The Forgotten Dead

by Tove Alsterdal

  ‘I need to ask you about the assignment that Patrick’s on,’ I said. ‘About what he’s doing in Paris.’

  ‘Is he still over there? I thought he was supposed to deliver something soon.’

  Evans frowned as he shovelled scrambled eggs onto his fork. It was clear that he would have preferred to eat his breakfast in peace.

  ‘I can’t get hold of him,’ I said. ‘He hasn’t answered his cell phone in over a week.’

  ‘It’s not always possible to call home when you’re out in the field,’ said Evans, peering at me over the rims of his glasses.

  ‘I know that,’ I said. ‘But we’re not exactly talking about the caves of Tora Bora. This is Paris. Europe. They have reception everywhere.’

  Evans turned his fork to look at the piece of sausage he’d snared. It glistened with grease.

  ‘Well, at any rate it looks like a hell of a good story he’s working on over there. He was very insistent that I hold space for it in one of the October issues, front cover and all.’

  ‘What’s it about?’ I asked. ‘His article, I mean.’

  Evans raised his eyebrows. I swallowed hard. It was embarrassing to admit how little I knew about my husband’s work.

  ‘Patrick is always careful to keep the magazine’s secrets,’ I added. ‘He never talks about his articles in advance.’

  I had done my best to remember what he’d said. When he was drunk, on the phone, he’d talked about death and destruction, and about human lives not being worth anything. He’d mentioned cafés he’d been to in Paris, but not who he’d interviewed.

  ‘Selling human beings,’ said Richard Evans.

  ‘Selling human beings? You mean like trafficking? Prostitution?’

  ‘No, not exactly.’ He wiped his hands on a napkin. ‘He’s writing about immigrants who are exploited as labourers. Slave labour, pure and simple. And how the problem is growing as a result of globalization. Poor people who die inside containers when they’re being smuggled across borders, suffocating to death, or drowning in the seas between Africa and Europe, their bodies washing onto the beaches. A few years ago a whole group of Chinese immigrants drowned in England when they were forced to harvest cockles. They were farmers from somewhere, and no one had warned them about the tides. A shitty way to die, if you ask me.’

  ‘England? So what is Patrick doing in France?’

  ‘Exactly. There’s no clear angle.’ Having finished his breakfast Evans waved to the waiter behind the counter and then pointed at his plate. ‘When we buy foreign stories, there has to be a fresh perspective, a unique viewpoint. But that’s something Cornwall should know by now. He’s been working for us a long time. How many years is it? Five? Six?’

  ‘Patrick usually says that journalists who know exactly what they’re after are dangerous,’ I told him. ‘They merely confirm their own prejudices. They don’t see reality because they’ve already decided how they want it to look.’

  Evans’s eyes gleamed as he smiled. Like glints of sunlight in ice-cold water.

  ‘I actually see something of myself in Patrick, back when I was his age. Equally stubborn and obsessed with work. The belief that you’ll always find the truth if you just dig deep enough. Not many people do that any more. These days journalists are running scared. Everybody’s scared. They all want a secure pension. They want to take care of their own.’

  He ordered an espresso. I shook my head at the waiter. The smell of scrambled eggs and greasy sausage was already turning my stomach.

  ‘But why did he go to Europe?’ I asked. ‘All he had to do was go over to Queens to find that sort of thing going on.’

  Evans shook his head and gave me a little lecture about why a story about the miseries in Queens wouldn’t sell as well as a report from Paris and Europe. He claimed that adversity is more appealing from a distance.

  I felt sweat gathering in my armpits. The café was getting crowded. The lunch rush had started, and it was filling up with businessmen and media people.

  ‘And the whole point of hiring freelancers is that they’re willing to go places where no one else will go. That’s something all those marketing boys up there don’t understand.’ He pointed his finger at the top floors of the building across the street. ‘The minute I buy a story that’s the least bit controversial, they think I’m going to drag them back to 1968.’

