Children of the Sun

by Max Schaefer

  After a while he answered: sorry not interested in time wasters

  Timewasters?!

  games playing

  I poured myself more Scotch. Really, I’d had enough of people’s judgements for one night. I said: What makes you think I’m playing games?

  I waited until he’d read it, then went to the bathroom to pee and look at myself in the mirror. When I came back he still hadn’t replied. I hit Reload a few times and watched the message window reassemble itself in flickering stages with each press.

  ‘Fuck it,’ I said out loud, and wrote: All right then. I’m free right now if you are. Can accom. I pressed Send before I had time to think.

  give me ur adress he said.

  Let’s agree some ground rules first, OK?

  give me ur adress or fuck off

  So I did, and he said, ill be there in an hour, and then he logged out.

  I stayed where I was for a few minutes, clicking randomly on bookmarks and links without reading the pages they led to. I wasn’t quite sure what I had just done, or whether I had really done it. It was just before eleven; at ten to twelve, or thereabouts, he would arrive.

  The website, like most of its genre, offered guidelines for meeting strangers. Choose a public place, a busy time; bring a friend. Nobody bothered with all that. But: hurt you & rape you & leave you bleeding … I had no mobile number for him, no way to back out except turn him away at the door. At the very

  least, it would be sensible to let someone know. In other circumstances I would have told Philip, or maybe even Adam (who would certainly have told me). I thought of calling Sarah I back, but such conversations remained unimaginable.

  At 11.10 I went upstairs. I tidied the mess in my room, fishing old underwear from the bed and straightening the sheets. I put the cash Dad had left me in the top drawer of his desk, and locked it. I showered; dried and moisturized; gargled mouthwash in lieu of brushing; put clean clothes on. I went downstairs again. Somehow all this had only taken fifteen minutes. In a no-nonsense burst of resolution, I called Philip. It rang three times and went to voicemail: he had diverted my call. I didn’t leave a message. I saw my parents returning from holiday in just a few days, suitcases on the front step, the key in the lock, the view from the doorway. My stomach felt fragile. I turned the music back on, realized Tom Robinson wouldn’t do, tried to find something appropriate: Depeche Mode. I listened to about a minute of ‘World in My Eyes’ and switched it off. I re-read arealnazi’s profile several times.

  An hour came and went; seventy minutes; eighty. I sat on the sofa with more whisky, and put on Philip’s tape again with the sound down. It was the last of several generations of amateur copies: the image was badly degraded and glitching; the colours bled. Every few seconds a wave of noise would ride up the screen, and sometimes break over it.

  A nondescript domestic interior. The Union Jack hung on the wall to the top right of the picture. Before it, centre screen, stood Nicky and a younger, slighter boy. They faced the camera with their arms round each other. They both wore skin gear: jeans, red braces, T-shirts. The camera panned slowly down their jeans (the boy’s were bleached, Nicky’s plain blue) and found the tops of their boots. The image popped. Now we saw their upper bodies again. Still holding each other, they gave nazi salutes to the camera with their free arms. The image shimmered as if the air before them burned. The doorbell rang. I jumped in my seat; my skin shrank tight around my face and neck. I stopped the tape and turned the TV to standby. My hand gripped the remote. I looked over to the front door, but with the lights on inside and darkness without, I could see no shape at the window. The bell rang again. I stood as quietly as I could.

  He knocked, paused, knocked louder. Then there was a metallic slapping sound that I didn’t recognize, until I saw that he was pushing in the flap of the letterbox and letting it spring closed. Through the gap I saw the ends of fingers invade, retreat again. When I walked towards the door my shoes struck the wooden floor. He must have heard, because he stopped knocking.

  The man waiting on the doorstep looked older than I had imagined: in his mid-fifties perhaps. His head was shaved, its skin slightly mottled; there was perspiration above his jowly mouth. His boots were ankle high: he wore combat trousers tucked into their tops, and his zipped black jacket cradled a substantial paunch. Over his shoulder he held a large duffel bag. He looked me up and down without comment, and as I stepped aside to let him enter, he similarly appraised the room.

