“Middle Kingdom” |
Nominated for the Pushcart Prize and for Best of the Net, Sibanda is the author of Notes, Themes, Things And Other Things, The Gushungo Way, Sleeping Rivers, Love O’clock, The Dead Must Be Sobbing, Football of Fools, Cutting-edge Cache, Of the Saliva and the Tongue, When Inspiration Sings In Silence, The Way Forward, The Ndaba Jamela and Collections and Poetry Pharmacy . |
THE IMMIGRANT WITH A DIFFERENCE
It heralds wild and dramatic festivities usually accompanied with champagne toasts, fireworks, dancing, singing and even whistling. They fill their champagne glasses of life to the brim with values and hopes and drink deep to their life and the joy it can and should…They reflect and remember the previous year`s feats and failures as they make resolutions, and look forward to the promise of a new start, a new year, a new look.
The most active-minded and most celebrated holiday in the world has lost its meaning and lustre-- that is as far as it relates to Sipho Mbongolo`s life. Over the years he has been taking stock and planning new courses of action to better his life, but all that has been unrewarding and frustrating. A life of losses and misses. That is his reality, a construct of his mind. It is as if his stance supports the notion that the conditions and circumstances of one`s life are as a result of one`s beliefs and thoughts.
He has lost track of most of his childhood friends. He does not know any longer where they vanished into. Did they disappear into the country`s exodus crisis? Like quite a lot of of his contemporaries and compatriots, maybe they migrated to the UK, South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, US-- you name it—any livable land, even a war-torn one seems to be habitable, for that matter, all in search of greener pastures. Do people not say there is a little Zimbabwe camouflaged in some parts of the UK? He knows it is a mirage for him to go there, and let alone to become a British citizen. He always comforts himself with : we can`t all be British. He wonders without end why people fought frantically against a biased system in his country only to follow those they had fought later in the UK. He is conflicted. He is not confused because he experiences the socio-economic chaos in the country. The liberation war ideals are lost on the perpetrators of the chaos. Independence time is like a fairytale he once heard of. It is a lost cause too.
He wants to stay aware of the time but a sense of hopelessness has imprisoned him like someone who binges on alcoholic beverages day and night without realising they are constipated. He has lost track of time, he has lost sense of time. He is oblivious to the passing time. For time waits for no man. He is worried, for no man lives twice. Unschooled, unknown and untravelled, what odds and opportunities does he have? What does the future hold for him? What is in store for him?
It is on the eve of the New Year that Sipho Mbongolo sets out on a journey to Bulawayo. As far as he is concerned, the heeding of Mzwakhe`s call could be synonymous with a bold walk into his destiny. His cousin, Mzwakhe, has invited him to the big city, affectionately known as the City of Kings and Queens to try out his luck in a bid to eke out a better living. Indeed, the New Year is a time for reflections and resolutions, a moment to recommit oneself to the causes and ideals one holds dear. For Sipho Mbongolo, a youthful bucolic citizen, over the years that moment of happiness, positivity and celebration for a number of individuals in his corruption-ravaged country has sadly become a mere transition from one day to the next, less like an illusion. It is something he finds hard to hold so much significance for. Time. He has lost sense of time .Yet time is a reminder that the clock is uninterruptedly going tick-tock. It is a cue that the alarm clock is heart-beating driiiin or beep beep, tick tack tick tack as it ticks away, that life is not stagnant, and that is too short to be unlived and unnoticed. He is merely existing, and time seems to overlook his existence. Is time, like everything else, not felt and appreciated by those who live?
If Bulawayo is where his call of destiny is expected to manifest itself or to be unlocked, or to be walked in, then again time does a mockery of his hopes and efforts, at least for a period of six months of wandering, wondering and languishing before he bumps into Lady Mumba. At heart, he is on the verge of going back to the rural areas when the unexpected happens.
Monday
It looks like Lady Mumba won’t look Sipho in the eye. “How old are you?” In spite of the fact that it is not dark, the pupils of her eyes have been acting up, growing in size as if in an effort to provide her with a clearer vision of the rustic man.
“I`m t----wenty –fi---ve”, Sipho responds in rather a shaky, strained voice.
She is thinking: was that perhaps an intrusive question? No!Good girl, fire another.
“You`re a man. Relax. What skills and experience do you have?”
“I can look at goats, cows, donkeys, cheap, I mean …shee…sheeep”.
“Ok, you`re good at looking after beasts…I wish I had a farm”.
“What? Beasts! Bad things? No, I can`t!!” His astonishment is palpable and protesting.
“Livestock. Domestic animals. That’s what I`m talking about.” Lady Mumba titters.
“Sorry, sorry very much. I understand now.”
This afternoon Lady Mumba is heavily hunched on an expensive-looking, fine-looking gold-coated garden chair. Her huge back is jiggling and wiggling as if itchy, or as if baulking at something bumpy or spikey. How could such a magnificent chair be needle-like as well? Sipho wonders, thinking of his father`s stool that was said be a no- go area for children as if it were spear-shaped. Actually, he was told: no other ass, big or small ever rested on it, not even the rude asses of tired or fussy visitors and relatives.
“Sipho, with whom do you live in Old Magwegwe?” So short are Lady Mumba’s lacey shorts that Sipho’s eyes are magnetically riveted to where her enormous legs are joined together in a union of fat and flesh. The sight simply drives Sipho’s poor heart into a series of emotional jerks. She still cannot look at him directly, but as if that emotional unrest is not enough distress for Sipho, she launches light and frisky kicks on his lap, and his chest in turn vibrates breathlessly as the hormones run really riot. He drowns deeper and deeper into a pool of emotive and explosive agitation.
“Ah…ahh…. Madam Mumba, I sit with my small father, my small mother and their children: Makhi, Mzwakhe and Sethekeli.”
“Sipho, please call me Mona or Monalisa. Are your cousins friendly to you, do you get along well?”
Sipho’s bloodshot eyes roll in their sockets as if at that point in time all they seek in this tempting world is to flee.
“They have the stubbornness of a black millipede, largely Sethekeli who has no shame to say she cannot be under a man. She has a mouth and I always protect her when her brothers want to beat her. But she thanks me by counting for me, hey I eat too much, hey I finish everything she gives, hey this, hey that. She has a tongue too, that’s why I don’t tell her my secrets, because her chest was kicked by a zebra. She sees me quiet and thinks I have no liver to tell her not talk bad about me.”
Madam Mumba cannot help laughing hysterically. “She has a mouth! A big mouth! A tongue...? Well, she critises you baselessly. But what does a person who has a liver do? We all have a liver, don’t we?”
“No, some people don’t have a liver. Those who don’t have the encouragement to tell you you have a mistake. I have a liver even if I see a lion, I don’t urinate with fear. I face it like uShaka!”
“You mean courage! I see, but what do you mean your cousin counts for you? You cannot count money?”
“No. I can. She counts for me. Uyangibalela ukudla. She says to people I eat too much of her father’s food. She forgets tomorrow is yesterday.”
Lady Mumba’s ribs are itching from a bursting of laughter. She steadies herself, before tapping Sipho in a playfully hooking and tickling manner between his legs. The rustically inclined man draws away, batting his eye. He gasps, looks askance – much to the amusement of the teaser. She picks up a glass of wine and ungracefully some wine splashes out, dropping on her fatty neck.
“Sipho, you talk of your uncle, aunt and cousins; where is your biological father? Ehmmm. But before you respond to that question please towel the spilt wine on my neck with your tongue”. Sipho’s yellow-tainted teeth are bared. In fact, if he were swimming one would be forgiven for thinking that he is on the verge of drowning. He is practically gasping for breath.
“My bio-o-ological father, he died five years old while the maize was kicking and the pumpkins were vomiting in the fields.” His face is a little gloomy. He adds: “It was the disappearance of luck as elders say. He, my father, didn’t like a person who doesn’t hear. His stomach was running him, running him…”
“Sipho, my goodness, you’re such a fascinating literal translator. Your parlance is what is sometimes referred to as Ndenglish. I guess that even if you cannot give me a blow-by-blow account of how your father died five years ago, you’re basically saying he died while the maize plants and pumpkins were blooming or tasselling”.
“Is that so?”
The reply is phrased like a question.
“Yes... Madam. No… Mona. Yes is that so, shuwa. Maa... Mona, I mean he was going outside fast-fast. He was carrying heavy.”
Lady Mumba tells him that life is a journey and a lesson on which trials and tribulations can be transformed into triumphs, brokenness into blessings. She concludes, “I believe in elevating and motivating others. Some people look for the rays of light instead of becoming the sunlight themselves”.
Sipho is enthused.
Outside, out of sight, she walks around, sneakily sprinkling salt all over the yard.
Time tears on.
Wednesday Night
The urinary bladder threatens to open apart with sudden violence if Sipho does not respond to the call of nature right away. Talk of seeking to combat a sudden, intense urge to pass water. To end up wetting the bed would not only be a crime, but an awful act. How would he live with himself? He slips out of the double bed, blazes towards the door, hits against the door frame and curses, “Demedi!” Commonsense orders him to put on the lights. The lights uncover one thing: he is wearing a tattered undergarment. He does not care a dot because he is alone. He slips into a pair of purple trousers – and races into the toilet. Inside the beautifully painted small room, he feels for the zip like an inept, butter-fingered fellow.
“Demedi! Where is the damn zip?” The zip--it is the other way round, at the back! He struggles with the waistline, hitches the trousers down but, no, the urine is irrepressible. Tremulously, he navigates his irritated human hosepipe to face the toilet pan – but the urinary stream just sprays and is hard to aim! It is already too little too fast… There is a desperate whirlwind inside him. It is spurting out, making the floor messy and cloudy. The short bursts of the coloured watery waste have made an emergency landing on an exclusive imported tapestry of the quilting products.
Mess looks him in the eye as if saying: I`m having the last laugh in my bubble bath. He glares at it. At his hosepipe too. It looks innocent, stress-free, calm and collected now. He calms down after relieving himself. Like an efficient scrub-man, he fetches the scrubbing cloth, sorts out his mess, sighs a sigh of a fireman who has stumbled and fumbled before putting out a raging fire. He walks along the passage.
At Madam Mumba’s door, he hears vocal noises. Sipho wonders: Mumba dreaming aloud? Is she soliquising? He places an ear on the lockset.
“I care for you.”
(An inaudible sound).
“Yes, I confess I was going out with that Minister but…
(An inaudible sound).
“Please… Let’s not dwell on that issue.
You killed him out of jealousy, now you suspect I am going out with that …”
(An inaudible sound)
“I won’t shut up! I don’t have a crush on him. He is just my… eh…”
(An inaudible sound).
Sipho says to himself: I am convinced that Lady Mumba is arguing with a boyfriend. Hmmn… so she has a boyfriend after all. Anyway, she is only human.
Once in bed, he recalls everything. How last Saturday he met Lady Mumba in a salt queue, his speechless admiration for her high-class car. How a naked man burst into the queue and started fondling the backside of a plump woman who, on discovering the presence of the mentally challenged man, took to her heels like her body was a mere feather. How they talked about the incident and the endless queues, ending up discussing the sad state of the economy, and how Lady Mumba was prepared to dig him out of his financial mess by offering him a job as her bodyguard. How they later weaved their way through the bustling crowd into her gleaming car.
Then on Monday, at what appeared like a billionaire’s evening party – at the Mumba residence, men and women who drove the latest and most expensive cars, spoke on the trendiest of cell phones and wore immaculate designer suits converged, wined and dined. They swayed in an English way and even sneezed in English – or so it seems to Sipho. He remembers one silly man with an elephantine neck who gave him a glass of wine, and when he told him that he was a teetotaler and a member of the Zionist Bakhonzi Beqiniso Church. The man with a heavy neck, called him a stupid, rustic pumpkin who did not know that Heaven is on earth.
He also has a vivid picture of a lady who told him squarely: “I love you boy. I’ve gold and silver. Gold is my first name. Fun my second. Bodyilicious my surname. What more can a soul want? Those who have had the privilege and pleasure of rubbing shoulders with me have confessed that I uniquely nurture a soul’s heart and body like the earth’s axis is on my palm. Run away from this portly pig, Mumba. I would pay you more; give you my everything, boy. Just bring your freaking fresh figure to my place, boy. My body oozes love and more love for you. Your body, oh boy, I feel like licking you up like a chocolate bar. Please make me feel like a girl again?”
He remembers his response:
“I appeared for my wife sometimes ago. The go-between asked for a fire. I paid the open-the-mouth money. I will pay the suitor be-known money. Sorry, besides in my culture, a woman does not smoke or point a man.”
The smoking, swaying and over-embellished woman unleashed f-prefixed obscenities at him. She called him the most unintelligent, rural, backward cat she had ever seen before reeling away and canoodling a man who could easily be her youngest grandson.
He is now half-asleep. He hears some patting sounds from a distance, but finally he drifts into sleep. He has a grandparent of a nightmare.
Thursday Morning
Sipho is feasting his eyes on the furnishings in the living room .He is gazing in awe at fittings like an exotic lalique crystal coffee table with its high quality and gorgeously detailed designs. His eyes fall on an end table, lamps, a chair, an ottoman, a neat bookshelf, and a Panasonic Keymat Yalos Diamond TV and stereo system. The couches in the spacious room are enclosed with a pigmented leather that speaks of being durable and resistant to soiling. It has a chocolate-like taste and floral aroma. Lady Mumba and Sipho are savoring the exotic Ethiopian coffee.
“That picture on the wall was taken some years back when I was in the UK. Isn’t it beautiful, Sipho?”
“It`s beautiful. Lady… Sorry Mona. So you lived in the UK?”
“For ten years. That`s where I met some of the party attendees you saw on Monday”.
Sipho hops into a different subject.
“Madam, me thinks there is a witch here?”
“What?” grimaces his boss looking him in the eye, perhaps for the first time.
Sipho takes a mouthful of the coffee as if he is unconscious of a tonal change.
“Me thinks there’s a witch who’s doing rounds and sounds here.”
“Sipho, get this clear, I hired a bodyguard, not a witch-hunter, okay?”
“Sorry, madam, but I’m made to see in my dreams as a Zionist…”
“Antiquated nonsense! Whether you’re a Zionist or whatnot, I don’t bloody care a whit. Stick to your job description or else…”
Maybe this subject is a no-go area. That is it. Madam Mumba is angry now. She is a flooded river. Maybe it is my fault? Maybe her boyfriend made her angry? Is he not loving? In Ndebele we say she is so angry she can swallow up a chameleon. Imagine the anger of a chameleon that has projected its long tongue… He too probably drives a stunning car? He must be one of the billionaires who were at the party. Maybe he too returned from the UK? These billionaires, they will tell you they were once broke before they became billionaires!
These people have expensive things. They have lots and lots of money. If everlasting life could be bought, l think Lady Mumba and her billionaire friends would have bought it. People usually say life is not fair. However, I think the fairness of life is in that we breathe the same air, we live and die no matter whether we are wealthy beyond description or poor in a sorry way. I think the difference is that people who have money enjoy because their lives are soft-soft yet ours are hard like a rock.
Do they know the troubles of life? Life is harsh. These people live in their own world. A soft world that shines because of gold and silver. Most of them have soft bodies, they eat soft things, do soft jobs, shake with their soft hands, and sit on soft chairs. Who does not want to live in that world? I think these people have a good living. Poverty is a far-off thing to them. They probably do not know how it feels like to go for a day without a meal. I know it. It is my daily bread. I hum a little song or whistle even if l walk into our crammed small, dark bedroom. Once l get there, l sleep on the hard floor on my empty stomach, and sometimes dream big dreams. Dreams about having good things, soft things, peace, only to wake up and hear my stomach making funny sounds, complaining about emptiness, emptiness and emptiness. I think their stomachs complaint of too much different food, too much food and too much food. Or maybe not. Their stomachs are used to it. That Monday evening, l ate many things with different colours, and my stomach, instead of celebrating, started behaving as if it had thunderstorms inside. My stomach made me shy because it was ‘crying’ and ‘crying’ in the presence of visitors. I am happy no one mentioned it.
Lady Mumba is now dazzling in her dress. She shows him where to find food whenever he feels the pangs of hunger. After whispering “Take care. I`II be back soon”, she drives away.
Friday Evening
He has been searching for it high and low for almost five minutes to no avail. Has the TV remote control developed legs? He has no shred of doubt that an hour ago it was on the coffee table. His TV control remote skills have improved vastly since he came to Lady Mumba`s residence. Tuesday was the day she taught him how to use a remote control for TV, how to start a car and how to start up a laptop. Prior to his arrival here, he did not know how to turn the TV using a remote, let alone scanning for channels. Lady Mumba has been kind, and sometimes full of mischief and fun. Last Tuesday, did her right hand not stray all the way to the chubbiness and warmness of his laps when she was showing him how to operate the remote control? Did she not pat and pinch him on his waist? In the absence of a remote control, he gives up on watching TV but momentarily he dozes off, and tries to fight it off until he finally drifts into a slumber. Sipho has on several occasions slept through noises and disruptions of stray dogs and donkeys in a dark hut in the village. He has always been regarded as a heavy sleeper by his family members in the countryside, but when there is a rhythm of weird footsteps, an echoing screech of windows, a scratching of doors, a howl of door fulcrums and a flipping of pages of books in the living room, his deep sleep seems to desert him and scurry for cover too.
7:55 pm
“Lady Mumba, sorry …Mona, are you back? “Dozily, he looks around the room, but it is dark. Who has turned off the lights? Is Lady Mumba playing games? He wonders. Wait a minute. The orchestra of a variety of noises and goings-on dazes him. He feels unusually exhausted and uneasy. Daze and dizziness dance and conspire to hold him captive. He does not think it would be a good idea to stand up and make his way into his bedroom. He feels too shaky and too petrified to make a move. He wishes he had a blanket to bury and shrink his entire body under. If some mindless mosquito or some lice were to nibble into him, he would not flinch, or that is what he wishes he could avoid. No body movement. No sound. Only if he could be motionless: no yawning, no sneezing, no coughing, no burping,…maybe the fear-provoking noises would subside. However, on the sofa his body betrays him because he cringes, yawns, sweats, sneezes and freezes. His body talks, twists and toots.
Like an ostrich burying its head in the sand, he grabs three sofa cushions in a bid to shutter his head under them, but one of them slides away from him in the process. For what seems like an eternity he tosses and turns on the sofa. Sleep seems to be elusive. A fugitive. Now and then he kicks, lurches like a restless soul lying in bed under a confused pile of interwoven sheets. It is hunger or the heat? Or the cold air? Is it by virtue of the odd commotion? Is this a haunted house? Whose ghost? My dreams gave me an idea that there is something strange here. It is a ghost… I remember the conversation I overheard on Wednesday. Lady Mumba said: You killed him out of jealousy, now you suspect I am going out with that…” This is perhaps the ghost of her former boyfriend. Yes. I’m no Shaka, if a hole were to open up I would melt into it in no time.
9:55 pm
Giddy, startled and stuck, Sipho wishes the curtains could close on his nightmarish experiences. Nothing lasts. Happy times. Mourning times. Bad or good dreams. Any party will eventually come to an end. Good days never last, so should these bad moments. As if his prayers are being heeded and answered at that very moment, miraculously the lights come on and the rhythm of footsteps, echoes from the roof, a shriek of windows, a scratching of doors, a howl of door fulcrums and a turning over of pages of books in the living room ceases. He regains a little measure of physical, mental and emotional stability though drowsiness continues to take a toll on him. Obviously he is relieved.
10:00 pm
Rats make noises while rolling nuts. Non-vocal noises. Rats and mice usually find refuge in lofts or ceiling cavities as they gnaw at electric cabling and other materials. Such interference with electric cabling can result in fires. Now no sounds reverberate and rumble somewhere on the roof. No rolling ball noises. Maybe the noises were caused by small nocturnal creatures. Maybe there was no power, he imagines. He prays that he does not spend a wakeful night. Sleep has made his eyelid as heavy as lead. His eyes are so sleepy that it is a challenge to keep them open, nonetheless surprisingly he catches sight of the TV remote control. Dreamlike. It is back where he had left it! No that is something. He wants to take a closer look at the remote control before laboring his way to his bedroom. Perhaps because he has been lying on the sofa for too or possibly he has some inflammation of the muscles, he finds it a bit difficult to get up from the sofa.
10:05 pm
Suddenly there is a high howl of door hinges, and a sound as if someone has hit the main door with their knuckles. Maybe the person outside does not know that the doorbell is not broken. As if the night has not been difficult, distressful and wearisome enough, Sipho`s eyes fall on… a small, terrifying humanoid creature like a gremlin. If he is drunk with sleepiness, he speedily sobers. The sight of a brown bear-like humanoid right in the room makes his hair stand on end. It has slithered into the room with neither a key nor the yanking open of the door. It seems like a dream. If it is a dream, in the deep, dusky recess of his soul, he just wants to be able to get out of it sooner than later. The glowing bloodshot eyes of the scary creature do not make any matters better by torching and torturing his mind. The sight of the hairy creature stabs his heart into several palpitations, confusions and tensions.
10:10 pm
Sipho studies that dwarf zombie with radiant red eyes and long claws. It is approximately 1.068 metres in height. Its face is capable of pushing both children and adults into freaked screams in a dream. The subhuman creature is attired in a wrap made of leopard skin and a necklet of beads, little stones, feathers and other strange bits and pieces. Around its waist there is a small bag. Sipho wonders what could be inside that pouch. Maybe a knife? It is in possession of a knobkerrie, too. This is the dreaded Tikoloshe, concludes Sipho. A thought capers on his head. Let me alert neighbors. A child who does not cry risk dying whilst strapped to the back of his or her mother, so goes the wise Ndebele proverb.
10:20 pm
Sipho is like a badly injured, lily-livered soldier who has had a tortuous and agonising journey, nevertheless is ready to soldier on, to summon enough strength and escape. He is not prepared to be kept as a prisoner for eternity by a creature that seems to be rooted next to the main door without saying what it really wants. He straightens up straightaway, tries to open up his mouth in a bid to scream himself into a tizzy, but the Tikoloshe is equal to the task. It swings at him in a flash and lands on his left shoulder. He can feel something heavy dangling on his shoulder. Does it have a heavy, long tail? Maybe it is an arm? He can feel its head too. Nearly it is a head the size of a huge water pumpkin, its nose is a weird sniff which is snake-like in shape, yet its ears are leaf-like in form. An attempt to slam him with a club sees the knobkerrie hover over his head, missing it by a few lucky, anxious centimetres before it plummets off.
With its emaciated, long legs and long claws it tries to push and pin him down. Sipho rolls over the sofa, seeking to repel it with his tired arms. The human and subhuman wrestle and wheeze, call and curse. It clenches its teeth together tightly because of its anger and ego. The gritted teeth are all set to bite and chew off his right ear as the hairy goblin`s head is thrust on his body. Swiftly, it leaps up like a possessed mortal, before its sharp curved nails wedge into his neck, throttling him in the process. He winces. Like a defeated wrestler in the ring, Sipho is a gasping, bleeding, pleading on the floor. The goblin lets out a throated chuckle.
Friday Midnight
“People believe we, the Tikoloshes, are malevolent mythical elves of short statue that pride in choking the life out of them! Well, you can see that if one humbles oneself, like you did after regaining consciousness, we chat, we bear no malice. We make peace. We bury the club!”
“Yes. Thank you, sir. I`m glad that your knobkerrie didn`t smash my head into pulp”.
The hobgoblin sneezes, sending out a yellowish, smallish and circular fluid across the room. It patters on the ceiling. The little thing has jagged teeth. From a distance one can perhaps mistake it for a boy, not a grown man. Its skin is mottled and leathery. From their proceeding, revealing chat he has discovered specific attention-grabbing, puzzling basics about the zombie creature. For example, it is always a male, it has a single buttock, and it is known to be covered in hair or scales. It has hairy legs and feet. It is constantly barefoot. It is usually naked but sometimes it wears a cloak, it wraps itself in the skin of a leopard or in the skin of baboon when it is chilly. It speaks with a lisp. Its red eyes are capable of seeing well both in the dark and during the day. It does not have a tail. Sipho is imagining: how is it be possible that women can be attracted to such an ugly thing? Fine, it has strong, bony and sharp fingers, and is stout in build with a potbelly but the face is very unpleasant, the skin is shocking.
“You are at liberty to ask anything about me?” The brownie`s words cut into Sipho`s thoughts.
“You`re stuck….no …stocky in build with a potbelly. What do you drink?”
“Sorghum beer and sour milk”.
“Is it true that you like moving into sleeping people`s rooms, and cause problems?”
“We can be visible and invisible at will. You can call us half-spirit, half-human. Hence, we derive pleasure from creeping into sleeping people`s houses, and scaring the hell of out kids!”
It laughs out proudly and loudly. Its child-like voice is peppered with a swishing streak.
“There is a …thought…rather a belief that you are used for seducing women?”
“We`ve a mystic way of making women fall for us. A little charm.
“I had a girlfriend who also worked for Mumba. Coz I’m a blast furnace in bed, the maid left in a state of panic. But me thinks she was already pregnant! Coz I`m a sharp-shooter! I`m a red-hot iron. We`ve no match when it comes to sexual prowess. Shen…hhh…How can I put it? Shen, Mumba had no choice but to hook up with me. Needless to say Mumba and I are an item. I’m a jealous, lascivious and dangerous man. So velly jealous shat you don’t mess with our relationship by hook or crook, day or night and live to see another day. Forget.”
As if flaunting its weaponry, it paces around the room, carrying a manhood so long that it is slung over its shoulder. Sipho is dumbstruck. What a sizable scrotum!
“Do you know the whereabouts of Lady Mumba?”
“I’m disappointed with lady Mumba. She won’t get away with it. I brought her all the fortune she possesses and parades. Now she wants to get rid of me. Shat day she served me with salty relish, yet she knows in our clan, salt is an allergy. She`s spreading salt all over. I read the mind. I visit the sea. She forgets shat. Now she has left for Chiredzi, to seek a muthi man who will wipe me off the face of the earth. If my memory serves right, a few years, just one, one man of God managed to kick me out of a certain house. Overwhelmed by his powerful prayers, I ran for dear life.
The sangoma thinks he or she can ward off a ‘malicious’ spirit, exorcise the area with salt, charms, oil and what-have-you. It`s game on. This is set to be a battlefield. A titanic battle looms large. Bring it on. The sangoma must come over here prepared to put up a perfect fight, or else he or she will faint, fall sick or die. How narrow-minded!! Kill me? Never! I killed her meddling minister boyfriend. I will kill her too if she continues running madly like a nervous fool trying to castrate a burly bull with their bare teeth!”
“How did you make Mumba reach?”
“Rich, you mean? I loot. Yes banks, factories, stores, mining concerns, you name shehem – I raid.”
Saturday Morning
It is 4:30 am. Sipho cannot believe that in spite of his fears, trials and weariness, he has been firing questions at the creature for that long and learning much about it. He remembers the words of Lady Mumba. “There will come a time when you will protect me in every way possible. When that time comes both of us will happy. I will be happy. You will be happy”. He recalls when she added rather softly. “l hope you won`t mind looking after me in my room when l ask you to, especially when l fall sick. Sipho, would that be a problem?” He was thrown into an unanticipated state of speechlessness. Let me ask one more question, and avoid thinking about what Lady Mumba said or else this creature reads my mind and I get into trouble again.
“So Madam Mumba will point the house where there is beer?”
“Yes, shat woman will taste my wrath. They don’t call me Ntokoloshe for noncing”.
The dwarf disappears into Lady Mumba`s bedroom before emerging from it after a short while with a container.
“Lishleen ,it`s time for you to strike gold. Now take shis and disappear. Don’t ever come back here. You did not talk with me. You did not see me, is shat right? You disclose, you’re dead. Shat me!”
Sipho cannot believe it. A suitcase filled to the brim with crisp notes! US dollars. He walks past the computerised colourful gate. With a trembling joy, he hurries on, his horizon characterised by the diminishing grandeur of the house and the snowballing mysteries therein.
If this is not a dream… if these are real notes… If… he wonders.
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Glossary
Small father: uncle.
Small mother: aunt.
To have a mouth: to provoke people to fight you.
To have a liver: to be courageous.
A person who does not hear: one who is either disobedient or hard of hearing.
To count for: to accuse one of eating too much (especially of the given food).
To have a tongue: to talk about someone else (usually) in a damaging way in that person’s absence.
A chest kicked by a zebra: this refers to a person who cannot keep secrets or whose chest `leaks` confidential information easily.
To point: a direct literal translation which refers to propose love.
Tomorrow is yesterday: Bear in mind that whatever bad thing you do or say today will haunt you in the future (e.g You can laugh at someone else’s abject poverty today but when you are in need in future you may turn to the same person for help).
The maize is kicking and the pumpkins vomiting: this a literal translation used to refer to the stage at which the maize plant is tasselling and the pumpkins are blooming.
Shuwa:sure.
Sangoma: a herbalist, a traditional seer.
Carrying heavy: Toiling or suffering.
Inyanga: In SiNdebele, this term refers to a herbalist or traditional healer
Has a black: a literal translation for bad luck.
Ask for fire: When a suitor’s delegation goes to the girl’s parents/relatives in order to tell them that a man is interested in marrying their daughter.
(It used to be a fiery affair, with the mediators being sometimes (initially) beaten/tossed about or chased away.
Open the mouth money: the money that kick-starts the above negotiations.
Point the house where there is beer: to be in hot soup.
Tikoloshe: half-man half-spirit, it is believed to be a dwarf-like male creature with pronounced sexual characteristics. References to this mystical creature date back to before 1700.
