Omar Musa - Here Come the Dogs

goes way past what’s rational.

Toby’s back the next week, though,

wearing unwashed and ripped clothes.

‘Jersey? What jersey?’

Aleks is waiting in line for the phone. A man in front of him is yelling instructions to put bets on the Canterbury Bulldogs. It usually calms down after twelve p.m., once people’s phone lists have run out. The man swears, hangs up and walks away. Aleks picks it up and Sonya answers after several rings.

‘How you going, baby?’

‘Good, good. I miss you, Aleks.’ Her voice sounds clearer.

‘I miss you so much, too, baby.’ He’s smiling and he can tell she is, too.

‘And Mila?’

‘All right. At school. Getting excited for you to come home.’

‘You still on the job hunt?’

‘Yeah. Still no luck.’

‘I’ll be home soon, baby. I promise I’ll sort everything out. Call that bloody lawyer of mine, all right? He hasn’t even visited yet.’

‘I will.’

He has a thought and then says, ‘Categories?’

She laughs out loud. ‘Sure.’

The last real holiday they had as a family was in Shellfish Bay, when Mila was only three. When she was asleep, he and Sonya would unfold an old card table on the tiled balcony and play drinking games with the two harmless stoners who lived next door. One of the games they’d play was Categories. Name a category (European cities, Olympic sports, etc.) and list things until there are no more. They’d play for ages, smoking ciggies and listening to hip hop and old rock. Once the neighbours left, he and Sonya would lie on the tiles, side by side, watching moonlight leaping from tile to tile like a fish and, more often than not, make love right there.

‘Car brands,’ she says, and the smile in her voice almost makes him weep.

‘Toyota.’

‘Audi.’

‘BMW.’

‘Ferrari.’

When they finish the game, they’re both laughing, but a line for the phone has built up. ‘I’ll be back soon, sweetheart. Don’t stress.’

‘I know. I won’t.’

‘I love you, baby.’

* * *

In bed, he holds his cross and tries to think of God. But other things take in the darkness above him: knives, fangs, men with the faces of wolves. He can almost hear the snicker and pop of their teeth. He imagines himself running with them, running together through a big, broken city.

Maybe these are his gods. Solomon didn’t believe in God. Aleks felt he had to.

What will he do if he moves back to Macedonia? Start the vineyard his father always talked about? Maybe run a tour company. All these things, he figured, he could gain an understanding and mastery of. The Balkans were chaos, but there seemed to be some inner reason to it, perhaps, the energy that propelled it even less opaque than in Australia. Mila would kick up a fuss, but she’d come around. He’s getting ahead of himself, though — first he has to concentrate on getting out.

Gabe wheezes and puffs and moans, and Aleks is sure the man is going to jump him. Animal, he thinks. Fucken black bastard. The man’s disquieting eyes, his narrow presence, surely it was the portent of something murderous. Who knew what he was truly in for or what he’d done in his own country. Something savage, no doubt. Aleks had seen what war did to people, how it could be used to excuse the most hideous acts.

Even as he sleeps, he swears he can hear it, the breath like hellish bellows. He wakes several times during the night and begins to clench his fists, open and closed, open and closed, thinking he will first hit the man with a short arm, an elbow to the nose bridge, hard enough to break it, then he’ll sit on him and beat him until the screws come. Maybe use the razor a bit. No, that wouldn’t do. It’d mean more time. It might mean solitary. But the question remains — what if the man gets him first?

He falls asleep and has a dream. In it he shivers. The darkness around him is absolute and unquestioned. He hears a door opening but still there is no light, just murmuring voices. He’s being guided through a corridor by a hand made out of smoke. He steps down and can tell by the uneven rocking beneath his feet and the sound of the water that he is in a boat. The boat moves swiftly, but he hears no oars or motor. He thinks to himself that there is a beauty, even a lustre, to darkness this entire.

A light appears on the front of the boat and it is soothing, diffuse, like the spoors of a dandelion. It is being cupped and protected carefully by a bearded man who seems very ancient, and Aleks thinks he might be a soldier or a priest. Surroundings are starting to appear in the meagre light and he can see small dwellings on the shore, and grapevines, and willows, and he can tell he is on a river; but which one, he can’t be sure. Is it the Drim River, which flows through Struga and is black and full of eels? Or the river in the Town where he and Solomon used to fish? Whichever it is, it’s flowing rapidly, and Aleks clutches onto the side of the boat. He is being propelled towards an enormous whirlpool, bigger than the eye of God or the throat of the devil.

He hears a sound and emerges from the dream upwards, as if from a pool, and is off the bed and on his feet. There’s a streak of movement and Aleks is ready. He sees Gabe upright and twisting with a great energy, dancing even, eyes bulging. Aleks then sees a strip of bedsheet around the man’s neck, self-tied and looped into an air vent, and how the man gurgles and fights against himself with a will to die that overtakes the will to live. Aleks leaps up and holds the man by the struggling legs, grunting. He feels very scared and tries to yell but the man hisses, ‘No, no, no’, and for some reason Aleks becomes silent. He grabs his razor from beneath his pillow and cuts the man down, who falls, gasping and crying. He pulls Gabe up and makes him drink water.

Aleks thinks to himself that somewhere, at that exact moment, someone had succeeded. But not here, not this time.

Toby’s mum

Grubby chin and port-sour breath.

‘What do you want with these kids, ay?’

‘I’m teaching them to play ball.’

‘Why?’

‘Just giving something back. I used to be a proper ball player.’

‘Couldn’t make it, ay?’

‘I had a bad injury.’

Toby is hovering behind her,

embarrassed and unsure.

The other kids continue to shoot.

Her pig eyes,

black and watery,

are searching my face,

but she doesn’t seem present somehow.

‘So now you teach kids?’

‘Yep.’

‘And give them presents?’

‘I gave Toby a jersey. It was a one-off thing —’

She leans in close. ‘You saying I don’t know how to look after my son?’

‘Not at all. I —’

‘Then why not buy them all presents?’

She grabs Toby by the arm

and I step to her.

She smiles a yellow, wobbly smile

and is then screaming.

‘I don’t need anyone else to look after my boy.

Especially not some fucken coconut,

some FOB cunt.’

As she hobbles away,

dragging Toby,

she yells, ‘YOU FUCKEN PAEDOPHILE.

FUCKEN KIDDY FIDDLER.’

When the kids leave,

I sit on the court,

and cup my face in my hands.

It feels like it’s gonna spill over the sides.

The next day

I get all the kids’ addresses.

Over four hours,

on foot,

I visit each house

(well, mostly flats)

and tell every parent what I’m doing,

that it’s on public property,

that it’s not illegal

and that they’re more than welcome to come along.

Most of them are single mums,

who seem confused at first,