by Mark Winkler
“Thank you, Johnson.” Mr. Naicker looks at the paper cup and sighs. “Such are our pleasures reduced, here by the rivers of Babylon.”
We begin to play. We take our time. Each of us willing the other to win. Or at least not to lose too quickly. Ricky Chin must be under the weather today. He’s not around. Socks is watching The Simpsons. He guffaws. I try to connect his laughter to what’s happening on the screen. I can’t. There is none. I suppose he’s laughing at The Simpsons because he knows that other people do. I wonder what he did to be here. What Ricky did. What the rest of them did—Old Man Jakes, Mr. Naicker, Simphiwe with his dark skin and yellow eyes. Me. I watch Mr. Naicker’s hands. They’re age-appropriate. He’s touched my hands before when he’s chosen a fist. The skin of his fingers is as soft as a girl’s.
“You never talk,” Mr. Naicker says to me. “In fact, in all our time together in this wonderful place, you haven’t said a word. I’m not questioning the value of your company, no, not one bit. And I’m not saying you aren’t polite. A nod is as good as a wink to a fallen soul like me. I suppose you know my entire long history, the official parts anyway, and yet I know nothing of yours.”
Qe5. Check. I rap on the table and point to the board to alert Mr. Naicker to the danger his king is facing.
“Did I mention that I was Christian? A descendant of the long-ago converted Keralite heathens. Catholic, actually, with all the guilt that comes with it. Maybe you would feel easier if you knew I was a Christian?”
Mr. Naicker looks at the board for a long moment. Then he moves his bishop. It takes him out of check and places me in it. “Funny,” he says. “We’ve been Christians for generations. In spite of that, I don’t think I’d ever eaten beef before I got here. Lamb, mutton, venison on occasion. Anything except beef. Beef, I have to say, tastes like paper when overcooked.” He peers at me. “Did you know your face never changes?” he says. “You have a phenomenally straight face. ‘Poker’ doesn’t even begin to describe it. I win, I lose. You eat, you don’t eat. One day you watch a comedy on that crappy TV, a tragedy the next. The Stormers win, the Stormers lose. Ricky goes bananas. Ricky offends people. Ricky disappears for a few days. Socks soils himself. Whatever. They fill you with drugs. They double your dose. They take you off the drugs. V.J. Naicker talks, questions, does his best to entertain and amuse. Also disappears for a few days. Whatever. You don’t ask, you don’t comment, and your face doesn’t change. You’re like someone who’s had two strokes, one in each hemisphere of the brain.”
I look at Mr. Naicker. I decide to reward him. I look right into those great wet black eyes of his. I put my smiley face on. Over my smiley face I put my laughing face. I’ve learnt that the two work best together. Mr. Naicker’s eyes grow wide. Then I laugh. It’s a laugh I haven’t used since I laughed with Sonia and her friends at Eric’s. Whenever that was. It was generally noisy at Eric’s whenever I was there with Sonia. My laugh had to be a loud one. Else why bother? From the blurry corner of my eye I see Johnson starting to twitch. I run out of breath and my laugh winds down.
“Jumping Jesus, Nathan,” Mr. Naicker says. His voice sounds like his throat has dried up. “Stop it. That’s just plain goddamned scary.”
I let my face go back to normal. Normal is probably a nothing face. The kind of face you have while you make coffee. Or just before you brush your teeth. Normal is nothing. I sit back. I see Johnson relax and lean back against the wall. Mr. Naicker looks down at the board. His forearms are resting on the edge of the table. His hands are shaking worse than before. He looks up at me. He is close to tears. “Please, please, please don’t ever do that again,” he whispers.
When I came down Dad was asleep on the couch. Snores came out of him like they did from Hamish. Loud and not in time. The table had been cleared. Aunty Mike still had his elbows on the balustrade. Mom had turned around and was leaning against it with her bum. She had kicked her shoes off. Their glasses were full. I sat on the top step next to Hamish. Mom and Aunty Mike were talking. It was boring listening to them. Every so often Mom laughed her rolling smoky Mom laugh. Dad didn’t even flinch. I could see his underpants up the leg of his shorts. I rubbed Hamish’s ears the way he liked. Then I stood up and called him. I could see he didn’t want to play. Slowly he scrambled up. We went down the steps and across the lawn and into the pines. It was hot even in the shade. Nothing grew under the trees. There was just an endless carpet of pine needles with old cones and sticks jutting out. I threw a cone for Hamish. He yawned and lay down and rolled onto his back. I scratched his tummy and his chest and under his chops. His tail swept pine needles from one side to the other. One of his legs kicked. Riding the bicycle. I picked up a stick. I got on my knees and scraped away at the pine needles. Perhaps there was treasure here, I told myself. Pirate treasure from the Lake Pirates. The earth smelt damp and insecty under the detergent smell of pine. Underneath the needles the ground was hard. The stick broke. There’s no treasure here, I thought. No such thing as Lake Pirates. I threw the stick away. Hamish stood up and shook the pine needles from his back.
