Who They Was

by Gabriel Krauze

  Solo’s cousin, an Irish traveller, comes on the wing. He’s on remand for a double murder and he keeps telling everyone how he’ll be out soon. We all know he won’t be. He gets put in a cell with the Birmingham brer. The next day, the Birmingham brer doesn’t come out of his cell and Solo says to me that problem’s sorted still, man ain’t gotta do nuttin. He spuds me. He has his dead brother’s name tattooed on his hand, killed in a motorbike accident. Fast life.

  There’s one screw on the wing called S.O. Squirrel. Massive ex-army man who no one likes. One time this brer called Caple is walking back to his cell after making a phone call at the end of association and he’s laughing. Squirrel tells him to stop laughing. Caple says shutdafuckup. Squirrel follows him into his cell, grabs Caple by the face and gives him one vicious headbutt. Knocks him out cold. Later, we hear Caple screaming but no one can see what’s going on. The next day his celly tells us that when Caple woke up, three screws including Squirrel rushed into the cell and grabbed Caple. Caple’s celly says all the screws know Caple’s got an abscess in one of his teeth, he’s been tryna get an appointment with the prison dentist for months. Two screws held Caple’s arms, while Squirrel wrenched Caple’s jaw open and shoved his hand into Caple’s mouth, grabbing the abscess and pulling him out of the cell like that. It only stopped coz he went unconscious from the pain and the cunts had to carry him out, says his celly as we stand on the landing during association. Caple’s been sent down block for two weeks and he ain’t even seen the dentist yet. Fuckery.

  And on and on. Behind the door. Days without breath. Nights without silence. Dreams without sleep. Scars on faces and heads and knuckles. Knot in the chest that slides into the belly all tight, tension and tension and waiting and waiting, but for what? Who even knows. You wanna phone people and say I’m locked up in pen as if you’re tryna remind them you exist. Locked away from the sky. Locked away from the air. Looking through the window just to catch a glimpse of the world, but there’s only more walls, barred windows and cameras. The world outside only exists in memories. Voices shouting from one cell to another. Plastic rosary beads. Black, white, baby blue, glow-in-the-dark rosary beads. Two cans of tuna for a drawing. Tinned tuna tastes so fucking good in here. Chicken is raw. Stomach pains. Pot noodle come like some gourmet ting. Don’t wear prison-issue trainers, mandem call them fraggle flops and don’t rate you if you rock them coz it means you ain’t got no one outside sending you shit. Rock hard pillows. Neck pain when you wake up. B addicts on methadone. Murderers addicted to buj. Exercise yard walking around anticlockwise. The sky looks far away, too far away, like if it started raining the rain wouldn’t even reach here. Someone gets their face cut on another spur and the wing gets locked down for twenty-four hours. Showers steaming up, burning skin. Back and chest tattoos with names of gangs, girlfriends, sons, daughters, dead friends. Always wear your boxers in the showers coz man ain’t no battyman tryna get raped n shit. Screws come searching through your cell, tapping the bars on the windows, going through your shit and leaving you to tidy it all up. If it isn’t tidy the next time they do a cell check, you get put on report. Someone hangs himself while his celly is asleep and the body gets discovered in the morning so we don’t get let out for our usual fifteen minutes in the exercise yard. Someone on the spur shouts did he piss and shit himself and someone else shouts did he get woods and bare man start laughing and I hear the same voice go I read it in a book, it’s what happens when you hang yourself, your tings go hard like it’s the best feeling in the world and another voice shouts shut up man, allow dat battyboy talk about man’s tings, wa’um to you. The Olympics are on TV. Everyone is behind their doors, stuck on the same channel. Usain Bolt breaks the world record in the hundred metres and the wing explodes in noise, cell doors banging clang clang clang, mandem doing gunshots brap brap brap. Pool and table tennis on association. Squeaking of trainers, ping-pong match, p-tik p-tok p-tik p-tok. Keys rattle. Someone’s got his stereo tumping Giggs’s album Walk in da Park. Books getting passed around like The 48 Laws of Power and The Art of War. Snitches get moved off the wing for their own protection. Brutus tells me about someone getting kettled when he was here before; it’s when you boil your kettle, put bare sugar into the boiling water and then dash it in a man’s face. The sugar clings to your skin so that when you touch your face, your skin melts right off, says Brutus. No female screws on our spur. Someone says that the last one got caught giving his co-d brain in their cell. I laugh, swear down? Mum’s life g. She even wrote him love letters after she got sacked. Burning incense to mask the smell of the toilet. Taking a shit while your celly watches TV. Man are plugging mobile phones up their arse. Plugging hash. Plugging cro. Plugging work. Plugging b. Plugging razor blades and homemade shanks. Bed bugs. Keys rattle. Doors open. Doors slam shut. Constant sound of metal; a timer. Voices are echoes. Only one present for everyone. Behind the door.

