The Memory of Water

²⁷ NOT WAVING

I am sitting in my lounge, drinking merlot and looking at the blue-skinned man. The wine is a vintage Meerlust I have been saving for a special occasion. I picked up a case on some or other Cape wine route holiday. I sigh. Those were the days. I figure that if I wait till I get out of prison to drink it I would kick myself for every day of my sentence. After this bottle I have another lined up. And another.

There is something unnerving about the painting. Not only do his eyes follow me around the room, but they seem to have some knowledge of who I am and what I’ve done, and it makes me feel on edge. After regarding him for a while I raise my glass to him and, in a way, to Eve. I see Eve in Denise’s eyes, and in the way she purses her lips to smile, but apart from that they are polar opposites. Eve was so cool and reserved and pure and Denise is mysterious, provocative, dark. Impossible to pin down. Almost as if she is Eve’s shady reflection. That’s why we connect: in this over-lit world, we are both shadows.

She is healing me, in a way. I catch myself thinking of her often. Wondering what my life would be like if we hadn’t met. I’m under no illusions: I know that I don’t know anything about her, and that she will leave me in a beat. But when everyone else is banging down the doors she asks nothing of me. She seems to know when I need her and when I need space. As if she has had some kind of special training. I have never been in a relationship with a girl who knows how close I want her. I usually feel overwhelmed, then abandoned. Denise makes companionship an art form. An intuitive foxtrot. I wonder why she is being so good to me, a stranger. Maybe she is doing it for Eve: a final gift.

I have broken all my rules for her. I make her breakfast every morning (rye melba toast with cheddar and marmalade, black coffee, neither of which she finishes). I hold her as we fall asleep. I emptied out a bedroom drawer of mine so that she doesn’t have to live out of a suitcase. She hardly takes up any space. I seem to have lost interest in other women. Sometimes, at night, when we are exhausted but too giddy to sleep, I read to her. Faulks, Gordimer, Rushdie, Niffenegger, Murakami. She purrs when I open Atwood or Mantel. She transcribes Plath and leaves the scribbled notes around the house for me to find. I discover Contusion hiding in the crevice of the couch, Kindness in the shower, Cut inside the fridge, Edge on my pillow. I whisper Ondaatjie’s The Cinnamon Peeler’s Wife into her ear. I have so little to offer, but at least I can give her that. We get lost in it, together. I keep Stevie Smith’s poignant and perfect poem, Not Waving But Drowning, to myself. It is too true to share with anyone else. I am, have always been, the one not waving.

And, of course, the sex. It allows me to go somewhere in my head I’ve never been before. An intense feeling I am somewhere else. I’ve been trying to figure it out. Maybe it’s something to do with the fact that your body is so earth-bound during sex that your mind has the freedom to explore. Sexual astral-travelling. Whatever the reason, sex with Denise is nothing short of transcendental.

“I’m going to make you start writing again,” Denise announces, mid-fuck.

“You’re good,” I say, “but not that good.”

She makes me stand near the full-length mirror in the bedroom so I can watch her give me head. She kneels in front of me, one hand on my hip, and uses her mouth and throat in a way that would make Linda Lovelace proud. After a while she lets me thrust into her mouth. I watch her body in the mirror, her black hair, her rocking tits. Naked except for her designer heels.

Maybe she is that good. Or that bad.

I go from safe in bed to being held down in the Bangkok jail cell with a shiv to my throat. It’s an old dream now and I try to go through the motions without feeling the fear. Unfortunately dreams don’t seem to work like that. It’s always the same nightmare with slight variations. Sometimes the knife-wielder isn’t Thai; sometimes the jail cell is the infested hotel room in Lagos; sometimes I survive. There is always a shiv – or something sharpened to be a knife – an enemy, and a sense of urgency. They want something from me and sometimes I figure it out in time. Tonight I am treated to the original version. A hundred and fifty kilo Muay Thai thug is in my face, shouting at me in words I don’t understand. I want to understand: I know that if I don’t give him what he wants I may as well say my prayers. But it’s dripping hot, there are fifty men in a cell made for five, and I haven’t had a drink of water in the last 48 hours. My left eye is swollen shut and I think he may have broken my ribs, but I stand my ground. I learnt the hard way, in the army, that you should rather cross the Great Divide than give in to the playground bully. The audience urge us on, whistling and clapping, as if this is a backstreet dogfight. Cockfight. He is hopping and shouting and spitting and I wonder how long he will be able to keep it up. He looks like he has moves but if I am clever I think I can outlast him. I am wrong. He roundhouses me, planting his foot in my mouth, and I drop. Then he is kneeling on my chest, shinysharpness to my throat. My brain and tongue are swollen and I just want to know what the fuck he wants. In the beginning I gave him my wallet, fat with US dollars. I reasoned it would buy me a few hours of safety, especially if everyone in the cell saw me do it. The man took out the notes, threw them in the air, death confetti, and started shouting again. After that I gave up trying to appease him and stood my ground, fists raised to protect my head, much to the amusement of the other men in the cell, and the guards. Then came the blows. Consistent, well-aimed kicks to my sweet spots, until I am lying there, waiting for my throat to be slit like a goat on New Year’s Eve. A smaller man, a boy, is instructed to strip me, which he does, paying close attention to the buttons on my shirt. He takes everything off except my jocks. I am too distracted to be grateful. I can feel blood run down my neck where the knifepoint rests just under my skin. For the first time I wonder if I’m going to die.

Before this moment it was Another Great Story. I was thinking how I would tell people when I got home. It was the craziest thing. All a misunderstanding. Yes, locked up! Can you imagine? (An outraged chuckle, a sip of chardonnay) In Bangkok! And then this Muay Thai thug starts taunting me. It was going to be the article of my career. I wondered if I would win an award. But then the shiv slides in slightly deeper and I realise there is actually a chance of me not making it out of here. That I am going to die this silly, senseless death without the solace of knowing why. Who knows how long it will take for them to identify my body, naked and slick with dirt and blood, alert my publisher, my agent, my father.

A misunderstanding.

Ja, I guess it was. I was on assignment to write a story about underage prostitution in Thailand so instead of going and observing from a distance I looked at a menu and chose a girl – one who could speak English – and paid for a whole night with her so that I could hear her story while sitting in her damp box of a room.

I was getting some good words down when the brothel was raided and I, realising the situation and my odds, decided to run. I learnt that night that Thai whores make most of their money when they are barely in their teens and that Thai police run like quicksilver. That was unlucky, and unluckier still was being stuck in a cell with a man who had lost his twelve-year-old daughter to a violent tourist john.

Tonight I wake up before they knock me out and drag my body across the cell, depositing me in the small space between the back wall and the maggoty latrine. Tonight I wake up and I have a guardian angel silhouette bent over me, warm skin shaking me, smelling like Chanel, telling me it’s only a dream.