The Paper Eater (2 page)

John and I, we’ve been together a month.

If I’m short and squat, which as a matter of fact I am, then he’s the opposite: a towering, scary man, lumpy-featured. He’s a murderer, or so the story goes – though you never know who’s truly guilty here. You won’t hear the Sect mentioned except by the new arrivals. And they soon learn. John has glinty little eyes like chinks in a wall, and a talent to hone in on weakness, which gives weight to the rumour that he bullied three of his neighbours into a suicide pact.

We have our arguments over my papier mâché industry. He claims it turns his stomach to see me sitting here in my thermal vest, masticating. And sometimes he’ll give me a grim look and try on his special blindfold, the one he’s planning to wear for what he’s now calling the Big
Fry-Up. But we have more in common than you might think.

– Do you support capital punishment?

That was the first question he asked me, when he came to join me in the cabin, after the previous bloke, Kogevinas, got transferred to the half-way facility on Gibraltar. Not Hi, John’s the name, or So gimme five, mate, or anything normal. It threw me.

– Capital punishment, no, I told him.

– Torture, then? he goes.

Now he had me there. You see, I’d been thinking in some detail about this issue, and I’d decided that some people deserved to be tortured, psychologically, for their crimes. An eye for an eye, a psyche for a psyche. Plus a little physical discomfort doesn’t go amiss. I was thinking of my own personal torturer, Wesley Pike, of course, and the ways I’d like to fuck with his head and cause him grief if I got the chance. Call me childish, but what I’d do is I’d shut him in a glass box, stopper his larynx, make him wear special confusing glasses, and stuff bat-shit up his nostrils. I’d make him drink salted lemonade from a baby’s bottle. I’d smear him with chilli-oil and jeer at his dick. When you’re cooped in a cabin, you find yourself having thoughts like that. Quite normal. So when John asked me for my views on torture, I found myself hesitating.

– I said torture, he goes. You oppose capital punishment. We’ve established that. But are you in favour of torture?

– Under certain circumstances, I confessed, I have to admit I am.

He thumped me on the back, then, hard. I was frightened for a moment, given his reputation as a man specialising in unprovoked violence, but it turned out the gesture was friendly.

– Correct answer, he said.

Torture became an issue we returned to often, after that. It was the nearest we had to common ground. He was an expert on the physical side of it. I favoured discussing the psychological. We’d talk for hours, sometimes, playing the game first developed in a children’s playground, sometime in the fifteenth century probably, the game called
Which Would You Prefer?

This is how it goes.

– Which would you prefer, I’d ask, for example, standing in a vat of rancid margarine watching all the forcies who ever nicked you making love to your ex-wife –
and her enjoying it
, or having to listen on headphones to two hundred hours of
Così fan tutte
played backwards at ninety decibels and at the wrong speed?

– Watching the wife, John might decide, and hoping she’d shag herself to death. And which would
you
prefer, being boiled alive, or being forced to eat nothing but your own excrement until you died of salmonella?

– Boiled alive, I’d say. Quicker. Which would
you
prefer, seeing your favourite weathercaster skewered through the liver, or –

You get the picture.

– D’you reckon they put
us
together as a form of torture then, mate? John said after lunch, as I sat down to work. Because you sure as fuck drive me round the twist. Prisoner 1-0-0-8-7, guaranteed to have you howling at the moon within twenty-four hours or your money back. That Malt Fucking Fishook.

You shouldn’t have applied for a transfer, then, dung for brains, I thought, but I didn’t say anything. I can’t, when my mouth’s full.

Then he changed tack.

– You’ll be sorry when I’m gone.

He was smoothing out his blindfold. He’s embroidering plastic pearls and little glittery sequins on it – an elaborate
task for such a hulk, about as unlikely as a walrus filling vol-au-vent cases.

– Believe me, he went, charred remains are no substitute for the live version.

Miss him? You must be joking. He tried on the blindfold, and the sequins winked at me.

– See no evil, he said.

I kept on chewing. Fifty-five, fifty-six, fifty-seven.

Speak no evil, I thought, chewing.

Fifty-eight, fifty-nine, sixty.

Spit.

And plop, into the bucket.

Atlantica
,
Atlantica
.

