Genie and Paul (19 page)

This morning, the sky was pale and complicated with cloud which was the grey of something that had once been white. In the distance the sea, out on the reef, was a tingling blue, the foam so bright, it made the clouds look even dingier. What a triumph of Earth over Heaven, Paul thought, there on his rock, remembering the story Eloise had told him, the one
he
had once told her, apparently. He was living like a monk. He drank water from the river that failed to meet the sea. He ate food that he bought from the shack: fried fish or dhal pancakes. He wondered what the boy had told his mother: she’d seemed tense, had avoided his gaze. He would buy his food and drink from her and she would push his change towards him on the counter without looking at him. On his last trip there the woman’s eyes had glittered in a funny way, as though she was about to spit on him. He did not feel like going back there again. Besides, this food did not agree with him. His digestion had deteriorated. His gut would go slack and he’d get the runs or else it would knot him up with constipation. One day when he was squatting under a hibiscus bush, straining, he looked up to see two small fair children – he couldn’t tell if they were boys or girls, they were that young – staring at him. He scrambled into the bush as their mother appeared to retrieve them. He heard her scold them in some Scandinavian language. Tourists. He saw a few tourists from time to time on the beach. They arrived in monstrous vehicles which rolled heavily over the landscape. But soon it would be winter
and, sweet and mild though it was, the tourists would leave. They were like the drunks who visited curry houses back in England and only wanted it hotter than they could stand it.

There might have been tourists around, but Paul was alone. And why would you say this except to mitigate the meaning of those words? You could not say them to anyone else, or at least, not to anyone you would expect to understand. If you could, the words would no longer be true. You said them to yourself, in your head, and you heard them echo. You heard the echo and you thought, I am alone.

Paul thought, how could anyone be alone with so much life around? So much insect life? If that was not a contradiction in terms.

There were ants in his shack. The cockroach he had heard clatter across the packed earth of the shack’s floor in the night lay dead on its back by morning, the ants feasting on it.

He remembered a cockroach he’d waged war on at Marie’s place, shortly before moving to the shack. He had seen it two days running, in the shower hut. It sat in the corner with its face (did they have faces?) towards the wall. On the third day, Paul had had enough of it. He took the shower head, switched the water on and aimed the jet of water at the cockroach. His intention was to swill it down the drain. When it began to drift on the water in semi-circles, like a leaf in a storm drain, it panicked, feelers plastered against its head like two wet hairs, scrabbling away from the jet of water, which Paul continued to train on it.

Paul had looked at this cockroach and its frantic efforts and felt almost a respect for it, or for life, or for its instinctive urge to live. But also disgust: why should it want to live so much? Why should the instinct to live be more developed in a cockroach than a human? The simpler the creature, it
seemed, the more urgent its instinct to life. After all, didn’t pandas and lions in the zoo lose the will to live sometimes? And didn’t people? Paul could never imagine a cockroach pining away with loneliness.

Eventually he had given up on the cockroach, feeling sorry that he had started this, feeling pity for it or respect or annoyance because it was taking so long to die. The minute he switched off the water, the cockroach made a run up the wall and slid off, onto its back, where it shuddered and twitched with a violence that led Paul to think it was finally dying. He let it be and left. When he returned the next morning it had regained consciousness and was upright again in the corner, staring at the wall.

He would walk to Port Mathurin later. Stock up on food there. Get drunk.

Out in the street the sky glared like brushed steel. But he could barely see in here. The girls lounging in the doorway of the rum shop had hung back to let him pass into the single dark room. The one window high up in the roof was small and covered in chicken wire, like the door of a rabbit-hutch. He thought back to that night in Sainte Croix and the stacks of rabbit hutches out in the yard. There was nothing but a few rough tables and chairs here, and a poster advertising Guinness. Paul sat down and ordered rum from a boy with a pencil behind his ear. He looked at the girls in the doorway. One of them was quite young, younger than Genie. She was tall and dark with a great cloud of frizzy hair and large, shining eyes and her white dress looked whiter in the gloom of the place and against her skin. She smiled at Paul encouragingly but he turned away. He sipped at his rum, but when he next looked around for her she was sitting at a table in the corner with a man Paul recognised as one of the sailors from the ship. The sailor looked at him and said something
to the girl, laughing. He did not have the dreamy look of the fishermen Paul knew in Mauritius.

