Distortion

by Gautam Malkani

  Then, from fuck knows where, a question lands slap on the basin like some Tarot card: “Dad, this is about them stories you wrote about www, ain’t it?”

  Can’t tell if his AK-47 look is shot at me or at his own reflection. “Double what?”

  “The letters www – you wrote a bunch of stories about some guy who was lobbying the government to scrap www in internet domain names. Something about the Hebrew numbers that correspond with the letters.” Don’t ask me why I can’t just say the actual number six. Ain’t like I’m superstitious or nothing. After all, Mum had started breaking mirrors after her bad luck, not before it. Dressing-table mirror on the regular.

  “Oh,” he goes – still talking to my reflection. “You read those stories.” Dries his face with a flannel that belongs to Ramona. She’d even tagged it with marker pen – just the first three letters: RAM. “I made up most of the quotes and content in those stories too.” He relocates our convo back to my room as if the carpet is safer ground than the bathroom. Fronting like it ain’t no biggie, like as if all this is just some nothing, as if the shitstains between us don’t exist. “Dylan, why can’t you bring yourself to say the actual numbers? Why do you use the letters www? Are you spooked, son?”

  “I ain’t got a problem with saying the numbers. But internet domain names start with letters, not numbers, so obviously I’m gonna say the letters. If I said the numbers, then we’d be talking in Hebrew and we can barely even manage Hindi.”

  “Ah – of course. Your mother’s family – they think I’m too anglicised just because I forgot how to speak my mother tongue.”

  “That ain’t what I meant, Dad. I didn’t even know you forgot how to speak your mother tongue.”

  “It isn’t a question of forgetting the words, Dylan, it’s a question of forgetting how to reach the volume they think words should be spoken at.” Buttoning up his suit jacket. “Anyway, Dylan, do you know your mother tongue?”

  Wanna tell him I know my mother’s ulcerated tongue. And we ain’t talking them tiny sores you take out by unloading a few rounds of Bonjela, I’m talking ulcers like bullet holes. Big, black immunocompromised cigar scabs that even my kisses can’t cure.

  “Son, those www stories were fake. Not only did I fabricate the eyewitness quotes they contained, but 99 per cent of all the experts I spoke to told me that, numerically, www doesn’t even mean three sixes in Hebrew. It just means 18. I just found one crackpot who thought differently to all the experts and, by giving him an equal platform, I made it look like there was confusion around the subject – that the facts of the matter still needed to be debated. Made for a much better story. It’s the same basic trick the tobacco industry used and what climate-change deniers do today – just keep generating doubt. Because, when faced with doubt, son, people often just believe whatever sticks in their mind – and lies usually stick better because they’re simpler.”

  “Wait, what? Dad, why are telling me this?”

  “To show you that there’s no big mystery, Dylan. So when you remember where you’ve hidden my scrapbook, please do me a courtesy and kindly return it.”

  31

  MY STUDENT HALLS again. My bed. My desk. Again my door opens. This time, Uncle Deepak rolls in. “You know your lock is broken, Dhilan?”

  Great. First my factual father and now the nearest thing I ever had to an actual dad. I peek out my door and scope up and down the corridor – like as if I’m expecting Mum to be visiting next.

  “I came by myself,” goes Uncle Deepak. “I told you I’d come. I told you I’d come and find you in your student halls.” He’s packing a pink umbrella and a brown paper bag. He can’t weigh up whether he should drop the bag on my bed or my desk so just holds it. “Didn’t I tell you I’d come? On the voicemails I left you. I said I’d come here and so I’m here.”

  Uncle Deepak always gives off the vibe of a man who should don a hat with his coat. Stride the fuck around in an old-school fedora. Probly be a bit difficult though – what with his turban. Wears it on the daily even though my family ain’t even Sikh. He converted all his files to Sikhism when he was in his mid-thirties. Picks and chooses, though. For instance, he ain’t got a beard. I reckon he’d look better if instead he’d selected a Sikh man’s beard and a non-Sikh fedora.

