Читать книгу While I Have Pedro - John Chesterman - Страница 5

I love relays. I don’t care whether they’re races, like at the athletics or in the swimming pool, or if they’re just people passing something along, such as the Olympic torch. I like things to be done in a certain order. I know it sounds stupid, and it probably is stupid. But it keeps me calm, just thinking about relays. Maybe if the police had thought more about relays I wouldn’t have ended up in jail. I mean, I was there. I saw the place burn to the ground. If I think about it, which I do all the time, I can even hear the screams of the woman trapped inside. And I didn’t help her. I couldn’t. But I didn’t light the fire. I just knew it was going to happen.

I’m Red, by the way. I’d like to say that you wouldn’t notice me if you passed me in the street. But you would. For a start, I’m tall. Six foot three. But I also walk with a limp. I shuffle with a limp is probably more correct. As if that’s not enough, you’d certainly notice me if you tried to talk to me. Some stupid problem in my brain doesn’t let me curl my lips around any words. So, basically, I grunt. People who know me, like Pedro, can understand some of my words. Parents often tell their kids to think before they speak. That is my entire life, in one statement. It’s what they’ll put on my grave when I die. ‘He thought before he spoke’. My brain’s fine, I reckon, though some, like Professor Battersly, phd, franzcp, disagree. My problem’s always been proof. I can’t write. I can’t really even hold a pen. I can tap tap tap very slowly on the computer, but I usually hit the wrong keys. Just like I hit the wrong notes on the piano when I had my one lesson with Mrs Smart, who to be honest I don’t think was worthy of her name.

There are four things that are really important to me: Pedro, my Diary of Important Dates, newspapers and my scrapbooks. My mum is sort of important, my brother is a little bit important. What’s all this got to do with a woman dying in a fire? Everything, is the answer, but you’ll have to wait or you won’t understand. The lady trapped inside the church won’t be grateful for the explanation, but the next unlucky person might be, so just let me do things in order.

I actually love newspapers, I don’t just like them. Pedro once told me that you like something if you’d prefer to have it than not have it. You love something if you get excited just thinking about it. Me + newspapers = excitement. I buy one every morning at the milk bar. And I read the local one, which is delivered every Tuesday, or sometimes on Wednesday if Marjorie’s knees are playing up again. I collect all kinds of details. I’m not really interested in politics or world affairs, but I follow all the sports results, especially when there’s an athletics or swimming carnival. I could tell you who won any relay you care to think of, better than most, if I could talk properly. Just knowing information like that has to count for something, I reckon, even if I can’t actually tell anyone about it. I also know all about the weather forecasts, what the governor has been up to, and which ships are coming in and leaving Melbourne. I’m interested also in all the local events and problems here in bayside Melbourne. I know about all the robberies and attacks from reading the local paper. This year there have been three men arrested for flashing near the beach, so I read (and they weren’t taking photos). Last year there were two. I should know because I was one of them, but I wasn’t trying to be rude. I was just having a wee and a young woman saw me. She screamed, and I have to agree that I got pretty excited, but I didn’t mean to scare her. The police let me go pretty quickly and even drove me home, which was nice. I’m not sure how many were arrested the year before because I don’t think the newspaper ever said.

The last thing you need to know before I tell you what happened, and this is also very important, is how to turn things on and off. To understand this you need to think of baseball coaches. I know a lot about them because I once read a very interesting article in the sports pages called ‘what you need to know to be a baseball coach’. That article went straight into the old scrapbook - I’ll tell you more about my scrapbook later, because you need now to concentrate on baseball coaches. Question: how does a baseball coach tell a runner on second base what to do when the other team are watching him and when his team is playing in a big baseball stadium with supporters yelling really loudly? A coach might want to tell the runner on second base to steal a base and run to third base, though you’d need to be Carl Lewis (last runner, 4 x 100 metres, five times world record holder) to steal from second to third. It doesn’t happen very often. But let’s pretend Carl Lewis is on second base - god knows how he got there because to my knowledge he can’t play baseball. But we’re pretending. How does his coach give the signal to the next batter, and to Carl Lewis, that Lewis is going to steal? The more I think about this example, the worse it gets, because if you had Carl Lewis on base everyone in the world would expect him to steal, because he is Flash Gordon himself. He’d probably steal home and get there before the pitch did. But we are just pretending. Go with me, as Alfie says. How does the coach give the signal?

