The Book of Malachi

by T. C. Farren

  Tamba strokes the shirt on his inner arms like his puncture scars are bothering him.

  ‘She did, but she was responsible for training him.’

  ‘Not entirely, Tamba,’ Meirong snaps. ‘Just his introduction. You were meant to be monitoring him.’

  The him, I take it, is the mute man in the room.

  ‘I watched him through the glass. I responded to every bloody peep.’ Tamba swings to me. ‘Didn’t I, Malachi?’

  I nod at his silent boss.

  ‘So what was the oversight, Malachi?’ Mr Carreira asks. ‘How did he get it right?’

  I glare at him, place my hands on my knees. He did it with the will of an iron giant who hated himself for killing his unborn son.

  Mr Carreira sways backwards. He says unexpectedly, ‘You can’t blame Malachi. He came late in the season.’ He swings a finger between Tamba and Meirong. ‘I hold you both accountable.’

  Tamba’s dreadlocks fly up, subside. Meirong bites hard on her lips. She pushes back her hair, sniffs an astoundingly wet sniff.

  How is it possible that I am unscathed?

  I glance at the clean-dry machine through the doorway. Perhaps it is my white angel’s outfit.

  A last little sob pushes up, propels me to my feet. Tamba pinches my trousers behind my knee, tries to tug back down. But if I sit, the memory of the giant will tower over me, send strange sounds from my mouth like a man with Tourette’s.

  ‘Wait, Malachi.’ Mr Carreira is the same height as me. ‘We need a midnight inspection. You will need to check their waste plates, check their teeth. We can’t have any copycat failures.’

  The giant left the earth. It was a resounding success.

  ‘How long will it take for you to do a midnight circuit?’

  About a minute multiplied by forty subjects. One less. I sign a revolution of the long hand of the clock.

  ‘An hour? Fine. Set your alarm for tonight,’ Mr Carreira orders me.

  He walks briskly towards the door, determined to leave the meeting before the most menial of his slave force. At the door, he swings to face us. ‘If by some terrible luck that search party finds us, and if you speak about anything you have seen or heard on this rig . . .’ he glares at each of us, ‘you will go straight to one of our asylums in the US. You will be admitted as a delusional schizophrenic. You will stay there indefinitely.’

  He sweeps out with a swish of his quality beige cotton. His polished shoes ping down the metal stairs.

  I refuse to let my mouth hang like an imbecile’s.

  ‘Christ. This is evil,’ Tamba breathes.

  Meirong unfurls her orange sunset. ‘Doctor Mujuru wants to see you straight after the meeting.’

  Tamba slumps like she just chop-kicked his neck.

  Janeé fights her way to her feet, holds out her hand to Tamba. He takes it, pulls himself up.

  ‘Go ahead, Malachi,’ he says. ‘I’ve got to go and have my head bashed in.’

  Ah. His father. The doctor. I heard the truth on my two-way radio.

  I’m afraid I can’t share Janeé’s sympathy for the man who is meant to be a poor Zimbabwean, not the son of a top transplant doctor in the Raizier wing. If I’m wrong about Tamba, I will eat my dirty sneakers.

  * * *

  My sneakers take me down the metal stairs. I am careful to stay upright, keep moving in case the air in me coalesces into useless sobs.

  * * *

  I shove on the door, force my eyes to the enormous gap the giant has left in the two rows of metal teeth. The emptiness of the space, the silence of the subjects, rack my heart another notch. I push back the pressure in my sobbing pipes, wheeze like my grandfather on his ferry last night.

  I must keep the good air moving, for if it gets stuck behind a rung of bone or cartilage I will fall to the floor and cry for my yellow father who had the courage to read us ‘Whoso List to Hunt’ to the end without stopping.

  I lock my glove to Samuel’s cage for the second time today.

  ‘He was a good man, the judge. Deep down he was good.’

  I grab Tamba’s Samsung from my pocket, type a reply. ‘He killed two people.’ My American assistant speaks with a deep, sanguine sound.

  Samuel licks his lips, checks the surveillance glass. He watches my phone like it is a bomb in a bustling public place. I slip it back into my pocket.

  Samuel nods. ‘His mind snapped.’ His trigger finger jerks inside the glove. ‘Boom. Boom. And you can’t take bullets back.’

