Paulo Scott - Nowhere People

Rener asks him to be quiet, the woman who lives in the next-door apartment has a sick daughter. She puts the jug of water and the glass on the small tin tray on the edge of the bedside table, turns on the little lamp, opens the wardrobe, takes out a Marks & Spencer carrier bag, throws it over to his side of the bed, he opens it (it’s full of every brand and style of condom), she turns off the ceiling light and immediately tosses a tube of lubricant onto his chest, she says that they are going to do what two uninhibited men should do when they feel there’s the chance of a great friendship between them.

Coincidences.

Paulo said he had to be at the restaurant before ten in the morning and it’s already eleven thirty-five (straight after the alarm clock had gone off, at nine, Rener had opened the bedroom curtains; she didn’t say anything, just made a cup of coffee, left it beside the bed and went back to sleep). From the moment he opened his eyes he was immersed in this stony silence. He must have said what he hadn’t told anyone since leaving Brazil. It was a good night in any case. She will introduce him to some guys who will get him to choose an empty building in Elephant and Castle. Arrive when it is getting dark (there’s no reason to hide from the building’s other residents; greet everyone, be polite, try not to give any impression that you’re going to be a bad neighbour), break the sealed padlock put there by the government and remove the metal bar blocking access to the door, break down the door, change the lock as quickly as you can, check that the new keys work, lock the door and only then tell yourself that the place is yours (at least until the squatter eviction proceedings, which can take years to progress, come to an end). It isn’t a question of good faith but of sorting out your life, yours and other people’s along the way, too. Sorting it out the way she, Rener, has been doing. She remembers having said that any mistakes must not be because of cowardice. Perhaps this was what made him agree like that, but it’s hard for her to know, it could have been so many other things. The worst mistake would be to try and guess, now that it’s nearly midday and she has to say that in a week’s time they will be entering a property valued at more than nine million and she’s counting on him, she needs there to be seven people besides herself and she has only managed to get six, there aren’t many people who will risk an occupation like this. If things work out, twenty people will get a new home; if they go wrong it’s every man for himself. Rener will figure out some way of getting back to Paris and, assuming there are no further coincidences, she and the Brazilian will not see each other again.

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palindromes

Rener ties the piece of rubber tight around her arm, runs the alcohol-dampened cotton wool over the bend of her elbow where she is going to make the puncture, takes the syringe, uncovers the needle, examines where the veins are, taps the surface, draws the blood, shows the filled syringe to Paulo. ‘Ten millilitres, no more, no less.’ Undoes the tourniquet, injects the blood into her own buttock. ‘There’s nothing like it, I promise you. It’s the secret of my vitality … It’ll reinvigorate you, too, you’ll see,’ she says, putting the empty syringe to one side and taking another from the packet. She takes the syringe from the sealed packaging. ‘Shall we?’ she asks, excitedly. Paulo had never heard of auto-haemotherapy, but Rener did not have to say much to convince him and for him to ask her to apply the practice to him. She said that she always plans to draw and re-inject her own blood on the day before an appropriation (that is the convenient word she uses to describe the break-in), because it gives her physical courage. He wasn’t sure whether she had meant to say physical courage precisely, but that was how he understood it and it seemed more than appropriate. The blood in the muscle acts as though it were a foreign body, activating the immunological system controlled by the bone marrow, that was all she gave as her explanation. ‘I haven’t needed a doctor since,’ she assured him. Paulo doesn’t have a problem with the sight of his own blood, getting shot like that stirred something up in him that is not visible, something he is still trying to understand. One second, under exceptional psychological pressure, and a whole life in all its particularities changes forever, accelerates towards something that has not yet happened. He did not even know what day it was when he woke up having spent the early hours tossing and turning in Rener’s bed unable to sleep, unwilling to wake her. The needle pierces his skin, it’s the second time, the blood warms his body as it enters. Rener has been his guide during these days in which he hasn’t left her apartment, even if being guided was not what he needed right now.

Maína, I don’t know how to send you this letter. I’m going to write it all the same. Here, where I am now, is on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, a city called London. There’s a river that cuts through the middle of the city, I really like sitting on one of the benches they have on the banks of the river. But that wasn’t what I wanted to tell you. I’ve been thinking of you a lot, really hoping that you’re doing well. Yesterday I bought a blue dress. I hope one day I’ll see you again and I can give you the dress I bought. Writing is difficult. I’ll try again some other time. Missing you. Paulo.

