Don’t Be Pitiful.

‘Don’t be pitiful.’

 

A year before the execution, on May 19^th, Benico got up late for work. He was distracted by a hung over Javier and an escaped cat. As a result, he forgot his umbrella and his key. When he returned from work, he was soaked. There was no use in running and there was little shelter as all the streets had been partially ruined by air raids. At the time, it felt as if there was a raid every day. This was an exaggeration, but they were frequent enough to affect everyone individually. Two weeks before, a shell had landed and taken out a church. A week after, a set of flats were demolished. In April, Benico had been knocked off his bicycle and through a butcher’s window. He had dislocated his shoulder. A doctor had come and popped it back in and put his arm in a sling. Benico asked him about the bicycle, and the doctor looked at the wire frame and told him to go home. As a reward, the newspaper where Benico worked had given him two weeks off. His shoulder was always slightly stiff and he never rode a bicycle again. But the most recent damage was a shell that had landed and turned Benico’s doorstep into a crater.

After he returned from work, he climbed in and stood knee deep in the crater. He rang the doorbell for flat seven, waited, and rang it again. When no one answered, he climbed out and yelled over the downpour. He found a stone and threw it against the window and yelled again. When no one answered still, he went back and pressed all twelve buttons. He missed out nine (dead), eleven (missing), and five (suicide). Eventually, the door was opened by a stranger. ‘Thanks,’ Benico said and ascended the stairs, dripping and shivering and angry.

He knocked four times on his door. The seven came free on the second knock and glided to the floor. The door opened on the fifth and Javier’s face appeared, cut in half by a sagging latch chain. His left eyebrow gripped the gold rim of a Victorian monocle.

‘Why didn’t you answer the door?’ Benico said.

Javier frowned. ‘What?’

‘Open up.’

‘I bought a monocle.’

‘Javier, open up.’

‘I got you one as well. All men should have a monocle, it’s essenti-’

Benico gripped the door and struck Javier’s face with it. He howled and disappeared. Benico reached inside, undid the chain and came into the living room. It was a sad room with peeling wallpaper and no carpet. The room seemed to sigh and, as it did, appeared to inhale the pair of mottled curtains and slip the door seductively shut. The room had five doors. Three lead to bedrooms, one to a decaying kitchen, and the fifth to a bathroom, dotted with slugs and fresh bloomed mushrooms. On the floor were discarded bottles, papers, brown backed books, a smashed pot plant and a dead bird. Javier occupied a simple corduroy sofa spotted with cigarette burns.

‘No clothes?’

‘Clothes are for the weekend, darling,’ Javier said and snubbed out the cigarette on the sofa.

‘You’re absurd,’ Benico said.

‘You seem tired, are you tired? Poor Benico. Let me cheer you up, let me tell you about my day.’

‘No.’

‘Don’t kid yourself, you’ve been wondering all day.

Benico said nothing and got into a dry pair of trousers. Javier waited a second.

‘We need sugar,’ he said.

‘What? We had two bags.’

‘That was two weeks ago.’

‘I can’t keep buying sugar.’

‘But you must Benico, you must, what will me and Oscar do?’

‘You could get a job.’

Javier pushed that suggestion away with a hand.

‘Death is coming,’ he said. ‘Always remember that Benico, death is coming.’

Benicio said nothing and pulled on a new shirt.

Javier admired his nails, then: ‘If I asked you to hit me, would you?’

Benico found his umbrella, bloomed it. ‘Where’s the cat?’ he said, rustling the thing back together.

‘Never mind that,’ Javier said, leaping off the sofa, his animal slapping against his chest, then his thigh. ‘Hit me. I need to be hit. I haven’t been hit in a while. It’ll be artistic.’

‘No.’

‘People will write about it.’

‘Hit yourself,’ Benico said and opened the door. ‘Feed the cat to.’

‘We have a cat?’

‘I gave it to you, remember?’

‘Ah.’

‘Ah?’

‘I hate this,’ Javier said.

‘Hate what?’

‘Well, honey, the cat’s dead.’

