He shoves his melted hands into the glove. I see they are shaking.
‘I am the one who hung on.’ Cinders crack inside him. The heat bursts his teardrops before they can fall. ‘Now he won’t let me go,’ he rasps. ‘I hung on to him. Now he hangs on to me.’
I hold his trembling hands still, clip his melted fingers. I cover his hands with my white cloth, squeeze them as if to starve them of oxygen.
He pulls his fingers from the glove, begs me, ‘How can I stop him from coming to me?’
I turn towards the top of the aisle, point towards the old witch. Ask Eulalie.
It is Gibril, the desert strangler, who picks up my meaning. He tells the yellow man who tells the prisoner next to him. The priest killer’s question lands in Vicki’s lap.
She says clearly, ‘What do you think, Eulalie? Mohammed, the Muslim oke, he still wants to kill the priest.’
Eulalie gazes down the aisle, finds Mohammed with her smoky eyes. She covers her ears, pulls her senses away from her rowdy friends. The prisoners quieten down.
Her words float down the aisle from the prisoners’ mouths.
It is the desert strangler who carries them to us. ‘She says you are brothers. You and Father Rayan.’
The priest killer gasps. ‘How does she know his name?’
Eulalie taps her fists together. Her words make their way down to us. ‘The Christian and the Muslim, they both worshipped the wrong God.’
Did those words come from the tooth-pulling Indian? Surely not. He can’t speak English, can he?
Eulalie speaks again, faintly. Charmayne, the big beauty, picks up the phrase from the desert-strangling Ethiopian, ‘God is who we are?’ Charmayne snorts loudly. ‘Did you say that, Eulalie?’ She smacks the cage with her huge hands. ‘That’s rubbish!’
The priest killer slowly unravels his fighting stance. He hangs his head so his shining fringe falls across his face like a curtain. I clip his toes with a lump in my throat the size of a Bible. With each cut it feels like I am ripping out an angry page.
Rubbish. Charmayne is right.
Does he believe that shit?
I clip crudely, shove the priest killer’s feet back to him. But my fury is wasted on him. Mohammed wraps his arms around some unseen figure, welds his heart against some imaginary chest. He is busy making friends with a plump Catholic priest. This is way too eerie, even for this cursed, blessed place. The priest has become his invisible friend. The entire hall makes soft sounds of amazement. My hands are shaking. My throat feels ragged, cut by my soundless shout, God is who we are?
Never. It can’t be.
* * *
I am grateful to reach the big beauty, who is as scornful as me. She hugs her muscular thighs, shakes her head bitterly. ‘There’s no God in me, Malachi.’
I lock the glove to her cage.
Charmayne leans closer, hisses, ‘Do you want to know the truth?’
Oh, no. Rather keep it. Please.
‘They were standing near the parapet. I heard them whispering.’ Her hair sticks up like two woollen horns on her head. ‘Pete said, “Let’s cut Charmayne out.” Bongi said, “Yes.”’ Her lips seem to swell as if the truth is poisoning them. It flies out like a swarm of marauding bees, ‘I pushed them.’
Oh God. Here is the God she is not.
‘I pushed them. I did!’
Oh, Charmayne. I am so, so sorry. My clippers hang feebly in my fingers. I feel their Versace suits against her skin, the echo of their living breath, the warmth of their living blood as she shoved.
Tamba interrupts, ‘Malachi? Is everything okay?’
I nod casually, resume my duties.
‘Watch out for that one.’
I glance sharply at him. Is this about Dominic?
‘From here, she’s a man-eater. I mean, on my monitor.’
I refuse to smile at him, sink to a buddy-buddy kind of sexism. As I start on Charmayne’s feet, a strange refrain flutters down the aisle. It starts softly with Eulalie, flits across to Madame Sophie.
‘They were gay . . .’
‘They were gay . . .’
‘The architects, they loved each other,’ the desert strangler says clearly.
‘Gay, like lovers?’ Charmayne shakes her magnificent, horned head. ‘Never. Bongi was married.’
I free her feet. Charmayne clambers to her mighty knees.
‘Eulalie,’ she demands, ‘what do you see?’
Eulalie stares at the space above Charmayne’s head like she is watching a movie.
‘Eulalie?’ Madame Sophie prompts.
‘They are wearing gold suits. They are very, very happy.’
‘Ooh.’ Vicki embellishes, ‘Glittery, golden suits.’
Charmayne covers her breasts like there are cameras clicking, catching her in a naked act of forgiveness.
Her voice catches with grief, ‘You’re teasing me.’ She turns her smooth, beautiful back on me. But I don’t see her expanse of dusky smooth skin. I don’t see her vertebrae.
I see Araba’s lovely breasts as she bares them to me. Plush they are, perfect cocoa-infused fruits, their silken skin topped by a chocolate ripple, the place to put one’s thumb to open it. But these nipples are not torn open by machine guns, they are soft like the ribbon they use to wrap gifts. I blink my eyes, try to refuse Araba’s gift of her glorious young breasts. I am thirty years old, please.
But it is the boy before the massacre she is smiling at.
Araba is alive, still flowering. Nothing can touch her, only me, if I want to.
I want to. I want to, but not in the way an ordinary man might. I want to stroke her nipple as soft as a butterfly’s wing, press my thumb on it as if I created it. I want to cup her perfect breasts and imagine it was I who healed the blown-apart flesh.
Let me make it better, Araba, please.
Charmayne is digging her thumbs into her eyes, trying to rub out the ghosts in their glittering suits. I leave her to battle with her spirits, float through several groomings in the company of Araba’s heavenly breasts.
* * *
As I work
