Katherine Carlyle

by Rupert Thomson

  He sets his briefcase on the floor and sits down. All his actions are deliberate, precise. I’m beginning to be able to imagine his apartment. It will be ordered, spartan. Meticulously clean.

  “I’m glad you came.” He sounds faintly disgruntled, as if there’s an aspect of meeting me that he finds difficult.

  “I like it here,” I say. “The other place I like is Café Einstein.”

  “Ah yes. The Einstein is very well known. An institution, really. I haven’t been there for years.”

  “Perhaps if you live here …”

  “Yes, perhaps.”

  The waitress brings his coffee. He glances up and thanks her. She’s dressed more discreetly today, in a black ribbed sweater with a high neck.

  He turns back to me. “Where you’re staying, it’s not a good area.”

  “I know. You told me that yesterday.”

  He sighs.

  “There’s a nightclub,” I say.

  “And prostitutes. There are also prostitutes.”

  I remember the idling car and the woman in her shiny boots. I remember the laughter in the middle of the night. The creaking. The hot-pink blinds.

  “It’s not safe,” Klaus says. “For a woman.”

  As I watch him over the rim of my coffee cup, both my elbows propped on the table, something lifts inside me. I think I know where this is going.

  “The thing is, I have a big apartment —” He pauses, then plunges on. “You would have privacy.”

  “I think you might have missed a sentence out.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Are you offering me a place to stay?”

  “Oh, I see. Yes. That’s what I wanted to say.”

  “Do you live alone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you have a girlfriend?”

  He hesitates.

  A voluptuous woman in a dark-green dress stands smoldering beside him, one hand on his shoulder. Valentina. The expression on her face is privileged, dismissive. In her eyes I’m just another girl who is on the make. I may have high cheekbones and good legs but my breasts are small. I’m not a threat to her. I’m too skinny.

  “No,” Klaus says at last. “No girlfriend.”

  I signal to the waitress that I want to pay. When I face Klaus again he looks fearful, almost panic-stricken. Perhaps he thinks he has failed to convince me, and that he has blown his chance. The woman in the dark-green dress is gone.

  “You can have your own room,” he says quickly. “For as long as you like.”

  “I can’t afford to pay much money.”

  “I didn’t ask for money.”

  “You don’t know me. I could be anyone.”

  “So could I.” He leans back in his chair. For the first time I feel a certain authority or confidence come off him. Once again I wonder what he does.

  I finish my coffee. The bill arrives.

  “I have an idea,” Klaus says. “Come and have a drink this evening. Then you can see the apartment for yourself.” He wants to text me his address and phone number, but I tell him I haven’t got a phone. “No phone?” Like Oswald, he doesn’t know what to make of this. In the end he jots his details down on the back of my bill. “The old-fashioned way,” he says, and smiles.

  I study the address I have already memorized. “What time should I come?”

  “Seven.”

  As I tuck the piece of paper into my bag I think of the dozens of messages I have received in the past few months, only to ignore them. Though this one is obviously for me — I’ve provoked it, engineered it — things haven’t got much clearer. I’m reminded of Magritte’s famous painting of a man in a bowler hat positioned in front of a mirror. Since the man is painted from behind, all anyone can see is his back. And in the mirror too that’s all anyone can see.

  Something jerks at the edge of my field of vision. It’s the minute hand of the clock above the bar. I look at Klaus again. His eyes, small and steady, are fastened on my face.

  “Won’t you be late for work?” I say.

  /

  When I was twelve and a half my mother took me to a nightclub on the coast road not far from Gaèta. We parked with two wheels in a ditch, then walked down a steep path between spiky clumps of aloe vera. The lanterns that hung on thin poles, guiding people to the entrance, swayed and flickered in the warm breeze that blew in off the sea.

  “We’ll have to pretend you’re sixteen.” My mother gave me a sidelong glance. “Can you manage that?”

  I wasn’t sure.

  “Leave it to me,” she said.

