Radiant City

by Lauren B. Davis

  Back in her own apartment, Joseph has not yet stirred. She runs the back of her hand along his cheek. “Wake up. Come on. Wake up.” He moans and turns away from her. “No, no, you don’t. Up. You have to go to school.”

  “No school today. Teachers are on strike,” he mumbles into the back of the sofa.

  “You are a liar and a lazy boy,” she says, but her voice is not angry.

  Joseph tries to hide a smile. “Donkey boy.”

  “Yes, walid himar. Now get up or the donkey will bite your ass.”

  “Oh, that’s terrible!” He laughs at the pun and rolls off the couch as his mother goes into the bedroom.

  “I have to dress and get down to the café. Make sure Ramzi meets the delivery. And listen to me, Joseph,” she calls to him as she pulls a navy blue dress from the closet, “I mean it. You go to school today. All day. And come to the café as soon as you’re finished. I want to see what the homework is.” She hears him in the bathroom. “Do you hear me?”

  “I’ve got soccer after school.”

  Saida knows this is not true. She wants it to be true, but she knows he does not go to soccer, although it is an excuse he uses often. There are never any soccer clothes to wash. Never a soccer ball in the house. As far as she knows he owns no soccer shoes though he says he keeps them at school.

  She does not want to call his bluff and telephone the school. Although she would never say this to her son, she dislikes the teachers at his school almost as much as he does. The tone of voice they use, as if their mouths are full of sour pickles, makes it clear they hold no respect for her—just another Arab woman raising a child alone, and one who bears the taint of her hardscrabble life in the texture of her very skin. The headmistress, Madame Brossard, lumps her into the same stew with Algerians, Tunisians, Moroccans. How can she explain who she is to the Parisians, who never go into Barbès let alone beyond the périphérique, into the housing projects where most of the immigrant population live? Her father once an engineer, her mother once a teacher just like them. Saida speaks three languages—how many do they speak? It’s no use, and she suspects it’s as little use for her son, who doubly condemns himself because he makes his friends among the beurs, those hard-eyed, slouching, baggy-clothed boys who try so hard to look like American rappers and who everyone assumes steal wallets on the subway whether they do or not. And her son does not. Of this she is sure.

  She pulls her tights up under her dress. “I will call the school, Joseph. I will find out if you have soccer or not. Don’t make me do that.” He says something she can’t hear over the flushing of the toilet. “What?”

  “Call if you want. I have soccer.”

  “I will call. Don’t you think I won’t. And if I find out you are lying to me, I will tell your grandfather, I will tell your uncle. And you know what they will do. You’ll be locked in your room for a month.”

  “I don’t have a room. Besides, I’m too old for all that. I make my own decisions.”

  Saida wraps a scarf around her neck. She says nothing for a moment, letting him think about the consequences of his words. It’s natural he would push the limits. It’s his age.

  “You can’t treat me like a child anymore,” Joseph says, standing in the doorway, his hands on his hips. Her beautiful son. Bold and brazen, as he should be. Saida smiles at him, then narrows her eyes, purses her lips and shakes her head at him in a parody of his own expression until he laughs.

  “Such a mean man you’ll grow up to be.”

  “I’m almost grown now.” He shuffles back and forth, afraid to look foolish.

  “Almost grown isn’t grown. Be at the café this afternoon. I need you to take your grandfather to the doctor. He has to have his blood pressure checked.” And Joseph sighs deeply so she will know how he suffers, but Saida understands she has won this round at least.

  Oh, the men in my life, she thinks. So many men and always everyone needing something. Where is the air left for me to breathe, and when the time for me to breathe it in?

  CHAPTER FIVE

  It is just after nine o’clock when Matthew finds the Bok-Bok, in the mostly Arab neighbourhood known as Belleville, in the 20th arrondissement, where windows full of oriental pastries and shops selling prayer rugs and Korans line the streets. As he walks, he keeps his eye on a group of twenty-something North African men wearing track suits and smoking with practised nonchalance. They joke, slap palms and watch the passersby. Women keep their eyes downcast as they walk past them. When a blond in a short skirt and high-heeled sandals walks by, they toss out insults in Arabic and spit at her. The old women and the ones wearing traditional headscarves are treated with more respect. An old man comes out of his grocery shop and shakes his hands at them, as though they are a trip of goats he means to move along. He says something harsh in Arabic, but the young men take no notice.

