by Jacob Ross
Sylus stepped back. He flicked his hand as if he were shaking water off his fingers. He walked towards the bag on the table.
‘Somefing Paso say about you. He say you better dan de people dat you work for. Or you used to be.’
Those words straightened Sylus up against the window. ‘Wozzat?’ he said.
‘You hear me first time,’ Pynter said.
Sylus looked down at the bag, then at his hands. He sat back on the table, his legs stretched out, the pleated ridges of his trousers sharp like the edges of knives against the light. ‘He send you?’
‘He dead.’
Sylus levelled a finger at Pynter’s face. ‘You part of all dat madness too? You … ’
‘I born in it.’
‘Dat communist fella say dat fo’ true?’
‘My nephew?’
‘He yuh nephew?’
‘Uh-huh!’
‘Dat’s why you wear hi face?’
‘Dat’s what Paso say,’ Pynter nodded.
Sylus dropped the keys on the table and called in one of the men from outside. ‘You de first,’ he said, and his hand shot out and closed around Pynter’s neck. He spun him round and shoved him roughly through the open door. ‘Useless lil jackass,’ he shouted down the corridor. ‘Don’t bring ’im here again.’
They dropped Pynter off exactly where they had picked him up. On the way back, the driver looked at him as if he’d been privy to some kind of sorcery with Sylus. He offered Pynter a cigarette, and as the van rolled off, the soldier honked his horn and waved.
That night Pynter slipped into bed behind Tinelle. He traced her spine with his eyes, placed his lips near the edge of her pillow. He knew Tinelle was not sleeping. He knew that by her breathing and the stiffness of her neck. The irritation he had left her house with had been replaced by a hollow craving in his gut. A desire for the only kind of warmth that could kill the chill Sylus’s eyes had left in him.
He lifted a hand and brushed her neck. Suddenly the bed erupted and she was on him and it took a moment before he realised that Tinelle was not fighting him but loving him with a terrible rage. She’d closed her teeth on the skin of his shoulders. He brought his mouth up to her throat. They wrestled and cursed until they were exhausted, and then with a tenderness that reminded him of their early days of loving, they held hands and spoke in whispers.
‘She touch you,’ she told him quietly, ‘and I’ll kill the bitch. It will happen again – and you won’t even have the decency to lie about it. I know you. You see something, you want it, you go for it no matter what. But I won’t take it, y’hear me? I won’t take it. I’ll give you so much hell, you’ll wish you never born.’
42
BECAUSE PYNTER did not go to Simone, she came to him.
He was on the veranda when he saw her walking across the Canteen playing field towards the lagoon some way beyond the pier. She was wearing a pale blue towel and was heading for the jetty. He thought of gauldins as he watched her walk – all length and glide and smoothness. She dropped the towel on the lip of the pier and, with that slow unbroken stride, stepped into the dark water, becoming a bobbing head there. He realised that he wanted her. He wanted her for something more than what Tinelle had shown him in all the months they’d been together. She had crept into his head, so that nights and days and mornings he could not shake her from his mind. So he went to her. He went to her and dived into the water after her. She pulled herself onto the platform and sat there glaring down at him. She’d cropped her hair very close, which seemed to accentuate her lips and cheekbones. Drops of water beaded her brows and she glistened in the sunlight.
Pynter took in a lungful of air and dived. The bottom was a great way down but he kept going until his head began to hurt. And when the pressure on his eardrums was unbearable, he hung there before rising very slowly.
When he surfaced he looked up at her. ‘I jus’ wan’ to tell you, Simone, that I think you nice. Not no ordinary nice but special nice. And I come runnin down here like a fool becuz I couldn hold it in no more.’
They met in the cove beyond the Carenage, below the place where the colony of lepers used to live. There were hardly any words between them. Afterwards, he would look down at her face, dusted with coarse white sand, and wonder at it. She would stir and look back at him quietly, uncaring of her nakedness, and then draw him to her again, and hold him there until he drifted into a kind of sleep. Simone would blow into his ear then, and he would lift his face to see the first lights of San Andrews tossing yellow, oily patterns on the water of the mainland just beyond.
