Читать книгу The Messiah's Dream Machine - Jennifer Friedman - Страница 12

The Hostel of Perpetual Hunger

In the small, airless rooms and empty dormitories of the Hostel of Perpetual Hunger – attached to the School of No Hope for Girls – the boarders, burdened with loneliness and boredom, bicker and sulk. Preoccupied, obsessed with their own misery, they furtively count and conceal the contents of their tuckboxes, devour their stocks of chocolate bars in secret, unwrap and wolf them down under their bedclothes, or behind the bolted doors of bathrooms – around any quiet, private corner. At night, they dream of food and home-cooked meals, and in the dark hours between their winter-damp sheets, they cry for home, for pets and families and friends, and grind their teeth, and drool in their sleep. In the mornings, their pillows are wet with tears.

In the Hostel of Perpetual Hunger, the girls – a disparate group of snarling, teenaged angst thrown together from foreign countries and different backgrounds – are always hungry. Everyone hankers after home comforts, yearns for things familiar. Some make new friends, while others stay lonely and alone. Some girls – like me – drift through the days detached and disconnected, while others, clustered happily together in this overheated, seething sisterhood, blossom and thrive.

Minute Steaks and Meatballs

At the end of my first day in the hostel, I stand behind Ramsey’s solid pear shape in a line of girls all leaning against a grubby wall in front of the closed doors of the dining room. The hungry boarders grumble and shuffle their feet, impatient for the doors to open. The air heaves with hairspray and fruit-flavoured lip-ice. A dozen deodorants mingle with the reek of sweaty armpits, compete with the overpowering scents of feminine hygiene sprays – Fresh Island Breeze, Baby Powder Fresh! Summer’s Eve – EXTRA STRENGTH – Ideal for Sensitive Areas – and the sour odour of unwashed hair. I can hear the maids laughing and shouting in the kitchen, the cook’s curses slipping out through the kitchen’s swing doors. In a sudden silence, footsteps hurry towards us across the linoleum floor. The dining-room doors swing open, and a nauseating gust of stale food and grease surges out. Undeterred, the girls push inside, elbowing and shoving one another, treading on heels and toes.

In the middle of the dining room, four tables have been laid for dinner. Piles of unused furniture stand stacked up against a far wall.

“Why’re all those chairs and tables over there?” I ask the girl behind me.

“I don’t know,” she says. “I know there used to be more boarders here …” She shrugs and looks around at the noisy crowd. “I suppose they keep them for spares now, or something.”

“Like all those beds in the empty rooms and dormitories?”

But she’s already pushed past me, and she doesn’t answer.

A single table, set with three places, stands on a raised platform in front of the kitchen’s swing doors. I tap Ramsey on her shoulder.

“Who sits up on the stage?” I ask, pointing at it.

“What?” She looks in the direction of my finger. “Oh, that’s where Mrs P and the hostel prefects sit,” she says. “Mrs P sits at the head of the table with the prefects on either side.”

I follow Ramsey to our table, take my place between her and a girl called Fanny. I pull my chair away from the table.

“Wait – you can’t sit down yet!” Ramsey hisses. “Quick! Push it back!” She looks up. The places on the platform are still empty. “We have to remain standing behind our chairs until Mrs P and the prefects have taken their places.”

“Why? What for?”

Ramsey snorts. “Why?” She rolls her eyes. “To show our respect, that’s why.”

Ramsey elbows me in my side. Mrs P lurches into the dining room, and the noise dies away. One of the prefects pulls her chair out for her and waits for Mrs P to totter unsteadily onto the platform. She sits down heavily, and as I watch, I see her thrust one shoulder forward, as if hoping it might propel her chair closer to the table. Her hands scrabble weakly against the sides of her seat, and she manages to drag herself halfway across the small distance towards her place at the head of the table. It proves too much for her, and she suddenly stops dead. The prefect grimaces and braces herself against the back of the chair. She leans forward and, with a grunt, pushes Mrs P up to the edge of the table.

