Man on Fire

1

I share my cell with a broken-down kid in a T-shirt that says ‘Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas’. He’s coming down from something transformational and the tragedy of his return to earth is scratched into his face like a prayer gone cold. His eyes are empty and restless. He knows how close I came to killing a man. He can feel it coming off me and it’s making him edgy.

I tell the Inspector I have to be somewhere.

‘Where?’

‘I have to go home. I’m dying. I haven’t got much time left. You know I’m innocent. Let us go, we just want to go home.’

The Inspector mumbles something profane to himself and turns the page of his newspaper.

‘You are dying?’ my cellmate asks me.

‘That’s right.’

On hearing this he sways towards me, drawn in. I can smell the fight on his clothes. I know somehow that every day for him is a fight he can’t win. His breath is hot and sweet and I need a drink.

‘I also am dying,’ he says. He looks very young when he says this. There’s confederacy in his tone and it sickens me a little bit.

He puts his arms together as though he’s handcuffed. The inner sides of his forearms are bitten and ravaged. He feels no disgrace in telling me he’s a user of heroin. He says it’s killing him but he can’t stop.

‘I need it too much. I have tried to stop but it is very difficult. My brother died from heroin also. He was nineteen years old. I am twenty-two. I have died twice before but each time I came back. When my brother died I was in college. I was studying to be an engineer. Now I am living on the streets. I steal and I beg. Sometimes I am selling books along the road but it is too much competition, the boys with limbs missing are always making the most sales, the customers are feeling sorry for them. I am just a junkie. They do not feel sorry for me.’

I reach out to touch his shoulder but then I quickly pull back in case he doesn’t want the intrusion. I’m not sure why but it’s important to me that he thinks I’m a good man, sensitive to the needs of others.

‘Life is very hard. God has forgotten me. I know I have disappointed him. This is why he does not listen anymore. There are many other people who need his help before me. They should have it.’

His smile is disarming. He’s as untouched by self-pity as I was enslaved to it.

I tell him God hasn’t forgotten him. I surprise myself by believing it. But then I shouldn’t be surprised, not after everything that’s happened. I believe in you informally, like a recipe handed down. You’re my bread now. Funny how my taste for you has come on like a fire in an airless room.

The kid hugs himself and shakes like a dog coming out of the rain. The boy he was is visible in the little tremors and the stamping of feet.

He asks me for money. Just enough for one night of comfort once he gets out of here. Then tomorrow he’ll buy some more books and go out on the road again. The monsoon is nearly over and many things are washed away. He knows he can’t get them back. Just enough for one night of comfort.

I tell him I can’t help him. I say God is with him and he shouldn’t give up hope.

He lies down on the concrete bench, curls up tight with his back to me. I listen for a warning of a coming rage but within moments his breathing is deep and he’s still. I’ve stopped speculating about the contents of other people’s dreams.

An hour goes by and you sit with me. You tell me that the world you made for me is a beautiful place, and it will still be beautiful long after I’ve left it.

What about earthquakes and volcanoes, I say.

Mostly beautiful, you say. And what horrors there are only pass through so beauty can have a new place to build its ministry. Grass grows from ash and birds from bone.

The horror I made is still fresh, and before I die I hope to be forgiven for it. I let myself smile. I’ll miss India and the rain on my skin.