  He is right. It is the dumb utterance, the wild mind’s decision. The impulse that killed them.

  ‘It’s good to hear you talking,’ Samuel says tentatively.

  I keep my face sombre, but a strange joy tears through my chest. It feels like the giant has crossed my heart wires.

  Samuel’s eyes are on fire, but he asks casually, ‘Where’s Tamba?’

  I slide out my keypad, type with one thumb. ‘Getting into big trouble for letting the judge die.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘I am mute. They presume I am stupid.’

  Samuel chuckles. Vicki’s delight warms me from the side. I clip and clean, matter-of-fact, but waves of pride keep heaving against my back teeth. I start on Samuel’s toes.

  ‘I see it’s a Samsung. Are you using Glossia?’ I nod eagerly.

  ‘Do you know there’s an African accent in that transposer app? It’s very crude. Generic. But it might be better than . . .’ He breaks off tactfully.

  I check Tamba’s glass, slide the stolen phone out. I scroll past Tone. Find Accents. There it is. Right at the top of the bloody alphabet.

  I didn’t need to rely on William, the choir-singing baseball player. I select African. Type on the keys, ‘Thank you, Samuel.’

  The voice is almost mine. A little laugh tears free from my secret tsunami. I avert my eyes from Samuel’s tiny smile. I lock his cage, move on to Eulalie.

  * * *

  The old witch nods like a priest, declaring me married to my Samsung. ‘You have found a way to speak.’

  But I am not ready for the commitment! I cut her fingernails, fight the urge to run like hell from what I have just done.

  But you can’t take bullets back.

  Eulalie sighs. ‘You were scared to live.’

  I glance at her, shocked by her perspicacity.

  She says, ‘And I was too frightened to love.’

  I hide my surprise. This is the first time Eulalie has spoken of her earthly life. It’s like Jesus suddenly saying he has Weet-Bix for breakfast.

  ‘There was a man who came to see me about his wife. She was burnt by a shack fire.’

  I lift out a towel, wipe her fingers clean.

  ‘After a year, he said he loved me.’ Eulalie’s despair pierces her voice, carries it to the ceiling. ‘But I was married to the spirits!’

  I scan Tamba’s glass. Still no sign of him. I type one word. It costs me nothing. ‘Sorry.’

  Eulalie’s eyes caress me like a proud grandmother, not like my one with the bleached hands from Kattra. ‘You are a good man, Malachi.’

  When I lift my white towel, her hands underneath are black velvet.

  I hardly need to trim the old crone’s feet. Her heart stoppage yesterday seemed to have slowed her nail growth. I wash them gently, release Eulalie to her Valentino memories.

  * * *

  Tamba’s antiseptic shower has made Vicki’s black hair soft and separated, as they say in shampoo ads. Luscious to the touch. This hair is more befitting a sensuous heroine than a black-hearted mermaid who spends her days blowing sarcastic bubbles from the deep. The web of skin between my fingers tickles. I want to touch her hair.

  Vicki smiles shyly at me. ‘You look nice in white.’

  Is she trying to get me to type?

  She tries again. ‘Aren’t you scared they’ll bust you for talking to us?’

  I strap her feet in, tap my keys beneath the leather brace. ‘I am trusting you to look out for me.’

  Vic
ki looks up, revealing a throat like a waterfall of cream. ‘Coast is clear,’ she says softly. Almost intimate.

  I trim the bubble toes on the cutest pair of feet I have ever seen. Her ankle bones were sculpted by the tools of a genius.

  Vicki cocks her head thoughtfully. ‘What’s the word Madame Sophie says, about helping people to die?’

  I think I hear the rustle of her clean hair across her scapulas. It sends a tiny trickle of electricity through the cloth of my white trousers.

  ‘Euthanasia,’ I type. But my mind is very far from assisted dying.

  Shut up, I tell my penis. Or I will shock you so badly they will harvest the heart that sends blood to you.

  ‘That’s what we did with Judge James.’

  I shake my head fiercely, press too hard on her fingers with my white towel.

  ‘Eina,’ Vicki says indignantly.

  I stroke my fingertips across her pink nails, type for the second time, ‘Sorry.’

  She smiles with teeth so pretty God must have put each one in place with a magnifying glass.

  ‘It’s love-hate, isn’t it?’ she says softly. ‘This thing between you and me.’

