April Fool's Day

by Bryce Courtenay

  He stuck out a reed-like arm, flexed it and made a muscle. “Feel that!”

  “Damon, what’s the matter?” I put my thumb and forefinger around his tiny arm and pressed the ball of my thumb into the top of his right biceps. There was barely any resistance. Damon was still the proverbial 125-pound weakling who gets sand kicked into his face by the bully on the beach.

  “I’m cured, Dad!” He took a step backwards and, raising his hands in the accepted Bruce Lee fighting stance, he chopped into the wooden panel of the front door. Then, to my astonishment, he suddenly leapt up and kicked, driving the ball of his left foot into the same part of the door.

  I grabbed him. “Damon, stop it!” I was deeply shocked. What he’d just done would put him in hospital with a severe bleed for days and probably put the hand and leg out of use for several weeks. Besides, what I’d just witnessed was, for him anyway, physically quite impossible.

  Damon chuckled. “See, I’m healed!” He spread his hands and shrugged his shoulders. “Simple. I don’t have AIDS any more and I don’t have haemophilia and I walked here in ten minutes.” He took a hurried breath, like a little boy who can’t get the words out fast enough. “And I feel wonderful!” His eyes shone. “I can’t do it properly yet, but tomorrow I’m going to run.”

  “Run?” I must have shown my bewilderment.

  He smiled and put one hand on my shoulder. “Dad, do you remember the last time I ran, I mean really ran? I was five. I remember I was playing with Brett and Adam and we had a scuffle and I fell into the swimming pool when it was being built.” Damon put his head on his shoulder and smiled. “That was the last time.” I recalled the incident which had eventually led to the calliper on his left leg and his bad knee which had, years later, been attacked by the Salmonella. That initial fall into the empty pool had meant weeks in hospital. The kick he’d just given the door had been hard enough to put him back for several days. While some bleeding is problematic, a severe bump such as this would always result in a bad bleed.

  He took his hand from my shoulder and slapped both hands against his quadriceps and jumped up and down, running on the spot. “Now I’m going to do it all the time again!” He was grinning and didn’t seem the least bit affected by the punch or the kick he’d delivered to the door. “I could run with you? I mean when I’m properly fit, of course – ten kilometres, I’ve always wanted to do that.”

  I decided to ignore the way he was dressed or even to mention the absence of his shoes. Instead I rather stupidly asked him if he’d like me to make him a “Dad Sandwich” which is how this famous culinary treat which involved bread and about a dozen other ingredients was known to my sons and all their friends. I am an expert avoider of the too-difficult moment. Offering to make food is a great way to escape having to face it, though now the offer was ridiculous. Damon, with his terrible oral thrush, couldn’t possibly have eaten a Dad Sandwich and I immediately felt stupid, but Damon wasn’t in the least upset.

  “Thanks, Dad, tomorrow maybe. That’s when they are going to cure my mouth and throat.”

  I’d followed him to the large terrace which leads out from our lounge room and which we’d turned into a small but very pretty garden about fifty feet up from the ground level. He lifted himself into one of the brick garden troughs raised about eighteen inches from the terrace floor and which acted as both garden and wall along three sides. Damon flapped his arms balancing on the far edge of the trough and looking down said, “I can fly if I want to, you know!” He looked at me mischievously, a small boy again. “I really can, Dad!”

  “Jesus, Damon, get down!” Damon normally had trouble balancing his lopsided little body on a flat carpet, let alone on a five-inch-wide brick ledge overlooking a fifty-foot drop. Merely waving his arms around, as he was now doing, could be sufficient to cause him to lose his balance and plunge to his death. He turned, took a step towards me and jumped back on the terrace. The jump was a bit clumsy and I needed to grab his arm to steady him, but it was nevertheless miraculous. Almost as much a miracle for Damon, then, as if he’d actually flapped his arms, taken off and flown away.

  The whole scenario was awesome and very frightening and I could feel my heart thumping and my throat constrict. Damon simply couldn’t do any of the things he’d done in the space of the past few minutes. He’d never been able to, he never would be able to, but he was!

