by Andy Cox
I want to ask her what she means, but before I can frame my question she leans forward on the handle bar of her shopping cart and begins pushing it back uphill towards the city centre. For a while I can still hear the grumbling sound of the trolley’s wheels against the fractured concrete, but after a minute or so even that is gone.
Zaira Massi’s novel is about a woman who falls prey to identity theft. Little by little she is rendered into nothingness. It is a terrifying story.
“We’re very sorry, Mr Wahid, but until the relevant documentation comes through we really can’t…”
“You’ve been telling me this for six months already. I come here every week like I’m supposed to but nothing changes.”
I think about banging my fist on the counter, then realise the very fact that I am still thinking about doing it means I won’t, that the moment for action has already passed. I wonder how it might have felt, for once, just to act without thinking, and in the wondering I find I can almost feel the impact of my fist against the slightly greasy laminated surface of the countertop, the shock to the wrist, the dull glow of pain afterwards. The young woman behind the counter stares at me guardedly. Her expression is the expression of an animal trainer, trying to work out if the tiger she has raised from a cub is about to turn rogue. She shifts her chrome-legged chair backwards, just an inch or two, on the dimpled rubber floor tiles. The woman is new here, or at least I have not encountered her before. She has hair the colour of beechwood, clipped short at the sides and thickly curled on top, like an autumn chrysanthemum. There is a perfectly round, almost-black mole about a centimetre to the right of her right nostril. It punctuates her skin like a strict full stop, an indication of negative certitude. No. Nothing. Never.
“I do understand, Mr Wahid. This is a difficult time for all of our clients. I would advise you to be patient. Is everything all right at your lodgings?”
She tries on a smile, but I can see she is still wondering if I might be dangerous. One of the quiet ones, she is thinking, who turn out to be maniacs after all, the ones you see on the news who cut off the heads of their neighbours with Samurai swords.
I search her features for traces of Marielena, but there are none, just the merest disturbance of her lipstick at the corner of her mouth, a brick-red smear. Like curry paste, I can feel the heat in it. I turn my back on her and walk away, without smiling, without apologising, without thanking her. It is my one small act of revenge and it makes me feel lower than a dog.
From the back of the DSS offices a narrow, concreted alleyway cuts through to the loading bays at the lower end of the shopping precinct. I do not normally walk this way. Apart from in the early mornings the area is usually deserted, a Mecca for muggers. It is too easy to imagine being tumbled against the hard ground and left for dead. Today I don’t care, though. The loss of hope has made me fearless. I stride through the litter, my head filled with images of crashing walls and billowing smoke, terrified people trampling each other in their need to escape.
Now you’re talking, says Marielena. I emerge on to Lonsdale Place, and this is where I see Mary. I recognise her at once this time, even though she has her back to me – the hunched-over posture, the grey woollen cap – but I am dismayed to see that she has fallen in with bad company. Four or five young people surround her – they may even be the same young people from the other night, grouped around the shop window yelling at the football game. How can I tell? They stand in a loose half-circle, not touching her, not yet, but in such a way as to cut off her escape. From time to time one or other of them takes a single step forward, and in this way they inch gradually closer to their victim.
I imagine their smells mingling, the mixed sap of their malice and boredom, the two curdling to excitement as each silently challenges the other to make the first move. I am not close enough to hear what they are saying, but their hostility is unmistakable, heady as incense.
As I draw nearer, one of them, a girl, snaps out a hand and seizes the handle of Mary’s shopping trolley. She bumps the cart smartly towards her across the flagstones. When Mary tries to drag it back, the girl begins yelling.
“Get your sodding hands off me, you filthy cow.”
Mary begins to moan, a high, wailing sound. She’s faking it, I can tell, trying to scare them off, trying to convince them she’s too crazy to be a safe target. The girl lets go of the shopping trolley, and for a moment it seems that Mary’s deception has worked, that the youths will disperse. But then one of the others – a lad with a shaven head and a tattoo of a large green eye on his right forearm – steps forward and wrests the trolley back again. He stoops, shoving his face at Mary, who falls silent immediately. She tries to back away, and now I am close enough to see the fear in her eyes, not the abject fright of the hopeless, the helpless, but the knowing terror of someone who has run for her life before and almost lost it.
With one single, casual wrist movement the youth overturns Mary’s shopping cart. There is a hideous clattering sound. Clumped batches of things strew themselves noisily across the pavement. The girl who called Mary a cow begins to laugh.
“Crazy bitch,” snarls the youth with the tattoo. He is still pressing his face forward into Mary’s, and it is as if he is trying to identify her by her scent, smelling her out like one of the sniffer dogs the police use for searching airports and abandoned buildings. “Get the fuck away from her or I’ll belt you one.” Mary shrinks away from him, and it is at that moment that something breaks free in me, tears itself free, I run down the street towards the group, towards him. I can hear myself screaming, cursing like a demon, words in my own language and in yours, words I did not know I knew how to say until this moment.
As I rage and accuse, I feel the freedom of the asylum unfurling its crimson within me like a great red flower. For what freedom does a madman have but the freedom to do, say, be anything he chooses?
