by Louise Dean
‘And so a male rat is introduced into the cage of a rat whom we know to be the dominant male and he is forced by the dominant rat to lie on his back. This is a very stressful experience indeed. It is only being returned to the cage amongst his own group that lowers his dopamine level. It may have risen as much as six hundred per cent. Now the extraordinary thing about this is the proven link of elevated dopamine levels in the schizophrenic, and of course the hypothesis here is that social defeat is a risk factor for schizophrenia, especially over a prolonged period, and this of course may be one factor in a multifactorial scenario for increased levels of schizophrenia in migrants. Thank you.’
So succinct, it was brilliant! Richard applauded. One or two others joined in his clapping, with less conviction, and when he could hear only the sound of his clapping, he knew he should desist.
‘Thank you. Thank you,’ the speaker smiled, shy as a jockey. A discussion started and Richard left to go to the toilet.
‘Hello, Mr Cuckold.’
His urine ceased. He zipped up. He washed his hands. Then the voice began again.
‘Your wife’s pussy goes so wet when I get my cock out and then I fuck her really hard in her hairy little box or sometimes I give it to her up the ass. She says you never pleased her. You never could. You are too afraid to come and fight me because you know I’d kill you. Too scared to go to work, too scared to move, scared of your own shadow. Prove me wrong. Mr Nobody.’
That was the letter he received in the post. The words had leapt from the letter and infected him in seconds, moving pathogens through his bloodstream to poison every part of his body and make it shake. Those kind of death throes can give you life.
* * *
The next time she came by to get clothes and remind him of his offer to leave the house, he ran after her car shouting as she drove off and then he came inside, told Max to do his homework and took charge of the house. He vacuumed, and he did the dishes and he had a turn at the washing machine, all the time his heart was beating like he was on the front line.
‘I’m not going anywhere,’ he said to himself. ‘I’ve changed my mind. She’s the one who left the house. How many houses do they want?’
They had an emotional afternoon, he and Max, watching a movie about a baseball star who had to choose between the duty of his gift and the love of a nagging woman. Max cried. Richard held him in his arms.
‘He’s like you, Dad.’
‘Do you think so?’
‘Yeah, you’re a hero.’
‘Oh, I wish I was. But I’m not.’
‘You are.’ He put his arm around his father’s shoulders like he was the father. ‘You should have hit that guy anyway.’
‘Who?’
‘Gérard.’
‘Who?’
‘Him.’ He nodded towards the neighbour’s house. ‘You should kill him.’
‘Jeff, you mean?’ Max nodded.
‘Well, it wouldn’t be a smart thing to do. I could go to prison or something.’ He pushed his fingers through Max’s hair. ‘But thanks for the thought, pal.’
He took Maxence to McDonald’s that evening and because the server was such a miserable prick and Richard was a professional salesman, he asked him a question about how he thought he was doing, and when he told Richard to fuck himself, Richard pulled him over the counter and held him by the ears and head-butted him across the bridge of his nose.
He was not a violent man. He’d never been anything remotely close to violent before. It made him feel a lot better.
He had to stop to pee by the side of the road and it was then he saw the blood on his shirt. Maxence was sorry the order was only half filled. He moaned that he was missing the chicken nuggets and it made Richard laugh and cry, and when he wiped his face he spread more blood on to his sleeve, but he knew now to use a higher temperature on the washing machine.
‘I think I will come out of this shit all right, Maxence. I promise.’ That’s what he said to him.
His teeth resting on his lips, Max held his paper bag on his lap, saying nothing.
Chapter 30
He ought perhaps to have paced himself, but he decided to take in as many sessions as he could. Coaches circled and withdrew in the car park, and he watched them with increasing anger, standing at the glass windows of the main lobby. There were signs on the front windows of the buses: ‘Giza’, ‘Nile Tour’, ‘Old Cairo’. The salesmen were sitting on the steps with their packed lunches in the sunshine, going through their Happy Meals looking for the free toy, pens on strings around their necks.
