Rome Burning (74 page)

Una seemed not to sleep; certainly she intended that no one else should. If the pounding and stamping from the top floor stopped at all, that first night, it must have coincided with whatever fragments of sleep Dama caught without noticing. Sometimes it seemed merely stupid, ridiculous, like a child’s tantrum, except so much more relentless. And yet it was insidiously frightening, too. He thought of a mad beggar he’d seen once, banging his head methodically against a wall, over and over again. Some time before dawn Dama flung himself out of bed, and raced upstairs to do – what? He stood outside her door, a few yards away from her, incensed, powerless. No, he must not give in, he would not speak to her.

There were twenty people sleeping in the farmhouse, beside himself, Lal and Una. Some of them were too accustomed to sleeping in the clamour of factory machinery for Una’s efforts to trouble them much, but others were hollow-eyed and irritable in the morning. One of them, a large, tough man in his thirties called Baro, suggested, ‘It’s like she’s laughing at us. Shouldn’t we tie her up, or something, if we have to keep her here?’

Yes, he could have her tied up, except that the knowledge of having done that to her would be harder to bear than the noise.

The continual temptation to go to her, to try again to make her see, overcame him. After all he had to find some way of controlling her.

Una was flushed, breathless, lit with the perverse energy on the other side of exhaustion.

Dama said, ‘Listen, I’m leaving. There are things I need to see to; I never stay here that long. So you may as well stop. I’m not going to be around to hear you.’

Una smiled oddly. Her eyes were hard and feverish, and
looked very black. ‘How will you know what I’m doing, if you’re not here?’

At the time he didn’t know what she meant, and went away without saying more. But it was true, much as he resented it, she’d made him dread leaving the farm.

He behaved as if Una were far more dangerous than the others, as if she could turn herself into smoke and pour away through a crack in the door, as if she were a muscular giant who could fight her way out. Repeatedly, he checked the patrol under the window; his fingers kept straying nervously to the key from the newly installed lock. He kept it on him, in his pocket, and handed it over only when someone took up her food, which he had directed to be done in silence, with at least three men ranked outside the door. Yet Dama avoided talking about her with any of them, and so two days had passed before he learned of the next phase of Una’s campaign.

Already the atmosphere at the farm had changed. Mazatl was gone, but Dama thought he saw the same doubt in everyone. They did not distrust him yet to the extent of disbelieving what he had told them, on the contrary. Every precaution he insisted upon strengthened them in their belief that the prisoners were to be hated and feared. But they could not understand why, then, Dama did not do more to thwart and punish them. And so Dama did not seem quite so strong as he had, and the farm did not seem so safe with the three traitors contained within it. The upper floor of the farmhouse, the cellar, the garage all radiated malevolence. The freed slaves were all under threat, Dama along with the rest.

On the second day, Dama found two of them, Cosmas and Anna, who had taken the midday meal up to Una, standing on the stairs and chatting, both of them picking idly at a plate of bread and cheese.

‘What’re you doing?’ Dama asked sharply. ‘Isn’t this … hers?’ He hadn’t spoken Una’s name since she’d been shut in the room upstairs.

They looked guilty. ‘Seems like she wasn’t hungry,’ said Anna, with some shy, loyal hostility towards Una in her voice. ‘We didn’t think you’d mind.’

‘I don’t care what you eat,’ he said impatiently. ‘Did
she
eat anything?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Cosmas, lamely. ‘Nothing much.’

Dama felt a bright blast of instant, surmising anger crackle through him like as if he’d touched a live wire. He strode out of the house, leaving Cosmas and Anna confused and dismayed.

He found Paccia in the chicken-shed. She was a poor, beaten-looking thing, she’d never be good for more than packing grenades one day, never a real fighter. ‘You took her food up this morning,’ he said aggressively, accusing her. He had made sure that no one person had carried food twice to Una or the others – less chance of them striking up any kind of rapport. ‘Did she eat it? Did she eat at all?’

