Sweetness and Light

by Liam Pieper

  The cop knits his brows at Connor. ‘Just give us some money,’ he says. ‘It’s not so hard for someone like you.’

  ‘I don’t have it.’

  ‘You have someone you can call,’ the cop urges, not unkindly. ‘A mother. A sister.’ He tilts his head inquisitively. ‘A girlfriend?’

  Connor takes the bait, loses his temper. ‘Go fuck yourself.’

  The cop is delighted with the insult. Connor is disciplined – a punch or two, not a beating. Just a nod to the old ceremony, to let him know how things will be.

  Connor is taken to a holding cell to have time to think. He has no way to know how much time is passing. There are no windows, no cracks in the door, just the angry buzz of long halogen tubes in the ceiling. The floor is polished concrete, the walls are brick and plaster – thin enough that he can hear life going on as usual on the other side. He hears horns, the high-keening pitch of auto-rickshaws, the angry growl of motorbikes navigating the mud in low gear. As time passes he tries not to think about the woman, instead going to the deep, thoughtless place he used to be able to call on when swimming laps as a kid.

  After a while it starts to rain, and not long after that the lights blink out. When they come back on, the floor is a moving carpet of cockroaches. He hugs his knees to his chest, tries to ignore them. Every once in a while one climbs up into the bed and he flicks it gingerly off.

  A guard brings him a cup of water. ‘Don’t worry about the little guys,’ he says cheerfully. ‘They’re your only friends in the world right now. You’ll find them nice enough when you get hungry.’

  Connor studies the cup of water, decides it’s not safe to drink, hours later changes his mind, takes a tentative sip, then greedily gulps the rest. He regrets it almost immediately, as his stomach starts to churn in protest.

  When the cramping grows unbearable, he shits in the corner, cleaning himself as best he can with his underwear. He gets some on his fingers and can only wipe it on his shirt and wish desperately for a tap. He is at a loose end; takes inventory of his inner resources, finds them lacking. As are his options. He grows weaker – first with hunger, then thirst that is so all-consuming the pangs in his stomach are forgotten. Although the heat is oppressive in the cell, he no longer feels it. The steady rivulet of sweat running from his hairline has stopped. That is a bad sign. He knows it.

  He has no idea how much time has passed, but the same guard brings in another cup of water. Connor doesn’t let himself drink it, but uses it to wipe his hands clean. He waits. This will end eventually, one way or another. The lights go out again. He tries to sleep, doesn’t manage it.

  Instead he hovers on the brink of unconsciousness. He thinks of the Talent, settling on the ocean floor, to be discovered by crabs and worms. He thinks of her. A parade of women he’s known passes through his mind and his hand strays inside his shorts.

  He cannot help it, has never been able to help it, not since he was a child. When the panic, the sense of dread, rises to consume him, there is only one release that works, lets his breathing return to normal, helps his thoughts grow calm and orderly.

  He has a hard-on he worries will never go away, a Sisyphean liability that rolls back up the mountain moments after he gets it down. An ancient curse that requires regular sacrifices; morality, money, dignity. Afterwards he is ashamed. It’s absurd, this furtive little escape, in this dank room, the cockroaches scampering across the floor.

  He wakes as the cell floods with light, sits up, wretched, disoriented. A man is in the cell with him, not police. It takes him a few minutes to recognise him as Baba. Baba, in crisp black trousers and a white shirt, looks down at Connor with disapproval. His eyes flit to the mess in the corner, then back to Connor.

  ‘My friend. You look like shit. Are you okay?’

  Connor doesn’t reply. He’ll wait to hear what Baba wants. Baba, for his part, seems happy to wait. He saunters to the bench Connor is slumped on, brushes it furtively with his hand, sits. Now Connor and Baba are side by side, watching a cockroach climb the far wall.

  ‘I heard what happened,’ Baba says, finally. ‘Very unlucky.’

  Connor goes to speak, finds he has lost his voice, manages a feeble nod.

