Bitter Eden: A Novel (7 page)

‘What do you mean where have I been? You saw me lying out there in the sun, didn’t you?’

‘Yes, but for so
long
? Boy! Are you going to
peel
!’

‘I fell asleep,’ I say, and the little devil with the knife asks why the lie?

Then the headman gives the word and I grab our dixies and fetch the swill, and, when I get back, Douglas has sliced the Spam sliver-thin and separated the slices into two exactly equal shares, and I mash my share into my swill and Douglas does the same with his, and we sit eating, huddled out of sight in his bunk because still so many of us have only the swill, and Douglas is prattling non-stop about trivialities, but I hardly hear him because of the little devil still asking me why the lie?

After lunch, Douglas says that if we are going to have tea, I will have to fix our blower-stove which is acting up, and I examine it and see that the fan that whirls round on a spindle when you crank it and blows air like a bellows in a forge onto the bed of wood-chips that we are sometimes allowed to collect on the surrounding hills – or the undersized, way-below-grade coals that the Ites dump on our side of the fence for us to use – is wobbling and knocking against the casing of the hammered-flat Red Cross food cans, and I fix it and we go out to the brewing site under the camp’s only tree and brew two pinches of the black flakes, scarce as gold, that used to be everyman’s humble tea.

Which is one helluva sentence, I know, but this is one helluva gadget that doesn’t exist anywhere in the still free world. Light, limbless and so portable that you can carry it with one hand, it can boil water, warm up food (or, on a cold day, your hands), as efficiently and quickly as any four-legged, sturdily-planted, civilized stove. And, yes, I did make it myself, Douglas being like a man without hands when it comes to working with wire and tin, but I did not
invent
– nor do I know who did – this one of uncounted thousands of its kin that whirr and puff under dixies of swill or tea or frying Red Cross Spam and are, to me, the crowning demonstration of how the human slob got to be the smartest bully of them all.

After tea, I stash the blower while Douglas rinses the dixie and mugs, then lie down on my bunk and look down at Douglas flipping through the pages of a hefty tome from the library about chemical fertilizers, and when I ask him how he can be interested in such shit, he says he’s not reading the book because of the fertilizers but because the fertilizers remind him of fields and flowers and stuff, and I think, ‘As fucking weird as
him
,’ and get restless and clamber down from the bunk and say I’m going to Tony for a haircut and shave.

‘But you’re only due tomorrow,’ Douglas reminds, dragging himself away from the book.

‘I know, but I don’t think Tony will mind.’

‘Tony will eat you alive when he sees what you’ve done to your face,’ and Douglas aims his long nose back at the page and I think, ‘Why can’t he, just for once, say something
coarse
like
grab you by the balls
?’ and take the long way round to the theatre, zigzagging through the blowers at the brewing site – ‘Will somebody show Danny how to make him a blower so that he can brew the tea that no pom can do without?’ – and meander further through the huts’ humming like hives, looking in at each in a manner that is not me at all.

‘I am bored,’ I say to myself, almost in surprise, the theatre now clearly seen, and try to bluff myself that this is just the usual camp malaise, but a more ruthless voice tells the truth and I am deeply shamed because he is a loyal and honourable man who is satisfied with the so very little that I give.

‘Christ! What have you done to your face?’ Tony howls, clever hazel eyes widening under the gold-rimmed pince-nez it is a wonder the Ites have not already swiped for the gold.

‘Fell asleep in the sun,’ I lie for the second time, and Tony shakes his hairless-as-an-egg head and the long melancholy of his face sets into an even more dolorous mould.

‘But, Tom, you
know
the show’s on in a week’s time. Why the fuck did you have to go lolling around in the sun at all? Have you forgotten that you’re supposed to be a pasty-faced British subaltern in the mud and sleet of France in the Great War, not a Saharan legionnaire who’s lost his way back to the fort? Do you think the Ites dish out greasepaint like they do their macaroni without cheese? How many sticks of the stuff do you think it is going to take before I get you back to looking what you are supposed to be?’

‘Don’t worry,’ I mutter, feeling more than ever like a pissed-off family man with a shrew for a second wife. ‘I will have peeled by then.’

