We Are Animals

by Tim Ewins

  ‘Bloody poofs,’ he’d said under his breath. It was a quiet pub. Hylad had heard, and looked at the barman as a reaction to the noise without registering what he’d actually said. ‘I said, bloody poofs,’ the barman repeated, only this time much louder. Hylad had looked down at his pint. On their way out of the pub, drinks only a quarter drunk, the barman had said, not shouted, but said with a distinctly casual disgust, ‘Faggots.’

  Hylad and Michael hadn’t touched each other in public since. They didn’t really mind. They sat and chatted over a drink sometimes after their respective work days were over and they saved their ‘together’ lives for behind doors.

  In Sweden it was different. After they left the police station they power-walked the wide and beautifully paved streets looking for Jan. It was a panicked search and they both accidentally bumped into lots of people. After the fourth collision (this one by Michael) they began to assume that förlåt must mean sorry in Swedish. Hylad bumped into a young lady.

  ‘Förlåt,’ he said.

  ‘Förlåt,’ she said.

  Michael bumped into a long blond-haired gentleman.

  ‘Förlåt,’ Michael said.

  ‘Förlåt,’ the blond man replied.

  Hylad bumped into a beautifully moustachioed man.

  ‘Förlåt,’ Hylad said, and the moustachioed man just grumbled, but they do tend to do that.

  They searched for three hours. They even passed the docks briefly but reasoned that Jan would a) be nervous to go there and b) try to explore the town. He was an inquisitive little thing. Eventually they stopped.

  ‘What now?’ Michael asked, exhausted and close to tears. Hylad wasn’t used to seeing Michael like this; he was not an emotional man, and it broke Hylad’s heart. He blamed himself for making Michael feel like this.

  ‘We need to sleep, Michael. We need to sleep and we need to eat.’

  ‘But, Jan…’

  ‘I know,’ Hylad said, holding Michael’s arm with both of his hands. Hylad hated seeing Michael close to tears, but that was better than what came next: tears. Hylad looked around them. They were in a busy street, probably the main shopping street in town, but this time Hylad didn’t care. He hugged Michael so tight that just for a second all their problems went away. Lots of people saw but no one cared, and neither Michael nor Hylad had to say förlåt to anyone.

  * * *

  Everyone made soft cooing noises at the sunset, and although Jan didn’t understand most of the languages being spoken he could follow that there was a general appreciation of it. He sat surrounded by people but feeling ultimately alone, and watched it too. It was pretty, but he couldn’t shake the feeling he was missing something that everyone else was seeing. Everyone was gathered to see what the docks looked like at sunset but to Jan they looked the same.

  Although the sky was a light pink, the concrete floor remained grey, the boats continued to bob about in the same way they had done all afternoon and even the water stayed a similar greyish white as it failed to reflect the sky’s hue. The main difference, Jan thought, was the fact that the docks were now busy with luminous tourists.

  He looked to his right. Everyone was looking out to sea, all together and in a uniformed communal stare. He looked to his left. A further sea of tourists facing the same way. There was very little movement from anyone, and everyone, but Jan, was in awe.

  Nevertheless, Jan felt proud to be in among this gaggle of tourists. To an outsider he would look like a true traveller – everything he’d wanted to be since his day trip away from Fishton and then back to Fishton.

  He looked to his right again and accidentally made eye contact with a man in a baggy, tie-dyed t-shirt. The man smiled at him and nodded, as if they were both agreeing on something. Jan nodded back. He looked to his left again. This time the view wasn’t as still. There was movement – a pale-skinned, dark-haired girl was crouching behind an embracing couple towards the back of the sitting crowd.

  She lifted a flap on the couple’s backpack, pulled out a purse on a drawstring, de-crouched, turned and walked away.

  It’s her, Jan thought, she’s there, although it wasn’t as if he’d been looking for her.

  Jan stood up and moved to the back of the crowd but by the time he’d navigated a way through the compilation of crossed, kneeling and bent legs she had gone. Once again Jan sat and tried to enjoy the sunset. It was nearly over and very little had changed. The sea remained a greyish white and the sky was beginning to follow suit.

