Anthems From Hell appeared in Tears in the Fence vol. 41, Summer 2005.
This story is true. When I close my eyes I see it happen. I spend long stretches with my eyes closed, watching it in my head.
It begins with a boy—an ordinary boy. One evening this boy was lying on the floor when the man who owned him—the man to whom one didn’t say no—told him to go upstairs.
“Eli,” the man said, “get up.”
The boy, Eli, had been thinking. His ponderings had been private. They’d had to do with how he coughed and how his body felt. They’d had to do with the animals he’d often seen rotting away in gutters. Eli’s mind had been too busy. He hadn’t gotten up.
His friends did what he’d have done for them. They rushed between the man and Eli, and pulled Eli to his feet.
“I’ll go up, too,” sweet Niko whispered. “You can lean on me.” Niko, who was so thin and little, he was nicknamed Twig.
The man ordered the children away from Eli. He stepped close enough that Eli could see the veins in his eyes and the deep coffee stains on his teeth.
The man struck Eli, knocked him down.
“You’ve been lying on my floor long enough,” he said. “Now get up.” He kicked Eli’s ribs.
Eli got up. He was hurting so that it was hard to rise, but he glanced over and saw little Niko fidgeting, wishing to lend him a hand, and he got to his feet the best he was able. The man wasn’t in a good mood.
Some of this story’s not easy to look at. It comes to my mind just the same. Because it’s the truth—I’m convinced that it happened. The place I’m in now—I don’t comprehend it. But I close my eyes and I see . . .
. . . Eli, making his way upstairs.
“Don’t cough,” the man had said at their parting. “We don’t want him thinking you’re sick.”
Eli stopped at every landing, sank down and waited for breath. He knew he was taking a long time to get there.
The one waiting for him might leave. If that happened, Eli would have no choice but to go out and beg on the street.
He arrived on the hotel’s top floor. He was coughing. He made his way down the long hall. He tapped on the door that was marked with the same number written in ink on his hand.
The door opened. A stranger let Eli into the room, shut and bolted the door behind him. There were no chairs. The man sat on the bed. He wasn’t smiling. He glanced toward a closet. Eli blinked at the closet, then back at the stranger. The stranger was looking at him.
“So,” the man said.
The room tipped.
“So,” the man began more loudly, “they sent you to me, am I right? I asked downstairs for entertainment. One asks for that here, one gets you?” He spoke with an accent. He was a foreigner, as often the strange men were.
Eli coughed.
“Thirty, they told me.” The man held a wallet. His hand shook—he counted out bills. “Is that right? I’ll put it here on this dresser.”
He spoke too loudly—it hurt Eli’s ears. Eli closed his eyes, saw a dog in a gutter. He opened his eyes, saw the bed.
“You don’t like to talk?” The foreigner was smiling, his smile too stiff to be real. A glance at the closet. “Then we should get started. Am I right—you know what to do?”
Eli pulled off his shirt and let it drop. He was shivering. He let his pants fall.
The man’s eyes were watching. His voice was a whisper.
“When I was your age I was playing with gewgaws. Who treats a child this way?”
Eli fainted.
Once I’d been working outside in the wintertime—snow and a snapping wind, cold. I was called in to bathe. I stripped off my frozen clothes, climbed in the oversize tub. It was so warm that it felt like my mother’s womb. I swooned and I nearly drowned.
Eli came to. He kept his eyes closed. He felt a man’s heavy hands on his body—he remembered that he had taken his clothes off and knew he was earning his keep.
“He’s feverish.”
His head hurt, but not like his chest did. His chest made him sorry to breathe.
“We’ll take him in my car.” The foreigner was talking. “Is there a back door to this place?”
“Think, though. Would it not be better to leave him?” Two men sometimes so that one could enjoy him, the other take pictures to sell. “Think, Richard—wouldn’t it be safer to leave him?”
“Safer for whom?” The strange accent was angry.
“There are more children, Rich—don’t forget there are others.”
“Give me your coat. Grab his clothes and the money. We’ll tell them he never showed.”
Arms beneath Eli, a weight on his body—it was too much. He passed out again.
Once, I was sick. It was very confusing. They told me that I almost died. What perplexed me was that I had died and knew it. I still recall how it felt—a crowd of whispering mothers touching me, tears falling on my dead face. . .
