Hand Me Down World

by Lloyd Jones

  That’s when I told him, ‘I need money to see the boy.’

  Almost right away the two selves of the little Frenchman went to war with each other. He wanted to help me. He wanted to criticise me. He said he loved me. He said I was stupid. How could I have got myself into this situation? And because it was late, and people were sleeping around us, he couldn’t stand it any longer, he had to get up and go outside and shake his fist at the moon and at my stupidity. In the middle of his outburst he began to recite a poem that moved him more than it did me, because within seconds of finishing the poem he was kissing my eyelids and cheering me with his words of kindness. He would do everything within his power to help. As he made these promises, the same promises seemed to deflate him. I left him muttering and picked my way back through the dark and the sleeping bodies to the bed we shared.

  The first time I ever had hotel sex I did not charge enough. I did not know what I was worth and I did not understand the value of the different currencies I was paid in. The first time Jermayne took fifty euros it could have been one hundred or five euros. Paolo had paid for things, then Bernard. I soon realised how hard it was to earn fifty euros.

  For a month Bernard wore himself out on my behalf. Some days were better than others. Rain meant bad earning days. I wished there was something I could have done. I would have gladly worked through the night to earn the money Jermayne demanded in order for me to see my boy. I had to see him. And that need turned me into someone with no heart or conscience. I didn’t care how the money was earnt.

  Every Wednesday afternoon we met in the playground. As soon as we parted I would set my mind to when I would see the boy next. The intervening period meant nothing to me.

  Then Bernard stopped earning as much as he had, even on good days when the city was filled with tourists. He couldn’t explain it. What had worked for him all winter suddenly stopped. They didn’t want to pay money for his poems. Then he got beaten up by the Serbian jazz trombonist. He should have seen that coming. The Serb had complained before. Certain soft notes played on his trombone could not be heard above Bernard’s ranting. They started pushing and shoving one another. Out of that came Bernard’s black eye. Maybe it was that black eye that made tourists wary of him.

  One Wednesday afternoon I showed up to the playground with the football. Jermayne was slumped on a bench, his head hanging between his knees. It was a beautiful day but Jermayne didn’t appear to know it. There were people laughing but Jermayne did not hear them. The boy stood some distance away watching the other children on the slides and the swings. When he heard the gate swing back Jermayne’s unshaven face looked up through smoke-ringed eyes.

  When I told him I had no money to give him today he became angry. He wasn’t interested in my promises to bring more the next time. I found myself wanting to explain so that he would understand that it wasn’t all my fault, it was the trombonist’s, but I didn’t. It was better I take the blame and the criticism than for Jermayne to hear about the little Frenchman. He didn’t want to know about anyone else in my life. He didn’t want the story of our arrangement going beyond the two of us. I was the bird which flew down to the playground once a week and then flew back to its roost on top of a dead tree stump.

  Now Jermayne was very angry. I had wasted his time. I had abused his trust. He went on listing all the abuses and insults then he stopped mid-rant—he saw me looking at the boy. He must have realised I was getting something for nothing. He said something sharp to the boy. The boy approached us, his eyes on the ball in my arms to start with. But then his eyes found mine. I saw some light there, and quickly it was gone. His father dropped a hand onto his shoulder and steered him out of the playground gate.

  On my way home I saw men collecting refundable bottles. I saw tramps selling newspapers. These were things that I could do. I mentioned this to Bernard. I could sell things. I had sold myself before. I could do that again. When he heard that the little Frenchman sat up and looked stunned. ‘No. No. No,’ he said. ‘You cannot do that.’ He looked distressed just thinking about it. He hurried over to the broken mirror hanging on the wall near computer man. There was still bruising around his eye. It was no good. Tourists wouldn’t go near a man who looked like he had just picked himself up from the gutter. Those are Bernard’s words, not mine. But as he looked at his black eye a different thought led him back to the bed. He got down on his knees and dragged out carton after carton of books. I had never seen so many books. I often saw him with a single book, but not this many books. It was hard to believe they were worth anything—hard to believe it of anything that had sat in cartons under a bed for so long.

