A Thousand Cuts

by Simon Lelic

  She smoked. Three buses later, she was still smoking. Four or five filters lay at her feet, two of them at least still smouldering. After using it to light another cigarette, she threw the one she was holding to the floor. The first drag of the new cigarette tasted even worse than the last one of the old. Each lungful, in fact, marked a steady decline; Lucia took no pleasure, no relief from what she was doing. She inhaled a second time, coaxing the flame towards the filter, but she drew too hard and she gagged. She coughed. She leant forwards and she retched. She was sick, and her sick splattered across her shoes and swamped the cigarette butts on the ground. Another bus pulled up but did not stop long enough even to open its doors. Lucia spat. She sat upright, wiped her mouth on her sleeve. She had tears in her eyes and though it was the shock of throwing up that had summoned them, she found herself unable to halt their flow. She buried her head in the crook of her elbow. She cleared her throat and spat again. The packet of cigarettes was clutched in her hand, she realised. It was squashed now, from where she had gripped it as a reflex to her stomach muscles contracting. She cast the packet on to the bench, into the banana, and stood up.

  For some time Lucia walked. She realised she was drifting towards the school so she took a left and then another and found herself on the borders of Finsbury Park. It was a weekday, not yet lunchtime, and the sun was barely discernible, yet the grass was strewn with blankets and bodies and barbecues ready to be fired up. Lucia found a spot away from the crowd and lay back. She could taste tar and vomit. Her throat felt as though she had just woken up from sleeping all night with her mouth open. She craved water but now she had stopped moving the thought of getting to her feet once again and heading off in search of some filled her with lethargy. It was London and it was summer, Lucia reasoned; it would have to rain eventually. When it did, she would still be lying here. She would part her lips and angle her face to the sky and let the raindrops hit her face and run into her mouth.

  But in the end she could not wait. She got to her feet, allowed a moment of dizziness to pass, then wandered towards the gates of the park. In a Sainsbury’s Local she queued to buy some water. Even before she had left the shop she had drained half the bottle and immediately regretted having done so. The water, so cold it was barely fluid, made her head pound and her stomach ache. She was hungry, she realised. She had not eaten since yesterday evening and it was now almost… what? She asked a passer-by. Four. It was gone four. She should go home, she told herself. Except that she did not want to go home. Not to her flat, at least. Instead she walked again, and found a cafe she knew well, and sat by the window picking at a piece of chocolate cake and staring at the building opposite.

  She drank tea. Three mugs of it, until the light outside began to fade and the owner of the cafe started to sweep up around her. When the cafe owner left so did Lucia. She lingered though, huddled in the doorway, pacing the length of the block and back again, leaning with one heel raised against the wall of the office block next door. All the time she watched the building opposite. The lights on the third floor were still off. The curtains were not yet drawn. There was no one at the entrance or visible in the stairwell. So Lucia waited, turned away, then turned back and checked again.

  It was late when finally he came home. At first she was not sure it was him but when he dropped his keys and cursed and bent on to the balls of his feet to pick them up, she knew. Before she could reconsider she crossed the road. She stopped between two cars, just shy of the kerb. She said, hey, and the sound caught in her throat. She said it louder. And the figure in front of her turned and stepped out of the shadow towards her.

  .

  It will all be forgotten. Won’t it? No one will remember. No one really cares. Even now, it is in the newspapers, but people buy the newspapers why? For the same reason they watch movies or read a novel. To be entertained. It is entertainment. They read the stories and they gasp and they tut – tut tut tut – but nothing is real to them. Not really real. They look at the pictures, the pictures of him, and they shudder and they say, just look at his eyes, you can tell, can’t you, it is all in the eyes. And they will tut again and turn the page and move on to a story about fox-hunting or tax increases or a celebrity taking drugs. But if it were really real to them, they would not be entertained. If they cared, they would not turn the page. They could not. If what was in the newspapers seemed real, they would not buy the newspapers at all. They would lie awake at night, like I do. They would weep, like I do. They would despair, like I do. They would despair.