Crossing Boundaries
Tony raised his head to look at Satish. He slept facing the wall. So Tony relaxed. He sat up, leaned to his right, and pulled at the pyjama cord of Roshan. It loosened. He waited. There was no movement on Roshan’s part. Tony pulled down the pyjama by gently lifting Roshan’s waist. Again he waited. The boy made no movement.
But Roshan was wide awake, even though his eyes remained closed. He felt exposed because of the breeze from the fan; it raised tiny goose bumps on his upper thighs. But he also felt nervous. He knew something forbidden was about to take place.
He sensed some movement behind him, and then Tony raised his left leg, inserted his penis and brought the leg down. It remained between Roshan’s thighs. It was hot and throbbing. Again, Tony paused to see whether there was any reaction from Roshan, who remained still. Tony pressed Roshan’s thighs together and pushed his penis forward and backward, trying to simulate a vagina.
There was an urgency in Tony’s grip on Roshan’s leg and the first signs of air rushing out of his mouth. Roshan felt he was on the edge of a cliff. All he could feel was this thing moving and getting bigger, between his legs and Tony’s grip on his thigh. The movements became faster. Tony slipped into another world.
After a few minutes, Roshan could sense the organ expanding followed by several contractions. And then a stillness. Then a soft and satisfied moan, as Tony withdrew. Roshan did not understand what had happened. Then Tony lifted Roshan’s pyjamas and re-tied the cord. Roshan sensed Tony’s body turning over to the other side. Roshan lay still for several minutes, not wanting to give the faintest hint he was awake. Soon, he heard a soft snore, and realised that Tony had sunk into a deep sleep. In the darkness, Roshan reached out and touched the sheet beside him. His left hand came across gooey stuff. Roshan rubbed his hand against another part of the sheet and drifted off to sleep.
Tony grew up in Margao in Goa. His father — Roshan’s Dad’s brother — worked in the Indian Navy. Tony got a job as an accountant in a biscuit-making firm at Calcutta. He was 6’ tall, but on the plump side — a slight paunch fell over his belt. But, at 24, he remained frustrated. In the early 1970s, India was a conservative place. There was little chance of an interaction between the sexes, let alone the thought of having sex. For that, you had to go to a prostitute. But Tony knew there was a risk of contracting a sexual disease.
The next morning, when Roshan opened his eyes, Tony and his uncle were not in the room. He glanced at the place where the sperm had fallen and, sure enough, a yellowish stain could be seen but it was not noticeable, unless you were looking for it, because of the maroon sheet. Soon, Abdul the servant would come and place a counterpane over the two beds. At breakfast, Tony, dressed in a long-sleeved white shirt and black trousers, and shining black shoes, smiled at Roshan.
He said, “How is school?”
Roshan said, “Fine.”
Roshan realised that Tony felt sure the child did not know what had happened the previous night. ‘He must be dumb,’ thought Roshan.
Roshan drank his glass of milk, and ate his omelette and toast, using a spoon and fork. His mother helped him put on his white shirt and grey shorts. Then she combed his hair, left to right, while holding his chin with her left hand. Then it was off to school.
For the next few months, it continued like this. After midnight, Tony pulled down Roshan’s pyjamas, placed his penis between the boy’s thighs and had an orgasm. Roshan thought of telling his parents but couldn’t muster up the courage.
Anyway, relief came when a marriage proposal came for Tony. The girl, Lisa, a daughter of a wealthy businessman, lived in California. Tony said yes because he always wanted to go to the United States and what better way than by marrying a citizen? And so Tony married Lisa and moved off to California. Roshan was relieved that his nights had become peaceful. Now he slept on one bed and uncle Satish on the next.
However, predators remained close by. In school, the English teacher. Fr James told him to come to his room with his English composition paper after classes concluded for the day. Roshan had got five out of ten, which was better than many students. So it puzzled him about why the priest had called him.
Roshan knocked on the door. Fr James opened it. He smiled. The priest had large eyes, which had a hint of lasciviousness.
When Roshan entered, Fr. James took off his white cassock and placed it on a hanger. Underneath Fr. James wore khaki Bermuda shorts and a brown T-shirt.
“Come sit on my lap,” said Fr. James.
Roshan was too timid to say no.
He sat on the left knee. Fr. James said, “You have to improve your grammar.”
As the priest leaned forward to look at the paper spread open on the table in front of him, Roshan fell between the thighs of the priest. The boy realised Fr James had not worn underwear. He felt the priest’s penis press against his lower back. Soon, it became hard. The priest pressed harder.
But Roshan was lucky. The priest did nothing more than that. After half an hour, Fr James allowed him to leave. When he stepped out, he saw Shyamal Mitra, a classmate of his. He wore thick-lensed spectacles. They were the smallest boys in the class.
The next day when Roshan asked Shyamal what had happened, his friend said that Fr. James took out the boy’s penis and stroked it forward and backwards.
He kissed it many times.
Roshan decided that if Fr. James called him again, he would tell his parents about what had happened on the first visit.
Shyamal was not upset.
“I liked it,” he told Roshan.
Roshan did not know what to say. He knew it was wrong.
As for the priest, he also knew that one complaint would destroy his career. So, he had to be very careful. He realised Roshan did not have gay tendencies, but Shyamal seemed okay. Fr James would give him some gifts now and then to keep the boy happy. He came from a lower-middle class family.
Just like Fr. James, whose father worked as an accountant in a small firm. When James turned fifteen, he realised that he liked boys rather than girls. He had his first sexual encounter in school when Mark, a gay like him, took him to the back of the building in the evening, and jerked him off. James remembered it as painful as Mark pulled too hard. He was not able to come.
Then Mark pressed down on the shoulders of James, who sat on his haunches. “Suck,” Mark whispered as he opened his trousers. For James, it was novel and exciting — the musky smell of the penis, mixed with the sweat, and the way it grew inside his mouth. James moved his mouth forward and backward. Expectedly, Mark came. James swallowed the sperm and wiped his lips with a handkerchief. Thereafter, James sneaked into the school toilet and masturbated silently, his breath going in and out with a rising speed.
After they parted, Fr. James pondered over the experience. And he enjoyed the throbbing penis in his mouth. He decided he would become a priest. This had been a vague thought, but now it became an earnest desire. There was an advantage of joining the celibate Catholic clergy; nobody would ask him why he was not getting married. He could always be with gay priests. Or seduce children. Fr James did not call Roshan to his room again. Shyamal went often, but Roshan did not ask him about it. He did not want to know.
At home, his mother said a new servant, Freddy, had come from Goa. He would sleep on the floor near Roshan’s bed. The 25-year-old wore sleeveless banians, so Roshan could see the bulging shoulder muscles. But he spoke in a quiet voice. So Roshan liked him. They became friends. Thanks to his presence, his parents and Satish Uncle went for film shows at night.
One night, when they had gone out, Roshan was lying in bed. Freddy lay on the floor next to him. Freddy sat up and told Roshan to come to the edge of the bed. The boy did so. Then Freddy took Roshan’s hand and placed it on his penis. Roshan’s eyes bulged out, to see how thick it was. He caught it like you would hold a tennis racket. Roshan sensed the trembling in his hand. He felt less scared than when he was with Fr. James. And Shyamal’s reaction had emboldened him. There was nothing to be afraid of.
But soon, his Jesuit upbringing — Roshan studied in St Xavier’s school — reared its head. He pulled his hand away, fell on to the bed and rolled to the other side. Freddy did not press him. He switched off the light. After a while, Roshan went to sleep. Freddy pleasured himself to an orgasm and used tissue paper to remove the sperm from the floor.
————--
Fifty years have passed since that moment. Roshan, who had a shaved bald head now, stood in the verandah of his fourth-floor apartment in Calcutta and smoked a cigarette. He exhaled in a lengthy breath, to lengthen the pleasure. It was a leafy neighbourhood — trees on both sides of the road. The road remained deserted even though it was a Monday evening, thanks to the coronavirus. Roshan was in isolation at home. The entire world was in isolation at home, he thought.
It gave him the opportunity to journey back into the past. And people like Fr. James and Freddy came floating to the surface of his mind. He had heard that Fr. James had retired a decade ago. Nobody had filed any child abuse charge against him. ‘A smooth operator’, thought Roshan. As for Tony, he died in his thirties, in a car accident in Los Angeles, and left behind a wife and daughter. Roshan did not know where Freddy was. That was the way with servants. Nobody knew where they went and what happened to them. Did he marry and have kids? And was he doing well? The middle class only kept track of their middle-class friends. They did not care about the poor but idolised the rich. As for Shyamal, he became a well-known theatre artist, and an avowed gay.
Roshan knew that he suffered far little molestation, as compared to so many others. His wife, Srimati, so stunning with her porcelain skin, grey eyes and sumptuous breasts, had been a victim.
She slept next to Kaushik, a cousin, when they were teenagers during a sleep-over. Kaushik grabbed her breasts, tried to force-kiss her and got on top of her. There were other cousins in the room. But it was pitch dark, so nobody saw anything. Srimati whispered, “I will scream. I will tell your parents.” But he just covered her mouth with his left hand, pushed up her skirt, she was not wearing a panty, and pushed himself in. And he remained inside her for a long while, almost prompting Srimati to vomit.
It scarred her. For years afterward, when she was in bed with Roshan, she would kiss for a few seconds and break away. Unpleasant feelings arose in her like lava erupting from a volcano. She trembled and tried to shake off the terror and helplessness she had felt all those years ago. The mood collapsed. Roshan took her to a psychiatrist. Many sessions took place. She wrote about the experience on white sheets of paper. It went to several pages. Step by step, the poison seeped out of her mind and body.
One reason Roshan remained patient was because he loved Srimati. Her beauty enthralled him. She was the only child of a Bengali professor and an English writer. They had met in college in London, fell in love, got married and returned to Calcutta.
For a Goan like Roshan, to get a goddess like Srimati was unbelievable. Over the years, she unlocked her sensuousness. And discovered the tigress within. Roshan remained a grateful beneficiary.
Srimati never moved against Kaushik. It remained their one and only encounter. He stayed away from her. They grew up. He became an architect, got married, had two girls and lived in New York. Did well for himself. A house in the suburbs and a BMW in the garage.
Roshan heard Srimati’s story many times in other lives. As a creative head of an advertising company, he had several women employees. Over time, they told him their tales of abuse — the culprits being family members, or strangers, on planes, trains, buses and trams, on the dance floor, and one even said, her own father was the abuser. Another said it was her grandfather.
One colleague said that when she was on an aisle seat in a crowded bus, people packed like sardines in a tin, a man took out his penis and rubbed it against her shoulder. She stood up and slapped his face. Her hand stung from the impact. She had to shake it several times.
As for the offender, he pulled in his penis, pushed himself through the passengers, ran to the entrance, pulled the chain, jumped out and fled. A vanishing act at Superman speed.
So, with their shared history of abuse, Roshan and Srimati vowed that they would protect their children, a boy and a girl, at all costs. So, they did not allow them to spend the night away from them, even if close relatives invited them for sleepover parties with their children. They knew the greatest danger came from relatives.
So imagine Roshan’s shock when, one day, Srimati came and told her that when their 16-year-old daughter had gone to the Quest mall, she moved among a throng of people. And from somewhere, a hand came out, and it went between her daughter’s legs and rubbed her vagina. And the hand was pulled away and his daughter did not know who it was. It shocked her and gave rise to unpleasant feelings within her. For Srimati, history was repeating itself. Again, she wanted to vomit. Roshan hugged her and kissed her on the forehead. They remained like this for a long time. Her heartbeat slowed down.
As he stood on the verandah, Roshan realised there was no chance of 100 percent safety. An attack could come from anywhere. Roshan’s only hope for his children — if an attack came, it should not be something horrible, but something mild, although there is nothing mild about molestation.
Maybe, he thought, Indian society should open up. Relations between the sexes should be free. But in a free society like America, there were too many instances of violence against women.
There are no solutions to the man-woman imbroglio, he thought. Roshan crushed the stub in an ashtray, placed on a low table, turned and walked into the apartment.
Srimati had called out to say she had made the evening tea.
A Problem Child
In another city, Trent may readily have washed his hands of Mark, finding any number of likely pretexts. However, it was hard making friends in Jakarta – foreign ones anyway. Many of the expat teachers were outcasts and misfits, but that wasn’t the biggest issue, as he and Oliver were outsiders themselves. The problem was more that they were the wrong kind of oddball. To use their preferred terminology, most of the teachers were barflies and Lotharios (it was comparatively uncommon to find Western women teaching in Jakarta), and being a gay couple, they had little in common with this crowd. While they’d made a few women and gay friends, Mark had been one of a kind: a straight male expat who they’d got along well with.
Or had they? The statement rather begged the question. On receiving Mark’s email, the first thing Trent thought of was that long weekend in Bengkulu. He recalled, with a wince, the dark mood swings of the Englishman, his sullen hostility to every aspect of the trip. Not a single thing had interested or impressed him – not the casuarina-lined beach, not the grisly old molar of its eighteenth-century fort, not the moldering mausoleums of the British East India Company graveyard and certainly not the exile-house of Sukarno, the country’s independence leader. As they’d walked around the city’s monuments and museums, Mark had grown increasingly unhappy, skulking in corners, his face a scowl of misery and anger.
As they’d stood looking at Sukarno’s bicycle, the star exhibit of the exile-house, Oliver had whispered to Trent, “What’s up with him?”
Just a moment before, Mark had left the room with a flounce, returning to the front veranda, where he moodily stared at the front lawn.
“Who knows? He’s been sulking since the fort,” replied Trent, “It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have invited him.”
“No one forced him to come,” Oliver grumpily observed.
It took Trent and Oliver another twenty minutes to look around the house and when they returned outside, Mark was waiting there with an exaggerated pout.
Pretending not to notice, Oliver cheerfully proclaimed, “Oh, I was wondering where you’d got to! Let’s head back to the bungalows. I wouldn’t mind an afternoon swim.”
“Surely we’re not walking back!” cried Mark, his resentment suddenly bursting its banks and swamping their entire party.
“How else do you plan to get there?” asked Oliver, in the manner of a teacher handling a difficult pupil.
“It must be a forty-minute walk,” complained Mark, “It’s absolutely roasting out there.”
“They’ve taken the becaks off the road here,” Oliver matter-of-factly reported, “and I haven’t seen a taxi all day, so we’re going to walk. But, hey, if you want to find your own transport, we’ll see you back at the bungalows.”
“How am I going to organize my own transport?” he demanded, “I don’t even know the address.”
“It’s on the room key,” Oliver wryly observed, “If you find some transport, just show it to the driver.”
“I’ll come with you then,” Mark testily agreed, “but it’s the last time I’m heading out today!”
Yet by the time they’d reached the street, Mark had already fallen behind, and he remained so for the length of the walk. At a couple of points, Trent and Oliver came to a pause so that Mark wouldn’t fall completely out sight. Yet even at such a considerable distance, they could tell how unhappy he was. Indeed, the word ‘unhappy’ couldn’t capture it: Mark’s whole being was turbid with resentment. His was no regular dejection, no commonplace grievance: like some occult emanation, it raced ahead to where they were waiting, enveloping them like a poisonous cloud.
Trying to please Mark, or at least to avoid any further eruptions of pique, they cancelled their plans for additional sightseeing. On the following day, there’d be no boat-trip to Pulau Tikus, nor any visit to the gold-threaded cloths in the collection of the Bengkulu Provincial Museum. Instead, they headed to the Horizon Hotel and spent half the day hanging out at the swimming pool. (Non-guests could pay a modest charge to use it). Lying on their sun lounges, they drank from bottles of Coke and Sprite and gazed at the Indian Ocean. It hovered beyond a fringe of casuarinas, as light and airy as an ether dream. As the day passed without conflict or contention, Trent and Oliver began to relax. They’d defused the hostility of the day before, which had brought them to the edge of some fateful breach. Perceiving a mood of rapprochement, Oliver had even suggested to Mark that the trip to Bengkulu had been a success. This, he soon learned, was a serious miscalculation.
“There’s nothing here,” Mark scoffed, “I mean, the best thing’s been this pool, and we could’ve gone swimming in Jakarta.”
On hearing these words, something in Trent hardened. Didn’t Mark know that they’d changed their plans for him? Was it too much to expect some gratitude or graciousness in return? Failing that, would it have killed him to pretend that he was having a good time? Though Trent voiced none of these questions, they got him thinking, leading him to some unflattering guesswork about Mark’s psychology. Had his parents neglected to socialize him properly? Had they never taught him that relationships required sacrifice and compromise? Or was it because he was an only child? Had he never learnt how to play with others?
As he reeled from theory to theory, finding only a sense of bewilderment therein, he realized that something else was required, something firmer and more resolute. And with that, he made a decision: they’d still meet Mark socially but never go away with him again. Though he’d have to run the idea by Oliver, he suspected that his partner would agree. Hadn’t he borne the worst of Mark’s bile?
And so it had gone. Though they’d spent seven more months in the country, leaving halfway through 2006, there’d be no repeat of that weekend trip, no further attempt at deepening the friendship. Nonetheless, from time to time they’d asked him out for a drink or a meal, preferring the neutral space of a bar or restaurant to the cramped intimacies of a dinner party. However, when Trent and Oliver were leaving Jakarta, heading off for an ill-fated teaching post in South Korea, they’d asked Mark out for dinner at a fancier place – the Thai restaurant on the sixth floor of the Sheraton Hotel. Lauren, a mutual colleague, was invited for moral support. If Mark was in a fighting mood, or sunken in pitchy depression, they could talk to her instead. Known as a cheerful prattler, especially when plied with alcohol, Lauren was viewed as a likely counterpoint to Mark’s gloomy presence.
Yet it almost hadn’t happened. When Lauren had heard that Mark was coming, she’d tried to get out of it, responding with nose-wrinkling, lip-loosening revulsion.
“Why? What’s wrong with him?” marveled Trent, who, despite having his own reservations about Mark, had never reached these depths of abhorrence.
“It’s hard to put into words,” she said, with a look of anxious detestation, “There are times when he creeps me out. I mean, I know it’s probably not his fault. I’ve heard about his accident, so I guess I should be more understanding. But you know how to smiles to himself when no one’s said anything? I don’t know… it just gives me the chills.”
Seeing how badly the invitation was going, Oliver made a timely intervention.
“Mark is a bit eccentric,” he allowed, “I understand where you’re coming from, but how about you sit next to me and we share a bottle of white or two? He’s not usually much of a talker. You’ll hardly know he’s there.”
It was hard to say which was more effective – the promise of white wine or Oliver’s pleading expression – but these joint inducements had soon won her over.
Yet if Lauren’s acquiescence had raised any doubts about her professed aversion to Mark, they were utterly quashed when she turned up at Sukhothai. Finding Trent and Oliver there before her, she sat next to Oliver and asked his partner to move to the seat across from her
“Sorry, Trent,” she said, “but I really don’t want him gawking at me.”
“It’s alright,” said Trent, “A lot of people seem not to like him. I was going to say ‘especially women’ but I’m not even sure that’s true. The other British lads don’t aren’t too fond of him either.”
All four of them were working for English House, commonly known as EH, which was a well-known chain of language schools in Indonesia. Most of the staff were either Brits or Aussies, with Lauren being the sole Australian woman. While Trent and Oliver were in their early thirties, Lauren and Steve were considerably younger – twenty-four in Lauren’s case and twenty-six in Mark’s.
“That’s a gorgeous understatement,” she said, referring to Steve’s unpopularity, her eyes atwinkle with insider knowledge.
“Why? What do they say about him?” asked Oliver, his voice dropped to a whisper. Whatever Mark’s foibles may have been, lateness was rarely one of them, and it was already seven o’clock.
“They think he’s strange,” she said, “No offense, guys – I mean, I know he’s your friend – but that’s what all the British lads say. His attitudes to sex have raised some eyebrows. I guess they see him as a kind of prude. You know how most of the expat men are like. They wouldn’t bat an eyelid at a sixty-year old man with two girls on his arm at Bats – ha, no pun intended! And they’re entirely unfazed by Bruce’s rent boy of the week, but a man who’s been here for nine months and never been on a date …well, that’s just incomprehensible.”
“It’s funny you say that,” said Trent, “because we’ve encouraged him to start dating. We’ve had that conversation more than once. But he’s always kind of resistant.”
“Resistant in what way? What did he say?” asked Lauren.
“Well, we’d noticed that he was spending a lot of time by himself. I mean, we’d go out for dinner with him once every few weeks, but he never mentioned any other friends. He keeps to himself in the staffroom as well. We thought he was becoming a bit of loner. So we asked him why he never went to Stadium or any of the other nightclubs, and he said he didn’t ‘approve’ of them.”
“What did I tell you!” exclaimed Lauren, “He’s a prude! There’ve been times when people were talking in the staffroom – a bit of sexual banter or that sort of thing – and I saw him squirming in his seat. He gets this expression on his face, a kind of disgusted look. It’s like he thinks they’re grubby. And the way he dresses, all sort of buttoned-up and proper … he reminds me of a missionary or something.”
“You’re onto something with the prude thing,” said Oliver, “but I think he’d make a terrible missionary. He’d be too grumpy to win any converts.”
“Oh, he’s an awful sulk, isn’t he?” agreed Lauren, her disdain more evident than ever.
“There’s no argument about that,” said Trent, “but I wonder about this ‘prude’ theory. If it was just a matter of him not liking nightclubs or sexual banter, I’d probably be sold, but he won’t even go on regular dates. One of the office girls liked him – she asked Oliver to put in a good word for her – but when he passed it on to Mark, he wouldn’t even ask her out.”
“That’s right,” recalled Oliver, “I’d almost forgotten. Novi liked him! Do you know her, Lauren? She’s usually on the front desk in the mornings.”
“I do,” said Lauren with warm interest, “She’s cute as a button. I almost feel like pinching her cheeks! God, it makes me angry that he’d turn her down. What does he think he’s doing? You know, it makes me wonder if there might be something to the gay theory after all.”
“There’s a gay theory?” asked an incredulous Oliver.
“Oh, come on,” said Lauren, in a tone bordering on archness, “Can you honestly say you’ve never had the thought?”
“No!” said Oliver emphatically, “I really don’t think he’s gay. He’s had at least one straight relationship – an Australian barmaid who was working in the UK. He said she was ‘sexually assertive’, and he seemed rather pleased about it. Perhaps he wants a woman who’ll take charge in the bedroom. I suppose he’s more of your passive type of male.”
“Oh stop!” protested Lauren with a grimace, “I really don’t need some gruesome image lodging in my brain. But I have to say that I’m still half-persuaded that there might be something to the gay theory. I mean, it hasn’t gone unnoticed that you two are the only foreigners he wants to spend time with. Are you sure that he isn’t in the closet? Maybe he looks at you guys as role models.”
“I’m with Oliver on this one,” said Trent, as if this were somehow an unusual situation, “I haven’t got any gay vibes. There’s never been a hint of sexual tension. Maybe it’s just that no one else likes him. He comes to us like a lost puppy.”
“Oh God!” said Lauren with half-feigned alarm, “Where’s the dogcatcher when you need him?”
Though the whole discussion had been tinged with malice, it showed a little too clearly here. While they tittered with nervous laughter, both Trent and Oliver felt that they’d overstepped a boundary. If they didn’t beat a hasty retreat, they’d be stranded in guilt and remorse. Their eyes darted about, as if scanning the scene for an exit route.
Perceiving the sudden sense of awkwardness, Lauren scrambled to redeem herself.
“Well, that was unkind,” she admitted, “Don’t worry. I’ll be nice when he gets here. I hope he comes soon. I’m looking forward to that wine.”
“Let’s order it now,” suggested Oliver, “It’ll take the edge off our nerves.”
When Mark walked in about ten minutes later, an ice bucket was planted on the table and Lauren and Oliver were sipping at a crisp white. Mark eyed them nervously at first, as if he was afraid of intruding, but Oliver spotted him loitering near the entrance and waved at him cheerily. Visibly relaxing, Mark walked over and sat down next to Trent. The group extended him unusually warm greetings – these were probably by way of compensation for the cutting tone of their recent discussion – and even Lauren managed a plausible smile. Accustomed to much frostier receptions, Mark responded with self-conscious pleasure.
Though the atmosphere was uncomfortable at first, Oliver got them talking about the menu, and by the time they’d agreed on the mains – a mixture of creamy curries and herby Thai salads – their initial discomfort had diminished. By the point when the steamed rice arrived (shortly followed by the first of the mains), the conversation was moving with an untroubled flow. Though this pleasantly surprised them, perhaps it shouldn’t have. After all, they all belonged to the same, narrow milieu – that of the Jakarta English teacher. Moreover, visible through any of the windows was a vast field of twinkling lights, reminding them of the enormity of the city that surrounded them. Jakarta was elephantine, a huge, ungainly creature with a lumbering tread. There was scarcely ever a let-up in the trumpeting of its motor vehicles, and its leaden-footed traffic jams were already the stuff of legend. Though expats rarely spoke of it directly, it was both an intimidating and an alienating presence, and it drove them all closer together. Though they little realized it themselves, they saw in each other the surest respite from concrete and haze and blaring car horns.
While Mark was the least talkative of the party, the evening was no second Bengkulu. There was none of the juvenile moping which had marred their trip to Sumatra. Even when he played no active role in the conversation (which was most of the time, really), he still listened in closely. As the others spoke of their mutual acquaintances – the cast of outlandish characters who staffed the city’s ‘language mills’ – he’d tilt his head towards his companions and offer the occasional smile. Yet if this implied a degree of sociability, Mark maintained a mysterious air, a certain enigmatic inwardness. For they couldn’t always tell precisely what had amused him, and nor was he likely to explain it to them. Though he clearly had a sense of humor, it wasn’t synchronized with those around him. He’d sometimes remain stony-faced amidst general hilarity but then grin broadly when no one else was smiling. Yet despite these eccentricities, his demeanor was never alarming. Judging from his countenance, he was in a gentle, tolerant mood, and the others were thankful for it.
Responding to this mildness, Lauren ventured to speak to him directly, asking some questions about his life back home. He’d started university, he said, studying English literature. But he’d dropped out after a couple of semesters, finding the lecturers ‘pretentious’ and the other students ‘fake’. After that, he’d gone back to his local village, living with his parents and doing some short-term jobs. But as he’d approached his twenty-fifth birthday, his father had suggested – subtly at first but more bluntly as the time went by – that it was time for him to move out of home. Seeing nothing for him in the Midlands (or anywhere in the UK, really), he’d done an online teaching certificate and headed out to Indonesia.
“Why Indonesia?” asked Lauren, with a tentative smile.
For Trent and Oliver, it was strange watching Lauren speak to the Englishman. While she was socially adept at work, veering effortlessly between girly gossip and blokey discussion of sports scores, she was a stiffer presence around Mark. Gone was the clever, self-confident Lauren, a steady stream of puns, witticisms and in-jokes. Her manner was now effortful, as if she were goading herself forward with every question.
“I saw a job ad and thought it sounded exotic,” he said, “Of course, I had no idea what I was getting myself in for.”
“Oh? How’s that?” she asked, her smile stretched tight as a drum skin.
“I mean, it’s been an interesting experience,” he allowed, “but Jakarta’s not exactly Paris, is it? And as for EH …well, it’s nothing but clever marketing. With all these newbie teachers, they’re really just flying by the seat of their pants.”
Though these sentiments were not exactly positive, they were shared by the bulk of their colleagues. Even the teachers who’d settled there for years, enticed by the allure of the city’s neon nightlife, would readily admit its drawbacks: the gridlocked traffic and fetid canals were yet to find their champion. And in terms of their employer, even its strongest defenders were guarded in their pronouncements. Yet if Mark’s opinions were commonplace, his tone was too strident for Lauren’s taste.
“EH’s all right for a first job,” she asserted, “but it’s not somewhere to build a career.”
Sensing that he’d just been chided (although gently to be sure), Mark dropped his gaze and retreated to the cella of his private thoughts. Yet it was only a temporary withdrawal. Within a few minutes, he’d been coaxed back into the conversation by Trent, who got him talking about his upcoming trip. He was planning to fly to Samarinda, he said, and head up the Mahakam in a motorized sampan. There were longhouses where you could stay with the Dayak – the collective name for the indigenous peoples of Indonesian Borneo. Upon hearing this, Trent felt a sense of vindication. When he and Oliver had first made friends with Mark, they’d sensed that he was different from your typical Jakarta expat. What interested him wasn’t happy hour drinks, nor the sort of jaded floozies who haunted the city’s beer-bars; he was looking for something authentic. It now occurred to Trent that even Bengkulu had fallen short. Perhaps what he’d been seeking was primordial sense of wonder, a glimpse of the untrammeled wilds – the outer edges of experience. In taking him to forts, museums and swimming pools, they might’ve misjudged him. Had he always been a latter-day adventurer, hankering after the green frontier?
Trent stowed these thoughts away, hoping to raise them with Oliver later. However, he also saw that they were only of academic interest. In a few days’ time, they were flying to Seoul, and Mark – strange, problematic Mark – would soon have dropped out of sight and mind. Still, the Englishman was not yet at vanishing point, and before they said their farewells that night, he had one more surprise in store.
It happened in the hotel lobby, which was six floors down from Sukhothai. Though the space was decorated in an international style, there were also some local accents. The most ostentatious of these was a large wall relief of the Indonesian jungle. Above the crowns of towering dipterocarps, a flock of hornbills sailed by. You could almost imagine their unearthly calls. In examining the scene, Trent was reminded of Mark’s upcoming excursion, and it struck him as a marvelous coincidence. But rather than point out the relief to Mark (who he feared would disapprove, finding it somehow ‘fake’), he gave his friend a hug and requested that he keep in touch.
“Send me an email when you get back from Samarinda,” he concluded, “I want to hear all about it.”
