Akin

by Emma Donoghue

  If R.J. was not Margot’s, then there was no reason to assume she’d taken a lover during the war. And if it wasn’t to meet a lover, Margot must have had some other reason to come to the Excelsior, or at least to photograph its entrance.

  If she’d taken that picture before September 1943, it was a weird coincidence that the hotel would go on to be commandeered by the Nazis.

  If she’d taken the picture after September 1943, it had to have had something to do with the Nazis. And if not an affair…

  He looked up “France Nice collaborators war” on his phone. Mostly fans enthusing about games called Gears of War and God of War. Noah tried again, with different wording, and came across a headline that punched him in the chest: “Up to a Million French May Have Spied for Germans.” Could that possibly be right?

  The article quoted a new study claiming that far from there having been two smartly booted Gestapo agents on every corner, as in the movies, Nazi investigations almost always began with spontaneous tip-offs from civilian informants—the eyes and ears of fascism. These indics (short for indicateurs) were more familiarly known as mouches, flies, and their motivations seemed to have been personally malicious as often as mercenary or ideological: petty disputes between neighbors, colleagues, in-laws…

  Noah forced his thoughts down that track.

  Was it conceivable that his mother could have been one of those everyday monsters? A covertly self-righteous hag who tidied up her father’s studio and cooked his lunch before taking a streetcar to the Hotel Excelsior to denounce communists, queers, prostitutes, and above all, Jews?

  But Margot was lovely, Noah protested, inside and out. She taught kids to play piano.

  Close to a million French people did it, though; came to the invaders with information, to sell or just to offer as a gift. If the country couldn’t shake off anti-Semitism today, think how rife it must have been in 1943. A well-bred, Catholic, intellectual woman, edging over to the collabo side of the line…was it really inconceivable?

  Noah sat up, arms wrapped around himself. Impossible. He knew his own mother. Margot had always voted Democrat. (Hadn’t she? Or had Noah just assumed?) She’d never expressed anything hateful. (Not in her children’s hearing, anyway.) She and Joan hadn’t got on particularly well, but Noah had chalked that up to Joan’s abrasiveness; his wife had had little time for women without serious careers. But their conversations had always been perfectly civil. Surely if his mother had been secretly anti-Semitic, Joan would have sniffed it out?

  Oh, now you’ve nothing to say? he complained. Help me out here: could my mother have given aid and comfort to the Nazis?

  No answer from Joan.

  Noah got into his pajamas and went into the bathroom. He used the various flosses and implements his patchwork of crowned teeth and bridges required. He was working himself into a tizzy, he knew. Suspecting his mother of being a fascist informer just because she had a snapshot of a hotel!

  None of Michael’s things were in the bathroom, Noah noticed. He stuck his head into the bedroom. “You can just leave your toothbrush and so on beside the sink, you know. Nobody will take it.”

  “’Kay.”

  Slipping under the sheets, Noah reached for the main switch. “I’m turning off the light now.”

  No response.

  “You should get ready for bed too. OK, Michael?”

  In the dark, the boy’s face was creepily lit up by his small screen, the wavering glow of the game. His thumb flickered, sometimes tapped the screen. Focus, patience, swift decisiveness. Now and then Michael let out a frustrated gasp, but he never stopped.

  Sounds of gunfire, at intervals. Small roars—of pain? Noah wondered whose pixel blood was getting spilled. “That’s all chemistry, too.”

  “Huh?”

  “Your game. Semiconductors such as silicon—they’re elements with this amazing trick of letting electricity pass much more easily in one direction than the other.”

  No response from the boy.

  Phone off now, Noah should say. But he felt an already familiar weariness at the prospect of an argument. Looking after a child was like a bad dream about appearing in court without legal training. Added up, presumably the points at issue mattered, but taken one by one they seemed irrelevant. And really, who was Noah to tell this boy when to go to sleep? Circadian rhythms kept teens up at night. Plus, Michael was jet-lagged. Plus, brokenhearted.

  In the silence, Noah fell over the edge into a doze.