  Matthew gives them and their tangible disaffection a wide berth. There are young men like this in every city of the world, only the ethnicity is different. He knows that the angry, like the poor, will always be with us. He avoids eye contact and keeps his gait casual.

  He is looking for a particular passageway that was part of Jack’s instructions, and when he finds it he edges through a gate into a small discreet courtyard that smells of piss. He crosses to a door on the left, next to a wooden sign with the name of the bar on it and a Harley-Davidson logo sticker. The steps inside are absurdly steep, narrow and dark. He feels along the wall with his hands as he descends. The wall is damp.

  When his eyes adjust to the shadows in the dimly lit room below, he sees that an attempt has been made to reproduce an in-country Vietnamese hooch. The floor is wooden, the bar is rough-hewn and the tattered remains of an army surplus camouflage net hangs from the ceiling, festooned with small red and green Christmas lights. The faces of Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin look down from the walls. There are dusty plastic palms in the corners and the air smells of cigarettes, beer, piss and the sort of centuries-old mould that is endemic to Paris basements.

  Matthew waits a few seconds, knowing that eyes are on him, and then walks slowly toward the bar, nods to two men who nod back, but is careful not to stare at any face. He becomes still here, in the pin-drop tension, and he begins to relax for the first time in weeks. He feels as though he has stepped into water the same temperature as his skin. The jitters inside him begin to quiet. Home sweet home.

  The bartender, a man wearing a porkpie hat over a scraggle of red hair, jerks his chin at Matthew, who orders a beer, whisky back, and drinks it, facing away from the room.

  “You all right, then?” asks the bartender.

  “Fine, thanks.” The bartender nods and walks to the other end of the bar where he polishes a glass. The room’s low buzz of conversation returns. It is a drone of speech not whispered, not under the men’s breath exactly, but with awareness that not all things are meant to be heard by all people. A pale girl sits a few seats along the bar. She has black hair, which looks like a wig, and wears a tight, high-collared, Chinese-style dress. She smokes a cigarette and picks at chipped nail polish. There is a slit in the skirt and a dark bruise on her leg. She notices Matthew looking at her legs and stares at him but does not smile and so neither does he.

  A man comes over and stands close to Matthew. He is not as tall as Matthew but is powerfully built, with tattoos of dragons on his arms. He says nothing.

  “How you doing?” asks Matthew.

  “You sure you’re in the right place, friend?”

  “I suspect so.”

  “No civilians here.”

  “Jack Saddler told me to meet him here.”

  “Ah,” says the man and extends his hand. “Name’s Charlie.”

  “Matthew.”

  Charlie and the bartender nod to each other and then Charlie returns to his table, where he says something to another man, who glances at Matthew and then turns away quickly.

  After a few minutes, the door opens and Jack Saddler enters the room. As he approaches, a
big grin under his droopy, greying moustache, Matthew notes he has put a few beer-pounds on his professional wrestler build. Being six foot one, Matthew does not look up at people often, but his neck tilts when Jack comes closer.

  “Hey! The original bad penny,” says Jack and he claps Matthew on the shoulder. His hand is the size and weight of a brick.

  “You’re looking prosperous,” Matthew says.

  Jack grabs his belly. “I look like a fucking Buddha.”

  “Suits you.”

  “How long you been in town?”

  “Few weeks. You still carry that copy of St. Augustine’s Confessions?”

  Jack laughs. “Shit. You remember that? Well, I’ve got a confession of my own. I never read it. Just knew that one quote.”

  “Now I got it!” says a voice. They turn and see Charlie coming toward the bar. “I thought you looked familiar. Journalist, right? You’re that guy. Hey, Dan,” he calls to the bartender, “fuck me! This is the guy in Israel, you know, the guy with that man and his kid, on CNN!”

  Matthew knocks back the whisky. “Time for me to go.”

  “Charlie, check yourself,” Jack says, his voice low. “Now.”

