The Wall

by William Sutcliffe

  ‘Are you hungry?’ she says.

  I nod.

  She kisses me again and walks out. I hear another muffled conversation, this time between her and Liev, then she reappears with a sandwich on a tray and a tall glass of iced orange juice. I drink down the juice in one go, with Mum watching me until I’ve swallowed the last drop.

  I wait and wait for Liev to appear. The longer he leaves it, the more certain I become that the waiting is an extra element of his punishment. He’s torturing me by letting me stew in anticipation of what he’s going to do, both of us knowing it will have to be something more severe than anything he’s inflicted on me before. I almost go out to confront him, to demand that he get started.

  The next thing I hear is Mum calling out that dinner’s ready. We sit round the table eating, and Liev still says not one word about my absence. The mysterious thing is, he doesn’t even seem angry. I know he has a pseudo-nice act he sometimes puts on just before switching into punishment mode – a routine he thinks gives added dramatic effect – but he isn’t much of an actor. This is something else.

  I try to catch Mum’s eye, but she avoids my gaze until one swift moment, as she stands to clear the soup away, when we look at one another, and a twinkle seems to pass across her features, accompanied by the barest fraction of a smirk.

  She’s lied. She’s covered for me. I want to jump out of my chair right then and hug her.

  ‘You sure you don’t want the rest of that soup?’ she says.

  I look down at my bowl, at the soup I’ve barely touched, and realise that I’m ravenous.

  ‘Maybe I’ll finish it off,’ I say, tucking in with my heavy spoon. ‘It’s delicious,’ I say, looking her pointedly in the eye. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I’m pleased you like it,’ she says, brushing my cheek with a fleeting, tender stroke from the back of her index finger.

  Liev leans back in his chair, making the legs creak, and says he wants seconds. Mum takes his bowl and scurries away to the kitchen.

  For a week, I can’t stop worrying about Leila and her father. Had Liev really scared them away? After all his struggles over so many years, could Leila’s father really have given up on his olive grove just because of something Liev said to him? Or had something else happened to keep them away?

  One crisp, bright morning that should have been like any other September day, before I’m even fully awake, I get my answer in the most surprising and horrible way.

  Never before did a day start like this. One moment I’m asleep, the next my head is flailing around in the air, flopping up and down against the pillow. Something has grabbed me by both arms, a pincer clamped on to each bicep, and this thing, or person, is violently shaking me. The curtains have been drawn and dazzling light is flooding over me, revealing only a confusing silhouette. My brain and eyes take a moment to comprehend what is happening, but when they adjust, I see above me – of course – the irate, bearded face of my stepfather.

  ‘Wake up! Wake up!’ he shouts. ‘You traitor! You liar! Wake up!’

  ‘I . . . I’m awake!’ I stammer. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘THIS!’ he shouts.

  Hovering in the doorway, her arms folded nervously around herself, is Mum. She hands Liev a piece of paper, which he brandishes in my face.

  ‘What is it?’ I ask.

  ‘WHAT IS IT? YOU’RE TRYING TO TELL ME YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT THIS IS?’ A shaft of sunlight briefly illuminates the spittle spraying out of his mouth.

  ‘What is it?’ I repeat.

  ‘Let him see,’ says Mum.

  ‘A LETTER. THAT’S WHAT IT IS!’ shouts Liev.

  ‘What letter?’

  ‘YOU’RE TELLING ME YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT LETTER?’

  ‘Let him read it.’

  ‘A letter for who?’ I ask.

  Liev stares at me, breathing like an angry horse, his nostrils flaring. His mouth is screwed up tight, and for an instant I think he might spit in my face. He shoves the letter into my hand.

  I’m still wearing only a pair of underpants; they’re both fully dressed. I feel naked and defenceless, but it’s clear they aren’t willing to postpone the discussion of this letter while I fetch some clothes. My mouth is parched, drained of all moisture by the shock of this terrifying wake-up, my tongue so dry it seems to stick against the roof of my mouth. I look across at Mum, but her face is closed and hard. I don’t dare ask for a drink. Sitting up straight and pulling the sheet around me, I put the letter on my knee and begin to read.

