Trainspotting (27 page)

– Maria. Antonio, he sobs. Ah realise thit ah've goat ma airm aroond the wee bastard n ah'm comforting him.

– S awright mate. S awright. Sorry. Didnae mean tae hurt ye, it's jist likesay, nae cunts wanked ower us before.

That wis certainly true.

– You are kind. . . what can I do? Maria. My Maria . . . He wis howling. His mooth dominated his face, a huge black hole in the twilight. He smelt ay stale drink, sweat n spunk.

– Look, c'moan we'll go doon tae a cafe. Huv a wee blether. Ah'll git ye some breakfast. Oan me. Thir's a good place doon Ridley Road, by the market, ken? It'll be open by now.

My suggestion wis as much motivated by self–interest as altruism. It took us nearer tae Mel's place at Dalston, and ah wanted oot ay this depressing basement room. He goat dressed n we left. We padded the hoof doon Stokie High Street n Kingsland Road, doon tae the market. The cafe wis surprisingly busy, but we goat a table. Ah hud a cheese n tomatay bagel n the auld cunt hus this horrible black boiled meat, the stuff that the Jewish punters up at Stamford Hill seem tae be intae.

The cunt starts gabbin aboot Italy. He wis married tae this Maria woman fir years. The family found oot thit him n Antonio, Maria's younger brother, wir fucking each other. Ah shouldnae really put it like that, mair like thit they wir lovers. Ah think he loved the guy, but he loved Maria n aw. Ah thought ah wis bad wi drugs, but the mess some cunts make ay thir lives wi love. It disnae bear thinkin aboot.

Anywey, thir wis two other brothers, macho, Catholic n according tae Gi, involved wi the Neopolitan Camorra. These cunts couldnae handle this. They goat a haud ay Gi, ootside the family restaurant They kicked ten types ay shite oot ay the perr wee cunt. Antonio goat the same treatment later oan.

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Antonio topped hissel eftir that. It means a loat in that culture, Gi telt us, tae be disgraced in that wey. Ah'm thinkin, it means a loat in any fuckin culture. Gi then tells us thit Antonio flung hissel in front ay a train. Ah thought, mibbe it does mean mair in that culture eftir aw. Gi fled tae England, whair he's been working in various Italian restaurants; living in seedy gaffs, drinking too much, exploiting or being exploited by the young guys and auld wifies he picks up. It sounds a pretty miserable life.

Ma spirits soared whin we goat doon the road tae Mel's and ah heard reggae music blastin intae the street and saw the lights oan. The fag–end ay what must huv been a considerable party wis still gaun.

It wis good tae git amongst auld faces. They wir aw thair, aw the cunts, Davo, Suzy, Nicksy (bombed oot ay his boax), n Charlene. Bodies wir crashed oot aw ower the place. Two lassies wir dancin wi each other, n Char wis dancin Wi this guy. Paul n Nicksy wir smokin; opium, no hash. Maist English junkies ah know smoke horse rather than shoot it up. Needles seem tae be mair ay a Scottish, Edinburgh, thing. Ah take a toke fae the cunts anywey.

– Farking great tuh see yah again, me old sahn! Nicksy slaps us oan the back Clockin Gi, he whispers, – Oose the old cahnt then, eh? Ah'd brought the wee bastard along. Ah didnae huv the heart tae leave the cunt eftir listening tae aw his tales ay woe.

– Sound mate. Great tae see ye. This is Gi. Good mate ay mines. Steys up in Stokie. Ah slaps auld Gi oan the back. The perr wee fucker wears an expression like ye'd see oan a rabbit at the bars ay its cage asking fur a bit ay lettuce.

Ah go fir a wander, leavin Gi talking tae Paul n Nicksy aboot Napoli, Liverpool and West Ham, the international male language ay fitba. Sometimes ah lap up that talk, other times its pointless tediousness depresses the fuck oot ay us.

In the kitchen, two guys are arguin aboot the poll tax. One boy's sussed oot, the other's a fuckin spineless Labour/Tory Party servile wankboy.

– You're a fuckin arsehole oan two counts. One, if ye think the Labour Party's goat a fuckin chance ay ever gettin in again this century, two, if ye think it would make a blind bit ay fuckin difference if they ever did, ah jist butt in and tell the cunt. He stands thair open–moothed, while the other guy smiles.

– That's joost wot oi was troi–ing to tell the bastid, he sais in a Brummie accent. Ah split, leaving the servile cunt still bemused. Ah go intae in a bedroom whair this guy's licking oot this lassie, aboot three feet away fae whair some junkies are usin. Ah look at the junkies. Fuck me, thir usin works, shootin up n that. So much fir ma theories.

