by Robert Power
NEIGHBOUR
Jim was a memorable neighbour. We lived in the flat above his ‘workshop’. This was a former dance studio that he’d taken over once the tenants had moved on. He was a builder by trade, but an accomplished criminal by vocation. Creative robbery and elegant fraud were his specialties. As a younger man he’d been involved in a celebrated jewellery heist. One of his accomplices had been caught and named names. So Jim served the best part of a decade on the Isle of Wight. That experience only furthered his resolve to make best use of his talents.
One Sunday, shortly after we’d moved in, he called to say the workshop was open for business and that we should take a look at what was on offer. It was like entering a modern-day Aladdin’s cave. The huge space was packed from ceiling to floor with electrical goods of all descriptions. Later that evening, over the obligatory gin and tonic, Jim held court. He told us that he had turned up at the electrical wholesale outlet early the previous morning and plastered Closing down signs on its front windows. Using his excellent sign-writing skills (his fraudulent insurance documents were exquisite) he’d painted the name and logo of the company on the side of a van he’d borrowed. He and his three co-workers drove up to the shop dressed in brown overalls, with company insignia on their backs. Looking very professional with their clipboards and pens, they proceeded to empty the shop into the van. After half a dozen journeys their task was completed. Jim’s philosophy was simple: audacity and boldness would rarely be questioned. This was a mantra that held him in good stead right up until he left the neighbourhood some five years later.
He and his wife (and two sons) had fallen in love with one of the Greek islands (best not named in order to protect the innocent). His swan song was to buy a new Mercedes and a boat on credit. The next day the family disappeared, having sold their house without a word to anyone.
Sometime later we went for a holiday to ‘the Greek Island’. He was now the local sign-writer. Many of his beautifully crafted misspellings of ‘accommodation’ hung from tavernas the length and breadth of the island. He’d gone straight since his arrival, but couldn’t help telling us the story of how they’d driven the Mercedes and the boat across Europe and then sold them for cash in Athens.
But for all his bravado, Jim was a broken man. After only a few months on the island his younger son, Mark, had been tragically killed in a motorcycle accident.
The afternoon we spent with him the sky was a brilliant blue and the waves glistened beneath the Mediterranean sunshine. I took some photos of Jim with my rare (or so he’d told me back in the ‘workshop’) OM2n SLR camera. And the way he looked out at me when the black-and-white photos were developed? The Jim sitting on the terrace had barely a trace of the bluster of the man who had auctioned radios and microwaves on the pavement in East London. For all he had taken, what had now been taken from him was irreplaceable, no matter the guile, no matter the fearlessness.
WONDER
I wonder. What will happen next or before? Something about the window in the house up on the hill. Looking up to the second floor where I first saw the woman. The etiquette of looking. There’s a dullness, a darkness to the edges of the garden, as if time has hollowed out. I look from left to right, taking in the scene: the tall copper hedge, the wrought-iron gate with its pointed palings and heavy padlocks keeping out and in. An urgent sense of uneasiness, apprehension, an artist’s longing for a good north light. Tortured by words. So often tortured by the need for words. The night shadows elongated, stretched.
A candle flame where none was before, lighting up the window, where once, only once, I saw the woman. On a night like tonight, where it happened next like it happened before.
RAPIDS
It was the end of what the United Nations calls a ‘mission’. We’d completed the last training workshops with Altai Krai’s regional narcologists and had a rare day free of any commitment. The night before we’d met Sergei, a young soldier who’d served in Chechnya, in the bar of the hotel. He said that for twenty dollars each he’d take us on a trip down the river.
So here we are, three from Europe, four from Russia, waiting in the hotel lobby. It’s early morning and the sun is bright and the sky is blue. We’re all naively dressed in shorts and shirts. Sergei arrives in a battered van and gestures us all aboard. For the next two hours we wind our way up a mountain road. The temperature drops, but the sun shines on. Towards the top we make a detour along a dirty road. Waiting outside a tumbledown shack is Viktor, a bear of man. He peers into the van and smiles. He’s unshaven and reeks of alcohol. He and Sergei disappear into a corrugated-iron shed. After a minute or two they re-emerge, wrestling with a shabby deflated dinghy which they stuff into the back of the truck. We glance at each other, not least of all in alarm at the number of patches sewn onto the fabric of the craft.