  Somehow we slipped past the buttafuori, with their muscular necks, their headsets, and their immaculate tuxedoes, and once we were beyond them my mother hugged me and then stood back.

  “We did it,” she said. “You did it.”

  I wish I had a photo of that moment — her face lit up and full of glee, and only the glittery Neapolitan darkness behind her.

  I drank my first ever glass of prosecco that night. My mother drank two. Later, we danced. I let the music take me over. My hair grew heavy, spiny with sweat. You could go inside if you wanted, but there were outdoor dance floors too, some cut into the hillside, others down by the water. Steps that were tiled or inlaid with mosaic led from one level to the next. Intense green spotlights made the plants look hyper-real. Far below, white lines expanded sideways in the dark where the waves broke against the rocks.

  A man with a shaved head asked my mother if she would dance with him.

  “No,” she said. “I can’t.”

  He looked puzzled. “Why not?”

  “I’m dying.”

  “All the more reason.”

  They stood still, staring at each other. Then my mother shook her head and took my hand and led me to the low wall where we had left our drinks.

  I liked the man for his directness and his restraint. Round his left bicep was a circular tattoo, an armband made of ink. His shaved head shone. When my mother turned him down he shrugged and moved away, and though he continued to watch her from a distance he didn’t approach her again. I don’t think she wanted anyone to enter the world she had conjured for us. It wouldn’t sustain another presence. It was too fragile and too rare, like bone china or gold leaf.

  “I’m sorry,” she said later, when we were sitting on a bench next to the sea. “I don’t know why I said that.”

  “To frighten him away,” I said.

  She looked at me, her face as still and deep as water at the bottom of a well, and I thought I could see myself in it, far away and small and slightly blurred. She drew me close and kissed my hair. She told me she was proud of me and would always be proud of me. She said I should never forget that.

  At two in the morning we drove north, back to Rome. A dense fog swirled around the car. We were passing through the Pontine Marshes, my mother said. Before Mussolini drained the area, it was a breeding ground for malaria. If the pumps were switched off, she told me, the water level would rise in less than a week. The fog thickened. She had to slow right down. It was as if we were motionless and big pale rags were being thrown at us. The temperature dropped and she turned the heater on. The heater — in July! Once, I peered upwards and saw a patch of dark clear sky loaded with stars, then the fog closed round the car again.

  “We’re very late,” my mother said. “Your father’s going to be worried.” She sighed. “It wears me out.”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  “He hates me for being ill,” she said. “He thinks I’ve let him down.”

  “He loves you too,” I said.

  She reached across and squeezed my hand. “I know, angel. I’m sorry. You probably think I’m talking nonsense.”

  “I think you’re beautiful.”

  She began to cry and the trunk of a tree leapt towards us. She swerved just in time. “Oh God.” The car bumped up onto the verge. She put the handbrake on and wiped her eyes. “Fuck.” Now we were still, bits of fog drifted through the headlights like a flock
of ghostly sheep.

  “Are you all right?” I said.

  I saw her gather herself, all the bravery and sparkle.

  “You’ll have a wonderful life,” she said, “I know you will. You’ll sleep in palaces, and dance with presidents, and —”

  I must have given her a funny look because she broke off and started laughing.

  “You’ll see,” she said.

  Then she shifted into gear and drove on.

  I dozed with my forehead against the window and when I woke we were passing the Colosseum. In the moonlight it looked like a big piece of bone picked clean by vultures.

  My mother looked across at me. “Say what you used to say. You remember? When you were small?”

  I smiled because I knew exactly what she meant.

  “Go on,” she said. “Please.”

  I took a breath and turned to her.

  “Are we there yet?”

  /

  “I love this painting.” Klaus stands next to the canvas, arms folded. “It cost half my annual salary. What do you think?”

  The painting in question, which is enormous, glossy, and uniformly gray, hangs on the back wall of his living room, next to the arch that leads out to the hall.

