Chameleon

Chameleon

Saundra Daniel

A slow and steady clicking of fingers emerges out of the void.

Click click click.

‘Hello, Carlo? There you are.’ I press my palm down into scattered gravel, feel its cool temperature against my skin. Instinct brings it to my head to dissipate the heat there. ‘Don’t move. Relax.’ The smooth cadence of a female voice comes through a vapour. ‘Take in a deep breath and let go.’

I breathe in and the pounding in my head evaporates, replaced by an weightless ebb, floating, I am a dot of simple insignificance. A delicate warmth infuses my body. I think of when I first arrived in England. Before meeting Ruby and having the twins, I would sleep in affordable hotels. Against the creeping winter, even the most modest establishments provided fifteen-tog duvets and after long days of walking high streets in search of employment, I looked forward to drifting off into a dream of freedom, airborne above the Pacific Ocean.

The young woman’s voice arrives again. Her accent is familiar yet has a hint of something else. She must travel widely. She doesn’t sound like the loud drunk customers that I overhear from the restaurant’s kitchen. How peculiar. I have lived in confusion for the last seven years, questioning why I’ve never connected with the locals - the English don’t speak the language in the way I was taught back home.

I often listen to them while I cook with the back doors open, occasionally glancing out at the empty carpark and the grey, derelict buildings opposite the Golden Palace. Broken windows serve as entry points for pigeons that had moved into the abandoned offices when government aspirations for business regeneration was overrun by wildlife.

My heart races with excitement. I can easily start a business here, but it would attract the wrong type of customer. Prices in Manchester are expensive too and I can’t have a repeat of what I left behind.

Click click click.

‘Hello?’

The intrusive clicking of fingers again.

‘As I was saying, do you realise how much we deny ourselves a beautiful breath of fresh air? The percentages of people taking shallow breaths from the chest are staggering. You want to go deep into the diaphragm.’ She breathes in to make her point. But the humidity this evening reminds me of home. Her voice goes fuzzy, then returns super clear, like a lingering drop of brandy awakening my taste buds.

‘…Allow external sounds to bring you closer to the sound of my voice. Good. I’m by your side. You have no place to go. So, relax.’

My shoulders drop and I float backwards.

‘You can talk to me, if you like? Go on, ask me a question.’

‘Where am I?’

‘You can be wherever you want to be. For instance, I myself have made a big journey from Cebu to Cheetham Hill for a special occasion.’ She sits beside me. ‘It took a whole day, I mean who knew that this place, Manchester, was so far!’ Her voice softens. ‘That’s enough about me… Let’s take an excursion. Tell me about your past.’

A warmth infuses my being.

‘Why are you smiling?’

She was right to ask. Why was I so open in front of this stranger?

I think of mother’s papaya trees and the fresh jasmine that she would pick from the garden. I spoke with her last week and she was asking again, when I would return home. With the large picture of Christ hanging in her living room, how could I go back and lie to her? Things were better this way.

‘Are you a priest?’ I ask the voice.

‘Does this feel like a confession, Carlo?’ Her voice wanders deep into my ear dilating the chambers into my heart. ‘Do you have something to confess?’

I try avoiding what I want to say but I’m behaving like Benjie, from school days. Gossiping was a disease he couldn’t shake off. No matter how hard he tried he would spill his guts about some drama: Kumusta ka Carlo, you know that Imelda is pregnant? I heard Kiko is the father. Carlo my brother, did you hear that Mr Guzman has been fired? Carlo you’re a really smart guy you can go places my man. Carlo, Carlo, Carlo... Benjie didn’t fit in with any groups and his bullies would use him as a punch bag teasing him for talking so much, like a girl.

‘Please don’t move, relax… Do you like hurting people, Carlo?’

‘No.’

My heart sounds like someone banging an angry fist at a door.

‘Keep still. Take a deep breath. Relax, go deeper into your memory. Tell me, what was life like back in the Philippines, before you left? Something significant happened before your departure?’

I find myself confirming: ‘I don’t like hurting people.’ I breathe deeply. It was evening not long ago. I was taking the bags of rubbish to the bins. I touch my clothes. They’re sticky and wet.

‘See Carlo, that wasn’t so difficult was it? Now, tell me more. Venture deeper and further into your memory, as if you were there now.’

My body collapses once more giving way to something that is not sleep. ‘Every morning the roosters from each neighbouring house crow just before dawn. I am already awake, I can’t sleep so I get ready for work. I add water to the vase with flowers by my mother’s bedside. She is asleep and I kiss her cheek before leaving. The sky is unusually dark, and landscape shades of malachite. I ease the dining room window closed.’

Fatigue slows my breathing but I continue. ‘After breakfast I take the thirty-minute ride by motorcycle to my boxing gym. I like getting there before the town becomes crowded with motorcycles, people selling wares and loud music from nearby shops.

‘Foreigners pay well for the Filipino experience, so I prepare and light joss sticks. My CD player fills the hall with traditional drum instrumentals. The large fans are whirring, it will reach forty degrees in a few hours. I hope that one of the grandmasters passes through. It’s good for business and amusing to watch attentive wide-eyed foreigners hanging on the instructor’s every word.

