We Are Animals

by Tim Ewins

  ‘I’m going to call my parents,’ Manjan said. ‘I said I’d call when we got to Moscow.’

  Manjan’s phone calls with his parents had calmed down. His father had stopped his mother from ‘getting on a plane herself and bringing him home by his ear’ and instead they had loaned Manjan a little money for food, and to thank Valter and Saga for their help. That, and for not killing their son when they’d found him stowed away on their boat.

  At the end of every phone call with his parents Manjan asked his father the same question.

  ‘Have you seen Hylad?’

  At the end of every phone call with his parents Manjan’s father gave a similar answer.

  ‘He’s not come back to Fishton yet son, I’m sorry,’ or, ‘Jan, do you not think I’d have told you?’ or, one time, ‘quite possibly, but I’ll be damned if I’ve seen him!’ Every time his father gave an answer which essentially equated to ‘no’, Manjan’s heart sank.

  Back at the table the unhappy man looked a lot happier thanks to the effect of coffee.

  ‘Hylad’s still not there,’ Manjan said, as he took a seat on a metal stool between Ladyjan and Valter. Valter put his arm around Manjan affectionately and explained to the now happier man who Hylad was, why Jan called him Hylad and where Hylad still wasn’t.

  ‘He enjoy Sweden,’ said the unhappy-then-happy man, ‘and he will go back to your Fish-town when he is done. Just you wait.’ The man looked down at his coffee and became less happy again. ‘The people you love and the people you lose,’ he said before trailing off into a short, muttered monologue aimed at no one and in Russian. Eventually he lifted his head. ‘They always come back,’ he said.

  When Manjan, Ladyjan, Valter and Saga had met the unhappy, then happy, then unhappy man, he had already gone through several relationships. Some were friendships, and some were romantic. It was these relationships which made him truly believe what he had said about people coming back.

  He had old friends he had fought with and who he regularly bumped into on the street, he had ex-lovers he saw out and about with their new lovers and he had family members who hadn’t turned up to his wedding but often turned up at his garage, unwelcome. He even saw his estranged wife most Thursday nights before Soviet curfew, when he was outside her new house after a few too many drinks. But she would have to deal with that, because, frankly, the people you love and the people you lose, they always come back.

  It seemed to the unhappy, happy, unhappy man that relationships were like a coiled spring trailing behind him wherever he went. No matter how far away the two people at each end of the coil were, they would always spring back to the middle and meet again.

  It is worth pointing out here that the unhappy, happy, unhappy man had never set foot outside of Moscow. No one he knew had. In fact, the unhappy, happy, unhappy man had spent the majority of his life so far in one particular district in Moscow. The same district that he was in now and the same district that all of his previous lovers, friends and family members lived in. His metaphorical coil never stretched too far.

  Later, when Valter, Saga, Ladyjan and Manjan left the coffee shop, Valter secretly placed 3,500 rubles in the unhappy, happy, unhappy man’s coat pocket, and when they had gone the unhappy, happy, unhappy man found it. Although he hadn’t managed to say thank you he felt certain that he would meet Valter again when their coil contracted, and this made him happy again.

  * * *

  ‘I talked to Saga earlier,’ Valter said, as he moved one of his pawns forward two spaces. Manjan was yet to make his first move. ‘This money your parents are offering us to say thanks. We don’t need it. We’ve got everything we need for the trip. We’ve got more in fact. We’re grateful, but we think you should keep the money.’

  Manjan looked a little hurt and reached for his rook.

  ‘You can’t move a rook on your first go,’ Valter stopped him. Manjan moved one of his pawns two spaces forward, exposing his queen. Valter moved his pawn again, taking the pawn that Manjan had just let go of. ‘Your go,’ he nodded at Manjan.

  ‘But you pay for everything,’ Manjan said, ‘so I don’t really need any money either.’ He moved another pawn. Valter laughed and advanced his knight before Manjan moved his queen forward, excitedly taking Valter’s pawn. ‘Yes!’ Manjan celebrated.

