by Jane Johnson
She realized that they had stopped walking. Abdou placed the flat of his hand across the narrow alleyway, barring her path. Her first instinct was to push him out of the way with a nervous laugh and carry on; but there was no space without brushing her entire body against him, so she stood there, rooted and inert, waiting for the world to turn, for something to happen.
“My place is just up here,” he said quietly. “You could come in if you like.”
Kate shivered. Partly it was because of the cold. Mainly it was not. “I thought you were walking me home.”
“Mine is closer.” He left a pause. “But we could go back to yours if you prefer.”
She knew she should feel angry at his presumption, but Kate blushed, and was glad that the darkness hid her discomfort. “It’s fine. I know my way from here.” Which wasn’t entirely true. “It’s a nice offer, but—”
His mouth upon hers was hot and sudden. She was too surprised to move, too surprised even to close her eyes: he was out of focus, a blur of dark hair and a gleam of eyes as he pulled away to look at her, before moving in again, this time cradling her cheek with one palm, tilting her face toward him, pulling her so close it was as if he would somehow absorb her through his skin. She meant to step out of the embrace, to push him away and walk quickly down the alley, but her tongue had other ideas, and her limbs had gone to jelly. She could feel him pressing against her now, hard and upright: in response a fire started somewhere below her belly button, turning her flesh molten.
At last the inability to breathe made her break away, gasping. “Oh,” Kate said. “I didn’t…I didn’t want…I didn’t mean to do that.”
“Do what?” He leaned back against a wall, regarding her from the shadows, enjoying the turmoil he had caused.
“Kiss you. Or rather, kiss you back.”
“You did, didn’t you?” He sounded smug.
There was little point in denying it. “Yes, but, I shouldn’t have. My life is complicated.”
“Good. That’s what life is for, complication. Without it there’s no pattern, just straight lines and blank colours. That would be very dull.”
She wasn’t falling for semantics. “I meant, my life is already too complicated. There’s no pattern to it, just mess and wreckage.”
“I like mess. And if there was no wreckage, there would be nothing to salvage.”
“You don’t understand.”
“So tell me.”
“It’s too late.”
“It’s never too late.”
“I mean now. It’s too late. It’s—” She glanced at her watch, then tapped it, looked at it again. “Bloody thing. It’s stopped.”
He grinned. “Time has stopped, then. Come upstairs.”
“Seriously, though, it’s late. I must get to bed. My own bed.”
“I thought you quit your job. No need to get up early.”
“Even so, I need to sleep.”
“‘Our little life is rounded with a sleep’: but the key word is ‘life,’ no?”
“For a man who can’t write his own name in his mother tongue you’re surprisingly literate all of a sudden,” she said tartly.
He raised an eyebrow, surprised by her rudeness. “Ah, you have so many other surprises to discover about me.”
God, she thought. This is ridiculous. How am I supposed to resist a man who works with his hands yet quotes Prospero at me; who looks the way he does and kisses like that? She could feel her hips being drawn toward his as if by a magnet. This was no good. Grappling with the potent mix of exhaustion and attraction, she quelled the instinct to close with him. “Honestly, Abdou, I really must get some sleep.”
There was greed in his gaze, but also philosophy. At last he shrugged. “Okay, you must sleep, and so must I. Join us tomorrow at noon for some couscous?”
Was he being deliberately unthreatening, offering lunch, and with others present? It was the second time the same invitation had been made: how could she say no? “At the Tower of the Captive?”
“We can meet here. With my uncle and cousin and me, yes.”
“All right.” She turned to go, but her knees were a little unsteady and she twisted an ankle on the cobbles. At once he was there, a steadying hand beneath her elbow.
“I think I had better see you safely to your door. You never know who might be lurking around these streets in the dead of night.”
A light musky scent drifted between them, a faint animal smell of promised sex. She could feel the heat of him through his clothing and hers as they walked together. We are like lions, she thought suddenly, like hungry lions that know they will not eat tonight, but soon.
At the entrance to the Calle Guinea, with the door to her apartment safely in view, she faced him. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“You will.”
They stood there in the darkness, powerfully aware of each other, the air between them charged. For a moment, Kate’s resolve wavered: after all, what harm would it do, really, to invite him in? She liked him, he liked her. And it had been so long…
She felt a sharp pain in her left arm, then another, and out of nowhere was assailed by the memory of James pushing into her with a groan— “Mine. Mine, mine, mine.” She turned aside just in time. Vomit spattered down into the gutter, her stomach emptying itself in painful heaves, as if she were turning herself inside out, on and on and on. When she stopped, it was to find that Abdou was beside her, holding her hair out of the firing line. A folded tissue appeared and she accepted it gratefully, wiping her mouth.
“Impressive,” he said. “Especially without the aid of alcohol. Like the eruption of a minor volcano.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know why that happened,” she lied.
“Father’s cooking can have that effect on people.”
“Oh, it wasn’t that! I’ve had a lovely evening. I’m just tired…maybe it’s a bug of some kind.”
“A bug?”
“A virus or something.”
He seemed to accept her weak explanation. Then he said, “You’re shaking.”
