The Gifts

by Karen Perry

  ‘I am. And you, Cozimo? Do you have children?’

  He sipped his coffee, shook his head.

  ‘There was a time, when I was a younger man, before I came to Tangier… There was a woman in my life, and our relationship was very much like a marriage. She became pregnant. An accident, as they say. Ridiculous phrase.’

  He thought back to the man he had been then, young, unhappy, lost in the vast city of London, working on the periphery of the art world, desperately wanting to be noticed, to break through and become the person he could envisage in his own mind. And then news of the baby came and all he felt was resentment towards this obstacle in his path.

  ‘What happened?’

  He took a breath, looked at her.

  ‘I didn’t want it. I didn’t want her to have it. I told myself that it was not the right time, that it would be a disaster for both of us. So I nagged and nagged until eventually I wore her down and she got rid of it.’

  If Maya felt any kind of judgement about what he had done, she didn’t show it. Her face remained impassive, waiting.

  ‘I haven’t thought about that baby in years,’ he told her, an unfamiliar emotion nipping at his edges: shame.

  ‘What happened to her? Your girlfriend?’

  He shrugged. Then closed his eyes and ran a hand over his face. He was so tired, and the air was so heavy.

  ‘We didn’t last. Not after that – not after what I made her give up. She couldn’t forgive me, and every time I looked at her I was reminded of what I had done.’

  It had been both an ending and a beginning. That one decision was like a crease running down the centre of his life, marking out the point at which he had decided to change, to become something different. Soon after that, he quit his job, sold what he had and, bolstered by a modest inheritance, he had set himself up in Tangier, opening his bookshop, finding his home. Surrounded by new friends, he had set about reinventing himself. How easy it had been in the end, shrugging off that old life, as easy as shedding his clothes. And stepping into his leather slippers, his djellaba, he felt himself relax, felt the freedom of anonymity, a freedom that allowed him to cultivate an aura that was both regal and enigmatic. Slowly the man inside him had emerged, taken his place in the world, such as it was. It was disconcerting now, all these years later, to realize that all this time the ghost of that baby had been there, silently cradled in his conscience.

  ‘What happened, Cozimo?’ Maya asked gently. ‘What happened to make you think of these things?’

  He looked at her then, saw the patience and concern in her eyes. It would be so easy to tell her. That hard heavy feeling in his chest of late. Coughing in the bathroom that morning. Blood in the sink. A line of vermillion running through his phlegm. Fear and recognition coming at him too fast. He knew what it meant. His father had died of lung cancer.

  But he didn’t tell her this. Something held him back. Instead, he told her about the boy, about the numbers game, about how Dillon had held that card up with its frightening image of death – brandished it, almost – and it had felt to Cozimo like this boy was sentencing him to some frightening fate, and in that moment he had come close to hitting the child.

  ‘Cozimo,’ Maya said, reaching out to touch his mottled hand. ‘I know the Tarot. The cards can only guide and suggest, but they will not predict a future you still have the freedom to alter.’

  She smiled at him then, and he felt her soothing words, the strength of her character, and he tried to latch on to it, to bolster himself. And yet it was not enough. Scarlet on the white ceramic. It flashed across his mind.

  She took her hand away and got to her feet, stretched a little as she gazed out the window.

  ‘It’s the heat,’ she said then. ‘It’s getting to everyone.’

  He looked up as she turned around to face him.

  ‘There will be a storm later and the air will clear.’

  ‘Yes,’ he agreed.

  Two or three new customers walked into the cafe and found seats and looked about them for service.

  Maya stubbed what was left of her cigarette into the ashtray.

  ‘Go and see your friend, Cozimo. Deliver his gifts to him. It will make you both feel better.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, and in that moment he even believed it.

  ‘Come and see me again soon,’ she said, touching his shoulder once before she left him.

  After a moment or two, he put his money down on the table next to his empty cup, then got to his feet and reached across for the bag with the gifts.