Eli lay in a bed. It was a small bed, but then, he was not a large boy. A strange man was touching him. Eli didn’t mind till the man touched a sensitive place.
“That hurts, doesn’t it?”
Eli was crying. He seldom did cry. He didn’t know why he was crying now—perhaps because he was so weak.
“That’s quite a bruise, son.” The man turned away—spoke to somebody Eli couldn’t see. “It might be worth another X-ray. I think he’s got a cracked rib.”
A tube stuck out of Eli’s arm—a woman had poked him with needles. She’d said not to move, but Eli had coughed. The woman had said she was sorry for hurting him. Eli had shed tears then, too.
“Hey.”
Eli wiped his eyes. The man who had played with his bruises was gone. Another man sat in his place.
“So,” the man said, and then Eli knew him—the foreigner from the hotel, “they said I could sit with you just for a moment. How are you? Are you OK?”
Eli coughed. The man reached out and flicked a cold tear from his face.
“You’ve been very sick, but soon you’ll feel better. We’ll have a little talk then.” The man rose and let down the plastic sheet that tented the head of the bed.
Eli looked after him. The plastic was see-through, but everything through it looked strange. A hissing sound told him he soon would breathe easier—a sort of giant glue bag. Eli closed his eyes. He heard men talking near him.
“ . . . the X-ray?”
“Yes, certainly.” This voice, the foreigner’s. “Do it—whatever he needs.”
I knew a man once who mistreated his dog, which ran off again and again. One day I saw the man dragging his beast home, and I asked him politely if it wouldn’t save time to treat the animal well. He cursed me and told me that it was his dog—he would beat it to death if he wished.
To some a clear title is simply permission to dismantle that which they own. It strikes me—I’ll say it out loud, I risk nothing. It seems to me that this is not a creative way to think.
Sometimes when Eli woke, the foreigner was in his room. Once when Eli wanted water, the foreigner brought him some, then watched him drink and said, when he’d finished, “You’re certain you don’t want more?”
The tent came down from Eli’s bed. He was allowed to sit up. He still coughed, but it didn’t hurt him so badly. Someone had tied up his ribs. He slept a good deal—solid sleep without visions. He began to eat.
The morning that Eli ate his first breakfast, the foreigner brought him gifts.
“It’s a coloring book.” The man gripped a wax pencil and pushed it across the first page. The pencil was green, the picture a tree. The man scrubbed the top of the tree with green color, then pushed it toward Eli. “You see?”
Eli took the book and the box of wax pencils. He didn’t yet feel well, but he knew he was better—stronger, at least, than he’d been in the hotel the last time he’d climbed up the stairs.
“They’ve taken the tube from your arm.” The man smiled.
Eli touched his arm where the tube had been—he touched the bright end of a pencil. He felt the man watching. He set the pencils and coloring book by his side.
“The hotel—” the man said, then stopped abruptly.
Eli lay down on his back.
“The doctor’s afraid,” the man went on quietly, “that I’m going to make you upset. I fear it myself, but I’m pressed for time, Eli. Am I right—Eli’s your name?”
Eli glanced at the foreigner—the hem of his sweater, the chair he was sitting in.
“I know,” the man said, “because at the hotel, someone’s been looking for you. A man called,” he pulled a small book from his pocket and opened it, “Boris—do you know a Boris?”
Eli pushed the bedsheet to his waist.
“I know you’re scared, Eli.” The foreigner spoke softly. “I know you’re frightened of him. Perhaps Boris hurt you—your bruise, am I right? Did he beat you the night you came to my room? Did he force you to climb up those stairs?”
Eli pushed down his shorts—they were all he was wearing. He pushed them and the sheet to his thighs. Goose pimples chased themselves over his body. He lay back and made his eyes close.
The lights hummed.
“I think—” The man stopped and cleared his throat. “The doctor was right—I’ve upset you. I’m an idiot, Eli—
Richard the idiot. Eat well and get lots of rest.”
The door shut. Eli was alone. He lay for a moment, then reached a hand down and worked his shorts back to his waist. He turned to the wall, drew his knees to his chest—his hand found the coloring book.
“Eli.”
The voice of a ghost or an angel. The room was near dark. It was late.