Seven hours later we will arrive at the small town where the river opens onto the lake. Anna, our Russian translator, will be delirious with hypothermia. Sergei and Viktor will be draining the last drops from the flagon of vodka. The rest of us will be silenced, exhausted and frozen by the ordeal of snow blizzard, treacherous rapids, frozen waters and hellish descents. The dinghy, all but deflated, will have delivered us alive to the welcoming shore. Dr Karpov, head of clinical services at Altai Krai Hospital, will begin to sing a song of hope and reconciliation.
PROMENADING
Tomorrow we go to Deir el-Bahri, but tonight we will take our usual walk through the streets of Heliopolis. The night is descending. The minarets pierce the skyline, along with the muezzins calling the righteous to prayer. We walk, my mother and I, arm in arm, past the defiant Catholic church to remind all that the Belgian Baron Empain and Sir Reginald Oakes, and not Senenmut, were the architects here. The streets are flooded with families promenading the shops. Roadside hawkers proffer drinks and dresses, music and paperbacks. In the small park by the hotel, lovers sit on benches under the screen of eucalyptus trees. As we wait to cross the tracks, a tram rattles by. It has the sign of the dreaming cat, the sign we recognise as the tram for Ramses station and Cairo City. Tonight, as usual, we take a circuitous route through the busy streets. We gaze up at the wonderful art deco architecture and stop to watch the women and children peddle cola drinks to those who loiter by the coloured fountain in the square. We eat kushari and ta’amiya from the cafe near Baron Empain’s Palace and then buy a mango drink from the vendor by the tram stop. We take a whiskey from the hotel bar and then return to our room to bed. For tonight we walk through the streets of Heliopolis, but tomorrow we take the night train to Thebes, then on to Deir el-Bahri.
INCIDENT IN THE PARK
I could see from a distance that he might have a cracked rib. He cowered after the blow, anticipating another. Even a punctured lung maybe. The assailant gave him one last kick then ran off shouting, ‘I’ll be back soon – you’re going nowhere.’
There were a few of us, strangers on a Sunday afternoon walk. Thrust together in witnessing this sudden act of violence. We stood stunned on the footpath as the scene unfolded in the dip in the lawn about fifty metres away. The young man who had been attacked lay prostrate on the grass, clutching his side, spluttering and groaning. Internal bleeding? His only companion, another young man, stood over him, unsure what to do next, looking anxiously over his shoulder in anticipation of the attacker’s return. Both of them appeared drunk, uncertain.
‘He needs to be turned on his side,’ I said to the older woman.
She stared at me blankly, as if she were watching a movie. But no one moved. We stood together. Innocent bystanders, but bystanders nonetheless. Then there was a noise, a ruckus from the park gates. The assailant and accomplices returning as promised. I looked around at my footpath comrades, eagerly awaiting the next instalment: an audience at the amphitheatre. Even though he was a distance away, the man’s gurgling was louder, more insistent.
‘He needs to be turned on his side,’ I said again, walking forward, quickening my pace in the hope of getting to him first.
A LESSON LEARNT
Over thirty years’ of international air travel in economy teaches crucial lessons in self-preservation. The most important of all is how to secure four seats at the back of the plane on an overnight flight (for example, Port Moresby to Melbourne, Jakarta to Melbourne, Chengdu to Melbourne, London to Harare).
1. At check-in, ask for one seat in from the aisle on the middle row at the back of the plane (this is the section least likely to fill and you will be out of sight of the cabin crew: crucial for 4 and 5, below).
2. If you strike lucky and the other three seats are empty, immediately, and certainly before take-off, place magazines, pillows and blankets on the empty seats (this will confuse other passengers who might be considering occupying them).
