Dirty Beat

by Venero Armanno

  ‘Made a change, baby?’

  ‘I know it was you, Max. What is it with men? To destroy, only to destroy. Did you think I’d thank you? Did you think I’d be proud of you?’

  I tried to touch her face. She jerked away and slapped my hand. Her bottom lip quivered with anger.

  ‘I said it had to be over. I said I couldn’t take any more, that I didn’t want things to be worse. I begged you, really begged you.’

  I couldn’t hold back any more. ‘Why would I let him do that to you? Why wouldn’t I make him pay? What sort of a man sits around and does nothing after that?’

  ‘Stop shouting! Max!’

  ‘I’ll shout! I should have killed him! He’s lucky!’

  Then the room reverberated into silence. Tears ran down her face. She took a ragged breath.

  ‘Listen. I will be going. Alone. I can’t live with you. You disgust me. John went mad, but you, you had time to think about it. You planned it and you enjoyed it. Tell me it isn’t true. Tell me you didn’t like doing it.’ She gritted her teeth and I saw the hard muscle in her jaw working.

  ‘Don’t act so quickly,’ I told her. ‘Just wait.’

  ‘Men are – insufferable.’ Debbie closed her eyes. ‘Thank you for letting me stay in this house.’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘Please what? No. No “please”, no nothing. I thought I loved you, Max. I really did and I really tried. But after what you’ve done. Never.’ She kept shaking her head then looked at me, one hard final stare that was as brutal as what I’d done to Iron John. ‘Don’t you see? The man I loved couldn’t do this, so I couldn’t have loved you.’

  I backed away from her. The words repeated in my head. I left the house. The words came with me. I drove away and tried to sleep in my car under a tree in a park, but instead I got out and watched a lousy new day break over this city’s muddy river.

  The next night I had my fill-in job with that synth-pop-rock band. When I went home to prepare, Debbie was well prepared for leaving. There were just a few bags, nothing heavy at all. We exchanged no words that I can remember. I left the house, the front door ajar after me.

  At the show I went through the motions, played everything by rote. By now she was going. Had gone. No movie-moment goodbye, no last minute change of heart while strings swelled.

  Everything was wrong about the gig. The singer was a dickhead in a foul mood. The crowd, no better. For some reason, partway through, he wanted us to do an extended jazz version of ‘Smoke on the Water’. It must have been the band’s little bit of fun; at least it was one part of the night I might have enjoyed. Concetto San Filippo was by my side for the seven-minutes-ten it lasted. He was laughing. I wasn’t. Even improvising my way through the song, I should have played better. It shocked me to learn exactly how much technique I’d lost since concentrating solely on the hard-driving boom-boom of rock music.

  The singer drank about a bottle of vodka, switched from singing to screaming to shrieking, then he tried to do a Jim Morrison and asked who wanted to see his prick. He got pelted with paper cups and warm beer, and so did the band. I was soaked. The singer couldn’t take a hint. He pulled out his slug. It was a worm, a veritable worm, and he danced around like a marionette. The audience howled its derision. He threw up and the show fell apart somewhere three-quarters of the way through. I packed up my things, swearing at anyone who came near me.

  Didn’t quite make it away. In the car park, someone was waiting for me. It crossed my mind that this was a police officer, or maybe a detective or something, and the road to jail was about to begin. Iron John must have finally disclosed who’d attacked him. What do you get for extreme assault and battery these days?

  Not to be. Instead, it was a neatly dressed guy a lot younger than me.

  ‘Hi,’ he said. ‘You’re Max.’

  He was a scrawny stick of nothing with bad acne and a tendency to stoop. Very pasty white skin and floppy, unkempt hair. He looked like the type to sing enthusiastically in Christian revivalist meetings. I opened the car and was shoving bits and pieces of my kit in. It would take me four trips to get everything, one of the main disadvantages of being a drummer. Hard to make a running exit, but there was no pleasure in knowing I’d be heading to a ghost-shell of a home.

