How I Lose You

by Kate McNaughton

  Though they do not have far to go, the walk down the avenue seems without end: the crowd is shapeless, incoherent, the urgency of some knocking up against the shocked stasis of others, their movements erratic and unpredictable, like the chaotic behaviour of atoms. Every metre of pavement is a struggle to negotiate. As they get closer, a stench of diesel and burning fills the air. There is water everywhere, and the people who walk past them are drenched and splattered with blood and plastery debris. Eva feels Adam’s arm grip tighter around her own, stopping her from moving forward.

  It’s like being inside Guernica: the world has collapsed into dissonant angles, fragments that can no longer be made to fit together.

  A woman sobbing, hobbling urgently on a broken heel.

  A twist of light debris floating by, like the remains of a Chinese lantern.

  Two young men, their shirts half ripped off their bodies, carrying a third, inanimate form: rolling head, trailing feet.

  A huddle of kindergarten children, screaming at the sky.

  Screaming, screaming everywhere.

  Running, manic running.

  Blood.

  She feels she cannot do anything, other than stay still and try to let the situation inhabit her.

  Adam, however, is twitchy, eyes darting in all directions, an impulse towards action palpable through his leather jacket. This also she knows about him: his need to act.

  She sees his gaze alight on something, and turns to see a man staggering towards them, his face covered in a veil of blood. It drips stickily from his chin on to what just an hour ago would have been an immaculately pressed white shirt. A briefcase dangles from his left hand like an afterthought.

  The man comes towards them slowly, blinking through the blood slicking into his eyes. He seems unaware that he has hands he could use to wipe it away.

  Adam gently takes hold of his forearm.

  ‘I’m – er. A doctor. Well. A medical student. Can I – er. Let me take a look.’

  The man stares at Adam without uttering a word. His eyes seem to be looking at them from very far away – another time, perhaps, or a distant, peaceful place. He lets his head be tilted back, the worst of the blood wiped away to reveal skin the same colour as his shirt.

  ‘It’s – um. I think it’s just a scalp wound. It looks worse than it is – lots of blood because, well, there’s a lot of capillaries under there and – um. You need to make sure you keep applying pressure to it …’

  Adam has removed and bundled up his jumper, and is holding it against the man’s head. The man is blinking up at the sky with the mild patience of a child about to receive eye drops. Adam tries to remove the briefcase from his hand.

  ‘Here, if I take this for you then you can …’

  The man’s grip tightens, knuckles whitening under the strain; he pulls the briefcase up to his chest and cradles it carefully. His eyes, though, stay fixed on some point high above them, as though the gods may be about to broadcast a news flash explaining the purpose of this atrocious morning.

  His eerie calm, the gentleness with which Adam tends to him, clash absurdly with the hysteria that surrounds them, clusters of people stampeding at every sound and wails that might have come straight from the Underworld, and limping and bleeding and coughing and moaning.

  Eva looks towards where people are running away from. She needs to get closer.

  ‘Ad, I’ll just go a bit further, OK?’

  ‘Eve, we shouldn’t separate. Look at all this, it’s chaos.’

  ‘Just to the end of the road. I’ll be back in five minutes.’

  ‘I really don’t think it’s a good idea.’

  The man emits a low whimper, and Adam, who is still holding his sweater pressed into his patient’s forehead, briefly returns his attention to him.

  ‘Five minutes, Ad.’

  Eva starts to walk towards the World Trade Center.

