We Are Animals

by Tim Ewins

  The sky turned to a dusty orange and the waves slowly calmed to form a flat, open field of blue – it would have been a truly beautiful sight to have enjoyed alone.

  The bar owner took away the man’s empty glass and the man ordered the same again. Shakey, much to the man’s surprise, ordered a vodka and Red Bull and requested that it be in one of those little plastic buckets.

  ‘Why are you here?’ asked the man a little too loudly.

  ‘Initially? To find myself,’ answered Shakey. ‘Now? I think something bigger,’ and then he rubbed the back of his head with his hand.

  ‘No. Why are you here, now, sitting next to me?’

  ‘Oh. I’m being as silent as a silent disco, if you don’t put on the headphones, that is. If you put on the headphones they can be very loud. Would you like me to be as loud as a silent disco next?’

  The man exhaled and frowned. ‘I’m afraid I find even your presence loud. To me, your mere being here is like a thousand out-of-tune and out-of-time trumpets playing a symphony of bad hip-hop songs. Badly.’ He put emphasis on the words ‘hip’ and ‘hop’ which made Shakey visibly cringe.

  Shakey had met people like this man before. He called them moustaches and he didn’t like them. He found them to be rude and stuck in their ways, but frankly he had been handing out silent disco flyers for two hours – he was hot and in need of a drink. He just wanted to enjoy the sunset and to sit next to someone, anyone, to whom he could pretend to be flyering, should his boss see him. This rude moustachioed man would have to do. Shakey did, however, try his best not to sound like a thousand out-of-tune and out-of-time trumpets playing bad hip-hop music, badly, but he found it difficult as he wasn’t sure what it was that had made him sound like that in the first place.

  ‘Did you say that you were finding yourself, initially?’ asked the man, and Shakey confirmed that he did. ‘So, are you telling me that you’ve succeeded? That you’ve found yourself now?’ and Shakey confirmed that, yes, he had. The man, with one eyebrow down and one eyebrow up, enquired as to where it was that Shakey had found himself so easily.

  ‘In the sand,’ Shakey replied confidently and with a shrug, and then neither of them said anything for a few moments as the man took that in.

  * * *

  Four bars down, the DJ in the COCK-tail bar looked across the empty beach and out to sea. Then he turned and scanned the bar he was in. It was also empty. Where on earth was everybody? He set his laptop to loop, left the DJ booth and stepped onto the sand. Along the beach, about four bars down, he could see someone luminous sitting next to a man holding a glass of red wine. Beyond them, he could see a wistful-looking cow. The DJ, who was also quite luminous, thought for a second and then started off towards the man and the vest, having decided that cows probably don’t like listening to music much. After a few steps he saw the vest turn its head.

  ‘Shakey!’ the DJ said to himself happily. The DJ liked Shakey because Shakey always really lost himself in the music.

  He ran back to his booth – they must not be able to hear, he thought as he turned the thudding music up as loud as it would go.

  ‘What an infernal racket,’ said the man. Shakey wasn’t sure what infernal meant, so he agreed happily that it was indeed an infernal racket, and quite a good one at that. The cow looked up from the sea and towards the COCK-tail bar. She shuffled her back legs, kicked up some of the sand behind her and then she turned her entire body to face the DJ.

  * * *

  ‘What were you doing in the sand?’ the man asked, now resigned to a conversation with his new companion.

  ‘I think I’ve always been in the sand, spiritually,’ Shakey replied, ‘but it’s taken my physical self to travel the world to meet my spiritual self and now I’ve formed my whole self, y’know?’ The man looked at Shakey in disbelief, which Shakey mistook for confusion, and so he continued, ‘like when the Power Rangers come together to form Megazord,’ as if to explain what he had meant. The man ignored this.

  ‘Where exactly did you look for yourself, before the sand, that is?’

  ‘Well. Just India so far.’

  ‘India?’

  ‘Goa.’

  ‘Just Goa?’

  ‘Just this beach really.’ Shakey looked a little embarrassed. ‘My parents met in India. Not Goa exactly, but I really like beaches, so...’

