by Maggie Gee
His thoughts turned to the coming evening. He was going to the Gala at Government Palace. He was sorry he had recently broken up with Caz, who looked buff and brutal, but did it with anyone. He would have felt good, with Caz on his arm, they would have been photographed arriving – though Caz never left with the same person.
Isaac had liked Caz, he had liked him a lot, though he couldn’t trust him alone for five minutes and had never had bareback sex with him once in the couple of years they had been together. In the nineties Isaac had tested positive, and death became horribly real to him – would he end up a grinning, shivering monkey, gloated over by his guilty step-mother? He had been mortally afraid. But time split for him. At the last minute, a second, negative, result came through. Isaac woke up in another world, where he was not doomed, where he had to go on living; the sun was out, he was starving hungry. In this new world, he took all he could, lived all he could, lost out to no one.
Isaac liked parties: noise, colour, enough alcohol to laugh and not think, a reason for people to be with him, a reason for people to pretend to like him. The hope that he wouldn’t go home on his own.
But if he did, it was bearable, here. That was why Isaac stayed in the city. Never the only one alone.
May sat and drifted as the sunlight strengthened. How she loved sun; butter, daffodils. The yellow cardie Alfred gave her one birthday, which didn’t suit her but made her happy. Oedipus, Charon, Persephone. Slowly her thoughts about Dirk began to soften. He was out of prison, so he’d served his time. He’d ‘repaid his debt to society’, as they liked to put it, though he’d never been in debt, indeed Dirk was careful with his money. The ‘repaying’ bit must be aimed at robbers.
Whereas her Dirk had never been dishonest. A mother knew things, and May knew that. The thing he had done was more mad than bad. Getting rid of wickedness, he probably thought, being so set against homosexuals. (May was broad-minded about all of them – coloured people, homosexuals – she spoke as she found, and most of them were nice: but Alfred and Dirk were both funny about it.)
The sun made a golden pool on her lap; it reminded her of the cat, at home, her childhood home, how it sat and warmed her. Everyone had to have something to warm them. Since Alfred died, May wasn’t needed. Darren didn’t need her, Shirley didn’t need her (only for chats and the odd bit of child-minding, now the boys were at nursery school).
Dirk, she thought. My youngest child. Somehow, Dirk had got in with loonies. He was – not a bad boy, but limited …
There was no one else to look after him. If Dirk needed her, May was ready. (And it might help her, as well, perhaps. Take away that tiny wireworm of guilt.)
In an odd way, Dirk wasn’t unlike Alfred. The same big nose, the same blue eyes, though of course poor Dirk wasn’t a patch on his father. Perhaps he would come and stay for a bit. She wouldn’t mind, if it wasn’t for ever. Just to help him get back on his feet again.
First, however, she had to find him. The newspaper said One Way was ‘strongest’ in the Towers.
May gave her appearance anxious thought. She should look respectable, but not too smart, for she knew how poor people were in the Towers. She had a little metal mirror from her mother, and she looked at her face in it, half-despairing; her eyes were still blue, but they were nested in wrinkles. Second-best coat, which dated from the sixties, with a little lamb collar, slightly tatty by now, and big patch pockets, blue rubber boots and a pretty blue paisley scarf, two dollars from a charity shop. No handbag, so there was nothing to snatch. Instead she put her money in her coat pocket, which made her feel curiously light and girlish, and a tortoiseshell comb, and her mother’s mirror, thus relieving the ache in her arthritic shoulder, which had a little notch where her shoulder-bag cut.
Good job the weather was glorious. She had to wait for an hour on the floating decking the government had strung around the streets. Derelict water-buses brought in from the riverside serviced the Towers a few times a day. May had her favourite Tennyson stuffed in her other pocket. Taking off her coat, she bundled it into a makeshift cushion so she could sit reading, but the water she glimpsed between the wooden slats looked black and greasy and full of dregs, and she was too afraid of her leather-bound book slipping through the crack and being lost for ever, her other Alfred, her beloved friend, so she put her coat back on again and stood rather stiffly till the boat appeared, trying to read and keep her balance as the decking yawed and creaked in the wash.