  Always time to kill. Nothingness is long. Turns the day long. Makes it drip, but as it drips down, it doesn’t separate from its source, like honey or golden syrup, a long sticky string, and you’re waiting for the thinnest part of the drip to finally break and separate so the drop can hit the floor. But it doesn’t.

  One afternoon I get some disposable razors for shaving. Brutus tells me how to do it. I break the blades out of the heads of two razors and throw the broken plastic out of the slit in the window so there’s nothing in my cell to make the screws think I’ve made a weapon. I get an old toothbrush and melt the head with a lighter. As soon as it goes soft – blackened, twisting, yellow bubbles – I stick the two razor blades in side by side and wait for the plastic to re-harden. I rip a small strip of my pillowcase off and tie it around the handle tight, so that if I have to slash someone repeatedly, my hand won’t slip and I won’t end up cutting myself. You can’t poke man up with this but if you slice a man down the cheek, their face will open up. Two or more blades next to each other means they won’t be able to stitch up the cut, which will leave a real nasty scar. Mark up a man’s face for life.

  After two and a half weeks I get moved with Solo to C Wing. We don’t want to go. We take all our shit in plastic bags marked HM Prison Service. Follow one short little screw and just before he opens the gate to put us onto the next wing Solo turns to me, makes a fist with his arm down by his side and says shall we go block? If I say yes, Solo’s gonna bang the screw in the face. The screw knows it. He looks at me like he’s just waiting for me to decide. I say nah brudda, ’low it. Solo says come we go block and I go nah fam, allow him, jus allow him. The screw has soft eyes. Solo doesn’t like not knowing what the next wing’s gonna be like. Neither do I, but I’ve only got a few weeks left in this place and I don’t wanna spend them down block in solitary confinement, only the bare essentials, concrete slab as a bed, no associating with other prisoners, basically no human contact apart from when the screws take you for a shower. Nah, allow dat labyrinth. Mandem turn into minotaurs down there.

  There are wasps in my new cell and they don’t know how to get out so I kill them. It’s a one-man cell with a bunk bed for two man. There’s not enough space for two people to be standing up and doing things at the same time. The toilet is at the foot of the bed with a little curtain around it for privacy. My new celly is a Tamil Tiger, them nuts Sri Lankan brers who beef with axes and samurai swords from Wembley and them sides. He asks me what my sentence is. I say I got three weeks left before I go home, how much you got? He says you will cry if I tell you how much I got left. His name is Ragul.

  That evening he tells me how he was involved in some gang war in Wembley. He says that the gang his team was beefing kidnapped one of his boys in east London and cut off his head with a samurai sword. So they did a drive-by on one of the brers they were after. Wembley High Road, broad daylight, early afternoon, but all the shots missed. Later they went to the brer’s yard and kicked off his front door. But he wasn’t there so Ragul popped the brer’s cousin. Afterwards he tried to execute the brer’s father, making him kneel
in the hallway of the family home, but when he pulled the trigger, the gun jammed. He is six years into a thirty-year sentence. Every night, Ragul sits on his bed on the top bunk, reading Bible verses for half an hour in a steady emotionless drone of Tamil, while I watch TV.

  One night, staring up at the ceiling it hits me. This life is like being in an ocean. Some people keep swimming towards the bottom. Some people touch the bottom with one foot, or even both, and then push themselves off it to get back up to the top, where you can breathe. Others get to the bottom and decide they want to stay there. I don’t want to get to the bottom because I’m already drowning.

