by Lucy Wadham
He was not there. Lola could not feel her arms or her hands. She was numb as she followed Mikel’s mother along the dark, narrow hall. The place smelt of wax. In the bright kitchen the smell of cleaning fluids filled her nostrils. Manuela was still crying when she opened the fridge and took out a baking tray. When she turned and said, Rice pudding? Lola opened her arms. Manuela put down the tray and went to her. Lola had always towered above her, even at fourteen. She took Manuela into her arms and let her cry.
He’s gone. I don’t know where. I’m so afraid.
He had been here. Lola searched the kitchen for evidence of his presence. There was none but then there never had been. Lola held Manuela away from her.
What are you afraid about, Manuela?
But Manuela shook her head and sobbed. Lola watched her busy herself by serving a plateful of rice pudding.
Shall I heat it? Manuela asked, holding out the plate.
No no. Lola took the rice pudding. How was he? Did he say where he was going, what he might do?
Manuela just shook her head and looked sadly at Lola. Lola wanted to hit her.
Sit down, Manuela said. Eat.
Lola tried to eat the rice pudding. Manuela sat opposite her, clutching her elbows, watching. Lola was not hungry but she could tell that the sight of her eating was soothing to this woman. The pudding was very sweet. She noticed that so long as she ate, Manuela talked. When she stopped eating Manuela would be overcome again.
He arrived by bus at about two this afternoon. I was not napping. I knew he would come. I was just lying there ready. Oh Lola. He’s so old!
Lola steeled herself. She did not want to be drawn into what felt like a ritual of grief.
I fed him and I told him about the visit that I had from the refugee committee.
Who? Lola’s tone was harsh. Do you remember who they were? she asked, more gently.
I didn’t recognise them. There was a young woman. Or perhaps she was not that young. A little older than you, perhaps. Her name was Lorea Molina. And a younger man with blond hair who called himself Anxton. I only know one Anxton and that’s Mikel’s old friend who they sent to Cabo Verde. They weren’t rude but I didn’t like the look of them. Especially the woman. She had a hard face. They wanted to know when his release date was and I told them I didn’t know.
Well done.
Lola wished she had let Manuela heat the rice pudding. She took another cold, thick mouthful.
What did they want? What has he done?
He hasn’t done anything, Manuela. He’s paid and now he’s a free man.
Manuela shook her head again. There was an irritating resignation about her, Lola remembered now. She watched Manuela pull a handkerchief from her dressing-gown pocket and blow her nose and it suddenly dawned on her that Mikel’s mother was incapable of feeling anything unless she had an audience. She dropped the spoon into the bowl and leaned back in her chair.
How was he? Did he talk?
You know how he is. At least with me.
What are you afraid of, Manuela?
But Manuela said nothing. Here was a superstitious woman. She had crosses above all the beds in the house. She would not name her fears.
At last Lola offered her a cigarette, which she accepted. Lola lit their cigarettes and sat listening to the ticking of the same electric clock on the wall. On the face she remembered the words Ramirez, Madrid printed in gothic bold, as though it had been made in the Black Forest or something. It was one-thirty. The cigarette seemed to calm Manuela and the two of them smoked a while in silence.
I’ve made up the bed in Mikel’s room.
Manuela shook her head and took another drag.
I’ll sleep a few hours, then I’ll leave, Lola said.
Where will you go?
Up to the village.
To see Txema?
Lola nodded.
And my mother, Lola said, putting out her cigarette.
Of course, Manuela said.
This was not a bad woman, Lola thought. Her only son had been locked away for all his youth. Perhaps she had simply come to the end of feeling.
I’m tired, Lola said, standing up. She leaned over Manuela and kissed her on the forehead. Thank you for the rice pudding.
Do you want a hot drink to take to bed?
No. I’m fine.
Shall I wake you?
Yes. At eight. I’ll catch the nine o’clock bus.
Will that leave you enough time?
