by Alan Duff
Driving alongside the sea for a bit, pretty flat; houses and apartment blocks other side. The fountain some ways out in sea surround in proud display of some straight’s ingenuity and others’ imagination. (Whilst we …) Jube slowing to make the turn up a hill, with houses stuck to it. Up a steep climb, a sharp hairpin, more of the climb, a church (hello, God), some shops, and a cigarette sign reminding Sonny to light up while he could since it’d be but a few minutes more if that. But not lighting as he customarily did for Jube, not this time, it didn’t fit. Not an act of even mild friendship. Staring ahead as he waited for Jube to protest where was his smoke. But Jube said nothing, nor did he light up his own, they just sat beside him, between the pair, on the torn upholstery, a packet of Pall Mall filter and a Bic lighter a yellow one.
Sonny sucked in the smoke as deeply as he’d ever. Held it there for longer too. (Anyone’d think this was my last smoke.) As Jube slowed and Sonny’s eyes went left, looking for the house, told Jube the number from the telephone book, it’s thirty-five. Then there it was, just another letterbox with brass numbers on it: 35, and a dugout of driveway deep into cliff face turned to a double carport, and Sonny heard Jube gasp as he went, oh well, swung hard left and parked beside a sleek car, a sports model with a soft top and red skin.
Jube switched off. They sat there for an eternity of only moments, waiting for something till it didn’t happen, then they got out at the same time, paused, both, at their opened doors and looked at each other. One’s eyes glistened with tear film, the other’s were hard to read, empty and yet filled with something. Detached, that’s how Jube’s eyes looked. Detached and cold. Let’s go, his mouth with its moustache removed from when the doctor said it had to go to lessen the chance of infection now a few days of stubble, light brown stubble. And the smell of the rum Jube’d been drinking on the way down of six and a bit hours of fast driving, with Sonny sipping tokenly so Jube wouldn’t call him a piker, straight from the bottle, a forty-ounce one, and over half drunk, mostly by Jube, now fuming off him this mid-morning in autumn Wellington.
A last look at each other that just happened that way: of Sonny trying to read right into Jube and Jube in turn giving back, and mouthing the words, This is it, mate. And so for an instant his eyes looked warm and of a kind to those observing him. Out of the carport. Steps. Must be over a hundred of them. Concrete faced with grey stone almost black.
Stubbing his hardly smoked cigarette out on the ground, Sonny went after Jube. (Man oh man, but this don’t feel right.)
Lawn bathed in a weak sunlight, chill air with light breeze in it. Trees studded everywhere off to their climbing left, a line of them along the boundary to the right. House visible only in part, owing to the angle as well obscuring of trees. Breaths the faintest of vapour cloud frequent in puffing expel. Smell of Jube’s rummy breath like a continuous cloud Sonny had to step up into. Sonny getting the thought – absurd it was too – that his own breath was barely tainted by the same smell since he’d hardly touched the vile, straight-from-the-bottle stuff. Absurd because he got this image of himself kissing Mrs Harland. (Kissing? Me?) He wondered if he might be going (finally) mad.
Breath cloud and booze stench and labouring lungs rasping a three-part lifetime of smoking. Insects in the cool air. Sweat starting to feel like sloshing around in sticky liquid.
In constant tree shadow of boundary line, snatches of lawn in glittering dew jewel. Other parts dark patches of shadow and foliage overhang. So very private. Such a twinned intrusion, one of them thinking, though more as a feeling than in words since words had left him some little time back. Intrusion turning to violation when Jube began swearing, Fuck. Fuck. This is fucking hard work. Though he strode on, those long, grubby-jeaned legs stepping up, two at a time.
Flurry of bird disturbance from nearby tree. A pause in Sonny’s stepping at eyecatching of birds on wing, an outburst of twitter from tree shape, soaring into safety of sky. Of blue sky gap between white and grey cloud islands. Background drone of city traffic a faint register. Not a neighbouring house to be seen, just trees. And well-tended lawn in between.
Sea slice. With tall building segment, or broken clear against a blue and white background of sky. Sky, and two thieves moving and panting in its lower reaches.