  Then a sound like thunder, a rumble that is more felt than heard, that drowns out even the howls of the sirens that have been the soundtrack to their morning. They have time, weirdly, to see the dense white cloud billowing towards them round the side of the building, looking like an avalanche that has been turned at a ninety-degree angle, time for Adam to push his wounded businessman into a crouch and rush to Eva’s side, before it hits them and somehow they are lying on the ground. Adam has his arms around her, clinging to her as to a raft, trying, perhaps – ineffectually – to shelter her from the blast. Eva is foetal, her hands cupped around her mouth, and she remembers reading somewhere that this is what you should do in an avalanche, in order to clear enough space in front of your face to be able to breathe – otherwise, the snow drowns you – and she wonders if this is what she has just done, internalizing that piece of information until it became an instinctive reflex. Or did she just raise her hand to her mouth in horror, in an age-old gesture common to Greek tragedies and pillaged medieval villagers and people who witness car accidents? Whichever it was, it has not worked: there is no air around them any more, only dust, and each intake of breath is like daggers, each exhalation a racking cough. Dust is everywhere, there is nothing but the whiteness of dust, the damp sound of dust, the bland smell and taste of dust. And somewhere, behind all that dust, is the pressure of Adam’s body. She feels him hacking against her, and for a while it is all they can do to lie there, and this is the moment when, really, she thinks they might die, and she almost envies those who have perished by fire or falling, because at least these are raging deaths, not the slow, painful death of asphyxiation.

  Somehow, though, they scramble to their feet, and lean on each other. When their flesh touches – when they clasp each other’s hands – they scrape against each other; their skin has turned to grit and dust. And they cannot talk: you need oxygen to talk.

  There is a Flüchtling in every man. How else do they find their way in this white-out, with shadowy forms crossing their path every now and again only to disappear back into the whiteness, with nothing to tell them what is top or bottom, let alone north or south, or nearer to the World Trade Center or further away from it – how else than by the homing instinct of the Flüchtlinge, who always know which way to go through the fires, the bombs, the devastated landscapes, and always know that they must run away as fast as they can if they are to survive? The streams of the displaced, walking along the sides of Congolese roads while rebel trucks drive towards their villages, fleeing the floods of Bangladesh, crossing Poland as the Nazis draw nearer, crossing Poland as the Red Army draws nearer, they have joined them, and soon, or rather not so soon, after a stretch of time that is both an instant and an eternity in the featureless, airless world of dust, they are in New York again, on a sidewalk with scores of other people caked in white, the mass of them moving as one now, in the direction of the Flüchtlinge, the direction that takes you – you hope – away from danger.

  It takes them so, so long to get off Manhattan; people have been pouring in from all directions, funnelling on to Brooklyn Bridge. And it’s when they get there, their lungs thankful for the breezy air above the river, that some instinct or other makes them turn, to take stock of where they have come from, survey the wreckage, and that is when the second tower collapses, frightfully elegant in its verticality, black dust mushrooming into a thin echo of Hiroshima.

  GRIEF IS LIKE drowning: there is a mismatch between you and the world around you, a chemical incompatibility. Your body is no longer suited to this climate, with its oxygen and temperate heat.

  You find yourself standing in your kitchen trying to boil a kettle, or in your bedroom trying to remember him, or in your leafy, sleepy north London street waiting for the ambulance to arrive that will take his body away, and you are emitting these unearthly wails that do not sound like they could come from a human being, and clutching at the air around you, grabbing at it in fistfuls, trying to pull down the fabric of the universe itself, topple it all on to your head.

  It should be possible, with this black hole that is your grief.


  But really, the outside world is impermeable to your pain. Your pain stays inside you. And the universe stays where it is. And your neighbours, when they catch a glimpse of you, look away and shake their heads, and thank their lucky stars or Fate or God or an anarchic combination of ungoverned circumstances that such tragedy has not fallen upon their house.

  THE DOORBELL RINGS, in exact synchronicity with the silly, two-tone wink of an ICQ message. Eva jumps, uncertain which to deal with first, then looks at the flashing icon: it’s Adam. She opens the message.

  So I have news!

  Hello. What news?

  Oh yeah. Hello

  How’s things going out there?

  OK so long story, but I’ve been doing some work for this guy at the Max Planck Institut here

  Things are going good btw

  She hears the brief, wet sound of suction in front of her, as though an octopus has just attached itself to her bedroom window. And sure enough, the glass is filled with the squidged-up forms of lips, a nose, half a cheek and, most disgustingly, a grey-red tongue. Eva has never understood why people do this: it is unhygienic, and the glass afterwards is left smudged with sweat and grease. And it creates disturbingly monstrous forms out of familiar faces.