Paccia shrank back, bewildered. ‘No.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ demanded Dama, so fiercely that Paccia flinched as if under a whip.

Once more, he wanted to rush to Una immediately, though he hardly knew what he wanted to do or say when he reached her. He looked towards the farmhouse and thought ferociously, commanding her,
give this up
. He seemed to feel the force of his own will, something coiled python-like around the building, around her room, invisible muscles and tendons pressing, gripping. And he thought he could feel her, out of sight, but pushing implacably back.

Well, it still might possibly be that she was simply too tense and wretched to eat, as she had been the day of Marcus’ wedding, in which case it would pass. Dama had no confidence whatever in this comforting idea, but he forced himself to wait until evening before surrendering it. The hours dragged. He stayed out of the house, instructing some of the slaves who’d been there longest in engineering and controlling a fire. But he could not keep his thoughts away from her, clutching at the idea of her with something that felt like hatred. And sometimes his eyes were pulled to the little concrete box of the garage, where Sulien was. He was increasingly nervous that the prohibition that kept the former slaves from talking with the captive spies among them would at some point be broken. It would be terrible if Sulien heard of this.

Finally evening came. Improvidently, they’d killed some chickens, as if they were celebrating something. Dama opened the door of the kitchen while they were being cooked, so that the smell would carry up the stairs. He checked the food tray before it went up to Una’s room, and felt scarcely able to hold a conversation until it was time for the little team he appointed to go and bring it down. There was no need to inspect the food carefully; it was immediately obvious that nothing had been touched. The whole tray had simply lain on the floor for an hour.

Dama did nothing. She wanted him to come to her. This was an attack, with such weapons as she had, and though he had so many people on his side, so much more power here than she, he had little defence against it except trying to pretend it did not frighten him. But he longed even more than before to be able to see what she was doing, what state she was in. He found himself picturing, in angrily wistful detail, the kind of observation hatch in the door that would be in a real prison. It did occur to him that he could have a spyhole drilled in the wood, but even to do that seemed a defeat, a concession of territory to her. Before this he’d thought of moving her, perhaps placing Sulien in the upstairs room and Una in the garage, getting rid of the noise. Now, though, he needed it, he depended on it. Every knock and thud that came from above fell separately on his nerves, but he was always listening out, wincingly anticipating the next one, afraid of not hearing it.

And over the following days, hideously, he could hear her getting weaker. The dogged blows against the floor or the pipes grew slower, duller. He could feel the aching effort it took, as if in his own joints, he felt the fluttering heartbeat and breathlessness which sometimes forced her to pause, summoning strength. At night, the onslaught was punctuated by abrupt long silences, which kept him awake more effectively than the noise itself; he lay helplessly straining his ears for it to begin again.

Then one day he came into the house and there was nothing, she was silent. She had been silent when he woke that morning. And there was a flatness about this quiet that chilled him; he felt somehow certain it had lasted all day, as
if a more recent cessation would have left palpable janglings in the air.

He did tell himself that she could hardly have died, that would surely take weeks. But this thought seemed to fly away, weightlessly; it was not enough to hold against the wrench of panic that dragged him upstairs.

And in the first second she did look dead. She was on the ground, her legs lying skewed, her back propped against the wall like a bit of broken furniture. Her hair and skin looked dimmed, altered in texture, as if she’d lain there long enough to be covered in a film of dust. Her head drooped to one side; her eyes were shut; her mouth was a little open as if in a gasp of exertion or pain.

For a paranoid instant Dama imagined that it was a trick: she would spring up and charge impossibly past him, tear out of the farm in broad daylight. But despite this he was already running to her, trying to lift her, horrified. Almost by accident he felt her pulse working, slow and muffled under his fingers. ‘Una – please, for God’s sake …’

Una seemed to come awake with a little shudder. Her skin was very cold, and there was a strange smell about her, a stale chemical scent on her breath, like solvent fumes. She looked at him through her limp hair and said, in a surprisingly normal voice, ‘Let me go. Let us all go.’

