There she lies, your wife, beside someone else, the pleasure radiates all the way down to her toes, she can’t remembering ever having . . .
Well, all right, there are other differences between you and him . . . The fact, for example, that he’s as black as my shoe. She had him brought in from Egypt and paid for his ticket, and now he’s lying on your side of the bed, looking at the gray light falling through a crack in the curtains. Maybe the new man is thinking about you right now as well, about the one who went before him. He knows the spot beside her in bed has been cold for a long time – he didn’t exactly wrest that spot from you, no, but he is making the best of your worst-case scenario, and he wonders whether he would ever have had a chance if you were still—
He turns brusquely to this woman in love, the link between the dead man and the living, eyeing each other distrustfully in the shadows.
Here’s what went before:
‘What are we supposed to call him?’ India asked when her mother said she was going back to Egypt to retrieve her lover for his first visit to the Netherlands.
‘Mahfouz, that’s all, that’s his name,’ Regina said.
‘I’ll call him “Papa” if you want.’
‘Why would I want that?’
‘Because it can be very difficult for a woman when her children don’t accept her new husband. The mother may feel torn between loyalties, and that can sometimes prove a divisive element with the family.’
‘Where on earth did you ever come up with that?’ Regina said.
Regina Ratzinger went to Egypt to marry Mahfouz Husseini, out of love, but also to provide him with the documents needed to visit the Netherlands. In Cairo she met with a swarm of lawyers, the hours spent in the waiting rooms of blistering hot administration buildings were a torment, but by the end of the week they were man and wife.
They took a two-day cruise on the Nile, then caught a plane to Holland. It was 10 December; the sky, gray as a pigeon’s wing, hung low over our heads.
When the Egyptian climbed out of the taxi on Achterom, the first thing he did was sniff the air like an animal. Did he smell the comfort of the delta? Of washlands that flooded at set times, as the Nile once had? His little suitcase contained a Koran bound in gazelle skin, a carton of Marlboros for Joe and India, a picture of his father taken in his shipyard and another one showing the whole family. For the rest a few clothes, but not many.
Joe came outside in his stocking feet and held out his hand. Husseini sighed deeply, as though a wish had been granted him.
‘My son!’ he said, locking Joe in his arms.
He hugged him like that for a time, held him at arms’ length to look at him, then drew him back into his embrace. India appeared in the doorway. Her mother shrugged at her apologetically, as though to say, ‘So many countries, so many customs.’ Joe came out of the embrace a little rumpled. The Egyptian then turned to India and shook her hand. Later, India said that she had felt deeply insulted.
‘Why didn’t he . . . grab me like that? Has he got something against girls? Was there something wrong with my hair? Could he smell that I was having my period? Does he think menstruating women are unclean?’
‘Quit it, would you!’ her mother shouted. ‘Mahfouz did that out of respect. Arabs have a lot of respect for women.’
Mahfouz Husseini was to become Lomark’s first official Negro. Even though he wasn’t really a Negro at all, he was Nubian; but hey, what did we know? White is white and black is black. Around here we can’t tell the difference.
Husseini stayed until just before Christmas, then flew back to Egypt to arrange his definitive departure. One of his brothers would take over his shop in the Sinai; in Cairo awaited the bureaucratic hell through which one had to pass before receiving the right stamps and emigration forms. Regina pined, Joe and India were left to their own devices – their mother neglected the housekeeping and smoked more than she breathed.
‘Mom, you have to eat something,’ India said.
‘I’ve already had two rice waffles.’
She shuffled out of the kitchen. Three weeks to go. India shouted after her.
‘If Mahfouz sees you like this he won’t think you’re pretty anymore! Jesus, Joe, why don’t you say something for once?!’
‘What do I know about it?’
And with that he had spoken a great truth. For what did he know about it? He and Engel Eleveld shared a colossal contempt for love. I never heard him talk about it, but it seemed as though he saw love as a less-than-worthy pastime. As spinning one’s wheels. Christof felt differently about it; like me, he had a crush on the South African girl.
I remember one time in the garage that summer, when Christof drew Joe’s attention to P.J.’s existence. A few days later we saw Joe looking at the new arrival as she sat with her girlfriends on the low wall around the schoolyard.
‘So, what do you think?’ Christof urged.
Joe slapped him on the shoulder.
‘Good eye, Christof. It’s definitely a girl.’
The freeze set in, the water in the washlands was higher than I’d ever seen it. Then one evening at the table I heard Willem Eleveld’s voice on national radio. As an ‘inhabitant of the disaster area’, they’d called him to hear about the ‘alarming water levels’ in the big rivers. Eleveld was interviewed live, you heard him pick up the phone and say, ‘Hello?’ real slowly.
‘Good afternoon, am I speaking to Mr Eleveld from Lomark?’
‘You are.’
You could hear this horrible feedback in the speakers, because
Willem Eleveld happened to be listening to the same station.
‘Mr Eleveld, it’s good to hear that you’re listening to our
program, but could you please turn off the radio?’
Engel’s father put down the phone, fumbled around a bit, and
the feedback vanished.
‘And who would I be talkin’ to?’ he asked.