  The next day, during association, me and Solo get our heads shaved. Then we go into his cell and write bars together. I get some letters. One is from Yinka and she tells me she misses me like mad and that the rose I gave her months back is now dead. She says she’ll be waiting for me when I get out. I read and re-read the last paragraph over and over again:

  You’ve always been in trouble with the police, ever since I’ve known you. Even when you met me it wasn’t enough to deter you. It’s a shame because I thought I could change that side of you, really, how stupid. You’re a drug which I’m addicted to but it’s an addiction which is no good for me. Even though we can’t be together you’ll always be my Butterfly … this pussy is yours xxx

  I feel to throw away the letter afterwards because I don’t want the burden of someone loving me like this. I’ve started having dreams again since I got locked up and stopped bunning cro, but the women in my dreams don’t have her face.

  My mother and father have written to me as well. The stamps are Italian. I read the letter from my father while the day fades and night lingers outside my window, looking in.

  Dear Gabriel,

  It’s only short note because I really don’t know what to tell you in this situation. You are in the prison and I’m at luxury place, like the paradiso from Milton’s poem.

  From my nature I’m the bird so cages and boxes my enemys. I need my wings keep straight and moving them all the time. I need to be free … I told you before but I want to repeat. The life is too beautiful and too short. I see it now every day when my time is shorter, my energy weaker, my friends and places which I know passed away. I want to talk to you – I hope we will find time for this at home.

  The owl in our garden is crying – time for hunting.

  With hugs and kisses

  Tata

  P.S. I hope you are alright there and life treat you well, and soon you will be free …

  Underneath this he has drawn a bird flying through clouds but the bird’s wings are sticking out of a wire cage which holds the bird within. I put the letter away with all my other papers, sticking it underneath my probation reports as if I’m trying to bury it.

  Then suddenly the screws tell me I’m getting early release due to overcrowding. Thursday association is my last time out on the wing. I jam with Solo the whole forty-five minutes and when I go, he hugs me and says brothers for life. I promise I’ll write to him.

  It’s the last day of August when I get released. When I step out the prison gates it’s like the sky comes down and touches the earth and I swear everything smells different out here. I can smell atoms moving, vibrating, free. It feels like that moment when your ears pop after a long flight. While mandem are hitting up carnival in London, I’m jumping on a train from Bicester to Marylebone station.

  Yinka meets me at the station and she’s looking peng, not gonna lie. White jeggings mad tight on her backoff, skin looking fresh and silky, lips all shiny like strawberry glaze on doughnuts. I hug her tight. She has candy-pink nails and she smells of sugar. We go back to my parents’ yard because they’re not back from Italy till the day after tomorrow. She’s acting all stoosh like she don’t wanna let off, won’t even hold my hand when we walk from the tube station to the yard. We go upstairs and end up play-fighting on my bed and she’s saying what Gabriel, you think you’re bad just coz you went pen? I get between her legs and she starts breathing heavy, moaning as I pin her arms down and then I lips her up and I pull her jeans off and her thighs are thick like cold honey and she says fuck me daddy and we end up fucking for like an hour until neither of us can see properly. Later she goes yard coz she’s got work in the morning. I go to Uncle T’s. Welcome home son he says and hugs me hard. A plate of food. Then I buy a draw of ammi. I go and link Mazey.

  We bun a zoot outside my mum’s yard and my head starts spinning after just five tokes. Everything’s moving around me and when Mazey talks it’s like he’s acting in a movie and I start laughing for no reason at all. I say rah, whatdafuck is in this? I swear I’m gonna frass out and Mazey says swear down fam? Swear down Maze and then I give him the rest of the draw and say that’s you fam, have the rest of the zoot as well, I need to sleep. Rah, safe my broski. I go into my parents’ building and climb the stairs. I wake up at three in the morning sprawled out on the landing, one floor down from the door to my parents’ flat. I never even made it to the front door. The moon is standing over me just watching.

  A few days later, I have dinner with my parents. We sit at the kitchen table, the light above holding us in its warm glow while night seeps into the rest of the kitchen. In a frame on the wall is a drawing of a crocodile with its mouth open in a big sharp-toothed smile, approaching a rabbit. Dinner is roasted aubergines in olive oil and garlic, based on a new recipe my father picked up from one of his Italian friends, followed by mushroom tagliatelle. I’m chewing focaccia which is this banging salty white bread from Italy that reminds me of my childhood when I used to go with my parents to Tuscany every summer holiday. It makes me think of the beach in Forte Dei Marmi. The salty taste of the sea. Jumping, somersaulting in the waves, laughing as they knocked me over.

