by Jon Walter
Malik waited.
Finally Papa said what they both knew. ‘They have robbed me.’
The two of them said nothing after that. They simply stood there until the cat walked into the bedroom and sauntered across the floorboards toward the window. It rubbed itself against Papa’s ankle and he kicked it hard with his heel, sending the creature skidding into the corner with a screech of a howl.
‘Stop it!’ shouted Malik. ‘Stop it!’
He ran to the cat but it dodged him, skittered across the floor and ran back out of the door. Malik let it go. He circled Papa at a distance as Papa clenched his fists into tight balls that he put to the temples of his head. He bent over till his elbows touched his hips and he sat down heavily on the wooden chair, put his head between his knees and moaned.
Malik stood back at a safe distance. He waited until Papa had stopped moaning and then he asked, ‘Papa? Are you all right?’ He took a step closer. ‘Papa?’
Papa kept his head bowed and Malik didn’t know whether he should ask again or say nothing. Papa spoke to the floor. ‘My face hurts.’
Malik couldn’t think what to do about that. He said, ‘Mama will be here soon. She’ll know what to do, Papa. I know she will.’
Papa looked up quickly. He pointed a finger at Malik. ‘I know what to do! Do you think I don’t know what to do?’
Malik stepped back and his hand went to the front of his shorts again. Papa lowered his head and stared at the floor. ‘Can I use the toilet?’ Malik took his hand away in case Papa saw, but when Papa didn’t look up he went to the bathroom anyway. He left the door open wide enough so that he could see the pipe in the floor and his wee fell in a golden arc that spattered on the side of the pipe, then fell away into darkness.
When Malik came back into the room, Papa was still in the chair with his head bowed. Malik waited to be noticed, but when it didn’t happen he said, ‘Perhaps the diamond doesn’t matter, Papa.’ He sounded uncertain. He looked down at the wallet on the mattress, still thick with banknotes. ‘You still have all that money.’
Papa touched the side of his face where it had swollen. ‘You’re right.’ He spoke quietly and his eyes were grim. ‘Yes, you’re right. Perhaps it doesn’t matter. It’s only money. It’s the betrayal that matters. That’s what hurts more.’ Papa looked Malik in the eye. ‘The diamond would have made everything easier. That’s all. Everything would have been that much simpler for us. You’re too young to realize, but it would.’
The sound of a motor came from the street outside. Malik ran across to the window in time to see a vehicle drive past the cottage, and it wasn’t a soldier’s jeep but a civilian car with shining black paint and polished chrome. Its wheels rattled on the cobblestones.
Papa arrived beside Malik as the tail lights turned the corner. He turned the pockets of his trousers back the right way and hurried over to the mattress. ‘People are arriving at the port. I must be quick.’
Malik didn’t know whether this was good or bad but it felt important.
Papa picked up his keys and passport, and the wallet with the cash, and he stuffed them in his trouser pockets. He went over to the wardrobe, took his coat from the floor and shook it out. He leaned inside the wardrobe door, found the knife that he had left in there from the previous night, opened out the blade and cut away the strip of red silk that he had torn from the lining of his coat, making it wearable again.
‘Where are we going?’ asked Malik.
Papa picked up the rucksack and searched in the pockets. ‘You’re not going anywhere. I have to go to the docks but I won’t be long.’
‘I want to come with you.’
‘It’s better that you stay here.’
Malik’s chest tightened. ‘But I don’t want to be on my own. It’s not safe.’
‘It will be, and anyway, I won’t be long.’
‘What if Mama is at the docks?’
Papa took a black leather notebook and a silver pen from the rucksack. He stuffed them into the pocket of his coat. ‘She won’t be.’
‘But what if she is? She should be here today. You said we would meet her at the ship when it sailed and that was meant to be today.’ Malik was desperate. ‘She might already be there.’
Papa was impatient. ‘She’ll know it’s been delayed. She won’t expect us to be there, and anyway, if I see her I can bring her back with me.’
