The Blind Eye Read Online Free PDF Page A

railing, line dangling, bait at his feet, but most of the time it is empty. The streets are also bare, just a few chickens scratching around in the dirt to indicate any sign of life, and nothing else.
    Once a working port, there were over 600 people living there in the early 1900s. The grain was brought down through the Port Tremaine Gorge and loaded onto the boats to be shipped off to the rest of the world. When Silas arrived, the port had long since closed and the town had dwindled to sixty residents, including Rudi and Constance, although most of Port Tremaine would not consider them in any head count. Silas could name many of them; he could describe what they looked like, where they lived and what they did. He later told me that occasionally their faces would float across the slow beginnings of a dream, and he would start, waking suddenly with the fear that he was back there once more.
    The sign at the entrance marks the population as 240, butit is, of course, many years out of date, and with numbers continuing to drop so steadily there has never been any point in regularly changing it. Silas saw it in the beam of the headlights as he slowed down, knowing he had hit the top of the main road, the four street lights pale in the darkness. There was only one other car out, its engine at a low throb as it cruised down to where the jetty began, the driver revving the accelerator for a minute or so, before turning and proceeding at the same slow pace, back to the other end of town.
    Unsteady on his feet, and slightly nauseous from lack of food and too much dope, Silas got out at the first pub he came across, not even noticing how dark and quiet it was until he was there at the front door and he realised it was closed. Each window was shut, tattered canvas blinds were pulled down, the glass in the front door was smashed and boarded up with chipboard, the sign on the front advertised counter meals with prices he had not seen for years.
    He stood in the middle of the deserted street and smelt the salt in the air. After the heat of the day, the gulf breeze was cool on the clamminess of his forehead and he looked down to where the jetty began, relieved to see that there was another pub, one that appeared to be open.
    That was when he noticed the old man, head down, an almost empty bottle in one hand, his entire body concentrated on getting another drink, his face hidden by long greyhair that fell to below his shoulder blades. He was talking to himself, muttering into his beard, words that Silas could not hear as he followed him towards the hotel, eventually finding himself close enough to smell the sweet alcoholic sweat on the old man’s skin as he pushed the bar door open, letting it swing shut behind him with a thud, so that it almost closed in Silas’s face.
    In the dim light of the vast room, Silas saw the few men clustered at the counter turn away as the old man took a seat and fumbled for coins in his pocket, only to turn back again seconds later when they saw Silas enter. All eyes were on Silas now, and in that moment he knew they all wanted to know who this person was, this person who was foolish enough to come to a town that everyone had left.

     
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    Dear Rudi
    Sitting at his reading desk, Silas would press his knuckles into his eyes, wanting the world to swim momentarily, wanting to see the swirl of colours that filled his vision before the darkness took over. This, he once told me, was what he did with his days.
    He had his notepad open in front of him, each page covered with those two words, and next to it were the books he had discovered when he first came to the library. Kirlian photography, a technique for capturing the electromagnetic field that surrounds every living object. Leaves represented by flares of orange, red, violet; one finger touching another, the colours deep and dark except at the point of contact, a brilliant yellow glowing between them; a dying flower; the image of where a petal had been just prior