My Name Is Nathan Lucius

by Mark Winkler

  I want to know

  I want to know where Mr. Naicker is. It’s raining and Humboldt’s Hush Puppies are stained dark again. They squeak when he walks. I imagine variegated toenails in soggy socks. The toenails hooked and digging into neighbouring toes. I shake my head to make it go away. I look for Sonia in the jungle. One thing, two things, three things. When Hamish died we got Suzie. She was a Doberman. She was nothing like Hamish even though she was a dog. She hated pine cones and swimming. She didn’t like her tummy being scratched. She never banged her tail on the deck. Her tail was only as long as your thumb, anyway. Suzie’s name was wrong for her in so many ways. I put my nose to hers one day and she snapped and growled. We weren’t friends after that. Perhaps docking her tail was the problem. They’ve redone my meds again. It’s like being drunk and sober at the same time. Drunk happens within parameters. You know when you are and when you aren’t. You know where you are when you’re drunk. You know what works and what doesn’t. With the meds some things work fine and others are complete toast. As soon as I try to make a point in my head it’s gone. The point and the argument leading to it. I think my point was about people. Poor forked animals that look more or less the same. When they’re all so very different from each other. I know that’s not profound. That something there was borrowed from Plato. I can’t remember what I was trying to say. It was something about not seeing people. As individuals I mean. You tend to see at them as one thing. A single great biomass. You have to make a real effort to see them as individuals. It’s hard to look into someone’s eyes and to see the backstory. The things that worry them. Like indigestion and dandruff and stools that aren’t quite right. Diabetes and money and poisonous spiders. Flickering pinpricks of dreams that were once flaming beacons. Deaths past and deaths to come.

  Doctor Petrakis starts asking the wrong questions again. She got it so nearly right with Mrs. du Toit when it should have been Madge. Today I’m hoping for Sonia or Mr. Naicker. It hardly matters anyway. I can hardly keep my eyes open.

  Blah blah blah, goes Doctor Petrakis. I’m really not on the planet. I know she’s not actually saying blah blah blah. I can’t wedge myself into her words to the point where I can understand them. All I can tell is that there was a question in there somewhere. She may as well be asking me about the atomic values of the periodic table or interrogating me on cuneiform. Whenever my eyelids droop the jungle dims.

  I’ve just remembered my point.

  My point is that everyone is different. I know that’s not a particularly insightful point. What I’m trying to say is that Suzie was a dog and so was Hamish. Suzie was different to Hamish in every possible way. Even though they were both dogs. I’m not saying that Sonia and Mrs. du Toit and Madge and Doctor Petrakis are dogs. Or bitches. I’m not some kind of primitive misogynist. Some kind of lower-order Neanderthal. I’m talking symbolically here. You expect a modicum of constancy among people. It’s not unrealistic. You expect dogs to be basically consistent. To demonstrate similar behaviours. You expect them to be loyal. To eat their Hill’s. To love their walks. To shit on the lawn. You’d be really thrown if your dog started demanding apple pie with crème anglais and began crapping in the guest toilet. Or if it painted your house green of a morning. So it’s logical to expect the people in your life to share some kind of common behaviour. Display some kind of follow-through. Some shared traits. Even if they are different people. Sometimes I expect too much, I suppose.

  My other point is that they’ll always think people are crazy if they keep filling them up with drugs.

  The carpet pushes out an octopus of tendrils. I try to count them. I can’t. It doesn’t matter. They’re warm and soft and free of thorny bits. They poke their spongy ends into my ears. I’m in my bed in Pansyshell Park. The sun is beating down on me through the window. In stereo I hear the glassy plinking of little waves against the bed as it drifts out into the lake. The bed isn’t a bed any more. It’s Doctor Petrakis in moulded fibreglass. I’m sitting in the hollow of her back. I’m paddling as quickly as I can. Her face is in the water most of the time. I’m scared that if she drowns so will I.

  Mr. Naicker is back again. They haven’t shaved off his beard. What they have done is make him younger. The black bags under his eyes have disappeared. His face has lifted. As if the skin has been pulled back and tied in a knot at the back of his head. I check. It hasn’t.

