Copyright

The Borough Press

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018

Copyright © Janice Pariat 2018

Cover design and illustration Rashmi Gupta © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018

Janice Pariat asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008272562

Ebook Edition © May 2018 ISBN: 9780008272555

Version: 2018-07-26

Dedication

For the one who stayed the night

Epigraph

It is easy to love.

– Anaïs Nin

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

THE SAINT

THE BUTCHER

THE CARETAKER

THE UNDERTAKER

THE PROFESSOR

THE BUTCHER

THE FLORIST

THE CRUSADER

THE LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER

THE SAILOR

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also by Janice Pariat

About the Publisher

THE SAINT

YOU ARE TWELVE, and you loathe me.

In my class, you refuse to paint, because you think your pictures are ugly. And I try and tell you, like every good teacher must, regardless of whether I believe it or not, that you’ll improve with practice. You disagree. It infuriates you that there’s something you can’t immediately do, like a maths sum, or a science experiment. This is art, I tell you, but I can see you’re a scientific artist. If there is such a thing.

The other children huddle around tables, painting and sketching in wild abandon. A few are truly accomplished. You are not one of them. Their hands move instinctively across canvas and paper, guided by some unseen spirit. Although I have a sorrowful feeling that this is the only time in their lives they will ‘do’ art. And that they will grow up and plunge into vocations that do not call for beauty.

Almost a year ago, on my first day here, in this small school, in this small town in the east of the country, I assigned the class to paint a tree.

‘What kind of tree?’ you asked.

‘Any kind,’ I replied.

‘But there are so many kinds of trees …’

‘I’m happy with any.’

That did not please you. And while you sat there undecided, the others dipped and dabbed, and I could tell that when you eventually tried, you were ashamed, even a little humiliated, that your tree looked like a green Popsicle on a stick. I made the mistake of coming round to your side of the table, and praising the girl to your right.

‘Look … how she’s allowed some sky to filter through the branches … That’s how it is, isn’t it? A tree is patchy. There are gaps between the leaves …’

You stared at me with something close to hatred.

It’s a look I grew accustomed to those first few months. Everything I said, whether to you or another student, seemed incendiary. You didn’t commit any overt misdemeanours, nothing I could throw you out of class or send you marching off to the headmaster for, which perhaps would have made it easier. Instead, it was a simmering, furtive mutiny. You did the barest minimum of work. Spending most of class time staring listlessly, excusing yourself to use the loo and not returning until just before the bell. You wouldn’t care to participate or answer questions, and anything I asked directly was met with a moody ‘I don’t know’.

In this way, we ploughed on through the year.

And even today, I get the same look of loathing. We’re painting a snowy landscape in class, and I glance at the picture you’ve made, and say sharply, ‘Have you ever seen pure white in nature?’

You frown. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean … snow is not white white, is it? There are shades of blue, and grey, and pink and yellow and purple even … the white wouldn’t show if it were only white.’

And then I make the biggest mistake of all. I touch up your painting. I dip the paintbrush in a bit of blue, black, and water, and spread it over your landscape.

A touch here, a stroke there. I have improved the picture but lost you.

From now on, you refuse to pick up a brush. Even on threat of punishment and failure.

You are the most stubborn child I know, and make me long for the days of corporal punishment.

Later, when I ask the class to hand in their assignments for grades, you submit a blank page.

‘What is this?’ I ask crossly.

‘White birds flying through white clouds.’

I give you an F. Then change it to a C. Rather than you failing, I have a feeling I’ve failed you.

We move on to other things, but you’re spectacularly unskilled at each. Your still life sketches are weak, your charcoals messy. I cannot allow you to touch oils because they’re expensive and I’ve been instructed to save them for the ‘best’ students in class. You’re mystified by acrylics, using them like watercolours, but they dry too fast and leave hard blotches of colour in the wrong places.

Maybe later, when I’ve been teaching for years, I’ll know how to deal with students like you. For now, I’m clueless.

I feel I’ve tried it all: threat, coercion, indifference, patience. I’ve spoken to your other teachers, and they can’t understand it either. You’re quiet and good in all their classes. Slightly scornful of chemistry, fond of literature, biology and history, and you’re intuitively skilled at maths. But about that I’m not surprised.

I really do feel I’ve lost you, until one day I ask if you’d like to play with paper.

‘And do what?’ You sound scornful of this too.

‘Well, we can make shapes for starters …’

You seem thoroughly unimpressed.

‘Have you heard of origami?’

Tentatively, you shake your head.

How much you must hate admitting not knowing something. I’m almost gleeful.

I hand you sheets of paper and a beginner’s How-To manual. I have a feeling you’d prefer this to taking instructions from me. You examine the pages, pick a pattern, lost in concentration. It’s remarkable. You’re marvellous at it. From your fingertips spring cranes and boxes, frogs and butterflies, crabs and flowers. Neat and intricate, the lines pressed and folded with industrious care and precision. They are exercises in exactitude. Each the same size and shape as the other. You sit in the corner of the classroom, patiently creasing, folding and lining them all up when they’re done. I want to tell you they’re beautiful, but I worry this might dissuade you instead, so I watch and do not offer praise.

After this, there’s a sea change.

You are the first to enter class, and the last to leave.

Your eyes follow me around, while I’m moving from one cluster of students to another and when someone walks up to my desk for help. You linger at the end, showing me all you’ve made that day, eager, if I’m not mistaken, for my approval.