The noise level rises again. Girls shout to one another across the tables, laugh and joke, their shrill voices penetrating the furthest corners of the echoing dining room. One of the prefects raps her knife against an empty glass. Quiet, the boarders look down at the patch of tablecloth in front of them. I shift about on the hard chair, fidget with my cutlery. Ramsey leans back and mumbles something out of the corner of her mouth.

“Sorry,” I say. “What was that?”

I turn towards her.

She stares down at her lap.

“Ramsey? Sorry, I couldn’t hear what you said.”

She glances around, quick and furtive, and drops her head again.

“No, I just wanted to say, seeing as this is your first Friday night here …” She raises her voice slightly. “It’s only fair to warn you …” Ramsey’s smile doesn’t reach her eyes.

“Warn me? What about?”

My stomach rumbles. I can’t decide whether I want to laugh or cry. I blink my eyes, cross my arms and press them hard against my stomach.

“You’ll see,” she says. “Once you’ve been here a while, you’ll realise we always get steak for dinner on Friday nights.”

“So?” I frown. “What’s wrong with steak? I like it – don’t you?”

“It’s not a matter of liking,” she snorts. “It’s more a matter of what kind of steak we’re talking about. Just listen, okay? I’m telling you this because forewarned is forearmed – don’t let tonight’s steak get your hopes up about what you’ll be getting to eat for the rest of the week.”

“I don’t understand …”

Ramsey rolls her eyes. “You’ll see,” she says, irritably.

Up on the podium, one of the prefects jumps up from her chair. “Quiet!” she shouts. “Shut up down there!”

A brief lull descends in the conversations around us. Knives and forks stop in mid-air. Girls glance at one another, turn around, whisper and point. I look down at the table. Ramsey hitches her shoulder and shifts back in her seat. Communications resume, interspersed with loud guffaws and titters, calls for the water jug, the salt- and peppershakers to be passed down the table.

“Look,” Ramsey snaps, “we’re not talking thick and juicy here!” She bares her teeth and hisses. “These are minute steaks, okay?”

“Minute steaks? What’s a minute steak?”

Ramsey shakes her head. “Are you kidding? Haven’t you ever eaten a minute steak?”

“No.”

“A minute steak,” she explains, “is so small and thin, it takes only a minute to fry, and then the cook here fries them until they’re rock hard, and so dry, they look – and taste – like bits of cardboard. And they’re as tough as old shoe leather.”

My stomach rumbles again.

The kitchen doors swing open, and two maids carrying trays laden with plates of food push their way into the dining room. Everyone cranes their necks to get a better view. Their hopes subside rapidly into groans of disappointment when the plates are handed down the length of the tables. I prod the tip of my knife against the grey, desiccated disc on my plate.

“What’s this supposed to be?” My voice carries across the room.

Ramsey inclines her head and gestures with the knife in her hand. “See?” she says. “This is what I’ve been telling you about – this is a minute steak, and these are the steaks we’ll be having for dinner every Friday night for the rest of the year!” She chews laboriously. “They make a point of giving us steak for dinner on Friday nights, you see?” She grins. I can see some­thing stringy caught between her teeth. “So, if you’re lucky enough to have a weekend pass, and your hostess happens to ask you what you had for dinner in the hostel last night …” Around the table, Ramsey’s audience nods in agreement. She shrugs her shoulders. “You can honestly tell them you had steak!” She saws away at the sliver on her plate. “They think it makes the school look good.”

She stretches across the table for the greasy water jug, fills her glass, takes a gulp, and chokes down her mouthful of steak.

“It’s the only way you can get it down,” she advises. “Swallow it with lots of water – and, by the way, if you’re not going to eat that …” She points her knife at my plate, flicks a warning glance at the other girls seated nearby, and stabs her knife down in the centre of my steak.

“You want it or not?” Her voice is low.

“I’m still thinking about it, okay?” I stare at the sliver of meat pinned under the tip of her knife. “Just give me a minute!”

Ramsey curls her upper lip.

