Darkmans (86 page)

‘You mean when I graduate?’ She shrugged. ‘Become a teacher, I suppose.’

Kane removed a further two collars.

‘So what do
you
do?’ she wondered.

‘Huh?’ he scowled. ‘How d’you mean?’

‘Well I’ve seen you in the French Connection…’

She gave him a significant look.

‘Oh…’ Kane slowly straightened up. ‘Uh…’

He gave his response some careful consideration. ‘Well, I suppose I’m what you might call a vagabond,’ he answered finally.

Maude glanced over at him, mystified.

‘A kind of…of
medical
vagabond,’ he expanded, before casually delivering her his most disarming smile.

The Darkmans lay in wait. He knew it would only be a matter of time before one of the two men came. Gaffar was the first to arrive. He was limping. He’d developed a blister on his heel from his new, leather boots. He was searching for the bird, but all he found was a stray feather by the edge of the road.

As he bent down to inspect it Gaffar noticed that there were shards of broken glass everywhere. And traces of blood. And there was corn on the tarmac – tiny, crushed ears of corn.

He approached the feather with caution (he had no intention of picking it up), but then he spotted The Darkmans – from the corner of his eye – moving stealthily towards it.

‘No,’ Gaffar said firmly, reaching down and grabbing it for himself, ‘it’s mine.’

He clutched the feather, tightly, in his hand. He claimed it as his own.

He
annexed
it.

The Darkmans prowled around him, foiled, enraged, fascinated. And as The Darkmans prowled, Gaffar’s mind was suddenly transported back to Hasankeyf. He was just a boy, sitting by the banks of the Tigris River, dreaming of the cool caves, of the magnificent obelisk, of the old, stone archway. Then – without warning – everything was
submerged. Gaffar saw himself drowning. He saw his life slowly washing away from him (his family, his dreams, his home, even his tongue).

He felt a moment’s sharp anxiety – a sense of suffocating panic – but then he quickly turned away from it. He kicked hard with his feet and swam up to the surface. He drew a long, deep breath –

Haaaaaaah!

The Darkmans crouched down and appraised Gaffar intently. He held out his hand for the feather. He pretended to be sad. He pretended to be broken. He dabbed at his eyes. He shivered like a kicked puppy.

Nope.
Gaffar shook his head. But as he watched The Darkmans’ pathetic act, Gaffar’s mind was suddenly transported back to Diyarbakir; the Town of the Black Walls. And he was standing, barefoot, in the dirt, his hands clenched into fists. And he was fighting a losing battle to keep his insides in and the outside out. Then, half-way through the battle, he turned, with a gasp (the taste of blood on his lips), and he saw his poor mother standing behind him, on the sidelines: abandoned, disappointed, alone.

Gaffar winced. He felt a moment of profound self-loathing, but then he sprang forward and he delivered it a swift, sharp upper-cut. He kicked it. He winded it. He hurled it down.

The Darkmans slowly rose to his feet. He scratched his chin, thoughtfully. Then he pulled himself up to his full height, placed his hands on to his hips, opened his mouth and
demanded
the feather. His voice crashed through the air like rolling thunder.

Gaffar tipped his head and he listened. And as he listened, his mind was suddenly transported back to a place that he’d never seen before; a place of his father’s ancestors, a place called Sinjar. He saw his people farming in peace there. He saw them caring for their livestock, delivering their lambs, waiting patiently for the summer rains. He saw them praying. He saw white turbans, clean robes and joyous devotion. He smelled incense burning. It was a lovely vision, but it quickly faded. Then everything was overturned. He saw chaos, he saw movement, he saw poverty, he saw persecution, and in the midst of all of this he saw his father, alone, in the Sheikhallah Bazaar. He saw the light. He saw the dream. He saw the whale. He saw the lie.

Gaffar scowled. He felt a moment of despair, of profound desolation, but instead of giving in to it, he shoved his hand into his pocket and he felt for his five die. He rattled them in his palm. He removed them from his pocket and showed them to The Darkmans, proudly –

See?

I make my own history

The Darkmans pricked up his ears. He stood to attention. He seemed intrigued, even delighted. He took a small, halting step forward.

Gaffar watched The Darkmans’ uncertain approach through bright yet slightly hooded eyes. He chucked quietly to himself, and the chuckle echoed down deep inside of him (it reverberated against the walls of that bottomless well within, that place where the women came to gossip, where the children played, where the mythical peacock loved to perch).

Then, without further ado, Gaffar smiled, extended a gracious hand, and with the legendary ease and beneficence for which his ancient tribe were duly famed, he cordially invited The Darkmans to a game. He even went so far as to promise him the first throw.

‘A whirligig modern version of Thackeray’s
Vanity Fair…
this flowing, discursive storytelling washes along like the Thames itself, embracing everything’

Michèle Roberts,
Financial Times

‘This is the work of a very fine storyteller indeed, one who has already won prizes for her fiction and doubtless will go on to win more’

The Times

‘Highly original…I whipped through its more than 800 pages with attention unbroken. The very night I finished it, it showed up in my dreams’

Literary Review

‘Only David Lynch could do justice to a celluloid version of its surreal humour, its gathering darkness and its beautiful, mystifying strangeness’

Scotland on Sunday

‘Hilarious and erudite, spooky and unconventional,
Darkmans
is a dazzling achievement’

Washington Post

‘A novel like no other – hilarious, bizarre, and possibly mind-altering’

Entertainment Weekly

‘History, in this novel’s presentation, isn’t a smoothly flowing river; it’s clogged, jammed, with all sorts of debris that floats up at unexpected moments. For Barker, the past is most vibrantly – and visibly – alive in language’

Los Angeles Times Book Review

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This edition published by Harper Perennial 2008

FIRST EDITION

First published in Great Britain by Fourth Estate in 2007

Copyright © Nicola Barker 2007

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This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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EPub Edition © MARCH 2010 ISBN: 978-0-007-37276-8

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