The Imperial

I hate my readers. I have written twenty-two books and nobody knows my name. No authors write words of praise on the covers. No-one says “his prose is reminiscent of a young Tom Wolfe,” or “his descriptions of Calcutta really capture the lingering smell of cow shit.” If I held a book signing no-one would show up because they liked my overview of the Mauritius bar scene. After 10 000 rupee of scotch I didn’t much like it either.

But I don’t hate you, obviously, for I am letting you in on the joke.

I am held up in the Imperial Hotel, Cielo, with a laptop and a case of cheap tequila. If you haven’t heard of Cielo, it’s because I’ve made it up. There is no old town square with a statue of St. Josephine. Josephine was a whore I picked up in Honduras. There are no boulevards of gridlocked motorbikes tumbling like river pebbles under the Arch de Chuck, or perfect beaches of bare-chested supermodels or waves that hang up long enough for you, dear reader, to remark at their beauty.

There is, however, a good bottle shop down the road.

Cynicism found me when I was penniless in Uganda. It followed me to my first Iranian brothel and had me head down over a toilet in a Monaco casino. I’ve eaten salmonella in Florence and E. coli in Ethiopia. I began inventing restaurant reviews because I was sick of people’s hospitality.

After six hundred hotel rooms I can write reviews based entirely off the name. ‘Nationals’ are soulless. Kids piss in the pools at ‘Oases.’ ‘Budgets’ are budget. ‘Imperials’ are “for the tired traveller looking to relax after a long day.”

Maybe it was my disappointment with the real world that had me inventing my own. My first invention was Dumpool, a Lancashire town so abhorrent that no-one would dare visit. My editor passed it without question and the publishers received no complaints from disappointed tourists. I was in awe of the repulsive power of my fantasies.

So from my hostel in Havana I planned my utopia: a patch of farmland on the south coast of Cuba called Cielo. I stole impossibly airbrushed photos from the internet of supermodels and hairy men in tight bathing costumes. I invented bars with invented drinks made from invented fruit. I built a red light district and shallow fountains you can scoop coins from to take to another casino. When I was finished I felt empty knowing that such a paradise could only be constructed from disappointment.

In my fantastical excitement, I finished compiling my Cuba book a week before deadline. So to fill the time I hired a car and, persuaded by my imagination, decided to drive to Cielo. I guess I was curious to know what was actually there. It was the most excited I had felt about travelling since my first book. I remember my anticipation as I drove around that last bend in the sugarcane. I imagined myself winning armfuls of peso at the Saint Guevara Casino and taking beaming photos underneath the Arch de Chuck: a monument dedicated entirely to me.

In a way it was exactly what I had expected: sugarcane plantation all the way to the horizon.

And so here I am. I’ve parked the car and walked along Desnudo Boulevard. I’ve sat on my balcony at the Imperial Hotel and watched the waves come and go until the noise felt like a logical metaphor for the stupidity of my life. I’ve thought about my Cuba book falling off the printers into shelves and shopping bags to be carried onto the planes and hire cars of hopeful tourists who would inevitably feel as silly as me.

And suddenly it doesn’t seem so bad, because if enough people come to Cielo on the same delusions that brought me to this “sunburnt eye candy” of a beach, then maybe we can build Cielo after all.

And maybe people will know my name.

Beginnings

Look at me. Right now I am two letters on a page. But I’m not. I am so much more, so much you don’t know about, wont care about. I am tempted then to casually say fuck you and move on. But I won’t. Because I am interested in you; where you are three letters and so many possibilities. We may have so much in common (in spite of no common letters). So I want to know you. Generic you.  Let us try to become friends. But how do we know when we are friends? How many indents in out dialogue categorises as conversation. How many conversations will it take until we, as a collective, are granted access to this label? I hope I’m not boring you; I’d hate to get off on the wrong foot. I already feel so pretentious, little old me, talking about myself in the third person.

Roses

What is most painful is knowing how vivid those final images must be for her. I sat in the field hospital beside her and watched thoughts ripple and break across her forehead. She will remember holding my hand at the market and the air raid siren howling like a woken baby and each thudding footstep tripping and stumbling over the darkness through the rose gardens where we had stopped to pick flowers and everything is smeared in a teary snot-clogged paste that catches in her throat. She will remember the swastikas watching from the windows along the Bautzner Straße as the night roared and flickered and we heard the thumping of giant’s footsteps. She has lived in the house we broke into. She has painted dust on the steps to that wine cellar and vineyards on the blood red bottles and when the bomb hit she saw the light shining off the splintered glass like rain.