“Eli!”
He turned. A man he didn’t recognize sat in the chair beside him.
“Eli, I know you.” It was a ghost—a young man, his face white and thin. “Richard doesn’t know you like I do. He hasn’t been where we’ve been.”
A scar ran down the man’s face from his hairline, ending where one eye had been.
In the hotel room, a man had been in the closet—he’d come out after Eli had fainted. He’d wanted the foreigner to leave Eli behind. His voice had sounded like this.
“Richard comes and asks you questions. You don’t answer him.”
Richard the foreigner had brought Eli, that morning, a very nice floating balloon. After an hour of silence, he’d left it with Eli, who’d played with it all afternoon.
The balloon skidded over the shadowy ceiling—
“There’s no time!”
Eli jumped in his skin.
“The children are crying.” The voice, a quick whisper. “There is no time—does no one else hear it?” A pause—Eli listened, but he could hear nothing. The strange man was talking again. “We’re out of time, Eli—Richard won’t tell you, so I’m going to tell you myself. You should be dead!”
Eli was coughing. He’d sucked too much breath.
“Be quiet!” The man pushed him down on the mattress and pressed his mouth closed. Eli felt the quivering strength of his arms and thought he’d be pushed through the bed. “If Richard hadn’t brought you here, if he’d have left you on that hotel floor, you’d have died—in that room, or another just like it. One day, or two at the most.”
Dogs in the gutter rotting to skeletons, rats nibbling at their gaunt bones . . .
“He brought you here, Eli. He pays your expenses—your doctors and nurses, your food.” The man twisted Eli’s cheek to the pillow. “Food! All your treatments, all of your medicine,” he whispered hard. “Do you see?”
Eli nodded. The young man released him, slumped back and sat in the chair. He covered his face. Eli stared through the half-light. The man rocked, and breathed in and out with deep shudders. His hands tumbled down from his face. “I’m not sorry for you.”
Eli was bleeding—a slippery cut on his lip.
“I’m not sorry for you—I see you too clearly. You’ll never have pity from me.”
Eli stared at the man—his one wild eye, the other that wasn’t quite there.
“Richard,” the man went on, “saved your sad life. He pays for your food. What is he?”
Eli swallowed blood.
“No one else needs to know, Eli—you and I understand. A man pays your way, gives you food and a roof—you believe he must hurt you? So what if he doesn’t? That’s not essential—that’s his own choice. What matters is that you do what he tells you because—”
Eli nodded again.
“You see!” the man said softly. “Say it—you know it.”
Eli heard the balloon skittering over the ceiling.
“Eli, why must you do what such a man asks of you?”
“Because he owns me,” Eli said.
When I was a youth, a stray cat crossed my path. Its fur was filthy, its tail at right angles, its ears chewed to knotted pink stumps. My heart went out to it.
Then the cat looked at me, and I saw by its eyes it would scratch me if I came too close. Like a coward I stepped back and let it pass by me. It disappeared into brush.
“Is Boris your father?”
“No.” Eli spoke around a toffee.
“How did you meet him?”
Eli looked up. The candy was glued to his tongue.
The foreigner glanced from the book he’d been writing in. “Do you remember how you met Boris?”
“No.” The toffee squeezed down Eli’s throat.
Richard looked at Eli a moment longer, nodded and wrote in the book.
Eli let himself breathe. He peered in the bag that Richard had brought him—toffees and chocolates and candies one sucked. There was no glue. He’d thought that there might be. He’d felt let down about that.
He reached for a chocolate.
“No more, Eli—not until later.”
Eli pulled his hand out.
“How long have you been with Boris?” Richard asked. “Where did you live before?”
Eli thought.
“With my father,” he answered. Richard’s head rose. “My father’s dead—he died in a car crash. He was burned alive.”
“Really?” Richard lifted an eyebrow. “And your mother?”
“She didn’t die—I think she misplaced me. Babies are small. It was dark.”
The man was writing again. Eli looked beneath his chair—a small black machine with little wheels turning. It was recording them.
Eli lay back on his pillow. Richard had told him he could lie down if he wished—he’d said that Eli was to tell him if he grew too tired, that he was to answer all the questions to which he knew the answers, that if he didn’t know the answers, he was to say so, but he was never to lie.
