The Book of Malachi

by T. C. Farren

  ‘That’s it!’ Meirong snaps. ‘You’re in for a disciplinary review.’ She leaps off the bench. ‘You’d better sleep tonight, Tamba. You’re going to need it.’

  Olivia wails, ‘Stop fighting, you guys!’

  Meirong flounces out.

  ‘Please, Tamba,’ Olivia begs. ‘We’re not here for us.’

  I catch Tamba’s shifty sleight of eye, his uneasy foot-shuffle beneath the table. Tamba is here for his own benefit, somehow I know this.

  Just like me.

  I sit accused in the presence of a meat souvenir.

  My mother, my father, my friends all dead. I am all I have left.

  Fuck. Shit. I would say it, Hamri. If I had a tongue.

  Ragged white light streaks through the portholes near the roof.

  Fuck. Shit. I have a right to be here only for me. I stand up, seething. Leave a cold, empty space on the bench behind me.

  * * *

  As I enter the bedroom, Tamba barges in after me. He punches the wall. ‘Bullshit!’

  There is blood on his knuckles. He thrusts out a finger. ‘One sedative! One!’

  I turn away from the smear of red on his knuckle. For goodness’ sake, Tamba. Stop the histrionics.

  ‘What am I supposed to do?’

  Go and play ping-pong, you idiot. I slip into the bathroom, shut the concertina door between us.

  ‘What are you, Malachi? Are you even human?’

  Tamba’s words blast through the soft partition, hit their target. A sob dislodges in me.

  He talks through the plastic panel. ‘Fuck. Sorry.’

  Thunder smashes massive rocks together in the sky. I flush the chain unnecessarily, come out, glare at Tamba. He is licking the blood off his knuckles like a cat with a grazed paw. I catch a streak of pink on his tongue, strangely fat for a naturally lean person.

  ‘Sorry,’ he says again.

  I see now Tamba’s knuckles have a row of pale stars where his skin has repaired itself with thicker scar tissue. He sits on his bed, sighs. I drop onto my pillow, lift my aching legs for the first time today.

  Tamba hooks a finger beneath his top lip, turns it inside out. ‘See this, Malachi?’ he lisps.

  I peer closer. Tamba’s gums are gouged with small, round potholes.

  ‘Cocaine.’ He lets his lip fall with a funny plop. ‘I rubbed so much it ate my flesh, man, burnt right through.’ Tamba turns his elbows inside out, shows me a massacre of sharp instruments. ‘I popped all my veins first.’ He pulls off his socks and shoes.

  I blow out in disgust. ‘Pphhh.’ His feet smell like dead mouse.

  ‘Sorry. My nostrils are nuked.’ That makes a trio of apologies. Tamba props his foot on his knee, shows me a clutter of old punctures in his heels. ‘Eventually I had to shoot up in my feet.’

  I stare at the scattershot marks, groan inwardly. I have already showered, please. Don’t smear your drug history on me.

  ‘I shot MDMA to try and kick the glitter, but it didn’t help. I worshipped the stuff.’ Tamba waits, like I might drop his sins in a shopping basket and go and pay for them. But after what I’ve heard today, cocaine addiction is an angel’s pastime.

  ‘I’m not kidding you, Malachi, when you hit your peak, there’s nothing between you and the old woman begging in the subway. You love her like she’s your mother. It breaks through the walls, man. But when you crash . . .’ He shakes his head, stares at the metal floor. ‘You’re the last man on earth.’

  Of course I do not comfort him. I pick up Tamba’s socks with the tips of my fingers, carry them to the bathroom.

  ‘Oh, okay-y-y.’ He sighs. ‘I missed my shower yesterday.’ Tamba gets to his feet listlessly, a different man to the groovy guy I met on Friday. This Tamba has pitted gums and needle scars on the heels of his feet. This one is too lazy to even wash his own skin. Most of all, this Tamba thinks he is a waste of breath. As he passes me on the way to the shower, our bodies don’t touch, but a soft fur of compassion brushes against us.

  * * *

  I lie down on my mattress, exhausted. From morning to night, this has been a day of sinister surprises. The giant’s comment about Dominic. Tamba’s secret needle marks. Vicki’s elbows, the way they lit a tiny flame in my charred libido. I glance down at my trousers. They peak infinitesimally.

  Oh, no.

  Tamba’s shower is softly dripping. I hear the friction of his towel rubbing to and fro.

