Lovesong (19 page)

That night a freezing wintry rain began to fall. It continued all through Saturday. There was talk on the radio of the rain turning to snow and of the roads becoming hazardous. By the time the men started arriving for their evening meal on Saturday night there was a touch of sleet in the air. John was behind the bar preparing the bread and the wine. He watched the men come in alone and together, each of them known to him by name, their clothes smelling of damp, lifting their hands to push back the hoods of their jackets as they came through the door and responded to his greeting, then going to their usual tables.

By eight o’clock most of the tables were occupied and John was busy going back and forth from the dining room to the kitchen serving the meals, the window
steamed up and the talk loud now, the crowded café warm and cosy, the icy rain outside forgotten.

When the meal was over and John had cleared the plates and bowls and the cutlery from the tables, Sabiha came out from behind the bead curtain. She was wearing her dark plum gown, her hair coiled on top of her head, a necklace of her grandmother’s old silver coins glinting at her breasts. Nejib had already begun to finger his oud, beautiful sounds floating out among the cigarette smoke and the talk, his silent companion seated beside him.

John saw how none of the men looked openly at Sabiha, and once again he knew the pleasure of this gentle place, the tact and quiet respect of these working men. There was something of home for him in the familiar dignity of this Saturday night gathering at Chez Dom, something for which he was grateful, something he would miss. He was reminded once again of the day he arrived there by mistake and heard Sabiha and her aunt singing in the kitchen behind the bead curtain. There were some nights when there was still for him a touch of the exotic magic of that first encounter. Some sense of having been admitted and made a part of their lives by the goodness and generosity of Houria and her beautiful niece. A sense that had never quite left him of being a guest in this place. And for this he
felt grateful. He had never taken it for granted. He was smiling with this thought in his mind when he caught the eye of Nejib’s companion. Nejib’s companion did not change his expression, but looked away, his eyes sliding towards the door.

It surprised John to see then that Sabiha was facing the men and waiting for their attention. He wondered what she could be up to. Usually she began to sing and the men fell silent. Tonight there was a restlessness among them. And tonight she was standing beside the street door, closed against the cold night, and was having to wait for them to settle. When they realised she was waiting for them a hush fell over the room and Nejib’s fingers ceased to pluck the strings of his oud. The sound of the rain rattling against the windows came up through the silence.

‘Good evening to you all,’ Sabiha said. She spoke French, her manner formal, as if she was not the cook who had just prepared their meal, or the singer who was about to sing for them, but was some other woman who needed to approach them from a place that was not familiar. There was a perfect silence while they waited to hear what she had to say, every man’s gaze on her.

She said, ‘My father is dying.’

The men shifted uneasily and one or two murmured a word of sympathy.

‘I am going home to El Djem on Monday to say goodbye to my father. I shall not be singing for you next Saturday, and I will not be cooking your meals during the week.’ She waited, her features softened now by a smile, and she looked from one man to another. ‘My good friend Sonja, whose spices you all enjoy, will be cooking for you. But she will not sing for you.’ There was laughter. ‘Sonja is a better cook than I am.’ There was a murmur of disbelief. ‘But I am a better singer. I ask you, friends of Chez Dom, please don’t desert us while I’m away.’ They turned to each other and said how impossible such an idea was, to even suggest they would ever desert Chez Dom! ‘Sonja and John will take good care of you until I come back.’ She turned to Nejib and he took her signal and began to caress the strings of his instrument.

John watched Sabiha turn at the door and look at Nejib, their eyes clinging to each other. She began to sing, singer and musician animated by the other’s perfect register of the music. It was
this
place in her heart to which John knew he would never be admitted. He felt a little tug of envy for Nejib’s perfect favour with her. It was not something that could ever be learned. One had to be born with it. To know it in one’s heart as a child, the way he knew the bush and the sounds and smells of his own childhood home.
Nothing would ever replace it. And it could never be shared. Except with another born to it.

The men watched her openly now, for as a woman she was masked to them by her singing. They smoked their cigarettes and sipped their wine or their mint tea, the lament of Sabiha’s song holding them in thrall to their dreams of family and their fathers’ sacred stony fields.

