Night in Tunisia Read online

  The young Trinidadian in the next cubicle squeezed out a sachet of lemon soft shampoo and rubbed it to a lather between two brown palms. Flecks of sawdust—he was an apprentice carpenter—mingled with the snow-white foam. He pressed two handfuls of it under each bicep, ladled it across his chest and belly and rubbed it till the foam seethed and melted to the colour of dull whey, and the water swept him clean again, splashed his body back to its miraculous brown and he slapped each nipple laughingly in turn and thought of a clean body under a crisp shirt, of a night of love under a low red-lit roof, of the thumping symmetry of a reggae band.

  There was one intense moment of silence. He was standing, spent, sagging. He heard:

  "Hey, you rass, not finished yet?"

  "How'd I be finished?"

  "Well move that corpse, rassman. Move!"

  He watched the seed that had spattered the tiles be swept by the shower-water, diluting its grey, ultimately vanishing into the fury of current round the plug-hole. And he remembered the curving cement wall of his childhood and the spent tide and the rocks and the dried green stretches of sea-lettuce and because the exhaustion was delicious now and bleak, because he knew there would never be anything but that exhaustion after all the fury of effort, all the expense of passion and shame, he walked through the green-rose curtain and took the cut-throat razor from his pack and went back to the shower to cut his wrists. And dying, he thought of nothing more significant than the way, the way he had come here, of the green bridge and the bowed figure under the brick wall and the fagade of the Victorian bath-house, thinking: there is nothing more significant.

  Of the dozen or so people who gathered to stare—as people will—none of them thought: "Why did he do it?" All of them, pressed into a still, tight circle, staring at the shiplike body, knew intrinsically. And a middle-aged, fat and possibly simple negro phrased the thought:

  "Every day the Lord send me I think I do that. And every day the Lord send me I drink bottle of wine and forget 'bout doin' that."

  They took with them three memories: the memory of a thin, almost hairless body with reddened wrists; the memory of a thin, finely-wrought razor whose bright silver was mottled in places with rust; and the memory of a spurting shower-nozzle, an irregular drip of water. And when they emerged to the world of bright afternoon streets they saw the green-painted iron bridge and the red-brick wall and knew it to be in the nature of these, too, that the body should act thus—

  SEDUCTION

  " YOU DON'T BELIEVE me, do you," he said, "you don't believe anything, but I've seen her"—and he repeated it again, but I didn't have to listen this time, I could imagine it so vividly. The naked woman's clothes lying in a heap under the drop from the road where the beach was clumsy with rocks and pebbles, her fat body running on the sand at the edge of the water, the waves splashing round her thick ankles. The imagining was just like the whole summer, it throbbed with forbidden promise. I had been back in the town two days and each day we had hung around till twilight, when the hours seemed longest, when the day would extend its dying till it seemed ready to burst, the sky like a piece of stretched gauze over it, grey, melancholy, yet infinitely desirable and unknown. This year I was a little afraid of him, though he was still smaller than me. I envied and loved his pointed shoes that were turned up and scuffed white and his hair that curled and dripped with oil that did its best to contain it in a duck's tail. I loved his assurance, the nonchalant way he let the vinegar run from the chip-bag onto the breast of his off-white shirt. But I kept all this quiet knowing there were things he envied about me too. I think each of us treasured this envy, longing to know how the other had changed but disdaining to ask. We loved to talk in monosyllables conscious of the other's envy, a hidden mutual delight underneath it like blood. Both of us stayed in the same guest-house as last year. My room faced the sea, his the grounds of the convent, the basketball pitch with the tennis-net running through it where the nuns swung racquets with brittle, girlish laughter. We sniffed the smell of apples that came over the town from the monastery orchard behind it and the smell of apples in late August meant something different to me this year, as did the twilight. Last year it would have meant an invitation to rob. I wondered did it mean the same to him. I concluded that it must, with his hair like that. But then he was tougher, more obscene.

