Zebra

by Debra Adelaide

  Every single time it is as if you are a child taking its first precarious steps in a new world, except there is no nervous thrill, no expectation of developing power, no skill to explore, no sense that these steps will ever become stronger and firmer.

  The Master Shavers’ Association of Paradise

  Early on the morning of the final day, you are ready to leave. You have already packed your belongings into the government-issue striped carryall. One for each person but one is too much. You could have fitted your cousin’s and your uncle’s possessions in your carryall alone, but it is too late for that. As it is, the fat blue-and-red stripes sag somewhere around the middle, whereas those of others who have already left seemed to have contained enough to make a firm, proud rectangle. You look around the room. You could take the blanket off the camp stretcher, or the stretcher itself, which dismantles and folds into a package. But these items belong to the camp, to the contractors, or to the government. You compromise by taking the towel. Grey-blue, the colour of marine paint, it is still damp. It will not dry before you leave. You fold the towel and place it on top of the carryall, and then turn to face the open doorway. The little sign – a piece of cardboard with chalked lettering that you propped up every day next to the doorway – has already been taken down.

  You sit on the step and look across the quadrangle, empty apart from puddles gleaming in the early light, to the huts in the row opposite. Their doors are held open with cabin hooks to comply with the regulation airing, their windows already shuttered with plywood. Beyond is a line of palms – you can just see the tops of them brushing against the morning sky – and beyond that is the hill that slopes down to the water and although the beach is bounded by a wall of rocks and barbed wire and you have never once felt these waves lap at your bare feet or even seen the colour of the water or the sand, you have heard the sea, day and night, and you hear it now, slapping at the shore. They cannot stop you hearing.

  A good hour previously, you had gone outside and stepped down the long muddy pathway between the tents, careful to avoid the potholes from the rain, to the shower block at the end of the row. At that hour it was still dark, but it was better to wash alone in the dark than jostle at first light with the other men. The men were fewer, as it was the last day, but the showers had never been sufficient, as if two or three years back the camp were expecting a dozen men, not hundreds.

  But the water was very clean. There were plastic rain barrels at each end of the larger sheds. These were bright blue, stamped mauser biofuel, which some of the men said meant toxic but you’d never been sure. All the tents had buckets parked at the corners to catch the drips. And when you moved into your uncle’s hut you took your bucket with you in case the men were right about biofuel – not that it would have made any difference, not after all this time. Unfortunately your bucket was bright pink, but then so were many others so you could tolerate the joking, though you would have preferred grey, or blue. Even yellow would have been preferable. Nevertheless in your pink bucket you still collected Paradise’s purest, even up to today, the very last day, for it rained frequently.

  You took this bucket to the shower block. There were meant to be plastic bowls set all along the wooden bench that ran opposite the latrines, but most had gone missing, which was a shame. A bowl would have been so much better for your business, these past few months. The conveniences were not very convenient. Men crouched there unconcernedly in the stalls, separated by a flimsy plywood panel not even waist height, and no doors. They stared back at you from the far end of the block, rising and hitching their trousers afterwards without so much as a glance back at their mess, barely breaking eye contact with you, the flies descending greedily the second they left. They were the kind of men who never came to you as clients, never spoke to you, never glanced at you except those times in the shower block, when they would stare so hard you would understand, without the need for words, the precise nature of your status in the camp. These were the men who would do nothing day after day but lie on their camp stretcher beds and smoke. From time to time one of these men would, as if on a roster system, throw himself at the fence screaming obscenities about the guards’ mothers or sisters, and then be taken off to solitary detention with a look on his face as if he were an avenging angel who had stormed the gates of hell.

  You did not shave, this last morning, as there were no more razors. Fortunately you had shaved cleanly a week before they were banned altogether and now you have produced a neat new stubble beard. You set your bucket on the bench and scooped some water out to rub over your face and neck. The day before there had been a sliver of soap like a cuttlefish bone, but in the dark you could not find it. You rubbed and rinsed with Paradise’s purest, saving the last bit to clean your teeth and rinse your mouth. Your toothbrush was in the side pocket, velcroed, of your cargo pants. You were meant to hand this in every night but somehow yours had gone unnoticed despite the extra vigilance. Or maybe the guards no longer cared, now that it was the final day. As you examined it, holding it out in the growing light, you saw how the bristles were all flattened. Over the months you had so chewed and worn it down that how it could ever be turned into a weapon puzzled you. But then you had seen a man slash himself with one carefully cultivated thumbnail, slicing across his other wrist as if he were cutting through banana skin. You had seen men tattoo each other with iron nails filed back to fine points. You once saw a man stitch his lips with plastic thread teased from a rope and a needle made from a chicken bone.

  You dried your face and neck with the grey-blue towel and scraped your damp hair back with your fingers, pressing the curls as flat as you could. Now that there was only you, the last member of the Association, you did your best with what you were left.

  The day you arrived your uncle took you around the camp and ate his evening meal with you and sat on a stool in front of your tent until the other men had gone to sleep, when he left for his hut in the second row, across the quadrangle. And the next morning he appeared again to stand with you so you would not be confused or bullied. Before breakfast he took you to the shower block, where the guard distributed plastic disposable razors. Like lollipops, they were handed out one at a time, each recorded in a book with a pencil tick. Your uncle grabbed you by the arm and took you to the bench inside.