She was, and now that she thought about it, it got worse. Little black stars began to dance at the edges of her vision. She swayed, blinking them away.
“I can’t leave you like this. I’ll worry.”
She breathed in then out. “That I’ll erupt again?”
“Devastating the entire Albayzín.”
They grinned at each other. “I’m fine now, really,” Kate reassured him. It wasn’t true. She felt shaky, both mentally and physically. Was this going to happen every time she thought about having sex? Damn James and everything he had done to her. Anger began to well inside her, displacing some of the nausea and faintness. “Give me your number and I’ll call you tomorrow,” she said, kneeling to fish in her handbag. She found her key, but where was her phone? She rummaged harder, till a spill of items tipped out onto the ground in front of him, her phone among them. Oh, not the condoms again. She swiped them up, hoping he hadn’t noticed. Triumph soon turned to dismay: he had her passport in his hand, opened to the photo page, angling it toward the distant street lamp.
“Jessica Scott?”
Kate closed her eyes.
She did not tell him everything, but she told him enough. Some of it she could not voice, did not want to remember. Some of it was just too personal to share with a man she barely knew. But even the bare bones of the story were damning. “And that’s why I’m travelling on my sister’s passport,” she finished miserably.
In the grey light of dawn, Abdou regarded her solemnly. Then he bent forward and took her hand, lifted it to his lips and planted a single hot kiss in her palm. He folded her fingers back over the place, as if to guard a secret. “I’m so sorry, Kate.”
“I left Luke behind.”
“At least he’s safe.”
“Yes, at least there’s that.” She paused, thinking. “I’m sorry I kissed you, I shouldn’t have done that—led you on, I mean. I’m still a married woman. I think.”
/>
“You think?”
She shook her head, feeling awkward. “Though technically, you kissed me first.”
“I’m not sure that kissing is a technical matter. Except maybe for engineers.”
It was a poor joke, kindly meant. She smiled wanly. “I don’t know why I got married. I never really loved James. And, you know, I didn’t really want children.”
“Not ever?”
“Not with him, anyway. Even as a kid I wasn’t one of those girls who babied their dolls. I was the quiet one who pulled their heads off and buried them on the beach. It was always Jess who made little clothes for hers and sat them down for tea parties.” She looked up at him, fearing the answer to what she was about to ask. “Do you hate me now that you know who I really am—a cowardly woman who fled from her husband and child?”
“Quite the reverse. I think you’re brave, and strong, and beautiful. Most women I know would have sat it out, stayed married, stayed quiet about it. It takes a strong liver to throw everything away and make a new life.”
“A strong liver?”
“It’s what we say.” He tapped his abdomen. “It’s where all the deepest feelings come from.”
“Not the heart?”
“The heart is a fickle organ.”
Kate looked around at her bare apartment, which appeared all the more spare and impersonal in the dreary light. Yesterday’s cups and plates sat on the counter, dirty, waiting to be washed, and she could smell the contents of the kitchen bin, which she’d forgotten to take out. “Not much of a life. Other than producing Luke, I haven’t really achieved anything. I don’t own anything anymore. I feel so transient passing through life with just a few necessities in a pack on my back.”
“On someone else’s passport!”
She laughed, rather sadly. “Yes.”
“It doesn’t always have to be that way, you know. I was a student for a time, and an activist when my grandfather was jailed. After that, I was on a list for a while in Morocco, so I drifted from job to job and place to place. I worked in garages, as a tourist guide, a cleaner, a driver. Till my uncle Omar took me under his wing and got me interested in restoration.”
“I bet that made your mother happy.”
“It did. It does. It makes me happy. It requires a lot of patience, and a lot of care, but I like to fix broken things, to give them back the best of themselves. It’s satisfying.” He ran a finger lightly over the little scars on her arm, making her shiver. “I’ve never tried mending a heart before, but I feel like I’ve spent all these years working up to it.”
Kate smiled. “I think I’m pretty much beyond repair.”
“No one’s beyond repair.” The look he gave her was direct, penetrating. She met it head-on, even though the touch of his hand caressing her arm was making her tremble.
“Why aren’t you married?” The question came out before she could stop it.
He withdrew his hand, looked away. “I was.”
“Oh. What happened? Or is it rude to ask?”
“She was the one thing I couldn’t fix.” His voice caught for a moment. “One day she was complaining of a headache, the next she was in intensive care with a shaved head and tubes coming out of her. It was just one big round of operations, chemotherapy and radiotherapy, a series of small hopes followed by terrible disappointments, and each time she was being worn away little by little, till there was hardly anything left of her. They gave her eight months: she lived for almost a year. It was a year too long.”
Kate sat stunned into silence. All the words that she could think to say were not merely inadequate but offensive in their inadequacy. At last, instead of saying sorry she asked, “What was her name?”
“Sinéad.” There was a pause as she took that in. “She was Irish. I met her when she was travelling. She said her name meant ‘gift from God.’ As they say, he gives with one hand, and takes away with the other. The day we buried her was the last time I went to a mosque.”
“Oh, Abdou.” She found herself reaching out and cupping his cheek, was surprised when he leaned into this small embrace. They stayed like that for a while, not speaking, until he straightened up. “I did not come in to talk about my troubles,” he said. “There’s nothing that can be done about those, and she is long gone. Ten years next year.”