“Will do,” said Mark with a smile and then walked across to Oliver, leaving Trent with Lauren.
“All the best, and don’t be a stranger,” said Oliver.
“Aren’t you going to give me a hug?” asked Mark, looking at Oliver with profound dejection.
Spreading his arms invitingly wide, Oliver went to hug his friend. From that point onwards, events gathered their own momentum. Seizing Oliver by the shoulders, Mark yanked him forward and planted a kiss on his lips. It was wet, thick-lipped and full of passionate feeling. Though a look of shock appeared on his face, Oliver didn’t actively resist it. Yet the mere lack of encouragement, Mark’s look of frozen non-responsiveness, was enough to bring Mark to his senses. He let go of Oliver and stepped away from him, already looking down, shamefaced. It showed that the urge that had prompted the kiss was a mystery, even to Mark. Just moments afterwards, he was already seeking to disown it, to pretend it was someone else’s doing. Unwilling to ponder the significance of his action, the inevitable question of what it meant, he avoided the eyes of his companions and went shambling towards the entrance, like someone in search of fresh air.
“My god! Why didn’t you do something?” jeered Lauren, elbowing Trent in his side.
“Like what?” he grinned, finding the suggestion vaguely hilarious. Was he supposed to find a second and challenge Mark to a duel?
“He was making a move on your man!” she insisted, “That kiss was passionate.”
“Come on,” scoffed Trent, “You’re making too much of it. We’re his only friends in Indonesia, and now we’re leaving. He just got caught up in the emotion of the moment.”
Lauren gave him a mocking look, incredulous at his naiveté.
“I know what you’re thinking,” said Trent, “but I still don’t think he’s gay.”
As for Oliver, who’d withstood the worst of Mark’s ‘affections’, he continued to stand there in a state of shock, his lips still moist with the Englishman’s spittle.
*
By the time the email arrived, the kiss seemed but a minor indiscretion. As disconcerting as it had been at the time, it was nothing compared to subsequent events. A few months after they’d left Jakarta, Mark had been fired from EH. Though they learned of it at second hand (with Lauren providing most of the facts), when Trent angled for information from Mark, his friend confirmed the truth of the story. He’d been fired for assaulting his long-term bête noire, a popular, young teacher by the name of Michael. Trent hadn’t pushed him for the details, much less the reasons for his behavior, for he really didn’t want to know. In truth, the news of the attack had upset him, bringing to mind ugly scenes which pummeled his comfortable assumptions. He’d regarded Mark as sensitive and misunderstood, and his attack on Michael ran directly counter to this conception. But he and Oliver had moved to Korea by then, so Trent thought it unlikely that they’d ever meet the Englishman again. Based on this judgment and a desire to preserve a positive memory of Mark, Trent hadn’t dwelt on the incident. Instead, he simply disowned the matter, placing it in the storeroom of shadowy and uncertain things.
If he needed an excuse for doing so (and he did question his unwillingness to condemn Mark unconditionally), he could always cite the rumor about the Englishman’s ‘accident’. He’d deliberately ignored it in the past, viewing it as a particularly grubby invention, but after Mark’s dismissal, he formed a more favorable view of the story. According to the gossipmongers, Mark had been hit by a speeding car, which had left him with traumatic brain injury. He’d received a sizeable payout from the accident, which accounted for such extravagances as his cozy apartment in Jakarta and his planned sampan trip to Borneo. But, the gossipers insisted, it also explained some of his eccentricities of behavior – most especially his fits of temper. And though Trent had never closely looked into it (he was not one of the world’s fact-checkers), the theory did make a degree of sense. Weren’t violent outbursts a common consequence of head injuries? And didn’t that complicate any assessment of Mark’s culpability? Wanting to mitigate the gravity of Mark’s transgression, Trent was eager to believe so.
And yet he also pulled further away. Trent told himself that he was merely busy; there was so much to adjust to in a new country. And while there was a degree of truth in this, he and Oliver hadn’t made friends in Korea, so their evenings were long and empty. If he’d been so inclined, he could’ve written emails every night of the week. Instead, he let Mark take the initiative, sending perfunctory responses which were stiff and impersonal in style. Yet if he was punishing Mark for his misbehavior, or biding time till he worked out whether the friendship was worth preserving, he wasn’t fully aware of it. The story of his busyness was repeated so often that he almost believed it was true.
In the end, Mark headed back to England and stayed there till the end of 2007. Though there’d been some talk of looking for other jobs in Indonesia, he’d eventually succumbed to fatalism. The Jakarta English-teaching scene was a small world, he said, and there was no hiding what he’d done. As soon as people knew that he’d worked for EH, the country’s biggest employer of foreign English teachers, they’d ring up his supervisor and find out what had happened. Though Trent wasn’t convinced by these arguments – reference checks weren’t exactly thorough at the less reputable of the ‘language mills’ – Mark wasn’t for changing his mind.
Once Mark was back home, there was less than ever to write about. In the initial phase of their relationship, they’d had two main things in common: the milieu they occupied and a common interest in travel. They no longer shared the first, and the second was suddenly less relevant; there was no hint of travel in Mark’s future. So all they had to fall back on was a third commonality, one which had played a minor role in the development of their friendship – a shared fondness for certain writers and musicians. It was rickety stuff, but they tried to make do with it. In one email exchange they discussed the second Arcade Fire album. (While Mark thought it was almost the equal of their debut, Trent thought it was only intermittently brilliant. Some of the arrangements sounded labored to his ears.) If this was little more than a statement of preferences, their emails were sometimes more revelatory. Towards the middle of the year, Trent wrote that he’d just finished David Mitchell’s most recent novel, Black Swan Green. He was greatly disappointed, he said, by the retreat from the high postmodernism of Mitchell’s earlier novels. However, Mark had again dissented. He said that it offered a very accurate depiction of the sort of village he’d grown up in. He’d been particularly affected by the scenes where the local boys had bullied the ‘townies’, the newcomers who lived in “little toy mansions”. Those passages, he said, were a potent distillation of all the horrors of his teenaged years.
Though Trent immediately sensed the personal nature of the revelation, he didn’t immediately see its full psychological importance. A few weeks later, it ‘suddenly’ occurred to him that he had a valuable piece of information which was directly relevant to many of the mysteries surrounding Mark. From that point, a series of questions came cascading into his mind, each one taking him deeper into the matter. Had the bullying marked – no! wounded– the Englishman permanently? How many of his ongoing social difficulties were the result of these early traumas? Was it even possible that his assault on Michael was an agonized reenactment of those distant scenes? Had the popular young teacher somehow reminded him of his former tormentors? By striking out at him, had Mark hoped to score a belated victory against the tyranny of the past? Through merely asking these questions, Trent adumbrated a possible backstory for Mark, one which linked his past victimization with the violent outburst which had cost him job at EH. It was likely, he decided, that Mark was still in thrall to some commanding terror. Whether it was true or not, it brought of a softening of Trent’s feelings, and he resolved to be more patient and understanding.
In April 2007, Trent and Oliver returned to Indonesia, grateful to escape the tense, strife-prone work atmosphere of their hogwan (language academy) in Korea. For a few months, Trent put off mentioning the fact to Mark, worried that the news would stir unpleasant memories. But when he finally told him, Mark took it well, casually mentioning that he’d hoped to visit them in Korea one day but would now plan another South-East Asian itinerary. At the time, Trent gave little credence to the idea, but fresh ructions between Mark and his father eventually increased its likelihood. Though the exact reasons were never spelt out, Mark was given a deadline for moving out of home. He seemed to take it badly, railing against a father who was ‘always in his face’, and this upset seemed to animate the dramatic gesture which followed. Rather than looking for a place of his own, he went out and bought a round-the-world air ticket, describing it, in his email, as ‘the adventure of a lifetime’. Though the phrase was irksome to Trent, striking him as both clichéd and grandiose, he found it forgivable in the circumstances. Reeling from his latest rejection – this time from his own father – Mark was probably in need of a sense of purpose. If a little linguistic inflation would help, who was he to judge? Anyway, as far as interest went, the phrase was outgunned by a competitor in the following paragraph. Just a few lines down, Mark wrote that he was going to fund his trip with ‘the last of his compensation money’.
The phrase seized Trent’s attention, as it belatedly confirmed a lot of the rumors from their EH days. It explicitly validated the existence of the money and implicitly linked it to some sort of accident. It occurred to Trent that he was now free to ask questions, as Mark had broached the topic himself. Doing so could no longer be considered indelicate. But he quickly realized that there was really no need. Both the accident and the payout were now established fact. What remained unclear was the question of Mark’s brain trauma and its ongoing impact on his life. Yet once Trent had considered the matter, he saw that he still didn’t want to probe there – it struck him as something private and personal. So instead he wished Mark the best for his journey and requested that he send regular updates.
The second half of 2007 found Mark in the Americas. He was soon sending emails from Quito, Los Quetzales National Park and the colonial old town of Antigua Guatemala. Being short and uninspired, these emails rarely caught Trent’s imagination, and he found himself wishing for some visuals – perhaps a picture of a cobbled old square, or a quetzal resplendent in the cloud forest. Why didn’t he attach some photos to his emails? Trent considered making the suggestion. But before he got around to it, Mark flitted to the United States, showing up (unexpectedly) in the hippie town of Sedona, Arizona. Predictably enough, Mark made some snide remarks about healing crystals and the vortex of swirling energy which could allegedly be experienced at Cathedral Rock. Of more interest to Trent was the casual mention that he’d soon be flying to Bangkok, a city he described as the ‘launching pad of his next adventure’. As soon as he got there, he was going to head for Cambodia, a country he imagined as an exotic amalgam of Angkorian temples and UXOs.
Though Cambodia was still quite a distance from Jakarta, Trent sensed that Mark was getting closer and might even turn up on his doorstep. His response to this was distinctly muddled. While part of him hoped to catch up with the Englishman (perhaps heading for some drinks at one of Jakarta’s expat bars), he was also worried about possible complications. At that stage, both he and Oliver were having difficulties at work, and he saw Mark as a likely cause of further upset. It was as if he were a low-pressure system which was moving towards the region, bringing with it the threat of a rain squall, a possible outbreak of blustery conditions.
However, these anxieties proved excessive, for Mark had no intention of immediately returning to Jakarta. In the end, he remained on the road for the whole of 2008. But if Trent had overestimated his own risk exposure, he wasn’t wrong to think of Mark as a potent source of turbulence. For as soon as he entered Cambodia, there were renewed signs of changeability, the latest swings of a mercurial and temperamental nature. It shouldn’t have surprised him, of course. On the trip to Bengkulu, their formerly quiet and unassuming friend had transformed into a brooding, petulant adolescent. And then there’d been the sudden transformations from sullen passivity to raging belligerence. Though the attack on Michael was the prime example, it wasn’t entirely without precedent. In fact, there’d been warning signs from the first time they’d gone out for dinner together. When the waitress had messed up Mark’s order, he’d lost his temper and shouted at her. Perceiving the shock on the faces of his dinner companions, he’d moderated his tone and accepted her apologies, but if they’d brushed it off at the time, it had a different look in retrospect. And then there was the time when they’d gone out to the pizza place behind Djakarta Theatre and a taxi driver, for whatever reason, had declined to take Mark home. Oliver was astonished when Mark lost his temper and booted the back door of the taxi. But if his temper fits were now a recognized danger, a familiar part of the landscape, the latest change was a different matter entirely; it was more a question of style, revealed through a sudden outpouring of emails.
While Mark’s previous correspondence had been reserved, conventional and more than a little boring, his new ones were lyrical and self-expressed, though sometimes marred by cack-handed attempts at humor. It was as if Mark had suddenly given up the dull, plodding stuff of prose and started his novitiate as a poet. To illustrate the change, it may be useful to offer some excerpts from his emails. The first comes from his time at Siem Reap, his first stop in Cambodia.
Standing in front of the temples, timeworn edifices magnificent in their ruin, you can only wonder how they must have looked in their heyday. I sometimes feel as if I were a player inside a game of ‘Tomb Raider’. (Regrettably, this hasn’t meant bumping into a sweaty, scantily clad Lara Croft lookalike.) Each time I arrive at a new temple, village children greet me with the usual array of souvenirs – handmade postcards, plaster busts of Jayavarman VII and little bamboo flutes. These play strange, otherworldly melodies which sound like something from another time...
Ten days later he wrote again, this time from Battambang, a riverside city known for its French colonial architecture.
I’ve been hanging out with Daan, a crazy Dutchman, and Gemma, an English lass who’s addicted to Valium and various other prescription drugs. Yesterday Daan and I went out to Phnom Sampeau with a guide and tuk-tuk driver. In the dry season, the landscape resembles the African savannah. Dirt roads. Paddies with the look of dried-out grasslands. Sugar palms like great, shaggy lions’ manes. With each potholed mile, we seemed to head further into the past, perhaps even to an earlier century.
Phnom Sampeau is a karstic mountain, with panoramic views across the landscape. Partway up the peak, we came to a halt and followed a staircase down into a cave. From the bottom, you could make out a source of light overhead. There was a ‘natural skylight’ in the cave. As I was looking up, Daan noticed a pile of human bones, some of them retaining a few scraps of clothing. This was the ‘death cave’, the one mentioned in the guidebooks. The Khmer Rouge cadres had bludgeoned their victims at the edge of the ‘skylight’ and cast their bodies down into the cave. It was shocking to think that they’d lain there for thirty years now, the dignity of burial still denied. But in a nearby cave, we found a Reclining Buddha statue and a ramshackle memorial for some of the victims. They’d built a cage out of cyclone fencing and chicken-wire and placed some of the bones inside it.
If this continued the poetic style of the previous email, it also introduced a further element – a propensity for the macabre. Though the two tendencies were still somewhat balanced at that stage, it was the morbid aspect which would soon predominate. The very next email was a sign of things to come.
A few days ago I saw the semi-naked body of a young girl (perhaps no more than 20 years old) who’d been murdered the night before. Her body had washed up on the banks of the Sangkae River. The police had put a small cordon around the body but had neither covered it nor taken it away. A large crowd of locals had gathered – grandmas and grandpas, primary school kids, mothers with babies. The scene had a festive atmosphere, almost like a town fête. Some of the people were taking photos on their mobile phones. Selfies with a corpse. This was the middle of the afternoon – the body having been found some 12 hours earlier. In Cambodia, bodies don’t get taken to the morgue until families come to claim them. Often nobody comes forward. In these cases, they sometimes cremate the bodies at the site of discovery. From what the locals told me, murders are far from uncommon and many go unsolved. The country is awash with guns, and police forces are corrupt and inefficient.
When Trent first read this email, he found it slightly disturbing, but he couldn’t immediately say why. If he’d been pressed, he might’ve said that he found it ‘weird’ or perhaps even ‘a sign of a troubled mind’. It was only years later that he finally saw the true source of his uneasiness – Mark’s covert participation in the very acts of voyeurism which his email decried. Hadn’t he inspected the body too, appraising the woman’s age and degree of undress? Hadn’t he loitered by the corpse, sharing gossip and conjecture with the other onlookers?
Though this was the only first-hand account of a crime scene, Mark stayed focused on murder and depravity. He developed an interest in the seedy side of Cambodian life, reading the Phnom Penh Post and offering summaries of the most shocking and gruesome cases. His emails became compendiums of violence and bloodshed – a knife-fight in a karaoke bar over who got to use a microphone, a machete attack over longstanding debts, and an unexplained shooting in a pool hall. As Trent read through these tales, one after another, they emitted a lurid, backstreet glow. The following is a representative sample.
February 1: He Hang, 23, was fatally gunned down during a nighttime drinking binge in Sapor village, Kampung Thom province. Police said Hang was shot once in the chest with an AK-47 while arguing with Penh Narith, 46, a policeman in Seda commune. A bystander said that Narith created problems after drinking two crates of beer. Narith escaped after the killing.
These emails presaged another change in Mark’s correspondence. He now abandoned all pretensions to poetry and settled on a journalistic style. By this point he was settled down at Lakeside, a backpacker ghetto in the suburbs of Phnom Penh. A small part of Boueng Kak (a poor neighborhood which was slated for demolition in the coming years), Lakeside was known for the cheapness of its lodgings and its bars. While Mark organized his visa extension, he hung out at The Drunken Frog, drinking cans of Angkor beer and sending dispatches on local crime and politics.
His interest in the latter was apparently piqued by Boeung Kak, the community whose wooden shacks and lakeside stilt houses were soon to be struck by the wrecking ball. It was, indeed, a scandalous affair involving corrupt politicians and the theft of land from some of the city’s most vulnerable residents. Nonetheless, it was curious subject matter for a string of group emails to his friends and former colleagues. (Mark had now started sending his missives to a dozen or more people at a time. Scanning the distribution list, Trent spotted the names Daan and Gemma, as well as some of the office assistants from their EH days.) Perhaps, Trent speculated, his own replies had been found wanting. As Mark had cast off his former inhibitions, sharing great slabs of impassioned prose, Trent had responded with brief or even perfunctory emails in which the chill of reserve was evident. Dissatisfied with these efforts, Mark had placed him in the group list ‘sin bin’.
To Trent’s critical eye, it seemed that his friend, desperate for attention, was casting his net as widely as possible. It must have been disappointing to have poured out his heart and received such guarded responses. He had offered poetry and been given prose in return. So it made sense that he’d set up a group list. If Trent ignored him, then maybe Gemma, Daan or even Dewi (one of the office assistants at EH) would make time for a detailed response. He was playing a numbers game, maximizing the chance that someone would take an interest. However, it certainly backfired with Trent. He self-servingly concluded that all those other names in the group-mail distribution list were excuse enough for not replying.
In truth, as Mark’s journalistic phase dragged on, Trent stopped even reading the emails. He’d let his eyes skim across the screen, just to determine the subject matter. But finding a set piece on the surveillance state of Hun Sen (the long-term dictator of Cambodia), or the latest batch of victims from the crime pages of the Phnom Penh Post, he’d shake his head and close the email. If this was Mark’s ‘passion’, why didn’t he start a blog about Cambodia or go back to university and study journalism? In short, Trent believed that emails weren’t the most appropriate place for Mark to pursue these interests. An email, as he saw it, was a kind of conversation, and he was starting to feel shouted at.
By early March, Mark had left Cambodia, heading back to Thailand to obtain a tourist visa for India. By this point, he’d abandoned both his crime reportage and his exposés on the corrupt, authoritarian Hun Sen regime. Perhaps the other people in Mark’s distribution list had been just as unresponsive as Trent to the subject matter of his emails. Whatever the cause, he’d dropped the affectations of his Drunken Frog phase, reverting to a simpler, more functional style. Once more grounded in practicalities, he weighed the benefits of the possible gateway cities (Kolkata? Delhi? or perhaps Chennai?), as well as the various classes of visa. Was the three-month visa enough or should he err on the side of caution and opt for the six-month option? Then there was the question of the single versus multiple-entry variants. If he got the latter, he’d be free to do side-trips to Nepal and Bangladesh. In the end, he got the six-month, multiple-entry visa. Things going well, he’d stay in the subcontinent till the end of August and then spend the autumn in China.
With Mark’s arrival in India, the kaleidoscope continued to turn. There was no return to Mark’s ‘activist’ phase, nor to the lyricism of his first emails from Cambodia; the eyepiece was filled with new shapes and colors – some of them strangely foreboding. The dominant theme was now travel as adventure, and he appeared to chart a haphazard course. Armed with his six-month visa, he had all the time he needed to explore the country at leisure. He had no fixed dates in his calendar, nor even a bucket-list of ‘must-see’ attractions. He used this freedom, this lack of commitments, to indulge every whim and follow every fancy. On one occasion, he was led to an obscure temple-town by an intriguing photo in a museum. On another, he was directed to a hill-station by a comment overhead in a restaurant. But if Trent observed a bold new pattern in all this openness and spontaneity, darker tints were soon to intrude.
Within a month, Mark was complaining about the prevalence of scam artists in India. Though he’d yet to visit the country himself, Trent certainly wasn’t surprised. It did have that reputation with travelers. But it seemed that Mark’s attitude was much less philosophical; he expressed his fury in a ranting email whose colours were broodingly dark. This ominous portent notwithstanding, Trent was still shocked when things got physical. It wasn’t too serious, wrote Mark – really just some pushing and shoving. But his ‘self-restraint’ was to prove short-lasting. Outraged by crooked guesthouse-owners and duplicitous auto-rickshaw drivers, the Englishman started fighting back. Predictably enough, the results were abysmal. There were further references to ‘arguments and scuffles’ and there was a palpable sense of escalation. Trent found the following lines especially worrying.
The local swindlers are out of control. It seems like every other Bajaj driver has got a guesthouse scam running. They’ll swear that your preferred option has shut down, closed for renovations or even burned to the ground. You name it, they’ll try it. But of course they just want to drive you to one of the commission-paying places. Anyway, I’ve started giving them a piece of my mind, and they don’t like being on the receiving end. The truth is, I’ve got into a few scraps lately. I can hold my own if it’s one on one, but that’s not how they fight in India. Indians are a social bunch. They always seem to have friends – lots of friends, actually – and if they see one of their mates in a brawl, they’ll join in without a second thought. It got a bit hairy the other day.
At this point, Trent wrote a lengthy reply, expressing serious concern about the direction things were taking. He said that while he understood his friend’s frustrations (it was galling to be viewed as an easy mark by scammers), one should try to keep things in perspective. Was it worth getting beaten up for the sake of a few rupees? Every year, thousands of travelers didn’t make it home from their adventures. If things were getting ‘hairy’, wasn’t it time to pull back and reflect on the risks?
Though he’d felt it necessary to issue a caution, Trent was worried how Mark might respond. He had the strong impression that Mark considered himself the ‘master of his own destiny’ and didn’t look favorably on input from others. But Mark took his warnings good-naturedly enough, saying that Trent was probably right and promising to take a step back. Whether the Englishman had actually moderated his behavior was quite another question, but there were no more emails about street brawls. It occurred to Trent that he might merely have shamed Mark into silence and the fights were really as frequent as ever. Notwithstanding his possibility, Trent decided that he’d fulfilled his obligations. However juvenile Mark seemed in his behavior, he was an adult, after all, and had to make his own choices.
Yet there eventually came hints that Mark’s aggression hadn’t disappeared but rather metamorphosed to a strange new form. If his previous strategy had been head-on confrontation, he now switched to games of cat-and-mouse. The fact that these were invariably played with security guards seemed of considerable symbolic significance, but like much else about Mark, its exact meaning was open to competing interpretations. Fortunately, the practical details were a more straightforward matter. The facts were as follows: whenever Mark visited a museum, he’d find rooms with security stationed on the door and then wait inside long enough to arouse the guard’s suspicions. He’d time how long it took for the guard to come and check on him, sometimes heightening the fun by lurking around corners or crouching between display cases. Finally growing tired of his bespoke version of peekaboo, he devised a much more elaborate game. Seeking a bigger arena, he shifted the venue from museums to historical monuments. He’d visit them in the daytime, buying a ticket like anyone else and using it to scope out the site. While most tourists would focus on the picturesque aspects – the brickwork, the carvings and the ornate façades – Mark would have other concerns. He’d be scanning the walls for security cameras and calculating where their blind spots were. He’d also be looking out for places to hide – walls that he could crouch behind, or ditches where he could flatten himself. As it neared closing time and the site emptied of visitors, he’d retreat to some nook or cranny and wait for the sun to set. Once it was dark enough, he’d emerge from his hidey-hole and explore the ruins by starlight. Mindful of where the cameras were placed, he’d weave a course through the deserted site, enjoying sole possession of the historical treasure. Finally growing tired, he’d rough sleep in some shadowy corner, and when the site re-opened the following morning, he’d dust himself off and walk out through the main entrance.
These adventures usually went off seamlessly, but he did have a brush with danger at a famous hill fort. Perhaps he’d missed a couple of the cameras, or maybe he’d just encountered an especially conscientious security guard, but after one of Mark’s flights around the complex, a guard came out with a powerful torch and did a circuit of the grounds. Squatting behind some crumbling masonry, Mark peeped out at the courtyard ahead of him, the one that the guard was passing inspecting. Yet before he reached Mark’s corner of the fort, he turned around and headed back, his way lit by a trembling flashlight.
In writing of the incident, Mark conveyed a heady sense of exhilaration. Though Trent couldn’t relate to his friend’s reaction, he sensed how much the adventure had meant to him. It wasn’t just an exciting experience, it was the apogee of his whole adventure, his closest approach to some lofty ideal. For this reason, Trent issued no further cautions. Though the whole thing struck him as foolhardy (almost the equal, in some respects, of his fights with auto-rickshaw drivers), he didn’t want to steal the Englishman’s glory. After all, exultation was hardly a commonplace feeling, and who was he to cast it into the dirt?
So he left Mark to his peculiar excitements, paying less and less attention to his emails and not even commenting when he left India for China. Yet in some sense, it seemed as if Mark himself had a dimming interest in his great adventure. As the year entered its final quarter, his emails became less and less frequent, and those he did send were marked by flat affect. He now seemed tired and apathetic, as if interminable months of travel had exhausted his capacity for wonder. The singular passions that had characterized his earlier emails were now replaced by conventional reportage, none of it very engaging. Though he complained of the grey skies of China’s cities, his emails were scarcely any more colorful. It seemed like he was moving about aimlessly now, searching for the resolve to call an end to his travels.
Then in early 2009, Trent got a personal email – one directed to himself alone. Mark wrote that he was almost out of money and was considering looking for another job in Indonesia. By this point, both he and Oliver were doing well at their new schools (Oliver was newly promoted to the Academic Team Leader position), and they were well accustomed to life in Jakarta. There was little of the restlessness which had marked their first stint in the city, and having finally obtained a degree of stability, they now looked unfavorably on possible upsets. It was against this backdrop that Mark was about to reappear. Fresh from his street fights and his midnight occupations of forts and temple complexes, he seemed an anarchic figure, a threat to their equilibrium. But out of loyalty to an ideal of friendship, Trent said that he’d talk to Oliver and see what they could do.
*
“You can’t be serious,” said Oliver, “From what you’ve been telling me, it’s clear he’s lost his marbles.”
“He is eccentric,” Trent allowed, “but haven’t we known that all along?”
“I wouldn’t call it ‘eccentric’ to punch someone in the face,” said Oliver coldly, “He’s much more unstable than we’d imagined.”
“I see what you’re saying,” said Trent, “but that must’ve been two years ago. Doesn’t he deserve a second chance?”
“How long since his last fight with a taxi driver?” asked Oliver, “Or should I say a mob of taxi drivers?”
“I think he’s dropped all that,” said Trent, “He hasn’t mentioned any fights in months.”
“And what about that weird stuff about hiding inside monuments at nighttime? How do you explain that?” challenged Oliver, hard and unrelenting.
“You’re right, of course,” said Trent, “That was strange, but I don’t think he meant any harm. He’s just some sort of fantasist, I suppose. He gets carried away with flights of fancy.”
“You’re telling me!” scoffed Oliver, “Do you think I’ve forgotten that night at the Sheraton?”
“What, you mean that kiss he gave you?” said Trent irritably, “Like I said to Lauren at the time, he was just caught up in the emotion of the moment. I wouldn’t read too much into it.”
“Trent, he slipped his tongue in,” said Oliver impassively.
“Like, inside your mouth?” asked Trent, who was still hoping for an accident, perhaps some sort of overshoot.
“Of course inside my mouth!” said Oliver testily, “Where else were you thinking?”
“Oh don’t!” protested Trent, “Poor you, hon. Imagine having that Crazy Mark slobber all over you!”
“It wasn’t pleasant, believe me.”
“Why didn’t you tell me before?” asked Trent, more curious than accusing.
“Well, he was leaving, wasn’t he? I didn’t see any point in making a scene. But if he’s coming back here – and, speaking frankly, I don’t see the point myself – then you should know why I don’t want to see him.”
“Is that why you’ve never written to him?” asked Trent.
“No…well, maybe that’s part of it. But what’s there to say? I haven’t seen this guy in two and a half years. And who wants to read his deranged travelogues anyway?”
“How about we just go out for dinner then?” suggested Trent, “Stay on neutral ground.”
“If I have to,” said Oliver, “but he’s not staying here. I wouldn’t be comfortable with him moping around the apartment.”
“The spare bedroom’s on the left, Mark. You can put your bags in there.”
“Are you sure this is okay?” he asked, “If it’s inconvenient, I can get a place in Jaksa.”
“Not at all,” said Trent, “We’re glad to have you.”
It was a bit before eight and Trent hadn’t been home long. Oliver had just texted him, writing that he was on his way but the traffic was even worse than usual. Trent told him that Mark was already there and promised to get some takeaway for dinner. Oliver was yet to get back.
“Have you eaten yet?” asked Trent, lingering in the doorway of the spare room.
“I had some noodles a couple of hours ago,” said Mark, “but I could eat again.”
“We’re just going to order some nasi goreng,” said Trent, “Do you want me to get you anything?”
“Yeah. Why not?” said Mark, “What kinds do they have?”
“Chicken, beef or seafood,” said Trent, “I’d recommend the beef.”
“Sure,” said Mark, “And any chance of a couple of Bir Bintang?”
“No worries,” said Trent, “There’s a supermarket in the basement. I think it’s where all the cockroaches come from.” He’d noticed one slowly climbing the doorjamb.
By the time he got back with the takeaway and the beers, Oliver was already home. He’d removed his tie but was still wearing dress slacks and a business shirt. He was standing in the lounge-room and talking to Mark, who was sitting on the sofa with his laptop balanced on the armrest. Trent observed that even though Oliver seemed tense, his tone was civil and respectful. He was ‘being good’ about it all.
“Should I get some plates or are we okay to eat out of the containers?” asked Trent.
