Life's Fare

by Greg Yevko

  “For goodness sake, Bondje,” she groaned, “it’s just another two-leg. They get disgorged all the time down there.”

  “I know, but I’ve never really looked closely at the process before. It’s really lovely, even if it is all over really very quickly.”

  Yu-Yu was definitely not convinced that the magnitude of this event merited the high status that Bondje had conferred upon it.

  “So, you are telling me that a jerky-jerky moment followed by nine Umhlabathi months of gradually getting fatter and fatter and more out of breath, being unable to do some of the most basic of things like tying your own shoe-laces at the end, then going through a painful bout of being prodded, examined, invaded by instruments which were doubtless conceived by a two-leg without the two bumpy bits at the front, then having to disgorge a smaller, wailing two-leg (which I noticed they immediately beat – no wonder it cries) through an opening which The Creator CLEARLY didn’t fully think through when She designed it, that inevitably results in ridiculous amounts of pain for all concerned – is that the Lovely Process you are referring to?”

  Bondje felt slightly sheepish at this tirade from his former break-out group co-worker.

  “And anyway,” continued Yu-Yu now that she was in full flow, “The problem I’ve noticed with a lot of these new two-legs is that the main two-leg who looks after them (I believe it is what they call Their Mother) tends to treat them far too softly in the early days. From what I see they should be pushing them much harder at the start to give them the best opportunities later on. Now if I was a mother down there…”

  Bondje gave an involuntary shudder as he envisaged Yu-Yu reading the riot act to a group of young two-legs down on Umhlabathi, but he had to admit that there was a lot of sense in what she said. He had a sneaky admiration for her as she often had to defend her position, sometimes even before it was attacked, as she was in a sector where she was very much in the minority, with there being a lot more gods like him then there were gods like her; it was just the way that The Management had divided up responsibilities. Maybe in the area that Yu-Yu had built on Umhlabathi there might be more of the two-legs that think the same way that she does, he told himself.

  Having seen the impact of the new arrival, he decided that things could be improved even further by the addition of another two-leg into the case-study, and he approached Perun to discuss the possibility.

  “Whoa, hold back there, tavarisch, we agreed that the case-study for our wager would be set by the start and end time of the original two-leg. Looking at him now, I’m not too sure we’d have time to add another one – the grains of Tempus flow pretty quickly, and you’ve seen for yourself how it goes much faster for those down there on Umhlabathi.”

  Bondje could see that Perun was definitely not keen on his idea, but he thought he’d try and push a bit harder, just to check.

  “But adding a new two-leg without bumps to counter balance this new one which eventually will get bumps would be the fairest thing to do. We could make this new one clever with numbers like the decaying one is; that seems to be helpful for the two-legs. We could also give the new one some of his patience too, and then we could carry on watching them all….”

  “Tavarisch, a wager is a wager. It must end when the original one decays.” Bondje could tell from Perun’s adamant tone that there was not going to be any give-way on this one.

  He reluctantly agreed that Perun was right and that there really was insufficient time for any new two-leg to intervene now. However, he thought to himself, there might well be an opportunity in the future to add such a two-leg into the mix. And who knows, such a two-leg may be able to go onto do some great things that this decaying two-leg didn’t quite have time to get around to; especially if Bondje gave him a helping hand now and again.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Golland 6.1 Fryday

  “So tavarisch, what have we learnt?” Perun made something remarkably like pursed lips after putting his question to Bondje.

  Bondje felt as split in his own mind as he had ever been over anything. Indeed, what had they really learnt? Sure, in some circumstances the two-legs had proven themselves to be highly competent and capable of dealing with some pretty tricky situations, but boy, at times they seemed like drooling idiots barely able to avoid self-destruction. However, he felt honour bound to try and defend his stance on the two-legs to demonstrate that they were indeed competent and worthy of the top position that they had somehow managed to carve out for themselves on Umhlabathi.