Some dark chronological force has dictated that today, twenty-four hours after Fishook’s bombshell, should be John’s birthday. My cell-mate is fifty. Looks sixty. Acts eight.

There’s a rattle at the door as Garcia unlocks.

– Here arrive you mail, he announces, and flings it on the floor. The metal door slams behind him with its usual
ku-klung
, followed a second later by the reverberative
du-dunnnggg
. John manoeuvres his weight off the upper bunk to pounce on the mail – a few letters and a parcel – but I don’t move from my leprechaun position on the bunk, next to the pulp vat, because the bottom line is that I never get letters.

– A letter for you, goes John.

A second bombshell: it hits me like a punch.

I gulp, and accidentally swallow a mouthful of paper pulp, which feels and tastes much as you’d expect – sawdust, metal, printer’s ink, I needn’t elaborate.

– How d’you know? I ask through the aftertaste.

John can’t read.

– The number on it. It’s your number. I know numbers.

– Hand it here, I say, willing my hand not to shake.

John’s podgy face changes shape, like malicious putty.

– What do we say when we want something?

He can be a scary bastard.

– Please, Mr Henderson. He hands it and I grab, swoop my eyes across.

It’s a cream envelope. My name, number and address are in large handwriting that loops and clambers to the right-hand edge of the rectangle. Writing with no discipline, like someone learning or re-learning how to do it by hand. Bright-red biro, and more flabbergasting to me than blood.

Fortunately, John’s too busy with his own mail to bother with mine. He’s a family man, so he has greetings from his mum and his ex, though not his kids. The mum’s card has a chip in it that plays Happy Birthday To You. We listen to that a few times, and I read him the messages in the cards. There’s a gift, too; his step-nephew, Jacko, has sent him a parcel tied up with coarse yellow string. The stamps – exotic flowers – are Namibian. Jacko’s a satellite engineer, so he travels the entire globe.

– Go on then, I say to John, buying time to recover from the shock. Birthday boy. If there’s a catch in my voice he doesn’t notice.

– Still don’t know why he does it, says John, scrutinising the package.

I can’t fathom it either. The gifts started arriving last month, out of the blue. Generous, considering John’s never even met this sister’s ex’s half-brother’s son by marriage or whatever he is. Didn’t even know he existed.

– Maybe if you’re a satellite engineer, saying: My Uncle the serial killer on the floating international penitentiary makes you look the big cheese, I tell him.

– Jealous?

– Slightly, I admit.

And it’s true.

When John opens the parcel, something blocky and beige
falls out and bounces on the floor. It looks like a loaf of home-made bread – irregular, with seeds and chaff in it. I pick it up, weigh it in my hand. To my surprise, it’s as light as polystyrene. It smells spicy. Organic. Like compost. I pass it to John, who puts it to his fleshy nose and snuffles at it like a professional truffle-pig. Boggles me, mate, goes the look on his face.

– Read me the postcard, then, he orders, like he’s a prince with a personal slave rather than an illiterate moron.

Happy Birthday, Uncle John
, I read.
Some genuine rhino shit for you. A souvenir from the savannah. Hope to meet you sometime! Regards, Jacko.

John chuckles.

– I like him, that Jacko.

– The fairy step-nephew. You’re his charity case, I tell him.

– I reckon he’s the success of the family.

And he puts the dried turd on the bedside table along with his cards, gently, like a monarch’s crown razzled with sapphires.

– Now you, mate, he goes. How long’s it been?

– As long as a piece of string, I tell him, inspecting my letter, trying to sound cool as a cucumber but all choked up just feeling the envelope, because despite my best efforts to banish her, my first thought’s been of a certain woman, and my heart’s going
thunk
like someone’s aimed a sledgehammer at it and swung. Memory’s a forceful thing, I’m right to avoid it.

The envelope’s so light it could be empty.

Harvey Kidd, Voyager no. 10087, Cabin B 52, Prison Ship
Sea Hero.

My insides are in freefall. You don’t wait for eleven months and twenty-three days to hear from the outside world, and then get a pleasant surprise, do you. The decision’s so simple it makes itself.

– I’m not opening it, I tell John.

He laughs.

– What, never?

– Probably, I say, standing back from the idea and approving. I’d say,
probably
never.

– The ostrich position again, goes John, spitting on his palm and smoothing his hair down in the mirror.