  The man scoffed. ‘It’s lucky your spiritual self was in the sand on this beach then, isn’t it?’

  The cow had started walking towards the COCK-tail bar and was now standing directly in front of Shakey and the man, blocking their view of the sea. The waiter brought over the drinks and shouted ‘shoo’ at the cow, but she didn’t move. Instead, she let out a rare, quiet and malnourished ‘moo’, leaving her mouth slightly open. Then she nodded her head slowly, repetitively, and maybe, just maybe, in time to the music.

  ‘What’s your deal anyway? What were you looking for on the beach earlier? When I came over you completely ignored me. That’s pretty rude, yeah?’

  ‘Jan,’ said the man.

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Shakey.

  ‘A woman,’ said the man, more in the direction of the cow than to Shakey.

  Shakey asked where she was. He was hoping she would come back quickly so there would be three of them. Maybe she would dilute the man’s rudeness, like polite water to his arrogant concentrated squash.

  ‘When did you see her last? Maybe she’s getting a drink before she meets you.’

  ‘1978. I last saw her in 1978, and as to where she is, I don’t know. That’s why I was looking. If she is getting a drink before she meets me, she’ll be pretty damn drunk when she does turn up.’

  ‘Man,’ said Shakey, and then, ‘jeez,’ and then, ‘are you ill?’ to which the man inhaled sharply.

  ‘No, I’m not ill. I’m just waiting, that’s all. You must believe in...’ and then he trailed off, realising how silly what he was about to say would sound to the vest if he said it out loud. ‘You talk some utter crap,’ he said instead.

  But then the man thought for a second, and he decided that he didn’t mind sounding silly in front of this vest. Everything Shakey had said so far had been silly, even his name was silly, and if nothing else Shakey had been incredibly forthcoming himself.

  ‘I’m waiting for fate,’ he said. It did sound silly. It was true though – fate had, as far as the man understood it, always brought him and Jan together in the past. ‘We never had to look for each other before. She was just there anytime I needed her. Until 1978, that is.’

  ‘What happened in 1978?’ asked Shakey.

  ‘I don’t know,’ replied the man and then he took a long sip of his wine.

  He explained how he’d always loved travelling, even before he had met Jan. ‘People say it’s a small world,’ he said, ‘but it’s not. I’ve seen a lot of it and I promise you it’s really very big. But we kept bumping into each other, Jan and I, and that had to be fate.’ The man took another sip of his wine.

  Shakey noticed the increased speed with which the man had started drinking, so he put all four of the straws from his bucket into his mouth and took a massive gulp to join in.

  ‘The last thirty-eight years, however, fate must have found it hard getting us together because I’ve not seen her.’

  ‘Man,’ said Shakey again, and then, ‘jeez.’ No matter how many times he’d told other vests that he’d met his kindred spirit in that restaurant owner, he wasn’t really feeling comfortable with the man opening up like this.

  ‘Yes, well. Maybe I am ill then,’ said the man under a stifled laugh. ‘Anyway, I thought I’d give fate a hand this last five years, and I’m not getting any younger, so I’ve stayed here. Now fate just has to get Jan here, and when it does I’ll be looking, just like I was earlier,’ and then he apologised if he had seemed rude, even though he knew that he had and he didn’t care.
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  ‘How long are you going to keep looking? I mean, you’re living on a beach indefinitely like a hermit or something.’ The man smiled at this. He still felt a bit silly for talking about Jan to the vest but at least Shakey had actually been listening.

  He had no answer though. He didn’t know how long he intended to stay on the beach and he didn’t know how long he would keep looking. Maybe Jan would never turn up. He wasn’t worried about recognising her – she was beautiful, and he was sure she would still be beautiful in her older age. But what if she, or indeed fate, had stopped trying? What if, out of the three of them, he was the only one still paying any attention?

  ‘What’s your name, old-timer?’ Shakey asked.

  ‘Jan,’ replied the man.

  ‘No. Your name,’ Shakey asked again.

  ‘Jan,’ replied the man again. There was a pause.

