Who They Was

by Gabriel Krauze

  Rah, ain’t my man gonna be conked out nah? I say. Even if he is, fuck it he can wake up, says Gotti. He pulls his hood off and turns round to stare across the night-filled park, dim electric light holding the roundness of his head. Then he leans over the balcony, spits at the park, turns around, walks up to the door and clatters the letterbox again.

  The door opens and there’s this tall lightskin brer frowning. Says wagwan and rubs his eyes. Gotti says get me a draw and make sure it’s nice. The brer doesn’t say anything about the fact that Gotti’s knocking his door near two in the morning.

  He goes what did you want? Gotti goes what did you want Snoopz? A score. Gotti goes make sure it’s buff yeah, I don’t want no small tings when I know you got that lemon.

  The brer steps back inside and comes out after a minute, handing me the cro wrapped up in clingfilm. I say safe and give him a twenty from my pocket and Gotti says cool and the brer goes back indoors and I hear the lock turning.

  I follow Gotti to the stairs and we climb to the fourth floor. One of the plastic-covered lights on the stairs is pink for some reason. The others are all yellow. Part of the plastic casing is smashed and on the jagged edges I notice a spiderweb. A fat brown spider hangs from its thread as I pass, but I don’t kill it because Capo once told me that spiders saved the Prophet when he was running from his enemies.

  We get to the top and as we walk down the landing, I see something wrapped in white plastic, looking like rubbish, tucked right next to the balcony wall in a dip which is there to drain rainwater. Gotti picks it up, puts it in the front pocket of his hoodie and says them man stash their food here all pebbled up so it’s ready for the cats and he laughs but his eyes stay like outer space. Banging, I say, not bad for one night, and we both laugh. We get to his mum’s door. He opens it and we creep in, locking the door quietly. I follow him to his bedroom.

  He’s got a single camp bed set up with a thin mattress and quilt on it, and he pulls out a sleeping bag from underneath, spreads it out on the floor and says you can have the bed fam and I’m like safe brudda. I sit on the bed and start billing a zoot with the cro I just copped and Gotti turns on his stereo and puts on an Uncle Murda mixtape. He sits on the sleeping bag and opens the plastic bag he found on the balcony and it’s full of buj and work, all chopped up and wrapped in clingfilm, all in £10 pebbles. Gotti says yeah we’re gonna make a nice p off this, probably shot it all in a couple days still, and I say seen, that’s a touch still.

  On the radiator, written in black marker pen I see ‘Kilburn Banditz’ and I say was that you yeah? He says yeah and starts telling me how him and couple next man used to do mad eats, how they called themselves Kilburn Banditz and how mandem in the ends were shook of them because of how ruthless they used to move – holding man’s mum for ransom when we couldn’t get to the brer we wanted he says. And I say we should bring that back fam. It was all because of Bunny, he says. Bugz Bunny. Myman had us doing mad moves Snoopz. I swear onetime he even set a car on fire on one road, pulled out his strap and beat it off into the air for extra impact, and then we all went and licked one jewellery shop only three streets away, but all the feds in the ends were attending the car that was on fire and responding to all the phone calls about shots going off on that other road. It’s Bunny who gave me my first strap. Swear down Snoopz, myman’s different. I say yeah, Mazey and them man told me about him still. Gotti says when I was a yout, I’d see him coming back from a move with bin bags full of money and he’d tell us to stick our hands in and pull out whatever we grabbed. Swear down? On my mum’s life Snoopz. When we got older, Bunny trained us up by sending us to stick up the petrol station next to Precinct. That’s why it got shut down coz it got robbed too many times.

  We go out onto the balcony to bun the zoot I billed and Gotti says the way you was just on it the second I said come we eat that brer, that’s how I know you’re on this ting Snoopz, and my heart swells and fills my veins with sunset glow.

  Later, I’m on the camp bed, billing another zoot as Gotti lies back on the floor and stretches his arms out.