Tony sniffs, twitching the small, fine-as-porcelain nose that complements the dashing smear of the moustache. ‘Better do some praying that you are right.’ Then, ‘But why are you here now? Rehearsal’s only at five.’

‘I was hoping you would give me a shave and a trim.’

‘That, too, is not down in
my
diary for now. It is for
tomorrow
if dementia is not already setting in.’

‘I’m still hoping you’ll give me a shave and a trim.’ (‘But why the hurry?’ asks a Tom I flee. ‘Why must it be
today
?’)

Abruptly Tony smiles, baring his beaver-like front teeth, the dolour momentarily gone. ‘Sit down, you bloody serf,’ he says, and I do so on the rather regal chair with arms that is reserved for this more mundane aspect of his art, and he knots a pleasantly clean cloth about my neck and begins to strop his cutthroat with the furious abandon of an assassin anticipating an enjoyable kill.

Tony – or so it is rumoured, he being as sensitive as women are supposed to be when it comes to his age – is in his late forties, but does not look all that much older than my still very early twenties, his spry, sinewy body possessing the agelessness of those in whom the grinning granddad lies dormant till the bones buckle under the load. In short, I could have been his son, which should be a guarantee of sorts, but I am always still wary of Tony, inwardly shrinking from his touch – as, indeed, though to a lesser extent, I do in the case of even heterosexual fussers with my hair. My reaction – or should that be obsession? – is all the more perverted for my knowing that Tony, being a poof with class, would never, without my asking him – which means never – take advantage of my defencelessness whilst in the chair and grab me where he must not, but no amount of reasoning with myself cures me of my cringe.

But he does take other liberties, such as: ‘How’s the wife?’ he suddenly asks.

‘Cut that, Tony! You know Douglas is not like that.’

‘Like what? Give it a name, man. You are old enough to say the word.’

‘And old enough to take out your teeth if you don’t shut up,’ I say, but there is no earnestness to it, we both knowing that this is only the usual bitter fun.

For a while he works on me as though I am a dummy under his hands. Then, ‘You are such a waste.’

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘Nice body, trying-to-be-nice heart trying to be loyal. Such a waste.’

I know I should be getting angry now, that he is going too far, but his voice is sad.

‘You don’t like him, do you?’ I ask instead, holding my tone steady as I can.

‘It’s not that I don’t like him. I
hate
him.’

‘But why?’ And now I am too shocked to be annoyed. ‘Because he is my friend?’

Now he again shows his teeth, but they are no longer a smile. ‘Don’t fancy yourself, kid. I don’t care two fucks
who
is your friend.’

‘Then
why
?’ I again ask, uncomfortably aware that I have, indeed, fancied myself, made of myself a fool.

‘Because he is like a sister that has left the tribe.’ Then he whips off the cloth, says, ‘Sweetest job in town,’ and turns away, saying ‘Bye,’ and I thank him and make for the door, but he stops me and adds, ‘Camel says to let you know he would like to be working on that portrait again,’ and I nod, knowing what he means.

Camel is called ‘Camel’ because he
reminds
us of one, rather than actually
looks
like one – all long, arrhythmical bones that jangle and sway till you almost believe you can
see
the hump on his back that is not there. Add to that a beaten boxer’s nose, ears that hungrily yearn, an alcoholic’s flush – though no alcohol is to be had – and perennially blood-drenched eyes, and you have something of the ugliness of the circus sideshow that enthrals even as it repels.

So, having nothing better to do, I straight away make for his hut at the other end of the camp and find him sitting on his bunk, sketching heads without bodies and bodies without heads, the latter hung with genitals bursting with lust. Is he hetero or queer? His mannerisms are as unfortunate as Douglas’, but whereas I know for certain that Douglas is straight, he never having made a wrong move, I’m not as certain about Camel who has the habit of looking at my fly as though unbuttoning it and whose sketches, like these, do little to swing the balance the other way.

Also, there is this business of the portrait of me which he offered to do and on which he has been working, off and on, for weeks without making much progress as far as I can see. I first turned down the offer, saying it was nonsensical to paint a portrait of a nothing like me, but then my not so very latent vanity, plus Tony’s telling me that Camel was, of all things, an Aussie and a painter of some repute, seduced me into changing my mind and I have been spending endless hours in improbable postures while Camel paints my face and studies my groin.