  ‘I’ve heard you’re a good drummer, so I came to see the show.’

  ‘I hope you enjoyed it.’

  ‘It was, quite possibly, the worst performance I’ve ever seen. But you did do that jazz thing.’

  ‘Another shocker.’

  ‘The band put that on for me.’

  ‘Why? Who are you?’

  ‘Jamie Lazaroff. My grandfather played with your father, with Conny.’

  ‘Bullshit. I knew who he played with and there definitely was no “Lazaroff”.’

  ‘No, not I Pinguini. Long time before that, when he started in this country. The first outfit with James Jones. Jimmy “Knockout” Jones and His Incredible Sixteen-Piece Orchestra, right? My grandfather and your father were great friends.’

  ‘He was my stepfather.’

  ‘Well, I never knew the details. Anyway, I wanted to hear you play. We need a drummer.’

  ‘Who’s “we”?’

  ‘A bunch of us. It’s up to about twenty now. We’re all studying at university, but every one of us is a jazz enthusiast and wants to keep playing. So we’ve got this little collective going. We do gigs all over the south-east, under different names when we need to, because we create little pick-up bands as required. With whoever’s available when the gig comes up. That way we all get to work, but only when we want to or need the cash. Want to join?’

  ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Nineteen.’

  ‘Nineteen? What’s a nineteen-year-old know about anything?’

  ‘I know enough.’

  ‘Do you? Well, Jamie Lazer-what, here’s something you should know. I’m twenty-five and I’m not at university and I don’t play jazz.’

  ‘We’re short of drummers who can really swing.’

  ‘What the fuck makes you think I can?’

  ‘Your father – I mean your stepfather – used to tell my grandad about how good you were. And now I’ve seen it for myself.’

  I shook my head. ‘Thanks, but whatever you saw, I think you can call it the end. This life is the pits. I’ve had enough. Over. You can make an offer on my kit, if you like.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he said. He had a notepad and pencil in hand now, and scribbled his name and phone number. I read neither. He tore off the strip of paper and wedged it into my top pocket.

  ‘Max, you call me.’

  I slammed my car door. ‘I won’t.’

  ‘Well, what do you want to do?’

  The car park’s security lights all went out, leaving my pastyskinned companion and me in darkness. I trudged across the gravel for the next load of my equipment.

  ‘Supermarket shelf-stacking, a specialty.’

  I

  Contented bees drank the nectar of summer and I curled up in my house drinking whatever came to hand. I spent entire days flicking through the absurd television channels of the early Eighties. At night I’d walk through the house like a drunken ghost, looking from room to room to see if anyone was there. Conny? Aunt Emma? Ma? Mostly I hoped it was Debbie Canova. Well, hope all you want.

  It hardly seemed possible that I could miss someone so much or that the thoughts in my head could make me so physically ill. All the anxieties building inside had finally come to a peak. At the supermarket I worked just enough to cover bills and buy alcohol. To keep costs down, I ate less and tore the telephone out of the wall. Hardly used the electric lights; hardly bothered the gas stove. I filled out a newspaper classified form and put the Rogers kit up for sale. On good days, sometimes I’d sit in the garden my step-parents had taken so much care with and wonder why I’d let it turn into such a lousy jungle. I didn’t care. Let the whole house go back to nature.

  I was losing weight. In my m
ind, I always saw Iron John writhing under my blows, could always hear his bones cracking. Debbie Canova was right to hate me for doing that to him; it was the action of a coward. Now I hated myself; at least Debbie and I could share that in common. The television news seemed full of bad things happening, but none of it bothered me, only what I’d done to that man. I was in hell while Iron John was probably off recovering in some luxury resort attended to by beautiful prostitutes and Swedish masseurs. At least that’s what I tried to tell myself, but I knew it was a lie; nothing was going to diminish my actions. I understood why Debbie Canova left; it made sense. Who could blame the girl?

