The Pain Eater Read online

“But now there is someone watching. It’s a boy, fifteen years old like Farang. He’s not anyone in particular, just a kid who couldn’t sleep and so he got up and walked around instead of lying there staring at the dark. So because he’s up, he hears the noise and comes over. He doesn’t want to be seen, so he stands behind a tree and watches.”

  David’s voice faltered and he paused. “He doesn’t know what to do. He sees the priestesses push Farang under the water and hold her there. At first, he thinks it must be a weird baptism, but they’re holding her under so long. But they’re priestesses, y’see, and priestesses are supposed to be good, and do what’s right. And one of the priestesses is the boy’s aunt. He knows her personally.

  “But Farang has been under so long. The boy is holding his breath. He hasn’t breathed since they pushed Farang under. And his own lungs are almost bursting – he can’t help it, he has to breathe. And still they’re holding Farang under.

  “Finally, the priestesses let Farang come up. She isn’t moving. They drag her to shore and dump her there. Then they spit on her and go back to the temple. The boy stands behind his tree, breathing and breathing. He can’t get enough air into his lungs. He’s never thought about breathing before, and now he thinks he’ll never forget how important it is.

  “He doesn’t go to Farang. He’s too afraid of the priestesses. He watches her. So he sees when she starts to move, and when she finally sits up he’s so relieved, his legs give out and he has to sit down. But he stays there. He stays and watches, until he sees Farang crawl away from the river. Then he follows and sees her crawl into a safe place under a bush and go to sleep.

  “He gets her some food and leaves it nearby, for when she wakes. Then he sits and watches while she sleeps. He isn’t a hero, that’s for sure. And he’s not a bad guy, either. He didn’t join in. He’s just an average, ordinary kid who happened to be there when it happened. He saw it happen, he watched. Now he watches while Farang sleeps. When she wakes, he watches her eat. And when he knows she’s okay, he goes away.

  “He never tells anyone what he saw, but he knows. He’s a watcher and a knower.”

  Silence hovered around the end of David’s reading like a breath held in. David stood quietly, as if caught up in the tail end of his story. Equally quiet, Maddy sat trapped in the sledgehammer thud of her heart. Every word that David had read in his hoarse, faltering voice felt as if he’d spoken it directly into her body. She felt as if she’d heard them inside herself. It had been exhausting. Glancing across the room, she saw Ken sitting with his dark eyes fixed on David. Nothing in Ken moved; he didn’t appear to be breathing. Maddy’s gaze flicked to David, who continued to stand silently, his head down.

  A hand went up. “What is his name?” asked Emeka, a boy in the first row.

  David’s head jerked up, the color fleeing his face. “Huh?” he asked.

  “His name,” said Emeka. “The boy who is watching – what is his name? I need to know. I come next.”

  “Oh,” said David, staring off into the middle distance. He seemed dazed. “I dunno. I didn’t think of one.”

  “I guess you’ll have to come up with one, Emeka,” said Ms. Mousumi.

  Dana’s hand went up. “This boy,” she said slowly, like a police investigator after the facts of a case. “He’s not supposed to talk to Farang or help her. So why does he bring her food?”

  David grimaced, as if confused. “Wouldn’t you?” he said. “I mean, if you saw something like that happen?”

  The hand that rose next was Christine’s. “But Farang is supposed to feel pain,” she said. “That’s her job for the tribe. So pain is good when it happens to her, isn’t it? At least, someone who lived in this tribe would think so, wouldn’t he?”

  “Maybe,” said David, shifting foot to foot. “But Farang’s supposed to get it on the full moon, and it’s supposed to come after she eats a dish of food. It’s not, like, open season, is it? Anyway, it’s different being told the way things are supposed to be, and then suddenly you see something like that happening…” David’s voice trailed off, and he stood once again staring into the middle distance.

  Maddy’s heart thundered in her throat. Her eyes were ri-veted to David’s profile, Krazy-Glued to his face, awaiting his next words. But they didn’t come.

  “Well,” said Ms. Mousumi, rising to her feet. “That was a very thoughtful chapter. Thank you, David. You may sit down. All right, class, we’re moving on to the short story ‘The Sniper’ today. Get into your groups and I’ll hand out the worksheets.”

