XI
Just as The Old Man was about to finish his pear, a bell sounded. And just like that, everyone in the cafeteria stopped eating and dropped their utensils. They each inhaled profoundly, and as if they had just woken from a dream or re-emerged from beneath a broken tumbling swell, they looked entirely present, grateful and aware. They held their breaths for a moment, but for The Old Man, who had never seen this kind of thing before, it seemed strange and uncomfortably long. Then, as they exhaled, they all wriggled in their seats and straightened their slouching backs. They stared with strange affection at everything around them – at the person sitting beside them, at the persons at the far ends of the room, at themselves in their own reflections, and at the meat and cream tarts that filled up their plates. And then they breathed some more. It was loud and it was obnoxious. The room inhaled and exhaled as if it were a fashion.
The Old Man, though, continued to eat his pear.
“I’m grateful for knowing you,” said The Roommate.
His fingers were covered in sticky brown grime, and he had half a chicken bone stuck to the side of his face. Worse still was that he was asking for a hug. To The Old Man, though, he was asking for something else.
“What are you grateful for? Are you grateful for knowing me?”
“We just met,” said The Old Man, picking bits of pear from his teeth.
“Yeah, and? You don’t think a baby is grateful for being alive; the second it’s born?”
“I don’t think a baby thinks all that much; the second it’s born.”
“Well, you have to be grateful for something.”
“You’ll have to excuse me from this one. No offence and all, I just don’t feel all that undeserving at the moment; or ever.”
The Roommate continued talking, except now his mouth was stuffed with a clump of chicken breast, a spoonful of pudding, and some sugared cereal. Even if he wanted to, The Old Man wouldn’t be able to make out a single word. As he chewed and slapped the mash of gruel around his mouth, The Roommate’s voice sounded like a hiker’s feet, marching through thick wet mud. Each word was like a rock or a thick mound of dirt coming unstuck.
The Old Man was eyeing the television. It was hard to miss them really. There was one in the middle of every wall and they all ran the same government propaganda, showing images of The Administrator, cutting through never ending streams of red tape.
“I’m grateful for her,” said The Roommate. “Without her, we wouldn’t have half of this. We wouldn’t get this second chance – to be better and to help make a better world. What do you think?”
“I’m an old man, and my life has been a long, bumpy road. I’ve seen many things and I’ve been many places. I’ve made many friends - most of them lovers; and I’ve made just as many enemies. I’ve also let the most important parts of me alone, to get old on their own. And all I have to show are the pieces of broken hearts.”
His eyes were fixed on the screen.
“Women of that calibre are the reason that I am here.”
In the far end of the room, a woman screamed. It caught The Old Man’s attention. “Fuck you,” she said, kicking her legs and thrashing her body about. The men who restrained her did so with a great deal of caution. “You can’t make me eat if I don’t want to. I’ll throw it back up, you motherfuckers.”
The men tried to encourage her to eat. They did this by holding her nose shut and forcing spoon after spoon of beans and rice into her mouth. It did no good, though. She’d either pass out and they’d have to scoop the food from her mouth, or if they called her bluff, she’d spit it back in their faces.
“Beat me,” she said. “Throw me down the fucking stairs. I dare you, fucking pussy. You fucking queers. You cock sucking, kiddy raping faggots. Hit me,” she screamed. “Come on you pussies. You scared of a woman, huh? They’re all looking at you.”
The men looked around. It was true. Everyone was looking.
“They think you’re weak; not cause you hurt girls, but because you love cock, and you hate yourself for it. Hit me, you fucking…”
Another spoon was forced into her mouth, and again, fingers blocked her nose.
The Old Man was already at the door, throwing his core in the bin. He left, being chased by The Roommate who was already shouting about what they should see next.
“We should get ready for therapy. It’s not good to be late. The best groups are always gone. Are you gonna wear that?”
The Old Man looked himself over and shrugged.
“No, you look good, but a bit formal, you know? People normally wear more comfortable clothes, but you can wear that.”
They passed a dozen rooms on the way back to their own. One of which had a large golden sign above the door that read, ‘O.F.E’.
The Old Man turned the handle and peered in. It looked like an operating theatre. There was a single table in the centre of the room, and around it, a host of machines and cutting instruments. They shimmered in the light that spilled through the open door.
“This is where you do the…. You know… Snip, snip, snip”
He made scissoring gestures.
“No, I don’t know,” said The Old Man.
His chest felt as cold as the steel table.
“It’s where you go to get the snip, or to tie your bits, if that’s what you got; in exchange for knowing stuff.”
“Stuff?”
“Things. You know stuff. Education and stuff. That’s what the words mean. Ovaries for education. Like a trade-off, kind of.”
“Who would do this?”
“I did. And everyone else too. You have to if you want to leave. It’s not all bad, though. I don’t want any more kids anyway. And by getting the snip, I can choose any technical course that I want and they’ll teach me. The best tutors and professors. I’d never get a chance any other ways. I didn’t stick around much in school when I was young so, I’m pretty lucky to be given this shot; we all are – to be able to have the same shot as everyone else, and get a good job. Pretty small sacrifice if you ask me, for being a better person, don’t you think?”
