by Tim Ewins
A cow looks out to sea, dreaming of a life that involves grass.
Jan is also looking out to sea. He’s in Goa, dreaming of the passport-thief who stole his heart (and his passport) forty-six years ago. Back then, fate kept bringing them together, but lately it seems to have given up.
Jan has not. In his long search he has accidentally held a whole town at imaginary gunpoint in Soviet Russia, stalked the proprietors of an international illegal lamp-trafficking scam and done his very best to avoid any kind of work involving the packing of fish. Now he thinks if he just waits, if he just does nothing at all, maybe fate will find it easier to reunite them.
His story spans fifty-four years, ten countries, two imperfect criminals (and one rather perfect one), twenty-two different animals and an annoying teenager who just…
Will…
Not…
Leave.
But maybe an annoying teenager is exactly what Jan needs to help him find the missing thief?
Featuring a menagerie of creatures, each with its own story to tell, We Are Animals is a quirky, heart-warming tale of lost love, unlikely friendships and the certainty of fate (or lack thereof).
For the first time in her life the cow noticed the sun setting, and it was glorious.
Published in 2020
by Lightning Books Ltd
Imprint of EyeStorm Media
312 Uxbridge Road
Rickmansworth
Hertfordshire
WD3 8YL
www.lightning-books.com
Copyright © Tim Ewins 2020
Cover by Ifan Bates
The moral right of the author has been asserted. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Printed by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY
ISBN: 9781785632037
For Gemma and our own epic love story
And for Indy, the product of that story
Contents
Part One
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Acknowledgements
About the author
Part One
1
A Crab
Goa, India. 2016
The man looked to his right. Three Indian men walked along the sand holding hands, a French couple started to pack up their towels and put various beach objects into an oversized floral bag, and a cow looked out to sea, maybe dreaming of a life which involved grass.
He looked to his left. He could see the rocks where the beach ended. The sun was going down and there was an Israeli man setting up a tripod, holding his camera high to protect the lens from any stray grains of sand that might want to nestle in its cracks. A bit further down, an Indian family were playing in the water – the adults fully clothed, and the children fully not.
He saw no sign of her.
He looked right again. One of the Indian men was laughing and pushing one of the others, the French couple were halfway up the beach now, arms around each other, and the cow was still staring, or dreaming, whichever it was.
The man strained his eyes as hard as he could, but still he couldn’t see her.
He looked again to his left. The men in the family were taking it in turns to hold their breath under the waves and the women were chatting among each other and watching their little ones. On the shore, predictably, the Israeli man was rubbing his camera’s lens frantically with his t-shirt and grumbling to himself.
It was no good. She wasn’t there. Just like she hadn’t been there the day before, or the day before that. In fact, she hadn’t been there any day for the past five years. But he always looked anyway. Just in case. Because, probably, one day, she would be there, and he’d hate to miss it.
Regardless of her persistent absence, the man always loved this time of day on Palolem Beach. It wasn’t too hot, but it certainly wasn’t cold, and everyone seemed relaxed. Even the lady who paced the length of the beach all day selling melons eased off on her selling at this time, and she would often find a tourist to sit and chat with. The tourist would always buy a melon afterwards of course, but that didn’t seem to be her aim.
One more check, he thought. He looked to his right. This time he could only see the cow, who hadn’t moved her holy self one inch. The men had gone, and the couple must have made it back to their beach hut. Then he looked to his left. The family continued to play, the cameraman was mounting his camera, seemingly content that he’d saved his lens from a sandy death, and a bar worker was bringing out a sign which read ‘COCK-tails – buy one, get two free’.
The man scowled.
Three girls were climbing over the rocks where the beach ended, back onto Palolem, and the man wondered whether they’d enjoyed their day. He knew where they’d have gone because Palolem was the closest place he’d had to a home in forty-one years.
He knew that over the rocks they’d have found another smaller beach with rocks at both ends. Over the next set of rocks, they’d have found a much bigger beach which would’ve taken them about an hour and a half to walk down. And then, when they’d have reached the end, they’d have found more rocks. Some people would get bored of exploring at this point and turn back, but he’d noticed these girls leave early in the morning, so he guessed that they’d carried on to the next set of beaches and rocks. ‘What an exciting day they must have had,’ thought the man – he used to love exploring.
‘That was awful,’ said one of the girls, and the man sighed.
He was sitting four bars down the beach from the COCK-tail bar, but he still jumped when the DJ played the first thud of music. He wondered whether they’d started playing the music louder or whether it was the direction of the wind. It had definitely been getting earlier – it never used to start thudding until after dark. He sipped his red wine and closed his eyes.
‘Silent disco tonight, ladies?’ The man opened one of his eyes to see a young male with ginger hair, an insanely wide smile and a hint of crazy in his eyes next to the three girls. The boy was luminous from the waist up.