  Desks began to move, but before Kara stood, she handed Maddy a folded note. “Give this to David,” she said. “Okay?”

  Without waiting for Maddy’s response, she walked away, and Maddy watched her go, wondering how Kara felt about being doomed to another week of working with Julie. She didn’t have much time to ponder this. Within seconds, August and Vince dropped into place, beside and across from her, and then David was edging himself onto the seat opposite August. Convulsively, Maddy shoved Kara’s note at him and shrank back. David stared at the folded bit of paper as if it was about to attack him.

  “Great chapter, David!” said August.

  David gave a cautious smile. “Yeah?” he said, his eyes flicking across August’s.

  “I thought so, too,” said Vince. “I could really see it happening. You’re a good describer.”

  David’s shoulders straightened, and he looked quietly astonished. “Thanks,” he said, picking up the note. Fiddling with the edges, he started to open it, then jammed it into his shirt pocket.

  “It’s from Kara,” blurted Maddy, her voice cracking.

  “Oh,” said David, his head jerking back. Taking the note from his pocket, he read it. A smile crossed his face, and he returned the note to his pocket.

  “Kara liked it?” asked Vince.

  “She liked it,” David replied.

  “The high priestess of English class approves,” August said wryly.

  “Uh uh,” said Vince. “That’s Julie. Haven’t you heard how she and her priestesses are going around telling kids what they’re supposed to write about?”

  “Since when?” demanded August.

  “I dunno since when exactly,” said Vince. “They didn’t talk to me, but Doody told me they were on his back. They talk to you?” he asked, turning to David.

  David shrugged. “Julie sits beside me,” he said. “That doesn’t mean I obey her.”

  “Doody did,” said Vince. “And Dana. And Christine. And probably Elliot, though with that guy, who knows.”

  “But not Jeremy or Rhonda,” August pointed out. “If Julie’s twisting arms, she didn’t get anywhere with them. I dunno, Vince. I don’t think Julie—”

  “She is,” Maddy broke in, the sound of her own voice so abrupt, it felt like a dinner plate breaking inside her head. Her heart leapt into high gear; her hands sweated. Keeping her eyes down, she forced words out into the astonished silence that greeted her. “I heard her and Dana talking in the can about…two weeks ago now.” And she described the September eleventh encounter.

  “Whoa!” said Vince, when she’d finished. “What’d I tell you?”

  “Looks like,” August admitted. “But Kara’s doing pretty much the same thing, isn’t she?”

  A sudden surge of – Maddy didn’t know what – washed over her. “Kara’s not going around threatening people in the can!” she protested, flashing August a glance. To her surprise, the other girl smiled at her, white teeth brilliant against her dark skin.

  “Hey, Maddy,” August said softly. “You go, girl.”

  Maddy flushed and dropped her gaze. Kitty-corner from her, David shifted uneasily. “It’s like an election, almost,” he said. “Everyone’s got their own opinion. But that’s okay. You’ve got to let them talk the way they want to. Except,” he added hastily, “they shouldn’t be going after othe
r kids in the can.”

  Even with her eyes glued to her lap, Maddy could feel David keeping his gaze carefully averted from her. Still, he was speaking directly to her, she knew that. Just like his entire chapter today had been a delicate gift laid open for her. There was no doubt in her mind – he had given it to her. He wanted her to know this: I happened to be there. I didn’t join in. I never told, but I know. I’m a watcher and a knower.

  Did he watch her after it happened, to make sure she got home safely? Maddy sat, pushing against the weight of her own silence. It was a great weight but she was almost past it, almost ready to look up and ask…and then August picked up her worksheet, Vince started to read the first question aloud, and the moment passed.

  . . .

  Maddy knelt in the tree house, watching the dark mural she’d begun on the south wall. Watching was the word for it, she thought, because if she kept herself still for long enough, parts of the mural began to move. At first glance, she saw only formlessness – charcoal and chestnut brown smudges that overlapped. But if she let her eyes go vague, almost out of focus, she could feel the colors begin to shift, drift into each other, groan.