Nearing the top so Jube’s head going from left to right. In animal mode, for danger signs. His breathing sounding like his original rib-broken pain. Couple more steps to go, house very visible from the angle, in cream and broken by timber brown and grey shingle roof in fan shape, a cleavage, an inventive imagination gone not quite wild since it all looked controlled. No, balanced. (Balanced.) Biggish tree on the left. Jube stepping off the pathway into tree shadow, and straight down on his knees with hands and heaving breath. And Sonny following suit.
Balies, Jube puffed, as he straightened and pulled his balaclava over his head and down around his neck. Sonny did same. On with gloves; Jube’s black leather, Sonny’s grey wool. Not planned, just what they’d found at home. Home now so far away, and yet as if they’d never left. (As if we’re still there, but we’re here too, we’re in the everywheres of our thieving comings and goings, that’s why this sense of being back at the flat: it’s cos we bring ourselves with us. Our intentioned, but unchanged selves.) Breathing easier. Regained. Lessgo. Jube. Jube in command.
Up onto a paved area, a kind of big courtyard. The breathing much better but the sweat like he, and no doubt Jube too, was soaking in it. Clothing clinging to skin, salt taste in mouth, stinging eyes, and woollen-enclosed neck and throat throttling. Across the paved area, which they’d not noticed last visit, night that it was. Front door entrance, with its little overhang walkway of pitched roof with same grey shingle covering, on wooden poles that green plant curled from the ground to the underside of roof. Same as last time except the little light of doorbell didn’t glow like an eye in the dark of last time here. Not in the broad daylight. And not when the door was wide open.
And music issued from the shadowed opening. Classical music.
Into Sonny’s heart it floated, at first sweet and highly familiar, then it turned discordant as it somehow played against a clashing background of his own memoried recordings, stolen (stolen) from this very house. Like some messaging dreamscape message trying to tell him something, except he wasn’t hearing, not with the clashing of sound between reality and memory; stolen memory. Jube? Man, I don’t like this, his whispering seeming so stupid of this bright-enough mid-morning. But Jube was already moving.
Sonny still standing there; caught in this confusion of song-pouring memory, and sight too of that door, wide-open slab entrance it could be a cave opening; churn of pictures in his head, none of it marrying: snow coming down and a man’s deep bass voice ringing out in his triumph of himself over God even as he seemingly sung to Him, but clashing with the stringed orchestral sounds issuing from the shadow cave-like opening that Jube was nearing, as though everything was slowed down even as things seemed opposite, inside his mind, a picture of piano being played, by her, her inside, unsuspecting, she was in the picture, as was her daughter, the one with the funny shortened nickname of Ants, she with the wiring all over her teeth how they do these rich kids, yet untouched of self-confidence for that.
Messaging. That he, this man caught confused here, and that man moving forward on his cautious creeping furtive toes, two dudes transported emselves a furious six hours’ drive down the main state highway, two dudes come from a structureless social pit, from mess of meaning, ruin of lives, bereft of values, from a dark she could not possibly know. Let alone that it was upon her.
Sonny turned looked down the long steep of panting climb; it could have been some dark-tiled passage they’d ascended, into some kind of unknown and yet it was a known (if only I could tell myself what it is). Wondering if he should bound down the steps, get the hell out of here while he could. Back the other way at Jube, to see him stopped there and glaring at Sonny and mouthing obscenities at what the fuck did Sonny think he was fucki
ng doing. While behind Jube, coming out that door opening, stringed sounds so unrelated to him and Sonny. Sounds.
Head cocked just to one side, hands and half raised arms like a Mother Mary statue (from that school I used to walk past, and the everyday surprise of seeing Her there, enclosed in this little concrete surround, in blue-painted gown, woman, Woman in stone forever). Like that she looked. Except she had an apron, a tartan one, and her surround was the broad reverberating of strings, orchestrated strings.
And Jube moving swiftly across the brown-tiled kitchen floor. The woman still with eyes closed in her world of ordered sound, still with her arms bent at elbow in supplicated Virgin Mary posture. Then not a sound as Jube took her, with an arm around her throat and other hand clamping over her mouth. Turning her to Sonny, so he saw her eyes, how utterly surprised they were (lady, I’m sorry), the terror in them; Jube walking her back so he was against a timber-lined wall that had a painting part obscured by Jube’s balaclavaed head. His mouth was moving but Sonny couldn’t hear, not at first, till he realised Jube was wanting the music turned down. Or off. Sonny fixed on the woman, her changing of eye reaction: from utter surprise to terror then closing in a kind of despair, but opening again to a narrowing that looked like determination. All this in the space of a few seconds. A witness, Sonny was, to a process of social conditioning, he was certain.