Next to the toilets there was a session full of African psychiatrists. They were the presenters, six or seven of them, friendly as a sports team, handing each other slides, conferring. Ten minutes or so later, and no one else entering the room, with dignity, their chairman addressed Richard; their entire audience.
‘Thanks for coming,’ he said with dignified economy. ‘We’re going to take you through the results of findings from the world’s largest psychiatric survey, of sixty-eight thousand persons over the last ten years, in rural Ethiopia.’
The way the man was fixing his attention on him puzzled Richard. He looked behind and saw that it was because there was no one else there. The team all laughed at that. It must have looked comical. Richard smiled to help out. But it was not funny really that he was the only person there.
‘Are you OK with English, Dr . . . ?’
‘I’m all ears,’ he said, his arms enfolding the satchel on his lap. He nodded. ‘Ready when you are.’
* * *
Jeff answered her mobile phone. He said, ‘Listen, man. I didn’t send you any damn letter. What do you mean, do I love her?’ He’d never heard Jeff speak that way; he sounded wrathful and small like a goblin whose name had been guessed. He should have gone over to Jeff ’s house and beaten the shit out of him when Rachel called; he should have given him a pasting, it would have done them both good. ‘Yeah, you should have done that, only you should have done it before now. And it wouldn’t have changed anything. She left you. Get over it. Let it go.’
‘You sat at my fucking table, you sat there . . .’ He could hardly get his words out. ‘Tell me how you could sit there . . .’
Jeff did begin to tell him, but the mobile connection was lost at that point. So now he’d never know. He threw the phone down the toilet. Then had the task of retrieving it with the barbecue tongs.
Valérie got a letter too. She came back for more clothes and to issue a final warning regarding his removal. She showed the letter to him. It was just as disgusting as the first one, and he’d been surprised enough by the language of that. This one told her she was going to have an accident in her car on her way in to town one day. Watch out, it said. Just because you have a pretty face, you shouldn’t think you’re anything special. Keep your legs closed in future. He read it through twice. Valérie was shaking and smoking as she stood watching him read it. She had that look on her face like when she got bad news about other people, her cheek muscles taut, reining in pleasure, the thrill of the bullet missing you.
‘Obviously, it’s Rachel,’ she said.
He gave it back to her. He didn’t say what he was thinking. He didn’t look her in the eyes.
‘Well, what do you want now?’ he said. ‘What about your lawyers, what are they planning?’
‘I don’t know if what I am doing is right,’ she said.
Perhaps she meant it. He examined her as he had examined the letter. It was actually quite ugly, her mouth. It expressed, to his mind, a revulsion wider than the matter in hand.
‘When are you moving out, Richard?’
‘I’m not going anywhere! I’ve changed my mind.’
‘Ri-schard . . .’
And to think he used to get an erection when she said his name.
* * *
The youngest man on the team made the final presentation. Richard had applauded each of the three preceding presentations, all very interesting. The final paper wou
ld discuss psychiatric illness amongst the extremely poor, those who could not claim to own more than twenty possessions. He was on the edge of his seat. It was important stuff. How to compare it to his own troubles? There was no gold standard to compare these things, no exchange rate for them.
All he could do was to care, to care with all of his being, since only he was present. The duty, the responsibility, the honour, made him sit tall. He concentrated; he was the right screwdriver for the screw.
Chapter 31
He went about his usual business, cleaning and doing the laundry. He was storing the bills in an old washing-powder carton in the laundry room so as not to see them. He had begun to dread opening the letter box, mostly on account of the credit card statements listing Valérie’s spending throughout the French Riviera. He decided if he got another of the handwritten letters he would leave it there, he wouldn’t even touch it.
