The Crane Wife (21 page)

Nothing. All she could hear was her own breathing and the ticking of the radiator.

What could it have been? It had felt oddly sorrowful, like a cry of mourning or heartbreak. Or perhaps a cry for a lover who would never answer–

‘Oh, please,’ she said to herself, shivering. ‘It was a fox. Not an operetta.’

Nothing continued to happen, so she gave up and left the bathroom, pausing only when she felt her stomach rumble again, queasily poking at her like a separate person down there–

No! Not like a separate person. Not anything remotely like that whatsoever. Just queasiness. That’s it, that’s all, queasiness. Aside from the whole having-sex-with-his-ex-wife-while-his-girlfriend-was-tending-to-her-mother thing, which, granted, wasn’t exactly a plus for him, Henri was a responsible and considerate man. He wouldn’t have dreamt of risking something like that. Besides,
she’d seen him put it on.

Had she?

‘Oh, shit,’ she whispered.

She tried to picture it happening, tried to see him doing it that night on her sofa, and yes, there he was in her mind’s eye, his hand rolling it down over himself as she unhooked her bra. But the whole episode had been so quick, so
unhinged
, that had she really seen it or had he just been stroking himself in the way that men seemed such prisoners to when they had their erections out in the open? And where would he have got a condom anyway? She didn’t have any in the flat and why would he be carrying one if he’d been with Claudine for the past couple of years–

‘Stop it,’ she said to herself firmly. ‘Just
stop
.’

Annoyingly, she couldn’t even call him to clear things up because they’d been quarrelling as well. Over JP, naturally. Henri wanted him to come to Montpellier for two whole weeks so he could be ‘properly introduced to France’.

‘No way,’ Amanda had said.

‘You cannot just say
no way
, Amanda,’ he said. ‘That cannot be how this conversation begins.’

‘He’s
four.
He gets homesick if we’re gone for a long afternoon. When he’s older–’

‘When he’s older, I will already be a stranger. I am a stranger
now
–’

‘No, you’re not. I can’t get him to
shut up
about you– ’

‘You see, you are trying to shut him up about me!’

‘
Henri
,’ she’d growled in frustration. ‘He is too young for a two-week trip–’

‘One week, then.’

‘He’s too young for a one–’

‘This is about me. You must admit this at least, Amanda. You are angry with me over what happened–’

Then she said, somewhat ironically given the current circumstance, ‘Oh,
God
, why are men so endlessly stupid about sex?’

They’d then spent a few minutes swearing at each other in French before hanging up with the issue of JP’s visit completely decided on her part and ‘still to be discussed’ on his.

She stopped by JP’s room now and looked in on her son. Still far too small for his new big-kid bed, he was sprawled as much as he could across a Wriggle duvet and even then he barely occupied more than a tiny corner of it. She went in and re-covered him.

‘
Ce sont mes sandales
,’ he mumbled, without opening his eyes. ‘
Ne pas les prendre.
’

‘I won’t, booboo,’ she said, kissing him on his sweaty little forehead, avoiding her cold sore. ‘I promise.’

He nestled back into his Wriggle pillow and was soon deep asleep once more. He was so beautiful there in the moonlight, Amanda found herself near tears again.

‘For God’s sake,’ she whispered.

At least being pregnant would explain all this weird emotional stuff lately. The jealousy of her father over Kumiko. The inexplicable yet tremendously upsetting feeling that somehow Kumiko was being taken away from her. It might even explain the intoxicating memory of Kumiko feeding her the rice pudding, the feel of Kumiko’s fingertips in her mouth, a connection utterly unexpected, utterly – as far as Amanda was concerned – taboo and surprising, but a connection that pulled at her very guts, so much so she occasionally put her own fingertips in her mouth to replicate it.

It was childish, maddening, but George marrying Kumiko felt like she had somehow missed the best chance of her life. Everything after would be diminishment. She still guarded the devastatingly beautiful tile Kumiko had given her (because
devastating
was right, wasn’t it? She looked at it and was devastated) with a fierceness that bordered on desperation. She kept it in a sock drawer now, hidden away and never taken to work again, and she didn’t speak of its existence to anyone, not even George.