  “Very atmospheric,” I say.

  “Atmospheric.” Klaus laughs. “That’s good.”

  “I studied art history. At school.”

  “Did you?” Still chuckling, he turns away. He runs his fingertips along the spines of a row of hardback books, then he lifts the corner of a kilim that is draped over the back of a chair and stares at it with unfeigned admiration. He seems constantly astonished by his environment, even though he’s the person who’s responsible for it.

  I too step back from the painting. The woman in the cinema described Klaus’s apartment as “amazing,” and it’s easy to see why. When he first moved into the building he had four rooms, he told me earlier, but then he learned that his neighbor was returning to Hamburg. He bought her out and had the two apartments knocked into one. His living room is fifteen meters long, with huge plate-glass windows that gaze out over the city.

  “I must show you the roof terrace,” he says.

  I follow him up a flight of stairs and out through a glass door. Dusk is descending fast and the sky has turned a shade of turquoise that makes the nearby roof tiles look magenta. A high-rise with the logo BHW on top lifts clear of all the other buildings. In the fading light it appears oddly insubstantial, almost transparent, like a portal. I swing round slowly, the breath shallow in my lungs. To the northwest, on the horizon, there is evidence of industry, smoke trailing from three tall chimneys.

  “A wonderful view, no?” Klaus is standing at the edge of the roof, his hands in his trouser pockets, his weight on his heels.

  “Yes,” I say. “It’s wonderful.”

  I bring my eyes back down. With its minimalist vine-covered pergola, its wooden decking, and its glazed pots containing stands of pale-green bamboo, the terrace has an oriental feel.

  “Have you lived in the Far East?” I ask.

  Klaus laughs again. “No, never.” He gestures at the table and the two glass bowls designed to shield candles from the wind. “I sometimes entertain up here — if the weather’s fine …”

  We return to the living room. What is the connection between the prickly English couple and this curious, self-regarding German? I’d like to find out how they know each other, but it’s the one question I can’t ask.

  Klaus leads me into the kitchen. In the middle of the room is a rectangular breakfast bar topped with black granite. A poster advertising a Rothko exhibition hangs on one wall, a framed black-and-white photograph on another. The photograph is by Su-Mei Tse, he tells me. He pours two glasses of chilled Sancerre, then opens a packet of unsalted cashew nuts and trickles them into a dish. I ask him what he does for a living.

  “I’m an orthodontist.”

  “An orthodontist?” My mind goes blank.

  “I correct irregularities. In teeth.” He thinks I haven’t understood the word.

  “There must be a lot of irregularities around,” I say.

  He looks at me uncertainly, his glass halfway to his lips.

  I indicate the granite breakfast bar, the art, the wine. “You seem to be doing pretty well.”

  “Ah, I see. Yes. Well, there aren’t many of us, so there is plenty of work — and the procedures are quite costly.” He ushers me back into the living room, with its white leather sofa, its chairs upholstered in ethnic fabrics, its scatter rugs made from the skins of exotic animals. “So you like the place?”

  “I like it very much,” I say. “I’m very happy.” Perhaps the wine is going to my head. I have eaten nothing since breakfast.

  Klaus beams at me from the sofa. “Would you like to stay?”

  “Yes. If that’s all right.”

  “Of course. You can move in tonight. Your room is ready.”

  “But I already paid for a room — at my hotel.”

  “You’d be more comfortable here, no?”

  “That’s true.” I hesitate. “I won’t be here for long. I’m only passing through.”

  “Don’t talk about that now.” He gets to his feet. “I have a car downstairs. Shall we collect your things?”

