Genie and Paul

by Natasha Soobramanien

  (v) 1987–88

  The day of England’s big storm, Genie and Paul stayed at home. They lived with Mam in a place of their own now.

  There was no school for Genie, since it was closed. And there was no school for Paul, who had left for good that summer. He had yet to find a job. Together, the three of them watched news footage of people moving in slow motion through flooded streets, of monumental oak trees snapped like toothpicks with something ridiculous and tragic about them, like felled elephants.

  Imagine that, but ten times worse, Mam said. That’s a cyclone.

  Mam told them about the cyclones she’d experienced in Mauritius – how kids would huddle under their parents’ beds while outside, roofs and trees and people were just snatched up, whirled in the wind like dead leaves.

  Like The Wizard of Oz, said Genie.

  That’s what it felt like when we first came here, Paul said. Like being in a cyclone. Snatched up and then dumped. Emerald City my arse, though. More like pumice stone. Grey, grey, grey, grey, grey, grey.

  But Cyclone Carol, Mam continued. Aiyo zot tu! That was the worst of them. I must have been six at the time. The cruelty of it was that for three hours, after an elemental battering, we had perfect weather. So people went outside and carried on as normal thinking it was all over but of course that was just the eye of the cyclone. Many of those people died when the eye passed over them. Crushed or drowned. Yes, sighed Mam, life is more fragile in Mauritius.

  Not any more, though, said Paul. They make buildings cyclone-resistant these days.

  What do you know? People are still living in shacks in Mauritius.

  It’s probably all changed, Paul said. You haven’t been back in years. Bet there are loads of new buildings there now.

  But Mam insisted that if Nature (she often cited Nature where someone religious might have said God) decided to crush you, there was nothing you could do about it. Mam found this out herself when she went to her potager two days later and found all her precious plants ripped up as though a vandal had decided to destroy all that was beautiful and good in her garden. Her apple tree torn up from the ground. Nature had destroyed Nature. That was cannibalism, surely, or suicide. And she was crushed.

  They were living in a council flat on the eighth floor of a tower block in Hackney. The corridor they lived on made Genie think of a submarine: long and narrow and dimly lit, with an eerie aquatic echo. Grandmère too had moved. They visited her on Sunday afternoons in her new flat to eat hunks of dry cake like mouthfuls of sand. Genie and Paul would twitch with boredom while Mam and Grandmère muttered together, their conversation syncopated by the heavy clock on the mantelpiece.

  It was on one such visit, the week after the storm, that Grandmère told Mam she would be buying then selling her council flat under that Government scheme. Her plan was to go back to Mauritius. Her sister, Ma Tante Rose, did not have long left to live. This time, when Grandmère patted her knees and said, Anfen! as she usually did to signal the end of the visit, Paul told Genie and Mam he would catch up with them. He wanted to talk to Grandmère alone.

  When he came home he told them Grandmère had agreed to his request for a loan to fund a month-long computer course. Mam was delighted, Genie impressed.

  The course was in Cambridge. It was residential. But, some days after Paul had left London, Mam and Genie received a letter. The handwriting was familiar, the stamp – in tropical colours – immediately foreign. It was from Mauritius. Genie had never received a letter before. She tore it open.

  Dearest Mam and Genie,

  I’m not in Cambridge. There was no computer course. I’m in Mauritius.

  I never wanted to leave in the first place. Ever since we came to London, I’ve been yearning to come back. Yes, I know, a funny word. But I can’t think of any other way to describe this feeling of something pulling at me – of something missing. London’s never been me. You always wondered why I didn’t bother with anything, Mam. Why school was such a bunch of arse. Well I’ve never learnt anything that means as much to me as the names of the streets I’d pretty much forgotten round here in Pointe aux Sables. I’m living in the old place with Jean-Marie. He is showing me my country. We’ve been everywhere. Me and him and his friends, driving round the island. Yesterday he took me down to Gris Gris on his bike, all the way down south.

  I feel more myself here than I’ve done since I was a kid. I’ve missed the place. People speaking Creole around me. The fruit on the trees and the dogs in the street. All those mixed-up faces that make so much sense. Don’t be angry with me. I’m happy. I’m home.

  Home, thought Genie. How could he be, away from me? How could he? But she was too shocked to think of this as a question really – to even consider an answer – and so the words hung over her all evening while she tried to finish her homework, while she warmed up her tea in the microwave, while she sat eating in front of the telly, while she carefully washed up her plate and cutlery. When Mam rang, still at work, Genie did not mention the letter. She chatted normally. Finished her homework. Packed her schoolbag. Got into her pyjamas and into bed. Switched off the light. Several hours later, Genie woke to find that she was standing in Paul’s room. The bed was made. Without hesitation, she climbed in.

