Speak Gigantular Page 12

  “You think that’s our guy?” I say, turning to my sister. She’s wearing an orange and purple patterned blouse that looks like a female orgasm. Her red braids are flammable. She is a match, femininely pretty with tomboy swagger.

  “Maybe,” she replies noncommittally.

  I move my shades an inch further back down my head.

  “He fits the description.”

  The van pulses, hums. I take another look at the driver.

  “Shit, that guy is really good-looking,” I exclaim.

  “You’ve been saying that about everybody since we got here. What, are you surprised or something?” my sister quickly replies.

  I suddenly feel too casual in black Ali Baba style pants and a blue and white striped vest, £2 from Primark, bikini peeking from underneath.

  “No, but that’s our guide?” I wonder.

  We’re closer to the van now, two lenses meeting at the same point. He nods at me, a brown-skinned black man in his mid-to-late twenties. He’s wearing a white baseball cap backwards. And sure enough, he’s the best damn looking driver/guide I’ve seen in a long time.

  “Ola.” My voice is the sound of a car engine warming up. “Are you our guide on your way to pick us up from Porto du Vento? Obrigado.” In one sentence, I use the extent of my Portuguese vocabulary.

  He doesn’t lean forwards towards us but back into his seat. “Sim et sou ging para escolher as pessoas para cima do Porto du vento para uma turne.”

  A fat fly buzzes near my ear then hovers in the car window as though it will translate. I throw my sister a look she pockets.

  “Shit, this guy doesn’t speak English,” I say. He chuckles. It is rum sloshing over the rim of a glass.

  “Small, small,” he replies, holding my gaze. At that point I wonder if his whole arm will cover the span of my rubber band waist, if he’s a prime or even number. I wonder if the probability of my forehead leaning against his chest will make us an oblique triangle wearing two pairs of sandals.

  My sister folds her arms, cocks her neck to one side so it looks like a tipsy exclamation mark. We start firing:

  “What’s the name of the tour company you work for?” (Even though it’s boldly emblazoned on the sides and back of the van.)

  “Show us your licence.”

  “What parts of Sal are you supposed to take us to?”

  “What’s the name of your boss?”

  He holds Portuguese and broken bones of English as his bullet proof vest.

  “Sim, muito bon.

  “Existem mais pessoas?

  “Vamos ao Porto du vento para pegar o resto.

  “Eu nao me entendem.”

  He fishes out a map of Sal and hands it to us. I recognise it; it’s the same map the man I booked the tour with showed us. He simply says, “Zecca.”

  “Yes!” I wave my arms like a conductor whose specialty is conversation. “Zecca is the guy, he’s your boss.”

  “Sim.”

  “This is definitely our guy,” I say and my sister’s arms unfold. We hop in, me at the front, she at the back. He turns the ignition and we set off. Above, someone has spilt orange paint in the sky. Tyres crush the skeletons of scenes just gone. People are specks crossing my irises. A man on a donkey with a bored expression meanders along on the other side of the street. The van stops outside our hotel.

  “No more people,” I gesticulate. “Just us, understand?”

  He nods his head and smiles warmly. “Yes, understand.”

  The seat feels hot against my bum. I slot the metal seatbelt tongue into the red throat of the buckle, making a French kiss. I twist in my seat. My sister is already gazing out of the windows.

  “Rock and roll,” I say.

  I notice he has two very long fingernails, unusual for a man. The white cuticles are stark against the black steering wheel. I find it slightly creepy but curious. At that length, it’s obviously a choice to keep them that way. Maybe he plays an instrument, the gunibri with its body made from a tortoise shell. He plucks at the strings feverishly after hours on the road. Or he’s a world record holder for untying Gordian knots. Maybe he uses it to snort coke during breaks from June to September; white, hot reprieve from idiotic tourists yammering on incessantly at him.

  I point to his nails. “Those are way too long. You should cut them.” I make two fingers like scissors and aim at his hand before angling for his head.

  He looks at me, slightly bemused. “No.”

  I think he finds me a little strange.

  “You like them that way?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  He launches into a short monologue in Portuguese. I nod and smile, without any idea of what he’s talking about. The next day’s dawn cracks on my face.

