by Jon Walter
‘Good God. Are you sure?’ Hector took a deep breath.
He bent down and chose the pliers. ‘I think these will be best, don’t you?’
He felt the weight of them, pulled the jaws open, then snapped them shut – Malik was reminded of the crocodile in Peter Pan. He sat down beside Papa and held his fingers.
Hector took a deep breath and looked at Vex. ‘I’ll need you to hold the torch.’
Vex nodded and touched Malik’s head with a finger. ‘You should come away.’
Malik sat back on the edge of the mattress. He didn’t want them to do it and he tried to think of something to say that would change their minds. But if this meant they could get on the ship, well, maybe it was worth it. He had to trust Papa.
The two men stood over Papa’s chair and the candlelight threw their shadows up against the wall. Malik brought his knees right up into his chest and held them in his arms. ‘Will it hurt?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ said Vex. He walked around behind Papa. ‘But not for very long. If we’re quick, it’ll be over and done with before we know it, so let’s do it now, before we change our minds.’
The men all agreed.
Vex took hold of Papa’s forehead so that he held him in a headlock, and with his other hand he held the torch in front of Papa’s mouth. Hector tested the pliers one last time, then he leaned across, hooked a finger inside Papa’s cheek and stretched his mouth out so he could see the tooth. Papa tensed and Vex tightened the grip on his head.
Malik didn’t want to watch, but he couldn’t look away as Hector guided the pliers into Papa’s mouth. He squeezed the handles and Malik heard them scrape against bone and come together with a click. Papa struggled. He brought up a hand and yanked the pliers away, then his fingers scratched at Vex’s arm and he choked on his own spit.
‘Let him go!’ Hector shouted. ‘Let him go, for God’s sake.’
Vex freed Papa’s head and Papa spilled forward over his own knees, gagging. He spat onto the floor and gasped for breath.
Malik edged closer, unsure what had happened. ‘Did you do it?’
‘I didn’t get the chance.’ Hector sounded angry. ‘Why did you bring your hand up?’
Papa had a finger inside his mouth, feeling his gums. ‘I couldn’t help it,’ he wheezed. ‘I was choking. My tongue went to the back of my throat.’
Vex was calm. He put an arm round both of their shoulders. ‘You must be quicker,’ he told Hector. He went and stood again at the back of Papa’s chair. ‘Again. We must try again.’
Malik moved to the far end of the mattress. He wouldn’t look this time. He put his hands over his ears and shut his eyes tight. He counted to ten, then thought it wouldn’t be long enough, so he counted again, this time out loud so he wouldn’t hear the muffled grunts and gasps that had begun.
When he took his hands away and opened his eyes, the men were arguing.
Hector blamed Vex. ‘You should have held his hands down.’
‘How can I hold his hands and his head at the same time?’
Papa looked as though he’d just run for a bus. His face was red and he was short of breath. He ran a finger across the front of his teeth and when he brought it away there was blood. He apologized. ‘I’m sorry.’ He wiped his finger on his trousers. ‘I have never been brave.’
Hector was exasperated. ‘But you must try, Salvatore.’ He looked across at Malik. ‘You have to do it for the boy. Think of Malik. It’s his only chance of getting on the ship. If we arrive tomorrow without money then there’s no hope for him.’
‘We’re all relying on you,’ said Vex. ‘But I disagree. I think you are a very brave man indeed.’
Papa looked grateful. Having Vex say such a thing seemed to give him more resolve and he pointed to the floor. ‘Bring me my sack again.’ He took the ball of thick yellow twine from the same pocket that he had the tools. He handed it over his head to Vex. ‘You must tie me to the chair – it’s the only way. Tie me tightly and let’s get this over with.’
Vex loosened the end of the twine and stepped back so he could weigh up both the man and the chair he sat in. He crouched down and took hold of Papa’s ankle and Papa let his shin be put against the wooden leg. Vex wound the twine around a good many times before he tied it off.
Malik held his own wrist in his fingers as he watched Papa become increasingly helpless. ‘I don’t like it,’ he said quietly, and he lay down on the mattress and curled his knees up into his chest.
