The Candle Dancer / The Way That You Found Me (2 page)

‘Go back and try to enjoy yourself,’ I said to Jenny.

‘Yes,’ she shivered.

The next day she found a note in our mailbox. Just one half-sheet of paper on which was written ‘Bitch!’

‘Do you think it’s the mother or the daughters?’

‘I don’t know, Jen. I suppose we did get them in trouble with the police. Perhaps we should let it lie.’

‘Let it lie! That candle-dancing twit and his malevolent women have pushed me over the edge.’

‘Jen, please–’

Her eyes lit up.

‘You know what you should do?’

‘No.’

‘You know how sometimes when they’re on the booze they whistle at you when you go for a bike ride?’

‘That was only once. And I don’t wear the lycra anymore.’

‘Well I’ll dig it up for you. I want to scare the hell out of those girls.’

‘They weren’t exactly scared.’

‘The lycra’s just to draw them out of the house. All you’ve got to do is ride around out there one night when they’re emboldened by drink, then when one of them comes out on the street to whistle, call her across and tell her you’ll give her twenty bucks for a bit of oral.’

‘God alive, Jen! Did you hear what you just said?’

‘I don’t mean to actually
do
it! Just threaten. It’s a joke.’

‘The police will get a laugh out of it when I’m explaining it to them. Those girls are fifteen years old! Jen, you’re scaring the hell out of me.’

‘I don’t know,’ she sighed. ‘I’m sorry, but I’m at wit’s end. Perhaps we should move.’

‘Are you out of your mind? It’s wonderful here.’

‘Is it? Ever since that night we…’

I sat Jen down and told her about my research. I told her about the Indochinese dances, the possibility that Victor had been performing one.

‘Doesn’t seem very likely?’

‘We better hope it’s one of those. Everything else was witchcraft.’

‘Let’s be reasonable. Maybe he was just working by candlelight, singing a song, then picked up the candle and happened to go to the window.’

‘The power wasn’t out.’

‘My friend the novelist does it. Writes by candlelight.’

‘I can’t imagine how tax returns improve by the light of a flame.’

‘True.’

‘What if that damn accountant has cast a spell on us? Just look at us, bickering at each other.’

‘Well he’s not doing too well out of it either.’

‘Isn’t that the way of magic, why it’s dangerous? It comes back on the caster too.’

‘Well it’ll look good on the flyer if we have to sell the house.
Ideal for young couples. Fully air-conditioned. Walk to cafes and shops. Owners moving because accountant placed an evil enchantment on them.
’

That night, I kept my vigil as usual, expecting nothing. But at some time around midnight he was standing on the road. I spoke low to Jenny and she woke.

‘Come to the window.’

‘What is it?’

‘He’s on the road.’

‘Does he have a candle?’

‘No.’

‘What do you think it means?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘God, Pete, he’s just standing there like a madman. And he’s staring right at us.’

Our bedroom, to my eyes, was completely dark.

‘He couldn’t have seen me watching him, could he?’

Jenny looked around the room. She agreed there was very little backlight. And yet…

‘I’m going out to meet him,’ I said.

‘No, don’t. He could be dangerous.’

‘Well, I’m not going to sleep with him standing there in the middle of the bitumen staring in at us like that? I’m going.’

‘Well, wait then.’ Jenny sat up and fished through her bedside drawer. ‘Take the gun.’

‘The what?’

Now I saw the thing glinting in the shallow scraps of light that came in from the street.

‘It’s a 9mm Beretta. My novelist friend lent it to me. It’s just for sport shooting, I think. Isn’t it?’

‘How the hell would I know? And what difference does that make anyway? If I’m going to shoot a man with a sports pistol should I tell him to run first so we can make a game out of it?’

‘God, Peter, stop blowing things out of proportion and just take the gun. For your own safety. Put it in your pocket. He’ll never see it.’

I stared at her without speaking a word.

The dim streetlight lit one side of his face and left the other in darkness.

‘Nice night for it?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Nice for… well… what is it exactly you’re doing, Victor?’

‘What are you doing?’

I was silent. Victor spoke next.

‘I’ve seen you looking across at my house at all hours of the night?’

‘What? Are you mad? But how… ’

‘It’s amazing what you can see with a decent pair of binoculars.’

