Janita Lawrence - The Memory of Water

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.

The cream-coloured letters started arriving about a year ago. They started off polite, even complimentary. They were delivered by hand so there were no stamps as clues. Always written in the same handwriting on the same paper. It was heavy, textured like watercolour paper, and the top centre was embossed with a decorative circle: perhaps a wheel of sorts. I always read my fan mail. My ego demands it. Also, I am always freakishly interested to see what my readers have to say about my work. Some letters are easy to ignore: the ones that say they enjoyed the book, it was okay, they would make the following changes, in fact they have also written a book, and they’re sure that if my meagre offerings are published then they also have a shot. And the ones that reprimand me: for saying too little; for saying too much; for being racist/liberal/chauvinist/feminist/dishonest/too honest; for being potty-mouthed; for being a gutter-brained, debauched sex addict. Some wish me a speedy trip to hell. These never bother me, and are usually mildly entertaining. God forbid a writer mentions violence or sex. Write about life, they demand, tell the truth! But God forbid you write about the creation or destruction of it.

But some letters I have kept. Some readers say their lives have been enriched by reading my work; that it led them to some kind of pint-sized epiphany, or made them think differently about an aspect of their lives they were struggling with. Some go further – these are my favourites – and explicate some thematic concepts or symbolism that I completely missed when I was writing it. I find it interesting that a novel is a different story to each person who reads it. It’s also different to the same reader, at different points in his life. As if the words are living, breathing. I’ve read somewhere that, à la Heraclitus, you can never step into the same novel twice. There is sorcery in the words.