  “Oookaaay,” he started slowly, “how about yesterday when a whole load of them gathered together in various places all over our creation and watched smaller groups of two-legs on a stage strut around and make funny noises. From that it looks like they made loads of the stuff that they need to get hold of food and shelter to send out to more of their kind who were in the more severe bits of Umhlabathi. That’s a great example of working together and coping.”

  Perun did his eye-brow trick again.

  “You’re making jokes again, yes, tavarisch?” This one definitely was rhetorical. “For the few times that these two-legs get together to do something positive, I can give you many examples of when they have completely buggered up by acting together; sometimes destroying millions of themselves rather than just helping thousands.”

  Bondje was not going to back down quickly.

  “Ah, but, even when they destroyed millions of each other, and to be fair, that’s only happened fairly recently -”

  “Twice!” interrupted Perun.

  “Yes, yes, true, a couple of times,” continued Bondje unabated, “but even when they destroyed millions of each other on those two occasions, look how nicely they got on with each other afterwards. They all made that nice single state out of all the bits that had been fighting each other. What did they call it? The European Onion, or something like that. That looks like it’ll stay together for ever now that they’re all such good friends.”

  Perun was clearly not convinced.

  “Okay, what about soon after our class, it happened last Moanday if I remember correctly, when the two-leg with the long hair led all those poor other two-legs away from that lot who were being REALLY nasty to them. Remember him taking them all to that, what did he call it, Promiscuous Land?”

  “I think you mean Promised Land, tavarisch,” corrected Perun, “and besides, he only got that far because The Creator helped him out a bit when She parted all that wet stuff so he could get his lot through ahead of those chasing two-legs; my point entirely, they just can’t cope on their own.” He seemed genuinely pleased with this rebuttal, and managed a sort of half smile.

  Bondje cursed himself for having forgotten that last bit. It was true that, in the early part of the week, The Creator had intervened on a few occasions when She thought that there was a danger of something going Tits Up. This She considered to be a great expression that She had come up with shortly after putting the burning yellow thing in all the blue stuff that She had put around Umhlabathi. It was an abbreviated version for “Titicaca’s Uplift”, which She acknowledged seemed to please the two-legs a lot since the big yellow ball seemed to cheer everyone up considerably, ahead of the darkness that then followed on a regular basis. It seemed to Her that this was happening day in and day out, irrespective of whatever She actually did. In fact, Chiminigagua in particular had really liked the name She had come up with, so much so that he named the biggest wet bit in his area after it, but She had not allowed him to use the abbreviated version, so he was stuck with having to use the much longer but still beautiful, Lake Titicaca. This still had a pleasant poetry to its sound as far as he was concerned, though for some reason that he didn’t fully understand, Katonda had collapsed into giggling heaps when Chiminigagua had told all the other gods about his large wet patch called Titicaca.

  “But She only helped a little,” complained Bondje, “and these days She hardly ever gets involved at all, so it’s all down to how they handle themselves.”

&nbs
p; Certainly, The Creator had found out very quickly that the more She “helped out” as She liked to call it, then the more requests She would get, and the two-legs started to rely more and more on what they thought She should be doing for them rather than what they should be doing for themselves. Then all sorts of groups of two-legs started to set up their own versions of what they thought would please Her, then one lot would say their version was right, then another group would say, nonsense, our version is right and before you could say bismillah, there they were at each other’s throats. She often felt desperate about this. “I sometimes regret giving them the ability to communicate so well with each other,” She had reflected one day, sadly shaking something vaguely head shaped. “I don’t get any of this hassle from the furry four-legs or any of the flappy things in the wet bits. Next time I do this, I’ll be a bit more careful. Even after I jumbled up all their words so that all the areas were different, they still managed to communicate enough to fight with each other.” So, after Moanday She had decided not to get involved any more, no matter how much beseeching or imploring was done by the two-legs in whatever-shaped houses they had built on the pretext of being able to worship and adulate Her. She had also then imposed the supposed ban on interference from any of the gods, so Bondje and Perun both knew that they were skating on very thin, albeit solid, wet stuff if they were found out.