  The man looks stricken. “Hey, hey. Listen.” He puts his hand on Matthew’s arm. “Sorry, man. No need to go. Rules around here. You don’t want to talk, you don’t have to talk. I fucked up. It’s just not too often we get a … well, anyway, my mistake. You’re welcome here.” He holds out his other hand for Matthew to shake. Matthew hesitates. “Next drink’s on me, for both of you.”

  Matthew looks at Jack, who nods.

  “Fair enough,” says Matthew and shakes the man’s hand.

  “Whisky, double,” says Jack to the barman. “See you later, Charlie.”

  They take their drinks to a table, and before Matthew knows it, there are more drinks. The night ebbs and flows as people come and go. No one comes near the table. Jack asks no questions. Instead he talks of himself.

  “Nearly fifty, can you believe it? I’m too old for that merc shit. Too old for the war photographer thing, too.” Jack chews the side of his moustache, as he always did when he was uncomfortable. “I needed a break, you know?”

  Yes, Matthew knows.

  “I’m working in a hostel. Don’t laugh. Sort of a receptionist-slash-bouncer. Gives me a little extra cash. And let’s face it, there’s something to be said for working in a place full of eighteen- to twenty-eight-year-olds. Especially the girls. All those belly rings and pierced tongues.” His eyebrows waggle and Matthew laughs. “But that’s not my real gig. I figure I’ll do some stuff in Paris. Street-shot stuff, down and dirty. The Paris the tourists don’t see. I’m thinking of a book of subterranean Paris. In fact, now that I consider it, you could even do the words. We could do it together. Me pictures, you words. What do you think?”

  Matthew laughs. Josh’s face swims before him. “Maybe,” he says. “Maybe.”

  Later, when Matthew is back in his apartment, lying on his back, the bed gently rolling under the wave of booze, he wonders why it is that everywhere he goes he finds someone who’s been in Vietnam. They pop up everywhere from El Salvador to Somalia. Soldiers turned mercenaries mostly, sometimes soldiers turned reporters, like Carl. Once in a rare while some guy, apparently just wandering.

  The first time he met Jack had been in Peshawar. He was thinner back then, with red leathery skin, and a dog-eared, talismanic copy of The Confessions of St. Augustine that he wouldn’t go anywhere without. Jack said he had come to the Afghan border to hook up with the legendary mujahedeen fighter Abdul-Haq. He stayed for a couple of weeks, making contacts and lining up guides to take him across the mountains. He showered in Matthew’s hotel room and told stories about being a Ranger in Vietnam, Company F, 75th Infantry, trained at the Recondo School at Nha Trang. About the Saigon hookers who plied their trade in the cemeteries, about the ambushes and the unending sense of anticipation that came from never knowing when a piece of bamboo was going to jump out of the earth and impale you, or when a snake tied to a vine would swing into your face. About his well-earned psychological discharge. “Totally fucking dinky dau,” as Jack called it.

  Jack had many stories and, at the time, Matthew thought most of them were probably true. Matthew was in awe of Jack’s ability to move through his own terror, which Matthew had come to understand was the true definition of bravery.

  “Aren’t you afraid of getting killed?” he had asked.

  “Immortality is health; this life is a long sickness,” said Jack, quoting St. Augustine.

  Jack vanished into the mountains and it was a long time before he resurfaced. In the interim, he became a sort of shining ghost, a sort of mythic questing figure. A doomed hero. Matthew winces. Jack would have picked up the gun in that square in Hebron. He would have let fly, and maybe then things would have been different.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Matthew and Jack arrange to meet at Odéon in the square in front of the movie theatres, to see if anything appeals to them, something to see later in the evening. From there they plan to head over to Square Tino Rossi, on the Seine across from the Institut du Monde Arabe, where Jack wants to photograph the tango dancers who gather late in the afternoons and into the evenings. As Matthew climbs the metro stairs, he is flushed and sticky with the afternoon’s heat, which the sausage-casing constriction of the subway has only worsened. Even under the shade of the plane tree, he feels heat sick.

  The street is a mass of people, and there is as much English spoken, it seems, as French. Everywhere he looks, wilted tourists in sensible shoes and track suits lumber along, taking pictures and gawking. The masses jostle and lurch and the cacophony from the car horns and the café crowds makes his head spin. He feels queasy, a combination of too much booze the night before and too little food today.