At some point during this numbing, hollow drift in which his mind wandered off to nameless, lightless spaces and faces as insubstantial as smoke, his body would be further stilled by a creeping sense of danger, but there was no urgency to it, no quickening of the blood.
She always hit the water first, pulling ahead with long, sleepy strokes, never once looking back to see how he was doing until her fingers touched the pier. And she would head for home without a backward glance while he went the other way.
Tinelle was waiting for him on the veranda one evening when he returned. Her legs were swinging over the edge into the void below. ‘This is your punishment for Paso, not so? You blaming us for what happened to him?’
Pynter looked past her shoulders at the buildings beyond. ‘I sorry, Tinelle.’
‘I could ask you to leave right now, but that don’t feel right. It’s not what I want. She’s done this before, not to me. She’s done it to a couple of my friends. She sees a fella, she likes him, and she doesn’t give a shit about anybody else. It hit me last night that it’s always the same type of fella. The dark ones, the slim ones. Then she drops them and moves on. Like she’s sampling men or something. Like she’s looking for something that’s not there. I hate women like that.’
Tinelle sucked in a lungful of air. ‘I’m not taking this, Pynter. I’m not. Hugo asked me to be patient with you. He keeps saying …’ She came off the veranda and stood in front of him. ‘I want a promise from you.’
He nodded.
‘Don’t go back down there. If it wasn’t for Hugo, I – I would walk away from this. On principle, I …’ She covered her face with her hands and turned away.
‘I’ll stay,’ he said.
She wouldn’t let him speak to her about it. She did not want to hear his confusion. She put it down to men – the dog he was, like all the other men she knew.
Tinelle was on the veranda the next evening. She looked down grim-faced at Simone, who walked across the pier as usual and, not seeing him there, turned around as if she’d forgotten or lost something. Simone left the blue towel on the boards and dived into the water. From where they were above her, Pynter could see how beautifully she swam, her strokes hardly breaking the surface of the lagoon.
He became aware of Tinelle’s eyes on him. ‘Pynter,’ she said, softly. ‘She gives you anything that I can’t give you?’
He shook his head.
‘Then why?’
‘S’not you, Tinelle. Is me.’
It was their fifth evening of standing at the window. Tinelle hardly ever looked down at the lagoon any more. Over the past few days, he’d felt the hardening in her. Her gestures had sharpened. She spoke to him with an abruptness meant to keep him away from her. She refused the drinks he mixed her.
He’d been following the figure in the water. Tinelle must have said something to him, but he didn’t hear her. She’d prodded him hard. He turned around and she was suddenly ablaze.
‘Go on! Go down to her, you sonuvabitch. And make sure you make up your mind when you come back. You tell me what you decide, y’understand? And if you can’t decide, I’ll decide for you.’
He heard her in her bedroom slamming drawers and dragging things around. Tinelle came out a short while later and stomped out of the house.
Simone was looking out to sea when he arrived. He was sure she heard him approaching but she did not turn. She was sitting on th
e lip of the pier, with her toes grazing the water. She did not seem surprised to see him.
She greeted him the same way she had when he first met her. ‘How you been?’
‘I been watchin you,’ he said. ‘You swim like a dream.’
A strong breeze was stirring up the lagoon. He followed the circling of gulls above their heads. He sniffed at the wind and thought that behind the smell of diesel he could pick out the odours of mimosa.
‘Let’s go.’ Simone flicked a foot at the water.
‘No,’ he said.
‘I not takin you from her,’ she said.
‘Is not you to decide dat,’ he said, lowering himself beside her. ‘I come to talk.’
‘We’ll talk ’cross dere.’ She nudged his arm. ‘Let’s go, Pynter.’