He moved to the divide between kitchen and dining room, feeling so mixed up; as if in an instant he was thrust back to the worst of confounded childhood. Of not knowing anything. Of being this thing, caught between a nowhere and another nowhere. So he moved thinking only shit! (Shit, shit, shit!) Like a kid deeply upset without understanding at what.
Into the living room, going automatically to where they’d last time removed the stereo system. Replaced. Looked different. But a volume knob is a volume knob. Turned it down, not too much, figuring they might need some cover sound. Head spinning. Going back to the kitchen, eyes seeing nothing, not with clarity.
Lady lady, don’t you be getting clever now and thinking you’ll scream, ya hear? Jube talking in Mrs Harland’s ear, his voice slightly muffled from the balaclava, and hissing through the gaps of punched- and kicked-out teeth. Hand still across her mouth. His eyes roaming as he spoke as if indifferent. As if he wasn’t doing what he was doing, and worse: as if he didn’t give two damns.
Her eyes registered Sonny’s arrival. He stopped a few feet from her. Could smell her. Familiar too. Of the perfume he took in of her bedroom last time. But not able to hold her eyes because he thought he saw pleading in them.
You the only one here? Jube asked her.
Her head moved she was.
Money, honey, hahaha, Jube even able to chuckle. We came for the money. Now, I’m gonna take my hand away and if you scream, then – he was shaking his head, he looked shocking with his head completely covered, as Sonny knew he too would look – then, lady, you are gonna get hurt. She shook her head. Her eyes said she knew better than that.
Jube’s hand came cautiously away, hovered a little ways off, so Sonny had to move to his right to get her face. Of no lipstick, nor make-up, as fresh and natural as the vase of flowers on the bench behind her. Green eyes, confirming the photograph, the home-made video. Sonny feeling an aching for her, but of sympathy and guilt, not longing. Looking at her mouth as it opened, as though wanting not to upset Jube, so careful. I – I – I’m sorry, her mouth broke into an apologetic quick smile, and Sonny thinking please don’t be sorry for my sake, since Jube was behind her, face too damned close to her ear for Sonny’s liking. As if Jube was gonna do something typical of him, like feel her up. Sonny thinking he’d grab that glass vase and break it over Jube’s head he got dirty about this. His eyes kept flicking from the contrast of faces, of the woman’s clear skin and proud cheekbones, her beauty, and Jube’s blue eyes with their scar-tissue marks and eyebrows both cut in two by scars, looking out from the slot in the bali. Reminding Sonny how he must look himself.
I’m sorry, I lost my voice. Pause. I hope you’ll understand in the, uh, circ – Get on with it, lady. The money.
Well, it’s like this – I said get on with it. I am trying. Then try harder. We don’t want your life story. Eyes grinning across at Sonny.
Her breasts came up in a heave of sigh. (She must be sucking in courage, fortitude from herself.) Sonny unable to cancel out the picture he got in his mind of this woman naked; her breasts, not large not small, not perfect neither. Her. This person. (I’ve seen her naked?) But she was talking again, and the image went.
We were burgled. Sometime ago. Burgled? Jube came in all false mocking innocence, eyes smiling over at Sonny. Ya hear that, pal? she was burgled. Grinning behind the navy face covering. (That’s funny?) Oh now that’s a shame, lady, burgled. And what, you gonna say they cleaned you out you’re now broke? Bankrupt? Eyes laughing away to Sonny again, and Sonny hoping his cold return’d tell Jube he wasn’t funny.
Look, I – I’m trying to tell you there is no money in the house. Well there is, I have a couple of hundred in my purse. After the burglary we – You stopped leaving money around the joint, right, lady? Yes. Yes, she says. Ya hear her, man? Yes she says. So what we gonna do about this, lady? I – She stopped herself. Side to side head moving showing her frustration, not to mention the fear that’d be running through her.
