Burning City

by Ariel Dorfman

  “Do you like that?” he asked, mouth close to her ear.

  “I like you,” she whispered. “It feels nice. Comfortable . . . Do you like it?”

  “Yes.”

  Silvia let out a slow breath, closed her eyes, breathed in, chest rising against Heller’s palm.

  “Silvia . . . ?”

  “Mmm?” Silvia murmured dreamily.

  “This was pure chance,” Heller told her. “The strange thing about chance is that you can’t understand it. Chance doesn’t make any sense until it becomes destiny. . . .”

  Heller continued to talk, more to himself, as it all came out of him.

  “It’s difficult, because there’s a world of pain out there. And all people have to hold on to are memories or God, Allah, or . . . little wooden horses. I don’t know what it is . . . but there’s something.”

  Heller hesitated, scared. “I just know . . . I had a message for you. I really can’t do this for much longer, be people’s messenger, I know it now. And I’m sorry about your father. . . . I’m so sorry.”

  The clock had made its way to fifteen minutes past the hour.

  Heller waited for Silvia’s response, held his breath.

  Her answer to it all was a light snore.

  Silvia had fallen asleep.

  Heller swallowed carefully, worried the movement might wake her up.

  He sighed.

  Kissed her hair.

  The water kept on its course throughout all of it.

  chapter forty-six

  The blare of a police siren woke them up.

  Heller and Silvia groaned, stirred, stretched.

  The sun was rising, and Heller was once again wearing clothes well past their prime.

  Silvia didn’t seem to mind, and she kissed him lightly.

  “Hi,” she said, raspy.

  “Hi.”

  They kissed again.

  “I’ll walk you home,” Heller offered.

  “I’ll join you,” Silvia said.

  She kissed him again.

  The two of them stood, muscles aching, feeling good.

  Heller felt the air rush out of him all at once.

  He took a few steps to where his bike had been chained a little less than twenty-four hours ago. Now there wasn’t even a sign of the chain. Empty space.

  “No,” Heller said.

  “Oh, no . . . ,” Silvia echoed.

  Heller looked around, a distant hope that the thief was still somewhere in the vicinity. A few kids off to day camp, their mother telling them where she would meet them later. Some squirrels. That was all.

  “My bike . . .”

  Silvia put her hand on his shoulder.

  Heller was in complete shock, unable to respond.

  “Look,” Silvia tried, “come up to my place. You can call the police from there. We’ll get your bike back. . . .”

  She was saying the same thing at the entrance to her apartment. “Heller? We’ll find your bike. It’s going to be all right. . . .”

  Heller nodded.

  Silvia dug into her pocket, got her keys.

  She opened the door, let Heller in.

  Dimitri was there.

  It was the second thing that struck Heller as the door closed behind him. The first was that the apartment was extremely bright. The blinds, if there were any, were raised, and the sun seemed to be positioned directly outside. The walls were bright white, light reflecting off them, not a single decoration to soften the glare.

  Then there was Dimitri.

  He was standing with a short, round woman with blond highlights streaked in dark hair. She was somewhere around her late thirties, and Heller didn’t need an introduction to know that it was Elsa Martinez.

  Silvia’s mother.

  Her eyes were dry, but the rest of her betrayed a state of absolute distress.

  Heller knew why, suspected Dimitri did as well, and suspected Silvia was about to find out.

  “Dimitri,” Heller said.

  “Heller,” Dimitri said.

  “Silvia,” Elsa said.

  “Mother?” Silvia asked.

  “Heller,” Dimitri began again, face a blank slate of professionalism. “First of all, you’re fired.”

  “Heller, who is this guy?” Silvia asked.

  “My boss,” Heller said.

  “Ex-boss,” Dimitri corrected. “What on earth is wrong with you, Heller? Not only do you disappear from work without a word’s notice, but then I have to hear from Mrs. Martinez’s family that they haven’t received word about the message they sent!”