  Carmen disengages with a plop and, now almost looking her usual self – her skin is slightly flushed down the side of her face that has been in contact with the window – she grins proudly at Eva, like a golden retriever that has just deposited a particularly large stick at its owner’s feet. Eva wrestles the window open. Carmen sticks her head in, still beaming, the sash window hovering menacingly above her, which makes her look like a golden retriever that has unwittingly placed its head inside a guillotine. Carmen is, generally, very reminiscent of a golden retriever – or would be if she did not have quite such formidable brains.

  ‘Is your doorbell bust or something?’

  ‘No, sorry, it’s just Adam ICQed me right as you rang.’

  ‘Well, you going to let me in or what?’

  ‘Yeah, hang on, two secs …’

  2 secs, Carmen here, got to let her in

  Carmen has vanished – you might think Eva had imagined her apparition, if it weren’t for the greasy trace she has left splurged across the window.

  OK

  Eva wonders if the rain will wash it away eventually. She doesn’t really want to be staring at the world through a smudge of her friend’s sebum every time she looks up from her computer.

  The doorbell rings again. She runs over.

  ‘Carm in, Carmen.’

  ‘You’re taking your time today.’

  ‘Sorry – Adam’s got some sort of announcement he wants to make.’

  ‘Oh my God. He’s not pregnant, is he?’

  ‘Hi, by the way.’

  ‘Hi. So, go chat to lover boy, I’m bursting for the loo anyway.’

  ‘Mi casa es su casa.’

  When she gets back to the computer, Adam’s next missive is bleeping on the screen.

  And so anyway they’ve got this research project they really want me to help out on – it wouldn’t be a huge amount of work, I can easily fit it around my hospital job – I’d just need to come out to Berlin every few months, isn’t that perfect? I was thinking we could even rent a small flat out here, and then have it like a second base to come to – anyway, to be discussed when you’re over. Have you booked your tickets yet?

  Ah.

  Wow, that’s great Ad – well done.

  It’s a while before Adam responds.

  Sorry, was making myself a cup of tea. So, when you coming over?

  This is tricky. Eva, has, in fact, been trying to answer Adam’s question; fragments of messages have, unbeknownst to him, appeared and disappeared on the screen in front of her as she tests out her feelings, cutting and pasting them in and out of one another, attentive to the different ways they resonate depending on how they are agenced together, but never quite sounding right, never quite encapsulating what she really thinks and feels, never quite producing the effect she wants. She doesn’t want to disappoint him; she wants him to understand.

  Yeah, so about that …

  Adam, I’ve been thinking about this, and I’m not sure I’m ready to come to Berlin yet.

  Look, I know it’s hard for you to understand, but—

  Look, I’m not sure I can even explain it to myself, but I don’t really want to come to Berlin – I don’t know, maybe I’m worried I’ll upset my mum.

  Look, I think it’s great you’re so enthusiastic about all this—

  Look, I’ve been thinking about this a lot …

  Adam, I’m afraid—

  OK, so I know this sounds insane, but I’m afraid I might come over and you’ll speak better German than me and you’ll know the place inside out and—

  Eva? You still there?

  ‘So how’s the old banana doing?’

  Yeah, sorry, Carmen here so hard to focus.

  ‘Good. He’s just been offered some sort of research job in Berlin.’

  Oh yeah, of course – say hi!

  ‘He says hi.’

  She says hi back.

  ‘A job? What, he’s going to move out there?’

  ‘No, it’s, like, a thing he’d just have to go over for now and again – some sort of research project.’

  ‘Wow. Cool.’

  How is she?

  ‘How are you?’

  ‘Hunky-dory.’

  Hunky-dory.

  ‘When you going out there by the way?’

  ‘Pff … I don’t know. I’m not sure I’m going to be able to, after all.’

  ‘What, really?’