  Waking a little later—an hour, maybe?—he sat up and found Michael still in his clothes, keeled over, off the side of the bolster, his darkened phone against his cheek. Noah slid the device out of his sweaty grasp and set it on the bedside table. He wondered whether Rosa would expect him to wake the boy to make him undress and brush his teeth. Well, too bad.

  He watched Michael sleep, that reassuring regular rise and fall of the ribs. Not cute at all; powerful. A tiny sound, as if he was sucking his tongue. The extraordinary thing about children was that they changed all the time, Noah thought, but not by attrition, the way adults did. Kids were always growing, moving up, away from their only ever temporary carers.

  V

  Neither Here

  nor There

  In the morning Michael was up and dressed and antsy. “Can we get out of here?”

  “Just give me a chance to dress. Are you that hungry?” Noah doubted the kid was getting enough sleep. Perhaps he should have taken the phone away from him last night, even if it had led to a fight.

  “Did my mom answer?”

  Noah rubbed his eyes and swiped his tablet, looking for the right app. “Ah, not yet. Remember it’s still nighttime for her. And she’s probably… I doubt she’s allowed at the computer whenever she likes.” Noah tried to imagine the compulsory beat of an incarcerated day.

  Breakfast was served downstairs in a dining room with see-through chairs and pictures of palm trees. Old American pop played over the speakers. Noah’s large crème was about a quarter the size of a New York latte, but he appreciated the hit. Michael turned up his lip at the cucumber water and rejected the croissants, but drank both their glasses of orange juice.

  Would the boy’s stomach be a vat of acid now? Oh well, vitamin C, at least.

  “On Saturday, there’s a Bataille des Fleurs—a mock battle—with people dressed up and throwing flowers at the crowd,” Noah told Michael.

  “Do we get to throw them?”

  “Well, I think the idea is for us to catch them, as many as we can.”

  “Lame,” Michael muttered.

  “Then on Sunday night we’re going to the Corso, the Carnival parade. But I haven’t planned anything else. What kind of thing should we get up to today?”

  A shrug.

  “We could take a train to a town called Menton where they make pictures out of lemons. Huge sculptures—scenes, really.”

  “Just lemons?” The boy was incredulous.

  “Various citrus fruit. I guess they had a glut one February, too big a harvest, so they had to get creative,” Noah said. “Want to check it out?”

  Michael mimed putting a gun to his head and firing.

  “OK, no lemons. Let’s see. I do want to visit my grandfather’s grave in the old cemetery at some point.” He might even spot the rectangle with the circle and two dashes, if it was a tomb.

  “More dead people? Not today,” Michael pleaded.

  Noah supposed the Nice war museum would come under the same heading. “What about a gallery, then? The South of France has always been full of artists.”

  “We did that already in Manhattan. The drainpipe pic.”

  Noah licked his finger to collect a flake of croissant. “Are you going to say no to everything?”

  The boy jerked his head toward the ceiling. “Just leave me in the room, chillin’.”

  “I can’t do that.” Tempting, though. As a Person in Parental Relationship, surely Noah had the right to leave an eleven-year-old on his own once in a while? �
�What about…there’s a sort of zoo, with otters and iguanas and, ah, lemurs, I believe.”

  “I’m not some little kid.”

  Noah got to his feet. “True. But you’ve used up all your vetoes.”

  “My what, now?”

  “Your no votes. Let’s go.”

  “Not the freaking lemons!”

  “I promise, no lemons.”

  They went up to the room for Noah to brush his teeth and collect his satchel. Michael insisted on taking the elevator back down; Noah, hurrying down the stairs with a childlike ambition to get there ahead of his great-nephew, almost tripped on the last flight. Watch it, he scolded himself.

  As they walked away from the front desk, Michael asked, “How come you gave back the key?”

  “They hold it for you while you’re out.”

  “But they could go in and steal your shit.”

  “They have duplicates anyway. How do you think the chambermaids get in to tidy up?”

  Michael’s face was horrified.

  It struck Noah that the boy had never stayed in a hotel before.

