One Big Damn Puzzler Read online

  It was now that he noticed that Managua was winking at him, first with one eye and then the other, and his heart sank another foot closer to the hut’s dirt floor. Another Westerner might have assumed Managua’s alternate winking was part of some ancient ritual, perhaps to welcome him. But William knew instantly it was no such thing, Managua could only be winking at him because he was winking at Managua. William had hoped that coming here, to a land that had sounded like some sort of tropical paradise, a slow and peaceful place, and moreover coming here to help people and thereby ease his constant unfocused guilt, would overcome or at least diminish all that, but here it was already, and he hadn’t even known he was doing it until he saw it reflected by Managua.

  William’s problem was Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, a mental disorder with behaviour patterns that vary considerably from one individual to another. The way it worked for William was that he was plagued by unwanted thoughts that filled him with overwhelming anxiety that could only be alleviated by certain comforting rituals the practise of which would somehow – magically and illogically – ward off the things he feared. At the same time William knew, as all OCD sufferers know – indeed it is a requirement for a diagnosis of OCD that they know – that both the unwanted thoughts and the idea that the rituals might protect him were illogical and ludicrous. In fact sometimes the rituals themselves became so demanding and frustrating that they had the opposite effect to the one desired and actually increased his anxiety levels and upped the frequency of the intrusive thoughts.

  William’s first intrusive thoughts had been about death. As a five-year-old child he would be lying in bed and suddenly have the idea that he was in a coffin and that the coffin was in a grave. He could feel the wooden sides of the coffin hemming him in, he sensed how cold was the earth beyond them. He would pass a cemetery and have the feeling that if he looked at a particular headstone he would find his own name upon it, as one day he surely would – or rather not him but someone else, he wouldn’t be looking at the headstone, he’d be under it, weighted down for eternity. In time it got so the trigger required to set him off down this melancholy trail would be something as insignificant as the mention of the word ‘death’, as in a phrase such as ‘I’m tired to death’. It might be an offhand remark used by a teacher in class, or another child in the playground. By the time he was nine or ten the fear and the rituals had begun to play a bigger and bigger part in his life. They were choking up his schoolwork; they were cutting him off from his friends.

  Although William guarded his fears and his rituals fiercely because he felt the very worst thing he could do would be to reveal them to other people and so make them real, he couldn’t hide his lack of friends from his parents. They were thoughtful, kindly people and his father, especially, adored his only son. When William was eleven, in an effort to help his social life they invited one of his classmates at the upstate boarding school William attended on a weekend home with him. Not only did the plan not work, it was such a disaster it actually accomplished the very opposite of what the Hardts had intended. It earned William the nickname of ‘Wanker’ and made him even more of a social pariah.

  It happened like this. William’s parents had invited the boys to spend the weekend at their holiday home on the Long Island shore. It was a pretty place – clapboard and shingles and a porch overlooking the beach – but it wasn’t very practical because it was so small. The Hardts had been given it as a wedding present by Mrs Hardt’s parents and although they should by now have upgraded to something more suitable for a family with children and their guests (William’s older sister Ruth had a friend along that weekend too), they just hadn’t any spare money for anything bigger. Besides, the place held too many happy memories of their early married life for them to be able to do it. There were only three bedrooms, his parents had one, of course, so William and his friend had to double up and Ruth and her friend did too. For all these people, there was just one bathroom.

  The only friend the Hardts had been able to get to come stay with William was of course another social pariah, but more understandably so than William, who was a nice boy but just a little odd. In contrast, the guest had everything against him a kid could have. He was small and weedy, he wore glasses and he had ginger hair. He was half Jewish which wasn’t the best thing to be in a WASP boarding school and on top of everything else he had the potential for a silly nickname. His name was Aaron Beach, which, with his hair, naturally meant everybody called him Sandy. With all this against him you’d have thought Sandy Beach would have made more effort to get people to like him, but as well as all the things he couldn’t help he had a horrible personality too. He was a real pain in the butt. His parents had never expected anybody to invite him for a weekend and practically wept with gratitude when the Hardts phoned up to ask. Mind you, after Sandy Beach had left, William’s dad had said they were probably crying with relief at getting shot of him for a couple of days.