  The paper is thin and waxy, traversed by lines hand-ruled in red biro. The words are written with blue ink, in small but gently bulbous handwriting. Every letter perches with meticulous accuracy exactly on the line; nothing is crossed out or corrected. I’ve never seen anything handwritten with such care, and I realise immediately who it’s from.

  Dear Joshua,

  Thank you so much for everything you have done in our olive grove. You are a good person and your work has made my father very happy or maybe I should say it has made him less sad.

  You know what happened to him that day he helped you back to the tunnel. He lost a lot of blood and he got better but not completely and his blood pressure is very high. There are few medicines here but the doctors have told him he must take aspirin every day to keep it low.

  After the last visit his blood pressure is worse and since the crackdown the shops here are almost empty. There is no aspirin left in the town but the soldiers won’t let us leave. He is getting worse and worse every day and now it is very serious.

  I hate to ask you but I am worried that my father might die and you are the only person who can help. Please please please get some aspirin and bring it to us.

  I hope you understand. I am sorry. This letter is a secret.

  Love,

  Leila

  xxxxx

  I count her five kisses then immediately read the whole thing again, the paper trembling in my hands. After two readings, I still stare down at the page, unable to speak. The content of the letter is bad enough, but the fact of it getting into Liev’s hands means something else entirely, something I cannot yet grasp.

  ‘WELL?’ says Liev.

  I drag my eyes up from the page, which has softened between my sweat-coated fingers. ‘Well what?’ I ask. I have no idea what to say, or how to defend myself.

  ‘This is not the day to play smart,’ says Liev, the veins in his temple bulging like forked lightning. ‘If you don’t explain this letter to me right now, if you give me any nonsense, I’m warning you, you will regret it.’

  I flinch in the glare of his wild eyes. He’s bigger than me, and stronger than me, and angry enough to do just about anything. The only way to save myself would be to run away, but he has me trapped. There’s no escape from this room until I’ve accounted for the letter and suffered the consequences. No lie or excuse can save me. I’m cornered. All I can do now is tell the truth.

  My tongue feels loose and heavy as I whisper my confession. ‘I went through a tunnel. I met a girl. She helped me get back.’

  It’s just a short string of words. A few seconds on my lips. But I know that by letting them out, I have lit a fuse.

  ‘What? You went through a tunnel? To the other side of the wall? YOU WENT THROUGH A TUNNEL?’

  I nod.

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I found a tunnel.’

  ‘Do you think this is funny? Do you think I’m joking around?’

  ‘I’m telling you what happened.’

  ‘What’s wrong with you? Why can you never tell the truth?’

  ‘I’m not lying.’

  ‘If there was a tunnel the army would know about it, and if the army knew about it, there wouldn’t be any more tunnel.’

  ‘I’m not lying.’

  ‘There are no tunnels!’

  ‘OK, there are no tunnels,’ I say, shrugging, my voice flat.

  He turns to Mum. A heavy, still silence fills the room as they stare at on
e another in some kind of mute conference.

  Liev snaps back to face me. ‘Where?’ he barks. ‘Where is it?’

  I shrug, feeling a knot of dread tighten in my stomach.

  ‘WHERE’S THE TUNNEL?’

  I pull the sheet up to my chin as I shake my head. With sudden, brutal force, he rips the bedding away, grabs me, hoists me into the air and rams me against the wall. The back of my head bashes against the plaster. He holds me pinioned, legs dangling, one hand pressing into my chest, the other around my throat.

  ‘I’M LOSING PATIENCE HERE, AND I’M NOT GOING TO ASK YOU AGAIN. WHERE IS THAT TUNNEL?’

  I try to shake my head, but his grip is too firm and I can’t move. The ball of his thumb is against my windpipe, choking me.

  ‘You’re messing around with the wrong guy,’ he says, ‘and I’m not in a patient mood.’

  Mum’s voice rises up from a corner of the room. ‘Let go of him. He can’t breathe.’

  ‘Sure I’ll let go of him, when he tells me where the tunnel is.’

  ‘He can’t speak. Let go of his neck.’

