by Jo Mazelis
‘You would have been peasants,’ the teacher said with relish. ‘Have no doubt about it. You would have known starvation, disease and unremitting hard work. Your brothers and sisters would have died early, your parents and your children too. Think of that. Think of an ache in your belly when you have had only a mouthful of bread for days. What joy you would have felt to see Madame Guillotine do her work! Hmm?’
A severed head, held aloft by the hair, the neck a spew of tangled vein and sinew, dripping blood. Cheers from the gathered crowd.
She could not help the sympathy she felt for the executed aristocrats.
Now she had inadvertently sent an innocent woman to a terrible fate. She had bundled her into a tumbrel and sent her on her way with a smile and a wave.
One of the policemen took her and Vincent to one of the benches and asked for their parents’ phone numbers, then he had gone back to the car to ring them.
No one had said they couldn’t talk to each other, but she and Vincent sat in silence.
They watched as people arrived at the entrance to the park and were turned away. Mothers with young children, some in strollers, some walking. As they retreated the children stared longingly at the swings and roundabouts, while the mothers looked hard at her and Vincent, curious as to what those two young people had done, what crime they had committed.
It was not long before she saw a familiar car draw up behind the police vehicle. A pine-green Nissan Almera, her mother at the wheel in her white nurse’s uniform. Then, minutes later, a sleek black car joined it.
‘It’s my dad,’ Vincent said.
Their respective parents stood awkwardly and impatiently listening to the policeman for a few minutes. Katherine could see the restlessness in her mother’s movements; she was hugging herself and shaking her head, then craning her neck to see her daughter.
The red-haired woman had been only a little younger than her mother. Had been. Past tense. Why would the policeman not tell her what had happened? His refusal was telling in itself. To close the park like that. There was something here. Unseen, but very close.
She glanced over at the trees that hid the lane. People came into the park by that route all the time. They came with their dogs and their children. Others used it as a short cut on the way to work. But no one had come that way this morning so Katherine guessed that somewhere, at the end of the path, there were more policemen with more lengths of plastic tape. And between these two places? Her and Vincent and empty swings and motionless roundabouts and looming trees and silent grass. And death.
Beside her Vincent was sitting with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. Tentatively she rested her hand on his thigh. She thought he might respond by holding her hand, but he didn’t, he only sat there in his posture of defeat.
‘Vincent?’ she whispered.
He shook his head, keeping it hidden in his hands.
There was a movement by the entrance, three figures advancing towards them, the policeman, her mother and Vincent’s father.
Now it begins. Now it is real, Katherine thought when she saw her mother’s expression of mingled fear and relief. She is thinking that it could have been me. Her mother’s lower lip is trembling, her brow is furrowed. ‘My baby,’ she will wail. Then she will squeeze me so tightly that I can hardly breathe. But I will carry this always, this burden, this innocence lost, this shadow of the girl I was once was.
A Flower Closing
‘The cold gets into your bones.’ This was an English phrase he’d copied from a novel into a hardcover exercise book. It came to mind now as he found he was shivering. He wasn’t sure if it was delayed shock or the onset of flu, but not being a qualified doctor he refrained from diagnosing himself.
So cold. So very cold.
Even though the day had been warm and the evening balmy, throughout the night, sitting on that wooden bench in the windowless room thinking of bad things, he had grown colder and colder.
When they released him, he had walked briskly back to his hotel. Afraid to run. Only guilty men run and he was innocent.
In his room, which suddenly looked different to him; more alien, dirtier, suspect, he put a sweater on over his tracksuit, but felt no warmer. He got into bed fully clothed and wrapped the duvet tightly around himself, but still he felt a chill. It rippled over his skin under his clothes, so that he felt naked.
After they had eaten from the tree of knowledge they knew that they were naked – a cold wind might have had the same effect. Whose God was this, looking down on Joseph with his icy blue eyes? The God of the white man, the missionary, the God who had baptised him Joseph.
Between science and God he hung suspended, waiting for the transit of the moon. Once more he wanted to reverse the clock and undo all that had happened to him, but also to rush forward, away from here to a future when this was a distant memory.
He looked at his hand, the words he had written there as an aid to memory were gone, but he saw them in his mind’s eye still; glottis, epiglottis, larynx. Lowering his hand onto the quilt he turned his head away.
His own hand seemed the symbol of that which suddenly disgusted him. Mankind.
Mankind who created civilisation. Civilisation that begat science that begat medicine that begat diamonds that begat property that begat war that begat rape that begat slavery that begat bombs.
Mankind. That entity which he had meant to dedicate his life to healing, whose pain he had wanted to ease. Mankind who was destroying the world with his greed and mindless cruelty and prejudice.
His eye, roving hopelessly, settled on the wild flowers he had picked the other day. Daisies, pink tinged on the outside and just beginning to unlock their petals to welcome the light.
