by Joel Willans
Eight o’clock then. Grinning, I waited on the swing, rocking back and forth, wrapping myself tighter and tighter in my coat.
The sun went down and still I stayed. The moon rose and I didn’t shift an inch. Foxes sniffed around in the bushes. An owl sat like a judge in the tree. Only when the cold made my body feel as distant as a dream did I begin to wonder if I’d interpreted them wrong. I took out the pack and slowly began to shuffle. Then I thought of the rainbow girl sitting in the pub, and the fear of what I had to do hit me like a two-handed slap. Taking a deep breath and with trembling hands, I held the pack tight and tossed it as high as I could towards the stars. Jumping off the swing, I watched the cards flutter back to earth. Then, with them lying like litter in the dirt, I jumped off the swing and ran as fast as I could down the hill and into town.
Purged
I want to sweat out thoughts of Tamzin. That’s why I’m in the gym six thirty every morning, while it still smells of lemon fresh from the Somalian girl’s mop. Leave it to nature and your body gets soft like dough. You have to work it. You have to pump it. You have to crunch it. Too many men are like my dad. They let their bodies rot on drink and their minds on despair.
When I first saw the Somalian girl here, I thought of home. That would shock Dad. He’d spit and curse to hear that a girl like her made me think of Helsinki, but Finland’s changed a lot since his day. He always said they were letting in too many foreigners. Not that he knew, stuck on the farm in the middle of nowhere with only Mum, me and the forest for company.
I remember the times when he’d go to the city for a tractor spare or fishing rod, and come back cussing with a frown as dark as midnight.
‘Should never have joined that damned EU. Didn’t spend the last fifty years paying the Russians off just so a lot of darkies could steal our jobs.’
‘What about your cousin? He went to Sweden to get work,’ my mum would say. ‘Was he stealing jobs too?’
Dad would lean back in his chair, belly showing, and run one hand through grey hair that he still greased back. ‘Your old woman talks a lot of shit sometimes, boy.’ If I were near enough he’d clip me around the ear to emphasise the point. ‘Don’t you be taking after her, you hear me?’
I’d nod and his face, which Mum said was once as handsome as a tango singer’s, would break into a grin.
Foreigners didn’t want to work or learn the language. They treated their women like dirt, he said, hell, they couldn’t even start a sauna. I wish he could’ve visited London to see what a city full of foreigners really looks like. Twice as many people here as in the whole of Suomi. Get on a bus and it feels like you’re at the United Nations. That’s why I came, for the people. To get away from the isolation that helped make Dad what he is. To feel part of the world instead of stuck on top, in a place nobody knows much about and cares for even less.
The Somalian girl’s name is Amina. A pretty name for a pretty girl. Face is long like a horse’s. Not in a bad way, but kind of noble, with eyes that hold you. She is different from Tamzin and watching her cleaning comes as a relief. She swishes the mop around the bench press like I’m not there. She has never spoken to me voluntarily. At first I thought it was the tattoos or the crew cut that scared her. Now I think she can sense something else.
Today, I stare at her as I do my crunches. I carry on till my gut goes numb. She’s packing up her gear, dragging her bucket behind her as if it’s a spoilt kid not wanting to go to school. She looks in one of the mirrors that cover the wall.
‘What?’ she says, catching my eye.
‘Want to go out with me one day?’
‘What?’
‘You and me. I’ll do the mopping for a week if you say yes.’
She laughs. ‘You frown too much.’
I pull my vest up and look down at my abs. They shine with sweat. I clench my fists and punch them. The girl stops dragging her bucket to the store cupboard and stares.
I smile. ‘It doesn’t hurt. It’s just a way of training.’
It’s not. It’s me trying to get rid of the feelings that refuse to go no matter how many crunches I do. It’s me thinking of what happened to Tamzin.
Once I finish training, I take the Tube to Tamzin’s house. She lives in one of those big terrace streets the English love so much. Road after road of houses exactly the same, with a garden no bigger than a bed in the front, and one not much bigger out the back.
