The Radiant City (3 page)

So, there will be no more writing today. But what then? He does not want to do what he mostly does. Mostly he sits and tries very hard not to remember things. Not Josh. Not the father. Not the daughter. Not Kate. Not his own father, brother, mother. Not Rwanda. Not Kosovo. Not Chechnya. Not so many places, not so many people. Not remembering them leaves very little room in his mind for anything else.

It is now eleven o’clock in the morning, and from the window, he watches the young man at Chez Elias
¸
a tiny café on the square. He wears a white apron and uses a long-handled brush to wash the glass. Now he whistles optimistically, but Matthew has seen him sitting at a table in the window, no customers in the café, poring over maps with a look of deep dissatisfaction on his face.

Matthew realizes he is jiggling his knee, tapping his foot, and he stops himself, because he knows from experience this nervous energy is not good for him. He tells himself he is adjusting to the tick-tock passing of time outside the crisis zones. He tells himself he is fine. He tells himself he should not have had that fourth cup of coffee. He tries to read the
International
Herald
Tribune
, a story about the North Africans, the
san-papiers
, who have occupied the Saint Bernard church in Barbès, demanding legal residence papers. It looks bad, with the government sounding tougher and tougher. It will not end well. He puts the paper aside. Folds it in a neat square and presses it flat. Looks around for somewhere to stuff his discontent.

The sweep of the clock’s hands is agonizingly slow; the voices of the children on the street below are needles in his ears. He briefly considers calling Brent, back in New York, but it is too early, and besides, he already knows what Brent will say. How’s the book coming along? Come on, pal, get yourself together.

Deciding what to do in a tourist town when one is not technically a tourist is a wretched task. Matthew has seen the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame on previous trips; he has chased the ghosts of Joyce and Hemingway through the cafés and bookshops. He does not want to stroll up the Gap-and-Planet-Hollywood-infested Champs Élysées. He certainly does not want to go to a museum. He begins pacing, which is a bad sign.

Jack Saddler
.
Perhaps it is the morning’s work, the memories of Sid and Carl that make him think of Jack Saddler, but the name now springs to mind and he is surprised he has not thought of it before. Jack Saddler. Vietnam vet, ex-mercenary, sometime combat photographer. The last time he saw Jack, back in Kosovo, he had said he was heading to Paris, in need of a break. Jack Saddler, who knew a thing or two about lugging a sack of skulls.

France Telecom proves helpful and a few minutes later Matthew dials a number for a mobile phone.

“Hello?”

“Jack?” This is a lot of noise in the background.

“Who’s this?”

“Matthew Bowles.”

“Hey! You in Paris?”

“Yup.”

A moment’s silence and then, “How you holding up?”

“Fair.”

“I can imagine.” The sound of car horns. “Fuck off! Not you, Matthew. You’d think we were in Tehran the way the French drive. Can you hear me?”

“I can hear you.”

“Tell you what, you free later?”

“Absolutely.”

“Meet me at this bar I know. Called the Bok-Bok.” Jack chuckles. “You’ll like the place. It never closes, and no one forces conversation if you don’t feel sociable, know what I mean?”

“Just give me an address and a time,” Matthew says.

When he gets off the phone Matthew looks at his watch, an then he takes a sleeping pill and strains toward unconsciousness until evening.

Saida Ferhat wakes up as alert as a fox with the sound of hounds on the wind. It has been this way for a long time, started only weeks after her marriage to Anatole twelve years ago. It does not matter that, since Anatole is gone, she no longer has to worry about dodging an early morning boot thrown at her head. Waking this way has become a difficult habit to break. She waits for her heart to stop pounding, and then slips her legs from beneath the blankets, and pushes her wide, strong feet into the thick socks that serve as slippers. She wraps her dressing gown around her and quickly braids her hair, so that it hangs in an arm-thick rope down to the swell of her buttocks. Once, her hair had been black as the inside of an ebony box, but now there is silver in it. A strand here and there, and there another. Each one witness to a worried night, a wary day. At thirty-six, Saida suspects she will be snow-topped before she becomes craggy-faced.

She pulls the lapel of her robe up to cover the scars on her neck. It looks as though the skin is as malleable as clay there, and a sculptor with no talent for creation has pushed it and pulled it, finally given up and left it unfinished. She flexes and straightens her right hand. The skin over the veins, stretched across the knuckle bones, is unnaturally smooth, and in the morning it is stiff, itches and pulls, no matter that she rubs almond and jojoba oil and aloe in each night.

