The Snow Kimono

by Mark Henshaw

  Who’s that?

  The boy, my fiancé’s nephew.

  No.

  Did she look around, did she look his way?

  Jo-Jo. Jo—Jo.

  Through the creviced flap. Carolina. In her white, held-up wedding dress. Her feet bare. Returning to the house. The wooden steps.

  He sees the screen door close, and close, and close.

  He never got to ask her. Why she came out. What she wanted. What she had to say. She was gone forever when he went inside, to all those silent faces turned his way.

  Later, he told himself he would never make the same mistake. How, he wondered, even then, had it happened? How did you end up leaving someone you must once have loved? Loved! What had to happen in between?

  When he was nine, they told him. It was the jack-in-a-box that never went away. Here, Auguste, open this. But what were these words he found inside? Separation. Divorce. Unhappiness. He had thought that all parents just fell silent.

  For a long time he kept a box of photographs of them beneath his bed. He would get them out, sit cross-legged on his bedroom floor, go through them one by one. Take them in his hands. There was one he kept coming back to—his parents on their wedding day. His father’s hand guiding his mother’s, holding the polished knife blade just above the untouched cake. His parents laughing, his mother, in her wedding dress, bent forward, her pearl necklace reaching up to her like a tiny tender arm, her left hand on the table, her face lit by an iced ellipse.

  There were other photographs of them: on the beach at La Baule, photos he had taken, photos of them at his uncle’s, his father’s brother, who had done so well, who never remarried; photos of them around an oval dining-room table, with their friends, in an apartment he’d never seen.

  Once, when he was older, he went to La Baule. He took a photograph with him. Sought out the same rocky outcrop. Stood there himself, in exactly the same spot. In order to inhabit them. Feel them. But they weren’t there. Time had erased all trace of them. It was a conceit to think that he could have found them in this way. ‘Them’—the empty, two-word word he used for them.

  In the end, he had to put the box away. This is what photographs did to you, he thought. This was their paradox. Their melancholy truth. He knew these permanently smiling faces, but not them.

  He could not remember one word of tenderness his father had said to his mother. Not one. They must have talked. In the beginning. But, in the end, their marriage had outlasted the finite number of words that contained it. Perhaps they had exhausted what they had to say to each other long before they had gone their separated ways. He himself had never had a single serious conversation with his father.

  After his father left, he never saw him again. Never heard from him. Not a word. Years later, when he could, he had searched the police database. Ludovic Emile Jovert.

  His father had died in Santiago in 1970. Santiago! Had life been so unbearable that he had to seek refuge in the furthest corner of the earth? Vow never to see his son again?

  And what had his father’s other life been like? Did he have another son? One he loved?

  Chapter 33

  THE new girl’s laughter spoke to him from out of his past. Not that he could place it at first. Or her. Amongst the new recruits. But he soon did.

  He used his training. To cut her out. To let biology do its work. His status. His impossible height. His useful smile.

  Sometimes he hated this. How easily people could be led. How little he had to do.

  In the beginning, he loved only her laugh. Then found he loved her. This smart, lean-limbed girl, with her green eyes and dark skin. Her tripping laugh as sharp as swallows. He loved her name—Madeleine. Sweet-sounding. Unforgettable. She wasn’t Carolina, whose ghost had come back to him. But it didn’t matter. Not now. After the pieces had fallen into place.

  He would sometimes be gone a week. Sometimes longer.

  In the beginning: Are you sure you will be all right?

  Yes, I’m sure, Auguste. Don’t worry. Fatima’s here to help me.

  But when he returned home, after the first absence, he found Madeleine lying on her bed, her face to the wall, her eyes closed. He sat on the bed, put his hand on her shoulder.

  Is everything all right, my love, ma chère?

  Yes, she said. Don’t worry, Auguste. I’m sorry. I’m just so tired. I’ll be glad when all of this is over. All I want to do is sleep.

  It won’t be long now, he said.

  But when he squeezed her shoulder, he felt her body tremble. He leaned over her, to see her face. There were tears, not just one, but a river of them, spilling from her cheeks. He lay down beside her, pulled her close to him. But it was a long time before she settled into sleep.

  The first, soft knock nervous. A young corporal had come down from the barracks, down through the twisted, late-night, blacked-out streets, to his house, his two houses, at the centre of the village, its core.

  Who is it?

  Corporal Dumas, sir.

  Just a moment.

  From his bedroom window. The curtain cleft permanently pinned. A solitary, shadowed figure at his door. He saw the shadow man look down at his shoes, then into the silent street. Corporal Dumas.

