Black Swan
I trace the label on the bottle. A swan swimming with its head held high. Black Swan Distillery, Holborn reads the lettering around the base of the label that follows the elegant curve of the swan’s breast and its water-borne body. I look further into the picture, which is very attractive, appealing. It’s drawing me in with its colourful scene of a river and the swan there, lording it, as swans do. Terrible proud birds they are. And a little man sitting on a bench by the river, looking like an old shepherd or a poet, and he’s holding a bottle with a swan on the label, would you believe? There’s someone else there but I can’t quite make out… Oh, it’s a woman, a little woman. How nice is that? Could be some kind of romantic triste, I suppose. It’s a very lovely picture. Pastoral. Idyllic. The kind of place I’d like to be. Hardly makes one think of whiskey. Is that a castle in the background?
I’ve drunk half the bottle, half of a full bottle that is, so I’m as merry as Father Christmas and everything is going fine and I’ve still half the bottle left to ease my way through the remains of the day. The lettering around the top of the label reads Whiskey Distillation Strength 62%.
* * * * * *
Shania, I swear I can hear someone talking, something about sound and a pixie and pixillation, but it’s like hearing the indistinct conversations from the other side of the wall in my apartment when I began to think I was hearing voices and they could communicate with me, asking me to do things I didn’t want to do like ‘Go to Switzerland’ – I didn’t – or ‘Eat more grits’ – I did. But, as they suggested themselves, I think I was just fitting the shapes of words to the sounds I thought I could hear. Today, now, the words are less clear, as though someone has been drinking. But I can’t help trying to listen. It’s like trying to focus on one of those floaters that drift across my eyesight just before I have a migraine. And I only get those when I drink whiskey. Which I don’t very often. Today I’ve brought a nice bottle of Chablis with me. Cigne Noir, Montée de Tonnerre, Yonne. Would you like a drop, Shania? Here, let me pour you a glass. There you go. Yes, it is isn’t it? I put it in the river to cool. When I took it out of the river a couple of minutes ago the label slipped off in my hand. It’s rather nice, showing a large black swan swimming on a river, just like that swan over there. And on the bank of the river, oh yes, I see what you mean. Just like us. With the chateau in the background. And the woods. Well, I never. What a coincidence.
* * * * * *
What or who was that talking about Swaziland and grids, reminding me of those inaudible comments I could hear sometimes, coming through the grating in the wall of that little place where I lived on my own for two years, making suggestions like ‘Visit Auntie Margaret this Saturday’ – I don’t have an Auntie Margaret, or ‘Try carpentry’ – I can’t imagine why? Now what the? What’s that swan in the label doing now? It’s gliding down the river, proud as ever, creating a little V-shaped wake, reflecting deep blues, burgundy reds, a speck of two of white, blossoms that have tumbled to the water from that enchanting wild rose climbing away into the trees. If I look up I can read the lettering around the top, something like Able Was I ‘Ere I Saw Elba or Et In Arcadia Ego. All right. Enough. Why do you keep going back to that? What do you expect? I. I. I. You can’t answer can you? You’ve never had an answer. Et In Arcadia Ego. And in Arcadia I? What the hell does that mean? Why is it so significant?
* * * * * *
It’s very unnerving. Oh, yes, I’m sure I’ll be fine, it’s just, you know, voices in the head, not great, not something you want, puts me a little on edge to be honest, it’s not improving my life, let’s say. Are you sure you can’t hear anything Shania? Someone saying something like ‘Armenia’ or “Elmo’s mean’. Yes, of course I have my little gun with me, the one Anton gave me. I wouldn’t go anywhere without my Sig Sauar. Not with all the reactionaries running around. We have a right to protect ourselves, Shania. Yes, the safety is on and it’s in the holster under my left arm here, see, very inconspicuous. On the left? Well, I’m right-handed, aren’t I? Right hand. Reach to the left. Of course not Shania, I have no intention of using it. Never have. It just gives me a little Swiss courage – although it’s made in Newington now.
* * * * * *
It all started the other day. For years I’ve not had a problem. Not fallen off the go-kart as my mother used to say, she fell off so often. My life was sweet, as sweet a glide as a swan on the water. My career was going well. I’m a research chemist, in pharmaceuticals, working on the fast-track development of an anti-viral against avian flu. We’ve been having good results. I was in the lab, what, three weeks ago, and I had just finished going through the previous day’s data with Shania, my research assistant – she’s a little more than that to be honest, but we keep work and play very separate, it’s good to have boundaries. We had a small disagreement. She had gone to ask our IT guys for help retrieving some more recent data, so I was alone in the lab. It’s kind of pale blue in there because there’s a gel on all the windows left over from a day of filming, and the pressurisation means there’s always a gentle hiss, like tinnitus.
There I am on my ownsome, just empty-brained really, quiet, calm, not sure what I was thinking about, Shania maybe, I think about her a lot, or golf, my albatross on the sixth at the weekend in spite of a claggie lie, I can’t remember. Then loud and clear I hear this voice, not like these nattering voices in the background – what are they saying now? It’s bloody irritating I can’t hear them properly – but loud and clear I hear this voice, though no one I knew, not my father – it was a male voice – nor my twin brother, I don’t think so anyway, although I haven’t seen him for years, and this voice – no it definitely wasn’t my twin brother – as calm as you please and with very good diction, the voice of a well-educated man with no discernible accent or emotion, no sense of the imperative or the threatening, a voice I can still hear so clearly it trembles the tiny nerves at the base of each hair follicle in my neck and I feel goose-flesh shiver across my body.
The voice says calmly and clearly, ‘You really need a drink’. And the voice was so specific, so right, so truthful, I left the lab, went to my car and drove all the way to The Eagle and committed myself once again to my long-standing love affair with whiskey. In three weeks, I have slipped below the surface of the world.
* * * * * *
I am not feeling well. I’ve been quite tearful off and on for days. I think I’m a burnt-out case. Just now I followed that black swan and walked along the river. It’s nice here. A good place for endings. The black swan stopped and I could see its webbed feet moving backwards and forwards in the clear water. I took another hit from my bottle and as I brought the rim down from my lips who do I see? Talk about a coincidence. I had to check the label and look again, so I’m doing this double-take backwards and forwards and he’s saying what are you doing here? And Shania’s with him, Shania who only split up with me a couple of nights before, and it’s as if she’s pleading with him as he’s reached inside his jacket and pulled out a gun he’s pointing at me, but he looks a lot like me so my brain is spinning and my hair follicles are dancing and then he seems to get distracted by Shania who stumbles against the bench on the riverside path, and he loses his temper now for some reason and a bottle goes flying into the river and the black swan takes off and the gun goes off and I’m on my own and Shania is a mess and the black swan, the black swan flies straight into me.
