Arcadia

by James Treadwell

  He remembers thinking once that this was what he always wanted.

  II

  Fantasyland

  13

  What’s weird is that he never says anything.

  Briar Hill, a bright autumn morning, a few days ago, gathering blackberries and sloes: he watched Ol walk away to his death, knowing he ought to stop him but not knowing how. The right moment kept slipping by, too fast to catch.

  It’s the same now. If he’d just shouted out then, a moment ago—Help! Let me out!—this whole unthinkable turn of events might have stopped and gone into reverse. But he never does, because now the moment is gone.

  There was a point soon after they were under way when he heard shouting coming across the water, voices screaming from the island. That was the moment. He could have jumped up and banged on the door. He can see himself doing it, the sequence of actions, panel by panel. Bang, shout: Hey! I’m in here! They’d have realized what they’d done and let him out, and then something else would have happened, over the page: they’d have dropped him off at the beach on Sansen, maybe, or put him ashore in the dinghy. If there is a dinghy.

  But it didn’t happen. He was waiting for it to happen and it never did.

  He has a little cry. Not for long: he’s feeling too sick. They must be out beyond the edge of the world by now. In the no-man’s-land, the vacuum. The graveyard. They’re a speck in the big grey swell. There’s no engine sound. They’re sailing. The boat’s wallowing and lurching in that queasily sluggish way which means the wind’s behind. The comics slide around on the dismal bunk. Feet bang overhead and from time to time vague shadows further blot out the grimy light from the hatch.

  At one stage the locked door rattles sharply and he hears Silvia say something in Italian. Obviously this is another moment when he ought to shout out—It’s me!—or was another moment: it’s gone almost as soon as it happens. What could he say, anyway? They’re not going to take him back now.

  Or ever, perhaps. Like Ol.

  Eventually he hears muttering and scraping at the door and then a couple of very loud whacks, so loud they make him forget his nausea and sit up cross-legged on the bunk. After the fourth or fifth whack there’s a metallic pop, and a crack appears in the door near the handle. One more whack shakes the handle loose. The lock falls out, the door bangs open, and there’s Silvia, a mallet in one hand and a screwdriver in the other and a look on her face as close to surprise as Rory will ever see. The sea sounds twice as loud with the door open.

  Her look changes to a dry smile.

  “I had a feeling,” she says.

  * * *

  They don’t turn back. Rory climbs unsteadily up the companionway and looks over the stern and there’s nothing there but waves, dazzling hills of water. Lino whoops at him and slaps his back. Per, at the wheel, still gripping his massive walking stick, only scowls. He doesn’t know what they’re saying to each other but he can tell from Per’s face that he wouldn’t turn the boat around even if they asked him to. The hills rear up behind him, dark on their shadowed side, relentless, wave after wave. He’s not so much seasick as plain terrified. The boat bangs and squeaks and judders and plunges off the back of each wave like it’s going to fall forever. It’s not even that windy, it’s just the ocean swell. He always hated it, even when he hadn’t just been kidnapped. He retreats below and crams himself into a corner of the main cabin, bracing himself against cold plastic.

  “I don’t like it either.” Silvia sits beside him. “We’re people of the roads, my people. Not like those two up there.” Lino’s scrambling all over the deck. They can hear him going back and forth all the time; it’s like listening to mice in the ceiling. “Per was a sailor, you know. It was his job. He worked on the big boats, all over the world. And Lino grew up by the sea. Like you.”

  Perhaps she’s trying to make him feel better by sitting and talking with him. He’s too sick and miserable to notice.

  “It doesn’t help you so much?” She ruffles his hair, like she did earlier that morning, outside the Hotel. It can’t have been the same day, he thinks, or the same world. How’d he end up here? “That’s OK. I think it’s right to be afraid of the sea. It’s the opposite of us. Those two, they’re the strange ones.”