Simple. They have a secret way of turning the message on. The team might know that when the coach touches his elbow, then that turns the signal on. Touching his cap might mean a steal is going to happen. But if the coach just touches his cap, it means nothing because the signal hasn’t been turned on. It’s only after he touches his elbow that the signal is on. Simple: elbow, cap, Lewis to third.

I do pretty much the same thing in my life - the signals, that is, not the running - and I don’t think there’s anything too silly in it. For instance, when I’m sitting at the table having dinner I sometimes like to have salt. On Thursdays we often have chips, and I like salt on those. Things are automatically switched on at the table, so if I’m on my own at the table, I can have salt. Why wouldn’t I? It’s just salt. It’s not very good for your heart, I read. But I think I have other problems that are more important than my heart just at the moment. So things are always turned on at the table, unless they’re turned off. And they can be turned off quite easily. If Johnny touches the salt, that’s the off signal, and I can’t have any salt. I’d prefer not to have any that night. But if Rav or Phil touch the salt, it’s back on again and I can have some.

To you this may all sound dumb, which is not a very nice thing to think. But it’s my choice whether I want salt or not, and I’ll decide if and when I’ll have any, thank you very much. It’s not up to anyone else, not even Pedro. There was trouble the last time things were not done the right way. At least there was trouble with me. It was two years ago. I got very cross. It wasn’t Johnny’s fault that he touched the salt. And it wasn’t Phil’s fault that he didn’t touch it. But Alfie told me to ‘snap out of it’ or something, and he forced me to hold the salt and made me pour it on my food. I can’t remember exactly what I did, but I think I chucked my plate on the floor and probably screamed a bit. I probably lost control of my bottom, too. Sometimes Pedro says I give him the shits, and he says he’s sure it happens the other way around also. Which it actually never does. But I certainly gave Alfie the shits that day. All I remember is the BIST people coming in and treating me like a child. I don’t know what BIST means, but these people come in when you get really cross and the people you live with can’t calm you down. I’m not always cross when they come in, because usually they come in for Rav when he starts doing his dirty thing. They talk to you like you’re an idiot. When they came in that day for me they kept saying things like ‘We know you don’t want to hurt Alfie, do you Redmond. We know you like Alfie. Alfie is nice.’

Of course I didn’t mean to hurt Alfie. He is very nice. Not as nice as Pedro, but he is a good man. ‘A gentleman and a scholar,’ someone once said of him, though he’s sometimes not that gentle, and sometimes not that smart. But anyone who looks after the four of us must be a good person. We can be bloody hard work. Sometimes Alfie says it’s like a lunatic asylum here, which is not really so much of a joke because we all used to live in a lunatic asylum in Kew. But now that’s closed and we are living here ‘in the community’, as the nice woman from the Department of Human Services said when she paid us a visit. I remember her because she gave me a big smile even though I knew she was a bit cross about breaking one of her high heel shoes on our front doorstep. She said, through her smile, ‘You must be very happy, Redmond, now that you are living in the community.’ I nodded, even though I had no idea what she meant. Now I know she meant ‘You must be very happy, Redmond, now that you are not living in a lunatic asylum.’ I don’t know why she didn’t just say that. But she was right. We are much better off here, that’s for sure. And we all like Pedro and Alfie. None of us tells them as much as we should. Well, I’m the only one who really can tell them, because I’m the only one who can get close to talking. None of the others can talk at all. Johnny and Rav have never said a word. And Phil can say ‘chocolate’ and ‘milk bar’, but that’s all. That’s all Phil ever wants: to go to the milk bar and get chocolate. He tends to say those two things about a hundred times a day. ‘Milk bar, chocolate’. ‘Milk bar, chocolate’. So I should take it upon myself to say thanks more often to Pedro and Alfie, not just for helping me, but for helping the others. And I will. Note to me: thank P and A.

OK, how then did I end up in jail? By putting two and two together, basically. Unfortunately for me, I came up with the answer before the police did. I was out of order. How’s that for luck.