  Baba fishes in the pocket of his jacket, retrieves a plastic water bottle. It is unopened, has just been removed from a refrigerator, beads of condensation run its length. Connor is seized with violent want when he sees it, but Baba doesn’t offer it to him. Instead he holds it in his hands, fidgets with it, rolling it between his palms as he talks.

  ‘I am not the most religious man, but I believe very strongly in karma. Cause and effect. This can apply to one lifetime, or, I like to think, over several lifetimes.’

  This is, Baba continues, the only way to explain the lives of billions of people who would be better off dead. He asks Connor to consider the beggar gangs of Kolkata who blind and mutilate children to make them more profitable panhandlers. What world would let children suffer so much unless it was redress for something truly evil in a past life.

  Baba is talking as though to himself, and now, almost as if it has just occurred to him, he passes Connor the bottle of water and watches, amused, as Connor gulps it down in one go.

  ‘I see that you have had terrible luck. I wonder what it is you did to deserve such luck? And this poor woman – what did she do to deserve it? Perhaps she wronged you somehow. Perhaps in your past life?’

  Baba seems to be enjoying his monologue, but Connor is having trouble keeping up. ‘What do you want, Baba?’

  ‘Are you in a hurry, my friend? Do you have somewhere to be?’ Baba is soft-spoken now. ‘There is only so much bad luck you can have in a life. Perhaps, I hope, you have had so much bad luck that from now on your luck will change. Perhaps it is already changing. This is why I’ve come to you.’

  He stands now, tugs his shirt to chase out wrinkles, tells Connor that he can talk to the police for him, make this whole thing disappear, that the money needed to do so was really not all that much. In return, Connor would take a package all the way to the east coast, across the country, to Chennai.

  ‘What’s in the package?’

  Baba’s smile widens. ‘Bread and tea. Just a little bread and tea.’

  ‘Why me?’

  ‘Why not? We’re old friends. And who will trouble you, a nice white guy, with your suntan and your cargo pants, on your way to a yoga holiday. You have everything to gain by doing this simple thing for me. I am offering deliverance, Connor, in exchange for a simple delivery.’

  ‘And if I say no?’

  ‘Then you’ll rot in here.’

  ‘And what’s stopping me just taking off with your gear?’

  ‘Then I’ll find you and kill you,’ Baba says cheerfully, not missing a beat. ‘When you get to Chennai, my man there will give you a new name, a new passport, a first-class ticket to Bali. A week from now you’ll be eating goji berries in Ubud.’

  Baba shrugs, in a way that implies none of this is in his hands, not really. ‘This is a good offer. You should take it.’

  Connor is given instructions, and his freedom. The police who beat him earlier now address him warmly and wish him a good day.

  That night, he walks to the location he’s been given. He takes a back road through the sand dunes, slipping through the paths carved by the tides. He is edgy, nervous, stopping frequently to make sure he is not followed. The night will not co-operate with his jangling nerves – the air is mild, insects chirrup softly and fireflies flit across the path ahead of him.

  The shore rises gently, the sand dunes giving over to stark volcano-black cliffs, dotted with sparse, tough-looking scrub, which in turn gives way to a dense forest of wild palms and banana trees. He reaches a spot where the rise suddenly drops away, forming a little cove that is closed to both the southern and northern approaches by rock falls.

  He knows this beach. It’s under water most of the time, but now the tide is low and the ocean has retreated to reveal a long stretch o
f sand, littered with shell fragments, bones and garbage. Connor stares out, sees nothing on the water but the winking lamps of fishermen on the horizon.

  The fish stocks in these waters are low, running to critical, but nobody with authority is hard-hearted enough to deprive the local fishermen of their livelihood, or rich enough to refuse their tea money.

  Over the years too many scandalised tourists have complained about the fishermen dumping out nets of writhing fish onto the sand, where they set about gutting them with long knives. As a concession the men who have fished these waters for generations have moved to this cove, sorting their catch away from prying eyes.

