Who They Was

by Gabriel Krauze

  Anyway.

  My father sits at the kitchen table looking at me, while rows of framed pictures and paintings stare down at us from the walls. There’s a black-and-white photo of him when he was younger, wearing a mask pulled up on top of his head and he’s making a face at the camera.

  When are we gonna do it Tata? I ask, putting my black Nike Air Maxes on in the kitchen doorway.

  I waiting for you, he repeats, picking up one of the little packets on the table.

  Tomorrow is Easter Sunday. There’s a tradition, which my father has always maintained from his childhood in Poland, that I take part in every year: the painting of eggs for Easter Sunday. On the day, we sit down for a big meal of Polish food – rye bread and salmon and horseradish sauce and potato salad and pickled cucumbers and kabanosy, which are these thin dried sausages with wrinkled red skin, and beetroot soup and poppyseed cake and Polish cheesecake – and we play this game with hard-boiled eggs. One person holds an egg and another person tries to break it with their egg. They take turns until one of the eggs is broken on both ends and then someone else has a crack at it.

  We’re not religious in my family but there are certain rituals which are repeated every year, as if to remind us of where we’re really from. Before Easter Sunday my father buys these packets of coloured powder. They’re not made over here so he usually buys a German or Russian brand that he finds, stashed on some dusty shelf at the back of the Iraqi grocers on Porchester Road. We hard-boil a whole load of eggs, waiting for them to cool down before lining up some empty glasses, shaking out a different-coloured packet of powder into each one – red, purple, blue, green, yellow and orange – then add boiling water until there is a rainbow sequence of filled glasses. The next step is to take the boiled eggs and place one in each glass, leaving them in there for about three minutes at a time before putting the next egg in, so that the shells absorb the colour. We take out the dyed eggs with a spoon and put them in a dish lined with paper towels, leaving them to dry. The first egg in each glass always retains the strongest shade of colour and the last eggs to be dyed are always pale shades of the glass they sat in. The final thing to do is to polish the eggs. You stick your fingers in some butter and rub it all over the eggs until light shines off the shell’s coloured surface. And that’s how we do Easter eggs. Me and Tata. That’s how we’ve always done Easter eggs. Every year.

  I was supposed to help him yesterday but I was out, cotching on Little Man’s block with Gotti and I only got to my parents’ yard at four in the morning. I’m only gonna stay for Easter Sunday anyway. I crouch in the doorway of the kitchen, my father and the pictures on the wall looking down at me while I put my creps on, staring at the floor with its chequered pattern; green, grey and red, painstakingly hand-painted by my mother years ago when we first moved in to this flat.

  I’ll be back in the evening so we can do it then.

  Okay, he says as he fingers the packets of dye on the table and a tremor goes through my chest, my back pocket bulging where I’ve stuffed my bally and I remember that I need gloves.

  By the time I link up with the mandem in SK, I’ve forgotten Easter eggs and family traditions and we spend the afternoon on the staircase of Little Man’s block bunning cro, getting blackup, talking to Tyrell, our new getaway driver, making sure he really will do his ting if it gets on top and boydem start chasing us.

  Later we’re in the whip, hearts beating faster than normal – the usual feeling when we’re gonna eat someone – driving into Sloane Square, with Big D in a next whip driven by Little Man. And then it’s night outside, dark all over, as if the sky has fallen down and broken all over the pavement. We’ve been driving around for more than two hours and the day has slipped by without my noticing. Gotti gets a call from Big D and when he gets off the phone he tells Tyrell to park up. We stop on one quiet street just off King’s Road and wait.

  There’s something I don’t like about these ends. Grand red-brick buildings looking down on us, clean pavements and elaborate door knockers and video-intercom systems and shiny black railings and warm lights peering out of high-ceilinged rooms and private gardens full of black trees and black bushes – the night turns them that way – and always a stillness coating everything, too easy to disturb, like if it’s so peaceful then the consequences of breaking it must be on a next level. Gotti’s voice tears me out of my thoughts, urgent, excited, that one, that one Snoopz, he’s got the iced-out Rolex Presidential on.