  After another fifteen minutes people began to leave, while Jan remained. He was about to search for his makeshift uncomfortable bed when he felt a movement in his back pocket. Without looking he swung his arm round behind him and knocked it into another slender arm. He managed (with some awkwardness of elbow movement) to grab the other arm.

  He turned to see the girl. Her eyes were dark, her skin was as pale as the sky had become and her cheeks smiled, even though her expression was full of shock and panic.

  ‘Give me my passport,’ Jan said forcefully. The girl yanked her arm but didn’t free herself.

  ‘Give me my passport,’ Jan demanded again.

  ‘I don’t have the passport,’ the girl said, at the same time as rummaging through her (or someone else’s) bag with her loose arm.

  ‘You stole my passport,’ Jan said louder. ‘Give me my passport.’ The girl brought five passports out of the bag and gave them all to Jan. He let go of her, but she didn’t run away. After finding his, Jan passed the other four passports to the girl, who had been rummaging further in the bag. She passed Jan his wallet, said förlåt, and then ran.

  * * *

  ‘It’s peaceful without Jan isn’t it?’ asked Jan’s father.

  Jan’s mother stared at him. Since Jan had left four days ago she’d started biting her nails. She missed Jan and was already counting down the days until he was due home.

  ‘I’m glad you feel peaceful,’ she said sarcastically.

  ‘I just mean,’ Jan’s father started, and then he stopped to think. He wanted to choose his words wisely. ‘It’s nice spending time with just you,’ he said, and then he mentally congratulated himself.

  Jan’s mother continued biting her nails but did, if only momentarily, looked touched.

  ‘This kind of trip can change someone,’ Jan’s father said. ‘When I was younger I went to Devon.’

  ‘I know,’ Jan’s mother replied.

  ‘I’ll never forget that trip. Aye, it changed my life.’

  ‘I know,’ Jan’s mother interrupted again, annoyed.

  ‘It was winter – a funny time to go to Devon I suppose, but it was beautiful nonetheless. Me and my mate, we stayed in a bunk house behind some stables.’

  ‘I know this story,’ Jan’s mother repeated.

  ‘That was fate, you see; I was meant to stay in those stables. I met the most beautiful lass there playing with the horses.’ He paused. ‘My point is, this could be the making of our Jan. He could come back a different person, someone more like...him. He might even meet someone.’ This last sentence brought a smile to the face behind a now very short fingernail.

  ‘He might find his bunkhouse lass,’ Jan’s father continued, ‘if you know what I mean. His horse girl.’ Jan’s father winked at Jan’s mother. ‘It had such a nice setting that bunkhouse, a setting that changed my life.’

  ‘Yes I know about the bunkhouse,’ Jan’s mother said. ‘I was there!’

  * * *

  The crowds had gone, and the sun had set. There were a few streetlights on, spread at a distance from each other, giving the effect of several spotlights. Jan took centre-stage in one of them.

  He sat on his painful homemade bed looking out to the relative darkness of the sea. His legs had gone numb. Occasionally he would move from his knees to his bum and occasionally he would move from his bum to his knees.

&n
bsp; The sounds of the harbour had changed. There were no human noises any more, just the sound of some of the smaller boats bumping into each other. It sounded like Fishton in the quieter winter months, and once again Jan began to miss home.

  A small spark of hope inside Jan spurred him to continually scan the horizon. Wasn’t there a possibility that Hylad and Michael had planned to come back to the harbour to get him under cover of darkness?

  He sat once more on his bum and stretched his legs out in front of him. He scratched the palm of one of his hands with his other hand and then used them to lean back on the hard bed. The ground under his right hand was much softer than that under his left hand, and it was warmer too. For a second, Jan smiled. Then the floor moved and his smile turned into a scream.

  ‘You again?’ the girl said hurriedly, as she tried to move backwards away from Jan. Jan held onto her hand tight and once again they found themselves violently holding hands.

