“You brats get out there again,” he hissed. “And do things properly this time.”
They lost each other by the stalls at the edge of the fair. Eva dallied over some rabbits that were on show, and he went on alone. It was the only way he could help their mother.
He held out his leaflets with beseeching eyes, ignored by everyone. If only they would take some, perhaps she might not be beaten when they got home. Then she might not cry all through the night.
He scouted around for a kind face, for someone who might share their fear of God. He listened out for a voice as mild and gentle as Jesus preaching.
That was when he heard children laughing. Not the way he had heard before, passing a playground, or on a television seen in the window of the electrical shop. These children were laughing as though their vocal cords would snap, and no one could resist their appeal. They laughed as he had never laughed at home beneath his duvet, and the sound of it drew him on.
The voice inside him could whisper for all its might about anger and repentance. He was simply unable to walk past and ignore the sounds he heard.
A small crowd had gathered in front of a stall, grown-ups and children together. On a banner of white linen, a child had written GREAT VIDIO FILMS HALF PRIZE ONLY TODAY, and on a makeshift table of planks was the smallest television set he had ever seen.
The children were laughing at the flickering monochrome images running across the tiny screen, and he soon found himself laughing with them. Laughing until it hurt inside, right down in the pit of his belly and in the part of his soul that was only now allowed to flourish.
“No one compares to Chaplin,” one of the grown-ups said.
And everyone laughed at the little man as he boxed and danced his pirouettes on the screen. They howled when he twirled his cane and lifted his bowler hat, and when he pulled faces at the fat ladies and the men with blacking around their eyes. And he laughed, too, and the cramp in his belly and all that was delightful and unsuppressed and unexpected overwhelmed him, and no one slapped his neck or took the slightest notice of him because of it.
This experience would, in its own singular way, change his life, and that of a great many others besides.
His wife did not look back. In fact, she didn’t see much at all, her legs propelling her and the child forward along the pavement as though invisible forces determined her route and speed.
And when someone becomes removed from reality in this way, the slightest little thing will often be enough to trigger catastrophe.
A nut loosening from the wing of an airplane. A drop of water short-circuiting the relay of a respirator.
He saw the pigeon settle in the tree above his wife and son as they were about to cross the road, and he noted its excrement splattering into ghostly fingers on the pavement. He saw his son point to it and his wife look down. And at the very moment they stepped out into the road, a car turned the corner and seemed almost to target them.
He could have shouted out. He could have yelled or whistled to warn them. But he did nothing. It wasn’t the moment. Emotion didn’t kick in.
The brakes of the car squealed, the driver behind the windscreen yanked at the steering wheel, and the world stood still.
He saw the frightened faces of his child and his wife turn in slow motion. The vehicle skidded and careered to the side, leaving tire marks on the road behind it like charcoal on drawing paper. And then it straightened out, the rear end found purchase again, and it was over.
His wife remained transfixed in the gutter as the car hurtled past, and he himself stood as though paralyzed, arms hanging limply at his side. Feelings of tenderness struggled against an odd rush of excitement inside him. He recognized it from the first time he had killed a person. It was a feeling he did not welcome.
He allowed the air compressed inside his lungs to escape and felt a warmth spread through his body. And he remained standing there just a moment too long, because Benjamin caught sight of him as he turned his head and clutched at his mother. He had clearly been given a fright by her reaction. But the sight of his father put him at ease again: he waved his arms and chuckled.
And then she turned around and saw him, and the look of terror from seconds before became fixed.
Five minutes later, she was sitting in front of him in the living room, her head turned away. “You’re coming home now without a fight,” he had said. “Because if you don’t, you’ll never see our son again.”
And now her eyes were full of hatred and recalcitrance.
If he wanted to know where she had been going, he would have to force it out of her.
These were rare and joyful moments he and his sister spent together.
If he started in the right place in the bedroom, he could walk ten short paces before reaching the mirror. His feet splayed out, his head rocking from side to side, the cane twirling in his hand. Ten paces, and he was someone else in the world of the mirror. No longer the boy without a friend. No longer the son of the man the people of that small community held in such esteem. No longer the chosen one of the flock who was to carry the weight of the word of God and turn it like a thunderbolt upon the people. He was the little tramp who made everyone laugh, not least himself.
“I’m Chaplin, Charlie Chaplin,” he said, and wriggled his lip beneath the imaginary mustache, and Eva almost fell off their parents’ bed laughing. She had reacted in exactly the same way the other times he had put on his act, but this time would be the last.
After that, she never laughed again.
A second later, he felt the prod on his shoulder. The touch of an index finger was all it took for his breathing to cease and his mouth to turn dry. As he turned, his father’s fist was already on its way toward his abdomen. His eyes were wild with anger beneath bushy eyebrows. There was no sound but the sound of the blow and the ones that followed.
He felt a burning sensation in his colon as gastric acid welled in his throat. He staggered backward, then stood still and looked his father defiantly in the eye.
“So the name’s Chaplin, is it?” his father spat, glaring at him with the same look he employed on Good Friday when recounting the weary path of the Lord Jesus on his way to Calvary. All the grief and suffering of the world lay upon his willing shoulders. Of that there was no doubt, not even for a child.
And then he struck again. This time a lunging haymaker of a punch, for otherwise he would not have been able to reach, and no defiant child would ever have the pleasure of forcing him to step forward so that he might deliver his punishment.
“Who put such ungodliness into your head?”
He looked down at his father’s feet. From now on, he would answer questions only when it suited him. His father could beat him as often as he wished, but he would not answer.
“Answer me, or I shall be forced to punish you!”
He was dragged by the ear back into his own room and hurled onto the bed. “You stay here until we come for you, do you understand?”
This question, too, he ignored. His father stood for a moment with a look of puzzlement in his eyes, his lips parted as though this child’s defiance marked Judgment Day itself and the coming of the all-consuming Flood. And then he composed himself.
“Gather your things together and put them outside,” he commanded.
At first he didn’t grasp what his father meant, though his intention would soon become plain.
“Leave your clothes, your shoes, and your bedding. Put everything else outside.”
He removed the child from his wife’s gaze and left her sitting alone with the slats of pale light the Venetian blinds laid across her face.