turned on their lamp and dropped his backpack on one mattress and then they lay down together on the other mattress.
How many did you sell Special?
Seventeen .
Tips?
Four dollars
Oh they were stingy. Aren’t we so lucky, we will be able to share one Kebab tomorrow.
Special smiled and tucked into Absimil’s curve and put his arm over his shoulder. And they stayed like that for quite a while.
Afterwards, they sat together with their backs against the wall a blanket over their shoulders joining them.
God says that two men shouldn’t have sex. I always feel guilty and know that he is watching.
You always talk that bullshit Absimil.
But I think that he must understand and forgive me. In Sudan, if they found out I would suffer a horrible death, you know that don’t you?
Neither said anything for a while.
I have a question to ask you Absimil.
Fire away.
Who is your biggest hero?
I haven’t really thought about it. Is there a point to this question? Does it having anything to do with us having making love?
Well a little bit, I just think it’s an interesting question. Mine is Copernicus.
Who?
Copernicus.
Never heard of him.
He was a Pole, you know someone from Poland who lived in the fifteen hundreds if I remember correctly, he was an astronomer who came up with the idea that the sun was the centre of the solar system, not the earth, what they call the heliocentric solar system. He realised that the earth was just a planet.
I suppose that was a bit of a discovery, especially way back then.
Spot on. It gave the Catholic Church the shits, old Pope Paul III was very angry and he quite liked Copernicus. But his theory said that a lot of what was in the bible was a load of bullshit and what kind of friend was that. Still friend enough so that Copernicus didn’t lose his head. He was the lucky one. There was this dude called Giardano Bruno who put forward the same theory about the same time but he wasn’t so lucky, they burn’t him at the stake.
What does that mean?
He was unlucky. They tied him to a pole and lit a fire at his feet until he was burnt to death.
That’s horrible. Why would they do that?
Because my dear friend as I said before what they were suggesting was that a lot of the claims in the bible were a crock of shit and then there was Darwin and soon there might be no god at all and we could make love in peace.
But everyone knows that God exists, you just have to look around Special, why are you always going on about God not existing. Of course he exists, otherwise how do we know the difference between right and wrong?
So all those people in South Sudan who persecuted your family, who would torture you for loving me, they would know that what they were doing was wrong?
Yes they would know that what they were doing was wrong. But most people are good people because they know God.
Absimil, Absimil what am I going to do with you? How can the unlucky believe in God?
8.
From the couch in Eleanor’s living room Eliot could look out over the lawn and the apartment’s communal garden. The man from apartment four, whatever his name, was doing something on his knees in his plot. Eleanor was preparing them dinner. He was in the next room, but because of the open plan he could see her most of the time. And hear her all of the time. Her apron was as colourful as her dress which always clashed with her auburn curls. Elvie sat in front of the refrigerater with her tail curled around her front legs probably expecting some food. She didn’t know it yet but she wasn’t going home. This was a farewell.
Eleanor was talking away but because she had her back to Eliot most of the time he could choose what he listened to, inserting a single word or two into the monologue when her inflection suggested that it was appropriate. She talked non- stop and every now and then he felt that he should say something so it looked like he was showing some interest in her. Where do you come from Eleanor?
Both sides of my family were originally from London.
It seemed to Eliot that he might need to ask another question just to be polite but Eleanor continued.
When I was a child, I remember my Great Uncle Bert who lived in a worker’s cottage in Old Kent Rd. He was a cripple, if that’s the right word because he had gone to work for a logging company somewhere in India. Something to do with an elephant if I remember correctly. He had a very bad limp and he couldn’t talk properly anymore. My aunty said Uncle Bert was just unlucky and that he had had a stroke but I didn’t believe her. My grandfather said it was caused by his own stupidity because white men should stay out of India which is full of all kinds of dangers………..I don’t think that things have changed very much what with that bomb killing all those people in Allahabad last week Elliot.
Eliot thought, what did she want him to do? Jump up, run out the door and rush straight to the nearest Air Asia Office, if there was such a thing and cancel his tickets?
I suppose that the real answer to the question where do I come from is Nagambie. My father was a bank manager there and my mother, home duties of course. My father was not a very nice person. That’s what everyone in town thought. Everyone was scared of him. Once a man accidently ran over our dog and my father beat him up in the street in front of people going about their shopping.
Eliot could hear the sound of the knife on the chopping board and now he was listening to her. Was she being serious about her father?
He was a cruel man and especially to my mother. He made his mark whenever he was disgruntled, whenever he had too much to drink. Knitting needles, the electric iron accident, clothes pegs, anything to get the desired effect. I know that this is hard to believe. She covered the marks and got on with day to day life until he killed our cat, her cat, and something gave. I still remember standing on the small round covered entrance to our house with its ionic columns and the rain was pouring down. I remember, I was wearing my red coat with the velvet collar and my Uncle and Aunty drove up in their Holden and they carried umbrellas to us while we grasped our suitcases and ran to their car. Soon we drove off with the windscreen wipers slapping. We never saw my father again.
When Eliot heard Eleanor say that her father made his mark he drifted away and thought of Special on the train and the dent in his forehead. Then he was startled and her voice was closer, she was taking of her apron.
In the beginning everyone said that my mother had been lucky, married well, every one said that. But they were wrong. Who you marry is a big thing Eliot, it could be the start of good luck but maybe bad luck. To think that I am half him makes me shudder every day. Oh, sorry, I have gone on haven’t I Eliot? Don’t get me started talking.
She smiled a guilty sort of smile, more like a corroborative smirk as she came and sat down beside him on the couch. Eliot made some sympathetic noises. He felt uncomfortable. Not because she sat so close to him, although that was a little disconcerting, not because of the pegs and the electric iron, but because he sensed that knowing so much about her meant that their relationship had just changed and nothing could be done about it. It was handy not to worry about cooking and cleaning up on his last night, great that someone would look after Elvie, but at what cost? She looked directly into his eyes when she spoke to him, her cleavage front and centre.
I have just put the fish in the oven Eliot and It shouldn’t take too long, maybe twenty minutes……... You must be quite excited. Tomorrow, and off you fly. So tell me about your new boss. What was his name again?
Jalal, Jalal Singh……well he is a retired doctor who