Plants and insects had been the first subjects of his interest as a child. His grandfather had given him an old magnifying glass, an unused desk diary from 1956 and an old box of ‘MEPHISTO’ copying pencils. His first drawings had been childish approximations of trees and flowers and animals, but soon the business of classification (not that he would have called it that then) led his drawings to become more precise, more detailed. Then once he began High School and learned more and more about different animal species and their specialisations he was smitten, and being smitten, he was an enthusiastic pupil, guided very happily and very easily into the sciences. Everyone assumed he would study to become a doctor – this being the pinnacle of all ambition for a gifted boy like Joseph.
Joseph considered himself critically; clever, academic, enthusiastic, yes he was all those things and had exam certificates and teachers’ reports to prove it. But he was also unworldly and gullible and easily hurt.
He stared at one daisy in particular; it was wilting, lolling over the edge of the small glass in a soft exhausted way. He had read a story in English class about a beautiful blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl who had plucked the petals from a daisy to discover if the boy she liked returned her feelings. She had intoned certain words as she did this, ‘He loves me, he loves me not, he loves me,’ until she came to the last petal which told her that the boy did not love her. She ran away from the small village and went to the city where she fell prey to rogues and Lotharios. Only at the end of the terrible tale did the author disclose that in her eagerness with the flower the girl had inadvertently pulled out two petals at a time so the flower’s prediction had not been right – the boy did love her, but she would never know and her life was ruined.
He had felt frustrated by the story – a made-up thing, a lie and to what purpose?
Traditional English children’s books were always illustrated with pinch-nosed, blue-eyed blondes whose mean little mouths were painted red and permanently wore an expression of consternation. Rather like the young woman he’d spoken to that night, the one who had dropped her cardigan then disappeared when he’d tried to catch up with her.
She’d been murdered, but he could not somehow reconcile that fact with what his senses had told him of that night. She had been there walking ahe
ad of him, he could see her and hear the hollow clip clop of her heels on the pavement, then she was gone. Gone somehow – what was that phrase? – in the blink of an eye. As if a secret door existed in the universe. He tried to think how such a door would work. Imagined it as mirrored; it would reflect the world around it, showing pavements, houses, trees, cornfields, yawning blue skies, then as one passed into it, it would flip open, revolving vertically on its axis, swallow the person up and flip shut. Seeing this at a distance all one might detect would be a brief flash of light as the mirror spun. There, then gone. Unscientific. Illogical.
As illogical as the idea that he was a killer.
His mission in life was to save lives, not to snatch them away.
He plucked the wilted daisy from the glass and laid it upon his palm, considered it for some time, then closing it in his fist he crushed it. He ran his hand under the tap letting the green sap and bruised petals and yellow pollen escape down the plughole.
He would not do it. He would not choose medicine. He was a free man in the free world. He would be a botanist, a zoologist – like that killer of God, Darwin.
Prayers
To know, but not to remember, this must be a kindness. A membrane had grown over the events of that terrible night, keeping them from her.
The Canadian woman seemed surprised by it all. As surprised as a child on Christmas morning. Her expression in her hospital bed was one of wonder. A type of stupefied wide-eyed wonder.
She was a writer of some sort. A poet, but not famous, but then all the famous ones were dead, weren’t they?
The bruises on her face were terrible, though the marks on her neck were hardly visible anymore. Her lower lip was still badly swollen; the delicate skin there stretched thin, was glossy and violent pinkish red. Her left arm and wrist were in a cast, as was her right lower leg. There had been bruising to the genital area, but no trace of semen. A handful of leaves and grasses (all plucked from the immediate vicinity) had been pushed into the woman’s vagina, nettles, feverfew and daisies. She was approximately three months pregnant. The baby had survived, its tiny heart, loud and clear on the ultrasound. A miracle.
The victim was sitting in her hospital bed, a white blanket covering her. Marilyn, that was her name, Sabine must remember it. ‘Victim’ denotes and defines the person only by what has been done to them not who they were and are. Marilyn held a black hard-backed, faux leather notebook on her lap as she spoke; occasionally she fiddled with the black elastic strap that held it shut or ran a finger down the smooth edge of its clean pages.
Sabine sensed that this notebook (which from its appearance was brand new and had yet to be used) was a source of strength for the woman. Like a rosary, she worked it with her fingers.
Sabine had her own notebook – the one issued from the central storeroom in which she should record dates, times, places and the words of victims, witnesses and suspects.
So far all she had written was Marilyn’s full name and the day’s date.
‘So tell me what do you remember; the last thing before the attack.’
The woman looked steadily at Sabine as if the answer was there in her brown eyes.
‘Anything you remember. It’s a starting point we need, that’s all.’
‘I was…’ she began.
‘Yes.’
‘…writing something. About…’
‘About?’
Marilyn sighed, ‘Oh, just a poem. About…’ She stopped speaking. Sabine could see the glancing light of memory strike her. Her eyes widened, rolled heavenward, then she laughed. It was not a bitter laugh, but gentle and genuinely amused. ‘That’s all I can remember … that and the baby. They said the baby’s okay. That’s right isn’t it? They told me I was out walking at night, in a park. Was Scott with me?’