Richard the foreigner had been excited. His hands had shaken when he’d turned the machine on. His words had tripped over themselves. His eyes had been happy, his long mouth had smiled—all because he’d asked Eli how he felt that morning, and Eli had answered, “All right.”
“I don’t suppose you know where your mother is now?” Richard had calmed down a lot.
“She lives in a house outside the city—a giant white house with a gate. She’s rich, I think, and very pretty. Her cars go in and out.
“One time,” Eli sat up—the foreigner was listening, the recorder turning its wheels, “once some friends and I went up there. We told the men at the gate they should let me in—my mother was waiting for me. They wouldn’t, so we threw sticks and rocks at the cars.” Eli’s breathing grew fast. He coughed very quickly, pressing a hand to his chest. “They chased us,” he said when again he could speak. “The men at the gate were slow and stupid—they were—” and Eli used a word that Boris had often called him.
Richard sat still. He switched off the recorder, picked it up and stood.
“I need to—” he glanced at the pen he was holding. “I’ll be back.” He walked from the room.
Eli emptied the candy bag. He unwrapped a chocolate, another, another—he filled his mouth till it was so crowded that he had to drool on the sheet.
The foreigner was talking in the hallway. The door wasn’t closed all the way. Eli heard the words “rubbish” and “governor’s house.” Eli thrust hard candy into his pillowcase. He stopped and listened again.
His own voice—or not his voice exactly, but his very words just as he’d spoken them. In the hallway, Richard had switched on the recorder. Someone was listening to it.
Eli was fascinated. He forgot the candy—forgot even to swallow—and listened to himself. Then his voice was switched off, and there was another—quiet, so low Eli couldn’t catch the words, but he knew it was the one-eyed man speaking, and he felt suddenly cold.
Richard returned. He wasn’t smiling. He sat down in the chair.
“I told you no more candy,” he said.
Eli’s quick hand wiped his chin.
“I told you—” Richard began, and stopped. “I admit I’m disappointed, Eli. Not about the candy only. I know you lied to me.”
Eli didn’t move. The foreigner was big—he was undoubtedly strong. He wore soft sweaters, but that didn’t mean the body beneath wasn’t hard.
“I didn’t lie,” Eli breathed, then added, “please.” The candy, a lump in his gut. “Please,” he repeated, “I swear I didn’t lie.”
“You’re lying now to me.”
Eli threw up—dark chocolate over the sheets, splashing wide, hitting the man. Eli fled and fell back off the foot of the bed. He wriggled himself underneath it. He was coughing and retching—a hand on his ankle. The man pulled him into the light.
Eli curled himself, covered his head with his arms, squeezed his knees into his chest—he felt the man’s mighty hand wrap his wrist. He waited to hear the bone snap.
“Eli?”
He waited.
“Eli—”
“Don’t break it,” he whispered. “Don’t break it—I’ll do whatever you say.”
Silence. The foreigner’s hand released Eli. Richard pushed onto his feet. He stood for a moment, then moved to the doorway and spoke something into the hall.
Eli retched again, summoning nothing. The chocolate and toffee were gone.
“Lower your arms.” Richard held a towel—it was wet and he wiped Eli’s face. He washed Eli’s stomach, his arms, and his chest above where the bandage was tied. The water was cool. Eli was shivering. He lay himself on the floor.
A blanket covered him.
“Take down your shorts.” Eli slid off his shorts, and felt the man thread another pair over his feet. “Pull them up, Eli.” Eli obeyed, and understood he was now clean.
Others were in the room—stripping off bedsheets, mopping the mess from the floor. Richard sat down close beside Eli, and pushed a pillow beneath his head.
“So,” he sighed, “we’ll start again, shall we? This time you’ll tell me the truth.” Eli found that the candy he’d shoved in the pillowcase had already been removed. “Your parents?”
He was incredibly tired. “I don’t know what happened to them.” He thought he felt Richard’s hand touch his hair—quickly, and then it was gone.
“So you lived—”
“I lived in a children’s home.”
“And you met Boris there, am I right?”
“The matron told me to go to her office. Boris was waiting inside. He pulled me out from under a desk—like we two today, only there was no chocolate. Without the chocolate, but with the sickness. It was a little like that.”