  ‘Hey, Malachi, I just thought of something!’ Tamba comes in, drips water from the loose eye of his foreskin. He pulls a yellow Samsung from the cabinet between our beds. ‘They took my sim, I just use it to play games. But I was thinking in the shower, why the hell don’t you talk like the deaf and dumb?’

  I stare at him blankly.

  He keys in three stars, unlocks the Samsung. He touches an icon, shows me the screen. A shimmering microphone flares and recedes.

  ‘Have you tried this app where you type and it talks for you?’

  A scary possibility throbs in my larynx.

  ‘This one’s called Glossia. I make it read books to me when I’m feeling lazy. I just load the text.’ He taps the screen. ‘Look. You can choose deep and sexy.’ He types something, taps the top of a list. A suave American says huskily, ‘Hey babe, you wanna dance with me?’ Tamba grins mischievously.

  I sit up, a hot fissure spreading across my chest.

  Tamba tries another setting. An audacious chipmunk invites me to dance with it. Tamba laughs, shows me a row of sliding dials.

  ‘Talking speed. Volume. Look, it goes from Whisper all the way to Megaphone.’ He sticks his nail into a seam at the bottom of the phone. ‘I’ve never appreciated this stuff, but look . . .’ A tiny plastic disc comes free in his fingers. ‘Have you seen this ear clip? You put it here like this . . .’ It is cone-shaped on the other side, a bit like a golf tee. It is halfway to Tamba’s ear when he realises his oversight. He hits his forehead with blunt force. ‘Ah, shit! Sorry. I forgot. You can’t read and write.’

  My vocal chords tick as they cool inside my cartilage.

  Tamba drops his eyes. Black guilt for certain, he suffers from the malady.

  ‘I was just lucky. Education is something the Zim government kept up.’

  I shrug as if I know nothing of such things. Tamba tosses his phone into the cabinet. He quickly forgets about the sorry illiterate staring at the space that just swallowed his Samsung. With the selfishness of a drug addict, he scratches for his Kindle, presses the on switch. I can tell by the backlit barbed wire that tonight he will be reading the Sun Prophet’s desert memoirs.

  Thunder splits the nearby sky.

  * * *

  One hit is all I need.

  One hard knock to stop the sex from filtering into my veins, climbing scar by scar up Vicki’s subtle wrist.

  * * *

  Like Araba’s, as she sat so languid and still, her eyes loyal to my father’s whiteboard. She wanted me too; the deep downstrokes of her writing told me so. She had the gift of composure, her skin like windless water, but she loved the Valentino books the girls read at school, each with the same purple strip but with a different black beauty, a different man in a suit with his collar loosened, kissing. I trailed my eyes across the classroom, cut Araba out of the backdrop with her one wrist hanging loose, her breasts pressed against the desk as she leaned into her untidy cursive. I returned to my Macbeth questions, hungry.

  * * *

  Tamba flings down his Kindle so it bounces on the bed. ‘Man, this book just makes me feel worse!’ He jumps to his feet, his face dark, washed thunder. ‘This is a pharmaceutical ship, for God’s sake.’ He storms to the door. ‘I’m going to try Janeé.’

  Good. Go.

  Watch out she doesn’t feed you arsenic.

  I listen to Tamba’s feet stomping towards the cook. Then I roll off my bed, drag out my suitcase. I dig out my radio, try to pry off the back. Damn. I smash a corner against the metal floor. A triangle of black plastic flies against the
wall. I hook my fingers into the crack. The plastic plate snaps off, baring its coloured wires. Brown, blue, yellow, running from positive to negative. I take a moment to admire the beautiful predictability of its nervous system.

  I rip the brown from its copper pin. Jerk the blue loose. I stick my plug into the wall. A hundred and twenty volts. I unbuckle my belt roughly, shove the raw wires into my trousers.

  I see Vicki’s mermaid knees, lucent in the sunlight sifting through a green ocean.

  I hit the switch. The rig catches fire in split delicious seconds, crashes me to the floor. There is a searing sensation between my legs; my spine becomes a tunnel of terrible flames. The pain rips me inside out as I sprawl, make no sound, clutch at my genitals.

  I am nerves blown out. Black carbon flesh.

  * * *

  Slow footsteps pad along the corridor. I jerk the copper wires from my trousers, snort from the agony. I clamp the broken plate over the innards of the radio. Shut my suitcase with fingers that feel like prostheses. I roll onto my bed just as Tamba shuffles in with an overflowing teacup.