When the doctors saw that her eyes were irreparable they sought to discharge her immediately but I convinced them to let her stay one night. Each hour she awoke and each hour I told her was the morning of a new day.

I began to believe myself. It was strange to see the darkness turn to grey then to know the sun could rise after the world has ended.

In the morning I led her between the rows of camp beds that lined the old warehouse. We stood outside so she could feel the February sun.

“Where are my roses?” she said.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I dropped them. But we can pick more.”

She was silent. Her head pointed at her shoes.

“A letter arrived from daddy while you were asleep,” I said.

“Really?” she said. “What did he say?”

“He said we pushed the Soviets out of Budapest. He says the Soviets are falling back like they have always done.”

She began to cry. She cried until blood appeared in her bandage. I placed my arms around her shoulders and held her head to my chest.

“I want daddy home,” she said.

“Daddy will be home soon,” I said. “You have me. We’re going home.”

“Ok,” she said.

I took her hand and we walked into the street.

“What do you see?” she said.

“I see the Bautzner Straße. I see the beer hall and it is open and there are men drinking and laughing in the street and waving flags. There are flags up and down the street. They know Germany is a strong proud country. They’ve heard about our victory in Budapest. They know the Fuhrer was right: ‘our unbreakable will and our capabilities will allow us to prevail.’ The sweet shop is closed but there are children playing hopscotch in the street. They are using debris as stones. Some houses were hit with bombs but there are Hitler Youth repairing them.”

“Really?”

“I’m your brother. I wouldn’t lie.”

“Tell me more.”

“And the rose gardens. The roses have bloomed. They are turning their heads to watch the sun.”

She loved to pick flowers from the rose gardens. She would wait until there was no-one around and take daddy’s scissors from her coat. She would spend hours arranging the roses into the vase on her window sill.

But she doesn’t ask to stop. She just smiles.

“Tell me more,” she says.

Puzzle

I carry a jigsaw piece in my pocket
because I’ve lost the other nine hundred and ninety nine pieces.

I don’t remember what it made

or where it went.

But I look at it sometimes

and hold its tiny arm between my fingers.

It has a red corner (but don’t we all?),

and it’s blue at the bottom (if you hold it the right way),

and the rest is purple

which is really just red mixed with blue.

It could have been the lips that join a kiss.

It could have been the dagger in the dead man’s back.

It could have been a picture of happiness

or maybe I’m holding it upside down.

It doesn’t matter what it was.

But I keep it with me

because I am looking for other lost jigsaw pieces

to link arms and make a picture

where red becomes green and yellow and blue and

when I look at it, it could mean something or everything or nothing

 if only I had another piece.

America

1.

 

The Americans are coming. They arrive in big white safari cars that make my ears hum and the gazelle break through the scrub like fork lightning. We are used to Americans because Americans built the orphanage and the school. Sometimes groups of Americans arrive in trucks to look at the school and stand in front of it with their thumbs pointed at the sky. I used to worry that the Americans would unpeel the timber from the walls and load the school back onto the trucks and take it away again.

            The Americans leave their safari cars in a long snake tail along the road. They unload tools and animals that I do not recognise and carry them to the chieftain’s hut. The chieftain pokes at the animals and hits the tools against the dust.

            He lets the Americans stay.

 

2.

 

The Americans assemble tents by the river. They unfold chairs and build a fire then sit down and watch it until dusk. They talk loud American. We lie in the scrub and listen for words we recognise.

            An American gets up from the fire and walks towards us. He fumbles with his crouch and his torchlight jerks about in the grass like a dying lizard. My friends giggle. They get up and run away. But I am entranced by the whiteness of his penis as he urinates into the grass.

            He has tucked it away when he notices me. I can feel his eyes over the blackness of my skin and the tick-like braids in my hair.

            “Hello,” he says in American.

            “Hello,” I say.

           

3.

 

The man takes my hand and brings me to the fire. The Americans stare at me. They smell of flowers and drink from long glass bottles. They speak in American for a while then lose interest in me.

            The man speaks my language while reading a book. His name is Sam. I ask him if he is here to see the school and he laughs.

