Little Bastards in Springtime (33 page)

“Whatever,” I say. I’m shocked to feel my face contort strangely and I have to hide it in my sleeve like a child.

Dr. Ghorbani says, “It’s okay, Jevrem, I know you’ve been through a lot. I know you’ve seen horror first-hand.”

Then she’s onto her broken record again. “The past has happened, we will try to help you deal with that. But it’s important you ask yourself how you want to handle the present and future. What do you want to get out of your time here? It’s up to you to decide.”

I raise my face and look her directly in the eyes. “A lot of dick up my ass,” I say.

She says, “Really, be serious for a moment, Jevrem.”

And I say, “I don’t mind dick up my ass, it’s just a small bit of flesh and blood.”

“I’ve read your file, I see that you got creative with your energy. We’ll talk more about violence, Jevrem, but you know that your intention doesn’t matter, even the best of intentions, if you’re breaking the law and behaving violently.”

And I say, “Yes, it does, anyone knows that from history. If you’re the U.S. of A. and it’s an inconvenient law and your intention is making the world safe for democracy and Coca-Cola.”

Dr. Ghorbani sighs. “Okay, Jevrem. I read you loud and clear. I know you’re not here because you don’t care about anything.
I know you’re here because you care so very much, and so much is so very flawed.”

I make a sad face, roll my eyes. Poor, hurt little boy.

“Rebels and delinquents and even nihilists,” she continues, “are fierce moralists, contrary to popular understanding. They see what’s wrong with the world and react with their own forms of outrage.”

“Hardened criminals too? Sadists and warlords?” I say. But I check her out again, carefully, when she’s looking down at my life on paper. She too knows that all the crazy boys are here because they spot bullshit a mile away, just like I do. And they hate it, it makes them sick.

“‘When the leaders speak of peace …’“ She looks up, pauses. “That’s part of a poem. Do you know what the next line might be?”

Of course I fucking know what the next line is, it’s totally obvious. “Everyone prepare to die, because an unholy motherfucking war is about to be unleashed on your heads,” I say. It slips out before I have time to think if I want to take part in her little lesson.

“Yes. Well, it’s actually, ‘… the common folk know. That war is coming.’”

“So?” I say.

“So,” she continues. “This poem, by Brecht, a great German playwright and poet, is about hypocrisy. Hypocrisy, Jevrem. I know that it’s this, of all things, that makes you angry, that makes you feel entitled to go rogue.”

Here we go with the psychobabble. Were you disappointed by the world when random adults tried to kill you over and over again for years when you were a kid?

“Hypocrisy enrages smart people, Jevrem, as it should,
since it’s about lying, about hiding one’s true nature. Doing one thing, saying another. Committing injustice, then hiding this commission. Expecting something of others, but not of oneself. And it’s fairness that we yearn for the most, it makes life livable wherever we are. People your age still know this, you still expect it, you still get angry at its absence. Brecht created a book called
War Primer
that I’m sure would appeal to you. Beside a photo of children maimed by war, he wrote a short verse, only four lines. Something like … all you warriors out there fighting this or that battle under this or that difficult circumstance, see who you’ve conquered, hail your great victories.”

She looks at me with her eyebrows raised, waiting for me to hit the ball back. But I say nothing more, because why be drawn into a serious conversation about teenagers with stars in their eyes and sleazy bullshitting politicians and hero soldiers who slaughter children by the tens of thousands because they can’t be bothered to find a better solution. As nice as it is to shoot the breeze, this is not a university classroom or a shrink’s office, this is my life in jail. I can’t stay in here, not for another week, I won’t survive it, I will be possessed by the monster, I will become the monster. No matter how many philosophical ideas she throws my way, no matter how many German poets she recites to me, this place is a place of violence that creates more violence. Hypocrite yourself, Dr. Ghorbani, why can’t you at least be honest about that?

Sometimes you just have to remove yourself from the muck, that’s what I’ve learned. And anyway, every cell in my body is already outside, roaming the streets and up in the treetops shouting to the racing clouds high above.

‡ ‡ ‡

I
SIT IN LISTLESS CLASSROOMS, I STARE OUT OF
smeared windows. The days are a blur. The colours on the walls are deadly pinks, rotted greens, filthy whites designed for suicide. And the shabby carpets, meant to make things more homey, are matted and foul, like the coat of a terminal dog.