  “Nathan, my boy,” Mr. Naicker says as he sets up the chessboard. He sounds like a motivational speaker. All lightness and spark. Someone has taped the black king up with Sellotape. Stickiness has leaked onto the body. It makes the king stick to my fingers. Then the stickiness is on my fingers too. “There’s nothing like a court case and a good bowel movement to clear the mind,” Mr. Naicker says. He folds his hands over what remains of his paunch. Then he unfolds them. He spreads his arms wide as he embraces the common room. “This,” he says, “is my new kingdom. It will be mine for the rest of my days. And you, Nathan, are my prince. Even though you’ve been sleeping solidly for almost twenty-four hours. Even though the learned might get the dosage wrong from time to time.”

  I don’t know what he is talking about. I move a pawn a square ahead of my queen. He pats my hand. “It’s all good, Nathan. All good.” I don’t feel like chess today. The slowness of it. I feel like a run. A run along the mountain road with its marshmallow breeze. It’s raining again. I can see streaks on the window panes. Winter in the Cape. Horizontal sluices that let up for a moment and then pelt again. It seems the world is underwater. I’d take it. I’d take a run in the rain right now. I’d take the blisters that come from running in wet shoes. The running vest pasted to my chest by the wet. The chafed nipples and the shrunken dick. The icy air setting fire to my lungs. I don’t feel like playing chess in this grey-yellow room with a crazy man who killed his wife and daughter. They didn’t ask for it. Right now I wouldn’t mind running barefoot around the broken lawns of this place with a chain tying me to Johnson. I’m thinking how to tell this to someone. I’m thinking this when Johnson comes up to our table. I hope he’s going to invite me for a run.

  “You have a visitor, Nathan,” Johnson says.

  I blink at him.

  Mr. Naicker bangs on the table with the flat of his hand. The chess pieces dance like they’re on coals. “We’re playing a game at this particular actual moment, Mr. Johnson,” he growls.

  “And you can carry on afterwards,” Johnson says. “It’s not like you’re going anywhere soon.”

  It’s a bad week for the chess set. Mr. Naicker flips the board into the air. The white queen hits me on the forehead. The other pieces scatter. Some land on the table. Most fall to the floor. Mr. Naicker scoots his chair back and puts his forearms on the table. He clenches his hands as if in prayer. I can’t tell if it’s Hindu or Christian. He puts his head on his forearms and begins to weep. Not so much of a motivational speaker, then. September comes over. Johnson walks me towards the visitors’ room.

  It can’t be Madge. Madge has gone. It’s probably not Mrs. du Toit. I’m hoping it isn’t. We were all about fucking, Mrs. du Toit and I, not talking. When we talked neither of us listened. We would just wait for the other to come up for air if we wanted to say something. Anyway, I couldn’t face Ricky Chin’s leers. Or comments about her colour-coding. It might be Sonia, though. Sonia coming to bitch that I haven’t made my targets. To invite me to Eric’s. Either way, at least I’d have an excuse.

  The visitors’ room is through a grey door. The paint is shiny. Set into the door is a little window. There’s wire mesh sandwiched in the glass. Through it I see the top of a woman’s head. The brown hair is streaked with honey. I don’t know who it belongs to. I don’t even know if she’s sitting or not. It’s just a window with some hair in it. I’ve never been into the room before.

