God of Hunger

by John Coutouvidis

  “Like the Red Sea?”

  “Yes.”

  “What do you mean about New York being Jerusalem?”

  “Of our dreams, Theo. In our prayers we would beg to return to the city of our kings. … The city of David. … Jerusalem. But we dreamt only of New York. That was the place to be. That is the place to be. …”

  *

  One day, passing his time in the television lounge Theo overheard a conversation at reception. He swore it was the voice of one of his school mates from Kongwa. He heard him greet a woman called Marisha, explaining to her that he had arranged a room for her at his place ….

  “Hey, Jozef. Jozef!. It’s me. Theo Kokopoulos. We were at Kongwa together!”

  He called, as loud as his weakened lungs could bear.

  “Shit, Theo. What the hell has happened to you …?”

  Jozef recognized only the face he saw before him. Luckily, the face had puffed out since the Congo episode. Under the influence of chemotherapy and gold injections a certain normality returned. But the bald head and skinny neck and arms belonged to the starving Jozef had once seen at an abandoned lepers’ colony near Iringa.

  Theo explained that he was between treatments at the Marsden. He went back for a week each month and then rested at the hotel.

  “Now we have met, please find me again. Here or at the hospital. I know that you are busy now. Good luck with her, Jozef.”

  Jozef smiled. ‘You must meet her one day, Theo. She’s quite a chick. I will take you to meet her when she’s settled in at my place.’

  *

  Jozef lived with other guys from Tanganyika at 41 Sinclair Road, between Olympia and Shepherd’s Bush.

  A room had become vacant after the death of Cranty from hypothermia. Jozef immediately contacted Marisha at her hotel. Where he had met Theo.

  Marisha moved straight in. She took to it like a duck to water. Certainly as at home in her new surroundings as the duck on the table to its former home: the water in St. James Park, a favourite hunting ground of the Sinclair Road gang adapting their African skills as poachers in London’s top spots for a potential roast.

  It started at Trafalgar square where the new arrivals could not believe their eyes at such easy meat. All you needed was a noose threaded through the sleeves of your army jacket and a bit of corn. “Croo, croo” and away into the tunnel. Ducks required more elaborate preparation. Same principle but into a bag slit along its base. This allowed a hand to hide in the paper tunnel and as soon as a beak pecked at bread at its mouth, quack. The best bags, tall, strong and stiff, came from the US Military PX store next door to no.41. When food ran out somebody would get a temporary job as bag boy to the Yank women, in town from their base for cut price shopping. Everybody else at Sinclair road would get whatever free provisions they fancied. Big tins of boef stroganov were a favourite, but after a few days anything in a tin tasted almost like anything else in a tin. So it was time again for a hunt. As easy and skilful as an Albanian in town to pick pockets.

  Hajo, in the basement, was an Albanian. Though not a pick pocket he looked like one; a jackal eyed shiftiness to his thin long nosed face gave him the look.

  On the ground floor lived two ladies of the night. One brunette haired called Dot and the other, a blonde called Daisy. They made a lot of money, sporadically, by leaping stark naked out of a cardboard cake at parties.

  Above them lived Gina the hairdresser. Sorry. The Stylist. Her room had a bar with plastic grapes and empty straw clad Chianti bottles hanging above it. And on the wall a painting of the bay of Naples with Vesuvius smoking in the background. Stylish. She left no.41 to be replaced Rumpa from the Philippines.

  *

  Most, of the boys at Sinclair Road were virgins when they arrived in London after Tanganyika’s independence in 1961. None more so than Adi Wexler who lived next door to Borisov Zakran. Here were athletes. ‘Zak’ had run the hundred yards at school in just a little over ten seconds. He was the only one in spikes which brought him much kudos.

  Adi was equally adored. At school he excelled at the discus, posing, whenever eyes were upon his body, like a Phidean statue. Junior boys called him Charles Atlas as he did the course every day. And one day discovered that lessons six to eight were missing. All hell broke loose. Everybody was blamed. But lost they remained.