Ten-thirty at night, the lamb doner kebab that she brought back from her meeting with the other six who would be going with them tomorrow hasn’t gone down too well. Paulo’s stomach is hurting more than his leg. He still hasn’t been able to understand why she thought it best for him not to come to the preparatory meeting. ‘The less involved you become, the better’ — it sounded like an excuse. He isn’t going to go back to sleep (which has nothing to do with the imminent occupation). Not sleeping, not getting out of bed, just watching the bedroom window panes turning lighter and darker, just listening to the sounds from the endless blocks and towers that make up the council estates of Elephant and Castle and trying to ignore the voices of its children, the crows’ cawing, the sounds of the plastic bags brushing against one another as the person carrying them hurries to escape the rain that will be here soon: all this is part of the rules of the boring new game, defying him to ruin everything. And wide awake, watching her sleep, he does.

Twenty-two hours later, at the exact moment that Rener sits down at the table with the two glasses of cider saying that this is her favourite brand of the drink, one of the white girls at the next table, one of the three girls who look Swedish, gets up, excitedly gives a few little squeals and shows her perfect breasts to the two young black men who are at the table with her, daring them to touch at least one of them as she sways them from side to side to display their natural opulence, and the two young men just laugh, and she gives another few little shrieks as she looks quickly around to check whether she really is drawing attention to herself and proving that these wonders, that was the word she used, talking loudly, didn’t have a single millilitre of silicon in them, and the customers at the other tables applaud, and Paulo and Rener applaud. ‘Brixton. I love this place!’ Rener exclaims. Paulo downs the cider in one. It’s getting dark outside, which makes no difference, the bar is curtained anyway, the curtains are blue velvet, the DJ who is going to be playing from nine-thirty arrives with his case of records, Rener insists on pointing so that Paulo will see him, excited fascination doesn’t suit her. Everyone greets him, DJs and bartenders, these guys rule, whether in Brixton or in the City, especially on nights like this, Thursday nights, the hottest nights of the week, the police are focusing on the major demos, the same attention they will give them on Fridays and Saturdays, residential areas are almost totally abandoned. The DJ who has been working the decks brings the track to an end, a moment of silence from the speakers, and ‘Last Night a DJ Saved my Life’ bursts on. Paulo stands up saying he’s going to get a beer, asks if she wants another cider, Rener says she’ll stick with just the one she’s drinking now, Paulo walks over to the bar, asks for a beer, looks over at the table where Rener is sitting, an indescribable fluttering of dark skin in the darkness, she’s even more beautiful than on the night they first met. All pussy’s the same, Passo Fundo used to say, older men say that, too, but it’s not true. Rener had never surrendered her pussy to him, Paulo had not spoken to Passo Fundo again, Paulo has to go to the flat in Willesden Green to pick up his things. Rener plays with her hair and waves from a distance without any shyness, she’s even more beautiful than she was five minutes ago. Rener lives a perfect radicalism, Alice in a state of wonder, enjoying every last drop in the dropper, as she herself says when she’s impatient, Paulo must not have understood the subliminal meaning correctly, she’s four years and a few months older than him. The bartender puts the large glass of beer down on the counter, one pound thirty. Paulo leaves twenty pence as a tip, he returns to the table, she takes his hand, the hand that is holding the glass. ‘You can’t get drunk’, that is the only thing she says, the kiss between them fits, perhaps it’s her mouth, it’s fleshy; she says that the best kind of kiss is a kiss between two men, Where is this going? he thinks, then she takes a mini-torch from her trouser pocket and explains what he is going to have to do: as he’s the first-timer in the group he will be in charge of the simplest task. Paulo says nothing, puts down the glass, takes the torch. She goes on: he’ll be waiting with the torch on a corner two blocks from the mansion they’re going to occupy, it’s one of the two places the police might come from if they are called, and she takes a wristwatch from her jacket pocket, Paulo’s going to need a watch. The watch is synchronised with the watches of the other six and her own, she tells him to put it on and see if it feels comfortable on his wrist; Paulo obeys. It’s tight, he doesn’t say anything, he can adjust the strap later, he takes off the watch, holds it in his left hand. They will drop him a three-minute walk from the corner, he will need to arrive there at ten-fifteen, exactly the time when the others will be reaching their positions, and she and the other two who are also going in to break the house’s padlocks and door-locks will jump the wall, one will open the front gate and she and the other will deal with the back door to the house, back doors are always easier to get into. It will take them less than five minutes to change the lock; if Paulo spots a car approaching he will turn the torch on and off twice, if it’s a police car he will turn the light on and keep it on while he walks off at a right angle to the street, the others will do the rest. Paulo picks up his glass of beer in his right hand, he says he has understood what she has said clearly and that he could be more useful, she says he’s already doing a lot and that he shouldn’t kid himself, often it’s the ones keeping watch who are the first to be taken, mostly when the police arrive with two or more vehicles, but that isn’t going to happen, it’s all going to work out fine, the house has been empty a long time. And the DJ puts on something by Soul II Soul, Rener asks Paulo to dance, he accepts, a car will come and fetch them, less than forty minutes from now; he holds the watch in his left hand and notices what a good dancer she is.