  “We said we’d give you one or two days before one of us came,” he goes. “But then after we got the visit, I decided better I waited a little longer. So now I’ve come here today.”

  “What visit?”

  “I told you I’d come and visit, Dhilan. Why they don’t give you a bigger room?”

  When I’d first moved into student halls, Uncle Deepak had offered to drive down from Birmingham to drop me off with all my stuff. That would’ve meant he’d have driven for three hours from Birmingham to Mum’s house in Acton just to give me a forty-minute lift to my student halls in Holborn. That’s just the kind of thing he does. “But what you will do?” he’d said when I told him not to worry. “You can’t carry all your books and computer on the Tube.”

  If I’d gone to Cambridge, then probly I’d have accepted his offer to help with the driving and dropping and consoling and crate-lifting and consoling and tear-wiping and mopping and consoling. Anycase, he and Aunty Number Nine have now moved from Birmingham to Acton to take care of things. He’s Mum and Masi’s first cousin. Sometimes I feel proper fraudulent tagging myself a “young carer” cos of everything he and my aunts have done. Are you still technically a marathon runner if you drop out before the final couple of miles? If your pre-bereavement bereavement peaks too early?

  “What visit?” I ask again.

  “I told you, if you don’t come back to Acton, I’d come and visit you here. And now I’m here.”

  “Oh, okay, sorry. For a minute I thought you meant that someone had visited you.”

  “Yes,” Uncle goes. “Of course. We got that visit from your boss.”

  “What visit?” Watch me working double shifts here to not drop an F-bomb. “What boss?”

  “Your boss from your typing business.”

  “But I’m the boss of my typing business. It’s my business – my start-up. And, anyway, it ain’t a typing business, it’s a data-entry business.”

  “I don’t know the ins and outs of such things. He told us he was the one who hired you.”

  “One of my clients?”

  “Can I ask you something, Dhilan? And answer me please truthfully. You are working for the government or something like this?”

  “Who the what?”

  “Like on the TV. For MI5 or whatnot?”

  “What?”

  “Because of the way you’re living. All the sneaking around and around, all the money you’re making. And also when your boss came to see us he knew everything about us. Everything. When and why I converted to Sikhism. What’s in my bank accounts. Everything.”

  Ain’t no need to ask Uncle Deepak what this boss man looked like. Nonethefuck, he starts describing an old man wearing a shirt and tie with a leather jacket – “Like the leather jacket Marlon Brando wore. What do you call them? With the two zips? Double-breasted.”

  “Well, what did he tell you – this boss man of mine in a biker jacket?”

  “He told to us that we should stop harassing and WhatsApping you in the office. That we should give to you the space. That you were his best employee and he needed for you to be free from the stress so you could do your job and your degree.”

  “He didn’t threaten you, did he?”

  “What threaten? He helped me to fix the carburettor. And so now I’ve come here to tell you that we’re giving you the space.” Uncle stays standing a full five metres away like he’s trying to do a demo. “Do you need anything, Dhilan? I know you have your typing business, but do you need any money or anything?”

  “No, I don’t. Thank you. I have my typing business.”

  He clocks the bleach stains on my carpet. Feel like fessing up that, yes, they’re from bodily fluids – but not the fun kin
d.

  “Also I came to give you this.” He drops the brown paper bag like a dead animal on my desk.

  First time Mum went in for surgical drama, she filled up empty ice-cream tubs with her freshly made sai bhaji. Frozen bricks of spinach to keep me strong and so on. Two tubs for while she was in hospital and an extra ten in case she never left.

  “What, so that’s it? We’re done?”

  “Yes, this is all I’ve come here to say.”

  “Why? Why is that all you have to say? What did that man – my boss – what did he tell you to make that all you have to say?”

  Uncle dodges the bleach stain as he steps towards me. His forefinger flexed. “Truthfully, I don’t even care what your boss said to us. What I have to say is this: you don’t need to discuss with him or anybody else about our family matters. I don’t care if you’re working for the MI5, the CIA or Inland Revenue.”