  ‘Nice place,’ he said, stepping into it. He walked forward to the base of the stairs and set his bag down with a slight groan. He turned to look at me.

  ‘Would you like a drink?’ I said.

  ‘Yeah go on.’

  ‘Is Scotch OK?’

  While I poured it he sat on the sofa. It was a big piece of furniture; he sank into it a bit. The fingers that took the glass from me were tattooed between their knuckles: a c a b. The light showed faded marks by his left eye, which I had not noticed when I opened the door.

  He asked, ‘Is this yours this place?’

  ‘My parents’.’

  ‘Thought you lived with your boyfriend.’

  ‘We split up.’

  ‘Oh …’ he said uninterpretably, and after another sip added: ‘House must be worth a few bob.’

  ‘Property prices round here have gone nuts. We’ve lived here for decades though. Since it was cheap.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’ He stood up, still carrying his Scotch. As he got near me he extended his free hand towards my face and I winced. He gave a small grunt. I held myself as still as possible as he took hold of my glasses by one arm and lifted them off at an angle; my vision skewed wildly, then blurred.

  ‘Where are they?’ he said. I could see him watching me, but barely made out his expression.

  ‘Where are what?’ For some reason I thought he meant my glasses, and that it was a trick question.

  ‘Your parents.’

  ‘Oh, they’re on holiday.’ The answer was automatic, an unthinking reaction to my delayed understanding of his question, and I immediately regretted it. They’re out, I should have told him: they’ll be back later.

  He put my glasses on an arm of the sofa and came close again, sipping his Scotch. He kept coming until we nearly touched; the detail of his face clarified once more, and I thought of those precise, monochrome moonscapes in the weekend supplements, all basins and rifts. I caught his eyes and quickly looked away. He frowned at me.

  ‘You Jewish?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Because you look fucking Jewish.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  He shrugged: ‘Don’t matter anyway,’ and sipped his drink. His eyes closed in synchrony with his swallow. He put his other hand in his pocket, seemed to reconsider, and took it out again empty.

  ‘Take your shirt off,’ he said, and stepped back to watch. After a moment I did so. Even in the room’s warmth I shivered a little. We stood like that until, to get some space, I told him, ‘I should shut the curtains.’ I pulled to the ones at the front, trying not to look at his bag as I passed. I walked back past him to the rear, began closing the curtains there. The black garden fell away.

  When I returned he was again on the sofa. I stood in front, of him, unable to think of anything to say. He sat, watching me. My upper body shook violently, as if I were very cold. I tried to control it and failed.

  He stood. He held out his hand, and ran a finger down the side of my face, my neck, and then the left hand side of my chest, which continued to buck and spasm of its own accord.

  ‘Fucking little queer,’he said.

  He took hold of my earlobe and, twisting it, forced me down, until I yielded to a kneel. He pulled my face against his crotch. His clothes smelled like they hadn’t been washed for a while and I tried to breathe more lightly. For an odd moment I imagined killing him (some brave, startled struggle with a knife, his stomach split like rotting fruit) and wondered where I could hide the body.

  He pushed back m
y head so I was looking up at him, said, ‘Fucking little stay-at-home mummy’s boy,’ and slapped me across the cheek; I wasn’t sure how hard it had been, but it jolted me all the same, and stung my skin.

  He brought his knee up under my chin, nudged it so I was looking up again, watched me adjust to the new information. My whole body was shaking now, twitching asynchronously in different parts, as if reacting to tiny, randomly distributed explosions inside.

  He pulled a small vial from the pocket of his coat, unscrewed the top and held it under my nose. It gave off a harsh, chemical smell.

  ‘Sniff,’he said.

  I said,‘I’m not sure …’

  ‘Fucking sniff it.’ He put his free hand over my mouth. I held my breath for a few seconds and inhaled cautiously. The smell filled my head. I reeled a little and concentrated on staying upright.