Benico stopped in the doorway. ‘You killed-‘

‘Benico, I’ve always been awfully wary of full grown men with cats,’ Javier said, smoked, sighed, ‘now, please, hit me.’

‘I’m not going to hit you,’ Benico said, pinching the bridge of his nose. He sighed. ‘Oscar’ll be heartbroken.’

‘Never mind that.’

‘I’m leaving,’ Benico said, and opened the umbrella. He promised to be back by eleven.

*****

While the pair talked, Oscar stayed in his room, redrafting a chess piece with a rubber hammer and a chisel. Its brother and sister drafts lay discarded. They were just not right. This problem arose as Oscar was dropped on his head as a boy. He had a father who liked to drink and dress up in his old military uniform. One day, while dressed in his old military uniform, he dropped baby Oscar on his head. It caused deep, incurable problems.

For example, once, Javier said: ‘Why do people do that?’ But Oscar was not listening. He was distracted by the voice a little behind his left ear. It told him: stop and salute the church three times. He stopped. ‘It will not prevent what God has in store,’ Javier said. He noticed Oscar had stopped; he turned and swore. Javier was impatient.

*****

Zip forward to May 19^th. Javier went back to the sofa, smoked a dozen cigarettes, grew bored and left. Then jump forward five lots of sixty minutes.

*****

Benicio came in red faced from the cold, spattered in eager snowdrops, hands crammed into his armpits and breathing like a kettle. He uncoiled his scarf and the winter light snatched a glimpse of two lines late night love bites, but then they were gone, concealed beneath a stiff white collar. He looped the scarf over the hanger, labelled B, for Benicio. Oscar was nursing a sofa bound Javier.

‘Be careful,’ Javier said, ‘cheekbone’s split, I’m sure.’ Oscar dipped a cloth into a pot of bubbling water. Three minutes before, Oscar had plucked three icicles (discarding three as they were ‘just not right’) from the windowsill and melted them in the pot. The water was golden now from blood.

‘What?’ said jaw-shaking Benicio, crossing the room in creaking steps.

‘Javier was in a fight.’ Oscar said. ‘He lost it.’

‘I declared victory irrelevant.’

‘A f..f…’ -Benicio’s jaw chattered for a while- ‘f..fight.’

‘I suggested a battle of wits,’ Javier said, Oscar continued to touch the cloth to his face, ‘but – ah! Careful! – he didn’t know the rules.  Also he has an – Did you learn medicine in a boxing ring, be careful! – Oedipal complex.’

‘Really?’ Benicio said.

‘Yes, he – fuck – he – look, give me the fucking! – probably wants to urinate on his mother.’

Oscar picked up the pot and cast the water out into the street. He returned and hurled the pot into the kitchen. Then he sat and unwrapped a mint humbug, besotted by a frown.

‘I’m making coffee,’ Benicio said, ‘then-’

‘I am not happy.’ Oscar said.

‘So you bought sugar?’

‘Two bags.’

‘Cheap?’

‘Don’t be pitiful,’ Benicio said, entering the kitchen.

‘How’s Maria?’

‘I would like coffee.’ Oscar said, in the process of reknitting his shoelace for the fifth time. (It just had to be right. It just had to be right.)

‘Remember your birthday,’ Benicio said. A broken nose, a spinster in tears, the shattered frame of a bicycle, all the plates stacked, restacked, and stacked again, flames consuming the sofa and finally a fire brigade and a blanket.

In the kitchen, Benicio’s spoon scraped rust and the last of the coffee into a pair of disused mugs. He added milk (tangy, but not solid). Found a kettle – still half-full with three day old dregs – boiled it and waited, fingers tip-tapping on his thighs. It finished with a ding and he shovelled two spoonfuls of sugar into his cup (three for Javier) and returned.

After two sips of coffee, and neat silence, Javier told Benicio how he had gotten into a fight.

*****

Upon a noontime, Javier, hungry, desolate, and bored, wanted simply to eat. The bread bin was deserted. The fruit bowl had decayed. Even Benicio’s stash of chocolate was gone.  Javier, quite simply, in his frame of mind, the frame of mind befitting a bachelor and (Benicio hurried him to the point) knocked  three times on a door, numbered five.

