RuKsaK

The flames flapped in tough bunches from the window knocking off paint and killing the wood for good. The house got sucked into the air and noses of anyone around. Loud cracks ripped out every few seconds as the fire bit into larger pieces of the house. The flashing blaze tore up the bricks and smacked black smoke onto them. The water being fed into it seemed too late, pathetic somehow, as the house was about to die. Fire murders anything it can – not just the living. A strange, selfish killer who has no regard for its architect.

Stink shook the fuzz from his head and gradually the manmade stenches of the burning came to him. He later told me how it reminded him of a natural history documentary – how the house was like a huge wildebeest letting itself be brought down and eaten by hyenas grabbing at him in savage flashes. The smoke and heat of it grew into his nostrils and woke him. He breathed it in strongly and felt recharged, exhilarated at the house coming loose. It woke him more than anything had in a long time. Ages had passed since Stink had looked at concrete, bricks, wallpaper - all the things that weren’t trees or grass and stuff of that sort. He got great pleasure in watching the ruination of the helpless house. He sat back and enjoyed the view.
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Of course ‘view’ is a dainty, feeble word for people who’ve always had their eyes open at the same kilter, but for Stink it was something revolutionary. He felt like he was winning a battle somewhere. The nastiness of the house was giving in and losing. Stink thought to himself:
‘The house looks stupid. It looks useless and stupid.’

It took him about five minutes to realise the house he was gazing at was not his own, but the one next door. In the less-than-second that he realised this, with its failing gutters, sills, arches and frames, he also remembered something – something which buried his glee, something which made him almost forget this moment of joy had ever even happened – he had started the fire.
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Getting up from the sofa in his guesthouse Stink had picked up a box of matches to rap out some absent-minded percussion on the way up to his third floor bedroom. By the moment he got to the bottom of the stairs he’d decided, in his drunkenness, to burgle the house next door. He wanted to provide some alcohol or dope for the gang staying in the house with him and didn’t have enough money. He had gone into the house, so drunk and disorganised that he figured the best way to see his way around was by lighting the matches. Staggering around the lounge he lit them to look into alcoves, around the settee, under the TV. When each match rasped down to his fingers he’d let it drop and light another. He left empty-handed and seven matches lighter after five minutes. He was asleep in his bed within a few more.
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The fire crew had evacuated this house first, and Stink was woken up an hour after falling asleep. Nobody was hurt, but the house was destroyed.
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A week later Stink told me all about it, getting me to promise on my mother’s life I’d say nothing to anyone. For someone who hated his mother I wondered, even then, whether he was worried about my capacity to keep it quiet or he just needed someone to talk to.
‘Ruk – I’m a fucking idiot – I’ve fucked it.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘I started that fire next door to me.’
‘What!’

While he told me about it I sat listening not only in awe, but also following the strands which had led to this. How so many people had been a factor, but how I’d been the first person to get him into crime and now he was risking people’s lives for nothing. It scared me – for what Stink could do and I what I could so easily start.
‘You can’t tell a fucking soul Ruk.’
‘Jesus! No, I’m not saying a word to anyone.’
‘I can’t go down again Ruk. I can’t explain it, but I hate been in a room with others, or sometimes just myself. I can’t stand what people leave in rooms and how it stuffs me. Rooms always feel small to me, but in borstal, in a room with sixteen beds, it felt the smallest. I don’t know how to fucking say this – I guess it just felt so small that it was smaller than me. Imagine being in a room that’s smaller than you – that’s how borstal felt – like it was inside me, not me inside it. It was fucking awful and I can’t go back to that. Does all this make sense?’
‘Yeah – it makes sense.’

Of course it didn’t – I had no idea what he meant, but he was giving me a headache and I wanted him to stop talking to me about it. Unfortunately, he wasn’t only talking to me about it.
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Go to Stink and the suicides - part 12 here.

Monday, May 23, 2005

Stink and the suicides - part 11