‘Another poxy vest,’ the man mumbled under his breath and then re-shut his open eye.
Even with his eyes closed, he knew that the vest would be bending his knees in time to the thudding. His neck would be bobbing along too, and he’d probably have his mouth slightly open. They always have their mouths slightly open, he thought.
The man exhaled loudly and opened both eyes lazily.
‘Yin?’ the vest asked the girls. It was amazing, thought the man, how only when he was speaking, did the vest’s mouth appear to close. What did he mean, yin? The man knew a few languages, but he had never heard ‘yin’ used in this context before. He’d heard of yin, as in the yin usually followed by yang. And he’d heard of yen, the currency. He even knew the meaning of yìn (a Chinese verb, meaning ‘to print’), but it seemed such an unlikely verb for a vest to be using to sell a silent disco in South India.
‘Yeah, we’re in,’ answered one of the girls, and the man felt silly – ‘Y’in?’ – of course.
The vest, bending his knees in time to the thudding, neck bobbing, and with his mouth slightly open, handed the girls some flyers
and watched the three of them walk off.
If the man ignored the music, as he had grown used to doing each night, he could hear the gentle lapping of the waves on the beach, the quiet natter of the melon-selling lady with her chosen tourist, and the sounds of a few birds communicating in their bird way (‘Cacaaa?’ one bird would ask, and another would reply ‘Cacaaa!’ in agreement, and then they would steal some fish from the fishermen). It was getting cooler now and he pushed his toes into the sand below his chair as he drifted off into a blissful sleep.
* * *
‘Silent disco tonight, old-timer?’
The man awoke and saw a boy with ginger hair, an insanely wide smile and a hint of crazy in his eyes peering down at him. He was bending his knees in time to a different, quicker-paced, thudding. His neck was bobbing along, and his mouth was slightly open.
The man stood up and walked towards the shore, ignoring the intrusive vest completely.
He looked to his right. The cow was now wandering up the beach by herself, gently waving her tail and probably looking for grass. The melon-selling lady was finishing her conversation with her chosen tourist and exchanging her last melon for a few rupees.
Then he looked to his left. He could see the rocks where the beach ended. The Indian family were now out of the water – the adults fully clothed and the children fully not – and the Israeli man was packing away his tripod, holding the camera high to protect the lens from any further stray grains of sand.
In both directions, he saw several gatherings of bubbler crabs, all rolling the sand into tiny balls behind them. That’s what bubbler crabs do.
Still, the man saw no signs of her.
He made his way back to his chair, past the vest, who, amazingly, hadn’t moved at all and was still staring at the spot where the man had been sitting originally, as if the man had remained sitting there the whole time. The man sat down, took a sip of his red wine, looked at the vest, and paused.
‘Pardon?’
‘Silent disco tonight, old timer?’
‘Old timer?’
‘Old timer. Y’know. Not like, old timer. But, old-timer.’
‘I’m sixty-four!’ said the man, as a small wave washed away hundreds of the bubbler crabs’ small balls of sand.
‘I said, not like, old timer, but that’s quite old...timer. Sorry. My boss says I’ve got to be friendly. You’re a young man. Just not as young as me. But I’m youuung. Like, really young. Especially to you.’
The man stared at the vest, and the vest stared at the man. ‘My name’s Shakey,’ said the vest, trying to be polite, and then they stared at each other for a few more seconds.
‘Shakey,’ said the man.
‘Shakey,’ said Shakey. ‘Silent disco tonight old-t...?’ His sentence trailed off.
The man was making things difficult for Shakey, who was, after all, just doing his job. Shakey had met people like this man before. Another stupid moustache, he thought. He hated moustaches.
2
Another poxy vest
Goa, India. 2016.
You could be forgiven for thinking that vests can see in the dark. They’re regularly found at night and they’re often luminous. They congregate on small beaches in Thailand and India, or on large beaches in Australia for the high season. It’s on these beaches that they successfully, quickly and loudly find themselves. They find that the country they’re in is in actual fact their spiritual home, and they always seem to be holding a small plastic bucket of vodka and Red Bull.
The truth is that vests cannot see in the dark – not everything, anyway. They can only see other vests. They rarely see workers, restaurant owners, cleaners, the elderly or parts of the world without sand.
After dark, vests glow. This attracts other vests, and they discuss the ways in which the small particles of eroded rock beneath their feet have changed their outlook on life completely, and how they don’t know if they could live in a Western society again. They discuss the blogs they’ve written (which are normally about small plastic buckets of vodka and Red Bull) and then later they find that they’re both in the new spiritual home for two months, and that they’re going to share the same flight home. Then they discuss the ‘not even in the cinema yet’ film it turns out they’d both watched on the flight out.
* * *
If you were to go through Shakey’s backpack you would find one pair of shorts (he would be wearing the other pair), no less than eight luminous vests and three pairs of sunglasses. You might also find a small plastic bucket. Shakey was certainly a vest.