  I clock a man in a suit walking by, headphones in, hair gelled neat from how he musta done it this morning, the bezel of his Rolex watch winking at me in the dark and I know this is it now.

  We are out in seconds, the bald white moon watching from above, and all I can hear is my own heartbeat and it feels as though there are hidden faces everywhere, watching every move, while outside of my body everything is as still and calm as a lie.

  I clamp him in the middle of the pavement, just as I was taught; forearm pressing into his throat hard, locking the grip round his neck, cutting off the oxygen so that within seconds his body is leaning heavy against me and he’s stopped thinking about struggling. I can smell the hair gel. Gotti pops the Rolly and I let go and start dussing back to the whip. The man drops to his knees and holds his throat.

  We jump in the getaway whip and now Tyrell is driving us away and I feel totally detached from everything, on a next wave completely, while Gotti chats to Big D on the phone about shotting the Presidential tonight.

  The city flashes by, a blur of noise that sinks into the sea of night, gems of light floating through its depths and I’m thinking what if we’re karma – that brer musta done suttin really bad in his life for me and Gotti to happen to him – and I want a Rolex like that for myself and it really pisses me off that I’ve been losing my hair recently and now in the car I’m brushing my right hand over my hair, watching white flakes and little hairs with roots still attached, floating onto my jeans and now I’m wondering – as we pass glowing lines of traffic on Edgware Road and the neon pink lights of shisha cafes – what my mother’s doing at this exact moment and in my head I can hear the sound of a knife hitting wood as she cuts the crust off a stale loaf of bread – her favourite part of the loaf – on the chopping board in the kitchen with the painted floor and blue and yellow walls, Mama wearing her round fake tortoiseshell glasses that make her look a bit like an owl and it’s mad because usually I don’t ever think of her, don’t ever think of my family, and now finally I manage to pull myself out of my thoughts and I notice that we’re nearly back in South Kilburn.

  It is around three in the lonely throb of morning when we get paid eight bags for the Rolex. Gotti and I get two and a half bags each and Big D gets two for setting it all up as usual and Tyrell gets one. We say safe, lickle more you man to Big D and Little Man and Tyrell, and head over to D-block to Gotti’s mum’s yard. Are you sure it’s cool to stay at your mum’s, I say and Gotti says most of them man are in pen after the raids, no one’s gonna be about. We bun zoot after zoot after zoot on the balcony and when we go indoors and I lie down on the camp bed, I swear I’m so high my eyes fall out and I can’t feel my face.

  When I wake up, night is sneaking into every corner, down every street, and it is Sunday evening. Nah. Fuckssake. How can I just end up sleeping through the whole fucking day? It takes a while for my mind to adjust, to wake up – fog still pushing against the inside of my forehead – and the only thing I can think of is that I’ve missed Easter Sunday, I’ve missed the painting of the eggs with Tata and more than anything else I need to go home. Right now.

  It is close to midnight by the time I am stood outside my parents’ building, looking up the length of it to the top-floor windows and there are no lights on. Everyone’s gone to bed. When I get to the top of the stairs in the building, I pause, keys in hand, staring at the brass letter E nailed to our flat door. I slip the Nikes off my feet, unzip my Avirex jacket and fold it over my left arm. Pick my creps up with my left hand and make sure my pho
ne and the stack of p’s are in my pockets. Open the door slowly, holding my breath while I pull the key out gently, barely clicking in the stillness. Once the door is shut, I tiptoe up the stairs in my socks, wrapped in darkness, no need for light since I know from childhood exactly where to tread on the wooden staircase without creaking. It’s mad how you can really know your home by its creaks. I reach the top of the stairs, breathing out quiet, putting Nikes down, hanging up my keys and jacket, hoping no one’s woken up. As usual when I’m bare charged, my mind starts going into mad thoughts and this time I start imagining I’m a ghost, haunting my parents. I make a floorboard creak. My knee clicks, popping the silence open and I stop and hold my breath again. Noises in the night, noises in the night.