“You bastards, you cunts. So cowardly you have to take out your foulness on a homeless person? You idiots know nothing. Have you ever been hungry? Have you ever been truly afraid, even for a second? I’ll teach you to be afraid, you morons. I’ll teach you, and then I’ll end you. I’ll bash your stupid heads in, how does that sound? Not so tough now, are you? You worthless lumps of shit, I’ll kill you all.”
Shit, shit, shit, I keen. I feel I am in love with the word, mutable as the tide, eloquent as the dawn, as an ode by Keats or Coleridge or Cavafy. Would this be happening if my appointment with the Border Agency had brought me better news? I don’t know and I don’t care. All I know is that my anger is unstoppable. It flies at them, these cut-price ruffians, with the uncanny, elegant swiftness of an Afghan hound.
From the corner of my eye I glimpse Marielena. She rolls on her back in the gutter, shaking with laughter. Her heavy-lidded eyes are bright with desire.
I can sense the tattooed youth is ready to punch me. He is so close to doing it I can almost taste the blood, feel the sickening crunch of my teeth as they give way. Then I see that he is going to back down, after all. There is something in my demented form he does not like. One of his cohorts, a shorter, broader youth with hair so orange it is like rust on the bulging roof of an old tin shack, spits on the ground.
“You ought to be locked up, you,” he says. “Frigging mentalist.”
“That’s right,” I roar. “Frigging mentalist.”
Mentalist is an archaic word, meaning mind reader. I do not think this is the meaning the fire-headed boy attaches to it. The youths slip away like phantoms into the further, brighter reaches of the shopping precinct proper.
Blood pounds in my ears, grainy and hot. A moment later I am shivering. Now that the hoodlums are gone, my behaviour seems insane to me.
I could have been killed, I think.
So what? says Marielena. At least you had the balls to tell the truth.
I don’t know if it is the truth, I say to her. They’re just kids. Kids with nothing to do and nowhere to go.
Mary has managed to stand the
trolley upright. She shuffles around it in a ragged circle, grabbing at the plastic bags, the nameless objects wrapped in newspaper that have tumbled out of it. I move silently to help her, and in the space of a minute or two the shopping cart is full again. It is only then that I realise Mary is crying.
“Do you have anywhere you can go?” I say. I feel suddenly helpless, coerced now into feelings I have no room for. “Somewhere safe?”
She shakes her head. “I’m scared. Scared they’ll come back.”
“They won’t come back,” I say, and immediately loathe myself for lying to her. For they will come back, of course they will. No one knows that better than I do. They always come back. That’s the rule.
“I know a place,” I say. “I can take you there, if you like.” I reach out to touch her arm. She is shaking all over, a continuous minute trembling, as if an electric current were pulsing through her body. I do not know what I will do if she refuses to follow me – I suppose I shall have to leave her here – but after a second’s hesitation she begins to move. Her hands grip the handle of the shopping cart so tightly they seem welded to it. Strands of her hair poke from beneath the woollen cap like some kind of left over packaging material. I lead her slowly through the streets, away from the shopping precinct and through the weed-choked underpass that tunnels beneath the ring road and on to Rowntree Road. Mary says not a word. We go side by side, the wheels of the trolley rattling as they struggle with the uneven pavements. The cracks between the paving stones sprout thickly with weeds: dandelion, groundsel, chicory. It is the first time since leaving my country that I have walked side by side with anyone. I find it hard to say if it makes me feel stronger, or more exposed.
The place I am taking her to might be called a hostel, but it isn’t, not properly, it is just a suburban terraced house where people can sometimes go when they have nowhere else. I know of a Syrian, a teacher like myself, whose house was burned down with his three younger brothers still inside. His application for asylum was finally rejected after eight months of waiting. I don’t know where he is now, but I do know he was safe here, at least for a while. If they can find a place for Mary, even for a single night, it might make a difference. At least I will feel as if I have done something.
I ring the doorbell and we wait. Eventually someone comes, a black woman wearing dungarees and gold earrings in the shape of roses.
“You two together?” She looks curiously from me to Mary and then back again. I shake my head, feeling slightly ashamed. I don’t want to disown Mary, but I don’t want to claim her, either.
“It’s just Mary,” I say. “I showed her how to get here. She needs help.”
“That’s all well and good, but we can’t take the trolley. We don’t have room. No trolleys, no pushcarts, no bicycles.”
The woman compresses her lips. Mary makes a small whimpering sound. I see her knuckles go white as she retightens her grip on the shopping cart.
“That’s all right,” I say quickly. “I’ll look after it for you.” It is the only thing I can think of to say. I have no desire to take possession of the trolley, none at all, but I want even less to be left standing outside on the street with Mary. I feel tired suddenly, more tired than I would have expected for the time of day. All I want is to return to Davenport Street, to make myself a cup of tea and write in my journal. Mary is scrutinising me with suspicion. Her hazel eyes gleam like agates.
“You’ll bring it back?” she says.
“I’ll bring it first thing tomorrow morning. There’s no need to worry.”