Once she was on board, she felt bouncy again. The boat moved into more open spaces as it crossed a richer part of the city; the floods reflected the blue of the sky. May gazed with pleasure at the shining water, knowing it wouldn’t be there much longer, enjoying the silly sight of orange beacons sticking out of the surface like short-sticked lollipops, the little hillocks of new green leaves growing out of the sea that had swallowed the tree-trunks, the everyday houses which had lost their gardens, paths, front doors, turned into Venezia.
But her mood changed when she reached the Towers. As the land dipped downwards, the water grew deeper. Thanks to the long wait, it was already afternoon. May wasn’t eager to stay too long. There was a hint of deep cold, striking upwards, but it smelled, as well, of rot, of toilets. This must be a frightening place at night. Because the water rose several floors up, there was nowhere central for her to get off, just a series of towers leading off into the distance, two dozen monoliths of stained concrete that reared up darkly between May and the sun, tall and narrow and without imagination, no arches or carvings or softening curlicues, the windows glinting like blind glass eyes behind which more hostile eyes might be watching.
I must be mad to come here, May thought. I’ll never find him. I’ll never get home.
As they drew closer, though, she felt less fearful. Several of the windows were flung wide, and music poured out to greet the daylight. May listened for hymns, but this was dancing music. Young people, people she didn’t know … but probably not murderers, if they were dancing.
‘Come on, lady,’ said the boatman, impatient. ‘You’re going to have to tell me which one.’
‘I don’t really know,’ May said. ‘Sorry. I’m looking for a – trying to find a – well you could call it a religious group. The One Way Brotherhood. Does it ring a bell? Where would they be?’
He looked at her with a little sneer. ‘Oh, they’ve all gone mad for it, round this way. Why can’t you lot find a proper church?’
May ignored the spite. She agreed with him. ‘It’s my son,’ she said. ‘I want to find him.’
‘Here’s as good as anywhere,’ he said.
He put May off, without a word, on the balcony of the nearest tower, with one other woman, coloured, youngish. May stood there for a second, shivering, as the boat rocked away towards the other towers, getting smaller, less real, in the shining distance. She felt suddenly old, helpless, useless, with her loose, childish money slipping about between her icy sausage fingers. The water below her looked very deep. Things moved beneath the surface like sea-monsters, things slowly pushing up to the light. Perhaps they were only rotting car-tyres, but they looked black and slimy and warm and alive.
What had she ever understood? What did she know about the world? Had she been a good wife or a decent mother? Suddenly May felt she knew nothing at all.
The young coloured woman was disappearing through the shattered window that led into the tower, stepping gingerly across the sharp triangles of glass, carrying her shopping-bag with anxious care. ‘Please,’ said May, ‘Coo-ee, miss. I’m looking for some, you know, religious people. The One Way Brotherhood, they’re called. Christians.’
The woman looked blank, then nodded. ‘Oh yeah, but they’re Muslims, innit? They’re everywhere here. You’re in the right place.’
The staircase, which felt cold and clammy as a morgue, despite the lozenges of sunlight on the wall, was plastered with dramatic posters, lettered in red to look like blood: ‘LAST DAYS’ they said, and ‘ONE WAY OUT’: towering black s
torm clouds sprayed arrows of rain: beneath the clouds, crowds dressed in white were gathered piously around a book, and the rain above them was mysteriously diverted. Childish, thought May. Do they really believe it? (In any case, they would soon look out of date. The rains had stopped, the floods would vanish.) She felt nervous, thinking of this new strange son who had put his faith in the end of the world.
Her feet tip-tapped self-consciously upwards, loud and alone on the blank stone stairs. On the third floor above water-level, she saw two posters on a door. She hesitated. It went against her nature, knocking on the door of total strangers. She carried on upwards, then turned, uncertain. Why had she come, if she hadn’t any courage?
Alfred had courage. She begged him to help her. Screwing up her money inside her pocket, May pressed the bell with her other hand.