  While Valter weighed up how cruel his next move should be, Manjan thought. He could give some money to Ladyjan. She’d stolen his money back in Sweden anyway and then she’d given it back, so in a way it would be like giving back the money that he had taken from her. It just so happens that the money he had taken from her was money she had made by stealing from him in the first place. But that was her job.

  Valter decided to be kind.

  ‘Do you want to change your last move?’ he asked, snapping Manjan away from his thoughts, which were beginning to confuse him anyway.

  ‘What? No. I just took your pawn,’ Manjan protested.

  ‘If you’re sure,’ Valter said.

  ‘I’m sure!’

  Valter moved his knight again. ‘You’ve lost your queen,’ he said.

  19

  A goat

  Moscow, Russia. 1972.

  Ladyjan refused Manjan’s money. If she wanted it, she told him, she would just take it. She’d done it once before and she could do it again. She was, in her own words, an expert in her profession.

  ‘Challenge accepted,’ Manjan said. He placed the money in his back-pocket and looked away. He was going to tell Ladyjan to steal from him again but as he turned he was instantly distracted by St Basil’s Cathedral, which stood like a grand multi-coloured flame in front of him.

  ‘Why do you think it looks like that?’ Manjan asked quietly to himself. Ladyjan smiled at what she understood to be his awe, spontaneity and inquisitive nature. It hadn’t crossed her mind that what Manjan actually possessed was a lack of an attention span. She told him that she didn’t know why it looked as it did but suggested that maybe the answer was in the question.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Perhaps they built it to inspire,’ Ladyjan continued, ‘so that people like you and me would look at it and say, why do you think it looks like that?’ She mimicked Manjan as she said this last bit.

  ‘It looks like it should be built on a cloud,’ Manjan said as Ladyjan took his parents’ money out of his back-pocket.

  ‘You should write,’ she joked, as she waved the money in front of his face. Manjan looked at her and smiled. ‘I’m not keeping it,’ Ladyjan told him sternly, ‘I’m proving a point.’

  * * *

  Michael watched Nigel from the window. He was pulling the ropes on his boat to test how tight they were, and he was grunting a lot. Michael watched Nigel lift the hatch on the floor and he watched him look through the safety equipment underneath. It was obvious why Nigel was spending so much time on his boat and it annoyed Michael that Nigel hadn’t told him. He’d clearly given up. Nigel was going back to England.

  With another grunt, the door slammed open and Nigel walked into the rented flat. Michael was sitting at the table drinking a bottle of beer. In front of him sat another bottle of beer, which he’d taken from the fridge after he’d seen Nigel leave the boat.

  ‘Beer,’ Michael said, rather than offered, tilting the top of his bottle towards the bottle on the table. Nigel picked up the bottle but didn’t take a drink. ‘Hylad,’ Michael said sadly.

  ‘Hylad?’ Nigel said. ‘I haven’t been called Hylad in a while.’

  ‘But you will be,’ Michael replied quietly, ‘when you’re back in England.’ There was a long pause and Nigel took a swig from his bottle. ‘What are you going to say to them, Nigel? You can’t go back.’ Nigel grunted again.

  After Jan had accidentally started his journey to India with Ladyjan, Nigel and Michael had spent two days searching for him, catching two full sunrises and two full sunsets. On th
e third day, with blisters on his feet, Nigel had called Jan’s parents. He didn’t think that he was telling a lie when he’d told them that he’d lost their son but that he wouldn’t come back to England without him. He’d promised. Jan’s mother was understandably in pieces and Jan’s father was more than a little angry.

  Before the call had ended, Jan’s father had spoken slowly and softly but with a real emphasis on each and every word. Words that Nigel heard in his sleep every night.

  ‘Bring…Jan…home.’

  Since the phone call, both Nigel and Michael had spent every day looking for Jan. They’d put ‘förlorat’ notices in several Swedish newspapers and they’d visited all of the surrounding towns. Eventually, realising that the task might take longer than they’d hoped, they’d rented a flat, and Michael had taken up odd jobs on people’s boats for a bit of extra cash.

