One Damn Thing After Another (31 page)

“May I have a shower, please?”

“
Si
.” First and only word spoken.

She was frightened because there was no curtain in front of the shower and she was torn between the decencies and wanting dreadfully to wash. But he seemed to understand: he went out, and locked her in. There was only cold water, so she just had to set her teeth. When he came back in she was very shivery and blue, wrapped in the damp towel with her hands crossed in front of her breasts. But to her infinite relief, he brought her overnight case with him. They had packed her a frock, under-things, a toothbrush, even her comb. She could even pin her
hair up. He took the case away from her when she brought it back.

“May I wash my other underthings out?”

“
Si
.” It was nice to have a frock on; gave her back some self-respect. She looked for somewhere to hang her wet things. He pointed to the radiator. He was sitting at his table, reading the paper.

On a little electric hotplate, standing on a shelf, was an enamelled metal coffeepot. He went and got her cup from the cupboard, poured her a cup of coffee, and gave her two hard rolls from a paper bag. She was allowed to carry this back to her cell. He had taken her suit and stockings away.

The coffee was thin and bitter, with no milk or sugar, but hot. The rolls were stale. She ate everything.

She stayed locked in, with nothing to do, until a third guard, a broad, chunky one with a boxer's face and a sour expression, came and let her out for ‘exercise'. This one did not stay with her. He locked her into the yard and left her there half an hour or more. The sun was shining strongly, but the walls of the yard were too high for it to have penetrated the whole way. There was a hot sunny strip and a cool shady strip, and she alternated the two. She did simple gymnastics with an idea of keeping her blood circulating and her body straight.

Some time around midday the sour one brought her dinner: boiled corn, with some scraps of mutton stew, a piece of bread, a cup of water. In the evening came the young one, with the beans as before and the cheese. Instead of the onion, there was a peeled raw carrot. Well, it was sensible. Whoever had laid down the rules of hygiene had said prisoners needed a fresh vegetable. She preferred the onion, but doubtless it would be there again tomorrow. Perhaps on Sundays there would be an apple. She remembered in another world a woman who had overeaten and promised herself nothing but yoghurt. Well, she had had her piece of cheese. There is nothing in the least unhealthy, she told herself, about this food. I can keep strong, unconstipated, alert. I get an hour outside. What more do I want?

She had done nothing but sleep, so far. There was no complaint she could make about that. A busy time she had had of it, an odtaa time: rest was what she needed. When the ‘old' guard woke her at five in the morning she felt fine. Everything happened exactly as it had the day before and this was reassuring. A routine, already. She mopped, this morning, the shower out and ‘the office', for which he allowed her a second cup of coffee, and even offered her a cigarette. She refused that, but it was nice of him.

What would happen though, when the shift changed? She would not always be able to count on the delicacy with which he left her alone while she was washing. It was even, she guessed, against the rule. There was at least one more cell-block, whose door was kept shut all the time she was in the office. She saw no other prisoner, but was this by design, or simply good fortune? It seemed likely, even probable, that others would be put in her own block, even were it kept for women. It would be nice to see another woman, if only at the exercise period: would it be allowed? It seemed inevitable that the regulation would be stiffened up. If they kept to the normal turnover of a three-eight shift, the ‘young one' would be the next on nights. He had seen her in her underthings and his young indifferent eyes had not changed – but if he used his power to supervise her washing time … Suppose this were all done deliberately, to break down her independence and her personality. A few days in solitary, as part of a brainwashing technique. Suppose it were more than a few days …

That morning, she had her first taste of what might be in store. Oh, it was nothing; no more than a little ‘coup de cafard', a momentary depression, a giddiness that was not to be called
anything as serious as vertigo. But showing the way the wind was blowing …

She had lain down, the way she was teaching herself, very light, crisp and dry and light as a dead leaf, slowly stretching and loosening one muscle after another into a liquid looseness that would be as weighty and shapeless as one drop of oil after another, stretching her toes and squeezing her insteps, clenching and uncurling her hands, stiffening her neck, arching her back, letting it all go until the drops ran together and made a still calm pool over which flew dragonflies, swallows, a kingfisher …

