Closer to Stone

by Cleary, Simon

  Perhaps it was the panting of my breath that interrupted Jack’s reverie, caused him to turn. Did he turn? The blood that pumped in my chest thumped a rhythm. Was my blood leading me, bit by bit, closer to Jack at the cliff’s edge? Blood pounded the image before me, an image I see to this day – it comes to me both dreaming and waking, it causes me to break into sweat – the image of my hands on Jack, my open palms on the blades of his shoulders, of me gathering myself into a moment, and of Jack teetering off the edge, falling into the abyss.

  This solution.

  The end Jack was praying for, that surely he was praying to me for. Wasn’t that, really, what he was seeking?

  ‘I am ready.’

  Did he whisper that too?

  I think he turned. At some point he looked at me, as if I was his confessor. That’s how I remember it. Perhaps I conjured it from desire, mine or his or both. I don’t really know. Neither whether he said it, nor, if he did, whether it was true. Whether anything was true, or ever could be, ever again.

  *

  ‘What about Sophia?’

  Because there was nothing but her left.

  ‘Sophia?’

  Dawn had risen. Jack’s voice, in that great wash of first light, was small and uncertain.

  ‘How do you know about Sophia?’

  His arms had fallen and he was stepping towards me.

  ‘She’s in Tamanrasset,’ I answered. ‘Waiting. I told her I’d bring you down.’

  Jack looked at me hard, as hard as at any time those three days. His eyes narrowed. He was, I think, weighing me up. Judging whether what I’d said was true, whether he should believe me or whether he should respond – as airily as he did as a kid, so confident in what he knew was true there was no need to persuade anyone else – that what I was saying was rubbish.

  ‘Mmm,’ he said, pulling away. ‘So you thought you could deliver that, did you, Bas? Taking me to her?’

  Everything was brightening now. It was difficult to remember what night looked like, how it felt, whether there was any substance in it, cowering as it now was behind the rocks. It had become mere shadow and everywhere I looked was brokenness. The gentle curve of the earth destroyed by the uneasy monoliths which towered and toppled onto the land in oblivious showers of rock and dust and debris. The scree itself, so much crushed ground, sharp-edged and forbidden, like tiny warriors massed on the slopes.

  ‘She wanted to come up too. She wanted to see you.’

  A whisper. Or was it a groan?

  ‘She’s waiting for you.’

  EIGHTEEN

  Tamanrasset appeared, low and unpresupposing on the horizon. I’d resigned myself to losing Jack when we got there. There was nothing I could do to change anything, I thought, as we descended out of the Ahaggar. We had hiked to a dig-site the monks knew of, where each week they rode down for supplies on the archaeologists’ truck. Now we were bouncing and jerking over a thousand rocks, a thousand holes, a thousand jagged hairpin bends. Jack and I clung, face-down, spread-eagled on the roof rack for hours, our backs to the sun as if in some medieval punishment. Either he’d go with Sophe, I guessed, or he’d return to the mountain.

  The buildings began to thicken, and we slowed. There were lean trees, and loose-robed Tuareg, and camels tethered to stakes in the ground, their heads bent to piles of dried grass, their lips quivering, even from that distance. We slowed even further when a group of boys emerged from behind a mudbrick wall, running towards us. It was not the running that startled us, but the angle of their approach. They did not swerve, nor did they hesitate. They ran straight at us, hard, three or four from either side – ran and propped and threw, with the purity of their adolescent courage.

  Jack and I ducked, pressing our bodies flat, our arms over our heads. The rocks missed. They either flew over us, or thudded into the vehicle’s flanks. One of them shattered the driver’s side window into a map of glass tributaries. I lifted my head when the barrage was over and saw the boys disappearing behind houses, down alleyways, out of history. There was no lolling around after battle like Michelangelo’s David, no fallen giant at their feet.

  We sped away, pulling over only when we reached the centre of town. The driver got out and stood beside the truck, hands on hips, inspecting his broken window and the dents in the panelling. He cursed, and looked up as we slid off the roof.