There was a long silence, then a slithering shuffle, then she heard someone just inside the door. They were probably looking through that peep-hole. That was good, if so; they too were afraid. A bolt was withdrawn and the door swung open. An elderly Asian man stood there, stooped. His hair was a deep, boot-polish black. He looked up quickly at her face, then down again.
May stood her ground, clearing her throat, and pointed at the poster on the door. ‘Is this yours?’ she inquired. ‘I mean, is it your faith?’
‘Why you ask?’ he said: eyes up, eyes down. The roots in his parting were startlingly white.
‘My son,’ May said. ‘I need my son.’ To her surprise, her voice choked up. ‘He’s a good boy,’ she said, pointlessly. Once he was a boy; once he was good; once he had bought his father sweets, with his own money, without being told, when Alfred was sick, in hospital.
‘The God love the mother who love the son,’ the man said, with a sudden flashing smile. Then his body seized up again, cramped, suspicious.
‘I’m looking for my son. His name’s Dirk White. One of the leaders,’ May said, smiling, with her best, kindest, most motherly smile. Surely motherhood was international. ‘Do you have a son? I’m sure you do.’
‘Two children,’ he said, flamboyant again. ‘Daueid, like David, Mariam, like Mary. From the Koran, but same in Bible.’
Soon May was inside the over-heated flat, sitting drinking coffee by the old-fashioned gas-fire whose tight toothed grids of flame and ash reminded her of the (Islamic, were they?) patterns on the cover of a book on the table.
He told her his name was Jehangir, ‘meaning he who holds universe in his hand … Jehangir build the Taj Mahal, madam.’
‘That’s famous,’ May said, thrilled. She had a little brass box with a picture of it. She’d thought it was built a long time ago, but then, she’d never been good at dates. Lovely to meet a famous architect. The coffee was terrible, with powdered cream, but it was very kind of Jehangir to offer it, and shortly after he produced some biscuits, ginger-nuts, which were favourites of hers, setting them on a plate on a low carved table.
He was talking to her with an impassioned desire to explain the world, to explain this life, which made May think of the poets she loved: Walt Whitman, Matthew Arnold. Alfred had not been a bit like that, so she’d kept her poetic side to herself. She expanded, now, in the heat of the fire.
‘The mother,’ he was saying, ‘she always love the child. Everything he do, she just love it. The father love it but he say “No”, he correct him, but the mother, she is pure love.’ (Listening to him, May believed she was; and if she wasn’t, she resolved to be. It was love that had brought her here, to the Towers.) ‘The prophet say, the mother has heaven beneath her feet. Not the woman; no. There is man, there is woman, wrong thing can begin. But the woman who is under what do you say, under husband’s name, everything right. The woman who becomes a mother, who gives life from her body and loves the child, this woman has heaven underneath her feet.’
Suddenly May felt, life is wonderful. (The caffeine and the sugar zinged through her blood; she had got starving hungry, waiting for the boat.) The truth was here, it was everything that mattered. This foreigner liked her, they could be friends, despite all this rubbish the government talked about foreign powers and sabotage. She smoothed her hair. He made her feel womanly. A woman and a mother. She was in heaven.
She tried to pay attention to the details, but after a bit he was talking too quickly. Every good Muslim must respect the Jesus. Jesus was a prophet in the Koran, who would come again on the Doomsday. His name in the Koran was Isa, or Esa-alaihis-Salaam, some hissing words she couldn’t quite make out; his mother was Mariam, the Queen of Women. (‘That’s Mary,’ she told him. ‘Which is close to “May”.’ She sat with her coffee, excited, queenly.) God had daughters, and their sons were all prophets. There were perhaps one hundred and forty thousand prophets (‘perhaps a more, perhaps a less’). But there was only One Way, One Truth, One Path. ‘God love the humans. Every one. But he is also a Judger, Mary.’ She asked if anyone could join the Path, and he told her, eagerly, yes. ‘The Christians, Muslims, even these Jews, which we call Yahudis.’ He didn’t sound keen on those but, he continued, ‘They are all people of the Book, Mary.’
‘May,’ she corrected him, slightly coquettishly. He had fine features, a noble hooked nose not so different from Alfred’s, though finer, thinner. She reminded herself she was doing this for Dirk, so there was no harm in sitting talking. ‘What was your name again, Jehan…?’