  My fingers grip the cell phone like it is my spokesman’s throat. I nod at Vicki, tap one word, the perfect word for us.

  ‘Ambivalence.’

  My eyes feel starry bright, heavier to carry now with all the extra glitter.

  The rest of the subjects are deathly quiet, perhaps silenced by their ambivalence about the giant. I work through four prisoners, thinking sometimes of the giant’s broken finger, sometimes his shattered teeth. Sometimes of the brute force I must use later to kill my admiration for Vicki.

  But why must I hurt my penis when all it wants to do is exclaim at a woman’s beauty? Why?

  I glance back, drop a little kiss on Vicki’s collarbone. Her surprised smile is shockingly sensuous.

  What is so terrible about hardening at the sight of lips so full they make creases in the middle, eyes so intense they hold a deep purple sheen, ankles so prim, so perfect it can’t be they are worn by a woman whose home language is the knife? Vicki is breathtaking now that she is healing. Why must I punish myself for wanting her in my mouth?

  I swallow, frightened.

  Thankfully the yellow man is too subdued to call me Jesus today. Jesus would never have had to fight off an erection, would he? But perhaps these are the carnal truths the censors burnt.

  Jesus, please, please can I perhaps let these feelings grow to a terrible tumescence rather than topple them with a hundred and twenty volts of agony?

  As I groom the yellow man, I sense the truth quite clearly.

  Yes. Jesus got an erection and he was not ashamed of it. Yes, he fell in love with a fallen woman, like me. It was my father who told me the rumour about Mary Magdalene, who was an ex-prostitute, wasn’t she? Hamri might have loved the oppressors’ tongue, but he was always wary of their religion.

  Next door, the desert strangler nods sagely, like he knows the ancient secrets of all prostitutes.

  I smile inwardly. Mary Magdalene was lucky to die a natural death, not be left stranded in the desert by this poor, sorry murderer.

  As I clip the glove to Gibril’s cage, I sense a shadow high above me. Tamba looks somehow flatter, less three-dimensional than before. Even his dreadlocks lie down as if chastised, creating the beaten silhouette of a bedraggled thief. Like the other man on the cross. What was his name? Barabbas.

  Tamba watches me work with a dead, inward-looking expression. What did Doctor Mujuru say to him; ‘I’ll feed you to Raizier and cut out your heart, if it still works after all that opium?’

  I’d like to hit my switch, type to Tamba on his Samsung, ‘Hey, Tamba, why don’t you try telling the truth? You’d be surprised how high you can get just from confessing.’

  * * *

  I groom two more subjects, approach the cavernous, cold space past the tooth-extracting Indian. The skinny man, I am glad to say, is no longer obsessed with his teeth or his umbilicus. Which is more than I can say about me and my penis. I shut the Indian’s cage, take an extra-big breath. The whole hall watches me pass the struts that held the judge’s cage. By the time I reach Barry, the fat Australian, my journey through the hallowed space has brought tears to his tiny eyes.

  His fingers droop in the sheath. ‘Judge James was the best friend I ever had.’

  I pause with my clipper, astounded by his statement.

  ‘I mean, he said I was a pig, but . . .’ Barry’s sobs seem to come from deep below him and shove through his splayed bum. ‘I miss him so much.’ He weeps uncontrollably. Hysterical, for a man who ran a tight, violent business and got filthy rich.

  ‘The judge always told me, Barry, money is just paper with some ugly president’s face on it. It’s not like the president’s going to jump out and give you a hug . . .’ A deep-sea sound blows through his loose mammalian skin.

  Above us, Tamba snaps out of his beaten-blue suffering. ‘Is that one laughing or blubbering?’

  I tip my hand two ways. Both.

  ‘What’s the problem?’

  I point at the terrible, tragic space next to Barry.

  Barry rolls onto his back, once more blubbering. I release his feet so he doesn’t crack his little ankles. Yes, Barry. We will all miss our Gadu Yignae.

  * * *

  The skinny rapist does not touch his penis today. Angus, I think his name is, mourns for the giant without so much as a mind or muscle spasm. His whole body is an effigy of what is left of a rapist when his madness leaves him. Harmless, he is, a shipwrecked British tourist with not even the will to crack a coconut. Did the judge’s death bring him some weird healing?

  The microphone crackles. ‘How much longer, Malachi? We’re going to miss lunch.’

