Elefant. Jamie Bulloch

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       Part One

      1

      Zürich

      12 June 2016

      It couldn’t be withdrawal syndrome as he’d had plenty to drink.

      Schoch tried to focus on the object. A child’s toy, a tiny elephant as pink as a marzipan piglet, but more intense in colour. And glowing like a pink firefly, right at the back of the hollow, where the ceiling of the cave met the sandy ground.

      People sometimes stumbled across Schoch’s cave, a hollow eroded from beneath the riverside path, and he might find the occasional junkie’s gear, condoms or fast-food packaging. But he’d never seen evidence of a child’s visit before.

      He closed his eyes and tried to get something like sleep.

      But then he had a ‘merry-go-round’, which was what he called those states of inebriation when everything started spinning the moment he crawled into his sleeping bag. In all these years he’d never managed to put his finger on what caused drunkenness to become a merry-go-round. Sometimes he was certain it was the volume consumed, while on other occasions he suspected it was down to the mixture of drinks. And then there were days like today when – so far as he could recall – he hadn’t drunk more than yesterday, or anything different, and yet everything was still spinning.

      Maybe it was something to do with the weather. On the way home the Föhn wind had chased the thick clouds over the river, intermittently tearing them apart to reveal a full moon. Full moon and the Föhn: maybe that was the reason for his merry-go-rounds, at least a few of them.

      He’d never found out whether it was better to keep his eyes open or closed either.

      Schoch opened them. The toy elephant was still there, but it appeared to be a little further to the right.

      He closed his eyes again. For a moment the little elephant spun beneath his eyelids, leaving a streak of pink.

      He immediately wrenched his eyes open.

      There it was, flapping its ears and lifting its trunk into an S-shape.

      Schoch turned over onto the other side and tried to stop the spinning.

      He fell asleep.

      2

      13 June 2016

      Schoch had been drinking for too long for this to be a hangover worth mentioning. But also too long to recollect every detail from the previous evening. He woke later than usual, with a dry mouth, gluey eyes and his pulse racing, but no headache.

      The heavy raindrops were making the twigs of the bushes at the entrance to his cave bounce up and down. Beyond these, in the dawn light, Schoch could make out the grey curtain of rain and hear its even drone. The Föhn had abated and it felt unusually cold for June.

      Schoch СКАЧАТЬ