Anatomy of a Disappearance (18 page)

During my last days in Cairo, before I had returned to school, Taleb had telephoned nearly every day. He would
exchange a few words with Naima first, then ask to speak to me.

“How is our young pasha?” he would say.

He usually sounded cheerful. He would speak about the weather or some film he had seen the evening before. He was a great one for exaggerating: something was either fantastic or truly awful. I now wonder whether his tendency to exaggerate was not a screen behind which he hid his anxieties, for even then I sensed that Taleb not only worried about me but felt somehow responsible for what had happened to my father. I understood this, because I, too, felt responsible.

In late January, when I had returned to Daleswick nearly a fortnight after classes started, he began to telephone every Sunday. He visited me several times too. These visits meant a great deal to me because Taleb did not speak English and seemed for all intents and purposes to dislike England.

I told him about Hass’s call. He listened and then asked if anyone had approached me about anything.

“Anyone like who?”

“Anyone like anyone,” he said. When I did not speak he added, “If anyone does you call me, understand?”

“OK,” I said, even though I had no idea what he meant.

He would often ask when I had last seen Mona.

“Recently,” I would tell him. “Last week,” I would say if he pressed me for a precise time, even though the truth was
I only saw her every four or five weeks when she would come up for just the afternoon.

“Good, good,” he would say. “She is a good woman. And Naima, have you called her?”

“No, why?”

“You should call her from time to time.”

“Why?”

“It’s your duty.”

A couple of weeks later he called again.

“Did you call Naima?”

“No.”

“Didn’t I tell you to call her? You must call her. You can’t lose touch with her. She’s too important.”

“But I don’t have her number.”

“What do you mean, you don’t have her number?”

“I have to go.”

“Wait. I will call you back with her number. Don’t move. Five minutes.”

I waited by the telephone for fifteen minutes then left. The following day Mr. Galebraith came to say I had a call.

“Naima doesn’t have a phone, but this is the number of the nearby mechanic. He will fetch her. Give him time. Be patient.”

He read me the number then asked me to read it back to him.

“Call now. And listen, from now on call her every week.”

“Every week?”

“Well, once a month at least.”

I called the mechanic, but after waiting for more than three minutes I hung up.

A week later I called again:

“Don’t make me bring her here again for nothing,” the mechanic said.

“But I am calling from England; it’s expensive.”

“Then hang up and call again in fifteen minutes.”

After ten minutes I dialed the number.

“He’s eager,” I heard him tell her.

“But is that him?” Naima asked.

As soon as she heard my voice she went quiet. Only when she spoke again did I realize she was crying. She begged me to call again, to call often.

“What’s today?” she asked, then repeated the same question to the mechanic.

“Sunday,” I heard him say.

“Sunday?” she said, then to me: “I will be here, beside the telephone, every Sunday, around this time, just in case you feel like calling.” When I did not say anything, she added, “I promise the next time I won’t cry.”

I did not call after that.

I was seventeen by this time and had perfected the art of squeezing some sort of activity into every gap in the school-year calendar. I was fortunate that Daleswick was known for these trips and that, although it was unusual for any one pupil to do this all year round, it was not entirely uncommon for students there to sometimes choose to go traveling together over Easter, Christmas or summer break instead of going home. We went hiking and sailing; we attended music and theater festivals; we worked for charities and took trips for the sole purpose of seeing a significant building or museum and sometimes just one painting or piece of sculpture. My time had suddenly become precious. I remember afternoons when I would run to my room to fit in half an hour of reading before supper. I felt grateful to my good father for
having chosen Daleswick and funding what I knew to be a lavish education and, ultimately, a distraction.

All this meant that I rarely needed to visit Mona. She, on the other hand, would occasionally take the train up on Saturdays and get a room in the bed-and-breakfast in the village. She would collect me in a taxi and take me out for lunch. I lost the old thrill. A gate had shut. And she sensed it, because she leaned forward more than she used to and talked more than ever before.

A waitress once asked if we were mother and son. I let her answer.

“Yes,” she said, but as soon as she did her cheeks pinked.

One time she telephoned insisting that I come spend the weekend with her. I boarded the train on Friday afternoon and arrived in London when it was dark. The somber country had given way to a triumphant city. A steady rain fell and glowed silver beneath the streetlamps. I would stop and take shelter inside shop fronts, a practice I had up to then regarded as an eccentricity of the British. But there I was, huddled with them: coated figures under a semi-effective canopy, looking out. Every so often a wind would slant the lines of rain. None of us said a word. We made sure our eyes did not meet. If they did we would quickly turn away without a smile or a nod. Looking at us, you might have thought we were avoiding the lives that awaited us at home. Then, without explanation, certainly without the rain stopping, one of us would pull up his or her lapels and continue bravely down the pavement.

I finally located the address in Little Venice. I stood on the opposite side of the canal, looking at the lit windows. Only when I pressed the bell downstairs did I notice how wet I was.

“Come in,” I heard her voice say, and then the buzzer went.

She kissed my cheeks, smiled. But there was something wrong. She was in a hurry, uneasy. An old jazz record played a little too loudly. I had never known her to like that kind of music. Then I spotted a man’s brown leather jacket on the back of one of the kitchen chairs. She fetched a glass, looked into the oven then banged its door shut.

“What would you like to drink?” she asked, not looking at me.

I heard a toilet flush, a door open and someone come out, whistling out of tune.

“Toby, Nuri. Nuri, Toby,” was the extent of Mona’s introduction.