  Luckily he came to London soon after and his first outing was to Charles Atlas in Dean Street, Soho. He walked up the stairs flexing his plexes; his torso vee shaped and taut in his black nylon polo neck. Then he came to a landing. Empty but for a hatch. Pasted over it was a hand-written notice which said ‘Please ring the bell for attention’. So he did all the time flexing. Up on his toes. Calves like gourds. Arms tensed showing rope-like muscles straining out of rolled up sleeves. Bull neck tense. Jaws clenched and pumping like James Dean, another of his heroes. Then the hatch opened.

  “Can I help you?.’ ‘Yeah. I have come to see Charles Atlas. I want to shake his hand and ask him for lessons six to eight which I have lost. I am from Africa.”

  Eyes slit. Looking for admiration. Finding only mirth all around the office. There it was. Charles Atlas. Just a room full of women typing. The one who came to the window said.

  “Not to worry, lovey. I will get you the lessons you want. Here you are.’ At that moment a section of Adi’s mental construct of the world crumbled into dust.

  But he continued to do his exercises being particularly proud of his arse. Of its perfect half-moon silhouette with dimples.

  One day, at Sinclair Road, he started what became a long standing discussion on the merits of arse muscles in sport.

  Jonah and Kaz who excelled in long distance walking, also held definite views on the subject. Jonah claimed that a rounded arse was best for running. Kaz had a flat arse but he could out-run Jonah. The argument went on and on and infected the habits of the others in the building, every one of whom looked in whatever reflective surface there was to check out the shape of their arses. And when Frashka came round for the rent his opinion was sought; he too developed the fixation.

  *

  Frashka worked for a letting agency owned by the bookshop managed by Klucicki ‘The Key’. He was owned by the Polish Government. Amongst many other deals in medicines, coffee and nylons, The Key, housed apparatchiks coming to London. He had allocated a decent bed-sit for Marisha na Actonye; she was as yet not senior enough for a place v Ealingu. In the event, when Jozef learnt that Marisha was coming to London he did a deal with Frashka whereby he would fix the guttering at No. 41 if Frashka would allow Marisha to take Cranty’s old room. “No problem”.

  Cranty was an itinerant habitué of No 41. Like several others who had joined the British Army in Nairobi in order to get a free lift to London. There they did the bunk. Got caught and eventually discharged. With one exception. That of Jonjo who was put on a bus to Sandhurst, hated it, but ended up as aide de camp to an antipodean Governor General, retiring as a colonel and in retirement stalked deer and poachers on large Hampshire estates. As ever, it was always back to basic skills. Learnt in Tanganyika.

  Cranty, Shaun, and Phokion, all ex-military; each ended up in Sinclair road. Not for long. Cranty died soon after. Shaun went as a mercenary to shoot commies in Angola, only they shot him first. Phokion went to Rhodesia via the Hammersmith College of Art and Building.

  *

  Cranty, who died of cold, survived as long as he did by joining the student rag week at Phokion’s college, collecting for Imperial Cancer and taking the blue tins back to his room. He kept the room warm by rigging up a paraffin heater made of ex-PX strogonov tins and fuelled by oil from warning lamps collected on his nocturnal journeys around the centre of town. Always via the new Hilton on Hyde Park Corner to gawp at the TV screen set up outside to show hopefuls Bunny Girls walking around the casino.

  His most expensive entertainment was going to the cartoon theatre in Leicester Square where you could, for two-and-six, watch Looney Tunes for hours in the warmth. Then,
on the way back he would decant a few red lamps set around road-works into his army water bottle and head for home.

  That winter he caught flu and took to his bed. The heating oil ran out and he froze. Someone heard him whimpering loudly one night when the sound of Rumpa had faded. One lad broke into Cranty’s room. Two others were called to the scene and it was decided to roll the sick boy into the loose rug on the floor and place him into the armchair while a fire was lit in the small hearth in which the defunct heater stood behind the redundant gas heater which had been torn away from its fittings, coin box long broken on a frantic search for cash. The fire consumed the bedside cabinet and the drawers in the chest before it was realised that Cranty had kicked the bucket. Poor bloke. Memory of his passing proved quite useful; after Cranty’s death the answer to debt collectors was ‘he is dead’ regardless of whom they sought.