When night comes and lights are switched off with an abrupt flick, the crazy boys slip quickly away into sleep where they float free and high in the moonlit sky, but I wait in murky corners of the bathroom for hours until I am so cold I shake like an epileptic. Eventually one of my attacker boys shows up stumbling with sleep and I take him down with a quick blow to his temple with the side of my hand. As he lies dazed on the gritty concrete floor I strip his pyjamas off him and grab his little sluggish penis and I hold it up, and I say to the boy, look at this thing, this bit of flesh and blood, well, mostly flesh now, and tell me something. And he cranes his neck, tries to focus his eyes, bares his teeth with fear. And I say, tell me why this little thing is used as a weapon of war? And he looks up at me, I see his shiny eye-whites, greasy eggs over easy, and he shivers long and hard but doesn’t say a word.

I smack him across the face and see that he has blood on his lips, that he’s licking it off with a glossy, plump young tongue. I say to him, what’s your gang? Tell me about your gang. And he just swallows and blinks his eyes, and I say, tell me or I’ll have to smack you some more, but harder, for real. And he groans and gags, and I say, tell me. And so he says, we’re the Portuguese. And I say, what? And he says, we’re the Portuguese. And I say, you’re not fucking Portuguese, even I can hear that with my
second-hand English. And he says, we’re the Portuguese, yes. What’s your name? I ask him. And he says, we’re one of the posses, like the Indians, the Jamaicans, AK Kannan, you know, the Sri Lankans, Tamils, Vietnamese.
What. Is. Your. Fucking. Name?
I say directly into his ear. We’re the Dovercourt Boys, I mean, a few of us are in here, that’s all. We’re the Portuguese. And I think, that’s pathetic, all these gangs based on where their parents and grandparents came from so many years ago trying to elevate themselves out of the gutter, how sad that’s all they can come up with for a reason to do shit and hang together. And then I have a blinding revelation: ours was a gang from the old world too. From the inside it was so mixed, all the nationalities together, but from the outside it just looked like plain old Yugo.

So I tell him about my gang, what crazy motherfuckers we are, and I can see his mind working hard, because even he’s heard about the Croats, Serbs, Muslims, all the young militiamen who swaggered around so tough, with beards, without beards, slaughtering and raping without hesitation for their leaders, who would stop at nothing for the map-makers. He shuts his eyes and winces. And I say, do you want me to hurt you some more or do you agree to never touch me again? Never touch me and show some respect? He nods vigorously, his eyes leaking fluid. Yes, yes, he squeaks. Because, I say, tonight I am being very lenient, but next time I will make my mark.

I
N THE
morning, in her small, paper-filled office smelling of the rubber that holds things together, Dr. Ghorbani marches me through my life. Yes, I lived through four years of war, yes, my father and brother were killed, and my sister expired like a little caterpillar on an icy winter day, yes, I immigrated to
Canada, yes, I did B and Es, yes, I put the heat to a few people, only to do what was necessary, only for the sake of justice in this unjust world, yes, I did some guerrilla social work, got caught, and yes, now, after the legal aid lawyer tried this and that, after a year of waiting in remand, of Mama visiting twice a week, sometimes pale and despairing, sometimes perky and reassuring, of Aisha writing a dissertation on refugee populations, post-traumatic stress, crime, rehabilitation, that somehow made it into my file, here I am. I am in this place.

Dr. Ghorbani leans forward. She says, “Tell me about your father.”

I just stare at her, because there’s no way in hell I’m going to talk about Papa to this stranger. She’ll just ask me what he was like, or some such bullshit. As if a list of things describing him could ever be more than a lie. I could tell her that he’s pretty close by all the time, that he likes to stand in doorways and walk through doors, get into elevators, that sometimes he gives me advice, but she’d think I was talking about some weird thing happening in my mind because I miss him so much.

“Okay,” she says. “Tell me about your brother. Older brothers are so important to boys.”

Older brothers, older brothers. Important to boys. I’m feeling hot and antsy in this room. I want a cigarette. I want a breath of fresh air. I want to be outside.

“You can speak to me, Jevrem. That’s what I’m here for.”