There are nights when a man lies awake in his bed and all his mistakes wander by—his errors in judgement, his miscalculations, the ways that he’s not been enough. They pass by and kick him, each failing, and cut with without ever letting him bleed. He rolls to his chest, feels a weight on his back.
“Do it,” he says to the weight. “Tear me open.” He waits, trembling, hoping to feel the blade enter.
What he really wants is mercy.
On Eli’s last day in the hospital, Niko visited him—Niko the Twig, so pale and small, so glad to see his friend. Niko had thought Eli dead, and he held him and kissed him, and pressed Eli’s cheeks until his lips puckered, then laughed and kissed him again.
They colored in Eli’s coloring book. They each sucked a piece of hard candy. Niko wore shorts and a robe with a tie. He was in the hospital, too.
They spoke of Richard, whom Niko had first met after the raid, which he described to Eli as a shout at the door with men bursting violently in. The children had screamed. Boris had been thrown to the floor by four men who’d lain atop him. He’d cursed and cried as they’d dragged him away, shouting of his love for his children, and how they would starve without him.
Some of the children had tried to steal away, but Richard and the one-eyed man had been there to see that they didn’t. The men had spoken kindly to the children—had given them candy and told funny stories until they were smiling again. Then the men had loaded them into a van and had taken them to a large house where food was waiting, and gentle-voiced women, and sparkling bathtubs, and beds.
Niko adored Richard, and he adored the one-eyed man who’d been so full of jokes, who’d wiped the tears of those who were frightened and given wild rides on his back. Niko clearly envied Eli for knowing both men so well.
Niko was wanted in his own room—the one-eyed man looked in to tell him. Eli stood very still and let Niko embrace him and kiss him once more on the mouth. He glanced up and found the strange young man watching.
The man’s eye caught Eli’s—a nod.
They left with Niko holding the man’s hand. Eli lay down on his bed. He watched a supper cart roll past his door. He heard a familiar voice in the hallway and turned his face to the wall.
“Eli?” He found it hard to believe he’d once found the accent so strange. “Are you awake? I’ve brought your supper. I hope you’re not too tired to eat?”
“Niko came,” Eli said without turning.
“I know,” Richard said.
“He told me the house was painted yellow. He said it was very clean. He said there was a sand lot behind it, and tires for children to swing.”
“That’s right.”
“Is it true that I can go there tomorrow? When I leave this place, I can live in that yellow house, or—” Eli stopped so that Richard would say it.
“Or you can come live with me.”
A thrill—the same that Eli had felt when Richard had first said the words.
“It’s a big decision, Eli, I know. Have you had time to think it through?”
Every moment for two whole days—even while Niko had been there. The man with one eye—when he’d nodded at Eli, had that meant he knew? He approved?
“I know how to work,” Eli said.
Richard didn’t answer.
“I wouldn’t be lazy—you wouldn’t have to beat me. I’d learn what pleases you.”
Richard said nothing. Eli was trembling.
“I don’t eat a lot, and you could save money like Boris did, giving us glue. It’s cheap—one can breathe it, it takes away hunger.” Eli felt rather desperate. He turned from the wall. Richard sat within reach. Eli reached for his waistband—
Richard stopped him. He caught Eli’s wrist and pulled it away from his belt. The grip was firm, but there was no danger. Eli knew that his arm wouldn’t break.
“The only thing that takes away hunger,” Richard’s voice sounded thick now, “is food.”
Eli was crying. He seldom did cry. He found that this crying felt good. He felt Richard’s hand on his head, very gentle. He felt Richard’s hand taking his, pulling him close till his face found the sweater, soft wool, warm comfort—secure.
“My house is blue,” Richard spoke very softly, “with a garden in the back. Flowers and vegetables—I could use your help, Eli. I won’t do as well without you.”
I’ve arrived at the place where I am, they tell me, because I haven’t obeyed. My master speaks, he sends down orders, but I refuse to heed. And so what I suffer—the pain and hunger—there is no pity for me.
I don’t believe it. I never will. A monster does not own me. When I hear the voice of my master, I’ll know it and I won’t run away.
In the meantime, I wait. I listen intently. I whisper to myself words like grace and impermanence. I close my eyes and I see . . .