Small Circle of Beings (20 page)

‘You must go and give it back, Shell.’

‘Me?’

More terrible than the anticipated blow: an abyss had opened in the car. Shell clutched at the seat. The chocolate fell into his lap and he grabbed blindly at it. When he raised his head again
his eyes shone with tears.
Me
. He saw himself staggering back inside, the fat figure of Mr Kakoulla behind his counter. The Greek would bend to hear his faint voice, smiling at this timid
child who had some message to relate. Until he heard him; until he was betrayed by Shell’s confession. He began to sob into his sleeve. His helpless father watched.

‘Shell –’

‘I
can’t!
Dad … I’m sorry … Please …’

‘Don’t cry. Look …’

‘I can’t. I can’t … Don’t make me. Please. I’ll never do it again …
Please
.’

‘
Shell
–’

At which point Shell swung out a directionless fist, the blow perhaps his father had failed to deliver. He hit Dad in the face. His glasses spun off, landing at his feet; his hands came up to
his nose. For a moment they sat side by side, neither moving, both horrified at an event Shell didn’t understand. Then he lunged at him. Shell hugged his father’s chest, his ribs
against his cheek, tears running into his shirt. Dad patted his head.

‘Dad … I’m sorry … I …’

‘All right.’

He pushed Shell firmly away. Contact embarrassed him. He fumbled for his glasses and examined them carefully before putting them back on.

‘Dad … I’m sorry.’

‘All right. All right.’

Shell continued to cry, though, as his father started the car and moved out into the street. He saw this unpleasant little town – cramped and tiny, close to the ground – through
spilling water. But as they headed back towards the road that would take them to the hills and home, they began to leave behind the towering Greek at his till. Shell grew quiet. They drove in
silence. He unwrapped what remained of the chocolate bar. He looked at his father, but no sign, no glance, passed between them. He licked his fingers when he’d finished eating.

He wasn’t sure whether his mother ever knew about the incident. It was difficult to tell what his mother knew about him. At unexpected times she would seize him, wrestle him in her
jointless arms smelling of powder. ‘Shatsi,’ she would croon between kisses that left wet patches on his forehead. ‘Shell, darling.’ Then she’d let him go, her bosom
kicking like something alive under her dress.

There was a time when he’d not been able to help himself. ‘Leave,’ he shouted, his voice so raw that it shocked him too. ‘Leave me alone!’

She stood back, his mother, aghast, her hands shaking. ‘It’s only love,’ she said.

‘I hate it when you touch me. I hate it.’

‘Oh, Shatsi,’ she hissed, ‘it’s just that I don’t want you to be like your father. I wouldn’t want that.’

He couldn’t think what she meant. There was nothing the matter with Dad. He did not treat her badly; he would sit with nodding patience across the table from her, placate her with his
voice. It was she who shrieked. It was she who threw the plate that time across the kitchen, so that it smashed against the door and showered little bits into Dad’s hair.

‘Joan,’ he’d said. ‘I don’t want this … in front of the children.’

His voice was dull. It was the colour of old bricks, baked in the sun for years and years.

‘The children,’ she said.

‘Joan.’

‘Give me a life,’ she said. ‘You owe me a life.’ There was steam coming up from the sink behind her; grey steam rising like mist from the marshy sink.

No, Dad was good to her. There was only once that it might have been otherwise. Shell was woken in the night. There were cries and sounds of struggling from inside the house. He got up, unafraid
because only half-awake, and went down the passage on giddy feet. His father and mother had separate rooms; it was late; the noises were coming from his mother’s room. He knew this before he
got there, before he saw. Peering through the crack of the open door, he witnessed a tussle unlike any other he had seen. His mother and father clobbered at each other like sacks of meat; savage;
intent; a collision he could never ask them about. He looked for blood, but could see none. So he went back to his room. He lay in his bed and felt the blood dripping from these walls instead. It
was a long time before he went back to sleep.

They were normal again in the morning. He was reassured by the breakfast table, and by daylight. They all sat about and ate toast.

He was hungry; he’d been afraid he never would be again.

Breakfast table conversations were the ones he remembered best. Words lay on the table amongst the plates.

