Dan Vyleta - Smoke

At the end of the round Julius bends over the ropes that frame the ring and spits out a black rotten sweet. For a split second Charlie is transported back to school, to that initial fight between Thomas and the head boy. There, too, a blackened lump was spat across a floor. It bounced on bathroom tiles.

Back then they took it for a tooth.

They start the second round. Thomas does not stand a chance. Julius continues to box scientifically, inflicting maximum punishment. He works Thomas’s body as much as the face, the side of the ribs, and the soft of the belly, Thomas looking as though he is drowning. He smokes from pain and helplessness, staggers, rolls, slumps. It does not even occur to Charlie that he is baiting his opponent, making him careless. But when Julius shoves his reeling figure, pushing him into the ropes, Thomas suddenly straightens and out of nowhere lands a hook with such force it sends four or five sweets flying from Julius’s mouth, some dark, some still clear as crystal. They are followed by a gob of blood.

Still Julius keeps coming and still he does not smoke. He is more careful now, boxes at distance. Punch after punch hits Thomas: the flat, dry drumbeat of air being forced out of the glove. It isn’t until the sand in the hourglass has almost run clear that Charlie understands that Thomas, too, has adjusted his strategy. He is leaning into Julius; is grinning, taunting him; allowing himself to be hit.

Feeding Julius’s frenzy.

Exhausting his remaining sweets.

And then, without any warning, with only seconds left in the round, the last of the sweets is spent. Julius erupts . Smoke paints him black. It envelops Thomas who screams a viscous cloud of welcome. They go down, one on top of the other, and Julius keeps pounding Thomas, never tiring, inhuman in his strength, while Thomas keeps on screaming in pain and hatred, his chin dripping with wet Smoke and blood. The round is long over, and Charlie is in the ring, trying to pull Julius off. In vain. Julius does not even budge, kicks and elbows behind himself, all the while sending fists into Thomas’s black and bloodied face.

Again Charlie tries to pull Julius off. Again he fails, Smoke and panic in his every breath. Then an idea comes to him. He does not hesitate, throws himself flat on his stomach, searches the floor for the unspoilt sweets that Thomas beat out of his opponent. He finds one, then a second the shade of light amber; scuttles over to Julius and reaches, through his Smoke, first for his throat then his chin, his mouth, attempting to force the sweets inside. Teeth cut his thumb, his index finger, the knuckle. Then an elbow to the head sends Charlie flying onto the parquet next to them, and when he gasps for air it is Smoke that rushes in his lungs and turns all thought to madness.

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It works, after a fashion. The fresh sweets absorb and bind the strongest Smoke. It grants a measure of lucidity to Julius’s hatred. He rolls off Thomas — to regroup? to fetch the stool from the corner of the ring and bash in their skulls? — staggers to his feet, yells something; then stops short, staring out into the hallway past the gym’s open door. The next moment he is running. Where to does not matter to Charlie. He barely hears the footsteps, his own blood is so loud in his ears. All that matters is that Julius is gone.

Charlie retches, watches Thomas’s Smoke die out. When his friend sits up, Thomas’s outline remains on the parquet. A wood-pale shadow, as though cut into a sheet of perfect black dust. Charlie, still on his knees, draws a finger through the Soot. It is warm, almost hot, and fine like coal dust. He feels he needs to say something, anything, just to return them to normality: a world where people communicate their feelings in words. But all he can find to say is a lie.

“I have never seen anyone smoke like that.”

The truth is that he has. Both of them have. When a murderess swung from a rope in London.

Thomas’s features are unreadable under the Soot.

“Do you mean him, or me?”

Charlie closes his eyes and again sees the smoking, blackened forms of the two prone bodies intertwined, like the charred remains of lovers discovered in a burnt-down barn.

“Him,” he whispers. But what he thinks is: Either. Both.

Compelled by some strange alchemy, Julius’s and Thomas’s Smoke have reacted to produce something Charlie has no words for. He was inside their Smoke for no more than a few seconds. What he breathed in — what entered his body, took control as surely as a puppeteer’s hand shoved into a Punch or Judy — stood all truth upon its head. Over there , inside the Smoke, pain was joy and anger peace. Violence was love.

As though hoping it will rid him of the memory, Charlie rises to his feet. The moment he is up, still dizzy, he sees what Julius saw.

Livia is there.

From the look in her eyes she has been there a good long while.

She is standing out in the hallway, half a step from the door, in a frock of perfect white. And looks as though she is going to a party. Her cheeks are powdered, hair pinned into a bun behind her head. It disturbs Charlie that in a moment like this he can notice such a detail. And approve. The hairstyle suits her, underlines the slimness of her neck. In her ears, two pearls swing on silver loops.

“Miss Naylor!” Charlie raises a hand in greeting then lets it drop. All social conventions are as though swept away. His naked, blackened chest shivers with sudden cold. One side of the hourglass is dusted with Soot as though it has been witness to a storm.

To Charlie’s surprise, Livia walks into the room rather than running away. She climbs in the ring, walks past him, and bends down low to where Thomas is still sitting on the ground, the hem of her dress soiling in Soot. Her voice betrays her disgust with what she has seen. But there is something else in it, too. Pity.

It softens her words.

“You must leave this house, Mr. Argyle. He will cripple you.”

Thomas shakes his head, croaks something only she can hear. She flushes, stiffens, shakes her head.

“I can’t. I won’t.”

Another croak. This time Livia straightens. All pity is gone from her voice. “I will not show you the laboratory, Mr. Argyle. And you will leave as soon as it can be arranged.”

Only then does she turn to Charlie.

“Clean him up, Mr. Cooper, and do it fast. It’s New Year’s Eve and Mother is planning a formal dinner. We eat at six.”

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At dinner, Julius is composed, charming, and attentive to his mother. The bruise on his cheek is barely visible. As course after intricate course is served, his mood only continues to improve. He declines to partake in the wine. As he reminds Lady Naylor, he is, after all, still only a schoolboy; his Smoke and Ethics teacher would not approve. Julius beams at Thomas as he says it. The two are sitting directly across from one another.

Thomas’s face is red and lumpy, one eye lost behind his swollen brow and cheek. The other eye is smeared by a ring of sickly yellow that is already darkening into hues of purple, brown, and black. He will look worse on the morrow. But Charlie is more worried about the damage to Thomas’s body. The way Thomas sits, slumped to one side like a listing ship, it is clear he is in considerable pain. Charlie himself winces whenever he takes too deep a breath. His rib is so tender, he eats with one elbow sticking out far to the side, to avoid brushing his own chest.

The afternoon was spent on their trying to make themselves look respectable. Getting the Soot off took several hours of scrubbing: Thomas so sore that every contact of brush with skin brought tears to his eyes. He struggled with getting into his trousers and shirt and yet refused Charlie’s offers of help; sat for minutes over each of his socks, unable to bend down to his feet. In the end, already dressed, his cravat splayed against his chest like a broken butterfly, Thomas had crawled onto his bed and lain there unmoving while Charlie paced the room, looking for something to say.