By the time I reach her, Madame Sophie’s eyes are bulging. I am no doctor, but I have read this could be a sign of a thyroid deficiency. How the heck do I mime popping eyes to Tamba?
I set my bucket on the floor before her. Stop staring, Madame Sophie.
Upstairs, Tamba is glancing down at us, starting to pack up. I have no choice but to bow my head, lop off a long white arc she must have cleaned with her teeth.
‘Do you see?’ Her blue eyes are polar lights from the place where the sun shines all day and all night. She whispers, ‘Do you see, Malachi?’
I see what she sees, a row of heroin-fed prostitutes lying on white beds, their transparent drip sacs gleaming above them. A moody golden light caresses the scene, warms my aching elbows, my knees as I rub my white towel across Madame Sophie’s photosensitive skin.
She lies back against the mesh, so still it’s as if her central nervous system has stopped functioning.
Across the aisle, Eulalie’s voice holds a pure, cracked sweetness, ‘They are clear, Madame Sophie. As clear as diamonds.’
Madame Sophie moves only her eyes. Is she paralysed?
‘Your dead girls are free.’
Seriously? Gold suits and sparkling nymphs?
But a blush suffuses Madame Sophie’s pale skin. A feathery smile touches her lips.
Josiah laughs as if choking on his own clotted grease. Some of the prisoners cough in strange sympathy.
Josiah snorts, ‘You’re lying, Eulalie.’ But his scarred eyes smoulder with some strange fear.
I squeeze his furry fingers into my glove, punish him gently.
He stares at me, says slyly, ‘What of your mother, Malachi?’
I clutch my chest, wheeze through the bullet wound.
He hits me while I am still reeling, ‘Is she free?’
I sink to my knees, rock like a brain-damaged patient in an asylum. Josiah’s words have been hiding in the lining of my brain, malignant as a cancer, corrupting the cells of my interstitial membranes. He found them, the devil, he stitched them together. I rock on the bones of my bum, my only memento of the man who stood here a moment ago.
Eulalie’s shout is like a sorcerer’s whip. ‘Josiah!’
Josiah’s laughter crashes to the metal floor.
Eulalie points her crooked finger at him. ‘Your mother was Seleka. From the village of Bambari.’
‘Oh. Oh. Oh,’ Vicki gasps behind me. ‘Josiah.’
Josiah’s black moustache seems to tear off his lip. His hairy hands fly up to catch it.
The hips of a thin donkey, I rock on them.
Eulalie’s tone is calmer now, matter-of-fact as if she is reporting the weather on the day that he did it, ‘You sent your soldiers in.’
Josiah rams his forehead into the cruel mesh. Harder and harder, over and over as if he is painting the walls of his cave with red. I shut my eyes. That might be me screaming. Eulalie speaks as if she is describing the strength of the wind, the chances of rain, the size of the hole in the ozone over Antarctica.
‘You were a sweet baby, she knows this. He taught you to hate.’
Josiah smashes his face into the floor of the cage, simulating the shock treatment he received on Monday. Eulalie shouts like a thunderclap, ‘Josiah!’
Josiah stops.
‘Your mother forgives you.’
Josiah breaks his nose on his excretion plate. He smashes his head against the left side, the right side of the cage, like Hellboy the Seventh before he tore free and demolished New Orleans. The five-inch bolts on the floor shiver.
‘Malachi, stop him!’ Vicki shrieks.
I scramble to my feet, hit the button of my intercom. Tamba appears after a few long moments. Half the prisoner portraits behind him are already black screens. He sounds irritated, like a shopkeeper locking up. ‘What?’ He watches Josiah batter his head against the mesh. ‘Oh-h-h,’ he breathes.
‘Stop him!’ Vicki shouts.
‘Blood. Blood. Blood,’ Tamba repeats, hunting for the right reflex.
Yes! This is not red paint.
‘Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.’
Hurry up!
‘What must I do? Shock him?’
Eulalie starts to sing a soothing song to Josiah. ‘Sou-al-lé, Souale . . .’
Josiah slows in his effort to smash himself up. Tamba reaches for a switch.
I thrust a hand up to the window. Wait!
‘Souale-e-e,’ Josiah sings a harsh, broken song with Eulalie.
I don’t know the language, but I know what it means. It is the unrequited love of a mother for her son.
Tamba is still watching me for an opinion. I conduct him with a reassuring flourish, float my fingers down and out. A gentle ending to a cacophonous climax.
But he remains wary, ‘He’s going to need an antiseptic.’
I roll my wrist, make a tumbleweed motion that means, tomorrow.
Ayenka, they say in Bhajoan.
‘You reckon?’
I glance again at Josiah. He is crying some of the blood off his cheeks. I nod like I am absolutely certain.
‘Nuh uh, Malachi. You’re getting soft.’
I turn up my life-lines to the window. Please.
‘No. We can’t take a chance.’
A rush of water sprays into Josiah’s cage. Tamba hits another switch, usurps the role of conductor, but his instruments are not quiet cloth and a pair of nail clippers. They are computer-controlled torture fluids. Antiseptic mist floats off the spray, sears my eyes. I skip out of range. Madame Sophie covers her eyes and whines. Josiah submits to the icy rain pumped from the sea. He turns his face towards the nozzles, lets the red run to pink from his crisscross lacerations. He holds his hands up to the freezing chemical spray. Josiah cries and cries and cries.
Cry, Josiah, cry. Of all people on earth, you have reason to grieve.
Tamba is fascinated by the terrible cleansing. ‘Why did he go mad like that?’
Thick oily sobs burgeon inside me.
Mother, how did you die?
The pressure of my sobs is hurting my chest, swelling so huge they could splinter my ribs right before Tamba’s eyes. I pick up my bucket, use the compassion on Vicki’s face to breathe in through the pain, out.
‘Shhh, Josiah. Easy,’ she says.
Her compassion, it seems, is