  He’s hardly said anything to her. What he wants to say is I want to go home. He wants to whine like Pink. But you can’t talk to Silvia like that. She’s not his mother. They don’t care what he wants. He’s caught up in their journey, small and useless as a burr. He’s not going home. He won’t be at the Abbey later on, or in his bed after that. His mother’s not going to tuck him in tonight.

  Silvia watches him for a moment and then just carries on.

  “I was born a long way from the sea. Do you know Romania? No? That’s where I was born. In a house on wheels. A car like a little house. What’s the word in English? Anyway. So I was even born on the road. Nineteen eighty-four. How old are you?” She only waits a little. “No, I remember. Ten?”

  He nods, finally.

  “Only ten,” she says to herself, like it’s hard to believe.

  Why’s she talking about this? Why isn’t she saying sorry to him, telling him it’s all been a stupid mistake, explaining how she’s going to fix it and put him back where he’s supposed to be?

  She pulls her knees up on the seat next to him and settles close. “You don’t know about the history in Europe, then. You’re much too young. Romania, where I was born, it’s a country in east Europe. Thirty years ago, this whole part of the world, it’s a completely different place. The Iron Curtain. Have you heard about the Iron Curtain?”

  He shakes his head. No one’s ever talked to him like this before.

  “All the countries in this part of Europe, we were like little children, and Russia is the mother. Yes? Telling us what to do. Saying, No, you can’t leave the house, you can’t go outside to play, you stay here where I watch you all the time. In Romania all the people are like that, like children. And my people, the Roma, we’re the smallest. The slaves of slaves. The Russians spit on the Romanians and the Romanians spit on the gypsies. Then one day, when I was a small child, Russia got sick and died. All the children were left with no . . .”

  She looks at Rory and thinks better of finishing the sentence.

  “So, all those countries, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, they don’t know what to do. No one knows what’s happening, what rules there are now. For the Roma, my people, there was nothing. No money, no work, nowhere to live. My parents disappeared maybe, or died, I don’t know what happened. I live in the streets. In a little box, under a bridge. This is the oldest thing I remember. My box, and water coming from a broken pipe. I remember the sound of dogs. Trucks crossing the bridge in the night, brrrmmm. I live like that, by the road. Can you imagine?”

  She waits quite a long time, watching him fixedly.

  “You feel sad without your mother?” she says, eventually.

  He gives a stiff little nod.

  Perhaps she’s finally noticed what she’s done to him. But she doesn’t do any of those things grown-ups usually do when they’re pretending to comfort you: no hugs or pats or poor-yous. She shrugs, looks at her nails. They’re filthy. Then she goes on talking about herself.

  “You know I’m an orphan? It’s the same word in Romanian. Orfan. I remember the day people came and took me to the orphanage. Nineteen ninety. I’m six years old.

  “It’s very young, yes? They come with a big white car and take me from my box under the bridge. I scream, I fight like this.” She waves her arms wildly in the air and makes her greasy hair flap around. “That night I’m locked in a room with other girls. All white Slavic girls. All our hair cut off. They say horrible things to me, pinch me so I can’t go to sleep, blame me every time there is a noise. I didn’t even have a mother but I cried for being alone.”

  Despite himself he can’t help imagining this story, a little bit.

  “You know they throw me out?” She catches his eye and smile
s like it’s a joke. “It’s true. When I’m maybe eight, maybe nine, they decide they don’t want a gypsy girl. That orphanage, it’s the worst place I ever go to, but they think it’s too good for me. They put me back in the same white car, drive me to a place where Roma are, and they open the door like so and—pffwwt!—out, like rubbish. Drop by the road, drive away. I was not as old as you are now.”

  The boat drags, yaws, slips downhill again. Loose things clatter around the cabin’s galley.

  “What happened?” he says.

  “Hmm?”

  “What happened then?”

  She points at herself, arching her thick black eyebrows.

  “You want to hear Silvia’s story? It’s a long story. I’ve come a long way.”