Paul ordered another rum from the boy, who after serving him returned to a chessboard he’d set up on the bar. The boy was apparently playing against himself. Paul thought of Eloise – of a visit he’d made to her in some private institution shortly after they’d split up. She had always worn her hair long and wild, stroking at it absently as though pacifying a cat that was trying to get her attention. So when she’d walked into the visitors’ room it had been a shock to see that her hair had been hacked off.

I get it, Paul had said lightly, realising with a lurch that she’d cut it herself. Self-harming. Is that what you’re in for this time?

I like it like this. Makes me look thinner.

Oh, disorderly eating again.

There had not been much else to talk about then, in that plain room with the high windows, until a pale girl with lilac-coloured skin had come in, followed by two people who were probably her parents. I played chess with her once, Eloise had said, nodding at her. She plays like a fucking kamikaze.

Paul tossed back the rest of the rum, then signalled to the boy that he’d take another. Until that conversation, he’d never even known Eloise could play chess.

Several rums later, the sailor left, and the girl in the white dress came to talk to Paul. She wanted to know who he was. What he was doing here. Where he was staying. Her questions annoyed him. I am going to tell you one thing about myself, he said. I am going to tell you about my sister.

When he had finished talking, she put her hand over his. He pushed it away, stood up. Staggered out into the metallic light. He stood in the doorway of the rum shop to steady
himself. He did not know how long he had been standing there before he heard someone shouting his name.

A London voice.

He looked up sharply. There she was, at the end of the street.
Genie
. She was running towards him.
At
him.

He ran.

Genie wandered back up along the street, ignoring the stares of everyone who’d seen her run screaming after him – the shopkeepers in their doorways, the people at the roadside stalls who had paused, snacks held halfway to their mouths, to watch the chase. She had lost him by the port. Now she was on her way back to the rum shop she’d seen him leave, to ask about him.

A couple of girls were sitting at the rough wooden counter that passed for a bar.

A man came in here, Genie said, laying the photo down in front of them. I need to know where he is.

The two girls looked at one another and laughed.

He’s my brother, Genie said. Our mum is sick. I need to find him.

They gave her their full attention then. One of them, the younger one, a tall, goofy-looking girl in a grubby white dress, spoke. I tried to talk to him, but he wasn’t very friendly. I asked where he was staying and he wouldn’t say. I wanted to know what he was doing in Rodrigues and he wouldn’t tell me. But he did tell me about his sister, she said.

I’m his sister.

Not you. The sister who died.

What are you talking about?

His twin. The tumour. In his stomach. The one he has lived with all these years. He told us he had had this terrible pain all his life and then when he went to the doctors they told him he had a cancer but when they did some investigations
on him they realised it was not a cancer but it was his twin sister. She had got stuck to him in the womb and had been growing inside him all this time. He had to have her cut out, he said. He was here to recover. He said he was full of guilt because he felt like he’d killed her. Is that true?

Without replying, Genie turned and left.

This morning it was diarrhoea. He squatted, felt his gut go slack, pulled some leaves from the hibiscus bush and wiped himself, shaking a little and suddenly weak. He’d go for a bathe in the sea.

He looked up at the sky. It was hard to tell what time of day it was. Today, the sky was white, harshly lit. It looked like a London sky before snowfall. He had not seen snow in a long, long time, he suddenly realised. For a second he wondered if he ever would again, and then he caught himself: was that it? Had he unconsciously made the decision never to go back to London?

He recalled the first time he had ever seen snow: the memory of Genie’s encounter with it was more vivid than his own. She was five. She had stood in the middle of the garden in her red galoshes, with her mouth open, uncertain whether to laugh or cry. And Paul had shown her there was nothing to be afraid of, even though he could not be sure of this himself. He pointed out, when it settled, its static, fibrous quality, like magnetised iron filings, the way it crackled on the skin and felt rough on the tongue. Soft as fur, but ruffled, like the hackles on the back of a cat’s neck. Paul had felt bad for Genie when it all melted days later and the stuff turned to a dirty red brown slush and they saw what it had been covering – all the rubbish and the shit – all the rubbish and shit in the garden of 40 St George’s Avenue, the garden Genie had always hated. He remembered how she had hated its long damp grass which hid, she was convinced, all manner of
repulsive creatures, such as the snails that were clustered at the edge of the path. Paul would walk along it and jump with both feet onto any snails he saw, taking great delight in the crunching sound, while Genie picked her way through them as though they were mines. If ever she trod on one she would leap up howling as though the soles of her feet had been burnt. Paul found this funny. One afternoon, he had guided her towards a robin he said he could see in the bushes.

