by Adam Nevill
‘Them tents yonder, old man,’ the soldier said.
The old man got his self under the dragoon’s left arm and walked him across to the tents. And once there the old man dragged the sagging dragoon from one yellowy interior of flapping canvas to another.
‘What God hath wrought this, soldier? What God?’ the old man asked him in the final tent. But by then the soldier who had fallen into him had already closed his tired eyes and left the foul tent and the foul world, and gone far from what lay grey and dry and mewling in the filthy bedding in the dirt beneath their feet. The dragoon had gone to another place to look for his sister whom he never did find among the Fair-skinned Nephites on the shore of the Great Dead Sea. The dragoon’s last words were: ‘Use my sabre.’
The old man took the young soldier outside the stench of death, which was soon to be heated by the white desert sun, and laid him at peace upon the dust. He closed the dragoon’s eyes and said three lines from the only prayer he could remember. Or was it a hymn? He didn’t know, but he did what he could for the man. And then he sawed the dragoon’s head clean off with his own sword, which was so heavy and long that the prospector marvelled at the arm that had wielded it like a switch about the godless.
The prospector walked back to the twelve tents, and went in to finish the cavalryman’s dreadful work.
In the last tent, as he carved off the tiny shrivelled heads of what was already dead or mostly dead – at those that had rustled from out of the dead wombs of Nephite mothers – the sabre’s keen edge scraped at stone. Again and again, as if these birthing tents had been laid upon a stone floor in all of this sand.
Curious, the prospector kicked aside the tatty bundles of the headless young, and then scraped his foot through the dust. What lay beneath the sand in the tent was smooth, undulating, like a water-smoothed boulder in a clear mountain stream.
Accustomed to digging in the dust for wonders to behold, the old man dropped the sword and wrapped some foul swaddling raiment about his left moccasin and began to sweep his leg back and forth across the hard rock.
After a few minutes, he uncovered a great eye, curved like an almond, and shielded by a heavy lid. Ten minutes later, he had swept the desert sand and grit away from what was an entire face.
By the end of the day, the Nephite remains of young and old were all burned to ash within the burning buildings of Zion, on the shore of the Great Dead Sea, and their tents were all cut down from the ground and dragged away from the campsite and left like a pile of dirty rags; also soon to be ignited, for the prospector felt that was what the solider would have wanted. And as the sun set across the glittering ocean of lifeless water, and the buildings were nothing more than blackened smoking bones upon its damned shore, the old man stared down at what he had uncovered beneath seven of the tents; at what had been hidden under the weightless husks of dead babes in the plague hospital, and under the sand.
He looked at the six colossal basalt heads, each measuring eight to nine feet in height and weighing, he reckoned, about forty tons. Stared searching into their great open eyes that, in turn, watched the sky darken and fill with bright stars. And when he eventually walked away, carrying his musket and the dragoon’s pistol, carbine and sabre, not wanting to linger at these ruins in the darkness, he wondered if they were the faces of Gods. The Gods that had wrought all of this.
Doll Hands
I am the one with the big white head and the doll hands. I work behind the desk in the west block of Gruut Huis. When I’m not taking delivered medicines upstairs to the residents who slowly die in their beds, I watch the greenish screens of the security monitors. Security cameras cover every inch of Gruut Huis’s red-brick walls and empty tarmac forecourt.
I watch out for deliveries and for intruders. Deliveries come every day. Intruders not so much any more. They have mostly died out there in the draughty buildings of the dead city, or are lying still on the dark stones before the Church of Our Lady. In Bruges, the dying shuffle and crawl to the church. It’s like they have lost everything but a memory of where to go.
Last Christmas I was sent out with two porters to find the baboon child of Mr Hussain who lives in the east wing. The baboon boy had escaped from his cage and blinded his carer. And as I searched for the boy in Guido Gezelleplein, I saw all of the wet stiff bodies beneath the tower, lying down in the mist.