  Connor scrambles down the cliff face and reaches the spot where Baba told him to wait. He checks his watch, sees he has fifteen minutes until the rendezvous. The rain is on its way – he feels it in his bad ear, in the ache along the old fractures in his bones as the air pressure drops. When the rain finally comes down in jagged squalls, he tries to shelter under a banana tree for a minute, but soon gives up. What’s the point of pretending he won’t get wet? Instead he stands, opens his mouth, tilts his head back to catch the rain.

  Out to sea he sees the fishing fleet turn and head towards the cove. Around him is full dark – there are no bars, no shacks, no homes, no eyes.

  When the fishermen land they see him standing nervously on the sand dunes and ignore him. He begins to worry, wonders if he is in the wrong place after all, frets that he’s missed a cue. One by one the motors of the longships cut out as they near the shore, coasting on momentum to beach on the low tide.

  Connor debates whether or not to approach them, but decides to wait. He sits and settles under the tree, knees up against his chest, arms wrapped around them, head down against the rain.

  Out of the rain a man approaches, skin glowing dark and wet against the blue of the night, wearing only jean shorts. He nods once and throws a garbage bag at Connor’s feet, then he is already moving again, back onto a boat, helping to heave the drag nets and spill their slippery catch on the sand.

  Inside the bag is a large shrink-wrapped package, clear plastic securing brightly coloured pills, each stamped with an Ω. Ecstasy tablets – thousands of them. Each of them would sell for 2000 rupees to the right tourist. This package is worth more than the entire fishing fleet out there; certainly worth more than Connor’s life right now. Connor is baffled, and – despite himself – a little touched that Baba would trust him with this.

  Connor stands and starts back inland. Behind him the fishermen are sorting out the bycatch. Soon trucks will arrive on the remote road that ends at the cliff face and there fishmongers, chefs and hoteliers will meet the fishermen to haggle over the catch. Connor doesn’t stick around to watch, has already slipped off into the jungle as the first trucks roll into the cove.

  As he rises to the crest he turns back, takes in the sight as the boats dump each net. Along with the kingfish there’s a host of other marine life – squid, turtles, sea snakes. The squid and the turtles, the fishermen keep, turning the squid inside out, gutting the turtles from neck to tail with a long knife. But the sea snakes they gingerly fish out of the nets and throw overboard, where, frantic, they slither back towards the sea.

  Connor floated in and out of consciousness. After the night in the sea baths he couldn’t get out of bed for a week. Sometimes he was burning, swaddled to the point of choking by blankets and fever. Other times the chill of drying sweat seeped into his dreams and he would be underwater again, freezing, so cold he was sure he was still in the sea baths, thrashing about, unable to find the walls of the pool to pull himself out.

  When the fever finally broke he emerged from his bedroom to find something of the nocturnal underwater world had come with him. He walked down the hall on shaky feet, one hand on the wall to steady himself. Something had changed, but he wasn’t sure what it was until he reached the bathroom and switched on the light. The switch – a big, hefty brass thing – flicked just fine, and the light flickered on, but the satisfying click of the switch in its bracket was missing. He tried it again, and again, confused and sleepy, then wide-eyed as he began to realise that there was nothing wrong with the switch, there was something wrong with him. He couldn’t hear anything.

  The footfalls on the tiles, his urine splashing into the toilet, gone. He washed his hands, turned the tap to the precise point that caused the old plumbing to screech in protest and only then did he hear – or rather, felt through the vibrations in his feet – the low rumble of the shaking pipes. Dismayed, he clicked his fingers next to his ears, found that he could hear a little out of his right, but his left was useless. He banged his open palm against it to shake free the watery feeling in there, tried to ignore the sense that the whole world was off, tried to reassure himself the hearing would come back.

  It did, eventually, but only in his right ear, and only a little. He decided, very early on, that he could not tell anyone. Since he’d recovered from his illness, his family had become tense. He surmised there’d been words spoken while he was unconscious. Dad was surly and cheerfully unapologetic in the way he got when he knew he’d fucked something up, and Mum was cowed and sad-eyed.

  Connor understood that if his mother discovered how damaged he really was by the night in the pool she would never forgive his father. And if that happened, his father would never forgive him. The repercussions would be horrendous, and, ultimately, it would be his fault. So he kept silent, and set about adapting to this new, muted world.