3. Cough and sneeze (a further deterrent to any potential usurpers).
4. As soon as the plane takes off, flip up the armrests, tuck the seatbelts in the gaps between the seats and place all the pillows at one end of the row (this prepares for the next step and makes for a comfortable bed).
5. While the plane is still ascending and before the seatbelt sign is switched off, lie down on the full length of the row and cover yourself with the blankets (this ensures no last-minute interlopers, as most stay in their allotted seats until the seatbelt sign is extinguished).
6. Fasten one seatbelt loosely over the blanket (to avoid problems with cabin staff in the usual event of turbulence).
7. Cover your eyes with a mask, which you need to remember to carry on as these are seldom provided in cattle class (this avoids unpleasant eye contact with irate fellow passengers who might want an extra seat).
8. Pretend to be deeply asleep (or drugged) from the very moment you lie down (so any taps on the shoulder, by passengers or cabin crew, can be ignored).
9. Sweet dreams.
FOOTNOTE: For those imbued with the basic principles of public health, such as empathy for others, humanitarianism and self-sacrifice: a simple message. You have sacrificed enough by being consigned to cattle class (in contrast to your illustrious WHO and UN colleagues), so feel free to set aside your finer conscience and niceties in this specific instance.
KNOCK ON THE DOOR
It’s early Sunday morning. The streets are icy and most people in the street have stayed in bed, huddled under blankets, barely a nose peeping out. Mrs Jarvis, alone, sits at the kitchen table, nursing a mug of tea, staring at the pile of unpaid bills spread out before her. She’s stirred from her stupor by a knock on the door.
‘We have come to bring you good news,’ say the two men (black suits and smiles) standing in the porch.
‘Oh God,’ she cries, running back into the passageway, clinging to the base of the banisters. ‘Bill, Bill, come down now, it’s the men from the football pools. We’ve won the jackpot! They only come to the house when you’ve won the jackpot. Quick, quick.’
The two men on the doorstep look at each other. The Ministerial School has not quite prepared them for this eventuality. So they open up the little sky-blue book, Did Man Get Here by Evolution or by Creation?, and wait, still smiling, to deliver their message.
Upstairs in the bedroom, Bill pulls his braces up over his string vest and rubs the sleep from his eyes. Downstairs, Mrs Jarvis straightens her hair, her head spinning with thoughts of champagne, a house in the suburbs and a villa in Majorca.
COASTAL PILGRIMAGE
It was a seeking of sorts. A pilgrimage, even. Late at night, as London settled down to sleep, he drove north-east towards Ely. That would be the first cathedral. From there he would head to Lincoln. Then turn north along the east coast to Beverley Minster, then onwards and truly upwards to Whitby Abbey. In between there would be pubs, attempts to link up with local dealers when the bag of dope ran out, and a wild night at the Beverley Races (an appropriately bizarre contrast to the tranquillity of the church earlier that same evening). That’s how the trip panned out: the spiritual and the profane, serenity and mayhem. On the last night of the venture, the day after he walked through the unsettling grounds of Whitby Abbey, he found himself in the seaside town of Scarborough. To his relief he managed to find some drugs to buy in the roughest pub around. He did some more drinking then headed for somewhere to sleep once the pubs closed. In the attic room of the seedy hotel he finally fell to a jagged sleep sometime before dawn. Some hours later he came to. When he stood up and drew the curtains the most peculiar scene of this surreal sojourn greeted him. There before him was an expansive sports stadium and a huge swathe of verdant grass. The stadium was full and the Yorkshire County Cricket team was batting against Lancashire. The modern day War of the Roses before his bleary eyes. He closed the curtains, then quickly opened them again for fun and effect.
He lay back down on his bed, his head throbbing, his heart pounding. And what was the image that came to him? Not the wild woman he’d met at the races. Not the ghosts of the stricken monks at Whitby Abbey that had sent a shiver down his spine. But that of himself, totally alone in the vast expanse of Ely Cathedral. Sitting in the front pew, staring up at the beautiful stained-glass window depicting Jesus at the Sermon on the Mount. And just as he did then, those few days past that seemed an age ago, he began to cry, gently, but from deep, deep down.
