Another day in this godforsaken place. He stuffs the groceries in the bag and steps onto the road. How much longer can I keep going like this? He lights his tobacco. And the old man will be there. Bloody hate him. I just hope he doesn't rattle me this time. He takes a puff. I can only hope though. He always does. Always...
Another day in this godforsaken place. He stuffs the groceries in the bag and steps onto the road. How much longer can I keep going like this? He lights his tobacco. And the old man will be there. Bloody hate him. I just hope he doesn't rattle me this time. He takes a puff. I can only hope though. He always does. Always...
A drizzle falls from the grey sky, gently brushing the cobbles on the road. The water fills in the blanks, creating an abstract picture of the reflected landscape. A row of clumped Tudor and red brick houses stand on both of its sides. The shape of a spire looming out of their rooftops distorts when another drop hits the puddle. Hills, with their peaks lost in the clouds, surround the place from every angle. The road leads onto them. The laden sun, hidden beneath the mantel of clouds, starts to set.
A few teenage boys are sat on the sidewalk. Upon the mellowing sound of the church bell, they say their goodbyes for the day. A nearby corner shop closes its doors.
Footsteps on the cobbles break the reflection with a splash. The once white trainers capture the ricochet and add another brown stain to the canvas. From his clenched fist hangs a stuffed plastic carrier bag. The neck of a whiskey bottle creeps out of it. In his other hand, he holds a cigarette wrapped in blurry paragraphs and creased pictures from some newspaper. As the rain intensifies, he picks up the pace, charging through every puddle that crosses his path. He tries to take another puff but the tobacco has dampened.
Bright storefronts with herbs, cutlery, books, and all sorts of nick-nacks illuminate the path up to the town’s end. Setting his sight onto the hill he sighs, and with a tired stride, he disappears from the spotlight. Behind him the remains of a wet cigarette lie on the road.
Coming closer to the hill’s peak, the wind blows the mist away. The light of a young moon hidden beneath the clouds starts to shine on the road. His toe catches an overexposed cobble. His ankle twists. His hip bones produce a hollow sound as they hit the ground. His head lands with a bang.
‘Fuck!’ The contents of the bag lay scattered before his stretched limbs. Some apples, potatoes, and a few eggs spill onto the road. At least the whiskey is fine. He sits back. ‘Ouch!’ He checks his forehead. A dark stain appears on his palm. Under the gloomy light he can’t tell if it’s blood or dirt. He looks at the broken shells and smeared yolk. Ain’t nobody picking those up. He chuckles. Shame though, it’s not like I stole them. Not this time at least. And they weren’t too cheap. He gets up and puts the groceries back in the bag.
His feet plummet into the mud of a small path. The sound of the rain hitting the plastic bag rises in tempo. He tries to shield his eyes from the oncoming water. The wind hums across the field, pushing his body off track. The mud permeates his shoes, numbing his feet and making his stride awkward. A pulsating light appears on the horizon. Getting closer, he manages to spot the shape of a house.
It’s a small two-storey structure in the middle of nowhere. A few pillars impregnated with mould loosely maintain its stability. It used to be white, once. Now, with the help of Mother Nature, it perfectly fits the greyscale palette of the place. Somewhere around it, and deeply stranded in the tall vegetation, lay the remains of a wooden fence. To the right of the house lies a small elevation. The ground looks the driest there.
He arrives at the front door and knocks, but the tumult from inside numbs his efforts.
‘Open the bloody door,’ he mumbles.
Inside the house, a voice bursts with joy. Footsteps become louder as someone approaches the door.
‘Josh!’ Shrieks a little creature hugging his legs.
‘Hey there,’ Josh says, trying to get inside.
‘Mummy! Mummy! Josh is back!’ The boy jumps around his older brother who has entered the hallway and proceeded to take off his muddy trainers.
‘Alright Georgie, calm down,’ says the voice of a slender woman as she steps into the corridor.
A checked skirt, the colour of leaves in Autumn, reaches down to her slippers; slippers which have probably seen more life than Josh himself. On top of the skirt and covering her lemon sweater, sits a dirty white apron with drawings of little yellow chickens. The smile quickly disappears from her youthful face. ‘Oh my God, Josh! What happened?’
‘Huh?’ Josh touches his forehead, smearing the blood all over his face. ‘Nothing. I’m fine,’ he mutters.
‘Georgie, go grab a towel!’ She says, wiping her hands against the apron. ‘What happened?’ She tries to touch his face, but he swats her hand. ‘Let me see!’
‘I’m fine, Mum,’ Josh says, trying to get past her. ‘I just fell.’
She picks up his chin. His neck muscles tense, trying to pull back. His eyes wander left, then right, away from her sight. She sighs. Josh’s head falls to his chest as she lets go.
The little creature appears next to her with a white tea towel in his hands. A few loose threads hang by its ends. Mum wipes Josh’s face. The towel soaks up the mixture of blood and mud.
The hallway extends from the entrance up to a flight of stairs. About midway through lies a half-open door to a dark room. Josh enters the next room, which sits closer to the staircase and from which light propagates.
Across from the entrance is a window, about five feet across and four high, facing the garden. There is barely any of the original paint remaining on its muntins which separate it into six equal parts. To the left sits a kitchenette. A round analogue clock with a white dial and two black hands hangs on one of the walls. In the centre of the room stands a naked wooden table with three chairs. Josh drops the carrier bag on it and sits on the chair closest to the window.