Papa smiled weakly. ‘It’s not as bad as it looks.’ He held his hands calmly in his lap and Vex parted them and put one on either side of the chair and he tied them round the wrist and then again round the wood, at the joint where the seat met the legs.
When Vex had finished, Papa could move nothing but his head. Vex stood back and looked over his work.
‘You’ve used a lot of twine,’ Papa tutted. ‘That’ll take some time to roll up when we’re done, but we shouldn’t waste it.’ He put his head back. ‘Please be quick.’
Hector approached the chair with a new look of determination and Malik closed his eyes tight shut. He could hear Papa’s breath quicken. Then Papa began to choke. ‘Twist them, man!’ shouted Vex. ‘Pull the handles back!’
‘Aaargh.’ Papa began to make a strange strangled kind of noise as though someone had their hands around his throat.
Malik kept his eyes tight shut. A foot stamped hard on the floorboards.
‘Stop it!’ Malik shouted and he put his hands over his ears.
‘Aaargh!’ screamed Papa again and Hector let out a scream of his own. ‘Aaargh!’
There was a loud crash and someone cursed at the top of their voice: ‘Oh, for crying out loud!’
Malik took his hands from his head and opened his eyes.
Hector was on his backside, sprawled out across the floorboards. ‘He bit me.’ He lifted a bloody hand and shook it at Papa. ‘You bit my finger like an animal.’
Malik went to Papa, who sat in the chair with his head hanging to one side. He looked weak. He was breathing heavily and the front of his white shirt had a napkin of blood. Malik put a hand to his face.
Behind them, Vex was shouting at Hector. ‘You’re useless.’ He pulled the accountant to his feet and slapped his face. ‘Get up and hold his head. I can see I’ll have to do it myself.’
Malik stood in the way. ‘Stop it,’ he said.
‘Almost there, Malik,’ Papa said weakly. ‘Let them be.’
Malik ran across the room and out of the door. He was halfway down the stairs before he stopped in the darkness, realizing he had nowhere to go and no one to ask for help. At the top of the stairs, the candlelight flickered in the bedroom doorway.
‘Tighter,’ ordered Vex. There was a scrape as the pliers were picked up from the floor.
Malik crept back up the stairs and stood at the open door. Hector had a hold of Papa’s head and in his other hand he held the torch high over Papa’s face. Vex had two fingers inside Papa’s cheek to stretch it out wide. He put the pliers in Papa’s mouth. ‘Let go of the torch,’ he ordered, and Hector dropped the torch to the floor and held onto Papa’s head with both hands, spreading his feet wider on the floor to steady himself.
Vex tightened his grip on the pliers, moving carefully and slowly. Then suddenly he twisted.
‘Aaaargh …!’ Papa came to life and his eyes went wide. He screamed loudly, and Vex’s arm shook with the effort. ‘Aaaargh …!’
Vex put a foot up on the chair and his body arched over Papa.
‘Aaaargh …!’
Malik stared at Papa’s hands, watched them curl and clench the leg of the chair as his fingers became hard white claws.
The two men screamed together, so close now they could have been one person, with Hector behind them holding Papa’s head, his eyes tight shut, his own teeth clenched.
‘Aaaaargh!’
Then suddenly Vex separated. He pulled the pliers from Papa’s mouth and stepped away so that Papa fell forw
ard, the chair tipping with him until Hector caught hold of his collar and pulled the chair back onto four feet.
‘It’s over,’ said Vex. He bent down and picked the torch up from the floor, then straightened himself and lifted the pliers into the beam of light. There was the diamond, glistening in the torchlight, and hanging from it was the root of Papa’s tooth, like a prize taken from an animal, with the blood still smeared across it.
Malik stepped inside the room again.
Vex took hold of the diamond between his thumb and forefinger and Hector was suddenly there at his side, the two of them standing toe to toe, staring at the stone that Vex held up between them, only centimetres from their eyes.
‘Untie me.’ Papa’s voice was weak and tired. ‘Please, untie me.’