At first, I’m not quite sure how to respond. Do I appear pleased? Do I ignore you now, in return? I think in my confusion, I do a bit of both, but this doesn’t deter you. If anything, it seems to make you even more determined. You catch me in corridors, and in the library, sometimes on the lawn, and initiate the most sweetly mundane conversation. We talk of the weather, and lunch, and whether I like cats or dogs.

‘Dogs,’ I say.

‘Cats,’ you say.

And everything I answer is followed by ‘why?’

Why do I prefer peas to potatoes? Why would I like to own a bicycle rather than a car? Why dogs? Why am I vegetarian? Why do I like dark chocolate? Why do I read poetry? When I turn the questions back at you, I find you pleasingly impulsive. You don’t take your time. You like beetroot for its colour. Cats for their eyes. White chocolate because it’s not quite chocolate. Poetry befuddles you. You reply from your gut. Everything, at this age, is instinct.

You show me test papers and essays, work you’ve been merited on. I praise you like I think a parent would. You aren’t that fond of sports, you tell me. Even though you’re made to run and throw and participate. You’re fond of music, but have no inclination to play an instrument. ‘I like to sing,’ you tell me shyly.

‘Sing me something.’

‘Just like that?’

‘Just like that.’

We’re outside, walking down a path in the school grounds.

‘What would you like me to sing?’

‘Anything.’

You take a moment to choose, and start singing. So softly, I must lean in to listen. It’s an old song from the ’70s. I wonder how you know it. Maybe your parents play it at home, and you’ve grown up listening to it. It’s a song about a man making a phone call to somebody he loved, and who left him. It’s sweet and silly, and incongruous, coming from you, but you sing it to the end, and I applaud.

Once, you hand me a flower, a full, heavy magnolia blossom. It had fallen to the ground in the rain, and now lay in my hand, wetly glistening. Creamy pink, deepening in colour at the centre, palest at its waxy petal edges. I slip it into a bottle filled with water, and carry it home with me at the end of the day. I am thrilled by your attention, and also disconcerted. It is intense, like walking out into noonday sunlight. I’ve never been at the receiving end of something like this. And then I tell myself you are a child, that you cannot know better. Your feelings will turn this way and that, flitting from thing to thing, person to person. Soon enough you will tire of this, and someone else will fascinate you. But it doesn’t seem to wane, your affection, anytime soon.

I think perhaps it is better to push you away slightly, to be a little distant, less accessible. After all, we don’t want you doing something wayward. So I’m polite but more reserved. I duck into rooms if I see you coming down the corridor. I tell you I’m busy when you chance upon me in the library. I walk out of school with my other colleagues. I sit on the lawn with a book, preoccupied. You seem puzzled, though undeterred. But the more you clamour for my attention, the less I give you any. It’s a terrible dance, and I feel sick, but I don’t know what else to do.

On some days, I find paper cranes on my table, sometimes, a dragonfly.

At first I would collect them, placing them on a shelf like a disorderly, inanimate zoo. Now I try telling you that you could take them home to your parents to surprise and please them instead, but you look at me in silence. When I persist, eventually you say you can’t, and you walk away.

This disturbs me, but it isn’t something I can ask you about directly. At least not now. We haven’t built up that kind of trust. I wonder if we ever will. So I speak to the other teachers, the ones who have taught you longer, and ask if they know more about you and your life at home. There are several conjectures. Someone asks, aren’t you an orphan? Or the child of a single parent? No, say the others, they don’t think it’s like that at all, but there is something slightly out of the ordinary with your circumstances at home. Then your maths teacher speaks up, saying if he isn’t mistaken it’s not that you’ve lost your parents but that they live elsewhere, and so your home, at least during the school term, is with your grandparents. Not that you’ve been abandoned, he adds hastily, but your father works in another state, one with few if any, well-regarded schools. My heart goes out to you and your paper companions.

From then on, I am kinder.

You aren’t entirely unskilled at clay sculpture, but I’m more encouraging than I would have been.

‘That’s a fine cow,’ I say.

You look at me doubtfully. ‘It’s meant to be a horse.’

Hastily, I give a talk on how art lies in the eye of the beholder.

‘So it doesn’t matter what I’m trying to do?’ another student asks.

‘It does. But you cannot control how others choose to see.’

You stay back in class, hanging around until the others leave. I wonder why. I don’t think you’re about to ask me about the subjectivity of interpretation. You shuffle up to my desk, papers and books in hand. Your hair, usually braided in plaits, has come undone, your ribbon trailing down your arm. You are twelve, but your limbs seem at odds with your age, like they will settle only a decade later. You will be tall and beautiful, I’m sure, even if now you’re gangly and awkward and coltish. You glance at me, your eyes dark as paint.

‘Have you always wanted to do this?’

I ask what you mean.

‘This.’ You gesture around the room.

I lean back in my chair. No one has asked me this. At least not here. I could tell you many things. That of course it was a dream to work with children, to teach them about beauty, and how to make beautiful things. But I decide to tell you the truth.

‘No.’

You don’t seem surprised.

I look down at my hands, hold them up in front of me. ‘I wanted to be a pianist.’

‘Did you go to a music school?’

I nod. I did, for many years. I even began performing recitals here and there. Not much scope in this small town that we live in, so I would also give lessons at people’s homes, trying to save up to move to a big city.

‘Then what happened?’ Or in other words, get to the point, why was I here.

‘I was in an accident … I hurt my hands.’

With the cold pragmatism of a child, you look at me and say, ‘But you still paint.’

I tell you it is all I can do.

‘Oh,’ you say, and leave. Maybe there was no reason for me to have been honest. You’re a child. With limited understanding. What had I been hoping for? Sympathy? Concern?