One of the day porters, Vinegar Irish, beat the baboon boy when we found him feeding among the bodies. Like the residents, the baboon boy had grown tired of the yeast from the tanks in the basement. He wanted meat.
At ten in the morning, there is movement on the monitor screens. Someone has arrived at the GOODS AND SERVICES entrance of Gruut Huis. Out of the mist the squarish front of a white truck appears and waits by the roller gate. It is the caterers. Inside my stomach I feel a sickish skitter.
With my teeny fingers I press the buttons on the security console and open Door Eight. On the screen I watch the metal grille rise. The truck passes into the central court of Gruut Huis and parks with its rear doors before the utility door of the service area. Behind this utility door are the storage cages for the residents’ old possessions, as well as the porters’ dormitory, the staff room, the stock cupboards, the boiler room, the workshop, the staff washroom and the yeast tanks that feed us with their yellow softness. Today, the caterers will need to use the staff washroom for their work.
Yesterday, we were told a delivery of food was arriving for the Head Residents’ Annual Banquet. Mrs Van den Broeck, the Head Resident of the building, also informed us that our showers were to be cancelled and that we were not allowed into the staff room during the day because the caterers needed to use these areas to prepare the banquet. But none of the staff ever want to go into the washroom if the caterers are onsite. Despite the sleepiness of the white ape, who is nightwatchman, and the drunkenness of Vinegar Irish, and the slow movements of Les Spider, handyman, and the merry giggles of the two cleaning girls, we can all remember the other times when the little white truck came to Gruut Huis for the banquets. None of the staff talk about the days of the General Meetings and Annual Banquets. We all pretend that they are normal days, but Vinegar Irish drinks more cleaning fluid than usual.
Using the desk phone, I call Vinegar Irish, who is the porter on duty in the east wing. He takes a long time to answer the phone. On the security console, I switch to the camera above his reception desk to see what he is doing. Slowly, like his pants are full of shit and he can’t walk straight, he stumbles into the green underwater world of the monitor screen. Even on camera I can see the bulgy veins under his strawberry face. He’s been in the key cupboard drinking fluids and not beside his monitors like he is supposed to be at all times. If he was behind his desk he would have heard the alarm sound when I opened the outer gate, and he would have known that a delivery had arrived. His barking voice is slurred. ‘What you want?’
‘Delivery,’ I say. ‘Watch my side. I’m going down.’
‘Aye. Aye. Trucks come. What you need to do –’ I put the phone down while he is speaking. It will make him go shaky with rage in the east wing. He’ll call me a bastard and swear to punch his trembly hands at my big head, while spit flies out of his vinegar mouth. But he won’t remember the altercation tonight when we finish the day shift, and I have no time right now for a slurred lecture about all the things that I already know about our duties, that he cannot manage to do.
As I walk across the lobby to the porters’ door, with my sackcloth mask in my doll hands, the phone rings behind my desk. I know it is Vinegar Irish in a spitting rage. All the residents are still asleep. Those that can still walk never come down before noon.
Smiling to myself at this little way I get revenge on Vinegar Irish, I stretch the brownish mask over my head. Then I open the airlock and duck through the escape hatch to the metal staircase outside. As I trot down the stairs, the mist rushes in to cover my little shiny shoes. Even with the mask pulled over my fat octopus head, I can smell the sulphu
r-rust of the chemical air.
At the bottom of the staircase, I enter the courtyard. The courtyard is right in the middle of all four blocks of flats. The residents can look down and into the courtyard from their kitchen windows. I bet their mouths fill with water when they see the white van parked by the utility door. What the head residents don’t eat, we porters deliver to their flats in white plastic bags.
Seeing the caterers’ white truck makes my stomach turn over with a wallop. The two caterers who came in it are standing by the driver’s door, talking, and waiting for me to open the utility area. Both of them are wearing rubber hoods shaped into pig faces. The pig faces are supposed to be smiling, but they look like the faces in dreams that wake you up with a scream.