  In Ponta Preta we stop at a stream that ripples from the breath of Gods. Weird rock formations resembling life-sized wisdom teeth surround it. The water is murky aqua, coloured by thoughts from all its visitors. My sister and I roll our trousers up. We wade knee-deep into those thoughts. They rise to the surface in the shape of weeds, leaves and debris. My hand is a sieve scooping them. My sister splashes water on me, catching me off-guard. I squeal and splash back. He stands to the side laughing at us. His laugh is a winged thing circling above. Our water fight soothes the dry air. We run out, dripping onto hot pebbles. My sister wanders to the left where a strip of concrete dusted with wet moss hair leading into the stream awaits. I weigh a pebble in my hand and chuck it in as far as I can. It fails to skim the water. My sister is on the strip now, at the end where the water greets it. She slips and falls back. Her head smacks against the concrete. We rush to her simultaneously. I fuss in older sister mode.

  “Are you okay? That looked nasty.”

  He helps her up, asks if she needs anything.

  “I’m fine,” she mumbles, looking a little disorientated. My sister is epileptic and I worry about any falls or accidents involving her head. I’m panicking that her brain may be dislodged somehow, floating in her cranium like a pickled egg. She dusts herself off.

  “Want me to take you to a hospital to get it checked out?”

  “No, it’s okay, it’s sore that’s all.”

  He walks ahead of us, we slip back a bit and I whisper, “I’m glad you went first and not me. I was about to do the same foolish thing!”

  She cuts her eyes at me. “Bitch. Your concern is overwhelming.”

  We wander over to a large square area that must be nature’s chessboard. The rock formations are eroded, rugged pieces. The sun makes its moves in the day and the moon at night. Play continues eternally. We are momentary reserve pieces hopping in between them, fingering rough grooves and jagged edges. After the last thoughts from the stream air dries on our toenails, we drive on. The van swells with heat you could mould into extra passengers. Soukous music blares low from the CD player. The aircon blows cool at my ardour crossing its legs.

  He tells me his name is Lindo. For some reason it makes me think of the game Connect Four. But instead of slipping blue or red circular chips into patterns of four, I’m slotting aquiline nose, nearly black eyes, stubborn chin and hairy wrist. Diagonally, horizontally, vertically.

  On the way we see the huge rock that has a lion’s face staring into the horizon. I wonder if it roars unexpectedly sometimes, if embers from those roars sneak into the right side of chests so it can beat too, bits of rock breathing inside people.

  I notice he honks his horn at many passersby. He seems to know every other person. At Buracona natural springs, he takes us to a small area between the rocks that looks like the entrance of a cave lying on its back. The water is so far down, if you were to fall in you would surely never get out. It’s dark in there but a part of the water is jarringly bright blue, it’s a jewel worshipping the light catching it. My head feels queasy. It wants to vomit at the prospect of accidentally falling. We navigate our way to the other side of the springs where people can swim. The routes are steep and tricky; he helps us through, holding
our hands. His touch is warm and lingers even after he lets go. I’m fairly athletic but pretend to be clumsier than usual.

  My sister rolls her eyes and grins at me. “I see you,” she murmurs.

  “It’s working,” I reply sheepishly.

  A man with dreads repeatedly dives from the top of the rocks, attacking each effort with gusto. A white couple swim with their baby. My sister and I dip our feet in. Our bikinis are second skin. It irks a little to watch the corner of the scene unfold and not sink our bodies in. Lindo motions at me. “No swim?”

  “Nah,” I shrug. “I’m not a very good swimmer and my sister can’t swim.”

  I’m consoled a little by his look of disappointment.

  At Pedra Lume, the abandoned ships from the 1800’s cave into one another in a misshapen embrace of rust and decay. They miss rough seas and rougher captains, the days of sugar transporting. They are no longer beautiful in the harsh mirror of day. I can’t afford to pay for both of us so I send my sister through to explore. Lindo and I drive round the back to watch her become a dimple in the distance. We lounge in the van next to each other with the doors open. We talk and laugh, two people discovering something old showing its new face. Our gaps and silences are empty rooms to sit in. We swap numbers. We colour our fingers with so much more.