  "Look, she's coming out now." He nodded his head sideways towards the chip-shop and I stared in through the dripping steamed glass. It looked warm inside, warm and greasy. I saw the woman coming out of the tiny corridor in which the chips were fried, leaning against the steel counter. Some older boys waiting for orders threw jibes at her. She laughed briefly, then took out a cigarette, put it in her mouth and lit it. I knew that when the cigarette came out its tip would be covered in lipstick, the way it happens in films. When she took the coins from them two gold bangles slipped down onto her fat wrist. There was something mysterious, hard and tired about her, some secret behind those layers of make-up which those older boys shared. I watched them laughing and felt the hard excitement of the twilight, the apples. And I believed him then, though I knew how much he lied. I believed him because I wanted to believe it, to imagine it, the nakedness of this fat blonde woman who looked older than her twenty-five years, who sang every Saturday night at the dance in the local hotel.

  "Leanche's her name. Leanche the lion."

  "Lioness," I said, being the erudite one. He looked at me and spat.

  "When'll you ever dry up." I spat too. "Here." He held out the chip-bag.

  I took one. It was like when I came to the guest-house and he had already been there a day. He stood in the driveway pulling leaves off the rhododendron bush as we took things off the rack of our Ford car. I looked over at him, the same as last year, but with a new sullenness in his face. I hoped my face was even more deadpan. He turned his face away when I looked but stayed still, pulling the oily leaves till the unpacking was finished. Then I went over to talk to him. He said that the town was a dump this year, that there was an Elvis playing in the local cinema. He said that Ford cars with high backs had gone out since the ark. I asked him had his people got a car yet and he said no. But somehow it seemed worse to have a car with a high back and rusted doors than no car at all. He said "Come on, we'll go to the town" and we both walked to the gate, to the road that ran from the pier towards the town where every house was painted white and yellow and in summer was a guest-house.

  "Let's go inside," he said, just as it was getting dark and the last of the queue filed from the chipper. "We've no money," I said. "Anyway, I don't believe you." I hoped my fright didn't glare through. "It's true," he said. "The man in the cinema told me." "Did he see her," I asked. "No, his brother did." There was disdain in the statement that I couldn't have countered.

  We pushed open the glass door, he took out a comb as he was doing so and slicked it through his hair. I went over to the yellow jukebox and pushed idly at the buttons. "Are ye puttin' money in it son," I heard. I turned and saw her looking at me, the ridiculously small curls of her hair tumbling round her large face. Her cheeks were red and her dress was low and her immense bosom showed white through it, matching the grease-stains on her apron. "No," I said and began to blush to the roots, "we just wanted to know . . ."

  "Have you got the time," Jamie burst in. "Have you eyes in your head," she countered. She raised her arm and pointed to a clock in the wall above her. Twenty past ten.

  We had walked past the harbour and the chip-shop and the Great Northern Hotel that were all the same as last year. The rich hotelier's son who had left the priesthood and had gone a little mad was on the beach again, turning himself to let his stomach get the sun now that his back was brown. Jamie told me about the two Belfast sisters who wore nylons and who were protestants, how they sat in the cinema every night waiting for something. He asked me had I ever got anything off a girl that wore nylons. I asked him had he. He said nothing, but spat on the ground and stirred the spittle with the sole of his shoe. The difference
in the town was bigger now, lurid, hemming us in. I borrowed his comb and slicked it through my hair but my hair refused to quiff, it fell back each time on my forehead, incorrigibly flat and sandy-coloured.