‘You were alone.’
‘Was I? Golly, I wonder why.’
‘We think you were looking for your husband, Scott.’
‘Oh… he doesn’t know about the baby, you know. I hadn’t told him. I should tell him shouldn’t I?’ Marilyn smiled beatifically. Had she always been like this, so otherworldly, so calm? Sabine wondered.
‘Well, look, you need your rest. But let us know if you remember anything at all, even if it seems silly or irrelevant. Yes?’
Sabine waited. She had never met a victim of violence who took it as lightly as this. She wondered at the woman’s sanity, at the effects of the blow to the head, the squeezing of the neck at the carotid artery, shutting off the oxygen supply. But the doctors had said there was no lasting physical damage and she had scored negative on all the tests which indicated serious trauma to the brain.
The woman stopped laughing and shook her head gently from side to side. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘It just seems silly now as you say. The poem, the baby, the poem. It had seemed so important then.’
‘We will be the judges of what is important.’
‘Well, this wasn’t really. It was just a poem. I’ve been working on it forever. It’s just it was the last thing I remember, but that’s meaningless because I’ve been worrying away at the damn thing every day since we got here. But it’s ironic, which is why I laughed, because it’s about nearly dying…’ She paused, then added, ‘I’m sorry.’
Sabine wanted to say we know who he is, we have a suspect, we will find him, he will be punished. Sabine’s own yearning for justice was acute, honed on years of policework, sharpened on those cases where the culprit was never found. ‘The man who did this…’ she began, then casting her gaze about she happened to look up and saw Marilyn’s husband’s face behind the glass panel in the door. When she met his eyes she saw the vivid hatred still burning in them.
‘Well,’ said Sabine, standing up and gathering her belongings. ‘Perhaps if you remember anything else you could write it down.’ Her gaze dropped meaningfully to the black notebook.
But the woman had now also seen Scott in the doorway and she put the notebook to one side and shifted her position in the bed to raise herself up as much as she could.
He opened the door and swept into the room before Sabine had taken more than one step towards it. He did not look at her again, focusing all his attention on the woman in the bed whose green eyes, Sabine saw as she glanced back, were brimming with tears of happiness.
House of Cards
Florian can hardly bear to say what it is he has come to say. Suzette looks at him, waiting for his words. He doesn’t look at her face.
‘What’s wrong? What’s wrong? Tell me what’s wrong.’
He shakes his head, looking as if he might cry. Then in that way that men are more capable of than women he lets out an angry growl.
‘Florian.’ She reaches for his shoulder, but resists touching him. She cannot read him, does not know what is wrong, what he wants, what she can do, or should do. She knows what she wants to do, what her impulse is, what her body wants. And that is to throw both her arms around him and hold him. Hold him, smell him, taste him, hear him, breathe in his breath, touch the back of his neck, his cheek with its rough pinpricks of hair – he needs to shave. All this is perhaps written on her face, concern, alarm and fear.
Which is why he cannot quite bring himself to look at her. The longer he takes to say what it is he has to say the more likely he is to weaken. So he blurts the words out.
‘I’m leaving.’
‘Florian?’
‘OK? I can’t stay. I’m sorry. I love you. Can’t stay.’
Staccato phrases. He’s giving her a list of facts. It’s a matter of simple mathematics. He might have told her this over the phone. Or avoided it entirely, said nothing, just disappeared, but he needed to see her. Not because that was the right thing to do when you dumped someone, but because he had to see her.
Perhaps he imagined that this last meeting with her could somehow be stored away and kept. Kept forever or kept until he no longer needed it? Or kept until it was worn thin and ragged. Ghost-like and vague.
‘I’m sorry.
I have to because…’
There he was with that list again
‘I’m coming with you.’
‘What?’
‘I’m coming with you.’
‘You can’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because, your job, your apartment …’
‘My lousy waitressing job! My two and a bit rooms?’
‘You told me you loved it here, close to the sea, the estuary, the salt marsh…’
‘So? There’re other places near the sea. It doesn’t have to be this town, this few square metres on the coast. I want to be with you.’
His mathematical projections haven’t figured in that equation. He’s dumbstruck by its simplicity, its unfathomable beauty. Zero plus zero plus zero is a pointless exercise. While he absorbs this he is worryingly quiet.
Suzette reformulates her own calculations, not that she had much time to prepare. His zero plus zero plus zero was a sum she could only add herself to and perhaps she isn’t wanted after all.
‘Unless,’ she says.
‘Unless what?’ he repeats.
She gives, then takes away. All his life this has happened to him. What impossible clause will she now add?
‘Unless what?’ he repeats.
‘Unless you don’t want me.’
Now they are packing their bags. Now he is buying a car. A battered old car that leaks oil and leaks water and has in the depths of its engine a knocking sound like the arrhythmic heart of a dying man. For three hundred Euros what did he expect?
Suzette puts the last week’s rent in an envelope along with her keys and posts it through her landlord’s door. Florian kisses his mother and tells her not to worry. He promises to ring.