  Fact that I ain’t even discussed my complicated family-related shit with the Botox man ain’t even the point now. “Who do you want me to discuss it with?” I ask him. “With the mother–son marriage guidance counsellor or with the pre-bereavement bereavement counsellor?” Takes some proper effort to keep my voice levels in check – technically you ain’t allowed to shout down your uncles or aunties.

  “But why you did all this counselling-bouncelling nonsense? You should have discussed these things with us – this is what the family’s for.”

  I tell him they only wanna think what they already think so what’s the point in talking to them? Again working hard not to shout at him. Swallowing all the bubbles of soggy, soap-opera hissy-fit. Cos you gotta respect your uncles and aunties. Don’t matter which race or religion or city you’re from.

  That shit’s the law.

  Ramona had explained it to me at school one time after she’d had a bust-up with her own aunt. She’d told me she’d realised that you couldn’t shout your fucking lungs out at someone if they weren’t your actual parent. That shit just Wasn’t Done. Even if that someone had been the most rock-solid substitute parent, or the world’s greatest surrogate parent – even if they rolled like Uncle Phil from The Fresh Prince. Because as every kid knows, you gotta respect your granddad/uncle/godfather/the female forms of all of the above. Gotta show em the kind of respect that you wouldn’t never show a parent.

  “I mean, think about it, Uncle – how the hell can you even begin to have a discussion with someone if they only wanna think what they already think?” There’s some caps lock on my voice, though, so I back down with a rapidness. “I mean, just in general, Uncle, just all the aggro and toxicness on social media – I mean the partisan divide.”

  “I don’t know what point it is you’re trying to get out of your chest, Dhilan, but it’s good you feel you can shout at me. Like a son, not a nephew. I don’t want for you to hold these things in. Even though, when you shout, you sound just like your loner loser of a father.”

  Whenever Mum has pulled that resemblance shit on me it’s like flipping on my inbuilt apology switch. When I’m done saying sorry to Uncle Deepak, I try and drop in a drive-by question about my old man – but without sounding too lippy or nothing, so basically without actually questioning anything. In fact, really, it’s more like I’m just agreeing with him – about my dad being a loser and so on.

  “Exactly, the man was a fool,” goes Uncle. “He chose to lose his wife and his son. His problem was he was the work-addict-holic. Always too busy with his busy-busy insurance busy-ness.” He reaches for my broken door handle. “You know, if you want I can send you a good locksmith – they’ll fix this free of charge as a favour to me. You must have a good lock, Dhilan – you need be safely and soundly when you sleep.”

  32

  CAN’T REMEMBER IF it’s bad luck that comes in threes or visitors. Drag my chair to the middle of my room, sit facing the door. Should probly scroll through my fones or something. Flip open my laptop. There are comic-book superheroes who can tap photographic memories, unlimited knowledge and powers of prediction. I just stay staring at my door.

  “Did you know your lock is broken?” The botched-Botox man chucks me a bag of chocolate chip cookies. “They’re freshly baked. Or are you still not big on breakfast?”

  I tell him let’s just say some websites still hit me with ads for pregnancy-testing kits.

  “Once upon a time, morning sickness would often lead straight to mourning sickness. Yes. It’s true. And not just because of high infant mortality rates – also because, under certain pre-Christian laws, newly born newborns weren’t considered human until they’d been put to the breast. Can you believe that, Dillon? It’s true. Not human until they’d had a proper taste of the titty.”

  Shoulda been a bit more badass and kept my other chair ready for him – man’s gotta shove away my laundry before he can sit.

  “Yes. It’s true. Did you know this, Dillon? Yes? It was perfectly legal to just delete your child, provided you did so before its first feed. Dump it in a river. Or just leave it on some windswept mountain with its feet bound – they called it ‘death by exposure’. Yes. You know this, Dillon. It’s known that you know this.”

  “Look, I didn’t take my father’s place.”

  “Come again?”

  “You just dropped another one of your neon-lit references to Oedipus. And so I’m telling you that I didn’t take my father’s place. I left my mum’s bedroom. Even left her living room when the living room become her bedroom.”

