The Radiant City (27 page)

“So why is this different?”

Why is it so different? This is a reasonable question. It is different because it is three o’clock in the morning now and she does not know where her son is and she should know, and she has been afraid, more every day, of the way he slips through her fingers like angry smoke. “It is too late. He should be home.”

“Okay, so where does he hang out? You’ve called his friends?”

“Yes. I called. No,” she looks down, shakes her head, “I do not know many of them. They are not from this neighbourhood. I do not know them. There is no one to call.”

“Did you call the police?”

“For a teenaged Arab boy gone not even twenty-four hours?”
He knows nothing. As if they would care.

Matthew runs his fingers over his skull. “All right. Okay. Where does he go?”

“If I knew that, don’t you think I’d go there?” She has made a mistake calling him. She wants him to leave.

“Listen to me, Saida. I’ll go out and look for him, if you can give me some clue, anything, about where he might be.”

She tries to think, her mind a whirl of streets and doorways and parks and alleys and bodegas and fetid apartments in the
banlieue.
“He is often in Barbès, I think. He might be there, anywhere. There is a park, Square Léon. The boys hang out there. But any of the streets . . . out in the suburbs with a gang, if he’s gone out there he can’t get back, the metro has stopped—oh, I do not know!” She must calm herself. If she crumples now . . .

Matthew steps toward the door. “I’ll start there, then.”

She turns and reaches for her coat.

“I think I should go alone,” he says.

“No. I am going with you.”

“What if he comes home? What if he calls?”

She does not want to see the good sense in this, for if she has to stay, has to sit and do nothing, she will surely go crazy. “I cannot.”

“Look, Saida, I know you’re worried, but there’s really no reason to go off the rails. Joseph’s probably just running the streets with his friends, or maybe he’s with a girl or something. Believe me, sixteen-year-old boys can find a million reasons not to call their mothers and ask permission to stay out for the night. I’ll call you in an hour, but you need to stay here.”

He puts his arm around her shoulders and, whereas before she wanted only to scurry away, now it is different and she does not like that it is different. She wants to pull away and wants, at the same time, to grab the front of his jacket and bury her burning forehead there. The indecision means she stands still.

“It is okay,” she says. “He is fine. He is fine. You will call me every hour, or more, yes?” In her mind, she sees the minutes, a flight of steep stairs, each riser three-feet tall, climbing up into the night. She will never be able to haul herself up that far. She looks up at Matthew. His eyes, shadows and light, hold hers. “Please, Matthew. I am so sorry to involve you.”

He gives her a strong squeeze. “Look, no worries, all right? I’ll take a look up the street in Barbès, and call you from there, either way, okay? Write your number down for me. Tell you what, how about making us something to eat? When we get back I bet he’ll be hungry. I sure as hell will be. Soup or something, okay?”

She smiles a little. “Busy hands, is that it?”

“Empty stomachs is more like it.”

“Thank you,” she says and in her mind she sees herself kissing his cheek, feels the prickle of stubble under her lips.
No. This is only need. This is only fear.
She pats the front of his coat, buttoning the top button for him. “Thank you.”

On the street, he heads toward Barbès, and with every step his conviction that he is out of his mind grows. One tall, thin, white guy, roaming the streets of Barbès in the middle of the night is an invitation for trouble.

Why is he out here?
Because Saida asked me.
Saida who works so hard and came to drag me up from the pit. Saida, who was burned and is still beautiful. Saida who cooks lemon and chicken, serves customers, and washes dishes while her brother reads the paper and her father stares out the window and Saida, who still has time to grow jasmine in the courtyard. Saida, who smells of sandalwood and whose hair is like a black velvet rope. Saida.
Because she needs me. Because her son needs me too, maybe.

Think of the son. Don’t think of the mother
. Matthew remembers what it feels like to be one of the lost boys. Never-never land is not all it is cracked up to be. Especially if it never ends.

Paris this late at night is a different world. Vacant and hidden. The quiet unsettles Matthew. Few cars. A lone, half-frozen bicyclist along the boulevard de Rochechouart. Symbolically, ironically, inevitably, a lone black cat in an alleyway. As he crosses Rochechouart he notices the bums in the doorways, set up for the night in sleeping bags laid over cardboard and scattered with empty bottles and plastic bags, their half-wild dogs at the watch. The homeless can’t be forced into shelters if they have dogs, and so, of course, they all have them. Yellow eyes follow him as he walks, hackles raised, soft growls. Farther on, several men stand, waiting, watching for business, he assumes.

Turning right on rue de la Goutte d’Or he hears voices from somewhere nearby. His hearing becomes more acute with every step and he finally identifies the voices as coming from a television on a third floor. Metal security gates cover shop windows and graffiti emblazons the walls: dozens of different tags in red, orange, white and black paint. Light spills softly from a half-open shutter and along with it the voice of Cheb Hasni, the young
rai
singer gunned down by Islamic radicals in the streets of Oran a couple of years before. A pair of drug addicts, quietly nodding away the night, slouch against each other in front of the butchers. The air smells different here than in Matthew’s neighbourhood, full of leftover lamb—tagine, cumin and incense, mixed with the garbage and the smell of drains—
parfum des
égouts
.

He passes the police station just as two cars pull up. Out of the first the police haul a blond girl with a wide-boned Slavic face. She is no more than twenty, in tight jeans and sneakers, her hair a rat’s nest falling over her eyes, and she is handcuffed. Two more police get out of the front of the second car and two girls get out of the back—one Arab one African. These girls are not handcuffed, and the African looks pleased, the smile on her face and the swollen eye telling most of the story.