Seven-thirty then. Shall I leave you another cigarette?
Manuela shook her head. Lola picked up her cigarettes from the table and left the room.
She stood in the doorway of Mikel’s bedroom. The posters had gone. She remembered the one of Che and of Jimi Hendrix and the red-and-black poster with the beautiful Basque word INSUMISOA. His books were gone, in the end he had them with him in prison. She looked for signs of him but the room no longer bore his imprint. It had been too many years. His smell too had gone, that close smell of mildew. Lola looked at his narrow bed against the wall. There had been a dip in the middle into which they had both fallen. At seventeen she had slept in his arms. She wondered if she could do the same at thirty-seven. She dropped her bag on the floor and went and sat down on the edge of the bed. The window behind the head of his bed still glowed yellow from the street lamp. Lola raised her chin and smiled. Mikel, she whispered. Where are you? Her heart was heavy in her chest but she had no wish to cry. Manuela had done all the crying. Perhaps, she thought, this is how Astrid found her strength, in the contemplation of her little sister’s weakness. She took off her sandals. Her feet were streaked with dirt from the journey but she was afraid that if she showered she would lose this mood, so she lay back on the bed without getting undressed, folded her hands on her stomach and closed her eyes. Breathing in as much air as her asthma would allow, she felt obscurely that it was necessary for her to be strong this time, for Astrid. She had been seeking a way of paying her debt to her sister. Perhaps she would find it here, in this ordeal. Lola prayed: Give me strength. For once, give me strength.
NINE
Astrid read Chastel’s note on her way to the kitchen.
Forgive me. I took advantage of your patience last night. You were tired and I left too late. I was wondering if you would allow me to go on taking advantage of you in all possible ways for another ten years.
Yours ever, J.C.
She scrunched up the note and threw it into the kick-flap bin. It fell among some dead carnations and ground coffee. In place of charm, Astrid’s building offered a rubbish chute, washing facilities and a lock-up garage. The flat gave on to a triangle planted with horse chestnuts that blocked her light and referred to itself pompously as a square. The wooden roller blinds on the windows came into the bargain as did the glass-fronted fireplace in the living room and the aluminium clothes molly above the bath. The white Formica cupboards Astrid had personalised with red stick-on knobs but the rest of the flat was as untouched as if it had been rented by three terrorists casing a target.
Astrid poured water into the coffee machine and turned it on. Chastel teased her about her utilitarian attitude towards her home. His flat in an eighteenth-century building on the Île-St-Louis was all bibelots and scented candles. It was one of the apartments on the Seine that threw its curtains open every night to the liquid floodlights of the bateaux mouches so that the tourists could gaze up at the painted ceilings and chandeliers.
Astrid watched the coffee drip through. It had indeed been ten years. Perhaps this ictus business was merely a reminder to herself, a kind of metaphor, if metaphor is condensed meaning, for all those years lived in a state of somnambulance. Thomas was right: the motorway was an appropriate image. She had been on a motorway through her thirties, her only moments of consciousness prompted by letters from Mikel. Astrid loved service stations on Spanish motorways. Mikel’s letters were like the cafeterias which served tapas on Spanish motorways.
She took the coffee jug from the
hotplate.
I can make tortilla. You do not know this about me but I believe it is important. When I get out I will make you a very good tortilla. Potato, green pepper, onion, chorizo and tomato or just potato and onion if there are any of these ingredients that you don’t like.
She had believed that she was smiling at the simplicity of the wording but she should have been warned by the pleasure the letter brought her. Indeed it was shortly after his letter about tortilla that she had begun to dream about him. She never dreamed about Mikel at night, only early in the mornings, after Chastel had returned to his wife’s bed. These were the days before guilt and the fear that came with it. Then just as she began longing for these dreams, they had stopped.
The night before she had told Chastel of her intention to take a holiday. She was sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee in her hands. Before her lay a pile of articles in English to read and summarise. She was tired and Chastel too seemed to be slower than usual, rising to his feet as if he were moving in something thicker than air. He had turned in the doorway.