  It was easier than he’d thought it would be. In time, low frequencies came back to him, so he could still, for the most part, make out the booming bass of certain blokes; Dad, Skippy. The piping, breaking voices of his classmates were harder to parse but that didn’t affect his social standing as much as it might a more popular boy. Among his few friends he had always been something of an outlier – tall and lithe, he was not built for footy or the Darwinian spin-cycle of male friendship. He was not aggressive enough, never had been, so most of his social interaction involved standing around in circles, laughing approvingly with the group.

  Connor learned how to modulate his voice to a regular level, could keep from shouting or murmuring when speaking. He taught himself to read lips well enough that he could figure out, more or less, what people were saying. But by then other boys, the bullies with rat-like noses for opportunity, had figured out that something was not quite right with him. They started to tease him and, when he didn’t fight back, the bullying started in earnest.

  Slow to respond, more and more socially awkward as puberty began to stretch and maul him, he went from a lonely figure in the schoolyard to a solitary one. There was blood in the water. When the other boys were in a predatory mood, they came for him first. Taunts and jeers, he could turn his bad ear towards and tune out the aggressors, but enterprising bullies learned to peg footballs at his blind side, knowing he wouldn’t clock them until they smashed upside his head and sent him sprawling. The verdict was delivered: Connor was retarded.

  His school concurred. He had never been a great student, but now that he couldn’t hear his teachers, refused to ask or answer questions in class, his grades nosedived. By the time he was ready for the final years of high school, there was some discussion about whether he should proceed to Year 11. After heated arguments between his parents and the school, he was allowed to leave, although it was clear there were few prospects for a high-school dropout in this town.

  Dad complained bitterly about his son – the lack of motivation and ambition, his worsening aptitude – to his wife, the old men at the RSL, to Skippy and Anna when they were invited over for dinner.

  ‘You’re getting so tall!’ Anna told him as they greeted the family at the door. ‘You look just like your dad when he was your age.’

  ‘He’s nothing like me,’ Dad spat.

  Skippy saw Connor blanch. ‘That’s true!’ he said, ruffling his hair affectionately while Connor squirmed. ‘You’re much better looking.’

  Dad dra
ined glass after glass of wine, until Anna discreetly stopped refilling it, but Dad either missed or ignored the hint, taking the bottle from the table to top himself up. He was on a tear; unhappy about the way of things, felt he had been let down by the world, would have liked his son, at least, to have made him proud. Skippy tried to change the subject, but Dad steered the topic back again and again.

  Finally, Skippy cleared his throat, shared a look with Anna, and Connor twigged they had been discussing him in private.

  ‘Connor has always seemed like a smart kid to me,’ Skippy said. ‘Book learning isn’t for everyone. I was never good at school. Shit, Einstein failed maths when he was at school.’

  Mum nodded enthusiastically in agreement and Dad shot her a look.

  ‘What the fuck do you know about Einstein?’ he snarled, and Mum looked down at her wine, took a chaste sip. Skippy and Anna exchanged another look, and Skippy continued in the same even tone of voice.

  ‘Maybe he’s dyslexic? Lots of kids are, you know. There’s nothing wrong with his brain, he might just learn . . . everyone’s different, you know? How’s he meant to know what he’s good at in life? It’s only just started.’

  Dad bristled. He would not be mollified. ‘Thanks for the parenting advice, mate. Always appreciated.’ His tone was acid. ‘But why don’t you get back to me after you’ve shot one up the duff?’

  ‘Honey,’ Mum said to Dad. ‘That’s not very fair.’

  Anna shrugged sadly – they’d been trying for years now to have one of their own, and failing. Skippy, who for half a second looked pissed off, started laughing. He reached over and squeezed Anna’s thigh. She shifted in her chair, changed the subject. She told Connor that she had something to ask him, had talked it over with Skippy and he agreed it was a good idea. She’d been a little overwhelmed at work, business at the cafe was growing, and she could use some help in the kitchen. Would he like a job?