“I’m alright with Styrofoam,” said Oliver, and Mark nodded his agreement.
“Should we start the beers now or wait till after dinner?”
“Let’s have one now,” said Oliver, to which Mark added his enthusiastic support.
Trent handed out the nasi goreng boxes and opened three longnecks, putting the rest in the fridge.
The conversation was faltering at first, with Trent asking Mark about his holiday and receiving only brief replies. Trent had forgotten the severity of Mark’s social anxieties. In the past, he’d been much more at ease around Trent and Oliver than the other teachers, but an absence of two and a half years had undermined their erstwhile familiarity, leaving it precarious, at risk of collapse. For his part, Trent was disappointed by Mark’s reticence, yearning for some of the freewheeling lunacy of his emails. So he tried to draw him out, asking open-ended questions about his travels, hoping to elicit some colorful new tales. But though many travelers were prone to garrulity, gushing over places that meant nothing to the listener, Mark was an exception. Hurt by the indifference of his friends, he’d come to see travel as a risky topic. Fearing further injury, he couldn’t be tempted into the fray.
Where open-ended questions had failed, beer had more success. After dinner, they each had a second bottle and then Trent went out for replenishments. From that point on, it was almost like old times. They traded gossip about their former colleagues (Lauren was now in Qingdao, married to an American businessman!) and poked fun at their former employer (have you heard about the school closures in West Jakarta?). Eventually Mark took his laptop of the armrest and gave them a slideshow of his travel photos from India. As keen travelers who’d yet to visit the country, Trent and Oliver showed unfeigned interest in the pictures, and Mark seemed grateful. Inspired by this success, Mark then showed them his iTunes music library, in which he took an inordinate sense of pride. He went to his ‘most played’ list and asked them to select a tune. While Trent was dithering between half a dozen indie titles, Oliver spotted something he liked, calling out, “Ça plane pour moi!”
“Plastic Bertrand!” cried Mark, apparently delighted by the choice.
As soon as the song started playing, Oliver got up from the sofa and started doing a frenetic jitterbug. As Trent looked on, utterly astounded, Mark gave a lopsided grin and then sprang up from the sofa to take Oliver’s hand. They then joined in a high-spirited performance, with Oliver twirling Mark around the room and shouting the words to the chorus. As Mark went whirling by, Trent looked on with the beginnings of dismay; he could feel things spinning out of control. But fortunately for him, they couldn’t keep it up for long, and they soon let go of each other, dropping back onto the sofa, panting.
When the song ended, Mark turned to Trent and said, “Your pick now.”
He surveyed the list of Mark’s most-played songs, finding Song to the Siren by This Mortal Coil in the top spot, with a remarkable seventy-two spins.
“Song to the Siren, hey? Isn’t it the most gorgeous thing ever?” said Trent dreamily.
“Absolutely,” replied Steve, with tremendous gravity, “It’s the most beautiful song in this world.”
While Steve was usually guarded about his feelings, adding a layer of defensive irony on the rare occasions when he did discuss them, he spoke now with unvarnished sincerity and not a hint of self-consciousness. The change was due to how he perceived the matter. As he saw it, it wasn’t even an opinion he was offering: he was merely stating a fact. As such, there was no need to be ashamed of it.
“It must be up there,” said Trent uneasily.
“Is that your pick?” asked Mark.
While Trent found the song exceptionally beautiful, he also regarded it as exceptionally sad. It seemed to brim with a desperate, or even fatal, sorrow, as if the singer was in danger of drowning in her heartbreak. It just wouldn’t do, he thought, as a follow-up to a jitterbug.
“It’s great,” he said, “but it isn’t party music.”
So instead he requested Goddess on a Highway by Mercury Rev. While it wasn’t exactly danceable, it was much more cheerful than the alternative. But when Mark reached for the touchpad, Trent noticed, with a shock, that his fingers were thickly encrusted with scabs.
“What happened to your hand?” he asked, momentarily unaware of how compromising the question might be.
“It happened in China, a couple of weeks ago,” he said.
Leaning forward to get a better view of the scabby knuckles, Oliver asked, “Why? What happened?”
Though Mark obviously felt uncomfortable, he decided not to evade the question.
“I was at a train station in Xian, trying to get to Beijing. Anyway, they sold me a ticket, but when I got to the platform, the gate was already closed. They close it ten minutes before the scheduled time of departure. I was, like, one minute late, but they wouldn’t let me onto the platform.”
“Bummer,” said Oliver, “So what happened next?”
“I went back to the ticket window, lined up for half an hour, and when I got to the front of the queue, the woman wouldn’t give me a refund. She said I wasn’t entitled to one. So I lost my cool and started punching the glass.”
“Oh my god! Did you break it?” asked Trent, horrified.
“Nah, it was toughened glass – really thick. It didn’t even crack, actually. It fucked up my hand pretty well though.”
Trent and Oliver exchanged worried looks. Mark noticed, lowering his gaze to his injured hand, which was quietly convalescing in his lap.
“Did you see a doctor?” asked Oliver finally, making a belated show of concern.
“Nooo! There wasn’t any need! Look, I know I went a little nuts, but it only lasted a minute. Didn’t do any lasting damage.”
“What did the woman do?” asked Trent, “She didn’t call the police or anything?”
“Oh look, I think I gave her a shock, and she called the security guards over, but it wasn’t a big deal. They just escorted me out of the station. That was it.”
“Trent mentioned that you also had some trouble in India,” said Oliver matter-of-factly. His tone was so detached that he might have been discussing some unnamed assailant from a news report.
Mark glared at Trent, his eyes accusing him of betrayal.
“I said you’d had some problems with scammers,” fumbled Trent, “You said they could get a bit aggro.”
“Yeah, that’s right,” said Mark, “And there’s no such thing as a fair fight over there. Before you know it, you’re getting hit from all sides.”
Trent looked at him closely, trying to gauge Mark’s intent. His first thought was that this just bravado, an attempt to project a masculine image. But then it occurred to him that Mark might genuinely have felt aggrieved. After all, there was nothing fake about his scabs or the blows that produced them. Wasn’t it possible that Mark habitually thought of himself as the wronged party, the one on the receiving end of every species of mistreatment?
“It sounds scary,” said Oliver, “I’m not sure I’d be brave enough to go there now.”
Trent shot him an incredulous look, as if to ask, “You don’t take this nutjob seriously, do you?”
Mark gave a rambling response in which he spoke of the Indians as a disputatious bunch, prone to outbursts of senseless violence. As Mark would have it, there was no end to the pushing and shoving, and no conversation was really in earnest there, unless it was conducted in an angry tone.
Having noted Trent’s skepticism, Oliver didn’t pursue the topic, instead taking the opportunity to raise a still greater controversy: Mark’s firing from EH. Trent would’ve left the matter alone, considering it the most combustible of flashpoints – a long walk back in the hottest part of the day. Yet it was irresistible to Oliver, promising direct access to the bubbling substrate of Mark’s character, the lava-like feelings which boiled away, ever threatening their next explosion. What was it, he wondered, which made Mark so profoundly eruptive? What was the source of all his heat? By returning to Mark’s largest blow-up, the one which had demolished his life in Jakarta, hurling him outwards like a whizzing projectile, Oliver hoped that he might better understand him. If they were going to help the Englishman to reestablish himself in Jakarta, they’d need to grasp what had gone wrong last time.
“Well, I know I’ll be cautious if I ever go to India,” said Oliver, “but I’ve been curious about something else too. I wanted to ask about EH. I heard that there was a fight in the staffroom. Could you tell me about it from your perspective?”
“Well, you know Michael,” he growled, “What a twat! He was your typical ‘head boy’, always looking for extra responsibility. He wasn’t even Senior Teacher, but he’d try and boss the rest of us around. He’d give these ‘gentle reminders’, like, ‘Hey guys, this is a gentle reminder to return the CDs when you’ve finished using them.’ Or he’d give us a ‘gentle reminder’ to fill in the class notes. He was always getting on our backs. Anyway, one day I’d had enough, so I told him straight to his face. Well, he got real narky about it, and that was it. I hit him. In all honesty, a lot of the teachers were on my side. A few of them told me so later. He’d pissed off a lot of people.”
Oliver was greatly troubled by this speech. He heard in it the tedious drone of self-justification, made worse yet by a furtive sense of pride. As Mark had neared the climax of the story, he’d blown up like a puffer fish. To Oliver, this was an ominous sign, and his spirits sank accordingly; if the assault was a point of pride, Mark’s wrongheadedness was worse than he’d previously imagined.
“That may the case,” said Oliver coolly and primly, “but you must know what a mistake it was. You can’t solve problems by throwing punches.”
Mark looked straight at Oliver, his expression a mixture of shock and anger. What had he expected? Gushing praise? Congratulations on a job well done? As hard as it was to fathom, Mark’s reaction suggested it was so; he looked at Oliver slack-jawed, his eyebrows a steep pair of down ramps. Even after he suppressed these obvious markers of upset, his eyes remained searchingly on Oliver, as if looking for signs that he was secretly impressed. It took an uncomfortably long time before he saw that Oliver was in earnest, at which point he seemed to fall in a heap.
“No, of course, you’re right,” he said somberly, before meekly bowing his head.
Though it wasn’t immediately obvious, that was the end of the night’s festivities. Trent tried to engage the others in alternative topics, but nothing got any traction; the sense of rapport was gone.
“I’ve had enough of this,” said Oliver, turning a reproachful look at his bottle of Bintang, which was still about one-third full. With that, he went over to the sink and poured the rest down the plughole.
“I might head off to bed,” responded Mark, “How much do I owe you for the food and beers? Will a hundred thousand cover it?”
“You’ll even get some change,” smiled Trent, “but let’s work it out tomorrow.”
Over the next few days, the three of them settled into a kind of pattern. Each morning Oliver would set off to work around eleven. Not having a management position, Trent would leave considerably later, eating lunch with Mark and then heading off around one. When Trent walked out the door, Mark would usually be in the living-room, with his laptop open on the coffee table. More often than not, he’d still be there when the first of them returned, which was usually after seven thirty. How much of the intervening period Mark had spent on his computer was anyone’s guess, but he gave the impression that it was a fair chunk of each day. When they asked him about his activities, he did mention some excursions – trips to mini-marts, restaurants, and once even the shopping-mall at Senen – but none of these places were more than a few kilometres away. Moreover, none of them were likely employers of English teachers from the UK, a point which Oliver emphasized to Trent when they were lying in bed one night.
“He’s home by himself,” replied Trent, “For all we know, he could be applying for jobs all day.”
“You think?” said Oliver skeptically, “I reckon he sits around watching YouTube videos. Every time that I’ve got home first, that’s what he’s been doing.”
“If he isn’t looking for a job, what did he come back to Jakarta for?”
“Because we’re the only bunnies who would put him up! He’s just looking for a free crash pad! He’s been here a week now. Has he mentioned any job interviews? Has he even had a shave? He’s not serious about looking for work. I don’t know how you can’t see it!”
“You make him sound so scheming!” protested Trent, “I really don’t think he’s as cunning as all that. But I see your point – he’s checked out of the whole job search thing. He may find it very confronting.”
“Yeah, whatever,” said Oliver, “but he can’t stay camped out on the sofa forever. How long were you planning on letting him stay?”
“I hadn’t thought about it,” said Trent.
“Well, that needs to change,” said Oliver, “The clock’s ticking on his little holiday.”
“All right then,” said Trent begrudgingly, “Perhaps he needs a nudge in the right direction. I’ll bring it up tomorrow night.”
Around noon the following day, Trent and Mark went out for lunch. Sick of the Chinese-Indonesian place by the swimming pool, they left the apartment complex, heading to the Padang restaurant across the road. After a satisfying meal of rendang, singkong leaves and curried jackfruit, they started back to Trent’s apartment. As they re-entered the complex through one of several gateways, a taxi came rushing down the drive, forcing them to jump out of the way. Though Trent found this rude and annoying, he contented himself with an eye-roll. Weren’t Jakarta taxi drivers the worst? But Mark’s reaction was something else entirely. When the driver stopped at the bottom of the drive, waiting for some motorbikes to pass, Mark walked over to the taxi and threw a punch at the side-mirror. Just as Mark’s fist hit the glass, the taxi sped forward, the driver having spied a break in the traffic. Though this probably reduced the force of the blow, it didn’t save the mirror: a web of cracks spread through the glass. Trent’s whole body tensed, expecting an uncomfortable scene. He envisioned the driver slamming on the brake and leaping from his taxi, intent on confrontation. As the bloody-knuckled veteran of many a street brawl, Mark was unlikely to back down. If he flew into a scrunch-faced rage and started swinging punches at the driver, chaos would quickly ensue. It was likely, Trent thought, that Indonesian cabbies would have just as many friends as their Indian counterparts. Furthermore, if Mark were mobbed on the driveway, pummeled from all sides by indignant taxi drivers, his own position would be hazardous. He imagined the mob turning on him, Mark’s presumed accomplice. But then a minor miracle occurred: the driver kept going, completely unaware of what had happened. (His head had been turned in the other direction, which would’ve put Mark out of sight. As for the sound of the blow, it must have been disguised by street noise.)
Strutting back to where Trent was standing, Mark said, “Can you believe that idiot? He almost ran us over!”
“You punched the mirror!” said Trent, aghast, “Show me your hand!”
“No real damage done. Nothing permanent anyway,” Mark assured him, yet he held out the injured appendage regardless.
The old scabs had been cracked open, leaving the knuckles raw and bleeding. Though there was only a modest amount of blood, Trent was still unnerved. The hand reminded him of some strange and piteous creature – a bird hatchling, pink and defenseless.
“Come on Mark,” said Trent pleadingly, “You’ve got to take better care of yourself.”
But perhaps, he realized, this plea was disingenuous, for it was less an expression of care than a sign of his growing desperation. Doubtless due to an adrenaline rush, Mark seemed unusually jaunty, but this wouldn’t last. Whether viewed soberly or superstitiously, the cracked mirror was the bleakest omen yet for the Englishman’s chances in Jakarta. Aswim in traffic and humidity and a million minor frustrations, the city was no place for an expat with an angry disposition. Provoked by every slight and indignant at every rudeness, Mark was now a risk to himself and everyone else around him. Though Trent still wanted to hope, it was starting to feel laborious.
“Thanks for your concern,” said Mark, “but there’s no need to worry. It’ll soon scab over again.”
While that much seemed probable to Trent, he felt no great confidence in the scabs being left to heal. How long it would be before Mark next threw a punch?
With a quick stab of his fork, Trent claimed the last of the kailan, bringing dinner to a sudden close. A couple of minutes later, Oliver gathered up the Styrofoam boxes and dumped them in the plastic bag which was hanging from the cutlery drawer. Returning to the kitchen table, he wiped it over with a wet sponge while noticing how tense Trent had grown. To Oliver, the cause of this was immediately apparent: Trent was preparing himself to ask Mark about his jobseeking activities. Feeling anxious himself, he decided to keep busy until Trent started the conversation. In the end, he didn’t have long to wait.
“Have you given any more thought about whether you’re going to stay in Jakarta?” asked Trent, affecting an air of casualness.
Mark was initially startled by the question, but his expression soon evinced a more revealing emotion: guilt. In perceiving it, Trent drew an unfortunate conclusion; Mark had either abandoned his job search or not even started in the first place.
Seeing that some sort of response was required, Mark managed, “Er, I had a look on Dave’s ESL Café, but, um, most of the jobs were at EH.”
“How above the other ones?” asked Trent, with a contrived air of cheerfulness.
“Most of them were international schools,” he said, his voice flat and unhopeful, “I just don’t have the qualifications.”
“I see,” said Trent, with a studied sense of disapproval, “So where to from here?”
Mark gave him a panicked look. He thought he was being asked to leave.
“I mean, what’s next in your job search?” asked Trent, a smile fastened to his lower face.
“Um, well, I’m not sure,” stammered Mark, “What do you think I should do?”
“Why not knock on some doors?” prodded Trent, “Print out your CV, rent a car and driver for the day, and go around the language schools. You’ll often get a better response if turn up in person.”
Mark nodded curtly, evidently displeased with the advice.
Trent glared at Oliver, hoping for some moral support. He knew that his efforts were faltering and had no idea how to set them right.
“I can vouch for that as a manager,” said Oliver, “Where I work, I’m not allowed to do phone interviews. They want people who are already here in Indonesia.”
“But I haven’t got any referees,” protested Mark, “No one’ll hire me without those.”
“So you’ve already given up,” Oliver coolly observed, “What’s left to say then?”
Trent shot him an imploring look. That isn’t going to help, it implied.
“Oh all right,” snapped Mark, “I’ve outstayed my welcome, have I?”
“No, look, it’s nothing like that,” pleaded Trent, his previous collectedness now looking ragged, “We’re just trying to help.”
“Is that what you’re doing?” asked Mark sarcastically, “It’s a good thing you told me then, because it looked like you were snooping.”
“And I’m glad you told me you were job-hunting,” snarled Oliver, springing to the defense of Trent, “because I could’ve sworn you were goofing off on Youtube.”
“Oh I see,” said Mark bitterly, “You’ve had enough of the freeloader in your apartment. If that’s all this is, you should’ve just told me. I said from the start that I was happy to stay elsewhere.”
“If you were honest with yourself,” said Oliver with icy detachment, “you’d admit that you do want a job. That’s the only reason you came back to Indonesia. But now you’re faced with looking for one, you’ve found it’s all too scary.”
“The way you said that, you sounded exactly like my father,” jeered Mark, almost exultant with contempt.
“Can I make a suggestion?” asked Trent, latching onto an idea that he’d hitherto disowned, “I think you might like it.”
“What is it?” asked Mark, cautious and defensive.
“I know the manager at Premier English in Kelapa Gading, and I’ve heard they’re short of teachers at the moment. If I put in a good word, she’d probably give you a shot. You would need to do a demo lesson, but I could help you with the lesson plan.”
Oliver stood there stony-faced, evidently sick of the whole business.
“Why didn’t you mention this before?” asked Mark.
“I don’t know. The pay’s pretty basic. Just seven or eight million a month. I thought you might want something better. But if you’d like me to reach out to her, I’ll see what I can do.”
“Yeah, all right then. Thanks,” said Mark, but the note of reticence was unmissable.
Dian, the Academic Manager of Premier English, was glad to hear from Trent. She said she’d been finding it increasingly difficult to recruit and retain expats. Trent explained that Mark was certainly not ‘a star teacher’, but he was familiar with Indonesian culture and was keen to stick around. She asked for his contact details, saying she’d like to meet him next week. At Trent’s prompting, Mark called her straight back, teeing up a meeting for the following Tuesday. It must have gone well enough, because she invited him back to give a demo lesson on Thursday. On the next two nights Trent sat up with him, poring over some resource books and helping him to write a lesson plan. On Wednesday evening, it was Mark who finally called it a night.
“Let’s not make it too good,” he urged, “Best not to get her expectations up.”
“I think it’s good enough anyway,” said Trent, “There’s a nice mix of activities there.”
When Trent left for work the following day, Mark was still in the spare bedroom. Trent knocked on the door and poked his head inside, asking his guest if he was nervous about the demo lesson.
“Yeah, a little bit,” he said, “but I should be okay. I’ve got the start of a cold as well, so I thought I’d just rest this morning.”
“Probably a good idea,” said Trent, “Text me later and tell me how it went.”
The lesson was scheduled from four to five, which was a busy time at the ‘language mills’. But when Trent had his break at quarter to six, he looked at his phone and found that there weren’t any messages from Mark. Feeling inordinately disgruntled (didn’t Mark appreciate the support he’d given?), he thrust the phone back in his pocket, his face a grimace of resentment. However, during his next class, he came up with an alternative explanation: Mark had fluffed the demo lesson, submerging him in a black depression.
The truth, however, was a much simpler thing: citing his head cold, Mark had called in sick!
When Trent found out, he was astonished, and not positively. Hadn’t he used a personal connection for Mark’s benefit? Given up the last two evenings to prepare a lesson plan? As he saw it, the non-appearance was a rogue move, the action of a shameless ingrate. If Mark had shown a modicum of embarrassment or regret, Trent could have been appeased, but he announced it matter-of-factly, as if it had been the reasonable thing to do.
“Don’t worry,” Mark added, “I rescheduled for next Monday. I can still use your lesson plan.” Though Trent acknowledged this with a single nod, he retained a grim set of mouth.
But when Oliver got home, his reaction was something much less constrained. Returning from the main bedroom, having put down his bag and taken off his tie, he immediately asked Mark, “How did the demo lesson go?”
“It’s rescheduled for next Monday,” he said.
“Oh,” said Oliver, crease-browed, “Did the manager postpone it?”
“Nah, I’ve got a cold,” said Mark, his eyes fixed on the screen before him, “I wasn’t up to it.”
“Really? Since when?” asked Oliver, his eyebrows signaling ironic detachment.
“I’ve had one since yesterday,” said Mark, “Do you want me to show you the medical certificate?”
“No I don’t,” said Oliver calmly, “because if you’re determined to blow it a second time in Jakarta, then it’s really none of my business. But I do think it’s time you got a hotel. I’d really prefer that we didn’t argue, and it’s getting harder to bite my tongue.”
“I’ll move out now if you want,” said Mark, with a pungent whiff of resentment.
“You can stay tonight, if you want,” offered Oliver, “but it’s probably for the best that you go in the morning.”
“No, I think I’ll go now,” said Mark, “Just give me half an hour to pack my things.”
“Up to you,” said Oliver, with an expression of profound boredom, “Don’t forget to leave the keys.”
And with that he went into the main bedroom, the door clicking shut behind him.
When Mark finally left, Oliver emerged from the bedroom and sprawled himself across the sofa. Turning his gaze on Trent he said, “It’s nice to have our own place back.”
“You were sick of him,” said Trent, more questioning than accusatory.
“What a loafer!” snorted Oliver, “He’s been here for three weeks and hasn’t gone to a single interview.”
“You didn’t buy the head cold?” asked Trent.
“What a joke,” scoffed Oliver, “You sat up two nights doing his lesson plan, and look how he’s repaid you.”
“It did make me angry,” admitted Trent, “I’d gone to a lot of trouble.”
“He isn’t worth it,” said Oliver, “He’s a waster. He can’t commit to anyone or anything. He’s given up on life. I’m not sure why you can’t see it.”
“There’s something I haven’t told you,” said Trent, “It happened the other day.”
“I don’t like the sound of this,” said Oliver, already summoning likely catastrophes.
“It doesn’t affect us personally,” said Trent, rushing to reassure him, “but I should’ve mentioned it earlier.”
He then related the tale of the side-mirror, ending with Mark’s bloodied knuckles and jaunty triumphalism.
“Thank God he’s out of the apartment,” said Oliver, “I mean, how long until he gets into another punch-up? If he’s determined to self-destruct, he’d better do it somewhere else.”
“I guess you’re right,” said Trent, “but I really felt guilty watching him go. In spite of his bravado, he’s vulnerable underneath.”
“He’s a complete egoist,” countered Oliver, “He’s never shown the least remorse for his actions. In fact, he always thinks he’s the victim. And that’s how he’ll see this little interlude too. We’ll be the nasty bullies who threw him out on the streets of Jakarta.”
“Do you think he’ll turn up on Monday?” asked Trent, not quite ready to write off his investment.
“I’d be surprised if he did,” said Oliver, “He may not realize it yet, but he’s already given up on Jakarta.”
But contrary to Oliver’s expectations, Mark did make it to the demo lesson. While his degree of seriousness would remain a bone of contention, his arrival at Premier English was never in dispute. For on the very evening of the demo lesson, Dian called Trent on his mobile phone and broke the news herself. In short, Mark’s lesson had been strange and bewildering and she couldn’t consider hiring him, not even on a casual basis.
“I see,” said Trent, “Could I ask what was so bad about it? I guess I’m kind of curious.”
“He had a very detailed lesson plan,” said Dian, “but he didn’t follow it. He just wandered around without any focus. To be honest, some of his behavior was peculiar. He mostly just sat at the teacher’s desk and gave his instructions from there. He didn’t try and engage with the students. He didn’t even ask their names.”
“Wow, that really sounds terrible,” said Trent.
“Actually, I spoke to the students afterwards and some of the girls found him ‘creepy’. That was the word they used.”
“I’m so sorry,” said Trent, now determined to minimize the fallout, “I knew he’d been having some personal problems, but I couldn’t have dreamed of something like this.”
“Yeah, I mean, there was one point where he was just sitting there and laughing to himself. As far as I could tell, nothing funny had happened. I think that’s what creeped out the girls.”
“Oh wow,” said Trent, with deepening mortification, “Well, enough said, Dian. Message received loud and clear! I won’t recommend him to anyone else unless I’m sure he’s sorted himself out.”
“Yeah, look, no problem, Trent, but I thought you should know.”
*
Jalan Jaksa was in a state of flux. The street had first risen to prominence as a backpacker haunt on the hippie trail. Though never a rival for Bangkok’s Khao San Road, nor even Delhi’s Paharganj, it was locally famous for its inexpensive lodging houses and range of ersatz eateries. If you were looking for cheap beer, bangers and mash or a second-hand bookstore full of dog-eared novels, Jalan Jaksa was still a reliable option. Yet in spite of these impressive assets, its low-budget heyday was coming to a close. With every passing year, fewer travelers visited the strip and more businesses closed their doors.
A variety of different culprits were fingered. Some blamed the Millennials, a generation who were reluctant converts to the delights of backpacker grime. Others pointed to the budget airlines; you could now fly right over Jakarta on the way to Yogya, Bali or a host of other appealing options. A further group blamed terrorism. These wizened critics claimed that years of hotel and embassy bombings had taken the gloss of Jakarta’s tourist image. Whatever the true explanation, Jaksa’s fortunes were well past their zenith and an era of decline had arrived. And it was that shabby, down-on-its-luck street which was Mark’s final stop in Jakarta.
In the evenings, he would flee his stuffy room to linger in one of Jaksa’s bars. He most often went to Ya Udah, partaking of the cold beer and free Wi-Fi which were always on offer there. He’d sit at one of the tables by the street, checking his email and peering out at the passers-by. For the curious traveler, the street attracted an eclectic mix of people. Apart from sandaled backpackers and down-market expats looking for cheap drinks, there were bootblacks, trinket-sellers, and troupes of tone-deaf buskers. Later in the evening, they’d often be joined by waria – the local name for transgender women. They were especially prominent on Jaksa, viewing it as an auspicious place to meet a foreign lover.
In this milieu, Mark was a subdued presence. Unlike the buskers, he wouldn’t strum a guitar or shake a tambourine, nor was he known for breaking into song. Though he’d sometimes spoken to other travelers, he was rarely judged an engaging presence, so he mostly found himself alone. However, on that, his sixth night in Jaksa, he was expecting visitors. Since moving out of the apartment, he’d stayed in contact with Trent, though only via text message. After the botched demo lesson, Trent, taking pity, had suggested that they all go out for dinner together. Mark had been openly skeptical, presuming that Oliver had already disowned him and wouldn’t agree to come. Trent had assured him that his worries were misplaced, but they turned out to be prescient. When Trent had spoken to his partner, he’d pronounced the relationship an ambulant corpse and suggested that they brain it.
“Come on, Olly,” pleaded Trent, “I know you don’t like him, but all I’m suggesting is dinner in Jaksa.”
“That isn’t all you’re suggesting,” corrected Oliver, “He’ll be there. I’ll be expected to speak to him.”
“Think of it as a farewell dinner,” said Trent, “He can’t have much longer on his tourist visa. I can’t imagine he’ll do a visa run.”
“Why don’t you go by yourself?” suggested Oliver, “You can send him my regards.”
“He’d see straight through it,” said Trent, “He already thinks you don’t like him.”
“He’s right!” laughed Oliver, “I can’t stand the sight of him.”
“We needn’t stay long,” persisted Trent, “An hour should do it.”
“An hour it is,” said Oliver, “and I’m going to hold you to it.”
When Trent and Oliver arrived at Ya Udah, they found Mark at a table near the entrance. There was a bottle of beer before him, and it struck Oliver as an ominous sign, a partial validation of his roiling dread. Although he’d already been anxious in the taxi, the feeling had been a formless thing, a kind of turbulent, black miasma. The bottle lent it shape and substance, suggesting an evening of drunken despair. Yet what really pushed Oliver to the brink of panic was the figure cut by Mark himself. On first seeing their former house guest, with his slouched shoulders and sunken expression, Oliver became convinced of the Englishman’s despondency. They were already too late, he thought. With Mark in such an agony of self-loathing, their visit could do nothing to rouse his spirits; it might even serve as a fresh source of torment. He should have been firmer with Trent; the whole thing was a ghastly mistake.
Yet they sat down across from him. Despite this, Mark’s awkwardness remained acute. He barely lifted his eyes for an instant before letting them drop to the tabletop.
“Hi! How’s it going?” Trent asked with forced cheerfulness.
“Yeah, all right,” said Mark in a voice bleached of expression, his gaze stuck to the dull tabletop.
Oliver shot Trent an impatient, even accusatory look: it was you who made me come.
Keen to relieve the awkwardness, Trent went searching for likely topics of discussion. At first, he thought it was going to be easy, but then the options started to narrow. He went to ask Mark how the job hunt was going but immediately remembered the disastrous demo lesson at Premier English. Though it was not impossible that he had applied for other jobs, Trent judged it highly unlikely; there was not a whiff of hope about him. Judging employment a decidedly unhelpful topic, he examined possible alternatives. He considered asking whether Mark had done any sightseeing. Perhaps he’d gone up to the observation deck at Monas or visited the Elephant Museum. But he quickly saw that this was hopeless too. Curiosity is rarely the defining trait of the depressed, and Mark’s mood was remorselessly bleak. For a brief moment, travel outside Jakarta seemed like a viable topic, but then Trent remembered the state of Mark’s finances. In seeing this option deflate like the others, he confronted an unpleasant reality: all the spontaneities of true friendship were gone, leaving only the social niceties, the mere machinery of habit and custom.