‘You’re messing on your shirt,’ his mother said. ‘Eat nicely, Shatsi.’

‘Don’t
attack
your food,’ Estelle said. She didn’t look at him.

‘Leave him, Estelle.’ Dad sometimes used with Estelle that same weary voice that he used with his mother.

It was his mother speaking now. ‘Listen to your father, Estelle. You should respect your father. Your father, make no mistake, is a man worthy of respect.’

‘Joan.’

They faced each other over the top of the table, which was littered like a battleground.

‘Have you packed your books, Shatsi?’

‘Yes,’ Shell said. ‘I did it last night.’

‘Don’t talk with your mouth full.’

‘Leave him, Estelle.’

‘No,’ his mother said. ‘Never be afraid to speak. Always speak out, Estelle. Speak out before it’s too late.’

‘It is never,’ said Dad, ‘too late.’

‘Listen to your father. Your father is a wise man. Your father,’ she announced, ‘has ruined my life.’

‘You have your life,’ he said.

Shell drank his orange juice, tilting the fierce liquid down his throat, with the sound of glasses, knives, forks, chipping carefully away on all sides. It was a quarry, his home.

His mother was laughing in her chair. She sat, a dab of marmalade on her sleeve, with yellow gobbets of laughter falling from her mouth. ‘I have my life,’ she said. ‘Children,
do you hear? I have my life.’

In the evenings the family would watch television. Shell liked to watch television; it meant that there was no need to speak. His family, finally and safely silent, sat about him in a half
circle, their faces stupefied with concentration. They watched commercials, interviews, sit-coms, dramas.

One night he sat eating popcorn and staring at a wildlife documentary. Creatures in the wild, the television informed, existed on their senses alone. Sight, hearing, smell, touch, taste –
these were what allowed animals to explore their environment, to defend themselves against their enemies, to hunt their own prey. They used camouflage to outwit the senses of their foes and their
food. Shell watched with increasing horror the movements of beasts and insects. He watched chameleons creeping down branches, shooting their tongues at flies. He watched eagles plummeting out of
the sun. He was appalled. Abruptly, without warning, this square, contained vision spilled from its box; it spread in concentric rings that burst from the house and scythed away into the dark. The
world was a forest of moving flesh that fed on other flesh; crawling and inching and loping closer or away. In terror he rose to his feet, knocking the bowl of popcorn from his lap. The white
pellets sprayed.

‘Shell! Be careful, Shatsi.’

‘Jesus. Look at him.’

Dad was staring. ‘What? Shell? What’s the matter?’ But he was already gone, running through the kitchen, through the outside door, into the clustering night. His skin prickled.
He’d grazed his shin on the table as he passed. Motion left him slowly as the house and its lighted windows receded behind. But he only stopped running when he was halfway up the road. Now
– it seemed for the first time ever – he was completely still, enclosed in the sighing blackness. Trees hung breathless over him. Through their branches he could see stars, remote and
high. He stood with his arms folded across his chest, clutching at himself, a trembling form at the side of a deserted road. Fear continued to spread in rings from a core within him too deep for
his hands. His body ached, as if already rent by teeth. They decided to send him away.

‘But why?’

He stood with his hands behind his back. They faced him on the couch, side by side. They looked earnest, as though they were courting him, or each other.

‘It is for the best,’ his mother said.

‘We have given it a lot of thought. You must believe that.’ Light from the lamp made Dad’s glasses opaque. Shell could see nothing behind them.

‘But I don’t
want
to!’ He was already close to tears. ‘Why? Tell me why.’

‘It can’t be good,’ said Dad. ‘So far from the city …The new school will be good for you.’

‘You’re going into high-school now, Shatsi. It is the time to make a new start.’

‘But I don’t want to make a new start. You didn’t send Estelle away.’

Dad stirred, a slow, scaly movement. A reptile on a rock. He licked his lips with a split tongue. ‘We’re not sending you away, Shell. Don’t twist our words. We feel …
your mother and I … we feel it would be better for you to be in a boarding-house. We – ’

‘Why? Why will it be better?’ Shell was crying now, without attempting to conceal it. Tears so hot they put out his eyes. His nose was running too.