  The woman in the chip-shop smiled and crooked her arm on the counter, resting her chin on her fist. The folds of fat bulged round the golden bangles. "Anything else you'd like to know." I felt a sudden mad urge to surpass myself, to go one better than Jamie's duck-tailed hair. "Yeah," I began, "do you . . ." Then I stopped. She had seemed a little like an idiot to me but something more than idiocy stopped me. "Do I!" she said and turned her head towards me, looking at me straight in the eyes. And in the green irises underneath the clumsy mascara there was a mocking light that frightened me. I thought of the moon with a green mist around it like the Angel of Death in the Ten Commandments. I saw her cheeks and heard the wash of the sea and imagined her padding feet on the sand. And I shivered at the deeper, infinite idiocy there, the lurid idiocy that drew couples into long grass to engage in something I wasn't quite sure of. I blushed with shame, with longing to know it, but was saved by her banging hand on the silver counter. "If you don't want chips, hop it." "Don't worry," said Jamie, drawing the comb through his hair. "Don't worry," I said, listening to his hair click oilily, making for the glass door. "I still don't believe you," I said to him outside. "Do you want to wait up and see then." I didn't answer. Jamie drew a series of curves that formed a naked woman in the window-dew. We both watched them drip slowly into a mess of watery smudges.

  We had gone to the cinema that first night, through the yellow-emulsioned doorway into the darkness of the long hall, its windows covered with sheets of brown paper. I smelt the smells of last year, the sweaty felt brass of the seats and the dust rising from the aisle to be changed into diamonds by the cone of light above. There was a scattering of older couples there, there was Elvis on the screen, on a beach in flowered bathing-trunks, but no Belfast sisters. "Where are they" I asked him, with the ghost of a triumphant note in my voice. He saved himself by taking out a butt, lighting it and pulling harshly on it. We drank in Elvis silently. Later the cinema projectionist put his head between both our shoulders and said "Hey boys, you want to see the projection-room?" His breath smelt the same as last year, of cigarettes and peppermint. But this year we said no.

  Later again I sat in my room and watched the strand, where two nuns were swinging tennis-racquets on a court they had scrawled on the sand. It was ten past nine and the twilight was well advanced, the balance between blue and grey almost perfect. I sat on my bed and pulled my knees to my chest, rocking softly, listening to the nuns' tinkling laughter, staring at the billows their habits made with each swing of their arms. Soon even the nuns left and the strand was empty but for the scrawled tennis-court and the marks of their high-heeled boots. But I watched on, hearing the waves break, letting the light die in the room around me, weeping for the innocence of last year.

  We pressed ourselves against the wall below the road, trying to keep our feet from slipping off the large round pebbles. My father was calling my name from the drive of the guest-house. His voice seemed to echo right down the beach, seeming worried and sad. Soon even the echo died away and Jamie clambered up and peeped over the top and waved to me that no-one was there. Then we walked down the strand making a long trail of footsteps in the half-light. We settled ourselves behind an upturned boat and began to wait. We waited for hours, till Jamie's face became pinched and pale, till my teeth began to chatter. He stared at the sea and broke the teeth from his comb, one by one, scattering them at his feet. I spat in the sand and watched how my spittle rolled into tiny sandballs. The sea washed and sucked and washed and sucked but remained empty of fat women. Then Jamie began to talk, about kisses with the mouth open and closed, about the difference between the feel of a breast under and over a jumper, between nylons and short white socks. He talked for what seemed hours and after a while I stopped listening, I knew he was lying anyway. Then suddenly I noticed he had stopped talking. I didn't know how long he had stopped, but I knew it had been some time before I noticed it. I turned and saw he was hunched up, his face blank like a child's. All the teeth were broken from his comb, his hand was clutching it insensibly and he was crying softly. His hair was wild with curls, the oil was dripping onto his forehead, his lips were purple with the cold. I touched him on the elbow and when his quiet sobbing didn't stop I took off my coat and put it gingerly round his shoulders. He shivered and moved in close to me and his head touched my chest and lay there. I held him there while he slept, thinking how much smaller than me he was after all.

