The Book of Malachi

by T. C. Farren

  I lean into the clipper, pit my strength against his fingernails as big as Calabar pods.

  ‘Remember Conscious Clause, if Raizier betrays you.’ He drops his voice. ‘Whatever you do, just don’t fall in love like Dominic.’

  My heart freezes in its cage. I breathe through dry ice.

  ‘Be careful, boy.’

  It feels as though the floor is sliding away beneath my feet.

  The fat Australian is pressing against his cage, straining to hear. ‘Did you say Dominic?’

  ‘What are you going to do, Barry? Send all your men?’

  The giant laughs hard enough to shake the Wapakwa Mountains. Barry flushes an extravagant pink.

  The giant shackles his humour. ‘Sorry, Barry, I take back that comment.’ He withdraws his hands, gives me his monumental feet. His skin is slightly dry, as if the hammer and chisel have scattered rock powder.

  Barry boasts to anyone who might be interested, ‘They called me Farin Sarki in the oil basin. White King.’ He glowers at the giant. ‘And I didn’t need a university degree for any of it.’

  The giant nods, further assuaging the pink man’s hurt. ‘We’re all the same here. All in the same big, ugly boat.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Barry says morosely.

  The giant turns his back on Barry, confides to me, ‘Off the boat, not so. Some of us are dangerous criminals. Some are casualties of corrupt justice systems. Any democratic country would grant them asylum.’ He ticks the names off on his fingers. ‘Samuel. Andride. Eulalie. Lolie.’ He pauses, considers. ‘Vicki.’

  The poisonous mermaid? Is he joking?

  The giant sighs. ‘Not me. I should still be in the Addis Ababa Penal Facility.’

  Speaking of penile, his baby toe is the size of a small one. The giant waves at the prisoners, shakes his head sadly. ‘This is not justice.’

  It’s like the rivets have popped in this metal universe, leaving me swimming in the ferocious sea. The giant was a High Court judge for thirteen years. How can I not believe him?

  * * *

  I dig my sneakers into the floor, move to the skinny man, whose rash has faded substantially. He has to let go of his limp penis to give his hands to me. I clip his nails mechanically, my thoughts sliding and slapping against my cranium.

  What was that stuff about Dominic?

  I release the skinny man’s hands. They flutter instantly to his drooping treasure. The wind sends a sustained, high note through our metal seams.

  What the heck did happen to Dominic? Now that I think of it, the entire rig is strangely silent about him, just as they are silent about this hurricane.

  How will I get someone to speak of him?

  A laugh curdles inside me. The irony of my frustration strikes even me, the man who vexes people every day with his silence.

  * * *

  I groom a young woman who looks like she has black liner on her eyes, the offspring of a cruel black cat. But her hands are small and soft. Childlike. I shift my eyes to my own smooth hand. Not real, a ghostly glove. I try to dissolve into mist, but Shikorina the child killer catches me and holds me under with her sucking, translucent eyes. For a moment I feel like I can’t breathe.

  Shikorina clucks sympathetically. ‘Poor baby.’

  I force myself to drop her hatch down, latch the sheath onto it.

  Shikorina’s hair is matted and moth-eaten. It is the madman’s beard my father grew for two months to play the Earl of Gloucester in our production of Hamlet. I drag my eyes from it, but my memory bites me behind my knees, snatches pieces off my hips.

  They shattered my father’s hip.

  Stop.

  A gigantic wave rocks the foundations of the rig.

  I fish out a white towel, pinch the ends. Scrub it roughly over her skin. The circular blueish marks on her arms and chest prove that she is not a gentle mother but a hideous, slimy creature that strangles its prey with anaconda knots. I throw her towel in the bucket, drop it on the trolley. I march from the hall of horror, slam the door behind me.

  * * *

  I suck some ordinary air, compose myself for human company. These hands before me are not gossamer gloves but bone and blood. I have got to find another way to get through the afternoon.

  * * *

  * * *

  I must have had a psychic vision of the lunch to come. Janeé has served up piles of rice with pink tentacles in curry spice. I manage to take my seat at the table. I have never in my life seen an octopus except in ancient books, but Chincha told me once he found one on Ladebi beach. He said he put it in his bag, but it started to stink. His father made him throw it from the window of the bus and it landed on a man walking from church in a suit and hat.