  “Strictly speaking, your father hasn’t slept in your mother’s bedroom either – at least not for several years.”

  Most people, they get properly creeped out by the thought of their mum and dad getting jiggy with each other. Me, I get kinda tranquilated – like when you swap out your Red Bull for sweet milky tea.

  “Come to think of it, Dillon, if your search history once again serves me correctly, you haven’t actually overlooked that part of the story. People tend to overlook that part.”

  Technical term for it is “backstory”. We’re talking back before Oedipus could even crawl. Oedipus’ birth parents had him dumped on some mountainside cos they’d heard the exact same prophecy from the exact same oracle. Only, instead of dying, little dude got rescued. Raised up by some next parents.

  Took some proper searching – ebooks and journals and that. Articles by actual psychoanalysers. No clickbait stories. None of that Recommended for you bullshit. Didn’t hardly even understand most of what I read, but eventually I puzzled out how the real bad deed went down long before Oedipus had marital relations with his mum.

  Way before Oedipus killed his dad, even.

  Way before Oedipus could even walk.

  It was when his father bound his newborn baby’s feet.

  As if any dad who dumps his son might as well just cut to the chase and dump him in bed with his night-sweating mum.

  i.e. it weren’t Oedipus’ fault.

  Problem was, by the time I downloaded this new info, it didn’t make no difference. Standard story of Oedipus was hooked too deep inside my head. Technical term for that: “the new information failed to challenge my core beliefs”. Like how when know something on some kinda intellect-level but somehow you just can’t tell it to your brain.

  That’s all for today about Oedipus.

  Botox man clicks his flabby fingers in my face. “So I’ve come here to tell you I gotta hand it to you, kid: what you did with your father’s stories was almost ingenious. Now they’re up there on the online archive but no one will ever even know they’re there as they won’t register in any search results. You did that the night of the antics that got you fired, I assume? Well, I have to say, it was almost ingenious.”

  I ask him what he’s gonna do. To the stories – what’s he gonna do to my dad’s stories?

  “What the hell do you think I’m going to do? I’m going to get one of the other data-enterers to finish the job, of course. Have them apply metadata and character recognition to each story so that they’ll start show
ing up in keyword searches. Otherwise your whole endeavour will have been about as pointless as wanking without a noose.”

  “Okay, whatever, I’ll play along with this shit – even though you know I don’t get it.”

  “What’s not to get? Making the text searchable is often the whole point of digitising things. After all, it’s not the searching that’s new here – humans have always been hunters and explorers and navel-gazers – what’s new is that everything is now so readily searchable. A searchable version of reality. That’s always been key to utopian ideals of a universal library. All stories must be searchable just as all archives must be searchable. Then the stories can become indexes of themselves just like every other digitised text. Or book. Or archive. Or person. But you already know this, yes – it’s the overblown sales pitch of your own student start-up. Yes. It’s known that you know this.”

  “Yeh, obviously I know what character-recognition software is – what I don’t get is why you’re okay about what I done. Why ain’t you just deleting the stories? Wouldn’t even need to piss about with a black marker pen this time.”

  “And why the fuck shouldn’t I be okay about it? Actually, I think what you did was admirable. All the trouble you took to get hold of unredacted copies of his articles … ”

  “Yeh, about that – do you think you could return his cuttings book to me, please? He’s really freaking the fuck out about it.”

  “But here’s the thing I don’t understand: given all the trouble you took with this – the elaborate exploits you staged in the office as a decoy and so on – why in the hell did you bother editing his stories down?”

  While I think up some semi-believable bullshit, I realise that I’m once again trying to imagine this guy fully bearded.

  “But then, that’s the way things worked before the invention of the printing press, right kid? Back when books were reproduced by pen-pushing copyists. You think those monks and scribes didn’t rewrite things as they copied them? Tidied up the punctuation a little. Maybe cut to the car chase – or at least the grisly death. It’s what they called ‘medieval collective texts’. ”