She felt asleep. She had slept quiet and dreamless until this moment, on her front, as draggingly still and comfortable as a dog in the shade …

She dreamed. She was here, here in Buenos Aires, at a gala night at the Colon Opera House. She knew, somehow, that this was long ago. Perhaps before the war? Of course, because to her joy Erich Kleiber was going to conduct. He had not yet come on: the theatre was not even full yet, the orchestra was tuning. Kleiber had come here from Berlin, where he was the Chief. Goering had offered him a fantastic contract to stay on, with a huge salary; all in Swiss francs … ‘Very well' Erich had said, pleasantly, ‘I have a free hand of course, with my programmes? Good, the next concert will be entirely Mendelssohn.' Good God, man, said the Reichsmarschall, you can't do that … ‘No? But in that case – there is a world elsewhere.'

A world elsewhere. Here, here in Buenos Aires. Kleiber had loved it here, loved the criollo style of the Argentinian musicians. Now we are going to do some German music.

It was going to be a lovely evening. She was there in the very centre, in the President's own box, as the President's personal guest. There, up in the enormous dome, was the great chandelier sparkling. When Erich left, at the end of the war, to go back to his beloved Berlin, he pointed up at it and said to the musicians ‘Remember. I'll always be up there, looking down at you; listening. And when I'm dead, too …'

She was in a very splendid taffeta frock, cut very low, with a necklace and diamond bracelets, her hair specially done, as
President Alvaes' own special guest. He was another great Kleiber fan. If any of the Buenos Aires high society arrived late, as was their detestable custom, he had developed a terrible, killing technique of staring hatingly at them through huge big-game-hunting binoculars.

Oh why didn't Erich hurry up? The musicians were ready. And it was going to be the best of all; it was going to be
Fidelio
.

Something was very wrong. She was up there in the chandelier, and it was cold, and the satin frock pressed tight and cold upon her skin, and the bracelets were too tight, they were hurting her wrists. And she had done something very wrong, she didn't know what it was. She was up there in the chandelier, and the President was staring at her disapprovingly-hatingly – through his terrifying binoculars. Was she dead …?

Bouh: beastly nightmare. You must start again, my girl. Start everything again from the start. She turned on her back, breathed very deeply, unwound everything. The concrete was not cold. It was cool, pleasantly cool.

She was in Paris, sitting at a terrace of some café. They still had the nice old wicker chairs, the marble-topped belle-époque tables with the intricately patterned cast-iron leg. She was waiting for her drink. Lazily she turned the pages of
Le Monde
. Aha, what was this – of interest to whoever lived in Strasbourg … ‘An illegal traffic exposed' – from our correspondent. ‘Raided by the local ecologists' – this sounded entertaining. ‘Madame van der Linden, judge of instruction in Strasbourg, yesterday notified Monsieur William Thibault, well-known dealer in furs and leathers in this city, of his inculpation for infringement of the laws in force against all handling in the skins of protected species …' Goody, goody: let's hope he now gets pegged for about ten other charges that will bite rather harder. She was herself a protected species, more properly called an endangered species, because protection … She was her favourite, the most beautiful of them all, the lynx, the ‘Star' – terribly endangered alas, for we are dreadfully vulnerable. We do not have real fear of human beings. Those damned stupid, backward, ignorant peasants with their incurable prejudices. A lynx, they think, slaughters deer … There is something very wrong. We
live in the forest, in the great forest that used in happier days to cover all of Northern Europe. Before they chopped it all down to build the Invincible Armada. But there is still plenty of forest – why am I in this burning-bare desert? There are Indians, Indians all around me. They make intensely cunning traps, that collapse in upon themselves, that are made of sharply pointed piercing sticks. Whichever way I jump …

Another horrible nightmare. She had gone to sleep on her back, it was her own fault.

You must get up. Pace a while. This is a very small cell, and not equipped for pacing. In fact just three metres from the door to the back wall. Four paces; five if I make very small ones. Do not, please, get yourself claustrophobic about these three metres: they are plenty.

