People of Mars (13 page)

Now she really felt
little and stupid. She had looked at him, learnt his name, and had
labelled him. Point. She hadn’t even considered that the reality
might be different. But, in the end, what had changed? His mother
was a western woman; he, instead, was one of them all the same. Her
face contracted in dismay. He was right: she was one of them, too.
No, there was a difference and it wasn’t the name.

“You are Muslim.” It
was the last card, but he couldn’t question it.

“Ah, so yours isn’t
racial intolerance, but a religious one.” He looked anything but
convinced.

Any attempt by Anna to
make a lucid reasoning was totally useless. She was too tired, and
in all honesty there was little reasoning in her prejudices. She
surely had nothing against the Islamic religion. What did she know
about it? Perhaps the problem concerned the traditions or the
outdated mentality often associated with certain religious groups.
She looked at Hassan. What had he to do with all that? Probably
nothing. Doubtless, he had nothing to do with the man who’d broken
her mother’s heart over thirty years earlier. All the more now that
they were hundreds of million kilometres from the origin of the
mentality that made her feel ill at ease. But that sensation of
suspicion was so rooted in her heart that, although she realised
how it was void of any foundation, she wasn’t able to get free from
it completely.

“Let me guess. You are
Swedish, so Lutheran Christian?”

“Theoretically,” Anna
replied, grateful that the question had pulled her out of her
cogitations. “My mother was Lutheran, but I’m not suited for that
stuff.”

“What d’you mean?”

“That stuff about
faith. I don’t understand it.”

“You aren’t supposed
to understand faith. Either you have it or you don’t. Anyway it’s
never too late to embrace it.”

Anna sat up and
addressed a hesitant look at him.

“May I say what I
think?” he asked.

“May I stop you from
doing so?”

Hassan laughed again
and this time she followed suit. She couldn’t remember ever seeing
him that way. Although their ways of thinking were light years
apart and there were sides of his character she found horrific, to
say the least, she was aware that fighting would take them nowhere.
Sometimes the best thing to do was to let go.

“I think your father
was a coward.” He sat up and leaned his back against the stuffed
edge of the bench. “I can’t deny that his cultural background would
somehow have been involved in his decisions. His family wanted him
to marry a woman from his country, from his religion. It’s very
common nowadays; imagine what it must have been like at that time.
But he owned all the necessary tools to make the right decision. He
lived in a country where he wasn’t actually subjected to any
pressure, and he had perfectly adapted to that lifestyle. He was an
adult and free to make his choices. In the end, the will of his
family was just an easy excuse to justify the way he didn’t accept
the responsibility of his relationship with your mother, way before
she became pregnant. All that had nothing to do with the colour of
his skin or the God he believed in.” He placed a hand on her arm,
ran its length with the tip of his index finger, then he lingered
on her wrist. “Despite what you may think, a man abandoning his
pregnant partner and then never taking an interest in her for the
rest of his life is anything but a good Muslim.”

Without realising it, Anna found herself gaping as
she listened to him. That
principled-man
version of Hassan was totally new to her and clashed with
most of what he had said and done since the first day she met him,
so much so that for a second she wondered whether he was just
acting.

She scrutinised him in
silence, contemplating whether to believe him or not. He kept a
straight face and started stroking her hand.

“
And are
you
a
good Muslim?” Had she really asked that? For a moment she hoped he
hadn’t understood what she meant.

His well-known mocking
smile appeared on his face. He had definitely understood.

“Well, if you are
asking me whether I might behave like your father …” He made a
theatrical pause and Anna found herself holding her breath, fearing
what could now come out from that man’s mouth. She knew his moment
of seriousness was over. “What should I say, Anna? We are confined
in a desert planet, where the fuck am I supposed to go?!”

And he smiled, that
bastard.

“Also because, if you
try, I kill you,” she replied, staring back at him.

Hassan raised his
hands in surrender. A moment later they were laughing.

Where the hell had
they been hidden?

He had searched
through all the cupboards in the infirmary, but without success.
Only silly aspirins, antibiotics. All useless stuff.

His hands were
shaking. Accompanied by a constant nausea, an acute pain radiated
from his nape along his spinal column and down his limbs. Bathed in
sweat, he had dragged himself into the box room where the medicine
provisions were stored, but it was like looking for a needle in a
haystack. There were at least fifty crates, neatly stacked, but
they only bore incomprehensible abbreviations. Or perhaps he wasn’t
able to give them a meaning right now. He’d had to climb on a
ladder to reach the higher ones and had opened them, while trying
to avoid leaving too many traces. A part of him would rather tear
them all open, but somehow he managed to keep control, as if there
was something in the bottom of his mind, projecting inside his
brain and preventing him from exploding.

He went through the
pots, one by one, until with great relief he came across the word
‘Oxycodone’. Agitated, he turned the lid open and swallowed two
pills. Then, after a moments consideration, added a third one. With
his eyes closed, his thought followed the drug down to his stomach.
It would be a while before it took effect. It would’ve been better
to crush it and then sniff it, but that would have caused too much
noise. The awareness that he would soon feel well, however,
sufficed to calm him down.

He nervously scratched
the back of his neck. The itching sensation was worsening.

Still balanced on the
ladder, he sized up the pot. At that rate, it wouldn’t last for
long. There were ten more in the crate. Perhaps he might have found
more, if he had checked the other crates, but he knew they would
finish, sooner or later. No, he couldn’t think about it now. He
would find a solution. The thing in the bottom of his mind seemed
to agree with him. He placed two pots into his pockets and held a
third in his hand. He needed the other hand to descend the ladder.
But before doing so, he closed everything with care. This time,
they wouldn’t catch him.