He trudged up to the house with a handful of bills, wondering what next. Before she left they had taken out a large loan for a new car for her and a holiday. Then there was the mortgage. His salary just about covered it. Plus, he needed to keep Maxence happy. He knew it was no kind of solution, going shopping, but he didn’t know how else to pass the time now they weren’t doing outdoor things. Inside the electronics store they forgot everything. They bought a PlayStation and took to playing ‘Grand Theft Auto’ with all the residual machismo they had left between them. Max said he was having the time of his life.
Among the bills, there was a letter from her lawyers outlining their suit for the tribunal. The next day a bailiff served him formal notice of his required appearance. She was going for full custody of Maxence and he would have visitation every other weekend. She was to have the house.
He called his lawyer. He told the lawyer she could have it all, the house and so on, but not the boy. The lawyer said it wasn’t that simple; the mother always got custody. Even if she was the one who left? Even if she left her son behind? Yes, even if she drugged herself, sold her body, no matter what. Even if she was dead? The lawyer said she didn’t hear that. She said he should prepare for the worst.
He did. He opened a bottle of whisky. He asked Maxence if he wanted to try some. Max said, Don’t be stupid, I’m a kid.
Grow up then, Richard said.
Max took a sip, tasted it carefully, made non-committal noises of vague appreciation and then he took one of Richard’s cigarettes and lit it and smoked it.
Richard gave him a quizzical look as he exhaled the first puff and sighed. Guy.
‘Papi,’ Max explained. Guy.
‘You know what?’
‘What?’
‘You’re my best pal, Max. My only pal.’
When he woke, Maxence was lying asleep with the game console between his hands; the screen paused, blinking, panting for more crime. It was 1 a.m. Maybe she’s right, he thought, maybe he shouldn’t be with me.
He put the boy to bed and lay next to him, making the pillow wet and dirty with his tears. He would put the pillowcase on at sixty degrees the next day, he had a whole load of whites to go in with it. He lay there with his nose in the nape of his son’s neck, in that mousey sweaty hair, the fine hair that infuriated his mother, being so prone to head lice. ‘He’s got a colony on his head!’ she used to yell, sitting with him between her legs on a stool in the bath tub, combing, gritting her teeth, knees wet, clothes wet, gripping his neck. ‘Let me do it,’ he’d said. And he sat down himself behind the boy and took each hair in turn with Maxence asking his bizarre questions that came from nowhere and led nowhere, from sharks to oddities of science to questions about love.
How crestfallen he was when he could no longer find one of the slick comma-shaped bestioles. He had enjoyed it and, by God, he took his time, every beast, every egg, gone; he truly knew every single hair on his son’s head.
He regretted he hadn’t spent more time with his son. Now he and Max were not doing anything as touching as lice-picking, but still there was a wealth to the indifference of their time together. They sat in cafeterias in supermarket malls, just the same way as mothers and children did, heads averted, each away in their thoughts, content. That was parenthood; idling side by side, the gorgeous profligacy of doing nothing much. Time passing; one growing, one fading.
Now he would be reduced to a scrounger, driving the boy to this theme park or that water park, getting him lashed up on soft drinks and French fries, pumping him for information about school and his mother, forcing his future with bon mots and strictures, never short of clichés, even rummaging through those of his own father, demanding a show of affection, purloining an audience to witness for him, sign here please, how good they were together, mussing his boy’s hair when people looked, chucking him under the chin — ‘Always do the right thing, kid, make me proud of you’ — and at going-home time pressing him for a show of love. Checking for sadness and loss and needing it to be there; this the very worst thing of all. And afterwards, he would be ashamed of himself.
He was crying loud enough to wake Max; he wanted his son to wake and comfort him.
He heard a band start up; they were playing the melody so cautiously, just for him. Out of the wardrobe stepped that cherubic high priest of popular music, Daniel Balavoine.
‘Ça fait longtemps que t’es parti maintenant . . .’