‘Well, it’s nice to feel spied on.’

‘Isn’t it? Perhaps you’re trying to see into my daughters’ bedrooms, to see them undressing? Perhaps you’re
that
kind.’

With a wife like mine waiting for me, I thought, but I did not say it as I felt this was not the time to insult him. I noticed his hand go into his pants and stay there. God, I thought, what if he’s armed. After all, I was. But he took his hand out and I breathed.

‘Listen, Victor, there’s obviously been a misunderstan–’

‘I don’t know what you think you saw.’

I was silent. Was he talking about it? The candle dancing?

I swallowed.

‘I didn’t see anything. What are you talking about?’

He eyed me askance.

‘But I wonder if you thought you saw something that you didn’t.’

‘Is that a question?’

Silence descended once more. And there we stood, even then unable to speak it. He did tax returns and polished his vintage car and cut boards for flooring. I gave advice to Singaporean investors on the stock exchanges—steel and wines mostly. What I had seen, what he had done, did not fit in our world, and yet, when the darkness descended and the world was asleep, like the deep and illogical dreams doctors say are necessary to keep waking men sane, the thing, I realised then, was necessary, so necessary Victor was out on the road at midnight, possibly armed, and willing to defend it: the dance of flames and darkness he had performed that night, be it Thai or Cambodian or magical, was some ancient and essential thing that we moderns have tried to forget, to drown out in internet podcasts and business newspapers and real estate speculation and every other thing we distract ourselves with, but, at last, we never can quite banish. Yet to have spoken of it, to have brought what must live in darkness into the light would have been to speak a forbidden name and cross a border to a country from which no man could return… Only now, with the darkling city taking on the visage of a dream, could the unspeakable thing take form in an unspoken and shared thought… Didn’t I understand? His eyes seemed to ask me, plead with me. I watched that hand that moving again toward his pocket, perhaps with the intent to grasp a weapon.

‘I saw nothing, Victor.’

‘But I think you did.’

‘No.’

‘You did. Admit it!’

‘No.’

‘You know of what I speak, Peter. A dark eye, lidless, wreathed in flame!’

‘Hey?’

He took a step toward me.

‘Stay back!’

‘Peter,’ he whispered.

‘Stay back, damn it!’

He took another step, and suddenly I realised this imp from the nether regions of consciousness, this unspeakable darkness was moving toward my house, my wife and unborn child.

‘Back, Victor!’

‘If you strike me down now I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.’

‘What? That’s
Star Wars
, isn’t it? Victor, no!’

But his hand flew to his pants and mine to my own and I pulled the pistol and shot him through the heart, and he fell just as Obi-Wan had, in a pile beneath his dressing gown. I thought I caught the snatch of a smile as he fell, as though he truly believed he had achieved a death proper to a mystic knight.

Prison is not as bad as the American television shows have it. Which is a great relief. The fact that Victor had been unarmed didn’t put me in good standing with judge or jury, but the basic premise for my defence—that I had been acting on what I at least thought was self defence—stood, and so I’m now serving five years for third degree manslaughter and illegally owning and operating a firearm. Jenny feels her own guilt terribly and comes to visit with the boy whenever she can, and I remind her that I’ll be on probation in nine months and all will return to normal. In the meantime I’ve joined the prison rugby team, which keeps me in shape, and I’ve launched myself into a study of John Ruskin’s papers on political economy, which I may, in the end, turn into a thesis. Something I’d always wanted to do, but somehow lacked the spark for when I was back at University. I’m not worried about my career: practically all the senior partners at the company have been in jail at one time or another, and my sentence isn’t even finance-related. I hear I’m held in higher regard than ever over there. So all is well, but still, there are hours in the night, between lying down and dreaming, when I can’t help but reflect on what got me here, for the truth is I would rather not be in prison, and I would sure as hell rather never have killed a man, a thing I am truly sorry for, and then I think back to that slightly bloated, curly-haired man standing grinning in his window with a candle, and think, ‘what the hell did I ever do to you?’

I.

The day the three of us became friends, I wandered out of the classroom shading my eyes from the harsh light with my hand. All around me, students were running towards the ovals and someone called out:

‘Coming, Suzanne? There’s a rumble. Behind the studio.’

