Stephen Kelman - Man on Fire

Or maybe a quick end is in store at the point of a needle, a merciful deflation after grief’s bloating. His mother a mountaineer in the landfill fighting the seagulls for his eyes.

He asks for another ice cream. I watch him go to work on it, something sweet to remember me by.

The clouds tussle and heave. Jolly Boy’s shoulders sag and he ages. The ice cream falls from his hand. He’s crying.

‘I was too slow. I should give you the next bat quicker. There are too many. It is my fault.’

‘Don’t say that, it’s not your fault. You didn’t do anything. We shouldn’t have let you anywhere near there. Don’t ever think it was your fault. You’re a good boy.’

His eyes claw for the sky and the peace to be found there in the brewing storm.

‘You could do with a shower,’ I tell him. ‘You’re smelling a bit ripe. I’ll take you when we get back. I’ll get you some new clothes as well.’

‘Okay,’ he sniffs.

‘I smell worse than you do,’ I say to appease him. I pinch my nose and wave a hand in front of my face. ‘Pooey, what a stink. I smell like shit.’

Laughter dribbles out of him. He mimics me, pinching his nose and holding an exaggerated breath, his tear-streaked cheeks swelling like a hamster’s.

The first rain spots the pavement. I hand him his shoes and we head back to the trees.

We go back to the fire-escape door and hammer on it until it’s opened. Zubin promises a change of clothes in Jolly Boy’s size. He takes us to the bathroom and locks us inside.

Jolly Boy makes me wait behind the wall of the shower cubicle, throws me his clothes once he’s removed them. I wash them in the sink while he rinses five days of hoping off, scrubbing until the water runs black.

I catch myself in the mirror and think about growing the moustache again.

Zubin comes back with fresh clothes, taken from various small corpses. Jolly Boy recoils at the idea of stepping into a dead boy’s shoes. Zubin reassures him that all is clean and death isn’t catching. I turn my back while he changes. Zubin gathers up Jolly Boy’s wet clothes and takes them away to hang somewhere. Jolly Boy is reluctant to be separated from his dragon. I tell him that dragons home, it’ll find its way back to him.

When we get back to the room Bibhuti is wide awake and pulling at the drip line that dangles from his arm. It slithers from his vein, glistening with blood. His wife accepts it prudishly and lays it on the sheet. It dribbles the last of its shames onto the cotton and lies still. Bibhuti sees me and recognition floods his eyes.

‘No more painkillers,’ Bibhuti says, his voice garbled and rusty. ‘They are trying to kill me with this poison. I am just now speaking with the fire-eater, he says we can still do it. Come, we must go home and practise. Eleven bats is poor number, we will come back tomorrow and improve on it.’

Jolly Boy is rooted to the spot, his hair still wet from the shower, unsure if what he sees is real or a ghost. His mother asks after his clothes and I tell her the story. She accepts my explanation without really hearing it, her attention flying back to Bibhuti and the terrible thirst he’s woken to. She tips a water bottle towards his mouth. He tries to sit up to take a drink but the effort of it wipes him out and he falls back onto the bed. The sight of him helpless slaps me awake and I rush to his side. He bucks and slithers, impatient to test the honesty of his returning strength. I hold him down as politely as I can until the doctor comes. His skin where I can feel it is hot with life and his moustache tickles my ear.

‘Thank you,’ he says flatly. Nobody else hears it.

Bibhuti asks me how I’m feeling. I look ill, he says. He’s calm, refreshed. Wherever he went while he was under and whoever he spoke to, his travels have stolen the memory of his ever being outwitted by the drugs. His only concern now is for me. Have I been following my diet? Have I been doing my exercises?

I’ve been sitting here waiting for him to wake up, I say. I’ve been remembering and trying not to remember. I’ve been scraping his blood from under my fingernails and telling myself it’s just the storyless grime that comes from being in a foreign country.

I tell him I’m fine. Everything’s fine. What he doesn’t know can’t hurt him.

The doctor has tested him, shone a light in his eyes and trailed a finger in a circuit around his nose and asked him the year and the date of his birth. He knew who ‘The Little Master’ was and who the opponents were when he made his last test century.

‘Always cricket,’ Bibhuti had complained. ‘Why don’t you ask me about floor gymnastics or karate? Ask me about my ninth World Record, I will tell you that on 14th October 2006 I successfully completed one hundred and fourteen fingertip push-ups in one minute. There is more to life than cricket.’

The doctor had smiled patiently and taken a blood sample. Bibhuti had flinched when the needle went in.

His wife and Jolly Boy cling to him, their fingers glued to his living skin. Now they’ve got him back they’re not letting go of him. They plan to ride him home bareback.

I ask him what he remembers of the day.

Everything, he says, up until a blackout. Eleven bats lie broken. He stood up to them and they sang to his tune. There was no pain then. Everything went to plan. I did him proud, and Shubham too.

Jolly Boy coils tighter around his father, his relief a prehensile thing that pulls him to his beating heart.

‘We found greatness,’ Bibhuti tells me, his eyes glowing through the gauze of returning pain. ‘I knew we would do it.’

‘You’re not disappointed we didn’t get the fifty?’

‘I have the record, this is the important thing. Nobody will match it. You have informed the Guinness people, they have ratified?’

‘I don’t know how. I was waiting for you to wake up.’

‘It was never in doubt.’

His wife lifts her head from private thanksgiving and scowls at him. ‘I doubted it. Every minute I am waiting for you to die. Shubham is afraid he will lose his father. Five days like this. Look at what you have done to yourself. Go on, look!’

Bibhuti looks down at himself. He takes in the plaster that holds him together and the bruises that intrude on his exposed flesh. Fear shivers through him. Then regret steals in to dull his eyes to ash.

‘I will not do this again,’ he says, his lips trembling as he speaks.

‘You have promised this before,’ his wife reminds him.

‘I am very sorry. I will break no more promises.’

He’s forgotten the revelation he shared with us when he first woke up. His conversation with the fire-eater is a dream that’s lost to him. Now that the morphine is draining from his system he knows only pain. It’s a bringer of clarity.

‘I am finished. I cannot ask any more of myself. I have given everything. I will ask God to release me from this debt and show me an alternative path.’ He examines the plaster on his arm, clucks his tongue disdainfully. ‘This plaster work is very shoddy, the joins are too rough. I will change when I get home. Come, we must go. I cannot stay here, a hospital is not the place for me. I will die if I stay here, these doctors know nothing.’

He peels his wife’s fingers from his neck and tries to move. A jolt of agony pins him down.

To know that he feels pain with me is a consolation. I want him to be human again and mortal. His time as a god only brought worry to the people who love him. To love him now is to convince him that his special properties are all exhausted. To save him is to remind him that he’s just like me.

The nurse disapproves of Bibhuti’s decision to bear his pain naturally. There’s no talking him round. He’s alive again and he wants to feel it, every spasm and firework. It’s the price he must pay for his former arrogance. His prize for poking death in the eye is to spend the rest of his life respectfully running from it, as everybody else does. Milk and turmeric await him at home.