  Three days ago, Nigel knew that he had lied to Jan’s father. He took another long swig from his bottle.

  ‘You don’t have to come,’ he said. Other than the continuous worry that they both had for Jan, Nigel and Michael found they actually quite liked the life they’d accidentally acquired in Sweden. Their flat was small, and money was short, but they had a lovely view of the harbour and they were spending more time together than they’d ever managed in England.

  ‘If you’re giving up,’ Michael said, ‘just ring them. Jan’s father won’t want to see you. Neither will his mother.’ Nigel agreed before there was a long contemplative pause.

  ‘I’m not giving up,’ Nigel said, before heavily breathing out of his nostrils, ‘but I am going back. We should speak face to face. I owe them that.’ He put his head in his hands.

  Michael sighed.

  ‘Of course I’m coming,’ he said. ‘If you can miss Norway, you’re never going to find England.’

  * * *

  The carton had a picture of a cartoon goat grinning on it so there was every chance that it was milk. They couldn’t tell, though, because neither Manjan nor Ladyjan could read Russian. It wasn’t just the words and the spelling that were different; they didn’t recognise most of the letters either. So far, in Russia, they’d bought a savoury cake when they were trying to buy bread, a sweet garlic sponge when they were trying to buy a fruit cake and a hard, miscellaneous white substance that tasted like dust when all they wanted was cheese. It didn’t really matter if the carton didn’t contain milk, though; they would laugh at their mistake together. It didn’t take much to make Manjan and Ladyjan laugh together.

  They had eventually agreed that they would share Manjan’s parents’ money. If they both wanted something, Manjan’s parents would pay for it and they would share it. They shared food, toiletries and travel costs. It was surprisingly intimate. They both ate what the other would eat and drank what the other would drink, they learned about each other’s routines and, thanks to Ladyjan’s choice of toiletries, Manjan had never smelt better. Now they would share what was potentially a carton of milk, but potentially not. The lady at the counter frowned when they asked for two straws.

  They were meeting Valter and Saga in Gorky Park. They’d been to the park several times since they’d come to Moscow, but they’d taken a different route each time, on Manjan’s request. He was adamant that they were still travelling, even though they’d been in Moscow now for weeks.

  On the way out of the shop Manjan saw a bright-blue payphone hanging, partially covered on the wall.

  ‘I’d best ring my...’ Manjan started, but he didn’t bother to finish his sentence because there was only ever one place he rang. Ladyjan nodded with a smile. She knew the reason he was ringing his parents so often and so did Valter and Saga.

  Hylad.

  He picked up the phone and Ladyjan showed him her crossed fingers. ‘You go on,’ he said, pointing in the direction of the park with a head nod, ‘the others will already be there.’

  ‘Aye,’ the receiver whispered in that Northern, Fishton accent that Jan would miss if it wasn’t for the regularity of his phone calls home. As had become tradition, Jan greeted his father and asked how his mother was. Jan’s father told Jan that they were both doing well but that they missed him, and Jan replied that he missed them too.

  ‘Jan, I’ve got something to tell you lad,’ his father said. ‘Guess who knocked the other day.’ Jan exhaled sharply and quickly before holding his breath in anticipation so that his chest felt collapsed. There was a silence on the line. ‘Jan, lad?’

  ‘Tell me,’ Jan said exhaling even further.

  Now, I know and you know who it was that had knocked on Jan’s father’s door. But put yourself in Jan’s position for a moment. Picture having not seen one of your closest friends for nearly two years – someone who taught you a whole language and to whom you had taught a whole different language in return, someone who had taken you abroad for no other reason than knowing that you wanted to go abroad, and someone you know is looking for you, un-contactable and in the wrong country. Jan knew the guilt that Hylad would have felt since they’d separated at the docks in Sweden, and Jan had felt that guilt in return.

  Now imagine hearing that the person, who you hadn’t seen for nearly two years, had come home and found out that you were OK. Imagine the guilt lifting, the relief setting in and the sheer happiness that Jan must have felt at that very moment.

