Good Thing Bad Thing

by Nick Alexander

  I think about what quality means – and wonder if the simple repetitive satisfaction of what I’m doing is what people mean when they talk about quality of life… Most don’t but maybe they should.

  As I loop another piece of wire and twist it, I drift back into the physical and wonder what it is about that gesture – about the clack the cutter makes as it cuts off the raggedy ends – that is so very satisfying.

  Dante is right in so many ways about so many things, and I wonder just why it is that I’m so resistant to having it all explained to me.

  Is it what he’s saying or the way he explains it. Or is it something underlying about Dante, something about his very being that I don’t like.

  I watch a tiny finch sitting on the fence a few meters back from where I am working and watch in amusement as it bobs up and down as I fiddle with the netting. I can’t remember the last time I took the time to watch a bird sitting on a fence. I guess we really are in danger of losing this meditative quality from our modern lives. Maybe Dante’s commune idea isn’t so bad after all.

  When I notice that the bird has gone, and I realise that I didn’t see it fly away, I know that the last few minutes were in fact hours. I look at my hands, working away on their own, looping wire through the final link of the fence.

  Tom and Dante are standing, hand on hips waiting for me.

  I look at them there, standing side-by-side, smirking at me, presumably at some in-joke or maybe just at the fact that I’ve been so lost in my thoughts that I haven’t noticed them.

  Whatever the reason, some unnamed pang of emotion registers at the sight of them like that. On some, semi-conscious level, something is noticed; something is noted. I can’t quite figure it out, but it’s to do with them being together and me being the separate one. My stomach knots.

  I finish twisting the two ends of the wire together and jump down.

  *

  After lunch I leave Tom and Dante herding chickens towards the pen, and head off to the local supermarket for provisions. The name of the store – Mec-Market – momentarily puts a smile back on my face. Mec is the French word for bloke. Mec-Market would be a great name for a gay bar, I decide.

  I cross the scrubby car park and check out the front of the store. It bristles with brightly coloured rubber rings and inflatable crocodiles.

  A woman in a pinny squints at me from a sun-lounger. As I reach the threshold I pause and she grins at me revealing a gold tooth.

  “Avanti,” she says, waving me in.

  Mec-Market is cavernous space. The light filtering past the inflatable toys is supplemented by four skylights, producing godly circles of light. Random goods within the store – a pile of filter-coffee machines here, a rack of faded seed packets there, a pile of green bananas over the far side, are lit by the beams. Dust particles dance and float in the columns of light.

  The air is rich with smells: floor polish, soap, spices, rubber… There seems to be little logic to how the store is organised, so I zigzag up and down the isles, checking my list as I push past tins of tomatoes and sachets of weed killer, past bottles of shampoo and dog-leads.

  Hung on hooks next to the nails and screws there’s even what looks like a range of cock-rings, laid out from small to large. Every time I swing past the front window, the owner in her bed-chair looks up, winks and waves me on.

  When I reach the checkout I peer outside. The sun has moved over and the owner has fallen asleep.

  I load my shopping noisily onto the counter. I stand in the entrance and cough loudly. I even bump the trolley into the edge of her chair as I push it past, but nothing awakens her, so with a shrug I slump onto a deckchair.

  “When in Rome,” I think.

  Every few minutes a camper van rolls past followed by its personal mini-tailback. A mangy dog is sniffing around the edges of the car park. A skitty cat darts along the wall.

  I wonder if Tom will kick up a fuss about leaving tomorrow. I know he’s enjoying the stay at Dante’s place, but how on earth can I explain to him that he’s enjoying it just a bit too much?

  There! The decision to leave appears to have been taken.

  So I sit and ponder how to tell Tom that not all choices are good; that some choices preclude others. That getting closer to Dante may be the end of getting closer to me. How to explain that I can sense real danger without sounding hysterical and jealous?

  I watch a green and orange rubber ring suspended from the awning as it bounces and rotates in the wind.

  What I need, is a destination, an alibi, a positive reason why we have to leave… Something that we have to see, something it would be a shame to miss. I decide to get one of the maps next to the checkout and work something out.