  Tamba bangs in and throws himself next to me. ‘Geez, what’s this? Monster of the deep? Did you wrestle this yourself, Janeé?’ He laughs loudly.

  Janeé chews her tentacles like she is feeding on Tamba’s own chopped bits tossed with rice. Tamba pitches the pink pieces into a sighing heap. Somewhere the wind screams through thick sea salt while I glaze my eyes, pick out my rice, flick the grains into my mouth.

  Janeé frowns. ‘Don’t you like octopus? Romano’s got a net down at the shark pit.’ She condemns me to a caste that has no taste for gourmet snakes, ‘The bosses love octopus.’

  Where the heck is the shark pit?

  ‘We have the right to refuse, Janeé,’ Tamba says. ‘Not many other rights going around on this rig.’

  Janeé glares at him. ‘We are lucky to be here.’

  ‘You’re right, Janeé. We’re fucking lucky.’

  I get that feeling of tectonic plates shifting beneath my feet, continents splitting off and drifting out of sight. I try to find my footing, spoon in some oily rice. A coat of grease forms on the roof of my mouth. Sadly, I have no tongue to remove it.

  Perhaps I should become slippery, slither away when the prisoners try to catch me, like Kontar and me when we wrestled near the river. We covered ourselves in red clay that made us so slick our hands slid off each other in useless, laughing swipes. The only way to win the wrestle was to pin the other boy to the ground, chest to chest until he surrendered.

  * * *

  Yes. This afternoon I will be nimble, fleet of foot. If they try to sink a tooth or diseased claw into me I will smear myself with clay, slide from their grip.

  I swallow my last mouthful of rice. I slip off the bench, thank Janeé with a lubricated nod, leave with footsteps so slick I could be barefoot. Not even Olivia’s false smile finds a place to stick.

  ‘Cheers, Malachi,’ she calls after me.

  I drift through the wind screaming in a fit of fury. I raise the red lanyard, let the key card do its trick.

  * * *

  I slip through the door, pad past Shikorina, who is curled in a foetal position, staring. Her eyes try to cling to my shining clay, but they slide off the bank into her own dark bathwater.

  I groom three more prisoners on the toes of my sneakers, ready to duck a flying punch, a spoken flame, a tilt of the floor in the metal hall. I release the feet of a red-haired man with orangutan arms and a contagion of freckles, pad to the next prisoner.

  ‘Are you Bhajoan?’

  I lock my head to my spine to stop it from snapping. The man looks my age; premature white hair at his temples.

  ‘Were you perhaps a member of ANIM?’

  The mud dries on me. Anger whips away my spit so my mouth feels like it is coated with bitter cocoa.

  The prisoner nods. ‘I am Andride. I was working with the ANIM soldiers from the Nachimale forest.’

  My breath rasps through the powdery dryness.

  ‘I was a trained social worker, but I taught them wood art.’

  A roar rumbles in my chest. I jam the brace onto his cage, try to veil my hatred, but a machine-gun glint escapes my eyelids.

  ‘The military shot down my whole woodwork class. Thirteen of them.’ There is a hollow in his eyes, a vacancy left by his guerrilla friends. ‘They blamed
me.’

  I pinch a half moon of flesh between the clipper blades. He talks like I am about to sever his fingers one by one. ‘I was helping them, Malachi.’ This is what the English call barking up the wrong tree.

  I could pick neat, semi-circular holes in him for teaching murdering pigs to carve African figures for curio stalls in airports. I snatch away the clipper, unravel a white towel to its full length. I scrub the man’s feet, half blind with fury.

  Of course I have kept abreast of Bhajoan politics. The ANIM lost their war six years after I lost my whole universe. Of course I heard how the guerrillas tried to creep out and live among the factory communities, but the people lynched them for burning Kapwa workers as if they were imperialist assets, factors in production, not human beings who take their places on the factory floor for the sake of their children. Showing up every day in caps and overalls for the sake of love, LOVE! I want to scream.

  If someone lit a match we would both burst into flames, Andride with his wooden carvings, me with the dry, caked mud on my skin.

  But surely this man is lying. Surely he is guilty?

  If so, this is one stupid irony, like a monkey’s wedding, shining through the soaking rain. Irony like a monkey’s bum, an unexpected bright blue.