  Evening

  There would be no sunset this evening. A heavy bank of cloud hung low over the city, trapping the heat within. All day, he had waited for it to lift, for the rains to come, but still it endured.

  It was late by the time he reached the top of the hill. Cozimo’s chest hurt with the effort of this last stretch; he coughed a little as the bookshop came into view. He had hardly visited it lately – his business was sliding into decline, fast becoming a hobby more than a means of making a living. Still, it hardly seemed to matter at that moment.

  Light was fading fast. He wondered whether Robin was home yet, wondered whether Harry had discovered that he had left the gifts behind. All day he had been carrying this bag around with him – he felt the weight of it now, the groove made by the string handles across his fingers and the palm of his hand. He should have brought it here earlier, but something kept holding him back, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on.

  Opening the door, he found the shop in shadow, made his way to the staircase and began the final climb. Already, he could smell cooking, spices in the air. The scent was like a warning – a barrier to entry – telling him that this was something private and he was not welcome. His behaviour that morning had been regrettable. Over and over, he had relived it throughout the afternoon – that moment when the boy held up the card, fear and anger colliding in Cozimo’s heart as he raised his hand, Harry’s face in the shadow of the doorway.

  ‘You will feel better,’ Maya had told him, but as he climbed the stairway, Cozimo felt doubt creep in.

  The silence in the apartment told him that Robin was not home. He paused before he reached the final step, holding his breath: Harry with the boy in his arms, carrying him down the corridor. Cozimo stood there, unseen, watching father and son, the boy’s arms flung around Harry’s neck, his face pressed against his father’s jaw.

  He saw it and it held him back. Doubt came flooding in. It felt, in that moment, that he was witnessing something not meant for his eyes – like a voyeur, he stood there, clutching the bag, trapped on the step, unsure which way to go.

  In years to come, he will return to this moment to ask himself why he did not stay. Why did he not at least leave the gifts in the hallway where they could be found? He will attempt, over and over again, to burrow back in time to read his own thoughts at that moment, on that evening, standing there in the shadows, vacillating. But every attempt will end in failure, his thoughts and what led him to his decision, for ever hidden from view, swallowed into the murky past.

  He waited until they disappeared into a bedroom, then Cozimo turned and silently went back downstairs. Outside, the air still felt heavy, although it was easier, now, going downhill. The bag swung by his side, and he thought about ringing Harry when he got home, considered whether that would be the best thing to do.

  But when he reached home, he found his clothes drenched in sweat. Half an hour passed, during which he washed and changed, worried a little more over his health, then fixed himself a martini, thought about dinner. The heaviness in the air was oppressive – almost unbearable now. A band of pain tightening around his temples. He stood in his bedroom and stared out the window at the sky – a greyish-white blankness – and willed the lightning to flash.

  But before it did, the doorbell rang. It startled Cozimo.

  Maya, he thought.

  Something unfinished between them. He remembered her parting touch on his shoulder. An un
spoken promise.

  He made his way towards the door and out into the courtyard.

  The light was dusky and darkening. There was a familiar figure behind the gate, waiting.

  It was not Maya, but Harry, and as he approached, Cozimo felt reluctance come over him, remembering the incident earlier that day, his friend’s darkening gaze.

  The gifts, he thought. He has come for the gifts.

  There was impatience in the way Harry stood, one hand beating out a rhythm against the gate as he looked away back up the hill from where, presumably, he came.

  Cozimo raised his hand in greeting.

  He went to the gate.

  ‘My friend,’ he said, opening the lock.

  He drew back the bolt, felt the rasp of metal sliding against metal, and that’s when it happened. The ground moved like liquid. The plates of the earth groaning and shifting, rock splintering against rock like some monstrous yawn far beneath the foundations of these helpless buildings. Fear opened its wings inside him and he saw Harry reach for the wall. Then a low rumble rose from the bowels of the earth and the ground shuddered and shook.

  Night

  Cozimo lights each of the four candles.