Where? she’d asked, looking up, stepping ahead, as Paul had planned. Kerrrrrunch.

But before she could scream, the sky had ripped open and it had started to rain – fat drops that fell heavily like a shower of stones. In a second they were soaked. She and Paul had looked at each other, laughing with the shock of it.

Come on! he’d said, taking her hand and pulling her back towards the house. He grabbed the hem of Genie’s anorak, and pulled it over their heads. Icy drops slid from the plastic onto their foreheads, stung numb with the cold, and as they ran up the path he looked to see Mam at her rain-streaked window looking out at them. When they got inside she was waiting at the door with rough towels. She’d wrapped Genie up in one and rubbed her hard, while Paul shook himself like a dog.

Well! Mam had said. Like Leda’s children, in the same shell.

Paul got to his feet, dizzy, shaking, and made his way back to the shack.

When the sun went down, the floodlights round the hotel pool went up, and a sudden golden-blue glow filtered through the curtains of Genie’s room. Out by the terrace bar a
sega
band was setting up, and the sound of instruments being tuned broke through Genie’s sleep. She had passed out earlier that afternoon. She lay on her bed, staring at the veins of light on her ceiling, reflections from the pool.

She got up and wandered back out to the bar. Regis was still on duty. He did not look up at her as she took a stool at the bar but continued making up a cocktail, which he then pushed in front of her.

On the house. You might need that.

The bar was still empty. Most of the guests were getting ready for dinner.

Was I really drunk?

Really
drunk. You should go out there and listen to the band. He smiled. Tourists love that shit!

How many times? I’m not a tourist.

You
might
have mentioned it earlier. A few times.

Tourism. It’s a form of prostitution. That’s what my brother said when he came back from Mauritius. It’s true. You let these rich people in, they give you money, you treat them like gods.

You don’t tip like a rich person.

The waitress came back to the bar with her empty tray. While Regis was making up her order he asked what
she
thought about tourism as prostitution.

Her name was Katy. She looked Genie up and down. Oh, well, me, I see tourists more like
children
, she said. When a tourist dies here or in Mauritius, it’s big news. The way it is when a child dies. Drownings mostly, but every now and then something worse. Something one of the locals has done. I always feel like the death of a tourist is worth more than the death of one of us.

That’s true, Regis mused. Whenever a tourist dies there’s this feeling that all of us are responsible somehow.

We were responsible for looking after this person and we failed, said Katy. She flashed a smile at Genie, collected the beers and went to deliver them.

Genie looked closely at Regis. The dimples had gone.

What are you doing here? she asked. In Rodrigues? Why haven’t you left?

Why should I? It’s my home. Where my family live. My sister. I’ve seen enough of the outside world – the people that come here, what I see on the news – to know I don’t need to see any more of it. Maybe that’s how your brother feels. Maybe he’s had enough of it.

He
doesn’t even know how he feels.

And how,
mademoiselle
, do you know that?
You
don’t know what he feels.

I know he ran away from me yesterday.

So you kept saying earlier. And he wouldn’t have done that if you hadn’t gone looking for him. I tried to tell you that the first time I met you, when you came here showing me his photo. As though you were a
gard
, or he was a lost dog! Maybe he just wants to be a tourist for a bit. I don’t mean stay in a swanky hotel. I mean, have a holiday from his own life. Leave him to it. If he wants to come back, he will.

But he never will, she thought suddenly.

Rodrigues was the sister island of Mauritius and Paul, she thought, was her brother island, remote and totally isolated
but somehow connected and, as Rodrigues was to Mauritius, a dependency. She realised now that she had thought this all her life: she was supposedly the baby sister, the younger one, the less clever one even. But she knew, and Paul did too, that she was the stronger one. Was this because she was younger? Paul had been alone for the first five years of his life. Her arrival must have changed his world. Genie had never known such a disruption, would never know the solitude he’d experienced before she was born. And then Genie realised – and the thought made her gasp almost – that for her it would be the opposite. She would know it if Paul were to die before her. She thought about what Gaetan had said. About how Paul would not want to be found, but how Genie was not giving him that choice.

She drained her cocktail. The
sega
band had started playing and guests were starting to wander out of their rooms to the poolside. The sound of clinking glasses and laughter floated over to Genie as she walked past the pool and into her room. She went over to the desk, switched on the lamp, sat down in front of the pad of hotel letterheaded paper, and picked up the pen beside it.

Let him have his choice.