  ‘Yeah, it’s just – I’ve got so much on at the moment, and I feel like, you know, I need to get things right otherwise they’ll realize they’ve made a terrible mistake and hand my column over to someone who actually has a clue about journalism.’

  ‘Eva, you’re doing fine.’

  Hello? I know you two are just nattering away there …

  ‘Anyway, if Adam is going to be going there regularly in future, it’s no big deal if I don’t go over now.’

  Yeah, sorry.

  ‘He’ll be disappointed, though.’

  ‘Yeah, I know.’

  It’s cool – I’ll leave you to it, got stuff to get on with anyway. Ping me later re: trip? I’m going to be online all afternoon.

  ‘Hang on two secs.’

  Yep, will do.

  Love you.

  Love you too – well done again.

  Thanks.

  Carmen is looking at Eva intently, her head slightly cocked to the side.

  ‘What? Why are you looking at me like that?’

  ‘Why don’t you want to go to Berlin?’

  ‘I told you, I’ve just got too much on my plate right now …’

  ‘You look stressed out.’

  ‘Yes, well, which proves my point, doesn’t it?’

  ‘I mean more stressed out than just work stress. Is everything OK?’

  Bloody Carmen. Knowing Eva so bloody well. Being able to bloody read her so accurately.

  ‘I’m – I don’t know, I feel weird about it.’

  ‘…’

  ‘I guess maybe I’ve always thought the first time I’d go to Berlin it would be with my mother, and I’m not sure I want it to be with Adam instead.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because – I don’t know, it’s like it’s a place that belongs to my family, you know? My history. It’s got a meaning for us that it doesn’t have for him.’

  ‘OK – I guess that sort of makes sense.’

  ‘Please don’t tell him I said that, though.’

  ‘I’m sure he’d understand.’

  ‘Well still – don’t.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘…’

  ‘…’

  ‘By the way, you are cleaning up that smudge on my window when we get back.’

  ‘What smudge?’

  ‘There. Where yo
ur face was. Man, you have a greasy face.’

  ‘Swarthy roots, what can I say? Do you even own any window-cleaner, Mrs Domestic Goddess?’

  ‘We’ll pick some up while we’re out.’

  ‘Is Henry joining us, by the way?’

  ‘Oh yeah, he said he should be able to – I’ll give him a bell.’

  THE DOORBELL RANG. It did this frequently. It did this all the time. People would come in, bearing pots of stew, fresh milk, expressions of concern. They were all so exhausting. Did they not understand that none of them was Adam?

  Eva’s mother jumped up.

  ‘I go.’

  Eva’s dad looked up from his paper. How could anyone read a paper, at this time? Even keeping her concentration for the length of a single article was beyond Eva’s ability. But then, she supposed, Adam had not been the other half of her parents’ life, just a pleasant and reliable son-in-law. It was strange – that they were here for her, really, not for Adam at all, however fond they may have been of him.

  She wondered, conversely, what role she would play in Adam’s family now. She had grown to feel a part of their loud, expansive tribe, but could she still belong if all that connected her to them was an absence, a memory?

  Was her family now reduced back down to this shrunken trio?

  She heard a booming voice greeting her mother at the other end of the corridor – even rent asunder by grief, Henry couldn’t talk at a normal volume.

  ‘Would you like a cup of tea, Henry?’

  ‘Oh, er, yes, thank you, Mrs Bard. Hello, Mr Bard. Hello, Eva.’

  ‘Hi, Henry.’

  Henry, like Eva, carried the marks of Adam’s death on his body: he too had stopped eating, and his face looked almost gaunt, the flesh melting from his heavyset frame. He had worn an expression of constant bewilderment since Adam had died, as though he was in the process of working through a particularly knotty philosophical problem. Which, in fact, Eva supposed, they all were; the dispiriting thing was that it did not look like they were about to find any answers. She imagined she probably wore much the same expression as Henry did.

  Henry sat down at the table and stared absent-mindedly at the cup of tea Eva’s mother had placed in front of him. ‘So there’s some news from the doctor, I gather?’ He didn’t like to use the word ‘autopsy’.