The Boy Who Could Keep a Swan in His Head

by John Hunt

  If he looked neither left nor right, it was six full paces into his bedroom. The far wall was bare. He had once considered buying a picture of a red E-type Jaguar. However, he’d then spent a disproportional amount of time on the next poster, which was of Ursula Andress in a bikini. The knowing smile of the store owner had made him blush and leave immediately. His single bed was covered in a used-to-be-blue candlewick bedspread. The tassels reaching to the floor were dog-chewed and uneven. Like roots no longer capable of searching for water, they fizzed and frayed on the edges. His grandmother had originally brought it from her hometown of Renfrew in Scotland when she’d emigrated with her husband in 1922. She couldn’t believe this treasured heirloom had become a dog’s plaything. “If I’d known, I’d have sewn bones on the bottom and been done with it.”

  The left-hand side of the cupboard opened all the way until it hit the wall, the right-hand side three quarters, until it hit the bed. Besides his school clothes, the shelves housed two pairs of shorts, one white, one black, both drawstring. Four shirts, three short-sleeved, one long. In the bottom compartment two jerseys lay on top of each other, though he could only wear one. His grandmother knitted clothes to grow into, claiming they lasted longer that way. Phen wanted to ask his mother for a pair of flared jeans, even if he was not too sure how wide he wanted the bell-bottoms to be. The single, empty wire hanger awaited their arrival.

  There were two items of great value hidden in the cupboard. In the folds of his grandmother’s jersey, secure in its woollen safe, were the papers that proved his cocker spaniel was a pedigree. The beautiful type with its embossed badge of the Kennel Club on the bottom corner indicated this was clearly an important document. It had a legal bearing about it. It declared emphatically that the sire was Six Shot Willy Wagtail out of the bitch Grand Empress Dowager Cixi. Phen saw no irony in such grand nobility producing an offspring he duly named “Pal”. The tweezer-lipped breeder had fiddled with the leather elbow patches of her tweed jacket and pointed out there was still a lot more space left to fill in the name, but he stuck with the three letters.

  “We don’t normally sell to Hillbrow,” she said, turning the suburb into the buyer. Phen held the puppy to his chest with both hands, unaware of the backhanded compliment. His mother asked if she accepted cheques.

  The other important object was his grandfather’s gold Zenith Elite watch. After thirty-five years as a fitter and turner at Rand Gold Mines, it had been presented to him on the day of his retirement. He had worn it proudly for four years before the cancer made him and his watch stop. It now lived in the heel of Phen’s old cricket sock, underneath his underpants. Every morning, before brushing his teeth, he felt to make sure it was still there. He’d promised his mother he’d only wear the watch when he turned twenty-one. Phen had also been left his grandfather’s First World War bayonet. His grandmother, however, had blocked the transfer of the long blade in its leather sheath. “It’s enough that men still want to shoot and stab each other. We don’t have to remind ourselves you can do both simultaneously.”

  The only picture in the room was of a clown juggling three balls while standing on one foot in the middle of a circus ring. Phen didn’t like the picture, but had been told it was rude not to hang it up. When Phen was a four-year-old on holiday in Knysna, a part-time painter had taken a shine to him and offered it as a gift. His parents had said yes. The oil paint mixed heavily with the acrylic. The artist’s palette knife scarred the canvas. The clown was in profile with an orange ball on his foot, a yellow one in his hand and a blue one hovering over his head. He had a pointed red hat like the ones stupid children are forced to wear in classroom corners with their backs turned.

  The blunt edge of the knife ensured the clown had a slapped-on nose but no eye. It also meant the three balls could not be made perfectly round. Phen worried how a blind man could keep these irregular shapes in the air and wondered if the dunce hat meant he was being punished. Even worse, the tail of his jacket looked more like the tail of an animal. Was it just a clown suit? Had the tail fallen out by mistake? What beast lurked within? Who was being punished, the clown or the animal? And what would happen when those three balls finally dropped to the ground? The more he stared, the more they spun and floated. He knew it was inevitable they would fall. He knew the man watching just outside the ring would deliver his terrible punishment. Just like his grandfather’s watch, time might’ve ceased, but nothing could stop the sense of dread about what would happen next.