  Ten minutes, he said, they will collect them again in ten minutes. You have to be quick.

  How will we know? you said. No one here had a watch.

  They’ll ring a bell. And if we’re not done a guard will take it off us, mid-stroke if necessary.

  You laughed. But maybe he was right. You looked around. The showers were a long, open-sided building with a low tin roof and blue plastic sheeting attached to one side, to protect from rain, you assumed. A long wooden bench contained a stack of plastic basins. Two stainless steel sinks were covered in plywood, the taps above them wrapped in plastic bags.

  They’ve never worked since I’ve been here, your uncle said. Instead of a mirror, a polished steel sheet was screwed onto the timber walls above the bench. Opposite were the doorless stalls with low dividers and lower toilets with no seats, also steel, but not stainless; rather they were very stained. There were two men in the cubicles staring at you as if shitting were an act of aggression. The three standing at the trough next to them were pissing at the one spot on the wall as if in competition. Come on. Your uncle grabbed your face, then after staring a few seconds laughed and thrust your chin away, slapping your cheek.

  Puppy, he said. You are just a fuzzy pup.

  You felt your face. It was true. Your struggling beard still shamed you. It was like baby’s hair.

  That’s what Mr Kondappan used to say, you said to your uncle. He would not believe I was fifteen already.

  And then the mention of Mr Kondappan made your words clog somewhere in your throat. You stood very still, willing your face to remain immobile. Your mouth threatened to become too loose. Your uncle opened wide
his arms and embraced you.

  My boy, he whispered, my boy. We must be only grateful that you are safe.

  Over his shoulder you squeezed your eyes so hard to stop the tears it hurt. When you opened them one of the shitting men was staring right at you. He brought his cigarette to his mouth and inhaled and exhaled slowly then let out a long loud fart into the bowl he was squatting over.

  You do me then, your uncle said. Let’s be quick.

  That you could do. This is where you were skilled, where you could take charge. You would never see him again but you would make Mr Kondappan proud. You placed your uncle’s towel over his chest and, standing there beside the wooden bench, rinsed the razor in the cold pure water then rubbed the soap into your palms.

  No lather, you said.

  It’s all we have, he said. You’ll get used to it.

  You soaped his face then applied the razor. It was white, with an orange head. It said Bic. The blade was spotted with rust. You scraped down one cheek then the next.

  Careful of my moustache, he said.

  It needs a trim, old man, you told him. He nudged you. Later, he said. I think I can find some scissors.

  He rinsed and dried while you washed your face and as you were both combing your hair the shitting man pushed past you. His beard was rough and tangled. The guard appeared with his box and book just in time, and your uncle handed the razor back and had his name ticked again. The box was tin, with a lid and a lock. Inside were about a dozen disposable razors. The guard snapped the lid shut and took it away.

  You began to notice the number of men walking around badly or half-shaven, or scraped all over their faces. Some men were like Janus, with a beard on one side of the face, a stubbly but clean face on the other. Conversing with these men was improbable, like talking to a circus freak. Shaving was permitted every five days. Your uncle joined you most of those mornings, to line up, be checked on then off, and you shaved him, and it was always a scrappy soapy mess but you did your best. Sometimes the Bic disposable was too rusted. There were also some blue Gillette Double Blades in the locked tin and once or twice you were lucky enough to get these. As you shaved him your uncle stared at you and you at him. You were his mirror. You tried not to notice how like your mother’s were his eyes, how the eyebrows arched then tapered past the eyes towards his hairline in the same way. Soon you began using your own bucket, and the grey-blue towel that was finally issued two weeks after your arrival in Paradise.

  After a month you stopped asking what there was to do. The first time your uncle laughed at you and then, uncharacteristically savage in a low voice so Mani could not hear, told you, Stay sane. And shut up. Just shut up. He was afraid of the guards but also of the shitting men, the ones who would hurl themselves at the fence screaming. The same men who refused food, for weeks if they could. They would still line up in the mess hall but then, not breaking eye contact with the orderly, would tip the contents of their plates onto the floor and then the plates, before turning and walking out. But you ate the breakfast – porridge, bread, margarine and jam – and washed your plastic plate along with the others and returned it to its place in the mess hall, and walked around the quadrangle, like the others. Like all the others you sat in the opening of your tent and stared at the others sitting at the opening of their tents. When you moved to the hut you sat with your uncle and Mani in the doorway, and stared at the other men sitting in their doorways. When it rained you sat and watched the rain. If it was not raining you walked around the quadrangle in the mud. Your pair of running shoes were soon filthy, but like all the others you set them aside and went barefoot. You sat and waited for lunch – ham in perfect squares, sometimes sausages, and bread – walked some more and waited for dinner. Rice, pasta, sloppy mince in gravy. Potatoes, boiled, mashed and often in their skins and still gritty. Once a week you had an orange, or a banana.