  When the bed-chair beside me creaks I look up to see the woman heading inside.

  It’s as if she has never been asleep. She moves behind the till and starts to work her way through the pile, lazily typing the price of each item, before loading it into a carrier bag.

  It’s funny how a tiny change to the way things are done can leave you ill at ease. I shuffle from one foot to the other as I wait for each completed bag to be handed to me.

  “Camping?” she asks, waving a tin of tuna at me.

  I nod and smile.

  “Inglese?” she asks, nodding at the Volkswagen.

  I nod again. “I live in France,” I say. “J’habite en France,” I repeat hoping that French will be easier for her to understand.

  She shrugs and places the tuna inside the carrier bag and reaches for one of the three corn-on-the-cobs.

  “Camping municipale?” she asks. “Vernazza?”

  I shake my head. “Full,” I say. “Erm, completo.”

  She nods and grins. “Allora, Rommagiore,” she says, pointing the corn on the cob at me accusingly.

  I shake my head. “Completo,” I say.

  The woman squints at me, then grins, apparently enjoying this game of guess-the-campsite. “La Spezia?” she says.

  I shake my head and smile back.

  She frowns in amused puzzlement, then shrugs.

  “Farm,” I say. “Erm, Podere?” I add. “Camping completo,” and she nods as though this explains everything.

  “Signor Romero?” she asks.

  I realise that I don’t know Dante’s surname, so I shrug and make an embarrassed grimace. “Mi scusa,” I say. “Signor Dante.”

  The woman thinks for a moment and – rather disgustingly – scratches her chin with the hairy end of the corn-cob she’s holding.

  “Fattoria Migliore?” she asks. “Dante Migliore?”

  I shrug again, and the woman shrugs back, but the magical moment is lost, the energy has shifted and the game is over. She moves into triple speed, clearly decided to waste no more time on this stupid tourist who can’t even describe where he’s staying.

  I pay her the twenty-seven euros and head out into the sunshine.

  The car park shimmers in the heat. I load the bags into the van and slide the door shut.

  The woman is watching me from beneath the Mec-Market sign. She has her hands on her hips. I climb into the driver’s seat and gun the engine.

  As I swing the van towards the exit, the woman steps forward, so I brake and stop. Gravel spits beneath the tyres.

  She looks deadly serious so, wondering if I have made some terrible faux-pas, I lean out of the window.

  She nods towards the east, towards Dante’s place, and then shaking her head she says, “Sta attento. E′ brutta gente, la famiglia Migliore.”

  I frown at her. “Mi Scusa?”

  She tutts and rolls her eyes, then says, very slowly, “Gentaglia, i Migliori…”

  I blink and shrug. “Sorry, I…” I say, shaking my head.

  “Sta attento,” she says, now nodding at me, raising a hand and wiggling a finger at me. Whatever she’s saying she’s not joking. “E brutta gente…” she says again.

  Finally, realising that I’m not understanding a word, she turns back into the shadowy
interior of the shop, and lets her hand drop dismissively to her side.

  *

  When I reach the farm, the gate is open, so I drive right up to the front of the house, then walk back and close the gate. I sneak a glimpse at the name on the letterbox – Migliore. Now what did she say? Buttagenti?

  I close the gate, and as I return to the van, Tom bounds around the corner, grinning broadly. “You get everything?” he asks.

  I wiggle my brow and throw open the side door of the van revealing the pile of carrier bags.

  “Wow,” Tom says. “All that?”

  I nod. “I need to sort through it though… The checkout lady mixed it all up.”

  Tom peers inside a bag, then glances back at the farmhouse.

  “What does Statento mean?” I ask him.

  Tom frowns. “Sta attento?” he says. “Erm, be careful… why?”

  “And Butagenta?” I ask him. “Only she said something – the lady in the shop – and I couldn’t work it out.”

  “Butagenta?” Tom repeats, shaking his head and pushing out his lips. “Sorry,” he says. “What was she talking about? What was the context?”

  I shrug. “If I knew that…” I say.