  Then he was standing in the open doorway. They were not supposed to know. But they knew it anyway. Half of it. Why he was here. His special gifts. It was he who interrogated the prisoners they took in. Who got so much out of them.

  He saw his reputation written on the young man’s face. Knew what uneasy thoughts had kept him company as he walked down the hill to him through the empty curfewed streets. Twenty minutes rehearsing in the walking dark, his only companion a formidable ghost. What would he have thought if he knew there were two of him?

  Capitaine Jovert. Have you met him yet?

  There’s a message for you, sir. A telegram. Personal. The rules infringed.

  He handed him the piece of paper.

  Thank you, Corporal.

  Madeleine in hospital. Mother and baby both well. Tilde. A handwritten message scrawled at the base: Jovert—Congratulations. See me in the morning. The signature illegible.

  He re-read the message.

  Tell the colonel I’ll be there at six. Thank you, Corporal.

  Now, the thrust-out chest salute. Sir.

  Both well.

  But they weren’t both well. Madeleine hadn’t been well for months. That first night crack was now an abyss.

  He thought he’d had a son. At first. But after a while, when he had returned for the sixth or seventh time, he saw that he was wrong. It was Madeleine who’d had a son. Not him. After that, she had begun to drift away. Taking him, his son, with her.

  This was how he came to see it. When he lay on his bed, in the almost darkness of the requisitioned house, a house that was not his own, listening to that night’s operation unfolding. The windows lit up sporadically, the house trembling, the windows chattering, wondering how many interrogations he would have to do the next day, how far he would have to go. Sometimes they died, so badly injured were they, before they gave up
anything. Had he had enough of this?

  He returned every ten days, three weeks, to see her, and her child. To the house they occupied. Only to find that she had drifted still further from him. So far now that he could not reach her.

  And it was not just her. The baby, his son, momentarily in his arms. But the look of panic, of fear, on his child’s face, almost instant, not recognising him. How strong, how alarming his need to escape. The alien, swaddling body twisting, elongating in his hands, stretching out for its mother. Even though he might fall. He saw the fear in his own son’s eyes: Where is she? The panic pulling at the corners of his mouth. No choice but to surrender him. Now rescued, the tumult subsides, his primal howl forestalled. There was no room for him.

  He thought of his parents. The silent photographs. The empty, hollow clock-ticking evenings of his childhood. His summer afternoons alone.

  Jovert had not got back until three weeks after his son’s birth.

  The morning after Dumas’ note, talking to Colonel Lemoine: I’m sorry, Auguste, we need you here. We’ve put too much into this. Madeleine is being taken care of.

  Afterwards, when she had recovered, Madeleine went back to teaching—I’m fine, Auguste, I’m better now, I need to do this.

  Perhaps, he thought at first, it was the cause, what they had come to do, that she had begun to doubt. A place for her, her forebears. For him. Their children. Instead, she had grown close to her teaching friends. To Mathilde, Khalid. These people she was supposed to be watching over.

  Some evenings, they would be there when he came home. As if they were waiting for him. Already quietened by his footsteps echoing in the corridor. Their fidgeting scrutiny always awkward. Their leave-taking brief.

  Auguste.

  Tilde. Khalid.

  Was Madeleine still reporting? He wondered if she knew, if they knew, about his other self.

  He still went to her. In the beginning. Embraced her. But then—the first, almost imperceptible rebuff, a tiny seismic shock. A momentary freezing. So minute, so barely there, he needed to verify it.

  It was over then.

  Yet he wore an indentation in her bed. From where he came to sit. To uncomfort her.

  Please, Auguste. Don’t. I will be all right. Just leave me be.

  Then: No don’t, Auguste.

  The turning away almost complete. Now the slow undoing of all the ties. Unspoken.

  The time that passed.

  Chapter 34

  IN those four months: the village census complete. The families’ names on each house. In white paint. The number of occupants. Here, what’s this? Your identity papers. Keep them on you. Then the random late-night checks. Come with me. No, not you—you. Take the youngest son. Next day, show the father what’s in the lattice-covered ditch. Trussed, bent over. Returned to him the following evening. The curfew unbreakable. The cost too great. A sheep. Two. From someone else. It helped them think.

  The schoolhouse built. Attendance compulsory. Ages six to twelve. Including girls. The notices distributed. For each class, a morning roll. No exemptions. Every school day. Otherwise they risked a soldier’s heavy rap. A lesser fine. But still too much. Where’s Fatima? She’s sick. Let me see.

  A village council elected. You, you and you. Publicly paid, in the village square. Every Wednesday. And well. They either stayed or left. Most stayed. They had family here. They were compromised. They pay you! Where else could they go?

