by S J Naudé
Axel gestures with his head to the boom box that the goth leader is carrying on his shoulder. The speakers are vibrating. The music sounds like something emanating from the cadaver-sated tree roots. ‘What’s the song?’
‘“Into the Abyss”.’ The goth has a strong accent. One of the others says something unintelligible. Russian? Etienne wonders. The disciple with the dog angel on his chest has the longest, thinnest arms Etienne has ever seen.
‘So, who’s the band?’ Etienne asks. The goth-god looks at him as if he is surprised that he can speak.
‘The name of the band,’ Axel demands too.
‘The Sex Gang Children.’ The leader smiles defiantly at Axel. He sports a Mohican; his temples are clean-shaven. He is wearing a leather jacket, nothing underneath it: pale skin against leather. Etienne looks at the phalanx of hell soldiers, at their mascara eyes; it looks as if they haven’t slept in a long time.
Axel and Etienne clamber over the trunk, walk past them. Etienne can’t help looking back. The goths also climb over the trunk, disappear in the opposite direction.
‘Russians?’
Axel shakes his head. ‘Finns.’ His hand is clasping Etienne’s upper arm. The excitement in Axel’s fingers has nothing to do with Etienne; his shoulder is simply available. He shakes off the hand.
‘I like that music,’ Etienne says. Not because it is true, but because he is trying to determine Axel’s frequency.
‘It’s goth crap,’ Axel says. ‘Post-punk cemetery rock.’ The music fades away behind them. Axel scrambles over roots, peers into open graves. Whenever Etienne gets close, Axel’s skin resists him like a magnet’s negative pole.
They walk in circles through the forest of graves – over grass that feeds off human remains, beneath lush cadaver foliage. The distance between them is growing with every loop. They walk past graves and fallen tree trunks that they have passed before. The intensity that has built up between them over the past weeks must find new escape routes, Etienne realises. And yet, the idea of the force field dissipating makes him anxious; he is frenziedly seeking a way to recharge the air between them.
Then he is back, the Finnish goth-Jesus. Right ahead of them, leaning against a tree. A black marble mausoleum would have been more suited, Etienne thinks. He no longer has the boom box with him. The disciples are nowhere to be seen. He is wearing a cross around his neck – filigree metal engraving. Etienne stares at it as the goth takes off his leather jacket and drops it on the grass. Etienne looks at Axel. To him, Etienne no longer exists. He looks back at the goth. Words are tattooed on his left arm – in Finnish? Below these are more tattoos: machines that look like medieval torture equipment.
‘What does that say?’ Etienne asks, pointing. His heart is fiercely keeping rhythm. The goth looks down lazily at his own arm.
He directs his answer to Axel, as if he had asked the question. ‘The History of Fucking Machines. Name of my own band in Helsinki.’ Etienne stands closer to see better. He wonders whether the complex machines depicted ever existed. They look like something that Axel could build into an installation.
The Finn leisurely takes a little plastic bag from his pocket, dispenses white powder onto his leather jacket, cuts it into three lines with a razorblade. He rolls a banknote, bends down, sniffs a line. Axel does the same, ignoring Etienne. The goth holds out his note towards Etienne. He shakes his head. Axel bends down again; the third line disappears.
Axel throws his head back and opens his mouth, as if sucking energy from the foliage. Then he bites the goth’s shoulder, drawing blood. He pushes down his own pants, forces the goth’s head to his hips. Etienne looks on; it is all happening fast. The Finn gets rid of his own tight black jeans. He smiles cruelly up at Etienne, reaches out and loosens his belt too. The Finn’s hand is as transparent as fjord ice. He spits milky saliva onto Etienne’s penis. On his right forearm, Etienne notices, a swastika is tattooed. Small and precisely drawn. Etienne starts, ejaculates. Axel reaches for the semen running down the goth’s shoulder, licks it from his fingers like beestings. Brutal calf are the words entering Etienne’s mind. Axel and the goth simultaneously stare at him. Did he say it out loud? Yes, he realises, and in Afrikaans. Brutale kalf. The sounds are still hanging; the death foliage keeps holding the hard r in brutale, like a long note. The Nordic goth ejaculates too, spurred on by the incomprehensible words.
