Tamba tries some flattery. ‘You know, Malachi, Olivia was headhunted by Greyfield Nuclear when she was still in college. She got top marks, didn’t you, Olivia?’
Olivia swings her legs off the bench and hurries out with a meatball still in her mouth.
‘Shit.’ Tamba hits his head. ‘It was the bloody job that did it.’
Janeé nods her big head sagely.
Tactless, I believe, is the right word for it.
Meirong prods her fork towards the doorway. ‘Patch it up, please.’
Tamba sighs. He leaves a pile of spaghetti, trails out to go and say sorry to his friend.
Meirong smears her meatball in the sauce. ‘You people really have to toughen up on this rig.’ She races it around the track. ‘I’ve had to look out for myself all my life. I was the second born. You know what that means.’
Janeé and I both stare at her blankly.
‘In those days the one-child policy was very strict.’ When the meatball has reached a good speed she tosses it between her lips. ‘I grew up in an orphanage.’
Ah, I see. I have read about that policy. Poor Meirong was probably well schooled in politics and Chinese etiquette, but every day she waited for her parents to pay the fine and pitch up at the gate.
Poor, poor child. I study her surreptitiously. Where is that little kid?
Meirong catches the pity stealing over me. She gets to her feet, picks up a mountain of spaghetti from the tray. ‘I’ve got to get this to Romano.’ She turns to me, punishes me for guessing right. ‘You’ve got seven minutes left, Malachi. Don’t dally.’
I flick a piece of spaghetti hanging its head off my plate. I will neither dilly nor dally. I hesitate for a second, try a polite goodbye. I wave at Janeé, but I don’t get it right.
I leave the scene of the Nollywood shoot-out.
My bravado dissipates with every step I take down the passage. At the door to the hall my heart kicks against my ribcage, tries to break free. I take a deep breath, raise the red lanyard. Open up.
* * *
I take up where I left off, cage number twenty-one, tune my ears to the roiling, rumbling sea. Very soon my ankles, my backbone protest against the relentless, repetitive bowing and straightening. Even my fingers hurt from sinking the metal semi-circle beneath each nail, and press, release, press, release. A human cutting-cleaning machine.
I groom four more prisoners, reach a man who is quoting from the Qur’an, I think.
‘Al-Araf, verse number twenty-seven says we have made the evil ones friends to those without faith . . .’ He taps his head. ‘I had every verse here. But I am losing it.’ The hands he offers me are misshapen, the flesh melted like wax. He sees me staring. ‘Must I tell you what happened?’
It’s the first time any of them have asked my permission. I can’t help but listen.
‘I was burning twelve hundred Bibles in a fire. I was making a . . .’ he waves, but the English word eludes him. ‘I am from Morocco, in the North. There we are Muslims.’
A glimmer of orange tongues leaps in his black eyes.
‘This Catholic priest tried to stop me, but his robe caught the flames. I tried to roll him on the ground but he was big, he was . . .’ His fiery eyes search the air for the English word. ‘An accident, Malachi.’
I stare at the death branded into his skin. A dead priest, a man of the burning cloth.
He is lying, like the others. Of course he killed in cold blood. The only ones who have told the truth are the mermaid with the knife notches and the giant who killed his loved ones while they were making love. As I pull the brace away, the Moroccan’s eyes are pools of sorrow. The ash of twelve hundred Bibles has doused the last sparks.
As I start on the next prisoner, I feel dark eyes driving into my crown. High above me, Meirong is standing in Tamba’s glass kiosk, her pale arms folded like a communist boss. I compose myself to be precisely what she ordered. A mute man with no moods, no soft spots, as resilient as the little girl who grew up in an orphanage.
I clip the nails of a bald man of about fifty. He has a German accent. ‘I was driving too fast, it was very misty . . .’
I squeeze my eyes shut, press on the clipper. Please.
My shelter comes from Bayira, singer of Kapwa songs. ‘Mokaa, Mokaa . . .’
Don’t cry, don’t cry . . .
I deflect Meirong’s sharp gaze with my springy hair, suck in my spit to hear Bayira more clearly. ‘Mokaa ne komoka na danga . . .’
Don’t cry, and let clouds rain in your mouth.
* * *
Bayira’s chili stew was a rite of passage among the boys in our factory village. If you could eat a whole bowl you were ready to kiss a girl on the lips.
‘Kafi fopaka nadyi . . .’
Bayira’s voice vibrates within my eardrums, trembles in my chest. There is a cry in his voice, a grieving loss that says he would die right now for the love he sings of.
Bayira had fat, soft lips but when he sang they became acrobatic, fitted around the Kapwa vowels, retreated from his teeth when the consonants came.
* * *
Meirong is still at the glass, watching for weakness. Does this mean there is no camera to spy on the aisle?
I do a perfect job of the German hit-and-run, start on a woman’s fingers.
When I turned fourteen I ate a whole bowl of Bayira’s chili stew without weeping.
The men teased me, ‘Whoo, Malachi. You are ready.’
I laughed and looked down at the fire, but I raised my eyes once to Araba’s father. I wanted him to see I was nothing like my father, Hamri, who could not eat Bayira’s chili without grabbing for a