“And you’ve been single ever since?”
The look he gave her—at once knowing and mocking—demolished the question. “Sorry, I have no right to ask. But you never remarried?”
“A union blessed by God seemed to be tempting fate. He had already broken my faith: I did not want him breaking anyone else.”
Rosy light had begun to flood into the little kitchen now; it warmed and humanized the place. Kate got up and made them both coffee, realizing as she did so that although she now knew more about this man than most, and had shared with him secrets she had told no one but her twin, she did not even know the simple fact of how he took his coffee. And yet she had the distinct sensation that their fates were bound together now. For a moment she stood still, feeling like a sailor at the bow of a ship looking out over an unknowable expanse of untraversed ocean. It would be so easy to turn back to the safety of port, but the mystery of him called her on.
25
Kate walked with Abdou through the Albayzín, then down a way to a little street market she’d never come upon before. She watched from the background as he went from stall to stall, chatting and bargaining, and noted how everyone’s expression changed at the sight of him. There was much laughter, always smiles. He was easy in his manner, teasing with the women, respectful with the older men, exchanging greetings in such a plurality of languages that she felt ignorant and undereducated. These people were all polyglots, and no wonder: they had been traders for generations, men and women for whom effective communication was a way of life, as well as of profit.
Soon it became apparent that, despite her attempt to stay out of his limelight, she was under some scrutiny: while the men asked cheerfully direct questions, the women were casting an eye over her, assessing.
“Eres hermosa,” one old lady remarked.
“Bella, bella,” agreed her companion.
“Lucky man,” said the jolly banana seller, winking at Abdou.
“Lucky girl,” said his wife, grinning to show off her gold tooth.
“They all think you’re my girlfriend,” Abdou told her as they moved away, cocking an eyebrow as he watched her reaction to this.
Kate tried not to smile and failed. “Well, I’m not.”
“Yet,” he said with undentable confidence, and bent to examine the ripeness of the peaches on the next stall.
Soon they had come away with bagfuls of colourful vegetables—aubergines and peppers, courgettes and carrots, butternut squash, French beans and red onions. It all seemed so delightfully normal, to be out and about, chatting with stallholders and shopping for meal ingredients with this charming man. It made Granada feel more like home than it ever had before, the people more like friends and neighbours than strangers. And there was a comfort to be had from the endless rounds of barter and chat; the sunshine; the prospect of the weekend, with long lazy meals and wine to be shared. Apart from the clothing the same scenes must have played out across the centuries—Moors and Jews and Castilians mingling in souks and markets to buy and sell and exchange news and gossip. Until, of course, the ambitions of the powerful set one against the other.
When you came down to it, though, people were much the same, she thought, watching a mother scold a small boy for taking an apple from the fruit stall without understanding the requirement of paying for the object of his desire. His howl rent the air, until the stallholder came around the stand to tousle his hair and hand him the fruit, waving the mother’s coin away. Kindness was universal: a human default. She caught Abdou’s eye—he had also watched the little sketch play out—and a wave of warmth travelled through her.
Thoughts of Luke appeared and chilly guilt replaced the warmth.
“Are you all right?”
There was such concern in his voice that Kate almost burst into tears at how little she deserved it. “Fine,” she said, pulling her cardigan tighter. “Just a bit cold.”
If he considered it odd, he made nothing of it. Instead he said, “Here.” He handed her a carrier bag. “Come and see how a proper Friday couscous is made.”
They wove through back streets that Kate vaguely recognized from the night before. In the stark sunlight they looked different, calm and unremarkable; entirely unthreatening. Nothing lurked here, nothing moved. Bright geraniums popped their heads out of window boxes; hibiscus and bougainvillea spilled over walls. Rough whitewash, pantiled roofs, tiled doorsteps. By the time he led her up some steps to a door that offered more wood than paint she had no idea where she was.
He turned at the threshold. “It’s no palace.”
This proved to be an understatement. Abdou’s apartment consisted of a single room under the eaves, where the air hung hot and heavy and undisturbed. He crossed it in three strides and threw open the shutters. Light flooded into the small space, illuminating his tiny but immaculate living quarters: a simple couch bearing a worn red blanket and two cushions, a small table and two mismatched chairs below the window, some shelving on which clothes were neatly folded. A curtain bearing faded roses concealed the kitchen area: an old porcelain sink and a two-ring gas hob sitting on top of a toaster oven. Kate had seen nothing like it since her student days. But there was no time to stare: Abdou thrust a chopping board and knife toward her. “Cooking is not a spectator sport.”
Peeling and cutting up vegetables was easy and she had soon completed her tasks. By then, Abdou was engrossed in the matter of rubbing olive oil through a heap of couscous that he’d just lifted out of the steamer into a wide wooden bowl. She watched his hands moving rhythmically through the grain, rolling and separating, appreciating the conjunction of colours: the warm brown of his fingers sifting through the gold of the couscous. He caught her watching. “Onions.” His tone was imperious, but edged with irony: he was a magician calling upon the services of his assistant for an invisible audience.