“So how do you get out of here?”
The Roommate looked white as a ghost.
“We should go,” he said, pulling The Old Man along. “If we’re late, we’ll be stuck with a bad group. You don’t want a bad group, trust me.”
On their way back, The Roommate was stopped by a guard. They pressed him up against the wall and made him hand over his file. The Roommate did as he was told, and as the guard flipped page after page of his precious possessions, The Roommate started to panic, lying about which ones he cared for the least.
“Oh that one you can take,” he said, though his voice was jester-like. “That one too.” It was easy to pick which of the papers were most important. They were those that he was most adamant to give away. The guard tore out three pages and then shoved the file back in The Roommate’s hands.
“Progress is difficult,” said The Guard, “only as long as we refuse to let go.”
The Roommate nodded. He was in tears, but he did his best to hold it in.
“What was that about?”
The guard was gone but still The Roommate clung to the file like a mother to her child. “It’s part of getting better,” he said, though his voice sounded bitter as if he didn’t believe a word of it. “Nothing is real, not the thoughts that I think, nor things in my hands; not even the life that I live. Everything goes away. I am not a keeper of things. I am not a keeper of things. I am not a keeper of things.”
He repeated his mantra over and over until his sadness subsided, which it did.
“Race you back to the room,” he said.
The Old Man walked at a slow and steady speed; not because he was old, but because he enjoyed the ‘getting there’ a little more than he enjoyed ‘getting there’.
“I need to leave.”
The Old Man stared at his unmade bed. He had no intention of sleeping the night.
“You can’t go
anywhere without the Doc saying so.”
It was hard to tell if The Roommate was giving advice or making a threat. He took something from his pocket. It was a picture. He kissed it once – softly, and then turned to The Old Man smiling. “Isn’t she beautiful?” he said.
The Old Man stared at the woman in the picture.
“She is,” he said. “Is she your wife?”
“She is,” said The Roommate. “Or she will be when I’m better. She comes with a new car – I don’t really know what kind; and a house as well. It’s nothing too glamorous, but it’s in a good neighbourhood. I figure we’ll have lots of kids, so being near good schools is important. We’ll probably adopt, so we can help kids that don’t get a proper shot. And I can’t, you know?”
“What’s her name?”
The Roommate shoved the picture back in his pocket. “That’s not important,” he said.
“Have you met her?”
“What does that matter?”
“Well, how did you meet her?”
“I didn’t meet her.”
He sounded frustrated.
“I picked her; like I picked all my things.”
“You picked her? A person? How do you pick a person?”
“You look for the prettiest one and you say, ‘her’.”
“She’s a fantasy. Everything is. It’s all a ruse, don’t you see? All of those things you say you own, all of those things in that file, none of them are real.”
“Just because you can’t see them, it doesn’t mean they aren’t there.”
“But they aren’t here, are they?”
“No. They’re there.”
“Where’s there?”
“There, is wherever I am when I’m better when they let me out of here.”
He might as well have said Heaven.
“How long have you been here?”
“I was rescued from the sea a few years ago. I was the only survivor. I spent some time on an island for people like myself – you know, people without permission. It was terrible there – the way they treated us. I thought we had escaped the worst of it, then I got to the detention centre on that island, and I saw much worse. I was there for a while.”
As he spoke, he winced, as if he were seeing things – things he had spent a great many years trying to repress. The last of his salvaged sanity fought to skip those significant details. As he acted as such, The Old Man sat on the end of his unmade bed and listened intently. It was the first real conversation he had had since he arrived – maybe even in the last week or so. He swayed back and forth as if The Roommate’s words were notes on some beaten down bluesy scale. He tapped away on the tops of his legs, playing the rhythm to the man’s unspoken pain, and he even hummed a note or two as he listened and followed along.
“Then I was moved here. And here I am better; here is better. And I’ve been here for a while, but soon…soon I’ll be out there, and I will be the better part of a better world.”
As he spoke, The Roommate repeatedly made his bed.
“You’re not from here?”
“West.”
“Your accent is thick. I would have said East.”
“You go West enough, you arrive East.”
“Your family?”
It was like he was provoking him. The Roommate tried to keep himself busy. He’d done so well at forgetting all of this – and if not forgetting, then doing his very best to avoid thinking and feeling the way he felt now.
“They do not exist. It is just ‘I’, and now there is ‘you’.”
“I hope you don’t see this as prying but, can I ask….”
The Old Man leant in such a way that he looked like a leaf stretching for the morning sun, or a drunk, for the ale that dripped from the tap.
“How did they die?”
“Yes. How did they die?”
The Roommate sat on the edge of his bed. He stared at The Old Man, but he looked through him. His face looked different. It looked flaccid and poorly attached. His eyes drooped and his manic smile vanished. It looked as if every muscle in his face just gave up and stopped pretending that he was OK with any of this.
The Old Man, on the other hand, closed his eyes and settled his body. He looked calm and relaxed. He looked happy and content. It was as if someone had sworn to play his favourite record, and he was listening now to the crackle of The Roommate’s voice, waiting for the needle to drop.
