Notorious (11 page)
‘A cruel man,’ says Laforche.
‘A man in the conflict of inner darkness,’ says Sister Antony.
‘An enraged man,’ says Laforche, turning a page.
He reads, ‘
This man, the man who calls himself Devlin tells me
,
You
know what the recruiter’s greatest tool is? Inspiring self-delusion in others.
I never got you to do anything you didn’t con yourself into doing, he says,
you believed what you were doing. You told me you would help me find
my brother, I say to him. I’m not a kind man, he says. I don’t do anything
for free
.’
‘A manipulator,’ says Laforche.
‘A man not knowing whether he wishes to live or die,’ says Sister Antony.
‘A liar,’ says Laforche, turning the page. The next page is blackened; I smell fire. I am back in Sicily, running into Pietr’s house. I am calling her name, trying to part the smoke clouding the marble hallway.
Laforche reads, ‘
Whenever he talked about the past, his eyes refused
to accept the light. He told me that his grandfather was an inveterate thief.
He said that to compensate, his father Czeslaw wanted to be a monk.
He told me he thought his grandfather, Czeslaw’s father, had endured a
childhood so devoid of affection that he stole anything he could find; objects
of beauty as nourishment. He said, My grandfather stole wherever he went:
Poland, Italy, Africa
.
I asked him how he knew. He said it was because
his childhood was the same
.’
‘A thief,’ says Laforche.
‘That’s not me she’s talking about,’ I say.
Sister Antony is silent.
I say, ‘That’s Pietr, the man she married.’
‘The man she married instead of you,’ says Laforche. ‘You, the jealous man, the enraged man. The man who says – ’ he reads from the diary – ‘
You make me feel like a beast
. A man desperate for clues to himself, she says, for signposts, bearings. A man who admits:
I tear
open letters about you and lick the seal for any trace of you
.
‘Tell me,’ says Laforche. ‘Why should we trust a man like this?’
I want to shout at them to stop. But I can’t speak. Laforche reads on, remorseless.
‘
The thing I always liked about him was that he had no honour. I am so
sick of men talking about their honour. It always precedes some appalling
act. Or a way to judge the world – women of course – by a set of rules they
have made up. Like people who moralise about religious virtues because
they have to keep reminding themselves. But he never had any honour,
he told me. He always believed the worst. That is what I most like about
you, I said to him.
’
‘No honour,’ says Laforche. ‘A violent man. A jealous man, as we’ve seen. Who will the police believe?’
‘Police?’ I find it hard to process the word.
Laforche says, ‘You are the only person saying who she is. Why couldn’t she be someone else? There is another woman in this story: the same age, dark-haired. Anna, the daughter of Pietr by his first marriage. Why couldn’t this be her?’
I stand. Sister Antony rises slowly beside me.
‘I know it’s you,’ I say to the woman in the bed. I see her lashes droop against her smudged skin. I shiver. The temperature is falling.
‘You know how I know.’ I put my hand on her leg and look at Sister Antony. ‘You know how.’
I throw back the sheet, looking for the photograph printed on her skin.
‘You devil!’ shouts Laforche.
Even before the woman points her finger at me, I know what I will find.
‘I erased you,’ she says, low. ‘You deserve to be erased.’
There is nothing, no mark on her thigh. Nausea wells inside me.
She says, ‘The minute you lied about my brother, you went into uncharted territory. You took us both there. And Pietr.’
‘I never killed him!’ I shout, but the effort makes me sway and I have to lean against the wall.
‘He’s sick,’ says Sister Antony to Laforche. ‘You put too much in the sugar drink.’
‘He will survive,’ says Laforche. ‘Once she has gone.’
‘Where is she going? The desert?’ My jaw hurts. ‘She won’t last twenty minutes.’
‘She did before,’ says Laforche.
‘A fluke,’ I say.
‘Intervention,’ says Sister Antony.
‘Suicide,’ I say to the woman. ‘It’ll be – ’
She says, ‘Like putting a scorpion on your face?’
‘You can’t leave me. I came all this way to find you.’
‘To catch me.’
‘No.’