‘No,’ he said. He imagined Tinelle looking down on them from up there. She would see two dark people-shapes against the darker waters of the lagoon, with their heads almost touching.
Pynter took Simone’s hand and stroked her fingers. ‘Ever hear the story about the fella an’ the girl who left everyting behind and swim out?’
‘Everybody know it.’ Simone turned her head. Her eyes were like the waters of the lagoon. ‘I like dat. De love stay clean dat way. You take it with you when it still perfect. It don’ die or go away. Life don’ dirty it or spoil it. That make sense.’ She smiled at him. ‘That’s what you want to do?’
‘I want to live,’ he said. ‘I want Tinelle.’
‘I not takin you from her.’
‘You sure?’
Simone traced the lines of his palm with a finger. She looked at her palm beside his. They were so similar it made his heart flip over.
She pointed at the little beach across the water. ‘S’gettin late. Let’s go.’
‘I can’t,’ he said, and stood up.
Simone turned her head up at him. ‘Another time?’
‘You nice,’ he said. ‘Nice enough to die with, and that’s de problem.’
He felt so tired when he got to Tinelle’s house, all he could think of was sleep. He sat on the wall of the veranda and stared out at the islands for a while. The decaying evening left traces of red and amber sunlight on the waters of the harbour. And for no reason he could point to, something in him crumbled and he began to cry.
43
SATURDAY NIGHTS, Tinelle and her friends converged on one of the houses above the town and danced to a radiogram that was played so loud everyone said it must blast a hole in the roof of the world. Pynter began to live for those weekend raves. They started an hour before midnight and took them half-drunk, delirious and thrashing through to the very early hours of the morning. Their dancing would briefly take their minds off their war of attrition with Victor and the loss of Paso.
It was the stiffening of Tinelle’s spine that would alert Pynter that Simone had arrived, and, however hard he tried, he could not prevent himself from lifting his head. Likewise, Tinelle said that she could tell from his movements when Robert was around. He called Robert the Floater, because that was all he seemed to do: float around the room, dance with whichever girl chose to dance with him, his eyes constantly drifting in Tinelle’s direction. It was this tension that kept Pynter and Tinelle close.
‘He’s not like you,’ Tinelle said. ‘He’s amoral. I can do no wrong. You understand that?’
Pynter wasn’t sure that he did.
There were moments when he left the milling feet and flailing limbs and stepped out into the early morning that always smelled of yellow poui and mimosa. Up there, high above San Andrews, there were fireflies and the air was thick with the tik-tok-tinkling of forest insects. And the same questions returned to Pynter every time: what did men like Victor do on nights like these? Had he ever marvelled at a morning? Tasted air so sweet it made him dizzy and just glad to be alive? Had he ever loved a woman or a child so much it made him feel blessed and helpless at the same time? Did he feel like a fool sometimes? Who were these people, and what was he doing here amongst them?
He would drift back to the party, and Tinelle and he would bum a ride in the car of one of Tinelle’s friends, run the short distance across the yard and throw themselves at each other on the cushions in the hall. He’d snugged himself down in San Andrews and it felt all right. But he knew it was too perfect to last.
Pynter was under the shower washing off the grime of one of the hottest days of the year when Tinelle came running in to tell him that Sylus had died with a harpoon in his gut and nobody knew who did it.
‘Robert just phoned,’ she said. ‘Sounds like a terrible way to die.’
‘You sound sorry fo’ ’im,’ he said.
‘You didn’t use to be like that – where you get that hardness from?’
‘From livin a hard life, Tinelle, made terrible by people like Sylus. Who gone an’ done this?’
She shook her head and walked over to the record player. ‘I don’t even want to think of the consequences. We gone past that stage,’ she said.
‘Gone past?’
‘Confrontation, murder.’
‘I was never there,’ he said.
‘Of course, you’re like Jesus, who absolved himself of everything, Pynter Bender. Remember what happened to all that righteousness? S’gonna be bad, Pynter. Bad for all of us.’