Etienne pulls up his trousers, starts walking away. He is trembling. He can hear a muffled exchange between Axel and the Finn behind him. Etienne is convinced he briefly saw a blue-black heart beating behind the Finn’s ribs: a fist aiming to break through the sternum. He has been dragged into someone else’s dark vision, Etienne thinks: a menacing addition to his Blake images.
Axel catches up with Etienne. His tread is now less furious, less certain than before. Neither of them utters a word. Etienne’s throat is itching; his feet are growing heavier. There was poison in the Finn’s spittle. It is seeping through his skin, starting to circulate.
On their way back to the station they stop in front of an empty Georgian house. Axel takes Etienne by the arm; he pulls away. The pointing is crumbling, the wooden window frames are as dry as bone. They press their faces against panes, hands shading their eyes: bare walls and wooden floors, all in washed-out grey. Axel stands back, looks up. He is assessing it for studio space, Etienne knows, plotting the trajectory of the sun relative to the upper floors’ windows.
Axel tries to take Etienne’s hand. Etienne slackens his fingers; Axel lets go. They walk around the house. There is an unusual silence in this house, Etienne thinks: the inverse of the sounds of birth and death. And then there they are in the back garden: the goths, their lower bodies bisected by waist-length grass. Everybody stops in their tracks. Like two sets of purchasers at a show house, Etienne thinks, on the verge of making competing offers. Only the estate agent is missing.
Etienne turns on his heels, walks back to the street. It is getting colder; he turns up his collar. When he is close to the train station, he looks back. Axel is on his heels, the goths on his. ‘They are following us,’ Etienne says. Axel shrugs. ‘Perhaps,’ Etienne continues, ‘you should move into that house with them. With the Finnish Jesus and his entourage. A perfect little family.’
‘Fuck you,’ Axel says. There is the rumbling of thunder; they look up. The sky is aubergine-coloured.
They get off at London Bridge station, walk to Bermondsey Street in silence. The goths weren’t on the same train. Even so, Etienne keeps looking back. He is dragging his feet, slowing down as they approach the house.
Chapter 13
The afternoon light has green and purple tints. The well is breathing poison, which is rising and forming a dome over the city. The City’s buildings are gleaming coldly. On the roof in Bermondsey Street, Axel is looking bewildered. They are sitting close to the edge, pedestrians passing below. Axel rests his head in Etienne’s lap. He pushes Axel away, gets up and kicks a dead bird in an arc into the street.
Etienne starts pacing back and forth. His chest is feeling pinched; there are pins and needles in his fingers – the toxic Finnish saliva, no doubt. Somewhere beneath Axel and himself, tectonic plates have shifted. Etienne wants to shout out words that smell of sulphur, recriminations that would further disrupt the landscape between them.
Axel takes Etienne by the shoulders, forces him to a halt. He looks Etienne in the eye. He is trying to measure the seismic activity in my chest, Etienne thinks. He turns away. I am going now, he wants to say. And I’m not coming back.
Just as he opens his mouth, there is a ruckus in the street. A dog running at frenetic speed. Just ahead of him, a city fox – one of those that live under hedges – is tearing down the street. The dog has an awkward run: half-cripple, nose on the ground. He storms straight into a lamp post, before finding the scent again and charging off. The distance between dog and fox increases. They disappear around a corner.<
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‘Foxes,’ Axel says. ‘So quiet and slight, always on the margins of one’s consciousness. Until, that is, they start wailing in the mating season . . .’ Copulating foxes: that explains the howling he sometimes hears in the community garden at night, Etienne realises.
‘Sometimes they become stuck,’ says Axel. ‘During mating. Then they keep standing like that for hours, their backsides attached, trying to pull apart. They become frantic, nails digging in – conjoined twins who must tear apart, even if it kills them.’ Etienne looks at a train rumbling over the viaduct into London Bridge station.
I’m leaving now, he wants to say. Axel is too quick: ‘But then, at times, they just stand there, as if nothing’s amiss. A meek double-headed animal. But they always ultimately escape each other.’
A commotion behind the house. They move to the other side of the roof. In the alleyway behind the backyard, the fox has become trapped. The dog jumps at the fox, but he miscalculates, hits a wall. His skull smacks against the bricks; he drops to the ground. The fox slips away.
