by Tobias Hill
–It’s Sylvia, Eleschen had said, prim and tart and simmering. Not Sirubiya. Two syllables. Can’t you learn to talk properly? But Natsuko had been giggling, and Jason had roared with laughter.
–Why would you do that? he had said to Eleschen, and Why would she do that? To no one in particular: but Eleschen had still been cross, going to fetch glasses and loitering overlong in the kitchenette, and no one else gave him an answer.
They had drunk brandy to keep warm. Natsuko had cooked fish and rice, wrapping sardines in vine leaves. No one had taken off their coats to eat. It had reminded Ben of old war films: greatcoated soldiers eating by candlelight in derelict Norman mansions. Eleschen had fetched bedclothes for anyone still chilled, and he had taken a blanket even though he hadn’t needed it. He had felt anything but cold. It was enough to be with them.
Jason had talked too much and Eberhard hardly at all. Eleschen had asked about England again and for want of anything better he had tried to amuse her with the markets, making the best he could of his family’s business, making her laugh even as he edged away from all real talk of family (and Jason watching him, a cat-got-the-cream, but saying nothing of Emine). Later Eleschen had played for them, folk songs on a Greek violin, but she hadn’t gone on for long, the instrument being hard to tune and her fingers numb. Natsuko had asked for his middle names and had written them out in Japanese, and Max–grumbling and sighing and confessing to be flattered at the girls’ coaxing nonetheless–had done the same in his native Georgian, the script like something out of Tolkien, all fishhooks and tongues of flame: and later still and less sober he had stood to recite Georgian poetry, a sherry glass gripped at the stem in one big hand, his smile gap-toothed in his pockmarked face and the verses full of harsh wishes. If our lives are bitter, let our deaths be sweet.
It had been small talk–little of it mattering in itself–but he had loved it all. The ease of their friendship. The way their conversation could die away only to flare up again, out of nothing.
–I love it here, Eleschen had said, just as he was thinking the same thing himself. They had been talking about the dig but had fallen quiet, and the words had carried, though Eleschen was muffled in an eiderdown and besides had spoken matter-of-factly, as if what she meant by love needed no emphasis beyond the fact of its own mention.
And Eberhard had shifted in his ladder-backed chair, his shadow mantling across the high walls, his own voice soft but distinct as always.
–All Europe loves Greece. It is dear to us as a grandfather. It is lovely as a granddaughter.
He had left after two. The others had already gone. He had lingered for as long as he reasonably could. Natsuko had been dozing, a pyramid of bedclothes surmounted by shining hair. Eleschen had seen him down. He had got a drowsy goodnight kiss at the door.
He had still not been sleepy himself and so had walked back by the town square, hoping to find a club or bar to keep him for another hour. The last few long days’ work had left him too tired to sleep, his thoughts weary and energised, and the burials had unsettled him. And he did not want to be alone.
Beyond the town hall, between the offices of the Guild of Ice Cream Manufacturers and a lurid hybridised kebab shop/cocktail bar/nightclub, he had found an internet café open. The dozen machines were all occupied by teenagers playing shoot-’em-ups, their Nazis and GIs hunting one another through massive multiplayer online bombstruck ruins, the attendant watching over them with dispassionate tolerance.
–How long will they be? he’d asked, in Greek, and the boy-herd had shrugged and run a thumb down one razored Nike-swoop footballer sideburn and answered in dour Australian English.
–Long as it takes them to die.
He had put his money down and gone to wait in the kebab club. The inner rooms were barely lit, their crazy-mirrored walls obfuscated by a mingled haze of souvlaki and cigarettes. Two goth girls with long green drinks had watched him with panda eyes. An insomniac DJ stood alone at the back, nodding over rap metal.
He had bought a beer and a side order of meat, picked his way through his charred pork, then had drunk up and gone back to the café. The pack of boys had left and their overseer had been alone, polishing a pair of twelve-hole boots. The concussive thud of bass still shuddered through the walls.