  I incline my head towards the last two cages in the row. Can’t he see our timetable has been thrown out by the death of a giant? I lock the rapist’s cage, move on to Lolie.

  She gives me her fingers, sighs like a depressed teenager.

  ‘The judge, he is lucky.’ Her English is limited, but her words hold a deep envy. ‘So lucky . . .’

  Her hands suddenly look too young for someone who has notched fifty kills since she was ten. My fingers itch to grab my cell phone and ask her how old she is, but Tamba sits watching like a schoolchild who has been ordered to stay in the classroom.

  It suddenly feels so unfair that Lolie should spend the rest of her life in prison. She deserves to have some teenage fun, style her hair even, drop people with only her deadly beauty. Her eyelashes, for instance, look at them. They have the power to snap people’s hearts open and closed, however many times she decides to blink them.

  Maybe Lolie and the solo sailor could meet up after this, laugh about the time they were both locked up on the rig.

  There is still time to laugh, Lolie. There is time to paint your nails. I trim her toes, will her to live while she wishes herself as stone dead as Judge James.

  * * *

  When I reach Shikorina, she is cradling one of her children again. I can almost see its soft, shining forehead. I stare at the empty space where I thought I caught a glimpse of baby skin. Is it a boy or a girl, I wonder?

  Shikorina is a remarkable mime artist. She stops her long strokes, tickles the imaginary child at the nape of its neck.

  ‘The way he did it.’ She shakes her head sadly. ‘It was terrible.’

  I nod imperceptibly. Ask me, I know how it feels for electricity to suck the ions from your blood vessels, crush them.

  ‘I was careful, Malachi.’ She leans towards me, whispers as if to prevent the child on her lap from hearing. ‘I didn’t let the others see.’ She rubs her child’s spine from its neck to its baby coccyx.

  I press Shikorina’s towel deeper into the disinfectant, wipe her toes curled up with love for the little ones she drowned so carefully.

  High above, Tamba stands up and shuffles some things on his DJ desk, his browbeaten eyes still on me. I
lock Shikorina’s cage, walk away as if I am not more than tempted to love this crazy mother. The giant’s empty space tries to suck me in, but I force myself past his three drops of blood. I feel a flush of heat as I pass Vicki’s charming freckles, her seductive smiling mouth. The brace slips from my fingers. I stoop to pick it up. Continue to the trolley, lay down my falcon-taming paraphernalia. A craving tugs at the muscles deep in my belly. I walk to the door with a sullen teenage reluctance. I want to stay.

  I want to stay and kiss Vicki.

  * * *

  Meirong and Janeé have shining lips from something mysterious submerged in gravy. I sit down, strike mine with a spoon, find a hard sunken object. I dredge it to the top. It is a bone with jelly meat clinging to it. I scrape the bottom of my bowl, find another. And another.

  ‘What’s wrong, Malachi?’ Meirong asks sharply.

  I take a noisy sip of the gravy. Delicious. Really. I nibble on a bone. Wonderful. Truly. Not vertebrae, but maybe a tail.

  I think of Vicki’s pretty coccyx, the place where her tail would have been twenty million years ago, a triangular plate above the soft swelling of her buttocks. Her engineer added two small dimples for sheer sexiness.

  I catch a piece of marrow floating with the carrots, gobble it. Delicious. I smile at Janeé.

  ‘Nice, hey, Malachi? I boiled it for three hours.’ Janeé grabs the pot, tramps around to my side. ‘Have more.’

  I lean back to make way for my new mother and her pot of broken bones.

  Tamba’s sense of humour cracks through his despondency. ‘Janeé, you hit the jackpot. Malachi is going to get nice and fat.’

  Janeé smiles happily. ‘Fat like me.’

  Tamba snorts through his stew. Even Meirong’s eyes almost smile above the u-shaped bone she is sucking on.

  Olivia hurries in. ‘I’m so hungry I could eat a horse.’

  ‘Well, you got ox,’ Tamba says.

  Janeé scoops three spoons of the ox’s tail for Olivia.

  ‘Any news?’ Olivia asks.

  Meirong places a bone on the edge of her plate. Her voice is shaky. ‘Three hover-cruisers and a helicraft from –’ She stops, refuses to give our location away.

  We all wipe our mouths as if Meirong ordered us to. Even Janeé puts down the pot.