– You want a photograph mate? this skinny wee Goth wide–o whae's cookin asks.

– You want a fuckin burst mooth, cunt? Ah answer his question wi a question. He looks away n keeps cookin. Ah stare at the toap ay his heid fir a bit. Content that the cunt's shat his load, ah loosen up. Whenever ah go doon south, ah seem tae huv that kind ay attitude. It goes eftir a couple ay days. Ah think ah ken why ah huv it, but it wid take too long tae explain, n sound too pathetic. As ah leave the room, ah hear the lassie groanin oan the bed n the guy sayin, – Wot a fucking sweet cunt you got gel .....

Ah stagger through the door, Wi that soft, slow voice resonating in ma ear: – Wot a fucking sweet cunt you got gel . . . and it starkly makes explicit to me just what ah've been looking around for. Ah'm no exactly spoiled fir choice here. The scene's pish–poor in the potential bag–off stakes. At this time ay the morning, the most desirable women huv either bagged off or fucked off Charlene's copped, so's the woman that Sick Boy shagged oan her 21st birthday. Even the lassie wi the eyes like Marty Feldman and the hair like pubes, is spoken for. Story ay ma fuckin life. Arrive too early, git too pished or stoned oot ay boredom n blow it, or git thair too fuckin late.

Wee Gi's standing by the fireplace, sipping a can ay lager. He looks frightened and bemused. Ah think tae masel, ah might end up whappin it up the wee cunt's choc–box yit. The thought depresses the fuck oot ay us. Still, we are all slags oan hoaliday.

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BAD BLOOD

I first meet Alan Venters through the 'HIV and Positive' self–help group, although he wasn't part of that group for long. Venters didn't look after himself very well, and soon developed one of the many opportunistic infections we're prone to. I always find the term 'opportunistic infection' amusing. In our culture, it seems to invoke some admirable quality. I think of the 'opportunism' of the entrepreneur who spots a gap in the market, or that of the striker in the penalty box. Tricky buggers, those opportunistic infections.

The members of the group were in a roughly similar medical condition. We were all anti–body positive, but still largely asymptomatic. Paranoia was never far from the surface at our meetings; everybody seemed to be furtively checking out everyone else's lymph glands for signs of swelling. It was disconcerting to feel people's eyes stray to the side of your face during conversation. This type of behaviour added further to the sense of unreality which hung over me at the time. I really couldn't conceive of what had happened to me. The test results at first just seemed unbelievable, so incongruous with the healthy way I felt and looked. Part of me remained convinced that there had to be a mistake, in spite of taking the test three times. My self–delusion should have been shattered when Donna refused to see me, but it was always hanging on in the background with a grim resolution. We always seem to believe what we want to believe. I stopped going to the group meetings after they put Alan Venters in the hospice. It just depressed me and, anyway, I wanted to spend my time visiting him. Tom, my key worker and one of the group counsellors, reluctantly accepted my decision.

– Look Dave, I think that you seeing Alan in hospital is really great; for him. I'm more concerned about you at the moment, though. You're in great health, and the purpose of the group is to encourage us to make the most of things. We don't stop living just because we're HIV positive. . . Poor Tom. His first faux Pas of the day. – Is that the royal 'we' Tom? When you're HIV

positive, tell me aw about it.

Tom's healthy, pink cheeks flushed. He couldn't help it. Years of intensive interpersonal skills practice had taught him to hide the nervy visual and verbal giveaways. No shifty eye contact or quavering voice from him in the face of embarrassment. Not old Tom. Unfortunately, Tom cannae do a thing about the glowing red smears which rush up the side of his face on such occasions. – I'm sorry, Tom apologised assertively. He had the right to make mistakes. He always said that people had that right. Try telling that to my damaged immune system.

– I'm just concerned that you're choosing to spend your time with Alan. Watching him wasting away won't be good for you and, besides, Alan was hardly the most positive member of the group.

– He was certainly the most HIV positive member.

Tom chose to ignore my remark. He had a right not to respond to the negative behaviour of others. We all had such a right, he told us. I liked Tom; he ploughed a lonely furrow, always trying to be positive. I thought that my job, which involved watching slumbering bodies being opened up by the cruel scalpel of Howison, was depressing and alienating. It’s a veritable picnic however, compared to watching souls being wrenched apart. That was what Tom had to put up with at the group meetings.