  Johnson unlocks the door and pushes it open. The woman looks up. She’s grown so old. The smoker’s lines around her lips disappear when
she smiles. Her lipstick has leaked into the crevices. Up towards her nostrils. Down towards her chin. The eyebrows push up wrinkles. She never had wrinkles on her forehead. Or the tributaries around her eyes. The deep brown of her eyes has watered to khaki. Her eyes are rheumy. There might be glaucoma. The sight of her makes me smell the pine smell of gin the pine smell of pines. It makes me smell the lakeshore fart and the grease of old dog. I want to do terrible things to her. Bleeding, stabbing, kicking, painful, terrible things. I don’t know which of the things to start with. I try them all at once. Johnson brings his great sculptural arms and grabs me around the shoulders. I try to elbow him. It’s kind of laughable. If you weren’t me. If you were just watching from somewhere. If you were watching a skinny runner being wrestled to the floor by a giant Nigerian. Johnson hooks his arms under my armpits and yanks me up. I kick at his shins with my heels. Kick kick kick. I hear someone screaming. The screamer is off down a long tunnel. It could be a man or a woman. It could be Ricky Chin or the woman in the room or Johnson himself. I can’t tell. I kick backwards to bury a heel in Johnson’s balls. He’s too tall. I whip my head back to smash at his face. I want to rupture his lips against his perfect teeth. I want to break his nose. Shatter a cheekbone. Crack a skull. Black an eye, at least. I try twice. Twice I miss. Johnson locks my arms behind my back. It feels like my shoulder blades are pressing on my cranium. He’s pushing my head forwards. The full Nelson. Next thing I’m kneeling on the floor. I struggle. My knees slip on the linoleum. My face presses against its alien rubber skin. Johnson has knotted me like a pretzel. I’m useless. “Come on, Nathan,” Johnson says, “how far, my guy?” Which is Nigerian for “what’s up, my man?” Johnson’s words are gentle. Deep and thick. He isn’t angry. If I had to think about it, I would hate how Johnson never gets angry. I’m not really thinking anything right now. I have my arms trussed behind me. I have my face smeared into the lino. Anger is not going to work here. I make myself relax. The more I relax the more he will. And the moment he does I’ll whip round and gouge his eyes out. I’ll tear his fucking tongue from his mouth with my teeth. I’ll rip his polished skin from his skull with my fingernails. Johnson has done this before. I know he feels me relax. So he doesn’t. More nurses run up. They take my feet, my arms. One holds my head by the ears so that I can’t turn and bite at fingers, arms, faces.

  Hamish lay down on the deck. I sat next to him and rubbed his ears. Isabel drove Mom off in the BMW. I could see that Isabel wasn’t pleased. She generally drove like she threw pine cones. Like a girl. Now, grit flew up behind the car and the dust rose and drifted into the highest reaches of the pines. Dad threw a forearm over his eyes. The pitch of his snore dropped. The dust hung in the stillness between the branches.

  Aunty Mike watched the car disappear. He took a sip from his empty glass. He looked baffled and put the glass down. Then he turned to me. “Nathan, my boy,” he said. “It’s time you and me have a man-to-man talk.” He wasn’t grinning and laughing and joking. I didn’t want to talk about him and Mom. I was trying to forget. I was telling myself that I hadn’t in fact seen whatever I’d seen from the forest. While Dad snored. If Aunty Mike talked about it I would just look at the floor and nod.

  “Come,” said Aunty Mike. “We’re going to have a little chat.” He held out a hand. I didn’t take it. I stood up on my own. He put the hand on my shoulder. He steered me down the steps and onto the lawn. We could have talked right there. On the deck. Mom and Isabel had gone off to town. It would have taken more than Lake Pirates or a volcano to wake Dad up. Aunty Mike nudged me across the lawn towards the shed. He took the paddle from where I’d left it against the wall. Maybe he wanted to teach me about paddling. He’d need an actual paddle for that. All he said was, “May as well put this away while we’re at it.” He tugged at the bolt on the door. As usual, it stuck. He yanked at it and it slid aside. He pushed the door open. The cool smell of pine logs and mould washed out into the heat. “Step inside, Nathan,” he said. He pushed me into the solid dark of the shed. “This is just the place for us men to discuss the ways of the world.”

  “Your mom was a little disappointed yesterday,” Doctor Petrakis says. She puts on her glasses and looks at some papers on her desk. She takes up a pen and makes a note. At the same time Humboldt writes on his pad. I wonder if he’s making the same note. Doctor Petrakis takes her glasses off. She puts them on again and takes them off. My chair creaks. The thing with the glasses is driving me nuts. Either she needs them or she doesn’t. The onning and offing tells me she’s not sure either. I feel like a good long run. A run into the wind. In the rain or under the sun. I want to run to Egypt. I’ll stop only for water and a crap. In between I’ll just run. I’ll eat when it’s safe to do so. My head hurts. A run to Cairo would clear the drugs from my veins. Clear my head. I’m atrophying from all the chess. From all the sitting. If I can’t run I’ll swim. To Perth or Rio. The further I go, the warmer the water will become. Or else I’ll fly. Flap my arms all the way to Delhi or Budapest or to Boise, Idaho. Anything to clear the wool from my brain.