  “What’s going on?” Silvia asked, sensing the sudden change in her life going one step further than before.

  Dimitri’s eyes shifted to sympathy. “I’m sorry it had to be like this.”

  “Let me,” Heller pleaded.

  “No!” Dimitri shouted. “You don’t work for me anymore!”

  Heller turned to Silvia, rushed, trying his best to beat Dimitri to it. “Silvia, I was supposed to give you a message . . . and I didn’t.”

  Silvia stepped back with an overwhelming dread masking her face. “What?”

  “Your father is dead,” Heller said, all at once. “He died of a heart attack. I was supposed to tell you yesterday, but I couldn’t—”

  “Get out,” Silvia said.

  “But I couldn’t because I wasn’t ready to.”

  “Get out!” Silvia screamed at him, pushing him toward the door, tears in her eyes.

  “Silvia . . .”

  “I can’t believe what you’ve done to me.”

  She shoved him out the door and stood there, a nest of rage.

  Heller tried to say something and the words wouldn’t come.

  “Heller—” Dimitri began.

  “I know,” Heller said, defeated.

  Silvia’s face contorted. She burst into tears and slammed the door.

  Heller remained in the stairway, left alone. Listening to Silvia’s sobs through the walls. Listened to her choking on the news of her father.

  He made as though to knock, knuckles resting against the wood.

  There wasn’t anything he could do, and he took a few steps down toward the exit, trying to think of a way out of what had just happened.

  A door opened, and Heller turned, hopefully.

  It was another apartment door. A seven-year-old child looked out through the chained crack of the entrance to his home. Heller raised his hand in a halfhearted greeting, mouthed a hello.

  The child closed the door.

  Heller went outside. His bike was still gone.

  It was Wednesday morning, and Heller had been sixteen for an entire week.

  chapter forty-seven

  The 6 train bounced and rattled on the rail, squeals of brakes and sparks illuminating the dark underground beyond the windows. The seats were packed, not even much standing room. Heat like a sauna, the smell of bodies packed together. Advertisements for cosmetic surgeons. Club Med retreats where the sands were white and water was clean and pure.

  Heller sat between two construction workers, their wide shoulders pressing against him, jostling him with every sharp turn of the subway. Nobody glanced at anyone else. Eyes all downcast. Tired and sweating under their work clothes.

  The door between cars opened, and a woman with a large stomach and a dirty maternity dress stepped in, a paper cup in one hand. Hair in clumped braids. Smudged face and lips chapped.

  “Excuse me, people. I am sorry to interrupt your ride, and I hope you are having a pleasant day. . . .”

  Nobody turned to look at her. They all knew where it was going.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, I am seven months pregnant and I have no home. . . .” Her eyes were ashamed, voice a steady monotone of despair. “I have also lost my job. I do not want to be a bother, but I am hungry and I am worried about my baby, and I need a place to stay. . . .”

  One by one, the passengers began paying attention. The woman had an indefinable quality about her. With every word, i
nvisible strings pulled at heads, Heller’s included, and by the end of her speech, he was entirely mesmerized, empathy unhinged and uncontrollable.

  “. . . All that I ask is for whatever you can find in your heart to spare: some change, a bit of food, an address for me and my baby to find help. I am alone and appreciate your kindness. God bless you. . . .”

  Everyone’s face remained hard and expressionless as she began her slow charity walk down the aisle. Still, just about everyone dug into their pockets, jingled change, dropped what they could into her cup.

  “Thank you, God bless,” she said with every donation. “Thank you, God bless. Thank you, God bless. Thank you, God bless. Thank you, God bless. Thank you, God bless . . . Thank you, thank you, God bless. God bless. Thank you, God bless . . .”

  Heller had spent all but a quarter on his subway fare.

  He dropped the twenty-five-cent piece into her cup, followed her with his eyes as she inched her way past the rest of the workaday world.

  She exited the car, on to the next one.

  The train continued to clatter through the tunnels.