Malik ran across to the chair and took the penknife from his pocket. He opened the longest blade and began to cut at the twine round Papa’s wrists, sawing as fast as he could, loosing first one hand and then the second, one ankle and then the next.
Papa was pale, his head still bowed. He shook as though he were cold, with tiny tremors that shivered across his shoulders and around his open mouth. He wasn’t strong enough to lift his chin from his chest.
Malik was aware that Hector and Vex were still staring at the jewel.
‘Shall we chisel the tooth away?’ asked Hector.
‘I can’t decide.’ Vex closed his fingers around the tooth. ‘We might damage the stone. Better to sell it as it is. Let them do it.’
‘How will they weigh it like this?’
‘They won’t need to weigh it.’ Vex felt the weight of the stone in his palm. ‘I can see the value of it. I’ll know the price.’
‘Let me see it.’ Papa’s voice was weak but determined. He lifted his chin and his eyes turned toward them. Malik cut quickly at the twine, then Papa reached out a hand and tugged at Hector’s sleeve and the men turned round, surprised.
Papa’s face was white but his eyes were clear. His beard glistened bright red in the candlelight. A single strand of twine still held Papa to the chair and Malik sliced through it. Papa lurched forward but then regained his balance and stretched out a hand, half rising to his feet, too weak to properly stand.
He flexed his fingers at the men. ‘Let me have it.’
Vex hesitated, seeming to weigh it one last time before he put the tooth into Papa’s hand.
Papa closed his fingers round the diamond. ‘There,’ he said, and he held it up to his eye to see it glisten. ‘There,’ he said again. ‘Now we have done it.’
The morning sun rose quickly, dispatching the long night that hung across the bows of the ship down at the dock. The sunlight lifted the gloom from the cracks between the cobbles of the street. It brightened the colour of the doors and windows in the cottages and crept around the half-shut curtain of the upstairs room and across the wooden floor.
Malik opened his eyes when the sunlight warmed his face. Papa’s head was lying close to his own. He was asleep on his back, his body slung across the bare floorboards, his mouth wide open. A line of saliva dribbled from the corner of his lips, which had swollen into patches of purple, red and blue, and he was breathing heavily.
Malik sat up and looked around the room. He was alone with Papa. He got to his feet, walked to the window and pulled the curtain back to make the room brighter. The street was empty. Above the opposite cottage he could see thin white clouds in a pale blue sky. A coil of dark smoke rose into the air from the back of the town.
Malik stepped into his Wellington boots and stood over Papa, expecting him to wake. He thought Papa looked older when he was asleep. The bright sunlight showed blood, like tiny flakes of rust, still clinging to the hairs of Papa’s white beard. Hector had helped Papa wash himself, using water that Malik had brought up in the bucket, and in the dim light of the candle they had thought his beard was clean. Papa’s shirt still lay in the corner of the room where Hector had thrown it, saying, ‘You’ll never get the blood out of that, but don’t worry – now you have the money to buy as many shirts as you want.’
Malik decided to let Papa sleep.
He went downstairs, expecting to see Hector and Vex. He thought they would be in the sitting room but found it was empty. They weren’t in the kitchen either. When he turned the handle on the back door, he found it unlocked. That was strange. He put his head outside. In daylight, the yard was smaller than he had imagined and empty, with the exception of a wooden planter, with four yellow pansies that crouched close together in the dry soil.
Above the wall of the yard, Malik could see the other cottages and, above them, the dark blue funnel of the ship. To the right of the funnel was another building that he hadn’t noticed last night – a warehouse that must be on the quayside, with bright red wooden doors for windows. A groan of engines came from the dock behind it. Perhaps Hector and Vex had already left for the dock?
Malik went to the back gate and opened the latch. He stepped into the alley and looked both ways. What had seemed so frightening last night had now become the most ordinary place in the world. He heard a rustle, looked down and saw a cat tug at the head of a fish that poked from a rusted hole in the upturned rubbish bin they had stumbled on last night. Malik knelt and watched the cat, but when it sensed him it let go of the fish and retreated, its body crouched and tense. It was a hairball of a cat, black with a white sock on each paw and a triangle of white under its chin that reminded Malik of Papa’s beard.
