‘It is less than you think,’ the old woman extended a hand.
Damon pulled abruptly away from her touch, stood up, spoke harshly. ‘Don’t say that. Don’t you dare say that!’
‘Less than you think,’ she repeated.
‘It is not less than I think. It is not so less than I think. How would you like something sort of stuck on the side of your face that pulls you, twists you, goes on knifing you day in and day out and night in and night out and every time you look in a mirror? Oh, fuck,’ he sighed, tired. ‘I grow a bit – it pulls. They cut and tuck and fuck it up a bit more. Biggest botched-up bit of plastic surgery ever,’ he paused for a moment, sighed again, relaxed slightly, sat down. ‘Well, okay. Guess it’s not quite that. Guess there are some got it worse.’
‘I do know one good thing,’ said Esther.
‘Well, that’s one more good thing than what I do. What good thing?’
‘It seems to me that you do not blame your poor mother.’
‘Of course not. She didn’t do it. They never ever caught the guy who did, either. Ask me, they didn’t try too hard. Of course I don’t blame my mum,’ he looked at Esther. ‘Well, that’s a bit of a lie. Was a time when I did used to blame her a bit. I’m not perfect, you know.’
Esther looked at him. ‘As you say.’
‘Yeah, well… this bloody scar doesn’t let me be anything near perfect, does it?’
‘You know that is not what I meant.’
Damon relaxed further. ‘Yeah, I know that, too,’ he said. ‘Come on. Let’s pig out on the Chinese. You got a microwave hidden round here somewhere, so’s we can nuke it?’ he looked at her. ‘Only joking. We can eat it cold. And where’s your horrible cat? Didn’t get this junk for the bugger not to come. Paid for it, too. Want to see the grin on his ugly face when he tucks into that posh gourmet one.’
‘Don’t worry, boy. Should the cat not come, I’ll eat it for him,’ she smiled. ‘Only joking.’
‘Yeah? I’m not so sure,’ said Damon.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
He placed the geranium in its blue pot on the table in front of him. He sat, idly stroked the leaves of the plant, touching delicately, with care, the almost open first spike of buds. Just the tiniest hint of red as yet, but it was coming. The soft green leaves had a fur-like feel to them. He sniffed his fingers, wrinkled his nose at the slightly acrid, somewhat unpleasant smell of the plant. He felt with the fingers of both hands around the smooth surface of the blue china pot. He closed his eyes and felt more deeply into the cracked surface of the container, tracing, yet again, the familiar shape. Still with his eyes closed he moved his fingers to his face and felt the self-same pattern.
Cracked flower pot!
Crack pot!
Cracked face!
The scar on his face felt hot, hot and dry to the touch. Reaching into his pocket he ferreted out a tube of skin moisturiser, pressed a small amount out onto the tips of his fingers and massaged the stuff into the hardened skin on the damaged half of his face. No thinking. No thought. For over ten years he had used these same actions. Occasionally he would wonder at the sheer physical volume of oils, lubricants, moisturisers, ointments, unguents, so-called healing preparations he had rubbed into that skin.
Damon massaged his face until some relief was earnt. He went through to his bedroom, sat on his bed and gazed into his image reflected in the mirror of his dressing-table. How could it be, he wondered, that the old woman, Esther, continually suggested that there was nothing there? How could it be that she would say that if indeed something did exist there to disfigure it was of little moment, small importance, no consequence?
Damon drew himself closer to his mirror and scrutinised his image. His dressing-table doubled as bedside cabinet. He switched on his small reading lamp and shone it, fully, directly into his face. The harsh light served to throw into a sort of relief the cicatrice, the criss-crossing of scars. Little rising hills, a pitting of valleys – scarcely more than a tracery of lines in normal light – stood out in mute testimony as to what constantly travelled with him.
