The Growler

‘He grabs me. Hard. And yanks me away. I hate him. I hate myself.’ I remember Nicola saying this to me as I lay on the floor of my jail cell.  The cell is covered with a cold clay tile, infused with aqua, purple, and green specks.  My mind plays tricks on me and recreates Nicola’s face from this uneven pattern.   I see her everywhere dancing across my jail cell floor. ‘He grabs me hard. I have a bruise on my arm.’ Her words echo through the background of my memory.  The soundtrack to my captivity.

 

They took my wallet and my phone when they arrested me.  In the absence of distraction, I close my eyes, and Nicola’s svelte figure jumps into my mind. She’s sitting on that wooden barstool at Senses.  Her black hair, ran down to the small of her back, an aggressive mole on the side of her nose, smoking a cigarette.  Nicola - one of the sexy expats who should have left Taipei years ago.  Why didn’t you leave?  She’s always surrounded by a mist of smoke.  Complaining how the local men have small dicks and won’t even look at her.  Too smart to teach English and too trapped by the easy money to get out.  Boredom and loneliness have turned her nasty.

 

The rancid smell in the jail cell is overwhelming.  It’s like old cabbages and sour milk, a stagnant smog pressing down on me. I’m not sure if it’s the rankness of my own sweat or the squat toilet in the corner. I take short sharp breaths, my lungs feel compressed, restricted, and unable to fill up completely. 

 

Sometimes I fall into a fitful kind of sleep.  It’s then that I dream, incoherent images jumping into my mind. 

 

‘The first time was in Kenting, it was after that fire festival we all went down for. Nobody knows about it.’  She was biting her bottom lip, like a child who had done something naughty. ‘He was so rough, he threw me across the room, and ripped my clothes off. I was terrified.’

 

I can hear footsteps outside the jail cell.  It’s the sound that rubber soles make on linoleum, thump-squeak, thump-squeak.

 

I had asked her how old he was.  ’43. He has a 78 tattooed in the middle of his fucking back.  A tramp stamp of his age tattooed between his shoulder blades.’ She delighted in sharing this indiscretion, leaning in to tell me more.

 

Keys start rattling in the door and sweat breaks out all over my body.  I can’t remember if Taiwan has the death penalty or not.  Are they like China?  Do they take you out to a mobile killing van and shoot you in the back of the head?  

 

I’m at the squat toilet again, heaving up bile and saliva.  My stomach is performing summersaults trying to empty itself of the nothing that is inside of it. The room goes dark as little pinpricks of light fight for my attention.  I collapse down onto the side of the bed and put my head between my knees. Everything is spinning, spinning, spinning.

 

‘There’s something wrong with him, he’s only got one ball. He can’t quite get it fully hard. He pumps for hours, but nothing happens.  He loses his shit.  Throws chairs across the room, rages, kicks, and screams.  He scares me.’ I asked her if she was being safe. ‘I tell him to get out, I tell him not to come back again.  I swear every time is the last time.’ She looked so small, so fragile and so terribly sad.

 

‘But then… he’s sweet again.’ She said with a small smile. ‘He kisses me, touches me, goes down on me for hours! My growler! My sweet, sweet growler.’  Her laughter was like water running through a brook.  There was a lightness in it.  It sounded like summer and long lazy days.

 

A switch clicks and a bright light comes screaming into my cell causing me to blink and shield my eyes. ‘…My sweet, sweet grow…’

 

‘458 Hào fànrén, nǐ yīdìng yào gēn wǒmen yī qǐlái shěnwèn.’ The guards are standing at the door to my jail cell.

‘Ting bu dong! Wo Ting bu dong!’ I use up the little Chinese I know to address the guard. ‘I need a translator.  I’m an Australian Citizen, I need someone from the embassy! I don’t speak Chinese’

‘Xiànzài hé wǒmen yī qǐlái!’ They look angry that I don’t address them in Chinese.

‘I don’t understand.  Why am I being held?  Why has no one told me why I’m here? When can I call someone?’

 

The guards put their hands over their noses.   Apparently, they too find the smell abhorrent.  They look at me with revulsion.  Another dirty foreigner, a Wàiguó rén, making a mess.

 

I don’t know what day it is.  Nicola and I had drinks on Sunday night.  Monday morning, I was woken by a knock on the door.

 

Bang Bang Bang

 

‘John?’ Dave said. ‘Wake up, the police are here. They’re looking for you.’

 

 My roommate Dave always wakes up before me.  He likes to go for a walk on his treadmill, and sneak whomever he was banging the night before out of the apartment before I wake up.

 

‘Go away Dave, it’s still dark outside.’ 

 

‘John, I’m not kidding.  The police are at the door.’ Dave’s brow is furrowed, and his right leg is rapidly vibrating against the wall as he stands at my door.  Homosexuality may be legal in Taiwan, but you never want the police coming to your door.   

 

‘They want you to go in for questioning.  Something about a girl you were seen with at Senses last night.’

‘Nicola? Why would they want to talk to me about Nicola?’  I remember the message she sent me last night.

