Extract: Small Circle of Beings by Damon Galgut

This entry was posted on 01 June 2021.

Booker Prize-winning author of The Promise, Damon Galgut’s economy of style and his chilling gift for understatement and the macabre are nowhere more eloquently displayed than in this gripping story.

 


 

“A CRY IN THE NIGHT. Perhaps I have been waiting for it: I am instantly awake and fumbling for my gown. I wrap myself in it, and stumble barefooted across the wooden boards to David's room. He's sitting up in bed, the sheets thrown aside.

The pain, he says, is still there.

I sit by him and murmur to him till he falls asleep. This takes a long time; he whimpers to himself, he bleats. I stroke his head with a rhythmical hand, back and forth. Eventually he subsides into the pillows. His head falls aside, distilling his dreams.

In the morning he seems to be all right. The pain is gone. I help him dress for school (though he's old enough to do this for himself). As he and Stephen drive off I stand at the window and watch them go. David looks up and I shrink back where he cannot see me.

When I fetch David from school after lunch, he's waiting for me on the curb, his chin on his knees. I haven't been thinking about it, but as we drive back up the long dust road, I say to him: 'How is the pain?'

'Gone,' he says. He seems preoccupied and I don't question him further.

It's later, after he's eaten, that he says, looking at me over the table: 'Red came out.'

'What?' I say.

He tells me. In the cloakroom at break, as he stood at the urinal, a stream of red came from his body. What frightened him more was the reaction of the other boys. The row of them along the trough, as they saw the bright flow pass by their feet, turned their heads one by one to look at David. He recalls with vague alarm the faces turned toward him, staring with open mouths.

'They watched,' he says.

I feel a rush of pity for him, this little boy who contrived by means beyond his control to piss blood.
'Did it hurt?' I say.
'It burned,' he says. 'A little bit.'

Something is wrong. I take David that same afternoon to see the doctor. Because I don't know another, we consult the same doctor who treated my mother. It's been a long time since I saw him last, but he hasn't changed much.

He's a little man whose body is made up of circles. He has round cheeks, a bald head, and two perfectly round eyes behind round spectacles. His name is Doctor Bouch. He makes David undress and lie on the table. Then he proceeds to examine him, going over the surface of his body with the soft tips of his fingers and the cold steel ends of his instruments. As I stand by, watching, clutching my handbag to my stomach, I catch David's eye and smile. He doesn't smile back.

When he has finished, Dr Bouch tells me that he can find nothing wrong. 'It happens,' he says, 'from time to time.'
People pass blood in their water. The pain, he says, 'could be anything'. But it's likely to be minor. I am to call again if it comes back.

 

Extracted from Small Circle of Beings by Damon Galgut, out now.

 


 
by Damon Galgut
 
 
 

 

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