He heard a laugh. He thought he might have
produced it himself. Maybe the
oxy
was already kicking in. The laugh repeated, but it was
doubtless a woman’s voice. Anna.

With caution, he moved
closer to the door and cracked it open. A silhouette passed before
the chink and Robert drew back, afraid to be seen.

He breathed slowly and
waited. Again, a laugh, but it was farther away now. In silence, he
opened the door again, just enough to let him look out in the
direction from which the sound was coming. At the other end of the
corridor were Hassan and Anna. His arm was on her shoulders and she
was stroking his back with her palm, then she let her hand slip
onto his hip. They were speaking in a low voices, and from time to
time, they chuckled, hushing each other as they did so.

Robert squeezed his
fingers, closing his hands in a fist. He took a deep breath to keep
calm and, when he exhaled, his muscles relaxed. He would’ve liked
to follow them in secret, but the photoelectrical cells would’ve
revealed his presence, turning on the lamps in the ceiling. So he
did nothing but stare. The corridor continued straight up to reach
the end of the station. In that area were the crew quarters.

The couple stopped by
a door. Hassan whispered something, but it was impossible to hear
what he was saying. Anna tilted her head to one side, as if she was
pondering his words. Then her mouth moved and she nodded. He let
the door unlock and they both disappeared through it. It was
Hassan’s quarters.

When he was sure that
nobody else was out there, Robert ventured into the corridor. He
paused outside his room, but he couldn’t stop looking at Hassan’s
door.

He had figured there
was something between the two of them, but for too long he had
preferred denying the evidence to avoid hurting himself. He felt
his rage building. He wanted to break down the door and then … do
what? He pushed the image away from his thoughts. Little by little,
the physical pain was starting to lessen; the one in his mind would
follow suit very soon.

He whirled about and
walked back. He crossed the entire station. The sound of his light
footsteps on the floor was the only perceptible one around him. The
lights in front of him turned on and went off behind him. He had
the sensation he was completely alone. A wonderful sensation.

As he entered the
communications room and, after closing the door, took one of the
seats, he was already grinning, in a daze. The data scrolled by on
the large screen occupying the wall in front of him; they were
detections from the various satellites to which the system was
incessantly connected. No contact with Houston was expected until
eight in the morning. The commander used to send a detailed report
at the end of the day, at eight p.m., in which he summarised all
the performed activities. Another one followed twelve hours later,
with the purpose of informing mission control about the events
programmed for the day that was just beginning.

Since Dennis wasn’t
able to perform this task, surely Hassan, the second in command,
had sent the report a few hours earlier. Who knew how he had
explained the absence of the commander? Perhaps he had already
reported about his condition.

If that was the case,
they were fucked.

But that fact made him
laugh. The sense of well-being had become more intense; maybe it
might even improve. He placed a hand into a pocket and took out a
quite rudimentary cigarette and a lighter. He lit it and started
inhaling avidly.

Oh, yeah, it was
definitely better now.

With a rapid movement
of his fingers, he activated an animated icon on the screen. Sweet
classic music started spreading from the loudspeakers. Robert sank
into the seat, raising his legs and placing his feet on the
desk.

Another pull and the
music became even more beautiful. Now it seemed to come from an
undefined point on the top of his head and was flowing down, like
liquid, along his face, his neck and the remainder of his body.

It was a complete
pleasure.

The thing in the
bottom of his mind started pulsing, following the tempo of the
music like a metronome. Wrapped in iridescent colours, with each
beat it became bigger, expanding in his thoughts.

Robert.

He snapped up his head
and looked around. He was alone. He laughed and tasted the smoke
again.

Robert.

He laughed out loud
and let the notes lull him as he moved his left hand to the back of
his neck. He bent his finger, scratching his skin. The loudspeakers
quieted, but the music kept on playing in his head, as the screen
was filling with a radio signal. He didn’t worry about it.

You know what you have
to do, Robert.

He closed his eyes. He
knew.

She’d let the water
run down her body for at least ten minutes, before realising she
was staring at the shower’s wall, without doing anything.

She had woken up in
that foreign bed alone and that had been a relief. She’d thought to
get dressed and go back to her quarters, but Hassan had exited the
bathroom in that very moment, so she couldn’t find anything better
than rushing in herself. Now she was still there, hesitant about
how to behave. She would like to have stayed in the shower until he
went out, to avoid facing him, but she knew he would wait for her.
In fact, if she remained there too long, he would end up coming in
and asking her if she was okay.

How could she conceal
the sense of discomfort she was feeling? What had happened the
previous evening was the result of a day bordering on folly, but
most of all she had revealed too much about herself to the man, too
much about her father. She feared that might be turned against her.
The fact she had put aside her prejudices and diffidence for a
night hadn’t really erased them. They were back again, more alive
than ever, now that she had slept and cleared her mind.

If only she hadn’t
accepted that last invitation of his, and had gone back to her own
quarters. She had only done it to taste that moment of peace for as
long as possible. She knew that it might have been broken in a
second. She had desired him to ask her to stay and, when he had
done so, she had been happy.

Now, instead, she just
wanted to escape, resume the routine activities, as far as
possible, regain her space.

But who was she kidding? Considering Dennis’s
condition, from now on there wouldn’t be any routine anymore. The
launch of the
Isis 2
was
surely evaporated, the commander was dying, their life in Station
Alpha would change, leaving them with only uncertainty. And in the
middle of all that she had thought to
fraternise
with one like Hassan, as if her head wasn’t
already prey to the chaos.

She had to regain
control, yes. In the meantime another five minutes had passed. She
looked down at her hands; they’d become wrinkled from the excessive
stay under water. She left the shower and wiped the condensation
from the mirror with a towel. The bathroom was identical to hers,
but Hassan’s personal belongings, scattered more or less everywhere
in a jumble, revealed the difference.