  Three minutes later, a grinding halt at the Twenty-eighth Street stop.

  Heller stood. Popped out from between the two construction workers.

  He stepped onto the platform, conductor on the speakers already asking for the rest of the passengers to stand clear of the closing doors. They chimed and slid shut and the train started up, racing to its next destination.

  Heller lurched through the turnstile with excessive difficulty, energy drained.

  Walked up the steps, out into the open air.

  Down the block he saw the pregnant woman. She was standing in a doorway, reaching under her dress. Heller watched her give a few tugs and pull out a large plastic stomach from beneath the material. She slung it over her shoulder and continued on her way, a smooth stride in the legs, head held high, back straight.

  Heller couldn’t see the look on her face, but was sure that if he had, it would have been unrecognizable as the woman he saw in the subway.

  The woman dissolved into a pack of schoolkids on a field trip.

  Heller went the opposite way.

  chapter forty-eight

  The apartment seemed empty. Heller slammed the door behind him.

  Leaned against it.

  “Heller?”

  It was Eric’s voice. Coming from the kitchen.

  “Yes,” Heller answered.

  “Come in here, please.”

  Heller went into the kitchen. Eric was seated at the table. Florence was leaning against the counter, momentarily halted in the act of cutting an apple. They both looked at Heller with their faces barely under control.

  “Where were you?” Eric asked.

  “I . . .”

  “Where were you?” Florence insisted.

  There was no way to explain.

  “I know that we’re only your grandparents,” Eric went ahead, anger slowly coming out, “but the way you have been acting for the past few days is inexcusable, even to such incidental people as Florence and myself—”

  “Silvia broke up with me.”

  “You’re sixteen!” Eric shouted. He tried to calm down, managed with clear difficulty. “Sixteen! I don’t care if Silvia broke up with you! Do you know what it’s like to stay up all night wondering if your grandson is still alive?”

  “Do you know what it’s like to be sixteen?!” Heller burst out, body trembling. “Do you? It’s a whole other world for us out there!”

  “Don’t talk to me about what it’s like out there.”

  “I’ll talk—”

  “You don’t know what Florence and I have seen, what your father and mother have seen. You don’t know what it’s like out there, you’re a goddamn child!”

  “Who cares what you’ve seen!” Heller yelled. “I don’t need to see it to know that I don’t want to inherit what you’ve left me! Any of it!”

  “Well, you’re getting it,” Florence spoke up, cutting into the apple calmly. “Whether you like it or not, Heller. It’s yours.”

  Heller opened his mouth to answer and saw the futility of it all. The futility of trying to explain, the futility of trying to understand. There was no debating anything, and it was clear nobody was going to win.

  The refrigerator clicked, began to hum.

  Eric, Florence, and Heller didn’t take it any further.

  Took it all in.

  When the phone rang, everyone jumped, Florence dropping the knife to the floor. She stooped down as Heller went to pick up the phone, cutting it off in midring.

  “Hello . . . ,” Heller said, not recognizing the voice asking for Heller Highland. “Yes, this is him. . . .”

  It was the hospital.

  Heller’s face darkened, and he was off the phone in less than a minute. He set the receiver back with a soft click.

  Heller thought Eric and Florence must have seen the color drain from his face, heated flush replaced by a sick sort of white. They shifted instantly. Their hardness dissolved, the enforcers now replaced with Heller’s grandparents, back again.

  “What is it?” Florence asked.

  “Salim is gone.”

  “Salim?” Eric was confused.

  “Gone from where?” Florence asked.

  “They say he left the hospital last night,” Heller told them. “Nobody saw him go.”

  “Salim was in the hospital?”

  “I have to go,” Heller said.

  He turned to leave, stopped in his stride by Eric’s voice:

  “Heller . . .”

  Heller didn’t turn around. He could see them anyway, in that cozy kitchen, wearing their age on their faces, concerned stares second nature after so many years.

