I’m rolling up the sleeve of my Italian suit, it’s an old suit, but it’s my best jacket. I don’t have a lot of clothes, I wear what people give me, what I find in the places I end up in, and what I steal.
I’m crying inside too, you know, but what can I do but stick my hand down the pan, into the pissy water, that’s right, oh dark, dark, dark, and fish around until my fingers sink into the turd, get a muddy grip and yank it from the water. For a moment it seems to come alive, wriggling like a fish.
My instinct is to calm it down, and I look around the bathroom for a place to bash it, but not if it’s going to splatter everywhere, I wouldn’t want them imagining I’m on some sort of dirty protest.
By now they must have started eating. And what am I doing but standing here with a giant turd in my fist? Not only that, my fingers seem to adhere to the turd; bits of my flesh are pulled away and my hand is turning brown. I must have eaten something unusual, because my nails and the palms are turning the colour of gravy.
My love’s radiant eyes, her loving softness. But in all ways she is a demanding girl. She insists on trying other drugs, and in the afternoons we play like children, dressing up and inventing characters, until my compass no longer points to reality. I am her assistant as she tests the limits of the world. How far out can she go and still be home in time for tea? I have to try and keep up, for she is my comfort. With her I am living my life again, but too quickly and all at once.
And in the end, to get clear, to live her life, she will leave me; or, to give her a chance, I must leave her. I dream, though, of marriage and of putting the children to bed. But I am told it is already too late for all that. How soon things become too late, and before one has acclimatised!
I glance at the turd and notice little teeth in its velvet head, and a little mouth opening. It’s smiling at me, oh no, it’s smiling and what’s that, it’s winking, yes, the piece of shit is winking up at me, and what’s that at the other end, a sort of tail, it’s moving, yes, it’s moving, and oh Jesus, it’s trying to say something, to speak, no, no, I think it wants to sing. Even though it is somewhere stated that truth may be found anywhere, and the universe of dirt may send strange messengers to speak to us, the last thing I want, right now in my life, is a singing turd.
I want to smash the turd back down into the water and hold it under and run out of there, but the mother — when the mother comes in and I’m scoffing the trout and she’s taking down her drawers I’m gonna worry that the turd lurking around the bend’s gonna flip up like a piranha and attach itself to her cunt, maybe after singing a sarcastic ditty, and she’s going to have an impression of me that I don’t want.
But I won’t dwell on that, I’m going to think constructively where possible even though its bright little eyes are glinting and the mouth is moving and it has developed scales under which ooze — don’t think about it. And what’s that, little wings …
I grab the toilet roll and rip off about a mile of paper and start wrapping it around the turd, around and around, so those eyes are never gonna look at me again, and smile in that way. But even in its paper shroud it’s warm and getting warmer, warm as life, and practically throbbing and giving off odours. I look desperately around the room for somewhere to stuff it, a pipe or behind a book, but it’s gonna reek, I know that, and if it’s gonna start moving, it could end up anywhere in the house.
There’s a knocking on the door. A voice too — my love. I’m about to reply ‘Oh love, love’ when I hear other, less affectionate raised voices. An argument is taking place. Someone is turning the handle; another person is kicking at the door. Almost on me, they’re trying to smash it in!
I will chuck it out of the window! I rest the turd on the sill and drag up the casement with both hands. But suddenly I am halted by the sky. As a boy I’d lie on my back watching clouds; as a teenager I swore that in a less hectic future I would contemplate the sky until its beauty passed into my soul, like the soothing pictures I’ve wanted to study, bathing in the colours and textures of paint, the cities I’ve wanted to walk, loafing, the aimless conversations I’ve wanted to have — one day, a constructive aimlessness.
Now the wind is in my face, lifting me, and I am about to fall. But I hang on and instead throw the turd, like a warm pigeon, out out into the air, turd-bird awayaway.
I wash my hands in the sink, flush the toilet once more, and turn back to life. On, on, one goes, despite everything, not knowing why or how.
Nightlight
‘There must always be two to a kiss.’
She comes to him late on Wednesdays, only for sex, the cab waiting outside. Four months ago someone recommended her to him for a job but he has no work she can do. He doesn’t even pay himself now. They talk of nothing much, and there are silences in which they can only look at one another. But neither wants to withdraw and something must be moving between them, for they stand up together and lie down beside the table, without speaking.
Same time next week she is at the door. They undress immediately. She leaves, not having slept, but he has felt her dozing before she determinedly shakes herself awake. She collects herself quickly without apology, and goes without looking back. He has no idea where she lives or where she is from.
Now she doesn’t come into the house, but goes straight down into the basement he can’t afford to furnish, where he has thrown blankets and duvets on the carpet. They neither drink nor play music and can barely see one another. It’s a mime show in this room where everything but clarity, it seems, is permitted.
At work his debts increase. What he has left could be taken away, and no one but him knows it. He is losing his hold and does it matter? Why should it, except that it is probably terminal; if one day he feels differently, there’ll be no way back.
For most of his life, particularly at school, he’s been successful, or en route to somewhere called Success. Like most people he has been afraid of being found out, but unlike most he probably has been. He has a small flat, an old car and a shabby feeling. These are minor losses. He misses steady quotidian progress, the sense that his well-being, if not happiness, is increasing, and that each day leads to a recognisable future. He has never anticipated this extent of random desolation.
Three days a week he picks up his kids from school, feeds them, and returns them to the house into which he put most of his money, and which his wife now forbids him to enter. Fridays he has dinner with his only male friend. After, they go to a black bar where he likes the music. The men, mostly in their thirties, and whose lives are a mystery to him, seem to sit night after night without visible discontent, looking at women and at one another. He envies this, and wonders if their lives are without anxiety, whether they have attained a stoic resignation, or if it is a profound uselessness they are stewing in.
On this woman’s day he bathes for an hour. He can’t recall her name, and she never says his. She calls him, when necessary, ‘man’. Soon she will arrive. He lies there thinking how lucky he is to have one arrangement which costs nothing.
Five years ago he left the wife he didn’t know why he married for another woman, who then left him without explanation. There have been others since. But when they come close he can only move backwards, without comprehending why.
His wife won’t speak. If she picks up the phone and hears his voice, she calls for the kids, those intermediaries growing up between immovable hatreds. A successful woman, last year she found she could not leave her bed at all. She will have no help and the children have to minister to her. They are inclined to believe that he has caused this. He begins to think he can make women insane, even as he understands that this flatters him.