  The best way to calm the panic was to shift his gaze a little to the left and through the window. Between his bedroom wall and the parking garages lay the cricket pitch and Wanderers Stadium. He squeezed the famed arena into an area paved in concrete slabs precisely six wide and twenty-two long. Previously a wayward throw would’ve landed in the Bardeaux’s garden, however, their four-foot wooden fence no longer played wicketkeeper. The jasmine didn’t peep over any more and no pansies waited to be crushed as he searched for his ball. All six houses on that side of Duchess Court had been demolished and a twenty-storey building was under construction.

  The huge wall, left unpainted and cement-grey, blocked out everything. It was already so high Mrs Kaplan on the fifth floor had been forced to draw her curtains. She’d been having lunch when a man in a tin hat on an iron beam had asked if she wanted to swap. He offered her one of his sandwiches as he slowly moved up past her window. She explained she was having her favourite Gedempte Fleisch, so clearly a trade was not going to happen. “Progress,” she said, “should mind its manners.”

  Nothing could get in the way of a test match at the famed “Bullring”, though. To ensure he had enough room for his run-up he’d had to use the full length of the boiler room. He’d burst from its door and let rip by the second slab to ensure a decent trajectory. The English were polite and acknowledged a good ball. The Australians were another matter. A thick edge a blind umpire would be able to hear and still they didn’t walk. Caught behind, again, and still he stood his ground. Only when the tomato box was struck with such force it toppled over was justice done. The crowd understood, though, as they rose as one. The bowler acknowledged their applause with a gentle nod and a wipe of his brow. He was tired and racked with pain, yet good for one more over. He’d found his line and length and that hat trick was calling.

  Back in his room with the roar of the crowd subsiding and his hand sore from all the autographs, Phen stared at the ceiling. He traced the crack in the plaster as it headed to the light fitting then turned left. His thoughts were good company; they filled a void, but he had to keep manufacturing them. Pal jumped onto the bed and lay next to his master. Phen ruffled his long spaniel ears and patted him on the head.

  “Hello, Aslan,” he said.

  2

  Enrapture

  /in-rap’tyer/ verb

  Number four Duchess Court had two storerooms. Besides the one in the dining room, the main bedroom was where they stored Phen’s father. Or, on a good day, where he stored himself. This room was connected to the flat but also lived in a parallel universe. Although you always entered from the passageway, that didn’t mean you always found the same room behind the door. Since the curtains were usually drawn, the darkness was thickest there. Yet, when they were open, this was where the light was at its brightest. How could the same gentle glow in the lounge hurt and dazzle his eyes in his father’s bedroom? Once, the reflected light off the enamel bedpan had been so strong he’d had to cover it with a towel. The beam had streaked across the bed, burst against the wardrobe mirror and electrified the far wall. “A sign from the gods,” his father had said. “A bowel blessing. I shall be regular from this day forth.” Much later that night when he heard his mother emptying it in the toilet, his father loudly declared, “Thus spoketh the Lord.”

  The room consisted of two single beds separated by a slippery lookalike Persian rug which, according to the patient, was “cunningly designed to kill unsuspecting infidels”. On the outside of each bed stood a matching
side table. On top of these sat a lamp, each wearing a maroon velveteen shade. Similar to Phen’s bedcover, they also had tassels. The tassels dangling on the right-hand side were scorched. The shade was worn like a beret, causing the strands of tightly bound string to lean directly onto the bulb. This made the room smell of burned toast. His father was aware of this, yet needed the direct light to read. Occasionally, when the stench became too bad, the shade was removed completely and placed over the glass ashtray like a tea cosy.

  A stranger entering the room would initially notice none of this. He’d peer through the half-light and be taken aback by a massive wall unit bracketing the beds on either side and spreading across the wall where a headboard would normally be. To sit up and lean back meant a touch of Brylcreem or Vitalis on the spine of Fahrenheit 451 or Charlotte’s Web. The huge bookcase ate everything in the room. Thousands of vertical teeth, some narrow, some wide, waited to chomp. Any individual extraction made matters worse, leaving the insane mouth of a gap-toothed giant covering the entire wall.