The golden jackal’s enemies are leopards, wolves, and men. It subsists on small mammals, insects, fruit and carrion. It is also a fast and efficient hunter. Canis aureus rises after dusk and ranges over a territory of one square mile. Though it pounces on smaller prey, larger quarries will be run to exhaustion before being disembowelled. Near human habitations the jackal may attack livestock and scavenge in waste. It is a recognised rabies carrier…
His emails had awaited him. He had paged through them unwillingly. Here and there amidst the junk were messages he might have read: should have read, if he were a better man. One from Ted, two from his mother, a dozen forwarded from work. He had opened none of them. He had resented them, the way they pulled him back to the margins of another life, the one he had left in tatters. He had not left home to find them.
From Emine there had been nothing.
A dog had barked outside and the boy-herd had thrown down his boots and sauntered out to cadge a kiss from its bleach-blonde owner. The dog had looked like Sylvia–he had recognised the breed–but had lacked her temperament, baring locked teeth at the boy-herd despite its owner’s chidings. He had thought of the jackal then, the wild dog up in the hills, and turning back to the console had entered its Latin name.
Canis aureus lives and hunts in families rather than packs. The animals pair for life. Hunting in tandem they may kill in two attempts out of three. This kill rate drops to one in five for jackals that hunt alone.
The jackal has a large and distinctive repertoire of howls. The most distinctive, the pheal, is a rising and falling wail that carries for many miles. The jackal howls at the moon, at the kill and in concert with its mate. Choral howling can be considered a form of betrothal…
At first he had found nothing but the bare bones of weight and height. He had searched on idly, trying to piece together an understanding of the thing. After an hour he had sat back, thinking that he had given up: but his hands had gone back to the keyboard again, his fingers doing their own talking.
Jackal: an eastern word deriving from the Persian. The animal is significant in many Eastern mythologies. The Egyptian Anubis–god of the dying–was portrayed as a man with the head of a golden jackal. The association may have arisen from the jackal’s recorded habit of burying kills, as well as from its unconfirmed practice of scavenging in cemeteries.
To reach the guiding hand of Anubis, the dead first had to proceed through a crowd of terrifying monsters. These beings–Flint-Eyes, Gut-Eater, Shining-Tooth and Bone-Crusher–waited for the newly deceased at the mouth of the underworld. To reach Anubis in safety, the dead were directed to chant, I am pure, I am pure, I am pure, I am pure.
Anubis led the souls to Osiris, deity of death. There the jackal-headed god would take the hearts of the deceased and preside over their weighing. Checking the tongue of Osiris’s scales, Anubis would balance each heart in its canopic jar against the counterweight of a feather. Those hearts borne down by deceit were eaten. Only the lightest of hearts were permitted to enter the endless reed fields of Aaru…
The boy-herd had fallen asleep, his head propped on his boots. Outside the square was empty. The kebab bar had closed. The sky was awash with stars. The Snake’s Head and the Hunting Dogs. The Northern Crown. The Kneeling Man.
He did up his coat and hurried home. The hotel lights had been left on. He stole in through the empty lobby and up to his single room.
Along the empty river road, past the Therapne turn. Upwards into the eastern hills, the Delux jouncing over holes. The sun creeping over a bluff where Eberhard turned off and slowed across the wild sage and thyme. The Volvo coming to a halt amongst a maze of wildflowers.
–Where are we?
–Nowhere. Th
ose trees are white mulberries. I’d hazard a guess this was a plantation once. The Venetians and Ottomans both being fond of silk. The Spartans themselves would have hunted here, of course. Hunting was meaningful to them. Almost as sacrosanct as war. Now it’s used for grazing, if at all.
–Never seen no one up here, Jason said, and swung his feet off the back seats.
–It’s Maxis land as I understand it, though it’s up for sale.
–Do they know we’re here? he asked, and Sauer smiled with nothing but his eyes.
–I would have thought you could answer that rather better than I. Help him choose a gun, Jason, would you?
He leaned on the warm silver hood while Eberhard stalked off with a box of clay pigeons under one arm, stooping here and there for stones. Along the ridge, by two windbent trees, were a series of miniature cairns, none of them larger than a molehill. Behind him Jason rummaged in the car until the boot popped open. Five boxes lay inside.
