Judi James - Naked Angels

When he caught sight of himself in mirrors he was always shocked. His hair was longer and darker. He asked one of the other boys he met to cut it with his knife but the boy turned on him and stole fifty filler from him instead.

Sometimes he did make friends of a kind. There was a boy with the nickname of Tincan he sometimes met down in the metro. Tincan had given him useful advice about where to sleep without being bothered too much. And then there were the men.

Mikhail was approached on average twice a week in winter and as much as three times a day in the summer. They all wanted to help him and they all wanted to be friends. It was Tincan who told him to be careful. The religious ones were the worst, he said, the ones who said they’d pray for you and show you a warm hostel where you could sleep the night for nothing.

‘Nothing is for nothing,’ Tincan told him, though even he had a couple of regular men friends he would disappear with now and again.

There was one man Mikhail saw a lot, around and about the city streets. Sometimes he would find Mikhail on a bench in the park and just sit chatting, and sometimes he would pass him in the street and nod his head as though they were old acquaintances. The man seemed pleasant enough and even Tincan appeared to like the look of him. He was shortish and middle-aged but smart and well-dressed, like an ordinary businessman.

The man’s worst fault was that he appeared to be a little shy, which made him rather boring at times. Mikhail felt safe enough with him, though – the man had never tried propositioning him. The most he had ever done was to share his sandwiches one day when Mikhail was too hungry to refuse them.

Tincan told him the man was wealthy.

‘How can you tell?’ Mikhail asked.

Tincan shrugged. ‘His haircut. The cologne he wears. And did you see his watch? Tell me it’s not real gold and then let me tell you you’re a fool.’

‘I wonder where he lives?’ Mikhail asked.

‘Dunno,’ Tincan said. ‘Why don’t you follow him if you’re so interested?’

That winter the sleeve of Andreas’s coat split open and Mikhail grew still more depressed. Too dispirited even to steal food or new clothing, he would often mooch up to Castle Hill and look down on the city and its river and dream of hot pork stew and chocolate and nut pancakes.

Tincan grew desperate at the state he was in.

‘You must get money, Mikhail, or you’ll starve! Look at you – you don’t wash, you don’t eat. What’s the matter, don’t you want to live?’

Mikhail did not have the words to explain how he felt. To Tincan existence was all; the good life lay in the future, and if he could just get through the winter then things would pick up by spring. He told Mikhail he was going to become a famous actor and he never voiced any doubts over the possibility of a sparkling career.

‘Take money where you can get it, Mikhail,’ he said. ‘Don’t be a fool. Stupid men die, you know – it’s the clever ones that survive.’

Tincan survived by meeting men under the iron bridge in the park.

‘You just have to wait there, that’s all. They give you money, Mikhail, it’s OK. Some give a lot – look.’ He held some notes out for Mikhail’s perusal.

‘I don’t want to get money like that,’ Mikhail said.

‘But you don’t argue when I offer you food it has paid for,’ Tincan said.

‘I don’t need your food.’

‘Don’t be stupid!’ Tincan grabbed him by the arm. He had hair the colour of linen and a line of matching fuzz across his pale top lip. His eyelashes were nearly white. ‘Look, Mikhail,’ he said, ‘it’s not that bad, you know, what I do. What do you think? You don’t have to like it, you just have to do it. Tell me, do you masturbate? Ever? Eh? Of course you do. Well, do you hate yourself so much for that? No. Well think of this as being similar, only with someone else, that’s all. I do it only to live, Mikhail. It’s not so important – life is what counts. One day I’ll be working in the film studios in Hollywood and I’ll look back at all this and laugh and be glad I was so crafty. Then I’ll remember my poor stupid friend Mikhail who died of cold and starvation because he was so foolish and stubborn. That’s how it is, you know, that’s what will happen.’

Tincan took Mikhail to the park the following evening. At first it was half-light and there were children around, so they smoked a cigarette and shared stale cake until it got darker, and then the children were gone and the whole park fell silent.

Tincan went off for a piss and Mikhail almost bolted. There was a wind hissing through the trees and the branches creaked overhead. He was afraid of ghosts and glad when Tincan got back. Then he saw that his friend was followed and his heart leapt with a greater fear.

The man kept his head down. He wore a knitted cap and his hands were firmly stuffed into the pockets of a greatcoat. He cleared his throat a lot but didn’t speak.

‘This is Pepe,’ Tincan whispered, ‘I call him that because of the moustache. He’s a policeman but I’m not supposed to know that. He comes here once a week when his wife visits her mother. He’s a bit shy of the bathroom so try not to breathe in too much, but apart from that he’s not bad. He won’t speak in case anyone recognizes his voice.’

Mikhail stared across at the man, who was hopping from one foot to the other in the cold. White breath rose in a plume from his nostrils. His head nodded once. OK.

Tincan had evaporated, though Mikhail could hear his rasping breaths from behind one of the metal posts. The thought that his friend was within earshot made him feel even more awkward.

He walked across to the man. Tincan was right, he smelt of stale fish and cabbages. He was chewing something – tobacco maybe – and he spat it out as Mikhail arrived.

‘Have you got the money?’ Tincan had told Mikhail to ask first. The man held his hand out; there were coins in his palm, glinting in the lamplight.

It was the clumsy attempts at tenderness that appalled Mikhail more than the lust. The man pulled his face closer beneath the lights, and tried to kiss him on the cheek, but Mikhail turned away. The man’s eyes looked regretful. He sighed a deep sigh and unzipped his flies, exposing a thick white cock. He gripped Mikhail’s shoulders as he was masturbated and Mikhail worried that Andreas’s coat might tear.

Tincan was right; it was nothing, really. The man came quickly, with a grunt, and his knees buckled heavily, which meant he almost pulled Mikhail over. He looked different when he had finished – the sadness had gone from his eyes to be replaced by a cold look of disgust. He pushed the coins into Mikhail’s hand in a business-like way and pressed his cock back into his trousers.

There was a splash of white semen on Andreas’s coat. He walked quietly down to a small pond and washed it off with his handkerchief. He thought he saw Andreas’s face reflected in the dark water, smiling back at him, and he almost screamed. The water was ice-cold. He took a mouthful without caring how dirty it might be, rinsed his gums, and spat it out. It made his teeth begin to ache.

The man stayed in his mind; his sad eyes, his smell, the grunting he had made. He wanted to wash the memory away, too. He wanted to cry for his mother, even though he had never really known her. When Tincan came over, though, he stood up and laughed instead, flicking one of the coins into the air.

‘What did you have to do?’ Tincan asked. He looked cold through from the waiting.

‘Nothing much,’ Mikhail told him.

Tincan grinned. ‘See? I told you it was easy money. OK?’

‘OK,’ Mikhail said.

Andreas had told him about the parties their mother used to have after the last stage show on a Saturday night, when there would be huge plates of gleaming salami and cold sausage and bottles of Bull’s Blood to wash it all down. Mikhail had never tasted wine but he thought it sounded wonderful.