Chapter
Seven
The strangest thing was the silence. It blew in your ears and it bloated your eardrums.
The second strangest thing was the darkness. Blinking and blinking, but never night vision. Just strips of lightlessness, all swaddled together; so tightly, compactly, that creation was snuffed.
The third strangest thing was Marcus: his very presence here, in the landscape. The way he dropped to his knees and lugged across the ground like an animal. The way he no longer thought about spiders or snakes or snails. The way his fingers grazed against the bark of a tree. He shot up a bough with surprising dexterity; stretching his legs out and falling asleep.
The sun was turning its spotlight. You could just about make out his skin marbled with white ash, or was it clay? Naked down to the boxers; a blanket swaddling his shoulders. Two rows of chattering teeth. He was unevenly balanced and looked ready to fall. A gecko sat on his kneecap.
The sun twisted the stage lights: the whole world lit up. His hands relaxed around the blanket. The gecko walked away. His forehead grew shiny with balls of sweat. His eyes opened up and they looked only pupil.
Marcus slid down the tree and walked further into the foothills. He wolfed down a breakfast of cricket clicks and chirping birds, sun streaks and sky. He tried to ignore the grumbles in his belly, which vibrated all the way through to the tissue.
Soon, the walking turned to gentle climbing. He walked like this for measurements of time that he no longer measured. The sun scorched his skin and he now used the blanket for protection, not warmth. He found another cluster of trees and yanked off giant lobes of leaves that he tied together with vine to make an impromptu hat. He found a long white feather, which he tucked into the vine, behind his ear. He did all these things with consummate care and attention, and these small tasks took up considerable mind power. He was so distracted with the now and what that he did not look into the past or future or ask himself why he was doing any of it at all.
At one intersection of time, there was a sound like shushing water. He changed direction and ran through yellow grassland, through a passing of trees, where a boulder was sheltering a dancing stream. He skulked about the edges, the thirst overtaking him; an intolerable urge to slurp up the water. Some latent and rational self was clawing him back, making him question the purity – was it safe to drink? He cursed his parents for not sending him to Boy Scouts: those hardy brats who always had a compass and penknife and the smug cotton blur of beige and khaki. Well, he could be just as prepared. He could be just as physically strong, as mentally awake and morally straight as those bastards. Those motherfucking Scouts.
He bashed a stone on the head of a lulling fish. It tossed about, pathetic. He did this several times until the water turned red. He didn’t know a fish could bleed. Why had nobody told him that fish could bleed? Would a Boy Scout have known?
He picked up the fish and held it on the flat of his palm. There was still the odd flinch, the odd tussle with life. But these were lessening. So he gazed in wonder at the gaping mouth and darting eyes, things he had seen before, in some distant life, he remembered that now. He lay that fish out on his palm for many measurements of time, until there was only stillness, and the water babbling, and the sun following its inevitable trajectory across the sky.
He sat for some time like that, swallowing and swallowing, trying to produce extra saliva to slake his thirst. His eyes wafted over the horizon, automatic, without apparent thought. He stuffed the fish into his underpants. This didn’t feel odd. While he stood there, his eyes kept wafting, until he saw a sheet of greyness ascend from the earth. It had to be woodsmoke.
There was running, and more running, until it caused his chest to explode. He broke down to a trot, then back to the beat of the walk. His skin peeled into dark pink strips. He licked his lips to stop them cracking. It cracked them even more so.
What Marcus found was a village that looked like the other one. Peroxide grass. Mud huts. Chickens. There were some gasps when he staggered into the centre and roared. Some women wailed. The men came out and stepped around him, in circles, jabbering words he did not recognise. One ran a finger down Marcus’s side. He turned the finger over and gazed at the clay. He held up that finger and showed it to the growing crowd of people. There were no more human words or sounds. Just the chickens clucking, oblivious, locked inside private conflicts.
