CHAPTER 2

Nalda said I first came to her in a complicated array of rags, silent and afraid, when I was just nearly two years old. I was wearing a shirt and trousers which had been all tacked up the back with pins, she said, to pull them in tight against my body. And, also, they were all rolled up and folded at their tops and bottoms, so that the bits of me which were supposed to stick out still stuck out.

Sometimes when Nalda told me the story about myself she said I came to her in spring, when the flowers were all just coming back to life again. And other times she said I came to her in winter, along a street all covered with a soft blanket of snow. But, no matter what, I was always brought by one of my father’s closest companions, in the passenger seat of a very expensive car. And when Nalda told me about that part she would always make me do a giggle by saying,

“And I looked down at this tattered bundle of rags he had handed to me, and I thought to myself… Good God, I’ve been cursed! What did I do to deserve this? ”

And she always laughed then too, and pulled me in towards her- in towards all of her dark scarves and skirts, and her warm hair and her chains. And she would rattle me about like that to keep me laughing, until I asked her to tell me about myself more again.

There were so many stories Nalda knew. And I would ask for the same ones about myself and about things in the world over and again. And whenever I asked her for a new one she would always have a new one too, and after hearing it two times, about, I would have a name for that one also, and I would begin to ask for it over and again too.

But my favourite story was always the one about how I first came to Nalda in a complicated array of rags, silent and afraid, when I was just nearly two years old. That was the one I asked for the most often of all. And after Nalda had rattled me, and I had laughed until I was tired, sometimes she would open the tin she kept in the drawer- if she was in a very special mood. And she would take out what she said were the pins that had been used to tack up my trousers and my shirt that time. And she would let me look at them some.

Even now I still have those pins with me. I keep them in a tin of my own now. And when I grabbed a few things to take away with me this evening the tin was amongst them. It was one of the first things I threw down into my bag. I wouldn’t have left that behind.

*

I realised, when I had no more breath left for running this evening, that I didn’t even have any idea about where I was running to. And so that was why I stopped. What I saw when I did stop, although, was that I was just close by to the bus station. So that was where I went to then.

At first I was going to look at the map outside of the ticket office, to choose a place from there which wasn’t too near and wasn’t too far away. Somewhere that wouldn’t be too easy a place to guess about, or that wouldn’t be an obvious place for me to be heading to, just in case the boy would still try to follow me.

But then I had a better idea that I would just go and look at which coaches had the least people inside, and which ones didn’t have anyone on who could possibly be the boy with the pictures on his arms, in disguise. And that way, too, it meant that if he should catch up to me soon he couldn’t ask at the ticket office about where I’d bought my ticket for, and then he would be stuck. If I had just bought my ticket on board.

So I found a coach with hardly any people inside of it at all, which was also going quite a distance away. And I got up on board and settled down towards the back, close by the door made for emergencies.

Just in case.

It was only a few minutes till the bus left, after I’d got on. But all the time I lay away down low on my seat anyway, hiding where I couldn’t be seen from the outside. And all the way out through the city I did the same, just peeking up over the bottom of the window’s edge every now and again, to see what I could see. I stayed like that, too, while all of the buildings were getting less, all the way out until it was only fields that were left on both sides of the road, and the city was far and away behind us. And only then, very slowly, did I begin to raise myself up in the seat at last, feeling a little bit safer. And feeling grateful, too, through my shaking, that I had gained some more time to await the thing which I await.

*

It wasn’t until the bus had been going on for over an hour, although, that I first began to wonder if I hadn’t maybe just panicked some back in the park before. And then over-reacted.

Before that there hadn’t been any doubts in my thoughts at all. I was absolutely sure about what I thought had almost happened. But while I’d been sitting watching the sky getting darker above the fields, with my cloth bag pressed away in tight against my chest, I’d slowly began to wonder just how the boy with the pictures on his arms could possibly have known about me. I hadn’t never hardly even spoken to him during all the times he’d tried to speak to me, so I was certain that I’d never let anything slip to him that I shouldn’t have. And then, too, as the bus kept moving, I also began to remember about a few kindnesses he had shown to me in the past. And there was one in particular which I kept on by thinking of which really made me think he wasn’t that type of a one at all, and which made me think that maybe the knife really had been something he’d just found and wanted to show me. To try and even make a friend of me. And so that was when I first began to think that perhaps I had just panicked.

Again.

It wasn’t long after I’d first arrived in that city, and before I’d been working in those gardens for very long at all, that the boy with the pictures on his arms did the kindness for me that I kept thinking of while the bus rolled.

To begin with I’d worked mostly in the rose gardens there, over where the gardens joined onto the main part of the park, where lots of young people always came to kick footballs around, or to throw those things like disks to each other.

So the thing that happened was, there was one group of older children who never did used to kick any football around, or throw any disk or anything much at all. Always they just used to drift about mostly, and maybe smoke some cigarettes, and maybe push each other around sometimes. And spit and stuff. So, one day they were all quite close to where I was working, and a few were looking at me, and then one of them shouted out a name at me. I don’t remember what name now, but I became quite tight and quite shy. And I got quite awkward about what I was doing and I even blushed some, though I don’t know if they could see that. But I didn’t shout anything back to them although. And I think that was what turned out to be the wrong thing.

They all came kind of closer then, and they started to all shout the name at me, and then all different things. And I just concentrated hard upon a rose, and pretended to work very absorbed until they went away.