Johnson tells me
“Johnson tells me you had a good laugh the other day,” Doctor Petrakis says. “Didn’t it feel good to laugh again?”
It felt like laughing. It didn’t feel like anything else.
“I wonder what was so funny?”
I’m wondering my own shit. I’m wondering if they’ve changed my meds. I feel like talking. Specifically about Madge. There’s a problem. I’m ninety-nine percent certain I’m here because of Madge. What if I’m here for something else? Like that thing of hugging myself. That thing I did during my last few days at work. Maybe it was weeks, even. Maybe somebody didn’t like that. And then there’s the not talking since I’ve been here. The hugging thing was nothing. Just a bit of holding myself together. Like the not talking thing. The not talking thing is a strategy. I’ll tell them all the things I want to tell them once I know what it is they want me to tell them. Killing Madge was definitely a thing. I can’t be the one to start talking about her. I need Doctor Petrakis to ask me about her first. Otherwise I’ll be admitting that I killed her. I’m not stupid. The meds haven’t fucked me up completely. I know that killing her because she asked me to doesn’t make it legal. No matter how much pain she was in. I wonder whether Doctor Petrakis is as clever as the glasses on her face and the certificates on her wall make her seem. She makes me wonder this even more deeply by asking another wrong question.
“Did you laugh often before you came here?”
Goodness, as Madge would have said. Now it’s about laughing. Or not laughing. Or some kind of measurement of laughter. Maybe you measure laughter like you measure ad space. The number of men who walk into a bar across, multiplied by clown noses down. It’s clear outside today. Doctor Petrakis’s scarf tells me it’s cold too. If she had half a brain she’d wear a pink scarf. A pink scarf would be a signal to tell me that it’s okay to talk about Madge. A deep pink scarf of silk would be exactly right. Doctor Petrakis’s scarf is black and sheer. It looks acrylic. It’s probably cashmere. I don’t have Madge’s scarf any more. I suppose somebody else has it now.
Doctor Petrakis stands up behind her desk and walks towards Doctor Humboldt. I hadn’t noticed him until now. He’s become part of the furniture with his beige pants and dull shirts. Doctor Petrakis is wearing black stockings. They whisper to each other as she walks. Whsh whsh whsh, they go. She bends over and cups her face to Humboldt’s ear. Secret things. All this beating about the bush. I look at the Persian for points of interest. There’s nothing new there. I have to work hard to see the jungle in the patterns. I’ve never had to work at this. It’s hard to get the picture right. It just looks like a carpet. Maybe it’s because I’m wondering how long I’ve been here. Whether it’s been weeks or months or longer. I don’t know. I wonder whether Mrs. du Toit is still doing herself in her flat at Pansyshell Park. And doing it more often. In my absence. The
thought should make me horny. It doesn’t. Nothing does these days. It’s probably the meds. It would be nice if Mrs. du Toit visited. Perhaps she’s found someone else to do her. I think about Sonia. One two three kinds of bollockings to the crew and nothing really changing. It would be nice if Sonia visited. Madge couldn’t visit even if she wanted to. Seems that once people go away, they stay away.
Doctor Petrakis is standing over me. “Do you want to talk about Adele du Toit?” she says. It’s the closest she’s come to perspicacity in all our time together. I don’t answer and force myself to think of Madge some more. Madge Madge Madge, I scream in my head. It doesn’t work. Doctor Petrakis’s telepathic moment has passed. She goes back to her desk and writes down a few words. Then she purses her lips and breathes out hard. It’s the end of the session.
I walked back to the house. I didn’t really want to. There was nothing to do under the pines. Least of all find Lake Pirate treasure. And Hamish so old and lazy.