People moved away, then, as if Marcus had gone invisible. They moved behind him, in front of him, around him – almost right through him. He stayed there upright, his energy sapped, his mind in tailspin. He felt the gentle tug of his fish, but was unable to stop it. Then he slumped to the ground and covered his face in his hands.
The smell of food lifted him up again. Someone set down a couple of bowls: sweetly cooked chambo, a mound of mashed nshima. A jug of drinking water, which he turned to first. Then he scooped out the maize, loading it into his mouth so his cheeks puffed out. He went back to the water to wash it down. Then he picked delicately at the fish, like a chef or a gourmand; thinking thanks for its existence, for its role in his life.
He went over to the women. ‘Thank you.’ He was surprised by his voice; surprised it belonged to him.
Their eyes swivelled upwards. They didn’t say anything in return and he could not read their faces. They went back to working. He assumed a lack of English held them back. But they stared at him, hard, as he staggered back into the thicket.
When the distance had gobbled him up whole, the people looked at each other in a deep and enduring silence. A man held up a hand to his throat, but the laugh ran away from him. Others were now laughing. Soon the women and children were clapping their hands and shrieking. They gestured at their underpants and told dirty jokes. A couple of jesters dragged out some fish from the nets and popped them into their trousers. The man who got the biggest laugh of all was the one with a fish head sticking out of his waistband. He moved the head up and down, made it speak in white-man language. ‘Please, please,’ he said, like the Queen. ‘Thank you very much, please. Marks & Spencer, lovely jubbly.’ A woman laughed so hard that she cried. ‘Oh don’t, don’t,’ she protested, and the children gibbered and grinned and touched her face. ‘He tried to white himself when he is already white! A white man, but whiter!’ She snorted. ‘And he is a grown man, too!’ This set them off again, and the fish got re-stuffed into underpants and paraded around. Any fear of white men and bogeymen was well and truly dissipated by recalling this spectacle: a strange and unusual sight and so completely hilarious.
‘Where has he gone?’ someone asked, at last.
‘Into the trees.’
‘Do we help him? Do we give him food?’
They turned to the headman for consultation. He frowned and peered up at the sky.
‘I think so,’ he said. ‘It is all rather strange, but there must be a reason why he is here. We should protect him just in case.’
‘But he’s not even a boy…’
‘I have never known a white man take part in this ceremony. But if he wants to call himself an initiate, let’s hear him out.’
‘But we don’t have enough food…’
‘We have enough. We can give him some scraps.’
‘Give the rich white man scraps? This is madness! Appearances can deceive…’
‘We only have appearances, so we will judge only appearances.’
They gave up protesting. The headman always had the last word. But somebody did snarl: ‘We had the appearance of an idiot with a fish down his pants.’ It was an interesting addition to a familiar proverb.
The headman continued, getting caught up in his gusto: ‘We must respond to this moment, I know that good will come from this.’ He raised his eyes like he was thinking of God, but he was thinking of money: white-man remuneration; rapper-dollar bills; gargantuan tips.
Chigayo had a brother in the city, who had gone to Lilongwe to open a restaurant and find some fortune. There was talk of rich ex-pats who worke
d at embassies. There was speculation of other people coming, soon coming, still coming, coming soon – to blow all their bills on safaris and game. A ‘holiday’ they called it, a chance to find something different. Chigayo had never even seen an aeroplane, he could not imagine getting inside one and going to see something new. There was newness, every day. Each day was new, each second was new. Even though Edson, his brother, was the one with the steam in his eyes and an unfilled restaurant. Now Edson was changing his tune, he was babbling, ‘They say we’ll get richer, more people will eat out, we have to spend the money somewhere.’ Oh no, Edson – here there is only poor, very poor and very rich. And the very rich do not eat out in Lilongwe, they’d sooner travel to South Africa and stuff themselves there! But none of this meant he pitied his brother more than he pitied that man. There was already a holiday in the next life, that was already a given. That lot seemed so unhappy – even the ones without fish down their pants. What did it all mean? What sense should he make from it?