  Even you. Why are you here? You do not care. Maybe you think you care but you do not. You are here because it is your job. Would you be here if it were not your job? And the questions you ask. Why do you ask them? How will what I tell you change things? It will not. Felix is dead. Felix was murdered. My son is gone and soon I will be the only person in the world who still remembers that he lived at all. He died in vain, Inspector. That is the phrase, is it not? He died in vain and that is the hardest thing of all for me to accept.

  Do you know what Felix survived? You do not. I do not blame you for not knowing because how could you know? Even Felix did not know. He was not yet a baby and already he was as close to death as I am to you, here, now, in this room. Children that would have become his friends were dying. His relatives were dying: his aunt, my sister; his uncle, my brother; his grandmother and grandfather. His father, who did not even know he was a father, was dying. They died for no reason, just like Felix. They died because someone told them, believe in this God, He will save you. But it was the wrong God. Someone else, someone who had a gun and who had friends who had guns, decided it was the wrong God. And the real God, they said, was angry. The real God was vengeful. The real God, it turned out, was a devil.

  But Felix survived. I survived, which means Felix survived. We came to England. We came to London. The Greatest City in the World. In London, they told us, only the old die. Only the sick die and usually not even then. Nobody dies for no reason. Nobody dies for a God that does not exist. There are no guns, they said. Not even the police have guns. To die from being shot, in London. Ha! Not unless a bullet finds its way over from Africa. So we felt safe. We thought we were being saved. We thought coming to England would save us.

  He wanted to be a waiter. In a restaurant. That was his ambition. I laughed when he told me and he asked me why did I laugh? I stopped laughing. I said, Felix, you will be a waiter. You will be a waiter if that is what you choose to be. You could be a doctor too, you should consider becoming a doctor, but if you decide to become a waiter I will love you just the same. He told me he would think about it. He said, waiters get tips, Mother. Doctors do not get tips, do they? I had to agree with him. I had to say, no, Felix, they do not. He said, yesterday I was watching at the window and I saw a man in a restaurant give a waitress paper money. He folded it and he put it in her pocket, just here, in the pocket on her shirt. So on the whole I think I would rather be a waiter. But I will think about it. If you want me to think about it, I will. That is what he said.

  He worked hard. He tried to work hard but his imagination interfered. He would dream. He would listen to a teacher and not know later at which point he had stopped listening. He would stare at the page of a book and come to a word and that word would carry him off, to somewhere other than the end of the sentence. He told me this. His teachers got angry with him and then they got angry at me so I spoke to Felix and that is what he told me. He said, Mother, what can I do? I want to learn. I know it is important that I learn. But I have so much thinking to do. I try to hold it off but sometimes I cannot stop it. It swallows me up, like it is thirsty and I am a glass of water. What can I do?

  I could not get angry with him. How could I have got angry with him? I think, Inspector, that he would not have been a waiter. He would not have been a doctor either. He would have written stories or sung songs or painted pictures. He would have made something beautiful. He was beautiful already and everything he did was beautiful but others would ha
ve seen it just like I did. They would have seen it too.

  Because they did not see it. Before he died, they did not see it. Felix was not popular. Partly it was because he dreamt so, I think, but mainly it was because he came from Africa. He was British, English, a Londoner, but he came from Africa. So the teachers complained about his attitude and the children, the other children, they complained about the colour of his skin. Even black children, Inspector. Especially black children. They said Felix was too black. They called him Africa as though the word itself were an insult. They beat him sometimes. They beat him and laughed and said, if it hurts so much then why don’t you ever bruise, why do we never see a bruise?

  This was in school, out of school, before school, after school. Felix would shrug. He would say to me, do not worry, Mother. Do not cry. It was my fault, it must have been my fault. Do not cry. And I would wish then that his father were alive and that he were here and that he were with us. Because that is what a father is for, do you not think? To protect his family. I tried but I failed and I failed and I failed. I would walk with him, to school, from school, but then we would both end up running. I would talk with parents and Felix would watch his mother get shouted at, spat on, laughed at and he would learn exactly the things I did not want him to learn, about what people thought of us, what they thought of where we had come from, what they thought we were worth. I would talk to the school and the people I spoke to, the teachers, the headmaster, they would nod and look concerned and tell me that boys brawl, Mrs Abe, it is the way of things in this country. This country. Like it was their country and not my country, not my son’s country. The way of things. Like the way of things was fixed and decided and unchangeable. I have heard such words before, Inspector. Where I come from, such words are like medicine, they make it easier to cope with the pain. But not here. Not in the Greatest City in the World.