“You can have anything you like,” she says. She turns abruptly away from me and towards the woman in the dungarees, who passes an arm around Mary’s shoulders and leads her inside. The door closes behind them. The street falls silent.
I gaze up at the house, taking note of its worn paintwork, the taped-over letter box, the cracked blue china door plaque with the number 40. After a minute or two I walk away, pushing the trolley. It surprises me, what a comfort it is, to have something to lean on.
Mary’s trolley takes up almost all the free floor space in my room. It is now impossible to get to the wash basin or the wardrobe. I sit cross-legged on the bed, eating the last scraps of a vegetable samosa I purchased on my way back to Davenport Street and hoping there is nothing in the shapeless agglomeration of bags, rags and balled-up newspapers that is likely to get me into trouble with the landlord. It is strange. Now that I am back here I want to go out again. Out on to the streets, down to the canal, anywhere but here. It is having the trolley in my room that makes me feel this way. I know that sounds ridiculous, but it is true. It is almost as if the trolley were another person, watching me, judging me, listening to my thoughts, even.
I cannot escape the sense that I am not alone.
In the end, I do the only thing I can do, and unpack the trolley. I tell myself I am doing this for Mary, that bringing order to her possessions may help restore some order to her life. Marielena is having none of it.
Bollocks you are. It is the first I have seen of her since I yelled at those hoodlums. You want to know what’s in there, that’s all. I’d be careful what you wish for, if I were you.
You can talk, I mutter. Marielena can’t stand secrets and she knows it. Unless they’re her own, that is. When it comes to the pursuit of gossip, nothing gets in her way. Up to and including nuclear war.
I pile Mary’s clothes into a dustbin liner and take them to the laundrette at the far end of Lyle Street, near the eight-til-late supermarket. The wash costs me two pounds, the drier another three. It is all the money I have left from this week’s allowance, but I do not regret it. There is a unique satisfaction to be found in the transformation of these ugly rags into clothing that is faded and threadbare but at least clean and wearable. Three hooded sweatshirts, a green cardigan, a denim jacket, two men’s shirts, a selection of underwear and a pair of jeans that started out so filthy I believed at first that they were made of cardboard.
When the drier has completed its cycle I take each item and fold it gently back into the bin bag.
This at least is something I can do for her, a simple service performed honestly and without the desire to profit by it. As for the rest though, Marielena is right, I will not sleep tonight. I can imagine myself already, pushing forward into the small hours like a lost traveller into a forest of hawthorn trees, looking for pathways that have become overgrown, or else never existed in the first place.
There’s a mobile phone. Or at least I think that’s what it is – it’s difficult to tell for certain, because I can’t turn it on. The design is different from any model I’ve seen advertised, and the make – Redaction? – is unknown to me. The device is approximately the size of a credit card and of the same thickness. It feels heavy in my hand, though what it is made of – metal, glass, some kind of ceramic? – I have no idea. Its surface is completely smooth, like an iPhone or an Android. There is no obvious way of activating it, no visible charging port. I turn it over and over in my hands, probing it gently with my fingers, but it remains inert. It could be that it is broken, but I don’t think so. The device looks brand new.
There is a passport in the name of Mary Eleanor Truelove. The blue cover is faded and scuffed. The pages inside are dog eared, but not torn. The photograph shows a woman with straight brown shoulder-length hair, a wide, slightly lopsided mouth and hazel eyes. I gaze at this photograph for a long time, trying to convince myself it is Mary I am looking at – Mary as I have encountered her – but the truth is I cannot.
The passport says that Mary’s date of birth is January 14th, 2035. I flick back and forth through the pages, looking carefully at the date stamps, the watermarks, the interactive hologram that contains Mary Eleanor Truelove’s biosignature. I am searching for an indication that the passport is a fake, that the information within it has been altered in some way, that a mistake has been made. I examine the document for more than an hour, but still I cannot find what I am looking for.
; A simple printing error, then? After my repeated and fruitless encounters with the Border Agency, I find I am unable to imagine a world in which the British passport authorities would allow that to happen.
Mary’s passport goes on insisting that she hasn’t been born yet, that she will not in fact be born for another twenty years.
Sometime towards dusk, I retrieve some of Mary’s old newspapers from the waste basket. They are old and damp and brittle but still mostly intact. I lay them carefully on the bed and smooth them flat.
It is the dates as much as the stories that make my head spin.
More than at any time since leaving my village, I feel I am on the verge of losing my mind.
It is long past midnight. I realise I have not eaten, not since the samosa. There is a packet of stale pita bread, tucked into one of the drawers of my poor monster of a dressing table. I lie on my back on the bed, chewing on pita crust and trying to understand what the newspapers and the passport and the new-looking mobile telephone are telling me. The thoughts circle and collide inside my head, travelling many miles but always returning to this same conclusion which, even if it is impossible, is the only one that makes sense.
Mary Eleanor Truelove is from the future.
Of course she is, dumbass, says Marielena. What took you so long?
But that’s not possible, I murmur.
Why not? When you’re running for your life, the impossible and the possible sometimes switch places. You of all people should understand that. She brushes back a stray strand of hair. Anyway, she says. No one hides herself away in this shithole unless she has to.