  We’d had a good thing and there was no one to blame for losing her. Yet she was with me more than if she was with me. Memory became everything. Like this:

  One early morning in the dead of winter I came home from stacking shelves, my body shaking and my eyes wet and sore with the cold. The house looked dark and quiet; she used to always stay up for me, but for once my Debbie must have been asleep. I didn’t mind. It went beyond the call of duty to keep a supper on hand at such a ridiculous hour. I’d just crawl into the bed with her and get warm in a flash.

  When I went inside I saw an orange glow beneath the living room’s door. The house, the corridor, everything creaked with the wintry chill, but I could also sense a warmth emanating from somewhere. I walked down the hall and the timber boards groaned beneath me. Opened the living room door. There were three candles lit. One on each of the stereo’s speakers and one on the low coffee table. Also on the coffee table was a spread of dips and unleavened bread, stuffed vine leaves and smoked cheese. A bottle of red wine, open. Two glasses with long stems. A record of Mahalia Jackson singing gospel. Debbie was on the couch covered in a soft wool rug. It was red. She didn’t really need it because a kerosene heater was lit and its radiant heat made the room warm as toast. We didn’t own a kerosene heater. We never could afford treats like this.

  ‘Phil sent me my portion of the house sale. Not much after the bills got paid off, but enough to celebrate.’

  ‘Hmm,’ I said. ‘And you waiting there.’

  She slowly drew the blanket down from her chin, revealing her breasts, her white arms, her flat stomach. Then she pulled it aside and opened her legs slightly.

  ‘And me waiting here.’

  It was just after four.

  She said, ‘Why don’t you sit down and let me look after you? I think such a hard-working man deserves a little TLC, right?’

  More than a little. Everything Debbie Canova had to give. I was happy. I believe she was happy too.

  Afterward she held tight to me. We lay on the couch under the blanket, sated, a grey chill dawn outside. I nodded off into a dream of oceans and iridescent creatures but she gently shook me awake, her mouth on my chest and her tongue licking and flicking at my nipple.

  She stopped and pulled her head up to face me. Word for word, I hear her.

  II

  Don’t go to sleep yet, Max, there’s something I want to tell you. Let me look at you while I talk. Comfortable?

  Guess where I was born. Yep. A town just like Thornberry. Well, at first, a long way outside of a town just like Thornberry. Country girl through and through. Learned to ride horses while other girls where getting on tricycles. Used to start my days feeding chickens, pigs and goats. And foals, whenever our horses delivered them. The good days were when the mornings started at daybreak, the sun starting to shine. The bad, when we had to be up in the dark mist and wet fog of our winter. I didn’t mind, at least not when I look back on it like this. I was lucky. It was the going to school I didn’t care for. Keep me in the fields of sorghum and I’m happy. The whole thing was beautiful until it went sour. Money, of course. Not enough rain. My father lost the farm and we had to move into town so he could work in the only place that had a job for him, the local produce store. Lucky he knew a thing or two about animal husbandry, even if he wasn’t so smart at managing his income. He started in the store tending their birds and livestock. Mum got a job in the local bakery. They used to joke that now they didn’t have the farm they were millionaires. They probably were, relatively speaking.

  Still not so bad, really, but that’s not everything about what went sour. We could have all lived with that sort of life, me too, but Dad had a friend in town and this friend started having sex with me just before I was fifteen. No one knew and I didn’t fight it, not even the first time. I was curious. I liked it well enough, so maybe I should say we started having sex, not just him to me. That’s the truth of the way it was.

  I knew him from about when I was five or six. He was unemployed and at first used to come work on our property a little, but then he said he hurt his back and he didn’t work there any more. His wife supported the family as a country solicitor and his home was free most days. When Dad moved us into town they became reacquainted; we only lived three streets away. Sundays we had barbecues together. When big games were on we had to huddle around one or the other family’s television.