  ‘What the hell do you make of that?’ he said, not needing an answer, wanting us only to join in, to share the experience, its shock.

  Instead, Jack said:

  ‘I’m sorry. Please forgive them.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ The archaeologist looked at him curiously.

  ‘They don’t know what they’re doing,’ Jack said.

  The archaeologist screwed up his face, but Jack kept talking, a rambling mix of gratitude and apology that sounded like he was taking the broken window upon himself, that it might somehow have been his responsibility, his fault. Eventually, the driver raised his hand to stop this speech. When Jack continued, he shrugged and turned his back on both of us, began consulting the rest of his party who by then were squeezing out of the vehicle and inspecting the damage, knotting together around the shattered window.

  *

  We didn’t go straight to the hotel; instead, we made our way to the market. They didn’t know what they were doing, Jack kept mumbling, they just didn’t know. Did the refrain have some power in itself, like prayer is supposed to if offered in the right way?

  When we reached the fruit stalls people began calling out to him, and Jack greeted the vendors with handshakes, and salaam alaykums, his agitation slipping away. He’d been down here no more than a month, but already he’d made a name.

  We stopped before a young orange-seller Jack knew, his crates of oranges laid out on a blanket on the ground. The two of them kissed each other on the cheek, once, twice, perhaps even a third time. Jack introduced me, but I wasn’t interested in his name, just shook his hand and stood back. Jack and his friend laughed, and put their arms around each another, and pointed at the oranges, selecting pieces of fruit, inspecting them, smelling them, joking all the while, Jack as at ease here as on the streets of The Springs. Eventually the vendor filled a plastic bag, which he hung lightly from Jack’s arm.

  ‘We need to get going,’ I said, irritated, wanting to get back, fearing more greetings like this.

  ‘Sophe likes oranges too.’

  ‘Too?’

  Jack looked at me, confused, almost hurt.

  ‘Like us,’ he said.

  Then I remembered the orange trees in the back garden at home. They grew as well as anything in that sandy soil. As kids we’d collect the fruit for weeks, in Mum’s cane laundry-basket, and empty it onto the kitchen table, the fresh citrus smell sharpening the house. We’d eat our fill – juiced at breakfast, or packed for school lunch – but there were always more than enough and Mum would offer oranges as gifts: to visitors or neighbours, or on trips to hospital to visit people we knew. I’d be sent out on orange-giving errands all over town. ‘Here comes the orange-boy,’ some of the older kids would yell out as I cycled past their houses or the cricket oval, or the Railway Store where they’d sometimes hang out. But the teasing didn’t bother me because there was something pure and good and right in what I was doing which lifted me above their joking.

  Now I offered to pay, but the vendor waved me away, smiling, patting Jack on the shoulder and saying for my benefit, ‘Friend, friend.’ But Jack insisted, and took some notes from my wallet, too many, and tucked them into the pocket of the young man’s trousers, then stepped away, waving.

  ‘Now,’ Jack said. ‘Which hotel is she staying at?’

  I could have kept the name to myself, and been the one to lead him there. But I told him, and Jack set off – striding out of the market and through the streets, hi
s blue plastic bag of oranges swinging from his hand like a manic pendulum, and me in his wake.

  Jack hadn’t exactly forgotten me, but it was now Sophe he sought. He turned around from time to time to see if I was following, but barely slowed to let me catch up. At one place Jack paused beside a wind-harried eucalyptus, and pulled a dusty leaf off a thin branch. He handed it to me when I reached him, panting. For me to crush in the palms of my hands and raise to my nose. Then hand back to him. The little ritual Jack had created so long ago, me never knowing quite what it meant. And certainly not knowing how to read it now. If there was anything to read into it at all.

  We reached the hotel. In the lobby Jack greeted the bearded man behind the desk, the same one I’d shown Jack’s photo to, three days before.

  ‘Salaam alaykum,’ Jack said.

  The man looked startled, eyes wide beneath his white hat.