He turned away from her, parted the blinds and stared down at the Carenage. It was beautiful down there with all that sun on water. It would always remain beautiful. The tourists would come, take their pictures and leave, and that was all that they would see – the brightness and the beauty. Not what lay behind them. Not the awful memories that hung above it like an invisible caul.
‘I have to go home,’ he said.
‘You can’t. Hugo’s hardly here and … ’
‘My mind made up.’
‘You go to your place, they’ll take you like they took your friend, Frigo.’
‘Fuh what, Tinelle?’
‘I’m trying to tell you something, Pynterrr. It happened on your side. That place y’all call Saint Divine,’ she said. ‘It’s y’all they’ll be searching for. Why else you think everybody’s calling me?’
He sat down and looked up at her. ‘Everybody left for home, Tinelle. Y’unnerstan?’
‘Talk for yourself. Not the others.’
‘I’ll speak for whoever the hell I want … ’
‘Who would want to write Paso’s name on the harpoon of a fish gun and shoot a man with it?’
He rose to his feet and walked out to the veranda. He stood there rubbing his head and staring down at the town. Tinelle hurried out after him and closed both hands around his belt.
‘I drag you with me if I have to!’ he said.
‘Go ahead,’ she said. Her eyes told him she meant it. He cursed her, swung her round, lifted her off her feet, carried her inside and dropped himself on the cushions with her still holding on, until their struggle became something to laugh at. She finally released him.
He left the house running.
Oslo was leaning against a small Seville orange tree at the left of the little house he’d obviously built himself. Everything here was new. The wooden house was barely settled in the ground. The yard was still no more than a clearing cut out on soil which had not been walked on to give it the worn and rooted quality of a true yard. There were stones everywhere, covered with washed clothing. Pynter recognised those stones as the type he found in Gaul and on the strips of unused land close to the river. It would take a determined man a lifetime to dig those boulders out.
Oslo spoke as if he had been expecting him. ‘Long time no see, Pynter Bender.’
‘Couple of years, Oslo.’
A young woman appeared from the back of the house. She began picking up the clothes.
‘You know why I come, Oslo; not so?’
‘No. Why you come?’
‘You cross my mind this morning and I thought I had to come.’
Oslo grinned at him. ‘You cross my mind too, a coupla times.
I hear you sell your soul to a woman in San Andrews.’ There was a sliver of silver on one of his upper front teeth, exactly like Birdie’s.
‘’Twas a mistake, Oslo, passing Sylus out like dat.’
Oslo’s face tightened. ‘Don’ know what you talkin ’bout.’
‘I feel sure enough about this to come all this way to see you,’ Pynter said.
‘You accusin’ me?’
‘Yes. I just want to unnerstan what make you do it.’
‘And if I say I didn’t?’
‘I’ll choose to remember that.’
‘I don’ have nothing to say, Pynter. You mad, you know that? Town Boy!’ Oslo laughed. ‘Y’all gone soft. Everybody gone off, or gone soft. Like nobody don’ remember Paso and dem schoolchildren on de Carenage, and Jordan and Frigo! Your friend! Like all those years was for nothing. A waste! I refuse to let dat pass just so. For nothing. If I have bad dreams and still find meself running like hell in my sleep to save my life from soldiers, is not because I want dat to happen. Y’hear! We become what dey make of us. I still remember that. You was the one who put dem words together. Was the smartest thing you ever say. Now look at you! De way you stand up, de way you talk! You don’ know if you goin or coming! Pynter de petty bourgeois! Tell me, when last you see yuh modder?’
‘Leave my family out of it,’ Pynter said. ‘My modder is my business.’
‘Rumour have it dat you leave your yard fo’ good, like you ’shame of where you come from.’
‘And y’all believe that?’
‘I tell you as I hear it. Y’know what I don’t like about you? You behave as if Christ live in y’arse. Like you spend all your life in this shit looking for purity, and you still expect to stay clean! You got a problem, Pynter Bender.’