  He looks around for a bakery, and spots one a few doors down. It is all chrome and glass and linoleum, the walls painted an eyepiercing shade of yellow. Plastic chairs circle three round metal tables and the air is thick with cigarette smoke from a group of well-dressed Italian teenagers drinking diet colas and speaking loudly. The cakes and baguettes look as far from those found in a traditional patisserie as Matthew can imagine. He is reminded of Safeway Groceries back in Nova Scotia when he was a kid, and donuts with Plasticine icing in garish pink. His stomach growls again and he seeks the least offensive item in the display case.

  The woman behind the counter puts her cigarette in the ashtray and steps over to him, hands on hips. She has orange hair and is heavily, if not improvingly, made up.

  “Oui, monsieur?” She does not smile. Smiling is unnecessary in Parisian commercial transactions, purely discretionary, and today it seems Madame does not care to smile.

  “Pain au chocolat,” says Matthew.

  “Quoi?” Madame frowns and squints as though he has a speech impediment, and so he repeats himself, adding a bottle of water to his order.

  There is a shriek behind him. Matthew jumps and turns, legs bent, heart pounding. A young woman in a strapless sundress curses as she tries to manoeuvre a baby stroller containing a squealing toddler through the door. She rams the wheels against the door jamb, jarring the child. One of the young Italian girls, cigarette in hand, jumps up to help her, chattering away in Italian. The woman with the baby thanks her and then casts an evil look Matthew’s way.

  Matthew puts his money down on the glass, and the woman behind the counter scoops it up before he realizes she has handed him the wrong thing. He looks down at the bottle of water, and what appears to be an apple turnover. He briefly considers not making a fuss. However, even if he wanted an apple turnover, this one does not look in the least appetizing. Oozing industrial filling, the pastry gives the impression of papier mâché. The woman looks at him irritably, for he is not moving, and gestures with her hand for him to step aside so she can serve the mother with the still-screaming child.

  “This is not a pain au chocolat,” he says, in French.

  “It
is what you asked for,” the woman says, looking past him.

  “I asked for a pain au chocolat.”

  “Non!” She clicks her teeth and shakes her finger back and forth in front of him. “I gave you what you asked for.”

  “You misunderstood me, then.” Matthew is aware of the young woman behind him; her impatience prickles the back of his neck. His anger rises, popping and fizzing in the veins, not quite at a boil, but fast approaching. He grits his teeth and tries to smile. “But I don’t want this.” He puts the offending pastry on the counter and nudges it toward her.

  The woman takes a breath, as though readying herself to let lose a stream of vitriol. Perhaps it is some sliver of ice beneath his flushed skin, some shard of volatility that makes her hesitate. Perhaps she can sense he is holding onto the counter so as not to lunge across it and grab her by her supercilious throat.

  She snorts. “It’s not my fault you speak French so badly.” She snatches the pastry off the counter, tosses it next to her pack of cigarettes near the register, grabs a pair of tongs and clamps the pain au chocolat in the case. She holds it out to him, but it is sadly dented. He takes it, turns and stomps out.

  The pastry is dry as bark in his mouth and he washes it down with the water. His stomach feels better afterward, though, even if his palms are sweaty. He stands in the shade of the green-domed newspaper kiosk trying to get a little respite from the malodorous heat.

  Matthew sees Jack lumbering along the sidewalk of Saint-Germain. His head is down slightly and his hands are stuffed in the pockets of his jeans. He carries a heavy camera slung across his chest. He nearly collides with a crumpled-looking old lady in front of him who stopped suddenly to let her Yorkshire terrier relieve itself. He says something, presumably “Pardon,” and the woman pulls her dog toward her in mid-poop, the crap dangling from its trembling legs, as though she is afraid Jack might kick the creature. Jack steps around her and people move aside to let him pass. A mother yanks her little boy out of his path. A young man, big, but not as big as Jack, wearing a black T-shirt with the sleeves cut off, hesitates for a moment as though deciding whether or not to challenge Jack, whether or not to play a little sidewalk chicken and see who will move first. He makes a wise choice and at the last moment dodges.