If she was honest with herself, which was difficult because the truth was so markedly uncomfortable, she admitted she was probably guarding all these things – the tile, the fingertips, her jealousy – against the thin, flickering hope that one day Kumiko might share all her unknowable secrets with Amanda. And perhaps that meant one day Amanda might be able to share
hers,
to finally show someone the flaw underneath the carapace of her personality, to maybe, possibly, even discover it wasn’t a flaw after all . . .

Which was all impossible now because of
course
George would be the person Kumiko confided in now that they were marrying. No matter how dear her and Kumiko’s friendship might grow, Amanda would never be the one with whom Kumiko discussed all those impossible things. And that made her sad enough to well up,
again.
None of it made any logical sense, and oh God, if pregnancy was the explanation–

‘Mama?’ JP asked from his bed. ‘Are you crying?’

‘No, no, sweetheart,’ she said, wiping her eyes quickly. ‘It’s only the moonlight. It’s so beautiful, don’t you see?’

‘I am sometimes the moon. When I sleep, I am.’

‘I know,’ she said, brushing away a lock of his hair. ‘That’s why you’re always so hungry in the morning.’

He smiled and closed his eyes. She stayed for a moment to make sure he was settled – and to make sure she neither needed to cry nor vomit any more this evening – and headed back to her own bedroom, feeling her way down the darkened hallway, her thoughts crowding up despite her best efforts.

Because what if she
was
? Oh, hell, what if she was?

She put her hand on her stomach, not knowing how she felt about it in the slightest little particular. It’d be eternally awkward to explain to people why JP looked so very much like his brother or sister, and it would be a very,
very
long secret to keep from Claudine–

Who was she kidding? It’d be a disaster. A wreck.

Which was okay, because she
wasn’t pregnant.
The end. A single night of regretful sex that ended in pregnancy was another thing that only happened in movies.

Except it would have its good points, too, of course. She loved JP more crazily than she’d thought herself able, and a second boy or a girl . . .

She sighed. It was practically a case study of the term ‘mixed blessing’.

‘But you’re not,’ she whispered to herself, slipping back into bed, finding a cool spot in the sheets. ‘You’re not, you’re not, you’re not.’

Which was when the sound came again.

It was much clearer this time, so deep and sonorous and unearthly she practically leapt from the bed to look out the window.

She saw nothing, just stilled cars again. No movement, not even in the shadows, though there were plenty of corners where anything could have been lurking.

But her heart was still pounding because whatever it was hadn’t sounded like it had come from four storeys below. It had sounded like it was right outside her window. There was nothing there, of course, and not even a proper ledge on which something could have been standing, but the sound, the call, the
keen
–

Where had that word come from? It seemed right, though. It had been a keening sound. Old-fashioned, more than old-fashioned,
ancient
, but not ancient like Egypt, ancient like an old forest which you suspected was only sleeping. Something had keened right outside her window, and she didn’t know why or for whom, but it hit her heart so purely she gave up trying not to cry altogether, even as she lay back on the pillow, and it felt proper this time, like the right thing to do, the right sadness to be holding.

Because what was sadder than the world and its needs?

She dreamed again of a volcano, but this time she alternately
was
the volcano and being ravished by it – a word she thought of, even in her dream,
ravished
, yes – his hands trailing up her naked torso, his thumbs marking the upward curve of her burgeoning belly, reaching her breasts, which were now somehow under her
own
hands as she leaned her head back against the hills and cities of her neck, and feeling the importance, somehow, that the volcano should open his eyes, open them so they could be seen, but no matter her entreaties, he refused, keeping them closed even as he entered her, and before she could object, before she could demand again, he was doing what all volcanoes must inevitably do, erupting, erupting, erupting, the stupid pun of it making her laugh, deeply, raucously, even in the dream, even while it kept happening–

She didn’t wake this time.

Mainly because she didn’t want to.

19 of 32

And so comes the final day.