–First time, you said?
He nodded as Jason joined him. The boxes were not mundane. They were entirely too well-made to be innocuous. They were finished in oak and brass, as if they were meant for miniature burials.
–Join the club. I mean it was mine too, when Eb and Max brought me up here.
–I thought you were the big expert?
–Not a lot of guns in Luton, to be honest. I’m just a fast learner. Scared?
–Not yet.
–Don’t worry, you’ll get used to them, he said, and reaching in he unlatched a case and tenderly brought out the first gun.
He had never held a firearm. He had never had the chance to do so, had never wanted to.
It was unexpectedly beautiful. He had seen weapons that possessed the quality before. A collection of Japanese swords with hilt-guards of oxidised steel, inlaid with electrum praying mantids and plum blossoms in pink gold. A Damask blade with a scabbard of shagreen and lacustrine velvet. Celtic pommel-works. Hoplite panoplies.
The gun in Jason’s hands was like those things. It had a magnetism. It drew him. Its beauty arose from its function. It was as finely tooled as the classic car beside them. From a distance guns had always seemed frightening to him, ugly mechanisms, brutal means of inflicting harm. Eberhard’s gun was all those things, but it was alluring despite them. Alluring because of them. It lured him.
It had two barrels laid side by side, the pair as long as an outstretched arm. Nothing was affixed to them, no scopes or straps. A metal tooth made do as sights in their cleft extremity. Their black tubes flared like the conclusions of bones where they joined the weapon’s thorax. The handle was carved of a dark veined wood, its grain full of whorls and cloudscapes. Above the trigger, on the cheeks, two birds were incised in gold. A pair of fowl roused into flight.
–Take it, go on. And, There! Jason said, pleased as Punch, as if admiring a new suit. You’re a natural. To the manner born.
He lifted the gun, settled its weight. Sighted along the bores. It could only be a trick of the light that made the mulberries at the ridge seem closer. A breeze moved in their bare white antlers. Eberhard was propping up clay pigeons in their shadows. He stood back from the last of the cairns, dusting off his hands, gazing up towards the sunrise.
Jason pulled the barrels down. –Easy, tiger.
–Is it loaded?
–Might have been, for all you knew.
–How did Eberhard bring these over?
–Didn’t. Got them in Athens. You should’ve seen the salesman’s face. Sweat pouring down his smile. Definitely working on commission. He’s got a hunting licence too. Used to come here with his family. You can drive down here from Germany. They make their money from guns, you know, Eb’s lot. El says they’re all rolling in it.
–These must have cost a bit.
–Five grand a pop.
–All set? Eberhard said, and as he reached them, How does that feel, Ben?
–Like I’m going to shoot myself in the foot.
–It wouldn’t be the first time, I’m sure. Try not to be nervous. Look. This is the trigger, this the safety. This selects the firing barrel. There’s no more to it than that. It’s not a complicated piece. Shall we give it a try?
Eberhard broke the gun for him. Jason fetched a box of shells. He slid a pair in, thumbed them home, closed the breech, levelled the gun.
The little cairns with the sun behind them. Pillars of rain in the far distance. He breathed in deeply and stopped breathing.
For a moment there was no sound at all. It was as if the world had retreated from him or from the thing in his hands. Or it was as if the inverse were true, as if he had drawn back into his skull, like a snail into its shell: and then there were sounds everywhere. He leaned his cheek to the gun’s cold cheek and heard the water down below. The fissured limestone of the river. A black bee droning through the thyme, as heavy as a shotgun shell. Birds crooning in the mulberries.
–In your own time, Eberhard said, and he swung the gun and fired and fired.
