The Silent and the Damned. Robert Thomas Wilson

>

       The Silent and the Damned

      Robert Wilson

      

       Dedication

       For Jane and José and Mick

      Table of Contents

       Title Page

Dedication

Epigraph

Rafael [blinking in the dark]

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

       8

       9

       10

       11

       12

       13

       14

       15

       16

       17

       18

       19

       20

       21

       22

       23

       24

       25

       26

       27

       28

       29

       30

       31

       Coda

       About the Author

       Also by Robert Wilson

       Copyright

       About the Publisher

       Epigraph

      Ha, ha! what a fool Honesty is! and Trust his sworn brother, a very simple gentleman!

      SHAKESPEARE, The Winter’s Tale

      Fear is the foundation of most governments.

       JOHN ADAMS, second President of the United States

       RAFAEL

       [blinking in the dark]

      I am frightened? I have no physical reason for fear lying here in bed, next to Lucía, with my little Mario yipping in his sleep next door. But I am scared. My dreams have scared me, except they are not dreams any more. They are more alive than that. The dreams are of faces, just faces. I don’t think I know them and yet I have strange moments when I’m on the brink of recognizing them but it’s as if they don’t want that right now. That’s when I wake up because…I am not being accurate again. They are not exactly faces. They are not flesh. They are more ghostly than real but they do have features. They have colour, but it is not solid. They just miss being human. That’s it. They just miss being human. Is that a clue?

      If I am frightened by these faces I should be reluctant to go to bed, but sometimes I look forward to sleep and I realize it’s because I want to know the answer. There’s a key somewhere in my mind, which will unlock the door and tell me: why these faces? Why not any others? What is it about them that my mind has marked out? I have begun to see them quite clearly now, during the day, when my conscious mind is adrift in some way. My subconscious moulds these faces on to living people, so I see the phantom faces animated for a moment, until the real people reassert themselves. They leave me feeling foolish and shaken, like an old man with names on the tip of my tongue but unable to articulate.

      I am shivering. That’s what my mind can do to me. I’m cracking up. I’ve been sleepwalking. Lucía told me when I was in the shower. She said I went down to my study at three in the morning. Later that day I found a blank pad on the desk. I saw the indent of some handwriting. I couldn’t find the original. I took it to the window and saw that it was something I had written: ‘the thin air…’?

       1

       Wednesday, 24th July 2002

      ‘I