“Ha-ha – very funny,” she smirks. “Witty.”

I shrug. Ramsey shrugs back. I push my plate away from me, and when I look again, my steak is dangling in mid-air, speared through on the tip of her knife. Her smile is tight with triumph, but her laugh sounds bitter, like a cough. She pokes her elbow in my side.

“You’d better be careful,” she says seriously. “If you’re going to be this fussy about your food, you’re going to end up starving here.”

I look straight ahead.

“You think this is bad?” she asks. “Just wait and see what the cook does with it for the rest of the week!”

My eyes widen.

“Ja. You’ll see, tomorrow the left-over steaks will become hamburgers, and on Sunday we’ll get a steak casserole.” She punctuates her litany, emphasising the days with doleful nods of her head. “On Monday, what’s left of the casserole will be turned into steak stew, and on Tuesday it’s steak mince on rice. Wednesday, we’ll be eating teeny steak rissoles for dinner.” She shakes her head vehemently. “The menu never varies.” She grimaces. “Oh, and on Thursday,” she continues, “it’s meatball day – and if I were you, I would not ever eat those meatballs.”

“Why not?” I whisper in dismay.

Ramsey looks down at the table. She studies the position of the plate in front of her and moves it slightly to one side.

“Wait,” she says ominously. “You’ll see next week. Just wait till Thursday comes …”

A week later, our room is so hot and stuffy, we can barely breathe. Ramsey and I lean across the desk, and hoping to catch a breeze, we heave the window open as far as it’ll go. The room smells of sweat and Ramsey’s Johnson’s Baby Powder.

Behind the closed window in the kitchen below, we can see the fat cook – a filthy apron tied around her waist – bend over a stainless-steel table in front of her. Her heavy thighs pressed up against it, her fat belly spreads across its steel surface. We watch her wipe the sweat from her face with the back of her hand. She takes a deep breath and crosses her arms over her huge breasts. Ramsey and I stare, horrified, as she slowly draws her palms through her sweating armpits. She steps back from the table and shakes her hands out in front of her, leans forward again and pulls a bowl heaped high with raw minced meat towards her.

She scoops up a handful of meat and slaps it from one hand to the other. Once, twice, three times she pats and squeezes the patty until her fingers ooze. The bulging front of her apron is spattered wet with the bloody liquid. Her face is expressionless as she squashes and rolls the meat into balls before slapping them down on a tray. She shakes her head against the heat in the kitchen. Sweat rolls from the edge of her doek onto her hands. The cook raises her arms. Slabs of fat swing and sway above the hairy nests of her armpits.

Mesmerised, we kneel on our beds, our elbows on the small table between us. The small wind outside finally gathers its breath and moves through our open window, blowing the greasy curtains until they billow against our faces, and obscure our view.

“You see?” Ramsey says, “Remember what I told you about not eating the meatballs on Thursday nights?”

Mrs P takes a dive

Up on the podium, a glass falls from the prefects’ table. As it smashes against the dining-room floor, Mrs P’s chair topples over. The buzz of conversation ceases abruptly.

“Ramsey?”

I push my chair back to see Mrs P sprawled slack-jawed on her side at the edge of the stage.

Her skirt is bunched up beneath her, and one of her shoes is lying on the floor below.

“What’s the matter with her? Why doesn’t anyone help her?”

No one appears to take the slightest notice of the dishevelled body lying at the edge of the platform. No one seems to care. The girls shrug in their seats, roll their eyes and resume their conversations, laughing and chatting, telling one another jokes, gossiping and confiding – shrugging and gesticulating as if nothing untoward has just occurred. The prefects continue eating, talking to one another with their mouths full of food, their elbows spread out on the table. Ma’d have a fit if she saw their table manners, I think.

“Why doesn’t anyone help her?” I repeat.

“Sit down,” Fanny hisses at my side.

Ramsey yanks at my sleeve. “Sit, or you’ll get a detention!”

A prefect points her knife at me. “Sit down!” she shouts.