An extravagance of light-tanned, stocking-locked leg answered. Small, librarianish. Dressed in a skirt. She was sucking a lollipop and her bun was escaping, strand by strand, from the hairbands lacing it together. Put simply, she was a treat. Javier, as he was apt to, immediately proceeded to sleep with her.

All it took was a gesture, a sweeping aside of hair, a lily livered kiss on the hot cusp of a blood red ear. A sigh, eyes convening. They fell leftwards, tusselled on the sofa (Javier gorging on her neck) lost their clothes, flipped, finished, reunited brown and velvety eyes, then smiled, revealing tender tooth tips, and trickled over each other in fingertips and kisses, swapped positions, heaved, sighed, moaned, finished (this time softly, on the panels and splinters of the floor) wiped the sweat from each other’s foreheads, placed gentle kisses on cheeks and bites on noses, danced then, twirled, waltzed, finished, again, (accidently) and then lay, covered in shimmering goose bumps, panting in a paradise of crumpled sheets and lost pillows, bathing in the warm winter sun.

*****

Her frowning husband, Angelo, returned. Javier was binding the zip of his jeans and she was devouring a cigarette. Angelo’s necklace scampered between open shirt buttons into a meadow of crisp blackness. He had Javier’s shirt in his paw.

‘Good sir,’ Javier said, ‘my shirt.’ Angelo handed him a backhand. Javier’s world disappeared with a crack. He found himself dumped on the floor, staring down the rivet between two floorboards. His vision sprinkled black-white. A wail in his ear.

Above him, he could see the silent fragments of an argument: hand gestures, tears, mouths set to anger. Should have hidden under the bed, Javier thought and returned, sluggishly, to his feet. He made for the door and a set of fingers fell upon his shoulder.

‘Weredud (sound emerged) think you’re going?’

Javier turned.

‘Do you play tennis?’ jaw-hurting, temple-snarling Javier said.

Angelo responded with a left hook. It was a miss. The fist plunged into the wall. Javier went to run. Angelo caught him by the neck and threw him against the wall. Angelo pressed his forehead to Javier’s, snarled. Javier could smell the recent prawns, garlic and rice of Angelo’s dinner.

‘You stink,’ Javier said. Angelo grunted and pulled back his head. Both eyes shut tight. Javier sat down. Only to be showered in dust. A flower with six plaster petals had blossomed on the wall.

‘It’s only your wife,’ Javier said, ‘some men have hundreds.’ Angelo, forehead white from the wall, dragged Javier to his feet by the collar.

‘Fuck you,’ he said.

‘Now, that’s not nessecar-’ Angelo hurled him across the room. Javier bounced on the bed. Rolled. Came to an unbalanced stop at the edge. Started to slip. Started to fall. Grabbed at the sheets. Missed. Got a pillow. And heaved them and himself onto the floor.

Silence, then she screamed (Javier was still ignorant to her name) and came to him, her face ugly with tears. Javier was hastily gathered up and cushioned against her breasts. Over her mole, he could see    Angelo fiddling with a key.

‘Don’t you dare!’ she said.

‘Dare what?’ Javier said.

‘He has a gun.’

Javier sighed. ‘What an overcompensation.’

Don’t you dare!’ she said. ‘Or you’ll have to kill me too!’

‘Darling,’ Javier said, ignoring the kisses on his forehead, on the softness of his eyelids, and reaching for the lamp. ‘Darling,’ Javier said. Angelo pulled out a gun.

‘Don’t you dare! Don’t you dare!’

Javier found the wire. ‘Darling,’ he said, still cushioned against her chest. He tugged, the lamp fell, the bulb cracked. ‘Darling,’ Javier said. Angelo stepped onto the bed.

She continued to wail. ‘Not him! Not him!’

‘Darling!’ Javier said, pushing her off him, ‘please, I’m in the middle of something.’

Angelo stepped off the bed and pointed the gun at Javier. Javier’s finger’s curled around the lamp.

‘What do you say now-’ he sai- Javier swung, knocking the gun out of Angelo’s hand. It skittered away and disappeared beneath a dresser. Angelo got to the u of fuck, before the lamp smacked into his temple. He fell to the bed. Javier stood, hunched over and panting. At some point, he realised he had dropped the lamp.