While Chigayo was pondering, Marcus sought natural protection in the trees. He would stay in the lowlands, at a reasonable distance from the village. He found this comforting, as he was far enough away that he didn’t see them as a threat. They had all seemed fairly normal, but he was in Africa now. He might be fast asleep tonight and one of them would come out to find him, wearing only a headdress and his goolies hanging loose; clutching a spear in one hand and something voodoo in the other. This was a primitive land, cursed by both humans and God. It was strewn with poison, disaster and death traps. Even McDonalds had no branch here.
Now – with time to think – Marcus mused on exactly how he had come to be here: in this continent, this wilderness, wearing only his boxer shorts. He could be, right now, in his perfect home, eating perfect food, picking up perfect women.
When these thoughts got too much to bear, he passed some other time by talking to the trees and hearing what it was like to be a tree. It turned out that trees were very remarkable and kept all kinds of secrets.
Then he passed other time by composing lists in his head: his top ten favourite films; his top ten favourite books; his top ten favourite lays. He said goodbye to the day while compiling his ten best sandwich fillings. This was more tricky to rank than he had ever expected.
That night, the cold whispered its way into his bones and lay flat like sediment. He seemed to sit in a husk, and he could hear himself rattle. Everything recoiling; everything turned inwards. He tried to stay still so he didn’t waste any energy, but his limbs echoed out into dark empty space.
Noises were heard, like heavy paw prints on leaves, like the head of a lion, pushing its fur through the bracken, like the pant of a beast with stomach juice dripping over jeering fangs. Then something like the whisper of humans, the sharpening of spears. His head became stuck in a whirl storm of thoughts. The blanket over his face now. His body still shaking, ready for foreseeable death.
He must have fallen asleep, since he woke with the lights back on and the world reformed. All the dangers had disappeared and there was now a renewed optimism for an indefinable something. His smile grew wider when he saw a bowl of food by the trunk – protected with cloth and a stone in the middle to stop it blowing over in the wind. He said some blessings and tucked into the fried potatoes.
Marcus had long finished eating, and was now digging a hole to squat, when he saw a shape just beyond. He stopped what he was doing. His eyes fixed ahead. His father was standing there. He was holding a horse.
Marcus blinked a few times but his dad did not go away. He wore his hair slicked back and that pastel blue suit, for the special occasions. A hand hovered to shoulder height and waved, a bit shyly. Marcus waved back. They didn’t know what to do next, so they both dropped their arms and their eyes settled over the forms of each other. It was all a bit awkward.
His dad stroked the horse’s face. It was a rare white thoroughbred. There was some grey dirt over its chest and haunch, but its face was clean, and the hair pristine white. Even the eyelashes were white: fluttering over large slits of liquid black.
His dad was the first to speak. There had been some build-up. He started to shake and a supernova of blood vessels appeared in his eyeballs. He said: ‘I can’t spend my money. They won’t take my money.’ He let go of the horse and they both watched it lope into a distant place that they could not see.
His dad started to pace. In and out, in and out, weaving in and out of trees.
‘Dad,’ Marcus said, but the pacing didn’t stop. He tried to catch his dad’s eye, but he was wringing his hands, his eyes wide with panic. He stopped, looked Marcus dead-on and screamed: walking backwards, running backwards, his mouth a great hole in the middle of his face. The hole stretched wider and wider until the face disappeared.
‘Dad!’ Marcus ran after him, but could not see him. He had gone. The scream had gone, too.
‘Marcus.’
He whipped around but saw nothing. Then a stone skimmed his shoulder.
‘Over here, Marcus.’
His mother was sitting on a swing above the ground. She was kicking higher into the air, like she might take flight.
‘Mum. Oh fuck, Mum. I just saw Dad.’
‘I know you did. Don’t swear, dear.’
‘Mum; he didn’t look happy.’ Marcus paused; refocused. ‘Mum – you look happy. What’s going on?’
‘Oh yes, I’m good, Marcus, I’m good. It’s so much better here. It’s so much better not to be real, anymore.’