The street door crashed open, catching Sabiha on the shoulder and spinning her around, then smashing back against the wall, sending flecks of paint flicking into the air, the window glass trembling, a gust of icy air and a stutter of rain on the boards.

A man at the table nearest the door stood up.

Bruno stumbled into the café. He stood swaying unsteadily and looking around, his eyes fierce and bewildered, like an animal that has been hunted and does not know where to turn to escape its tormentors. He was soaking wet and cast around him as if he was trying to locate his tormentors so that he would know which way to face.

Nejib made a small gesture with his hand to the man by the door who had stood up. The man sat down again.

John carefully set the jug of wine on the bar and stepped across and took Bruno by the arm.

Bruno woke from his trance and flung John away from him violently and stepped forward and stopped at the table he regularly occupied for his midday meal. At a gesture from Nejib the two men sitting at the table stood up and moved away.

John recovered himself. He was alert now to the whole room. He felt calm and knew he would deal with this. He noticed that Nejib’s companion had the same expression of faint bored contempt on his face that he always wore, and he had a sudden intuition that the man was not surprised by Bruno’s violent arrival, but had been expecting it. No one had ever seen the Italian either drunk or in Chez Dom on a Saturday night.

When the two Arabs stepped away from his table, Bruno grasped the back of his usual chair. The chair tipped and he took an unsteady step backwards, still holding the chair, then lurched forward again, the chair describing a wild arc behind him. In one long movement, neither quite falling nor quite sitting, Bruno managed to bring the chair down on two legs behind him and get his backside onto it. Someone laughed. Bruno sat perfectly still, his weight dangerously forward, his head sunk on his chest, as if the effort had exhausted him. Then he slowly eased back and set the two back legs of the chair on the boards and he lifted his gaze to Sabiha.

Sabiha had closed the door and was standing with her back to it.

Slowly Bruno spread his large hands on the table in front of him, as if he meant to rise from the chair and go to her, or as if he was about to deliver a judgment.

In the perfect stillness there was the light tap of the oud’s staved body touching the floorboards as Nejib set down his beloved instrument with infinite care. Two of the men turned and looked at him, then quickly looked back at Bruno. Bruno had swung around at Nejib’s movement and he kept looking at him now.

John saw Nejib’s companion shift his chair a fraction to the left, not enough to make anything of it, but enough to free his knees from being encumbered by the table should he need to get up quickly. The man was now facing at an angle slightly away from the table and directly towards Bruno. John decided to watch him closely and be prepared for something. He was surprised to find that he was not nervous but was cool and perfectly ready for whatever was to happen; his decision to protect Bruno from harm was simple and clear in his mind. He knew he was going to look after Bruno. He was not afraid of drunks.

Bruno lifted his right hand and pointed at Nejib. ‘Now you sing for this black
stronzo
!’ he said with
contempt. He swivelled and looked at Sabiha. ‘You do it for this black turd!’

Sabiha pleaded softly, ‘Please, Bruno! Please don’t do this! I beg you.’

John looked at her. She held both hands clasped under her chin, as if she was praying.

She could not know it, but Sabiha’s pose at this moment was a perfect mirror of her mother’s pose when
she
had watched the bus taking her daughter away from her forever. John motioned to Sabiha to stay out of it, but she either did not see him or was prepared to ignore him.

Bruno looked at Nejib. ‘Get up!’ he shouted. ‘Get up, you black bastard!’

John saw there was no fear in Nejib’s eyes.

Nejib’s companion stood first, taking a step clear of his chair and to one side of the table. Slowly, with reluctance, Nejib also got up. He made no move to stand free of the table.

Bruno pushed himself away from his table and stood up. His chair fell backwards with a crash. He stepped unsteadily out into the open space between his and Nejib’s table. Bruno and Nejib’s companion were now facing each other across a space of less than two metres. Nejib’s companion looked slight compared to Bruno, whose boxer’s frame seemed to be an impenetrable
barrier to any possible assault by the smaller man. It was scarcely to be a fair contest.

The sound of the rain hitting the windows was loud and the front door rattled as it was hit by a gust of wind. Nejib’s companion stepped towards Bruno. He did not appear to hurry, his small frame relaxed, his expression giving the impression that he considered this encounter of little consequence. Everyone was silent, astonished by the little man’s daring, their attention glued to him. As he closed with Bruno he lifted his left arm and put it around Bruno’s shoulders, placing the side of his head against the side of Bruno’s head, as if he embraced Bruno and would kiss him on the cheek.