  “Yeah, well… Sorry, can’t help you then,” Tom says, glancing nervously back at the farmhouse. “Erm, can I… Only, we’re killing chickens.”

  I wrinkle my nose. “Killing chickens! Tom! That’s disgusting.”

  Tom looks at me uncomprehendingly, as if to be killing chickens is the most natural thing in the world for a vegetarian to be doing.

  “It’s not actually,” he says. “It’s like the man says… it just depends how you do it.”

  “All the same, Tom,” I protest. “You’re supposed to be vegetarian.”

  Tom shrugs. “I may even eat chicken tonight,” he says. “I mean, if you can kill one, then why not?”

  I sigh and shake my head. “Whatever,” I say. “Enjoy yourself.”

  Tom smiles at me. “Enjoy might be a bit strong,” he says. “But it is interesting.”

  “Tom, before you go?” I say.

  He pauses, one hand on the edge of the door and looks back at me. “Yeah?”

  “Can we move on tomorrow,” I say. “Please?”

  Tom thinks about this and then shrugs dismissively. “Nah, not tomorrow,” he says.

  I would argue, but there’s no one to argue with.

  In an attempt at calming my mounting anger, I stomp around the perimeter fence. I argue with myself – point and counterpoint – trying to be reasonable, trying to see both sides of the story.

  I tell myself that Tom’s answer may have been a little dismissive, but it wasn’t truly aggressive. I force myself to acknowledge that I did ask him the question, I did say, can we leave tomorrow? No is a valid response.

  But it doesn’t really work; it doesn’t really quell the rage. Sure, it contains it momentarily; it stops it bursting out all over the shop. It stops me running over to the two of them and telling them to fuck off, or simply getting in the van and driving right home. But the rage remains, compressed into a manageable sized lump, right in the middle of my rib cage.

  At the end of the field I use the compost hillock to climb back over the fence, noting vaguely that Tom or Dante, or Tom and Dante, have dug a new hole next to it. Presumably they are intending to add a new batch of compost, or pig carcasses, or whatever it is that Dante dumps here.

  The forest is as eerily calm as the first time, only now the strange silence entices me further in. I head down the corridor of trees listening to the spongy crunching noise of pine needles beneath my feet, listening to see if I am yet far enough away to escape the voices of Tom and Dante on the farm behind me.

  Eventually I come to a recently felled clearing, and sit on a pile of stripped logs and wish for the first time in years that I still smoked.

  It’s just after six when Tom returns to the van. “What have you been up to then?” he asks cheerfully.

  The words, quietly smouldering, come to mind, but instead, when I open my mouth, what comes out is, “Oh, not much, wandering around the forest.” I even manage a fraudulent smile.

  “And you?” I ask. “Looks like you’ve been digging ditches?”

  Tom frowns at me cutely, and says, “No, planting zucchini and aubergines actually.”

  “Zucchini,” I say. “How American of you.”

  Tom shrugs and grins. “Or courgettes…” he says. “You know what I mean… Anyway they’re called zucchini in Italian.” He stretches and pulls a face. “My back’s killing me though… I might get you to massage it later.”

  “Might you now,” I say, forcing a smile to make my reply look like a joke.

  “Later though,” he says, reaching for a towel. “I need to go and shower, and Dante is making dinner for us.”

  I nod silently and stare at him.

  “Is that okay?” he asks. “I said it was okay,” he adds tentatively.

  I can’t even begin to think of a way to explain to his innocent little face just how not okay it is. I can’t believe we can be so out of sync. So I say, “Sure, that’ll be dandy.”

  Tom plants a peck on my unresponsive lips. He smells of soil.

  “Is that okay?” he tries again, confused by part of my response, by some leaking air of grievance he has detected.

  “Go shower,” I say. “I’ll meet you there.”

  Unable to face Dante on my own, I tidy the van, occasionally glancing out of the side window until I see Tom, heading for the farmhouse – the wet towel draped around his shoulders.

  I take a deep breath, swallow hard and head across the field, telling myself as I walk that it’s just not fair to blame Tom for not reading my mind, that it’s not his fault he can’t sense the turmoil within. But even if I don’t blame him, the fact that he has no idea – and I mean absolutely no idea what I’m thinking… Well, that must mean something about our relationship, right?