  Nuff of these man ain’t got heart like you Snoopz, but they try fronting like they’re about dat life, and he laughs. Like this brer Yellow, he says and I’m like oh yeah I know Yellow and he says Yellow ain’t about dat life fam. But I seen him all iced out, I say, rocking mad chains n shit, doesn’t he shot or suttin? He’s a eedyat Snoopz, says Gotti. His grandma died and left him bare p’s so myman went and copped couple iced-out chains and like three straps or suttin mad like he’s some gunman, but really he’s always been a dickhead tryna beg it with the mandem. And I say how’s man buying guns and ice with p’s he inherited from his dead grandma? That’s some wasteman ting. Gotti says I know. Yellow might have straps but he definitely ain’t clapped nuttin. The joke ting as well is myman’s broke now, he spent all that p’s tryna stunt and now he’s got nuttin except for the iced-out chains. I say fam the only way I’m spending p’s like that is if I get it from a move, otherwise what’s even the point ah lie? And Gotti says true dat. Then I sit up and open my backpack. I dig around in my clothes and pull out the Star 9, still wrapped up in plastic bags, and pass it to Gotti saying, check this my brudda.

  Gotti sits up and says don’t lie, and I can hear the excitement like a wave crashing inside his voice and he holds it, feels its shape through the plastic, grips the handle and points it at the window. He’s switched the light off in his room but the street lights outside melt orange all over the muscle of his arm and catch the side of his face. Black and orange. Prison-gym body like he’s made of sharp wires with muscles bunched all over them.

  We’re gonna do some serious moves Snoopz, he says and hands it back to me. I stuff it into the rucksack, between my T-shirts and socks and boxers, and go back to billing a zoot. Gotti lies down and buries his eyes.

  I feel something come over me like the lemon I’m crumbling is the sweetest smell and the bed I’m lying on is the softest mattress and the words of the Uncle Murda track we’re listening to is pure shit from the soul and the darkness embraces me, fills my heart and holds it, squeezes it. I’m tapping the zoot to pack the weed and baccy down tap tap tap so it’s nice and tight, and it hits me how I don’t want an easy and boring life. I want to run from the law and feel my heartbeat making me sick. I want to fuck gyal like it could be my last night on Earth. I want to see fear in people’s eyes and eat my own fear. I want to live dangerously, on the edge of existence.

  I tap tap tap the zoot and the tap tap tap becomes bang bang bang in time with my heartbeat, which is going boom boom boom in time to the music, and everything around me has a pulse, like this this this is real life. I clock that Gotti has drifted off and for the first time in ages, a massive sense of calm floods my body and I fall asleep listening to Uncle Murda.

  DIARY OF AN EATER

  LAST NIGHT, THIS brer from SK called Daniel Ross got slumped in the middle of a rave in Scala in King’s Cross.

  In fact it was early this Sunday morning, Gotti tells me, around 4 a.m., right in the middle of everyone shacking out, one of the D-block brers walks up to Daniel, pulls out a strap and bursts him in the head. Then the gunman joins the screaming crowd and cuts out with the tide. It’s literally the first thing I hear when I wake up on the camp bed in Gotti’s mum’s yard – yo Snoopz you awake yeah? Lissen to this …

  Gotti’s already been up for a while and he tells me all about it while rain taps away on the window. It only happened like five hours ago. He tells me who done it as well coz he knows them man and it ain’t a secret. The way he goes on about it, it’s like he’s excited the way you would be over a football score, or some celebrity gossip.

  Everyone is talking about it in the ends today. Uncle T keeps chatting about it when I go to cop a draw off him, phoning people up as I bill a zoot in the kitchen, repeating exactly what he said to me when I walked into the yard – did you hear what dem bwoy deh from the balcony did to one yout inna rave last night? I tell you the yout dem are ge
tting worse rasta, he keeps saying. Maybe he talks about it like that because if he doesn’t it’ll become normal and he doesn’t want to let that happen, even though this isn’t the first murder of someone from the ends, someone who was basically a neighbour, a brer I used to see around the ends when I lived at Uncle T’s. But all that shocked talk about mandem are getting worse? Bullshit. To me that’s like the ultimate sign of getting old, when you start getting left behind by how things go and you start to feel shocked like you can’t keep up or suttin. Nothing’s getting worse. This is just how it is. It’s South Killy. It was and it is and it will be. The mandem are in its veins and this place is in theirs.

  I phone Gotti. He says I’m at Bimz’s, you coming through? and I’m like yeah and then I squash the rest of my zoot into the ashtray even though there’s a good few tokes left and leave.

  When I get to the yard it’s stopped raining and Bimz says he wants to go and get some DVDs. Puddles capture pieces of the sky, treetops and blocks, and flip them upside down as we walk up to Kilburn High Road. Bimz, Spooks, Gotti, Mazey and me. Garms radiating smell of cro. Streets marinate in city dirt and rainwater. Mazey says rah I can’t believe they slumped that Daniel yout in the middle of the rave you know and Bimz says them man ain’t ramping. Head gone, says Spooks and everyone starts bussin up laughing and Bimz says you man ain’t serious and kisses his teeth.