He stretched out his hand and rubbed his fingers together. He made the smooching noise that cats couldn’t resist and the cat, which looked only just old enough to fend for itself, stretched out its neck and sniffed, but it wouldn’t come closer.
Malik took three careful steps and knelt by the bin. The fish head smelled bad. He waved away some flies and prodded it. The flesh was soft and the dead eye looked like a dirty puddle. He put his finger in behind the head and flipped it out of the hole so that it skidded across the alleyway and stopped at the cat’s feet. It prodded it and turned it over, pausing only to look at Malik suspiciously.
Malik stayed very still as the cat began to eat. Papa had told him that you should never approach an animal that is hurt or hungry, and when they had been with the dying dog in the cellar, Papa had let him throw a piece of ham close to its head, but he hadn’t let Malik go any nearer than that.
So Malik waited.
When the cat had finished eating it came to him itself and allowed him to stroke the fur along its arched back. It purred and nudged its nose into his hand. Malik tickled it under the belly as the cat walked to and fro, rubbing itself against his bare legs and the top of his Wellington boots.
Malik picked the cat up and it didn’t seem to mind. He thought it was probably thirsty, so he carried it into the kitchen, and because he had no bowl he poured a little water into the bucket and left it on its side. The cat stretched itself and sniffed. It took a lick of the water and once it knew it was fresh, it began to drink with quick laps of its tiny pink tongue.
‘Malik!’ Papa shouted from upstairs. ‘Hector? Vex? Is anyone there?’
‘I’m here, Papa.’ Malik ran out into the hall.
Papa stood at the top of the staircase. His face was white and haunted and the pockets of his trousers were turned inside out. ‘Where is Hector? Where is Vex? Are they with you in the kitchen?’
Malik shook his head. ‘They’re not here, Papa. They have gone out already and they left the door unlocked.’
Papa stood in the centre of the room holding his winter coat. He had a hand deep in one of the pockets. He brought out his passport and dropped it onto the mattress where his keys and wallet already lay. He turned the coat around and felt the outside pockets, first the left and then the right, his forehead creasing into deep furrows, his hands worried and frantic. He produced the two red apples and dropped them on the floor without a second glance. Malik watched them roll across the boards and settle under the window – he knew they weren’t what Papa was searching for.
Papa was muttering. He talked to himself in fast, clipped sentences that Malik could barely understand. Then he dropped the coat at his feet and his hand went suddenly to his heart and a finger scooped inside the small pocket on the left breast of his shirt, but it was empty like the others.
He touched his face. Felt his jaw and winced. He looked around the room, bewildered, took in the upturned chair and the wardrobe as though he had never seen them. Then he sucked saliva back into the side of his mouth that wouldn’t close properly, and his eyes darted from one end of the room to the other. He began to shake, his shoulders shivering and his head beginning to twitch. His mouth fell open.
Malik thought Papa would collapse he was so unsteady on his feet, and when he began to bend at the middle, Malik took a step forward, but Papa regained some control of his body and Malik stepped away again, scared to get too close.
Papa seemed to not even know he was there. He reached down, picked up his coat and felt again in every pocket, trying to be calm, but all the while he was frantic and muttering, with hands that moved too quickly so that he dropped the coat on the floor.
He left it where it lay, stepped around it and stood on the collar. He gripped the edge of the inner pocket, then pulled hard, tearing the lining from the inside of the jacket in one long strip of red silk that remained attached at the hem. He turned the coat around and did the same on the other side, then shook it vigorously, turned it upside down and shook again. When nothing fell out, he threw it at the wardrobe.
‘No!’ Papa shouted. ‘No. No. No.’
Malik moved from foot to foot and his hand held the front of his blue shorts. He had never seen Papa look like this and he didn’t know what he could do to make it any better.
Papa stood still, his lips pursed, staring blankly out of the window.