  “OK,” he says.

  She looks at him curiously, as if she’s making her mind up about something. “Or maybe you want to know what a small child did, all alone?” He blinks, suddenly tearful. “Except you aren’t all alone. No? I told you, I think your road and mine, they go”—she points the index fingers of both hands and lays them beside each other, like the rails of Jake’s train set—“like this.”

  She doesn’t care at all about what’s happening to him. He’s so astonished by this that it’s somehow impossible for him to weep for himself, it’s like she’s changed the rules.

  “I wasn’t all alone either. The Roma took me in. They know I belong to them. I live in their camp for a while. An old woman looked after me, made me say she was . . .” She frowns. “The sister of your mother, what do you call this? I forget the word.”

  Rory has to concentrate to help her. “You mean aunt?”

  Silvia snaps her fingers. “Of course. Aunt, she makes me say she’s my aunt. We all live in tiny dirty houses. No floor or water. No one wants to see the Roma so there’s no work. I remember one night people come with dogs to make us go away, they want the field we live on. But our dogs were bigger!” She grins at him. “Or maybe hungrier. Another old woman, she took me into towns with her to beg. In the towns I have to pretend I am her daughter’s daughter.”

  “That’s granddaughter.”

  “Granddaughter, thank you. I have to go like this”—cough, cough. “Pretend I am sick so people will give more money. And sometimes people come to the camp and give my aunt money to tell their fortune. That’s how I lived. But it was better than the orphanage. My hair grew back!” She tugs it and smiles, sharing a joke.

  It’s too much. He stares back at her. Her smile disappears and she studies him for a while. Then she edges closer to him, sliding along the seat, bracing her legs against the plastic table in the middle of the cabin, leans close and says:

  “Tell me, Rory. Do you believe in fate?”

  She’s talking almost in his ear. He’s been stolen from his home, he’s nauseous, he doesn’t think he’s ever going to see his mother again, and instead of curling up and crying his wretched heart out he’s talking to a mysterious gypsy about fate.

  “As soon as I saw you,” Silvia goes on, “I know our roads run together. Do you believe that?”

  Does he? Does it really matter what he believes? He thought he was only ten and nobody cared what he thought about anything, let alone destiny.

  “Dunno.”

  “But it’s true. Everyone carries their fate with them.” She’s murmuring, like she’s sharing a secret. Every time the boat pitches he’s pressed right up against her shoulder and he can smell the grassy dirty musk of her hair. “Everyone likes to think they’re free, you know? Like they do what they want. In Romania, Bulgaria, everywhere, people said this all the time. Now we are free. Give us more freedom! Like they can choose their fate. But it’s not true. Your fate is outside you. But like a shadow, you see. Attached. It’s like this for everyone, even children. I see it when I look at you. The first time, in that old place, in the rain. I see this . . .” Her voice drops to a whisper. “Big shadow. Covering you.” She turns to stare at him, very close. “Do you believe this?”

  He can certainly feel a dark cloud above him but he doesn’t think that’s what she means.

  She settles back and folds her arms. “When I was nine years old, in that house in the field, with no floor? And people came to hear their fortune? They came to the old woman, the one who calls herself my aunt. But it’s me who knows the answers.” She watches him as if she’s afraid he’s not listening properly. “It’s true. Nine-year-old girl. There was this man one day, a farmer, big man. He comes to the camp. His son’s getting married, he wants to know about the girl. You know, is she healthy here”—Silvia taps below her stomach—“will she bring boys, will she love other men, all this. The old woman sends me away to fetch a handkerchief and put his money away and when I’m coming back I look in his face and I see his fate, so I say don’t worry because he will be dead before the wedding.” Silvia smiles grimly. “He was very angry. My aunt too. She beat me afterwards. The man took all his money back, says I curse his son. But I’m not talking about the son, I mean the man. In two months he was dead. The old woman too. While she’s beating me I tell her she will die soon after the man. Four days after we hear the farmer is dead, my aunt is drunk in the road and a truck hits her. Do you believe me?”

