Closer to Stone

by Cleary, Simon

  I stopped, a hundred metres or so above the truck, and looked down. The men must have finished and were lying, resting. A child appeared, moving along the road towards the two men and Sophe. A small, stiff-haired girl in shreds of cloth that might once have been an ankle-length dress, skipping barefoot between potholes, moving lightly across the earth. She was carrying something in her skirt, both hands lifting the hem. As she danced towards Sophe, I began scrambling down the slope, then leaping from boulder to boulder. I saw Sophe raise her head from her journal – she was surprised by the desert urchin padding her quiet way past the sleeping drivers, and moving tentatively down the side of the truck. Sophe smiled to her. It was then I tripped and fell, dislodging a small cascade of stones and landing on my shoulder, a rock-edge tearing my shirt and skin.

  When I regained my feet, both Sophe and the girl were looking up at me.

  I picked my way more cautiously down the last of the slope. At the bottom Sophe held out her hand to guide me over the final rock. I sat in the shade where a moment earlier she’d been sitting herself. From my duffel bag Sophe took the first aid kit. She had me remove my shirt, and then knelt before me. With the blade of her own pocketknife she scraped pieces of gravel from my hands and shoulder before splashing water on the wounds. She squeezed antiseptic cream over the grazes, and unpeeled some band-aids, the child watching all the while, fascinated.

  When Sophe was done the girl came forward. She approached Sophe and knelt before her, as she’d observed Sophe kneeling before me, lifting her tattered skirt as she bent. Her knees, and the skin of her shins, and the top of her feet pressed against the stones of the earth. She lifted the apron of her skirt for Sophe to see, unfolding it like a petal. In it were pieces of flint. Sophe leaned forward to look, and, encouraged, the girl began picking them out, one by one, and laying them in two neat rows on top of a flat stone, her prehistoric arrowheads, her treasures.

  The little desert girl spoke no Arabic or French but spread her arms instead, a gesture encompassing the rocks and the boulders, the granite range, the entirety of the desert. It was a prologue to a pantomime, for the girl then began to act out how she’d found the arrowheads, crawling on her hands and knees and turning over loose stones with her fingers, inspecting the fragments of rock. Next she picked up one of the pointed shards of flint, and fitted it to the end of an imaginary spear, her eyes darting towards Sophe constantly, making sure she hadn’t lost her. She returned to the ground then, and with the edge of a stone drew the outline of an elephant or a wildebeest or a lion, so crude the sketch, it seemed not to matter. When Sophe nodded that she understood the girl rose for the final act of her story, the child now become a hunter, a Diana in miniature, stalking the land for prey, bringing her quarry down with her prehistoric weapon.

  When she was done Sophe motioned for her to come closer. I thought she might embrace her. But as the little girl inched forward, the driver came round from the other side of the truck, his boots hard against the ground. He yelled a scornful rebuke at the girl, and waved the back of his hand at her while keeping his distance as if she were a rabid dog. The second man joined the first, these two men and their great vehicle and this tiny ragged girl.

  And so Sophe stood, and stepped between the drivers and the cowering girl, and faced the two men.

  Their surprise that a woman would oppose them was momentary, and soon they’d turned their snarls on her. But Sophe responded and she was no less vehement than they. The argument escalated into a contest, more at stake than merely whether the girl would stay or go. It was as if every belief they held dear was in jeopardy. And all the while the rock-girl watched – more fascinated than frightened – as the Arab truck drivers and the white woman argued in that vast chamber of desert stone. Finally Sophe prevailed, her determination stronger than the men’s custom and their pride. She outlasted them and they withdrew. Folle, they muttered. She was mad, as if therefore different laws of human behaviour, and authority, applied. They retreated.

  Sophe gestured to the girl again and nodded as she stepped forward. She bade her kneel once more and began producing gifts from her daypack: shoelaces, a pen, half a dozen sheets of blank paper which she tore from her journal, all the remaining sweets she’d bought from a street vendor a week ago, three hundred dinar in notes. Then she scooped the arrowheads from their display-stone, and carefully lowered them into the skirt of the transfixed girl, her black eyes full of wonder.

