by David Mathew
I spoon in the first forkful of lava. Towards the end of our meals we take it in turns to claim the attention of the Cookery Gov—asking dumb questions, usually—so that some of us can stuff what we’re too full to eat into our boxer shorts for later on—either to eat or to sell. I won’t be doing the same (I imagine the feel of solid fire and it turns my stomach) but I’m not surprised to notice Dott fisting the last portion of his bake beneath the waistband of his tracksuit bottoms. It is better to conceal your food quite close to your scrotum. When we leave the room and the screws pat us down for hidden tools, they are not allowed to touch our bollocks. But other methods are used. I know of at least one inmate whose chosen style is to cook curry to a ripe old density and then smear it all over his upper thighs on a visit to the toilet before the end of the lesson. I have never favoured this approach myself, but each to his own.
It is time to go back to our cells. Bowels screaming and lassooing, I hobble alongside Dott, simply hoping for something—some exchange, a raise of the eyebrow even still.
He leaves it till the very last instant. Just before our paths have to part in order for us to aim for our Wings, Dott moves slightly closer and says, Hold out your hand, Billy. And I do so.
I can’t look down—but I identify what he has placed in my right palm anyway. I close my fist on it and reposition my hand inside my pants—the fashion statement is so widespread that the screws don’t give it a second glance. It’s not until I get back to my cell that I can comprehend why Dott has squidged some of his pasta bake into my grip. Does he think I’m hungry?
My position is secure on the toilet, but my body doesn’t care about comfort or convenience right now. I will be there some time. Plenty of time to read the letter that Dott has stuffed inside his meal.
Five.
Darkness has fallen by the time my lower body has recovered. It is one of those feverish evenings that sometimes shatter the monotony; one of those evenings when bizarre but unquestioned matters arise. For no reason at all a yoot on G Wing starts singing ‘I Want to Break Free’ at the top of his voice. It is spooky that no one seems to have a TV blaring or a bass-line tumping. The sound carries. It’s an anthem for us, of course; and before long the lone voice—which I can just about hear at first—is joined. One yoot, two yoots, seven yoots more. It’s like an epidemic the way it spreads from Wing to Wing. From A to H, via Puppydog F Wing: eight Wings and four hundred versions of Freddie Mercury. Singing our lungs to bursting. Mindless. I can even imagine the dead rising from their graves, in the cemetery yonder, rattling their long brown bones on the headstones, keeping time and keeping rhythm.
The boys on C Wing take the guitar solo.
Though it’s happened before—this kind of spontaneous singalong—it has not happened for a while, and now, with Dott present, the singularity of the exercise assumes an eerie new implication. I sing anyway. The last time it happened it was ‘Jailhouse Rock’; the time before that, ‘Folsom Prison Blues’: old songs that somehow (it’s on the wind, it’s in our food) we all know the lyrics to. I sing along to ‘I Want to Break Free’ for, I don’t know, the first thirty or so repetitions, into the night. The chant is still going strong when I decide to call it an evening and re-read what Dott has handed me—stopping reading only when a screw whose eyes I don’t know (he or she must be short) opens my flap and regards me and my silence with brief suspicion. Not wishing to cause trouble, I start to sing again.
I can’t get used to living my life, living my life, living my life without you, by my side.
It’s two sheets of A4 lined paper, both sides covered, the script miniscule; in some places Dott has even written two lines of print between a set of lines, the words on top of one another like motoring wrecks.
I start to read again.
Entr’acte:
The Prison Ship and the Oasis
Oil trapped on water is what I remember most clearly. The slicked rainbows and the water-bound constellations. The dreams that the smears seemed to incorporate. I was there—and I recall it all vividly.
In the distance we could sometimes hear bombs detonate. We didn’t care. The oil and the water—they were what we lived for.
Something pretty. Something pretty in the relentless gloom.
I was thirsty. We all were. All two hundred of us.
You think you know about cramped, Billy Boy?
Fuck double bang-up. Fuck bunks and shared privileges.
You don’t know how lucky you’ve been, son.
We were there on that ship, all two hundred of us, fighting for a place to sleep, and dreaming of the water in the oasis. Imagine that: every day. A fight—a physical fist-fight— for somewhere to lay your head when you got weary.
Some tried to vault the barriers. Granted access to the upper deck—the equivalent of an Enhanced—some abandoned their mops, climbed the rails, and belly-flopped into the stagnant tide. To escape.
They died.
The oil was a treat and a curse.
It was smeared across the water like marmalade. It stank of offal and aftershave. But it was my guiding inspiration.
They drowned. Or they took a bullet in the shoulderblades. Either way.
The Prison Ship was called The Oasis. And we were moored in the Oasis. Rumour ran that the rowboats surrounding our ship were manned by robots and electronic personnel. I have nothing to prove it either way. There was a rumour that when one of our jailers spontaneously exploded in his rowboat it was because of water in his circuitry. But I can’t prove that.
The Oasis is two miles wide. Skinny ghost that it is, it’s about a half of that long. And no one has ever asked me where I came from.
I made certain of that. I chose my crimes carefully.