  He borrowed a broken-down pram from the Polish mime artist woman. She didn’t have real babies; she had two plastic ones. But people still paid money to see her craned over the pram with her face and hands frozen with alarm. We stacked the books in the pram. Bernard carried another carton of books in his arms. We set off for the second-hand bookshop with me pushing the pram.

  There a thin young man, who did not once look directly at me or Bernard but only at the books in the pram, bought half of them for one hundred and twenty euros, of which Bernard gave me a hundred.

  For the rest of the week I worried that Jermayne would not show after the disappointment of last time. He would want to put me in my place. But the next Wednesday at the appointed time I saw him hurrying the boy along the bike path.

  I took the boy out of the playground. We walked down to the canal. I had brought some stale bread. I broke it into pieces for the boy to feed the ducks. Ente. That’s the word for duck. The boy taught me that word. Ente. Ente. As he repeated it something unpleasant grew in his face. It was his father’s understanding of the power of transaction. By the time Jermayne returned we were in the playground kicking the ball.

  I could not wait another week before seeing the boy again. I told Jermayne I would give him another fifty euros on Friday. When he picked up the boy on Friday I told him I’d see him next Wednesday, even though there was no more money.

  This time Bernard sold his black coat to one of the young musicians. There was time for him to buy a new coat before next winter. The coat was worth thirty euros.

  I spent the next few days wondering where I could find that extra twenty euros. Bernard wouldn’t let me out of his sight. He followed me around like a lost dog.

  On Monday we visited a pawnbroker. Bernard took out his diamond-inlaid tooth and placed it on top of a glass counter. He didn’t want to sell it. He couldn’t do that. But if he’d asked me I would not have stopped him.

  The man in the shop put a glass to his eye and held up Bernard’s tooth. He looked at it for a long time. He looked at it from every angle. Then he put it down on the glass top and frowned at it with a naked eye. He and Bernard finally agreed on two hundred euros. The shopkeeper had wanted to give more in the hope that the little Frenchman would fail to pay back the full amount.

  Before handing me the money Bernard led me to a cafe. There we sat, him with the cash in his pocket, a coffee set before him, a hot chocolate before me, and the matter of the money hanging over us like a cloud. He told me this was the last money he was prepared to give me. He had nothing left. I had to talk to Jermayne. I should try to find a way to appeal to his better instincts. Jermayne had kindness in him. I’d known that kindness. But something else inside of him had seeded down and overtaken it. Bernard was right about that. I saw it in Jermayne’s face when he dropped the boy off at the playground. A strange wild beast looked out of his eyes.

  Now, after every visit, Bernard would ask me if I’d had that conversation with Jermayne. Each time I said no he became downcast and he’d go back to following me around, in and out of the building, to the hole in the wall where I sometimes went to look out at the world.

  He didn’t want me out of his sight. He made me come with him to the places where he recited his poems to tourists. Each time I saw how hard it was to earn fifty euros. I realised that Jermayne had put a high price on h
is time. But whenever Ramona asks what price would be too high for me to spend time with my boy I never have the answer. I can’t imagine what that price would be. I would have to be a different person from the one I am because I cannot come up with a figure.

  I had spent the two hundred euros but I still turned up the following Wednesday afternoon to see the boy. There was just time to pass him the ball. After Jermayne discovered I had no money he grabbed the ball out of the boy’s hands and he booted it into the canal. Then he grabbed the boy by the hand and hauled him out the gate. I ran after the ball. I didn’t care about the other mothers or the old faces that occupied the benches. What did they know about anything? What could they possibly know about a ball that contained language? I had to run for ten minutes along the banks before I overtook the ball. I broke off a branch from a tree and, standing on the stone steps cut into the canal, I dragged the ball in from the slow-moving brown water.