  Kilburn High Road is chicken shops, barbers, banks, nittys like Shakes and his son sitting outside the corner shop begging change. Two generations of nittys, both looking as old as each other with that haunted look that you can spot from across the road, and as we pass Shakes he says yo Gotti you got that light? Gotti says I’ll get at you later still. £1 bowls of fruit outside the shop absorbing fumes from passing traffic. Undercover feds in New Balance trainers, tight jeans and Superdry hoodies suddenly clamp someone and pull out handcuffs and radios. Chinese DVD shotters hide their DVDs and act as if they’re waiting for a bus. JD Sports and Foot Locker where all the mandem cop Air Maxes and tracksuits, Western Union money transfer shop with Jamaican and Polish flags in the window. Nail shops. Mazey and Bimz stop by the window and stare at some chick who’s getting her nails done and Mazey’s like rah she’s fire still and Bimz says she needs to finish them nails and come outside blood, she’s got them DSLs and then he laughs that cartoon character laugh of his. I say what’s DSLs? Dick Sucking Lips fam, wa’um to you? Argos, McD’s, the big Primark where people look at £2 T-shirts, then drop them on the floor and no one picks them up. Market stalls selling string vests and sunglasses and bandannas even though summer’s done and it’s wet and grey with the start of a new rain stinging everyone’s faces. Weed crushers and fake Ralph Lauren tracksuits and incense sticks and fake chains that’ll turn your skin green if you wear them for a week or more.

  We clock the Chinese DVD shotters going DVD, DVD, just in front of Argos. We start ripping packs of DVDs out of their hands, ripping the bags off their shoulders and I see Bimz has already got two bags and when one of the brers tries to grab his bag back, Bimz towers over him and the brer shrinks back and Bimz starts bopping off, doing his lean walk. I chase one brer and a chick into WHSmith and right there next to all the pens and stationery I rip the bag off the brer’s shoulder. The chick tries to fight back and the shop’s security guard comes up to us and goes please take it outside. I take the bag and walk out. Outside, all the DVD shotters are huddled in a group by the bus stop, hugging their bags and looking at us while they talk out of the side of their mouths in a language none of us understands. Everyone’s got a stack of DVDs or a bag so we head back to the blocks.

  At Bimz’s yard, Bimz and Spooks go into the bedroom and start sorting out DVDs. Me and Gotti do these licks just to break the boredom, I mean it’s fucking DVDs, it’s not a serious move or anything. But Bimz has got this hustle on smash, sorting them into piles, says he’s got enough pornos to buy at least ten draws from Chris or Uncle T, since them man will take three pornos for a £10 draw. Next mandem in the ends will buy DVDs for three nugs each as well, especially when they’re the latest films and they’re not those shaky cam jobs where you see people’s heads blocking the screen n shit. At least we’ll have some movies to watch.

  In one of the packs we find Paid in Full, so me, Mazey and Gotti go and watch it in Mazey’s room. It’s based on a true story about these three Harlem dons called Alpo, Rich Porter and Azie, who got rich shotting work in the 80s. There’s this scene where the three friends are jamming together after Azie just survived being shot in the head. Azie says he’s decided to get out of the crack game for good and Alpo tells him ayo, niggaz get shot every day b. Gotti cracks up and starts repeating it, turning to Mazey – yo Mazey, niggaz get shot every day b, and we all buss up laughing and Mazey goes this guy, while he passes me a zoot.

  The next day is Monday so I have to go uni for a lecture and two seminars. Mazey and Gotti are still ko’d when I leave. When I get on campus, I buck Capo and we talk about how that Daniel yout got duppied and then later I’m in a seminar with people who know nothing about South Killy, nothing about their neighbours getting murdered and all that madness, and the class is talking about The Birth of Tragedy. Butterfly knife in my pocket. All I wanna talk about is how a man got slumped in the middle of a rave and how his killers are probably gonna get away with it, as if talking about it here, in uni, in the classroom, might make it normal, because since I touched uni, being around everyone catching jokes and studying and whatever has made me start to doubt that it’s normal. But in the end I don’t say anything because really and truly it feels abnormal that no one at uni talks about things like that when it’s going on in other blocks, in other ends like Pecknarm and Bricky and Hackney, and I barely take part in the seminar which is unusual for me, but all I wanna do is go back to SK and jam with the mandem.