Georgie follows his brother. His arms hug a wooden car of natural brown tone with just three cherry red wheels. Kneeling on a chair opposite Josh, he proceeds to drive it back and forth following the scratches on the kitchen table. The toy’s surface is smooth, though imperfect, giving the impression that it was carved with a knife.
‘I may have cracked some eggs,’ Josh says, ruffling the bag.
‘Good you didn’t completely crack this one,’ Mum taps his forehead.
‘Where’s the old man?’ Josh says.
‘Josh, if you’re not willing to say Grandad it’s at least Bob. And please try to be more understanding this time. He means you well. He just doesn’t know how to phrase it,’ she exhales, looking at the whiskey bottle.
‘Hopefully the understanding is mutual,’ Josh says.
‘Josh,’ she looks at her son. ‘This last week he’s just been getting worse. You have to be more understanding.’
‘Come on Mum, he’s just grooming me into his ideal, like he did with Dad,’ he sighs. And you expect me to just take it on the chin?
‘Enough!’ Mum snatches the carrier bag from the table.
Because it’s true? How long can we keep running away from the truth? Josh sighs. ‘At least if he wasn’t spending half of the money on booze…’
‘Talking about wasting money, have you been smoking again?’ Though she knows his friends share their tobacco with him. ‘Take off that sweater, you’ll catch a cold,’ she adds, putting the bag on the counter.
With the garment off his torso, his protruding rib bones and fibrous muscles cast shadows on his pale skin; shadows that, with every single breath, move as if they had a life of their own.
Mum cleans the potatoes. Then, she fills a pot and a saucepan with the running water and places them on the stove. She turns on the gas knob. ‘Click,’ the stove replies. The flames don’t appear. ‘Click, click.’
‘Josh, honey, could you bring another bottle?’ She says.
‘Sure,’ he answers after a brief pause and slowly makes his way out of the kitchen. A few minutes later he comes back with an oxidised butane bottle rocking between his thighs. Mum disconnects the old bottle under the sink.
‘It’s the last one,’ Josh says, pushing the old bottle to the back of the cabinet and connecting the new one to a loosely hanging hose.
Mum takes a chef’s knife out of a drawer. It’s about a foot long from the handle to the tip. Its blade reflects the light from the cone pendant hanging above their heads. ‘Gulp, gulp,’ she drops the potatoes in the pot. Peeking into it, she seems to fish something out.
‘Tell Grampa to come down for dinner,’ she says as Josh heads out of the room. ‘And put a t-shirt on.’
‘Robert come down,’ Josh mumbles, entering the room across the hallway.
He comes back wearing a discoloured short-sleeved t-shirt ripped around the collar.
Mum’s gentle humming accompanies the murmurs of the boiling water. The pitter-patter of the rain marks the tempo of a serene tune. Occasionally, scratching sounds break the music pattern as Josh’s nails pierce the wood on the table. The clock silently ticks another minute.
‘Dad, dinner’s ready!’ Mum shouts towards the staircase as she leans into the kitchen doorframe.
‘All right, all right. I’m coming,’ a deep voice grunts from upstairs. It has a strange tone to it, as if someone was gurgling water while speaking. The stairs creak under his footsteps.
Under the doorframe appears an old man. Despite his stooped back, the top of his bald head covered with liver spots almost caresses the top beam. His sad eyes, hiding beneath the falling eyelids, scan the room. When he coughs, the skin flaps on his cheeks vibrate. ‘Slurp,’ a thin thread of saliva travels back to the corner of his lips. His big sausage fingers knead the dry skin under the stubble. He sits on the chair opposite Josh.
*This review contains spoilers*
Hallelujah by Niko Janarek is a short story of a small dysfunctional family, brothers Josh and Georgie, their mother and grandfather Bob. Tensions are present from start, particularly between Josh, a rebellious teenager who is artistically minded and Bob, an alcoholic who would rather see his grandson pursue a career in the army. A heated spat ensues between the two generational alphas, resulting in the off-scene death of Bob, after he stumbles back to his bedroom.
Acts two and three follow closely Josh and the young Georgie, who rapidly try to conceal the body of their deceased grandfather. Appearances of the mother figure become fleeting; her sudden change in personality (including instances of extreme paranoia and denial), suggest a character undergoing severe mental trauma. Her acknowledgement of her father's death occurs towards the end of act three, when she walks in on Josh attempting to set Bob's body on fire. Believe it or not, things escalate further from there.
As a reviewer it hurts me to score this book two stars out of five. The writing and poetic language is deployed nicely for some of the early scene setting and during dramatic events, this could have, and should have, been a better book. Hallelujah's main problem lies in the storytelling itself. Some events happen at too slow a pace while other important areas are seemingly skipped over altogether. Given the lack of transparency around Bob's cause of death, there is a massive plot hole in Josh's thought process as to why his instant reaction is to conceal the body.
Other minor details include not establishing Georgie's age (his mannerisms are that of a very young child, yet he appears capable of manoeuvring a heavy body into a shallow grave) and the heavy use of expletive language in too short a space of time. Josh's frustrations could be shown better through internal monologues and his interactions with the outside world.
Hallelujah, a twisted coming of age tale of one boy's transition into manhood, has all the creative skill to make it a good read, if only the structural foundations were not as sandy.
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