  Without a date to look forward to I felt the boy once more move out of my life. I must have made Bernard anxious because again he insisted I accompany him to work. He said he needed me to watch out for the mad Serbian trombonist. We both knew what he was more afraid of and I could not give him a guarantee that if a man offered me fifty euros I wouldn’t give myself to him.

  I spent the nights sitting on the bench across the canal watching the windows of Jermayne’s apartment. Sometimes I saw life in the windows, which was reason enough for me to return the following night.

  One night Jermayne came out of the building. He stood on the cobbles smoking a cigarette. I stood up from the bench. When he saw me he took the cigarette out of his mouth and stared the way you do at a dog that has fouled your patch. I started across the bridge. Jermayne stepped further out onto the cobbles. He looked up at the windows. Then he flung his hand at me as if he was throwing a stone. I walked on pretending I hadn’t seen him.

  I had found Jermayne’s weakness. I had made him afraid. This was good, Bernard said.

  twenty-nine

  It had rained overnight. Thick gluey clouds hung over the city. It was a bad earning day and Bernard decided to do something else. He said he had some business to attend to. I took that to mean he was off to the pawnbroker to pay back some of the loan. He was missing his tooth. He said it affected the delivery of his poems. The gap in his teeth made a hissing sound. In other words, no money could be spared for me to see the boy. Even so, I set off for Jermayne’s neighbourhood by myself.

  Shortly after midday I arrived at Jermayne’s building. As soon as he heard my voice the intercom went dead. Abebi must have been at home. So I waited. Sure enough, I heard someone flying down the stairs. Jermayne didn’t so much open the door as come bounding through it. Next moment his hands were on my shoulders and I was being pushed backwards across the cobbles. In the shadows beneath the trees he hung onto me. Called me all kinds of names. If he ever saw me here again he would ring the police and I would be deported. I would be flung across the sea back to where I’d come from like the stinking dead fish I’d turned into.

  I told him I was here to see my boy. I told him I would pay. Not that day, but soon, as soon as I could. My promises didn’t interest him. I was a liar. My heart was rotten. I would say whatever it took. A person like me could not be trusted. Besides, the boy didn’t need me. He had a mother. A good mother who read to him at night, who bathed him, and who the boy loved. Who the fuck did I think I was to turn up the way I had, like something scraped off the dirt by a gust of wind?

  Jermayne wouldn’t shut up. I banged my fists against his chest to make him listen and he slapped me hard across the face. The next thing Jermayne is falling away from me, his eyes wide, as the little Frenchman jumps on top of him. Bernard is beating him with his fists. He is screaming in Jermayne’s face. Jermayne yells back. The two men roll in the dirt under the trees. A crowd has gathered. Men on bicycles. Walkers. One old man, with a thick newspaper held under his arm, hunched his shoulders forward so that they became part of his smile.

  Then I hear a woman’s voice and I know who that is. I don’t need to look. The voice is coming across the cobbles as I slip away towards the bike path and I run.

  Past the second bridge I stop and look back. There is just a jogger and a black dog with its nose in some old plastic.

  Bernard was hours coming home. I waited by the hole in the wall. When I grew sick of that I went inside the warehouse and sat on Bernard’s bed. Computer man kept turning to look. I was making him nervous. So I went back to the hole in the wall. The Polish mime artist brought me a bread roll. She laid it at my feet and smiled. The young musician who had bought Bernard’s coat passed me his bottle of beer.

  I sat out there until dark then I walked back to Jermayne’s neighbourhood. There I found Bernard beneath the trees. Someone must have sat him up. He was leaning against the trunk, his rag-doll legs splayed out in front. His eyes were glazed, his mouth all caked with dried blood. I bent down and I held his head in my lap. He let me do that but he didn’t speak. One of his shoes had come off. His shirt was torn. An eye was closed—the same eye the trombonist hit. The greater hurt was inside of him. I lay his head back against the trunk and I crouched before him so he could see me. His eyes shifted—and when I looked behind there was Jermayne.