  ‘Me?’ screamed Jan. ‘Me?’

  ‘Let me go!’

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Jan.’ Jan loosened his grip and she pulled her arm free, but again she didn’t run away. They both looked surprised.

  ‘How do you know my name?’ Jan asked.

  ‘I don’t,’ replied the girl in a soft Swedish accent, ‘but I could know if I wanted. I had your passport.’ Jan sort of smiled at her and she half-smiled back. The wind blew her hair in almost every direction – behind her, to both sides of her, above her and across her face. It sounds awfully unattractive, but Jan found it mesmerising.

  They both stood in silence for a few seconds, a metre apart but both fully in the spotlight of the street lamp.

  ‘I can leave?’ the girl asked eventually.

  ‘Um. No,’ Jan said. ‘You said my name. You said Jan.’ The girl looked at him quizzically.

  ‘You are Jan too? How funny. My name is Jan,’ said Ladyjan.

  13

  Other people’s faces

  Sweden. 1970.

  For most people the night that followed would be long. Sweden is not a warm country at night and Jan was not equipped for sleeping rough. His bed would surely testify he didn’t really have the smarts to survive a prolonged stint on the streets. It was lucky, then, that at no point did Jan try to sleep that night. It was also lucky that this would be his last night on a cold Swedish street.

  After a conversation that would have been uncomfortable to watch but pleasing to be a participant of, Manjan and Ladyjan had sat down together. It had taken them over fifteen minutes to work out that neither of them had run away from the other, not because of fear, but because they didn’t want to. Each of them faced a night alone in the cold, and company, even that of a beautiful thief or a persistent victim, would be gladly accepted.

  Ladyjan made a noise as if she was about to say something. Manjan looked at her, slightly flexing what muscle he had in his skinny arm in the hope that she might notice. ‘What on earth are we sitting on?’

  ‘I made this,’ Manjan said proudly, hoping that she would be impressed.

  ‘But what is it?’

  ‘It’s my bed,’ Manjan beamed. ‘I made it today.’ Ladyjan thought about what Manjan had said and then disagreed with him. She told Manjan that it was not a bed and that they’d both be more comfortable if they sat next to it rather than on it. Manjan looked hurt and Ladyjan took pity on him and conceded. They both sat unnecessarily uncomfortably on the bed for the remainder of the night.

  Manjan looked into the darkness of the horizon while Ladyjan looked at him.

  ‘I’ve never seen you before today,’ Ladyjan said. Manjan wanted to impress Ladyjan. After all, she was beautiful and the only person he knew in Sweden, so the next thing he said, although not strictly a lie, put a certain spin on actual events.

  ‘I’ve been travelling for a while now,’ he said, ‘seeing parts of the world that, I guess, have inspired me. I visited this small island off the bottom of Norway actually. I really think you’d like it, it was quite something.’ He paused. ‘You should see Norway at sunrise, you really should.’

  Ladyjan was impressed. They talked at length about Jan’s travelling feats, how he’d stowed away on a boat in Fishton when he was younger and how only the other day he’d saved a cockroach from certain death. Again, Ladyjan was impressed.

  ‘Wow,’ she said, her subtle accent shining through in the word, ‘I’m sorry. I would never have taken your things if I’d seen your, um, well, what you’re calling a bed.’

  ‘I don’t mind that you took my passport,’ Manjan said, ‘but I don’t know why you took it.’

  Ladyjan didn’t try to impress Manjan when she told him about her life. She just hoped that he wouldn’t judge her and stop talking to her. She didn’t want him to look down on her for being kicked out of her parents’ house last year when she’d tried to defend her mother from her abusive father. She hoped that Manjan wouldn’t disapprove of her subsequent decision to share a house with an alcoholic. That was when she’d started to steal, so she could pay the alcoholic the small amount that he charged for a bed. She held back a tear when she told Manjan that now she just stole for the sake of stealing. She lived here, outside.

  They sat for a while.