Malik knew the only way to persuade Papa was with logic, like he had with the torch in the alley. He tried not to speak until he was sure that he had something worth saying. ‘But you said I was good at looking. You told me we make a good team. It would be better if there were two of us. We could make a better job of looking for her.’
‘No, Malik. It’s better that you stay here.’ Papa didn’t even bother to give a reason.
Malik stamped his foot. ‘But I don’t want to be on my own. What if someone comes here?’
‘They won’t come.’
‘But what if they do? They did last night!’
‘Aaaaghh …’ Papa put a hand to his forehead. ‘That’s too many questions. Just like yesterday. For heaven’s sake, I have only just woken up. I haven’t even had a chance to start counting and I still think you’ve bust your limit.’
‘I don’t care!’ Malik burst into tears. ‘I don’t care about your stupid counting.’
There! He had said it. He stared defiantly and Papa met his gaze and they stood with both their eyes burning. Malik didn’t care if Papa got angry and he didn’t care that he was crying.
Papa blinked first. He lifted the rucksack from the floor, looked inside it for nothing in particular and then put it back down. ‘Go ahead and cry.’ His voice was gentle when he met Malik’s eye. ‘You deserve a good cry. Really. I mean it. You have been very brave these past few days, Malik.’ Papa reached out and touched his arm. ‘I sometimes forget how old you are. I’m sorry.’
Malik immediately felt bad. He was ashamed of himself and he could hear from the tone of Papa’s voice that he wasn’t going to give in – he was still going to convince Malik to stay in the cottage.
Papa was quiet and assured. ‘We do make a good team. We wouldn’t have got this far if we didn’t make a good team.’
Malik waited for the ‘but’.
Papa squeezed his shoulder. ‘But every team needs a leader. That’s right, isn’t it? And anything that’s worth doing involves moments when we have to do things we don’t want to do. I’ve said that before, haven’t I?’ Malik let his head drop but Papa lifted his chin with one finger. ‘Right now, I need you to stay here in this house. I don’t want you to go outside. I want you to stay right here in this room until I get back, OK? I will try not to be long but if you stay inside then you’ll be safe. Do you understand?’
‘What if the soldiers come and take me away?’
‘I don’t think the soldiers will take you away, Malik. I really don’t.’
Malik shrugged his shoulders.
‘We all choose who to trust, Malik. Sometimes we get it wrong like I did last night, but you can always trust me. Do you understand? You can trust me to put you first before anything else.’
Malik shuffled his feet. ‘I haven’t got anything to do. I’ll be bored.’
‘You have your magic trick. That takes lots of practice.’
‘I don’t have a coin.’
Papa brought out his wallet and took a coin from the little pocket on the inside. He handed it to Malik and closed his hand round it. ‘I want to see a clean French Drop when I get back.’ Papa picked up an apple from the floor and touched the place where it had bruised. ‘Have these apples if you get hungry, but try not to start on the bread and tuna in the rucksack before I’m back.’
Papa walked quickly out of the door and down the stairs and Malik heard the creak of the hinges as the back door shut. He turned the coin over in his fingers, tried to palm it like Papa did, and watched the coin drop to the floor.
Papa pushed at the bright red door of the Port A
uthority building. It opened the length of an arm before a man moved across the doorway.
‘You here for the ship?’ he asked Papa.
‘Yes. I wanted to speak –’
‘You should ask downstairs.’
Papa leaned in toward the closing gap. ‘I know that. I wanted to speak with Nicholas Massa –’
The door was closed before he had finished what he wanted to say. Papa stared at the glossy red paint, then knocked and waited, and when nothing happened he knocked again. The door opened wide enough to show an eye, a mouth and the rim of a dark brown hat. ‘Go away,’ said the man.
Behind Papa’s back there were hollow voices in the tall brick hallway and feet coming up the stairs. Papa turned to see a group of four men, and in the middle of them was Nicholas Massa – Papa knew his face from photographs. He stepped forward to meet them, said ‘Excuse me, sir,’ but one of the other men reached him first and eased him away from the top of the stairs. Massa walked past, intending not to stop.