The first time I visited, I’d asked her what was the point of such a small bit of dirt.
‘It may just be a bit of dirt, but it’s my bit of dirt,’ she said. ‘I can do what I please with it.’
‘It’s funny how people here care for scraps of land. It’s what happens when so many people try to squeeze onto such a small island. In Finland, we have too much land and not enough people. The forests go on and on and on and they are almost totally empty.’
‘Really? Fascinating,’ she said, quickly checking the street before hurrying me inside. ‘Now, chop, chop.’
At first, she was just like all the other English. She talked a lot, yet she never really listened. Even if I did speak her language and even if I was, as she claimed with a smile, ‘the epitome of the Nordic hunk’, I was still just another stupid foreigner.
Now, as I stare at her bright red front door, made even brighter by the early light, I remember how I found her on the kitchen floor. Half naked and battered, limbs sprawled like those of an elk that had just been shot. I turned her over. Her lip was split and her eye was swollen. Her black hair stuck to her forehead. Pink spit dribbled down her chin. I took a glass of water, held it to her lips.
She opened one eye.
‘Where is he?’ I said.
She grabbed a gulp of water. Her lipstick smeared the glass. ‘He knows.’
‘Where is he?’ I repeated. The same question I used to ask my mum when I found her like that.
Tamzin shook her head. I lifted her up and buried my face in her hair. It smelt of marzipan and was so smooth I wanted to drape it over my face like a curtain. I got her dressed and took her back to my flat. Even in her state she seemed shocked how bare it was. A bed. A sofa. Table and chairs. An old photo of my mum baking pulla, held in place by a Finnish flag fridge magnet bought on a whim in the airport. I took her to my bed, stroked her hair and sung to her. It helped her sleep and it helped me control my rage.
In the morning, I found her hunched up on the sofa. The way she was trying to curl in on herself reminded me so much of my mum that I had to stop looking. I wondered as I studied the scars on my hands, if all beaten women looked like that. I didn’t know what to say, so I asked if she wanted some breakfast.
‘Come here.’ She patted the sofa. ‘I know I look a mess, but…’
I sat. ‘You make my place feel as bright as a sunny day in winter.’
She put her fingers on my lips. ‘You’re a poet, you know.’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah, truly. You have a different way of thinking.’
‘What, for a foreigner?’
‘No, for a man.’
I held her to me, wishing we were alone in the forest. Wishing not for the first time that I hadn’t moved to this country at all, with its people who treated you as dumb if you pronounced their words wrong, and its mixed-up weather and its claustrophobic cities.
‘You know why I moved here?’ I said.
‘For the stunning women?’
‘No. To get away from my dad and to live in a place totally different from the place that made him such an arsehole. I never want to be like him.’
She kissed my elbow. ‘You’re not.’
‘I was,’ I said, showing her the scars on my hands. ‘Do you think you learn to be an arsehole or you inherit it?’
‘Nature or nurture?’
‘What?’
‘I think it’s a mixture.’ She traced my scars with her fingernails. ‘You’re not an arsehole. I should know, I live with one.’
Later that morning she told
me it was over. That she’d never meant for it to happen. That I was an adventure, a dare to herself, a luxury she could no longer afford. She stroked my face and said she was sorry, I was a lovely young boy and I should find myself a lovely young girl. Not a middle-aged troublemaker like her. I watched her leave from the window. She limped in her high heels, but she didn’t look back. I felt the urge to break things rising in me like a sickness.
Only once has it taken hold of me since I’ve been here. Once in ten months. That’s the longest I’ve been free of it since I left the army. I try to tell myself that I’ve done well. That once isn’t bad. Still, it worries me that I still lost it so easily. It happened the third time Tamzin took me out, not counting the times she came to the café in Kensington where I wait tables and make overpriced sandwiches. We went to a club in Soho. It was in a converted cellar with red velvet on the wall and alcoves for getting intimate. A man, with a loud shirt and a louder mouth, asked her to dance. When she said no, he called her a slut. Perhaps it was the word, perhaps it was the sneer on his face, or perhaps I was already in love with her and I just didn’t know it.