  In six months: the village now contained. The checkpoints manned. The soldiers armed. No one in. No one out. Not without a pass. They had seen the consequences. An accident. A lost leg. One would usually suffice.

  A dispensary. See Mr Valedire. A doctor—twice a week. The soldier’s own. For them. For free. But his heart unhealed.

  A conversation half-remembered. When was this? In the library he tries to fold time back. Reorder it. But it’s futile. This memory has been cast adrift.

  I can’t do this, Auguste. Not any longer. What if we’re wrong?

  We’re not wrong.

  But don’t you see? We’re being used. They don’t want to save this country. Look what we’ve done. How could we have been so stupid? We’ll be outcasts if we go back.

  No, Madeleine, that’s not right. Half of France wants this.

  Now. What about later? People forget. Then someone remembers. Starts digging. Asks questions. How careful have we been?

  That’s not true. What we’re doing is right.

  No, it isn’t. They lied to us. They’ve sold us out. Those traitors back home, those cons. Can’t you see that?

  He looked at her across the table. Her ravaged face still beautiful. That’s when his own first doubts crept in. How careful had he been?

  It’ll be okay for you. They’ll just shut you up. Give you a promotion. Two. Inspector Jovert. Of the Special Interrogations Bureau.

  Her laughter bitter now.

  Inspector!

  The cigarette in her shaking hand. Had she exhaled then? Brushed the smoke away?

  But what about our son? What will happen to him? When they find out what we’ve done? In ten years. Twenty. He’ll be the one who pays.

  He went to her.

  No, don’t. Her hand held up. Don’t touch me, Auguste. Not now.

  And the final barriers went up.

  There was still so much to do. He stayed away. In Ighouna. In Sétif, twenty kilometres away. When he did come home, he came home to a house asleep. To his own room, his own bed. To the two sleeping strangers who lived there now. To his son, who looked at him as though he was an unknown thing. But the aching memory of him still imprinted on his hands.

  At night, he would hear him crying, endlessly. As if he already knew what misfortune had befallen him. Madeleine would sleep on. He could not go to him, his child. Could not comfort him. For fear of stirring his tearful, infant raging once again.

  The second knock, six months later: Colonel Lemoine himself standing in the doorway. The urgent call to return. Surely he knew—he must have done. Thibaud waiting in the car. The high-speed night drive home. The car’s bucking headlights quickly reeling Algiers in.

  He sees them hurtling through the labyrinthine darkness, his arm outstretched against the dashboard. He can see figures running. Cars overturned. Buildings on fire. A man reaches out to them as they speed past; his face is imprinted on Jovert’s brain. Beseeching them to stop. His splayed hands burst up in front of them like two white pigeons. Thibaud swerves to avoid him. All around them, there is artillery fire.

  Thibaud is saying: What if she’s not there? What if she’s already left?

  He strikes the steering wheel with the palm of his hand.

  This is crazy, crazy. Merde.

  This final syllable hangs in the air.

  But Madeleine is there. She’s sitting at the kitchen table when he bursts in. Her head in her hands, her pale, tear-stained face blank. She won’t look at him. A woman he does not know sits across from her.

  His child’s not there.

  Where’s my son? he says.

  He’s
in his crib, thank God. Asleep. Unscathed. Still innocent.

  His heart still beating.

  Mathilde Benhamou was killed today, the woman says. With her brother-in-law, Ahmed, and three of her students. A bomb explosion in town. At Les Trois Bleus, their favourite café.

  How many thousands of times had he replayed this sentence since: Mathilde was killed today…Mathilde was killed today… Until he had to close it down, bury it. So deep he could not hear it anymore. Tilde.

  Is that why it had been Lemoine? He saw his face looking into his. Don’t ask what you don’t need to know.

  I was supposed to be there, Madeleine says. I was supposed to be there. With them. With Mathilde.

  He remembered one evening, an operation unexpectedly postponed, he had returned to Algiers. Madeleine had been surprised to see him. Tilde had been there. Tilde, whose husband had been killed in the riots of ’57.

  Tilde.

  Auguste.

  How are you, the children?

  They’re well, and how…

  And Salima, how old is she now? She must be what, five, six?

  Six. She’s at school already.

  It never hurt to let them know.

  And Ahmed?

  Ahmed, her brother-in-law, her sister Haifa’s husband, whom she depended on.

  He’s well. Busy.

  Busy, he said.

  Afterwards, when he heard her leave, he slipped out, followed her down the dim-lit street.

  Mathilde!

  Tilde turned back, anxious, not knowing who it was.

  It’s me. Auguste.

  He caught up with her. She was not unfriendly. Her fine-featured hijabed face handsome.