With grim resolution, Trent made an attempt at small talk. He asked where Mark was staying, what his room was like, where he’d been eating and so forth. Though the Englishman answered, he did so briefly, perfunctorily, as if these details of his daily existence were of no real interest to himself. He’d clearly arrived at that desolate state in which the presence of others merely heightens your sense of aloneness.
“I’ll get us some menus,” said Oliver, eager to foreshorten the agonies of the evening.
He waved at the waitress, who’d been standing at the rear of the restaurant, watching a soap opera on the TV. Taking the cue, she came across with some menus and an order pad. Though he felt like having a burger, Oliver ordered fried rice instead, judging it the faster option. Trent was slightly more adventurous, ordering the goat satay with lontong. Without even looking at a menu, Mark ordered the fish and chips.
“Mau minum apa?” asked the waitress.
“I’ll have another beer,” said Mark, tapping the side of his empty. It was the most life he’d shown since the Australians had arrived.
“Are you going to have one?” asked Trent.
“Let’s just share a big bottle of Aqua,” said Oliver meaningfully.
Though he would have liked the encouragement of alcohol, Trent took the hint and agreed to water. Yet by the time the drinks came, he was deeply regretting it. The inhibitions between themselves and Mark were now so numerous and densely clustered that the going was impossible. He would’ve welcomed anything which could help to blaze a new pathway.
But with only bottled water for inspiration, he made for a dreary conversationalist. Though he offered some reminiscences about their EH days, he gave a listless performance and earned an even more lethargic reception. His subsequent offerings (a meandering discussion of the president’s re-election chances and a plodding account of their recent trip to the Malukus) weren’t any more successful. With that, he gave up and asked Oliver about his day, speaking to his partner in a confidential tone which implicitly excluded the Englishman.
Yet it wasn’t clear that Mark had noticed. He was more focused on drinking his beer, chugging it down with unusual abandon. He’d finished it before the mains arrived, promptly ordering another. Oliver cast a disapproving look but Mark didn’t catch it; if he rarely made eye contact with Trent, he assiduously avoided it with Oliver. Yet it was precisely this avoidance, this careful sidestepping of Oliver’s judgmental gaze, which revealed the nature of Mark’s insecurities. While neither of the Australians had gone there hoping to launch an inquisition, it was this which Mark feared. The incongruous note of the beer aside, he’d sat there like a defendant in the dock, his downcast gaze making him look guilty.
Things briefly looked up when the mains came. It gave them a reprieve from labored conversation and painful silences. When Oliver first crunched on his outsize prawn cracker, it had the sound of relish. Mark was less obviously pleased with the food, taking a couple more gulps of beer before starting on his chips, but at least it got his gaze unstuck from the pale flypaper of the tabletop. The battered fish was a more comforting presence than his former colleagues. Nevertheless, it didn’t slow the pace of Mark’s drinking and within ten minutes he’d finished another bottle and was waving at the waitress to order a replacement.
“We’ll head off soon,” announced Oliver, “It’s been a long day and I’m almost ready to crash.”
“Suit yourself,” said Mark, with all the pique of a jilted lover, his gaze hardening and narrowing. Yet what bothered Oliver wasn’t so much the stony look which Mark arrived at but the hint of woundedness which had preceded it. The idea that Mark was somehow the wronged party here seemed absurd to him, a kind of injury all of its own. Hadn’t they come out on a work night to see him? And how had he responded but with a further display of teenage surliness? It confirmed his sense that they were pursuing a lost cause, making him keener than ever to leave.
He didn’t have long to wait. Looking at Trent’s plate, he saw that he was down to his last two skewers; they could make their escape any minute now. But before it happened, Mark managed a superlative encore performance.
At just that moment, a petite waria had appeared outside. Though she was probably heading to one of the Jaksa bars (the billiards room at Absolut was still popular with expats), she stopped outside the restaurant first to ask a passing backpacker for a cigarette. If she had failed to bring her own, it was probably due to a lack of pockets; this, it seemed, was one of the drawbacks of stepping out in a halter top and pleated skirt. The backpacker obliged, also giving her a light. She then stood there, puffing luxuriantly on her cigarette and gazing out at the passing traffic.
But her moment of jouissance was not to last. Something about her presence had attracted the notice of Steve. He regarded her with a mixture of amusement and derision, his face transformed by a huge, leering grin. Then the catcalling began.
“Hey, cantik,” he called, before lapsing into a fit of laughter.
Hey, beautiful.
Oliver started at these improbable rumblings of life, these volcanic intimations.
“Hey cantik,” he called again, even more raucously this time.
The woman turned, cigarette in hand, and coolly appraised the Englishman. To judge from her detached expression, she was far from convinced of his sincerity. Deciding that Mark was indeed a detractor, she raised her chin to look down her nose at him. Her dignity thus restored, she immediately went back to smoking, her movements still fluid and graceful.
“Cewek cantik,” cried Mark, more boisterous than ever. He then burst into a hysterical cackle, which pronounced him far drunker than the Australians had reckoned.
“I’m going to get the bill,” announced Oliver, all but issuing an evacuation alert.
“No need,” said Trent, “Our part comes to less than seventy thousand. I’ve got some fifties. Do you have a twenty?”
Oliver pulled out his wallet and withdrew a couple of ten thousand rupiah notes. They were the violet ones, with the likeness of a sultan on one side and a rumah limas house on the other.
“Here you are,” said Trent, holding the money towards Mark. However, he stared straight ahead, smiling a crooked smile. It was hard to avoid the conclusion that he was finally starting to enjoy himself.
“Just leave it on the table,” said Oliver, nodding in Mark’s general direction.
Trent made a neat pile of banknotes – one fifty and a pair of tens – as if careful handling could yet save the whole affair. Yet Mark just stared unblinkingly.
“All right,” said Trent, “We’ll be off then.”
Though Mark didn’t respond to this directly, he turned his head to look out the doorway, promptly resuming his catcalling. It was, Trent decided, a message of sorts: it really was time they were going.
Having long since reached the same conclusion, Oliver picked up his satchel, slung it around his neck and headed towards the door. The waitress called after him, asking about payment. She’d clearly been unsettled by Mark’s drunken jeering.
“Uangnya dengan dia,” he said, gesturing at their onetime colleague.
The money’s with him.
She nervously looked at the Englishman, who was eyeing the smoker with such an unpleasantly damp expression that it conjured the smell of mould.
Observing the waitress’s reticence, Trent decided to offer some advice. Turning to face her, he said, “Tendang dia ke luar, mbak. Sudah waktunya dia pulang.”
Kick him out, miss. It’s time he went home.
At first, the waitress seemed shocked by his words, but on realizing that he was serious, that this wasn’t some further mockery, she nodded soberly, slowly coming around to the suggestion.
With that, the Australians walked out the door, heading into the moist enormity of the Jakarta night. They passed the uncowed waria, who was enjoying the last of her fragrant cigarette; its tip glowed as bright as her hopes for the evening. The street beyond her was clogged with traffic – honking cars, the leather-hooded auto rickshaws known as bajaj and motorbikes angling through narrow gaps, inadvertently worsening the congestion. Upon seeing this, the Australians decided to walk a little. They made their way along the crooked footpath, passing dim guesthouses, cheap eateries, a mini-mart blazing with light and, right towards the end, a popular nightspot. There was a live music in the main bar, which drifted out into the street. Though the night was heavy and thick about them, the music arrived like a sudden whiff of breeze.
Stephen Faulkner is a native New Yorker, transplanted with his wife, Joyce, to Atlanta, Georgia. Steve is now semi-retired from his most recent job and is back to his true first love – writing. He has recently had the good fortune to get stories published in such publications as Aphelion Webzine, Hellfire Crossroads, Temptation Magazine, Hobo Pancakes, The Erotic Review, Liquid Imagination, Sanitarium Magazine, The Satirist, Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, Fictive Dream, Flash Fiction Magazine, The Literary Hatchet, ZiN Daily, Longshot Island, AHF Magazine, Midnight Street Anthology #3 and the anthology, “Crackers,” published by Bridge House Press. He and Joyce are both now retired and living the good life in Central Florida keeping busy volunteering at different non-profit organizations and going to the theater as often as they can find the time. His novel, Aliana in Paradise, was published by World Castle Publishing in 2018 and is available through Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com. His second novel, Lunar Effects, will be published by Eden Stories Press by October, 2020. |
Goodwill
I never complained though I knew that I had the right and enough reason. What were they, crippled or something that they couldn’t lug their last year’s “finds” to the clothes collection boxes in the parking lot of the local Lutheran church? With between four and six – sometimes seven – shopping bags to tote two at a time the four block route, clean-out-the-old-stuff days were, for me, all morning affairs. I did it willingly, however; it must have been my accepting personality. I could have made a scene, argued the point that it was Saturday and they weren’t so all-fired busy that they couldn’t get off their duffs and do it themselves or at the very least give me a hand. I’m sure I could have gotten at least one of them to help make shorter work of the chore. But I never did any of those things, always came back into the house yelling, “What’s left?” for the next set of bags. I was sweet natured and accepting about it, knowing that this was the only thing for which my sisters ever took advantage of me. And, except for birthdays and Christmas, they were also the only times in my young life when they ever gave me anything without having to be bothered for it. Doreen would bake me my favorite cake, Meg would take me to the Sunday movie matinee in town and Andrera would buy me whatever my heart desired as long as the price tag, including tax, didn’t exceed ten dollars. The rewards, though expected, never were the real consideration for my helping out on those strangely special days. I took the role of being my sisters’ pack mule as a duty, something unusual to do to kill some of the bleak time of a boring Saturday morning. Of course, though I was glad to help and be made a part of the peculiar madness of the house on such days, I never refused anything that was offered in recompense for my freely given services.
My arms felt like they were about to stretch to the ground from the weight of the bags in either hand. I made three trips to the six foot high steel boxes with their square, yawning maws up near the top. I was tall for my age, an inch or two shy of five feet – I was a gangling weed of a kid from several growth spurts by the time I had reached ten. Even so I had to us a hammer throw technique each time to get each bag into the gaping hole. Sometimes I missed, spilling the contents of the sack over the graveled asphalt of the lot. If it were the first bag I would take my chance with the second as I was usually better on the second throw with my timing and aim. Then I would gather up the spilled mess back into the first bag and try again with that one. Second time around I was usually able to guide the trajectory of the hulking bag directly into the open hopper of the Volunteers of America, Salvation Army or Goodwill Industries bin like a pro. Come to the third and usually the last trip, though, and my aim, would be fouled either by fatigue or a combination of that with boredom; by that time, after five or six throws, I just wanted to get the job over with and go home.
On my third foray to the church parking lot the year I was ten I came upon a Salvation Army box that was loaded to its rusty roof which finished it as a viable target. My first two trips had already topped off the Volunteers bin, so now that one was out, too. I could see shadows shifting inside of the Goodwill box and so assumed it was the only logical choice. By that time though I didn’t know which of my three sister’s bags I was carrying, I could feel the telltale drag and bulge of shoes against my left calf and ankle as I huffed along. The bag against my right side had the soft feel of clothing, not a belt or sandal in the lot. My reasoning proved true when the first bag hit the bin just below its high and wide opening with my first upward heave and turned upside down, dumping slacks and blouses, halter and tank tops and frilly ‘jamas onto the ground with a soft fwumpish sound. Frustrated yet anxious to get the job done, I two-handed the overstuffed shoe bag and, with my back to the target hole, I spun a swift 180 degrees and let it fly. It sailed into the opening without even grazing an edge or corner, hit the inside back wall of the bin with the deep, hollow bonging of a church bell. Before the reverberation could diminish another sound came from inside the box, one that was very loud and sounded decidedly very human.
“Who that?!” it yelled. The voice echoed tha-tha-tha-tha-tha from within the metal enclosure.
I was already on my knees, scraping up the scattered shoes of my first botched throw into its bag. In that attitude of supplication I was halted, not quite sure that I had heard what I thought I had. “Hello?” I said, tilting my head the better to catch a repeat of the obvious manifestation of the magic to which I had just been sole witness. Even if I got no answer, the voice I had heard amid the clanging ring of the vibrating Goodwill box would have been enough to give me food for a week or more of serious pondering.
“Hello,” answered the box, softly now so that there wasn’t any nagging echo in attendance.
“Me,” I answered stupidly. Then, realizing that that would not be enough, I gave my name.
“Chucky,” said the voice in a humming, thoughtful way. “Are you feeling kind of giddy, like fearful and nervous right now?”
I said no as I rose to my feet.
“And do you know who you are talking to right here, this minute?” asked the pleasant voice from the box.
Now relaxed a little, I again said no, that I sure didn’t.
The box shook with another gonging boom that caused it to shiver with sound of peeling thunder. “I AM THE SPIRIT OF GIVE AND GOT!!” it roared with a shout that surely made itself heard for blocks around.
I took a quick, jumping step backward. To anyone that might have been watching me at that time I would have been seen to be visibly shaking, barely supported on rubbery legs. My tongue had gone numb; I could only mewl like a squeezed kitten.
“You still there, child?” asked the spirit. A sound squawked from my throat as my glottis tried vainly to unstick itself from my uvula to make some note of affirmation. “I hear you, don’tcha worry about that none,” it said. Then, after a pause: “Wanna see me?”
“Yuss,” I managed to squeak, my throat making all vowels come out the same. I humphed to clear my throat. “Yiss,” I tried again, louder this time. Hearing the strange word that I had just uttered, I then commenced to cough and hawk out my fear.
From the open hole of the box a white shape rose like a faceless serpent. It turned toward me to show that it was eyeless, as well. But it did have a mouth and with that mouth it spoke without any real animation but that of simply opening and closing. No expression at all for the absence of nose or ears or eyes. “I am the spirit of give and got,” it said again in its deep nasal voice. “I give to those who ain’t got. With your kind help.”
“You’re the one?” I said, my voice now back to its full register. Ma had told me that all that stuff that was put in the boxes in the Lutheran Church parking lot went to the poor. I had imagined the boxes to be above-ground openings into a network of tunnels and wide pipings that took your offerings right into the home of those that she called “the needy.” A spirit who magically transported such cast-offs, though a less reasonable explanation of how it was done was equally acceptable as the former version to a person of the temperament and willingness to believe as my ten year old impressionable self.
“I’m the one that does,” the spirit said, its toothless mouth chewing on the words. It was dingy white, that head, its neck as long as an arm, bobbing and weaving in the shadowed frame of the box opening like a charmed albino cobra. “Those who need what you no longer have use for, are eternally grateful. As am I.”
“If you’re saying thank you,” I said, picking the meaning out of the spirit’s wordy reply. “Then you’re welcome. They’re welcome to whatever we can give.”
“As long as there is use for it and it’s not just rags, it is needed,” said the spirit. “This, however….” The sock faced spirit dove into the box and quickly came back up to toss a grime encrusted, threadbare old washcloth at me from the open front door of its home. “This kind of thing won’t do at all.”
I studied the discarded item closely, wracking my memory for its place in our house. “This wasn’t from us,” I said when certain. “My sisters only throw out good stuff, just a year old, even sometimes less than that.”
“Commendable,” said the Spirit of Give and Got as it descended back into the bowels of the Goodwill box. “Give your sisters my blessings and greetings.”
“Can’t do that,” I muttered to myself, knowing the answers and ribbings I would be in for if I conveyed a message from a spirit that no one but myself could believe in. My sisters, though dear to me, weren’t the kindest or most understanding people in the world when it came to what they would call childish nonsense. Neither were my parents.
“WHAT DID YOU SAY?!” rang the box, its sheet metal sides echoing out the ay-ay-ay-ay-ay-ay syllable of the last word as if off of the steep sides of a canyon.
“I said I’ve got a full bag here and another one still at home,” I lied and waited for a long, quaky moment for a response. Apparently the spirit’s powers lay in helping others and not reading the minds of frightened little boys. It gave no reaction to my fear when it said in its calm, gently deep voice, “Give what you have to give. And go, then, for the rest. The hunger for adequate clothing by those who have not is never truly satisfied.”
I tossed the previously spilled bag of shoes into the hopper with flawless aim and ran back home for the last bag. My impression of that racing run was that of impossible speed for a skinny legged ten year old. The back screen door of our house slammed twice in fast succession as I charged in to grab the handle of the shopping bag and back through the door on my super-sped-up legs to the parking lot and the Goodwill spirit of the donation box. Once the bag was inside in the spirit’s care it sent me off by telling me that my family would ever find happiness for its selfless generosity. It was only later that I came to the conclusion that the “selfless generosity” that the spirit deduced in my family’s nature was really a sham. That generosity was largely that of my sisters and that only because what was so generously given was stuff that was no longer needed or wanted.
My smug pride dissolved like sugar in hot water. My faith in the wisdom of the words of the spirit of the box, of Give And Got, diminished precipitously. Pretty lame for a spirit, I thought as I came to the corner of my block. What did he know anyway?
***
As expected, Meg took me to the Sunday matinee at the local movie theater; the picture playing was a revival of The Stranger with Orson Welles. She had to explain what was going on in some of the scenes but seemed glad that I took an obvious interest in such a “grown up” film and hadn’t been overly bored by it. As expected, Doreen’s hot-from-the-oven fudge swirl bundt cake (anything with fudge or chocolate in it was my absolute favorite) was cooling on the kitchen counter when we returned, its scented steam filling the back of the ground floor of the house. The only unexpected result of my Saturday good deed was one that came from me. When Andrea asked me what she could get for me for being such a helpful little man (“Keep it under ten bucks,” she reminded me. “I’m working, but I’m sure not rich”) I asked her for the money she would have spent on me instead of the gift she was planning on buying.
“No toy you’ve been wishing for?” she asked incredulously. If it was a toy I wanted, we both knew, a crisp new ten dollar bill would be useless to me; all the stores were in the downtown business district of our little city and are far out of my permitted five block radius of travel. “No book you want to read? Not even a t-shirt?”
There were some numbers in my collections of serial books I didn’t have (Rovers numbers 118 and 136; the last few of the Starman series) and there were also one or two super-hero t-shirts I would have liked. But I resolutely shook my head and held out for the cash. Shrugging her shoulders while muttering something to herself and Doreen about me getting to be a regular little financier, she forked over the ten along with a sloppy kiss that took an entire sleeve to eradicate from my cheek.
After dinner, with permission given to me on the condition that I should be back within the hour, I left the house at a dead run. Four blocks equals about a quarter of a mile in that town and I made it to the Lutheran Church parking lot in about two minutes (maybe three; I wasn’t carrying a stop watch, so I couldn’t be absolutely sure). No world’s record but for a kid my age I should have been rightly proud of the accomplishment. It didn’t matter to me at all once I got to where I was going, though I did hear the cheering of crowds egging me on for most of the route that I ran. The rhythmic flashing of the police car’s red rooftop light as it sat with three of its four doors wide open in the lot was enough to pull the Finish Line tape clear away to the center of town over two miles away. A square nosed truck with “Goodwill Industries: stenciled on its broad side stood nearby, its engine growling hotly in idle, its vertical pipe puffing greasy blue exhaust.
The door of the Goodwill box was open, the box’s interior dim and empty, its contents laying in a huge heap on a large sheet of burlap laid out on the parking lot floor. The Salvation Army and Volunteers of America boxes were still bulging, probably to be emptied out within the next few days. One of the policemen was talking to the truck driver while the other one was handcuffing a man dressed in grimy clothing and leading him to the open back seat of the patrol car. The man’s face was deeply tanned with a tight webbing of livid, cherry colored veins standing out below his left eye like a smudge of smeared dry blood. His thin hair reached to his shoulders in ratty coils, his beard was chest length and broad and shot with gray. Though presently soured by circumstance, his face was a pleasant one, determinedly kind. On his hands, against the chill of the mid-autumn evening he wore not gloves but white socks worn like mittens, molded to the hands so that, conceivably, they could be employed as puppets with which to speak to gullible, magic enthralled ten year old boys.
“Mister?”
Both the policeman and the vagrant turned to me, questions tightening in squints around both their eyes. Only the vagrant, the bum who had used the clothing drop for a day and night’s sheltered rest, smiled at me. His teeth were yellow-orange, outlined at their lower edges and along the gums in shades of brown and black. I held up the ten dollar bill for him to see. “For the Spirit of Give and Got,” I said. The question on the face of the young policeman remained, even deepened. The vagrant, continuing his angelic smile, just shook his head. I felt foolish for not having brought along something more appropriate, like a cut of Doreen’s cake or a woolen scarf to be worn against the coming winter’s bone chilling winds. What could a man in his current predicament do with a measly ten bucks?
“Give to the Spirit, then,” he said in a voice not so deep or booming as that which had issued from the large metal box. “What it requires.”
“But you are….” I said, forming an argument before I was sure of what it should be.
“Just a voice,” said the man, cutting me off kindly. “A conduit through which the Spirit of Give and Got sometimes speaks. But right now…” His smile faded as he shrugged. “Just a bum, homeless and sad.”
“C’mon, old fella,” said the young cop as he nudged the man toward the open car. His more experienced partner had finished with the truck driver and was heading toward us. The young cop was obviously nervous, wanting to get this little matter back under his control before the older officer would be forced to intervene. The kindly bum did not resist as he got into the back seat of the police car. He was still smiling at me as the younger cop shut the door. The second cop reached us as I asked in a loud enough voice to be heard through the closed rear window of the car if he, the vagrant, were getting enough to eat.
“When he’s in the pokey,” said the older cop to me as he got behind the wheel of the patrol car. “He’ll get his three squares, don’t you worry.” He then slammed the door, started the engine and put the car into gear. The younger cop was already in the passenger seat and seemed almost timid and still a bit edgy about the way in which this “collar” had been conducted by him. “Once he’s out – po’boy tomorrow – feeding him self’s going to be his problem.”
The vagrant leaned forward in the back seat, the purplish patch under his left eye fading a little in the glare of the dome light and said something to the driver. The older cop nodded and gestured for the bum to sit back in his seat. “Says to tell you the Fifth Street Mission House. All donations gratefully and graciously accepted.”
The younger cop pulled the passenger side door shut with a soft thump and the dome light went out, bringing a soft gloom to the car’s interior. The older cop gunned the engine, waved out of his open window to me and drove out of the lot. As the hum of the police car’s thrumming engine faded into the distance, the side of the open clothing drop box shuddered and rumbled two words to me as if carried on the undulant wave of receding sound: BLESS YOU! I heard it distinctly; it was not a trick of the ear or of the echoing nature of the metal box.
The Goodwill box, open and empty, kept on rattling like artificial thunder, tolling off the echo you-you-you-you-you-you like a talking bell. The Goodwill truck driver was busy pulling the four corners of the burlap over the load of donated clothing, forming a mammoth hobo’s bindle out of the formless heap. He looked up, having been startled for the moment at hearing what was surely something that couldn’t have been heard, was not real. Then he shrugged his heavy shoulders before going back to the tedious task of knotting the four corners of sacking together with a thick length of frayed, hairy looking twine.
Chris Collins is a morris dancing, shanty singing, narrowboating English teacher who writes. Her poems and short stories have appeared in Cephalopress, Three Drops from a Cauldron, Twist in Time Literary Magazine, Mooky Chick, Animal Heart Press, Between These Shores Literary and Arts Annual, Dusk and Shiver Press and Enchanted Conversation. |
Woman Under a Eucalyptus Tree, 1927
So I came. On the boat, my stomach tingled every morning when I woke up in the top bunk of the four-berth cabin, thinking of that letter. Remembering how my head had swum, and London’s grey streets silenced for a moment when I first read it. Then telling my sisters while avoiding their eyes; buying the ticket in quick breaths; clammy palmed embarking. Then: the feeling of speed, but only at the bow, watching miles of changeless blue that seemed to fly towards me yet seemed motionless. Salt air that dragged brown curls from their pins and tangled it, whipping away like the smoke from the steam engine fires. Trying not to think about our childhood legend of Uncle Bill, shovelling coal on the big Belfast ship fifteen years earlier. Trying instead to focus on that line in the letter, to stay excited as the days drew out and my tingling stomach ripped and churned with the heaving sea. Keeping my mind on the young man I had stepped out with in Mile End on Sundays, who spoke nicely, was a Catholic, and talked about his brother in Gallipoli. But he never told me about Belgium. Just said he’d been too young, but he always changed his socks. Then he’d look at the ground; smile at me bashfully and change the subject. He told me about his brother in a funny named place. Then one Sunday; he told me about a chance of cheap land – farming, and his eyes glittered, and his words came in short breaths – out of London, out of the grey fug, to build something – and with a smile, he was gone on a boat, ten thousand miles away. Like the songs.
Then the letter. So I bought my ticket and got on the boat. What can I do now but watch the sea, and hope? Sick to my stomach that he might not meet me at the port, that I’ll be alone and abandoned on the other side of the world. Ten days in; winding myself up. At least six weeks to go.
I didn’t see him at first. The sun was in my eyes; they were streaming from the wind and I was squinting. My insides were water again, head light, breathing underwater, spinning around in all the noise and tall men. Then my name, shouted in a way I’d never heard it said before; a sudden collision – arms and squeezing; I was off my feet and spinning for real and crying. He was here. He was here. It was all alright.
We sat close together on the cart, holding hands. Despite the heat, and Mary Joseph, it was hot. Breathing easy for the first time in two months, I could take in this sky. Even on the gentlest spring day in East London, never had I seen such blue. So unabashed, so brazen in blueness. He was smiling and chattering, confusing the horse by waving his rein hand about, but I kept interrupting with gasps and starts: ‘what’s…!’ ‘why’s…!’ ‘how’s…!’ as cockatoo shrieks overhead sent me in spasms of shock before I saw their sunlit snow wings. He laughed, told me its name. He’d just launched into another story when a bolt of vivid green on wings shot out of the canopy like a leaf bullet and lurched me to my feet again to point at it. He fell silent then, letting me take it in, as I watched colours lit by a light I’d never seen the like of. Great black cockatoos with their flamed tails, blood red birds called rosellas and such open, open space that split my ribs apart to breathe it. All filled with green. And the sun. So fierce and sharp, like pins on my arms and neck. Yet familiar? The green, the flowers – from a distance; purple clusters or pink and white tall bells, the name within grasp but when we approached them, elusive to define. Similar, but not the same. He waited for me to wear myself out looking at this new, hot land, then sleep a little. It was a two-day journey down a jolting dirt road to Pemberton.
We stopped the following afternoon in Manjimup. Green fields and grazing had been broken up by more trees and it was all forest now. Immense trees, like nothing I’d ever seen, bone white and straight like the skeletons of giants. A logging town he said, and it took four men to cut one tree down which could build an entire house. He’d known a chap get into the tree cut once, for a bet. I shuddered. Yarri, he said, and Karri. What? and Marri, he continued. I dug him in the ribs as he laughed. The fortune of Western Australia, he told me. Excellent for ship building. I thought of Uncle Bill.
His brother met us, with his wife, and took us to the police station where he worked. Cool water to wash our faces in the shade; a comb, a sprig of flowers. Straight into the church to make it all legal; respectable Catholics. After the long voyage, so quick; all this new family, all these new places, all these new animals, heat, trees, feelings. He pulled a gold ring from his pocket and showed me the engraving; Bernard and Irene, 1927. I cried then. I think it was because I was happy. I think so.
On the way to his homestead, he tried to prepare me that this arable land he’d been sold was a bit of a con. It was all forest, in fact; those giant eucalyptus trees a man could cradle in, and he had fourteen months left of his contracted twenty-four to clear it. My face dropped at that. He pressed on, leaning towards me with his eyes and face serious; told me about the sawmill where he made a decent enough living selling the wood he cleared, and he’d made good progress; built a house. We’ll have a good life, Irene. We drove through the village of Pemberton, along its railway for the logs, then out the other side. He made me laugh with the funny names and sounds of places; Wandergarup, Beedelup, Nannup. Native words, he said. Then we arrived.
It was a one-story clapboard house, with a brick chimney. A veranda took up the entire front of it and the roof was a sort of corrugated tin. He’d cleared a bit of space in front of it into a small garden, then beyond the fence, it sloped down like a little valley. There was a brook down there, he said, among the trees. Huge trees, like sentinels; like a permeable, shifting wall all around the house. We ate supper on the veranda, the pearly king and queen of our own little kingdom. A huge black crow landed on the gate and cocked its head at me with gold rimmed eyes, then spread its wings to reveal white patterns like Spanish fans. It flapped off to a high branch above the house and threw us down its call as my face opened to catch it and I laughed. It’s a currawong, he said. You’ll hear kookaburras (I laughed again at the name and he smiled) at dawn; you laugh but so do they – wait till you hear that. Huge bearded black ravens came out wailing such a mournful cry it sent shivers down my arms. Magpies enthralled us with a song like flutes. We sat on the veranda as the stars came out. The eucalypts had such a tangible smell – ubiquitous; herbed, like wild thyme; I’ve never forgot it. Great ribbons of bark stripped off them and scattered around the trunks, like old skin being scoured off leaving young, supple smoothness behind. I felt I would live forever too. But there was an edge to that wonder, an edge like fear. You could forget that there was a town two miles away. It was easy to believe there was nothing at all but the green forest and us. On the edge of something, with fear and wonder both there. I was tingling again with excitement – my first night as a married woman in my new home, tingling for the warm night, the heady smells – so clean – the strange flowers and birds, the gurgling water below. He stood up and beckoned me to the edge of the veranda and pointed up to the stars. The southern cross, he said. You’re the first person in your family ever to see it. He put his arms round me. I suppose the fear was there too, then. But so was wonder.
