Ostrich: A Novel Page 2

  “Yes?”

  He rehearses one last time in his head and then asks what he’s meant to ask. “How are your mum’s piano lessons going?”

  For a second I feel sorry for him. He’s so small. (It’s hard to believe I was once that young, even if it was three whole years ago.) He has no idea that he’s about to learn a lesson he’ll never forget, a lesson that will strip him of a faith in humanity he’s so far never had to question. However, it’s a lesson we’ve all learned in our time. I know my lines. I tear up a little, which I can do on demand. “My mum hasn’t got any arms.”

  A breath dies in his throat. It’s my second cue.

  “Why would you ask me something like that?”

  Now his face has no trouble with ambiguity. Terror sweeps across it, freezing his features in place and pricking his tear ducts. At the front of the bus, David Driscoll pops up like a Whac-A-Mole and blasts him with a “Waaaaah!” I knew he’d have had something to do with this.

  Your Mum’s Piano Lessons is a simple game that requires three players, Older Boy 1 (the instigator), Older Boy 2 (the accomplice), and New Boy (the mark). It works like this. Older Boy 1 sidles up to New Boy on a bus trip or on the playground and asks him if he wants to be part of a really brilliant joke. New Boy, eager to please and slightly star-struck by Older Boy 1, who he instantly recognizes and reveres on account of his seniority, discerning a valuable opportunity to associate with a social superior (and perhaps recalling from a nature documentary he’s seen the levels of protection afforded to those tiny birds that clean crocodiles’ teeth), gratefully accepts. Older Boy 1 then points out Older Boy 2 (who may or may not have been previously briefed, depending on his familiarity with the game) and tells New Boy that if he goes over and asks him how his mum’s piano lessons are going, Older Boy 2 will break into hysterical laughter and everyone will live happily ever after. Then what just happened happens (the crocodile snaps his jaws) and New Boy scurries back to his seat or his corner of the playground, and when anyone asks why he’s crying blubbers something about the high pollen count.

  Except this one doesn’t. He couldn’t move if he tried. He’s staring at my head, transfixed.

  “What happened to your hair?”

  I’m the only one in school who’s allowed to wear nonreligious headgear (there are four turbans in our year, and Simon Nagel wears a skullcap in the colors of Watford Football Club) because some of the younger kids don’t understand why I’m bald and sometimes it’s easier to hide things than explain them. I get a lot of looks, but it’s okay. Once in Year 6 I forgot to wear my own clothes on Own Clothes Day and for the whole day I was the only kid at school in uniform, so I already know what it’s like to feel ostrichized, which is a better word for excluded (because ostriches can’t fly, so they often feel left out). I took my sweater off and undid my top button, but that still didn’t stop people from staring at me. It’s weird how you can wake up one day exactly the same person as you were the day before except the world has changed around you and now you’re the odd one out.

  Being ill is a bit like forgetting Own Clothes Day.

  (Analogies are also important in Composition because they help people relate things they don’t understand to their own experiences (and to tell a good story, you need to write about things that not many people have experienced). Metaphors are just one type of analogy, but there are loads more you can use. Sometimes people don’t even realize they’re using a metaphor because they’ve heard it so often that they’ve forgotten that they’re trying to relate to something they don’t understand. These are called dead metaphors, and there are some examples below:

  1) Running water

  2) Head Master

  3) Flower bed

  Dead metaphors prove that we can understand the world around us only by pretending that it’s human and it behaves like us (which it isn’t and it doesn’t). That’s why we pretend that chairs have arms and woods have necks and we’re so used to doing it that we’ve forgotten that that’s even a slightly weird thing to say (which is why you don’t get extra marks for using dead metaphors in Composition).

  When my doctor, Mr. Fitzpatrick, explained about my treatment he used an analogy. He told me to imagine that a suicide bomber had taken a group of innocent people hostage in Gamestation and that if we didn’t stop him he was going to blow up the whole of the Harlequin Centre, which is the biggest shopping center in all of Hertfordshire. And then he told me that if we sent in a Specially Trained Armed Response Unit they would be able to “neutralize” the terrorist threat, however, they couldn’t necessarily guarantee the safety of the hostages (who might accidentally get shot), but if we did nothing the terrorist would kill them all anyway, as well as everyone else in a 10-kilometer radius.

  “And that’s why we’re sending in the SWAT team,” he said. “That’s why we’re telling them Shoot to Kill.”

  And when I asked him why we didn’t try negotiating with the suicide bomber first, he shook his head slowly like a cricket umpire and said, “It is our country’s policy never to negotiate with terrorists.”

  (So I asked him what were the bomber’s demands and he told me he didn’t have any, which I told him was bullspit because the whole point of taking people hostage is getting your demands met, and if you didn’t have any demands there would be no reason to take hostages in the first place. So then he told me that the terrorists hated our freedom and that actually the suicide bomber did have some demands after all, and did I want to hear what they were, because all they were was the systematic destruction of Western culture and the entire American way of life (because Mr. Fitzpatrick is American).