I see her eyes, as blue as the lake in Sicily. A current moves deep below. She is remembering those hours in the hut above the lake. For a moment, I have her between my hands, I am pulling her towards me, wrapping my arms around her, wrapping my leg over her leg, my hands at the small of her back, pulling her into me –
I touch her wrist and she flinches. ‘You remember Sicily,’ I say as clearly as I can. ‘Don’t tell me you don’t.’
She stares at me, her mouth open. I bend and kiss her on the wrist, let my head rest on the side of the bed. An enormous heaviness rolls over me. Her hand touches my cheek, her fingers travel gently along my jaw, my ear, trace upward, smooth the lines between my brows, slowly stroke my hair.
Far away, I hear Laforche say, ‘He came here to catch you. Remember that.’
I try to lift my head, to tell him he is wrong but it is too much effort. Her hand is still stroking my hair, my shoulders are dropping. The terrible burden I always carry slips away.
‘You were the only one,’ I try to say, ‘I could ever relax with.’
She holds my face, her lips are in my hair. She says, ‘Sleep now.’
The black sky is lit by flashes. Broken silver spears part the curtains of purple-black clouds and batt away the dirty yellow moon. The Massif is a frowning profile. Lightning flares over the plain like tracer fire: the smallest plants become gigantic black roses, hollows become lakes, stones grow to boulders. Shadows that might not be shadows move between the enormous cactuses. The barking of dogs is carried for miles through the racing wind. The air shudders and hums.
A fine rain falls on my cheek. It burns me and it is cold. There is sand in my mouth.
It is dawn when I wake. The shutters are open and a flat blue sky is growing. I feel salt on my cheek and a crick in my neck. I had fallen asleep with my head on my folded arms, leaning on the side of the bed. When I stretch out a hand, the sheet is cold and stiff.
I sit up. The bed is empty.
Sister Antony is standing by the window.
I look around the room for a hiding place. It occurs to me that nobody had said she couldn’t walk.
Sister Antony pushes back her hood and it is as though I finally see her clearly. She has a scar like a river of ill luck running down her left cheek. Her dark grey eyes are clear and hard, polished pebbles reflecting the light. Her hair is pure white.
She says, ‘Jesus walked into the desert. It was a surrender in the tradition of the Desert Fathers. Like Saint Antony. Absolute poverty is absolute nothingness. You must make yourself as blank as the desert, as the page. To be written on, by God.’
I heave myself up and stagger to the window, stare across the stony plain. The sun surges over the horizon, the dunes are blood red in the early light. I feel the heat coming.
‘She’s gone,’ says Sister Antony, ‘into the desert.’
She comes to me, presses something into my hands. A sheet of paper.
It is a note in the woman’s handwriting:
When I look at you, I know
the people I loved are gone. Five deaths are too much for one person to
endure.
I crush the paper between my hands. But even as I shred it and the fragments fall like snow, I am kneeling. I gather them up and hold them in my cupped hands and stand, looking at the desert.
The land falls away, remorseless. The sun rises in the blue wall of the sky.
I wait.
It is only a little while before the black helicopter comes out of the west and swings in a low circle around Abu N’af. It beats its way past the windows, closer and closer, louder and louder. Mitch is sitting in the passenger seat.
He sees me, raises a thumb and forefinger, aims them and cocks them like a gun, firing at me.
The helicopter thuds past, the beat steadying as it drops to the ground. The noise slows, and stops.
I put the fragments carefully in my pocket.
I go out to meet Mitch.
C
zeslaw pulled out his map, wrote the day’s date – 19 August – in Polish at the bisecting co-ordinates of 13 degrees longitude, 37 degrees latitude. A guess, of course. He had no idea exactly where he was.
Sicilie Pars
, the map read, next to the black boot-shaped island below the Italian mainland. He spread his hand against the rich indigo blue of the Mediterranean. The grease in the cuts from yesterday’s breakdown made fine black rivers and tributaries across his palms. Sand grated under the sweat on his back and he was light-headed from fasting. He had only had bread and water today.