Papa shouted out. ‘I’m a friend of Angelo Vex.’
Massa stopped walking and turned to look at Papa. The skin on his face was tight and smooth except for a crow’s foot at the edge of each eye and it seemed he only smiled at cameras.
‘He spoke of you only last night,’ Papa added quickly.
The party of men paused and Massa stepped through them and came closer. ‘You know Angelo Vex? I assume you want a ticket for the ship?’
‘I want two tickets.’
‘I bet you do. They’re not cheap.’
Papa nodded. ‘Ten thousand each, I heard.’
Massa shook his head. ‘Fifteen thousand. Paid in cash.’ He made no apology for looking Papa up and down. ‘Do you have the money?’
Papa kept his eyes steady. He didn’t want Massa to see anything but certainty. ‘There’s something else. My daughter, Maria. I need to find her.’
Massa waved a hand as though there were flies about his head. ‘I cannot help you – that has nothing to do with me.’ He moved toward the door and the other men closed around him.
‘I could be of help to you.’ Papa walked quickly along beside them as they approached the red door. He had to walk on his tip-toes to see above the shoulders of the men. ‘I may have something that you want.’
Nicholas Massa stopped at the bright red door. He turned to Papa, an eyebrow raised in disbelief. ‘And what could a man like you possibly have that I might want?’
Malik took out his penknife and opened all the tools. He had a metal shape that opened bottle tops and a corkscrew. He had a file and a toothpick. He closed them again so that only the knife blade remained, then he picked up one of the apples, cut it in half and cut each half into thirds. He lined the apple segments up in a row along the floorboard at his feet, making sure to keep the bruised piece in the middle.
The cat appeared cautiously at the door. Malik let it choose to come in and when it did, it walked over and put its nose to each of the apple pieces. ‘Eat them if you want to,’ Malik told it but the cat didn’t want to. Malik ate the pieces himself, and when he was finished he slid the plastic toothpick from its slot in the penknife and picked at the bits of apple that were stuck between his teeth.
The cat pounced on the strip of red silk that lay on the floor, turning it up around its head and Malik held the other end and got the cat to jump around the room and hang onto it with its claws.
The sound of an engine made Malik drop the silk. This was louder than before, a deep throb that shook the window in its frame. Something was coming down the street, and it was bigger than a car and there were boots running on the cobblestones. A man shouted, ‘Bring them on. Bring it this way.’
Malik took three quick steps to the window. There were soldiers in the street! He drew back so he wouldn’t be seen. He should hide. He looked for the cat but found it was no longer in the room and he ran to the top of the stairs and saw its tail disappear into the living room. The house was full of the sound of engines and boots. Malik went halfway down the stairs. ‘Come here, cat,’ he whispered, but when the cat didn’t appear he went on past the front door and looked into the room.
The cat stood up on the windowsill, sniffing the fresh air through the broken window. There were soldiers in the street right outside now. Malik smooched his lips and rustled his fingers, but the cat didn’t budge until the side of a tank drew across the front of the cottage, close enough that the view of the street became one large block of grey metal that came to a standstill and shuddered like a nervous animal. A line of rivets shivered in the holes across its flank. The brakes let out a gasp of air, which made the cat leap from the window and run back across the room. Malik bent down and scooped it up as it tried to pass him through the doorway.
‘Keep them coming!’ shouted a voice that was close. ‘Keep them coming through.’
Malik heard a footstep behind him. He turned to see a man standing in the porch, just the other side of the frosted glass panels in the front door. There was the click of a lighter and Malik saw a flame and the fierce orange dot of a cigarette that faded when the man took it from his mouth. If the soldier were to crouch down now and look through the letterbox, he would see Malik standing there holding the cat, staring at him as though he were a ghost.