  One look at her face is enough to tell him that doubting her isn’t an option.

  “It’s true. Everyone in the world has a road they travel. Sometimes I see ahead, one turn maybe, two turns, or up or down. Sometimes the end. When I was little, like you, I think everyone can see like this. In that camp I learn, no, I am special.” She shakes her head. “You know how I learn? Because the others, the men, they start to bring more people to our camp. To take their money! They make me work. This is how stupid people are. ‘Look, here is Silvia, she has a gift, how can we use this gift to get money?’ Then the men take the money and buy vodka and cigarettes. More vodka and cigarettes, that’s how I find out I’m special.” She looks away, brooding.

  Rory has two feelings inside him and no way of making them join up. On the one hand he’s been kidnapped, betrayed by a horrible failure of his own brilliant idea, helpless and lost, and he’s never going to see Home again. On the other hand he’s on a quest with a gang of superheroes.

  “You mean,” he says, when it becomes apparent that Silvia’s backed herself into some kind of dead end, “you can see the future?”

  “Yes,” she says, as if he’s just asked her whether she’s tied her shoelace.

  He makes an effort to process this. “So . . .”

  “Now you’re going to ask, ‘What will happen next?’ ” That’s exactly what he was going to ask, but now he has to pretend it wasn’t. “It’s not like a book.” She mimes turning pages, peering at the next chapter and going ahh! “It’s not all written like this, waiting for us to come to the right page. If you ask me when we’re going to reach land, I send you up to ask Per. I don’t know the next page. I know everyone in the world has their own fate. Your fate belongs to you, mine to me. Even if they go like this.” She makes the train tracks with her fingers again. “Sometimes the shadow of it falls on your face and I see it there. I’m not like the girls on TV who tell you the weather.” She chirps, “ ‘Tomorrow morning will be rain, then in the afternoon sun.’ ” She shakes her head. “Not like this. The men, the Roma, they take me to watch horses race in the fields and they ask me which one will win. They want to bet and make money! And when I don’t know they beat me. Do they beat you all the time? Those women, on that island?”

  “No,” he says.

  “I didn’t think so. You have nice easy life, I think. Big house full of food and many women to look after you. And then—” She snaps her fingers close to his face and waves around to indicate the decrepit cabin. “This.”

  He grips the back of the seats more tightly.

  Silvia sighs. “But this is your fate, you see. Maybe it’s not so bad too. You tell me that your mother is going to take you away, yes? She’s afraid you will grow older and the sirene will take you, so she wants to ca
rry you from that island in this boat? So if not for this you go with her, and then either you drown or you starve. You don’t believe me? It’s true for certain. Even if you cross the sea and don’t drown, when you come to land you die. Me and Lino, we come across half of Europe this year. I know what’s happening everywhere. You and your mother, just two of you, on land? Ai.” She puffs her cheeks out and shakes her head. “You are lucky that isn’t your fate. You are lucky the storm blows me and Lino and Per to your little island.”

  Black thoughts sting him. “How’s it lucky?” he says, as sulkily as he dares.

  “Hmm?” She wasn’t expecting him to say anything.

  “How’s it lucky? If it’s fate. It’s not luck if it’s fate, is it. It can’t be both.”

  She’s startled for a moment, and then she laughs. “Philosopher,” she says.

  “Didn’t you know there was going to be a storm?”

  “No. I told you, I’m not a weather girl.”

  “So what’s the point? What’s the use of seeing the future if you can’t . . .” He blurts this out in a little fit of anger, enraged that she’s making him listen to her story and telling him how nice his life is when she ought to be apologizing for kidnapping him and doing her best to comfort him like grown-ups are supposed to do for children when they’re sad. The fit drains away very quickly under the force of her stare.