Dama gave a little sob of relieved laughter. He realised she was not really as wasted as he might have feared – thin enough to look ill, certainly, but not yet grotesquely so, not skeletal.

‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘I will when I can, I promise. But not now. So why do this?’

‘Because I don’t consent,’ she answered, emphatically. ‘I will not stay here. I told you that.’

‘So you’d rather die? You’re going to kill yourself just to get out?’ asked Dama desperately.

She sighed, with a kind of weary patience. ‘You’d be willing to die, I should think, trying to make something happen? For this new clean world you think you can make? Or maybe you wouldn’t.’

‘Yes,’ he said, in a low voice, suffering a sting of hurt at
the idea that he might be willing only to sacrifice the lives of others.

Una shrugged. ‘So, then. Would you rather I died than let me go?’

‘Of course I don’t want you to die,’ he whispered.

‘I know you don’t
want
it,’ she said contemptuously. ‘But if it’s all fine and right to start this war, it shouldn’t be such a problem, should it? Not one person. How can you justify that?’

Dama grimaced. It was chiefly for her sake he’d been trying not to hear or think such things, it was horribly bizarre to hear them coming out of her mouth. ‘I still … I wish … I want you to understand.’

‘Well,’ she said laconically, ‘then we want the same thing from each other.’ She shut her eyes again and let her head fall back against the wall, conserving energy. It made her look worse, that numb stillness. A sunkenness around her mouth and eye-sockets became more prominent.

He looked away in exhaustion and urged, ‘Please eat something.’

Una nodded mildly. ‘When I’m out of here, I will.’

‘I’ll let you see Sulien,’ offered Dama, rashly.

There was a pause, and she looked up. But she said, ‘No. I’m not bargaining. I won’t stay here. You can let me go, or you can kill me. That’s it. That’s all you’ve got.’

Dama said, ‘No.’

Una got up, a slow painful-looking movement that seemed to turn her dizzy and made him grit his teeth to watch, and walked away from him. She climbed stiffly onto the bed and curled up, with her back to him, shivering again.

‘If you won’t eat,’ Dama warned her, ‘I’ll force you.’

Una lay huddled among the blankets as if she’d gone to sleep, and didn’t answer. Finally Dama left quietly, as if trying not to wake her.

Lal was crouched over the pipes, listening. Between the silent entrances of the people who brought her food, the only way of measuring time in the cellar was against the activity in the house above. She was trying to gauge how long the pipes stayed hot, and how much time she needed.

She pulled her sleeve down over her hand for some protection, and laid her wrist against the hot metal until she had to pull it away with a hiss of pain. She felt the heated flesh anxiously. Did that feel like a feverish warmth, or was it clear what she had done? It wouldn’t be enough just to lie on the ground and moan. It needed something more. Perhaps if she could wrap herself in hot cloth. She pulled off her dress and draped it over the pipes. She had wedged a cup of water as firmly against the heat as she could, and left it there for hours, but clearly it was not going to heat up enough to raise her own temperature if she swallowed it. Experimentally, she flicked the lukewarm water onto her face and into her hair, instead. While her dress warmed she dropped back naked onto the mattress, letting herself go limp, trying to remember the helpless, stewed lassitude of her illness.

It was at least worth trying.

She scrambled up to reach for her dress, and knocked questioningly on the pipes. It was a long time before any reply came: a single, weary beat. Una had been so quiet lately. Lal drummed a rapid little tattoo to her, thinking, don’t give up. We’re going to get out.

No more water was taken to Una’s room, unless it was mixed with sugar. If she was thirsty, she’d have to drink that – or milk, or fruit juice. Dama couldn’t think of a way of physically force-feeding her, at least none that he could bring himself to attempt, but he could do that. Yet he was afraid he might provoke her into refusing to drink, too. But to his surprise and brief exultation, Una seemed to accept that she’d lost a round. She didn’t take much, but those mouthfuls of sweet liquid surely must do some good, must slow the deterioration a little.