Stephen Kelman - Man on Fire

‘It will not be so long.’

Somehow I know I’ll be dangling from that roof and I turn away from Ellen so she won’t see my excitement.

The air in the apartment is gummy and dense with the gossip of the ghosts who took up tenancy while Bibhuti was away. Drowned children who’ve spent the last few days bickering over who died most stylishly and the best way to the afterlife. When they hear the key in the lock they bolt to the cracks in the walls. We walk Bibhuti in, sweating from the climb up the stairs. An anxiety enters the room ahead of us, a fear of the curse that might touch us should he find his home ransacked of its treasures. He scans the room suspiciously. He lingers at the sideboard and takes an inventory of its contents. His trophies and commendations provide momentary comfort. The ghosts evaporate.

He switches the TV on, watches the snow falling on screen until the pain becomes too much to bear and he allows us to sit him down on the zebra-print sofa.

‘It must feel good to be home,’ Ellen says.

He gives a shattered smile in reply. The rain beats against the window and makes a clock for Bibhuti to time his wasting by. Already he’s desolate. The long healing ahead and the abandonment of his former creed have sapped the blood from him. He can’t bring himself to speak or to look at us.

Jolly Boy runs to the bedroom to turn the air con on and there’s a moment of tension while we wait for the system to expectorate and rediscover its breath. Cool air drifts in and Bibhuti’s wife goes to the kitchen to be alone with her thoughts. A sour homecoming, everything in the house has been chipped or moved one step back from its rightful place by the knowledge we share of disasters weathered. Nothing has lasted. The neighbour, having followed us up, offers us his food until we get a chance to restock. Charity will be the fibre that stitches us back together.

We put ourselves where Bibhuti can see us, the men competing for his eye and the scraps of blessing he might toss our way. We all want him to know how committed we are to the cause of making him comfortable in his new obscurity. Being intimates with obscurity gives us leverage and wisdoms to pass on about how to walk in darkness.

We’re asking a tiger to take up matchstick modelling.

He’ll be writing again soon, Vijay Five assures him. The newspaper will always need him and the city will always have stories to tell. And there’s the memoir to finish, new chapters to add. The world awaits his account with bated breath.

Butterflies on the wind, the neighbour says. He could use some help with the sanctuary he’s been planning, when he’s up to it. There’s a patch of woodland he’s had his eye on and he thinks he can get it for a good price. A butterfly man has peace and time to think. He has the friendship of nature and beauty is his companion. A blessed life, it could be.

Bibhuti thanks them for their help and asks them to leave. He’s tired and he needs to rest.

When they’ve gone Bibhuti tears his plaster off. He’s a child unwrapping Christmas presents, impatient to see the full extent of the disgrace the hospital bunglers have inflicted on him.

‘Really they have done a very poor job,’ he mutters as the casts are shed in eggshell pieces and more battered flesh is revealed, discoloured and creased from its quarantine. ‘It is no wonder the pain is not leaving.’

His wife helps him out of the plaster sleeves, very careful not to touch him. Every suggestion he makes that his mastery of pain has left him is met with a sympathy cringe and a snapped retreat of hands. The rest of us sit and watch and let the second-hand tremors pass through us. To be touched even as an afterthought by the pain he feels is to wish myself in his place.

Everything I’ve wished for since I arrived here has come true. If only I could take it all back. I’m devastated by my own selfishness. It’s a revelation that brings no pleasure or relief. I look at the family who took me in and see trees that I just had to climb. They’re ruined now. I’ve carved my name in them and stolen all their fruit. My heels have scraped great gouges in their bark that will leave them open when I’ve gone to other parasites.

The last piece of shell is removed. Bibhuti appraises his wounds, moving his limbs very slowly to keep the bones in place. Shame comes over him again and his moustache droops. The effect has lost its comical allure.

‘You should not see me like this,’ he tells me, stripped down to his Y-fronts and fighting back tears.

‘I’ve never seen a guru in his pants before. It’s an honour.’

Bibhuti’s wife seizes on his confusion and relates to him his new status. The news troubles him.

‘Why did you let this happen?’ he demands, stiffening. The tired muscles in his shoulders contract and he kicks out his legs, clattering his shins against the coffee table. The room jumps. He suppresses a howl.

‘I do not want this,’ he goes on, his anger rising. ‘I did not ask for your priests. I did this for the love of one God only and for the love of the people. I am not a bearded man in saffron robes, I cannot teach others how to live. Look at me. This is not a good lesson. I have broken myself for twelve years and still the world is in pain. Planes are falling from the sky and my friends are expiring. My friend from England is unwell, I have not been able to cure him. His wife must walk with a stick. We have no television. Where is my lesson? You will get your priests here and they will reverse what they have done.’

Chastened, his wife slinks away to the kitchen again. She comes back with a plastic bucket, a jug of water and a packet of white powder. Ingredients for the new plaster Bibhuti is anxious to get into before his bones disintegrate under the strain of premature freedom. The inside of the bucket is crusted with the remains of past mixes, each new layer betraying another self-inflicted collapse. Under Bibhuti’s trained eye she pours the water from the jug into the bucket. She adds the powder at his commentary, a little at a time. Its dust spills out in a plume that sandstorms our eyes before the air con wafts it clear.

‘Air bubbles,’ Bibhuti prompts, and she taps the side of the bucket with her spoon to disperse the powder and even out the mixture. When Bibhuti is happy with the consistency she gives it a stir and the water becomes a paste.

I think this is something I should be doing, but she has determined it her duty and besides, I’m still feeling the sting of Bibhuti’s earlier comment. That my fragility should be so obvious to him when he’s the one who’s just come back from the dead. What a sorry pair we are.

Jolly Boy trots to the kitchen for the rest of the ingredients. He comes back with an armful of bandages still in their packaging and a fat spool of cotton wool. He drops the bandages and unrolls the cotton wool, cuts it to length for the first application. He holds Bibhuti’s elbow delicately while his mother wraps the strip around Bibhuti’s arm for padding. She dips the first bandage in the plaster solution and then winds it over the cotton-wool sleeve, her eyes darting all the while to her husband’s for guidance. With great care she repeats the process until three layers of bandages clad his arm, smoothing the plaster down with her palm between each application to achieve a clean finish. Her sobriety throughout suggests many years of painstaking ministrations like this, of swabbing blood and smoothing matted hair, of binding fractured fingers and forceful reintroductions of ball joints to their sockets.

Bibhuti stays awake to watch, biting back the pain to remonstrate quietly with her over her fussy technique. She flusters to get the job done to his satisfaction while the room hums to a narcotic rhythm of muted industry. Before my eyes he’s fixed and shielded again from my thrill-seeking bat. I’ve hit him for the last time. A pang of mourning. I’ll end my life having never killed a man. I feel the consolation of it as I feel the cooling draught of the air con on my neck. Your mercy, that’s what it is. If I feel saved from something, whether it’s hell or an inescapable deed, then someone or something must have done the saving. That’s what I’m thinking when I watch Bibhuti’s other bones being dressed and then sit alone with him listening to the rain as the plaster sets.