What is more likely to eclipse an interest in a past than a present that is so repulsive and abhorrent? I chose rape and mutilation.
You’ll ask me why. You’ll ask me many things, Billy.
And I will try to explain.
Just like I did, you came to Dellacotte in the back of a padded van. In the desert there are no padded vans. My crime was theft. Prometheus stole fire and was punished for eternity. But me, I stole water—and was sentenced to a lifetime on top of it, in the hold of a ship. My equivalent of a padded van was a pre-programmed boat. To cheers and boos I was manhandled into my rowboat but I had no need of oars. The boat knew which way to go: towards the hulk in the distance, looking liquid under the noonday sun.
I climbed a wriggling rope ladder and was hauled aboard.
Among the first things that I was told was not to take personally the savage kicking I received when I landed on the deck like an asphyxiated trout. All new arrivals got their guts and livers kicked blue. It was a way of establishing routine, normality—and hierarchy.
Above everything else, violence establishes a hierarchy— a chain of command, if you will. But you know that already, don’t you, Billy?
Why else are you here? Because you lost the race.
And I will always have more answers than you have questions.
Raging is too grand a term, but a war was certainly ongoing. You could hear the pilots overhead; you could hear the pock-marking detonations.
A war was ongoing and I didn’t wish to be a part of it.
My crime was theft. Bombs meant nothing to me, blood. And to tell you the truth, blood meant nothing much to me either.
I stole water. I stole water more than once, but I was thirsty. Dying of thirst. I didn’t know what else I could do to maintain my equilibrium. I needed water.
Is that clear enough?
I needed water as much as I needed air. It wasn’t free and I couldn’t afford to buy it. So I did what others did: I stole it.
The oasis was feared and revered. To the inhabitants of the shanties and the slums it was where a stereotypical Heaven and a stereotypical Hell met comfortably. It was home
. It was life. The oasis meant a break from the heat.
There were makeshift establishments, scattered here and there. Little pockets of civilisation. Freckles on the arm of a country.
But which country?
I’m astonished, Billy-Boy, that you’ve been so slow in the asking. You disappoint me, cuz.
You’ll ask me where. You’re not a moron: you’ll ask me where.
And I’ll say: desert.
…Barry Manilow wrote the songs the whole world sang.
I commited the crimes the whole world watched. And subsequently, I was able to brilliance a total re-focusing away from my past, from my history.
Given what I’d done, who cared where I’d lived.
Dott? What sort of fucking name is Dott?
I stole it from a Neasden Town snooker player.
My name—my real name—you will never know. You don’t need to.
Not twice in your life would you be able to spell it, and not once would you be able to say it aloud. Imagine the car- crash of letters.
The only important thing is where I lived.
Places shape us; places build us.
I was a desert child and no one has ever thought to check me out. To dry me out to bare the desert: the desert. The Sahara.
Made from sand and dust, I was a man before I was a boy. I have never been a boy. I don’t remember anything but the sand, the dust…
Wearing a scarf and a pair of goggles was the norm. It was a necessity, to protect your eyes against the white light and the smotes. You started your day fully clothed—stepping out into the raging heat—and you finished it by stripping to the knackers. In other countries you dress for the chill of the night- time hours, but we—we couldn’t wait for it.
Night-time was like having the cuffs unshackled.
I remember the time when Morjardahid discovered grass.
It can’t be explained. But Morjardahid found grass in the sand—and grass doesn’t grow in the sand—and he brought it back to The Wethouse for inspection and praise. His lips were baboon-bum red with excitement.
The Wethouse. The Wethouse was what we called the hospital. The sick went in and did not return. The negatives— the not-yet-borns—went in and stayed a long time. The wetnurse’s name was Saira el Door.
That name, and the taste of her left nipple, I remember fondly.
Me? I had the ageing disease.
Generating electricity was part of the punishment, for some lags.
You’ve seen the films, Billy.
Row! Row! Row your boat! Gently down the stream! But there was no boat. And there was no stream.
There was a ship and there was an oasis.
Why a ship? No rain, and yet the oasis thrived. Allow it.
But why a ship? Why not drown us and burn the bones? We meant next to nothing. So why the consideration?
Why a ship?
The Leper Island is the answer.
We were held in the grip of fear by the Leper Island. It might have been no more than the size of five prisons, but it didn’t matter.
We felt the breath. That was the real punishment.
Blackened breath on a stale, hot breeze.
…I’ve changed my mind: my name is Noor Aljarhalifaro. (I’ve changed my name too - but you already knew that.) You can call me Dott. That’s a joke.
If it had one—or one that was widely accredited—the township was called, variably, Umma—meaning ‘community of believers’—or Mostashifa—meaning ‘hospital’. A town called Hospital.
There were two other terms.
The first was Mostashifa Tamaninat. ‘Hospital.’ ‘To be motionless.’
The second was more complex. Ana mabsout beshughlak, it ran. I am happy with your work. A town called ‘I Am Happy With Your Work’.
You know those cartons of fruit drink that we get every day? The breakfast slops. You’ve probably got one in front of you right now. Study it.