  The Bondi cottage had been wonderful for him and within a couple of weeks had completely lifted his depression and he also seemed to be going through a period when he seemed relatively well. But I was suddenly aware that something else was about to occur that we couldn’t possibly understand. I had seen him do enough in these few minutes to put himself into hospital with a series of bleeds which, given his present physical condition, could quite easily set him back for months. And yet he seemed unharmed. He hadn’t flinched as he’d slammed both the side of his hand and the ball of his foot into the door, nor had he as much as grunted when he’d jumped from the terrace wall.

  Thank God Benita wasn’t home. She is not the calmest person on earth, and while we didn’t know at the time, she’d developed a severe heart condition; I was certain that had she witnessed Damon’s performance she would have been overcome with a panic attack.

  “Good, eh?” Damon asked again, plainly in high spirits.

  “Damon, are you on drugs, LSD or something?”

  “No Dad, I swear!” he looked genuinely shocked.

  “Hypnosis? Are you in a hypnotic trance? If you are, then tell me and I’ll help to get you out of it!”

  It was all I could think to say though I couldn’t believe Damon would be this stupid. Hypnosis can alter a state of physical awareness and even allow a demonstration of physical strength impossible to imagine in a normal waking state. The aftermath, in Damon’s case, would be much too severe. I told myself he would never do anything so stupid as to put himself so deeply into hypnosis.

  Besides, if it were hypnosis, it was doubtful that he could induce such a deep trance in himself without cooperation from someone else. People can be persuaded under hypnosis to do some remarkable things, but the pattern for what had taken place with Damon in the past minutes was completely beyond anything I understood.

  “Dad, you don’t understand. I’m cured!” He stopped and put his hands on his hips like a small child. Clicking his tongue, he added, “Well parts of me are! They are still working on the other parts.”

  I thought I’d heard the word “they” on the first occasion but I hadn’t been absolutely sure, now it was unmistakable. I knew with a sudden certainty that Damon was not fully in control of his mind.

  I am an African first and foremost. I have seen people possessed by evil spirits. Rationally I’ll tell you that’s nonsense, of course, but I have learned that few things in this world are wrought by logic alone; now I was certain Damon was being controlled by someone or something else.

  “Do you mind if I smoke, Dad?” he asked, following me into the living room.

  “Smoke? Are you smoking again?” It was a surprise to me. He’d given up when he’d had the AIDS-related pneumonia.

  “No, not cigarettes.” He reached into the back pocket of his dirty shorts and produced what looked like a packet of cigarettes. “These.” The packet was of an unusual design and from it he withdrew a long, chocolate brown cylinder, slightly thinner and about half as long again as a normal cigarette. “They’re special cigarettes. They have special qualities made particularly for me.” Then, as though reading my thoughts, he said, “Not dope, Dad!” He pushed the long, slim cigarette carefully into the corner of his mouth, first using a dirty fingernail to pick away at the thrush formed on the inside of his lips.

  It was then that I saw how dirty his hands were. The dirt not only covered the back of his hand but it ran into the creases between his fingers. Damon, who’d wanted to be a doctor and who washed his hands a dozen times or more each day. It seemed impossible.

  “I’m not going to light my cigarette
without a match.” He looked up at me before reaching into the same back pocket of his shorts and producing what looked like a genuine Zippo lighter. Well, at least the old Damon was still under there somewhere. If he couldn’t have a solid gold Dunhill I knew it would have to be a genuine American Zippo.

  “I could light it, you know, spontaneously, just with my mind.” He flicked the lighter open with his thumb and lit the thin brown cigarette, letting it hang expertly at the corner of his mouth, squinting through the rising smoke. “But you’ve seen enough today.”

  Celeste arrived soon afterwards, calling “Hello everybody!” as she came through the front door which had remained ajar.

  “I’m just telling Dad about my cure, babe!” Damon shouted happily. “He’s pretty impressed. I showed him my karate kick!”

  “That’s good, Damon,” she replied, her voice controlled and matter-of-fact, then she added, “But we really ought to be going home. Christopher’s coming over for lunch. Remember?”