  I knew that The Reporter had been forced to shut down in ’68 because management couldn’t agree on how the Vietnam War should be depicted, but that wasn’t what I’d come here to discuss.

  ‘Are you saying he’s gone undercover?’ I asked.

  ‘If so, it would have been smart to talk to me about it first, but you never know. Maybe he’ll surprise us.’

  Evans sighed heavily and ran his hand through his thick hair. According to Patrick, Evans would have been promoted to editor-in-chief, if only he’d been able to stay on budget. He understood the profession, unlike the marketing yokels who were in charge lately. They were people that Patrick despised as much as he worshipped old journalists like Bernstein, Woodward, and Evans.

  ‘In the past I could spend hours with the reporters,’ he said. ‘We’d go over the story in advance, try out specific analyses, and toss around various angles to take. But there’s no time for that any more.’

  The tiny espresso cup had shrunk to the size of a doll’s cup in his big hand.

  ‘I was in Vietnam. I’ve seen Song My. I was in Phnom Penh right before the Khmer Rouge came in. Nowadays reporters come out of college thinking that journalism has to do with statistics. But if you really want to get into a story, you need to go out and smell reality.’

  I glanced at my watch. It was 11.15 in New York. Almost dinnertime in Paris. I had to get back to the theatre.

  ‘So if I’m reading you right,’ I said, my voice chilly, ‘you’ve sent Patrick to Europe and paid him an advance, but you know almost nothing about the story he’s working on, and there’s no definite delivery date. Is that usual?’

  ‘No, no. We haven’t paid him any advance.’

  My blood stopped. Time stood still. People passed by in slow motion outside the window, munching on sandwiches. I stared at Evans, but couldn’t think of anything to say.

  ‘We’re not allowed to pay out advances any more, not to freelancers. It’s a policy set in stone. I can remember when I was going to propose to my first wife, and I called up the editor to ask for an advance so I could buy her a ring. They’ve discontinued everything that once made this job fun.’

  He shoved his newspaper in his briefcase and stood up.

  ‘I’m sure he’ll get in touch soon. Cornwall always delivers.’

  I got up too. The whole place seemed to sway. Patrick had lied to me. He’d never done that before. Or had he?

  ‘What if he doesn’t?’ I said, and then cleared my throat. ‘I mean, hypothetically speaking. What would the magazine do then?’

  ‘He’s not on any specific assignment, so the magazine has no official responsibility, if that’s what you mean. As a freelancer, he’s in charge of getting his own insurance coverage.’

  I felt someone shove me in the back as two students took over the table where we’d been sitting. Talking loudly, they put down their books and latte cups.

  ‘That’s all part of being freelance. Right?’ said Evans. ‘If you want to be free, with nobody telling you when to get up in the morning or send you out on routine jobs. I really miss those days.’

  He smiled as he wrapped his shiny woollen scarf one more time around his neck.

  ‘When you hear from him, tell him hello and that I still have space in late November.’

  I gritted my teeth. In his eyes I was merely a nervous wife in need of reassurance, so the boys could be kept out in the field. Phnom Penh? Kiss my ass.

  Evans was busy putting his wallet away in his inside pocket, but then he stopped.

  ‘There’s a stringer in Paris that we sometimes use,’ he said, shuffling through a bunch of business ca
rds. ‘If they decide to set fire to some suburb again, we give her a call.’ He dropped a few cards, and I watched them sail to the floor. Pick them up yourself, I thought.

  ‘She’s a political journalist.’ He bent down to gather up the scattered business cards. ‘I think I gave Patrick her name too. Damn. I can’t find it, but I’ve got it on my computer.’ He handed me his own card. ‘Send me an email if you want the info.’

  ‘Sure.’ I didn’t bother with any final courtesies and left the café, walking ahead of him and turning right on 8th Avenue. It was thirty-eight blocks to the theatre in Chelsea, and I walked the whole way. At that moment I needed air more than anything else.

  ‘There stands an oak on the shore, with golden chains around its trunk.’ The dancer on stage made the words float, her voice as delicate as a spirit or a dream.