  I never thought he was an unkind man. I even used to think I loved him. Way back he’d been a banker or something and did something bad with their money. He didn’t go to jail. Instead, he couldn’t work in finance any more. They moved from the city to our town and he stayed home all day and listened to classical records and read thrillers. He told me once he was an escapee. To remember it now, I think he was a prisoner, a prisoner because he just couldn’t make himself move back to a city, any city, and deep down he didn’t like our town at all.

  When we got over being shy, those first few weeks of just going at it hard, quiet and blind, the way I used to see our animals doing it, he started to show me the way to do more interesting things to him. He’d do the same to me, and more. And he always said, Don’t you for a second imagine I think about my Roxie this way, because he had a daughter a little older than me. I hated Roxanne. She was a stuck-up, netball-playing little bitch, but she didn’t even know I was alive. She had boyfriends galore and when she wasn’t at school she was always off in some boy’s car. Mostly I went over on sports afternoons; they were the easiest to get out of. Roxie was never there because other than being boy-crazy she was completely sports crazy too, and his wife, well, she was a workaholic. I knew why. There wasn’t much love in that home. Added to which, she hated cooking and housework and left it all to him. So we didn’t have to worry about her, just had to remember to straighten up, make sure there were no tell-tale signs of something going on, and make sure to wash things. Sex is a messy business. At least the way he wanted us to do it.

  Mainly it was just that once-a-week thing. We never got caught. Never even came close to it. He’d write me love poems that I could read a couple of times, but I wasn’t allowed to leave the house with them. He always took them back and set them on fire. You can guess why. Romantic teenage girls tend to blab. To teach me the lesson about how important it is not to blab, to never say anything to anyone, ever, he told me this fairy tale. Want to hear it?

  There’s a young prince consumed by greed. He wants to be king. He can’t wait for his father to die so he can ascend to the throne and get what he thinks will be all the riches of Heaven and Earth. So, one night he puts poison in his father’s wine and next day the king, who was old anyway, is found dead in his bed. The prince gets the throne. He’s got it all. Being king soon proves to be better than he dreamed and unimaginable riches come his way. He even marries a beautiful and exotic princess from a neighbouring country, so now there’s an even bigger kingdom for him to reign over, and even greater prosperity for his subjects who, of course, love their new king and queen.

  And then this happens. The one thing he can’t ignore is his conscience. He wants to admit what he did, get it off his chest, actually speak his crime because, despite everything, it’s been building up in him and he’s fit to explode. Can’t tell the queen or a priest or a concubine. Sooner or later someone would let it slip and his life would fall apart. Even his poor innocent kingdom would go
to ruin. He can’t let that happen. What can he do?

  So one day, holding his hand over his mouth to make sure the words won’t spill out, he runs down the banks of a stream and, standing barefoot in the water, bending down, he lets the words tumble out in a rush. He tells the truth to the nodding reeds. Ah, that’s all he needed to do, just unburden himself for one minute. Out it all pours. The truth gushes like that stream when it floods. There. The crisis has passed and his secret is still very safe.

  But then. Ah, but then.

  A group of travelling minstrels arrives by the stream and they’ve come to the kingdom for a very special occasion. So many years have passed since the murder of the old king that the new king and queen’s only daughter is old enough to be married. Which is about to happen. There’s to be a great celebration. Royalty, visitors, musicians and performers from all over have come to this most fortunate of countries in order to help make the festivities the most memorable ever witnessed.

  One of these travelling minstrels wades into the water and carefully picks out the reeds he will make new musical pipes with, and he fashions them with all his love and skill. He wants to help create the most magnificent music the kingdom’s ever heard.

  The big day comes. The princess is married to a foreign prince. There’s feasting and dancing. At the height of the celebrations the king throws up his hands and declares silence. His eyes pass over the jugglers, the jesters, the court musicians and all the minstrels who’ve gathered from near and far. Finally, his gaze falls upon one shy-looking young man. You there, play the most wondrous tune you can muster for my daughter. Play something full of life’s truth.

  Well, it wasn’t exactly what the king meant, but it’s exactly what he got. The minstrel stepped forward and with all his heart and all his skill he set to playing his new pipes.