“We travelled very far to be here. Our home was a place of war – no food and no shelter. It was not safe for happy children, so we left; along with hundreds of thousands more – we left. We paid men some money – everything we had saved - and we took a boat, but there were too many people and the boat was in terrible condition. And the fool that steered it was worse. We had an accident in the middle of night. The waves were big – like mountains. They broke our boat, and they broke the people on the boat. Everyone went into the water, and everyone drowned; everyone except me. I don’t blame any one person, though. There was no way to save that many people. I did the very best that I could. I called for my children first - my two girls.”
The Roommate smiled, and The Old Man was nearly driven to tears.
“They were beautiful. They had their mother’s smarts and they had her looks too, but my wife would probably tell you different. My girls could argue their way out of anything, except this; neither of them knew how to swim. And that was my fault, as a father. It was dark and I couldn’t see. My mouth and eyes were full of wind and water, but I called for them. After every wave, I called. I called louder than everyone else. I called louder than the ships engine, and I called louder than the waves that were breaking it apart. I kept calling, even when other people stopped. And when I knew that they couldn’t be alive, then I started calling for my wife.”
His smile was gone now, but it was not taken by sadness. He looked entirely unemotional; as if he were merely giving The Old Man directions.
“And then I stopped calling. I realised it is just me in the ocean. In the morning I saw that this was true. I’d drifted a long way with a piece of the boat. There was nobody. There was nothing. There was only blue - the blue of the water, and the blue of the sky. At some point I started to think of death and of course, I thought of God – why he would do this; why he would kill all these people; and why he would just leave me. When I was as a boy I learned how to swim, but my children – I just didn’t have the time. And my wife; she hated the beach, and she’d never go to the pool – she hated what the chlorine did to her hair. All those people – none of them knew how to swim, but me, I did. I felt guilty for a long time. I blamed myself because I didn’t die. And I said, ‘God, give them back, and take me instead’. I begged and pleaded for a long time, and I just cried a lot. But it’s difficult to cry and keep your head above the water, so I stopped, and instead, I kept treading water and then thought about dying. I thought about stopping and just letting myself sink. It’s funny, though, I learned how to swim, and even if I wanted to die, the rest of my body didn’t so it just kept swimming. It wouldn’t listen to me. It wouldn’t let me give in, no matter how much I wanted it. It’s impossible to unlearn something that’s in the process of saving your life. And then one day a boat passed and it took me to the island. I don’t know how long I was in the water, but I was in bad shape. And after the island, I came here, and now…” he said, taking a long breath, the kind he took in the cafeteria – the kind of breath that washed away needless and damaging thoughts and feelings. “Now I am better.”
The way The Old Man swayed back and forth, you’d think he loved every word.
“That’s terrible,” he said.
“For you? For me, it is a story.”
“I mean, it’s tragic and it’s terribly sad.”
“What happened? No, sad it was not. Scary, yes. It was very scary – frightening even. Missing my wife and my two beautiful daughters, and knowing I will never see them again, that is sad. But to think of them as dead – as not existing – that
isn’t; at least it doesn’t make me feel that way. One cannot see what does not exist. For me, it is not tragic; it’s just a story. It’s the past. It shaped me, but it does not define me.”
He smiled as he spoke.
It was now that The Old Man looked frustrated. He stopped his swaying, and his eyes were wide and glazed. The way he looked and the way he spoke, The Roommate was starting to sound no different to the lady at the bar. He sounded cold and rigid, like the music that spilled from its stage. He was hardly a man worth swaying to.
“One cannot touch what does not exist. Just as one cannot hug or kiss what does not exist. One has no sense of what does not exist, and it is therefore that one cannot feel for what is dead and buried, or for who or what is lost at sea. One cannot feel for what does not exist. And so I do not feel sad or sorry because my family doesn’t exist; I do not feel at all, just as I feel nothing for the infinite number of possible things that could exist but that do not – especially those that have yet to be imagined and invented and those yet to be dug out of the Earth or brought home from distant planets. I cannot plant a seed where there is no garden. And I’ve been told I am right and better in thinking this way, so I know that it is true. And what about you? How were you lucky to come here?”
“Do you believe in God?”
The Old Man wasted no time.
“No, I do not.”
“Did you?”
“Of course. You are an old man. I am sure you also did, no?”
“What did you believe?”
“We are not permitted to talk about these things.”
“Is there a soul?”
“Sir, I have worked very hard to be better. You are making it very difficult at this time. I don’t like these kinds of questions.”
“If there is no God then how can we judge morality? How can we assert right from wrong? And why do we sing songs of redemption?”
“There are no more songs of redemption. We are people. We are alive, and we live together at the same time. We are people. It’s simple. We hurt and we heal. And if it is you that did the hurting, you feel bad not because of moral reprisal; you feel bad because you are a person and it is not your wish to hurt for no good reason. I do not need God for being a good person. I am a good person, and I am a bad person too - it depends on which person you ask. For the most part, I believe that I am good. I do not need God and you do not need God too. It is simple, my friend,” he said, resting one of his hands on The Old Man’s shoulders. “Just do not be a pointy penis to other people. There is your moral compass. In therapy, you will understand.”
London When it Rains Page 7