  * * *

  I muse furiously about metaphors such as these, cut a trail of flying nails to the priest burner’s disfigured fingers.

  ‘Whosoever kills a soul, it shall be as if he had killed all mankind . . .’

  The man is quoting from his disappearing Qur’an but he can’t catch me, I am sealed in wet clay, as slimy and slick as the mud bream at the bottom of the Tantwa River.

  ‘Allah forbids murder and I am his son. But do you know who the judge believed?’

  In his eyes I see Bibles burning, their skin-thin pages melting faster than my own bargain books.

  ‘The tourists in a big hotel looking through a window.’ He shakes his head. ‘Stupid, those tourists, you know those fat ones from the United States and Japan?’

  His talk of fat tourists seems to relax him.

  ‘Sometimes my elevator could only carry three.’ His fingers cramp again, perhaps on the Catholic priest’s vestments. ‘He hung on to me. Please believe me.’ His pleas gather speed down my slippery back, fly off to kingdom come.

  * * *

  As I cut and clean, the giant watches me with the eyes of my large grandfather, as if I was a familiar-looking boy from an alien tribe. I finish two more prisoners, make it without incident to the big beauty who entranced Dominic. I capture her handsome hands, glance up at the glass. Tamba is watching me closely.

  Relax, Tamba. There is no danger of me falling in love with the girl on the side of the bus. Firstly, one-way love is just not possible. Secondly, I have an FM radio waiting to shock my libido into subservience.

  Still, I am careful to keep my eyes off the latent strength of her ankles. The glimpse of moist pink between her legs, of course, leaves me dead. I have never, ever had sex, but I have no interest in going into the bush. I have erased those erotic visions with electricity. The same applies to her nipples. They might just as well have been made at a rubber factory.

  I groom Charmayne impassively, boast to the spy above, See, this beauty does not move me.

  ‘It was the tallest office block in Bulawayo City. Worth fifty million to each of us.’

  Her eyebrows soar in savage arcs – violent, somehow, in this end-of-tether atmosphere. Her half-tamed, half-rebel hair makes her look madder, more unkempt than the child killer, even.

  ‘My partners fought like two goats. Pete slipped off the roof. He dragged Bongi with him –’

  ‘Don’t believe her.’

  It is the Ethiopian runner with gnarled muscles that seem laid atop his skin.

  Charmayne snaps, ‘Were you there, Gibril?’

  I see a skyscraper, scaffolding, those airborne eyebrows flying.

  ‘Were you?’

  The wind quietens suddenly, lets go of this ship. The whole hall seems to be holding its breath. Charmayne thrusts her feet into my glove. Her breasts shine with sweat, her nipples prickle with the effort of persuading me.

  ‘I was happy with my thirty-three percent . . .’ Her succulent lips form more sexless, corporate words, but still Tamba does not move from his window.

  Charmayne drops her business talk, tries to suck me into her childhood. ‘I grew up in a little room off a fire escape. My mother was a cleaner. Malachi?’ Her eyes are a vat of swirling molasses. ‘All I wanted in the world was to make my mama happy.’

  I fall into Charmayne’s hunger, up to my knees.

  Vicki’s titter slowly calls me back to my dignity.

  I pick up my bucket, force my puny thighs down the aisle. This woman, beautiful enough to adorn a fleet of buses, is just a child who loves her mother as much as I loved mine.

  * * *

  I continue my work in a drunken, dream state. Madame Sophie, the brothel owner, watches me demolish the perfect curves of her toenails. She must have shaped them with her teeth. I glance at the hamstrings running behind her knees. Madame Sophie must be supple.

  She shocks me from my reverie. ‘They were heroin addicts before they came to me. They arrived at my door as weak as lambs, so I put them to bed. I washed them, dressed them, fed them . . .’

  I stare at Madame Sophie. To my tired mind, she looks like a psycho nurse, with an eerie platinum colouring. I glance at her breasts. They don’t even fit her.

  Did she steal them from one of her drug addicts?

  In the cage next to her, one half of Josiah’s black moustache curls up. ‘You saved them, Sophie.’

  Madame Sophie tries to wrench her feet free. ‘Quiet, Josiah.’

  I release the strap, slam her hatch shut. I stare at Josiah’s fingernails, crooked and filthy after only one night. Where has he been digging?

