusc] family, the oyster has the most undifferentiated body and possesses no limbs whatsoever. The animal is completely encased in its shell and absolutely immobile, since it is attached to a rock. Its only visible life expression consists in the slight opening and closing of the shell . . .
Calcarea
is standstill, passivity, immobility, clinging, restraining, peripherally enclosing, restricting, in going, the negative or holding-in receptive principle.
    Edward C Whitmont,
Psyche and Substance: Essays on Homeopathy in the Light of Jungian Psychology

     
1
    When Silas returned from PortTremaine, the few friends he ran into would occasionally ask him what he had been doing while he was there.
    Nothing much
, he usually said, not once making mention of Constance, her father, or the garden in which they lived.
    As the weeks passed and the change that had occurred in him became inescapably obvious to everyone who had known him, Silas was no longer faced with the possibility of having to discuss the time he had spent away, and he was relieved. It was not until he saw Jake, about eight months after he had come home, that the topic inevitably came up, once again.
    Jake had also been out of the city.
    India
, he told Silas.
Studying Ashtanga
.
    Jake was the first person to ask him whether he had fallen in love. He had followed Silas into his apartment building but when they reached the lift, Silas had told him he was only going up for a few moments, he had to go out. Even though the relief that sex might bring was tempting, it wasnever really a possibility. The aversion he had developed to any kind of closeness was too strong, and, unable to express this, he had simply made up an excuse.
    Did anything happen to you out there?
Jake looked at Silas curiously. He had always prided himself on his ability to read people, he said he could see the
energy flow
, a phrase that Silas found as irritating as Jake’s tendency to do the splits at every given opportunity.
    Did you fall in love?
Jake asked.
    Silas shook his head.
No
, he assured him, his response emphatic.
    Greta also asked him the same question when he first spoke