  “I’m sorry,” Heller said, sincerely wondering who he was talking to. “I’m just sorry for everything.”

  He ran out the door, down the stairs, and raced on foot to see if there was any possible way to find his friend in a city of millions.

  chapter forty-nine

  It wasn’t a problem finding Salim’s apartment building. Wasn’t a problem getting in—the lock on the front door was still busted. Wasn’t a problem entering the room—the door was unlocked.

  Heller stopped at the entrance.

  The entire place was empty. The cots were gone, clothes, scant decorations, even Salim’s books. Vanished. All that was left were the cracks in the walls and the incessant dripping of a broken faucet in the bathroom.

  “What are you doing here?” an accusing voice snapped behind him. A large woman in a polka-dot dress was poised in the doorway, gritty eyes and permanent grimace carved into her cheeks.

  “Are you the landlady?” Heller asked.

  “Landlord,” she insisted, clearly wearing the title on her sleeve. “I’m the landlord, and this is my building.”

  “Where did everybody go?”

  “They took off, disappeared last night.” She peered at him accusingly. “You don’t actually know those Arabs, do you?”

  “They are not—” Heller caught himself, felt he might be in over his head. “No, I don’t.”

  “You know it turns out they had no papers.”

  “I don’t know anything,” Heller said, aware that there was no need to lie to her. It was the honest-to-God truth. “I really don’t.”

  He pushed past her, almost knocking her down.

  “Hey!” she shrieked, calling after him as he bolted down the stairs. “You come back here again, I’m calling the cops, you little sneak! Get the HELL out of my place!”

  She was still ranting when Heller hit the street.

  In the reflection of a parked-car window, he caught a good look at himself. He was a total mess. The sidewalk on either side of him seemed to stretch out into infinity. Where to go, where to even start trying to make things right . . .

  Heller felt his necklace rubbing against his neck.

  He ran one block north, looked left, looked right, took in every angle of the
intersection. On the adjacent corner were a couple of phone booths. Heller ran between the bumpers of gridlocked cars and picked up the first phone he got to. Its cord was severed. He tried the other one; the healthy sound of a dial tone. Heller reached into his pocket, remembered the woman in the subway.

  Heller swore, slammed down the phone. At a loss, in a state of near delirium, he jumped into the middle of sidewalk pedestrians and announced:

  “Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen!”

  A few people turned, some even stopped, and Heller kept right on:

  “I’m sorry to interrupt your walk, but I have just lost my job, my bike, my girlfriend, and possibly my best friend! There is no way to fix this, but if anybody can find it in their hearts to spare a quarter, one quarter! I don’t want to be a bother, but I don’t seem to have any other option! GOD BLESS YOU ALL!”

  Heller finished with his arms outstretched, chest heaving.

  A lanky twenty-year-old with glasses and a gingery goatee walked up and dropped twenty-five cents in Heller’s hand.

  “Please,” the charitable stranger said, “just promise you’ll never do that again.”

  “I promise.”

  “Good.” He winked and went on his way.

  Heller went back to the phone, lifted the receiver.

  He reached into his back pocket, searching for a phone number. Pulled out an ambiguously light green card, 4 x 8— the message for Silvia that should have been delivered by Heller. He crumpled it viciously and threw it to the floor. Reached back into his pocket and pulled out a business card.

  Heller dialed with poor accuracy and had to try three times before finally getting a ring on the other end.

  He found himself crossing his fingers, hoping for the first in a long string of miracles.

  chapter fifty

  Benjamin Ibo listened intently to the whole story.

  Heller talked fast, knowing he was leaving out massive details. He held tightly on to the cup of coffee Benjamin had served him. Benjamin’s apartment looked different from when he had appeared there on business two weeks ago. Nothing like the apartment he remembered. Transformed, purified somehow.

  None of it comforted Heller, and he was done relaying the events to Benjamin in under fifteen minutes. Benjamin nodded, leaned over the table, and put a hand on Heller’s shoulder.