  Phen hated and loved reading to his father. The same way he hated and loved his father’s bedroom. Although his mother slept there too, it was always his father’s room. Over time they’d developed rules, some spoken, some not. As his father’s glasses grew thicker and thicker and as the book moved closer and closer to his face, it became obvious he could no longer read. His magnified eyelashes stuck to the lenses like the bent legs of spiders waiting to scurry away. The size of his eyes was cartoon-like. The sticky tape wrapped earnestly around the bridge of his horn-rimmed frames only added to the caricature.

  The game was predictable enough. Phen would return from school or from walking the dog and hear his father calling for him. Sometimes he’d pretend not to hear, although that always proved a useless exercise. Sick people develop a sixth sense about the presence of others. The only delaying tactic that worked was the offer to make tea and to then prolong the process as much as possible. Once the cup was placed on the doily, Phen had to move to the other side of the bed and sit in the cracked leather armchair. To get his shoulders flush with the backrest meant his legs would be parallel to the ground and the soles of his feet visible to his father.

  “He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish.”

  “The Old Man and the S-s-sea.”

  “Good. Let’s start at the beginning and see how we go.”

  Having identified the book correctly, Phen now had to find it in the vast bookcase and read to his father until he fell asleep. This was easier said than done. He was not tall enough for the top shelves. Often the search involved the Formica kitchen chair and Encyclopaedia Britannica. If the book lay directly above his father’s head, he’d have to take off his shoes and stand on the bed. The more he climbed the pillows the more they sagged under his weight. He also had to be careful his bare feet didn’t snag the thin plastic tube bringing oxygen into the mask.

  A reading took anything from ten minutes to two hours. It depended on the story itself, the recollections attached to it and the health of the listener. Phen supplied the words but where they went were not of his doing. Havana glows differently for each of us. Did Hemingway’s fisherman see the mighty Yankee DiMaggio the same way as a sick man in Hillbrow? You read “The old man had taught the boy to fish and the boy loved him”, but you don’t know why that makes your father lift his head and stare far off into the distance. You are the voice to the words yet you have no control of their destination. You don’t know why some merge into another story you’re not reading. You stay true to the lines in front of you, although other thoughts are gathered along the way and memories you don’t have are released.

  Phen knows sometimes it’s the rhythm of his reading and not the words that sends his father to another place. Like the steady drone of a transistor radio turned down low. He watches the calm face slowly fall asleep behind the oxygen mask and imagines his father is a Spitfire pilot. Echo. Foxtrot. Tango. Mission accomplished.

  Sleep in that room needs to be tied down thoroughly. Creaking chairs, passing cars, yelling builders all wait to sabotage the slumber. The shrinking chest in the blue-and-white-striped pyjamas needs to rise higher and fall deeper before Phen can go. He sits patiently and continues reading. Although he keeps the same pace, he now turns the pages ten and twenty at a time. Soon the end of the book appears before his tired eyes. He leans forward and tips the page into the light. The edges of the letters turn crisp and focused.

  “What’s that?” she asked a waiter and pointed to the long backbone of the great fish that was now just garbage waiting to go out with the tide.

  “Tiburon,” the waiter said, “Eshark.” He was meaning to explain what had happened.

  “I didn’t know sharks had such handsome, beautifully formed tails.”

  “I didn’t either,” her male companion said.

  “Up the road, in his shack, the old man was sleeping again. He was still sleeping on his face and the boy was sitting by him watching him. The old man was dreaming about the lions.”

  It wasn’t easy to silently get out of the armchair. Naked skin always squeaks against leather. Jumping off was not an option. The small frame had to slither off like a snake. That meant Phen ended up on his knees praying the gentle hiss of the oxygen cylinder had covered any unintentional sounds. It was obligatory to stay in this position for a while. His impatience had cost him dearly in the past. The body in the bed knew when the space around it had changed. Too much activity would cause its right hand to raise and wave him back into the chair.

  Shutting the door meant much more than just sealing the room. Phen was now free of the four walls but not the guilt of the escape. Could he jump the perimeter walls as well and actually leave the flat? His mother would not be back from work for another two hours. If he waited until then it would be too dark to go to the park. His father could make it to the bathroom by himself, but preferred someone on standby. The thick plastic bottle, shaped like a weaver’s nest complete with tunnelled entrance, and the bedpan were only for emergencies. “For dignity to be preserved, mobility must be maintained,” his father often said. On good days his walking stick would rest against his shoulder like a rifle as he marched off.

