Anatomy of a Disappearance (13 page)

In the morning she said, “I can’t stand this place,” and insisted we breakfast somewhere else rather than at the hotel. We found a nearby café. And although it was a cold day, she wanted to sit outside.

“This is better,” she said when we sat in our coats at a small round table on the edge of the empty pavement. “Everywhere else, I feel people are listening.”

Then she stared fixedly at a spot in the distance. She seemed determined. I wondered what Taleb, Hydar and whoever it was who had called in the middle of the night had told her—what they thought happened to Father and what they thought she and I should do.

Very faint in the distance, there was the sound of drums and discordant trumpets. Now the music seemed a street or two away.

“We need someone high up,” she said.

Then we saw them: girls and boys dressed in blue uniforms with gold fringes, crashing cymbals, blowing horns that gleamed white in the winter light. Those inside the café came out onto the pavement and stood right behind us. Mona leaned over and shouted in my ear:

“A minister, someone like that.”

People looked down from windows here and there, clapping, waving. Each face was smiling. It was not even 9:00 a.m. yet. For some reason the spectacle of a marching band amid these cold gray buildings was disturbing. When I looked at Mona, I found her face covered behind her hands, the fingers pressed tightly together. Was she crying or laughing? The sound was now deafening; it pressed against my chest. Some of the young musicians smiled toward us. The idea of smiling back was impossible. When I turned to Mona again, she was gone. Her bag was not there either. I could not see her anywhere. I faced the band again. The large bass drums were now passing. One of the girls placed a hand on the arm of the boy beside her and let it brush down his sleeve. He smiled without needing to look at her. And gradually the sound diminished. The square blue backs of the last row, crossed with the white belts of the large barrel drums, disappeared round the bending street. The heads in the apartment windows above were no longer there. And
the pavement was once again empty. There was still no sign of Mona.

I asked the waiter if he had seen her.

“In the toilet,” he said, then, “Don’t worry, she’ll be back.”

I wondered if he was making fun of me.

A few minutes later she was standing beside me, her bag on her shoulder, ready to leave.

We returned to the hotel.

“A man came asking for you,” the hotel receptionist said when we collected our key. “No, madame, he didn’t leave a name. He waited for a few minutes, then left.”

I was sure it was Hass, but a little hope lingered. I could not wait for Mona to finish washing her face. I dialed his number.

“Thank God,” he said when he heard my voice. “I couldn’t find you anywhere. The hotel had no idea where you were; they said you had missed breakfast. I went to the police station; they said you hadn’t been there.”

“Here’s Mona,” I told him when I saw her come out of the bathroom. “It’s Hass.”

She wrapped a hand over the receiver so tightly that the blood left her knuckles.

“Was it him who came earlier?” she whispered.

I nodded.

“Hass, was that you who came to the hotel?” she said without saying hello. “I just felt like a walk. Listen, I have
been thinking,” she said, facing her lap. “I want to see the journalist.… What do you mean, why? Because he was there before anyone else—” she said and stopped as if interrupted.

She looked at me then turned slightly away. I watched her rib cage swell and recede.

“Listen, what are you afraid of? … Then call the fucking journalist,” she said and hung up, keeping her hand on the receiver.

She collected her sunglasses, address book and cigarettes, throwing them carelessly into her bag.

“Come on,” she said. “We’re going back to the station.”

At the hotel lobby I stopped and ran back to the room. I shoved the plastic bag that contained Father’s things into my suitcase, deep beneath the clothes.

Out on the street, walking beside her, I worried about what she would do next. It was an odd feeling: I feared for her but could not say from what.

Inspector Martin Durand did not make us wait. He led us back to the same sparsely furnished room.

“Have you distributed his photograph to the border crossings?” Mona asked.

“We are doing all we can,” Martin Durand said.

“Whoever abducted him is trying to take him abroad.”

“The border police have been notified.”

“Not good enough; you must give them this photograph.”

“I know this must be awful for you. I can’t imagine. But you must know that we are doing all we can.”

I could see that he found Mona’s conviction that Father’s abductors would want to take him out of Switzerland suspicious.

“There is a good chance,” I said, “he was taken by our country. I mean by the people who now run our country.”

“Not ‘a good chance’: hundred percent,” Mona snapped.

Martin Durand looked at her, then at me.

Mona ordered sandwiches from room service for lunch. As we ate, she called Monsieur Hass’s office at least three times, and every time his polite secretary informed her that he was in a meeting. She asked me to call, to pretend to be someone else. I got the same response. A few minutes later the telephone rang. I answered it.

“May I speak to Madame Mona?” He sounded tired. “I am sorry, I have been busy,” he voluntarily explained.

As soon as she took the receiver Mona said, “Where on earth have you been?” Then, before he could have possibly had a chance to explain, she said, “Right, well, listen. Have you contacted the journalist? … What do you mean, he’s out of town? Isn’t he meant to be a local reporter? How convenient: on holiday. And did you get hold of that woman? Or has she bloody disappeared too?”

Barely an hour passed before the receptionist called to say a Monsieur Hass was here. We could not possibly receive him in our tiny room, now smelling of food, so we went down. We found him pacing, his shoes making a high-pitched crack every time they hit the tiles. The three of us sat in the corner of the hotel lounge.