I’d like to take a couple of weeks off, she had told him.
Good idea. Where shall we go?
No. I mean I’d like to go home for a while.
Oh. When?
She looked steadily at him. This week.
He had made a face.
I’m afraid that’s not very convenient.
I realise that.
Chastel plucked his earlobe.
You’re on call for procurement.
I know.
We’ll talk about it in the morning. Call me from the lab. We’ll have lunch.
He did not pause for an answer but left so hastily he forgot his tie on the kitchen chair.
Astrid now sipped her coffee, her gaze sliding over the surfaces of her kitchen, as clean as her lab. There was a miraculous lozenge of sunlight on the black-and-white checked linoleum into which she placed her bare feet Mikel had been out for twenty-six hours. She washed up her mug then emptied the bread bin. She disposed of the rubbish, dropping it into the chute outside her back door. The smell of boiled fish came wafting up the back stairs, as did the guttural drone of the downstairs neighbour’s Buddhist chant tape.
She put on the red linen suit she had bought with Lola but the sight of herself in the wardrobe mirror made her change. The skirt was, as she had always suspected, too short. There was her beige dress but she preferred not to go home in something that Chastel had bought her. In the end she wore her black dress with daisies on it; one of those that Lola referred to as her widow’s weeds. She put on a large silver bangle as a concession to Lola’s love of ornament and pinned up her hair.
She put Chastel’s tie in a padded envelope and added the following note.
Dear Jacques,
I do not like to ask favours as you know. This one will be the first and I hope the last. I have not taken a holiday in all the years I have worked for you, not that I ever wanted one. I am leaving today. Vincent will hold the fort while I am gone. I will let you know when I am coming back and will work on the conference down there.
Fondly, Astrid
She reread the note. Her written French was still a disaster, full of spelling mistakes. She packed a small bag of clothes and filled a large leather briefcase with printed matter. Then she left the flat, double-locking the door, and took the lift to the basement. She threw her luggage into the boot of her car and climbed in through the passenger side as she had parked too close to the wall. When she turned the key in the ignition she jumped at the blast of classical music from the radio. She turned off the radio and drove out, aware that she was hugging the wheel like an old lady.
The périphérique was flowing smoothly. Her windscreen was soon covered with a fine coating of squashed insects which reduced visibility, forcing her to lean forward and peer through the gaps in a greasy film of chlorophyll and haemolymph. She stayed in the fast lane and for the first time took note of the season: the squashed insects, the coating of dust on the cars, the black shredded plastic washed up against the dividing wall like seaweed were all the signs of urban summer. Before passing beneath La Muette she glanced up at the egalitarian horse chestnuts, flowering here in the pellucid sunshine of the sixteenth arrondissement with as much vulgarity as those that bloomed in her own dingy square in the eighteenth.
TEN
Soon the compartment filled up and Kader was no longer alone. When a middle-aged woman sat down on the folding seat beside him, he shifted, leaning into the door of the train, careful to keep his shoulder out of contact. He drove his hands deeper into the pockets of his tracksuit top to still their shaking.
Fabien had crumpled on impact. The look of surprise on his face after Kader had brought the top of his forehead down onto the bridge of his nose had suggested that he was not accustomed to a fight. Kader had stood over him watching him rise, first onto his knees and then slowly upright, vertebra by vertebra, arms dangling, like some woman in a gymnastics class, until he was face to face with Kader for the second round; only this time Fabien’s small eyes denoted not surprise but blurred vision. The second blow, to the solar plexus, had knocked the air out of him and the grunt that came from him had made Kader pause for a moment and consider. He believed it was this intrusion of thought that had been his downfall. The knife blade had appeared then, at the edge of his vision, and he had seen it glint like a silverfish before it struck him on the shoulder and it was his turn to be surprised at the sight of his own blood blooming on the sleeve of his T-shirt. He was then aware that he and Fabien were no longer alone. Fabien’s voice rose up, indicating that he was a man again, one of an army of men, not calling for so much as acknowledging the reinforcements, and when Kader had jumped away from the knife someone behind him had grabbed him around the waist and his abdomen shrank from the blade all by itself and then he was whirling, spinning free of their grasp, his arms flailing and as he ran he was aware of their weight beside his, aware that he flew while they only seemed to stamp harder on the ground. But it had not been satisfactory. There had been no glory in the fight with Fabien.