John had been on the point of stepping between them, but he hesitated, feeling an enormous relief and glad he had not intervened, believing that what he was looking at was a generous gesture of reconciliation from Nejib’s companion.

Bruno was evidently so surprised by the man’s confident approach and easy embrace that he did not react with violence. As if he imagined he was going to have plenty of time to react later.

Bruno flinched and gave a strange grunt.

Nejib’s companion stepped away and walked to the door and opened it. He went out, closing the door behind him.

Bruno stood a moment, his face bloodless, then crashed to his knees. He knelt a moment, a man intending prayer, the room registering the impact of his fall, then he toppled forward onto the boards and lay still.

Sabiha was the first to move. She cried, ‘Bruno!', and ran forward and knelt by him and took his head in her hands and tried to turn him over. ‘Bruno!’ she pleaded.

John realised the café had cleared. The last man leaving the street door swinging, the rush of freezing wind and rain. The only one who had not moved was Nejib.

John looked at him. ‘For God’s sake, Nejib! Who is he?’

Nejib stood looking down at Bruno and Sabiha. He said with infinite sadness, ‘He is my brother.’

The autopsy would show that the knife concealed in Nejib’s brother’s right hand had expertly sliced through Bruno’s abdominal aorta. Death had been almost instantaneous. Just as it had been for Dom Pakos all those years ago.

J
ohn had just returned from the Préfecture and was still wearing his old brown overcoat and scarf. He was standing side-on to the bedroom window looking down into the street. The street was quiet now, the flashing lights of the police cars and the ambulance and the trampling of people in and out of the café had ceased hours ago. He was still
seeing
them down there. He turned from the window and looked across at Sabiha. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, her pale nightdress and bare feet, her old blue blanket clutched around her shoulders. She looked like a woman who had been rescued from the sea, only to be told her loved ones had drowned.

She lifted her head and looked at him. ‘What did you tell them?’

‘They just wanted to know what happened. They didn’t want my opinion of why it happened. I told them exactly what I’d seen.’

There was a long silence between them.

‘I spent most of the time sitting waiting in the passage.’

The cold blue light of dawn was beginning to lift the sky over Paris, as if someone was stealthily lifting the lid on a well.

Neither of them had slept.

‘You never know what the police are thinking,’ he said. ‘I felt as if they suspected me of Bruno’s killing. They suspect everybody. I think they’ll probably hold Nejib until they find his brother.’

There was another long silence between them.

He said, ‘I could have saved him. I just stood there and watched. I can’t believe I did that.’

Bruno’s murder had changed everything. She said, ‘I am an evil woman.’

He looked at her. ‘What’s this for?’ he said. ‘Don’t start saying that sort of thing. Not even jokingly. This had nothing to do with you. You’re exhausted. We’re both exhausted. Why do you say a thing like that?’

He turned to the window again and looked out into the street. The street-sweeping machine was grinding and trembling along the kerb. He thought of a wounded
horse trying to find its way home, a ghost from the days of the old abattoirs trying to find its way back to the fields. There was a park now where the abattoirs of Vaugirard had been when he first came to Paris. A horse would find a field there now, instead of a slaughterhouse.

Sabiha made a strangled noise and he whipped around. She was bent over with her head in her hands. He stepped across to the bed and sat beside her and he lifted her up and held her in his arms. He sat holding her, the yellow light of the street-cleaning machine flashing on the ceiling.

He said, ‘When Nejib’s brother put his arm around Bruno I thought he was making peace with him. Just for that second or two I relaxed. I thought I’d completely misjudged the man. I failed Bruno. I was no help to him at all. I saw it coming and I did nothing to prevent it. They must have hated each other, those two.’

She said, ‘I’m pregnant with Bruno’s child.’

He leaned away from her and looked at her.

She said, ‘Bruno was in love with me.’

‘
Pregnant
?’ He gave her a little shake. ‘You can’t be pregnant.’

She turned to him, her dark eyes grave. ‘I am having Bruno’s child.’

