Jenni Fagan - The Panopticon

It smells like saliva in here. Like when you go to the dentist, or to get your eyes checked, and the man comes right up into your face and you can smell the saliva in his mouth — it’s gross. There must be a café or something through that door as well. I can smell bad school dinners and bleach.

The monk smiles and smiles, and nods his head. He’s kind of cute, tiny and wizened and I dinnae have a clue what to say, so I just sit. After a while he begins to look sad.

My face flushes, and I feel embarrassed. Helen is out in the nurses’ office chatting — she’s probably telling them all about elephants in India.

Someone should wipe the spittle from that old pill-head’s mouth; every time she exhales a strand of it expands out.

‘So you saw my mum?’ I ask finally.

‘Aye.’ He grins.

‘But you cannae really see?’

‘I could see quite a lot then,’ he falters.

‘What did she look like?’

‘Nice thatch.’

I dinnae think he’s taking the piss but I cannae be sure.

‘And a winged cat, lovely it was, great big wings.’

He spreads his arms wide to demonstrate. Shivers up my back. A winged cat and a woman that jumps from a big arch-shaped window and never stops falling.

I’m not looking at the walls, cos I dinnae want to see faces. I cannae imagine a woman in this room giving birth to a baby, but that doesnae mean she wasnae here. He said she had a flying cat and he even drew it for me. My arms are prickling.

‘She flew in on it. It followed her around, and it padded right down this ward. They didnae see it, of course. Oh, it had lovely black glossy wings.’

A cat that flies — Malcolm. There’s a coldness in me. The hairs on my arms are really up and I look around the room as hard as I can, as if this cat will materialise for me to see it, but it doesnae. The faces are there briefly. Just like a tracer.

‘My mother flew?’

‘Uh-huh, flew in — flew away. They didnae see anything.’

The monk leans across to me.

‘They dinnae see much, though — do they?’ he says.

Glance towards the office. Helen and the nurse are drinking tea.

‘So. You’re saying you saw my mother.’

‘Aye,’ he nods.

‘And she flew in here on a winged cat?’

‘Oh, aye. He was braw, he had a thick coat. His wings were huge! Your mother flew in from that side of the building — the orderlies thought she was walking, but they didn’t look down, her legs were not touching the ground! She glided right down that corridor on him, then through this door. He waited for her, while she gave birth tae you — and that took quite a while! Then she smashed that big arched window right there, then she jumped. Well, the cat picked her up, down by the woods, about five minutes later. I saw them flying east.’

‘Right.’

He’s so schizo it’s hopeless. Weird thing is, I totally believe he’s never told a lie in his life.

‘Your mother was massive with you in her tummy.’

‘What colour was her hair?’

‘Black, like yours.’

Helen’s still chatting in the nurses’ room; they’re all laughing about something.

‘What did she smell like?’

‘Eggs, and death.’

‘I hate eggs. So — let me get this straight: she flew in on a big black winged cat, and she gave birth in here?’

‘Aye.’

‘In this room?’ I ask him.

‘Right there.’

He points to the window. I look, but all that’s there is a fake rubber yucca tree.

‘And she smoked cigarillos,’ he adds.

‘She smoked wee cigars?’

‘Aye. She was a cigarillo-smoking Outcast Queen.’

He is taking the cunt.

‘They’re lovely, they are — sensational girls, the Outcast Queens. D’ye not know of them?’

I rub my head, and undo my ponytail and shake my hair out. My scalp feels too tight, and this is the single weirdest conversation ever — it tops ketamine. Maybe the experiment have already got me, maybe I’m in a cage somewhere right now, drooling down my chin.

‘Oh. Well. There were only ever three,’ he says.

He seems disappointed in me.

‘What’s an Outcast Queen?’

The monk smiles queerly and my tummy flips over — he is freaking me right out.

‘You dinnae seem mental,’ I tell him.

‘I was in the army before this, Anais. I went to boarding school first from the age of four, all the way until I was a young man — then straight in the army. Both are quite extreme institutions in their own right. They got me early. It’s hard when they get you so young.’

I’m sweating. I need to get out of this room.

‘I couldnae be in the army,’ I say.

‘Me neither — in the end, it was too late, by the time I came here.’

‘What do you mean?’ I ask him.

He just stares at me. His white eye’s moving with the other one. I want to believe him, I want to believe that I was born here — not in a test-tube. I dinnae want to have started life as a fucking experiment.

‘What colour were her eyes?’

My heart’s pounding and the shrinking’s coming in. He can fucking sense it.

‘They were just like yours,’ he says.

My mother had eyes and they were the same colour as mine. A nurse comes in with a medication tray for the drooler — she holds her hand out and swallows some tablets down. I want to take them off her. I’d pop anything I could get my hands on right now. The drooler waves at the monk and goes back to sleep.

The monk takes out a worn domino, its numbers four and four — he gestures at me to take it.

‘It’s my lucky one.’

‘We better leave now, Anais.’ Helen appears.

The monk quickly hides the domino; he doesnae like Helen, and she can tell.

‘Thanks for speaking tae me,’ I say.

I walk away and my legs are like fucking jelly.

‘You’ll come back and play me at dominoes?’ he calls after me.

‘Aye. Okay.’

‘D’ye promise?’

‘Aye.’

It’s snowing outside, just lightly, and Helen’s spraffing shite, but I dinnae hear it.

As we reverse out the car park, the monk comes stumbling out the doors. He’s not fast. His bare feet slap off the stones and his pyjamas flap around his skinny body.

‘Stop the fucking car.’

‘Anais, we should just go, our appointment time is over.’

She slows down and I wind down my window, feeling protective of the monk although I dinnae know why.

‘It was snowing, Miss Anais!’

He pants as he reaches the car and grabs at my window.

‘It was the prettiest snow I have ever seen — it began tae fall just as you were born. It was the biggest snowstorm for fifty years that winter. The snow was so thick, it covered everything and it sparkled and the moon was full, Miss Anais — a great big one. I remember, cos hardly anyone was asleep. We all heard your first cry, you sounded so fierce!’

I let him see my tears, it’s important — I dinnae know why, but it is.

‘I looked out the window, not long after she jumped. That big one right over there, see. I looked out the window tae see where she went, but she was gone, and her footprints were filling up with snow, they disappeared by the light of the moon. It was such a big moon,’ he whispers.

‘And she was gone?’

‘Aye.’

The monk grasps my hand. He’s frail. He’ll not be here much longer, he’s on his way out. I’ll look it up when I get back: snow and a full moon, the coldest snow in years is bound to be on record. Maybe there’s even a photo. The monk slips the domino into my hand.

‘For luck,’ he says.

‘Good to meet you then, Mr Jamieson. We need to go!’ Helen says.

I turn and glare at her. If she starts on him I’m gonnae fucking slap her.