He pressed a painted fibre lifting off the map. He was closer to Trepani than Palermo, he thought, but last winter’s flooding had carried off the road signs and it seemed no-one had bothered to replace them. The wolves took them, the villagers in Siracusa had said, crossing themselves and spitting on the worn stones of the taverna. Wolves? There were no wolves left after the war, surely, when everybody ate them? The locals spat again and muttered about the sea crossing from Albania and animals which leaped through the night as the moon turned the crests of the waves to silver.
He put one fingertip across the calm eyes of the Jesus painted in lustrous oils at the top of the page, traced a path back up the Italian coastline, past the words and figures written there: notes on his fasting, the times he had whipped himself, the amounts of money distributed to the villages on his route. He traced his projected path across the map, from Koloshnovar straight through Czechoslovakia and Austria, down the Italian coast, up to France and the home of the rightful owner of the Frenchman’s book. He avoided the shining palm leaf, cut from sheet gold, which marked Rome.
As he drove across the flat plain, dust was channelled up to the sky. The echo of shouts grazed the wind and the clouds seemed to quiver. He heard the ragged engine and the back of his neck tightened. He had learned not to ignore those feelings. He shifted down through the gears and steered toward the jagged hill, an outcrop of the mountain range proper, black against the sun.
At the base of the hill, he eased the car across the rougher ground. The suspension groaned over the chips of flint and slate and odd scattered objects: a water canteen, a picnic basket, a tyre crumpled like the skin of a dead animal. When the rocks became blunt boulders, he switched the engine off and pushed the goggles back. The pistons stamped down, the fan ticked unevenly to a close. The wind prickled his forehead with dust and pine tips.
He used the metal base of his compass to ease out the panel in the driver’s side door, put his hand on the oiled leather bag wedged there, hooked his finger through the gold silk draw-string, gripped its dark sliminess, smelled the escaping sea. He closed his eyes, listened. No shouts, just a far-off hawk crying over a moving shadow.
He would rather have made it to the other side of the plain. Landslides were not uncommon in this region. And bandits.
The sun bleached the ground now but the grey haze staining the horizon meant a storm. Maybe he should put the roof up. He got out of the car, folded back the front side panel of the hood and tugged at the limp fan-belt.
Number one: change the fan-belt. Check the water, number two. Number three – he looked up and saw the children, a boy and a girl. Their hair was a muddied blonde, not as light as his own, but still unusual this far south. Maybe closer to the Austrian border, yes. Even for the villages in these parts, they were dressed in a very old-fashioned way. He took a closer look. Was she holding . . . ? Yes, it was a bonnet, with a fringe.
The girl came forward. She was tall and slender with pale blue eyes. She stared at him, unblinking.
Czeslaw had a working knowledge of Italian, picked up from the mechanics on his mother’s estate and at the annual Torino races. He had mostly forgotten his schoolboy Latin, which was ironic, he thought now. He had always been an indifferent student, always yearning through the window.
He asked the children where he was, who they were. The boy hung back, glowering at him: the bad foreigner; the seducer. He felt like laughing. If they only knew.
The sun on his head was making him drowsy. He wanted the breeze, wanted cool weather, poplars straight as spires down the long avenue at Koloshnovar, elegant emerald sentries, tipped with blue. Not this hunched and leached green, these crooked fingers scratching a sullen sky.
The girl edged forward, slowly. She was older than he had thought. For some reason, he wanted to retreat. He moved to his right, keeping the car between them. He could see the inside door, the missing panel, the light sliding off the leather bag, the drawstring protruding like a hangman’s rope.
She turned and waved. Two more children – teenagers really – appeared from behind the rocks: a plump girl, another boy, both with the black hair typical of the region.
They must have been waiting there. Hiding.
Czeslaw picked up the wrench.
The blonde girl beckoned but only the plump girl came forward, mouth open, staring at him.
The blonde girl raised her voice, was saying to the boys what sounded like, ‘Now. What are you waiting for, Paolo?’
The blond boy shook his head. ‘The parents never take two in two days.’
‘Useless,’ shouted the blonde girl. ‘How will we ever get out of here?’ She swung back to Czeslaw so violently that the cross around her neck tumbled out from her collar. The gold caught the sun like shook foil, the light piercing him. She came closer, smiling in a way she obviously thought was seductive. The boys still hung back but Paolo had picked up a large rock, was holding it by his side.
