The Inbetween People (8 page)

Daniel

C
HAPTER
10

I
’ve packed, she says. I’m ready. Even if we had to go suddenly I am ready.

She is dizzy with her plans. I look at my hands, dirty from working in the gardens, like Father’s always were when I was a boy and he held me as I tried to sleep, his calloused hands against my bare skin in the heat of the summer.

I’ve been very clever, she says. I’m sure no one has noticed. Even Karim. She leans against the gauze.

There are no loud visitors around us today. Instead there is just muttered whispering, the air is full of acceptance and resignation, the distant sound of a woman sobbing, and Sahar’s voice seems loud in the silence. I told my mother, she says. I raise my eyes to her. Stupid girl.

It’s okay, she says. I trust her. She understands everything.

Nobody understands everything.

She looks away from me. I had to, she says. I had to tell her. I want her to take care of my canary. And some other things too. I don’t want Karim to take him.

What did she say?

She understands. She won’t tell anyone.

She must have said something.

She just hopes you will be good to me. She looks up at the clock. I will come next week, she says. There will be last minute things you need to say to me. You may need me to do something for you? She glances around, at the other visitors. I won’t miss this place, she says.

Silence.

Avi, she says. Avi, you aren’t saying anything. Avi, what is it? Her fingers clasp her wrist and it becomes white under the grip.

I think of the beach. It’s not going to work, I say. I finger the leather strap of my watch, Father’s watch. I can’t. I’m sorry. I’ve tried.

Avi, she says. It has to work. We have to do this. There are no other options.

There are always options.

She jerks back in her chair and stands, glances around her, at the people sitting and muttering in the surrounding cubicles. A moth is fumbling around the bare light bulb over her head, she turns to me. You know I have no other options.

Please go now, I say, but she laughs, a harsh laugh, and the couple in the next cubicle stare through the wire. I’m not going.

Well, soon you will have to leave, I say.

Why, she says. She looks straight at me. What is this about? Is it about Saleem?

She stands before me. A woman, not much more than a girl, dark hair, eyes that know things about the world, a mole on her forehead, over her right eye, lips that look better without lip gloss, small hands that I picture against my skin; she leans forward, these hands outstretched, pressed against the gauze.

It’s the only thing I will ever ask you, she says. I promise. Never again will I ask anything of you. Please.

She has no hopes or expectations, no dreams of a detached house by the sea, a large garden with a south-facing patio to sit out on in the summertime. Such dreams are beyond her, standing as she does in a dark prison in a hot place, a place she does not like. She stands as she is, in complete possession of this November afternoon, as if it belongs to her, this place, me, and everything in it. She stands in front of me with dust upon her face, and when she rubs her eyes, she leaves a black streak of mascara across her cheek, the way she always does when she wears makeup, so that I feel a smile inside me for a moment. She doesn’t expect absolute happiness, doesn’t believe in it and I like her for that, like that she takes what she can from life and runs with it, clasping it to her. I like how she moves so softly within her world, how everything about her reflects him so exactly; and I want her to talk to me, tell me her plans, because when she does I listen to her voice and it feels safe, like when I was a young boy and my mother lay beside me as I was falling asleep, that feeling just when sleep was coming and I was safe and she was there.

Her fingers scratch at her cheeks. She turns her face toward me. Avi, I’ll make you happy. I’ll do anything you ask. Anything.

Zaki coughs behind me. We need a few more minutes, Zaki.

That’s not your right.

I know it’s not my right. I’m just asking a question, okay. He is reaching for his keys that hang on the belt around his waist.

Avi, she hisses at me, for I have antagonised him.

Have yourself a smoke, I say. I reach into my pocket and take out a packet of Gitanes. Have one, I say. They are good cigarettes. Father used to smoke one every evening. We are not allowed to smoke them here. No foreign cigarettes.

I know the rules, he knows the rules, he takes one, and as he takes it he looks me squarely in the eyes. He points the cigarette at me. Five minutes, he says. Five minutes and then it’s goodbye. Goodbye. He makes a kissing sound with his lips and she recoils.

She is silent. She doesn’t plead with me anymore, doesn’t look at me; she stares at the ground, the dust that has piled up, from people walking in and out, bringing the smell of autumn to this sterile place, for dust has a scent, I realise then. She moves her toes around in the dust making swirling shapes on the floor. She raises her eyes. I watch Zaki smoking and she watches him too until he is exactly halfway through it, then she turns back to me, but still she doesn’t speak.