Then he asks about me. It excites me to be a curiosity. I tell him about my mother’s death and school and about the work trucks that will take me away next year to the farms. He nods as he listens. He licks his smile and picks skin from his knuckles.

I ask him about America and his smile widens. He leans into the dust and draws long tree trunks poked with windows. He says that America is a forest of trees and he lives in the top-most window. He says that everyone owns a car and they drive over bridges made of steel.

He says that you can have whatever you can dream of in America. The problem is deciding what that is.

 

4.

 

The Americans don’t leave. More Americans arrive until there is a whole village formed by the river. We watch them sit and talk and bring supplies back from the horizon. Gossip has begun as to why they are here. They say there is a war being fought. They say fire fell from the sky onto America and the Americans fled like ants from an anthill.

            They say the Americans are refugees.

 

5.

 

I ask Sam if this is true. He laughs and says yes. But he says that America will recover. He says that America is an idea and ideas can’t be beaten from his mind. He gives me a slice of chicken meat and I nibble it into fine threads.

            Then I ask if he will take me to America with him. He laughs and laughs.

He says yes.

 

6.

 

There are new Americans in the village but these Americans are different. Some have yellow skin like old paper with slits cut for eyes. They don’t speak American but a strange bubbly gibberish. Others have dirty brown skin or pale white skin and sunny hair. Soon there are tent villages on all sides divisible by the colour of skin.

            Sam says the tents by the orphanage are the Asians. There are the British by the game reserve and the Russians further along the river. There are more people but they are more names for me to forget. 

            Then he stops smiling and his face becomes frightening. I can see creases like war paint fold across his cheeks. He points at the Asians. He tells me they are dangerous because they don’t agree that people should be allowed to have whatever they want.

            He says they dropped fire on America.

 

7.

 

In the night-time I drop fire on the Asian tents.

 

8.

 

The Asians must have known I would come. They put out the fires with long hoses as I watch from the scrub. They shout at themselves. They shout at their friends and the darkness and the shouting spreads from tent to tent until the village is surrounded by snarling and barking of vicious pack dogs. Out of every safari car comes guns. Guns are fired into the air and the sky screams back in agony.

            Men from the camps come into the village holding guns and fat torches. They shout at each other in their region’s American. We hide in our huts and watch. I see Sam with his scabby fist curled around a pistol and the torchlight catching in the creases of his cheeks. He is shouting American into the night.

            They shout until the grey fuzz of dawn nibbles at the darkness. They speak in hushed tones until light.

            By evening the safari cars are packed and gone.

 

9.

 

Sometimes I sit in the dust where Sam’s tent once was with flowers against my nostrils and know that Sam will come back for me when the trees sprout again from the ash bed of American dust. I imagine ridiculous things, like drinking from long glass bottles and placing one shoed foot against the pedal of a safari car as it follows the other cars to wherever it is that people go.

            Safari cars drive along the road but nobody stops to look at the orphanage. Sometimes, when my mind is weak, I wonder why people who have everything ever bothered to stop at all.

Around me

The city is wrapped around me like a blanket tonight. The cars wait in long cues for me to pass by shopfronts and hookers and office windows that shine down on me like stars. I see shadows in the darkness that reach out and pull me through doorways into empty bars and sex clubs and parties of strangers huddled around the heat of a cigarette in lofts over empty banks and open planned warehouses that dement the soul and pump out babies on conveyor belts. I am drunk, stoned, depressed, on a train in the darkness going around and around and the people around me stare at their reflections in the windows and see only the city as it wraps around them like a blanket and slowly they dissolve.

To my doona

How can you recluse from something you’ve never seen.
Life doesn’t live in darkness.
It throws coins at the homeless and hates the government
and finds love and loses love so it can find love again.

Come with me. Come outside.

I will tuck you around my shoulders as we drink coffee and talk to Margaret
(remember her? You liked her).
We can laugh at all the different types of soy milk.

So what if people talk about us? People talk about a lot less.

People will talk about anything. You will learn that quickly.
And they do it with their heads held high
as the wind cuts into their necks.

Maybe we will start a trend.

Then you can tell all your new friends
that you were the first doona on the street.
Then you will know what it actually feels like

 to come home and really feel tired,

to lie with me and really feel warm.
I need you, doona. And you need me
because without me

 you’re just a cotton bag on a bed.