Botched-up surgery it might have been but enough effort had been made to save the sight of an eye. The eye had been saved at the cost of its lower lid. Subsequent surgery had developed an eyelid of sorts. These days, at least, it closed! The shaping of this lid was less than perfect and it gave a dragged, pulled-down look to the eye in stark contrast to the perfection of its partner. Very much the same with one nostril. Serviceable, both of them, eyelid and nostril. That was the good part – at least he could blink and at least he could sniff.
‘Good face bad face good face bad face good face bad face good face bad face,’ a mantra chanted over and over and over. ‘Why the hell did I go and tell her everything? Why?’ he turned the lamp away so that its light fell elsewhere. He squinted up his eyes and stared into his mirror some more. No. It was still all as clear as it had ever been and it wasn’t solely in the mind of his eye that he imagined it. Slowly, as he had often done, he edged across his bed so that the only reflection staring back at him was that of the good half of his countenance. Always, now, he would breathe out a sigh of relief and dream, dream on into what-ifs and what-might-have-beens. For a good salutary dose of grim reality, sometimes he would pull himself across his bed to the other extreme of his mirror. Not this time.
Could she be right? Could the old woman, old Esther, be right in what she suggested and that the disfigurement existed more in his imagination, in his thinking, than in the eye of any beholder? If that were the case why, then, could shit be thrown that still held the power to hurt so bad? It would be a stupid shit-thrower who threw shit for nothing. No. Shit-throwers always meant shit to hurt and he’d given them no more than any of them deserved. The old gypsy was wrong. Sure as shit wrong!!
Oh no no no no. She couldn’t be right. She could never be right. Okay for an old woman who had nothing, who had already made it through most of her life, okay for someone like that to pretend to look beneath, past the surface to whatever might be whole, solid, beautiful even, underneath the crap. Okay for her who seemed to need so little of anything in order to exist. What if it had been her, Esther, back when she was younger than he was now and dancing her feet and toes off for some mad old bat of a queen and people all chucking solid gold coins at those feet and toes? Give her just half a face back then and it wouldn’t have been gold coins getting chucked, it would have been her, old Esther, getting chucked right out of whatever bloody palace or castle she had been hired to dance in!
Okay for her at just about… just about what? Seventy? Ninety? A hundred and fifty years old? Get as old as the hills and you don’t want, need the same things any sane person wants back near the beginning of it all. Shit a brick, it’d take more than inner beauty or purity of the soul for him, Damon, to get what he knew he wanted. What he knew he needed! He murmured to his image in the mirror, ‘Come home with me, babe. We will spend the night together, my dear, making crazy and mad love all the night long. You must not mind, my dear babe, that I am shit-face on the one side. The other side’s a bloody miracle and I do have a beautiful soul and a spirit and I am very sensitive and nice all over inside of me. I am deeply and madly spiritual!’ and then he had a good laugh and it was not all bitter, twisted or self-tormenting. ‘Yep, babe. Me? I sure got a good pure white soul struggling inside of me,’ and he grinned.
‘Now do what you usually do at times like this,’’ says Good Face. ‘Drag out Mum’s bottle of brandy.’
‘Reckon there’s sweet bugger all left,’ says Bad Face.
‘You’re right there. Remember? Was you topped it up with tea last time, so’s she wouldn’t notice.’
‘It’ll taste like shit,’ says Bad Face.
‘Sure suit you then, won’t it? Go on. Drag it out. Bet she’s hidden it behind the Coke,’ says Good Face.
‘You turnin’ into a piss-head, too?’
‘Gotta have something in common,’ says Good Face.
CHAPTER TWEL
VE
Damon’s concern for Esther grew, day by day, as the machines of the demolition crew ate voraciously, slaking their appetites on the pile of old buildings at the core of which was the old woman’s home. His concern found no match in her attitude to the process. ‘They come? I go. There is no worry. End of story,’ she spread her hands in the gesture that was now so familiar to him. ‘Goodness, boy, I have faced worse. Much worse. As I tell you, the weather warms,’ she smiled at him. ‘A park bench in a nice garden is as good a place as any and better than some!’