  One of his eyes was closed. He’d changed out of his earlier shirt. In his hand he held a broomstick. He spoke quietly, calling me a Judas bitch that leads the lambs to the butcher. Now look at what I had done. Judas bitch. He poked Bernard in the ribs. He spoke in Deutsch and slowly Bernard began to get to his feet. He groaned with the effort it took. In English Jermayne told me to leave him alone. He said it was only fair that he find out where we lived. And so we walked back to Bernard’s neighbourhood. I carried his shoe. I had tried to give it to him but he stared straight ahead. He walked lopsided, like a man with a limp. Jermayne followed with his stick.

  We reached the hole in the wall. Bernard went through first. As I went to follow the stick came between me and the wall. ‘Not you,’ he said. Bernard turned round. His miserable face peered out at us. Jermayne said something for Bernard’s ears only and the little Frenchman turned and wandered away.

  Now Jermayne steered me with the broomstick. He drove me along the wall towards the station. I asked where we were going. He said the Judas bitch would find out soon enough. If I stopped or tried to look back over my shoulder he poked me with the stick. We had to wait at the lights. Again I asked him where we were going. This time he said we were walking to find out. ‘We are walking away from your old home and that stupid fucker of a boyfriend. If I ever see you with him again you will never see the boy. That is my promise to you,’ he said. ‘I don’t think it is such a difficult choice. You think you can come into my life and destroy everything, well, think again. It works both ways. If Abebi ever sees you there will be trouble. If I ever see you and the boyfriend together there will be trouble.’

  The lights changed. We crossed the road and walked beside the tramlines and the early-evening traffic. Whenever I came to an intersection Jermayne said ‘left’ or ‘right’. Soon we came to the busy road where I had surfaced with the Frenchman all those weeks ago. He pointed to the television tower in the distance. ‘That’s where we are headed,’ he said.

  We walked for half an hour, in the same formation. Jermayne didn’t say another word until we reached the square around Alexanderplatz. There he stopped me and told me to turn around and to listen to what he had to say. His face was covered with sweat and his eyes were calm. But there was bitterness on his breath. He repeated some of what he’d said earlier. What had happened that afternoon could never happen again. If it did he would not hesitate to telephone the police. If he ever saw me with the Frenchman I would never see the boy again. He asked if I understood and I nodded. Then he surprised me. Did I have any money? I shook my head. ‘You haven’t thought about anything, have you?’ he said. ‘Look at what you gave up. A perfectly safe and respectable life in the hotel. Now look where you are. Do
you think this is better?’

  ‘It’s the boy I wanted to see,’ I said.

  Jermayne didn’t reply—unless silence counts as a reply. The silence went on a while. I wondered if he might be reconsidering everything so I did not dare interrupt that silence. When at last I thought to look behind me he had gone.

  I walked across the square to the station. With my last euros I got change from the receptionist in the toilets. I found my old cubicle. I sat down and stared back at the white tiles. Soon after that the banging on the door started.

  thirty

  I had no idea about the steps you might take in order to give up. If someone had pointed out a door with the instruction ‘Go through there,’ I might have been tempted. I might have drifted towards that door and taken a peep to see what lay on the other side. But pulling me back from that door was the idea of seeing the boy again—and Bernard. I had two people to think about now. Two people in the world who I cared about enough to go on sitting in those toilets and wandering in circles around the railway station.

  I noticed the changes since I was last there. The warmer weather had brought out more people. Some of them were strange-looking young men with yellow-and-purple hair. There were men and women with winter in their faces. Dogs who kept their heads down. The dogs I noticed always seemed to know what they were doing and where they were headed. Once I found myself walking behind a man with a large trombone strapped to his back and when he turned round it was not the Serb.

  I kept the last of my money to pay for the cubicle in the station toilets. I washed there. I brushed my teeth with my finger. I’d left the plastic bag under Bernard’s bed. I was confident of finding my way back, but I kept thinking, What if Jermayne sees me? Although I never saw him during the day, the feeling that he was there haunted me. He was about to poke his head between the clouds and wave that stick at me.