  The groans didn’t frighten her. As she watched, her heart thudded slow and steady; she felt something dark and unnamed shift deep within herself. That inner shifting and what she’d drawn on the wall seemed to go together; Maddy could feel the formlessness inside herself reaching out toward the wall, as if wanting to connect. She thought of Rhonda Hinkle standing before the class and proclaiming “I can!” She thought of David, his head down, saying, “Just an average, ordinary kid. A watcher and a knower.” Well, that was what she was too – an average, ordinary kid now staring at some kind of knowing…a knowing that was undefined, something inside herself that wanted out.

  I can, Maddy thought. Poking through a box of chalks, she chose a cream-colored stick and began to work it into the dark formlessness twisting across the wall. No words spoke in her head; no image presented itself – she knew nothing about what she was drawing, and yet a knowing was with her – she felt she was at the beginning of everything. I can, she thought again, her hand trembling as it picked up a pale yellow. This is mine, whatever it is. Silently, she continued to work, watching the colors blend, the yellow lose itself into the darkness around it. Almost as if it never was, she thought. There’s so much dark. And yet where she continued to work the yellow chalk, the darkness lightened somewhat, a pale presence there within the gloom.

  Higher, something in her said. Go higher. Raising her hand, Maddy began to work farther up on the wall, in cream and gold and slight smudges of orange – a sphere that hovered above the lower darkness. After a while, she settled back on her heels and regarded the fuzzy blur she’d created. If asked, she couldn’t have said what it was meant to be, but it held part of her – she knew that much. And it gave her satisfaction, as if drawing this sphere had in some way made her more solid, had given her a stronger standing in the world.

  She and this wall had a long conversation ahead of them. Maddy could still hear its groaning. And the wall seemed to be able to hear and receive hers. It was a beginning – enough to make her keep going.

  . . .

  Emeka smiled apologetically at the class. Tall, with glasses and shortly cropped hair, he wore his usual polite, wary expression. “I am sorry,” he said, in carefully enunciated English. “My English is not excellent. But I will do my best.”

  Wednesday afternoon, Maddy sat slanting glances across the classroom at David. Head down, he’d positioned himself at an angle in his seat, so that he was leaning visibly away from Ken. Rigid and upright, Ken looked grim.

  Beside Maddy, Kara’s desk sat vacant. Accustomed to the other girl’s presence, Maddy felt exposed, as if part of her defence system was missing. A cluster of thumbnail welts rode her left hand.

  “I think,” said Emeka, “we must talk about tribes. What is a tribe? There are black tribes and white tribes, so that does not matter. Tribes are about family, and people who live together stay alive in the jungle. Not like we live here, where people live separate without troubles.

  “So in Farang’s tribe, everyone must be together. Together, they make food to eat. Together, they make warm clothes, and houses and fire. Together, they believe in the same gods. It is so, so different from here, where we believe different things. In a tribe, everyone thinks the same. They think the same to live. You cannot think, Oh, I will believe this or that, whatever I want. You obey your parents. They think, you think. They say, you do. Or the tribe says, ‘Go away now.’ You are alone and you die.

  “Farang has her beautiful altar in the forest. It is her secret. She does not tell anyone. And she swallows her soul stone and gets her soul back. Only she and the high priestess know that. But she cannot go away from the tribe. She must think like them and do what they say. Or she dies. That is life in a tribe. It is tradition. Even in a tribe in a story that is how it is.

  “And one more thing. Kara said a pain eater comes once in a generation. A generation is ten, twenty years. Farang is fifteen, so a new child must come soon. What happens to Farang? She will die then. She will die to make a place for the new pain eater. Maybe in a year, or in two or three. But she will die. Yes, she will die.

  “Thank you.” With a polite nod, Emeka started for his seat, but Ms. Mousumi called him back.

  “Does anyone have a comment for Emeka?” she asked, getting to her feet. All over the room, hands shot up.

  “There are always people who think different in any group,” said Rhonda. “Everyone all over the planet started out in tribes, but things changed. People thought differently and they changed things, and now we don’t live in the stone age anymore.”

  “Emeka?” asked Ms. Mousumi.