  During the long months of Paul’s absence, Mam and Genie lived in a state of strange, jaundiced calm. Neither spoke much. Mam’s face became pinched from frequent migraines. And it was physically that Genie felt Paul’s absence too – a pain in her throat as though she was on the verge of choking, something hard and round stuck in her throat. Genie found it hard to breathe or speak. The heart is a muscle, she thought, as she registered the constriction in her chest. Her nights were disturbed. She continued to sleepwalk and in the morning Mam would often find her in Paul’s bed. Mam would get agitated then. It’s not right, she’d insist, and Genie grew sullen and difficult, feeling as if Mam was pushing Paul further away. They moved sluggishly through an atmosphere that was heavy with Paul’s absence, which had now become a presence itself. And then, after almost six months of this, Paul rang.

  Yes, said Mam, when the operator asked if she would accept the reverse-charge call.

  It was Paul. Jean-Marie was dead. He was coming home. That was all Mam could get out of him. She tried to ring Serge, but his new wife refused to let her speak to him.

  He lost his boy, Mam said, helplessly. He lost his boy.

  They must be kind to Paul when he came back to them, Mam said to Genie, though she did not look kind as she said it. They should understand that he had experienced something terrible, Mam said, looking terrible. They must not mention this terrible thing unless Paul did. But Mam did not mention the terrible thing he had done in leaving them, in claiming a home away from them.

  Any sadness Genie felt about Jean-Marie was for Paul. She knew how much Paul loved him, while she herself knew Jean-Marie only from photos now. But during the days after Paul’s call Jean-Marie returned to her in dreams: a wicked laugh and hair like hers, a high pair of shoulders onto which the five-year-old Genie had felt herself hoisted. Genie awoke remembering in her body just how it was to be carried like that: like flying and sinking at the same time. These dreams left her light. While thoughts of Paul – the idea of his return – oppressed her, all the more so for her not quite understanding why.

  It didn’t occur to Genie until she and Mam were at the airport that she might not recognise her own brother. After his flight had landed and the doors parted, knots of people emerged: tanned holidaymakers – couples mostly – and then Mauritians, trolleys heaped with battered suitcases and plastic bags bearing unfamiliar logos. When Genie found herself looking at a young man on his own for a second longer than it took to dismiss him as not being Paul, he met her eyes and then she realised –

  Eh – alla lila. Mam nudged her and Genie fell forward, and he folded her in his arms and buried his face in her hair. She wore it longer now.

  He looked bigger and more golden than before. He refused help with his bags.
On the tube home he sat opposite Genie. She saw how his body had broadened but his face had hollowed out. Then she looked past him to her own reflection distorted in the curve of the tube window, where she had two sets of eyes, as though she were wearing a pair of glasses pushed back on her head. She caught Paul looking at her with a disorientating curiosity – as though she were the stranger here – which dissolved into an apologetic smile when she met his glance.

  At home, Paul took his bags into his room. Who’s been sleeping in my bed? he said. No one replied. Genie and Mam were as shy of Paul as he was of them, it seemed, this young man who’d replaced their skinny, surly Paul.

  This Paul had seen death, after all.

  He stayed alone in his room until called for dinner. In the kitchen, sitting at the table, Paul seemed too big for the room. He looked as though the flimsy walls could hardly contain him, and if he breathed out too deeply they would fall away. He seemed to know it too: there was something tensed about him, as though he was afraid to take up too much space. Mam barely looked at him as she served the food and joined them at the table.

  Genie rolled her eyes. He’s probably sick of Mauritian food. You should’ve done sausages and chips.

  He can tell me that himself, Mam said. He is here, you know.

  But Paul was not listening. More than that, he was silent. Mam and Genie soon realised that his silence was itself a request for silence. They fell quiet and found themselves considering him as he stared at his food, not seeing it at all, inhaling deeply and holding himself still the way some hunting dogs did before swiftly executing an expert act of retrieval in the undergrowth.

  That was when Paul told them what had happened in Mauritius, the night Jean-Marie had died. It would not be quite true to say that Paul told them in the same tone he might have used if asking for the salt. But still Genie felt there was something almost casual, something unfeeling, in the way he told them.

  It had happened the night of Paul’s birthday. A whole gang of them had gone out. There’d been a big fight. Paul had gone for one of the gang, Maja. But Maja had had a knife. Jean-Marie had got between them. That was how he’d died. Genie held her breath, not daring to speak. Mam, also quiet, was immobile too: she did nothing to wipe away her tears. But Paul had nothing else to say. He just bent to his plate then and ate as though someone were about to remove his food. He only looked up when he’d finished.

  Mo capav gany ankor?

  Mam brushed the back of her hand to her cheeks, took his plate and got up to refill it. Genie gaped: Paul, speaking Creole?

  Genie asked him about that later on when they went over to the newsagent’s to buy ice-cream.

  Fabs – they’re your favourite, right? said Paul, leaning into the deep-freezer.