  In the last ten minutes I snap back into the discussion – hand up – yes Gabriel? and I start breaking down the concept of the Dionysian and the Apolline, art as a beautiful end product that hides the dark and disturbing origins of its inspiration. Our seminar leader Dr Jerry Brotton says that’s good that’s good, says did everyone write down what Gabriel said? I say if anyone wants private tuition come holla at me. Everyone laughs and one girl says Sara would like some private tuition with you and the Iranian girl sitting next to her blushes deep pink burn and holds her book up in front of her face.

  The second Renay starts whispering to me during our Critical Thinking lecture, I know I’m gonna smash. Pretty gyal who studies English literature – what more could I want? After the lecture we swap numbers. Says she lives in Kensal Green and I say rah that’s up the road from me, I live in South Kilburn. We jump on the tube together after our seminar. She invites me to her mum’s to continue the conversation we’ve been having on the tube, although really she says nothing and just listens to me filling the silence. Afterwards I go Precinct and tell Mazey yo I got this little peng ting from Kensal who goes to my uni and she’s on man and Mazey says gwan Snoopz.

  The next day I don’t have any lectures or seminars so I go straight from Bimz’s yard round to Renay’s and again I do most of the talking for us and it feels like I’m not learning anything about her and if this continues soon I’ll actually have to start opening up to her. Fuck dat. Whenever I stop talking, tryna think of suttin else to say, she goes why you being so quiet for? until it gets jarring and I have nothing left so we start lipsing, rushing it, as if we mustn’t stop to think, and then we end up banging on the sofa and she’s mad petite so I pick her up and beat her out against the wall and her pussy’s so tight I can’t fully push myself in and she wraps her legs around my back like she’s holding on for dear life or suttin and I look at her face and her eyes are shut like she’s forcing them to stay closed and then I pull out and buss all over her mum’s living-room floor.

  Later, when it’s evening times I get waved with Gotti and Mazey, drinking Rémy Martin cognac on the block. We go Kilburn High Road and I put one brer in a headlo
ck and Gotti goes through the man’s pockets and takes his phone, takes his wallet, takes his watch – some dead Seiko ting – and as soon as I let go of him the brer runs across the busy road like he wants a car to come and lick him down. Then we go back to D-block and we don’t even need to bun any zoots coz we’re so mashup from the juice. I crash onto the camp bed without even taking my creps off. Gotti lies on the floor, playing with the watch we just licked, winding the dial round and round as if it might make tomorrow come sooner. Ragged night flutters outside the window and as I drift off Gotti says yo Snoopz, niggaz get shot every day b, and his laughter scatters into the darkness that fills my eyes.

  THE SEEKERS AFTER SMOOTH THINGS

  This saying, referring to the last days, concerns the congregation of those who seek smooth things … who despise the Law and do not trust in God … As robbers lie in wait for a man … they have despised the words of the Law.

  Fragment from the Dead Sea Scrolls

  IT WAS THE morning that I told my lecturer to shutdafuckup. Gotti phoned me and said I got a serious move for us fam, come buck me when you finish uni. Then I went to my lecture feeling gassed up and told the lecturer to shutdafuckup. The whole year, everyone doing an English degree, packed into the lecture theatre to listen to someone talking about Nietzsche and The Birth of Tragedy.

  The lecture starts. I’m sitting high up towards the back in my Nike tracksuit and Avirex jacket – all black – and I’ve got my pad out, taking notes. Three chicks who are sitting in the row just in front of me whisper to each other and laugh. The lecturer stops, looks up and says you don’t have to be here if you want to talk. She is staring in my direction and several rows of students in front turn round and look at me. The lecturer continues talking about Nietzsche, I continue taking notes, the three girls continue to whisper. The lecturer stops again and says look if you’re going to keep talking just get out, there’s no need for you to be here, and her eyes pin themselves to mine. Students turning round. The lecturer goes back to Nietzsche while my face gets hot. I stand up and say are you talking to me? She looks up from her notes and says yes, if you want to keep talking you can just leave and I say shutdafuckup and the entire lecture theatre turns into one voice which gasps and hangs, suspended above everyone’s heads. I say I wasn’t even talking, don’t make random accusations that you can’t substantiate otherwise you’ll get embarrassed like you just did, and she says can you leave? I say no I can’t, fuck dat and then I sit down and she stands under the loneliness of the spotlight onstage, shuffles her papers like she’s trying to make all the edges line up neatly and then continues with the lecture.