  On the way back we visit the mirage spot, a river’s reflection beckoning. We are children of the dust leaning against the wind’s hold. The closer we try to get, the stronger the wind becomes. Eventually we turn back. The wind uses our clothes to slap us.

  Sal Island is a different animal at night with its yellow bulb glow. It is occupied by people as well as moods; joyful, raucous and reflective. On our two dates, Lindo and I walk around Santa Maria holding hands. Our shadows use our words to make maps on the soil.

  Making love on a beach is not romantic. Sand gets in my hair, bra and bloodstream. My head becomes an antenna to spot passersby. The bolstered boat shielding us from view feels like it will set sail on sand. The moon’s silver light smile cracks the sky. I’m forced to make sand gloves with my palm so I can’t stroke Lindo’s hair. He dips his head and sucks citrus from the inside of my arms. His saliva is a spell of rainfall becoming night dew on the mounds of my chest. His two long fingernails are magic markers drawing on skin. He spits the pips from my watermelon tongue. Liquorish coated words travel through the tunnels in my ears. The frothy waves greedily lap at the dusky breasts of the shore. He buries the condom in the sand. I tell him his sand baby will punch its fist through. It will uncurl it and hold the green veins of our night up as an offering.

  We don’t say goodbye. Our goodbyes dwell in the clammy pockets of Santa Maria, watching love fevers perusing fresh victims.

  At the airport the plane takes off, altitude and air intertwining in a sport nobody has bothered to name. My intestines are sucked through ash clouds that are airborne cigarette stubs. I’m mourning not what was, but what could have been, a well of emotion that shifts between the shallow and the deep. I wish I didn’t fall in love with beautiful looking men with two long fingernails and slow smiles like light flickering. I wish my heart wasn’t broken in three, with one piece browning on a barbecue, another lodged in my ribcage and the third a boy floating on out on the waters between the islands. I wish this white aeroplane was a big foam bed to cushion the fall to reality.

  A tear drops on my cheek. I’m sure Lindo is driving his silver van inside it, clearing the salty liquid away with the windscreen wipers. My sister clutches my hand. I turn to show her my back, my skin of picked seams that has come undone.

  Please Feed Motion

  On the third Thursday of each month, before writing to Eros, Nesrine Malik, prisoner 2212 pulled skin from the thing living in her throat. She performed this ritual without fail and had done so for four years since landing at Woodowns prison on drug charges as an accessory with intent to supply.

  Nesrine had arrived with a few items; an afro comb, a brown leather wallet and two first class stamps. It was love that threw Nesrine in jail. Blind, dangerous, destructive love for a man who’d groomed her to be his soldier on the streets. A man who’d told her there was wonder in her infectious, hypnotic smile and who liked to rub his thumb on her palm, slowly in an anti-clockwise motion.

  Emerico had only ever visited her in prison once and only to inform her he wouldn’t be coming again. “This is how it is,” he had said, watching her coldly, dispassionately, the chunky gold chaps bracelet on his wrist so large it knocked against the wooden table with the slightest move he made. He had been wearing his fade neat, his boyishly attractive face had remained distant, the proud flair of his nostrils had roused in her the memory of having pressed her lips there.

  At his declaration, Nesrine had slumped in her uncomfortable chair in shock, shoving her hand into her braids, heart-shaped face hollow, crumpled, looking through the glass partition, wanting to press her mouth against the smattering of holes there to get some air. It was a different kind of air that he’d brought with him.

  When he had gotten up to leave, she was vaguely aware of the sound of his chair scraping back, of the ceiling fan spinning, slicing her protest-laden tongue, of the other prisoners’ heads bent towards their visitors, deep in conversation. And then the jangling of the guards’ keys, dipping, and falling into the darkness of her throat.

  Then everything changed. Nesrine wasn’t sure whether it was the sticky heat of the room, the worn edges of the cheap brown linoleum floor that was starting to come unstuck, the sound of the glass door sliding open slowly, mechanically, or the boom of her own silence as that man left her to rot. Something changed in the air. The prisoners’ faces stretched, distorting into caricatures in the afternoon light, leaving their bodies to float in the dusty windows, crying at personal items they recognised spinning in the distance. Visitors’ hands rummaged through their pockets, searching for things that had fallen through an anti-clockwise gap. Guards scrambled on the floor, sniffer dog collars around their necks, dodging batons flying at their faces.