When I head butted him, his nose cracked. He staggered away holding his face, gasping like a man who’d stayed in the sauna for too long. Someone shouted. A bouncer grabbed my arm. I looked him in the eye and he asked me to leave. Outside, Tamzin wrapped her arm through mine as if we were promenading.
‘Well, you’re quite the action man, aren’t you?’ she said, her face flushed. ‘I thought people only did things like that in those ghastly Hollywood films.’
I didn’t say anything. Just looked at my hands. At the bitten nails. Later, in an all-white bar, she bought me fancy cocktails that tasted like melted ice pops. I didn’t tell her that I don’t drink anymore. I didn’t want to lessen her sudden enthusiasm for me. Before we left, I went to the toilet, stuck my fingers down my throat and purged myself of the brightly coloured poison. The smell of vomit reminded me of mornings when I was a kid. Of my dad stumbling out of the bathroom, cursing with the stink of cigarettes and stale vodka wafting from him like foul aftershave.
Now, I stare at Tamzin’s door, with my finger hovering over the bell. I want to tell her she can’t just walk away, but I know she can because that is just what I did. Except I ran away. Ran away from the first girl I’d ever loved, so she didn’t end up like my mum, or like Tamzin.
If I were at home now, I’d take a boat out onto the lake and stay there until the wind hurt my face. That’s what I did when my dad used to beat me with a birch branch or slap me with the back of his hand or grab my hair and drag me out to the barn. That’s what I did after I finished national service and my mum begged me to leave, telling me it would make her life easier.
‘Why do you stay, Mum?’ I asked, standing at the door with my rucksack.
‘It’s just his way. He loves me, really.’
You don’t beat your wife out of love. You’ve got to have something wrong inside or you’ve got to hate the world outside. I wonder what it is for Tamzin’s husband? I wonder what his excuse is? She told me once that teaching frustrated him. That he found the responsibility of nurturing young minds a strain. I think about that standing in front of his door. I think about those kids being taught by a man like my dad.
I walk to his school. Outside there are flocks of mothers. They all look the same. Hair messy. Eyes tired. Minds somewhere else. Like girls who grew up overnight. They stare at me. I see Tamzin’s husband then. He’s strolling through the car park, whistling.
I bounce on my toes. I feel a rush surge through me. I came to the city to lose this feeling. Now I know, as I breathe harder and harder, it will never go. It’s me. It’s what life made me. No matter whether I’m alone in the forest or in a city of ten million. If I have to live with it, best use it the right way. I clench my fists open and closed. Last time I felt it this strong was when I beat my dad, for the years of whacks and slaps, of punches and burns. For mine and for my mum’s. Beat him till my knuckles bled.
Tamzin’s husband doesn’t see me until it’s too late. He staggers at the first punch. The second knocks him to the floor. He yelps like a dog. I kick him over and over. Behind me the mothers scream. I carry on until he is quiet. Until my white trainers are red. When he is still, I walk away. I feel sick, yet purged.
Tomorrow I will ask the Somalian girl out again. And this time, with my frown gone, she will say yes.
All For Just Fifty Baht
Even though it’s morning, the pavement outside Wat Ratchapradit is busy. In Bangkok, every hour is rush hour. Sinee crouches down next to an old woman sitting beside cages packed with sparrows, swallows and weavers. The birds bounce around, chittering and flapping and eyeing Sinee while she undoes her pink heels.
‘Want to get rid of your sorrows, child? Only fifty baht for a swallow, seventy-five for a pair.’
The old woman flaps her hands. ‘They fly so high they touch the heavens.’
‘First I need to visit Buddha’s house.’
Inside the temple she knows it will be cool and peaceful. It’s beautiful, too, and difficult to find. Maybe her farang will get lost. Maybe she won’t have to answer his question after all.
The old woman grins. ‘Why not a bird first? One now, one after you speak with Lord Buddha. Think of all the good it will do for your karma. Give life to another creature, all for just fifty baht.’