The caterers are wearing rubber boots to their knees too, with stripy trousers tucked into the tops of them. Over their stripy trousers and white smocks they wear long, black rubber aprons. They are both putting on gloves made from wire mesh.
‘Christ. Would you look at the cunt’s head,’ the older caterer says. His son giggles inside his rubber pig mask.
I clench my tiny hands into marble hammers.
‘Awright?’ the father says to me. Under the mask I know he is laughing at my big white head and stick body. The father gives me a clipboard. There is a plastic pen under the metal clasp that holds the pink delivery note to the clipboard. With my doll hands I take the pen and sign and print my name, then date the slip: 10/04/2152. They watch my hands in silence. The world goes quiet when my hands go to work because no one can believe that they have any use.
On the Grote and Sons Fine Foods and Gourmet Catering sales slip, I see I am signing for 2 livestock. Extra lean, premium fresh. 120 kilos.
The caterers go into the cabin of their truck and drag their equipment out. ‘Let’s get set up. Give us a hand,’ the father says to me. Up close, his clothes smell of old blood.
From behind the two seats in the dirty cabin that smells of metal and floor bleach, they pass two big grey sacks to me. They are heavy with dark stains at the bottom and around the top are little brass holes for chains to pass through. Touching the sacks makes my legs shake. I tuck them under my arm. They give me a metal box to carry in my other hand. The container has little red numbers beside the lock. The box is cold and is patterned with black and yellow stripes.
‘Careful with that,’ the fat father says as I take the cold box in my small hand. ‘It’s for the hearts and livers. We sell them, see. They is worth more than you are.’
The son hangs heavy chains over one arm and grabs a black cloth bag. As he walks, the black cloth sack makes a hollow knocking sound as the wooden clubs inside bang together. The father carries two steel cases in one hand, and two plastic buckets in the other that are reddish-grubby inside. ‘Same place as before?’ he asks me.
‘Follow me,’ I say, and walk to the utility door of the basement. We go inside and between the iron storage cages and are watched by the rocking horse with the big blue eyes and lady lashes. We pass the white door with the STAFF ONLY sign on it, and the floor changes from cement to tiles. I take them through the white tiled corridor to the washroom where they will work. In here it always smells of the bleach used by the whispering cleaners. The cleaners sleep in the cupboard with all the bottles, mops and cloths and are not allowed to use the staff room. When the nightwatchman, the white ape, catches them in there smiling at the television, he roars.
I take the caterers into the big washroom that is tiled to the ceiling and divided in two by a metal rail and shower curtain. There is a sink and toilet on one side and the other half has a floor that slopes to the plug grate under the big round shower head. Against the wall in the shower section is a wooden bench, bolted to the wall. The father drops his cases and mask onto the bench. His head is round and pink as the flavoured yeast that the residents eat from square ration tins.
The son coils his chains on the bench and removes his hood too. He has a weasel face with many pimples among the scruffy whiskers on his chin. His tiny black eyes flit about and his thin lips curl away from long gums and two sharp teeth like he is about to laugh.
‘Luvverly,’ the father says, looking around the washroom. I notice the father has no neck.
‘Perfek,’ the weasel son adds, grinning and sniffing.
‘Your night boy asleep?’ the father asks. His fat body sweats under his smock and apron. His sweat smells of beef powder. Small and yellow and sharp, his two snaggle teeth are the same as the son’s. When he squints, his tiny red eyes sink into his face.
I nod.
‘Not for long,’ the weasel says, and then shuffles about, giggling.
I move towards the door.
‘Hang on. Hang on,’ the father says. ‘We need you to open that friggin’ door when we bring the meat in.’
‘Yeah,’ Weasel agrees, while he threads the chains through the brass eyes in the top of the sacks.
The father opens his cases on the bench. Stainless steel gleams under the yellow lights. His tools are carefully fitted into little trays. In his world of dirty trucks, old sacks, rusty chains and snaggle teeth, it surprises me to see his fat fingers become gentle on the steel of his tools.
