Stephen Kelman - Man on Fire

‘The bride is very beautiful,’ she muttered.

I stood beside her on the carpet, felt the vibrations from the wedding party needling the soles of my feet. I was almost afraid to look at her in case my attention scratched a permanent mark. She was an island of undiscovered music in a sea of noise.

‘Soon they will be coming into the hotel,’ she said. ‘They will have a banquet room with flowers and more music playing. There will be food and dancing and somebody to take their pictures. There are lots of weddings here.’

The horns had taken on a ragged quality, the trumpeters’ industry slackening as the air grew thick with the spectacle wealth makes of itself.

‘Shall we gatecrash?’

The girl didn’t know the word. I explained. ‘We’re guests at the hotel, we should be allowed to join in. We’ll get drunk.’

‘We cannot go into the party, it is not permitted.’

‘Then let’s get down there while they’re still outside. Come on.’

I came away from the window and dressed quickly, glad of the excuse to pack my desires away out of her sight. I checked my trouser pocket for the sweets I’d stolen. We’d need more. The girl saw that I was serious and got dressed too, retrieved her bag from the bathroom. I put the colouring book in it. She didn’t look for meaning in the gesture.

We jumped up and down in the lift to make it go faster. I scooped a handful of sweets from the bowl at reception and gave them to the girl. The security guards opened the door for us and out we charged into her rightful sunlight.

The wedding party had swelled, sucking in well-wishers from the passing shoppers. Fellow hotel guests, called like us by the trumpets, were lurking at the outer circle, filming stray splinters of the procession on their mobile phones to bring back home for the amusement of their offices. Out here the drums hit me in the stomach. It felt like they were coming from inside me. Sweat from the dancers hung like flies in the air and their colours formed a fire-ring around the promised couple, a barrier to the dust and resentments of the wider world.

The girl stood and watched, her mouth open.

‘I like the colours,’ I said.

‘These are the colours I would choose. But I do not like her jewellery, the design is very old-fashioned. I would choose something more modern, I think.’

The bride wasn’t beautiful like the girl had said. She was caked and basted and frightened. The groom the same. In the eye of the storm they waited to be told what to do, their sugared lips parted in acceptance of their good fortune, their kohl-smeared eyes flea-jumping to every movement that might divert them from each other’s gaze. I felt a rush of worry for them. I threw a sweet to a boy who was standing apart from the crowd, naked from the waist down, ignored by the elders’ ritual scatterings. He didn’t grasp my intention in time and the sweet hit him on the side of the head. He bent to pick it up without complaint.

Other children rushed in and I threw the rest of my sweets, showering them with my benevolence. The girl joined in, throwing hers more discriminately, one at a time to the little girls who reminded her of innocent times.

When they were all gone she wandered away from me through the hotel gate, unstung by the suggestive looks of the security guards. On the pavement outside she found a place for herself in the surge from where she could get a better view of the final flourishes before the trumpeters gave out. I stayed where I was, watching her back in case she was caught up in the crush and needed saving.

A prying dog snarled at the watchers’ legs, causing a fall somewhere at the back. In the commotion a tourist dropped his phone and swore loudly. The dog had its foot trodden on and let out a yelp. A cross-legged infant shoved the dog muzzle-first out of the firing line and picked up the sweet that had been hiding in its shadow.

The music died and the crowd cleared to let the procession through the gate. The lovebirds were eased from their seat and lowered to the ground. The doormen swung the doors open to the advancing party. The bodyscanner was switched off, a prearranged concession to the dignity of the occasion.

I stepped aside to set myself apart from the happy ones as they filed into the lobby. I looked for the girl.

She was standing in the road watching the bride being swallowed by her new family, her face starched and covetous as the gate was wheeled closed. Our eyes met and I gave her a little smile. She didn’t return it. She didn’t have to. My money was hers now and she could do what she wanted with it.

‘I know where there are butterflies,’ I said. ‘I can take you to see them.’

‘I must go,’ she said.

‘Okay. Thank you.’

‘I hope you don’t die.’

‘Thanks. You too.’

She turned and crossed the road and kept on walking. I waited until she was a speck and then I went back to the room to get my things together. I smelled her as soon as I walked in. I cried briefly for my loss.

I took the train back to Airoli, breathing in the dust from the open door and thinking about the approaching rain. How heavy it might be and how fast it might fill me up if I stood very still with my mouth wide open to the sky. I bought a bunch of blackened bananas from a child with eyes dimmed by illiteracy and the smoke of rubbish fires. I gave them to Bibhuti’s neighbour when I got back, to feed his addiction to beauty.

Bibhuti was on tenterhooks. I told him I’d behaved myself and he embraced me like a long-lost friend. He hadn’t been convinced that I’d return.

‘What made you think that?’ I asked.

‘I imagined you might go home and leave me without hope. It has been a difficult time for you.’

‘I wouldn’t do that. I made you a promise and I’m gonna keep it.’

His relief was startling and I had to sit down. It felt good to be missed.

I was beating the life out of Bibhuti with a baseball bat when my first monsoon broke. Jolly Boy was timing me on his stopwatch.

‘Faster, Uncle, faster! Hit him more harder!’

‘It kills your arms though.’

The sweat was falling off me in waves. I felt sick to my stomach but I’d come too far to give up now.

Bibhuti was standing with his legs spread apart for balance, his body tensed like it was holding a high note. His face holy cow serene as I piled into him, bouncing the bat off his shoulders and his shins and his thighs, his back where the crocodile bites were shining. He made a tree of himself and took it, let out a satisfied little grunt whenever I hit a sweet spot.

The black clouds spilled their first drops. Big rain. Birdshit big and hot. A drop landed on my head. Itchy. Then another one. Everything went dark. The courtyard sagged and sang under the weight of it, all that enraged air. I couldn’t get the right grip, my feet were slipping. Everything hurt and the raindrops were burning.

‘Keep going,’ Bibhuti said, his voice quiet and steady. He sucked a fat raindrop from his moustache.

‘Twenty-four seconds!’ Jolly Boy shouted, jumping up and down with the turmoil of it all. ‘You can break it! Hit him!’

I lifted the bat up higher, tightened my grip. I thought I could see a hairline crack but it wasn’t enough, it still felt too solid. The fear was a coal in my throat. I looked at Bibhuti’s shin where it had come up red and swollen. I didn’t think it would be this hard to break a man.

‘Come,’ Bibhuti said, waving me in. ‘You are almost there. One more hit only, I can feel it. Come.’

His voice was soothing. Like Mum rubbing calamine lotion on my wasp sting, that time at the Mumbles when I was a boy. I was as helpless as a boy again. A prisoner of the moment and its keeper, weak and drunk on daring. I couldn’t let him down. I lined up another shot across his shoulder, closed my eyes and stepped into it.