  “You are thinking from the way you live here,” Emeka replied. “In Farang’s tribe, there is no thinking different. It is all the same. Tradition. No Internet, no phones. No books. Where does different thinking come from for them?”

  “Jeremy?” asked Ms. Mousumi.

  “The rebel,” said Jeremy. “There’s always a rebel in every group. Someone who thinks just a little different.”

  “Like Galileo,” said Theresa.

  “Gandhi,” called Harvir.

  “Princess Di,” said August, raising a fist.

  “Yes, Amy?” said Ms. Mousumi, pointing to a girl who sat next to Jeremy.

  “I heard of a Doctor Semmelweis,” said Amy. “He invented germs, sort of. Or figured out they exist. It was in the eighteen hundreds. He started telling other doctors to wash their hands before they did operations or delivered babies, because he said germs caused infections and people died from them. And people said he was crazy, because they couldn’t see the germs, of course, and they took away his doctor’s license. But he kept going on about it, so in the end they put him in an insane asylum and he died there.”

  The class sat, silenced by this information. Amy flushed. “That was in Vienna,” she added. “Not a tribe, I guess. But he thought differently, and look what happened to him.”

  Emeka nodded. “So, you see, it happens in Vienna too,” he said. “In Farang’s tribe, it is even more like that.”

  August’s hand went up. “But isn’t the real point that it changed eventually?” she asked. “And that the doctor stuck to what he thought, even if he got put in a loony bin for it? You’re gonna get creative thinkers anywhere and everywhere, even in a tribe like Farang’s.”

  “I am saying don’t forget tradition,” said Emeka. “In a tribe, tradition is strongest. It is the way it is.”

  “Thank you, Emeka,” said Ms. Mousumi. “I think we’ll leave it there for today. Sean Longstreet, we’ll hear from you on Friday. Group time, everyone.”

  Maddy sat rigid, still braced against what hadn’t come. Next on the class list, after Longstreet, came Malone – she was sure of it. She’d gone over everyone’s sur
names in her head, and the inevitable had arrived – her chapter was due next Monday. But by fluke or by luck, Ms. Mousumi hadn’t called out her name, which meant it wasn’t quite inevitable yet. At least, that was the way Maddy decided to think about it.

  Vince and August, then David, drew up desks and sat down. Hesitantly, Maddy shot David a glance. Yesterday, he’d been cautious, never looking at her directly and speaking only to Vince, but fully planted in his seat. Today he was back to leaning as far away from Maddy as possible – so far his butt hung halfway off the seat and was hovering midair. Such intense unease radiated from him that Maddy felt swarmed by it. When she glanced across the room to Ken’s group, she saw him sitting bolt upright in his desk, watching David.

  Maddy’s gaze dropped. Savagely, she went to work with her thumbnail, driving it in deep and using the pain to shove away panic and the thoughts that swarmed with it. She wasn’t going to think about any of that now. In fact, she wasn’t going to think about anything at all. Not about David, not about tribes and free thinkers, not about Liam O’Flaherty’s short story “The Sniper.” All she was going to concentrate on were the thin wedges of pain in the back of her hand, those tiny hot lines that kept everything else at bay. Shit – she’d broken through the skin and drawn blood. But blood could be good – it sharpened pain, and then there was nothing but pain…no thoughts, no fear.

  Digging a Kleenex out of her pocket, Maddy pressed it against the small cut, pressed hard, harder. Pain pulsed, pulsed deeper, faded finally into numbness, and then Maddy was where she wanted to be – where there was no fear, there was no joy, there were no feelings of any sort – just a bump on a log, like everyone expected her to be.

  Chapter Eleven

  Thursday afternoon’s English class was much the same – Kara was still absent and, once the class had moved into work groups, David again hovered half on and half off his desk seat, grunting the odd reply. Frustrated at his lack of participation, August snapped at him, but she didn’t go after Maddy, who continued to hunch, bump-on-a-log-like, without speaking. August, in fact, seemed to have claimed some sort of protective status over Maddy – though neither of them referred to it, Maddy could feel the other girl standing guard. Vince, at one point, said, “Ask Maddy, why don’t you?” and August simply shook her head at him. Vince got her drift – he left Maddy to bump along on her log without interference from him, from anyone at all.