She has followed him to another war. The earth splits apart in seams and crevasses, spouting fire and lava and steam, chasing the volcano’s minions who race through the narrow streets of some city or other, killing its men, raping its women, dashing its babies to the pavement.

She flies through the carnage, the looting, the pillaging, skating her fingers through pools of blood. She weeps for the world that is their child but was never their child, she weeps for her love and wonders if it is lost. She does not wonder if it was true. It was true, for both, that much is obvious.

But is it enough?

20 of 32

The volcano is everywhere and nowhere in the war, all things to it at all points and therefore, in an important way, absent by ever-presence. She finds instead this army’s small general, one who thinks he leads his troops, when of course he no more leads them than horns lead a stampeding bull. His chin is covered in blood where he has been feeding on an enemy.

At the sight of her, the small general drops his enemy and bows to her respectfully. ‘My lady,’ he says.

‘You know me?’

‘Everyone knows you, my lady.’

‘You fight for my husband.’

‘Aye, my lady.’ He gestures to his disembowelled enemy, now grasping at his viscera and trying to shove them back into his body. ‘But so did he. We all fight for your husband, my lady.’

‘Are you not tired?’ she asks, stepping around him in a slow circle.

He looks up, surprised. ‘Aye, my lady,’ he says, his voice full of weariness and disappointment.

‘You do not seek war,’ she says, behind him now.

‘No, my lady.’

‘You seek forgiveness.’

He answers nothing for a moment, but when she comes round again to his face, he pulls himself up to full height and looks proud. ‘As you say, my lady.’

‘Shall I forgive you?’ she asks, slightly puzzled, a hesitancy forming around her.

The small general unbuttons his uniform and exposes the skin over his heart. ‘As my lady wishes.’

She goes to him. His eyes give nothing away. She is unsure still, and hesitates.

‘This cannot be done in anger,’ she says. ‘It can only be done out of love.’

‘Would it help my lady if I wept?’

‘Very much.’

The small general weeps.

‘Thank you,’ she says, and plunges two fingers into his exposed breast, piercing his heart, stopping it.

21 of 32

He does not die. He does not even thank her.

‘I shall bite out your eyes now,’ she says, the uncertainty lingering.

‘Please, my lady, as quickly as you can, to end my suffering,’ he says, and his words sound true.

But they suggest a different kind of suffering than the mere pain of death.

Confused, she moves to bite out his eyes, but at the last moment, she sees.

Deep within them, deep down past who this general is, deep beyond his youth and birth, behind the history of the-world-their-child who brought the general to this place, in this city/abattoir, on this battlefield, deep behind that–

There is a flash of green.

22 of 32

‘We are the same, my lady,’ says the volcano, looking out of the general’s eyes.

‘We are different,’ she says.

‘We are the same and we are different.’

She opens her mouth to contradict him, but finds she cannot.

‘You have betrayed me with this small general,’ she says instead.

‘And you have betrayed me with him as well.’ He steps from behind the general’s eyes, blasting away the flesh to spatter the concrete walls. Nothing splashes on her. ‘And you see, my lady, I still cannot hurt you.’

‘Nor I you.’

‘We must end this,’ he says. ‘We cannot be. We do not fit. Our end is only one of destruction. That is how it must be, that is how it always must have been.’

‘I cannot.’

‘You can, my lady.’

23 of 32

He kneels in front of her, his green eyes burning with sulphur and potassium, hotter than the centre of the earth, the centre of the sun.

And his eyes weep. They weep lava enough to fill an ocean. The city around them is reduced to ashes and boiling rock.

‘I have betrayed you, my lady,’ he says. ‘From the day we met until the seconds that pass as I speak this sentence, I betray you. It is what a volcano does, my lady, and I cannot change as certainly as I cannot harm you.’

The sky blackens. The world shudders beneath them.

‘And so, my lady,’ he says, ‘the day has arrived. Our last day. Ordained from when we first set eyes on one another.’

He pulls the flesh away from his left breast, landslides and lava spilling to earth. He exposes his beating heart to her, pumping with rage, bleeding with fire.

‘You must forgive me, my lady,’ he says.

‘I . . .’

But she cannot speak further.