  “Okay then, Dad, I’ve got to go,” he said cheerfully. He walked over and rested a hand on both my shoulders. “Pleased, eh? It’s good, isn’t it? I’m almost cured. I told you my mind could do it, now do you believe me?”

  Damon was looking directly into my eyes. His own were still sunk deep into his skull, though the whites were clean and clear around the lovely hazel of his pupils; this was strange for they seemed to have regained their depth and colour and had lost the dark, dead, soaked-raisin appearance they’d taken on with his AIDS condition. I didn’t know what to say. If I agreed with him, would I then be driving him further into the fantasy world he was clearly living in? Or if I objected and called his bluff, would I damage his fragile ego and plunge him back into depression?

  “I don’t know, Damon. I just don’t know. It’s all rather a lot to take in all at once.”

  Damon smiled and gave me a hug. It was the old killer smile and little boy hug I hadn’t felt for years. “I know, I know,” he said, pressing his fingers into my shoulders. “I love you, Dad. I really love you such a lot; now that I’m better I’m going to show you, I’m going back to uni to become a doctor.”

  “That’s good,” I said softly, not sure what else to say.

  I walked with them to the front door and when Damon was not looking I cupped my fist to my ear and mimed, “Call me!” Celeste nodded, almost imperceptibly, afraid Damon might see her. It was clear that whatever was wrong with him, Celeste was prepared to go along with it. Celeste called several hours later to say that Damon had been acting strangely for some time, but that the change in him had been gradual, hardly perceptible at first.

  “It was a very gradual high, that started to get higher and higher. Remember how depressed he was? Then we came here to Bondi and, almost immediately, he became happy and much more cheerful. He felt that he had everything to look forward to, this house was his dream and he was really happy! We both were; it was like the Woollahra cottage all over again, only better. Damon was back to the old Damon again. It had been a long time since he’d been well and happy, a very long time.

  “It started when we were painting the house. He was helping, except he couldn’t climb up the ladder and things, but he was really helping. Mixing and stirring the paint and doing lots of other things. And, gradually, he just got higher and higher and higher and he started having trouble sleeping at night. He’d be on the computer a lot and he was talking a lot about what he wanted to achieve and I noticed that he wanted to have people around him a lot. Damon liked people, but he also liked to be alone; but now he didn’t, he wanted people around him all of the time.”

  Celeste paused on the phone. “There’s something I have to say which I don’t think you’re going to like.”

  “Say it,” I said, sure that I could cope, that another shock wouldn’t make all that much difference to my already traumatised system.

  “Well, Damon’s been on drugs, on Ecstasy.”

  “But Damon hasn’t taken any non-prescription drugs for a long time?”

  “Ecstasy is different. Well, for Damon.”

  “Why?” I asked, trying to sound casual. “You’ve just said he was happy with the move and having his own house.” Recreational drugs frightened me.

  “I don’t know,” Celeste explained. “It’s a new drug. Someone told him that it was a cross between Speed and LSD; it keeps you in an elevated sense of consciousness and you feel as though nothing can harm you.”

  “How would he have gotten hold of it?” I asked, not at all happy with what Celeste was saying but trying not to show my annoyance. It was one thing to blame AIDS, but if Damon’s present condition was the result of taking drugs I wasn’t sure I knew how to react.

  “Oh, Bryce, it’s very easy to get. You can get it anywhere. It’s new, there’s plenty of it around.” Celeste’s voice was casual and I found myself further irritated.

  “For Christ’s sake, Celeste! Damon’s paranoid about the stuff they give him in hospital, he questions everything! Why would he put an unknown drug into his body? I mean that’s super stupid!”

  Celeste sighed. “That’s Damon being sick, being unwell, I mean in hospital around doctors. Damon better sees himself no different from anybody else. Ecstasy’s a new drug taken by just about everybody we know.” Celeste paused. “I’ve taken it, though only once.”

  “Well?’

  Celeste sounded a little exasperated. “It’s okay, it was good! But I didn’t need it.” She paused. “Damon does, I mean did.”