  ‘Mon frère,’ I said to him, showing my brother off. Proof that he had been in the mountains, just as I’d said, and that I’d found him.

  ‘Vous voyez,’ I continued, pointing to Jack’s robes, ‘il n’est pas soldat.’

  He reached for my room key then, having recovered himself, and placed it on the desk once again before turning away to make a phone call. Dismissing us like that.

  Only then did Jack step aside for me to lead. I began the climb up the single set of stairs to our first-floor room, number 119. It’s strange what one remembers, what one forgets. I remember too that Sophe’s room key had been on its hook on the key board at reception, which meant she was in. Jack and I moved down the corridor, past the communal bathroom. I remember the light blue of the corridor’s paint – the colour of ducks’ eggs I’d once found in the bush behind the house – and the white ceiling. The line of lights, hanging equidistant along the length of the ceiling like inverted stepping stones, or warning flares. I remember knocking. I remember the door swinging open, as if of its own accord. Or, as I’ve thought a thousand times since, as if it was Fate itself who opened the door for Jack and me that day.

  Sophe was sitting quietly on the bed, her back against the wall, her body moving, though oddly slumped, her feet pulled up, knees bent, her arms grasping her legs to her chest. But something was wrong. It was an eternity before I realised it was a pillowcase over her head and not her headscarf. And that her wrists and ankles were bound.

  This image, of Sophe on the bed, helpless, silent as death, shrouded like it, framed by the widening door of the hotel room. This image stays. Sophe and the pillowcase tight on her head, one of the corners upright, like a small triangle of cat’s ear. This image of her.

  Then came a blackness, hard as concrete, perfect as night.

  *

  When I came to, hours later, there was no victory of light in it. Death had merely withdrawn, the slowest of tides, to return at the appointed time.

  I was in a different room. It was askew, the lines of its geometry – where walls met floor and ceiling and each other – at odd angles. Human bodies, the shape of them, filled the space, close then distant with each new pulse of blood. The pumping blood swelled the ache in my head from dull to sharp, dull to sharp, dull to sharp. The ferocity of it was so excruciating it seemed to catch in my throat. Another pain – it was difficult to isolate them – came from my side, the gasping crash of a boot into my ribs.

  Jack and Sophe were already conscious, both of them propped against a wall as if waiting for me to arrive. When the Beards saw me open my eyes, the one who’d been kicking me dragged me across the floor to join Jack and Sophe, all of us lined up in a row, one two three. Our arms were pinned behind our backs, our ankles tied with cloth. I turned my head to look at Jack and Sophe and was struck in the face by the butt of a rifle.

  There were four Beards in the room. They may have had different physiques, different faces, different eyes. They each may have had different lives. May have been different men, may have been men, joined to humanity in all the usual ways. I can admit the possibility of this, the theoretical possibility of it. But they were just Beards then. That’s how I’ve thought about it until now, that’s how I’ve come at it. Thinking wouldn’t have been possible otherwise.

  *

  What came next? Next came next – an eternal loop back and back and over again, destroying time. Next are Beards, and rooms, and bindings, and sweat and fear, and the movement of Beards around the room. In and out. Our attempts to whisper to each other are met with rifle-butts and strips of cloth wrapped hard around our mouths, pressing against our tongues and cutting into our cheeks. Next is learning to breathe despite the fear. Next is listening to what the men are saying through the expressions on Sophe’s face.

  That is what next is. Reading the loss of what is precious through her eyes. There is no next.

  *

  That night, I prayed. The prayer of our childhood. The prayer we were told to pray. The one I learnt by heart.

  Our Father. Who art in heaven. Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done. On earth. As it is. In heaven. Give us this day. Our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses. As we forgive those. Who trespass against us. And lead us not. Into temptation. But deliver us. From evil. Amen.

  But whose evil? I used to wonder that as a kid. I wonder still. I don’t believe I could have prayed any more fervently, that I could have been more earnest. Unless fear intervened. Unless terror somehow got in the way.