  “And besides, even if we could negotiate with him—which we will not do—it wouldn’t do us any good anyway, because let me tell you something about the terrorist mentality, let me school you here a second, son. The terrorist believes he has God on his side. The terrorist actually believes that when he gets up to heaven-knows-where there’s seventy-two virgins waiting for him, and every last one of them, they’re big-time murder fans—and do you know whose side they’re on, cos it sure as bacon ain’t Team Infidel.”

  (And then I asked what a virgin was, because this was two years ago and I was young and naïve (and Mr. Fitzpatrick told me that a virgin was a really good friend with a PlayStation 2). (Being a virgin is like growing up Caucasian in Hertfordshire. You are one long before you know there’s a word for it.))

  So then I asked Mr. Fitzpatrick why they had to shoot to kill and why they couldn’t use rubber bullets and shoot to disarm, which would ensure the safety of the hostages, and he told me that the terrorist has a thick hide like a rhinoceros and that the rubber bullets would just bounce off him. (Which I took to be an insult to my intelligence, so I asked him where exactly he thought the terrorist was from, because if he was threatening everyone in a 10-kilometer radius that would suggest he had nuclear capabilities, which was extremely unlikely, unless maybe he came from North Korea, in which case he’d most likely be a Buddhist and not believe in heaven. And Mr. Fitzpatrick just said, “Exactly.”)

  But even then I didn’t understand why we couldn’t just try talking to him, because, after all, even if the suicide bomber did believe some weird stuff and even if he did have Weapons of Mass Destruction (which I sincerely doubted), at the end of the day he was still a person. And that’s when the analogy stopped working, because my tumor is not a person.)

  The Year 5 is still there. I tell him to get to fuck, which is not in the script.

  Normally I try not to swear. I learned to swear when I was seven in Wales when we went to stay with Uncle Tony and he dropped a frozen leg of lamb on his foot. A few weeks later I was watching football with Dad and his team conceded, so to empathize I said “Shit!” Dad washed my mouth out with soap (because it was “dirty” (which suggests he doesn’t understand metaphors)). But that wasn’t half as bad as the time Mum heard me call Pete Sloss a cocksucker on the way to the cinema. She didn’t get angry with me, but that nigh
t when she was tucking me in she asked if I knew what one was. And when I said no, she said she didn’t have a problem with me using rude words if I felt they were necessary to express myself, but she’d prefer I didn’t use words I didn’t understand. So she explained it to me. She told me about oral sex and foreplay and lubrication and even flavored condoms (I had previously thought vaginas had taste buds), and finally when she was finished she made me repeat it back to her. After that she kissed me good night, which made me feel queasy.

  I can swear in sixty-seven different languages. But I can apologize in only three, which means I could get beaten up in sixty-four countries.

  One of the languages I can do both in is French, which is my first lesson on a Monday. In French class we’re not allowed to speak English. Instead, we have to do everything en Français. There are a lot of things I do en Français that I’d never do in English. For one thing, I help out around the house a lot more. Every weekend I spend a minimum of one hour passing the Hoover in my bedroom, and each night I set and clear the table before and after dinner (respectively (obviously)). I have a younger sister who calls herself Marie-Clare (who has nine years (whenever anyone tells you their age in French it sounds like they have a terminal disease) and enjoys horse-riding), and what is more, an older brother (Serge) who likes to play football. Moreover, I have a diet that consists exclusively of the potato in its various incarnations (plates of chips, bags of crisps, and baked), a father who is a doctor (because I don’t know the word for a driving instructor), and a mother who works at home (because I don’t know the word for sexism (or legal secretary)). Every summer the five of us go on holiday without fail, and always to the same place, La Rochelle, where we practice windsurfing and pass a fantastic week with one another and our dog, who calls himself Sausage. I even have a different name in French. (Madame Berger made us each choose one at the start of the year and explained that in her class that is what we would be known as. At first it felt a bit like we were losing our identities, like we were going into prison and being given a number, but actually now I quite like my French name.) It’s Marcel.

  “Marcel?”

  “Oui, madame?”

  “Qu’est-ce que tu as fait le weekend dernier?”

  At first the question confuses me because I don’t know if last weekend means the weekend that’s just passed or the weekend before that. Both are in the past. I can tell that because I’m in French class.

  “Le weekend?”

  “Oui. Le weekend dernier. En passé composé.”

  In truth, it doesn’t matter which weekend. Madame Berger was only trying to be helpful. But in French I do the same thing every weekend: “Samedi j’ai joué au foot avec mon frère et dimanche j’ai lu un roman.” (I am a much more active person in French, and I read novels only, because I don’t know if the Internet is masculine or feminine.)

  “Ah, oui. C’est vrai?”

  This is une question rhétorique. However, I decide to answer anyway, because Marcel is a keen conversationalist. “Oui. C’est vrai.”

  “Et pour aider tes parents, tu as fait quelque chose?”

  “J’ai passé l’aspirateur dans ma chambre pour deux heures.”

  “Comme un bon fils, n’est-ce pas?”

  (Marcel is a good son. I take some vicarious pride from this, which is when you experience something as a result of something someone else has done.) Madame Berger is beaming.

  “Et est-ce que tu as fait quelque chose hors de l’ordinaire peut-être?”