‘Joachim Verdonschot from IKON radio, you’re on the air live,
Mr Eleveld. If I understand correctly, you live in the middle of
the disaster area. Could you tell us what things are like
there?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, the flooding, for example.’
‘Oh, not much to tell.’
‘No water in your basement?’
‘No more than usual.’
There was a rustling of paper in the studio in Hilversum.
‘The high water has been causing a lot of problems, you and
other inhabitants of your municipality are surrounded by it
on all sides. When will you finally leave your house, Mr
Eleveld?’
‘Ferry Island,’ Willem Eleveld said.
‘Excuse me?’
‘Ferry Island isn’t a municipality.’
‘Ferry Island. When will you leave your house, Mr Eleveld?’
‘It’ll go down again. No bother for us.’
‘Well, then that’s a blessing in disguise, as it were. Thank you
very much, Mr Eleveld of Lomark, I hope you all stay dry out
there!’
‘No problem.’
January 1 arrived, there’d been a little drinking the night before, a few fireworks had been shot off, and now everyone was sound asleep, ready to wake up later in a shitty mood in a new year. The river had gone down some and was frozen hard, and the washlands lay beneath a layer of perfect ice on which the sun conjured up deep-golden flames by day – but now it was still night, and I was on the dyke, straining my eyes in the dark. Joe and Christof had just skated away into the blackness, shoes in hand. Today Joe was going to try to get the plane off the ground for the first time. Murmuring in the darkness they had pushed off, until all I could hear was the scratching of their blades growing wispier and wispier.
When I got cold I started rolling the chair back and forth, back and forth. The sun was taking a long time to come up. I decided to go for it: the other
shore, I wanted to be there, to see the takeoff up close. I rolled down to the Lange Nek, to the red-and-white-striped barrier gate where the road disappeared under the ice, and out onto the river there. I’d never wheeled on ice before. No wonder it made me a little nervous at first, but once you got out there it was no big deal – just the feeling that you could skid at any moment, and your tyres slipping every time you yanked on the handle. In the almost complete absence of friction, progress was easy. A fuzzy strip of purple light was rising behind the Bethlehem Asphalt grounds, and I was all alone on that huge expanse. I might as well have been a downed aviator in the desert. The silence was bewitching, and I was in no hurry to get to the shed.
Lately I’d noticed a few more signs of life in my own body; I’d even made a deal with myself to get out of the chair and start learning to walk a little. It may sound strange, but my plan was to jump-start this old wreck of a locomotor apparatus – I was about to turn seventeen, had an erection now and then, but I was so damned spastic that self-gratification was almost out of the question. Somehow, though, I sensed that my body held a certain potential – limited though it might be – for finer motor development and, who knows, maybe even a form of non-wheeled propulsion. I had actually started a secret exercise program a while back that consisted of holding onto the table or my bed with my right hand while shuffling across the floor on my knees, keeping my torso upright all the while. That may not seem like much to you, but it’s important to realize that what I was doing here, in fact, was re-enacting the entire course of evolution, all by my lonesome – this was what one might call the amphibious phase. I had just emerged from the primal ooze and could start thinking about holding my head up higher.
When I moved around the room like that it looked like I was doing some kind of penance; if Ma had seen me I know she would have rejoiced at another of her prayers being answered, quoting Isaiah and saying, ‘Then shall the lame man leap as a hart, and the tongue of the dumb shall sing,’ and so on, because some people would rather see wonders than willpower.
Whatever muscles I had left had to be revitalized. For years my body had been lying around in bed and slouching in its chair with no idea whether it was capable of more. My rehabilitation specialist hadn’t held out much hope, it’s true, but that was such a long time ago. I was older now, and sometimes you have to hand yourself an assignment. And when unreasoned optimism starts coursing through your bloodstream, that’s the time to do it.
The ice was fantastic. The light on the horizon grew steadily brighter, and I was going where I had never been before. All around me was glassy blue light, the turquoise heart of a glacier. So smooth and so vast, why hadn’t I tried this a long time ago?
Jet-black ice was sliding by beneath my wheels now, my sights were set on the extreme northerly point of Ferry Island.
But allow me, if you will, to withdraw the earlier image of the glacier’s heart: what I was in was the heart of a winter-wonderland paperweight, one of those fluid-filled plastic universes that start snowing after you turn them upside-down. We had one on top of the dresser at home, it contained a rearing unicorn against a royal-blue background. Whenever you shook it it snowed all around the unicorn, whose mouth was open in a whinny.
Beneath the ice floor were the fields of summer and the winding road to the riverside. Down there the grass swayed in the slow current.
I was steaming like a workhorse; somewhere an engine coughed and roared. My ice palace fell into tinkling shards.
I turned and saw the plane moving across the ice. It was still more night than day, and from this distance the airplane looked like a sinister vehicle from the workshop of darkness. Two shadows that could only have been Christof and Engel ran out onto the ice. The plane had stopped and they were talking to Joe, whose head was all I could see above the fuselage. They slid the plane around until its nose was pointed at the village. Once the two of them had retreated a respectful distance from the prop, Joe revved it. I loved that sound, which grew higher and angrier the harder the engine was torqued. Joe shot off across the ice. As soon as he hit top speed he tried to lift the nose into the air. Every time he pulled up, the plane would leave the ice for a moment, then bounce back down. And again. Barely rising each time, then falling back. Like it was skipping.
