Stephen Kelman - Man on Fire

When it was over I looked at the piece of orange string around my wrist. The skin there felt different but my heart hadn’t changed as far as I could tell.

We handed out the razors and the deodorants, customary gifts for the monks in return for our blessing. None of them said thank you. Bibhuti said they weren’t allowed to, it was against their code.

‘If you receive thanks for your charitable deed it is like a reward. The best charity is given without expecting a reward, then it is meaning more for the giver.’

He asked me if I felt better. He didn’t wait for my answer.

‘This is the prayers infused by the string. Wearing it will block all negative energy. We will be protected from all harm, our success is walking in spontaneously.’

‘Are you a Buddhist then?’

‘I have no religion, I have only faith. I do not believe that God is one thing. He is everything all around us, the names we give him and the shapes we make for him are just inventions. But it is good to accept their offer, we are drawing from the same energy and all blessings are welcome.’

‘That’s sensible,’ I said.

‘Yes. And my paper will give them good coverage for their donations appeal.’

‘Everyone’s a winner,’ I said, and immediately regretted my witlessness.

The monks escorted us to the boundary, a pair of them peeling off for the table as we passed. They took up their paddles and began at once to tear holes in the air. I imagined they were immortal and would still be playing their game on this hilltop when the rest of the world had crumbled to ash around them. We passed through the ring of holiness with our sins intact and stumbled back down the hill. On the valley floor the robots were still sleeping.

Bibhuti’s wife hasn’t said more than a handful of words since her husband fell asleep. She’s barely looked at anyone else in case she misses the moment of his waking up. Her vigil is quiet and spiteful. She wills her husband to come back to her with a force that shakes the birds from the trees. Her hands have been balled into fists that hold hope like a bleeding stone. I remember how I told her with confidence that her husband would go global thanks to me. If I catch her eye I’ll be turned to stone myself, I’m sure of it.

She looks at her husband, waiting. She counts the bruises she can see under his plaster casts and imagines soldering his cuts back together again. Her name is still a mystery to me and now there’ll never be a right time to ask it.

I smell the solder in the air, from the summer job Ellen had making piecemeal circuit-board connections at the kitchen table, back when we were saving up for a nursery and all the things a child might need to make it strong and happy. The radio on and the window open to the sounds of the street, kids playing football on the new patch of grass and her fingers glossy and black from an assortment of painless burns. I remember how ashamed I’d been that she’d had to take a second job because I couldn’t bring her golden eggs, and I remember telling her we’d try again and get it perfect when the first life we made fell short of the sunlight.

Promises. I used to make a lot of them back then. Now I know how stupid it is to say something that can’t be taken back.

The two women sit next to each other now, Ellen having woken up with a start and felt the need to remove herself from me before word gets around that she’s on my side. The nurse has just been in to change Bibhuti’s piss bag. We were all drawn to the colour. Brown isn’t good. It’s a powerful feeling to know that you can change the colour of a man’s water. It’s not a feeling I’m enjoying.

His wife’s first inclination was to feed me. She gave me her food without reservation and it revived me. The flavours brought me pleasure while I thought about the possibility of killing her husband. When I coughed at the initial heat of it she passed me water and a tissue to dab my nose. When I asked for more she filled my bowl again.

Bibhuti’s apartment was in a low-rise concrete box on stilts a couple of minutes’ drive from the hotel. Japanese cars slept under its belly in various states of undress, shedding their superficial parts like a dog shaking loose its fleas. The little courtyard was bare except for a badminton net Bibhuti had put up so he and Jolly Boy could play in the evenings when the temperature drops and the boy needs a dose of the ennobling power of competitive sport.

An elbow-high wall divided his building from the bungalow next door and where it was broken I could see the neighbours as we pulled up, sitting on plastic chairs in their front yard. A young couple with eyes that shone brazen with contentment, as if they knew the steps to all the world’s dances and would happily teach them to me if I showed the first sign of wanting to learn them. The wife was peeling almonds, her skilful hands a blur. The husband watched the sky for thieves and kept the bucket centred between her feet to catch the stream of kernels as they fell. Bibhuti waved to him and pointed me out. They spoke briefly in their language and the husband gave me a thumbs-up. He welcomed me to his country and wished me good luck. I thanked him and fled to the shade of the stairwell that led up to the apartments.

To reach Bibhuti’s door we had to tiptoe past a prosthetic leg that someone had left on the stairs. The little moulded toes were so poignant that I felt like crying.

A swastika was painted on the wall next to Bibhuti’s door in a small meticulous hand. I knew it meant something different here than in the West and I wasn’t afraid to look at it.

I copied Bibhuti by taking off my shoes and leaving them outside. He opened the door and Jolly Boy slipped past him into the apartment and flopped down on the zebra-print sofa that dominated the small living room. He clicked the TV on and in a moment he was lost to the events onscreen.

The plane-crash site had become a feeding ground for ghouls. The reporters were fighting over the walking wounded. The interviewee couldn’t hear their questions and her hair was smoking.

I felt nervous and alone. The absence of familiar TV programming reminded me that I was now nationless and spun free of all my comforts.

One side of the room was a shrine to Bibhuti’s madness. His Guinness and Limca certificates hung from the wall in an irregular flock. The newspaper cuttings of all his records were propped in tortoiseshell frames on the sideboard. Every one was real and in each he looked lifeless, the shock of strange victory draining the history from his eyes. Sitting on a disciple’s shoulders for a sweat-soaked fool’s parade. Straddling the slab at the instant the sledgehammer struck.

I saw a picture of him topless punching a fish and I had to bite off a smile.

‘This is not from a record,’ Bibhuti explained, ‘this is from a long time ago, when I was thinking of becoming a model. The stream I am standing in is feeding Thane Creek, which divides Navi Mumbai from the mainland. I did not want these photographs to be taken but I was persuaded when my fame started to grow. They did not reach wide distribution. I am keeping this one here because my wife likes it.’

I looked in his eyes for the light of sincerity that was missing in the photographs. Finding it, my fears for his mental rigidity were dispelled.

‘Welcome to my home,’ he said. ‘Now it is your home also. We usually are only eating two meals a day, one in the morning and one in the evening, but we make a special lunch for you. You are my visitor from across the seven seas, this is a big blessing for all of us.’

Bibhuti’s wife came in then, quiet and expressionless, trailed by a jealous fog of cooking smells. Sweat from the kitchen trickled from the folds of her neck. She said a shy hello to me and put three glasses of orange squash down on the coffee table. I could see her handprints in the steam on the sides of the glasses. I could smell the work she put in to making her world seem fresh and new at the start of every day. She wouldn’t look at me and I couldn’t blame her. As far as she knew I was the angel of death come to herd her husband to the next world before she could redeem the promises he’d made her in their private moments.