  The flame is hypnotic. In a way, he needs its mesmerizing flicker. It acts as a distraction, a lure to take him away from the stark facts of the day.

  It’s quiet now, although the silence is uneasy with a lingering fear of aftershocks.

  The fine filigree of the tray catches his eye. He reaches for it and places it on the table by the candles.

  The tray will be discarded, he imagines.

  He thinks of Harry still out there, scrabbling in the dust, the wreckage; wonders when he will give it up, accept the inevitable.

  Cozimo takes the roll of fabric in his hands, brings it to his face and inhales the pungent fumes of the marketplace, the diesel, the tobacco. Already, it smells like nostalgia.

  It’s darker now. He hopes Harry will return soon. Dreads it too. The heft of that grief, a constellation of unanswerable questions, the tortuous clawing of all those If Only’s. He, Cozimo, feels a little of it too – the glutinous cling of guilt.

  If only I had not stopped to talk with Maya.

  If only I had returned the gifts when I could.

  Still. The boy is dead. Lost in the rubble. A casualty of a snap decision – Harry, believing he could run down the road to retrieve the gifts for his wife, leaving the boy alone; believing that he could be there and back in a few minutes, not knowing what dark fate would befall his son in that small snapshot in time.

  Cozimo has swept up the broken glass, the shattered remains of his trinkets thrown to the ground during the quake. The place looks strange without them. Books lie where they fell. Outside, the fountain has stopped spurting. An occasional splutter of water, but that is all. And a crack has appeared in the ceiling. A narrow line passing straight through one of his stars.

  He thinks of Dillon here, only this very morning. Real, breathing, flesh and blood. Hears the echo of his voice, remembers the wonder in it: Aladdin’s Cave, he had said.

  He sees the boy in his bedroom once again, crouched down by the bureau. He is holding the card out – the card which represents death. Holding it up to Cozimo with an innocent gaze.

  It is only now, as he runs his hand over the saffron-coloured fabric on the back of the sofa, that Cozimo realizes the card was not for him at all. The boy had chosen it for himself.

  He sighs, takes a lighted candle in his hands and walks slowly down the corridor to his bedroom. At the door, he hesitates, then knocks gently before entering.

  Lying on his bed with her back to him is Robin. She is still and quiet, but he knows she is not asleep. Silently weeping, her body shudders at her loss.

  There is so little that Cozimo can do. What comfort can he offer? And still, he remains. Because he must. Because there is nothing else that can be done.

  He goes to the bed and softly, he says: ‘My dear?’

  Then he reaches out and touches her.

  Prologue

  Kenya, 1982

  A woman lies in a field, sunning herself. The grass grows long around her, and from it, she hears the sibilant hum of unseen insects. Nearby, the children sit in the grass, restless and bored, but content to leave her be. Above her, the air shimmers with heat. It is almost noon.

  She has flattened out a patch of grass with the tarpaulin they have used beneath their tent. It gives off a stale tang of sweat or mould, but right now that doesn’t bother her as she stretches out, legs crossed at the ankles, a paperback novel unread and flattened against her belly, sunglasses covering her eyes from the white glare of the sun. For now, all she wants is to lie still and soak up the heat.

  She breathes in the heavy air, feels the baking earth beneath her, and takes in the hush of the great meadows and plains that stretch out around her. The others left a half-hour ago, down the worn track towards the Masai village and she, Sally, has stayed behind to watch over the children. But the children are of an age that resists parental supervision. All summer long, they have held her at a distance, absorbing themselves in their new-found alliance, forming their own secret games, their own clandestine code. She feels driven out by their new demands for privacy. Even now, she can hear them stirring, getting to their feet, a resolve formed between them. She sits up and watches the three of them moving purposefully towards the downward slope of the field.

  ‘Boys!’ she calls to them, and when she calls a second time, they stop, Luke turning to look at her, Nicky mumbling something to Katie.

  ‘What?’

