Fiction

Across the border

1. Every day we must pass the building site at the end of the street.

2. We ask ourselves, what stage is it at? Complete abandonment or complete destruction. Or perhaps a stage new to us that we do not have the words for.

3. We slap our hands against the wire fence and stare. But we don’t know exactly what we are looking at.

4. Steel rods like broken bones jut out of rubble. Dust. Flies. Piles of rubbish. An odd view of a woman three floors up setting a table. The wall has blown away or is still to be put up. She is like a circus performer artfully spreading a tablecloth on a blue sky.

5. This afternoon at the fence, I stood with neighbours, to look at a guy with his arm blown off. He was in an armchair. He turned towards us. I think he was on the fifth or sixth floor. Then a weapon locked on and blew him away. He was a bad guy. One of the leaders.

6. But what to make of the children and the babies. Even the question is obscene. What else can be made of a baby or a child? They are beyond reproach, messengers from Heaven.

7. Two days ago, we were at the fence when we saw a child fall from a six-floor shattered building – we pushed forward to catch him. But our efforts were not enough. We lacked the will or strength or moral certainty to push the fence over and rush forward in time.

8. Blue summer skies, white ruins. We must pass them on our way to the bus stop. Some choose to look the other way. It is understandable.

9. Yesterday a fight broke out on the bus. Someone was upset at what they had seen. Someone else said, Well, maybe you shouldn’t have looked.

10. Now the bus company has issued a special instruction: anyone who looks at the building site will not be allowed to board the bus.

11. This morning, I stopped at the fence for a look – I saw a young male pushing an old woman (grandmother?) in a cart, some thin kids banged their empty pots at me. I am still describing this scene to my fellow passengers when the bus stops. The driver and a security guy come down the aisle and tell me to get the fuck off the bus.

12. Our old neighbour was a solo mum. We had little to do with her, knew nothing of her history, or of how she had come to be alone. Her kitchen smelt different from ours. Hers smelt bitter. We never spoke to her. She looked out her front windows. We looked out ours.

13. Why have I just remembered that, do you think?

14. Today I stopped at the site. White dust rose from a corner. I watched it settle. I did not hear the children cry. Apparently, a doctor performed surgery on a child without anaesthesia.

15. Then at the bus stop a woman said, Look. The fuchsias are out already. Then on the bus, a guy at the back held forth and said, Look. Sugar is the true enemy. Sugar opens the door to cancer. Sugar is a dopamine boost to protein which doubles and redoubles and before you know the enemy’s tanks are hammering key organs. Sugar forces a fat man to his couch, with an appetite that wants more. More sugar. More chocolate. More Kentucky Fried. More Big Macs. More sugar-coated jubes. Sweet cane syrup.

16. We sat in the shame of our silence.

17. This morning at the bus stop, I saw them look away.

18. I saw them look at their phones for a message from their astrologer.

19. I heard one of them say, Isn’t it terrible? What happened to her? Like she’d been punched in the face. That plastic surgeon should be struck down.

20. I saw a man crouch to untie a shoelace only to retie it. I heard him say, No, sorry, didn’t see a thing. I was doing up my shoelaces.

21. I saw the bedsheets flap on the line, and the dog stretch and yawn.

On TV last night I saw a man with a cigarette in his mouth bend down and dismantle a roadside bomb in Ukraine. The road was grey and the trees dismantled by winter.

On world cinema I watched Mads Mikkelsen put a hunting knife through one of the two men who raped his wife and cut the throat of their son. I was hoping Mads would – and he did. A satisfaction like warmth passed through me. Revenge. How sweet it is.

A motorbike accelerates up the road. The camellias. The poor camellias in their trembling pink.

That is my truth-telling done for the day.

This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on October 18, 2025 as "Across the border".

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