*****

‘Is he dead?’ she said.

‘Of course not,’ Javier said, but checked his pulse, just to be sure. (Javier’s words, “Even his heartbeat contained a modicum of sexual jealousy”)

‘No,’ Javier said. ‘He’s not dead’ and breathed out.

****

‘Well, it’s been lovely,’ Javier said, at the door, leaving her naked and cold. They were no more than strangers, who loins had been, somewhat unavoidably, entangled. He descended the three sets of spiral stairs, tumbling like a penny down a charity chute and collapsed on the sofa. At some point, Oscar had started dousing his cheek.

*****

The story died and took with it the pitter-patter of Javier’s voice. The room was filled with crisp silence, broken only by the tick                         tock

tick                   tock of two out of sync clocks.

Oscar had left, mid story, and returned, swathed in a towel. He was searching for his special spot, the place he stood to brush his teeth, every day, at three o clock exactly.

‘Does Angelo know where -’ Benicio said, lost the words and painted a picture with a circling finger.    ‘You live,’ is what he meant.

‘He moved out. Covered in blood,’ Javier said.

‘You’re in trouble.’

‘Go hang yourself.’

‘But how’s Maria?’

‘Don’t try so hard.’

‘Go drink paint.’

Benicio laughed. Oscar began to brush. Benicio finished the drink, saw no fortune in the dregs and went back to observing the ever-shifting snow. Meanwhile:

‘Stop!’ Javier said, ‘you’ll drive me insane!’

Oscar, through a foam of fluoride, mumbled that he couldn’t.

‘Fifth time today!’

Oscar took out the brush.

‘Ma ma juu can.’

Javier hurled his cup at him; the cup popped on the wall.

‘I can’t stand you!’

Oscar continued to brush stoically.

‘Like her?’ Benicio said, bored of the snow.

‘No.’

‘Really?’

‘Really.’

And that was all that was said about it, till an incident on the terrace of a French Café.

*****

Oscar had seen two shirts earlier that day. His voice liked them a lot.

‘And if I have twelve buttons and bring two shirts I can give each of these shirts six buttons unless I want to give one five,’ Oscar said.

Benicio, nodding along to Oscar’s monologue, spotted the girl with Angelo, and a small boy with Javier’s unique eyes, each the colour of oak.

‘Javier,’ Benicio said, hushed, ‘Javier.’

Javier sighed. ‘What.’

‘Look.’

‘No shirt should have seven or five buttons,’ Oscar said.

Javier looked, frowned and, gradually, his mouth opened.

‘Is that my son?’

‘Last night, Maria said-’ Benicio said.

‘I personally think-’

‘Oscar!’ Javier said, slapping his palm against the table. ‘Shut up!’

‘It was,’ Benicio said.

‘Looks like me.’

‘Don’t be pitiful,’ Benicio said, ‘say hello.’

Angelo saw the pair looking and sheltered the boy under a hair-matted arm.

‘He’s looking at me.’

‘Go over.’

‘Shut up.’

‘She’s sagging,’ Benicio said. ‘Not as attractive as you said.’

‘I fathered his child,’ Javier said.

‘Excuse me, sir-’ a waitress said.

The waitress looked at Oscar. Oscar smiled, his lips laced with spittle.

‘One coffee’ she said, glancing at Oscar.

‘Thank you,’ Javier said, ‘but possibly something stronger.’

She nodded and left, stealing one last glance at Oscar, before disappearing into the depths of the café.

‘Alcohol?’ Benicio said.

‘“Celebration”’

‘“Sorrow.”’

‘You’re pitiful,’ Javier said, ‘you don’t understand.’

‘You forgot sugar.’

Javier sipped: ‘I fathered a child,’ he said, through a coffee moustache. Oscar smiled and wiped off the coffee with his sleeve, then stroked Javier’s face.

‘You’ll be okay, Javier,’ he said.

‘What do I do?’ Javier said.

‘I don’t know,’ Benicio said. And the sat there, puzzling, hoping a neat solution would come.