  The expectant eyes of a dog go deep. They watch even while Phen sings “If You’re Going to San Francisco” and imagines wearing flowers in his hair. Safe in his solitude Phen allows his hips to roll and his fingers to click as he dances past the Grundig. He turns the volume of the radio up a little more in the vain hope it will deflect the stare. Pal sits motionless and unimpressed next to the hat stand that contains his dangling leash. Torn between the sleeping body in the bedroom and the waiting cocker spaniel, he makes a Solomon-like decision. He will walk the dog around the block and when his mother returns, they will go for a longer outing. Dogs, after all, also have to go to the bathroom.

  The block is a building site full of pregnant women. Besides the huge construction next to Duchess Court, there is also a pre- and post-natal and baby clinic on the far side. It used to be a small synagogue, but now the congregation is either swollen or already divided in two. Everywhere you look, women in various degrees of wideness waddle or push prams between powerful black men who sing as they dig a trench to lay pipes in. The picks sway like a conductor’s baton. Silence as they pause at the top, then pure harmony as they swoop down into the hard ground. It is, without doubt, the most beautiful thing Phen has ever heard. He is more than mesmerised; he is enraptured. The sound synchronises these humans into a perfect machine. Stripped to the waist, they are somehow holy. A church choir at work, sacred in their labour.

  He thinks of his father hummed to sleep by his imperfect reading. Here words do the opposite. Here they wake you up and fill you with energy! These words don’t stumble; they fly. They hold themselves perfectly in the air as they glide effortlessly. Like the birds at Zoo Lake they take off and land at the same time. He remembers his uncoordinate
d gyrations in front of the radiogram. He wishes he too had such a muscular body. Then he could also take his shirt off, tie it around his hips and let his chest sway in the late-afternoon sun.

  The white foreman tells him to move back or he’ll get hurt. He is wearing very tight black rugby shorts and thick khaki socks. The socks rise to under his knees, then fold back meticulously to create a two-inch ridge. The ridge accentuates his scrawny calves. Even when he bends down to help a young woman carry her pram over the broken pavement there is no sign of a bulge. She thanks him coyly, but it has the opposite effect. The foreman blushes, doffs his hat and rubs its leopard-skin band with his thumb. Three ballpoint pens in his left shirt pocket confirm his seniority. He checks if they are still there and fans himself with a clipboard.

  Phen would like to stay, yet senses his presence is somehow annoying the boss man, who impatiently kicks the pipe that still has to be laid. Maybe it’s the dog. As Phen walks off, the leader of the work party changes the song. The pace is much faster now. There is a whoop in the middle of the chorus and two pretend shoulder dips before the picks bite into the hard soil. They’re all smiling now, even as the tempo increases. Between strikes into the ground, hips are thrust forward with a lurid intent. Phen doesn’t understand the words but it’s clear the new song is aimed at the boss man.

  “S-s-s-spaz.”

  “D-d-d-dork.” Phen can’t stop himself from matching the staccato greeting.

  Jimmy the Greek turns his roller skates sideways and screeches to a halt. His real name is Vakis Papadimitropoulos. He lives with his parents at the Chelsea Hotel, just off O’Reilly Road. Phen has it on good authority that the Greeks, like the Portuguese, only know how to run corner cafés. He, therefore, suspects Jimmy is lying when he says his dad is an engineer. In an attempt to emulate the Greek’s confidence, Phen pulls his shorts down and tries to wear them like hipsters. Jimmy’s jeans are brand new and tucked into his socks. His body is a year or two ahead of his age. According to Phen’s gran this is typical of foreigners from the Mediterranean who eat the tentacles of octopus and wrap rice in vine leaves. Jimmy is athletic and has the self-assurance of one who’s always picked first for every team. Unlike Phen, he has muscles you can actually see. His chest pushes against his T-shirt in a hard outline; his biceps fill his sleeves. He is as physical and powerful as his opposite companion is delicate and slight. Phen corrects his poor posture, jealous of Jimmy’s sinewy frame and of the confidence it brings. He also gets words wrong, yet no one laughs at the Greek.