  I will not cut the nails of this death-eating sadist. I will not touch this beast.

  I leave the last towel rolled tightly beneath the limp, sullied ones. The clay on my skin cracks and leaves a shower of dry disgust as I walk to the door. Behind me I hear a high, quavery cry. It is Shikorina, mimicking her youngest child.

  * * *

  I shower at normal temperature, let the rain pound the clay from my eyelids. Thunder rumbles too close as I wash my armpits, cleanse my sweat.

  It is right that these people suffer.

  I lift my testicles, rinse my penis.

  I see Vicki’s elbows, their perfect little points nestling against her soft, scarred hips.

  Damn it.

  I squeeze my penis, test it. I feel not a stiffening but a kind of tension, an animal sensing an impending storm. The barometer is dropping.

  I turn off the water, check my timepiece. I have no time to disassemble my radio and shock this treachery from me. I will have to do it after supper. Come hell or high water, I must find some privacy.

  * * *

  I leave my bucket at the door to Olivia’s laboratory. As I turn into the canteen, I jerk to a halt. A massive tongue sits in the centre of the table, its skin rough and pimpled.

  Thunder rolls like circus drums. Tamba arrives unceremoniously, shoves me into the canteen. Meirong glances at the atomic clock.

  ‘In time,’ Tamba says triumphantly. He throws himself onto the bench. ‘Where’s Olivia?’

  ‘Staying late to mix hormones for the breakfast feed,’ Meirong says. ‘Malachi, I checked the day’s records. You saw no problems with sexuality?’

  I stare at the gigantic replica of what I am missing. Is this a joke at my expense?

  Tamba follows my eyes. A laugh bubbles to his lips but he strangles it.

  ‘Jesus,’ he exhales under his breath.

  ‘Malachi? Did you hear me? Any sexual issues? The hormone cocktail sometimes fades on day three.’

  I drag my eyes from the platter, shake my head at Meirong. Negative. Meirong is too obsessed with her schedule to see the horror of the scene. She must be st
upid.

  I shut my eyes as Janeé descends with her carving knife. I want to dive to the floor and leopard-crawl through the door, but I lock my spine straight, float in perspiration, watch Meirong’s lips move around her vowels.

  ‘There’s only the one subject we can’t seem to stop from masturbating. Angus. He’s not hurting himself, is he?’

  Tamba answers for me. ‘Uh-uh. But it’s creepy. He’s a sexual offender, isn’t he?’

  Meirong nods.

  ‘I wouldn’t like to be Malachi,’ Tamba says.

  They turn to look at me just as Janeé slams down a slice in front of me. I lift my utensils, swallow the resistance that has gathered behind my teeth. First the octopus, now the flesh cut from the mouth of a cow, complete with taste buds. The scientific word is papillae.

  I saw so my knife sings against my fork. I part my teeth and slip the meat in.

  I flail for my water, take a gulp.

  ‘Take it easy, Malachi,’ Tamba says. The green streak in his eye has grown dim, no longer mocking me. He points at the tongue in the centre of the table, accuses Janeé: ‘A bit dumb of us. We didn’t think, did we?’

  Meirong suddenly gets the tongue thing. ‘Ohhh.’

  The final thread of Tamba’s angry day seems to snap. He sags, lays his hands on the table for everyone to see.

  ‘Meirong, do you think Olivia can help me out one more time tonight? The last time. I swear on my life.’

  Meirong’s red acrylic dress bristles with the same splinters that coat the rude tongue. ‘No, Tamba. Definitely not.’

  ‘Why-y?’ Tamba whines like a small boy in the toy aisle.

  ‘Do you think this is the right place to discuss this?’

  Tamba stabs towards the door. ‘Let’s go then.’

  Olivia shuffles into the canteen with new, tired lines drawn by her overtime. ‘Hi everyone.’

  Meirong’s mouth has gone white. ‘You, Tamba, are not going to ruin my career. A lot has gone wrong.’

  Tamba speaks with a warrior stillness: ‘Are you blaming me for Dominic?’

  Meirong is shaking imperceptibly. I stare to make sure. Yes. Her lips are trembling.

  ‘Only weaklings need sedatives to sleep,’ she says.

  ‘Shit. You’re such a bitch.’