We regard each other, and there is a light of recognition in her eyes, something like the last gleam of a match before the flame is snuffed out. For a moment she recognises me completely, knows me, and a part of me that I don’t want to recognise reaches out to that part; but then life goes out of her visibly, absolutely, so that she lets out a gasp, a deep breath, swallowed far into her lungs, and expels it in one go. She turns and walks away—I don’t call after her and she doesn’t look back.

I stand up, I want to call after her, but the words don’t come; I have to tell her something, a promise, an amount of how much I can give, I try to estimate that, but my mind is empty. I want to tell her about the dead, how they come back, how they always come back. I look at Zaki’s cigarette, it’s burnt down now, but he hasn’t stubbed it out, it’s between his fingers and his hand is halfway to his open mouth. He is watching the doorway. I watch the doorway too, long after she has vanished, so that the shadow it throws across the floor grows longer, the whispered conversations around me become less urgent, tired. I smoke too, and Zaki takes another one, and then eventually he begins to bring the other prisoners back to their cells, leaving me to watch the empty doorway.

M
Y
MOTHER
sent me a present for my tenth birthday. It is an important birthday, she wrote, you are now a decade old. I read the card first, it arrived three days before my birthday. I didn’t open the present until the morning of my birthday. Father granted me permission to open it but I couldn’t bring myself to tear open the paper she had touched. I imagined her wrapping it, her tongue against her lip as she concentrated on folding the paper around the present, the cool scent of her perfume, the sound of her other children squabbling in the background.

I opened it carefully, peeling away the layers of paper, my nails scraping against the tape, until eventually an oval snow globe fell out into my hands. There was a girl inside, a blonde girl with pink Wellington boots and anxious eyes, clutching the hand of a fat toddler in a red woolly hat and green coat. I stood with it in my hands, and Father stood behind me, and we both looked at it for a time, until eventually he found the words.

Shake it, he said, give it a shake.

I shook it and the snow began to fall around them, so that the two figures seemed to stand closer together. I watched them for a long time, shaking the globe sometimes, and then the snow would fall again. They stood in front of an old stone house that looked like a castle. My mother had two other children then, a boy and a girl, and it seemed to me on that day, my tenth birthday, that those were the children in the snow globe. When I imagined them and their life in Holland, it was those children I saw, it was that stone house they lived in; and they played in the snow, threw snowballs at each other, wrapped themselves in the immensity of that coldness, before returning to the warm house, the fireplace, warm toast with melted butter, thick vegetable soup, while I swam in the warm sea.

Sometimes I would take the snow globe, shake it hard and watch the snow falling on the frozen figures inside and stare at them, standing as they did in their frozen wintry world where summer never came, even when the white summer sky of my country burnt beyond them. I came to believe absolutely that they were indeed my mother’s children, her northern children, different from this barefooted, long-haired Middle Eastern child. I knew their kind, I had seen plenty of European movies. I knew how they dressed, knew they were well mannered, that they said excuse me and thank you, that they had Santa Claus and Christmas cake and holidays that seemed more fun than my own.

I always felt cold when I watched them. I always shivered, the coldness starting in my shoulders and running down my spine until I was cold all over. Even in the summer. And at school, when my teacher read about such places, those northern European countries with their secretive forests, endless grey skies, frozen winters, and roaring rivers, I listened with all my heart to her voice, for it spoke to me of my mother, her family, and their life there. I never stopped loving her, so that her touch remains upon my skin even today, even here.

Z
AKI
COMES
back, pulls a chair close to mine and lights another cigarette. There is ash on his moustache.

You ready to go back, he says.

Yes, I say. I am ready.

He leads me to my cell but he is different, moves quietly, and when I enter my cell he doesn’t slam the metal door behind me.

Do you need anything? he asks.

No, nothing.

The small window is open so that I hear the rain outside. It’s not heavy, just a dull sound, a constant presence, and I feel cold then, I hate the sound of rain. I lie on my bed for a time until all the light goes out of the day and I begin to write. I’m desperate now, I need to finish this before I leave, so that these stories and people remain here in the desert, perhaps where they belong, among the stones, and rocks, and cracks, to rest here, so that they reside somewhere at least; and maybe with time they will become less sharp, less glaring, kinder and more forgiving.

C
HAPTER
11