  “I don’t want them going in.”

  Did he fear they’d steal some treasure of his—his grandma’s glasses? “They’re not going to take anything of yours.”

  “They’ll see.”

  “What?”

  Michael’s face was suffused with red.

  Noah put a hand on the boy’s narrow shoulder.

  Michael threw it off.

  “What’s up?” Softly. “What’ll they see?”

  “The freaking bed.”

  “What about it?”

  A word barely mouthed. “Wet.”

  “Oh.” Like the other night in Noah’s apartment, the sheets Michael had washed by hand. “Oh,” Noah said again, mildly, in case he’d sounded stern the first time, “is that all?”

  The boy scowled, as if Noah was making fun of him.

  He’d read something about this, hadn’t he—bedwetting as a sign of extreme stress. He couldn’t remember whether it was because the exhausted child was so tired he slept too deeply to wake, or so agitated he slept restlessly, which upped metabolic production of urine. “Don’t worry about it, is all I meant. It can happen when you have a lot on your plate. They’ll change the sheets.”

  Michael, through his teeth: “They’ll be mad.”

  “Not a bit, it’s routine.” Noah jerked his head toward the doors and led the way out of the lobby.

  In the sunny street, he mentioned, “Joan and I were once staying in a five-star swanky hotel in Chicago, and she woke up in a gigantic puddle of blood. It looked as if there’d been a murder.”

  The boy’s eyes bulged.

  “Just from her period,” Noah told him.

  “That’s revolting, dude!”

  Noah thought of telling the boy that their bodies were just as messy as women’s, but that discussion could be postponed. “We’ll tip the chambermaids when we leave, OK?”

  Warily. “’Kay.” Michael crossed the road.

  “Careful!” Noah hurried after him.

  They worked their way through the streets.

  “Where are we going?” Michael asked, at his side.

  “Nowhere in particular. I’m waiting for inspiration to strike.”

  Outside the Lycée Masséna, the boy eyed the white ornamented walls, the decorative frieze under the roofline. “Pretty fancy for a school.”

  Noah was reading a plaque. “Students from here joined one of the first Resistance groups in Nice.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “Well…” He read on, and sort of regretted bringing this up. “They fought very bravely till the end of the war.”

  “They won?”

  “These particular boys died,” Noah had to admit, “but their side won.”

  He eyed the modern teenagers variously smoking and vaping against the wall, and tried to imagine how their forebears had managed to rise to the occasion, back in 1940. If the US were invaded, Noah found himself wondering, where would he find himself on that spectrum from fighter to nervous bystander to collabo? He couldn’t know for sure, but he’d lay money that heroism was not in his nature.

  Michael had found another sign below a small tree. “Oliver. Is one of the Resistor guys buried under here?”

  “No, it’s olivier, an olive tree.” Noah patted the gray bark. “A symbol of peace.” Because of the dove carrying the sprig to announce the end of the Flood? Noah had never liked bearing the name of that cranky patriarch. “Olive trees grow so slowly, it’s said you don’t plant one for yourself or even for your kids, but for your grandkids.”

  “What if you don’t have any?”

  “It’s a metaphor. It just means future generations.”

  What had Noah planted? He’d contributed to some minor discoveries in polymer science, he supposed. As a professor, he’d helped shape the minds of wave after wave of students; that probably counted for more.

  Across the street was a long park stretching over several blocks, with huge trees and a bronze copy of Michelangelo’s David. Michael sniggered. Because of the inevitable splatter of greenish guano on the statue’s head, Noah wondered? Or the—

  “Micro dick!”

  “In the sixteenth century, they thought it looked better like that.”

  “No way!” Michael zoomed in and snapped.

  “Well, at least for sculptures: more discreet and elegant.” Presumably Renaissance Italians had valued big dicks in real life?

  Noah went over to a sign about the native-plant garden. The scrawny carnations reminded him of watching flower-pickers toil in the hills above Nice—unless that was another false memory?

