Keys of Babylon (10 page)

That was the time I'd eaten the amanita, and I was quiet. The strangeness had become a silence. So I'd stroke the goddess' white thigh and think about nothing and not even brush the pine needles off my arse before I clocked on.

As I'm clocking on now. I like Justin and I think he likes me. Not that I care. But you can always tell when a man likes you. Or when he doesn't. There's a humour, an almost undetectable regard. Tolerance, I suppose, and an interest. That's it. Yes, when one man likes another man he finds the time to be interested in him. A little curious. He's one degree warmer.

Back of the van is okay to sit in because I cleaned it last night. Swept out the cement dust and the Supercrete, the wet building sand and the sharp sand, the brick dust and the chippings, the broken plastic guttering, the empty tins and the tin lids. Collected the screws and the rawlplugs and saved them in a pocket of my jeans, saved any nail bigger than one inch, any bracket or hasp, any quillet because they're hard to get. Anything useful. Tub of seal and bond with a scrape left. A stainless-steel hammer fixer. That might come in. One day. There was also a new blade slipped from its dimpled Stanley haft. It went in my other pocket.

That's why I like Justin. He's small time but he's meticulous. He takes care of his van, or, rather, I've been doing it of late, checking the oil and water, adding a drop of brake fluid because he likes it just past the line. Safe side. Sometimes his kids travel in the van. Sometimes his wife.

First thing I did when I arrived here was ask Justin for work. He was parked outside the Spar, smoking, window down in the heat. Watching the girls go past in their little dresses, showing their tattoos.

Hey boss, I said, putting my pack down. Any work, boss?

Now
boss
is an interesting word. I found that out a long time ago. A local word but used everywhere. Kind of national patois. Multifarious meanings to you, to me. A word to be careful of, boss.

Justin's a thin man. Wiry as a weasel. He blew out Benson smoke and looked at me.

What can you do?

Point me at it, I said. And I'll show you.

That was a month ago. Money was never even discussed. Cash only of course. Divvied up on a Friday evening. But I show willing. And I don't complain. That's why Justin likes me.

See you at nine tomorrow in the car park behind here, he had said. Then a girl walked past with a butterfly on her shoulder and whispered something and Justin laughed and that was it. Settled.

Now Justin's driving. Furiously, like he smokes. Doesn't drink but the Bensons make up for it. Cled, the plasterer is in the front seat. Don't know why he's come because it's just hard labour today. And Si's in the back with me. Filthy Si, in broken Army and Navy steelies, their webbing ripped out, his jeans caked white with cement dust, his tee shirt paint-stained. He'll peel it off soon enough to show his scrawny back with its American bald eagle tattoo. Si's plugged into his iPod and Si doesn't speak. Si doesn't even look at me. So I look at him. His scalp is shaved up to the top of his skull. All that's left of his hair is a circle, gelled and dyed blue. He looks like a thistle.

How's the family, Nerry? shouts Justin, changing up.

That's a joke. Not malicious.

You might be seeing them soon, he laughs. The paper says you're all going back since the pound's dodgy. Going back home with your ill-gotten gains.

Yesterday I took four rolled-up copies of
The Sun
from the front windscreen, five silver-grey Benson empties and more crisp packets and Twix wrappers than I could count. An empty two litre plastic flagon of Tesco cola was wedged under Cled's seat, and five tropical-flavour Sprite cans rolling about. With one Lipton ice tea. God knows who was drinking that. Not Si.

Since last week Si and I have a bit of a problem. It won't be resolved. We were in Wickes, the builders' merchants, with a list of supplies we had to pick up. Si had the paper because he didn't believe I could read Justin's scrawled English. So he was leading, I was pulling the trolley, long and awkward to manoeuvre. That's the word I used that got Si going.
Manoeuvre
.

Si didn't like that word. Either I pushed the trolley or I pulled the trolley. What I didn't do, what I couldn't do, was manoeuvre the trolley. Because manoeuvre was a bad word. It offended protocol, and like I've said, I pay attention to life's protocols.
When you're an illegal, protocols are life and death. My father was a man of protocols. Okay, I'm not illegal now. But I'm an immigrant. And even if I go home tomorrow, I'll be an immigrant there.