  Oh, no. I like Mivvis now. Genie was surprised to hear this take the form of an accusation.

  They walked outside with their lollies.

  In Mauritius, Paul said, lollies come in totally different flavours. Really exotic ones like guava and mango. Even lychee-flavoured.

  Genie pulled a face. I hate lychees, they remind me of eyeballs.

  Still?

  They walked slowly towards the park, licking their lollies in the honeyed light of the late afternoon.

  So how come you can speak Creole now?

  I never forgot it.

  Don’t they speak English over there?

  Yep.

  So why didn’t you just speak in English?

  I wanted to speak Creole.

  Creole’s like Latin or something. Nobody really speaks it, do they? Well, only people in Mauritius.

  Only? There are about a million Mauritians just in Mauritius.

  But it’s not a proper language, is it? You can’t write it or anything.

  Actually, you can. It’s more fun when you can speak to people in their own language. You feel like you belong.

  They sat on the swings. Genie struggled to catch the drips from her lolly while Paul told her about the gang of guys he’d hung out with over in Mauritius – Jean-Marie’s friends and cousins. One cool guy called Gaetan.

  Genie had a special technique for eating Mivvis: she would suck the juice out of her lolly, then she would bite off the tip and crunch down into the ice-cream centre. There was, Genie felt, a weird parallel between the considered negotiation of her lolly (via her tongue, and the skilful wrist flicks which allowed her to escape rogue drips) and this carefulness she now sensed between herself and Paul. It might have been his new knowledge of death. Death felt like yet another person in Mauritius that Paul knew and Genie didn’t. She felt a strange kind of fear and fascination: who were these people? She had always known everyone Paul knew. Not knowing Creole – barely able to remember her own half-brother, whom she would now never know, whom she could not think of as dead since he had only ever really been a memory – and not knowing his friends, not knowing Mauritius, made her feel left out. Genie knew Creole only as the language of adults. The language they were told off in at home.

  I would rather be treated like a visitor. Then people would take you out and stuff, and treat you. I would have made them all speak English to me.

  Paul nudged her and smiled. Tilamerd! To tetu kom en burik, twa!

  Just because I can’t speak it any more, doesn’t mean I can’t understand, she said.

  So what did I just say?

  Something about me being a little shit, she said, trying to detach her tongue from the burning ice.

  Yeah, a stubborn little shit. And if you could speak Creole you could answer me back, couldn’t you?

  It felt like hard work to Genie, Paul’s teasing.

  Later, he came into her room. She was sitting on the floor, surrounded by her novelty soaps.

  Are you still collecting those things?

  What does it look like?

  Sorry.

  She had been collecting them for some years now. All her efforts at self-control, forbidding herself the pleasure of using these soaps (this thwarted pleasure an odd pleasure in itself), all efforts to preserve the integrity of her collection had proved pointless: having been lumped together in the same basket all these years, they had pretty much come to smell of one another.

  Paul sat down heavily on the bed.

  So, how have you been? While I’ve been away?

  I made some new friends. You don’t know them.

  Mam told me.

  One remaining pleasure the soap collection afforded was categorisation: Genie was now arranging them according to smell, or rather, what they were originally supposed to have smelt of (fruit, floral, desserts). She sniffed the one shaped like a big strawberry. It had lost its smell completely. She put it in a pile of its own.

  Mam can’t stand them.

  So I hear. Apparently they’re leading you astray. Who are these friends?

  Nicky. Debbie. Mam never mentions them by name, though. They’re always tifi angle or tifi nwar. Whenever I say she’s being racist she says she’s got nothing against English people. Or black people. She just says, Girls like that grow up quicker. She says she doesn’t want to see me growing up too quickly. How can I grow up too quickly? I’m growing up as quick as I’m growing up. I mean, I do have to grow up, otherwise I’d be like a spastic or something. Does she want me to be a spastic or something?

  You want to watch it. She’s thinking about boarding school. She’s been talking to Grandmère about paying for it.

  If she does that I’ll just bloody run away, man.

  Aw, c’mon, Genie…

  Like you. I’ll bloody fucking run away like you ran away.

  Genie! Don’t give me a hard time, I’ve had a –

  Don’t give me a hard time? What do you think I’ve been having since you went to Mauritius? It’s been horrible without you. I had this pain in my heart all the time. Like you were dead! I wish you were dead. I wish – I hope – I HOPE YOU GET HEART CANCER!

  And then Genie threw at Paul, with all her might and in no particular order, all her pr
ecious, sun-faded soaps.

  That evening, Paul gave them the presents he had brought, as if he had come back from just another holiday. A tape for Genie, and for Mam a paper bag full of seeds.

  What kind of seeds are these? she asked.

  They’re a surprise, he said. Plant them and see what comes up.

  Nothing illegal, I hope. It is a council allotment, you know.