  The others joined in, repeating the words in a rhythmic chorus as Masha danced her longing. On the stage stood three substantial chairs from Russia’s Czarist period. I’d leased two of them from a private museum in Little Odessa, and then I’d spent weeks searching half the East Coast until I found the third chair in Boston.

  I sank silently onto the seat next to Benji in the auditorium, noting that it had been worth all the effort. I watched the bodies in motion around the solid chairs, which were a constant, something on which to rest and yearn to flee. They were also practical obstacles that stood in the way, preventing the dancers from moving freely, forcing detours and pauses in the choreography. Chekhov’s play was about three sisters who spend the entire drama longing for Moscow without ever getting there, as the world around them changes. At first I’d imagined an empty stage, with the starry sky and space overhead, but then I realized that something solid was needed on stage, something that held the sisters there. Why didn’t they just leave? Take the next train?

  I touched Benji’s arm to let him know I was back. His real name was Benedict, but I wasn’t allowed to tell anyone.

  ‘What is it?’ he whispered. ‘Where have you been?’

  I shook my head. ‘Not now.’

  I hadn’t told even Benji how worried I was. I’d gone about my job as usual, while thoughts of Patrick whirled through my mind.

  ‘They’re doing Masha now,’ he whispered in my ear.

  The light changed from yellow to blue, then switched off before coming on again. The light technician hadn’t yet worked out all the cues.

  ‘They were supposed to rehearse Irina, but Leia has locked herself in her dressing room. She swears she’s never going to dance in this theatre again. She says there’s evil in the air, and she can’t express her innermost emotions.’

  He gave me a sidelong glance and smiled sardonically.

  ‘And she says it’s all your fault.’

  ‘Oh my God. What the hell …’

  I got up, groaning loud enough to be heard in the whole auditorium. He was talking about that girl I’d called a spoiled diva a few hours ago. Duncan, the choreographer, glared at me from the edge of the stage, motioning with his hand for me to leave. Out. Go fix the situation. OK, OK. I understood the signal.

  ‘I’ll go talk to her,’ I whispered to Benji. ‘Or do you think that would make her commit suicide?’

  The whites of his eyes gleamed blue in the wrongly placed light.

  ‘I hear she actually tried that once, in all seriousness. It was Duncan who found her. Did you know they used to be an item?’

  ‘Be right back,’ I whispered.

  A small group of people had gathered outside Leia’s dressing room.

  ‘She won’t come out,’ said Helen, who played the third sister, Olga. ‘She says we should find someone else for the part of Irina. But she knows full well that’s impossible.’

  ‘Take it easy,’ said Eliza, who was the theatre’s marketing manager. She’d witnessed all sorts of neurotic behaviour. ‘She’ll come out when she starts to wonder if we miss her.’

  I knocked on the door.

  ‘Come on, Leia,’ I called. ‘I shouldn’t have said that to you. This show can’t manage without you. You are Irina. Nobody else can play her the way you do.’

  The silence lasted thirteen seconds. I counted. Then the lock clicked. I opened the door and slipped inside the dressing room, shutting the door behind me. The dancer’s face was streaked with make-up. She was still sniffling.

  ‘I don’t understand what I ever did to you,’ she said. ‘Why are you so mean?’

  ‘I don’t know what got into me. I guess I’m just stressed out because of the opening night,’ I replied.

  ‘You don’t care how I feel,’ said Leia. ‘You only think about yourself. Everybody in this fucking business only thinks about themselves.’

  ‘Everyone’s nervous,’ I said. ‘It’s an important show.’

  Leia looked at me from behind her smeared mask. A mask of despair, I thought. Maybe that’s what I should use. Streaked make-up, a person who’s on the verge of falling apart. First the make-up runs, then the whole face gives way, and underneath is an entirely different face. Neither is who she seems to be. There’s yet another face behind the mask, just as real or phony as the outer one.

  ‘What are you nervous about?’ asked Leia, who had now stopped crying. She cast a glance at herself in the mirror and reached for some cleansing cream. ‘You don’t have to stand on stage in front of an audience that might hate you.’