  *

  Phokion too had arrived from Nairobi as Army recruit.

  He was a boy who loved his home and was loved by all his family, so much so that, Kleo, his Greek grandmother, died on the night of his departure. Of heartbreak.

  Kleo, who so loved her grandson, was present in the boy’s mind as he flew the nest. He could see her sitting on her baboon skin covered arm chair telling all and sundry how Napoleon had met Cleopatra at the opera in Smyrna and how she had legs and a bosom to match hers …

  “Vre papse pia, shush, cried out Grandfather, tee pothia kai tee steethos? At which she would thrust out her one breast, the other having been surgically removed, and say, ‘Ne mor e, me thelane oulee. Tee eethela egho kai se peera? ‘Yes indeed. All the men wanted me. Why on earth did I choose you?’ She would then stand up and draw up her dress to her knees and show her legs at whose sight he would wince and shut his eyes, especially if the scene included the undoing of her bun allowing her hair to drop almost to the floor.

  She would then say in the lilting Greek of Chesmelites, natives of Tsesme:

  “Ya thes malee. Kamia ehee tetia malia, kai esee anthroulee mou kleenees ta matakia sou. More Andras pou eese. Kreema ta nyata mou …” Just look at it. None other has hair like mine and you dear hubby close your little eyes. What a man you have turned out to be. Shame to have wasted my youth on you. And if anyone else were in the room she would go into the detail of her toilette.

 

  “Water”, she would proudly say, “never touches my body. I wipe it all over with oil and kolonia. And I comb my hair through with black tea.”

  The joke was Kleo was only a little taller than a dwarf and the sight of her demonstrating her beauty caused all, except her beloved, to laugh.

  Phokion smiled in his sleep, waking only on the approach to land. A land entirely foreign to him.

  Dressed in shorts and short-sleeved cotton shirt he had embarked with, he walked down the steps of the Britannia into the cold of Christmas of 1963; the harshest British winter since 1947. No one was at the airport to meet him and after begging for help by the public telephones he got someone to connect him to the Reading number he had on a letter only to be told that transport would be delayed by the weather and that he would have to wait.

  The transport never arrived and, if it had, it would not have found Phokion. He got chatty with a young West Indian who was also waiting to be met. No one came and together they went to an address in Harlesden; a number given, ‘just in case’ by an old auntie back home in Jamaica. By such tender mercies a bed was had for the night and for tens of following nights.

  Phokion, who was so well liked, such a sweet and inoffensive boy, came to be called George. It may have crossed a mind or two to name him a rude derivative of Phokion. But no one ever did. He was called George because that sounded better than Yezi which is what his mother called him.

  In the evening he would do the washing up, a ritual in England that was unheard of in Africa. It struck him as strange how much was made of it. Domestic life seemed fixated on the issue of who would wash the dirty dishes after the evening meal. Phokion volunteered to break the impasse on the day he found the bath with the aftermath of a party and did so without complaint. He also washed up in the morning. And then went for a walk. It was a long time before he got just a little used to the surroundings. The drabness of the houses. The drabness of the people. What was this? Was it the poor quarter of London? The Kaloleni of London? It was grim and grimy, especially during that winter when pavements sang out a frozen tune to his footfall and all was covered in icy filth. But he had a warm room and a warm family to return to. And they laughed. And played loud music. And smoked ganja. And let him join in. One thing led to another and then to a job at Cadby Hall where all who needed a job in the Harlesden household found employment. Also warmth and sustenance; Cadby Hall was a huge red-brick complex of bakeries making cakes for Lyons.

  It was only a matter of time before Phokion made contact with the habitués of Tanganyika House in Sinclair Road, en route to Cadby Hall from the bus stop at Shepherds Bush. One morning in February he walked behind a figure who, by his crew cut hair, he half recognised and then fully so by the voice which said out loud:

  ‘Cacking mafee la umbwa.’ Unmistakably Anglo-Swahili. Unmistakably a dog turd; one of hundreds out of the wretched canine arses straining around Olympia. For the dog show.