  I push into the kitchen a few seconds after Tom, but already he and Dante are chatting in Italian. I stand at the entrance until they notice my presence. Dante crosses the room and kisses me on the cheek without interrupting his flow of words. The gesture shocks me a little, and I frown and resist the desire to wipe my cheek.

  “So what’s today’s subject?” I ask moving to Tom’s side.

  “Oh, we’ve been talking about religion all day,” Tom tells me. “Well, religion and how to grow zucc… Sorry, courgettes.”

  “Religion?”

  “Yeah, we got onto the whole Judaeo-Christian monogamy thing,” Tom says.

  “Right,” I say, walking towards the stove and peering in at the swirling spaghetti.

  “Dante doesn’t believe in monogamy,” Tom says.

  Dante stirs the pot and glances up at me, flashing his teeth. It could be a smile or it could be a primitive baring of teeth, it’s hard to say.

  “Tom says you are quite old fashion,” Dante tells me.

  “Old fashion,” I repeat. I bite my lip and nod. “Does he now?”

  Tom steps sideways so that his hip is touching mine. It’s a tiny sign of solidarity but it does what he intends; it placates me. “I didn’t exactly say that,” he says. “I said you believe in monogamy, it’s Dante thinks that’s old fashioned.”

  “Old fashion and stupid,” Dante says.

  I raise an eyebrow, and sigh, realising that it’s going to be even harder than I thought keeping my ball of rage contained.

  “Stupid…” I repeat flatly.

  Dante pours the spaghetti into a strainer and through a cloud of steam, he adds, “Well, for a homosexual.”

  The phrase is such a shock that I have to pause to catch my breath. The subject matter, the frankness of the delivery – well, it all implies an intimacy that Dante and I simply don’t have.

  “If you say so,” I say, turning the phrase over in my mind. The word homosexual grates too – in my experience, people who say homosexual are rarely very comfortable with homosexuality.r />
  I bite my bottom lip. A response is forming, but I hesitate. Then I think, “What the hell.”

  “So what kind of a homosexual are you then Dante?” I ask.

  He stops stirring and shoots me a glare. I can see that he has stopped breathing. Then he looks back at the pan before him and slowly exhales. “So tonight,” he says, suddenly all upbeat. “Spaghetti con Pomodori.”

  I restrain a smirk at the change of subject. “Tomato,” I say, tilting my head slightly. “Yum.” My voice is perfect. I could be taking the piss but then again I could be being perfectly genuine.

  Tom smiles at me vaguely as if all of this is passing him by.

  “And when did Tom’s radar get so cloudy?” I wonder.

  It’s not until the end of the thankfully short meal that everything becomes clear, or at least a little clearer.

  Tom is washing dishes to my left; I am drying a plate with Dante’s slightly surreal Charles and Diana tea towel.

  Tom jokingly barges me with his hip as he scrubs a pan, and I glance over my shoulder to see if Dante – who is seated at the table rolling a cigarette – is watching us. I see him reach into a tin box and sprinkle something on top of the tobacco he has laid out.

  He must sense my gaze because he looks up and smiles lopsidedly. “I grow it here,” he says. “Tom show you my plant?”

  My hands pause their plate-wiping action. “No,” I say. “He didn’t. Funny that.” I tip my head to one side and raise an eyebrow at Tom who shrugs naively.

  “Hey, we only smoked, like, one joint,” he says.

  “Two,” Dante says behind me. “Today two.” He looks at me. “Tom says you no like.”

  I shake my head. “Dope makes me paranoid,” I say. “So Tom and Dante are sharing drugs now,” I think.

  “More paranoid,” Tom mumbles.

  “Okay, more paranoid,” I agree.

  Once the boys have shared another joint I end up feeling paranoid anyway. The conversation takes on a dreamlike edge – the out-of-phase thing between Tom and I exacerbated so much by the drug that I start to wonder if dope isn’t the simple explanation for all the misunderstandings of the last few days.