ATTEMPTS
Twice he tried to kill his own father. He’d promised that when the time came, when he himself was an adult and the father raised his fist to the mother, he would kill him in his tracks. Too often as a child he had got between them, only to be hurtled against a wall like a fly being swiped by an enraged grizzly bear. The time arrived. It was a dull winter’s day. His parents were living in a semi-derelict building and he had brought them eight cans of barley wine to get them through the day. He stayed to drink with them even though he had work to go to. As always the mood, never one of gay abandon or lightness, shifted. Something was said (or wasn’t said) and the father rose up and raised his fist in anger. The son pushed him to the ground, straddled the prone body and squeezed the neck with all the force he could muster. The face went bluish-purple, and, having never killed a person before, the son released his hold, certain the deed had been done. Then the face came back to life, the mouth smiled, the eyes opened, and the voice said: ‘You can’t even kill me.’
The second attempt was some ten years later. The father had been sober for a time, but had been drinking again. The son’s wife was heavily pregnant and the father, having drunk a full bottle of vodka, had fallen to sleep on the sofa in the son’s house. The son and his wife went to bed upstairs. Some hours later he was woken by the singing of an Irish rebel song and the sound of his father’s footsteps ascending the stairs to the attic bedroom. The son leapt from the bed, knowing anything could happen (and none of it good), and pushed the father back down the stairs to the room below. ‘So you want to fight?’ said the father, or something like that, taking out his false front teeth and placing them on the bookshelf. The son was standing by the open window, three storeys high. In the moment, he hatched a plan. The father did charge at him, the son did try to guide him through the open window, but they both struggled and crashed against the wall, the son gaining a nasty gash above his left eye. They gasped and panted at each other in the clinch. Then the father pushed the son away, turned and headed to the door.
‘Don’t go,’ pleaded the son. ‘You’re too drunk to drive.’
But the father laughed, slamming the front door in his wake. The son looked out the window and watched as the car roared away down the road.
Perhaps he’ll kill his own self, he thought.
At the top of the stairs stood his wife, his dressing gown engulfing her, protecting her.
It was nearly morning and the son was deep asleep in the throes of a dreadful dream, as the insistent ringing of the telephone woke him. He tried to ignore it, but the ringing continued. He dragged himself from the bed, hoping his wife would sleep on. He picked up the receiver. First there was silence and then the sound of a cigarette being lit and deeply inhaled. T
hen the laughter, then the voice.
‘I’ll be back to destroy you.’
SOME LIKE IT HOT
The day before he had spent the afternoon on Coronado Island with the young French woman, pretending to be Jack Lemon to her Marilyn Monroe. He had on a pair of blue-and-red-rimmed dark glasses that he’d bought in San Diego. It was a sunny afternoon and they had fun together, he and the French woman from Paris. They had afternoon tea in the hotel amid the stills from Some Like It Hot. They found the spot on the beach where the Blonde Actress (as Joyce Carol Oates would come to call her) had sat and they took photos of their own.
But later that night it would all unravel as the whiskey took a greater hold on him than could the French woman from Paris. In the rundown bar by the old port, long after the French woman had left, he ran into John from New Jersey. He remembers that John sat down and listened to his long tale of woe and that he sobbed in the desperation of his once again drunken stupor.
So that’s how tonight he finds himself sitting in a church hall on the outskirts of the city. John, who suggested he might want to try this, is sitting next to him.
‘Do you think you need a detox?’ says John, noticing how his new friend is shaking in his seat.
‘I don’t know,’ he mumbles, not seeming to know too much at all just now. But as the night and days ahead, and the weeks and months and years unfold, more, much more, would be revealed.
MEXICAN TOMATOES
The man with the black Ridgeback–Labrador cross was not one of the usual dog walkers. We were all standing together by the cricket table, keeping the dogs well away from the wickets, when he arrived, smoking a cigarette. His dog had a studded collar, which was not quite de rigueur for this neighbourhood.
‘He’s in the doghouse,’ he announced, unannounced.