Malik thought about running. He looked back up the staircase but he dare not move, dare not even flinch, as the man smoked his cigarette and the convoy went on past the cottage. Malik looked back into the living room. The tank was still outside, level with the window – he could even smell the fumes from the exhaust. Then quite suddenly the tank jerked back to life. The engine roared and the joints groaned and the line of rivets began to move across the window until the tank was gone and Malik could see the street again, full of jeeps and armoured cars and soldiers that passed the cottage on their way toward the dock.
Malik knew these soldiers weren’t like the ones that he’d seen from the cellar or at the roadblocks. These soldiers had neat uniforms, all identical with proper metal helmets. The soldiers Malik had seen before, in town, had all been dressed differently from each other and most of them hadn’t looked like soldiers at all. Some had worn army fatigues, but they’d had their own jackets over the top or they had tied bright sashes around their heads as though they thought they were kings. Papa had said they weren’t soldiers at all – he’d said they were a ragtag outfit of thugs and chancers, dressed in clothes they had taken from the dead.
Perhaps these soldiers in the street were the peacekeepers that Hector had talked about and they had come to make the port safe?
Malik held the cat tightly and stayed where he was until the soldier at the front door threw down his cigarette and was gone. The sound of engines and feet faded down the cobbled street and away toward the port.
Malik slouched against the stairs and took a deep breath. But then he realized there were still people outside in the street. He became alert. He could hear voices and see outlines of passing figures through the frosted glass. He peered into the living room and could see men, women and children walking past the broken window, both on the pavement and down the middle of the cobbled street. They carried holdalls and suitcases and they wore their heavy winter coats just like Papa. Malik hadn’t seen people out in the open like this since the day before the soldiers had taken Mama, and that must mean that something had changed, that it was safe to be in the street again.
Malik went and stood at the shattered glass – there were so many people that it didn’t seem to matter if he was seen there now. He watched a man wrestle his way across the cobblestones with a large trunk on a trolley, and he caught the eye of a young girl being carried on the shoulder of her father, who saw the cat in his arms and pointed at him, smiling.
Malik suddenly thought that Mama might be in amongst these people. She might even be there in the street right now. He began to search the faces of the women, quickly moving from one to the next, and he looked for the hem of a blue dress beneath the winter coats, but there were
too many people, too many faces for him to be certain that he had seen them all.
It would be easier if he went outside. He ran to the front door, pulled at the latch and stepped onto the pavement. He left the front door wide open behind him and stood in the middle of the street so he could see the faces of everyone walking toward him. There was a woman holding a cage with a songbird but this woman was clearly not his mother. There was a couple who struggled with two bags each, and she stopped to put one down and the man told her to ‘Hurry up’. Malik stepped to one side so he could see behind them.
He began to move with the crowd along the street, past the bombed-out houses on the opposite pavement, where a woman stopped to smack her child behind the knees. He passed the locked doors of the empty houses, weaving between the luggage and the legs of people, looking for a sign that his mother might be there, and as he walked the rims of his Wellington boots smacked against his bare shins and the dark blue funnel of the ship came closer.
At the last cottage, the road turned right and opened out to become the quayside. There was a chain-link fence and a tall metal gate across the entrance to the docks. A jeep stood there with its engine running, two soldiers sitting in the front seats, smoking cigarettes and watching the crowd come through. Just inside the fence was the charred wreckage of a small light aircraft that was tilted uneasily to one side with the tip of one wing touching the ground.
Malik slowed his pace to look at the plane and the corner of a woman’s suitcase caught the back of his head hard enough that it hurt. ‘Keep up,’ she scolded him. ‘Keep up or get out of the way.’
Malik stepped aside and the cat shifted its position on his shoulder and its claws scratched at the skin beneath his shirt. He didn’t dare go further in case the soldiers wouldn’t allow him back. Behind him there was only a straggle of people left in the street and his mother wasn’t amongst them, so he walked back to the cottages, hugging the cat to his chest.
When he reached the cottage door he found it closed. He pushed, and when it didn’t open he went to the window and looked into the empty living room. There was no sign of anyone so he decided to try the back door and he ran to the top end of the street, turned the corner into the alley and ran along, tapping each gate till he came to the thirteenth cottage.