I am left alone in the room, feeling, for some reason, decidedly silly.

In the next class, you are missing. And the next.

And even though I try and feign indifference, I’m concerned. What’s happened, I ask the others. What’s happened to you? A bronchial infection, apparently. One accompanied by a cough and high fever. I wrestle with myself, wanting to send you ‘get well’ wishes, yet wishing to keep a distance. I know your classmates have made cards for you, but I don’t jointly sign any of them. I don’t send enquiries from my side. In ten days you return, paler, wan, still coughing. You’ve lost weight. I make you a little clay flower, paint it red, and leave it at your corner. I do it for all my students who’ve been ill. You thank me at the end of class, and don’t linger like you usually do. It leaves me, uncomfortably, wondering why.

I find you quieter than usual.

You have stopped with the paper animals and clay figures, and instead are painting sheet after sheet of paper in deep, unvarying blue. Then orange. Then green. I joke that you’re an abstractionist, but you do not laugh.

One day, I catch you in the corridor and ask how you are.

You don’t look at me when you say you are fine.

‘I heard you’ve been unwell …’

‘Better now, thank you.’

‘Is anything the matter?’ I can’t help asking.

You shake your head, your eyes still fixed to the floor.

I want to say that you can tell me, that you have someone you can talk to. That I know you live in a house with two old people, that you might feel alone. But I don’t. I give you a perfunctory pat on the shoulder, and you’re on your way.

It’s odd, but I miss you staying back in class, chatting in your sharp, inquisitive way. I miss your singing, your flowers, your incessant questions, your attentiveness to everything I say, even the merest, most mundane instruction. I hope it might revive at the end of term. Especially when I make the announcement that we’re to hold an exhibition of all we’ve made over the past year. Most of the students are excited, whispering to each other, debating which of their works they’d like to display. Some have much to choose from. You look as though you haven’t even heard me.

I allow a few classes to pass before I ask you. That afternoon, you’ve lingered, unintentionally, because a sheaf of your painted papers fell to the floor, scattering like leaves.

‘Have you thought about it …?’

You stare up at me. Startled.

‘What you’d like to display … for the end-of-year exhibition …’

You still look blank. It’s exasperating.

‘Yes …’

‘Oh good. And …?’

‘I’m still thinking … I don’t know …’

I begin to make a few suggestions, and then stop. What am I doing? This is undoubtedly the best way to get you to not participate. ‘Well … let me know if you need any help …’

You nod, and shuffle out of the room.

One day, when I’ve given up on any hope of you returning to your old self, you stay back in class. I’m at my desk examining some paintings for our show.

‘What happened?’

I look at you, puzzled.

You come closer, clutching your books to your chest. You’ve never really recovered your weight since your illness, and your cheeks remain pale and hollow.

‘What do you mean?’

You gesture at the paintings.

‘I’m trying to choose frames …’ I begin.

‘No,’ you interrupt. ‘I mean your hands. What happened?’

I think I understand, but I don’t want to answer. You persist.

‘You told me you had an accident … and you couldn’t play the piano any more …’

‘I can still play,’ I say, and add, ‘But only a little.’

You stay silent, waiting for me to explain.

I push the paintings aside. ‘I got a job with a choir … wonderful bunch of young kids … voices like angels and all that. It wasn’t …’ I laugh. ‘We played mostly hymns, but it paid well and helped supplement my music lessons …’

You haven’t taken your eyes off me. I don’t know where to look, at you, at my hands. I settle for the window, where the late afternoon sun is streaming through and falling in patterns on the floor.

‘We were travelling … for a concert in a nearby town. All of us in a bus … it was raining … I must have dozed off … but I remember waking up to a lurch … a terrible crash … the bus crumpling like tin … and the seat in front of us suddenly pinning us back. If I hadn’t put my … put my arms between the boy next to me and the metal, I think he would’ve been crushed …’

‘You saved his life?’

‘That’s the thing … I’d like to think I did … but I don’t know.’

‘Your bones were broken?’

I nod. Grateful in a way for your stoic lack of emotion. By now most adults would be voicing profuse commiseration, and I would never know what to say to their ‘I’m sorry … I’m so sorry … that’s just terrible … what a tragedy …’ I’d usually end up awkwardly saying ‘thank you’ and resigning myself to silence.

‘Broken in several places …’ I hold up my left arm. ‘There’s a steel rod running through this one.’

‘Do you beep at airport security?’

I laugh, you laugh, and suddenly the room fills with light.

‘Does it hurt?’

‘Sometimes.’

Then you ask me something else no one has asked me before.

‘If you were in that bus, would you do it again? What you did.’

It takes me a moment to reply. ‘I’d like to say yes … but in truth, I’m not sure.’

You don’t seem disappointed. In fact, you nod briskly, as though this is a business conversation. I want to ask you several questions in turn, about you, your home. But this is akin to having a bird finally sit on your hands and peck at crumbs. Now is not the time to make sudden movements or loud noises and frighten it away.

As you walk out of the classroom, you turn back. ‘You know,’ you say, ‘I think you would.’

Soon enough it’s end of term, and we’re setting up the exhibition hall. You haven’t submitted anything. I’m disappointed, yes, but not immensely surprised. I can’t even use the line I do with the other kids – ‘Wouldn’t you want your parents to see your work and be proud of you?’ I’m not sure yours are coming. And I don’t want to hazard saying ‘grandparents’ instead. I don’t know why, but I feel it’s a delicate situation. Or at least I treat it so.