‘Sleeves are heavy,’ he would tell other travellers if they asked. ‘I’m packing light.’ But the truth was that he’d spent the past six months in a gym lifting dumbbells, and that he liked the look of his arms.
While on a fishing trip recently, a girl vest had asked Shakey what his best experience in India had been so far. He’d intentionally gone misty-eyed and looked slightly over her shoulder and into the distance. He’d been aiming for a ‘man of the world’ look, but he had actually been thinking ‘can she see my bicep?’ and ‘is she looking at my bicep?’ He tensed his bicep.
‘I was sunbathing on Palolem beach, listening to my headphones and using my sarong as a pillow,’ he’d said, ‘when an Indian man took me in as one of his own.’ At this point he rubbed the back of his red hair with his hand and moved his gaze from the distance and directly into her eyes. He paused for an uncomfortable seven seconds before telling her how the Indian man had been dressed in beige, both on his top and on his bottom half, and how he had sat down next to Shakey, singling him out from everyone else on the beach.
‘He must have seen me as some kind of a...a kindred spirit,’ Shakey explained, still tensing his bicep even though it was beginning to hurt. He was beginning to burn from the sun, too.
The Indian man had asked Shakey if he wanted to join him and his family for a meal. Shakey had accepted, not through reasons of gratitude or intrigue, but in the hope that he would one day get to tell another vest about it – hopefully a girl, and maybe on a fishing trip.
Shakey told the girl how he had sat with the Indian man and several other people from all around the world and eaten naan, chapatti, samosas, dal, chana masala, and how it was all rounded off with several beers. Then he paused. ‘I’m a vegetarian,’ he said, while further raising one corner of his insanely wide smile, before looking into the distance again. ‘It was quite spiritual,’ he carried on. ‘I mixed with the locals, ate local food and drank local beer.’ He noticed that his bicep had become slightly limp so he tensed his other arm and turned his body so she could see. ‘And it only cost me 2,500 rupees.’
The girl widened her mouth in awe. The boy she was with had immersed himself so entirely into the Indian culture that he had been eating in local family homes and meeting with kindred spirits. It was exactly the kind of thing that her guidebook had told her she should be doing.
Of course, what Shakey had actually done, was go to a family-owned restaurant.
She smiled at Shakey and he smiled back. ‘Wow,’ she breathed, and then she touched his slowly burning bicep.
The fishing group had not really done much fishing up to this point. The boat owner had briefed them on some very basic safety points (don’t jump off the boat, don’t put the hook in your mouth/eyes/near your genitals, and don’t forget to tip) and then he’d set up each fishing rod by himself. The tourists had spent the following hour just chatting as the boat chugged on, so it came as quite a surprise when the girl’s fishing rod started violently jolting in its holder.
She moved her hand away from Shakey’s arm and screamed. Shakey grabbed the fishing rod from its holder and pulled backwards, imitating a TV programme he’d seen. The rod pulled forward against him.
‘Give me!’ shouted the boat owner as he ran up behind Shakey, and Shakey thought that giving him the rod was probably a good idea. He l
ooked back to the boat owner and tried to pass him the rod by letting go of it. The rod hit the inside wall of the boat, flipped overboard and landed in the sea.
He’s such a hero, thought the girl vest as she skirted around the visibly distressed boat owner towards Shakey, and then they kissed. Somewhere, under the boat, a small milkfish celebrated its victory with a piece of bait and a rod.
Yes, Shakey was as vesty as a vest could be. If there was a hierarchy among the vests, Shakey would probably be the king. But there would be a good chance he wouldn’t realise he was the king, and that’s why there is no vest hierarchy.
* * *
Being a vest is only a temporary condition which is normally cured by the vest holding onto the material that’s loosely hanging by its side and pulling its hands upwards and over its head. Once this process has been followed, the vest begins to realise that there is no spiritual home, it has crabs living in its flip flops and that it is in desperate need of a shower.
Often, later in life, a vest will become something useful like a doctor, a builder or a teacher. No one will know about its two months of being a vest, and an ex-vest will tend to lie about it. Lots of ex-vests will revisit the spiritual home some years later with their children and there will be new vests scattered around the beach.
Ex-vests don’t usually like new vests, and they tend to mumble about them under their breath.
‘Another poxy vest,’ they mumble.
3
A cow
Goa, India. 2016.
The man was mumbling under his breath, and although Shakey couldn’t make it out exactly, it sounded like he might be saying that the silent disco was going to be the poxy best… Or something like that.
The music from the COCK-tail bar was getting louder and ever more intrusive.
‘How silent is a silent disco exactly?’ the man asked. Shakey sat down on the chair next to the man but he didn’t answer the question. This was good, thought the man, because now Shakey was at least being quiet, but it was also bad, because now they were sitting together, as if they knew each other...as if they were friends.