For all her brave words he began to sense a frailty in the old woman and he worked harder at bringing her odds and ends of food. Small comforts. If he had expected a measure of fulsome thanks he was doomed to disappointment. Damon suspected that most of the tidbits he brought Esther ended up in the belly of Tumbler the cat. The rolling, three-leg gait of the creature was increasingly an inelegant tumble! ‘Are you sure it’s a he and not a she?’ he asked Esther. ‘Could swear the bugger’s having kittens. Suppose you’ll expect me to knock them off, too?’ he grinned.
‘He is very much a male. Can’t you tell the difference?’
‘Not in all that fur and not without a closer look,’ said Damon. ‘You feed him most of the stuff I bring you, eh?’
‘Sometimes,’ said Esther.
‘What a helluva waste,’ said Damon. ‘Jeez! I even pay for some of it.’
‘I don’t ask you to bring me anything,’ said Esther. ‘I eat little,’ she smiled. ‘It’s kind of you. It’s very kind. However, I would rather the cat fatten than me.’
‘You need anything at all, you just sing out. Not just food. Anything you well, fancy.’
‘Save your money, boy.’
‘Who said anything about paying? Shit, I don’t often pay,’ and he spread his fingers and held them out towards her. ‘These fellers are good for more than bashing, you know,’ and he winked. ‘Only joking.’
‘Are you sure?’ she asked. ‘Thank you for your trouble and for your concern. Thank you for your generosity. Now, boy, tell me more about your face,’ she was blunt.
The grin on that face vanished. ‘No more to bloody tell. Don’t want to talk about it.’
‘Tell me,’ she persisted. ‘This time I am asking. You carry what appears to you to be a burden almost beyond bearing. It matters little that I tell you that I consider it to be of lesser importance than you imagine. What is to be done?’
‘Okay,’ and he spoke slowly. ‘Most of what is to be done has been done. They reckon I’m lucky they done as much as they did. Dunno about that, do I? A couple more years and the butchers are going to have another bash at it. After I’ve stopped growing so quick. They told us, Mum’n me, not to hope for any bloody miracle although they say they can make it look a bit better. But not much better,’ he was quiet for a moment and then fingered his scarred cheek. ‘It’s a bit of a bugger. They say they won’t ever be able to get this part to grow whiskers. Pisses me off majorly already, that does. Because I’m dark I’ve got a good whisker growth and I gotta shave now and it’d sure be cool as to have that sort of half-shave look like some guys have. Reckon it looks cool. Besides, a bloody beard’d sure cover this shit!’ he touched his face. ‘But me? Jesus, I gotta shave every day or it looks worse than ever. Don’t suppose you can understand that. You are a woman, after all.’
‘Oh, I think I can understand,’ said Esther, smiling very slightly. ‘Would you allow me to touch your skin, your damaged skin?’
He looked at her. ‘No one else ever has. Only doctors, nurses and my mum. Why the hell would you want to touch this shit?’
‘Allow me?’
Hesitantly. ‘Okay… if you really want to,’ and he bent forwards across the table. He closed his eyes. The touch of her fingers as she explored the scar, the wound, his burden, was both light and electric. She took her time, almost stroking his face with her long cool, dry fingers. ‘Satisfied now?’ Damon asked, as her fingers left his face. ‘Not a pretty feel, eh? My scar goes helluva deep, doesn’t it? You must’ve felt how deep it goes.’
‘Oh, yes. It goes deep in more ways than you fully understand,’ said Esther. She searched in a pocket of her coat and brought forth a small jar. She pushed it towards him. ‘Try this on your scar.’
‘I’ve tried everything on it short of cow-shit – and someone once told Mum I should be trying that! What is it?’
‘It’s an ointment. It is no magic potion and it is certainly not able to erase your scar. It may, I think, work to ease discomfort and tightness,’ she gave a short laugh. ‘Better, I think, than cow-droppings.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Try it. Of no harm at all and, just maybe, of a little help, at least to the surface. You tell me there is little more that can be done? Surgery?’
‘I didn’t quite say that. There is… oh, shit, can’t we stop jabbering on about this? Please?’