There’s a picture on the front. There’s a picture of a halved mango, a halved apple, a chopped banana, diced pear; there’s a picture of a mangled kiwi and a decimated nectarine.
In the same picture is a whole—an entire—peach.
Why? Why did the peach survive bowdlerisation and viciousness? I’ll tell you why. Because the peach is the only fruit to resemble the human body.
The peach looks like a woman’s arse. Pure and simple.
Even ad campaign designers recognised this fact.
I am happy with your work, Billy Alfreth.
I have no choice but to be so. No one else has ever made the effort.
Apart from Kate.
One last thing—or ‘ting’ as you would say.
I’ve got all the time in the world—literally—but you haven’t. Rinse me clean of this disease and I’ll follow you to the ends of the earth.
I’ll talk to you about time.
I love you.
Ronald Dott x
Part Five:
Declensions (The Sadness of Roses)
One.
No one kicks off in the Cookery class. But violently worded debates are the order of the day. By means of a little barging I have managed to secure the stove next to Dott’s. It is usually Chellow’s place of work, and the man gives me a boysing about it, but I explain the breach of protocol in a manner that all us inmates comprehend:
Man and I’ve got beef, bruv.
Chellow nods. You wouldn’t be doing nothing stoopid now, Alfreth, would you? he warns me in his sternest-but- wouldn’t-scare-a-sparrow-type tones.
Need to link man, is all, I reply.
The Cookery Gov wants to demo. Ordinarily I enjoy this part of the lesson—as a rule I like to learn—but this time it’s all but unendurable. I can’t wait to chat to Dott. We’re doing chick fricassee. I already know how to make it. Gov understands this and wants to elicit responses from me in the way that a good teacher does. I play along. Perhaps because the class is still on a sort of probationary period, the first part of the lesson is conducted in verbal silence. And this is no use to me. I can’t stand it. So, as I say. No one kicks off in the Cookery class, but disagreements are the order of the day.
Yo, Meaney!
Wogwun, blood?
Your team play shit at the weekend, cuz, I taunt him—not only completely ignorant about his team’s performance but by no means even vaguely aware of what his team even is, or if he has one.
You on smack, Alfreth? he replies in the sky-high cadences of utter disbelief. We fucking cream ‘em, blood!
The debate is slow to get going—it’s like those shows where the hench man pulls the lorry with the rope, with the harness around his torso. Once it’s in motion it’s hard to stop.
You’re chatting waffles!
As soon as the argument is good and going, I can talk to Dott. Or rather, he can talk to me.
Heard the life story then? he says. How does it work as a narrative?
Every day’s a school day, Dott.
Very philosophical.
You’re telling me, blood, I say. But who can I tell?
I’m reminded of a conversation with Kate Wollington, a few months earlier. The hour is stoned o’clock, but when you’ve got psychological problems you talk to a psychologist, right? But not a Criminal Psychologist: a Psychologist Psychologist.
Gov, I’m whining that night, can I go to Health Care, please?
When? In the morning? asks Screw Oates.
No, sir. Now please, sir.
It’s two o’clock in the bloody morning, Alfreth. You wet the bed?
I’ve got stomach cramps, sir.
His eyes are working mine something fierce; he’s thinking— well, actually, Alfreth isn’t known for pushing the night bell or clowning around. Maybe it’s real. There’s been a short epidemic of foo
d poisoning, after all.
Get dressed, Billy, he says.
I happen to know it’s Kate Wollington’s turn to work nights. And she’s from a therapeutic background. She’s not like the Education Govs, who always play their cards close to their chests. Kate reveals—from time to time—little pieces of information. She’s got a cat named Sooty. Favourite colour is mauve. And when she does the night shift she leaves her office door open; she doesn’t like the silence or the confined space. (I could tell her her fortune, cuz. Don’t talk to a YO about confined spaces.) So she will hear us approach.
That’s the plan. But will she?
She’s playing Mahler at a discreet volume as we enter the corridor. This isn’t helpful. I do my best to make my footfalls louder; I even clutch my stomach and indulge in a pregnant moan.
Nearly there, Alfreth, I’m told.
Kate Wollington appears at her door. Workhorse that she is, she has been applying nightcream to a nasty-looking delta of eczema on her left earlobe. What’s going on? she asks.
Gut rot, Miss, the screw replies.
I catch her eye. Whether or not I have learned anything from Dott about mind control is questionable, but it’s a technique that I pray I’m at least a novice at right now as I will Kate to want to speak to me.
We’re almost past her. Then she says: If you’re feeling a bit better in a little while, Billy, I need you to pop in and sign your Psych Report from a few months back. I don’t know how I missed it.
Yes, Miss, I tell her. Thank you, Miss.
You’re welcome.
And so it is that I enter the Health Care Surgery. Salty- eyed and with a brisk moustache, sallowed by nicotine and what looks like tomato sauce from his midnight snack, the doctor’s name is Peregrine or Montgomery or something old school like that. If it’s not, it should be: he’s got a Bertram appearance about him. He’s also got a sleep-deprived appearance about him— and the sort of breath that suggests he might have stopped at the local for a few whiskies before he started his shift.