I’m going, Etienne finally wants to say. What emerges is: ‘What’s wrong? Why does the dog hurt itself so badly?’
‘He hangs around here. Indiscriminately chases foxes and rats. Completely fucking deaf and blind. Have a look at his eyes when he comes around again. And his scores of old injuries. Broke a leg once, then lay down in the tunnel for weeks on end. Crawled into the electrical substation, among the live cables. I sent some of the guys to splint the leg. To feed him, take him water. Until the leg healed, albeit crookedly. Then he crawled out, started all over again . . .’ Etienne looks at the dog, still motionless. There is blood on his jaw. The fox has long since found a safe hollow somewhere. Etienne regrets not having his camera. It could have made a closing scene for his film – perhaps he can still add a scene.
Axel turns towards Etienne. ‘Stay over,’ he says. ‘Stay with me tonight.’ There is dread in his voice.
‘You knew they were going to be there, didn’t you? In the cemetery. The Finn with his disciples.’ The depth of rage in Etienne’s own voice startles him. He ignores the remorse in Axel’s eyes. ‘You knew he’d be there. You went there to meet him.’ Axel doesn’t reply. ‘And, while we’re at it, why don’t you tell me where you go at night when you’re not at the hospital?’
Axel remains mute. ‘I have to go now,’ Etienne says and lowers himself through the hatch. From the studio he looks up at the rectangle of light. He walks down the stairs, out the front door. Axel doesn’t call him back. Is he standing on the roof, his toes curling around the edge? Etienne doesn’t look back when he walks down Bermondsey Street. To this house he will never return.
Etienne stops at the Tavern, downs a few beers. Before he knows it, he is in a street near the Square. It is almost dark. He looks at his watch: he has lost two hours. Did he encounter Jimmy Somerville again? Did they slip their tongues into each other’s cheeks? The Finnish poison is warping time, he thinks. He conjures up a picture of the narrow-torsoed goth. Like an animal with fatal bacteria in its mouth. Etienne’s clothes smell of smoke and stale beer. He is seeing himself through a lens, angled at a Dutch tilt. He is feeling nauseous, bruised. Under his clothes, black-green blots are forming, of that he is certain. Necrosis. Or sepsis. He lifts up his shirt under a street light. The skin underneath the trail of hair descending from his navel looks pink and healthy.
He carefully walks further, doubting the ground underneath his feet. In the Square he first sees the back of No. 52, across the community garden. There is light in his bedroom window. How strange: he left in the daylight hours; no lights were left on. He walks around, goes up the stairs. Patrick’s door is open. He shrugs. ‘Sorry, mate, I couldn’t prevent it. I’m not the owner – no one is. So it goes . . .’ Etienne frowns, ascends the next flight of stairs.
Music is sounding from his room: The Sex Gang Children. Outside the door, on the small landing, his drums have been dropped in a pile. And his clothes.
Etienne opens the door. Inside are the Finns. All five of them.
‘What the fuck?’
The chieftain, the Nordic goth-Jesus, walks right up to Etienne. He places a soft palm against Etienne’s cheek. ‘We’re living here now,’ he says. ‘Time for you to go elsewhere.’
‘What do you mean?’ He slaps the hand away. ‘It’s my place. My stuff.’ He gestures towards the drums and clothes on the landing. (Certainly not all his clothes. Where are the rest?) The bedding has apparently been appropriated. So too the television, videocassette recorder and records.
The Finn smiles patronisingly. Etienne wants to crush his gaunt face. ‘Your place?’ He shakes his head. ‘You sound like someone from a different world, friend.’
The accent hurts Etienne’s ears. The mumbled vowels, the slippery consonants. And he is not this man’s friend. He wants to enter, but the thin arm is blocking his way. ‘Go and talk to your friend,’ the Finnish Jesus says. ‘The one whose seed I drank today, whose saliva I can still taste. Ask him. He gave me this address; he let us have the place.’
‘Let you have it? Do you think Axel is the master of housing in this city? Or in your weird fucking sub-world? In never-never land, where everyone wears black?’ The Finn’s irises are phosphorescent green. His friends are gathering around him. What an absurd little gang, Etienne thinks. Like the youngsters in the film Children of the Damned. Unstoppable, as chilly as the North Pole. Eyes glassy, bones as brittle as ice.