The next day his brother and wife surprised us with a visit. Help you settle, they said, now you’ve got used to… they trailed off and politely looked out the window with little smiles, and I blushed. They brought us so many supplies I became afraid of what Bernard had been surviving on, but Margaret brushed this off with chatter about welcomes. She talked me through practical, serious considerations when managing a home alone in the forest, and how she’d prepared when they lived in Youanmi. At the time I remembered less than half of what she said, following her around the house with a notebook while she pointed things out, made suggestions and asked me questions. She was very kind – I always wished we’d seen more of her. Bernard had disappeared off outside with his older brother and after a deal of pointing and standing around, they came in and ate lunch. William commended my cake. I’ve always made good cakes. Afterwards they shuffled us outside, grinning and holding a camera. Bernard and I laughed and arranged ourselves with our backs to the sun; he heaved me up onto a fence post and leaned on it debonairly. I’d been laughing all day, dizzy with everything and nearly fell off, but I managed to keep still long enough for the picture. These trees, these birds. This sun. These people.
It was lonely later. Those first few days seemed very far off when my belly swelled in the hot summer. Bernard was away every day razing his forest and I paced the veranda in the shade, trying to get comfortable when the baby wriggled. At first it felt like how your stomach gurgles when you’re hungry, or after dinner. Then it was tighter, pulling, and my breasts ached and went solid. I missed my sisters and wrote to them, but we were so remote I never had many return letters. It reminded me how often I was alone. Then as summer passed and winter took hold, it rained so much, no one could visit anyone. I worried constantly about what would happen to Bernard if he injured himself logging; and about the birth. I missed London then. It rained there too, but at least there were people. Bernard came back at lunch times, dusty, dirty, his blue eyes jarring in his face, and when it rained in the winter; he’d come back earlier, covered in mud and lean against the sink, peering out at the sky. Green and wet, he’d say, shaking his head. Then clap his hands; just like Ireland! I rolled my eyes. I didn’t remember Ireland. My accent had broadly flattened years ago in Mile End. What voice would this child have? Neither of her parents’. She would take for granted the green ring-necks, the black cockatoos and the eucalyptus trees that I found so watchful and still. How would she feel about them? Would they not make her feel alien and lost? Would she be touched by them in a deeper way, bled from birth? Or would she look at them as I do pigeons? My own bush child. I asked Bernard where all the people were. In town, he said, that’s all that’s been settled around here. Were there never any people here before? He frowned. Said he didn’t know. Must have been, because all the names are native words, so someone must have said them. Well where did they go? I asked him. He shrugged.
We had adventures. One afternoon, I rode home from town and came across a snake on the path. I’d like to say I spotted it first, but the horse did, and nearly threw me off when it reared. Clinging on, I saw the snake rise and face me, poised to lunge. It seemed to me that moment was stretched out endlessly, I could hear it hissing, I saw the black strips on its back; we both wavered in the heat. I shot that snake dead with my gun, while the horse was still bucking.
Then June was born in July. The coldest time; no midwife could get to me through the floods and the birth was terrible. I thought of summer back home; June – the word always makes me think of green oaks and dog roses. We were both very happy in those first few days with our tiny little person that filled the clapboard house with more purpose; another thing to grow. Bernard leaned over her one morning and exclaimed, oh! She has your eyes! And she nearly did – instead of one blue and one brown eye, she had one blue and the other exactly half and half in a horizontal line. My unique little girl. Even now, I’ve never met anyone else like that. And the brown was carried on as a splodge in her daughter’s eye. I wonder if her children will have it too.
In between running the house and after the child, I didn’t have time to feel lonely for the rest of the short winter and before we knew it, white blossoms flourished on the peppermints again. June was beautiful – I know all babies have curly heads but hers was astonishing, and she smiled all the time. As she became more aware of the world, she would clap her hands at the ring-necks and rosellas, and gurgle like the stream when the magpies sang. When she began toddling, I could watch her from the garden while I dug the carrots. She was very good, kept to the trees and didn’t go near the stream. She often came running back with little leaves or gum nut shells to show me and I made her build a little collection, so she had something to do while I worked. Bernard loved her. Carried her everywhere; out into the bush to see wallabies and she came home squealing, brown dust smudged all over her face. Then we’d eat on the veranda under the stars framed by the close edges of the forest and I thought that the lights of the southern cross are the only stars she’s ever seen. Yes. When I look back, there were lots of very happy moments when I really loved Australia.
I was pregnant again. June was more mobile; she could run and was harder to keep up with as I got slower. I feel awful saying it considering what happened to her later, but I used to wish she wouldn’t move as much.
In the end, I couldn’t face it. Another winter, alone, wrangling a two-year old with backache and breast ache and no sleep. Just to speak to another person through the day. I could see Bernard was tired, physically aching from logging; and our life together was very much lived on Sundays just as it had been in London.
Then I got a letter from Ellie. She’d moved out to Japan with her husband. And suddenly the idea sharpened like a far-off fuzz of wattle resolving into individual tiny flowers. I spoke to Bernard. Told him not to be unhappy, that I’d come back when the baby was born. I just needed a bit of family near me for a little while, during the pregnancy – to help with June. Ellie was lonely too, do us both the world of good. He looked off towards the trees and peppermint blossoms for a while; a currawong filled the silence. Then with a grimace, he nodded.
We never went back. I got a letter from Bernard a little before Mick was born saying he’d sold up and was on his way and we’d go back to London from Osaka. Then my little girl’s eyes were filled with the grey of London instead of the greens and reds of rosellas. Still, Australia would have been no place to grow up when the juvenile arthritis set in. But I wish she’d been old enough to remember the black cockatoo, or what a wallaby looked like. Perhaps she’d have grown into a happier woman if she’d had more bush colours in her eyes.
Ayan Das is a senior year student, pursuing bachelor degree in history from Calcutta University, India. Although his love for fiction began since middle school, his exposure to Anton Chekhov gave him the enthusiasm to write his own piece of fiction. Being a romantic person and his fascination about human emotions, Romance is one of his favourite genre, which he chose as a theme for his first short story, and excited to share with all the readers out there. |
THE MERCHANT'S LOVER
Ananya Malhotra ignited the last candle in her bedroom when someone banged the door. She looked at the clock, blew the candle in her hand, and rushed towards the door with a smile on her face. Before she reached, it banged twice, louder each time. “Coming!”
She opened the door and Vikrant was there. He picked her into his muscular arms and slammed the door with a furious kick. Ananya wrapped herself on him and flopped into the bed while showering kisses on his face. Vikrant moved the frizz from her giggling butterface; it was flushed with the rays of the full moon and the flaming candle. He weaved his index on her crinkled brunette hair and found those big hazel eyes where he found himself lost every time.
“I think you should tell her.” Ananya broke the pleasing silence.
“I know,” he replied, with a sigh of sadness.
He leaned on the bed and grabbed the half-drunk glass of champagne from the table. Ananya grazed herself into his arms and began to wave her soft palm on his newly grown beard.
“I understand. But how long we can live like this? It feels like we are not just betraying her, we are betraying each-other too.” said Ananya. Her voice was cold.
Vikrant heaved another deep sigh and turned at the window behind him – to the sea of the Arabs; it was glittering like someone had weaved a blanket of pearl on it. Ananya was following his chivied face; after losing its true colour to the yellow giant in the sky, it still glowed like flakes of snow in the moonlight. She clutched her left arm tighter over his neck and started to play with his silky dark hair.
“That fear of yours, it will make the truth more painful for her. It has been seven months; it's just a matter of time that she will find us. Can we take that risk?”
Vikrant looked at her. “I am just afraid that she just doesn't do anything stupid.”
Ananya grabbed his face and looked straight into those tired brown eyes. “Hey. Nothing will happen like that.” Vikrant's untamed heart got a little relief by her mellow voice; he gave a smile of comfort to her.
“I wish I had met you earlier,” said Vikrant, and kissed on her forehead.
Ananya's eyes became glittered by the stored moisture in her eyes. She gave a pleasing smile and kissed him with utmost fervency. She laid her head on those strong pecs and closed her eyes. “Better late than never.” said Ananya.
Vikrant kissed on her head and looked at the sea, where the brightest moon was leaning to the east. The grand clock on the north wall told them they had passed another midnight together, and there are hundreds of midnights like this are waiting ahead. He sighed. “Better late than never,”
Vikrant Dewan was a merchant who spent most of his days on Goa port, shipping excellent pieces of jewellery across continents. But in his 31 years of life, on a scale 1-10 of having a great romantic life, he was dragging himself at the bottom quite successfully for a long time. While having everything a man could wish for – money, time, handsomeness, but still he couldn't let go of his one particular habit, which was the real cause of his boring adulthood: lack of romanticism. The reason behind this behaviour was quite tricky, but the outcomes were tremendously funny and often annoying for the women at his opposite. As some examples, Jhanvi, his girlfriend from high school, waited an entire evening on her 17th birthday at Roxy's cafe, because her boyfriend was busy to tally up the last month's business expenditure – his second girlfriend, Ruma, who was an aspiring poet back in the college days, recited one of her own, poorly written poem to his new boyfriend, on the valentine's dinner. But instead of receiving a bunch of roses, chocolates, and ornaments, she received nothing but some hilarious laughs and claps from her boyfriend – and for the last one, Dipshikha, who left him almost 6 years ago, because he used to compare Deepshikha with his late mother, Mrs. Ankita Dewan.
Despite such horrible experiences, whenever he approached or got approached by someone, God knows how, but he always came back with the same title from each one of them – “calculative and unromantic.” As the days passed, and the graph of his failure spiked upward along with it, his desires fell dull and he went back to his mistress like every time, his work. But, life never stops; it flows, along with the people, and Vikrant wasn't meant to be an exception. Love is something that cannot be found – it just happens, and it happens you're expecting least of it. He too found his ONE, the one he was waiting for so long – Ananya – through one of the few things he dearly disliked – parties, especially the casual ones.
He was in Mumbai, for one of his client's wedding reception. He had no intention to attend it, but then he thought it would be the worst way to lose a lucrative client. Like always, he wasn't enjoying the party, the atmosphere was choking him. He decided to say ‘goodbye’ to the newly married couple when a woman came into the reception hall.
The red saree and the long brunette hair drew every pair of eyes in that room. The woman was in her mid-20s, she was slender, like the God sculpted himself. She handed the gift to the bride and looked away from the couple when their eyes caught each other for the first time; a glance, which supposed to flee in a second or two, locked on each-other, until one of her friend, or a colleague perhaps, break the hypnosis and took her away to the crowd. But it was too late, the damage was done, those hazel eyes had already made the man obsessed. Before the gentleman inside kept him under control, Mr. Sikhawat, the old groom, came with the woman in the red saree to introduce her.
“Mr. Dewan! Meet Ms. Ananya, the mastermind behind those beautiful pieces of jewellery, our chief designer.” He said, turned at Ananya. “And Ananya, meet Mr. Dewan, our finest customer, and a great friend.”
“Finally,” said Ananya, extending her hand with a smile. “Nice to meet you.”
Vikrant suppressed his impetus and grabbed her hand; a sweet warmness hit his frozen palm.
“You must have cast a spell on him, didn't you? I don't remember a day in the last 2 years where he didn't admire you.”
“Careful, Mr. Dewan. Ms. Malhotra has a two-edged sword in her tongue.” A crooked smile was hanging from Mr. Sikhawat's face.
“A merchant who failed to pick the gem from a pile of coloured stones, has failed as a merchant. And I'm pretty sure I am not one of them,” said Vikrant with a pliant smile.
There was a brief silence until her unparalleled smile and the groom's laugh came out together.
“See, Ananya? Mr. Dewan knows how to play with words too. There is no way you can fail; your contribution to our company is invaluable, Vikrant. You are the true jewel of my business.”
“It's always a pleasure to work with you, Mr. Sikhawat. And I hope that this relationship between us will be unending.” Vikrant said.
“Well, I never had a doubt about that,” said the old groom, smiling. “did I say anything wrong, Ananya?”
“No, absolutely not,” replied Ananya, with a wider smile. “Don't worry, Mr. Sikhawat, I will do my best to make sure that this relationship between you and Mr, Dewan, thrive at its potential.”
Vikrant still couldn't believe it had been 9 months since that day, and now 4 weekends in a month wasn't enough for them. But anything with Vikrant had never gone easily. There were obstacles in the path, but unlike the others, he didn't have too many, just one – Rohini, his wife.
2
Rohini was stirring the coffee when the sharp sound of the door came into her ears. “Good morning,” Vikrant said with a smile, put down his dark grey coat on the sofa, and started to unbutton his sleeves.
“Good morning.” She replied.
“What's wrong?”
“Nothing,” she put down the spoon and took a sip.
Vikrant went to his wife, standing beside the kitchen window, in her green velvet housecoat, gazing at the cup. She was taller than Ananya, almost the same as Vikrant. Her flawless porcelain skin was contradicting with the fact that she just crossed 42 some days ago.
“What's wrong, my love?”
Rohini remained silent for some moments. “I had a fever yesterday – I called you, three times, even in your office, but –”
Vikrant never hesitated to avoid interactions whenever he spent time with Ananya, but Rohini's sore voice and dried face made him tense and convicted for the first time. He laid down in her shoulder, and the remaining tulip perfume on her black silky hair hit his nostrils. Vikrant tightened his grip and reached her cheek.
“I am sorry, sweetheart, actually I was with Mr. Sinha.”
“I called him last night.” said Rohini, turning at him, “He told me you left for home before evening.”
Vikrant became speechless. Rohini gripped his hands. The coldness in her palm ran through his veins, he froze.
“What's going on, Vicky?”
“What do you mean?” asked Vikrant, remaining still for some seconds, “Wait a moment. Don't tell me you think I have a mistress in Mumbai, Do you?”
A few drops of tears streamed through her cheek; she dropped her grip and turned away.
“My god! Rohini,” Vikrant laughed out loud and kissed her.
Rohini gripped him with all her strength; his shoulder became wet, but her restored warmth and trust somehow delayed his worry. But deep inside, he knew, with every delay, he was sharpening the lie, and very soon that lie will tear her heart into pieces. But every time Ananya came in front of him, his sensations, his emotions, stabbed his dignity. Ananya herself couldn't resist his charm; she knew every time she met him, kissed him, loved him, she was destroying three lives. But her morality couldn't stop the force of love frisking inside her. And when love is forbidden, that force becomes unstoppable. Every time their limb, their lips, their hands touched each other, they felt that God made them do this sin; it was their only way to run from that guilt – that pain they were causing, not only to each other but also a person who was completely unaware about this infidelity. Vikrant realized he was pushing everybody's life in an unending hollow of darkness; he decided this tale of lies must end.
Later in that evening, Rohini was sitting at the edge of the bed, unlocking her tangled hair in her bath coat, when Vikrant entered in his boxer and flopped over the bed.
“Sometimes I think I should have married a more matured man.” Rohini smiled at him.
“Mature men won't tolerate your irrational demands,” Vikrant spread his hands and closed his eyes.
“Like what?” she replied, frowned.
Vikrant heaved a deep breath, “Like – ”
“Like – a baby?” she replied.
Vikrant pulled his head; Rohini's lips were radiating with a smile. He stood up, “What did you just say?”
Rohini dragged herself close to her husband, “I was thinking about this for a long time, but I wasn't sure how you would react about this but – Vikrant, don't you think we should become parents now?”
“A child?” he said, after a brief silence. “Why?”
“What do you mean "why" ?”
“I mean, are you not enough for each other?” he asked, in a throbbing voice.
Rohini touched her nose at his, “I didn't mean that – I just want to complete this small, happy, family of ours.”
“But you are 42.”
“We will sort out something.”
“Did anyone say something to you?” asked Vikrant.
She looked at his eyes, remained silent. “I just want to be a good mother.”
“And what makes you think you can't be one?”
“I – I can't explain.”
Vikrant grabbed those soft cheeks, “I am sure you will be a great mom – but, ”
Rohini discarded her eyes from him.
“Rohini, children are a huge responsibility – and I don't think I am ready for that. Besides, I am not in a mood to share.”
Rohini burst out into a laugh, she grabbed her husband and smooched his lips extra deep. Vikrant was lost, thinking about that day when she would find out about these promises, these appreciations, all of it, was nothing but a lie. “This the last time I am lying to you, Rohini. I promise.” Vikrant thought to himself, tightening his arms over his wife.
It was mid of November. Ananya leaned on a rattan chair in the balcony, from where the sea was pretty far, but visible. The sinking sun fell his last sweet rays to brighten her ivory face. She was sipping wine and looked sad for some reason.
“Do you love her?” asked Ananya.
“No.” said Vikrant in a cold voice. He leaned on the balcony, little far from Ananya, concentrating on the sinking sun.
A gust of wind hit them, filled with the aroma of succulent fruits and mellow flowers from the gigantic garden outside her apartment. Ananya closed her eyes, an alluring smile raised on her face. “Looks like nature also believes that,” she said. Vikrant replied to her words with an ashamed smile, sipped his coffee, and went back to the sunset.
“I know how it feels, that very thought – that fear,” she said, “My mother was a charming woman. I admired her more than anyone in my life – but she didn't admire me, not even once. She told dad I was her biggest burden, otherwise, she would have left home way before. That day, after hearing those words, I was the happiest person alive, knowing I was saving my family – but what I didn't know, was the real meaning of 'burden”. And when I did, everything was over.”
Tears fell from those sunlit eyes, She looked down as a blow of wind weaved the loosen hairs from her bun. “It has been thirteen years and I don't even know if she is alive or not – and I hope she is not,” said Ananya. “Life is strange. People we love the most, are often those who hurt us the most – and I know you don't want to bring that pain upon her.”
Vikrant was surprised. It was the first time she ever mentioned her past, which was completely against their few mutually agreed conditions; “Never insist each-other to reveal about another's past” was one of them. But now he realised why she pitched this condition. Although he had no problem with that, because he didn't have to mention his shameful failed relationships – not even their names, and surprisingly, his wife was in that list too; all she knew, that her lover is married, nothing else. At first, it felt a little weird, but later, he realized that their past was the only antagonist of their love, and so they decided to accept each other as who they are, instead of what they were or what they pretend to be.
Vikrant sat down on his toes and grabbed her hands. “The only fear I have is losing you.”
Vikrant's words glittered in her smile like the last rays of drowning sun did on her hazel eyes. She grabbed his face and kissed his lips; the essence of strawberry on her lips made him kiss longer than usual. After the detachment of lips, Vikrant smiled at the massacre he made on those slim red lips. He rubbed his thumbs over them to reveal the soft pink skin and kissed again.
“I want to live like this, every day, for the rest of my life,” said Vikrant with a joyful smile.
Ananya grabbed his neck with her lenten arms, Vikrant stood up and pulled her on his lap like an infant.
“Can we just vanish – for some time? Far away from this – this reality,” said Ananya.
“If that pleases you, so be it.”
3
It was a fine day in December. They were in Mussoorie for almost a week, in a hotel named Blue-Pearl, situated on the northern side of Mussoorie, covered with lavish greenery and the bluest sky. The sun was drowning behind the greens, and the fugitive lovers, running from their reality, were enjoying their warm tea at the balcony. Vikrant was on his chair, with an empty cup in his, enjoying the last rays of Mussoorie; Ananya was sitting on the other side of the table, congregated, leaned over her chair, looking towards the glowing west. Vikrant opened his eyes; her silhouette with waving frizz fell upon him. That was everything he ever wanted – everything he ever dreamed about. Three failed relationships – a complicated married life, and now he had found his one, that young woman in the gold playsuit, sacrificing her dignity, her humaneness, for a man who committed an unforgivable betrayal to his lawful wife. That was love, a true and purest one, beyond every social containment.
“Vikrant? What if we never leave this place?”
“You mean hide?” said Vikrant, pouring tea in his cup.
“If that's how you see it – yes,” said Ananya, looking west.
“I wish we could.”
There was complete silence for some time until Ananya broke it.
“Sometimes I think, I am the one who made you corrupt. I don't think God will ever forgive me.”
“Every choice has a cost, Ananya. It is the priority that matters.”
“You don't understand. Every time you come to me, I not only see your undivided love for me; I see guilt, shame, in your eyes. Tell me, Vik, if you feel so ashamed of yourself, then why didn't you leave me?”
Vikrant understood her concerns – realized his past is the only way to make her understand the present.
“My parents died in a car accident when I was twenty, left nothing for me except a business at the brink of collapse. I went door to door, every person I knew, for help – and obvious reasons, nobody was ready to lend their money to a would-be bankrupt sophomore, so I had to make some bad decisions.”
“What "bad decisions" ?”
“I took the money from some bad people.”
“Then?”
“But I wasn't making enough profit from my business, to pay the amounts that the lenders were demanding.”
“Let me guess, this was she came in, right?” Ananya said.
“Then one day, a fashion designer came to the shop; we met, we talked and we laughed, and she gave me an expensive deal that I needed desperately – and this is where everything went wrong. As weeks passed, the dinners became dates – friendship became a relationship, for her. But I was mesmerized by her charm – I didn't stop meeting her, and nor did she. One day, after one of the dinner dates, she handed over me a briefcase full of cash. And before I could come out from the shock, she proposed marriage.”
“And you weren't able to reject her,” she said.
“Of course I couldn't, she saved me from getting shot in the face, that was more than enough for me to delightfully accept her proposal.”
“Then what?”
“Then life happened. I saved myself and my business, got married to a beautiful woman, made a lot of wealth – but somewhere, it all felt false, felt pretended for me. Now it feels like I just traded myself to her, to save my life.”
Vikrant went silent, so did Ananya.
“You must be thinking so pity about me, isn't it? You should, but trust me, Ananya – I tried to love her, and I still don't know why I couldn't. That's why I decided if I can't pretend to be a good lover, at least I can pretend to be a great husband.”
“But you failed her – and yourself,” said Ananya.
“I avoided countless women in the past four years because I didn't want to break her heart.”
“What happened then?”
“I fell in love.” said Vikrant.
A mesmerizing smile shined on Ananya’s face.
“I shouldn't have said these; now you might be wondering, how to get rid of this melodramatic traitor,” he said with a sarcastic smile on his face.
Ananya stood up with her pleasing smile and sat on his lap.
“You want to know I am thinking? If I hadn't met you at the party that day, I would have lost the most loyal partner destiny has to offer.”
Her words brought an unseen smile on his face she had never seen before. Their warm lips touched each other. The kiss felt different, it was sweeter than ever.
The next morning, Ananya had caught mild fever; she didn't leave the room and Vikrant went to bring some medicine before taking their fight in the afternoon. Ananya was getting bored with the annoying headache and loneliness. She ignored her lover's advice and started to pack their luggage.
Vikrant came back with the drugs, saw Ananya in front of the wardrobe. He called her numerous times as he went forward. She turned, with a bunch of photographs in her left hand and a tiny box in the other.
“You have brought a ring for her?” she asked in a sharp voice. “Why?”
“Tomorrow is our marriage anniversary,” Vikrant replied casually.
“Wait a minute! I am confused – are you truly that innocent or are you just an excellent actor? What is it?”
“Why are you getting frustrated over this small issue?”
“Small issue? My God, Vik. Are you shameless? After everything, you told me yesterday, and now you are planning to surprise that person – who took advantage of your “tragedy”?”
“I have already told you, despite the truth, I am still her husband. I can't deny that responsibility.”
Ananya put her hands over her face as things in her hands scattered over the carpet. “I am tired of this 'Trying to be a great husband' acting of yours; it sickens me.”
“This is just a gift, I don't know why you are reacting like this?”
“Because I think you are enjoying being dragged between two women.” Ananya ramped towards him. “It must feel great? Isn't it? Collecting love and lust from both, by keeping them happy with your vigor and sugar-coated words?”
“Watch your mouth, Anne. You are crossing the line.”
“No! You are the one who is crossing the line.”
Ananya grabbed his deltoids with her sharp nails. He prepared a gruesome reply to her nonsensical behavior – but then, he saw the same insecurity and concern in those eyes. He stopped himself, remained silent for some moment.
“What's wrong? Tell me.” Vikrant touched her cheek.
“Stop this.”
"I can’t." Vikrant released himself from her daunting grip and heaved a sigh.
“I shouldn't have brought you here; it's not your fault, I am the one who wanted to spend time with you – but as long as that woman is present in your life, you can't be alone,” said Ananya, throwing the box over the bed. “Do whatever please you – but don't try to touch me until you break all the ties with your precious wife.”
Vikrant stood still like an imbecile, listened to her mean words as she pushed him aside and slammed the door.
4
9 days after his absence, Vikrant was finally on his way home, ready to tell the truth to Rohini – but what was intimidating him, was Ananya's outrageous assault she rammed upon him. Despite being well aware of her impulsive nature, he didn't expect her to be that visceral and terrifying over one diamond ring. He reached the main gate, while these things still huddled inside his mind. The watchman gave him an enthusiastic smile and opened the door.
He entered their bedroom and left astounded. It was covered with mild yellow light, the fragrance of fresh tulip was huddling inside, symbols of love spread everywhere, and a path of rose petals leading to their bed.
Vikrant's face became gray; all that strength, courage, vanished.
“Happy anniversary, love,” said Rohini, smirked at him.
That sleeveless black dress stood out on her porcelain skin, hair was straight and dyed recently. She kissed his lips, quite harder than usual. She looked at his right hand, “I guess that's mine.”
“Of course, who else I will bring this to?”
“You deal with jewels – it's not hard for you to find a gorgeous hand.”
A smile of embarrassment bloomed on his face; he failed to give a reply.
“I am kidding,” she said. “Wait here, I have something for you too.”
Rohini handed him an opened envelope, went to the couch, and started to make a drink.
“Where have you been?” asked Rohini.
“Honey, I told you. I was in Delhi, to negotiate with a client.”
“What client?”
“It's a new one, you don't know. Why are you asking? ” Vikrant said, reading the letter inside the envelope.
“Well – a man came here yesterday, to meet you – he said he was from Delhi.” said Rohini, “He told me he had an appointment with you, which didn't happen – because you went to meet him personally – at Delhi.”
The smile on her face was evident to him that the deception he had been sewing for the past seven months was shredded. He prepared to apologise.
“Rohini – I,”
Before Vikrant could complete his words, Rohini threw her glass at him. It shoots through less than a few inches from his face, scattered on the wall behind him.
“Don't you dare to say a word, you son of a bitch!”
She grabbed his collar and shook him. Her eyes were red, glittering.
“I buried my instincts, every time – whenever you said those sugar-coated lies. I loved you, gave you my everything – but you went to that whore, just for your undying lust for young women. How dare you go Mussoorie with that witch? Did I never disrupt through your conciseness, not even for once, huh? Answer me, answer me!”
“Rohini, listen,”
“Don't you dare to seek apologies, you bastard. You have no dignity, nor shame,” she said, grabbing his chin with her nails, “What I failed to give you is that you went to that slattern? Tell me – what spell she had cast on you, or you just couldn't resist her youngling sexuality, huh? Tell me, what happened – tell me.”
Vikrant looked away from her red, swollen eyes, and tried to remove himself from her firm grip.
“It's my fault, Rohini. Don't drag her into this.”
“She had nothing to do with it?” said Rohini, stepping backward. “Do not tell me you have fallen in love with that filthy woman.”
An absolute silence took over their quarrel.
“So it's true then,”
“I know what I have done, Rohini – the amount of pain I have brought upon you; and no amount of apologies can't amend this. I never wanted to hurt you – I thought by hiding the truth, I was sparing you – but now I understand I was just sparing myself. I know you can't forgive me, but I am tired of lying – I can't betray you anymore, or myself.” said Vikrant, heaved a deep sigh. “If I had told you before, neither of us had to see this day.”
Rohini absorbed his words with her fragile patience; her eyes were still red, but dried out of tears, jaws grinding on each other. She slapped him.
“You think I am a child – that you'll give me two lectures about philosophy, and I'll forget everything you have done and hand you over to that worthless bitch.” said Rohini, “Listen to me very carefully, Vikrant Dewan. If you dare to meet her again. I swear to god – I will slice her throat, remember that. Now get lost, I am done with your fake tears. Get out!”
5
Days passed, and they became two strangers who lived under the same roof. Ananya, on the other side, was boiling rage. The man who said countless lies, one after another, just to spend some hours with her, hadn't contacted her for the past two weeks. She called him thrice, every day, but he never picked up once – but the new year brought an end of her loneliness and impetuosity with Vikrant's arrival – and brought something worse than she was going through.
It was a Friday night. For the past nine months, Ananya used to go out with Vikrant in every fortnight Saturdays – they watched cinema, or a play, dinned traditional french meals at Juliette's, then roamed around Aksa beach, having chat with a couple of sweets kisses and go back home before midnight. Now, those happiest days seemed decades ago for her.
Vikrant caught sight of Ananya as he entered in her bedroom; She was on the floor, at the verandah, under the dim light of the chandelier – wearing an old white romper, whose lease had been fall down from her shoulders – two bottles of scotch, one empty, an ashtray front of her, a glass in her left hand – empty, and a flaming cigarette in the other.
“I thought you lost the way,” said Ananya, staring at the sea. “Come, sit. Let me make you a drink.”
Vikrant sat beside her – her face had become withered, dark patches below her eyes, seemed she aged twenty years in just twenty days.
“I am sorry I couldn't call you.”
“She found out about us, isn't it?”
Vikrant remained silent.
“And I guess she has told you to leave me, otherwise she will kill me,” Ananya said with an inattentive smile, eyes still froze on the glittering sea.
And again, Vikrant didn't say a word.
“Then you are probably here to tell me – “It's over, Ananya. I am sorry. Please forget me.” Tell me I am wrong.”