  Liev changes his grip, lowering me until my feet reach the mattress and I can support my own weight. His fingers spider upwards to squeeze me by the jaw, pressing so hard I can feel my teeth cutting the inside skin of my cheeks.

  ‘DO YOU KNOW WHAT THOSE TUNNELS ARE? DO YOU KNOW WHAT THEY’RE FOR? TERRORISTS! PEOPLE WHO WANT TO KILL US! YOU AND ME AND YOUR MOTHER AND EVERYONE LIKE US! THEY WANT US OFF THE FACE OF THE EARTH AND THEY WILL DO ANYTHING TO KILL US! THEY HAVE NO MORALS! THEY WILL STOP AT NOTHING! AND YOU THINK YOU CAN KEEP A TUNNEL SECRET FROM ME? ARE YOU CRAZY? DO YOU THINK I’M AN IDIOT?’ He pulls me towards him then gives my body a shove, banging my head against the wall. ‘WHERE’S THE TUNNEL?’

  I can feel the salty tang of blood pooling in my mouth. I roll a puddle on to my tongue and spit it into his face. Crimson dots splatter across his cheeks and forehead. He blinks to clear his vision and tightens his grip on my jaw.

  He leans me towards him and bashes my head once more against the wall. ‘WHERE’S THE TUNNEL?’

  Then again, harder, my skull resounding against the plaster with a hollow thud. ‘WHERE’S THE TUNNEL?’

  The next impact knocks a picture off its hook: Rafael Nadal holding the US Open trophy, beaming a carefree smile towards an admiring crowd. I cut it out of a magazine myself and bought the frame with my own money. It skids downwards, shattering against the foot of my bed.

  I’m dizzy now, with prickles of whiteness dancing at the fringes of my vision, and can barely see beyond Liev’s blood-speckled face. I can hear my mother saying something – a burble of words that sounds like a plea, getting louder and louder – but the world seems to have shrunk away to just me and Liev and the wall, and the rhythm with which he’s thumping my head against it, thud after thud after thud, until I realise that my mother is between us now, yelling, prising us apart, one of her hands pressed into Liev’s face, her nails digging into the flesh under his eyeballs, then I’m back down on the bed, crumpled on to the mattress, vaguely feeling shards of glass nipping at my legs, and my mother is screaming louder than I have ever heard anyone scream, pushing Liev out of the room and slamming the door.

  Perhaps I then fall asleep. Maybe for just one second, maybe for several minutes, because the next thing is a feeling something like waking up, and I’m still on the bed, and my mother is stroking my hair and telling me that she loves me, and she isn’t going to let anyone hurt me.

  My head is booming as if it’s still being rhythmically struck with something hard and flat. I don’t move, and I don’t want her to move. I just lie there, feeling limp and empty and confused, letting her stroke me. It feels good to have her around and above me, comforting me like a child, as if I’m still that small boy who needed only his mother’s presence for the world to feel safe.

  I can’t remember her ever stepping in to protect me from Liev. Today she intervened, but too late. He’s finally done to me what he always wanted to do.

  Maybe I fall asleep again, I’m not sure, but I feel a little less strange, a little less dizzy, the next time I open my eyes. My head is on a pillow and Mum’s perched on the edge of the mattress, sitting how she usually sits, folded in on herself with her elbows tucked into her sides and her knees and ankles pressed together. The sheet feels smooth again, cleared of broken glass. A cup of water is waiting for me. I raise myself on to my elbows and gulp it down.

  She takes the empty cup and kisses me on the forehead. ‘Are you OK?’ she whispers.

  I nod, and with her little finger she brushes a wisp of loose hair away from my eyes, repeating the movement several times, even though it takes only one flick to move the hair. She hasn’t shown tenderness like this towards me for years, not in all the time we’ve lived in Amarias, not since she met Liev and seemed to harden inside. This gentle hand on my face, stroking my skin, feels like a hot bath, like a slice of cake, like the deepest sleep.

  Liev’s presence always fills the house, even when he isn’t there. Alone with my mother, at this moment, I feel a rare sensation of him receding to a great distance. She dug her nails into the skin of his face and shoved him out of the room. For the first time ever, she stood up to him, and protected me.