  So I expect nothing. I have learnt to expect nothing. You seem nice. You look kind. But you know, I think, how this will end. It has ended already. Not for me, for me it will never end, but for everyone else it was over as soon as it began. Felix lived and now he is dead and already the world is forgetting his name. Tell me: will you remember his name? In a year. In a month. In a week. Will you remember his name?

  .

  A hand stroked her cheek and she twitched.

  ‘Lulu.’

  She turned away.

  ‘Lulu. Wake up.’

  The hand was on her shoulder now, prising her from the pillow’s embrace.

  ‘Lulu. I’ve got to go.’

  This time the name he was using registered. She lifted her head, just a fraction. ‘Don’t call me that.’ She tried opening her eyes but her eyelids resisted. The pillow drew her down; the blanket held her there.

  Footsteps, the clinking of a set of keys. The muffled sound of water running, then more footsteps, almost to Lucia’s side. She turned on to her back and forced her eyes open. She freed her hands from the covers and with her fingertips rubbed at the bridge of her nose.

  ‘You snore, Lulu. You still snore.’

  ‘I don’t snore,’ Lucia said. She sat up, so that only her legs remained under the blanket. ‘And don’t call me that.’

  David shrugged on his jacket, adjusted his cuffs. ‘Call you what?’ He looked about him. ‘Where’s my phone? Have you seen my phone?’

  ‘What you just called me. Don’t call me that.’

  ‘Lulu? I’ve always called you Lulu.’

  ‘I know. But someone else does too. He heard you one time, I think.’

  ‘Who does? Heard me what? Where the hell is my phone?’ Lucia’s Nokia was on the coffee table. She reached for it and dialled the number she still knew by heart. ‘Just someone I’d rather not be reminded of,’ she said and lifted the phone to her ear. She heard the dialling tone and then, half a second later, the hollow echo of the soul tune that David had chosen as his ring tone. It was coming from his jacket pocket.

  ‘That song,’ said Lucia. ‘That’s our song.’

  ‘You always said we didn’t have a song. You always said having songs was corny.’

  ‘I know. It is. But still.’

  David disappeared into the kitchen. Lucia heard him open the fridge, lift out a bottle and take a swig of whatever was inside. He drifted back into the living room. ‘I’ve got to go,’ he said, yet he lingered just beyond the coffee table. He glanced towards the front door and then turned back to face Lucia. ‘So,’ he said. ‘How does this work?’

  ‘How does what work?’

  ‘Well, do I kiss you goodbye or what?’

  Lucia swung her legs from the couch and sat upright. ‘What?’ she said. ‘No. Of course not. Why would you?’

  David ran a palm from his crown to his forehead. His hair had been cropped for as long as Lucia had known him but it seemed thinner now, the cut less a statement of fashion and more a muttered denial of the advancing years. It was no bad thing, Lucia thought. It made him look more vulnerable somehow. Less male. ‘I don’t know,’ David said. ‘You slept here. Usually when women sleep here I kiss them goodbye. Then I leave or they leave. More often they leave.’

  ‘I didn’t sleep here. I slept on your sofa. And what do you mean, when women sleep here? Who sleeps here? What women?’

  David grinned. ‘What’s the matter, Lulu? Not jealous?’

  Lucia laughed. In her head it sounded less than convincing. ‘You and I both know that the only women who have ever spent the night in this flat are me, Barbarella over there—’ she gestured to the poster on the wall ‘—and your mother. Oh, and Veronica. How could I forget about Veronica?’

  ‘Victoria,’ said David. ‘It was Victoria, not Veronica.’

  ‘Victoria, Veronica, Verucca. Whatever happened to her?’

  David shifted, stroked his head again. ‘She left. She got poached.’

  ‘In boiling water?’

  ‘By another firm. She got poached by another firm.’