  /

  That night I dream about Adefemi. I wake in the dark, my body slick with sweat. I push the covers back. The images inside my head are real as memories, but jumbled, illogical. We’re sitting in a bar, drinking beer out of brown bottles. He’s telling me about a place he wants to take me to. His fingers, long and elegant, form all kinds of shapes in the air. First crowns, then fans. There’s a beach of fine white sand, he says. And palm trees. And there are elephants clothed in red and gold. Elephants? I laugh. But I can see it all — the beach, the elephants, the sunlight splashing down on everything …

  We need to pack. Our possessions are in storage, though. We hurry to the warehouse. We’ll take the minimum, we say. Forget the rest. But there’s much more than we remembered. Adefemi climbs to the top of a huge tottering pile of stuff and levers the lid off a box. Things start spilling out. I tell him it’s getting late but he doesn’t listen. Leaving him to sort through the boxes I enter another warehouse. The lighting is poor. I find myself in a wide central aisle with large cages on either side of me. In the cages, barely visible, are hundreds of people. They stare through the bars, their eyes unblinking, hollow. No one speaks or moves. At the far end of the warehouse, where the daylight is, I can see the place Adefemi has been describing — it’s some distance away and far below, over land that is hilly, lush, and green — and I know that if I want to see the palm trees and the elephants I will have to walk through the warehouse, from one end to the other, and I know I will never be able to do that …

  My body has cooled down. A shiver shakes me.

  Where am I?

  I’m staying with Klaus Frings, in his apartment in Berlin. My heart thuds once, then dives deep. I leave the bed and move across the room. The moon is full and round on one side, worn on the other, the shape of a sucked sweet. I open the window. Cold air floods in.

  I think of where Adefemi lives, two rooms and a kitchen on the ground floor of a building in Trastevere. His next-door neighbor is a Brazilian woman who is always laughing, especially when she’s on the phone. Adefemi thinks she’s a benign spirit; her laughter makes him happy. I remember telling him that it would drive me up the wall. He lowered his eyes. Kit, he said reproachfully. This was in the summer of 2012. We were sitting at his green table with the front door open. A view of parked motorbikes and a wire-mesh fence. Overhanging trees. I talked about my mother that night — the IVF, the cancer, the long slow death. I talked about my father too. He never says he blames me but I’m sure he does. If they hadn’t tried to have a child she wouldn’t have died. It was the IVF that gave her cancer. It was all my fault. Adefemi watched me as I cried. Sometimes his tongue clicked against the roof of his mouth, a sound that meant he disagreed with me,
and sometimes he held my hand, but he didn’t tell me I was being hard on myself or self-indulgent or that none of it was true. He knew that would only make me angry. I was often astonished by how intuitive he was. How gentle. He would do anything to get her back. He’d trade me for her, I know he would. He doesn’t have any time for me. He can’t even bring himself to look at me. I was exaggerating, but I needed to exaggerate. I had to paint the darkest picture. Seizing a pair of scissors off the table, I snipped at the flesh at the base of my thumb. The pain was like a flash; it made me gasp. I dropped to my knees on the tiled floor, two kinds of tears in my eyes. The blood slid down my wrist with real purpose. Sometimes I have to prove that I exist. That I’m vibrant on the inside. Colorful. That I’m not a freak, an experiment. A shell. Adefemi looked frightened when I cut myself, but he watched me do it all the same, as though he knew it to be necessary. He seemed to realize that it was the mildest form of something that had to be undergone.

  At four in the morning, when I finally stopped crying, Adefemi reached out and took off my T-shirt. I lifted my arms above my head to make it easier. I was wearing nothing underneath. I remember the feeling of my hair falling against my spine, my ribs, the small of my back. It was always cool in his apartment, even at the height of summer. The temperature dropped as soon as you walked in through the door. His bedroom smelled of cement, as if it had only recently been built. He kissed my bare shoulders and then unzipped my jeans and pulled them off. He kissed me on the mouth. His breath tasted clean but sour, like vinegar.

  To start with, it was as tender as the light of the new day pushing through the shutters, and it stayed tender for a long time, but then I wanted it to change. By the end it was fast and hard, relentless. The bed turned through forty-five degrees. Moved halfway across the room. The cries that came out of me were like bright paint flicked against a wall.