  On this particular day, he and William were playing a game of chess in the bedroom they shared. William was a much better player but was forced to let Sandy Beach win because the brat would cut up rough if he didn’t and that would get William into trouble. Even when he was let win Sandy Beach was still a pain. What did it for William was when Beach said, ‘That’s your queen gone – prepare yourself for an early grave, my friend.’ Even the way he talked was irritating but it wasn’t what William noticed here. It was the word grave. It so paralysed him he moved a rook without thinking and blundered it. Unlike all the other pieces he’d lost, he hadn’t actually meant to lose the rook. Suddenly he felt suffocated by the heat in the bedroom. It was raining outside and the sea looked morose and threatening. William imagined himself dying and then came a sudden awareness of the inevitability of it all. He was going to die. There was absolutely nothing he could do about it. There was no way anybody was going to grant him everlasting life, not even if he offered to spend eternity with Sandy Beach, which he would have done. That’s how terrified he was.

  As Sandy Beach made the move that he hoped was his penultimate before checkmate, William scrambled up from the floor and made for the door. ‘I have to go to the bathroom,’ he said.

  In the bathroom William locked the door and took a deep breath. Calm down, he told himself, it’s going to be all right. The bathroom was spartan – it wasn’t big enough for any furniture – and, on this day, cold, and there wasn’t a deal of incentive to hang around in there, but William had a lot to do.

  If he stood with his back to the door, the lavatory bowl was against the opposite wall, to his left, and the washbasin was fixed to the same wall and immediately in front of him. The bath ran along the wall to his right, the taps at the end further away from the door. The floor was covered with black and white check linoleum which at this moment had the unpleasant effect of reminding William of his chess game and that had the effect of reminding him of what Sandy Beach had said. The linoleum had been laid in two strips with the join roughly down the centre of the room, running from the door to the washbasin.

  If William closed the door behind him, took a couple of steps into the room and stood with his feet apart, astride the join, and kept his head perfectly erect, he could look left and see into the lavatory bowl, but without bending he couldn’t see the water at the bottom. If he looked to his right he could see into the bath, but he couldn’t see down as far as the plughole. But by leaning to his left, he could see the water in the toilet bowl. And by leaning to his right, he could see the plughole. With a weary sigh at the unavoidability of it all he took up this familiar position. He leaned slightly left and saw the water. To even things up he returned to the vertical and then inclined a little bit right. He could see the plughole in the bath. But he couldn’t leave it at that; things still weren’t even. The lavatory had, of course, been favoured, by dint of going first. To square this he made a second run at the whole thing. He leaned to his right, took in the plughole and then leaned to his left, lavatory pan.

  For a brief mo
ment he enjoyed a sense of equilibrium and calm. His anxiety subsided for a nanosecond. But of course, only a fool – and William was no fool – would have been satisfied with this simulacrum of balance. For when he put the two sets of movement together, he had a sequence that went – WATER-PLUGHOLE-PLUGHOLE-WATER. In other words a sequence of four movements where two waters were bracketed around two plugholes. Water not only now went first but had the satisfaction of rounding the whole thing off and of also going last. This was so patently unfair it had to be rectified. So William put in another four movements, which were, naturally: PLUGHOLE-WATER-WATER-PLUGHOLE. He paused at the vertical, took a deep breath and felt a few seconds of peace. The anxiety was subsiding, he was going to get over this, everything would be OK.

  It was at this moment that Sandy Beach pounded on the door. Sandy Beach had not only got tired of waiting for William to come back and get checkmated, he’d also got so excited at the prospect of beating William, the best chess player in the whole of their class, that he was nearly peeing himself. He was desperate to pee and then he was desperate to do the checkmate.

  ‘Hurry up in there, I need to pee!’ he shouted.

  ‘OK, OK, go away, I won’t be long!’ William called back. Sandy Beach’s interruption did nothing for William’s anxiety level which now began to rise again after the brief remission granted by the second sequence. He made himself concentrate. He didn’t want to forget where he was up to and have to start all over again. What he had now were two groups of four, the first beginning and ending with water, the second with plughole. Although perhaps less uneven than his single initial glance in either direction, it was still worryingly askew. He had now to add another two sequences to match things up a bit. So he threw in another PLUGHOLE-WATER-WATER-PLUGHOLE and then a second WATER-PLUGHOLE-PLUGHOLE-WATER. What he had now was WATER-PLUGHOLE-PLUGHOLE-WATER; PLUGHOLE-WATER-WATER-PLUGHOLE; PLUGHOLE-WATER-WATER-PLUGHOLE; WATER-PLUGHOLE-PLUGHOLE-WATER. It might have ended there if Sandy Beach hadn’t called out, ‘If I don’t get in there this minute I’m going to pee myself!’