  I pretend to scan my brain for an irregular past participle, but really I knew the question was coming. “Oui, j’ai ri à un film.”

  (In many ways, my life is so much simpler in French. I don’t get headaches or déjà vu in French, because I don’t know the words for them. Moreover, I don’t worry about my parents’ marriage or my own mortality or why I haven’t had a wet dream, because these are emotions I am not able to express. Sometimes I’m jealous of Marcel. I think that if I moved to France I’d be a completely different person. (For one thing, I’d agree with people a lot more, and for another, I’d spend much more time in libraries and swimming pools.) Do you know what the French call a Lost Property Office? They call it a Found Property Office. (But then again, they call a Potato an Apple of the Ground.))

  “Et qu’est-ce que tu feras le weekend prochain? Dans l’avenir.”

  I don’t know the French for brain surgery. So I cheat.

  “La même.”

  Our next lesson is the one I’ve been waiting for. English. Miss Farthingdale hands back our Compositions in reverse order, starting with the worst and ending with … Simon Nagel’s. Effing eff-word!

  I come third, with 16 out of 20, behind Simon and Chloe Gower. As punishment, I decide I have to coat my forearm in the fluid from the white end of my ink eraser pen and rest my nose on it for the whole lesson. (It’s made from pig urine.)

  Simon Nagel is an Alkaline Jew, and his grandfather was in a concentration camp (I forget which one. It’s definitely not Auschwitz, but it would be one of the other top answers in Family Fortunes if they ever did that round). He always finds a way to write about the Holocaust, whatever title we get set, which is why he always wins. Chloe Gower is an albino and comes from a Broken Home. Her skin is the same color as the correction fluid she uses to write Manic Street Preachers on her rucksack, and her parents split up a year and a half ago (which is about the time she dyed her hair black (which is not a good look for an albino (because it makes her face look like apartheid))). Every few months when her dad picks her up from school in his convertible there’ll be a new woman in the passenger seat. They always look roughly the same, like younger, prettier versions of her mum. It’s a bit like her dad’s casting for an American Remake of his life. I tried to talk to her once about the Manic Street Preachers because I quite like that song they do about being tolerant, but when I told her this she sneered and told me she liked only the early stuff. Then she gave me one earpiece from her minidisc and played me a song called “She Is Suffering” and asked me what I thought. I think that being a Manic Street Preachers fan who prefers “She Is Suffering” to the Tolerance Song is like being a Christian who prefers the carpentry to the miracles. But I told her it sounded cool, and now when we cross each other in the corridor we nod.

  Chapter Two

  (The Composition was A Life in the Day, which is absolutely not the same as A Day in the Life. A Day in the Life is a snapshot of a particular day from the time you woke up to the time you went to bed and all the things that happened in between. We don’t do A Day in the Life anymore, because it’s too easy.

  A Life in the Day is much harder. In A Life in the Day you have to give an account of an average day in your life to show what it’s like to be you. To do this, you have to focus on all of the thoughts and feelings you have about the places, people, and routines that make up an average day in your life.

  On an average day in my life I have milk on toast for breakfast (or maybe Honey Nut Cornflakes with Peanut Butter). There is such a thing as an average day in my life, but I don’t think it tells you anything about who I am and what it’s like to be me. In fact, I’m not sure that life really has all that much to do with days in the first place.)

  Chapter Three

  When the anesthetic practitioner came to visit, he weighed me like I was a fish he’d just caught and asked me if I had a phobia of needles, which I told him I didn’t because a phobia is an irrational fear of something and my fear of needles is 100% justified. (I don’t understand why people insist that they have phobias of things like heights and snakes and small spaces and open spaces and other people when all of those things can kill you. I hate how people think that not walking under ladders makes you superstitious, when actually it’s just common sense. You wouldn’t call someone superstitious if they didn’t want to live under a flight path. (I am not superstitious.))

  Then he asked if I had any questions. I could think of only one, but it didn’t seem relevant (If S
tephen Hawking got his CapsLock key stuck, after a while would he start to lose his voice?), so instead I shook my head.

  “It’s a real game of chess,” remarks Dad.

  I have always wanted a TV in my room. There’s a bed (which I’m in), a bedside cabinet with a call button, an armchair (which Dad’s in), and an unusually high number of three-pin plug sockets (six). I thought about asking the nurse what they were for, but then I figured it out myself. (Three are for personal use, three for medical use. (Three to charge my minidisc and three to charge me.)) In the corner of the room, Chelsea are playing Liverpool.

  I look up from my crossword (24 across: uncooperative (9), which is either difficult or difficult, in which case it’s easy (and 19 down is basic)), because I prefer chess to football. At first I can’t see any similarity, and I’m just about to dismiss Dad’s claim as a bad metaphor when one of the Chelsea defenders reaches the opposition’s goal line and is replaced by a better player who can move forward, backward, and diagonally. Dad seems pleased by this and lets me go back to my crossword. A few minutes later, Liverpool mount an attack that ends in an acrobatic save by the Chelsea goalkeeper. Dad tells me to look at the screen: “Because that’s what a pedigree goalkeeper looks like, son.”