  I rose. The desert child looked up as I neared, uncertain, but Sophe nodded and patted her arm. Without looking, without it mattering, I emptied my medical kit into the girl’s skirt. Sophe pressed her palm against the little girl’s cheek then, and the girl turned, and began her climb back into the rocks.

  *

  Night fell and with it the cold. The truck roared relentlessly on, tunnelling its way through the darkness. We were wearing all of our warm clothes, but still they were not enough. Dry skin in the fierce air, we sheltered behind the cabin with our shoulders pressed against each other, but the bitter, curling wind reached us there too, prying beneath collars and sleeves and robes and the cuffs of our trousers.

  Near midnight we slowed to pass through a gorge – the mountains momentarily smothering the stars – so narrow I leant out to touch the sheer granite walls, but the cliff-face was just out of reach. We followed the fissure as it carved its way through the rocks, till we spilled out of the earth at the other end of the gorge and were bared to the stars once more.

  We began shaking with cold, first Sophe, then me, our teeth chattering. Shuddering hard, I remembered the huge fridges stretched along the length of the tray behind us, the truck’s cargo. I reached for the handle of one. Though my fingers were numb, I managed to release the latch, and lift the door open. Long, cavernous, and empty, the metal box was cold, but inside there was no wind. I wrapped the latch of the door with a sock so it couldn’t shut and motioned for Sophe. She peered inside then nodded and swung her legs over, lowering herself down. I followed, and suddenly all was quiet, all the night’s roaring above us as we lay there on our backs, the metal biting against our shoulder blades and our buttocks and the smalls of our backs, but the stars out there somehow brighter. The aluminium was cold but Sophe’s arm and the outside of her thigh where she pressed against me were warm, the vibrating truck forcing our bodies against each other, absorbing the jolts, a careful, heart-filled trembling.

  I blew against my hands, the breath stinging my frozen fingers. Then, when they’d thawed, I pressed my warm palms first against my cheek, then Sophe’s. And Sophe nestled her cheek into my hand in reply, almost imperceptible, perhaps just a bump in the road. The heat returning.

  Then another jolt, and the backs of our heads knocked against the metal, both of us gasping – the surprise and the momentary pain of it. ‘Here,’ I said, sliding my arm beneath her head. Not thinking. Risking everything. And for a long time of stillness, neither of us breathed. I could count the stars.

  Then Sophe’s body shifted, turning, an eternity in her rolling to face me. Her eyes and my thumping heart, and then Sophe reached her hand around my back, pulling herself closer. Her hips. Her head on my shoulder. Her breasts beneath her clothes, against my chest. I slipped the scarf off her head, bared her forehead to the starlight, felt the fall of her waist, tasted the salt of her lips.

  Sophe sat to lift her robes from her legs and waist, and over her shoulders. My fingers followed her shirt-buttons, and her hollowed neck drew me down, and my palms met the flat of her stomach and there was a precipice, and we were over it, falling through the night.

  ELEVEN

  When we booked into the hotel in Tamanrasset we followed the routine we’d perfected on our journey south: room inspection, assurances about electricity and water, our passport details entered into the hotel register, checking in as a couple, just married. But everything was altered, everything. Sophe was changed beside me, and I was new, som
ehow undiscovered.

  And I could also feel Jack now. His presence up there in the Ahaggar, so close. These streets he must have walked, the vendors he would have bought bread from, the blue-veiled Tuareg men he might have exchanged greetings with, perhaps even in their own language.

  I asked the hotel-keeper whether he’d heard about an Australian staying in the hermitage in the mountains, Assekrem.

  ‘L’ermitage chrétien?’ The Christian hermitage?

  He was another of those Arabs in white, the beard and the flowing gown and the white Islamic hat.

  ‘Oui,’ I answered.