‘Property,’ the Finn says and slowly shakes his head. ‘The root of all evil. Of all injustice and oppression. There is room for you at your friend’s. Don’t leave those who are lost out in the cold, let the children come to—’
Etienne laughs scornfully. ‘Don’t even bother with the pseudo-Biblical nonsense. Really. Where I come from, I got more of that crap than I could digest in a lifetime. And even that was more convincing, the church-picnic nonsense of my youth.’ All of this he says in Afrikaans. He has made his calculations: he will, for now, have to back off. ‘I’ll be back,’ he says in English. ‘I’ll be back.’ He lets some steam out of his voice: ‘Just give me the letters. Please. My mother’s letters. Two piles under the bed.’ The Fin wavers for a moment, then brings him the envelopes. Etienne points at the storyboards on the walls. “That too.” The Fin’s eyes glow; he turns around and rips off the pictures. One gets a long tear. He presses them against Etienne’s chest.
Etienne takes them, retreats. The Fin closes the door. The music has fallen silent. Etienne slips the storyboards under his shirt, where they are safe against his stomach. He looks down the stairs. Patrick’s marijuana clouds are drifting up; he is peering out into the corridor. When Etienne calls his name, he slams his door.
He goes to No. 42, knocks. Glenda opens the door. He tells her what has happened. She shrugs. ‘That’s how it goes.’ She looks impatient. He can smell something on the stove. Green peppers and onions, cloves and basil. A vegetarian stew? He is waiting for her to invite him in, give him an apron so that he may help her cook. He wants her to ask him to stay for dinner, offer him a sofa for the night. And, tomorrow morning over breakfast, to ask him to move in. Etienne looks over Glenda’s shoulder, towards the afternoon glow in the rooms behind her. Hilde asks a question from inside. ‘It’s no one,’ Glenda says over her shoulder. ‘Just the guy who used to live in No. 52.’ She turns back to Etienne. ‘I have to go.’ She starts closing the door.
‘A bag,’ he says through the crack. ‘Please. For my clothes. Just a supermarket bag.’
‘We don’t keep plastic bags.’
He wedges his foot in the door. He wants to enter, wants to sit down in the warm light. Wants to hear Hilde’s stories over a steaming plate of food. Or the stories she ought to be telling. About hunting lodges, bison heads and reindeer horns mounted on walls, valleys shrouded in fog, snowy peaks in the winter sun, musty rooms, oil lamps glimmering behind heavy curtains, mould
ering brocade, tables with silver service. Later, over coffee, Glenda would have to tell the story of the Square again. Of the early days, when they had to tame it, carve domesticity from the rubble. Stories about resistance and protest, love and familiarity. About the oases of inner thighs and cheeks. About the vegetables grown in stolen gardens and the music they have heard over the years . . .
She looks down at his foot in the door, lets go. ‘Wait here.’ She disappears, brings back a dirty cotton bag. He removes his foot; she closes the door. He hovers around, looking at the ivy snaking up walls. He walks around aimlessly, peering into windows, lingering in the shadows. The Square has become lusher since his arrival.
He returns to No. 52. Outside his room, he bundles as many pieces of clothing as he can into the bag. He feels the brittle paper of the storyboards under his shirt, only now realises that he has left the blue file behind at Axel’s place in Bermondsey Street. He feels relieved that it is there. There is music behind the closed door. He knocks on Patrick’s door. He is on his bed, half-vanished in smoke. ‘Can I store my drums with you for a while?’ He nods, looks on while Etienne carries his stuff into the room. There are a few new scratch marks on the drums, Etienne notices.
He stands outside Vauxhall station with his bag of clothes, next to the Elephant & Castle pub. Inside the pub, as on every other evening, a drag show is in progress. Gloria Gaynor and Madonna songs are being played behind black windows.
This is how it is when one doesn’t have a home, he thinks. He is hardly the first person to experience it. He is feeling calm and clear. Like someone who has been fasting for weeks. He wants to ascribe it to the Finnish goth poison, but he has to admit, at last, that he hasn’t really been poisoned. His limbs are still working; his facial muscles aren’t paralysed. It feels as if the entire city is made of glass, perfectly transparent. He keeps standing there for a long time, looking at buses lit up like aquariums.