Just short of the winter dyke Joe braked, swung around and came back in our direction. Now I was only a couple of yards from Engel and Christof, who stood riveted to the ice, watching every move Joe made. The airplane barrelled across the frozen flats, it was a joy to behold. There he was, coming straight at us, doing eighty or ninety now. Christof murmured, ‘Come on, man,’ and Engel flicked away a cigarette butt that sparked once and died. Behind us the curtain of dawn slid open further and further, lighting the sky in an orange and purple glow.
It must have been ten below zero that morning, but I don’t remember the cold. Right before he got to us Joe swerved to the left, eased back on the throttle and cut the engine. The silence felt good. Engel and Christof ran to the plane, where Joe was shaking his head and peering at the controls; the hand throttle, the brake, the oil pressure, the fuel gauge and the thermostat. He still had the joystick clenched between his knees.
‘It won’t nose up,’ he said when they got there. It was hard to make out exactly what he was saying, though, his lips had turned blue.
‘I think I need more flaps, I’m not getting enough lift.’
Wearing those ski goggles and that old-fashioned red-white-and-blue-striped skater’s cap, Joe looked like some kind of insect. Placing his hands on both sides of the cockpit, he wriggled his way up out of the plane’s embrace. Before jumping onto the ice he squatted for a moment on the edge of the fuselage. On his back I could see a dark, wet spot about the size of a bicycle seat. The sweat had gone right through his layer of sweaters and his coat. Joe was too cold to stand up straight, all he could do was ask for a cigarette. Engel handed him his smokes and a lighter and they talked about what the problem might be. All three of them had been working toward this moment for so long, and now it wasn’t happening. Engel walked around the plane, cursing quietly. Joe puffed on his cigarette like an old-fashioned flying ace on some remote north African air strip. Then he spit on the ice and climbed onto the wing and back into the plane, the cigarette still dangling from his lips. The engine fired, the prop began to spin, and an icy cold wind hit us in the face. Joe turned the plane around and taxied back to the shed. He saw me, and grinned.
‘Happy New Year, Frankie!’
The next attempt was made on 4 January. They’d changed the angle of the flaps and adjusted the rudder. That didn’t help either.
The weather was about to turn. By the weekend the cold front would make way for warmer air, and they worked non-stop; without the ice they would be lost. It was a race against the clock. January 10 arrived and with it the thaw; my tyres left wet tracks on the ice. For the umpteenth time Joe rolled out onto the frozen river, and now it was do or die. I joined Engel and Christof, watching tensely as the plane picked up speed in the distance. Faster and faster it went until, at top speed, it traced a flat line between the town and the old factory grounds.
‘Pull the nose up, man!’ Engel said breathlessly. ‘Pull that goddamn thing up!’
If ever there was a right moment, this was it – it was still early morning, the air was clear, cold and ‘thick’, as Joe had called it, perfect for a takeoff. He went thundering across the ice; at this rate, unless he pulled up quickly, he would go crashing into the row of willows in the shallow ice of the washlands.
‘What the hell is he doing?!’
Joe was racing flat out toward the trees; he’d never pushed the plane this hard before, but he wasn’t even trying to lift off – if he didn’t turn fast or brake, he was a goner. I closed my eyes, then opened them right away and saw him pull back at last. The rear tyre was off the ice, the plane hung wonderfully level and kept bouncing up and down, any other plane would have been airborne by now . . . Oh my God, oh my God . . . Th
ere he went! He was off!
The plane shot up a few metres, fairly brushing the tops of the willows as it went. Joe could never have calculated that, he’d simply taken an idiotic chance and had enormous luck. Pure luck, I was sure of it. If the plane hadn’t done exactly what he hoped at that point, he would be dead now. But he wasn’t dead, he was flying . . .
‘Yeah! Yeah!’ Engel was bellowing beside me.
Christof jumped up and down and threw his arms around Engel. Now the two of them were jumping up and down together, shouting at the top of their lungs. My own face was covered in tears. He had done it, he was flying away in a westerly direction, the throbbing of the engine fainter as he grew smaller on the horizon. He had performed the miracle of the Wright Brothers all over again. Nothing could stop him anymore.
*
If Mahfouz Husseini hadn’t come back, Regina Ratzinger would probably have died of starvation. The way Mahfouz put it in his fractured English was: ‘In years of dryness, flowers are first to die.’ At least that’s what Joe made of it.
Regina had trouble getting the housekeeping back on its feet. Something had changed in her, a degree of world-weariness in her behaviour and appearance that never went away again. She seemed not to change her clothes as often, and the knitting purists of Lomark noted testily that tiny glitches had appeared in the patterns of her sweaters.
Mahfouz often did the cooking now, so dishes with lamb and coriander began appearing on the menu, prepared with a sharp red paste of hot peppers and spices that sowed confusion on your tongue.
Joe Speedboat Page 7