He didn’t skimp. This was his anthem. The father deprived of his child by a mercenary mother. She’d ripped his guts out. Nothing said about him in court would matter to him, it would be nothing as compared to the smile of his son. He gave it everything he had, Monsieur Balavoine. He had his microphone in his hand, and he brought it to him, his face aching out loud, his brows livid. Shouting.
He sang through each pledge, each threat, a second time to underscore them, turning an open supplicant palm into the warning of a pointed finger, repeating, she shouldn’t have gone.
And then he withdrew back into the wardrobe.
Richard knew what to do. Je vais tout casser. The whisky inside him rose up like a serpent with its fangs bared, and let loose a ludicrous wolf-whistle.
Chapter 32
The taller African doctor in his navy-blue suit stood behind the projector, tapping his pen on the key points. They had arrived at a figure for depression in rural Ethiopia among the poorest of the poor of 4.4 per cent; this compared to a figure of 10–17 per cent in the United States and Europe.
‘The implications,’ he concluded cautiously, ‘seem fairly obvious.’
‘Yes, they are,’ said Richard.
The first speaker gently enquired as to Richard’s provenance.
‘Are you in practice or teaching . . . ?’
‘Me? Neither.’ He folded his hands, shook his head. The question hung in the air. ‘I am a salesman, I work for your sponsor. I am here supposedly, apparently, officially on behalf of Big Pharma.’
‘And you come to sessions like these? Are you new to the job?’ There was some laughter.
‘No, I’ve been working in it a long, long time and I’ve never been to a session like this. But I stand corrected. I have learnt a lot today. You know, my company’s sales objective is to grow the market for anti-depressive pharmaceuticals by twenty-five per cent this year. My own region is Africa. My job is to grow sadness.’
His voice cracked. He stopped and put his head in his hands, he had lost control of himself. The Ethiopian doctors grouped around him, and one of them knelt and offered Richard a drink from his water bottle.
There was a hand on each of his shoulders. He was smiling and crying, like the sun and the rain. He saw a rainbow on the projector screen, and thought: Shit, I’m having hallucinations too now.
Oh God, he thought, what a fool I am. Oh God, look down on me and pity me.
He pulled himself together enough to speak.
‘Please,’ he said, ‘don’t get to the conclusion yet. I know what’s coming but I need to get myself ready for it. Give me some time.’ The presenter looked at his colleagues, as if to say: What�
��s the form here, with these overemotional white salesmen?
A fly traversed them, each man in turn waved a hand over his face, first the farthest right swiped, then the next left, then the next left, then finally the tall presenter passed his hand in an arc.
‘How long do you need, Richard?’
‘A lifetime,’ he attempted to laugh but merely dry-choked. ‘No, no, not a lifetime. Give me like twenty minutes or something to pull myself together.’
With that he exited the room; the fly went with him.
The Ethiopian doctors shook their heads, and the shortest offered his hand to the tallest and then they laughed again.
‘Well, we’ll wait. Do you see anyone else listening?’ said the presenter.
Chapter 33
At 2 a.m. one morning, the week before the custody hearing, the telephone rang. He was in bed. He had no idea where he was when he woke. He’d been drinking.
‘Ri-schard.’
‘Hi, honey. Where am I . . .’
‘Ri-schard, I keep thinking about Max; you know, he is not normal. I’ve been thinking about him, about how he was as a small child, and I’ve been reading and I know now he’s not well in the head.’ She started to cry; she whispered, ‘I’ve decided I am going to take him to see someone . . . but I want to come home now, for his sake. He is so disturbed . . .’ She started to sob more heavily, ‘Please, Ri-schard, you have to help me to do this, for Max . . .’
He put the light on and sat up. He knew then where he was and who she was and who he was.
‘So you’re telling me now you think he’s got some sort of mental problem? Well, if he does it’s because you’ve fucked him up! Look, Valérie, he’s fine, he’s happy with me. I can tell you that. We’re cool. Leave us alone.’