  I don’t think I’ll be running or swimming or flying any time soon.

  I follow a spiral in the carpet as it curls in on itself. Then I follow it outwards. In again. Out again. My eyes are scanners. Scanning this way and that. Hunting for predators. I am a robot in a Tom Cruise movie. Being a robot makes my head hurt less.

  Doctor Petrakis puts on her glasses and takes them off. She clasps her hands under her chin. The glasses hang from her fingers. “Were you a little disappointed, Nathan?” she asks across the jungle.

  Finally she’s asked a right question.

  I open my mouth and move my tongue. It’s like a sock. A thick runner’s sock freshly out of Mrs. du Toit’s tumble dryer. Fluffy. Designed to suck up moisture. I open my mouth wider and a little croak comes out. I clear it away. Swallow the stickiness. I try again. It’s not really my voice. It’s high-pitched and weird. It doesn’t matter. It works.

  “Not as disappointed as I was when Aunty Mike fucked me in the woodshed,” I tell her.

  Doctor Petrakis drops

  Doctor Petrakis drops her glasses. They slip from her hands to the desk. The rest of her doesn’t move. She’s pretty good. Just not that good. It was Ricky who got me talking. Not her. Ricky talks a lot of shit. Sometimes it’s hard to isolate the good bits. What he said yesterday was pretty smart. About silence not being a defence. He had a point. So I’ll talk. I’ll tell them things. I’m not telling them everything. They’ll have to ask more of the right questions first. Humboldt has a snuffly way of breathing. I realise that because it’s suddenly silent in his corner. I don’t know what he’s doing there anyway. He’s not only badly dressed. He’s superfluous.

  “So you remember, then?” says Doctor Petrakis, picking up her glasses. She can be glad I’m full of drugs. I’m instantly furious. She’s known about the woodshed all along. All the while playing a stupid game, when she knew all along. What a cunt, I think. I imagine two stiff fingers thrust into the softness where her collarbones come together. I’m not going to give her the pleasure. Not now. Not yet. I shrug. Ricky was the one who got me talking. She’s the one who got me to remember. Photographs and pine needles. I’ve spent twenty years trying to forget. I’ve spent every minute since then teaching myself not to remember. Twenty years’ worth of time. Of stuff. Of beer. Whisky. Work. Wanking. Anything to bury that day. Doctor Petrakis’s question is redundant anyway. Perhaps rhetorical. Plain stupid, even. Or just some words to give her time to rearrange her brain. All this time to get to what she already knew. Jesus. She might have asked a real question. She might have asked exactly what I’d been trying to bury. Then she’d have had me.

  “It’s time to get up,” Mom said to me after my third day in bed. I was lying on my stomach. She threw the sheets off me and pulled my bumcheeks apart. It still hurt to go the toilet even though the bleeding had stopped. I didn’t care. It didn’t matter if my a
rse hurt or not. It didn’t matter if it rained or the sun shone. If I was missing school. If a great big asteroid was a mere hour away. It didn’t matter that Mom said Aunty Mike would never visit again. He was there all the time. Especially in the dark. There was only one way to get rid of him. Open the curtains and put a light on. This wasn’t an either/or. It was both together. That’s why it was one thing, not two. Getting up was the last thing I wanted to do. I wanted to lie there for ever. With the curtains open. In my room in our city house. Where the air smelled of cars and fishy harbour and wet tar when it rained. Not of pine needles or dust or lake fart when you walked through the mud. Mom rolled me over and took me by my forearms and pulled at me until I was sitting up. She took my uniform from the closet and tossed it onto the bed.

  Mom and Dad must have been talking for a change. She said exactly what he’d said to me the day before. “Come, Nathan,” she said. “School. It’s time to put your brave face on.”

  The pink tip of a tongue creeps out from between Doctor Petrakis’s lips. It plays there for a moment. As if she is tasting what she wants to say before she says it. Perhaps because she is going to come straight to the point for a change.