– It’s a good position, I tell him. I’m comfortable in it.

Red biro. And whoever wrote it isn’t used to addressing envelopes. I can’t work it out. An Atlantican stamp, post-marked Central Post Office, Harbourville. No clues there, except that it’s home – and also, suddenly, the place we’re headed. Somehow, I don’t like either element of this combination.

– Best to leave it, I go. No news is –

I stopped. That choking thing again. My heart felt dangerous, like I had a pacemaker and it’d been put on a setting that was too fast and fibrillous for a human. I could see John’s bulbous face in the mirror. He was looking at me sideways, like he does when he’s wondering whether to buzz the crisis button. But he won’t, I thought, not after last time, when we had an ethical disagreement about chastity belts, and he ended up in solitary for false-alarming. So I just stuffed some of his Namibian wrapping paper in my mouth and began chewing.

Chew, chew, chew. Chomp, chomp, chomp. Chew, chew, chew. Et cetera.

– You know what that is, goes John, straightening himself up in front of the mirror, and indicating my papier mâché pulp with a jerk of his head. That cud of yours. That spitting habit. It’s what teenage girls do, isn’t it. Bulimia.

And he opened his birthday card again, to make the chip play the tune.

That night, as we passed the Straits of Kattegat, I propped my unopened letter on the shelf alongside my Garry Kasparov
autobiography, the forget-me-not condolence card, my papier mâché chess-pieces, and John’s bric-à-brac, which included the dried sea-horse from the Philippines, the plastic figurine of an Atlantican terrier whose collar bore the message: GIVE A DOG A BONE, and the mass-produced Egyptian papyrus covered in phoney hieroglyphics. Jacko the mysterious step-nephew again.

The boy needs shooting.

Then came the first nightmare, which did its usual thing: starting as an innocent dream and then turning nasty.

I’m the Bird of Liberty, and I’m flying over the ocean, with the rest of my family following silently in my wake in V formation. I guess they’re Birds of Liberty too – in fact I get the feeling we’re a smallish flock returning home after a trip away.

Suddenly, there it is. Down below, look. The familiar fried-egg outline of Atlantica, cushioned on the sea, its lush flatlands and lace-frilled shores exhaling a purplish haze of mist. You can picture the seabed below, where the artificial land has been grafted like a tooth in a jawbone, the waste craters like blood vessels feeding the porous rock, mingling fathoms deep with minerals, calcium and hot brine. Feeling the organic genius of it, I feel a nudge of pride, a nudge that turns into a loud yell.

– Home sweet home! I cry out.

And my voice rings happy through the clear blue sky.

From up here the geography of Atlantica is scaled down to toytown, a 3D map. Hovering high, you can see Groke to the north, Mohawk to the south, St Placid to the east, all ringed by farmland – pineapple fields, guava orchards, the bright red hoo-ha of tulips. And spread below, the leisure centres, schools, malls, golf courses, and retail parcs of Harbourville itself. As we swoop down, spiralling lower over the capital, the yellow-grey skyscrapers leap out at us
like pop-ups, unpacking their mazes of detail, crowding us with the machine hum of the twenty-four-hour city. I love its thrill, I love its energy, I love its hope.

We’ve landed now, on a sea-less beach – a flat vista of sand, peppered with small boulders and clotty hanks of bladder wrack. Here, a big bonanza of a picnic spreads out before us: chive-and-onion kettle crisps, whole lobsters, processed-cheese triangles, lychees, choc-o-hoops, devilled peacock eggs. What you might call The Works.

My mother Gloria sports a sparkly evening dress of turquoise chiffon, protected by a homely kitchen apron – for thrills and spills, she says. She’s busy doling out home-made granary baps with a large pair of surgical pincers. Us kids first, then Dad and Uncle Sid. The next part’s blurry (there’s a live crab in it, and a five-piece chamber orchestra) then abracadabra, somehow I’ve collected a mass of driftwood for an al fresco fire, where my big sis is char-grilling some freshly caught mackerel thrust upon her by a local fisherman struck dumb by the sight of her fantastic naked breasts. Lola always goes topless, so she often gets perks like this. We’ve got used to it as a family. Sometimes you can stop a dream in its tracks, but this one kept rolling on, filling me with its bliss.