  Silence hangs over us. Small talk. How was your holiday? Good flight? I don’t really know what to say though. It’s like I’ve become so used to daily conversations about who shot who and who stabbed who and who robbed who and who went pen for whatever, that I can’t talk about other shit. I can’t deal with talking to my parents about Tuscany and the figs they picked up off the street out there and the lemons and tomatoes and the beach and their Italian friends and the sea and the pine trees and— I swear I almost feel like I don’t even know how to talk about things like that any more. Then my mother asks me Gabri how are you? Are you okay? Yeah I’m fine, I’m fine, I say. Distant, strangers almost, we all seem to be searching for something to say. It’s like meeting people you once had a great holiday with, but it’s been so long since that golden time together that when you see them again, everyone’s just forcing the interaction while hiding what they’re really thinking.

  I get pissed off with the hesitant silence boiling the air around me and say why are you acting like you’re not sure how to approach me? I was only locked up for a month, it’s not like I went through some deep experience and it’s changed the person I am.

  Well it has hasn’t it? says my mother.

  Oh my days, allow it, I say, trying to finish everything on my plate as quickly as possible.

  My father doesn’t look at me, just pats my mother’s hand on the table and says her name gently, like he’s telling her to leave it alone.

  We carry on eating, the kitchen filled by the sound of cutlery knocking against plates and I’m thinking about Gotti and Rex and Solo and Yinka and Mama and Tata when it hits me: only love can hurt me.

  ON THE MORALITY OF MURDER IN HAMLET

  Orun ni ilé, Oja ni ilé aye.

  (Heaven is home, the Earth is just a marketplace.)

  Yoruba proverb

  A WEEK BEFORE uni starts I hit one uni rave with Capo where I grab one big-batty Nigerian chick and start daggering her. I smell shea butter and olive oil in her sweat and her skin shimmers silver as she says you’re so bad, I’ve got a boyfriend you know. Then she gives me her number, tells me she’s a first-year Biomedical Sciences student and I should holla at her when uni starts. The club night itself is p
retty dry. Nothing like the hood raves I’m used to.

  A few days later I hit up a rave with Dario. It’s in Willesden in one spot called Theorem. Gyaldem looking cris, fresh weaves, tight braids, dancing with their backs arched to show off their backoffs while bare man stand around, chains out, hoods up on some screwfacing ting. Then one brer starts getting bottled with an E&J brandy bottle – you know those thick glass bottles with hard edges – and it doesn’t break. Every time it connects you can hear this hollow CONK sound as the glass bounces off his head. The music gets locked off and me and Dario push through the crowd to see if it’s anyone we know. Everyone’s standing in a circle watching the brer get fucked up, pulling their phones out to film it, going oh shiiiiit myman’s getting fucked up. It’s not anyone we know so we carry on watching. The brer who’s getting bottled tries to get away. The crowd surges into the street. Outside, the brer collapses on the pavement, head all lumped up and bloody. But still, that E&J bottle ain’t broken. That’s one thick bottle to get licked with ah lie? says Dario. When the bredrins of the guy who got bottled see what happened, they jump in a whip to go and chase down the mandem who done it. As the whip pulls out into the road, the brer who got bottled stands up, staggers into the middle of the road and gets run over by his own boys. The impact of the car flings him into the air like he’s doing some kinda front flip. Imagine.

  For my final year, I find a room to rent in a big yard in Plaistow, shared with four other students from Queen Mary. Since it’s in East, far from the ends, I can just focus on the uni ting and finish my degree. Still, I start shotting coke and MDMA to students, and also to some people on my road just to make a little p’s on the side so I can buy whatever I want and be comfortable.

  I still have couple cases, which means I have to go to court every now and again, and I end up missing handing in the proposal for my dissertation. My supervisor knows what’s been going on with me, so he writes down that I already gave it to him and says we know it’ll be of a high standard anyway. People like him give me hope forreal. Incidentally, he was my professor when I first did The Birth of Tragedy and got so into Nietzsche.