Sinee smiles. Though the old woman talks like a street hustler, she reminds her of her grandmother. Sinee counts on her fingers. Nearly eight months since she left Chiang Mai. It feels longer.
‘If Grandmother is to get better, we need money. There is no other choice,’ her mother said. ‘You must go south.’
She didn’t mean to end up in Patpong, but the medicine was expensive and the wages were so much better there. The men were mostly okay and some, like her farang, were even friendly.
Tiptoeing down the steps, Sinee realises she has forgotten to remove her silver nail varnish. She feels exposed but carries on, head bowed towards the golden Buddha sitting cross-legged inside. Kneeling in front of him, she breathes in the sandalwood and jasmine until her throat tastes sweet. Two monks, boy apprentices in mustard robes, sit at the side chanting soft words. Flowers, yellow roses and violet lotuses, lie at Buddha’s feet. Some still beautiful, others wilted and old.
She tries to clear her mind but finds herself looking at the monks. Each wears a frown on his smooth, round face. They know what she is. Despite their glares, the temple calms her. She stares at the crinkled garlands. They make her think of herself in ten, twenty years. Only Buddha’s smile comforts her and she realises that her farang often looks at her with the same expression. Feeling a little better, she lights a stick of incense.
She hears her farang before she sees him.
‘Sinee, I am here! I am sorry I am so late. This has been so difficult to find. The tuk-tuk drivers speak even worse English than I. Do you want me to wait outside?’
She nearly nods, but he might touch her before he leaves and she doesn’t want that. Not here. Not in front of the boy monks. She gets up, bows and goes to him.
‘You look beautiful.’ He dabs his head with a blue handkerchief. His yellow hair sticks to his scalp.
She tries to smile at him, feeling sorry that he has to lumber around the sopping city in his bloated body.
‘I got you this.’ He hands her a necklace with a jade S. ‘I thought it would look pretty great with your eyes.’
She thanks him and slips it in her pocket. She can tell, by his hungry expression, he wants the answer now. ‘I tell you, but not here.’
The monks’ gazes flitter around her like startled moths. She ignores them. Her farang tries to take her hand in his damp paw but she pulls it away. Outside, the sun has cleared a path through the tin-coloured sky. There has been no monsoon today, but the world still smells like an old sponge. Sinee puts her shoes back on and listens to her farang’s soft smoker’s wheeze.
‘I have not be
en around here before. Only that big old temple, Wat Pho. That one is pretty okay, but this I like more. This I could imagine in the forest at home.’ He smiles. ‘Like it has grown right out of the earth.’
He talks too much when he is nervous and too little when he is not. She wonders if she’ll ever be able to handle the silences.
He nods at the old woman. ‘They didn’t have these birds in Wat Pho.’
‘They aren’t for tourists,’ Sinee says.
He stares at Sinee as she walks towards the old woman and hands her a new note. ‘Two swallows, please.’
The old woman snatches the money and reaches inside the nearest cage. With two quick jerks she grabs the birds and hands them over. Cupped in her hands, Sinee can feel their little hearts beating faster and faster.
‘What will you do with them? Watch out for the beaks, beautiful.’ He puts his arm around her. She flinches. ‘Will you be happy in Helsinki without all this?’
Sinee holds the birds tighter, remembering the way her grandmother wheezed when she said goodbye. She pictures the flowers around Buddha, drained of their beauty, and the way the monks looked at her. After a deep breath, she kisses the swallows, whispers a few words and throws them as high as she can into the sky. When they are nothing more than swirling specks of black, she turns to her farang and answers his question.
Break a Brick
I draw my finger along the surface of my Akai reel-to-reel tape deck. Dust sticks to the tip. I do the same with my Pioneer quadraphonic sound system. More dust. I should’ve listened to my granddad. A pretty woman is a slovenly woman, Scott, he said, that’s why your mum couldn’t keep hold of your dad.
Well, they don’t get much more slovenly than Pammy. She might look like Marianne Faithful, but the kitchen always smells of burnt toast and the bathroom is always littered with her tack. Lippy, bottles of empty perfume, Tampax.