I was at the edge of the trees when I saw Aunty Mike and Mom. Mom had her bum against the balustrade. Her dress had hiked up. I could see the white skin of her thigh. Aunty Mike had an arm around her back. Mom’s arms were hooked around his neck. They were kissing like people in a movie. I hated movies where people kissed like that. Tongues and spit and someone else’s teeth. I always closed my eyes when those scenes came on. It was worse than watching people being shot. People being shot was okay because mostly they deserved it. And the blood and the bullets were fake. Everyone knew that. You couldn’t fake a kiss, though. Not even in a movie. I’d never seen Mom and Dad kiss that way. Definitely not on the deck after lunch.
I shouted for Hamish as loudly as I could. I knew he was standing next to me. He looked up at me with his head on one side and an ear up. I shouted for him again. Huh? said his face. I shouted and shouted and shouted and then I stopped. Mom had turned around. Now her front leant against the balustrade and she was looking out over the lawn. Her arms were crossed. Aunty Mike was almost next to her. He looked at the pines as though he’d never seen them before. Just like Mom. Aunty Mike picked up a glass. He tossed a few bits of ice onto the lawn. When he saw me he took a sip from his empty glass. I tried to play the fool with Hamish as we crossed the lawn so that I wouldn’t have to look at them. Hamish was too old for tackling and tumbling and things. He wasn’t interested. He trotted back to the house and I had to follow him. His tail was wagging. Like he was happy at the thought of lying on the deck and doing nothing.
When I got to the steps Aunty Mike straightened up. He took Mom’s glass from where it was balancing on the balustrade. It was also empty. Aunty Mike went to the drinks trolley. He picked up a bottle and held it out and peered at it and waggled it and peered again.
“Shit,” he said.
Dad’s eyes flicked open and closed again.
“What, Mike?” Mom said.
“We’re out of gin. And it was turning into such a G and T afternoon.”
Mom looked at Dad. She put a hand to her forehead and shook her head. She went to the door and stuck her head inside. “Isabel?” she called. “Isabel!”
Isabel’s hair was all tangly when she came out. She yawned and scratched at her hairline and rubbed her nose with her wrist and frowned at Mom.
“Come,” said Mom. She held out the keys. “I’m a bit squiffy, so you’ll be driving.”
Mr. Naicker has disappeared again. If they cut his beard any shorter they may as well just shave it off.
“Shock therapy,” Ricky says. “Ouch.”
Ricky and I are playing chess. Or rather, I’m watching him annihilate my pieces and his.
“They take these electrical things and attach them to your head,” he says. “And then, ka-blam, it’s like Frankenstein. A gazillion volts into your brain.”
He takes my bishop with his knight and his knight with my queen. NxBe7. QxNe7.
“Ka-blam,” Ricky says again. Shouts it. Makes a slow-motion explosion with his hands on the blam. It’s as if he can actually see shrapnel flying from his fingers. He watches the invisible debris as it settles to the ground.
Johnson starts circling. Ricky calms down.
“It’s like flushing your brain. Clears out all the shit, just like that. So for a while you’re fine, until it clogs up again. And then, ka-blam, all over. What do you say to that?”
I want to say that it’s not 1969. What next, lobotomies? I say nothing. I never do. The chessboard is in a pickle. I can see that Ricky is stumped. Maybe he’s forgotten which colour to move. Or which part of him wants to win, or not lose, which is black and which is white. He shoves the board aside. Kings and queens and bishops go head-over-heels. Some pawns survive. Then he smacks the board with the back of his hand. The rest of the pawns fall. Ricky does that Ricky thing and stands up and plants his hands on the table and leans over it.
If I had the energy I would take one of the fallen kings and drive it into his eye.
Ricky hangs his teeth out at me. “Silence isn’t a defence, Nathan Bloody Fucking Lucius,” he says. “You can shut the fuck up all you want. It doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.” He throws himself back on his chair. Puts his hands behind his head. Lurches forwards again. I struggle to focus on him.
“So how did it feel, little man?” he asks.