Most members of 'HIV and Positive' were intravenous drug–users. They picked up HIV

from the shooting galleries which flourished in the city in the mid–eighties, after the Bread Street surgical suppliers was shut down. That stopped the flow of fresh needles and syringes. After that, it was large communal syringes and share and share alike. I've got a mate called Tommy who started using smack through hanging around with these guys in Leith. One of them I know, a guy called Mark Renton, whom I worked with way back in my chippy days. It's ironic that Mark has been shooting smack for years, and is, so far as I know, still not infected with HIV, while I've never touched the stuff in my life. There were, however, enough smack–heads present in the group to make you realise that he could be the exception, rather than the rule. Group meetings were generally tense affairs. The junkies resented the two homosexuals in the group. They believed that HIV originally spread into the city's drug–using community through an exploitative buftie landlord, who fucked his sick junky tenants for the rent. Myself and two women, one the non–drug–using partner of a junk addict, resented everyone as we were neither homosexual

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nor junkies. At first I, like everyone else, believed that I had been 'innocently' infected. It was all too easy to blame the smack–heads or the buftie–boys at that time. However, I had seen the posters and read the leaflets. I remember in the punk era, the Sex Pistols saying that 'no one is innocent'. Too true. What also has to be said though, is that some are more guilty than others. This brings me back to Venters.

I gave him a chance; a chance to show repentance. This was a sight more than the bastard deserved. At a group session, I told the first of several lies, the trail of which would lead to my grip on the soul of Alan Venters.

I told the group that I had had unprotected, penetrative sex with people, knowing full well that I was HIV positive, and that I now regretted it. The room went deathly silent. People shifted nervously in their seats. Then a woman called Linda began to cry, shaking her head. Tom asked her if she wanted to leave the meeting. She said no, she would wait and hear what people had to say, venomously addressing her reply in my direction. I was largely oblivious to her anger though; I never took my eyes off Venters. He had that characteristic, perpetually bored expression on his face. I was sure a faint smile briefly played across his lips.

– That was a very brave thing to say, Davie. I'm sure it took a lot of courage, Tom said solemnly.

Not really you doss prick, it was a fucking lie. I shrugged.

– I'm sure a terrific burden of guilt has been lifted from you, Tom continued, raising his brows, inviting me to come in. I accepted the opportunity this time.

– Yes, Tom. Just to be able to share it with you all. It's terrible . . . I don't expect people to forgive . . .

The other woman in the group, Marjory, directed a sneering insult towards me, which I didn't quite catch, while Linda continued crying. No reaction was forthcoming from the cunt who sat in the chair opposite me. His selfishness and lack of morality sickened me. I wanted to take him apart with my bare hands, there and then. I fought to control me senses, savouring the richness of my plan to destroy him. The disease could have his body; that was its victory, whatever malignant force it was. Mine would be a greater one, a more crushing one. I wanted his spirit. I planned to carve mortal wounds into his supposedly everlasting soul. Ay–men. Tom looked around the circle: – Does anyone empathise with Davie? How do people feel about this?

After a bout of silence, during which my eyes stayed trained on the impassive figure of Venters, Wee Goagsie, a junky in the group, started to croak nervously. Then he blurted out, in a terrible rant, what I'd been waiting for from Venters.

– Ah'm gled Davie sais that . . . ah did the same. . . ah did the fuckin same . . . an innocent lassie that nivir did a fuckin thing tae naebody . . . ah jist hated the world . .. ah mean . . . ah thought, how the fuck should ah care? What huv ah goat fae life .. . ah'm twenty–three an ah've hud nothin, no even a fuckin joab . . . why should ah care . . . whin ah telt the lassie, she jist freaked . . . he sobbed like a child. Then he looked up at us and produced, through his tears, the most beautiful smile I have ever seen on any one in my life. – . . . but it wis awright. She took the test. Three times ower six months. Nuthin. Shi wisnae infected .. Marjory, who in the same circumstances was infected, hissed at us. Then it happened. That cunt Venters rolled his eyes and smiled at me. That did it. That was the moment. The anger was still there, but it was fused with a great calmness, a powerful clarity. I smiled back at him, feeling like a semi–submerged crocodile eyeing a soft, furry animal drinking at the river's edge.

– Naw . . . wee Goagsie whined piteously at Marjory, – it wisnae like that . . . waitin fir her test results wis worse thin waiting fir ma ain . . yis dinnae understand . . . ah didnae .. . ah mean ah dinnae . . . it's no like . . .