  In a moment of uncharacteristic irritability, brought about by the extreme pressure he was under, William made the mistake of shouting, ‘You do and I’ll tell the whole class.’ He didn’t mean it. William would never have done anything as mean as that, but Sandy Beach, who would, didn’t know that and that was why the remark would later cost William so dearly.

  Even then everything might have been OK had not Ruth heard the ruckus and come to investigate and then join in.

  ‘You come on out of there right this moment, William Hardt!’ she yelled, rattling the doorknob. ‘You’ve no call to be in there so long.’

  Unlike Sandy Beach, Ruth didn’t need to pee at that moment. What she wanted was access to the bathroom. Ruth was thirteen and hadn’t started her periods yet, although most of the girls in her class had. Amy Fowler who was spending the weekend with her and had now followed her out onto the landing had recently begun her periods and had made a big show of placing some sanitary towels in her bedside chest when she unpacked the night before. Ruth was ahead of Amy Fowler in everything else at school and this made her sure she was going to get her first period any time now and what worried her was that when it came there wouldn’t be any warning. It would just happen and when it did she was going to need to get into the bathroom urgently. She had to stop William blocking up the bathroom now. She couldn’t wait to fight that battle then. The alternative was just too horrible to contemplate.

  This wasn’t the only reason she wanted him out of there. Ruth was supporting evidence for research that indicates OCD may have a genetic factor since she had a few obsessions of her own. One was with bodily hygiene. She had a horror of bodily fluids which was why being able to get into the bathroom when her first period occurred was so vital. It also meant she was horrified at what William was up to behind that door. He was spending more and more time in the bathroom and she didn’t even want to think about why. She’d seen photographs of sperm swimming in biology textbooks – nasty little tadpole things – and it could drive her crazy worrying about it if she let herself. How long could they survive on a lavatory seat, for example? Did that sort of homing instinct they were said to possess work outside the womb? Did bleach kill them the way it did other microscopic organisms? And if not, what if the stuff ended up on the floor? Could it crawl across linoleum? Could you get pregnant even though you hadn’t had your first period? It was all too gruesome to contemplate and Ruth fought to keep it out of her head.

  ‘God,’ she said, turning to Amy Fowler, ‘that room is going to be drenched in sperm.’

  ‘Do you think so?’ said Sandy Beach, overhearing her. ‘Do you really think so? Is that what he’s doing in there?’

  Ruth turned and looked at him as if he were a sample of spermatozoa himself. It wasn’t a subject she wanted to discuss with a boy, especially one who looked like Sandy Beach. She turned on her heel, followed by Amy Fowler who lingered only long enough to say to Sandy Beach, ‘Men are just so disgusting!’

  In the bathroom panic was rising up William’s oesophagus like bile. He was finding it hard to catch his breath. He quickly began a new sequence of four fours, beginning PLUGHOLE-WATER-WATER-PLUGHOLE. By the time Sandy Beach rattled the door again he had: WATER-PLUGHOLE-PLUGHOLE-WATER; PLUGHOLE-WATER-WATER-PLUGHOLE; PLUGHOLE-WATER-WATER-PLUGHOLE; WATER-PLUGHOLE-PLUGHOLE-WATER; PLUGHOLE-WATER-WATER-PLUGHOLE; WATER-PLUGHOLE-PLUGHOLE-WATER; WATER-PLUGHOLE-PLUGHOLE-WATER; PLUGHOLE-WATER-WATER-PLUGHOLE.

  The door rattled again. ‘Come on out, I know you’re pulling your dick off in there!’ screamed Sandy Beach. ‘I’m going to tell the whole class.’ Sandy Beach wasn’t too nice to do this and that is how William ended up with his nickname.