  He paused, considering me closely. I’d assumed it was my accent, or that I’d asked the wrong question, or something about me had given Sophe away. He narrowed his eyes and shook his head slightly, wanting more, some motion of his wrist.

  I took out my two photos of Jack. He looked at them both and reached for the one of Jack in uniform.

  ‘Qui est-il?’

  ‘Mon frère.’

  ‘C’est un . . . soldat?’

  A slow question. Filled now with suspicion. Perhaps even more.

  ‘Non, non,’ I said quickly. ‘Je crois qu’il est dans les montagnes. Ahaggar.’

  ‘Le soldat est dans les montagnes?’

  The conversation was deteriorating.

  ‘Non. Il n’est pas soldat.’

  His eyes were hardening, some lurking danger.

  ‘Il n’est pas soldat?’

  ‘Non, non,’ I persisted. ‘C’est un . . .’ I was floundering, not knowing the right thing to say, the right description ‘. . . un père.’

  But that word – father – wrong too.

  ‘Can you explain, Sophe?’

  The hotel-keeper listened carefully to Sophe. His concentrated eyes, the questions which followed, Sophe’s answers. The sound of her voice alone was reassuring. So calm. I understood nothing of it, of course, the Arabic.

  In the end he placed our room key on the desk and turned away as if he didn’t want to know us.

  *

  I had to call home. Though I hadn’t yet found Jack, I’d collected enough to share – things I needed to give to my father. Thanks to Sophe and to the journey itself, I was confident enough at least to do that now.

  I left Sophe at the entrance to the women’s hammam, her wrist pulling away from my fingers. Past the mosque with its minaret was the post-office. At the telephone counter I wrote down the number on a piece of paper in overlarge letters, and handed it to the operator. He read it back.

  ‘Oui,’ I said.

  ‘Australie?’

  ‘Oui.’

  He nodded, and pointed me to a booth. After a few moments the phone shook, with that old bell sound, and I picked up the handpiece. Down the line came ringing, sad and plaintive, so far away. The voice, when it answered, was Em’s, off-balance. It was not yet dawn.

  ‘Em, it’s me, Bas.’

  A little groan, followed quickly by a burst of pleasure.

  ‘Bas!’

  ‘Sorry to wake you, Em.’

  ‘Don’t be silly!’

  A swelling within my chest. A familiar voice. Even Em’s. So, so, so distant. So much forgotten, momentarily at least.

  ‘How are things, Em?’

  ‘Oh Bas.’

  I could picture her standing in the kitchen, having fumbled the light on, blinking in the hardness of its fluorescent blast. Her hair would be pressed out of shape by her pillow, her nightdress hanging loose, falling around her knees. She’d be barefoot, the floorboards warm still from the day. She would have stumbled from her bedroom down the hall, the sound of her footsteps dulled by the long scarlet runner. My father must be lying awake, trying to work out who it was.

  ‘How’s Dad?’

  ‘Yes, he’s fine.’ He’s awake listening, I thought, the tone of her voice. ‘He’ll be glad you’ve called. Where are you?’

  ‘I’m in the desert.’

  ‘The desert?’

  ‘A desert town.’

  I named it, and the town before this one – the red town – and said the name of the country too, just in case. Where I was going next, the mountains. I was leaving my own trail.

  ‘Have you found him?’ she asked.

  In the end it came to that. And to think I’d believed the information I’d gathered so far might have been worth something.

  ‘No, but nearly. I’ve learnt a lot –’

  ‘We were wondering when you were going to call. We got a letter.’

  ‘My postcard?’

  ‘No, Bas,’ she answered carefully, not wanting to hurt me. ‘From Jack. A letter from Jack.’

  Even this – Jack had beaten me to them! So it was me ringing them for information. I could have laughed out loud, black and bitter.

  Then I heard my father’s voice in the background, could sense his bulk in the corridor, heard that hiss of his – for Chrissake – and the vehemence he could get into it, knew he’d be grasping the phone from Em’s hand.

  ‘Bas,’ he bellowed, ‘is that you?’

  I breathed in, held it, let the air out again slowly.