  Sometimes you and your cousin would sit in a corner of the quadrangle, or behind the kitchen shed, or up by the gate. Mani was twelve, large for his age, unlike you – still growing at sixteen, still sporting a laughable beard at seventeen – otherwise he might have been sent with the other children to the mainland. We are the lucky ones, your uncle said again and again, you and me and Maniyarasan, we are lucky, we must be grateful. Mani would stare at his father. You knew how much he hated hearing these things, though he did not contradict him.

  Mani and you would speak in whispers. The water, the hunger, the parching heat and of course the thirst when there was water all around. He’d been in the water, along with your uncle and seven other men, rescued after a night and most of the following day. They were lucky, your uncle says, because they had a lifebuoy to share. Mani did not care that the beach on Paradise was forbidden. He would be happy never to see the ocean again. Sometimes sitting at dusk by the gate a quietness descended, as if the whole island was asleep, and then you were aware of the slap of waves down on the forbidden beach. Mani sometimes clamped his hands over his ears and walked back to his hut. He spent a lot of time on his camp stretcher bed with the blanket over his head.

  After your first three months you had walked the perimeter so thoroughly you knew every rut in the path, every puddle after rain, every rock, every weed. You couldn’t lie and smoke and stare like the others. After the tenth or hundredth game of playing cards you thought you would die of boredom. Your uncle would patiently deal the cards, so worn they were barely readable, sitting on the stool in front of his hut, using your upturned pink bucket for a table.

  For six months the Red Cross ran a weekly afternoon discussion group. They served Cheezels while men practised the new language. Cheezels are made from cheese. Cheese is made from milk. Milk comes from a cow. There was also orange cordial from a large orange plastic barrel with a big M on the top. You pronounced the words, orange, drink, thank you, thirsty, and held the Cheezels up to your eye before popping them in your mouth. They tasted good but not of cheese. You did not say you had been learning English since you commenced school, nor that your school had been closed down when you were eleven, when all the teachers disappeared and the buildings were shot up one night.

  The Red Cross worker left a year ago. There was also a library, in a converted kombi van. Every Thursday afternoon, the library volunteer set out plastic crates with magazines, National Geographic and Reader’s Digest, plus English-language primers and comics for beginners, and an entire set of Ian Fleming’s James Bond books, Casino Royale to Octopussy and The Living Daylights, with clever covers: a bullet shooting a hole into the title page; playing cards fanned out against green cloth. One day your English would be good enough to read them, but before that time arrived, the volunteer stopped appearing.

  The men began their own smoking club, down behind the mess hall late at night, where hidden packets of favourite cigarette brands or tobacco would be mysteriously produced and traded. Longbeach and Champion were the most prized brands, if they could be obtained. White Ox tobacco and Ventti papers, sometimes handed over, one at a time, in return for favours, information, documents, signatures, anything, even promises. One packet of cigarettes for a name that would give you a passage to freedom. You did not smoke, and your uncle never participated, retreating to his hut doorway and playing cards laid out on the upturned bucket. The Red Cross parcels that brought Champion and White Ox also brought essentials and other small indulgences: Lux and Palmolive soap, Cadbury’s chocolate, dried fruit, socks, writing materials, sunscreen.

  The camp rule forbade long beards. It was better to shave badly, or to use the scissors, than fight it. The guards were meant to supervise a proper trimming. All the scissors were aluminium bladed, with bright green plastic handles; however, if a man was lucky he would get a new pair and it would not tug as much, at least for the first few times.

  You had no need for the scissor option. Your beard, what Mr Kondappan had kindly called incipient, straggled down the sides of your face like a delicate weed. You stil
l trimmed it and rubbed oil down your cheeks to make it shine. Meanwhile you made yourself useful, for the men who wanted a shave but did not have your patience with the rusty Bics. The guard handing out the razors every few days got to know you and after several months the ten-minute rule was not quite so rigid.

  In the shop Mr Kondappan had had a cutthroat razor and a leather strop and he had begun to teach you the art of proper barbering. You had long and steady fingers, he said. You were his best apprentice by far and although your job, when you were not sweeping the floor, was to whisk the badger-hair shaving brush in the cup of soap to make the creamy foam just as he liked it, you had already learned a great deal. It was when you were out the back rinsing the brushes and combs that you heard the van as its tyres squealed to a stop. You heard shouts, then shots, then the squeal of the van again, and in seconds it was over and you were left staring out into the street that had been busy five minutes before, empty now but for the smell of burnt rubber and a stray dog that shook its coat and turned away. And no one had seen a thing. It was not that people were unsympathetic. Just unwilling to get involved. When you left, bewildered, you were still holding the badger-hair brush so tight your knuckles were white. You took it with you when you fled. It was in the backpack along with everything else at the bottom of the Indian Ocean.

  Once, lawyers came. At least your uncle thought they were lawyers, but on reflection no one was sure. They could have just been government officials, secretaries, bureaucrats, policy makers. They were driven up to the camp gate in four-wheel drives and set up an office in an empty shed, with their boxes of papers wheeled in on a trolley. You were called in one by one, five or ten minutes each. The men all waited, sitting at their doors as usual, and when your uncle filed back you saw there were tears in his eyes.