Older brothers. I didn’t think of Dušan that way. He was just Dušan. He was Dušan down to every last cell of his body. I knew the feel and smell and touch of every cell of his body like I know my own. If he’d made it out alive, he’d be the one in jail, not me. And he’d be scoffing and making a joke, he’d be laughing his head off at Dr. Ghorbani’s questions. And I’d
laugh with him, I’d honour his jokes, I’d be happy that he was on top of his world. It’s exactly what this moment needs, I think. Dušan and his jokes and fooling around. I suddenly miss him so hard it’s like I’m being electrocuted. I look up and scowl at Dr. Ghorbani. The scowl is how I really feel.

“Leave me alone,” I snarl.

“Okay,” she says slowly. “Okay, I understand. If you don’t want a conversation, I encourage you to use this time to your own benefit, whatever that means to you. That’s what we want here. It’s up to you.”

She’s repetitive, this one, with her turtleneck sweaters and clicking shoes. I notice a plain gold ring on her finger and wonder about her marriage, her husband probably a professor who wears designer glasses and linen suits. She has a nice watch too, and small gold hoop earrings that are very thin, very fine. But I make sure to keep my mouth shut. My mind is on the outside anyway, it’s a trick I’ve learned from a year of lock-up. For the whole year, I travelled our vast country on air currents like a bird, exploring thousands of miles of unpopulated terrain, me and the atlas they let me have, cursing how I’d ignored its endless possibilities before, tethered to one small place, eyes down, head up my ass, when I should have been on the move. For a whole year, I went on road trips with Sava, waking at dawn with her, watching the sun rise over mountains, lakes, winter fields, endless bush. Standing on glaciers, the cold of twenty thousand years under our feet. Right now, as the doctor goes on some more about wonderful imprisoned opportunities for education and training, I’m racing over the bush of northern Quebec toward craggy, glowering Newfoundland, and, rising with the ocean air, I see the Atlantic Ocean, steel grey, solid as matter, crashing into rocks that crust the shore.

‡

A
FTERNOON
comes and twenty-five boys and I are in the locker rooms, bodies bumping into bodies, roughhousing, or whatever they call it. When they are done pushing, shoving, getting naked, sauntering, swearing, insulting each other, they throw on track pants and shirts and burst outside like a single body, football in hand. But I invite myself into the stall where one of my skinny-assed ball-breaking boys is crouching down by the bowl puffing fast on a joint. He says, get the fuck out of here, punk, and I kick him in the face with the second-hand running shoes the detention centre has found for me. His head cracks against tile and he slides between wall and toilet and lies there for a bit, then moves like someone waking from sleep. He tries to get up and I kick him again. Then I repeat my little performance with the friendly request to be left alone, I tell him about my vicious, psycho, old-world gang outside. Understand? I ask. Next time I will wreck you. And not a whining word to the others, except that I am supremely untouchable. You can tell them that. He nods and swallows and bolts out of the stall like a horse at the races, and I slump against the toilet, breathe hard, feel dizzy, feel nauseated, and more tired than a third-world mule. Intimidating crazy boys really takes it out of you.

But on the field it is do or die. The rule is no tackling, but no one obeys and the guards don’t care. They stand on the sideline and crack smiles when boys go down, bones crunching and ligaments stretching like bubble gum. Farther down the field stands Papa, hands in his pockets, watching the game with a small smile on his face, which I know means he thinks it’s stupid but he’s really enjoying it anyway. The muscle boys,
the hard-as-rock boys, they are fit and strong and have been taught how to play. I am soft and skinny, and don’t understand this game that stops and starts like a stutter, but I remember my childhood days when winning the game was staying alive. No one can take me down, zigzagging like I do, running for my life, legs remembering their soccer-playing days, with the pointy ball clutched to my chest like it’s a bag of rice on my sprint for home. Zigzagging is not a technique taught to these peacetime boys. They think it’s ridiculous and frustrating, but it’s my sniper-survival specialty and it’s foolproof. And then, at the end, a sudden stop, a quick turn and a fist in the neck of my pursuer, with Papa shouting,
Hurrah.
I score several key touchdowns. I live to see another day.

“S
O, YOU’RE
a fighter, Jevrem,” Dr. Ghorbani asks me the next morning.

I say nothing to her. I look out of the window, which is too high for a view.