  WATER-PLUGHOLE-PLUGHOLE-WATER; PLUG-HOLE-WATER-WATER-PLUGHOLE; PLUGHOLE-WATER-WATER-PLUGHOLE; WATER-PLUGHOLE-PLUGHOLE-WATER; PLUGHOLE-WATER-WATER-PLUGHOLE; WATER-PLUGHOLE-PLUGHOLE-WATER; WATER-PLUGHOLE-PLUG-HOLE-WATER; PLUGHOLE-WATER-WATER-PLUGHOLE; PLUGHOLE-WATER-WATER-PLUGHOLE; WATER-PLUGHOLE-PLUGHOLE-WATER; WATER-PLUGHOLE-PLUGHOLE-WATER; PLUGHOLE-WATER-WATER-PLUGHOLE; WATER-PLUGHOLE-PLUGHOLE-WATER; PLUGHOLE-WATER-WATER-PLUGHOLE; PLUGHOLE-WATER-WATER-PLUGHOLE; WATER-PLUGHOLE-PLUGHOLE-WATER.

  It wasn’t enough, but it would have to do. Each new round had at least reduced the unevenness to a smaller percentage of the whole, making it that much more bearable. And it was getting to the stage where it was counterproductive; having to do it, just having to remember it all, what with all the pressure from Ruth and Sandy Beach outside, would actually increase his anxiety levels if he didn’t stop now.

  ‘OK, OK,’ said William. ‘Gimme a minute, won’t you?’ He pulled his pants and shorts down and sat on the lavatory. After all, he was an eleven-year-old boy alone in a bathroom. He still had to masturbate.

  Thanks to Sandy Beach, when they returned to school William soon became known as Wanker, a British term meaning ‘complusive masturbator’ that Beach had somehow unearthed and that he smugly explained to their schoolmates had the auxiliary humiliating connotation of ‘total loser’. It was already difficult for William to disappear somewhere by himself – boys’ boarding schools offer few opportunities for privacy – and this new sobriquet didn’t help. So he devised other coping strategies for his OCD that could be done more or less in public. The first of these involved the alternate clenching and unclenching of his fists while they were concealed in his pants’ pockets. The trouble with this was that Sandy Beach spotted it and, in an attempt to ingratiate himself with the rest of the class, pointed it out in his own inimical fashion.

  ‘Wanker’s playing pocket pool!’ he chanted and William was caught, well, if not red-handed, then with his hands in his trouser pockets. After that he settled for blinking his eyes alternately. Of course when he did it really frenetically people couldn’t help noticing but they thought it was just a tic and nothing worse than another thing to think him odd for. Its big advantage was that it could bring him instant relief from intrusive thoughts, even in the
middle of a class. The downside was that his kindly father noticed him – as he assumed – squinting and thought the boy must have strained his eyes. He insisted on William wearing glasses even though the ophthalmologist said they weren’t at all necessary. And the result of that was that Sandy Beach used this as the ocular proof of William’s onanism, gloating, ‘I told you you’d go blind if you kept beating your meat.’

  Now, here, in Managua’s hut, William forced himself to stare. It made him look like a police mug shot of a serial killer but not blinking at all was the only way he could guarantee he wasn’t doing it alternately. He was brought out of his reverie about the past by the realization that Managua was speaking to him. It was the question he had been hoping wouldn’t come up, at least not yet.

  ‘What for you is come here?’ asked Managua.

  All eyes in the hut were on William. The natives were prepared to be astonished by his answer. The only person to come to the island in recent times and not affect it adversely was Miss Lucy. Before that, over a period of half a century, they had been visited sporadically by the British en masse and most of the islanders were still confused over what that had all been about. The British had introduced the black bantam pigs, built half a hotel and then left. Besides that, the only other newcomers in the last fifty years, during one of the lapses in British interest nearly two decades ago, had been the Americans, who were mad in a different way from the British. Instead of building something – half-building something – the Americans had more or less destroyed the northern village. Then they’d gone away leaving behind not black bantam pigs, but something far more deadly.

  William smiled. ‘I have a job to do here,’ he said, and looked around as though that might take care of it. He was pleased to see all the natives were smiling back. He didn’t know that they had no idea what he was talking about because they hadn’t encountered the Western concept of work. The nearest they came to it was catching fish or picking fruit and those were just things you did, for your own immediate needs, as natural as breathing or taking a shit every morning. It wasn’t something you thought of as work.