  ‘Because you’re finding yourself, and when you look around the beach, you’re really looking for you?’ asked Shakey, looking like his head might explode with deepness.

  ‘No. Jan is called Jan, and I am called Jan. We are both called Jan. She is a girl, and I am a man.’ Jan the man really didn’t enjoy saying this. It was hard to say without sounding like he was reciting a children’s poem.

  ‘Man-Jan?’

  ‘Sure. If it makes it easier for you. Manjan,’ said Manjan.

  * * *

  Four bars down, the DJ looked again across his empty bar. Where was Shakey? He normally loved this particular thudding song. He glanced towards the beach to see if Shakey was on his way, maybe with his wine-loving friend. He didn’t see either of them, but he did see a cow with her mouth slightly open and her head nodding along in time to the music. The DJ put his hands in the air excitedly and pointed towards the cow.

  ‘This song is for you,’ he screamed with delight, dancing in time to both the music and the cow. The cow shuffled her back legs and once again mooed. ‘Beach cow, this one is for you!’

  Manjan watched this from his chair four bars down. Even the cows on this beach were adapting to suit the times. They’ve survived centuries with hardly any grass, and now, it seems, they’ll survive the loud, thudding music too. This made Manjan feel slightly jealous. He wished that he could adapt to change quite so easily.

  Manjan asked why Shakey was called Shakey, and Shakey laughed.

  ‘Isn’t it obvious?’ he asked, and then he held onto one of Manjan’s hands and shook it lightly, as a parent might do to a baby. Manjan had no idea why this was obvious, but he enjoyed it just the same.

  Once Shakey had stopped, they both looked back out to the no-longer-obstructed sea view, one smiling more widely than the other, but both happy.

  ‘Manjan,’ started Shakey, still looking towards the sea, his smile slowly disappearing, ‘what if Jan’s dead?’

  Manjan’s smile quickly faded too and he took another sip of his wine. He thought about it for the first time ever, and then answered the only answer that was acceptable to him.

  ‘She’s not,’ he said.

  4

  Classic moustache

  Goa, India. 2016.

  You can’t always tell if someone is a moustache by the physical presence of hair on his top lip. What makes a moustache a moustache is his determined refusal to accept change in any way. Sometimes a moustache will have a face entirely void of hair, but there is a sure-fire test to find out if he is indeed a moustache. You just have to suggest that he grow a moustache. A true moustache would snort at you disapprovingly – ‘I’ve never had a moustache before, why should I grow a moustache now?’ he’d say. This is a typical moustache response. It’s classic moustache.

  Of course, if a moustache does possess an actual moustache, there is a good chance it will have been there ever since his adolescent face will have allowed it to be.

  Millions of moustaches all over the world sit in their homes complaining that television programmes aren’t what they used to be and that there are too many channels these days anyway. Don’t even get them started on supermarkets. Most moustaches tend to stay indoors, shut off from the outside world, and they only communicate with the people they have direct contact with. A moustache will never check his emails. This is for the best though – have you seen the amount of spam emails supermarkets send these days?

  A moustache living predominantly outdoors is a different breed of bristle altogether. Places change, and societies change. The world changes. In fact, the only things that don’t change are the moustache’s opinions and his upper lip (however decorated, or not decorated, it might be). A moustache outdoors is constantly outside of its comfort zone. As a result, these are the worst kind.

  * * *

  Manjan was one of those moustaches that did sport an actual moustache, and quite a moustache at that. It was long and grey, and it tickled the rim of his wine glass with every sip. He wouldn’t have it any other way.

  Over the past five years, he had established a comfortable routine on Palolem. In the morning he would scan the beach for Jan before enjoying a spot of yoga and a fruit salad in a nearby health restaurant. Then he would scan the beach for Jan, read a newspaper or chat with the melon-selling lady for a while. He would use the same health restaurant for lunch (but this time he would order a masala dosa), before scanning the beach for Jan. In the evening, after he had scanned the beach for Jan, he would sit in the very same bar he was sitting in now, with a glass of red wine, sometimes chatting to the bar owner and sometimes alone with his thoughts and memories. He would stay there until sundown, when he would have a quick look around in case Jan had turned up, and then he’d find his way back to bed. It was repetitive, and it was predictable.