  “We need to agree a finalisation to our wager by the end of today,” Bondje reminded Perun.

  “Indeed, tavarisch, indeed,” agreed Perun. “But let’s just see what any final twists and turns for these two-legs bring us; we know that they don’t last long from disgorge to decay so it shouldn’t be too long at all before we get the full picture.”

  Bondje attempted a decisive nod of a sort of a head, but secretly hoped that something dynamic might happen in the brief time left for the wager to swing it in his direction, as he wasn’t really sure that he could convince himself, let alone Perun, that these woeful creatures really could cope on their own.

  Umhlabathi 6.1 10:25am Sunday July 14th 1996; the Hospice

  It was a most magnificent way to die.

  The Thames Valley Police had followed the silver Ford Mondeo for nearly seven miles along the M25 motorway. Sirens blared, cars had scattered. The erratic circus-like procession careered at speeds approaching 100 mph, weaving dementedly from lane to lane. The driver had just about maintained control over the car even though the beautiful young Ukrainian hooker had sat straddling him the whole time. Head thrown back with wild shouts of laughter, she looked straight back into the faces of the men haplessly chasing in the trailing police cars as she pumped her body furiously up and down on him in wild abandonment. He had held the steering wheel with one hand, bottle of Standard Vodka in the other. He took down long gulps of the fiery liquid as he negotiated both the road ahead and the trails of blond hair frequently obscuring his vision.

  The car had left the road at the foot of the Queen Elizabeth Bridge; Saskaya had often thought about visiting the Thurrock Shopping Centre, but never quite like this. Luckily, they both died instantly as the car met the outside of the north wall of Marks and Spencer’s.

  Stanley Marley shook his head and put down his copy of the Sunday Sport.

  Now that is a shit hot way to go, he thought to himself.

  He sighed and looked around at the plain but comfortable furnishings surrounding his bed in the hospice. Gentle rain on the window.

  “Supposed to be summer?” he snorted to himself, and winced slightly as he tried to get into a marginally more comfortable position. The tubes bearing the remorseless drip, drip of drugs flapped tauntingly just above the taped-off canula protruding from the back of his painfully thin right hand. He didn’t know it then, but in three days’ time, like the Mondeo driver and the young lady, he too would be dead. Relief for him; relief for his family.

  Everyone was anxious that he didn’t suffer any longer than was necessary in the so-called battle against cancer. Everyone knew that it wasn’t really a battle – you get cancer, you get treatment, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Shit just happens. That’s life. That’s death.

  He weakly rolled his lucky bottle top around between his thumb and first two fingers of his right hand as he had done on so many occasions in the past, looking at nothing in particular, his mind far away. He was back on the sun-drenched beaches of St Lucia, a young man once again, laying in the warmth of the sunshine, a rolled joint hanging from his half-smiling lips, Leroy by his side recounting filthy tales of illicit passion.

  He was back on board the ocean liner that had been commandeered for the war effort, travelling in what had once been premium cabins that now boasted twelve narrow bunks and little else, each bunk occupied by a fellow volunteer from the islands who was determined to do his bit, everyone full of expectation, everyone full of fear of the unknown. But then discovering Singapore, Malaysia, Burma, Africa. Some bits had been tough, but on the whole his had not been a bad war.

  Then his mind was back in London, back in the bustling tea room, meeting Marlene for the first time, making plans for a life together, their homes, their children, his grandchildren; the concoction of analgesics, opioids and metoclopramide flowing through his fragile body gradually eased Stanley back into a hazy, confused sleep.

  He usually had a short-lived respite when coming around from these brief sleeps. When he next opened his watery eyes, he looked around the single room again for what seemed to be the hundredth time since he had been admitted. Small TV, bright curtains, a comfy chair for visitors. It annoyed him that only one visitor could sit normally whilst the other had to go through the uncomfortable practice of sitting on the bed and twisting round at an angle achieved only by practising contortionists to engage in conservation with the main bed occupier. However, even in his current failing condition, Stanley’s impish sense of humour had come up with a way to get some fun out of the situation; on one occasion he hid a hard, ceramic bed-pan under the sheets near the foot of the bed where he knew Marlene’s infuriating brother would have to sit during the next visit. Sure enough, after he had unsuspectingly sat down on top of the offending article as planned, Marlene’s brother had quickly jumped up with a startled expression on his flushed face, and Stanley had cackled with delight.