He made an impatient flinging gesture with his hands and stood up. He swung around. ‘What are you trying to do? What do you mean, you’re
pregnant?
How can you be pregnant?’ He took two strides to the window, then turned. ‘Why are you doing this?’ he said. ‘What are you doing?’

She held his gaze steadily.

‘My God,’ he said quietly. ‘This is true, isn’t it?’ He laughed emptily. ‘Jesus Christ! I thought you were going through your change of life.’ He stared at her incredulously. ‘You’re
pregnant?
That’s
it?
You’re having a baby? Jesus! Bruno’s baby.’ He spun around and reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a crumpled cigarette packet and stood frowning at it, the light coming up in the sky behind him, an iridescence suddenly around his thinning hair. He took out a cigarette but did not light it. Instead he unbuttoned his overcoat impatiently and took it off and threw it on the floor.

‘I can’t bear it if you hate me,’ she said helplessly.

‘Of course I don’t hate you. I’m not going to start
hating
you now.’ He searched in his trouser pockets for matches and couldn’t find any and gave up. He looked at her. ‘I’m just trying to
believe
this. Did you love Bruno? Did he love you? Is that it? How long have you been pregnant? Are you saying that’s why he came here
drunk tonight?’ He flung out his hands in an exasperated, helpless gesture. ‘You and Bruno! I can’t believe it. I mean, where? When? You and Bruno were always so formal with each other. He was always so courteous and respectful to you.’ He stood there frowning. ‘All this! This
stuff
with Bruno, these moods and this carry-on with you, this is what it’s all about? How does it involve Nejib and his brother? What did they have to do with it?’ He stopped suddenly and stared at her with a look of anguish. ‘If you were seeing Nejib as well, I
will
hate you. Tell me you weren’t seeing Nejib.
Were
you?’

‘Of course I wasn’t seeing Nejib,’ she said.

‘Of course
nothing
!’ he said, bewildered. ‘There’s no
of course
about any of this for me. I mean, where
are
we? What are we doing? You and me? Bruno rushing in and out, then staying away, then getting excited. All that shit.
You,
carrying on.’ He looked at her. ‘I just can’t believe it of you.
You!
You did this?’ He went over to the dressing-table and picked up a book of matches from the glass tray, struck a match and lit his cigarette. He took a deep drag on the cigarette and blew out the smoke.

She said quietly, ‘You trusted me.’

He said, ‘I
still
trust you.’ He laughed. ‘You tell me you’ve been having an affair and I tell you I trust you.’

‘I wasn’t having an affair,’ she said. She sat hunched under her blanket as if she was in physical pain or had been beaten with a stick. She was looking up at him, her features grey in the uncertain light, her hair thick and black and hanging in disarray around her face. ‘I wanted my child.’

He actually felt quite calm. Strangely calm. Inside. But felt it was necessary to make a bit of a show of his emotion. In an odd way, he wasn’t even surprised by any of this. That was the really funny thing. He felt as if he had known it all along. He was not deeply, shockingly, wildly surprised by it. He had always been calm in any kind of an emergency. He had felt calm before the murder. Even when he thought there was about to be a fight between Bruno and Nejib’s brother he had felt completely calm. He had felt as if he was in charge. As if he was in control. But he hadn’t been, not really, only of himself. But to no use. Uselessly calm. She looked so utterly at his mercy, sitting there on the bed, as if she expected to be abandoned and tossed into the street with her baby.

He said gently, ‘It’s the child you’ve always had in your dreams, isn’t it? I know that. Ever since the day we met. That day we lay in the grass on the bank of the river in Chartres. You told me about your child then. You didn’t have to tell me. I felt it. I knew even then.
I felt your warmth then towards this child. I still think about that feeling. Yours was different from the warmth of any other woman I’d ever met before. Your warm body pressed against mine. I remember it. I thought of you then as a mother as well as my lover.’ He smiled and took a drag on the cigarette. ‘I know you’ve never given up hope of having this baby. Through everything. I know that. You don’t have to say anything.’ He went over and sat beside her and put his arms around her and held her against him. ‘This is your child, darling. It’s yours.’ He said softly, ‘Bruno!’

She was crying.

