‘You do look absurdly funny, I’ll give you that, but it would help things along if you shaved it all off voluntarily.’
I go back into the bathroom. The reflection of me is strange. The hair is OK, a tufty Mohican. But I don’t recognize myself. I guess I’m not used to looking at myself in a mirror. I watch myself stroking my hair, see my scarred right hand brush it back, but the face doesn’t look like me. I know it is me cos of the scar on my cheek bone that Jessica gave me, and there’s the scar near my ear, white against the black specks of my shaved scalp, where Niall got me. But my face looks different from the way I thought it looked. Older. Way older. My eyes are large and black and even when I smile there’s no hint of a smile in them. They look hollowed out, the black triangles rotating slowly. I lean into the mirror and try to see where my pupils end and my irises begin and my forehead hits the glass. I step back to the far end of the bathroom, turn away and turn back quickly, trying to catch something, a light perhaps. I don’t catch anything.
‘What’s taking so long?’ Celia shouts.
I pick up the razor and then put it down.
A minute later I walk out.
She laughs and then stops herself and says, ‘Now you’re being ridiculous. Take them out.’
I grin at her and feel my eyebrow. I’ve pierced it with three small metal rings, put a metal ring in my right nostril and a bigger one in the left corner of my bottom lip.
‘It’s all part of the punk look.’ I run my fingers across the choker. ‘It would be better with safety pins.’
‘Where did you get that thing in your lip?’
‘They’re all from the plug chain.’
‘Why don’t you attach the plug as well? You might as well look totally mad.’
‘You’re just too old to understand.’
‘Can we go back to my original point? What are you trying to achieve?’
I look out of the window to the hills and sky, pale grey high clouds leaching the colour from everything.
‘Well?’
‘Freedom from persecution.’ I say it flatly.
Silence.
‘Do you think I’ll ever get that?’
Nothing moves outside; the heather on the hills is undisturbed by wind, the clouds are motionless.
Later on in the evening I do a drawing. I use pencil as we’ve run out of ink and I’ve gone off charcoal. Pencil is OK. I’ve drawn the animals and plants I see around here. Celia has put a few aside to show the Councillors. I am tempted to ask, ‘What are you trying to achieve with that?’ but I don’t bother as I’ll just get a blank.
Tonight I’m drawing Celia. She hates me drawing her, which is all part of the fun. Warts and all is my approach. Take no prisoners. She’ll burn it afterwards. She always burns the portraits of her. I don’t take this as an artistic insult; it’s the original that’s the problem.
I do self-portraits, but just of my right hand. The melted skin is like runs of thick oil paint ending in a rounded, not quite solidified blob. The skin on the back of my hand between the smooth runs is cracked and lifting like an old painting too. My hand is art.
I did a drawing of my hand holding a long, slender dagger a few weeks ago. I thought Celia was going to faint she was holding her breath so long. I scrunched the paper up, saying it was ‘rubbish’ and threw it on the fire before she could stop me. I’ve not done it again; it wasn’t that funny.
My landscapes really are rubbish. I can’t get them right at all, and my buildings are boringly bad. I’ve drawn the cage, though. I captured that. I caught its sucked-out blackness, a holding-something-down-ness. I know that cage so well. It was my best piece. I told Celia we should show it to the Council. She didn’t say anything and I’ve not seen the picture since. I guess she burned it.
‘They’ll be here late morning,’ she says as I draw. ‘I’ll weigh you, photograph you before they get here.’
‘Nervous?’
She doesn’t reply and I lean away, anticipating a slap, but she doesn’t take the bait.
‘I won’t mess up. Don’t worry. I’ll be a good boy and answer all their questions nicely. And I won’t spit at them until the end.’
Celia sighs.
We’re quiet again, me trying to draw her hair. I think it’s thinning; perhaps it’s worry.
‘Will you be in the room when they do the Assessment?’
‘What do you think?’
‘Probably not … Definitely not.’
‘Then why ask?’
‘Just making conversation.’
‘Then make it better.’
I draw her mouth at that point. She has a great sneer that somehow makes her big lips seem less ugly and more interesting. I’d like to draw her standing to attention outside my cage, holding the key, with the look she sometimes has on her face, the look that’s almost pity. The reason she does this job, I think.
‘Well?’ she asks.
‘Well what?’
‘I know you want to ask something.’
How can she tell that?
‘Umm. Well. I was wondering … How come you got the job of being my jailer?’