I stare into his desert-sand eyes.
‘Give her water, Gibril.’
Did those words come from me?
‘It will make her happy.’
They come from the witch. Eulalie’s shock treatment seems to have got her in touch with a thirsty prostitute.
‘Water?’ The desert strangler scans my face for a more convincing commandment.
Yes, give her water, I urge him silently. Don’t make her wait.
Slow hope flares in his eyes.
I turn my whole body towards Eulalie. What about me? I plead silently. What must I give? Please, tell me.
By some alchemy, the old witch hears me. She pulls on her rope of hair like she is ringing a church bell from the twelfth century. ‘Give them your love, Malachi. They are not free while you are guilty.’
A wave of ice-cold sea breaks over me.
My father. My school friends. I do love them. I do.
‘Malachi,’ Tamba speaks sternly. ‘Are you feeling faint again?’
I shake my head, somehow pull off a tight-lipped grin.
I love you, Hamri.
It’s all I can think through the next few prisoners.
I will love them, like Eulalie says. It is easy.
I love Hamri’s eyes, their unnatural shine whenever he looked at me. I love Araba’s neck, the bones delicate but inseparable as she bent over her maths, digging too hard with her pen. I love Kontar’s wild laugh as he tore from my grip, clay covered, his bare heels sprinting through the green grass. I even love Erniel, his timorous smile, his long school socks pulled up too high. Cherishing tears leak from my heart, drip down the seam of my yellow trousers. They leave a trail behind me.
Am I imagining it? I stare at the floor. Yes. I see a damp tread from my sneaker. It is not my penis, surely – it is my heart, overflowing with the love I have not let myself feel since then.
* * *
The tooth-extracting Indian is digging at his bellybutton with a fingernail that must have shot out overnight. His poor umbilicus is red and raw already. It tears me back to the present.
Bullshit, Malachi, those drips are not an overflow of lost love. Your valves are just weak, worn out by too much pressure.
The Indian man gouges at his stomach like he is trying to unbutton it to release the truth. I press my switch, point at the Indian’s frenzied fingers.
‘Stomach cramps?’
No, he’s crazy. A small electric shock would do the trick. Instead, I nod at Tamba.
‘Any sign of a loose stool?’
I stare at him, incredulous. How the heck would I know?
Tamba gets my message.
‘Okay, okay, it’s not like you can ask him. I’ll get Olivia to check his outflow for pathogens. Let’s give him a painkiller.’
Good, Tamba, please. Take his pain from him.
I hear the crackle as Tamba connects with Olivia.
‘A painkiller antispasmodic to cage number thirteen. Fast-acting, please. It’s that mad Indian dude. Malachi says he’s got stomach trouble.’
Well, actually it’s his secrets.
‘Thanks.’ Tamba tips his head to my microphone. ‘Tell him to drink from his pipe.’
I point at the Indian’s feeding tube. He shakes his head, pokes at his bellybutton.
Tamba touches his torture switch. A fine mist falls over the Indian. Before Tamba can even add violence to it, the Indian sucks frantically on his food pipe.
Almost immediately, he goes loose. A silly smile creeps across his fevered face. I hold out a hand, invite him to give me his feet. He lifts them into the glove, strokes the inflamed skin around his bellybutton as if to say, One more day, then I will undo the knot.
I will have to watch him carefully. It is not an antispasmodic this man needs, but an antipsychotic. But a drug such as this might stop him from remembering.
Let him remember everything, this mad, navel-excavating Indian. Let him remember and die free.
* * *
The giant seems to overhear what I am thinking.
‘One freedom, please.’ He slurs a little, barely moving his lips. ‘Just this once, pass me by.’
He is sitting on his hands like a child under rebuke. Has he had a stroke? I stare at his mouth. No. It is not hanging slack. I check his musculature. He still looks like Hercules. I glance up at Tamba.
‘Please,’ the giant begs. ‘I just want some peace.’
It is not like him to plead. And he is in a far better state than he was yesterday. I pretend to fiddle with the latch on his cage.
‘Tamba’s not watching.’
I glance up. The giant is right. Tamba, thank God, has been lulled by my last few groomings to pull out some chewing gum and play a computer game. I can tell by the rapid action of his thumbs. Yes, he is shooting something.
I skip the mournful giant, move to the fat Australian.
Barry looks strangely stunned, as if suffering some aftershock. Did my confession do this to him?
His voice shakes as he speaks. ‘I know how it feels to love a girl like you did. This one girl, Zauna. She really knew me.’
He sounds like he is reciting lyrics from a vintage love song by Justin Bieber. Has he heard of him? Yes, without a doubt Barry had Justin Bieber on his sound system. I trim the Australian’s flabby hands, feel his sadness pulsing through his soft fingertips.
But I know what he means. Araba was the only one who understood my twisted humour. She knew of my struggle with my father’s poetry, the way it kept surfacing in me. She knew of my yearning for her, so vast I could scoop out the insides of the earth leaving only its porcelain skin, take her hand among the dust and start a new universe.
I cannot bring myself to laugh at the fat Australian.
I work my way to Lolie, the young assassin who could find the nought-point-three-millimetre passage through my brain and stop my heart with a high-pressure hiss. But today, she looks like she has drunk from the Indian’s painkiller. She lies back with her black hair tickling her shoulders, pretty.