  ‘Fucking chamomile.’

  A few minutes ago Tamba’s desperate, doleful look might have been funny, but I am fighting the aftershocks jittering in me. Tamba perches on the edge of his bed, sips his tea like a nephew of the long-deceased queen.

  A drumming starts up, the syncopation of raindrops against the steel rig.

  Tamba sighs. ‘How the hell am I gonna get through the night?’

  If I could, I would say, Tamba, I know of something that would help you. It has to do with leaping into an agonising blue fire then resting in the music of the cooling, the plucking of the electric current through your bloodstream.

  Of course I do not offer Tamba my radio.

  * * *

  I slip into a sleep so lifeless I might as well be a fibre-optic cable burnt by a vicious power surge, then left to tie up a loose bumper or use as a noose to hang yourself. I sleep like I am litter, forgotten factory waste lying in the dust of Africa. Somewhere I am aware of the rain lashing this cold, steel earth. I hear Tamba moving about the room, pacing perhaps, but he is a mere pedestrian passing over me.

  SUNDAY

  I roll in the carbon-dark sand. Susan Bellavista’s ankle boots crush me carelessly. A cool toothpaste breeze blows across my face.

  ‘Malachi. Geez!’

  My eyelids are sealed shut by heat. Susan nicks them open with a razor-thin blade. The eyes above me are bloody. Suspicious.

  ‘Did you have a sleeping pill stashed in your bag? Get up. It’s ten to seven.’

  It is Tamba, waking me too late.

  ‘Okay, look. You coming?’

  I nod, vaguely surprised by the weight of my teeth. ‘See you in the canteen.’

  I lift my head like a patient recovering from a spinal tap. Arrange myself into a sitting position. I hear the soft hiss of electricity coursing through the wall next to me, but there is no sign of thunder or lightning. Last night’s injury chafes against my sleeping shorts as I drag my suitcase from beneath my bed, open it. My fingers singe my radio. All I can face today is grey. Grey trousers, matte. A soft grey shirt with a floppy collar. As I slip on clean socks, my panic penetrates.

  Get moving, Malachi. Do you want to lose your tongue?

  I leave seven drops on the toilet seat. Too many.

  * * *

  I am a wasted, grey creature, but I am in time to meet Meirong at the door to the canteen. I step back, let her pass through. Today, Meirong is a one-woman dynasty in an emerald dress so silky it must have been spun at a silkworm factory. It ends just above the knees.

  ‘Beautiful green,’ Tamba says.

  Meirong glares at him.

  ‘Lovely colour,’ Tamba says weakly. He must be trying to apologise for last night.

  I take a seat next to my roommate.

  ‘Thank you, Tamba, for saving my skin,’ he coaches me softly.

  What does he want me to do, repeat after him?

  My tiny smile gives Tamba the courage to lie outright. ‘I slept like a log. Whew, it’s like I died. And you, Meirong?’

  Meirong’s eyes narrow. ‘Why the red eyes?’

  ‘Too much sleep.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’

  Tamba nods, lies again. ‘Delicious oats, Janeé.’

  Janeé tilts the rig as she takes her seat, uses her spoon like an earth-moving machine.

  Across from me, Meirong pours too much milk on her oats. She scoops up an oat island and tips it into her tiny mouth.

  ‘Romano, we need you to stay awake to watch a merchant tanker convoy until they are safely past. Five hours is our guess.’ She turns to Olivia. ‘Olivia, can you give Romano a stimulant?’

  Romano shakes his head, ‘Not for me.’ He grates his spoon across his plate, hunts for the food he has already eaten. Janeé heaves to her feet, produces a pot of oats as if from her bodice.

  Romano sighs. ‘Thank you, sister.’

  We are like a badly matched family, clinging to the ordinary, eating oats as if we are not trespassing on the ocean. Today every member of this crew seems familiar and sweet. A warning tries to swirl up from the depths of me. Last night’s electricity has stripped me of my fighting spirit. I suspect it might have killed some of my intelligence. How will I protect myself against the monsters I am about to walk among?

  I must use this murky trepidation, stay in the grey. Let the subjects feel for me with their bony fingers and find only smoke, perhaps the light stink of electrocuted flesh. I have nothing to fear. Just as Romano can stay awake for another day, I can take a hundred and twenty volts of electricity, get dressed in five minutes and eat my oats as casually as the green Ming vase across from me.