Vikrant saw the anger, the fear of loss, through those teary eyes. He touched her cold hand, “Look at me, Anya. Look at me.”
She turned her fainted gaze to him.
“Until death takes my last breath, no power in this world will be able to separate us.” said Vikrant.
“Then leave her, because she won't. You have to leave her – or she'll never let us come together, she will never let us come together,” said Ananya, hiding her sob.
Vikrant put his right arm on her hunchbacked shoulder, lobbed her frizz over the left ear, and wiped her stained cheek.
“I will make everything right.”
“But she won't let you.”
“What makes you think like that?”
“ Because I know plenty of women like her, and I am well aware of their capabilities.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because if I was in her place, I would have done the same.”
Vikrant realized her emotion had got completely seized over her intelligence, harsh words will only make this worse. He touched her shoulder, “All right – what are you proposing?”
“Let's disappear – forever,” said Ananya. “This is the only way left.”
“Left? Where? This is no hide-and-seek, Ananya. She will come after us. And even if we consider that, I just can't leave Goa. Everything I ever achieved has been spread around that place. I can't just leave all that and leave, it's impossible – and dangerous too.”
“Dangerous? For who? Me or your possessions?”
“Life is not a fairytale, Anne. I don't need to teach you the value of money – then why are you asking me to do something that will put our lives in greater trouble.”
“Then what should I do? Let you sleep with that witch for another seven months? Huh? Tell me!” Ananya started to sob aloud.
Meanwhile, several drunk corporates were passing below the balcony, caught her sobbing. A mid-age crossed, chubby, bearded man between them, shouted at Vikrant. “You filthy bastard, don't make that gorgeous girl cry – I am warning you – otherwise I will come up, beat your ass, and make her my bride.”
The corporates laughed at his Shakespearian style threat, and they went off to their destination soon after. Embarrassed, Ananya wiped her tears and prepared to go into her room.
Vikrant grabbed her hand. “Do I look like I am happy? Knowing the woman I love, living all alone, dying for these few hours,” said Vikrant. “I am going through the same misery as you are, but sometimes you have to do things which do not please you, for people who love you – care about you.”
“Do I not love you enough? Care for you enough?” she asked.
“More than anyone else.”
“Then stop this nonsense of “being generous”, I can't tolerate this anymore.” said Ananya, “A woman you don't love, is living with you under the same roof – and I can't even see you when I want. What kind of relationship we are in, Vikrant. Sometimes I feel, I should kill myself rather than burning in this pain.”
Vikrant looked at her with his daunting eyes and remained silent before telling her his intention, which he knew she would deeply disagree with.
“Look, we need to stop seeing each other – for a while – until the divorce. That's the only way to be certain about our future.”
“Are you out of your mind? It will take months, maybe years, god knows – and how can be so sure that she will sit idle in that time? You are infidel to her; she will do anything to see you in misery.”
Vikrant heaved a deep sigh in self-disappointment. “Then what do you want me to do?”
“Stay,” said Ananya. “Send her a divorce notice. You don't need to leave this house anymore."
“Are you crazy? This madness of yours will sink us both. You need to calm down, and let me handle this.”
“No! Let me handle this. I have already seen what you can do. If you wanted, you would have told her the truth way before this inevitable chaos, but now I understand why you didn't? You have fallen in love with her. That's the truth.”
“You've completely lost your mind.”
“I don't want you to hear another word from you. If you leave this house today, it will be closed for you – forever.”
Vikrant remained silent. His eyes were stuck at her wet hollowed eyes, demanding his answer. He stood up and went off without saying a word. She didn't stop him or say a word, just turned at the midnight's sea, fumed the smoke in the air. The sound of door-slamming echoed in the room – she smashed the flamed cigarette in her palm and burst into tears.
6
It had been a month since Rohini wasn't talking to Vikrant. After that quarrel, she was going through an ambivalence between forgiving him and continuing the torment silence, until his self-esteem kneel in guilt.
After Vikrant came from Ananya's house, Vikrant didn't get a chance to lay his back on the guest bedroom as Mr.Sinha, his manager, notified him about a fixed meeting with a client. Knowing he had nothing to do on this lonesome Sunday, after eating some breakfast, he went off towards his office. Rohini was keeping her eyes on his every movement, presumed the reason for his absence last night, which led her to decide to end this tormenting silence between them by erupting another wave of rage at him. After an hour of sunset, Rohini’s strolling stopped by the doorbell, but unlike her husband, she heard multiple loud footsteps, ascending on the stairs. She turned, saw a mid 20’s girl in a blue tunic top and white trouser, and the maid gasping behind her.
“Mam, this woman wanted to meet you – I told her to wait – but she didn't listen.”
Rohini raised her hand at the maid, turned at the girl. “Do I know you?”
“Oh yes. You do, but I am here so we get to know each other a little better.” said the girl.
“Come to the business, I don't have time for bullshits. Tell me who you are or I'll throw you out of my house.”
She frowned with a smirk. “Why don't you call your “beloved husband” and ask him who I am. He knows me better than anyone in this world.”
Rohini's eyes became wide, she waved her hands at the maid; she nodded and left. Ananya went in and stopped in front of her. Her stagnant eyes were irritating Rohini.
“How dare you come here?” asked Rohini. “Get lost, or I’ll call the police.”
“I bet you can – but I didn't come to digest your vile words or your silly threats. I am here to tell you the truth.”
Rohini smiled. “The truth? I know enough. You better leave with your truth, or I'll call the police.”
“Go ahead, call the police, call your lawyer, call whoever you want to call, but today you'll learn the truth, whether you like it or not, Mrs. Dewan,” said Ananya. “Or – should I say, Mrs. Malhotra?”
Ananya’s last words froze Rohini's heart like a cadaver. “What did you say?”
“You are not used to truths, aren't you?” Ananya said with a smile.
“I am Rohini Dewan, and that's my one and true identity.”
Ananya lost into false laughs for a couple of seconds. “So you have abandoned your past, just like you abandoned your ten-year-old daughter in that filthy courtroom."
Ananya's words flinched her back, her heart was stopped, so did her consciousness – collapsed altogether. Her entire life flashed through those astounded eyes, all those memories she had fallen behind years ago.
“Ananya?”
Ananya's red eyes became blurred. “No. I am the girl who cried inside that courtroom, called my mother a thousand times – but she never looked back.”
“No! This can't be,” said Rohini, throbbing, tears dripping through her chin.
“Isn't it ironic? What you did with me years ago, is now happening with you.”
“I did nothing more than saving you, girl. I loved your father, I loved him enough to become a mother when everybody went to college because I didn't want to break his heart – but your father just loved himself; his wish hadn't stopped with you. He wanted me to live my entire life, rotting in that kitchen, bringing food to his mouth three times a day, taking care of you and the household. I wanted to be an artist, but he trapped me in his sweet words – but I said nothing, I was ready to sacrifice everything for you and your father – but he didn't stop there, because he didn't want to. One day he burnt all my designs, just because I was going to an exhibition with a friend of mine – and that day I decided that I can't live with that person under the same roof.”
“After all these years, now that I am front you; you want me to believe you left me because dad was a skeptic. I saw your meeting with Mr. Rahaman every day, for months before you left us – don't you dare to blame my father.”
“Your father was a vile, skeptic, and a selfish man. He never wanted to see me thrive, but Rahaman did, he encouraged me; helped me to become who I am.”
“Oh! Of course, he did. Who would dare to stand before your charm and lust.”
“Shut up! How dare you talk to your mother like that?”
“You? My mother? What have you done as a mother? Tell me?” said Ananya, “Nothing, you did nothing. But now you want the privilege of being one. Have your hypocrisy knows no bounds?”
“What do you know about me? How much do you remember? Did he ever tell you what happened that day? Did he tell you I called him for months? But he didn’t let me talk to my daughter.
“Stop Lying!”
“What do you know about lying? What do you know about me? What I had been through? What did I do to bring some food to my mouth? You know what's true – You never understood me, just like your father never did.”
“I don't care. In all these years, how many times has my thought crossed your mind? You are telling me you did everything to save me from your struggle? Then why didn't you try to communicate with me? In all these years? Have you ever thought about how I look like, what I am doing, even if I am alive or not? Anything? No. Where have you been when I got bullied because of you? Where were you when I burnt in fever and mumbled your name? Where have you been when I bleed for the first time? Where were you when I was all alone? Nowhere, you were nowhere close to me, because I was a burden for you, an obstacle, on your dream life – but see the amusement of fate; it brought us together, it brought me to my justice, and you to your ultimate fate. You have taken everything I am deserved, so you could live your glorious life. Now I'll do the same to you.”
“You can't do this to me.”
“Yes I can, and I will. Just like your selfishness snatched you from me, I will snatch Vikrant from you, and you won't be able to do nothing. And that will be your true punishment.”
“Do whatever please you. But let me make myself very clear. If I lose him, I swear to god, I won't let you have him – even if I have to kill him for that,” said Rohini.
“If you cause one scratch on him,”
“You have no idea what I am capable of.”
“No matter what you do, he won't come back – you know why? Because he was never with you – you are nothing but a burden for him – but how could you know? A cold-hearted woman like you is incapable to feel anything beyond sexuality.”
Ananya's words brawled inside Rohini. Her neck cramped, so did her left fist. She swung her right palm on her face at lightning speed. The sound echoed in the room. There was an absolute silence. Ananya's eyes were wide, swallowed, dried out of tears; Rohini's fingerprints were flaming on her ivory cheek, shrouded by the hair.
“Don't you dare to talk to me in that manner,” said Rohini. “I am not a woman like you who destroys families. Now get out of my house, and never come with that face again."
“How dare you touch me – you, a characterless woman. You slept with men to reach where you are right now, and you are lecturing me about my character. What do you know about me to question my dignity?” said Ananya, “It's not your fault anyway. You thought that I am just the same, like you. You may love him, but I never trade anything to make him do the same. This is where you lost, Mrs. Dewan.”
Rohini lost her voice, her will was scattered. She was running from years, from all these truths, were unbearable for her; those selfish excuses that defended her dreams, her achievements, her reputation, everything she sought in her life, now needed her defense to retaliate against that harsh truth, otherwise, she will lose the only truth that matters to her the most – the undying and selfless love for Vikrant. Before Rohini could stab her with her words, she saw her daughter, yelling some seconds ago, tottering; her eyes were starting to blur – and in a blink of an eye, Ananya fell over the white furry carpet beneath their feet. Rohini, absolutely baffled, kneeled beside her senseless daughter and started to shake her arm.
“Anne? Anne! ” said Rohini.
She put her fingers below her jaw. The blood was still running, but a little slower.
“Reena!”
Reena, the housemaid, jogged inside the bedroom, wiping her face with the fringe of her saree. Before she asked why she had been summoned, she froze by the unknown lady, unconscious, laid on her landlady's arm.
“Oh my god!” said Reena, “What happened to her?”
“Stop panicking, Reena.” said Rohini, “She has lost her sense, call the ambulance. Now!”
Vikrant hadn't touched a pen or a paper in the entire day. After the meeting, he laid in his office,thinking about his mistakes that brought him in that abandonment; the mistake of falling in love with Ananya, the mistake of lying to his wife for months about his illicit relationship. All these irreversible incidents were huddling inside his mind when a deep yet euphonic sound brought him back to reality. He opened his eyes. The clock had struck 8. Vikrant stood up, and the telephone rang.
“Hello?”
“Sir, It's me, Reena. I need to tell you something. Today,”
Reena told the partly known story to her landlord in a single breath.
“What? Where is she?”
“Mam told the ambulance to go to St. Teresa Hospital.”
7
Vikrant was wriggling his hands at the reception; he bent his left wrist to calculate the time hospital authority was taking to evaluate his request to meet Ananya. After some moment, the female receptionist, who was vanished with his request, came to him. “Mr. Dewan, the authority has accepted your request, you can see the patient.”
Vikrant went into a room and saw Ananya in a deep sleep. As he was observing her, someone entered the room. A doctor - tall, dark, average aged man with a clean-shaven face and rimless glasses, looked at him like he had lots of questions to ask and more answers to give.
“Mr.Dewan?”
“Yes.”
“There is something I need to clarify first, I won't say a word until you give me trustable information about your relationship with our patient.”
“She is my lady.”
The doctor doesn't seem shocked like he was expecting this reply from the beginning. He looked at him for some moments with a smirk on his face and said, “Well then, congratulations, Mr. Dewan. Now your lady has your love inside her.”
Vikrant's heart stopped, and so did his mind; he couldn't laugh, nor cry. He had no words left to respond, just countless possibilities of four lives, rattling inside his mind. “The woman who admitted her, is she aware of this?” Vikrant asked.
“You mean her mother? Yes, of course. But she had left almost an hour ago, and didn’t care about informing us.”
Vikrant closed his eyes; he clutched his fists and heaved a deep sigh.
“Doctor, do what's necessary, I will come back soon.” said Vikrant with a frozen voice, and rushed away.
Vikrant broke almost every traffic rule anybody could break to transit a trip of 45 minutes in just twenty. The terror inside grew impetuous as the distance between him and his wife was decreasing. Reena informed him that her wife didn't go to the house. Vikrant knew where she went to – Their villa near the kola beach.
Vikrant rushed through the lawn to reach the door; he went inside and ran through every room at the ground floor, but they were flawless, as two weeks ago. He went upstairs and saw Rohini at the balcony, looking at the sea. Vikrant halted at the door. She turned; her skin had turned grey, so did her eyes, the fortifying wind brought the fragrance of tulip to his nostrils – it was familiar – it was in the anniversary gift. His feet tucked at the floor. There was silence, the stagnant eyes were talking with each other. She looked back to the sea, it was dark, just like their lives, the night of the new moon. Vikrant went forward as she grabbed the railing.
“Rohini, come back here.”
She was too far to reach his words. She pushed herself and submitted to the gravity. The sound of the collision made him deaf. He ran.
She was laid on the lawn. The stream of blood touched his shoes. Vikrant collapsed in front of her, shivering, looked at his wife for the one last time, the woman he betrayed, the woman he killed, the woman who loved him till her last breath, her wife – lost – forever.
8
The summer passed in courtrooms. They shifted to Kolkata in the first week of June. Vikrant went busy, setting up his business there, and Ananya devoured herself to redden everything in pink in the room they chose for their child. Although Vikrant and Ananya, both were disappointed with Vikrant. She was supposed to be spending that time with her husband, not with a middle-aged Bengali housemaid. But that wasn’t the only thing which bothered Ananya; during those courtroom hours and migrating to a new place, she developed an illness. She saw her mother, everywhere – covered with stains of blood and tears, looking at her, every day, everywhere. But Ananya didn't tell her husband; she didn't want her imbecility to cause him any distraction. But unfortunately, things didn't go as she planned; the depression didn't stop; she did everything to distract herself from the distraction – painting, singing, writing, playing guitar, but it didn't change a thing. Soon that depression turned into dreams, and eventually into delusions. Ananya started to see Rohini everywhere – bedroom, kitchen, hall downstairs. Every time she saw her mother, that delusion did nothing but showered unending anguish and anger through those dark, hollowed eyes. As the days passed she started to believe in those hallucinations. One day, things went so bad that she screamed out loud in the middle of the night.
“Go away. Leave us. I beg you, leave us!”
Vikrant was observing her unusual behaviour, thought the reason for her unhappiness and disappointment was he, himself. But that night, he realized that his wife was going through something else, something more horrifying. With her utmost reluctance, they visited a local psychotherapist. After some days, due to her decreasing symptoms, Vikrant realized that the medication was working. But what he didn't know, that she was overdosing the medicines to prevent those unending hallucinations, and getting addicted to those drugs while doing so. Soon, he found out this problem and tried to convince his wife, but she rejected his advice with extreme aggression. When she refused his words, he applied his masculinity and snatched those medicines from her. And things went worse – she screamed, yelled and begged for those medicines, rampaged in the house with that little life inside her. Vikrant wasn’t seeing any solution, he thought the anxiety that was tormenting her wife had caught him – the fear of losing her wife, the insecurity of their child's life, bombarded upon his head together. And three days before her wife's delivery, the fear that was eating Vikrant's heart for so long turned out to be real. Ananya overdosed those medicines to avoid the panic attack, but she failed to handle it and fell from the stairs, all the way to the drawing-room.
Vikrant knew he was getting punished, for the crime he can't outrun, but he didn't know his true punishment was still waiting for him, a punishment that he will give to Ananya and himself. The doctor gave him a choice, her wife, or their daughter.
Vikrant put a rock in his torn heart and chose. He traded their daughter for Ananya. But the price he paid was half, the other half was Ananya's – and she did pay the price – with her motherhood. She lost her fertility due to excess drug consumption. The news killed Ananya, from the inside; she had no tears left after giving all to his daughter, all she had was countless regrets and a heart that will never get the warmth of a child.
Time slipped like clenched sand. A year passed, but they didn't. It was an evening on the end of monsoon, Vikrant came back from the port and saw her wife sitting on the balcony, tranquilized, looking at the Ganges. Ananya stopped stepping outside their house, her smiles were history, and so did her painting. The strings of the guitar caught rust like her voice. All she did was roamed around the room that meant to be their children, every day, for the past one year. The only person she had was her husband, to lie down on his shoulder every evening, and talk about the kids, who played in the garden in front of their house.
“Ananya?” said Vikrant, entering their daughter's room.
She didn't move or replied to his words, sitting still on her chair at the balcony. The drowning sun was lost behind the dark clouds of August, the moist wind made everything glitter, from the garden to the Ganges at the opposite of it, radiating the green. The room was dark, merely covered with the ashy light of dusk. Vikrant went through the waving curtains and stood behind her. He couldn't recognize her Ananya anymore; her skin had lost the bright gold tone, cheekbones had become more prominent, and the hair had lost its shine, and the fragrance of tulip was lost. He put his hands over her shoulder.
“You know what day it is,” said Ananya in a sober voice, looking at the river.
Vikrant sat down beside her; he held her cold, moist hand and remained speechless.
“It's our daughter's birthday,” she said.
Vikrant had lost everything, and he blamed none but himself. He had no words left to comfort her pain, her anguish, but only shed tears with her, and tried to share the grief of a mother, who had lost her daughter, her motherhood.
The last ray of dusk was gone, so did the growl of the wind, but the torment silence was still with them. Ananya stood up and went in, it was her time to take the pills.
George Lubitz was born in Manhattan, New York. He is a copywriter and photographer living in Denver, Colorado and his short fiction has been featured in The Adroit Journal, Gravel Magazine, Pif Magazine, and elsewhere. He has a 4-month-old kitten named Willow. |
Passing Through
“Can I ask you something?” She said.
Usually when I hear a phrase like this I recoil, and the hairs on the back of my neck stand up at attention. Not so, here.
“Certainly you may.”
“I was wondering if you’d ever been to Rotterdam.” Rotterdam? I thought to myself.
“No, I can’t say that I have, but I’ve always wanted to go.”
“I had a feeling you did. It can get quite windy there, you know.”
In fact, didn’t know that. What’s more, I didn’t know much about the city at all, except for its unique claim to fame—that it was a city on the water. Not exactly an island, Rotterdam had a grid construction that did away with typical streets and avenues and was instead largely made up of long, slender channels of water.
Mika continued: “I think it would be fun to take a trip there someday. Maybe we could go together.”
She wasn’t coy about it or anything. No, when Mika said something like “Maybe we could go together,” she absolutely meant it as she said it. As in, it might be possible that the two of us would take a trip. She wasn’t fishing; she wasn’t trying to gauge my interest in going.
I looked through my window. The sunshine was oppressive, sure, but it was nice on my face. By the looks of it, it was already a little past noon, and I had only just put clothes on. A bright pink Oxford that was stylishly a size too large, faded black jeans, and desert boots (I have a rule that if I’m going to get dressed, it must include shoes as well). With one hand, I blocked out the sun. With the other, I pulled the phone closer and used the crook of my shoulder to tug on the long cord.
I asked: “What are you up to today?”
“Well,” she said with a sigh, and I could tell that she used the duration of the deep breath to gaze at whatever she had laid out in front of her, taking inventory of her To-Do list. “Right now I’m folding laundry. And after that I’m going to read a book. I don’t know which one yet, since I finished one last night before bed. Then, finally, I’m going to get some cat food.”
“Cat food? I didn’t know you had a cat.” In all fairness, I had not yet been to her apartment, but it seemed rather odd that this was the first I was hearing of a cat, since I had been on a heavy handful of dates with Mika. At this point, we’d been seeing each other for a little over three months.
“I don’t have a cat. Not yet, anyway, but I’ve been thinking about adopting one, and I’d like to be prepared for when I do.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. I stopped myself before I broke out into absolute hysterics, which I might have, had I not thought better of it. “Well, there’s certainly nothing wrong with being prepared.” I waited a moment before following up: “What kind of cat? Or, I guess, what kind of cat food are you thinking of getting?”
She chuckled and said “I’m not sure just yet. I think I’ll have fun with it. I might let the pet store clerk tap deeply into his or her expertise. And then what I think I’ll do is improvise the whole thing. Depending on how it all plays out, I might let them decide the cat for me.”
I blinked a few times in quick succession, not exactly clear on what Mika meant. “How exactly does that work?”
“Think of it this way: if the store clerk recommends a certain brand of food for kittens, I’ll just have to get a kitten. But if they talk my ear off about the best food for elderly cats, then it’s an elderly cat I’ll get.”
“I see, but what if they ask you what breed of cat you have?”
“Well, in that case…” She let the silence fill the space once more. “In that case,” she continued, “I might have to tell them I don’t know exactly which breed of cat I have, but instead I’ll paint a picture of whatever comes to mind. Maybe it’s a young black cat. Maybe it has really tall hind legs with long, round ears. Maybe she’s fifteen years old, white with orange spots, and was born without a tail. Depends on what comes to mind first.”
I laughed once more, edging on hysterics yet again. “That sounds like a plan, alright. I just hope the store clerk is up to the task.”
“Me too,” she said. “I’ll let you know how it goes.”
“That sounds like quite the day. I was wondering if after all this you’d like to grab dinner with me. I’d love to hear more about your feline adventure over some food.”
“That sounds lovely. How does seven sound? You can pick the restaurant.”
“Seven it is.”
I told her that there was a cute new sushi restaurant perfectly placed equidistant from both our apartments. Sushi sounded fabulous, she said, and I could tell she meant it. Her feelings on food, alongside her opinions on everything else, were never said with embellishment. Speaking with Mika over the phone—much like speaking with anyone with whom I shared a genuine interest—was an absolute pleasure and never felt like a task to be completed. While she had her laundry to get folded, and I had my own set of responsibilities for the day, I could sense an unspoken agreement: Conversing with each other was not at all a chore. I hung up the phone and started on my errands for the day.
Off the beaten path and tucked away on a street that had no name, I arrived to the restaurant with five minutes to spare. Not exactly a secret spot, this particular sushi restaurant hadn’t been discovered by the masses just yet. I had read about it in a magazine just the week prior and decided it was worth a try. How bad could it be, anyway? I wasn’t particularly in the mood for sushi, but I was in the mood for intimate, quiet conversation with Mika, unencumbered by rowdy restaurant goers in an otherwise loud establishment. Rather than hedging my bets on a place I had hoped would be quiet enough, I elected for an otherwise unknown locale. And my choice paid off immediately—When I arrived, I was the only person inside, except for a lone sushi chef who appeared to double as the maître d’. Without a word, he shuffled out from behind the sushi counter and greeted me up front.
“Just one today, sir?”
“Actually, I’m waiting for someone.”
“Well, typically, we don’t seat incomplete parties, but I’ll make an exception.”
He showed me to a small booth by the window, and I ordered a whisky highball while I bided my time.
As I waited, the sole employee shuffled quickly back behind the bar, which was conveniently connected to the sushi counter, and fashioned the highball masterfully. As he did, I looked out at the empty dining room. I usually wasn’t very particular about restaurants, but on this evening it was crucial that I picked the right kind of ambiance.
I thought about the run of Mika and my relationship up to this point. I really enjoyed speaking with her, and I was feeling grateful—of all feelings—that we were scheduled to have another date in the books. When you first start seeing someone, no second (or third, or fourth) date is promised, and I was happy to be moving in the right direction with a good bit of momentum. I was especially optimistic because our first date was not an easygoing affair. I doted on the memory fondly, essentially thankful that the social missteps and otherwise awkward jitters of a bad first date were well behind us, and could be viewed in the rearview mirror as a minor bump in the road of our time together. I thought about it how different she once seemed, an exercise I often play once any relationship has made some tangible progress. I enjoy comparing the first image I have of any person with the most current reputation they have in my mind, like two photographs taken years apart. It’s an interesting assignment, to juxtapose the two very different people that stand before you—the person you know nothing about versus the other, more ingratiated person, for whom you’ve gained considerable feelings. Of course, this exercise works equally well for those with whom you have a terrible, insidious relationship. Even a great nemesis is introduced to us firstly as a banal individual. Looking back on a great friendship or rivalry is an almost magical experience, is all I mean to say. It’s a wonder what types of things time can do to a person.
We had met by pure happenstance. As random as a misdialed number, our relationship began suddenly and out of thin air. Mika was trying to reach her dentist’s office but instead reached me at my own office. For a moment, she thought I was a new receptionist, which she mentioned was odd. She had said she had only ever seen women behind the desk when she went in for checkups, but was nevertheless glad to meet me, and wondered if I could move an appointment she had on the books back a week. I told her that I was terribly sorry but that I thought she had the wrong number. Mika held firm, and told me that it was impossible she dialed the wrong number.
“I have it written down right here…(XXX) XXX - XXXX.”
That’s where I cut her off. “Ah,” I said, “but you’ve still reached me all the same. And yet, I am no dental assistant. I’m a copywriter, in fact. So it sounds like you’ve dialed the number as you’ve described it, but the destination is still incorrect.”
There was a pregnant pause, and it was the first of many between us. I typically take long pauses as a signal to panic—a sea of uncertainty within which my mind usually drowns—but not this time. Instead, I waded the ocean with ease.
After a beat, she spoke up: “I’m terribly sorry,” Mika relented, “but it looks like I’ve smudged a one. Now it appears as a four. My mistake, and I’m sorry to have bothered you.”
“It’s no trouble at all, and I can’t say for the life of me that I feel bothered in the slightest.”
Another pause. From the other end of the line, I could hear pages of a diary being swept back and forth. She spoke up: “Even a tumbleweed, with all its empty space, can be brushed up by the wind,” she said.
I sat up straight in my chair and re-seized the receiver, out of a sense that what she had just said caused the phone to loosen within my grip. “What’s that?”
Mika sighed. “Anyway, I’m sorry to demure. I’ll be sure to call the right number for my dentist next time.”
I was taken aback by her comment. “Where did you hear that line? I’ve never heard it before.”
“Well, I’m not sure, really. I think I just came up with it.”
Another bout of silence filled the line, this time my own doing. Given the interval—four seconds—I thought about the phrase over in my head, and decided that if I remembered it at the end of our conversation I’d have no choice but to write it down for safe keeping.
“That’s a pretty clever line. Poetic, even.”
“What, that? I don’t think so. It’s a nickname my friends gave me.”
“That’s the nickname you dear friends bestowed on you? Tumbleweed?”
“Well when you put it that way, it doesn’t sound the least bit flattering.” Though I didn’t hear as much, I could sense Mika had chuckled silently to herself, the tad bit embarrassed. She continued: “I have something of a reputation for being absent-minded. Sort of in one ear out the other. I can be something of an airhead.”
“Like wind through a tumbleweed. I follow.” I laughed, too.
“Precisely,” she said, with a smile, I imagined.
“Hence the phone number.”
“A perfect example, by the looks of it.”
“Listen,” I began, “When did you say you wanted to move your appointment to?”
She chuckled and replied, “A week and a half from now. I was thinking sometime on the 15th.”
“Well,” I said, thinking my words over carefully, “If you have nothing else going on between now and then, I was wondering if maybe you’d like to grab dinner with me.”
Mika said that sounded lovely.
I told her that she has my number—her dentist’s in essence, the only difference being a four instead of that pesky one.
And so, she called me later on that week, if I recall correctly. We spoke for hours, with scarcely a pause out of place. The fact of the matter was this: Speaking with Mika over the phone was nothing short of phenomenal. It was an exciting, natural feeling that was felt on both ends of the line.
For our first date, not long after our first tele-meeting, Mika and I had arranged to meet for drinks downtown at a small bar we both knew well. I had no idea who to look for—we had only spoken over the phone a handful of times and this was our first time meeting in-person. When we set up the date, Mika had told me she’d be wearing a camel-colored coat, and in turn I told her I’d be wearing a mustard-yellow sweater. “An interesting choice for a first date, but I respect the decision,” she said. Perhaps the description didn’t do it justice, but it was my favorite sweater. In all fairness, too, Mika didn’t remark on it once we actually met, so I think I was safe. True to her word, she arrived at the bar just moments after I did in the coat she had described, and her presence was unmistakable. As Mika walked through the crowded room, I could tell based on looks alone that this was her. With such a mellifluous voice had to come a matching appearance. I raised my hand to catch her attention, and she returned my wave with a warm smile.
“Well fancy I’d find you here,” she said, sitting down across from me.
“What are the odds?” I replied.
“I’d say about one in a couple hundred thousand, at least.”
I furrowed a brow and inquired: “How do you figure?”
“Well just based on the different permutations one can misdial on a telephone.”
I laughed and asked if she’d like to order a drink. She said sure.
The bar quickly grew cramped and swelled with conversation from the other guests.The both of us had to raise our voices to get through to each other, as though one of us were entering a tunnel. A pause filled the space between us, and I was the first to dispel it.