But after that although, they kept on by coming back a few days more, and I would get nervous and things as soon as I saw them. And they always stopped to shout for a while. Sometimes they even came closer, and maybe flicked my sleeve or something, or flicked my hair. But always I pretended just to be absorbed by my work, while all of them giggled and shouted, or just made a strange noise. And then one of them curled a fist around the head of a rose once, and said,

“What would happen if I pulled this, mister? What would? Would it bleed?”

But still I kept on by staring at what I was doing, and then another one tugged at my sleeve and said,

“What would happen if he did that, mister? Would it bleed?”

Then another one, a girl, she said,

“Don’t you think I look like a rose, mister?”, to a lot of shouting and laughing. “I do though.” she insisted. “Don’t I, mister?”

And she touched my cheek with her fingers, and all of them laughed.

“Would you fuck her, mister?” a boy asked then. “Would you want to?”

And then another girl, “He would too! Look at him blush…”

I still kept on just by seeming like I was absorbed in my work although. Not looking. Mostly I didn’t even know what they were saying about, and younger people always make me even more confused than older ones, some of them. So I had no idea at all about what to do.

But that was when the boy with the pictures on his arms came along. Just then. And he grabbed one of them by the arm and he shouted some. And I looked up just quickly and I saw that they all looked pretty scared. Very scared really. And the boy said about what he would do to them if they came around that part again, and he said to them how I would let him know if they worried me ever any time again, and about how he would get them all one by one if I said that.

One at a time.

I tried to do him a smile just then, but I think it failed quite a lot, and I heard one of the children start to laugh. But the boy with the pictures shouted pretty loudly at him, and he stopped right then, and no-one else laughed. Then, in time, he let go of the one he had grabbed, and they all ran away together then. And I never did see them again.

So it was thinking all over that which really got me to thinking that I’d maybe just panicked today, along with, of course, wondering about how he could possibly have known about me, in the first place.

What Nalda used to say, you see- about people, I mean- was that all but the very few would rip and tear at even the most precious of things to get to that part which would bring them profit and gain. And not just nasty people, she said. But just about all of everyone, almost every person you could ever meet, all except for the very most gentle and kind, and also the most very pure. It wasn’t really that they were bad, she said most times, but only really that they were lazy and tired. Or else ignorant of any other way. But whichever, that’s what makes up the main reason of why I must keep a distance really, and be careful never to get so close as to let anything slip which could put me into danger from their ways.

But the thing is although, the main thing, I got to wondering for a while on the bus if the boy with the pictures on his arms maybe might even have been just one of the very few that she sometimes said of. Just because of the kindnesses he had shown to me sometimes. And that made me a bit upset in case he had just been trying to make a friend from me, because one of the things I would very much like to have is a friend. And mostly I sometimes think that a girl for a friend would be best. But still…

And that made me wish a bit that I could go back, even although I couldn’t.

Just in case.

*

When the bus finally got to where it was going tonight, I waited until all the other people inside had got off and wandered away, before I got down too. Then, with my bag still pressed in tight against my chest, I looked around at where I had got to, and then I looked around for a place to stay for tonight.

I continued being a bit cautious outside to begin with, looking a few times behind me while I walked, despite all of what I’d thought on the bus. Just to make sure that the boy hadn’t followed me there. But I soon got to be convinced it was alright, and I soon found a hotel place that looked okay, so I came inside.

Always, in the pocket of whatever shirt I’m wearing, I keep a supply of emergency money ready. Just enough to take me away from wherever I am, on a bus or a train, and to pay for a room for the night wherever I end up, in case something should happen which makes me have to leave. Like it always does.

The room I’m in now looks almost exactly like all the other rooms I’ve stayed in at times like this. And once I’d been shown in, and I’d locked the door up behind me, I did what I always do first, after up and running. I unfastened my cloth bag and sat down on the bed with it, to see what things I’d brought with me, and what things I’d left behind.

I had the tins with my pins inside, of course. And most of my clothes too, which aren’t really many anyway. Then, besides that, I had my can and my utensils, the book with some pages pasted inside that I’ve saved from newspapers, a couple of special things to eat, and that was all. I’d left a lot behind again, like I always do. I’d left a lot of trinklets and ornaments I’d collected, and some photograph pictures I liked to have on my wall. But what was most important of all was I’d left my jewler’s eyeglass behind, and that will make things a lot more difficult for me.

I found that, one day, just when I was digging up a flower-bed in a park, and I didn’t even know what it was at first. But once I’d worked it out, and cleaned it up, I was very pleased at my find. And I started using it the very next morning.

I’ve been using it every day too, from then. And I even know exactly where I’ve left it. I can picture it sitting exactly on my bed, back in my last room.

And I could even kick myself.

Usually I always left that lying with my utensils together, but this morning I just brought that through by accident, and laid it down there.

I suppose that’s what happens when you leave in a hurry, although. You sometimes always leave something behind that you’d rather not have forgotten. The trinklets and the photograph pictures don’t bother me really so much, but…

Curses.

I’ll have to buy an old kind of stupid magnifying glass tomorrow again now.

Anyway, although. It feels like as if it’s been a long day today. My terror in the park even seems like it could have been a week. And leaving my other room this morning, to walk through the people to the gardens, that seems like it could have been a year.

So what I’m going to do now, I’m going to wash. And then I’ll get my can set-up, just so’s as it’s ready. And after I eat some stuff, I’m going to lie down in my bed. And hopefully I’m going to go to sleep.