‘Go on. Finish what you were about to say.’
‘There are a couple of places. There’s this clinic in America, Chicago. One or two places in Europe and in England. You see, I get everything for free here. I don’t have a shit show getting anything done anywhere else. You need big money, big big money for anything like that.’
‘I see.’
‘No. No, you don’t see. You couldn’t see. It is my dream. My dream is that I can be, well, sort of whole and okay to look at. We both save for it, my mum and me. But it’s only a dream. Bit like winning Lotto, eh? If that dream ever comes true I’ll probably be so old it won’t matter any more, so…’ he spread his hands in Esther’s own style. ‘What the bloody hell.’
‘Yes,’ she looked hard at him.
‘Yes what? You know that old old saying about pigs might fly?’
‘I’ve heard it.’
‘Well, they don’t. Poor buggers end up as bacon, ham and roast pork. I sure as shit know. I work in a restaurant.’
‘I do believe, Damon, that should you want something badly enough… hope and pray for something…’
‘What? It’ll come true? You gotta be joking, old lady. Dreams come true? Crap!’
‘Maybe yes, maybe no. One must be careful of wanting something so badly that everything else in life and living is shut out.’
‘What d’you know?’
‘The years passing, well, they have something to teach us all. I am no exception,’ she paused and looked hard at him. ‘I have had my dreams.’
‘When I was about seven or eight,’ Damon began. ‘Well, that was when Mum was first told there wasn’t much more could be done for me but that there were these couple of overseas joints that might be able to do things – at a helluva price! We didn’t have a hope then. We don’t have a hope now. Yeah. Reckon those bloody pigs do have a better chance of flying than I ever had.’
‘Your father?’
Damon snorted. ‘What about my father? Yeah yeah yeah. Told you a shitload of lies about him, too. I haven’t got a father like I pretended. Sure, my old man was a Greek. He was a Greek sailor. Here one day, gone the next – and look what the bugger left behind! See, Mum always tells me his name was Dimitri and I don’t go on about it. What’s the point? I think it makes her feel better to give the bugger a name. When I was little she used to tell me all this stuff about him.’
‘Oh, yes?’
‘Like about where he grew up. According to Mum it was in an olive orchard, olive grove place on the side of Mt Olympus just down the road past the Acropolis.’
‘Goodness.’
He laughed. ‘I never ever let on to her when I began to look up stuff for myself. You know, I don’t think she ever knew his name. Dimitri? Greek name? Yeah, right! I think she just wanted me to think that somehow, somewhere I had a family. Well, guess I’m happy enough with the little bit, the very little bit of family I’ve got. It’s sure a whole heap better than what my mum’s got – well, what my mum had. As I just told you, I was seven or eight, about that, anyway, when Mum first found out about these overseas clinics. T
hat was the last time she ever heard from her olds. She wrote to them, see. They are truly as rich as. Didn’t lie about that. She wrote and told ’em about what happened to me. She asked for help. Weeks and weeks later she got a letter back. Not from her mum and dad but from some older brother. Only about five lines, it was. It said that none of them wanted to know about her problems and as far as they were all concerned she did not exist and she was dead. Didn’t exist! Dead! Now that was a bloody shit thing, wasn’t it?’
Esther let the cat in. She fed him. Damon watched as the animal wolfed down a rather nice portion of fillet steak. ‘That should do you, Tumbler,’ she spoke to her cat.
‘Better do the bugger! That’s your top steak, that is!’ said Damon. ‘They’re religious, see.’
‘Who?’
‘My mum’s family. They kicked her out when she told them she got knocked up by Dimitri the Greek and was gonna have me.’
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
‘Mum was only sixteen. That’s all she was. I’m nearly as old now as she was when I got born. They let her out to come down here for a few days for her sixteenth birthday. Very first time they’d let her off the hook to go away all by herself. She stayed with an old girlfriend she had known forever and was at school with until that mate’s family moved down here.’
‘That was a kindly act on the part of your grandparents,’ said Esther.
Scarface and the Angel Page 5