Even before he climbs the steps to the Square Leon, he hears more voices. Louder, slurry. Three drunks wrestle with a bottle, until it falls to the ground and shatters, the smash followed by loud curses. One man tries to slap another, only to misjudge the distance and land on his hands and knees, where he quietly, effortlessly, vomits. The soccer grounds are empty; the houses around the square locked up tight.

A group of young men loiter at the corner of rue Myrha. He counts six but cannot tell if Joseph is among them.

“Hey,” he calls, “Joseph?
C’est
moi.”

He is answered in French. “Who you looking for?” says a small man, with sharp eyes and two missing teeth.

“Friend of mine. Joseph Ferhat.”

“What you want?”

“Said I’d meet up with him, but I can’t find him.”

“We don’t know him,” says another man.

“You don’t know Joseph? I thought everybody knew him. Sixteen? Lebanese?”

“You looking for boys, you
pede
!
”

Matthew laughs at the accusation. “No, no, nothing like that.” It is important not to look flustered, not to move too quickly in any direction.

“Get out of here!”

Joseph is not there, and they are not going to tell him anything. He raises his hand to say thanks and walks away slowly, not looking back.

He searches a few more streets and sees no one who looks like Joseph, nothing but remnants of human beings and the scavengers that feed off them. It is a needle in a fucking haystack. At a public phone he dials Saida’s number. It is nearly 4 a.m., and no sign of him. Surely he’d be holed up with a girl somewhere by now. Matthew’s earlier protective instincts are replaced by a desire to strangle the kid when he sees him next.

In the phone booth, he wracks his brain for other options. There is someone who just might know, and although it rankles him no end to have to call Jack on this subject, he is desperate. He dials Jack’s number and for a moment, when a woman’s voice answers, he thinks he has the wrong number.

“Suzi?” he says after a pause.

“Oui?”

“It’s Matthew.”

“What time is it?”

“It’s late. Listen, is Jack there?”

“No. I got in a couple of hours ago. He is not here.” If she is miffed at Jack’s absence, it does not show in her voice.

“Joseph Ferhat hasn’t come home tonight. His mother’s going nuts. I don’t know where to look. Suzi, listen, do you have any ideas?”

“Why are you asking me?”

“I’d ask Jack if he were there.”

There is silence on the end of the phone, then the sound of a match scraping against a box and smoke sucked into lungs. “Suzi, you’re a mother. How would you feel?”

“I am sure he’s fine.”

“Where should I look?”

There is a long exhalation at the other end of the line. “There is a squat full of artists. It is on rue de Châteaudun, near the Gare Saint-Lazare, I think. They call it
La
Source
.”

“I’ve heard of it. Jack pointed it out to me awhile back. They put out some kind of a lit mag.”

“I think there is a party. I would try there if I were you.”

“Thanks, Suzi.”

“You did not hear this from me. It is not good for a mother to be looking for a child,” she says and then hangs up.

He decides to look at the squat, if he can even find it, and then call it a night. Maybe Joseph is hanging out on the Champs Élysées, maybe he is in an all-night club, maybe he is in jail, but there was only so much Matthew can do. He stuffs his hands in his pockets and heads back down rue du Faubourg Poissonnière toward rue de Maubeuge, which leads him directly to Châteaudun, at the church of Notre Dame de Lorette.

At the taxi stand in front of Notre Dame de Lorette, three drivers doze in their cars while the blue light on the stand’s column flashes unnoticed. Whoever is calling for a cab at this hour is unlikely to get one. Matthew walks in the direction of the train station, trying to remember exactly where the squat is.

He need not have worried. It’s unmistakable.

The squat stands on the south side of the street and is a large building, modern, though abandoned by the insurance company that once occupied it. The double glass-and-metal doors lead to a long hall lit with fluorescent lights, festooned, in honour of the season, in red and green tinsel garlands. To the right of the door a large storefront window displays a television playing a video. In it, a grey-haired stocky man in plaid shirt and jeans, who reminds Matthew of a Nebraska farmer, jumps up and down in what looks like a prison exercise yard, endlessly trying to reach a blue milk carton that hovers above his head. Behind the television, a pink neon sign blinks on and off: “This is not ART!” and then “This is ART!” Bass-booming music thrums from somewhere high up. When Matthew puts his hand on the glass, he feels it vibrate.

Behind the doors sits a large red-haired, red-bearded man, so fat his stomach falls across his thighs and his buttocks spill over the seat of his chair, which tilts back on two legs and leans precariously against the wall. He wears a red beret with a black band and a parka with a Canadian-flag decal of dubious origin. His eyes are closed.

Matthew taps on the glass and the fat man opens his right eye, screwing up his face as he does so. He regards Matthew for a moment and then closes the eye again.

“
Pardon
,” Matthew taps again.

“What?” the man says in English through the glass, not opening either eye this time.

“You going to let me in?”

“Why should I?”

“Why shouldn’t you?”

“Because I don’t know you. And because it’s very late.”

“I heard the party’s only just starting round about now.”

“You don’t look like much of a party animal. Who would have told you such a thing?”

“Jack. Jack Saddler.” He throws out the only name he knows.

The man’s eyes open slowly. “You know Jack?”

“I know Jack.”

In slow motion, the man tilts his chair onto four legs and stands. His legs are short, but his arms are long. It gives him the appearance of an overdressed orangutan. He puts his arms behind his back and stretches loudly, and then flips the lock on the door. As Matthew squeezes past him he says, “Jack’s upstairs if I’m not mistaken. Top floor. Don’t go to the first or second floor, or the third, or the fourth, or the fifth. Those are private. The party’s on the top floor.”