Now why had she been dreaming about the desert? And it had been the Arizona desert. Where she had never as much as set foot and of which she knew extremely little. In fact, thinking hard, nothing. Not so very long ago, on television,
Rio Bravo
by Howard Hawks – John Wayne to be sure, but was that the Arizona desert? Mixed up with Arthur being funny about Leslie Howard and Bette Davis, bad beyond belief, in
Petrified Forest
, and an unshaved Bogart with his shotgun across his knees.

But now she had it, and really that explained it all. The ‘Don Juan' books, with which Arthur had been considerably taken. Upon her much less impression had been made: ‘you are much too French' said Arthur. Not, in other words, with a romantic imagination, like him.

Several things could not be denied. Live in the deserts of Arizona or New Mexico, and Don Juan will begin to make a great deal of sense. Come to that, live anywhere and he has some remarkably sound counsel. Especially, perhaps, to someone in my position, not very keen on this pacing lark, and even less keen on lying down again and having more nightmares. This is not the place to have a coup-de-cafard. Find your spot, ol' Juan would have recommended; sit loose and comfortable on the floor with your back against the wall. If you are not yourself cramped, you have no need to feel cramped.

Have no self-importance. You are full of crappy weaknesses and conceits. Very true indeed. What else? Keep your death constantly present. Mm, that should not be too difficult. Live, said who was it? – someone Spanish?: Saint John de la Cruz? – as though you were going to die tomorrow. Pray, as though you were going to live forever.

Do not have any personal history. Right: these circumstances seem especially well designed for ridding myself of every scrap of personal history.

Keep to no routines. All this bullshit about well, it's midday: it's therefore time to eat. That, here, will be much more difficult, but there are other things that will be easy.

Just go to work, Arlette, on having no self-importance. These guards for instance. There is no point at all in saying ‘I like such-a-one': ‘I dislike such-a-one because of his nasty boxer's face' – all that is the purest rubbish.

Be a lynx.

They came for her, on the evening of the third day. It might have been about six. The young guard was on. He had put her out for her airing, but she had not had her evening meal. She had been doing Juan-things: ‘seeing'; ‘stopping-the-world'; ‘being-a-warrior'; ‘acquiring knowledge'. Jingle, went the keys. Supper, already? – that had gone quick. But instead of putting up the little shelf outside the sliding guichet, he opened the door, said nothing – as usual – but made a slight impatient gesture with his hand, summoning her. Maybe he'd forgotten, and was putting her out for more hygienic yard-work. Maybe she'd forgotten, and hadn't been out at all, that afternoon. She felt sure she had – but perhaps the Juan-technique was more potent than she knew.

But no – back up the corridor, through into ‘the office'. A man was waiting for her there. Plain clothes, elderly, smallish, Indian face. Maybe it was Don Juan.

He looked her up and down, nothing nasty; not quite ‘cop' either. Without hostility: with a kind of curiosity. He produced the keys to the grille.

“You can come with me.”

“Don't I need shoes or anything?”

“No need.” He brought her back up the passage and into one of the functional grey rooms she had been in when she came. She did not know whether it was the same. It was absurd to feel anxiety at being taken to the outside. But – where was the next stop? As before, she was bid sit on a stool in front of the table behind which the Indian-looking man installed himself with an air of authority. There was no means of telling what authority he had: he was in shirt sleeves, with an open collar. He had a small, flat leather writing-case, too small to be called a briefcase. From this he drew what she recognized as her
documentación
from her own handbag; the miscellany of passport, cheque book, card-holder, and a stiff-covered black notebook filled with close black handwriting of which she could make nothing upsidedown, even if she had tried. He left her sitting while he consulted this, turning over several pages.

There was another man sitting in the corner, with nothing to say, but he had bright blackish eyes behind glasses with thick dark rims. Well-dressed, this one, in a rich, nicely-cut suit of a bluish-brown colour, a cream shirt, a silk tie with little diamonds, white hands with the nails cut square. Blue-black hair longish, wavy, nicely parted. Agate cufflinks and a square gold wristwatch – he looked too wealthy for either a cop or a government functionary, and she could make nothing of him.