* * *
I stand up, undo my buckle. I slide my black trousers past my stinging thighs.
* * *
Kontar hugged me. ‘Thank you, Malachi.’
He started towards their hut.
‘No. Come to us!’
He stopped, shook his head. ‘He will hurt my mother.’
My own mother cried out at the sight of me naked and torn up by razor blades.
‘Father, you must help Kontar. Uncle’s going to beat him.’
‘Where is he?’
‘Hurry, Father, run!’
‘Go, Hamri.’
My mother used hot salty water to strip the hippo grease and clean the cuts. I kept my scream down to a whimper.
‘Will Father save him, Mama?’
My mother said nothing.
* * *
I sink onto my back, balance on my raw shoulder blades. Above me is the sound of faint rifle fire. Tap, tap tap. A ping-pong marathon.
* * *
Hamri arrived home smaller, more yellow than I had ever seen him. His eyes slid past me to the shadows on the wall.
‘If I fought him, he would have killed them.’
‘No.’
His voice cracked. ‘I don’t know what he did to that child afterwards.’
‘Stop him!’ I jumped up and raced into the night. It was my mother who streaked after me and held me tight. My cuts began to leak through my clean shirt.
‘Why doesn’t someone stop him?’ I cried. ‘All the men can go together . . .’
‘They won’t. He’s the only one with a hippo licence. He feeds everyone.’
I broke away, shouting, ‘I’ll stop him, I will!’
My mother whipped me close, pressed my kicking knees, my elbows deep into her belly. ‘He’ll kill you.’
My mother made me hold my tongue. But she could not stop the rotting malaise that grew within her son.
From the night of the lions, I was ashamed of Hamri. My father was too small, too yellow. Too weak for the monster that blocked out the light.
Kontar came to school squinting. He wore his long school shirt and trousers, even though it was sweltering. He rested his swollen head on his desk. He turned slowly from the waist for several weeks. His skull gradually returned to its usual shape, but Kontar stumbled all the time. My heart cried each time I saw him stop and consider a short jump from rock to rock.
* * *
The tap of the ping-pong stops. Or does it?
An echo haunts the air for nearly half a minute.
The Kindle. I pat the duvet. Where is it?
I drag the bed from the wall. I can’t see it. I run my fingers against the floor. They hit something solid – ah! I tap the red X, shut the anatomy book. Shut the cloak of Little Red Riding Hood. I slip the Kindle back into Tamba’s hatch, throw myself beneath my feather duvet. I face the wall just as Tamba’s shoes stall at the door. He lets himself in and switches on his bedside light. He removes his shoes, then pees as if he’s been drinking jugs of beer. Tamba tears his blankets back like the lid of a tin. He slides the door of his hatch, scratches for something. I feel the weight of his Kindle in his hands.
Will he smell me on the screen?
I control my breathing like a yogi.
Tamba begins to snore with the light on. I ease onto my back, cover my groin, an involuntary habit. My bed clothes feel as if they are woven from barbed steel.
Damn them.
Damn the prisoners for bringing my loved ones back to me. They called up my father, my cousin Kontar, the singer in our village, for goodness’ sake. They hooked their toenails beneath my skin, dug their fingers in.
Somewhere between the moon and the sea a helicraft thrashes like an overhead fan.
Tomorrow I must be an unremembered dream; too ethereal for them to bite into, use my silent blood for sustenance.
Yes. Tomorrow I will be the ghost.
SATURDAY
My skin is still sore but, by some miracle, not torturous. An eerie whistling rises and falls miles above me. Is it the wind? I get dressed in a black shirt and pleated black trousers. Tamba breathes heavily in his sleep. He has an erection. I should wake him, but it would be a definite intrusion – enter stage left into a pornographic dream.
I slide the concertina door back with a deliberate bang, splash water on my face, still tingling from last night’s scalding. I check the mirror. No redness. My hair growth is quite prolific, stubble like a burnt field after two days. I slap my chin with shaving foam, strip the new growth with a brand-new blade. I brush my teeth loudly. Check my timepiece. Ten to seven. I peep through the bathroom door. Tamba’s white dome is still growing.
* * *
I remember those dreams from when I was fifteen, my narrow bed shielded by the red Chinese horse hanging between the beds, my skin still unmolested by voltage clips. Like Tamba, now so luxuriously, happily on his back, dreaming of a woman’s hips fitting over him.
It makes me sick.
I retreat into the bathroom. I did not cross the sea to witness a stranger’s wet dream.
I must be untouchable, remember. A ghost among the killers. I must float like a membrane across their retinas.
I catch my eyes in the bathroom mirror. They are too bright, too fraught. I draw a veil across them. Good. My eyes appear blind.
With these eyes I locate Tamba’s big toe beneath the sheet. I give it a squeeze.
Tamba opens his eyes slowly. ‘Shit.’ He leaps to his feet like Meirong is after him with a gun. ‘I need a piss.’
He groans as he tries to aim his heaven-thrust penis into the toilet. I have had more than enough of this gruesome intimacy. I dive through the door, hurry to the canteen.
* * *
Meirong is sitting in a bright red dress watching the doorway like a cash-in-transit guard. She has a briefcase at her feet and some emails printed on plastic sheets.
Olivia waves one at me, grinning. ‘Look, Malachi. A message from my granny.’
‘Malachi
