“Pornographia?”
“Busty Biker Chicks. Unbelievable.”
“I think for Emanuel pornographia is not good.”
“Yeah,” Toby McKenzie nods. “He’s a bit of an innocent, isn’t he?”
Andriy is sitting with Toby McKenzie on the red sofa downstairs in the TV room. Everyone else in the house is asleep. Toby is drinking beer from a can. He offers one to Andriy. Andriy shakes his head. He needs to keep his head clear. Then he thinks maybe it’s better to be a bit drunk in this situation. He accepts the beer and takes several gulps.
“Toby, this my friend Emanuel, I am worry for him after I go.”
“Don’t worry, mate, I’ll look after him.” His glibness is not reassuring.
“Like you say, he is innocent. Maybe better is for him to stay like this.”
Toby McKenzie gives him a sideways look. “You want him to stay innocent? What you giving him condoms for?”
Andriy wants to say something deeply intelligent about how Emanuel must take the best of what the West has to offer while also keeping hold of the best from his own culture. But the thought is too complex for his limited English. Maybe the beer wasn’t such a good idea.
“He is African,” is all he can mumble.
“It’s up to him, innit?” Toby scratches the roots of his long plaited hair, examining his nails for evidence of dandruff. “He’s got to have the choice. Everyone’s got to make their own choice. That’s freedom.”
“Sometimes we have freedom but we make bad choice. Look at my country Ukraine.”
Toby McKenzie shrugs. “You make the wrong choice, you got to live with it. Look at my Pa. Funny thing is, he thinks it’s me that’s making the wrong choice. He thinks it’s a choice between working for the system or being a dosser. But it’s not.” He crunches the empty beer can in his hand. “It’s just a choice between whisky and narbis.”
This boy is not stupid. But why is he in such a mess?
“OK, Toby, maybe you right. With condom he has choice.”
“At least if he makes the wrong choice it won’t kill him. Not like that bloody stuff my Pa drinks.”
“But how will we make this condom demonstration?”
“Maybe you’ll have to demonstrate,” says Toby.
Hm. This could be embarrassing. Andriy takes another gulp of beer. On the television screen in front of them a troupe of almost-naked female dancers are tossing their hair and thrusting their hips forward rhythmically. Despite their frenzied activity they are having zero impact on his manly parts. Will they be arousing for Emanuel? Unlikely.
Toby McKenzie takes the remote control and starts flicking through a few channels. There is politics, home improvement, a cookery programme. Suddenly he stops. “That’s it. Vegetables!”
Andriy struggles to picture some arousing scene with onions and cabbages. Really, these Angliski are quite original.
“My Ma’s got plenty of them. What size is he? Carrot? Banana? Celery? Cucumber?”
Andriy tries to recall that lean black-skinned figure towelling himself dry with a white towel.
“Not cucumber. No. Carrot, no. Maybe we try medium-size banana.”
Dear sister,
I have been thinking much about those long ago days before the convent and the orphanage and the mission house at Zomba when we lived with our mother and father and sisters in our mud walled cottage on the banks of the Shire River of the long days of my nakedness and river fishing and gathering of mangoes. In those days I had a different understanding of the world.
But when aged twelve I was beloned and taken into the orphanage by the good nuns there I discovered the Knowledge of Good and Evil. For Sister Theodosia said that God is Love and the Maker of all Good things but Sister Benedicta said that all the Evil that befalls us is a punishment for our sins such as the sickness that took away our parents. And the everlasting punishments that would happen after death she said were consideringly worse than death itself with roasting fires and boiling oils and lumps of scorched flesh torn off with pincers.
Then I fell to imagining the gruefull torments our dear ones would be suffering in hell and often I cried in the night longing for your comfort dear sister but you were away in Blantyre. Then Sister Benedicta chastised me with her staff but Sister Theodosia taught me a prayer to sing to Mary mother of Jesus who would enter seed on our behalf Ora pro nobis peccatoribus. This is a song of such outstanding beauty that singing it would set our loved ones’ souls at rest even the peccatoribus and also my own soul.
The fear of these torments kept me away from any canal knowledge despite my sinful curiosity. But tonight Andree and Toby Makenzi showed me how I may be protected against orgasms that cause the deadly sickness by clothing my upstanding manhood in a condom and in this way I may enjoy canal knowledge without paying the mortal price. Then I recalled that Father Augustine had said the condom is an Abomination in the Eye of the Lord and although my body would be saved my soul would frizzle in hell. And I said if I am going to frizzle for canal knowledge should I first taste the sweet without the wrapper?
But these good mzungus showed me the use of the Abomination by means of a Banana in such a cunning way that the Banana would frizzle and not my own Immortal Soul. They took the Banana and clothed it in the Abomination and Andree said now Emanuel when you are coming together with woman you put it not upon Banana but upon your own manly part. This caused me to smile then Andree unclothed the Banana and ate it being Ukrainian and much beloved of Bananas. So by using a Banana instead of my own upstanding manhood it would frizzle up in the Fiery Pit and I would be spared.
For the life of the soul endures beyond the life of the body which has only a brief flowering then is cast like grass into the oven said Father Augustine who is a kind man with a big belly and crooked teeth and very short-sighted. Then he put his arm round me and said don’t worry boy your parents were not bad people but they suffered from the frailty of our fallen human condition. And seeing the questioning look still on my face he sighed and said dear boy there are some mysteries in the ways of the Lord which we are not given to understand but some among us believe there is no evil without a purpose and we believe He only permits evil because it is a test for our own Goodness.
But still I have been rubbing some questions over and over in my head until they begin to smoke and burn like fire sticks and I pray feveredly for His guidance as I contemplate the Decision I must make. For if I choose the earthly delights of canal knowledge then I will never know the heavenly Love nor sing in the Choir of Angels.
Bendery
It had rained in the night. I could tell, because the air smelt different. I woke up early in my blue-and-white attic room, full of excitement and anticipation, because at last I was going to see London, the city of my dreams, and especially because I was going to see it with him.
It was strange, at first, being just the two of us in the Land Rover, him sitting at the wheel and me sitting in the passenger seat with the dog at my feet. What were we going to say to each other? I wanted to talk to him. London is a very beautiful city. English men wear bowler hats. No, not that stupid stuff. I wanted to talk about us, him and me. Tell me who you are, Andriy Palenko. Do you love me? Are you the one? But you can’t say that. So we just drove in silence, crawling in the heavy traffic.
According to the map Maria had given me, we were on the South Circular Road. He had that fixed look on his face, concentrating on his driving. And I know this sounds strange, but although he was a Donbas miner I noticed for the first time that in profile he had a slight look of Mr Brown about him. Then he said, still with that look on his face, as though he was talking to himself, “I wonder what happened to all the carrots.”