Mrs P groans. She snorts and turns over onto her back. Her chest rattles. Saliva bubbles and foams on her lips, and a long thread of drool runs down into her neck. She turns back on her side, grunts like an old sow, and starts to snore.

“Isn’t anyone going to do anything?” I ask again.

Fanny shrugs. “Don’t worry about her,” she mumbles. “It’s Friday night – the old bat’s always drunk on Friday nights.”

“You mean she’s drunk? Is that what’s wrong with her?”

Ramsey leans sideways. “You’ll get used to it,” she says with an odd smile. “I can’t believe you haven’t noticed – Mrs P’s always half-sloshed!”

“Yeah, I just told her,” Fanny chimes in, “but especially on Fridays. She hates weekends – she always says, she wishes we could all get weekend passes so she can be left in peace and quiet, but everyone knows, she just wants us out of the way, so she can get drunk.” She shakes her head.

I wait for her to continue, but Fanny goes back to chewing her steak. She dabs her lips and carefully wipes the corners of her mouth after each forkful.

Strands of grey hair have tucked themselves into the corners of Mrs P’s slack mouth, and a growing puddle of drool starts to spread towards the edge of the platform. The deep lines on her face hang in loose, pouched folds. Her spectacles lie smeared, lens-down, still attached to their chain on the floor above her head. I feel sick.

Behind the platform, the kitchen doors swing open. Two maids tiptoe into the dining room. Mrs P suddenly rolls onto her stomach and heaves herself up onto her knees. Long strands of saliva swing from her chin onto the floor in front of her. She lurches back on her heels and swats her hands around her head.

“Voetsek!” she shouts. “Leave me alone!” She falls forward again, and her yellowed nails bounce and click on the floor. “Ag, can’t someone jus’ give me a little regmakertjie, please, man,” she begs. “Jus’ a little dop!”

No one listens, and no one laughs. The boarders turn their faces away and continue eating and chewing, swallowing, and making small talk. Below the hum of conversation, I sense a layer of cruelty and unkindness that binds these girls together, and I worry that if I stay here too long, I might become like one of them.

No one takes any notice, or looks up when the two maids haul Mrs P to her feet, and no girl remarks as she shuffles out of the dining room supported by compassion on one side, and kindness on the other – a debt of honour paid and repaid each week – and no one but me seems to notice, when she steps across the threshold of the open door into the vacuum beyond, how the air closes seamlessly behind her, erasing her presence in this room as if she’d never existed in the here and now.

Tastes like toffee

I’m hungry.

Ramsey surveys me with a critical eye.

“Listen,” she says casually. “If you don’t start eating more, you’re going to fade away to nothing.”

“So?” I feel too dispirited to argue. “I don’t care. There’s noth­ing worth eating in this dump anyway.”

“Can’t argue with that,” Ramsey snorts. “But if you’re really that hungry, you should come down to the kitchen with us tonight after lights out.”

“What? For a midnight feast?”

Ramsey looks bemused. “I’ve never thought about it like that, but yeah, I suppose it is, in a way – only we don’t do it for fun, you know – like we used to when we were kids – it’s more like we have to, if you know what I mean.”

“Try and stop me,” I say.

Behind the closed door of our room, our empty beds are filled with moonlight. Quiet as spiders, we creep by torchlight through the dark corridors. Small shadows detach themselves from walls as we pass by, fluttering and scuttling into the high, gloomy corners. Cockroaches and mice scurry across the dusty floors, and disappear through invisible cracks. Girls bump into one another in the dark, bite their knuckles to muffle their screams.

In the dining room, the tables have been set for breakfast. Like homing pigeons, or a herd of thirsty cattle with the smell of water in their nostrils, we head for the kitchen’s swing doors, the stale odours of sweat and greasy water, burnt milk. The reek of boiled cabbage and unwashed feet.