Just got home, you won’t believe who’s waiting out the front – the growler!!! XOXO

 

I’m walking down a long, dirty, pea-green corridor.  There’s a guard on either side of me.  They’re not saying anything. I can see the police officers look up as I walk past the rooms on my left and right.  Some of them say something to their co-workers, and others shake their heads in disgust.  It seems that my guilt is a foregone conclusion.

 

I enter another pea-green room.  There’s a large mirror against one wall and a desk with two chairs in the centre. A man dressed in a smart business suit looks at me and signals that I should sit at the chair opposite him.

 

‘Mr. Adams, please sit down.’

‘Oh my god, you speak English.’ Tears of relief start rolling down my cheeks. ‘Can you tell me why I’ve been arrested?  No, one has told me anything. I’m going crazy in that jail cell.’

‘Please, Mr Adams, sit down.’

I do as I’m told and anxiously look at my lifeline.

‘Can you tell me where you were on Sunday night?’

‘I was at Senses, a gay bar on Xinsheng Gao lu.’

‘Who were you with?’

‘My friend, Nicola Van der Meer.’

‘Is this Miss Van der Meer?’

He slides a manilla folder over to me, I open it and turn the photo over.  Looking at the photo I’m struck with the thought that there always have been and always will be monsters amongst us.  An understanding comes over me.  Those looks from the other police officers as I walked down the corridor.  The neglect I was afforded as I sat in my jail cell.  A wave of disgust threatens to engulf me.  Bile races up my throat and I’m crumpled over, jerking as I try to contain my gag reflex.  Nicola, sexy, fragile, sad, and lonely Nicola.  Naked, battered, bruised, her legs tied apart, her arms hanging limply next to her head.  Cigarette holes burnt into her supple flesh. A haunted expression across her now hollowed-out face.  The brutality is indescribable.

 

‘I take it by your reaction that you recognise the woman in this photo?’

‘Yes, it’s Nicola. Nicola Van der Meer.’

‘And by your own admission, you were with her on the night of her murder?’

I shiver as goosebumps make their way across my flesh. He thinks I killed her. 

I look him squarely in his eyes, ‘Yes, but when I left her, she was very much alive.’

‘Then how do you explain this?’ 

He slides another photo over to me. It’s a photo of her side table.  There’s something written in what appears to be blood – her blood.  Nicola’s last words.  She wrote them with her blood as she lay dying.  But what does it mean? It looks like – JA.

‘As you can see Mr Adams, the victim inscribed the letters JA on her bedside table.   Pointing to you as her killer.’

‘No! You’ve got this all wrong.  Ask my flatmate Dave, I was at home just after ten.  Nicola was still in Senses when I left.’

‘We have spoken with Dave, and he cannot verify which time you came home on Sunday night, it seems he was otherwise indisposed.’

Fucking Dave and his revolving door of booty calls!

‘Then what about the barman at Senses? Surely, he can tell you!’ Desperation clearly seeped into my words.

‘He did. He remembers you leaving together.’

‘We didn’t though, I came home early.’ I’m furiously wringing my hands, this seems surreal, murder, how could they think that I murdered her? ‘What about the traffic cameras?  I can tell you the route I drove.  I went past the Presidential Palace. Surely there are surveillance cameras outside the Presidential Palace?’

‘Mr. Adams, as you are driving an unregistered vehicle, any footage we obtain would be inadmissible.’ He starts collecting the photos and returning them to his manilla folder. ‘If you have nothing further to say in your defence, I must ask you to return to your cell now.  Your embassy has been informed of your arrest and they will supply you with consular assistance.’

The door opens and the guards who were waiting outside start walking towards me.

‘What do you mean return to my jail cell? What happens now?’

He looks at me calmly, this is just another day for him, he seems satisfied that a messy affair is heading for a neat conclusion.

‘Mr. Adams; now we charge you with the murder of Nicola Van der Meer and you become the problem of the courts.’

 

With that, the door is closed and the two police officers place their hands on my arms, pulling me back towards my jail cell. I’m numb, my legs refuse to move.  I feel cemented to the spot.  Realising that I’m not walking they begin to drag me.  Panic sets in, I pull away, ineffectually slapping their hands off my body.  I fall backwards and begin to half crawl, half run from them.  But there’s no point.  One of them grabs me by the foot and I’m blinded as a sharp pain travel across my jaw.  I can feel a blossoming warmth flowing from my mouth, a metallic taste on my lips.  When I look down there are drops of red falling on the aqua-green tiles. I think I’ve lost a tooth. 

 

JA that image keeps coming into my head.  I’d seen Nicola write my name before, and this didn’t look like her handwriting.  Was it possible she was trying to send me a message, tell me something? What could she have been trying to say? 

 

The police officers grab me once more, forcefully now, lifting me to my feet.  I can’t walk, I feel weak, and my legs drag along the floor.

 

’78!’ I spit these words out, half aware that something white has flown out of my mouth tinkling along the floor. I don’t care.  I’m shouting at the top of my lungs. ’78! He’s got his birth year tattooed in between his shoulder blades. 78!  It’s not JA, it’s 78!  The growler, it was the growler!’

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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