I stood up and shook the man’s hand.

“I’ve heard a lot about you,” he said.

I looked at Mona, and she looked away.

“Finally Crumb thought it safe that we should meet.”

“Toby, behave.”

“Just glad to finally meet someone from your Egyptian odyssey,” he told her. “We wondered if the old girl had deserted us.”

After an awkward silence I asked, “Crumb?”

She blushed.

“I see,” he said. “Hiding it from your fancy friends.” Then to me he added, “It’s her nickname, since she was a child.”

He looked satisfied, smiling with his keen eyes on me.

“How’s school?”

“I love it,” I said and could not help looking again at Mona.

“Excellent,” Toby said.

“He hates it,” she told him.

“Don’t believe her,” I said. “I am having the time of my life. Really.”

“It beats the City,” he said. “I work in finance.”

“And on which odyssey did you and Mona meet?”

“I like him,” Toby told her and laughed. “University, we met at university. Many moons ago. Probably before your time.”

“What was Mona like then?”

Toby was eager to tell me. He leaned forward and was about to speak when we heard Mona shout:

“Enough.”

Toby looked at her, but she was looking at me. A silence as thick as sand fell now. Suddenly the music seemed very loud, and Mona must have thought so too, because she went to the stereo and turned it off.

“Don’t worry,” Toby told her. “I won’t embarrass you.”

“You already have,” she muttered, and I pretended not to have heard that.

“She was, as sadly she remains, a genuine pain in the arse.”

She threw a tea towel at him and covered her mouth.

“But, but,” he laughed. “A diligent student notwithstanding.” He pulled the tea towel off his shoulder. “So glad to have her back.”

I stood up so violently that the chair fell against the wall behind me. Not knowing what to do or how to explain my abrupt movement, I looked at the time, at my father’s old watch.

“I am sorry, so sorry … I must …”

I slung the bag over my shoulder.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

I tried not to look too long into her eyes: how ashamed and lost they seemed, how dark and small.

“I am already late.”

“For what?” she said.

“I had promised a school friend I would stay over.”

“But you … The dinner?” she said.

“Sorry.”

“But when will you be back?”

“Tomorrow. Definitely.”

Now I was winning; it felt like I was winning.

“But you can’t just leave. And who is this friend, anyway?”

“Alexei,” I said.

“But hasn’t he left school?”

“He’s in London, visiting.”

“Give me his number. I need to know how to get hold of you.”

“I don’t have it. I will call as soon as I get there.”

Toby placed his arm around her. “He’s not a child,” he told her.

They followed me to the door and stood waiting as the lift crept up. I stared at my shoes. I knew that she knew that I was lying, that there was no friend expecting me and that, more than anything else, I wanted to be expected, waited for, welcomed. Now her silence came to resemble a challenge. I must not turn back, I told myself. I must prove to her that I can do this. Tears filled my eyes. I fixed them on the lift door and prayed that neither of them would place a hand on my shoulder. The lift arrived and I quickly got in. After the doors shut I heard her say, “Call as soon as you get there.”

And just like that I was out into the night again. The rain had stopped, but the air was colder. The dampness had gone through my coat. I trembled and told myself it was not fear. I was alone in London, but I could afford a hotel. After all, that is what people do, I told myself, when they have nowhere else to stay. And I had experience. Had I not countless times followed Father to the reception desk of some hotel in a foreign city? I recalled how he used to say, “I have a booking.” And although I had no booking, it comforted me to imagine him there, beside me, just out of view to the left.

I found a hotel more quickly than I had anticipated, on the same street, perhaps six or seven doors down, overlooking the same canal. I knotted my scarf to hide the school tie.
With all the confidence I could muster I approached the reception and slowly lowered my bag.

“I would like a room, please. I don’t have a booking.”

He shot a glance beyond me.

“For one,” I said, and, although his face remained uncertain, he pulled out a form and took my details.

“Do you have a preference which floor?” he asked.

I was not sure and could feel myself begin to sweat. Then I thought of the floor she lived on and said, “Fourth.”

He asked for a deposit, and it was half of the money I had. Earlier that day at the bank I had imagined us going to Clarisse’s for fondue and then on to the cinema, so I had withdrawn half of my monthly allowance.

I sat in the darkened room by the window and watched the light of the streetlamps play on the water. This was not Cairo, and the slim canal was certainly not the Nile, but I tried to imagine living here, seeing this view every day. Then I realized I was shivering. The cold had reached my bones and touched them. Mother used to run me a bath in winter. That is what I must do to kill the shiver, I told myself. I lay in the bathtub until the hot water cooled.

I left the bathroom light on and entered the cold sheets. Every time I heard someone come up the stairs my heart quickened. I was certain the footsteps were coming to my door, and only after they passed could I start breathing again. At one point I was convinced that one of the voices approaching was that of Toby. And when the woman beside him answered and she did not sound like Mona, I argued
that perhaps that was how she spoke to him, that, like the tone she used to reserve for Father, she had one especially for Toby too.

The following day a fever set in. By eleven the receptionist called to ask if I intended to stay another night. “Yes,” I answered, and that was that. An hour later I ordered soup and tea, and the receptionist hesitated before saying, “I will see what I can do.” The man who delivered them kept looking around the room as I counted the money. By early afternoon I was wrapped in my coat again and making my way down the staircase. I walked to Mona’s building and rang the bell. She answered quickly.

“It’s me,” I said.

“Where have you been?” she said, and pressed the buzzer.

When I got out of the lift I found her waiting.