“I’ve been meaning to ask you, what do you do for work?”
“I work for a big life insurance firm.” She sat back and folded her arms.
“What’s the nature of that line of work like?”
She took a sip of her drink and took her time doing so. From over the rim of her glass she looked me in the eyes. With a shrug, she said “It’s nothing too special. I don’t mind it.”
I flashed a half-smile and took a sip of my own drink. I pressed: “Well that’s good, to not have any complaints. It’s important to enjoy the work you occupy your time with.”
“I don’t know if I enjoy it, per se. I don’t mind it, is all. I mean, I don’t mind it.” She shook her head quickly, as if to suggest “I don’t know what more I can say.”
I downed the rest of my drink and looked around the bar. More rightly, I looked at nothing in particular off into the distance, away from our table.
The hum of the bar died down a bit, and over it I could hear the music. A Miles Davis album, Ascenseur pour l’échafaud was playing. A soundtrack to the film of the same name.
“An absolute classic,” I said, still staring off.
“What?” Mika replied.
“Do you know this song? It’s called “Générique.”
Immediately, without giving her ears a chance, Mika said “No, I don’t know it.”
“A real forbidding piece, as though anticipating a mysterious yet gloomy demise. It’s a beautiful tune, though. One of my favorites.”
Mika looked off into her own section of the bar.
I continued, "Davis was commissioned to compose this album for a film, and supposedly, he and his band were invited into the hotel room of the director. He and the quartet came with nothing prepared, but once the plot of the film was described to them, they improvised the whole record right then and there, with the movie playing soundless in the background for them to improvise over. I mean, what talent.”
“Hmm,” she mumbled. “What does générique mean?”
“Generic,” I replied.
“You don’t say. Generic as in over-the-counter or generic like boring?”
“You know, I’m not quite sure.”
Another bout of silence, and then the sound of record static filled the room. Must’ve been a 7-inch and not the whole album.
“What kind of music do you like?” I asked, pulling myself away from the distant chatter beyond our table and back into the space of our conversation.
Mika took another sip of her drink. “I listen to classical music, mostly.”
Now we’re getting somewhere. “So like Bach and Mozart and the like?”
Mika flashed a quizzical look. “I’m not sure what the songs are called. I don’t pay them any mind. I just listen to the music and don’t really pay attention to the titles.
The static from the restaurant’s turntable filled the silence once more. I spoke up: “Someone really ought to put another record on.” I said it in the same way one might suggest cracking a window, fanning oneself in the stuffy summer heat.
“I like the quiet.” She said. “The music was a little too exciting for me.”
I finished off my drink. “Do you want another,” I asked? Noticing she was just about empty herself.
Mika yawned. “I hate to do this, but I didn’t get much sleep last night. Would you mind terribly if we got the check and rescheduled for a better time? Perhaps when I’m livelier and feeling myself?”
As I walked home, I decided that perhaps Mika wasn’t the girl for me. We’ve all had bad first dates, sure, but sometimes you can just tell a second date isn’t in the cards. I was mostly just disappointed that there was so much potential for us, and now it wouldn’t amount to anything. If I had to compare the feeling to something more illustrative, the whole entanglement felt not unlike a shipbuilder who erects a giant sail for his dingy, only to feel deflated once he discovers there is no wind to fill it.
As I entered my apartment and hung up my keys on their hook, the phone began to ring. I checked my watch, perplexed as to who could be calling me this late. Nevertheless, I picked it up.
“I’m not calling you to late, am I? You can tell me right away if it’s too late to be calling you.” It was Mika.
I told her it wasn’t too late at all, I was just surprised to be getting a call from her, given the circumstances. We spoke for two hours straight. If the whimsical essence of pillow talk could be distilled and rebranded for the sake of phone conversations, this was it. Thus began the cycle.
But now, on date five—or was it six?—at about the same time that the bartender (slash host slash sushi chef) returned with my drink, Mika arrived through the door. She scanned the empty room, frowned, and lit up when she spotted me and the owner making pleasantries. She hurried over, as though she’d been waiting all day to tell me something.
The host bowed between us, as Mika was shuffling into the booth. “A drink for the lady?”
“I’ll take a water for now,” she said, only slightly out of breath.
“Very good.” He walked gingerly back to behind his counter and grabbed a pitcher of ice water.
“Howdy,” I said. I reserve “Howdy” for when I am truly excited, like a top shelf brandy that only comes out on special occasions.
“How do you do?” She replied. If words could come in the form of curtsies, this is how they would.
“I hope you don’t mind I ordered a drink.”
“Not at all.” She didn’t bother to look a what I was drinking. Instead, she focused her attention on the inside of her purse, which she rummaged through frenetically.
At a loss for words, if only momentarily, I took in her frame; studied it, scrutinized it to its core. Mika was wearing a light blue coat. Rather, it was wearing her. The sleeves remained unoccupied—It seemed that she had thrown it on with haste, and that she had tossed it over her shoulders as a canopy to shield from the rain as she rushed to the restaurant. The only thing wrong with that, however, was that it hadn’t been raining at all. Her long black hair was magnificent, not a stray lock in sight. Two deep green eyes, wide and unassuming. Larger-than-typical ears, studded each with hoop earrings. A button nose, always blushed as though still acclimating from the previous winter. And finally, a mouth that was stuck in a peaceable smile. Beyond those lips, the creme de la creme, a honeyed voice that could put the Sirens to shame.
“I’m not late, am I?” She peered up from out of her bag, giving up on whatever quest she had within it.
“Not at all. I was five minutes early, in fact.”
She smiled, and took a sip of her water, not having noticed where it came from. “So, what’s new?”
“Nothing much. Funnily enough, I actually came across an article in a magazine about Rotterdam. Apparently, a good chunk of the population is single. No wives or husbands to speak of.”
Mika took another sip of her water and furrowed her brow. “Hm? Why were you doing research on Rotterdam? Planning a trip?”
I demurred. “No…well, not exactly. I guess I just was inspired by—”
The host returned to our table once more and asked if we were ready to order. I ordered a miso soup, 3 pieces of yellow tail nigiri, and 3 pieces of toro nigiri.
“And for you?” He turned to Mika, pen at the ready to capture her order.
For her part, Mika paid him no mind and looked squarely at me. She said: “What do you hate? I don’t feel like sharing.”
I guffawed nervously. “Well…” I looked down at the menu I’d yet to return to the host. “I’ve never been much a fan of California rolls.”
Mika ordered a California roll and a house salad. The host bowed approvingly and took our menus.
“How was your day?” I asked.
Mika had moved back into her purse, swirling its contents around in search of something crucial, by the looks of it. What exactly she was determined to find, I cannot say. I didn’t feel like asking either. She looked up from her purse. “Come again?”
“I said, how was your day?” I repeated.
“Oh. Nothing too special. It was okay. Just a lot of errands to run, that’s all.” Mika took a sip of her water to signal that was all she had to say on the matter.
I could have asked her what book she decided to start reading, or how her mission to the pet store for cat food went, but I thought better of it. I had a feeling that I wouldn’t get much in the way of thoughtful answer, so I just let it be, and invited the awkward silence that followed join us at our table. The whisky had begun to take its effect, and as it made its way through my system, I determined that it would work its magic one way or another by injecting some life into this conversation or, at the very least, it would numb some of the boredom. I felt stuck, the same way a typewriter that’s showing its age might become—frozen, mid-thought, the trained hand of a patient writer the only savior for a conversation that’s lost its momentum. A distinctive ether covered the space between us and sat like a stuffy tablecloth. The kind that sits folded in a dark closet and collects dust 364 days out of the year, brought out and set uniquely for Thanksgiving dinner. One that lays inertly throughout the meal, resigned begrudgingly to hold the weight of silverware and terse conversation like it’s being asked the world of you.
I took a sip of my highball. I relished the taste and savored its flavor, hoping perhaps that I might find something interesting to mention about it to Mika. But I found nothing remarkable about it, and swallowed. The restaurant owner returned with our plates of sushi, and Mika’s bowl of salad. He placed each dish gingerly in front of us and delicately spun each item so they lay perfectly parallel to one another.
“Direction is everything,” he whispered, and I couldn’t tell if it was to himself or for both Mika and me to hear. Without another word, he spun around and returned behind his counter and began to dry some glassware. A sudden chill filled the air. I turned around in search of a draft, but there were no windows or door left open.
Before picking up a piece of sushi, I looked at Mika and said: “Do you think this is going well?”
Mika finished a small bite of her California roll and furrowed her brows. “Do I think what is going well?”
“This. The two of us. Right now and beyond. Do you think we get on well enough for this to continue?”
She appeared surprised by the question, but did not respond at first. Instead, she took the remaining bite of her roll in one hand, studied it, and placed it back down onto her plate, in a pool of soy sauce.
“Why would you ask me that?” She finally said.
“I think it’s an honest enough question. I’m curious to know what you think.”
“You’re only asking because you don’t think it’s going well enough to continue, so why not just say that? Why not just say what you’re feeling instead of making me say it?”
I finished my highball and as soon as I did, I caught the restaurant owner glance over at me from a nearby table he was wiping down. He hustled over to the bar and began crafting another one.
“Truthfully,” I began, “I just don’t feel a strong connection with you in person.” I hung onto in person a little longer than I meant to, but she didn’t catch on.
She fished the piece of half-eaten sushi from the pool of soy sauce with her chopsticks and transferred it to the dry side of her plate. She picked at the individual section of avocado and removed it from the shell as judiciously as a child might excise the Broken Heart piece from a game of Operation. I expected a loud beep to sound, but it didn’t.
“If that’s how you feel, I appreciate you being up front with me. Personally, I was having a good time, but maybe it was all in my imagination.” She looked up at me and calmly lay her chopsticks down on top of her napkin. Mika began again: “I know we’ve been seeing each other for only a short while, but I had high hopes about where things were headed. But perhaps I got swept up in the wind—carried away by some misunderstanding. Even a tumbleweed, with all its empty space, can be brushed up by the wind, after all.”
I firmed up in my seat. I pictured the rag-doll motion of the tumbleweed being coaxed calmly by the breeze. I imagined its empty space being filled with gusts of air.
“What do you mean by that?”
“Which part?” She said.
“Well the part about the tumbleweed.”
Mika took a deep breath and looked down at her lap. She spoke without looking back up at me. “I let myself get swayed easily, I suppose. I let in certain words or ideas that push me in certain directions. For instance, I let your words and actions lead me to believe we were going somewhere, when really you were just passing through.”
“So are you the tumbleweed, then?”
“You could say that, yes.”
“And in this sense, I’m the wind.”
“That’s about the weight of it, yes.”
I took a moment for myself, and considered this metaphor carefully. I was happy, first of all, to be having a real conversation with Mika. After that thought faded, I began to consider her words. You were just passing through. I repeated this refrain in my head. Just then, the chef came over with my drink.
He placed it in front of me and said “All full?” Neither of us had really touched our food. Mika smiled, in a terribly sad kind of way.
“We’re just savoring it all,” I said with a short chuckle.
The owner smiled, put his hands behind his back, and walked toward the bar yet again.
Mika spoke up once more. “I suppose there isn’t much more to say. I wish you the best on your trip. Or wherever it is you end up.”
Before I could respond, she promptly collected her purse and exited the restaurant. I didn’t run after her. I didn’t move from my seat at all. Instead, I took a heady sigh and finished off my drink before gesturing to the only other person left in the restaurant that I’d like very much to grab the check. Silence filled the room. The kind of silence that comes after a windstorm or an abruptly ended phone call. I half expected to hear a dial tone if I waited for much longer. A chill returned to me. The host-turned-bartender-turned-waiter-turned-witness came over with the receipt and I paid him in cash, leaving a generous tip.
“Please do come back again soon,” he said. “Perhaps your next friend will like the food better.”
I laughed at the thought and looked over at where Mika had sat across from me, her dismembered California roll sitting next to a grainy pool of soy sauce.
Mika had weaved into—and out of—my life as expediently as a late summer rain. The kind that erupts from a bluebird sky and bows out like an Irish Goodbye, surreptitiously and without warning. A puddle of black soy sauce upon the table, like droplets of water on warm pavement, was the only evidence she had even existed at all.
Any other person in the same situation might take a series of bad dates as a sign. A sign that, perhaps, these two people weren’t meant to be. Don’t misunderstand me—I would normally take that sign, clear as day, and heed its lesson considerably if not for the fulfilling phone calls that lay sandwiched and bookended between each previous lackluster outing. Some people return from a bad date and wash away the bad taste with a glass of whisky. Others chalk it up to another blip on the radar and move onto the next person that piques their interest. Myself, I had made the habit of returning home and leaving a message on Mika’s voicemail, and sometimes I would return home to find she had already left one for me. We would tell each other that we had a lovely time and that we should give each other a call when we can, which we invariably would. And when we did, we’d talk for a good chunk of time and schedule another date.
What it was about speaking face-to-face that made our conversations much less enchanting, I can’t say for sure. Perhaps even after months of seeing each other we were both still the slightest bit timid, neither of us wanting to completely let our guards down, whereas the distance through the phone lines provided a perfect safeguard. Maybe the phone was the necessary bulwark that could shield our relationship from any unwanted awkward pause, badly timed joke, or any other crucial pressure point that could only be alleviated by distance and the imagination. Indeed, speaking in person required our full attention and eye contact, and left little to chance, which could be a saving grace for any vocal misstep.
Maybe like the tumbleweed, Mika was truly just going with the flow, and perhaps—like the tumbleweed—wind blowing from multiple directions put her in a rut, unable to roll freely and with ease. It was possible that in a vacuum—such as the static, steady environment of the telephone—Mika felt well-equipped to be herself and speak her mind. But once other forces of nature got involved, it became overwhelming. It was all terribly confusing, but I had nowhere really to turn for answers. Despite the blow our relationship had been dealt, I wondered if I could still call Mika up, to be greeted like a long lost friend with whom I could shoot the breeze, instead of a stubborn former romantic interest. After all, it was only in person that our time together had come to a close—the woman over the phone might have a completely different point of view.
Just One Choice
“The most difficult thing I can think of when I think of the future is a life without Katy. I say those words speaking for every member of her family, at least for most of them. When we first started our life together as a married couple, like all newlyweds, we had grand ideas of growing old together, taking care of each other, being there for each other, and loving each other for the rest of our lives. In this day and age, of course there are things like divorce, but divorce was a concept that didn’t cross the minds of young couples in love like us. Instead, it was death that separated Katy and me. It was death that separated Katy from everyone who loved her, and it was death that separated Katy from those who she loved back. In my mind, Katy will always be alive. In the minds of our two daughters, Katy will always be alive. As our family moves forward in life, I can tell you we will take her along with us. As her family moves forward
in life, they will also take her along with them. Her kind heart, loving spirit, and strong determination will guide all of us through life just like the stars once guided those who sailed the seas in search of new frontiers. She was the very best of us all, and everyone will remember her that way.”
After her brother-in-law finished his eulogy, Jo could only notice that there was never a time he tried to make eye contact with her, as he did with her mother, father, and two nieces, all of whom were seated in the front. In her mind, that was okay. If she had sat any closer, it would have forced him to make a choice as to whether or not to recognize her presence at her sister’s funeral. She may never know if her brother-in-law would have made eye contact or not as he gave his eulogy, only that by sitting in the back, Jo could use it as an excuse for him not to look that far back in the church. It not only let her brother-in-law off the hook, but it was also a defense mechanism to protect herself from the embarrassment of having him gloss over her. Yet there was a part of her that thought that her feeble frame and out of place wardrobe would have been enough to at least granted her a glance no matter where she was seated given the fact that she was Katy’s sister. Regardless, her state of mind not only prevented her from appreciating the celebration of her sister’s life, it also caused her to perceive the precious moments of time that this occasion represented as coming to an end much sooner than it actually did. When it did end, on her way out, Jo overhears her mother and father talking behind the doors unaware of her presence.
“How dare she show her face here. She has wasted her life getting high on drugs. That’s all she cares about. She’s a parasite. The wrong daughter died. Jo may be Katy’s twin sister, but she’s only her twin by name only. Jo will only ever be a small shadow of Katy,” Jo hears her weeping mother say to her father who does not respond back. She can only assume he agrees with her mother’s assessment.
When Jo arrives back at her apartment at eight o’clock in the evening, she is unfazed by the smell of unwashed dirty dishes added to the soiled clothes cluttered about. It is a smell only known to those who are foreign to her living quarters, but all too familiar to herself to generate any reaction. She places her keys on the table as she enters, and then stops for a moment. There is not a sound to be heard. There is not any movement of any kind to witness. She is alone in this place, and she knows that this is by no means any haven. She has no idea of what to do next, but ultimately, she succumbs to something more primal.
“I’m so tired,” she says out loud to no audience. There are no tears for her sister. There are no feelings whatsoever for someone whom she has not seen for five years. There are no feelings for a sister fallen after 27 years of life. She feels the disgrace of her lack of emotion. She feels nothing but emptiness. She tells herself that the only silver lining is that she acknowledges that she should feel something despite the fact that she doesn’t.
“Why can’t I cry for you, Katy? Why can’t I feel sadness? Why can’t I grieve?” she asks herself.
As Jo breaks her stoic stance, she slowly makes her way to her couch and lands upon the space she makes for herself after tossing the array of clothes that cover it on the floor. Giving in to her fatigue, her heavy eyes close making way for what she believes to be undeserved sleep. After some passage of time, she is compelled to open her eyes.
“It’s midnight. Why am I awake? I need to get back to sleep,” she tells herself after she sees the clock.
“Don’t get back to sleep just yet, sis,” Jo hears coming from behind her. After she gets up and turns around, she sees Katy standing before her.
“You’re here with me, Katy. Am I dreaming? I don’t feel tired, but I know I should. I don’t feel wasted, but I know I should. My body doesn’t feel any bit off at all for some reason.”
“Joanne. Jo. You can call this a dream if you want to. It won’t change the fact that I’m here, with you, right now.”
“Then I’m dead?”
“No, Jo. I’m the one that’s dead. You’re the one that’s very much alive.”
“Then I like this dream, Katy. It’s the only way I can see you again. It’s been so long. The only reason why I can remember your face is because we share it. The only reason I can remember your voice is because it’s the same as mine.”
“It has been five years, Jo.”
“It should have been me who died, Katy.”
“We both know Mom didn’t mean what she said.”
“She may not have meant it, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s true. You’re the one with the husband. You’re the one with the children. You’re the one who’s clean. You’re the one who didn’t make the mistakes I did. You’re the one with the life.”
“Our lives are built upon the choices we make, and it’s not too late for the choices you make from now on to change the course of your life.”
“Look at me Katy. I’m nothing. What choices can I make to change that? What makes you think that I care?”
“Why did you go to my funeral if you didn’t care, Jo? You made a choice to care. You made the choice to go to my funeral even though you knew that there would be people there that didn’t want you in that church. So, you see, no matter where you are in your life, you have the power to make as many choices as you want. The only thing you have to decide is if those choices will be in your best interest and the best interest of those that you love the most.”
“It’s too late for me.”
“It’s never too late. We’re twin sisters. We grew up together. You weren’t always like this. Do you remember the times when we went to the skating rink as children?”
“Yes, I do.”
“It was you who caught on first, and you weren’t the one that was always falling down, Jo, it was me. You weren’t the older sister, but you were the one that helped me get up when I fell, and I fell a lot. You didn’t stop helping me until I was just as good as you were, and that wasn’t the only time that you lifted me up when I fell down.”
“I remember.”
“That’s right, Jo. It was that way when we were in high school as well. We took the same courses. We competed in all the same sports together. When I started to fall behind in any of them, you helped me. You helped me rise whenever I fell, and all you have to do is ask yourself is why you did all those things for me?”
“I did those things for you because I loved you, Katy. I did those things because you are my sister and I still love you.”
“You showed your love unconditionally, Jo. That’s all that matters, and there’s still time for you to show and give that love to others as well.”
“Five years is a long time to stay away from me, Katy?”
“Jo, you’re the one that stayed away. You stayed away from me, from Mom, from our Father, from our entire family. You can make the choice to change that.”
“It’s too late for me, though. I have nobody, and you’re no longer here to do for me now what I did for you when we were growing up, Katy.”
“I’ll always be here for you.”
“Why come to me? Why not your husband? Mother? Father? Your children for God’s sake?”
“I come to you now because you’re the one that needs me the most. The one gift I couldn’t give you in life, I’m giving you in death. For all those years we were growing up together, it was you who was teaching me. You taught me the importance of making the right choices and helping me when I couldn’t help myself. Now you just have to listen to your own self. You have to listen to your inner voice. You have to make a choice to follow what is in your heart and what is in your soul. It was a lesson that you taught to me when we were growing up, and I made the choice to follow it. It was you who made the choice not to follow your own heart and soul. Our deaths are unavoidable, but our lives aren’t. I embraced my life because of you. You made the choice to abandon yours. I’m here to make sure you choose to reclaim it.”
“It’s not much of a life, Katy.”
“Life is what you make it. Only you have the power to shape and mold your life and the world around you. Open your mind to the possibilities that exist in the world and you will see the world will respond to you with open arms for the choices you make and bring those possibilities into reality. It will not be easy or fast. In fact, it will be hard and long, but I’m opening my heart to you so you can take the first steps. All you have to do is embrace it. Will you do that for me? Will you do that for yourself?”
“I can’t do it alone.”
“Nobody said you will be. In fact, I think you already know in your heart that you won’t.”
“Baby steps first, Katy?”
“Baby steps first, Jo.”
“I’m going to miss you Katy, now more than ever. Even though we haven’t seen each other in five years, I always knew that you were alive and well someplace. Now you’re gone and I will never see you again.”
“No crying over me, Jo. No tears for me, Jo. Only love.”
Jo gives Katy a hug, and she is surprised that she can feel her warmth. Just as Jo starts to let her go, Katy whispers something into Jo’s ear.
“I will always be with you. Always remember that,” Katy tells her.
“Where do I start, Katy?”
“All you have to do is ask for forgiveness and it will be yours. From that point on, the road back towards self-discovery will pave the way to your new life. I promise.”
“With all of your heart?”
“With all of my heart.”
“How do you know? After all the things that I’ve done. After all the hurt that I’ve brought upon this family.”
“Have I ever steered you wrong?”
“No, you haven’t.”
“If that’s not enough to convince you then just remember that this is a family, and that’s what families do. Families forgive.”
“It’s never too late, is it Katy?”
“No Jo, it never is.”
“I feel different now.”
“How do you feel, sis?”
“Alive and awake.”
Jo suddenly awakens as her head jolts up. She can tell that it is morning as the sun shines through her windows. Her eyes are wide open, and her body is tingling incessantly. She asks herself if what she experienced last night was real or a dream. She cries out for Katy but hears no response. Unlike the previous time she woke up, this time she feels a bit wasted, not surprisingly because of the drugs. Then she sees the funeral flyer and realizes that her sister is truly gone. Right now, she cannot reconcile her mental and physical state. She feels physically off, but mentally, she is at ease, even in the face of her sister’s death. What happened to her last night may have something to do with it, she tells herself. Was it a dream? Was it real? Was it both at the same time? All she knows is Katy has gotten through to her. Can a person change after just one night? She does not take long to realize that the answer to that question is yes, a person can change overnight if they make the choice to do so.
Jo packs her backpack with all her drugs, paraphernalia, and booze. After cleaning up her apartment she opens the door to a bright sunny day. The sunshine blinds her weary eyes temporarily as she exits, but to her, it does not change the fact that it is the start of a new day. It is the start of a new era. It is a start of a new life. She walks outside and finds a garbage bin. Without hesitation, she throws her backpack into the bin and says goodbye to her old life and welcomes the beginning of her new one. At a nearby convenience store, she buys a burner phone with a number that is not blocked on any of her family’s phones. The first call she makes is the most important call she will ever make.
“Hi Mom, this is Jo, please don’t hang up. I don’t know how long I have on your voicemail, but I have something to tell you. It’s going to be a long hard journey for me, getting clean and making up for my mistakes, but something happened to me last night, something wonderful, and I now know that I’m not alone. I can’t explain it to you in words, but I want you there with me. Father too. Everyone, not only because we’re a family, but because I love all of you, and I think somewhere, despite all that I’ve done, I know you love me too. Before I run out of time, I have a few quick things I need to tell you. Most importantly, I want to tell you that I’m sorry. I also want to let you know that of all the things I’ve ever wanted in my life, I’ve never wanted this more, and that’s to get clean and stay that way. I just want a chance to start over. I am choosing to start over. The journey to get to the end of this dark tunnel and into the light will be long. It’s okay if you don’t want to go with me on that journey, but I’m making it regardless. If you’re there with me, then I’ll embrace all of you with all my heart. If not, then that’s still okay. I understand more than you know, and I hope you’ll be there after I make it to the other side.”
Jo ends the call with her mother by telling her the burner phone’s phone number. Afterwards, she walks down the street, and for the first time in a long time she notices the cool breeze of the wind flowing through her hair and the birds chirping in the sky. She puts her hands in her hoodie pockets, looks down, and watches her two feet take their turn taking one step at a time moving her forward along the sidewalk.
“Just think, in a few months, I’ll feel right as rain, if I don’t already, that is,” she says.
A few minutes later she receives a call on the phone she just bought.
“Hello?” she answers.
“Joanne, this is your Mother.”
Maxwell Stannard, AKA hngyhngyhppo or HPPO for short, is a mid-tier millennial who endeavors to master work-life balance through physically demanding jobs and creative pursuits. He is the author of the "ContractMan" series a western pulp set in tolkienesque fantasy. He is currently adding art to his skill-set via a remaster for webtoons of Ambrose Bierce's "The Devil's Dictionary". All this while working long nights in warehousing. He also hopes you enjoy your time here as well. |
A letter from Judas the hired rogue written by Hyppo HngyHngy
I hope this letter finds you in good times of splendor. I have much to tell you that cannot be divulged in ink.
’Til we raise glasses once again, you’ll find this bit nice to chew on, and perhaps you’d be able to shed some light on my experience.
I’ve picked up a few more tricks in the field of magic since we last spoke. Nothing as bright as mage fire or as blessed as cleric sutures, but I have touched a line. The currents of magic that flow just outside this dimension occasionally poking through spawning new growths. What the mage’s academy hasn’t sealed in wards, the Fae have cursed, the Necros have rotted, and the dragons have sentineled.
South of Wayfair, north of Dirgebottom, I was on my typical contract work paired with an ex-communed mage at the holders’ request. Ex-mages are barred from using any magic powerful enough to draw the Academy’s attention, and this fellow was having a hard time adjusting to drawing power from inside himself and the wind alone. He asked to bond and draw from my force as well as his own to speed the powering of his various trinkets. Gold up front and four days rest seemed like a better trade than two weeks down.
The bond lasted longer than he let on about, or he was deliberately keeping me tethered. Either being the case had no effect on the outcome. With our hands on the target we became trapped: a hulking beast in the doorframe and a cluster flood of spiders pouring in from behind the beast, blocking out the light from the lamps. I was a trifle worried; my blades are sharp, but two points verse twelve hundred fangs was not ideal. Had there been a window, I’d have taken flight and landed courtesy of your feathers. Had my temporary partner disclosed his arachnophobia, I’d have splurged on using my last drops of misting draught.
Instead, I called for the man to use his flames and char the beast, hoping for light blind so I could strike him in a vital. The Fire sputtered from the ex-mages fingertips . . . little and poorly timed flashes gave the cluster of hairy creeps scaling the walls and carpeting the floor an appearance of inanimance. Yet with each flash they filled the exposed stone between the gaps of light. Reaching into my soul, he pulled enough strength to stretch his flame to the beast. I was light-footing across the backs of his tiny minions when the ex-mage tapped a line.
Waterfall training allowed me to strike the beast’s throat and hold his body up to shield myself from the magic that ex-mage was pulling to fuel his fire. Because of the tap on my soul from the ex-mage, I could feel and sense how destructive his cast was going to be. The spell crispified my shield and charred the carved stone blacker than coal. The cluster of spiders left only a smell of burnt hair.
What I must tell you though is how it felt to have touched a line. It is unlike anything I thought it could be. I heard a drunken master-rank mage say that it was akin to holding lightning in your hand while standing strong against a crashing wave. Even filtered through the distance of the ex-mage’s tether, this description is only fit for half the sensation that the inside of a ley line gives.
Every piece of me felt something different. My nerves felt electricity; my muscles felt the force of the waves; my brain flooded and lost in darkness; my soul almost swept from inside its cage by the wind; my skin burned with the warmth of three suns. And my stomach tightened into a ball wrapped in steel chain trying to keep it all together.
Stranger still, after the spell was cast and the ex-mage dropped the power of the line, was the feeling I kept after we became untethered. When you step from the bathing pond and dry yourself, but a little moisture remains on your skin before your skin and clothes adjust and dry. It felt like that but from inside my soul.
The fellow told me that merely by being exposed to an opened ley line I may have increased my own facilities for magic. Now I have that itch in the back of my mind and a slightly damp feeling inside my soul. Hopefully I’m overthinking this whole experience, but if it’s something I should worry on, I’ve no doubt that you’ll find the solution for me before I have a chance to find myself another problem.
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A. E. WILLIAMS
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DESTANY TOLBERT
DOUG HAWLEY
DR. RICHARD AULT
ELLIE ROSE MCKEE
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ERNESTO I. GOMEZ BELLOSO
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GEOFFREY HEPTONSTALL
GEORGE LUBITZ
GLYNN GERMANY
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JOHN F ZURN
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JOSEPH R. DEMARE
JOSEPH SHARP
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JULIA BENALLY
KARL LUNTTA
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KATE TOUGH
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KIERAN J. THORNTON
LAYTON KELLY
LEISA JENNINGS
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