  He shouted.

  ‘Weaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!’

  It wasn’t a word as such, he was too full of emotion to form an actual word, but what it lacked in sense it made up for in volume.

  * * *

  In the park, Valter and Ladyjan were sitting on a bench with Saga spread out on the grass in front of them. They were leaving for Nepal in two days and were taking it in turns to say what they were most looking forward to. It was refreshing for all three of them to talk in their native tongue when Manjan wasn’t there.

  Valter was looking forward to Kathmandu. He said that he thought the city might give them their first taste of what India would be like. He was also keen to spend some time in Nepal’s countryside and jungle area. Ladyjan confessed that she didn’t actually know anything about Nepal, but that she’d enjoyed Poland, liked what she’d seen of Ukraine and absolutely loved Russia. She told Valter and Saga that she was just keen to learn more about another country.

  Saga started to say that she’d heard about a large and beautiful lake in Nepal that she’d like to visit but that she really just wanted to get to India. Ladyjan interrupted.

  ‘That is Jan?’ she said, returning to English, and pointed at a small Manjan-shaped figure running full pelt at them from the park entrance. Saga sat up and they all watched as Manjan’s gangly legs sped his flailing body towards them as fast as they could. He started shouting something before he was in their earshot.

  ‘He’ll be there,’ was the first thing Ladyjan heard him say about half a minute later, ‘when I go home. He’ll be there.’

  ‘Hylad?’ Valter asked.

  ‘When I go home,’ Manjan continued, out of breath but nearly reaching the group, ‘he’ll be there.’

  Ladyjan stood up excitedly, and as Manjan reached the three of them, without thought, he and Ladyjan kissed.

  Valter and Saga fell silent. Saga held her hands together tightly. Valter nodded and raised his eyebrows. They’d both been waiting for something to happen between these two for some time – as, I’ll wager, have you.

  Manjan held Ladyjan’s shoulders and their lips parted. They looked at each other for a few seconds. Manjan was still out of breath but beaming and Ladyjan looked surprised and wide-eyed. Was it Manjan, or did her eyes have a hint of sadness to them?

  ‘When did you say you are going home?’ she asked.

  * * *

  At the airport Manjan considered ringing his parents. There was a bright-blue, partially covered payphone hanging on the wall between a fake plant and an advert for yoghurt. Manjan had ru
ng his parents nearly every time he’d seen a payphone but today he didn’t feel any need to.

  He could ring them and tell them that he was about to fly for the first time. He could tell them how nervous he was and how he hadn’t slept all night. He could let them know that, despite all this, he was still safe and well. But he didn’t. Hylad was home.

  Manjan looked closer at the yoghurt advert. A big cartoon goat was jumping from a carton of milk grinning manically. Manjan recognised the goat and realised that he hadn’t drank his half of the shared milk. Was it milk?

  ‘Saga, where did Jan go?’ Manjan asked. There was a yoghurt and milk-based joke to be shared.

  ‘She went to the toilet,’ Saga replied, looking at the big clock on the wall, ‘just after they started boarding. She said she’d meet us on the plane.’

  Manjan looked at the payphone again. Hylad was home and well. He should ring anyway, he knew he should, but he didn’t.

  ‘Shall we get on the plane?’ he said.

  * * *

  Manjan did not understand the air host when he explained to the passengers in Russian that they would shortly be taking off. He did not understand the air host when he said the same thing in Nepali. Manjan didn’t understand any of the safety procedures that the air host ran through. He just kept looking at the door waiting for Ladyjan. He did understand why the air host was shutting the door though, and he started to panic.

  The air host did not hear Manjan’s first attempt to call him due to the buzz of the other passengers. He didn’t hear Manjan’s second attempt to call him because the pilot had started the engine. By the time the air host had heard Manjan he was next to him and the plane had started moving.

  ‘Stop,’ Manjan ordered, manically pointing at the empty seat next to him.

  Calmly, and in perfect English, the air host told him that the plane couldn’t just stop. Then he started saying something about the terms of the ticket but Manjan had stopped listening.