  ‘I’m not nervous,’ I tell her.

  ‘Then why do you keep yelling at me? Why do you call me names if you don’t mean it?’

  ‘They don’t hate you. They love you.’ I picked up a dress that had been tossed on the floor and brushed it off. What a stupid girl. She couldn’t even take care of her costumes. ‘It just slipped out. I must be tired. That’s all.’

  ‘Are you having your period or something?’

  ‘No, I’m not.’ I put a bit too much emphasis on those words, but it was too late to change what I’d said. I saw Leia’s eyes studying me in the mirror. Those sharp blue eyes of hers.

  ‘So are you pregnant or what?’

  The words hovered in the air. I couldn’t think of a thing to say as I stared at the girl in the mirror. A small, insecure girl who barely weighed a hundred pounds. And then I saw a spark appear in her eyes. I’d been silent a second too long.

  ‘My God, you’re pregnant!’ said Leia triumphantly.

  I turned away from her annoying, make-up-smeared face.

  ‘Do you know who the father is?’

  ‘Of course I do,’ I said, my voice barely audible even to me. It was a mere exhalation, a toneless whisper.

  ‘Congratulations,’ said Leia. ‘Poor you.’

  ‘Nobody else knows about this,’ I said quietly. ‘If you tell anyone, I’ll kill you. No, sorry. I didn’t mean that. But I don’t want anybody to know. It’s way too early. It hardly exists at all.’

  ‘But it does exist,’ said Leia. ‘Of course it exists.’

  I sank down on the chair next to her, meeting her eyes in the mirror above the make-up table. My face pale, with dark circles under my eyes. We’d worked until two in the morning, and afterwards I couldn’t sleep. I’d lain in bed, sweating, as I thought about how Patrick was about to leave me, and my child would be born without seeing his father. I realized I was more exhausted than I’d thought.

  ‘I was once pregnant too,’ said Leia.

  I fixed my gaze on the table. She was the last person I wanted as a confidante.

  ‘I had an abortion,’ she went on. ‘I didn’t want to ruin my career. It wasn’t the right time to have a child. And the guy was a real jerk. He never would have helped out with the baby. But you’re married, right?’

  I nodded.

  ‘He was too,’ said Leia.

  I slowly turned to look at her. The cleansing cream had spread the make-up into big splotches. Right now I really needed to see about getting her on stage, or else Duncan would never trust me again as the set designer.

  ‘Do you ever regret what you did?’
I asked.

  ‘You mean that I’m not sitting in some suburb as a single mother? I never could have taken this job.’

  She spun her chair around so she was facing me.

  ‘So, does he want it?’ she said. ‘The father?’

  I nodded. ‘There’s nothing he wants more. He’d like to have a whole baseball team.’ My voice quavered. I could hear Patrick speaking so clearly, as if he were standing right next to me, whispering in my ear. ‘A mixed team, both boys and girls.’ Speaking in that gentle voice of his.

  ‘Well, at least you don’t have to go on stage,’ said Leia. ‘You only have to build things. It’s OK for you to have a big belly. So what’s the problem?’

  I took a tissue from the box on the make-up table and blew my nose. I’d also had an abortion, when I was twenty, after a one-night stand. Back then it had seemed such a simple and matter-of-fact decision. This was something else altogether.

  ‘It would have been born by now,’ said Leia, tugging at the elastic band holding back her hair. ‘I know I shouldn’t think about that, but sometimes I do. Even though I didn’t want it.’

  I grabbed a towel from a hook and tossed it to her.

  ‘Wash your face,’ I said. ‘Then go out there and dance. That’s what matters.’

  Leia put the towel under the tap to get it wet, then washed her face. Her smile became a grotesque grimace in the midst of the splotchy make-up.

  ‘Good Lord, why must I be a human being?’ she said as she rubbed her face hard and stood up. ‘Rather an ox or an ordinary horse, as long as one is allowed to work.’