  ‘Again.’ With the hand that held the bottle he pressed my free nostril closed. Then he kicked me, not hard, in the ribs, and I breathed in sharply. My skull felt like hands were pressing it, or lifting it perhaps; my thoughts went slow and fuggy. I heard him say, ‘That’s better.’ He took away the bottle and I thought he sniffed from it himself. I looked up at him, wondering what he was going to do.

  He trod on my hand and said something that sounded like ‘Fucking nigger,’ only I wondered if it had been ‘nigger-lover’, which made more sense. He ran his finger down my cheek again and I saw the stained lines of his tattooed skin. I thought of marked flesh, unwilling, like a branded calf, and then the symbols I had drawn for him, the swastika I had carried secretly for days, watching it slowly fade.

  I said, ‘Can I have another sniff?’

  ‘Yeah go for it mate.’

  I exhaled, rammed the vial up my nostril and breathed in as violently as I could. It burned the lining of my nose a bit but that feeling was soon lost in the rush of the rest; I felt hot and giddy, like I was tipping constantly backwards; my head swelled and was pressed; my skin prickled, pulsed. He said, ‘Can I have some more of that Scotch?’ and I said, ‘Help yourself.’ The glug of its pouring ran behind my sight of things in hazy, cropped fragments: the tall still curtains, his combats’ scuffed knees.

  ‘That’s it,’ he said, ‘lick my boots you fucking cocksucker.’

  In the toe of one I saw my face, a hazy fish-eye distortion.

  ‘What’s in your bag, anyway?’ I said, and added, ‘I’ve got Skrewdriver somewhere,’ but had second thoughts about drawing attention to my iPod and decided to drop it.

  At some point then he was pacing around me, around the room, which I saw from my lowered, listing perspective in exaggerated angles and cartoon foreshortening. ‘How much cash have you got?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I said say heil Hitler,’ he said, or maybe it was me.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said, and took off the rest of my clothes. I said, ‘You can hit me again.’ When he did my jawbone buzzed in reaction and my ears also separately rang.

  ‘Fucking little queer,’he said again.

  His finger ran down my neck.

  ‘… aren’t you?’

  ‘Yeah.’ I looked up. He breathed, looking back at me. I thought I could see him thinking. He seemed a bit stuck. I asked, ‘Have you got a blindfold?’

  ‘No sorry.’

  ‘I thought there might be one in your bag.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. The image came to me of Mum and Dad, a few weeks back, when I went in to say good-night: her reading, and him with something to shut out the light. ‘I might have one,’ I said.

  ‘Only that’s not exactly my cup of tea do you know what I mean?’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. My knees were hurting and I sat back on the floor. ‘OK.’

  ‘No but I mean if that’s what you’re after … Tell you what how much cash have you got?’

  ‘Cash?’

  ‘Only I’m a bit short. Listen why don’t you go and fetch your blindfold and get me like fifty quid at the same time. You can lend me that can’t you?’

  ‘Um.’ I said. ‘Yeah, OK.’

  I felt detached from the stairs, like I was floating up them. Halfway up I turned and asked, ‘Did you really know Nicky Crane?’

  ‘We was in the BM together mate. Down in Woolwich. I knew him for years. And Ian Stuart too. Skrewdriver. I knew all them lot.’

  In Dad’s study, I stopped and listened a few times to make sure he hadn’t followed me, and when I’d locked the rest of the cash back in the desk I put the key behind a book on the shelf. I rooted in my parents’ drawers but there was no sign of the blindfold I was picturing, and I realized they’d probably packed it. Just as I was giving up and regretting the now pointless concession over money I found another, some freebie from a long-past Virgin flight. Printed across its front was the phrase beddy byes. The elastic was old and brittle and it kept slipping down my face. He adjusted it hopelessly: it felt like a hat from a Christmas cracker. ‘Bollocks,’ he muttered the third time it fell. He looked tired and upset, like an old person realizing they have forgotten something.

  I said, ‘Give me that bottle again.’ Its edge tickled my stinging membrane and I could hear myself grunting as I inhaled; then my brain was air on one side and brick on the other and the imbalance made me slump. I doubled over and caught the floor as it came for me. I hovered above it, drooped over my locked arm, which still shook with the impact.