‘I unlock the wooden gates onto the outdoor area, and stack the car tyres, rattan sticks, bolo and other training weapons. I am cleaning the boxing ring whilst I wait for the police. They will be expecting their weekly payment.’

‘What is the payment for, Carlo?’ Her question is slow and deliberate.

‘To keep my business safe, of course.’

Any hint of my sarcasm fades along with the hum of distant carriageway traffic.

‘You’re doing well Carlo. You’re remembering.’

‘Seven of the police arrive as I finish setting up. They’re looking for my friend Erique who has defected. They say that he can cause them a lot of trouble, and that if they get trouble, I get trouble. They are not happy. They surround me when they talk. One of them draw out a training Kampilan sword from its sheath, running his eyes and finger along its dull blade. His index finger rests on the tip, and he twists the sword with his other hand at the handle. They do not need to go into detail for me to understand.

‘They tell me to keep either Erique or his children at the gym when he arrives, especially his girl, she might be useful to them, they know of local gangs that will look after her very well. The laughter, deep in their throats, makes me sick to my stomach, but there’s nothing I can do.’

This was long ago but I feel a descending shroud of sadness.

‘Maria is special, she visits with her little brother after school each day. She fights better than many of the young boys in the gym. Her kali fighting, panantukan and secret dark elements of Filipino Martial Arts, is mesmerising and unsettling. She can be ruthless. She once broke the finger of an older boy for playfully putting his arms around her waist. She fights with everything: hands, feet, elbows, or anything she can hold.’

I move to straighten my stiff back.

‘Carlo, remain as you are with your eyes closed. Breathe, and begin to count backward from one hundred.’ She sighs, irritated.

I lose track of counting but I’m aware that her voice has lost its warmth.

‘Good, you’re doing well. Now go back to that time. What did you do?’

‘After school, Rodrigo the younger child arrives. I ring the police as instructed. The Chief Superintendent is a family friend.’

My chest is tight and I sigh before carrying on.

‘He asks Rodrigo if he would like to go into the police car and see what they do with people that disobey the law. Of course, Rodrigo is excited and asks if he will get to carry a gun. The Chief Superintendent takes the boy without a fuss. It was that easy. I run into the bathroom to be sick. I don’t know what happened after they left.’

‘Because you are a coward. You sold up and fled to where you thought nobody could find you.’

My silence leads me along a corridor of clarity. The emotion in her throat betrays her refinement and her native accent now appears prominent. I need a moment to think. The voice continues and eventually I focus on it:

‘…travelling to different continents to find my Rodrigo, but luckily for you he is now safe, away from danger, although not unscathed, a stranger to my father and me.’ She pauses. ‘You are the only loose end now, Carlo.’

She emits a quiet curse.

A weighted silence leaves me suspended as I search until I hear her again.

‘Carlo, we’re going to go through these instructions quickly.’

‘Maria.’ My voice is faint. If it’s truly her I’m done. How do I undo the workings of deep trance, what about Ruby, the children, and mother?

‘Carlo, I want you to pay close attention. I am going to count from one to three. At the count of three and not before I want you to open your eyes. All physical sensations will be amplified. I want those strong sensations returned to your body, magnified by one hundred. Do you understand!’

‘Yes.’ I can feel my breath, shallow, rapid.

I try nodding but can’t lift my thumping head.

Footsteps are advancing from somewhere, like mother’s used to whenever she had urgent news.

‘One. Reorient yourself to your surroundings.’ Maria’s voice retreats into hollow inkiness.

‘Two. Take in a deep breath of air.’

Feet, two pairs, are running now towards us, soft thumps across a grass verge and then hard concrete, accompanied by shouting voices.

‘Three -’

My breath is taken away but returns in stronger and laboured rasps, bringing tears out of the squeezed eyes which I refuse to open.

Whichever way I position myself amplifies agony. I tentatively touch two sharp points protruding from above my waist and the paste of warm stickiness glued along my chest, arms and legs. My throbbing nose is bent at an angle and I don’t have to touch the hot bruising at my cheek to know that it is growing, filling with blood.

New voices. They gasp. I know that the muffled retch from one of them is a reaction to how I look.

Maria’s voice has stripped away my weightlessness and driven out the light.

‘What a sicko.’

Mother would say be grateful for small mercies.

‘She was too quick, I only managed to get a blurred shot.’

‘How… What the hell did she use?’ A woman’s voice, distorted as she covers her mouth, speaking behind her hand.

‘An iron bar and her fists. She was taunting him too, probably about to mug him or something. Poor bastard.’

‘Do you think he can hear us?’ the woman asks.

I wonder how far away Maria is now, an apparition, leaving as she came, blending into the night.

I dare to look. My eyes roll in their orbit, settling into a blurred sideways view of the back of the restaurant and car park. There is a misunderstanding between my nervous system and neck. My head doesn’t move on command to see the people by my side. Instead my mind shows a burst of bloodied visual shots of how I must look: blood, bones, ripped skin, bruises, broken. I return to the peace found within and close my eyes.

My cry echoes further than necessary, too loud in this derelict business complex, disturbing movement in the foliage.

There is the sound of ringing through a mobile’s speaker.

‘Police. Please hurry.’ Shoes crunch softly against the gritted ground.

‘Christ, look at the state of him.’