While the work is being put up, you hang around.

Because I think you expect it, I don’t ask you where your contribution is. I ask you what you think.

‘About?’

‘All this …’ I gesture around the room, filling up with paintings, sketches, sculpture.

‘I want to see what it looks like when it’s finished.’

And I find it hard to get another word out of you. But I see that you watch carefully, where everything is being placed. Right now I have no time to question why or wonder. This is my first event, it must be impressive, and it must somehow validate … something.

I leave late that evening, after all the children’s artworks have been put up. It’s looking, I think, quite lovely. What a pity you aren’t part of it. I’m tempted to place some of the paper figures you’ve gifted me in a corner, but desist. This is your choice and I must respect it. You did not feel involved enough in this class to wish to participate.

The next day, I arrive early at school and head to the exhibition hall. But someone else has been there earlier. Or that’s what the security guard tells me. ‘One of your students,’ he says. ‘Said she had your permission … special permission … to place something in the room. She had a lot of stuff with her …’

‘What do you mean?’ Panic pricks my chest. ‘Which student? What was she carrying?’

He shrugs. Clearly not comprehending why I would be worried. ‘Scissors … paper … art stuff like that …’

‘I didn’t give anyone permission to do anything.’

Finally, he seems a touch concerned. ‘You didn’t?’

I shake my head.

He fumbles with the door, unlocking it and drawing it open. We make our way briskly down the corridor.

In my head, I imagine everything in ruins. Paintings ripped out of their frames, shredded and sliced to strips. Canvas torn, sculpture thrown across the floor, smashed to pieces. I can barely conceal my anger. Who could have done this? And why? For a flickering moment I think of you, and force myself to discard the idea. I have no proof. And why would the first person I think of be you? Perhaps because of your sullenness, your plummeting moods, your aloofness. But you haven’t been that way all the time. You’ve never struck me as vindictive. Still, who knows? Children can be strange creatures. I try to shake it out of my head before we enter the hall. The security guard and I are silent.

I step in and everything is in its place, just as we left it the previous evening. Nothing seems to have been touched or broken or moved.

‘All okay?’ asks the guard.

I nod.

‘Well, that’s a relief.’

And then I see it. What you’d come in for, earlier this morning.

At the door leading outside, on the other side of the room, a curtain of white.

I can’t really tell what it is, fabric or ribbon, until I walk closer.

Paper cranes. String after string. I stir them gently, and they rustle against my hand. Pristine white. Neat and even. Made with industrious care.

They are a thousand, I am certain even without counting.

They say folding a thousand cranes will grant you a wish.

I wonder what it is you’ve wished for.

I hope so much it will come true.

THE BUTCHER

I LOVE YOU. I almost hit you.

You’re lodged in a corner, screaming at me, and I raise my hand. I can still see your eyes widen, your mouth round into a silent ‘O’ as the words die in your throat from surprise. And fear.

The evening didn’t start out this way. No, we didn’t start out this way.

Years ago, I remember. I see you across a bonfire on New Year’s Eve. All soft and glowing, lit by the light of the flames. I’m rolling a joint and you catch my eye. After that, millions of sideward glances, a small smile or two, laughter. A reshuffling of places as people stand to refill their drinks, use the loo, seek cigarettes and matches. At some point, we find ourselves seated next to each other. I pass you a joint and you take delicate puffs, most of the smoke escaping your mouth. I wish I could say something witty, or smart. That I could quote a line from a book or something, so that whatever we might share after this, however extended or fleeting, would always have this beginning. Instead, when you hand the joint back, I hear myself say, ‘Good stuff, no?’

And in an instant, everything becomes forgettable.

You’re older.

I’ve just begun university and you’re in your final year.

‘Please don’t ask “what next” …’

I was about to, but protest, saying I wasn’t, and comment on the weather instead. Something truly meaningful about it being cold. You make no reply.

Fuck. It’s some terribly banal conversation I’m attempting. But you make me nervous. Even if I’ve just met you, I feel I must appear more than I am, or have ever been. A better version of myself, shinier, somehow more brilliant. Much later, I will put it down to something simple. Awe. Like you’re some rare bird visiting a garden. Stupid as it might sound, at the time it feels like a privilege, that you should choose me. I’ve never been gladder that I left home, a small town in the east of the country, and moved to the capital, the city without a river. I’ve always had a sense that everything beyond is so much larger, that it moves to crazy rhythms, and contains people like you. That night, I sit next to you, joint following joint, expanding my senses into the sky. This is what it was like, I think, for explorers, perched on the brink of an expedition. You an undiscovered continent. A land that hasn’t been charted. And in a way, for me, the world.

That night around the bonfire a discussion breaks out.

We’re an odd group. All of us having headed out for the weekend to this hill station. Cheap. Good weed. Popular with backpackers. The place we’re staying in has a terrace, and there we all congregate. Some foreigners, some locals, a large college bunch from the city. It isn’t yet midnight, but late enough for a friendly buzz rising with the fumes of cheap alcohol. Small talk has been made, travel stories swapped. Time then for drunken philosophizing.

Someone asks, ‘What would you do if it could be seen?’

‘What?’ I ask. I haven’t been paying attention.

‘Grief.’

I say I don’t understand.

Future grief in the face of someone you’ve just met.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Grief that you will cause. Someone you will be with. If you could see it, would it deter you? Or would you be willing to take the risk, test the prophecy?’

I say I would.