Small eyes shine like black beads in the moonlit kitchen. Shadows coalesce and separate. A finger of light beckons from an open fridge door, and a sigh sweeps across the stainless-steel tables as the refrigerated air touches our cheeks. Someone heaves a heavy slab of cheese onto a table. Loaves of white bread follow, and tubs of margarine, tins of golden syrup, bottles of peanut butter. Girls elbow one another out of the way. Cutlery rattles in drawers. Golden syrup runs down wrists and chins, and tongues work hard against the thick paste of peanut butter spread on rough-cut chunks of bread. Ramsey waves a bread knife at me. She holds up two slabs, thick as doorsteps, plastered together with peanut butter and syrup.

“Here,” she says, offering her sandwich to me. “Have a bite – it tastes just like toffee!”

I smile and shake my head, show her my own chunks of bread and cheese. Over her shoulder, I notice the window at the far end of the kitchen. I walk across the crumb-strewn floor and lean over the stainless-steel table against the wall. I look out, and up, and see the dusty glass of our bedroom window high in the wall opposite, the greasy curtains hanging limp in the moonlight.

Letters from home

“You must write to us there by our boarding school.” My cousin Wilfred leans back in the wire chair on the farmhouse stoep. He swings his feet up and down, stretches his legs out in front of him. “It’s lekker when you get a letter.”

“Okay,” I say, “I’ll write to you, but you must promise you’ll write back, hey?”

“I promise,” he nods. “Benjamin will also write – hey, Benjamin? Jennifer says you must write to her – she says she’ll write first.”

“But he’s mos sitting right here, Wilfred – he can hear us!”

Wilfred grunts.

“If I write to you, Benjamin, will you write back?”

“Ja, oraait – just don’t write long letters there by your boarding school in Cape Town, okay?”

“Ja,” Wilfred chimes. “I also don’t want long letters you hear? Just short and sweet, hello and goo’bye!”

“Okay.” I nod. “Just make sure you guys write back.”

Dere Jenifir

How ar yu? I am fin. I alredy ate al my Tuk my Father donerd benjimin he left the gat opin the katl went in th sugirkan wen we went hom for the longe weekend I ran awuy fast hey he kudnt kach me. Are yu alredy ther by yor new skool how is Yor new bodingskool I wil rit agan soun

From yor kusin

Wilfred

Der Jenifer

How are you? I amfin Wilfred alreddy at al his tuk bekaus he sayd he dint wanto giv me ani my Mothir skreemd at Wilfred he at al hir biskits she was very th moerin wen we went Hoam for th longe weekend howsit ther by Yor nuw skoole isit naais or notso I doant mind long as I can go bak to th farm kwiKly I Am running ina kroscuntrie rais this turm yu must rite sune

from Benjamin

Every day, except on weekends, Mrs P tucks letters from home, postcards, and happy-birthday-congratulations, orange-enveloped telegrams and lucky post-office parcel slips between the faded red, crisscrossed ribbons on the cork noticeboard outside her office wall. And every day, after four o’clock tea, the boarders in the Hostel of Perpetual Hunger crowd around it, their faces tense and hopeful – desperate for the sight of their name on an envelope, even a postcard – anything to calm their fears, to reassure them they haven’t been forgotten.

I’m in Sub A, five years old.

“Letters are a lovely way for you to stay in touch with Granny and Grandpa and your cousins,” Ma says. “You can tell them all about school, your teacher – all your new friends – why don’t you write a letter to them? They’d love to hear from you, and I’m sure they’d write back.”

I like writing letters – finding envelopes in the post box with my name on them, and words and letters, wavy black lines stamped across the Queen’s coloured stamps to show me where and when they were posted. I sit on the rocking chair in the lounge next to Ma and read my letters full of stories about cousins, and Uncle Leslie on the farm, Aunty Alice’s perfect scones. Grandpa writes about shearing time and the price of wool, the rain that falls on the veld in mysterious points and inches, the heat and the dust. Granny writes about the cold and the price of coal, little babies being born, and old people dying – letters exciting and happy and sad, that bring news of people and places I know, and love. I feel just like a grown-up.