‘Jehangir, Mary, Jehangir. In the Koran, Jehangir is the son of Aqbar, which means the Mighty One. They call him Shah-han-soar, which is, the king above other king –’
‘King of Kings,’ she helped him out. She wished he would offer her another biscuit. In his culture, it might be rude to reach out and take one, from the small gilt plate on the pretty table, for May understood about different cultures, unlike her husband, who had been a little narrow. It was lovely, a man looking after her. Alfred hardly ever made her cups of coffee.
‘Yes, Mary. Kings of King, Kings of King. Aqbar takes a Hindu woman, makes her Muslim, marries her …’
This was encouraging, to May. ‘I once knew a nice Hindu,’ she confided. ‘I like your religion, with everyone included. I didn’t realize it was like that. My friend was the man who ran the post office. Mr Varsani. Very honest. Though Alfred didn’t think so. My husband got a thing about his change … But I like the idea we could all be together.’
But her new friend fired up at once. ‘Hindu don’t have Book!’ he said, indignant. ‘This is rubbish religion, if they don’t have Book.’
‘Mr Varsani was very sincere,’ said May, thrown off course; she had thought he would be pleased. ‘Indian, like you,’ reproachfully. ‘I don’t suppose you knew him?’
‘I am Pakistani, Mary!’
May had never really understood the difference. ‘Don’t you think all religions are good? Hindus do,’ she suddenly remembered. ‘My daughter told me that’s what Hindus believe.’
But this was a definite wrong turning. ‘Let me explain you Hindus,’ he said, leaping up, flashing his eyebrows, smiling, mocking, looking rather elderly once he was in motion, with a little pot belly that quivered as he gestured. ‘If I say to you, “Now we worship the cow”, you say to me, “Rubbish, rubbish, dear”. This is the Hindu: he worship the cow. God never forgive you to worship the cow.’
May decided to back off Hindus. It was One Way, after all; Hindus couldn’t get in.
Now Jehangir returned to the theme of marriage. He didn’t like cows, but he did like trees, and waxed lyrical now as he sat close to May and explained how the God made the trees pregnant, smiling at her with tender meaning. His breath smelled sweetish and peppery; he was very intense; his lips were red; after a while his voice was hypnotic. He was looking deep into her eyes.
May tried to hotch away very slightly, and a spring in the chair poked sharply at her buttocks. She blushed, hotly, remembering her mission. She reached for her coat (which she’d slipped off, as they chatted, embarrassed by its worn fur collar, wishing she had worn her best blue one) and pulled, from
the pocket where her money was, her newspaper cutting with the photograph of Dirk.
‘Please,’ she said. ‘This is my youngest boy. You must know him. Where can I find him?’
‘White fella,’ he said, sounding disappointed, as if her son should have been Pakistani.
‘Do you know him? You don’t know him.’ Her heart sank. She had been buoyed up with hope, and the pleasure of the chat. Now it all seemed empty. Jehangir didn’t know him. She started to gather her things together.
‘There are hundred, hundreds hundred, thousands hundred, One Way people now,’ he told her, whirling his hands about. ‘I know only the Muslim people, Mary. Muslim people very good people.’ There was a long pause while she buttoned her coat; her fingers felt like someone else’s; the coat seemed unwilling to be buttoned, as if her body wanted to get out. He watched her, his eyes intent and hot. Suddenly they were gazing at each other; she was out of her depth, too old, too frail, but her eyes gazed, and her body sweated, and she failed to force the button through the buttonhole.
‘If I marry you, you can become Muslim. I can have four wives, the Koran say.’ He smiled a complicated, ghastly smile, a mixture of lust and gallantry and despair because he knew she was going.
May was touched and upset by his need of her, but as pity began, her excitement vanished. Men were needy: she knew about that, but she made it to her feet, she extended her hand. In any case, he didn’t really mean it.
‘I’m going,’ she said. ‘You’ve been very kind. Thank you for telling me about your religion.’ She stood there smiling with her hand stretched out.