Ya hear her, mate, she says – Man, I ain’t deaf. So let’s get the hell out. Out? Yeah, out. Out where? Come on, man, you know – No fucking way, bud. She’s lying. You’re lying, aren’t ya? You just don’t – I do not lie. She said it to Sonny since Jube was behind her, said it in a queenly manner, of pride and outrage that she should be so insulted. Man, she’s not lying, I can tell, Sonny trying to end it. Ya hear my mate there, lady? He doesn’t want to stay around. Again Sonny saw her breasts heave up; came out on the air she expelled. I should think that is wise. Stopped there. Oh? Jube wanting more. Oh? when she didn’t offer more. Oh, yet again when still she remained silent. Hahaha, she’s packing a sad now. Jube as if this wasn’t really happening or it was but it wasn’t real, wasn’t for real. Just tv. A bit out of a movie. And this wasn’t her house, it was all of theirs. And she wasn’t afraid, she wasn’t really being terrorised, it was just part of the act. How Sonny saw Jube’s perception of this. Going back in his mind the past few weeks of Jube in his physical healing, hearing snatches of Jube in kind of confession, of personal aspect, of his childhood, how he could never figure if he loved his mother or hated her, but since he hated his father, hahaha, that’d do for both of the buggers, HAHAHA! That laugh of Jube’s echoing in Sonny’s mind. And the calm way he said, Well we’ll all go take a look-see, shall we? telling Sonny he was right: that Jube was living this no different to a little fantasy, a dream sequence, an act straight from a tv screen.
Though it occurred to Sonny as he followed the two that his own role had a distant dreamlike quality to it, and that he was half in this moving moment and half somewhere in his peculiar head. (I might even be crazy.)
The study. That’s where Jube was leading them, or she was in front and Jube directed her from behind, That-away, lady, straight ahead, hahaha. Turning a look over his shoulder, eyes wrinkled in smug smile.
Passing into the fantastic scope of living area, but didn’t look the same as last time. Not anywhere the same. Not with her in front, being pushed along by the denim-clad figure behind her. (In her own house.) Thisaway, Lady Muck. Still with that chuckle. And with an old familiar swagger straight from a prison exercise yard, straight from a study (comic) on crims, their mannerisms, how they each tell a different story and how every crim comes to the same body-language conclusion. (Of being this. Being that. But none of which they are. Can never be. Ya are what ya are …) Which was why, Sonny thinking, he was going along with this kind of kidnapping thing, hostage taking of a woman in her own home: (Cos ya are what ya are. No madda how hard ya try to be otherwise.) Resigned to it. This life. This way of living. Even as he followed the two he had this sense of
deep resignation to life being just another dreadful situation, and what did it matter what the details were? Cells’re the same, they’re all the fuckin same, only have a different name of prison on the inmates’ lips; only have a locational difference, like this is crime and only the play-out of it is different. As so will the sentence.
Piano. Wow. Really took Sonny when everything else was barely registering. Only Jube and the poor controlled woman in her own home. She who was in a man’s mind sat at that instrument, with her daughter beside, talking, introducing themselves, then playing. And mirroring on its upraised lid not a bad day outside too.
Well here we are. Would ya mind pulling them curtains across, my good man? Jube breezy. Too breezy. Sonny stepping around both them, Oops, sorry, for brushing against the hip of Mrs Harland, and wincing with embarrassment at Jube laughing at that. Oh yeah, man: Oops, sorry. Oops, he’s sorry, Lady Muck. His laugh cut short at her telling him, Do you mind not calling me that. This situation is awful enough without you adding insulting terms.
Ohh! HAHAHAHAHA! Did ya hear her, mate? Did you hear her? At the same time the room went into a gloom when Sonny pulled the curtains across. Ooooo, it’s gone very dark in here … HAHAHAHAHAHA!! Jube’s laughter seemed to echo in the small confines. Sonny trying to find the switch for the desk lamp. Found it. On. World a tiny and different place.
Let there be light, Jube in a flat voice, like the change of light had got to him too, turned this moment into something else. Cranked it up a bit, or down. And Mrs Harland’s face a different smooth-skinned hue: soft yellowish from flower bursts in the curtains, and bits of hair over her forehead doubled up by throwing shadow. White blouse in the natural light more brushed with the same yellow; so the breast outline and cleavage shadow more marked. Sonny swallowing. And hearing Jube’s breathing changed. And since nothing was being spoken … Looking at Jube’s eyes, now harder to read; and his tall, denimed figure looking more ominous when before he looked like what he was – a galoot. She kept brushing at the strands of hair on her forehead, and they kept falling back to where they were. Books and leather smell and woman scent and booze stench and body sweat, and three’s different breathing.