They sat in silence for a long time, Sabiha weeping quietly, John rocking her. Eventually he said, ‘If it’s a girl we’ll call her Houria.’

Sabiha gave a choking sob.

He was so tired he felt sick. He was trying to recall the details of the scene. What had he told the police? One moment it was a peaceful Saturday night in the café, Sabiha singing her songs, Nejib playing his oud, the men quiet and enthralled and happy. Then suddenly the place was empty and Bruno was lying dead on the floor. Under the police questioning he had found himself getting confused and had started contradicting himself. He had felt they didn’t believe him and this had annoyed him and he’d got a bit upset
with them. They had been suspicious and rude and had kept him waiting for hours, sending him out then calling him back in again. Sitting out in the passage waiting for them to call him back inside for more questions he had felt exhausted.

He said, ‘We must get some sleep.’ He pulled back the bedclothes and took the blue blanket from around her shoulders and helped her get into bed. He stood and tucked her in and leaned down and kissed her.

She looked up at him.

He put his finger on her lips. ‘Don’t say anything. I’ll come to bed. It’s happened. We must get some sleep.’ He went over to the window and pulled the curtains closed against the day. ‘The café's done for,’ he said. ‘None of these fellers is coming back, that’s for sure. I don’t even know if the police will let us open again. I could have been nicer to them. We’re not going to need Sonja on Monday either. I’d better give her a call. What’s today?’ He stood trying to think. ‘Sunday morning. I’ll call her at home later. It’s impossible to believe Bruno’s dead. I just can’t believe it.’ He was thinking of Angela and the eleven children and what they must be going through tonight.

He got undressed and climbed into bed beside her and held her against him. ‘When you come back from El Djem we’ll go home to Australia. There won’t be
anything left for us here. We’ll start again.’ He kissed her on the cheek. ‘Don’t worry, we won’t forget Bruno. We’ll think of some way of remembering him.’

There was the slam of a car door and the sound of an engine starting. The street was waking up. The mournful howl of Tolstoy from the back lane greeting the new day—the beast waking from his dreams to find himself alone on the snow-covered steppes of his ancestors.

‘There are things I’ve kept from you too,’ he said. ‘Nothing like this, of course. I’m not even sure what these things are. Parts of myself, I suppose. My ambitions. Perhaps it will all be clearer to me when we’re in Australia. There must be things about ourselves we can only know properly when we’re at home.’ He was exhausted but he didn’t feel sleepy. He would be returning to Australia after sixteen years in France, having accomplished nothing. What had he done? His mind was racing.

‘Men fighting,’ he said. ‘It’s so stupid. The cops must see it every day.’ He was silent for a while, listening to the sounds in the street. ‘I’ve wanted to be a father,’ he said. He knew it would not matter to him that he had not fathered their child himself; he would
become
the child’s father. He would look after them both, Sabiha and the kid. And he would find a way to dignify the
memory of Bruno in their child’s life. That would be necessary. One day he would tell the child about its real father. He held Sabiha close against him, feeling the warmth of her body, the tiny baby growing inside her, its perfect unknowing, the absoluteness of its innocence. To begin! The small beginning. A new life. His own life had been such a waste.

He began to drift towards sleep, images of the terrible night springing into his mind, André and Simone and their daughter, bewildered, standing in the wet street in the lights of the police cars, like refugees who have been kicked out of their home. Old Arnoul Fort, and the Kavi boys and their customers, ringed around and staring silently, their eyes bright with the mad lights, the rain falling through the lights. The strange silence of the frenzy, not an Arab in sight. The pointlessness of it all.

Sabiha’s leg kicked out in a nervous spasm and half woke him. He longed to relive the night and be given another chance to save Bruno. He imagined himself quietly removing the knife from Nejib’s brother and telling him to leave Chez Dom. Normality restored. Sabiha finishing her songs. Bruno sobering up and apologising to everyone … Sabiha was asleep. He would have to get an advance on his credit card for their fares home … He was dreaming Tolstoy’s howl
was a train hurtling towards him, its trembling light dazzling him. He could not get off the tracks as it flew towards him out of the dark. He wrenched himself awake and lay there breathing heavily, his heart pounding. Suddenly he was weeping. He couldn’t stop. He wept for everything.