A clash of opinions come flooding in. It’s cruel. No, surely now that one is aware, it can be avoided. Yet, isn’t that the thing about prophecies? They are self-fulfilling. The argument continues. I lose interest. You, I notice, remain quiet.

Later, I go back to the room of a French tourist. It isn’t my first time. I’d slept with a girl in my hometown a few months before I left for the city. We had lain naked on the bed of a friend’s ground-floor bedroom, and heard abuses hurled through the darkened window, along with the clatter of stones on the roof.

‘What’s happening?’ she had asked in fright.

‘Someone saw us,’ I said. Probably our friend’s nosy and deeply religious neighbours. ‘Should we stop?’ she asked.

‘No.’ I was almost in her. And when I pushed myself inside, I shuddered and was still in less than a minute. It isn’t that quick with the French girl. She emits tiny, excitable squeals that distract me. It’s cold. The bed a slab of ice. I’m clumsy. She likes biting, and I wince as she almost draws blood from my lip. I like her blonde hair though, and her shapely waist, her long legs that wind around me. Finally, I bury my face in her shoulder, above her small pear-like breasts, thrust hard and quick, and it’s over soon enough. I’m thinking of you at the bonfire.

I don’t meet you again until a month later. At a student party, back in the city without a river. One of those unwieldy gatherings that usually ends in a drunken brawl. I find you on the balcony, looking as though you’re waiting for no one. This time, I think, I’ll say something memorable.

‘Where were you while we were getting high?’

For a moment you look confused, then you smile.

‘I came back with another joint … and you were gone.’

‘It was cold … I was sleepy.’

I light a cigarette and lean on the railing.

‘Did you have a good time … that night?’

I nod, remembering, in a flash, the blonde girl. ‘Would’ve been better if you were there …’

‘I’m here now.’

‘For how long?’

You glance at your almost empty plastic cup. ‘As long as the alcohol lasts.’

‘So that’s ten more minutes, then.’

When you laugh, I want to kiss you.

It turns out you too are from my small town in the east of the country. But from a different, posher, neighbourhood. Also, you’ve lived here for quite a few years now. ‘And maybe at some point, elsewhere,’ you add. I have a feeling you might be more of a drifter than I am. For even though I want to get away, I know my roots. I drop you back to your flat that night on my motorbike. I drive slowly, because I want to reassure you that I’m a safe driver. Also, I want the ride to last. Your hands gripping my sides, the feel of your chest on my back.

When we arrive, I ask, ‘I’ll see you soon?’

You nod. Then, with a wave, you’re gone.

I’m amazed by how we begin with so little, or no, conflict.

It’s not what I have known.

I’m only twenty-two but life has been long.

I started out studying something my parents thought useful. Two semesters in biotechnology though, and I’d failed every exam, spent all the money I’d been given for the year, and switched courses. To the fury of my physician father, of course. But my mother, the gentler of the two, persuaded him to let me be. If it was visual studies I wanted to pursue, so be it.

I never told them that all I really wanted was to be a musician.

‘You play well,’ you tell me.

We are at a house party, sitting in the living room where I’ve found a guitar. ‘Thanks,’ I say. ‘I taught myself.’

I don’t tell you yet that my parents only sent my younger sister for piano lessons. That they thought, being a boy, I wouldn’t – no, shouldn’t – be interested in such frivolities.

You move closer. You’re wearing a long woollen skirt, a frayed leather jacket, and a polo neck. Your hair is tied up, loosening around the edges.

‘What would you like me to play?’

‘Ooh, he’s taking requests,’ someone shouts from the other end of the room.

‘Not from you, Bongo,’ I shout back.

Since you say ‘anything’, I play the songs I know best. Some Marley and Led Zep, some Dylan and Clapton. You sing in snatches, in a soft, pleasant voice.

‘Something by the Beatles?’

Suddenly, I feel like I have only one chance to pick the right song. That it will make all the difference. I run through the ones I know in my head. ‘Come Together’. ‘Penny Lane’. ‘Yellow Submarine’. ‘Eleanor Rigby’. They all somehow seem inappropriate, until I remember the one about a blackbird and broken wings. Sweetly complex melody, and sweetly simple lyrics. Turns out you know all the words. Verse after verse. The room falls silent, with only the guitar and your voice filling the air. I know, no matter what, that when I drop you home that night, we will kiss.

You live in a flat you share with two other girls. It’s a nicer neighbourhood than the one I live in, with trees and wide roads. Your room, when I get to see it, has multicoloured curtains drawn over the windows, a low bed, a ragged carpet, and photographs pasted on the cupboard. You’ve twirled a scarf over a tall paper lamp. I like it better than the place I share with three boys, littered with used plates, discarded footwear and empty bottles. We are quite lucky, you say, when I first stay over, that the landlord doesn’t live in the building, and so can’t express his disapproval over these ‘indiscretions’.

I’m taller than you but we fit on the bed, oddly sized between single and double, if I press my back against the wall. And if we don’t move much.

We don’t move much, but we talk. I like you because when I say, late one night, in the dark, that I want to start a band, you don’t laugh.

Bolder, I make you listen to a song I recorded, secretly, in my room in my hometown. It’s stark and sad, about a man who drinks in parking lots. I don’t think it’s very good now, but you listen intently, and say you think I’ve done well.

‘But I can do better.’ With you, I want to add, I feel I can always do better.

You, though, rarely talk about yourself. Only once you tell me about your parents, and how they always lived away from you because of your father’s job.

‘I’d tell people they were dead. That they died in a car crash.’

‘Why?’ I ask, bewildered. ‘Why would you do that?’