  On the next block stood a bizarre playground of sea creatures. The silver tongue of a huge, wooden-ribbed whale was a slide; the rope-covered saucers that hung under the giant octopi were swings. The place was deserted except for a drunk asleep on a bench, and a couple of men in neon-orange uniforms armed with trash grabbers and plastic bags, as well as portable tanks. The grass turned out to be fake, when Noah looked more closely; they were spraying something, presumably to dust it. “You need some exercise,” he told Michael.

  “I’m eleven.” Scathing.

  Noah went over to read the sign. 3–12 ACCOMPAGNÉ D’UN ADULTE. “It’s for up to twelve-year-olds. Think of it as a gym.”

  “Only jocks go to the gym.”

  “No need to classify yourself, this young. We’ve all got muscles.”

  “Barely,” Michael muttered, tugging down his sleeves.

  A security guard of some sort glided by on a Segway. Noah wondered if in a couple of generations the human race would live in wheelchairs. “Go on, show me how high you can climb.”

  An extravagant sigh. Spotting a vaguely pyramidal spider’s web thirty feet high, the boy made a beeline for the top, then reclined there, dangling in the ropes.

  Noah smoked a cigarette on a bench, thinking ruefully of the fostering leaflet: “guidance, discipline, and a good example.”

  He brooded over the rearview shot of the couple on the bench in his mother’s photo: like a botched version of one of Robert Doisneau’s iconic pictures of lovers.

  After five minutes, Michael slithered down.

  “Got a rope burn?”

  “No,” Michael said unconvincingly, hiding his hands in his pockets.

  He went over to stuff his legs into the ride-on fish that said it was for ages three to six, and made it plunge so far backward and forward that it almost hit the ersatz turf. Then he hopped in reverse along the rail of the wooden ship, hands in his pockets, refusing to look at his feet.

  Noah shut his eyes and imagined the paperwork involved on both sides of the Atlantic if the kid were to smash his head, on Noah’s watch. (In fact, by his order: “The old dude made me go up there!”) Social services and French people were two groups notorious for red tape. How would Noah ever get permission to bring the small coma patient—or corpse—back to New York?

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nbsp; The scarlet-faced man sleeping on the bench opposite sat up and rubbed his beard. Then folded up the long piece of cardboard he’d been lying on, with an odd fastidiousness, tucked it into the huge plastic bag that held his other possessions, and went off about his day.

  Michael hung underneath the saucer, somehow clinging on. Then stood on the exposed springs of the manta ray, jumping up and down as if trying to break them. He came down the slide headfirst, gazing at the sky; Noah had to avert his eyes again for fear of some neck-cracking landing.

  “Look, Great-Uncle Noah,” Michael squealed in what Noah supposed was meant to be an English accent, “I’m having so much fun!” Riding on the head of the sad-looking wooden turtle, grinding his pelvis into its neck, taking a lewd close-up. Then he jumped down and said, in his own voice, “I need a bathroom.”

  Noah felt an irrational surge of exasperation. He scanned the park in all directions. “There—over that door, it says Public Toilets.”

  He savored the solitude for a minute.

  Then Michael was back, glowering. “Some woman in heels tried to hit me up.”

  A mugging, did he mean? A beggar? Then Noah remembered that French bathrooms always had an attendant. “How much, did her sign say?”

  “Fifty cents.”

  “That’s how she gets her wages. Here’s a euro—she’ll break it for you.”

  When he came back the boy said, “Look at that big-ass Ferris wheel,” pointing toward the far end of the park where a vast circle stretched into the sky. “Can we go on it?”

  “Another day, maybe.” Distracted by a man rolling on the grass in apparent agony, Noah didn’t see the leaf of a low-hanging palm tree until it spiked him in the scalp, which Michael found hilarious. Actually there were three men, all belly down on the ground, all clutching their ankles, so Noah deduced that it must be in the service of fitness. “I need a coffee.”

  “You’re a fiend for that stuff.”

  “Well, you’re just as bad with your soda, and that’s worse for you.”

  “You freaking smoke, dude. Touché!”

  “See, you do know some French,” Noah said.