With eyes full of glee, the weasel son watches his father remove the two biggest knives from a metal case. Weasel then unties the ribbon of the last sack with the hollow wooden sounds inside, and pulls out two thick clubs. He stands with a club in each hand, staring at me. He is pleased to see the horror on my little face. At the bottom of the clubs the wood is stained a dark colour and some bits have chipped off.
‘Go fetch ’em in,’ the father says, while he lays two cleavers with black handles on an oily cloth.
‘Right,’ the weasel son says.
We go back down the tiled corridor. I walk slowly because I am in no hurry to see the livestock. When Mrs Van den Broeck, the Head Resident, announced the banquet, I decided that I would show the livestock a friendly face before it was taken into the washroom; otherwise, the fat father and the weasel son would be the last people that it would see in this world, before it was stuffed inside the sacks and chained up.
When we reach the courtyard, I remember what the fat father told me last time, about how the meat tastes better with bruises under the skin. That’s why they use the clubs. To tenderise the meat and get blood into the flesh. When he told me that, I wanted to escape from Gruut Huis and keep running into the poisonous mist until no one in the building would ever find me again. The residents don’t need to eat the fresh meats. Like the staff, they can eat the soft yellow yeast from the tanks, but the residents are rich and can afford variety.
We go back into the courtyard. Above us, some lights have come on in the flats. I can see the dark lumps of the residents’ heads watching from their kitchen windows. And suddenly, from the east wing, the baboon child of Mr Hussain screams. It rips the smoky air apart. Weasel Boy flinches. You never get used to the sound of the baboon child in the cage.
The weasel son rattles keys in his chain-mail hand. ‘We done a wedding last week. St Jan in de Meers.’
I can’t speak with all the churning in my tummy.
‘We done eight livestock for the barbecue. Da girl’s farver was loaded. Had a tent built and everything. Ya know, a marquee. All in this garden, under a glass roof. Me and Dad was up at five. They had fifty guests, like. We filled four ice-chests with fillets. Done the sausages the day before. For the kids, like.’
He finds the correct key and unlocks the back doors of the truck. Under his pig mask I know he is smiling. ‘We made a few shillings. There’s a few shillings to be made at weddings in this part of town.’
When Weasel opens the back doors, I feel the hot air puff out of the truck. With it comes the smell of pee and sweat to mix with the chemical stink of the swirly air. Two small shapes are huddled at the far end of the truck, near the engine where it is warmer.
I walk away from the open doors of the truck and look up at the vapours. They drift and show little
pieces of grey sky. There is a smudgy yellow stain where the sun must be. But you can never tell with the cloud so low. I wish I was in heaven.
‘C’mon, ya shit-brains,’ Weasel shouts from inside the truck. He’s climbed in to get the livestock out. They never want to come out.
I cringe as if he is about to pull a lion out of the back. Through the white sides of the truck comes a bumping of bare feet on metal and then the chinka, chinka, chinka of a chain.
Weasel Boy jumps out of the truck, holding a rope in both hands. ‘They as dumb as shit, but it’s like they know when this day is coming. Get outta there. Git! Git!’
Out of the back of the truck two pale, yellowish figures stumble and then drop onto the misty slabs of the courtyard. They fall down and are yanked back to their feet by the weasel.
The livestock is skinny and completely shaven. Their elbows are tied together and their hands are tucked under their chins. They are young males with big eyes. They look like each other. Like angels with pretty faces and slender bodies. They start to cough in the acid-stinging air.
Shivering against each other, the smaller one starts to cry and hides behind the taller one, who is too frightened to cry, but pees instead, down the inside of his thighs. It steams in the cold air.
‘Dirty bastards. They’ll piss anywhere. Truck’s full of it. Yous’ll have to wash that corridor down after we’re gone.’ Weasel Boy pulls the rope taut. Each male wears a thick iron collar that looks loose on his sallow neck. A rope is attached to the short chains welded to the collars. In his metal hands Weasel Boy holds the slack rope.