When I stood in front of Justin that first morning, I put my pack on the pavement. There was a dictionary in that pack, a dog-eared Concise OED. I love that book. In a Camden squat, a fire-ruined, three-storey Victorian townhouse in Cardiff, under the bridge in Bridgend, I've sat and read that book. Yes I love that book. I've seen
manoeuvre
in it and I've even heard people say it. I knew that word in college. But I made a mistake in Wickes. I should have pulled the bastard thing. Pushed the bastard thing.

It was a scorching day, lunchtime.There was a petrol haze across the roundabout to the McDonald's drive-thru. We went down the aisles picking up some Marble Tex. Some Powerkote. Then we were down where the timber was, that new wood still smelling sweet despite the plastic wrapping on everything. We wanted some tongue and groove.

What's wrong with shiplap, I said, thinking of the job.

Si looked at me then. The last time he's ever going to look at me.

Justin wants tongue, he hissed. It's on the fucking list. He's written it here.

Okay, I said.

Si kept looking. What's that rattling all the time? he asked.

Rattling?

Fucking rattling. In your pocket.

He was still looking at me. I was looking at the timber. Clean, Swedish. Impossible to think it had been a tree. I thought of the birches around Drusk, of Drusk and the camp lost in the birches, the fungus on the birchtrees like rain-swollen bibles, the birchsap wine one of the gang passed round. Cloudy as piss. I thought of the goddess, clumsy, ecstatic. Then I pulled the shells out of my pocket.

What the fuck are those? asked Si.

Mussel shells, I said.

Shells?

Off the beach, I said. I picked them up the other day. I used to collect freshwater mussels when I was a kid. Looking for pearls.

Si was still sizing me up. He had his shirt off, and every step through the depot I'd been staring at the eagle on his back, the bald eagle in front of the stars and stripes. A tattoo that must have taken weeks.

Jesus, said Si. Your name is Nerys and you pick up shells. Jesus Christ.

That's when I turned to him. I saw the scorn in his eye. He was a skinny kid, twenty say. There was nobody around.We had walked all the way down that aisle on our own. I put my left hand in his crotch and lifted. The tuft on his belly was against my wrist. I had the newly-ground bolster in my right hand and I put it under his chin.

Listen, I said. I'm more than twice your age. But I was in the army, son. I was in the Russian Army. They sent me to Chechnya. Ever heard of that place? You know what happened there? Is still happening?

Si was white. Stiff as a lath.

If it's on the list we'll buy the tongue, I said. We'll get it all. Boss.

Then I stroked the hairs on his belly. Like I'd stroke a dog. Then I kissed him. Once on the cheek. Then I let him go.

That's when Si stepped away. When he looked away. And he's never looked at me since. We picked up the tongue and groove. Then ten bags of builders' sand. A chuck for the Black and Decker. Some sandpaper for chamfering. There was still no one around.

I pulled the trolley behind me and we went out wobbling through the yellow automatic doors to the van. Justin was smoking and reading the paper.

Okay? he asked, not looking up.

Si gave him the change. But he didn't speak.

Okay, I said. And got in the back.

Now we drive three hundred yards and pile out. All day I sand a floor in a house on the seafront. Its name is ‘Hafan' and it used to be an old people's home. Soon it will be apartments. Justin's been sub-contracted to do a few things. So today I wear a mask and push an industrial sander over varnish that's thicker than treacle. Every ten minutes I stop and go to the window and take off the mask and suck the air. The sky's so blue it hurts to look at it. Below are the young mothers with their buggies, men in panamas and white flat caps, kids in long shorts.

The sander is worse than the Wickes trolley. I remember I drove an armoured car once. We went across a field of lupins. It was like a blue mist. A farmer shouted after us. There was a fox we scared out of a ditch. Our sergeant said it was a wolf but I knew all the wolves were dead. We were just driving around like teenagers with their dad's car. Nothing much to do.