  There was a thin rim of light round the edge of the sea when he woke. His face was pale, though not as grey as that light, and his teeth had begun to chatter. "What happened," he asked, shaking my coat off. "You were asleep," I said, "you missed it," and began a detailed account of how the woman had begun running from the pier right up past me to the end of the strand, how her breasts had bobbed as the water splashed round her thick ankles. "Liar," he said. "Yes," I said. Then I thought of home. "What are we going to do?" I asked him. He rubbed his eyes with his hand and drew wet smudges across each cheek. Then he got up and began to walk towards the sea. I followed him, knowing the sea would obliterate his tears and any I might have. When he came near the water he began to run, splashing the waves round him with his feet and I ran too, but with less abandon, and when he fell face down in the water I fell too. When I could see him through the salt water he was laughing madly in a crying sort of way, ducking his head in and out of the water the way swimmers do. I got to my feet and tried to pull him up but his clothes were clinging to every bone of his thin body. Then I felt myself slipping, being pulled from the legs and I fell in the water again and I felt his arms around my waist, tightening, the way boys wrestle, but more quietly then, and I felt his body not small any longer, pressing against mine. I heard him say "this is the way lovers do it" and felt his mouth on my neck but I didn't struggle, I knew that in the water he couldn't see my tears or see my smile.

  SAND

  THE DONKEY'S HOOVES were like his sister's fingernails, long and pointed. Except for the ends, which were splintered and rough, not fine and hard.

  He was sitting on it, trying to make it move. He could feel its spine against the bone between his legs. He could feel its flanks, like two soft sweaty cushions against each knee and thigh.

  He dug his heel into one of the flanks and it shifted a few feet.

  "Stop kicking up sand," his sister said. She had that annoyed tone in her voice.

  "Will you come for a swim if I stop," he asked.

  "Oh just stop, would you."

  "No," he said.

  He kicked at the donkey again, though he dreaded his sister's tongue. When she spoke she seemed to know so much that he didn't. It was like her suntan lotion, like her habit of lying by the sea with her eyes closed, on their towel. He felt that somewhere he knew as much as she, but when he came to say it he could never find the words.

  "If you kick more sand at me—"

  "Alright," he said. "Alright."

  He put his hands on the donkey's neck and wondered how he could get down with some dignity, some of her dignity.

  He looked at the dark blue of the sea and the light blue of the sky, thinking about this. Then he heard something far away behind him. A shout. He turned on the donkey, saw someone running across the burrows, arms waving.

  He clambered down quickly, without dignity. He thought of tinkers. He knew most donkeys belonged to tinkers. He looked at this donkey and it was as impassive as ever, its hooves curling out of the white sand.

  The figure came nearer, running with a peculiar adult single-mindedness. It wasn't an adult however, it was a boy, not much older than him. The boy had run beyond the rim of the grass now and was kicking up sand. He was totally naked. He held a boot in one hand with which every now and then he covered his genitals.

  But mostly he couldn't cover them, his arms flailing as he ran. And t
he boy saw the naked figure, smaller than him, but stronger and much browner, jogging to a halt. He saw the open mouth panting and the eyes, wary as his were, but older and angrier than his could ever have been. The brown nakedness stopping at the waist becoming grey-white nakedness. The boot stationary now in front of the patch of hair.

  "That's my donkey. Leave hold of it."

  He did so immediately. Not because he was afraid, which he was, but because he would have done anything those eyes asked. He looked at the shoe and it didn't quite hide that curl of angry hair and that sex. He looked at his sister. She was looking the other way, blushing, arched rigid in her blue swimsuit.

  "I'll give you that the next time."

  A small bony fist hovered before his face. Behind it were the eyes, young as his, but with clusters of ancient wrinkles round the edges.

  "Okay," he said. He tried not to sound defeated. And the tinker turned and pulled the donkey after him by the thin hair on its neck.

  "Really," his sister said.

  And now he blushed. The tinker was on the burrows now, pulling the donkey by the hair on its neck. His buttocks swung as he walked, two white patches against the brown of his thin body.