‘We’ve given it a lot of thought,’ his father said again. He was upset by this display of emotion. Any emotion upset him.

With difficulty, his father conceded: ‘We feel … your mother and I … that you’re too introspective. You need to mix more with people, people of your own age,
Shell.’

There was a pause. His mother was crying now too. She was pummelling her nose with a pink tissue. ‘We went to speak to your teachers, Shell,’ Dad went on. ‘They say you
don’t mix at all, that you don’t seem to have any friends.’

‘And Estelle, Shatsi. She says you stand around by yourself at break. She says –’

Shell was amazed at the extent of their treachery. He no longer cried. Staring at them through tunnels of red, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. They looked at him in
consternation.

Dad tried again: ‘ … for your own good … your mother and I … only want the best. For you. You know that.’

Turning to the window, Shell looked out into a congealing dark that reflected his own. They stared at him while he looked away.

At last he accused: ‘It’s the ball. Isn’t it? It’s because I couldn’t catch the ball.’

His father blinked, as though he truly could not understand. But Shell was not deceived.

‘I think I have a migraine coming on …’ His mother propped up her forehead with her fingers. Otherwise her head would have fallen from her neck, a heavy glass globe, and
smashed on the floor. He willed it so.

‘You will understand,’ his father said, ‘if you give it a little thought.’

He understood already. Words welled up to the surface of his tongue. But he doubted very much that he would ever speak to them again. His beloved parents.

After his father had left the room, his mother grabbed at him. Her face was guttering in a sudden wind. He didn’t resist this time as she clawed him, snapping his bones in her voracious
embrace. She kissed his forehead. ‘Shell … Shell, darling …’ She let him go, or fell away.

His last weeks at home were parched and endless. He continued to roam through the forests nearby. But now everything upon which his gaze fell became illuminated by a clear white light that had
its origin in him. Trees, leaves, folds in the ground; all blazed in the pure pain of his sight. He walked upright, stiffly, careful not to spill what he was carrying.

There was no earthquake. Home and mountains didn’t tremble, let alone shift in devastation. Yet silently, at the roots of his hair, this entire landscape was pouring and roaring with
inexorable force.

He packed his belongings. He could not conceive of how quietly the lock on the suitcase would close. It had barely taken an hour to fit his clothes into this allotted space. He had everything
that he required. Underwear, socks, jeans; T-shirts. Two pairs of shoes. He had a little red sack that contained all his toiletries. His mother had put a tin of deodorant under his shirts. Neither
of them mentioned it, because he hadn’t used it before. He had his own comb, with strands of his hair woven into the teeth. And his blue toothbrush, which he hardly ever used. He didn’t
pack any books, for fear that he might be mocked.

He didn’t say goodbye to Estelle. She was in her room, the door closed. He walked past without hesitation, his suitcase weighing down his right arm.

His mother and father drove him down to the station. His mother was to accompany him on the first trip; she had a little overnight bag of her own. He didn’t recall that anybody spoke on
the short drive downhill. The headlights of the car moved ahead, white and crazy. He sat on the back seat with his feet together.

Shell stood at the window as the train jolted underneath. Metal squeaked as it tightened and dragged, beginning to move forward and away. His fingers reached up to touch the glass, but were in
fact trying to reach further; to reach the sombre, mourning face of his father outside as he started to trot to keep pace with him, down the grimy concrete of the station. Although his mother sat
behind him in the close compartment, it was an emptiness he sensed at his back, also gathering momentum on clicking wheels. Between these voids, he moved away into dark.

Shell moved from class to class. He wrote in books. He was bored. During breaks he dashed back to the hostel to pack his books for the next three periods. His uniform was stiff
and new. It was also uncomfortable; wet patches formed under his arms. He polished his shoes nightly, because that was the rule. He liked his reflection in the full-length mirror at the end of the
dorm, and he learned to do his tie himself. He kept his blazer buttoned. Uniforms had always appealed to him, although he would not have been ready to admit it. In the library he found a book in
which there was a photograph of Germans marching in the Second World War. They had tall black boots that shone. They had gloves. Their hair was as white as his, their eyes as blue. He longed to be
marching with them to a glorious music.