There had been a time when he had dreamed of glory. As a kid he was the best footballer Nanterre had and his coach believed in a great future for him. When he was twelve he began to prepare for trials at the famous training centre in the forest west of Paris where he would have played football six hours a day. But he didn’t grow. The other kids did; their voices broke, their muscles developed, dark hair sprouted from their nostrils. Time passed. He was still better than the others technically but the force of their kick so surpassed his own that he was made to play piston, an inglorious position that required much mobility and little efficacy. At fifteen, puberty had still not come. He began to deal and he got fed up with waiting. When it did come, the following year, he outgrew everyone. But it was too late; he didn’t care any more. One evening his mother had asked him why he was back so early.
I left the team, he replied. I left like a prince.
His mother clutched her head.
Like a prince, she had moaned. Like a prince.
Kader looked out of the window of the RER. Years later the phrase was funny. Like a prince was what you said when you jumped before you were pushed. What he liked about Amadou was that he never needed such phrases. With Amadou, there was no posturing. He did not nudge his balls in public. He stood tall, his feet firmly on the ground. He did not play the caïd for women either. He had not started smoking with the other ten-year-olds in the class, nor had he ever racketeered younger kids. When anyone had tried it on him, it soon became clear that they would have to saw off his hand before he gave up his watch. Not that he squealed; he was just stubborn, sufficient unto himself. Like Thuram. But, thought Kader, as the train pulled into La Défense station, what would he know about a professional footballer who was probably worth over 300 million francs? What could he possibly know about a person like that? Thuram might be black but he was from another planet.
As the doors o
pened Kader felt a rush of fear in the face of Amadou’s absence. Without Amadou there beside him he suddenly feared his own nature. Amadou was like his name, all love and gentleness, while Kader saw grounds for conflict everywhere. Amadou had left a CD in the Discman for him. It was Bach. Amadou liked classical music. He said it was the last good thing white civilisation had produced, that after all this time it had come into the public domain, so to speak. It’s for everyone, he had said. And what people like us do with it, weave it into our music, is a healthy mixture of gratitude and revenge. Gratitude and revenge: Kader had liked that.
He put on the headphones and turned on the machine. The woman beside him was staring at him. He tried to ignore her and enjoy the music. But the hag was crowding him. He unhooked the headphones from behind his ears.
Want a listen? It’s Bach.
But the woman made a tutting sound and turned away.
What is it, you miserable bitch? Don’t you like Bach?
Just then Kader caught sight of the man standing in front of the nearest set of doors, saw him reaching into the pocket of his leather jacket, and his cop radar made him forget the woman. Just as the siren sounded to signal the doors closing, Kader upped and jumped off the train.
The next train came in no time. It was a miracle to him they didn’t crash into each other more often, just as it was a miracle that people didn’t jump on the lines more often. Once Amadou had seen someone try. He had spotted the man a few metres away from him and he had known what the man was about to do as surely as if he had been holding up a sign. Luckily for the man, or unluckily, Amadou was there at his side, his long arm plucking him from certain death and total bodily disintegration; a detail in which the man, if he was a Catholic, would have no interest, since for him the body would be a useless envelope; not the case for a Muslim for whom, as Kader’s mum had told him, the head was required for all valid applications to paradise. Still, Catholic or Muslim, as far as the head was concerned, there would have been no chance of retrieval.