  ‘Go on then,’ I mumbled at the planks, ‘be a fucking nazi.’

  ‘What’s that mate?’ I looked up. He was taking the money from the side table and folding it into his wallet: ‘Can’t go forgetting that.’

  ‘Well then,’ he said, and with an air of desperate improvisation kicked me in the crotch. I shouted, ‘Ouch! — shit.’ The pain rose up my abdomen in a hot flush. I felt a bit sick.

  ‘I feel a bit sick,’ I said, and with a surge of surprise puked briefly on his leg.

  ‘Shit!’ He jumped back. I stayed where I was, panting at the floor.

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Only I’m not into that you know what I mean?’

  I burped.‘Nor am I.’

  ‘Yeah. Is there more where that came from?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Don’t move.’ I heard him opening cupboards in the kitchen, and then he was back and putting a mixing bowl in front of me. ‘Stay where you are for a minute or two,’ he said. ‘Going to find a tea towel or something.’

  In the metal bowl my face appeared with the opposite of the earlier fish-eye effect: features tiny in the centre, edges stretched crazily towards me. After a while I felt stable enough to sit down where I was, but I kept the bowl close.

  He came back with his boots off and the lower part of his trouser leg drenched. ‘Did it come out?’ I asked. He sat on the sofa, raised the leg and sniffed: ‘Not all of it.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘You not used to poppers?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Want to take it easy the first time,’

  His stretched his wet leg from the sofa and stroked my knee with his toe.

  I said, ‘I might lie down for a bit. Do you mind?’

  ‘Did you grow up in this room then?’

  He was standing in the doorway.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Nice isn’t it.’

  ‘Well, it’s been redecorated since, then. It’s a guest room now.’

  ‘Still. Somewhere to come home to.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Anyway,’ he said, and patted his thighs. ‘Guess l should fuck off.’

  ‘Sorry,’I smiled.

  ‘Might hold on to that fifty for now if it’s all right.’

  ‘Sure. Of course.’

  ‘At least I finally got to meet you anyway. Thought it was never going to happen.’

  I smiled again, politely.

  ‘I’ve left my number,’ he added. ‘On the table downstairs.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. He gave me a little nod and he
aded off down the stairs.

  After a minute he reappeared. ‘I see you got a washing machine down there. Only would it be all right if I did those trousers quickly? Save me taking them to the launderette.’

  I asked if he wanted a shower while he waited, and he said he’d prefer a bath. I watched him undress; there was something unexpectedly shy about it. His belly sagged over old, thinning boxer briefs that had torn away in places from the waistband; with my glasses back on I could read the text that ran around it, calvin classics. ‘Might as well stick this lot in and all,’ he said. When he was gone I put on a T-shirt and some boxers, and when I heard him safely in the bath I padded downstairs to the kitchen. He’d found the washing tabs: the box stood on the counter. The machine quivered as it ran, and through the door I could see it had been loaded almost to maximum. His duffel bag sat open on the floor beside it; left inside were more dirty clothes, a pair of trainers, two fist-sized bundles wrapped in shopping bags, a brown bottle containing a few pills.

  He took a long bath, perhaps listening for the machine to stop, and I was half asleep when he came out. He had my bath-towel wrapped around him. It started at his belly button and fell clear of his legs in front of him.

  I said, ‘Can I see your tattoos?’

  He sat on the edge of the bed, held out his arm.

  ‘I know what most of them are,’ I said. ‘That one on your fingers. And that symbol’s the Celtic cross, probably British Movement. Swastikas, Skrewdriver, White Power … all self-explanatory. How about this one?’

  ‘That one? It’s just a picture I liked. Don’t mean anything.’

  ‘Were those Borstal tears?’

  ‘Yeah. That was a long time ago. They’re nearly gone now.’

  ‘How long have you had the spider’s web?’

  ‘Ten, twelve years. Something like that.’

  ‘I won’t ask what it’s for.’