  I reach for her hand, not wanting to speak, or do anything to disturb the moment, but hoping to let her know that I’m grateful, and I love her. She interlaces her fingers with mine, wrapping herself around my palm, and squeezes.

  An intense thought seems to be hovering on her lips, struggling to fight its way into words. I wonder if this morning, seeing what Liev did to me, she at last saw through him. I wonder if she finally understands that his hands are in fact around both our throats all the time; that his beloved Amarias is a brutal, suffocating lie; that we have to escape. We could pack one suitcase and be out of there that very day. I’d be happy to lose everything we owned if she would just agree to get up, together, and walk out. It would take only a moment to make the decision. We wouldn’t even need to tell him. We could hop on a bus as if we were going on a shopping trip, with nothing but a toothbrush, and just never come back. We could go into hiding, and even if he tracked us down, he wouldn’t be able to force us to return, not if we stood up to him together.

  ‘Joshua?’ she says.

  ‘Yes,’ I say, thinking yes, just say it, say we can go, say we can run away. I squeeze her hand as hard as I can, willing her on.

  She squeezes back. ‘I need to know. Where’s the tunnel?’

  I look up, scrutinising her face. Her eyes are filled with compassion and love, but I feel as if she’s pulled back her hand and slapped me. Liev throttled me in front of her. She saw how much he relished hurting me, how far he was willing to go, but her loyalties haven’t budged. I can’t even trust her strokes and kisses. She wants information, just like him. He tried his interrogation technique, now she’s trying hers.

  In this instant, I realise that she will never leave him, whatever he does to me. We will never leave Amarias.

  ‘Where’s the tunnel?’ she repeats ‘You have to tell me.’

  I roll on to my side, towards the wall, pulling my knees up to my chest.

  ‘You have to tell someone, and don’t you think it’s easiest if it’s me?’

  ‘Is that a threat? What are you going to do to me?’

  ‘We have to tell the army. We don’t have a choice.’

  ‘Yes, you do.’

  ‘Just tell me where it is. If you do, I can protect you.’

  ‘From what? From who?’

  ‘Tell me, Joshua.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because it’s not mine, and everything I do just destroys things and makes everything worse for people who don’t deserve it, and I can’t live with myself if I do it again.’

  ‘You can’t go through that tunnel. Never again. You have to forget about the letter. Put it out of your head. These people are trying to manipulate you. They ar
e very clever and they will do anything to get what they want. Whatever they’ve made you think, whatever they’ve done to you to get you on their side, you are just their tool, and they will crush you as soon as they’ve finished with you. That’s not going to happen. You are never going to see any of them ever again. Do you understand?’

  I stare at her, not nodding or shaking my head, trying to freeze the muscles of my face into a wall of secrecy.

  ‘You know what my job is?’ she says. ‘Over and above anything else I’ve ever done.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s keeping you safe. You’re my only child, and if anything happens to you, my life won’t be worth living.’

  ‘If you want to keep me safe, get me away from Liev.’

  ‘He feels the same as me. He just wants us all to be safe. That’s why he’s so angry about the tunnel. Nothing is more important to him than the safety of this community.’

  ‘Have you forgotten what he did to me? You were right here! You saw it!’

  She gives a slow blink, as if her eyelids can wipe away irrelevant distractions. ‘It seems like you’ve done some stupid, dangerous things, and I can’t let that carry on. I just can’t.’

  ‘It’s my life,’ I say. ‘You can only decide what I do for so long. In the end it’s up to me.’

  ‘Maybe. But while you’re in my house, you’re my responsibility.’

  ‘I’m my own responsibility.’

  ‘A bomb could come through that tunnel today! Today!’ she says, her voice lifting to a high, strangled thread. ‘Every hour that tunnel exists is an hour that we are in mortal danger! You can’t be this stubborn! You can’t! Liev’s going crazy out there! He’s acting like he wants to kill you! You have to be sensible!’

  ‘If I tell you, you’ll send the army in.’

  ‘I don’t know what’s going to happen, but we have to tell the authorities. For the sake of ourselves and our neighbours. For all our people. We have to protect our own people.’

  ‘And who are our own people?’

  ‘All of us who live here!’

  ‘All of us?’