  Unmistakably to Phokion’s ear, the voice belonged to Jozef. A mate from school. Greetings were quickly exchanged, Jozef explained his particularly loud ill-humour that morning as arising out of an affliction which necessitated a visit to the VD clinic that morning. Phokion tittered sympathetically. The friendship that had only just been renewed was not on firm enough ground for a piss-taking belly laugh. However, by the time they had both negotiated the iced turds, Phokion had decided to accompany Jozef to the clinic in Hammersmith.

  On the bus the story of the infection was told. Cranty had, a few days before he died, met a pair of usherettes at the local flick house, the Odeon on Ken High Street, and invited them to a party at Tanganyika House …

  It was at the clinic that Jozef told the others that he had seen Theo in town. And all decided to go and see him at the Marsden.

  *

  Jeezus what a place. People moving around corridors, thin as skeletons, scraping drip stands along the floor, passing each other like fish in a pond. Young kids with no hair, pale and pained, watching telly or trying hard to speak with their parents also pained and pale in contrast to the nurses who looked pink and plump. Each trying to cheer up their charges with a cheerful smile or cheerful word, neither of which had much effect to halt the downward spiralling.

  They asked for Theo’s whereabouts.

  “Second bed in the next ward. Are you his friends? He will be so pleased to see you. No one has visited since he came here.”

  Poor shit. Or so they thought until they approached his bed which was surrounded by men in white coats. What were they looking at?

  Would you believe it! Theo was asleep with a woman in his arms. She was awake and blushed at the audience. She had a lovely face. Bluey green eyes. Blonde hair. Beautiful skin and as far as they could all see through the gaps in the sheet, great legs. As for her breasts, beneath the thin blouse, they were the pillows dreams are made of.

  In every face there was a single thought: ‘The lucky shit!’

  *

  Soon after meeting his schoolmates, Jozef left for home. Then, Sheila, Phokion’s girl became pregnant. And soon after that the remaining residents of Tanganyika House, no. 41 Sinclair Road dispersed in various directions.

  Phokion and Sheila found a room in Sydney Street on the borders of South Ken and Chelsea. It was a room with a view of two flats opposite. In one, a prig made a ceremony of pouring himself a sherry from a decanter and drinking it for hours while reading the paper. His regular as tick tock behaviour wound Phokion up. Fortunately he could shift his gaze to the other flat where, each day, right on aperitif time a model of a girl sat grinding her Indian boyfriend’s linkum. But even this sight lost its appeal by its very regu
larity. That was the basic fault with life in England. Too damn regular. Everything by the clock. Phokion decided to make the break. He certainly was not going to allow the bump in Sheil’s womb to grow up a regulated child in a regulated land.

  He had, with Jozef, completed an HNC in Building. And with that scant diploma found himself the job of architect to the education department in Salisbury, Rhodesia. But the departure to the land of the regular sun was delayed.

  *

  At the Royal Marsden Theo was in his last month of life. The karkino had spread throughout his body. Not that he or his visitors from Sinclair Road were told. After Jozef’s departure and Adi’s decline it was Phokion who remained the stalwart Good Samaritan. He went each day to see Theo. And each day he would seek out the consultant.

  A large red faced besuited man who, in his sadness at the decline all around took to and smelt of whisky. He also took to Theo. For his shear guts. No procedure, however painful, worried him. He had a series of surgical interventions and before the last, on his testicles, he prepared himself by asking a nurse to get him a plain white T shirt and an indelible marker.

  He went into surgery wearing his logo: “Message to the Prime Minister; don’t cut the NHS. Message to the NHS; don’t cut my penis.”

  Phokion was in Theo’s room after the operation. And he could see faces at the two glass apertures in the sprung doors which moved with the movement of the crowd outside. Theo smiled. He lifted the sheet to reveal written, in red, on the paper like skin of his sunken stomach: ‘Oops. Sorry.’’ And an arrow pointing down. And there it was. All wrapped in a bandage soaked in blood and held together with a huge safety pin.