  ‘Hello, Dad.’

  What was I resigning myself to?

  ‘For Chrissake, Bas, you’ve got to bring him back. Em’ll read you the letter. You’ve got to bring him back. Poor bastard. He’s not right, Bas. Understand? He’s not thinking right. It could happen to any of us, Bas. You’ve got to find him. Got to bring him back. Are you there? Bas? Bas!’

  How easy it would have been to walk away.

  ‘I’m here, Dad. What’s happened?’

  ‘He’s not right in the head, Bas. There’s no shame in it, Bas, absolutely no shame. War can do that. There’s no shame. Understand? Something happens and you crack. There’s no shame in it . . . understand?’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘Good, son. Here’s Em. She’ll read it to you. Here. Listen to this –’

  And Em read out Jack’s letter of God. Like his letter to Sophe, Jack’s evangelism had arrived straight from the mountains of the desert: He is alone and face to face with all that is Eternal. Jesus is Lord and Jack is daily cleansed so he might live and die at Jesus’ feet, the feet of his Beloved. Jesus calls him to that which is simple. And he has found it here, among the Muslims. There is nothing to fear. He is happy, and he prays for them. For peace. They are not to worry. They are bathed in Christ’s love.

  There’d been so many Jacks. Powerful Jack. Ironic Jack. Sceptical Jack. Jack of escapades. Playful; neglectful; laughing; dark. Jack the soldier. Jack who was destined for greatness. All true. I’d seen it. But not this. Not this. Of all the Jacks, this was the odd one out.

  ‘He wants to be alone,’ I said to Em.

  ‘Oh Bas,’ she sighed. Resignation or despair.

  In the background I could hear my father. Make sure he brings him home. Make sure he understands to bring him home.

  TWELVE

  Sophe was already seated when I got to the restaurant that evening, her head turned to the waiter at her table, listening to him. She was glowing after her bath – her clean skin, the henna rubbed from her hands – and I wished I’d been brave enough to try the hammam, rather than having a short, cold shower in the hotel. She was wearing a new headscarf, one she’d probably bought from the markets that afternoon. She saw me coming and smiled, before turning back to the waiter and whatever he was telling her.

  I sat down. Their conversation washed over me, Arabic with the odd word in French, something serious the waiter wanted to say to her. But they are all serious, these Arabs, I thought, so unreadable. I studied Sophe’s raised face, the strength of her chin, her stretching neck – so intent, so alert, beautiful. The waiter turned, including me in what he was saying.
r />   ‘Pardon,’ I said, ‘je ne comprends pas.’

  ‘He says we’re safe down here,’ Sophe interpreted. She thanked him and he turned away to serve the table beside us.

  ‘Safe?’

  ‘There was another killing up north yesterday. A French journalist in Eucalyptus.’

  ‘Eucalyptus?’

  ‘It’s the name of one of the suburbs in the capital.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘There’s nothing to worry about. We’re a long way away.’

  ‘I mean about the suburb. There’s not really one named “Eucalyptus”, is there?’

  ‘Sure is, Bas,’ Sophe said. ‘Sure is. And it’s where a lot of the trouble is.’

  *

  The thought landed on me there in the restaurant, detonating in my lap. Had she slept with Jack?

  ‘Jack . . .’

  Sophe leant forward.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Did . . . ?’

  ‘Yes?’

  But I didn’t really want to know, not then. Not now.

  ‘I need to go up there alone,’ I said.

  Suddenly I had this vivid image of what might happen if we went up together. I pictured both of us walking towards him, calling out his name, Jack turning, recognising us, and stepping towards us. But then having to choose. And what I saw was Jack greeting her first. Or worse, embracing her but not me, instead merely shaking my hand. Or Jack falling at Sophe’s feet weeping. I could not bear that, could not face the possibility that all I might ultimately achieve was to deliver her to him.

  So I said, the promise bulging in my throat, my heart:

  ‘I will bring him down.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ she said, each word weighted, tangible, as clear as everything she ever did.