The chant of ‘rum-bull’ could be heard from where I stood, underscored by some other rhythmic beat. Clapping, perhaps. It took me a moment to hear that the other sound was separate and unrelated: someone playing the drums. When I got to the music studio I paused to listen. Was that Led Zeppelin? Surely not. I didn’t know anyone at our high school who could manage the varying tempos of the kick, snare and high-hat in “When The Levee Breaks”, let alone make it sound effortless.

When I turned the corner I glimpsed Dolfo Merlo’s unmanly shape—tall, thin, round-shouldered—encircled by bristling onlookers. The boys were lining up. It seemed they couldn’t wait to get a swing at Doll, as she was known even then.

A massive thug called Bruce Carbody who was once someone’s beloved baby boy looked to me like Grendel risen from the deep, veins throbbing in a broad sweating face, legs thick with muscle under his school shorts. Doll stood no chance though she got up a few times and swung back, her long ivory limbs seeming frailer than bone, frail as matchsticks. She cried out when he booted her over, and while she lay sprawling on the grass one of Carbody’s mates had a crack. He was a rugby player with that thick rubber neck they get. Trevor Wicks. There was no ethic of ‘pick on someone your own size’. No ethic of any kind. Just pure hate flowing snakelike from an uncorked bottle.

We weren’t yet friends and I was just another face in the crowd. I didn’t even yell ‘stop!’ though I should have: I was scared. Sixteen-year-old Carbody and his gang were the toughest kids at Kingswood High. Doll got to her knees and threw back her head. Blood sprayed from her nose, briefly staining the air. Trevor Wicks kept kicking her until she fell forwards, making such terrible groans I wondered if she was in danger of dying.

‘Stop!’ cried a younger boy beside me, half swallowing his voice in fright.

Trevor paused and locked eyes with the boy. The boy’s muffled
oh nooo
got louder as he turned to escape through the crowd, pushing and elbowing.
Let him pass
, I hissed, turning back to see Doll getting to her feet. Rather than making a run for it, she put up her fists. A roar of excitement went through everyone and even I felt strangely delighted (it’s terrible to recount these emotions but I have to be truthful). My shout rose up with the crowd’s. Sock him in the jaw, I thought. Kick him in the balls!

The background drumming stopped. The crowd ceased shouting and a sense of menace flowed into a brief silence. Carbody broke it, yelling:

‘Look. He wants more!’

The drummer, Benjy Wilson, emerged from the studio. He seemed astonished to see Doll bouncing from side to side with upraised fists, her skin as white as milk and her bravado vanishing fast. I saw a dark figure moving swiftly through the green football fields and heard a muted cry run through the crowd:

‘Mr Scott! Watch out. Mr Scott…’

The onlookers dispersed like sand in the wind, hiding behind the studio or simply running away as the burly science teacher strode up and grabbed Carbody’s arm. The rage sharpening his nose and mouth made him look like a hawk.

‘What’s going on?’ he demanded, squeezing Carbody’s arm till the skin reddened under his short sleeved shirt. The boy jerked but couldn’t escape the teacher’s grip. He turned his head to one side and spat.

‘I tell you what, Carbody, you’re up for expulsion, mate. You alright, Dolfo?’

‘Yes, yes sir…’ Doll put up a hand to catch the blood and her foot moved backwards to steady herself.

‘Suzanne!’ barked Mr Scott.

I jumped.

‘You help Dolfo. Benjy Wilson, by God, I hope you weren’t a part of this!’

‘No way, sir—I just…’

‘Wicks, follow me. We’re off to the principal’s office. Suzanne, Benjy, take Dolfo to the sick bay and tell the nurse to ring her grandmother.’

Mr Scott didn’t seem to notice his own slip of the tongue. We all knew Dolfo was a boy, though under her grey shorts her legs were as long and slender and hairless as Bruce Carbody’s were gnarled with fur and muscle.

Mr Scott set off still holding Carbody by the arm and now grabbed Trevor Wicks’s collar. We stood looking at Doll.

‘Lean on me,’ said Benjy.

‘Sure,’ said Doll, throwing an arm over Benjy’s shoulder. She was at least half a foot taller than him. We walked slowly to the sick bay. No-one was there. Not sure what to do, I wet a flannel and pressed it to her nose. She closed her eyes. Blood dripped onto her white school shirt.