by Claire North
“I’d been shot on Hung Hom Pier, yes. Said it was an accident at work.”
“And I believed that?”
“I don’t think you were expecting a thief to say hello. I’d approached you in São Paulo, I knew—”
“What did you do in São Paulo?” Incredulity, rage, beginning to rise, but he’s keeping it under control, just, pulling back the tempest.
“Nothing. We had a drink.”
“We had a drink?” The fingers of one hand grip white against the table, then jerk up, as if stung, hang for a second in the air between us, and for a moment I don’t know if he’s going to hit me or not.
Then there it is, the copper’s sigh, getting control of himself, pulling it all back together, jaw tight, eyes narrow.
“We had a drink,” I repeated. “I pretended to be a policewoman from the local service. It was just a drink.”
“Why?”
“You were…”
“Investigating? A good man?” The words came out edged with bile, and he heard it, and half closed his eyes again, and when they opened again he was calm, flat, listening, a cop on the job.
The café turned, the door opened, the door closed, cold air drifting in from outside. A woman laughed at the counter, the checkout till pinged shut, we sat in silence.
Then I said, fast and flat, surprised to hear myself speak, “In the short term, these deeds are yours, as well as mine.” His eyebrows flickered, fingers tight, but he said nothing. “You met me. Spoke to me. Formed an impression. Your short-term memory can hold me long enough. You made a judgement. Would you like me if you knew who I was? Probably not, you have long-term impressions that a short-term experience cannot trump. But for a second, forget that. Meet me now, for the very first time. In this moment, who do you see? Create a picture of me second by second, no past, no future, no care, no responsibility. You do that; I do not do it for you. I can position myself in a certain way, say certain things, but in the end, the choice is yours. You chose this. In Hong Kong—”
“We went up in the elevator together,” he interrupted, stopping words he didn’t want to hear.
I shrugged, let him finish.
“And six hours and twenty-eight minutes later, you got into the elevator on my floor, and took it to yours.”
Silence.
“Would it make a difference if I told you?” I asked, chin resting on the netted top of my hands. “Everything I can tell you is just words, and you’d have no way of knowing if it was true. Only trust, or rejection, or something doubtful in between. Your choice.”
Silence a while. Then: “I am a good man.” He said it so softly, I wondered if he knew he had spoken at all. Then he looked up, and a little louder, “I am a good man. I don’t forget the people I’ve slept with; that’s not who I am.”
“And here we are. Is that why you wanted to meet? To ask all of this?”
“Yes.”
“Why did you think I’d come?”
“Because of Hong Kong. Because I think you’re obsessive and lonely.”
I shrugged.
“Do you want pity? A thief is a thief.”
“How would you live, in my shoes?” I replied. “It’s tough drawing housing benefit when no one down the Jobcentre remembers you. You’d think that stuff would be automated, but hell no, government can’t have slackers, slackers have to be assessed, interviewed, catalogued. Tough getting catalogued, when people forget to file the report. Try getting flatmates, doing an interview, getting treated by a doctor, finding friends – what would you have done?”
“Isn’t it your fault, that you’re forgotten? Isn’t it something you choose?”
My turn to consider hitting him. I contemplated the idea with cool detachment, and found it surprisingly easy to let it go. “No. I never chose any of this.”
“You chose to steal Perfection.”
“Yes.”
“You chose to manipulate me. To… to…”
His voice trailed off. He rolled his teaspoon between his fingers, one way, then the other; reached a decision, and turned the Dictaphone off. Put it in his jacket pocket.
“We slept together in Hong Kong,” he said at last.
“Yes.”
“And in Brazil?”
“No.”
“What about here?”
“No.”
“Do you want to?” Not an invitation; a simple question.
“Are you sure you don’t want to keep recording?” I replied.
A shaking of his head. “I don’t want to remember this.”
“If you don’t remember it, it doesn’t mean anything.”
“It’ll mean something to you.”
“Is that enough?”
“I don’t know. I am what you could call a coward. You say that you are a thief, you say it like it’s… it’s something of what you are. I say that I was a policeman, a career man. They knew my name at the local deli, I was in the community choir, a would-be family man. I was many things that made me who I thought I was, and now I am not. All of that was taken away, and I followed you. You pulled on my strings and I followed, and I lost my job and I would have done it again to catch you, you became… finding you became a part of who I am, just like the rest of it. You were… my obsession. Does that excite you? Are you aroused by that, to know that I needed you, needed to catch you, just as you needed someone to fuck?”
Anger, rising, though his voice hid it, his face tightening, compressing with the effort of keeping it in.
“No,” I replied quietly. “It doesn’t excite me anymore.”