“You and I know he hasn’t just run off,” Mona said softly.

He looked at me with concern.

“Nuri,” Mona said. “Can you please fetch my address book from upstairs?”

When I returned I approached slowly from behind the sofa where they were sitting, catching some of their conversation.

“They have a responsibility to protect him. They can’t brush it under the carpet.”

“Let me see what I can do,” he said.

When they saw me they stood up.

“All right then,” she said. “You will call me.”

“Yes, as soon as I get hold of my friend.”

I followed her to the lift. She stood just inside the sliding doors. When they drew shut she spoke.

“Decent fellow, that man,” she said. “He just needs a good kick up the backside.”

The doors opened, and she marched through them.

I tried to understand what was going on. I asked whom Hass was going to call.

“Someone he knows at the Federal Department of Home Affairs.”

“What’s that?”

“Their equivalent of the Home Office.”

“What, like the police?”

“Above the police.”

She lay down, crossing her hands over her stomach.

“I am going to close my eyes for a few minutes,” she said.

I did not know where to go. I thought I could look out of the window, but the view was of the back of the neighboring building.

“The curtains,” she suddenly said, her eyes still closed.

I drew them. The room became oddly dark, as if light were an actual solid substance that had poured out of the room. I shut myself into the windowless bathroom but did not turn on the light. I felt my way to the edge of the bathtub. I descended into its dry black shape. I did not cry. I remained there until I heard the telephone ring. I quickly got out.

“Good, you got hold of him,” she said, sitting up in bed. “I don’t care that it’s Christmas. We need to see him.… Then why don’t I call him?” she said. She stood up. “OK, OK, then you call him now and tell him that if the minister does not see us tomorrow, I will call every paper in Switzerland and tell them that the Swiss government doesn’t give a shit about the disappearance of a man who has done nothing but call for the freedom of his people.” She listened for a while, then laughed. “Yes, exactly, tell them his wife is crazy.… OK, great, I am waiting by the phone,” she said and hung up.

For some reason, listening to these words, the easy yet excited voice with which she spoke them, made me feel unsteady. I sat on the floor, my head dangling between my knees.

“What’s the matter?” she said.

I shook my head, blinking hard to erase the tiny white blotches.

She lit a cigarette. The smoke quickly filled the room. She yanked the curtains apart but did not open the window.

When the telephone rang again, she let it ring a couple of times before answering it.

“Hi,” she said, then, “Good, good. Great, it worked. What time shall we set off? … OK, we’ll expect you by noon tomorrow.… No, he should definitely come. They need to see his son.”

She hung up.

“The bastards,” she said, underneath her breath.

The light through the window was weak. She began brushing her hair.

“What shall we do for supper?” she said.

The following morning Mona and I were back at the station. Inspector Martin Durand would not come out to see us. A woman with a thick neck and eyes so clear that the white in them was as colorless as chalk stood in a uniform behind the counter and told us to come back another time.

“I’m not leaving until he comes out and speaks to me,” Mona said.

“Madame, Monsieur Durand is not here.”

“We will wait,” Mona said and sat down in one of the chairs against the wall.

After ten minutes or so the inspector came out and told her, his face growing red with the words, “Please know we are doing all we can. We will call you, I promise, as soon as we have news.” No matter what Mona said after that he would repeat the same words, with less emotion yet more finality, adding, “I am sorry,” in the beginning, and sometimes at the end, and other times, oddly, in the middle. Mona by now looked defeated. It was then that I lost my temper.

“Can’t you see this is dangerous?” I kept repeating in a voice that caught me off guard.

The inspector stared at me from behind the counter.

Mona took hold of one of my arms and led me out onto the street. The veins in her neck bulged with every breath. I watched her cry. She pressed a pale hand against her forehead. Her eyes peered wildly, and her mouth opened until the hand on her brow came down to cover it. She looked at me furiously, as if I were responsible, as if I were suddenly a stranger to her. But I must have misread all of this, because then she placed a hand on my shoulder and said, “Don’t cry, my darling.” We began to walk slowly down the street. She held her shoulders tightly together, as if the rest of her body might break loose and collapse to the ground. The dark maroon bag that usually rested against her side was now elbowed back, its soft leather beating against her ribs. Then, without a word or looking to see if I was still there, she
turned in to a café. She sat down at a small square table beside a column, leaving her handbag on the table. With a trembling hand she pulled out a cigarette. The waiter came over and stood motionless beside us. Mona did not react. I asked him to bring her a cup of coffee. She lifted her eyes, asking, “What?” then looked at the waiter and said, “Yes, coffee, please.” The man turned to me, and I heard myself say, “The same,” although I had never had coffee before. A long minute or two passed. Then she remembered something. She searched in her bag, pulled out the address book and took it to the telephone in the corner of the café.

“Who are you going to call?” I asked.

She did not look at me. All I could hear from her conversation was the occasional
s
.

Who was she talking to: Hass, Taleb, Hydar, or some other friend or associate Father had introduced her to? She hung up and returned to the table.