  ‘I still don’t understand why you took my passport,’ Manjan said quietly, not wanting to belittle anything Ladyjan had said.

  ‘It’s silly,’ Ladyjan started to answer, ‘I try to steal from tourists because they have money, and if I can get their passport too, I do.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘So that one day I can give everything back.’ She looked into Manjan’s eyes, hoping that he might understand. ‘But you didn’t have any money,’ she said quietly, the words almost lost in the wind, ‘and I’d already taken your passport when I realised.’

  Manjan didn’t judge Ladyjan. He wanted to help her. ‘Here,’ he said, unbuckling his green plastic watch, ‘take this, and you can take my passport back, too. You can sell the watch and use the money for what you like, but I want you to use the passport to one day find me again.’ He held out the watch and the passport. ‘You know, just to say hi.’

  Ladyjan looked at the watch and laughed, and that made Manjan smile. Her laugh was pretty.

  ‘I don’t want to steal from you,’ she said before adding, ‘again.’ Her eyes lit up as she told Manjan that what she really wanted was to travel, like him. She wanted to save a cockroach and visit unknown islands – so unknown, as Manjan had pointed out, that he didn’t even know where they were or what they were called.

  Some distance behind them a man whistled a tune. The sky remained a star-speckled black but Ladyjan knew it would soon be morning and she said so. The two didn’t want to part and Manjan didn’t want his first full day alone in Sweden.

  ‘You can travel,’ he said, again flexing his puny arm. ‘Anyone can travel.’

  Ladyjan looked sad. ‘I have so many passports, but none of them are mine, with my face on it. Not anyone can travel. I can’t travel.’

  Manjan jolted his head around, first to his right, then to his left, and finally to the boats bobbing along the harbour front.

  ‘Anyone can travel,’ he said. ‘How good are you at hiding?’

  14

  A pickled herring

  Sweden. 1970.

  Hylad and Michael had barely woken up from a night spent barely asleep. The harbour was wet and miserable, and the weather made them even more worried for Jan. Yesterday they’d searched the town, walked into every café and down every lane. They’d looked behind every Jan-sized object including bins, stairwells and one particularly large dog. Today they were back at the harbour.

  They’d started early and found the harbour to be dark other than the occasional spotlight provided by the street lamps. A quick scan told them that there was no one there but one whistling man. They strolled up and down the harbour
without much hope, let alone luck.

  Now, in daylight and after a quick breakfast of Surströmming, they were back. Neither Michael nor Hylad had known what Surströmming was when they’d ordered it, but it was the single option at the only seller they could find so early. It turned out to be pickled herring – an acquired taste and one that Michael had found trouble acquiring – he felt sick.

  The harbour was much more bustling at this hour.

  ‘Excuse me,’ Hylad said to a couple who were clearly just waking up, ‘have you seen a thin English boy around here? Eighteen, looks younger?’

  ‘It could have been that boy yesterday,’ the man said, looking at the girl to see if she agreed. ‘He asked if we were going to England.’

  ‘That’ll be him,’ Hylad said hopefully, as Michael put his hands on his knees and tried to calm his stomach.

  ‘He was asking everyone with a boat,’ the girl said, ‘but we’re going to Norway.’

  ‘It’s a slippery bugger, Norway,’ Hylad said, before wishing them both good luck in finding it. Michael followed Hylad to the next boat, slow but optimistic. All they had to do was find the boat that Jan had managed to get a lift on.

  ‘Have you seen an eighteen-year-old English boy around here? He looks a bit younger, might have asked if you’re going to England?’

  ‘That is not how two gentlemen addresses a gentleman,’ said a man not too gentlemanly.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Hylad before pausing. ‘Sir, have you seen anyone of that description?’

  The rude gentleman told Hylad that he had seen Jan, but that he had not offered him a lift as he had only been planning a day trip on his boat, certainly not a voyage to England. Although the not-too-gentlemanly gentleman was speaking to Hylad, he looked disapprovingly at a now funny-coloured Michael throughout the entire conversation.