  Today had been a day like any other for Manjan, except today Shakey had sat next to him, and yesterday he had been called just Jan. They’d been sitting quietly for quite some time when Manjan said, ‘I hate this beach,’ flatly.

  ‘Whoa!’ exclaimed Shakey. ‘I don’t know if I mentioned at all, but this sand is me, man. You hate this beach and you hate me.’

  After a few seconds of thought, Manjan replied.

  ‘Sometimes. I hate this beach, sometimes.’

  If Shakey truly believed he and the beach were one, then this statement rang true for both. Manjan did hate the beach sometimes, and, in the short time he had known Shakey, he also hated him sometimes. Only sometimes, mind, and that wasn’t bad.

  ‘What’s wrong with the beach?’ Shakey asked.

  ‘It’s changed,’ Manjan explained, and Shakey remembered that Manjan, as interesting as he had first seemed, with his stories of a lady who was probably made-up (I mean, he couldn’t even think of a name for her different to his own), was still a moustache. He decided not to listen to whatever Manjan had to say next. It would probably only serve to kill the buzz he was beginning to get from his vodka and Red Bull.

  Manjan shuffled the back legs of his chair into the sand and then leant on them slowly to make himself comfortable.

  He explained how he’d first come to Palolem with Jan, just for a week, when he was twenty-five. Travelling was still exciting then, and every new place he visited felt like an adventure, especially with Jan. Palolem had felt special. He’d fallen in love with the beach the moment the soles of his feet had touched the sand, and by the time they’d left, Jan seemed equally taken.

  They’d visited a spice farm, learnt to ride motorcycles, and tried yoga for the first time. One day, they had climbed over the rocks at the end of the beach and found another beach with rocks at both ends. Over those rocks they’d found yet another beach, which they’d walked down for about an hour, and then, at the other end of that beach, they’d found more rocks. It had been a magical week. If fate had a plan to bring him and Jan together again, Manjan felt certain it would be on Palolem.

  ‘Since then,’ Manjan said, while Shakey nodded absently but politely, ‘the beach has changed. It
used to be quiet, peaceful and fun, but now it’s loud and full of vests.’ Shakey instinctively frowned when Manjan said ‘vests’. It was the first word he’d really noticed, and he assumed he was being insulted. Then he realised that frowning was almost an admittance to being whatever it was that Manjan was accusing him of being, so he rubbed the back of his head with his hand and smiled his insanely wide smile. This annoyed Manjan more than the frown. Nothing he’d said had warranted an insanely wide smile.

  ‘The good old days eh?’ said Shakey, hoping this might end Manjan’s monologue. Manjan sighed.

  ‘I’m watching Goa fall apart around me,’ he said ‘and I’m talking about it to the source of the problem. To make it worse, you’ve not even been paying attention.’

  ‘What are you doing here then? If you hate it so much, why not just move?’

  Manjan flinched at the thought, and then sighed again. He’d travelled the world – he’d spent most of his life doing it, in fact – but he couldn’t leave Palolem now and he knew it. The beach had become his lottery ticket and he had the same numbers every week. If he stopped buying the ticket, Jan would turn up, he was sure. No, he was stuck on Palolem.

  ‘Because there’s nowhere better than Palolem,’ he said, ‘and I’m meeting Jan here. No no, I’ll be staying on Palolem thank you very much,’ and then he stuck out his bottom lip in a pout so that the very ends of his moustache hairs scraped the inside of his mouth.

  ‘Classic moustache,’ Shakey said to himself, but he actually found himself feeling sorry for Manjan. This grumpy moustache was living in the past – waiting for it to re-happen even – but he was completely lost in the present.

  ‘Nowhere better than Palolem,’ said Manjan again, matter-of-factly, resolutely and to himself, wondering if he meant it.

  ‘Nowhere better than Palolem,’ agreed Shakey quietly.

  * * *