Only once, when he was small, had he seen his father in a fight. It was a hot summer and the crowds in Church Street simmered and boiled between the market stalls. They were all there, his uncle Maurice, his dad, the kids and their mum helping out. Uncle Maurice had come up trumps. He’d bought a job lot of hand-held fans off a fellow in the Commercial Road, and from a friend who owed him favours a load of fizzy drinks. He’d driven down to Smithfield that morning for a block of ice and they’d smashed it up in an old tin bath and laid a hundred bottles down. They sold the fans at forty pence, three and a free drink for a pound, and as long as the sun was shining people couldn’t get enough. Lolly and Coll and Ted and he stood round the bath’s glittering hoard, opening bottles, drinking as much as they could stomach, all buzzing with sugar in the sun, their tongues peppered with bubbles. Fanta and Lilt in thick cold glass with paper straws.
They were flicking drink with the soggy straws when Lolly saw Mr Marinescu. Mr Marinescu owned the ice cream van, Marinescu Refreshments (Ices, Ice Drinks, Mind the Children). He parked every weekend outside Granada TV Rentals. He didn’t speak good English but he was nice, had given Lolly a Mivvi for nothing once on account of her name being funny. Now he was pushing his way in through the crowd. He held people back with his big round shoulders. He had his scoop in one fat hand, like a hollowed silver egg. He talked with Uncle Maurice and their dad, their heads nodding together, and just like that the fight began.
The first thing was Uncle Maurice sitting down. He put his hand up in the air the way that children did in school (Sir! Sir!) and with his hand still raised sat down, missing his fishing stool and vanishing behind the bath. That made them laugh, all four of them, and then their mum was gathering them, ushering them, their heels tripping on the kerb, and looking back he saw the scoop in Mr Marinescu’s hand, the silver smeared raspberry red.
It seemed unlikely, looking back, that he had never seen his father fight. He knew it happened, knew he fought with Ted, their mother, other men. Once at tea the phone had gone and it had been Sol Ullmann, who somehow made a living from nothing but stale knockdown chocolates, ringing from the box outside his lock-up, and someone–two men! Three!–crashing around inside; and Ben’s father ran out of the house; and when Ben saw him at breakfast he seemed quiet, kind, almost peaceful for once, the kitchen smelling of Dettol and fry-ups, and as he cut his eggs his knuckles like knobs of raw mince.
His mother had got them away and they were not the only ones. The fight seemed to have blown a hole in the packed mass of the Church Street crowd. Everyone was shouting except Ben’s father. Mr Marinescu was yelling about the iced drinks. He shook his scoop as if it were a knife or evidence. His face had gone white as his shirt. Then Ben’s father nodded, as if he agreed with all of them. He stepped towards Mr Marinescu, one hand out to conciliate until it brushed aside the scoop, the other coming out of nowhere, like a coin kept up his sleeve, and jabbing Mr Marinescu fast in the neck and face, once, twice, three times–four times–and the
ice cream man already down, the hot tarmac blacking his knees, and as Ben’s father stepped away the crowd cheering, and someone ahhing, as if he were a brilliant act. A juggler, a conjurer, a human cannonball.
He had never been so proud of his father as he had been then. He had carried the feeling with him for days, cherishing it.
Now he felt it again. The gun in the boot and the two birds with it, collared doves, Eberhard said, beautiful things, as beautiful dead as alive, their tea-greys and tea-pinks and pale gore wrapped up in newspapers and plastic bags; and Jason and Eberhard smiling as they drove down, arguing over how to cook the birds, talking about him, over him, and both proud of him, it seemed, happy with him and happy for him. And the thrill and the surge and the rush of it still fresh as the blood and the smell of the gun.
He went to turn on the lights.
–Don’t.
–So you can see what you’re doing.
–I can see what I am doing.
–…What are you doing?
She was picking up things here and there, moving from bathroom to bedroom, from wardrobe to bed. Her hair fell to one side like a shadow as she sorted through his clothes, his books, stared at the laptop on the desk, gazed at the razor on the black glass shelf. It was evening and the daylight was long gone.
–Natsuko? he said, and she paused in her circling and looked down at him as if surprised to find him there, seated on his own unmade bed. –What are you looking for?
She raised her shoulders and let them fall. –You shouldn’t shave yourself.
–Why not?
–You cut yourself.
–Do I?
–Here, she said, and stepped in, reaching to touch his neck, down at one side by his ear, and feeling the blood-spot crusted there he raised his fingers and caught her own.