  “And what now?” I was trying not to sound shocked, even though I felt like giving her a lecture on the spot. Celeste seemed not to notice the exasperation in my voice.

  “Damon had Ecstasy and had a good time, Bryce! It’s a party drug and when he takes it he’s happy again.” She sighed a deep sigh, as though she was trying to teach a backward child. “He had it once and it worked and so he’s had it again; it makes him happy, makes him have fun. But with Damon it’s more than that, it’s also making him not feel pain, it’s making him feel strong and letting him have confidence in his body. He says it makes him feel sexy and well and fit.” She paused. “All of those things!”

  “I asked him this morning if he was on drugs and he denied it. He gave a damn good imitation of appearing to be shocked at the question.”

  “Well yes, he would! He isn’t, he hasn’t had Ecstasy since he started to get on a high. He’s not on drugs, I mean, you know, that sort, like Ecstasy, non-medical ones.” Celeste adopted a slightly patronising manner. “Bryce, it’s not the way you think. He needed it at that time when he was coming out of his depression.” Celeste paused again. “He wasn’t addicted or anything, he just took it maybe three or four times. I only told you because it was after taking Ecstasy that he started to get on this high.”

  “What are you trying to say? The drug, this Ecstasy and not his AIDS, brought on the high?”

  “I don’t know, maybe it was a combination? I told Brent Waters, he says maybe.” Celeste then added, “Maybe, you know, Ecstasy was a catalyst.”

  “When was all this? When did he start behaving strangely?” I hated the idea that Damon might have brought this dreadful thing upon himself. It seemed so bloody stupid after all he’d been through.

  “At the beginning of this month, about two weeks ago,” Celeste said.

  As she spoke I recalled my secretary, Cathy, having come into my office a week or so previously to ask whether she could, on Damon’s behalf, send flowers to a lady called Denise at Prince Alfred Hospital. I was busy and I simply nodded my agreement. Damon was given to such thoughtful gestures; it was one of his more disarming characteristics. Denise, I imagined, must have done something very nice for him and, as usual, he was broke. With Damon the gesture was always more important that his ability to pay for it, but I excused his presumption by reasoning that we owed Denise a great deal anyway.

  A little later Cathy came back, her expression puzzled. She waited until I was off the phone and then said, “It’s none
of my business, Bryce, but what did this Denise do that earned her six-dozen, long-stemmed, yellow roses?”

  Damon’s favourite flowers were yellow roses, but even for Damon this was somewhat grand and I had intended asking him about it. Now I mentioned the roses to Celeste, who laughed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know about the roses, but I’ve cancelled the BMW!”

  “What?” I yelled.

  “Damon wants to trade in the Mazda on a new BMW, the salesman has been coming around for days and he’s already had a test drive. I told him that you’d definitely said ‘No’ to the BMW and he’s going to see you about it, to try and convince you that his cure for AIDS will make him so much money, he’ll be able to pay you back immediately.”

  “Have you called Brent?” I asked.

  “Yes, but Damon doesn’t want to see him. Brent said not to force it yet, that it sounds like a mild mania. He said if it got any worse to call him, as we may have to make him take treatment. But it’s not easy. Damon has to agree to see him and also agree to go on Lithium; that’s the drug they might possibly use for this condition.”

  “I’ll come down immediately,” I said.

  Celeste’s voice grew suddenly tremulous and I thought for a moment she was going to cry. “No, please don’t,” she said softly. “Robert says there’s nothing wrong with him, that sometimes AIDS makes you go a bit funny and imagine things. He keeps telling me Damon is all right! It would be embarrassing if you confronted Damon or upset him in front of Robert.”

  Robert was the Uncle Robert of Damon’s childhood, a great friend of the family, who’d known us for all of Damon’s life and of whom Damon was very fond. Robert, who was gay, had moved to the United States some three years earlier to open a native art gallery in New York and he and his friend, Philip Burgos, had arrived for a visit. Damon had been most anxious to have him stay in his new Bondi house.