Cosmo Cosmolino Read Online Free PDF Page A

open.
    â€˜Look,’ said Natalie. ‘The only person in the world with a full inventory of your crimes is you. You can burn things, wish death—but the past is still the past and you’re still the same person.’
    â€˜I know,’ I said. ‘I know you must be right. But—’
    â€˜But what?’ said Natalie.
    We were both shivering. The fat girl’s eyes were on my face, waiting for my lips to move.
    â€˜But what if he forgets everything?’ I said. ‘What if it’s all up to me? He was my first real friend. Everything I ever knew about friendship I learnt from Patrick.’
    â€˜Oh, don’t start that,’ said Natalie, closing her eyes. ‘You’re worse than he is. Can you imagine how many times I’ve heard all these tales? You can’t know how desolating I find that kind of sentimentalism.’
    â€˜But listen,’ I said. ‘He did things for me. He was faithful to me. He was there .He bailed me out of thelockup. I was in a cage in the back yard of the police station and I saw him coming through the gate. And once a doctor put drops in my eyes to dilate my pupils, and Patrick took me by the hand and led me home.’
    â€˜All right,’ said Natalie. ‘That’s enough.’
    â€˜He sent me the money for an abortion,’ I ground on.
    â€˜Stop now,’ said Natalie. ‘Shut up.’
    â€˜I didn’t even know which bloke it was. I wrote to Patrick in Sydney—I hadn’t even seen him for two years—and he sent me fifty quid the next day. In pound notes. In an envelope. No questions asked.’
    â€˜Yes,’ said Natalie. ‘Yes.’ She leaned forward with her elbows on her knees: I could see her teeth. ‘But what I want to know is—what did you ever do for him ?’
    â€˜I can drag it back,’ I babbled. ‘He thinks I’ve forgotten it all—but I can dredge it up. All of it, if I have to—if he can’t remember any more.’ I began to bawl. ‘I’d lie at the foot of his bed like a dog,’ I said, ‘if it would do any good. Tell him that, Natalie.’
    Natalie stood up.
    â€˜ You tell him,’ she said. ‘Tell him yourself.’
    The intercom on the wall next to the ward door spoke a name and Natalie ran to answer, putting her mouth right up against the metal; then she beckoned to me. I followed her in. She had a way of walking which suddenly seemed to find its purpose: she put her feet down firmly, but with a light spring, as if her kneeswere never completely straightened. She was ready for anything, with this walk. Anything at all would find her ready for it.
    The air in the ward was dense with anxiety. Entering it was like wading against a surf of rhythmic moaning, whether human or mechanical I could not tell. Down the aisle between the two rows of beds trod Natalie, lightly and quickly. I saw the first body. That’s not him. The head, shaved and with a bloody modess pad clapped to the back of it, was turned away from us in a hard, unnatural position: dead, an Auschwitz victim, someone who had perished in agony. I kept moving but Natalie stopped. She stopped .Wildly I tried to read the name on the clipboard. It was Patrick.
    He was suffering. He was crying out. A nurse rushed to him with an oxygen mask: he rolled to grab at it and the force of his in-breath seemed to suck it on to his terrible face; then, seeing us over its rim, he tore it away and reached out his left hand to where we stood, two of the women in his life ,gaping with shock and fear at the foot of the bed. We were tripping over each other to defer. Frantic, Natalie pushed me: ‘Go on!’ I blundered to the side of the bed and seized his hand. It was warm and very meaty, but it was not my place to go closer, to approach his face, his wounded head. I kissed his hand, squeezed it, and laid it down for Natalie, who took hold of it as I scrambled out of range.