“I think I am a coward. If you walked away now, I would forget you, and then I could enjoy being seduced. It would be a pleasant short-term interruption to a long-term malaise. I might hate myself afterwards, finding that the reality of my actions does not conform to who it is I like to believe myself to be; and then I would forget, and wouldn’t hate myself after all. An easy option, yes? The coward’s way out. The man you stalked was an illusion. You created him from your own loneliness, fabricated someone you needed in your life. It’s all pathetically obvious, really. As Matisse says, you are infinitely more interesting to a scientist than to a shrink. Does this horrify you? I wanted to turn the recorder off so I couldn’t hear myself say this, I would hate myself for these words too, you see, not good, not courteous, not who it is I think I would like to be, but of course, with you, I can say whatever I want now and forget, I won’t remember myself calling you bitch, whore, fucked-up little infant, child, slut, thief. It feels incredible to have those words out, it’s like – I am ashamed and frightened and excited and this must be how you feel, how it feels to be a criminal! Christ it’s like… cunt! Fucking bitch, I hope you tear your fucking eyes out. Eat razors, piss fire, remember and shed your tears alone in the night, die alone, this is wonderful! Saying this is… fuck you, fuck my fucking life!” His hands, locked on the edge of the table, knuckle-white, eyes red, tears pooling in the bottom, blinking them away, hands not moving to wipe the salt as it rolled down his cheeks. “I am a failure, so fuck you, whoever you are, fuck the truth!” He lunged across the table, one hand wrapping around my throat. I grabbed a fork instinctively, ready to drive into his eye, his neck, any easy target – but his hand didn’t squeeze, just pressed there, ready to dig, his body arched up and forward in an awkward L, leaning on the elbow of his left arm for support, the tears flowing free.
Faces turned in the shop; someone screamed, someone else said, call the police.
He was frozen there, and I held the fork in my hand and wondered if I needed to hurt him, and the tears rolled and his lips moved and he said nothing and did nothing and finally, slowly, let go. He let go, and sank back into his chair, and held himself, wrapping his arms around his chest, and wept in silence.
A while, we stayed there.
The café watched us, and when we did not move, they turned away.
Quiet, a while, save for Luca’s tears.
Quiet.
I put the
fork back down on the table. Said, “You are a good man.”
Only the sound of tears, of little ragged breaths from a rag-doll man.
“Funny, the things we do when we think no one will remember,” I mused. “Tempting, sometimes, just to punch a stranger in the street, just to see what it feels like. Is it like the movies? Or to sleep with the guy you really, really shouldn’t, but hell, go on, today, just today. Or to steal something from a shop. A packet of crisps, a chocolate bar, nothing big, nothing that anyone will mind, really, but just… go on. Break the rules. Just a little bit. Just today. Most of the time, people stop themselves. They stop because they think they’ll be caught, or because they’re afraid. Or because their conscience kicks in and whispers, if you break this rule, you’ll be breaking the trust on which society runs. You’re not scared of going to prison – I mean, maybe you are, but more likely you’re scared of a world in which anyone could just attack you as you walked by. Or in which your property wasn’t your own, and the only thing that mattered was might and power and the will to act. Goodness is a concept as loose as any value imposed by man throughout the ages. Good: correct or proper. Of high quality. Agreeable. Pleasant. Virtuous, commendable. He’s a good’un, that’un. Fighting a good war. Good: good wives, good daughters, good housekeepers, good women in their place. Good: burning witches. Good: catching thieves, putting that druggie away behind bars, blowing yourself up in the name of… whatever. Allah or Jesus, Vishnu or Jehovah, everyone’s got their thing. And everyone, no matter who, at some point, hears the call, go on, go on, go on, say it, do it, hit it, smash it, go on! And usually they stop themselves, or if they do not, they remember their actions later, and are ashamed.”
I reached over, into his jacket, pulled the Dictaphone out. Turned it on. Put it between us. Sat back in my chair. He watched it, holding his breath, stifling the sound of tears.
“Two commandments,” I mused. “Know thyself, and know everyone else. Having no one else to know me, having no one to catch me or lift me up, tell me I’m right or wrong, having no one to define the limits of me, I have to define myself, otherwise I am nothing, just a… liquid that dissolves. Know yourself. But finding definition without all the… the daily things that give you shape – Mum, Dad, friend, sister, lover, work, hobby, job, home, travel – without the limits of place or society, I could define myself as anything. I am breath. I am mercy. I am the sea. I am knowledge. I am beauty. I am perfection. I am… anything at all. What am I, then? I look at the world and it seems like a distant thing seen through the window of a speeding train. A glimpse of a field where a woman sows, a child waving from the platform, a man fixing his car by the side of the road, I move and the world passes by, untouchable. But in the act of seeing, in the act of moving, I gather memories and they become me. Others do not remember me, so only I remain. You try to remember me by words, and you only remember the words, not me. I become formless. I don’t know what my destination is, but I keep on travelling, surrounded by other people’s stories, absorbing them, and in their way, though they are not me, they become me. I am just… travelling. Nothing more. I am me. I used to think there was no goodness in men, not really – just laws and fears. But you are a good man, Luca Evard. You are a good man.”
So saying, I stood up, turned off the Dictaphone, pushed it towards him, left a tip on the table, and walked away.
Chapter 88
Running.
A bad sport, really. Terrible on the knees – they say running is free, the cheapest sport there is, but good shoes cost a lot these days
the ancient peoples of Australia going walkabout, a rite of passage into manhood, barefoot, following the songlines, they didn’t need expensive shoes
what did Pheidippides wear when he ran to Marathon?