This sander must be clumsier than a tank but by 6 p.m. I've finished a big room, apart from under the walls and around the washbasin. I'll have to do that tomorrow. The floor is pale and stained, a bit cut up, I'd have to say. But no one could have done this better.

There's a mirror in the corridor. That word ‘Hafan' is carved into the frame. I've seen it in every room. When I look at myself, even I'm surprised. I'm black as a coalminer from some shithole in Donetz. In the corner are nineteen sacks of varnish dust and all the floorboard shavings the machine's rubbed up. All the filth of one hundred years. Paint and varnish and old people's piss. Si's doing the wallpaper in another room. I saw him at break, down on the esp with his iPod in. Cled's mooching about, and hours ago Justin was eating an ice cream, talking to the girls. Haven't seen him since. People say it's been nearly one hundred today, which might be a record. For here.

I wash the thick off in the sink then undress and beat my jeans, my pants, my shirt against a wall. I take off my shoes and empty the dust and I comb my hair until the needles are clogged with the crap and I wash the comb and repeat.

Up the street near the charity shops is a men's toilet. This old bloke's in charge and it's won prizes for cleanliness. They're on stickers on the door.
Loo of the Year
. Every year bar one for the last ten years. What happened that year? I wonder. All the fixtures are brass, the enamel a rosy white.

I speak to the attendant, who's usually looking for a compliment, and I have a shower. First freezing cold. Then as hot as I can stand. Then I get it just right and the water runs over me and I'm in my element. A kid, seventeen, jumping off the bridge at Uzupis, aiming for the only pool that's deep enough. A boy in his knickers, clutching his knees, smashing into a roof of green glass.

In Uzupis, there was always someone's washing in the trees or on the bridge, a girl packing up her honey stall. That was Uzupis before it changed. That's where I learned what I know about building. How to keep a wall from falling. How to point.

You should see it now. I can imagine what it's like. Because the Russians have come back, the Germans have come back. They bought it up and cleaned it up and tidied it up. Now only rich people live there. Second homes. The gypsies have gone, the black and red puppets they used to hang in the street have gone. Or, maybe someone's selling them to tourists now. Maybe there are guided walks to show you where the anarchists lived.

I'm staying at a rooming house in Lifeboat Street. It's an attic, stifling this month, even with the Velux window open. And it's been open all month. I lie on the bed naked and look at the sky. There are swifts up there, one, two, twenty swifts. All of them screaming. I get up and peer out. The swifts live in the eaves down this street. There are nests under the slates and at night I hear the young scratching. Or maybe it's mice. People say the adult swifts never sleep but I don't believe it. How can that be? Now there they are. One almost seems in reach. Black stars like the stars on a thrush's blue egg. I found a thrush's nest in Drusk once and looked at the clutch. When I touched them the eggs were cold. There was dew on the shells.

I put the same jeans on but another tee shirt I bought at the car boot sale. Twenty pence it cost me. A Polish guy runs the stall, there are lots of Poles up there, on the old airfield. He was friendly. I looked at his tattoos. Some kind of Nazi insignia.

Oh yeah, I thought, as I gave him the coin. Everyone's coming in. Big orange cotton tee, with the words
Una Cerveza Por Favor Senor
, on the front. It's wrinkled at the neck but the best I've got.

Now, food. Sometimes I save up hunger. Save it till I can hardly stand. Tonight, I'm ravenous. I buy double chips and one of those oggy pasties and mushy peas in a tub. Lots of ketchup. Two tubes of mayonnaise.

Hey, this is the life. I sit on the sea wall and as I'm eating I look out and there's nothing there, not a ship, not a wind surfer. Only the flat blue it's been all month. But the sky is whiter now. Like a hotplate, and the far coast a line in the heat haze.

When I was in the army, hunger was permanent. Like the sergeant it was always hanging around. Powdered egg and powdered potatoes. Black half moons of rye bread with no gravy to soak them in. Maybe the oil from a sardine tin. Sometimes we'd fry mushrooms in lard and wipe the skillet clean. Round and round with the black bread. So I became used to hunger.