  The kitchen is shrouded in moonlight. I don’t even bother switching the lights on as I see the bowl in the middle of the table, only four eggs left, already dyed, already polished, and I walk over to the bin knowing what I will find but still wanting to see it. In the bin I see red and green and purple and blue and orange eggshells scattered among empty dye packets, rotting food, plastic and other rubbish, and now I close the bin and I need to sit down. I am at the table, holding one of the uneaten eggs – a green one, my favourite colour – and I rub the egg softly with my hands and I don’t know what it is but I feel like somewhere out there I have lost a part of myself.

  SLEEPING WITH SPIRITS

  There is only cursing, lying and murder, stealing and adultery; they break all bounds, and bloodshed follows bloodshed.

  Hosea 4:2

  WHAT I’M TRYNA say is you can never tell what’s ahead of you. All you can do is brace yourself. That morning when I broke the woman’s finger, I never knew when we set out to do the eat that it was gonna happen. But it did and everything fucked up, we never got the belly and then Big D wanted us to go back and do a next move just so we’d have p’s for a new whip. Like I said, whatdafuck was that about?

  A few days after we decide to stop doing moves with Big D, I’m jamming on the first floor of Bimz’s block with Gotti, mouth burning from hot wings, bunning zoots. The day slithers along on a wet grey stomach, ready to burst. Although we don’t say it, I know we’re both thinking about that broken finger move and how we shoulda got the belly.

  Gotti says we should do this gunman ting you know. We should become hitmen. I look at him but he’s not even smiling, just staring into the distance, seeing something that’s not there. His thoughts have sharp teeth. How d’you mean become hitmen? Well there’s people who will pay you mad p’s to go and turn a man ghost, innit. Especially in London. Someone always wants to kill someone. I’m like but how do we even go about dat? How would we even get started? He goes, well there’s ways to get your name out there innit. All you gotta do is lick one person down and people will know you’re about dat, and once people know you can get away with it, that’s when certain heads will approach you, offering you p’s to take care of their problems. I’m like rah, but how do you make sure you get away with it though?

  Gotti draws his zoot and dashes it off the balcony. I bite into a hot wing. He turns to me and goes, man’s gotta do this juju ting and get a spirit. A spirit? Yeah. You go to the juju man who deals in spirits and powers – he’ll do certain tings like he’ll make you do a ritual, give you some magic powders that you burn or you gotta put in the bath and then bang; you get a spirit. What kinda spirit? A spirit that attaches itself to you and protects you or does certain tings for you. It could make you invisible, or it could make you bulletproof. Swear down brudda? I say. Mother’s life Snoopz, I know couple man who went to smoke one yout, they blatantly peppered the brer, let off a full clip at him but they saw the bullets go right through him like he wasn’t even there, and the brer just carried on dussing. They couldn’t kill him, you get me. Myman had powers. Certain man even have powers that makes them invisible so the feds can’t see them when they go to do a madness innit. I’m like rah, that’s a real ting? Gotti says yeah fam and looks at me without blinking, without a trace of anything moving in the lakes of his eyes and he says brudda, it’s fully real – lemme have a hot wing. I offer him the box and he pulls one out. Then he leans back over the railing and says but you can’t fuck up the power, you can’t make one mistake. If the juju man says you gotta wear these beads, the day you take them off is the day that the spirit will detach itself from you and you’ll fuck up. It’ll ruin your whole life. Or he might tell you that if you wear the beads when you fuck gyal you’ll lose your powers. I lean against the flaking metal railings. My head starts spinning but it’s probably the cro we’ve been smoking. Gotti dashes his chicken bones over the balcony and licks his fingers.

  If a next man said this to me, I’d be like whatever, you’re just chatting some mad shit about magic, you don’t even know what you’re on about, we’re in the twenty-first fucking century, we don’t deal with them tings. But this is Gotti. This is a very serious individual. We’ve been through a whole lotta madness and all I’ve seen is realness. This is an intelligent person. Not someone who believes in bullshit and superstitions that you can’t see or prove. Man don’t even believe in God. We don’t even know if God believes in us, so why bother? But Gotti’s talking to me about this juju ting like it’s as real as the air we breathe, like it’s gravity n shit. He points to one block in the distance and says see that block there, if you come with me I’ll take you to the juju man who lives there, myman will put a spirit on you for the right price. Truss me. And then he starts talking about Bugz Bunny.