  Trembling, Nesrine stuck three fingers down her throat, convinced something would emerge from the moist darkness. While she grabbed at the thing there, Eros, shaking with anger, appeared for the first time in the empty visitor’s chair opposite her. Tears ran down his cheeks. Stunned, Nesrine removed her fingers from her throat, leaving the thing in the dark screaming. She saw Eros had only half a beating heart, shrinking and swelling in his chest. He set his bow and arrow down on the floor. He pulled Nesrine through the glass partition so she could breathe. The cuts around her mouth did not matter nor did her deadened tongue. He had come.

  *

  Nesrine sent the postcards to Piccadilly. They never came back. She imagined them flying boldly on the wind. That year, Nesrine sent Eros postcards of skeletons floating in the abyss. Before that it had been lost cities and prior to that it was women inventors. Without fail, every month she made a different prisoner press the damp tip of their tongue to the corner of the postcard. They always grumbled but nevertheless indulged her.

  “This is stupid, still it doesn’t cost me anything so I’ll do it.”

  “You are bonkers. Eros is something somebody created. He’s not real.”

  “You’re not asking for juices from my lady parts which would be more worrying yet frankly, somewhat arousing.”

  Nesrine knew he was real. She’d touched him, been rescued by him. She’d seen her pain and destruction reflected in his face. He’d caught her when she thought her organs had absconded from her body to become small explosives beneath the fingers of other prisoners.

  She fed Eros snippets of prison life; that Hollis, prisoner 4712, was found dead in the underground tunnel trying to escape, surrounded by empty crisp wrappers, rats eating the last images from her eyes, how Moffat, prisoner 3083, had fallen from the ladder injuring her shoulder whilst building the set for their interpretation of Much Ado About Nothing, how Gaudier, prisoner 2241, still possessing a hint of her French accent was found in
a donkey costume screaming in the costume wardrobe, waving a large candlestick holder at anybody who approached. She told Eros about her diary, which she kept tucked away beneath her mattress.

  At night, Nesrine ran her fingers over the kink in her hair, along the expanse of her brown skin where tiny scenes from a life lost rose to the surface mimicking the shapes of small countries. She thought of Emerico’s deceptive face. It only ever came to her in parts; left side first then the right. Never head on. How like him that was. Even in absence, he didn’t show you the whole picture. She watered his face with tepid prison tap water. She cried trying to silence his overarching, growing mouth. Sometimes she dreamt of emerging from a white triangle in the dessert, holding the remnants of her battered heart to an abandoned bow and arrow.

  On February 8th 1995, Nesrine’s postcard to Eros was delayed because of the netball game. The cold court was covered in invisible scuff marks from black, worn, plimsolls and the prisoners seemed malleable; blink and they’d be babies in orange and blue team bibs scrambling for the ball while the prison cat Homer kept trying to shove its head through the hole on the left side of the court, wanting to observe this grey world from a different angle as the women transformed. The locks in their chests clicked open, airborne bodies slick with perspiration, catching other things than the ball. Homer tried to leave a paw print on the game but the flashes of blue and orange were too quick. Too sly. Too seductive.

  Nesrine flew around the court in her position as goal attack. She felt she could be anything, such was the feeling of exhilaration, of freedom; a magician’s chest chasing its tricks, a concert reveler crowd-surfing the wrong way, a microorganism outgrowing the confines and gaze of its microscope. Hot on her heels was Harris, prisoner 2241, who played centre for the opposition. At the edge, where the half-circle surrounding the goal met redemption, Harris knocked into Nesrine with all her body weight. Nesrine fell, then sprang up like a prize fighter already tasting the spoils of victory; an extra packet of cigarettes, the title of Woman Of The Game, a chance to order two books of her choice at the prison library. Nesrine shoved Harris back. Their mouths curled dangerously, the way mouths do when words harbor small, sharp instruments that glint silver amidst their snarls.