Your voice is soft in the darkness. ‘Because I was angry. They kept promising they’d come back for good, but they never did.’

Another night, after we’ve had more than a few beers each, you tell me that once, when your parents left after their yearly visit, you were so upset you fell ill with a fever that lingered for weeks.

‘I was eleven … twelve … I couldn’t understand why I was always left behind …’

Silently, I promise I’ll never leave you.

But it’s a promise I eventually find impossible to keep.

When summer comes around, we turn nocturnal.

We return from university to darkened houses, the sound of other people’s power generators studding the air like quiet gunfire. It is impossible to sleep. The heat seeps out of floors and walls, out of every surface we touch. We throw down buckets of water, we soak the sheets, but the heat is insidious. So we drive out on my motorbike and head to the centre of the city, where the roads are wide and all the filthy rich sleep in their beds under the cool purr of air conditioners that never trip or turn off.

‘Bastards,’ we yell as we cross their gates, my motorbike roar shattering the silence. Then we stop at some patch of grass, with all the poor others who’ve found their way there in those restless, insomniac nights. Sometimes, we buy orange ice lollies from the man with the ice cream cart, and while I bite into mine whole, you suck at the juice until the ice turns white.

‘You’re a vampire.’

And you pretend to bite my neck, and I pin you to the grass, and I want to lift your dress.

We are wild children.

Once the summer cools, and the rains lighten in the north, we head to the hills. Our first trip away together. It is also the first time we have a terrible fight. The first of many.

To begin with, we miss our stop. We were meant to disembark at six in the morning, but we were fast asleep, buried in our jackets and shawls on the cold hard seats. By the time we awake, we’ve overshot our destination by three hours and must make our way back on a rumbling local bus.

When we arrive at the town in the mountains, we disagree over where to stay.

‘This is too fancy,’ I hiss into your ear at the hotel that charges five hundred bucks a night.

‘Where do you want to go then?’

‘Somewhere else.’ I don’t add ‘cheaper’.

‘We’ve just spent twenty hours on the road and you want to walk around some more?’

‘This is the first place we’ve looked at.’

And so we do, but everywhere else we look for cheaper, you detest. Too dirty. Too small. Damp walls. And so we end up back at the place where we started.

‘I’ll pay for both of us,’ you declare.

And that annoys me even more. ‘It’s not about the fucking money,’ I say. It is, but it also isn’t, and I know you won’t understand.

That evening, when an unquiet calm has settled, we head into town. Almost immediately, we’re accosted by a sad, red-eyed rat of a peddler who walks next to me asking if I want some hash.

‘Ignore him,’ you say, but it’s too late. I’ve already said, ‘How much?’ I couldn’t help it. It’s instinctive.

He names a price, insane as it is, and then won’t leave us. You don’t say a word but I can feel your anger, hot and silent. When the rat pushes the hash into my jacket pocket and then pretends like I’m the one not paying up, I get really mad. I give him his thousand and then throw the stuff into the nearest dustbin.

‘Okay I’m sorry, all right?’ I offer, but you stay quiet.

We find our way to a rooftop restaurant where backpackers are sitting on cushions around the edges, drinking beer. The walls are graffitied, and lanterns dangle from bamboo poles. Our moods improve after some food. We start making conversation again. You dig your socked feet under my thigh to keep warm. I tuck a strand of hair behind your ear. Night falls thick and fast, and the mountains behind us disappear into darkness. The alcohol warms us. Someone passes us a joint. We sit closer. Then a guitar is brought out from downstairs.

‘Who can play?’ shouts the owner.

You pull up my hand.

And the night passes by in a blur of song and music, and faces and smoke. People gather around me, bottles in hand, glasses glinting like stars. My voice, and their voices, and ours, rise over the rooftops. There’s a woman with long, dark blonde hair, wearing a Tibetan jacket, smiling at me. A boy with an earring passing me spliff after spliff. We sing endlessly. The songs we all somehow seem to know. It’s one of those moments when you feel music will make everything all right, and the world isn’t such a shitty place after all. If we just keep singing, it will all stay the way it is, frozen in that moment.

The next day, you’re gone.

I wake up alone in the hotel room. A crumpled, slovenly mess. The bed, not me. Although I don’t feel well either. Across the sheet, emptiness, a pillow. I call out to you. Maybe you’re in the loo. I call you again. I heave myself up and check, now stung by fear and worry. Your side of the bed looks slept in, I think. Anyway, how can one tell? I’m sure we came back together. Am I? Yes, I think we stumbled back together at dawn, me glowing in the aftermath of performance. For a real, live audience. I feel I’ve never played better, or more skilfully. I remembered lyrics, and manoeuvred my way through complicated chord progressions. When we reached our room, I groped you drunkenly, I remember, from happiness, lifting your sweater, moving my hands over your breasts, kissing your neck. I think you pushed me away. I must’ve tried again before slumping asleep.

Now, in the late morning, it comes back to me in flashes.

I’m not sure where to start, but I head out. The guy at the reception is clueless when I ask if he’s seen you. The town is small, but feels endless when I step outside. I walk down to the main road, the one flanked by matchbox clothes stalls, still-closed restaurants, and women in shawls selling steaming dumplings. Maybe you were hungry and came looking for food. Maybe I’ll find you standing by one of these makeshift street-food vendors, eating momos. ‘Here,’ you’ll say, holding one out to me. Your eyes, as usual, will be rimmed by the kohl you didn’t clean off, your hair bundled untidily into a bun. Suddenly, your absence feels like a stab in my stomach. I must find you. Somehow my feet make their way to where we were last night. Up the stairs, to the rooftop restaurant, which is all but deserted apart from a group of trekkers eating breakfast. Oddly, I can’t remember where you were while I was playing the guitar. Next to me, of course. Or was that the lady with the dark blonde hair and the Tibetan jacket? She was very friendly. At one point, hadn’t she asked me to show her how to strum?