It feels like I want him to shut the fuck up. I look at the board. I want to play chess. I want to play chess with Mr. Naicker. The pieces are all over the place. Scattered and senseless. Lying sideways. Chess only makes sense if you stay in the squares. It’s not that I want to win. I just want a long, slow game of chess. I miss Mr. Naicker. I miss his civility and his calm chatter. It gives you a sense of being. Like a radio that you’re not really listening to. That’s not going to go ballistic and start screaming, or stop suddenly, unless you turn it up. Or off. I miss Mr. Naicker’s understanding that the longer the game is, the better off we both are. Neither of us is the aggressor. The winner is the one who makes the least mistakes. If I make the mistakes, he wins. He lapses, I win. If we don’t take all day, we start again. We line up rows of pawns and rampant horses and horny bishops and impotent kings and go at each other again. Slowly, patiently, as if we’d just invented the game. As if we were testing it out for the first time. Bloodless bloodshed. The gentlest of wars. The truth is, neither of us is very good. We only know so many opening moves between us. We’ve tried to invent new ones, with instant and disastrous consequences. Which means the game is over long before it needs to be. When that happens you have to start again. It’s tedious. Like washing your clothes only to get them dirty again. It gets you nowhere. So we forego the innovations. Stick with the traditional openings. Play the way we know. No surprises.
“Come, Nathan,” Ricky Chin says again. “Really now—how did it feel?”
I’m still looking at the board. I’m willing the pieces to take their places. It’s not working. There’s a quick shadow. Something goes crack. It’s Ricky. He has clapped his hands, loudly, in front of my face.
“You see now,” he says. “I clap, you shit yourself. You are not deaf. So you’re not dumb. You just don’t want to speak.”
I look for Johnson. He’s leaning against a wall with his great gymmed-up arms crossed. He’s got a foot up on the wall behind him. He’s listening to September with his head to one side. Johnson laughs. Simphiwe is asleep in a chair. Old Man Jakes is staring at the empty trees outside. Johnson Johnson Johnson, I scream in my head. He’s as useless as Doctor Petrakis. I reach out and swipe the chessboard off the table. It clatters to the floor. The pieces spill across the linoleum. Ricky Chin closes his eyes and shakes his head. Johnson stops laughing. He unfolds his arms. He comes over to us.
“Sorry, Johnson,” Ricky says. “A little accident. Caused by this little prick.”
Johnson puts the board on the table. He scoops pieces off the floor with his huge black hands. Ricky rebuilds the board. The black k
ing is broken. He’s now the size of a pawn. The top half of him can’t stand up. Imagine having to defend two kings. Ricky puts the king’s head on the table. “Nice one,” he says. Johnson goes back to chat to September. Ricky has decided that he is white. He moves his king’s pawn two squares towards me. My dwarf-king seems hardly worth defending. I push his pawn out a square. Defensive stuff. Ricky ignores the move.
“So, Mr. Lucius,” he says. I’m waiting for him to move. He doesn’t. “So,” he says again. “How did it feel? The scarf around the neck, the tightening, the ending of things?”
I don’t want to listen to Ricky. I look at Johnson. He’s talking to September again. I don’t like Johnson any more.
“Two for you, almost three. Let’s call it two and a half,” Ricky says. He laughs and leans forward again. “I fucked you up on that score, Nathan Lucius. Seven for me. Seven.” He leans into my face again. “That’s what they think. Just seven. Arseholes. No fucking idea.” I have no idea either. No idea what he’s on about. He leans back and puts his hands behind his head. “Seven to your two and a half. Poor fucking show, Lucius. A little bit like your chess.” Ricky jumps a knight over his row of pawns. I place a finger on the stump of my broken black king. Push it over onto the board. Ricky doesn’t like that one bit.
“No!” he screams. “You you you you you!” he smashes his fists onto the table. The chessboard flies up. Lands. “You!” Ricky screams again. “You do not capitulate!” He leaps up. “You do not just fucking give up!” His chair falls over backwards. He turns and screams and kicks it. The chair skitters across the floor. Socks is standing in the middle of the room. He’s swaying gently and gaping at something. Or nothing. The chair hits him on the shin. Socks starts screaming. He grabs his leg and starts hopping up and down. Then he lies on his back clutching his shin. He screams even bigger screams. Old Man Jakes opens his eyes and looks around. He starts bleating like a sheep. Apparently he’s not that old. He just looks that way. War will do that to you. It will make you old and bleat like a sheep. Ricky leaps up. He flaps his arms and bellows and stamps his feet. Then he goes for the chairs again. Johnson and friends unpeel themselves from the wall.