  Romano springs up on wiry thighs, stalks out as if leading reconnaissance into enemy territory.

  Me, I leave three oats on my bowl for old time’s sake. Drop it on the trolley.

  ‘Wait for me, Malachi.’ Tamba lifts his bowl to his face. ‘Sorry guys, but –’ He sucks his milk from his oats.

  Meirong frowns as if silkworms are hatching in her dress.

  ‘What?’ Tamba smiles with a bitter, milky mouth. ‘Isn’t this how the Chinese drink their tea?’

  Olivia giggles. I don’t wait to see if Meirong cuts off his head.

  * * *

  I listen for the click, sidle inside with my smoke-damaged brain matter.

  Samuel, the journalist, is even more loquacious than yesterday. As I fasten the falconer’s glove to his cage he says urgently, ‘There is no way we go back to jail. Did they tell you three cycles?’ He shakes his head. ‘We will never leave this rig.’

  The smoke thins. I peer at Samuel’s fingers, press my blades together.

  ‘Not even our corpses. Look at these scars, Malachi. Can you imagine if they returned our bodies to our families?’

  My eyes flick across the needle marks from sewing up Samuel’s carcass.

  ‘There would be an inquiry.’

  His words shove through my deadened nerves.

  ‘What I’m saying is, they’re going to use us up. Then kill us.’

  I squint through the smoke into his lion eyes.

  ‘You’ve got to get hold of the Free Press. This is murder, Malachi. Not medicine.’

  I buckle at the stricture in my chest. I hang over my bucket, wring out Samuel’s towel. I struggle up again, clean his feet clumsily.

  I check the pipes that bring Eulalie sustenance and take her waste away. I clip her milky nails, the only sign that her hands belong to an ancient hag. I feel her grey eyes stroking me, trying to peel my skin and spy beneath it. I smoke her out silently, a poisonous beehive. Move on to Vicki.

  The mermaid’s toes are unaccountably pink. There is something transparent, newborn about them. Ten little beads of flesh facing in, searching for their mother to suckle.

  ‘It makes sense what Samuel says. It looks like they choose prisoners that no one would miss.’ She smiles sardonically. ‘Look around, you’ll see.
They’re the ones no one visits.’

  ‘My father lives in London,’ Samuel splutters. ‘Otherwise he . . .’ He trails off, wavery.

  The mermaid shrugs, ‘I couldn’t care less.’ She growls, ‘I don’t want my human rights.’

  ‘It’s mass murder, Vicki.’

  A dry laugh cracks from Vicki.

  ‘Mass murder of the mass murderers? Her evil sense of humour shuts her eyes, splits her fruity mouth open to show sharp, white pips. ‘Samuel, that’s funny.’

  I release Vicki’s toes, watch them clench with glee on her excretion plate. Hilarious, I agree. I should be laughing with the husband killer, rolling on the floor in happy apoplexy. But her mirth only makes me furious.

  Mass murder of the mass murderers. This is what Samuel is accusing me of.

  I slap Vicki’s cage, make it ring. She recovers her breath, gives me her fingers. She smiles treacherously, as close to pretty as a living cadaver can be.

  Watch out, Malachi. Get your skin back on, quickly.

  * * *

  I groom a string of prisoners, make it all the way to the Sudanese yellow man.

  ‘Save us, Jesus,’ he says in English. ‘Thank you, Al Massih.’ His tears roll off his skin, glitter on the mesh before vanishing.

  What did he do that he is so sure of his salvation? Steal a red apple for his hungry son? The man’s hysteria must be contagious, because three cages away, the tooth-pulling Indian starts chattering and pointing towards the sky. I lock the yellow man’s cage, move to his friend, the pitch-black Ethiopian.

  He gives me his hands woven with muscle. ‘You’re not Jesus, I know, but you’re the only one we can pray to.’

  I cut his fingernails, wipe his hands with a towel so white it draws his sins from deep inside him.

  ‘I’ll tell you the truth. I have nothing to lose. The soldiers from Eritrea stole our food aid from the desert, where the aeroplanes dropped it. They sold it in the city. They let our children eat sand.’ He clenches his muscular fingers. ‘We had to stop those soldiers with our bare hands.’

  Oh no. Please.

  I don’t know how to feel, who to be. Jesus. Malachi. Pontius shitting Pilot.

  Sorry for swearing, Hamri.

  My nerves are repairing too quickly. I stare down the aisle. How the heck will I get through this long line of murderers?