  *

  It was three days, truncated into nothing. The details I’ve lost. Did they give us water? Something to eat? I don’t know. Did we cramp? Did they loosen our binds so we could stand or walk around the room? Escort us ever to a squat toilet in another room? I can’t remember. What I do remember, is that when the gags came off, they were replaced by the torment of blindfolds. Denying us even the fleeting solace that we were in this together. In that enforced dark I strained for signs that Jack and Sophe were still there in the room: a change of breathing, the heel of Sophe’s boot scraping across the concrete floor, Jack humming a hymn we both knew, an involuntary cry from shallow sleep.

  One of them spoke some English, a few words, a clutch of fevered commands, all verbs. I wonder if he’d learned them for this. Come. Go. Wait. Each command accompanied by a prod, or a push in the back, or a kick.

  *

  But I can never forget this.

  At the end they took off our blindfolds. We looked desperately for each other, blinking the light away until our eyes met, while the Beards crouched beside us, covering our mouths with duct tape.

  The Beard with the English said, pointing to me, ‘You remember.’ An injunction. These days there’d be cameras and video footage posted to news stations or the internet, but not then. Back then the Beard with the English merely stood above me, behind me, grabbed my hair and turned my head, forcing me to look. ‘You remember,’ he said. ‘You tell.’ My head being shaken from side to side, a marionette’s head forced one way then the other from above. ‘Don’t forget. You tell your people. You tell your country.’

  Then the scream. No words I could recognise. The scream was not mine. Not Jack’s nor Sophe’s. The three of us were denied that, staring, our mouths taped mute, our own screams gurgling in our throats. This injustice, that even our fear was trapped. Nothing human allowed, no matter how primal. No words. No final wishes, no conversations, no discussions. No scream, even, allowed. We were mere animals, mere beasts in that bleak room.

  But there was scream, and it was theirs. Sound, pitch, fever, a room-filling war cry. A frenzy. A cry to transport the crier. The Beard and the scream. But the room could not hold it, that war cry, that cry of the knife. The cry of the head pulled back, the cry of the slit throat. The wail of blood, heavenwards. First one throat, then the other. My head jerking too, my eyes neither open nor closed, the broken voice above me all the while, some dull backing to the wailing Beard: Look. I, too, am tran
sported. Look. Don’t forget. The room, the scream. Jack’s throat, then Sophe’s. Their wide eyes. Death to America!

  PART THREE

  ONE

  I see his shape as he enters the room, the cut of his hat against the doorway so different from the silhouettes of the man and his wife who’ve come and gone, day upon day, with tea and bread and damp cloths for my forehead. I touch my forearm under the shirtsleeve as the shape enters, and dig my fingernails into my skin to feel I’m still here.

  He squats before me where I sit on the floor, my back wedged in the corner of two walls. I see curious heads in the door, haloed in the sun – the woman who’s been tending me, and two or three of her children.

  ‘Oi,’ he says softly, his hand on my shoulder.

  ‘Oi.’

  And so Logan has come, not knowing if it was Jack or me he’d find.

  *

  I hold onto Sophe. The statuette of her I sculpted from desert stone those last days in the mountains. Someone tells me I was gripping it when I reached the guesthouse, mute, fingers clenched hard around it, palm cut from holding it so tight. Only when I fall into something resembling sleep is it prised from my hand.

  There’s too much to remember.

  They feed me, water me, wash me – these people whose names I’ll never know, kindnesses I’m told about later. They find my passport in the pouch slung round my neck, tucked under my shirt. Not just mine, but Jack’s and Sophe’s too, shifted there by the Beards because I am their messenger. You. Go. Tell. The faux wedding band Sophe wore is also in there, caked dark with blood. The guesthouse keepers give over their living room to me, the floor with its thick carpets and stacked cushions. I wear the man’s grey trousers and his collared shirt. His jumper is tight against the desert chill. I do not stop shaking. I cannot understand the simplest of gestures, queries that would overwhelm me even in my own language. It is all I can do to respond to their hands, and lay my head on the pillow they set out for me. But it is not rest.