In half an hour, I feel I’ve exhausted all possibilities and walked that main road to death. I’m beginning to waver now, between anger and fear. Why the fuck are you doing this? What if something happened to you? I’m hungry and hung-over, and the weed has left a bitter, burnt taste in my mouth. I wolf down a plate of dumplings and then feel guilty. I shouldn’t waste any time. I must find you. When I think I’ve run out of options, I walk down the road that takes us out of town, towards the highway. Here too are shops and a sprinkling of small eating joints. I pass one that’s placed higher than the rest, on a raised platform, with outdoor tables and chairs.

Sun Moon Café it’s called, and I think that’s the kind of place you would like.

There’s someone sitting outside, reading. It looks like you. It is you.

I yelp in relief. You look up at me, and turn back to your book. ‘What the fuck,’ I mutter, as I run up the steps.

‘Where were you?’ I say. I realize it’s a stupid question even before you reply.

‘Here.’

‘Why did you leave like that?’

You shrug.

‘I was worried, man.’

I hear you mutter something.

‘Is this about last night?’

‘What do you think?’

I hate it when you do this. Turn the question back at me. I’m only trying to figure out what the fucking matter is. I care enough to do this. Why isn’t that good enough? I take a deep breath, trying to keep the glimmer of anger at bay.

‘Something about last night upset you … except I don’t remember much …’

You snort, in laughter, disdain.

‘What, man?’

‘So convenient.’

‘We drank a lot …’

‘Yes, we did. Except that still didn’t make me throw my arms around some blonde stranger.’

‘I was showing her how to strum!’

‘Oh, is that what you call it, you wannabe rock star?’

I am struck, at this moment, by how precisely we know how to hurt the ones we love.

It doesn’t go on for long, this argument. Mostly because I think we’re exhausted, or at least I am. And also, no matter what, I’m relieved to have found you.

We return to the city without a river. Something has changed. We are closer, yet further apart. That doesn’t make sense, but it does. Our quarrel revealed how much we care for each other, but it wounded deep. Here I am, a fucking contradictory wreck. I look to you to feel good, but I realize that if I give someone that power, they can also make me feel like shit about myself. You never say ‘wannabe rock star’ again, although other hurtful things are hurled around the room. We are knife throwers in a circus. Bring on the clowns, and the little dog in a big bow that jumps through hoops. Sometimes, I think I am all of them rolled into one.

It is worse because I have never seen you this way. Suddenly restless and complaining all the time about the city, your flatmates, your university. You feel it’s all a waste.

‘This is not what I’m meant to do,’ you say. And when I ask what it is that you do want, you don’t reply. You don’t know, and I think that’s what annoys you. I don’t know when you’ll snap next and for what reason.

The other night, I asked if I could borrow a couple of plates from you for a shoot in college. Some video project for class.

‘No.’

‘It’s just some plates, man.’

‘No,’ you shouted back, your eyes filling with tears. ‘You’ll break them.’

‘It’s just a fucking shoot,’ I yelled back and left, slamming the door behind me. By the time I returned, you were in bed, the lights were off. I don’t know if you were asleep, but you didn’t speak.

One evening, we watch a movie. Something that had been screened in class that I wanted to share with you. We do this often. You recommend books, that I admittedly don’t read, and I bring back films in my hard drive, filched from friends at university. Within the first five minutes, barely after the opening credits, we are arguing. A shot of a woman lying on a bed in her underwear, from behind, and I remark on the camera’s ‘male gaze’. It’s something our professor had mentioned.

You roll your eyes.

‘What?’

‘The movie’s directed by a woman … so perhaps this is somewhat subversive.’

We don’t finish watching the film.

The night I almost hit you, we are headed to a blues bar hosting a live act. These are my favourite evenings in the city. Back home, the streets fold into themselves by six. Here, nothing begins until late. Even if I’m not performing, nothing makes me happier than being someplace where someone is. You seem all right when we leave. We get on my bike and head south. You seem all right even when we get there. When we climb the stairs and step into a dimly lit room. There’s the stage. The audience, with drinks in hand. The band is setting up. Sound check. The first number. They’re good. Not brilliant, but I don’t really care. You seem all right even when you meet a few people you know, and make conversation. When you sip your drink, and bob your head to the music.

See, that’s the thing, I can’t tell the moment when you’re not all right. It’s a switch that takes seconds.

Suddenly, you’re tugging at my sleeve saying you want to leave.

‘Why?’

‘I want to go …’

‘But they’ve just started.’

‘This place is awful …’

‘It’s fine … I want to stay …’

‘And I don’t want to.’

It carries on like this, and the band’s really getting into it now. Something strong and bluesy bursts into the air. I’m beginning to get annoyed.

‘You stay,’ you say, ‘I’ll go.’

‘No,’ I shout over the music. ‘We came together, we leave together.’

‘That’s ridiculous …’ you begin to say when I walk out. I only know you’re following when I hear your feet clatter behind me on the stairs. We step out into the evening. You’re saying something, but I can’t hear you through the throb of my anger. I feel something strike me on the side of my head.

‘What the fuck?’ I roar, turning. You’ve flung a magazine at me. For a second, I pause to wonder where you got it from. Strange, isn’t it, the things that occupy us even at moments like these?

