2. Attention and patience.
3. Equality and reciprocity.
‘What do you think?’ she asked me.
‘Bullshit.’
I already knew what she wanted. She smiled broadly.
‘Then why do you think you did it?’
‘Diversion. I’d say diversion.’
‘What did you want diversion from?’
She nodded, her eyes leading me on. I was desperate to speak. I began telling her the truth, one sentence, two sentences, but then in burst a middle-aged man (like a lion trespassing into our territory, she was my lioness). He was clutching a piece of paper which she read, reclined in her seat and exchanged meaningful looks with him as he left.
That was it, it was over, whatever there had been between us. I shut my mouth.
‘Diversion from what?’ she asked with a heavy heart, having seemingly forgotten my earlier explanation.
‘Nothing,’ I said.
Then I said, ‘For a moment, you reminded me of my cousin.’
She liked this and leaned forward again. It was the most hypocritical thing I’d ever witnessed. To think I’d thought her worth trusting, just like my cousin. Now I could see that supposed sincerity for what it was, a superficial technique. She was trying to cheat an answer out of me. Everything was leading to this; even her dress and make-up were carefully chosen to this end. As soon as I’d given her what she wanted, she would leave, high- fiving her colleagues on a job well done.
‘Please continue with what you were saying,’ she said.
‘I’ve got nothing to say,’ I said.
The atmosphere became frosty and she wasn’t expecting it. In one last-ditch attempt, she started an onslaught of ridiculous questions.
‘What does it feel like to be sent away from home?’
‘It’s not what you’re thinking, I wasn’t constantly burning with anger.’
This was possibly my last offer of kindness, but she didn’t take it. Instead she rushed to the next question.
‘What was it that stopped you from putting the fire out?’
‘Putting the fire out?’
‘I mean, the flames of your rage, your desire to kill?’
‘It was impossible.’
‘How come?’
‘Because the ground beneath me was burning.’
‘So you just let the flames grow?’
‘I didn’t let them grow, they were going to grow without me.’
We carried on like this, not fully understanding each other, until she decided she had had enough. She turned her back on me and spoke to the camera. She read the words beautifully:
Resplendent flowering youth, joy and wild abandon
suddenly, this was the outcome
My heart, what pain?
Child, I don’t understand
Why would you do such a thing?
I hear mother’s blood-filled tears
Child, I lament
I cannot, will never comprehend
why you would do such a thing.
I wanted to cry. If I’d known someone was going to write such a shit poem, I wouldn’t have killed her.
In Prison
No one came to visit after that. I was handcuffed and tied by my feet, like a bear in captivity. After hours of sitting for too long, I began to feel like I’d become stuck to the cold, damp floor, that I had become part of the building. I’d heard people say that prisoners could spend a whole afternoon playing with one ant and eventually were able to distinguish between males and females. But there were no insects here, so I had my hands on my crotch most of the time. In, out. My hands were sticky from semen and smelt like a fish market. I took to wiping them on the soles of my feet until they were black with grime. I didn’t do it for pleasure, I was just bored senseless.
I asked the guard for a Rubik’s cube, but was refused. I said it wasn’t exactly a lot to ask.
‘What would be the point of locking you up if I were to give you a Rubik’s cube?’
He pulled the small metal window shut and I start thumping at it.
‘What’s a Rubik’s cube got to do with my incarceration?’
He ignored me. I asked him again when he came with food.
‘You want to play with the Rubik’s cube. If I gave you one, I would be undermining any sense of punishment.’ He was kind of right.
I started obsessing over my arrest; the blue skies of freedom outside my window didn’t occupy my thoughts much. I could have pushed over the police officer and run. I could have used stones or a kitchen knife to keep passers-by away. They would probably have shot me. Instead, I sat alone in my cell facing the immeasurable void that was time itself. Life’s petty problems (frustrated commutes, tedious work, inconsequential arguments, sexual escapades) were all designed to create a screen between the flesh and time’s inevitable stranglehold. But I was stuck in my cell, with nothing to do, or at least nothing that could keep me occupied for more than a few minutes, and time’s infinite embrace kept leaning towards me. Herculean, invincible, omniscient, flesh without feeling, it listened not to your entreaties, cared not for your sorrows, it was the dirt always crushed, the waves always crashing, it forced itself into every space, drowned you, dismembered you, it pressed on top of you so that its weight felt solid, it dug into you like a quick, relentless bamboo arrow piercing through your nails. There was no resisting it. It was a slow demise. My father’s image came to me and hot tears gathered in my eyes.
In the days before my father’s death, he stayed in a hospital room much like my cell – cramped, dark and moist, the floor like rat skin giving off the stench of nothingness. At one point, having been in a coma for a while, he quietly woke and took my hand.
‘I keep seeing a young man in a white robe sitting over there by the wall. I think I know him, but at the same time I don’t. He is eating a simple apple. Or maybe he is simply eating an apple. Can you hear the chewing? He sits with his back pressed against the wall, his eyes shut, concentrating on the piece of fruit. He will never finish. He is waiting for the right moment to stand up. He will throw the pips on the floor, step on them. He is waiting, but you don’t know what for.
‘He is the angel of death,’ he continued. ‘He has come to tell you that death is not a flash or an exclamation mark. It doesn’t come suddenly, in a violent moment. It is a process.Your organs are waiting to malfunction, one by one, like a water bottle cooling. It’s not about waiting for that one painful moment. Child, what I really want is for someone to lie down beside me and die with me. But that rarely happens in life. I see only you healthy people, growing. You frown, you cry, but you still have energy in your bones.Your bodies are like buds after the spring rains. I was exhausted long ago. You come only to reinforce this truth.You’ve locked me in this cell, but you are outside running like children in a playground.Your laughter is like a metal weight pressing on me, pinning me down. I feel ashamed of you. There is such a distance between us. Either fuck off, or get a gun and shoot me.’
My father sighed, his dreadful attempt at a poetic monologue over, and finally brushed me away in disgust. I left, thinking of the injustice of it all. You’re born, you get old, you get sick, you die. Oh, humanity! It’s nothing but a fucking disgrace. All of it. But as soon as my mother walked in, my father rolled into her arms and cried. Ma didn’t say anything to comfort him.
I started trying to keep up with life outside my cell. I would scrape my finger along the dusty floor and mark the days on the wall. But I soon gave up. I was going to die whatever, so what was the point? Time turned into a primal chaos, days could pass in what felt like only one, or they went on for ever (like broken shards of glass, impossible to count). Sometimes I wanted to keep the night from coming and other days I longed for it to come quickly, even when it might already have been dark outside. My dreams became more vivid. Once I pictured myself in bed. I went to get up, to visit someone, but I was paralysed. This was the only person in the whole world whom I cared about and who felt the same way about me. There were no feelings of resentment between us. I couldn’t see his face, he had no name. I went through everyone I had ever met, but there was no such person. But when he brushed against the clouds, the branches and the occasional lightning when he flew up into the sky, at that moment I felt I knew him better than I would ever know another human being. He shook his scales and from them drops of water rained.