I run from
I run to
I run to be free
freedom from thought
Luca Evard’s hand wraps round my throat, and he weeps, and he forgets, and I carry the memory of what he did where he does not and that’s
fine
another part of the journey.
His journey, but I’ll take it for him, just this once. I’ll make the pilgrimage he doesn’t have the courage to take.
Look out across the lagoon.
Count my heartbeats
and stop.
Find that I do not need to count. Not any more.
Chapter 89
A monk sat on a pillar in Indonesia.
What are you doing up there? I asked.
I am a man on a pillar, he replied. I sit on the pillar to be closer to God.
How do you eat?
Every day I drop my basket down, and it is filled with food by devoted followers, and then I eat it.
How do you shit?
Should you be asking that?
I’m just curious.
I drop my pants and I shit over the side.
How do you sleep?
I balance carefully, and tie myself on. These days I find I need less and less sleep, though.
Why are you up there?
I said: to get closer to God.
What for?
To find a path to spiritual truths.
Why?
So I may go to heaven.
But down here there are people suffering and dying. Forests burn and the seas rise, why aren’t you helping?
I am. I am showing them the way. You should come and live on top of a pillar sometime soon, you know. Material matters only tie you to this life, and this life is suffering. How much better life would be if we all sat on top of pillars.
How much better life would be if we all helped each other build pillars together?
Exactly! Now you get it!
What about books? I asked, for I was going through a learning stage. Books are material objects. If I own books, am I suffering?
If you desire them, yes, they limit you!
But they contain the knowledge of the world. Who knows: one day someone may write a book about you.
I hope they don’t! They would be much better off sitting on top of a pillar.
I thought about this statement, then said, Drop your basket down to me, and I’ll give you some food.
No meat, he said, as he lowered the blue plastic bag. No fizzy drinks either.
I received the lowered bag, then reached up and cut the rope that held it, took the bag and began to walk away.
Hey! he shouted after me. What are you doing?
I’m not really sure, I called back. But I think it might be something good.
Pilgrimage: to journey to a sacred place.
Pilgrim: a traveller or wanderer, a stranger in a foreign place.
Crusaders: pilgrims with swords who attempted to conquer the Middle East.
Hajj: the journey to Mecca, one of the five pillars of Islam. Shahadah, Salat, Zakat, Sawm, Hajj.
Pleasant, perhaps, to say that I am a pilgrim, but looking at it, counting the swirl of white as the devout move round the sacred stone in Mecca, watching the fans scream at the movie premiere, listening to the old men sitting on their benches by the sea who report that everything changes, and that’s okay…
fuck me who isn’t a fucking pilgrim anyway?
I run, and my run takes me to the Hotel Madellena, and I think I see Byron out of the corner of my eye, climbing out of a river taxi, but when I look back, she is gone.
Chapter 90
Countdown to Armageddon.
Hard to make a convincing bomb threat when you’re forgettable. My first two attempts to convince the Venice police that I was a madwoman determined to blow apart the Hotel Madellena did nothing. Perhaps the person who took my call forgot the details by the time he’d rushed to inform a superior. Perhaps they get more crank calls than I realised. I wrote instead, a good, memorable typed message. Included detailed descriptions of the device I was building, and said, this is real, this is fucking real. If the 206 come here, I’ll kill them all.
They didn’t reply, and when
I went to inspect the hotel the next morning, I saw no sign anyone was taking it seriously.
Gauguin was there, of course.
A message through the darknet:
Please desist in these antics. The event will proceed whether you wish it to or no. We will catch Byron if she comes.
Would that I had the time to weep.
I photographed the housekeepers and waitresses at the hotel; cut out the glam mag pictures of the fabulous and the perfect already arriving in the city. I picked the pocket of one of the security men, and found my photo in laminated plastic, and a piece of paper listing words to describe me, a commandment to memorise, if not my face, then at least the act of attempting to learn it.
On the back was an old grainy photo of Byron. She’ll probably wear a wig, said the notes. And glasses. And maybe prosthetics. And different clothes. And she’ll be older. If she comes at all. If she isn’t working by proxies. Other than that: she’ll be easy to spot, right?
I kept it to remind me of my purpose, and went about my business.
Three test passes at the hotel, in the four days leading up to the party.
Pass 1: as a potential guest, decked out in all the finery I can steal, adorned with the personal information of Awele Magalhaes, swiped from her mobile phone. Awele used to work in marketing, but she married a rich coal magnate three years ago and quit her job for a life of parties, very time-consuming; got Perfection two and a half years ago, got perfect four months back, loves the treatments, loves how they make her feel, they feel like… Oh, they just make me feel like me.
My identity passed without a hitch, and I explored the hotel, bustling in my white not-quite-fur coat, head held high, shoes impractical for running in. An ornate metal staircase in the main foyer, that divided a few steps up to curve out then in like the petals of a tulip. A landing above, decked out with an imitation of something famous of St Sebastian killed by arrows. Below: a bank of authentic 1600s elevators, lined with silver- and black-backed mirrors, at once inviting and discouraging reflection and self-contemplation. The top floor accessible only with a security key (stolen from the head of housekeeping), the basement leading directly out onto a private quay where punters could board their taxis.