Back at your flat, the argument continues.

‘It wasn’t a big deal,’ you yell. ‘You could’ve stayed … I could’ve left.’

‘We went together, we leave together,’ I shout back. I don’t know why, but I’m hung up on this line. It’s become precious to me, this idea. We are loud, and I’m sure people outside, downstairs, upstairs can hear us. I don’t give a shit. We shout at each other.

‘You threw that magazine at me …’

‘Because you wouldn’t stop and listen.’ Your voice is shrill and piercing. I cannot bear it.

It seems like you’re raising your hand against me. So I raise my hand too. Your eyes widen, your mouth rounds into a silent ‘O’ as the words die in your throat from surprise. And fear.

‘Look what you made me do,’ I shout. ‘Look what you made me do.’ I am the worst, most vile version of myself. I am crumbling like a pile of garbage. I am a pile of garbage.

With you, I am highest, and lowest.

It isn’t this, though, that breaks us up.

We continue for weeks, months. Over a year. Two. At a wedding you get pissed off because I’m chatting for too long, you say, with some other woman. Another time, you find an email exchange on my laptop between some girl and me, entirely innocent in content, but then why haven’t I told you about her? Back home, I’ve seen butchers dice meat, and sometimes pieces string together because the cut isn’t clean. We hold on like that too. Unhappy together, but what if we’re unhappier apart? I think, at times, we would be. Because, no matter what, we do have fun. We sing a lot, with me on the guitar. A bottle of whisky. You dancing on the bed. We still drive around the city at night, and eat ice cream, and go to gigs.

But eventually, all this is not enough.

One evening, after a fight about I don’t even remember what, I storm out of your flat and go to my friend’s house to spend the night. We drink. There’s meat being cooked. We sample some weed from the hills. Some time just before dawn, when I’m lying awake in an unfamiliar room, I send you a text. It’s the coward’s way out, I know, but maybe that’s all I am.

I say I can’t do this any more. That it’s over.

You don’t reply. Not then. Maybe you never will.

I stare at the screen. The light fades, and it finally dies into darkness.

THE CARETAKER

YOU’RE HALF MY age, maybe younger, but I see you and I want you.

I’ve felt it before, this kind of want. It’s raw and easy, and instantly recognizable, like hunger, and as uncomplicated – mouth to gut. With you, though, I’m afraid.

At this time of night, it might be the alcohol. How much have I had to drink? Always one too many. In my head, that familiar lightness, and the hall in which this gathering is taking place has taken on a certain hazy glow.

I see you clearly as you step into the room. You stand uncertainly for a moment, glance about you, and walk across to where the door opens towards a small lawn. You stop just beyond the glow of the wood burner. Why would you do that? It’s December, and cold, and your dress – if that’s what it can be called – won’t do much to keep you warm. It’s a cross between kimono and lab coat, with sleeves that swirl like windmills. On my wife it would look like an eccentric bathrobe, but you it suits, that touch of the dramatic. You seem to be a woman to whom something is always about to happen.

I watch you from a distance; sip my whisky – both in unhurried pleasure. I am called to your face. That nose, that sweep of brow, something about your chin. Your hair is long, but swept deliciously away from your neck, piled on top. You are pleasingly – not conspicuously – tall. As a child you must have been awkward, gangly, I’m certain of it, but not now, not any more. And if I were a poet I’d find a way to describe your body as it deserves to be. All that comes to mind is a tree, a cypress, whose leaves shimmer in the sunlight.

I watch as you gaze into the wood burner, your face indecipherable. Are you thoughtful? Bored? Dulled by your surroundings? Quietly contemplating setting the place on fire? For the moment, nobody joins you; you stand alone while the people around you ebb and flow. It doesn’t seem like you know anyone and no one else knows you. In which case, why are you here? I edge closer, and am accosted by acquaintances. Hard not to run into somebody I don’t know. It’s a large gathering, teeming with fat journalists and faded writers. All right, that’s unfair and untrue. It’s a nicely cultured lot; some who’ve known each other for years, and pride themselves on their perspicacious social contacts and good intentions. This is some book launch or the other, I’m not sure. More like an excuse for all of us to gather and drink middlingly expensive alcohol, eye each other’s partners, check out the new youngsters on the scene. You can spot them a mile away. They’re eager, and they smile a lot, and say things like, ‘Yes, I’m a poet.’

Perhaps you’re a friend of one of these youngsters, for somehow, you aren’t quite … indigenous. You seem – and I’m not prone to using the word – unreal. Suddenly, I grow afraid you’ll walk into the shadowy edges of the lawn and I’ll lose you. If I don’t speak to you now, you’ll step away from the fire and disappear.

So I walk up and ask why you don’t stand closer to the burner.

‘It’s pointless.’

‘To keep yourself from freezing to death?’

‘Perhaps. Only it’s much worse to warm just your hands, don’t you think? Or your – back.’ I think you almost said ‘ass’, but maybe I seem dignified (read ‘old’), and you haven’t drunk enough wine yet. Besides, for now, we’re strangers.

‘I’d rather be cold all over.’

‘Or warm all over.’

Did that sound cheap? I took care to say ‘warm’ instead of ‘hot’.

You turn to me.

Your eyes fall on my neck. I’m certain you’re thinking, ‘Oh god, he wears cravats.’ I’ve always felt they suit me; that a tie is a touch too plebeian. Although maybe to you, it makes me look ancient. I’m barely past fifty, but at twenty-something, that must seem light years away.

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