  ‘Well,’ said Lucia. ‘It was probably for the best. She wasn’t your type, you know. Too hairy.’

  ‘She wasn’t hairy.’

  ‘I saw her naked, David. She was hairy. She was downy.’

  David shook his head. He made to leave, then stopped himself. ‘What about you? Are you seeing anyone? Philip told me you weren’t seeing anyone.’

  ‘Philip’s wrong,’ said Lucia. ‘I am seeing someone.’

  ‘You’re not seeing anyone.’

  ‘I’m seeing someone. I am. His name is… ’

  ‘His name is?’

  ‘His name’s Harry. He’s from work. We met at work.’

  ‘Harry,’ said David.

  ‘Harry,’ said Lucia.

  David nodded. He grinned again. ‘Right,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ said Lucia.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘What? Nothing what?’

  ‘Nothing nothing. It’s just, well. If you’re really seeing this Harry bloke, what are you doing here? On my sofa? Wearing one of my T-shirts and very little else?’ His eyes slid below Lucia’s waist. Lucia looked down and realised her legs, her thighs, were no longer under the blanket. She whipped the cover across.

  ‘You have to go, David.’

  ‘Huh? Oh shit. Shitshitshit.’ David spun and darted from the room. Lucia heard shoes tumbling from the rack in the hallway. A moment later, David reappeared at the door. There was no trace now of his grin. ‘Jesus Christ, Lucia. You’re not… I mean, you aren’t… ’

  This time when Lucia laughed it was with genuine amusement. ‘How long has it been, David? Six months? Seven? I don’t think even this T-shirt would have let me keep that quiet until morning.’

  David’s eyes closed. He breathed. He opened his eyes. ‘Thank fuck,’ he said. ‘I mean, sorry, but… Thank fuck.’

  Lucia tapped a finger against her wrist.

  ‘Right,’ said David and he disappeared again. He hollered to Lucia from the hallway. ‘So what’s up, Lulu? You turn up at my flat in the middle of the nig
ht—’

  ‘It was nine-thirty, David.’

  ‘—in the middle of the night, after six months in which you have basically refused even to talk to me. You eat three mouthfuls of the omelette I cook for you, then you fall asleep on my couch. If you’re not pregnant, why are you here?’ Again he poked his head around the doorframe. ‘Do you need money? Is that it?’

  ‘No! God no.’

  ‘Because it’s not a problem. I mean, I know it must be hard: with the flat, being on your own. I realise you don’t get paid very much.’

  ‘The flat’s fine,’ Lucia said. ‘The money’s fine.’ Although as she spoke it occurred to her that it might not be fine for much longer. ‘I just thought, I don’t know. That we could have lunch or something.’

  David was fiddling with his tie. He looked up. ‘Lunch?’

  Lucia nodded. ‘Lunch. Just the two of us.’ She realised immediately how this would have sounded. ‘I mean, me and you. Not together, just alone. Not the two of us as in us.’ She shut her eyes, waved a hand. ‘Just lunch,’ she said. ‘Are you free?’

  ‘For lunch?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Just the two of us?’

  Lucia sighed. ‘Me and you, yes.’

  David bobbed his head. ‘Okay. Sure. I can do that. How about Ciullo’s? On Charterhouse Street?’

  ‘I’ll find it. One o’clock?’

  ‘One o’clock,’ David echoed. He turned away, then reappeared at the door. ‘You sure you’re not pregnant?’

  ‘I’m not pregnant, David. Cross my heart.’

  ‘And you’re sure about the kissing thing? Not even a peck on the cheek?’

  ‘Not even that,’ said Lucia.

  It was the same apartment. The walls were still white, the carpet still green. The furniture was as it had been, in the same places, against the same walls, and looking only marginally more scuffed than it had before. Even Jane Fonda was a longstanding tenant, the result of a compromise Lucia and David had reached at the outset of their cohabitation and that Lucia had regretted for its duration: Lucia was granted veto on every other wall so long as Barbarella retained her position above the mantelpiece. She was framed, David had argued: that made her art. She was wearing rubber and squashing her tits together, Lucia had countered: that made her porn.