  I’m leaning over the balcony and I look up at the sky, bleached by rain. There’s two hot wings left. The day is dying. Gotti says how d’you think Bunny’s always gotten away with it?

  What, Bunny’s duppied bare man?

  Gotti laughs like it’s something obvious and says course fam, myman’s got bodies. And he always gets away with it. Just like the Chicken ting.

  Yeah I heard about Chicken still. Didn’t he get popped in one house party in D-block and then jump off the balcony?

  Yeah, it was me who made that happen.

  How you mean?

  Gotti tells me:

  Chicken wasn’t on stuff, wasn’t involved in fuck all, just a next yout from SK. Whenever it was summertime he’d bring out this little drinks stand on the block and try shot juice to the mandem n dat. But his cousin and couple next man yacked some of Bunny’s peopledem inside one chicken shop. Took their chains and gunbucked them n all dat. I was in the shop getting a burger when it happened. Them man disappeared afterwards, so Bunny couldn’t find them. Two twos, Chicken has a house party. Bare man from SK come. So I’m in the party and Chicken’s got one chick winding on him right next to me, so I phone Bugz Bunny and tell him one of the brers who robbed the mandem is right here. Bunny says are you sure? I say yes, coz true Chicken is the cousin of the main guy who robbed the mandem, so it’ll have to do. I tell Bunny I’ll be standing right next to him, just come now. About twenty minutes later, Bunny runs up in the yard blacked out, bally’d up, holding a Glock 9 with a red laser attached to it and he pops Chicken in the chest right in front of me. Chicken tries to get away, so he runs out onto the balcony and jumps off. But the yard was on the second floor of Dickens House, so he breaks his legs when he lands. I swear down everyone could hear his legs snap and then he starts crying for help. Everyone goes running out the block and I remember some woman was screaming help him, help him. Bunny comes out the block and says help him yeah? And then he says move back, move back, and he waves his strap at the crowd like he’s swatting flies away. He walks over to Chicken and shoots him couple times in the face. Then he calmly turns Chicken’s face over with the toe of his trainer and gives him couple more in the other side of his face before cutting out.

  As he tells me this, Gotti’s eyes go all distant, almost drowsy, like he’s well fed on memories, drunk on the past. That’s peak, I say. I’m still eating a hot wing and something shivers inside me and I say standard fam and laugh, but I can smell the dead flesh of the bir
d through the greasy skin and I put the half-eaten bit of meat and bone into the plastic bag with the box of chicken wings and dash it off the balcony. Everyone knows it was Bunny, says Gotti, but there’s no way feds can get him for it. His powers are too strong. I never even liked Chicken anyway, he was a dickhead, and then he laughs.

  Then he tells me about how Bunny got paid to go and duppy one brer for some next bosses in Northwest. He’s in the back of the whip and it’s the brer who’s sitting in the front passenger seat that he’s gotta kill, says Gotti. They park up somewhere in Maida Vale and Bunny takes out the strap and busses it in the back of myman’s head. But the strap was a rebore, the barrel wasn’t drilled through properly, so when the bullet hit myman’s head, it’s like it broke on his skull, it didn’t go fully in. Myman’s clamped his hand to his head and gone aaah fuck. Then Bunny’s clapped it off another seven eight nine times in the brer’s head and obviously that killed him. The brer’s cousin, who’s in the driver’s seat, jumps out and runs off, and Bunny’s all shouting after him, come back bruv I ain’t gonna kill you. So whenever he goes pen, it’s never for a M, it’s always suttin else, and that’s the spirit. That’s the power that Bunny got put on him, you get me.

  A couple of children in school uniforms walk across the precinct and the camera swivels down to look at them. They walk into the little shop where we’re always buying Skittles and cans of KA and chip n Rizla. I look at Gotti and I’m thinking rah, this is forreal, it’s true. Certain man are really going around London, dropping bodies and getting away with it. You don’t read about it in the papers, you don’t read about people not getting convicted of murders. Stories with loose ends that no one wants to tell. That no one knows how to tell.