  She has to shade her eyes to see her elder son’s face, and even though it is in shadow, she can still see the sullen set of his features, the suspicious look he has been giving her for some time now. Recently, whenever she is with him, she has the sense that the boy is faintly disgusted by her.

  ‘Where are you off to?’

  ‘The river.’

  ‘No, Luke, it’s dangerous –’

  ‘Dad lets us.’

  ‘Even so, I’m not happy with –’

  ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake.’

  ‘Luke!’ she shouts, enraged.

  He opens his mouth to say something, thinks better of it and stands there chewing his lip, waiting. Sally feels prickly and uncomfortable, the vast heat rising around her. When she thinks of the trees that flank the river, the relief of shade there, she finds she hasn’t the heart to argue with him.

  ‘Oh, very well,’ she says, trying to sound firm and purposeful. She wishes she wasn’t seated. Her authority seems diminished, stretched out on her tarpaulin sheet, her son gazing imperiously down on her. Ten years old with the haughtiness of an aristocrat. ‘But you’re to be careful, do you understand? All of you.’

  She casts her voice out so that the other two will take note. Katie glances back but Nicky keeps his eyes fixed firmly on the dusty ground.

  ‘Luke,’ she says sharply, as he turns to go. ‘I’m counting on you to watch out for the others. All right?’

  He gives her a look, closed and unreadable, and there it is again, the feeling she’s had lately that he’s holding himself back from blurting something out and confronting her.

  ‘All right?’ she says again.

  He shrugs, then turns away. She watches him catching up with the others, overtaking them, his shoulders set with a grim determination, moving towards the shady banks with a purposeful air while the others lope along in his wake. How different they are, her two sons. Where one is bold and enlivened with a kind of animal energy, the other hangs back, dreamy and shy. Sally finds it hard sometimes to negotiate the role of parent to two such different children. If she is honest with herself, she knows she leans towards her younger son, finding she understands him innately, that she can identify with his dreaminess, with the rich inner life that occupies him. Her older son remains a mystery – an enigma – even though he lives his life so openly, almost aggressively, with an energy that sometimes baffles her. A
wave of feeling takes her as she watches them until they reach the trees and disappear into the shadows – her two sons, her beautiful boys.

  The sun is too bright, and the stifling heat makes it impossible to linger in the middle of the field. She can feel her body becoming desiccated, like the baked earth around her. Besides, there are things to be done before the others return. She gets to her feet and moves back towards the camp, leaving her book and the tarpaulin behind her – she will get them later, when Ken and Helen return with another driver.

  The tents have been collapsed already, but the job of folding and packing them away was abandoned when Mackenzie came back and they discovered he was drunk. God, what a scene. Sally doesn’t even want to think about it. She stops by the white van to check on him before she tackles the tents. Peeping in through the cab window she sees him stretched out on the seat, one arm thrown over his head, the other dangling down into the foot-well, the steady rise and fall of his chest as he sleeps it off. She cannot see his face as it is turned away, into the backrest.

  ‘I don’t like him,’ she had said to Jim that first day.

  They were in the office in Kianda, the two of them. Mackenzie had just left.

  ‘Why not?’ Jim had asked, surprised.

  ‘I don’t trust him,’ she replied, and Jim had laughed, shaking his head, before returning his gaze to his paperwork, one hand tapping out a rhythm with his pen.

  ‘You don’t trust anyone,’ he had said, but there was fondness in his tone, a light-hearted mockery that took the sting out of his words.

  But it was true – she didn’t trust the man, although she had nothing to base it on, only her own gut instinct. Within minutes of him stepping inside the office, she had felt the nudge of wariness. He was small, thin shoulders braced with tension, square-faced and flat-nosed, with nostrils that seemed permanently flared. She had watched him lighting up, puffing away on his cigarette the whole time they were making the arrangements, his small eyes flicking around the room but hardly ever alighting on her. He directed his comments to Father Jim, as if Sally wasn’t even there. The whites of his eyes were tinged yellow, as if nicotine-stained, and he never once looked her clear in the face.