I tell him Tony said I must come for another sitting and he stares at me as though I am flotsam from a ruined past, then says ‘Ah!’ as at a revelation and, seemingly irrelevantly, adds, ‘Tony’s changed you again,’ as though that was a heinous crime, and I look at him bewilderedly and he says, ‘Doesn’t matter, though. I only want to do your left eye,’ and angles my head to a hundredth position with his bony, broken-nailed hands, his breath malodorous as a drain.

Then he sets up his paints and home-made collapsible easel in the aisle, thus blocking all traffic, though no one seems to mind, and ‘does’ my left eye, his usually quivering hand knowledgeable and sure, and I ask if I can look at the painting and he stares at me as at one deranged, then shrugs, and I hate what I see.

‘Why is my one eye squint and where is the skin on my face?’

Patiently, as to a child, he explains, ‘The squint eye is your evil eye. We are both devil and angel, you know. And there is no skin on your face because I am not painting your skin. I am painting what is
under
your skin – the real you that you are not wanting me to see.’

‘Looks more like a joint in a butcher’s shop,’ I sneeringly condemn, which waspishness does me little credit because he is, after all, doing it all for free. But he takes no offence, only looks at me a little pityingly, even shouts after me as I leave, ‘That hunk who was lying beside you this morning – if you see him again, tell him I want to paint him too – in the altogether,’ and, trying to make up for my just past boorishness, I nod that I will though I know that I won’t, facing up at last to my day’s several subterfuges and deceits.

*   *   *

I wake early,
still depressed by the knowledge that the previous evening’s rehearsal had been a flop. We fluffed our lines as though it was the first time round and went through the motions of passion with a spiritlessness that left Tony, literally, in tears. Fortunately, after the histrionics, he calmed down and said we were probably over-rehearsed, which was his fault and the next rehearsal would be the dress rehearsal the day before the show. But, this being my first time ever on the stage, the previous day’s debacle stays with me as a warning of how easily the elaborate creature of deception that is a play can strip itself down to the nothing that is at the heart of all legerdemain. What, I ask myself, if that should happen in front of all those goons out there? – and I cower like a cornered beast under the howl of laughter I clearly hear.

But it is not only the rehearsal that is involved in my waking early and the mood that I am in. From the first day of our arrival here, the huts have hosted uncounted hordes of bedbugs, about which the Ites refuse to do anything and that, as soon as the lights are switched off, flood out of the joints of the bunks and even drop from the roofs with a sound like light rain. Then they feast on us with a ferociousness out of all proportion to their size, releasing their distinctive shellacky stench as we crush them between our nails, and there are mornings such as this when my harassed flesh can take no more and I writhe as upon a bed of tintacks, if not yet of nails.

There are also rumours of lice, Douglas swearing by all that’s holy that he has caught the interloper checking on his crotch, and I point out to him that there could be a trillion other reasons for the poor guy doing this, but Douglas persists, motivated as much by spite as any fear for the purity of his own private parts. But I show only the fear as I now find
myself
covertly sifting through my pubic hair for the nits that will betray that a new pestilence prevails.

Finally, and for the first time in I don’t know how long, I have dreamt an erotic dream that I am unable to recall, but that has left its sowing of sperm between my naked thighs – I, like most others, sleeping in the raw as the hot, dry summer drags on – and I hang my towel loosely about me and hurry to the ablution block where I wash off the sperm, being as shy of exposing my condition to Douglas as though I had spent the night with some whore.

After a glum tea, I ask Douglas, ‘How’s my face?’ and he says, ‘Horrible,’ and I go out with a heavy heart to the tanning site, knowing there will be no tanning for me, but wanting to be there with an urgency I am reluctant to confront. Towel screening my face, I wait and time drags past me like a snake with a broken back and there is a leadenness in me as long as the snake, and I am starting to ask of myself what did I expect, when his shadow falls across me like the axing of my mood and I am ludicrously, honestly relieved.