  “There you go, Jeff. I know you are always talking a load of shite so I thought I’d get something for you to put it all in,” and Jeff had had to laugh politely whilst quietly fuming inside – it was not good form to have a go at a dying man after all.

  Alvita, Nollie and Marlene were frequent visitors to Stanley, the hospice only being a few miles away from the city where they all still lived. Robert and Maria lived around one hundred and eighty miles away.

  “No, you really must go down and see him again, Robert,” Maria had instructed him in a stern voice, after he had flopped onto the sofa after coming through the door and throwing his laptop bag onto the floor; he had told her that he was toying with the idea of not making the four-hour trip the next morning after a particularly gruelling Bad Friday Afternoon at the office.

  “But, shit, the traffic round the M25 is such a nightmare, and dad has seemed to be doing okay in terms of not being in pain since they upped those doses…,” Robert tailed off in a deflated manner, as he knew he was really trying to convince himself rather than Maria.

  “You may not have many more trips, Robert, your poor old dad won’t be around for much longer I’m sure, having talked to the nurses who were there last time we went. Just think how much it means to him to keep seeing you.”

  Robert felt guilty for his insensitivity, and got up from the sofa to go to his wife. He looked at her, then looked at their young daughter sat Buddah-like in the middle of the kitchen floor, turning the rigid cardboard pages of her first book, with brightly coloured pictures of farmyards, and trains, and houses, and animals; she seemed to be absorbing each picture in minute detail with intelligent eyes. “My little professor,” the public health nurse had taken to
calling her, as she came around on her regular home visits following the birth.

  “Shit,” he cursed resignedly, “Of course you’re right, and of course I must go. There’s nothing quite like the love of a parent for their child.”

  Umhlabathi E6.2 2:15pm Sunday July 14th 1996; home

  Marlene was tired. She was very tired. She had been dutifully visiting her husband every day for the past four weeks.

  Cancer. What the hell was cancer anyway? Lung cancer, stomach cancer, throat cancer, skin cancer, anything-you-bloody-well-want-to-put-in-front-of-the-word “cancer” cancer. She was very, very tired. Her friends had tried to be helpful at the beginning.

  “Oh, you never know, Marlene, they can do wonderful things these days with treatments and everything. Once Stanley has had some therapy in the hospital, he’ll be right as rain and you’ll be nagging him again for being down the bookies too often…”

  They stopped the platitudes once he’d been transferred to the hospice.

  She looked out of the front room window of the small two up two down they had lived in for over 35 years; the rain forced the little droplets to come together and find their convoluted path down the small glass pains. They weaved weary, erratic paths, getting bigger as they progressed downwards, eventually though to die at the base of the glass. All that energy, all those rain drops, coming to nothing.

  “Nice to have some water for the garden,” she said absent-mindedly to herself, then had sat down quietly in front of one of the many television sets scattered around the house that she liked to have on all the time to escape the silence. She looked at the screen blankly, not really seeing the programme being broadcast, and started to cry.

  Coming to terms with the imminent departure of someone you have shared your life with for almost half a century is not something that happens easily. Marlene reflected on the times that they had had together. She knew from the appearance of her husband at her last visit that it would not be much longer; his skin had somehow appeared even more drawn and translucent, and when he eventually did open his eyes after she’d sat quietly by his bed for a full ten minutes, it had taken a moment before a flicker of recognition had made its way through the drug-induced numbness. She had managed a half smile; the nurse had advised that it was good to try and smile as often as possible in the early visits, but as time went on, she had also said that it was perfectly okay to share a few tears together if it felt the right thing to do.