He swallowed. His insides churned. ‘But of course you’re real. I can see you.’
‘Everything you see is you. You make it what it is. Your brain makes it. I am you. This is you.’ She gestured around her. ‘Everything is you. You’re talking to yourself!’ She laughed. ‘How does it feel?’
‘Wonderful,’ he said. ‘I never knew I was so interesting.’
‘I agree,’ she said. ‘I always thought it was a shame we couldn’t clone ourselves and then we’d have our best friend sorted forever. After all, we only talk to other people so we can validate our own opinions.’
‘That’s very cynical,’ he said.
‘That means you’re very cynical,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You’re probably right.’
‘I’m always right. I’m your mother.’
‘But I thought you were me.’
She drew a circle in the air. ‘And everything is complete.’
‘You’re being very cryptic,’ he said. ‘You’re talking like Yoda or Mr. Miyagi. Like somebody in a film.’
‘I don’t know who those people are.’
‘You must do if you’re me.’
‘Yes, but there has to be some realism involved, doesn’t there? The playwright writes the play, but he still tries to write this panoply of characters – not just versions of himself. Anyway, I can guess what your point is. And I’ve got a riposte.’
‘I’m not sure I ever heard you use the word “panoply” when you were alive. But anyway – what’s the riposte?’
‘Well, how would you like it if I started talking to you about the weather? Or asked you for the latest on Eastenders?’
‘I suppose it would be disappointing.’
‘Yes. Yes, it would be.’
They both mused on that for a moment, and then he ventured: ‘Mum. I’m not going to tell you I’m sorry.’
‘I know.’
‘I don’t know if I am. I mean – I really hated you. Since Dad died, but also, maybe, before that. I hated you for falling apart. I hated you for not being like Dad. You were so wishy washy, you had no energy or ambition. You just seemed happy to die like you’d lived. I felt like you’d be happy with that lot for me, too. I felt like you suffocated me, like you could stop all my potential. I resented your genes. I didn’t want to be like you.’
She stopped swinging. She folded her arms and sighed. ‘Marcus, I know all of this. Why are you telling me again? I get it. I do.’
‘I don’t know
. I guess it’s freaking me out. That there’s something else.’
‘What something else?’
‘That…’ He didn’t know why, but he was crying. ‘I don’t know.’
‘You know this is what initiates do, honey? They’re meant to commune with their ancestors. This is what’s meant to happen.’
‘I remember now.’
‘You’ve always remembered. People pick and choose what they remember, but it’s always there.’
‘I thought I read somewhere that people never remember a memory the same way. There are only false memories. Memories change.’
‘Oh, that’s certainly true. The very act of remembering distorts it. But the thing itself, the core of it, is always there, like a photo: just waiting for retrieval.’
‘You never talked like this in real life.’
‘Of course, I didn’t! That was real life. Oh you are funny, dear.’
‘I don’t like it here, Mum. I miss everything about home. I miss all the little things. I miss going to the cinema, broadband, my Friday night wine, a bit of steak béarnaise…’
‘But you couldn’t talk to me like this if you were back home, could you, honey? We couldn’t commune.’
‘So this is…communing?’
‘Yes! How do you like it?’ She resumed her swinging. ‘Oh please stop crying, Marcus. I’ve not seen you cry since you broke your arm on that god-awful caravan trip in Wales.’
He tried to sniff away the tears. ‘Yes. I think that was the last time.’
‘You know that it wasn’t. Stop pretending. You’ve cried a lot in the last few weeks. And of course you did cry when your father died; you just didn’t show anyone. You cried in secret. To yourself. To the walls.’
‘How do you know that?’ His tone was defensive, embarrassed.
‘Oh Marcus, do we really have to have this conversation again?’
His head dropped. ‘No. No, I guess not.’ He’d stopped crying. He put his palm up to his forehead, to feel his temperature.
‘Are you feeling better now, honey?’
‘Yes, Mum. I guess I got a bit overwhelmed.’
Another Justified Sinner Page 13