She goes to the bedroom door and puts her hand against the jam as she opens it, trying to be quiet for her son Joseph who is sixteen and sleeping on the couch in the room that serves as living room, dining room and kitchen. He did not get in until too late last night, and Saida knows she should be angry with the boy, running the streets, hanging out in Barbès, smoking and slouching around like a thug. She looks at him, and in sleep his face is sweet, beautiful almost—his soft lips open, his perfect skin flushed. He looks nothing like his stepfather Anatole, who has thick features and a low hairline. Joseph looks like his father, Habib, buried fifteen years ago in Lebanese soil in a grave beside his Uncle Khalil—his eyes are thick-lashed and his nose is long and fine. Only his lower lip is imperfect. A slight malformation there; at the bottom right it looks perpetually stung and swollen. Saida has told him since he was a toddler that Gabriel, archangel of the cleansing fire, must have kissed him there. It makes him more beautiful, she says.

It is all she can do not to reach out and brush her hand over Joseph’s head, the hair fashionably shaved as though he were a prisoner. Whatever anger there had been evaporates and she lets him sleep.

Saida uses the toilet and washes her face, brushes her teeth. She then leaves the apartment, stepping out into the dingy hall. Someone has ground a cigarette out on the floor and left the butt. A filterless Gitane and so it must be the fat man who lives with his ferret at the end of the hall. A filthy man. A filthy animal. Saida uses a tissue to pick it up. The man would shit in his own bed, she thinks. Two doors down, she lets herself into the apartment where her father and her brother, Ramzi, live. This apartment is also two rooms, with the men sharing a bedroom. The main room is slightly smaller than hers and there is a table with four chairs. There is also a larger arm chair, bought second-hand for her father, covered in gold-and-blue damask, somewhat stained, and a round brass-topped table on which stands a silver teaset with a samovar that is not real silver. The teaset is the last remnant of life in Damour, of her mother’s good taste and of promises betrayed.

Saida boils the coffee and sets out bread, cheese and oranges. Elias, her father shuffles out of the bedroom, adjusting his dentures. They do not fit properly and they hurt him, she knows, but he is too proud to go without them. His hair sticks up at odd angles and his eyes have dark shadows under them.

Saida worries about her father, who has never found his way in this country, never healed—as though anyone could—from the loss of so many family members. His wife. His parents. His younger son, Khalil. His daughter-in-law, Farida. His son-in-law, Habib. His grandson, his namesake, Little Elias. He walks through the world now, his ear cocked to the cries of ghosts. Nor has he coped with the fall in status. No longer a civil engineer, respected, a landowner—but a café keeper, and less, the old man who sits by the door. She knows he misses the field, the oranges and the sun. She knows he misses being a man who understands his world. He is so often baffled now, sits gazing out the window.

He kisses her on both cheeks, pats her unscarred arm. “Good morning, Daughter.”

“Did you sleep?”

He raises his eyebrows and makes a tsk
-
tsk sound. “
La.
Two hours, maybe three.”

“So go back to bed, Father.”

“Give me coffee. I’ll be fine. An old man’s complaint. A lack of sleep is nothing in this world. Nothing.”

Saida pours the coffee, sweetens it and hands it to her father. He blows on it noisily and then sips. “Good. Your brother sleeps like a drunkard. Tanks could roll through the living room and he’d hear nothing.”

“Is he up?”

Elias makes a face.

“He’s going to miss the bread man.”

“Get him up.”

Saida goes to the door and opens it. “
Yalla!
Ramzi! Up!” Her brother lies on his back on one of the two narrow beds, long arms and legs dangling over the sides, his mouth open. She shakes him on the shoulder. Without waking, he reaches between his legs with both hands. Through the thin blanket Saida sees he has an erection and she feels blood come to her cheeks, bringing with it a flush of resentment. She slaps his arm. “Wake up! You’re late again.” His eyes spring open.

“What?”

“Get up, Ramzi. The bread man will come and you will not be there. What is he going to do? Leave the pita on the stones?”

“I’m not your son, Saida. Get Joseph up if you want to bully someone,” he says, but he sits up and scratches his head, a sure sign he’s moving in the right direction. “What time is it?”

“Seven-thirty.”

“Shit.” He scrambles out of bed. “I need a shower.”

“Yes, you do,” she says, wrinkling her nose as he pushes past her.

She goes back to the kitchen and pours more coffee for her father, puts food on a plate for him. “Do we have grapes?” says Elias.

“No grapes. Have an orange. I have to get Joseph up,” she says.

“Are you taking me to the café, or is Ramzi?”

“I’ll take you.”

“The sheets should be changed today.”

“I know, Father. You don’t have to always tell me,” she says as she leaves.

Back in her own apartment, Joseph has not yet stirred. She runs the back of her hand along his cheek. “Wake up. Come on. Wake up.” He moans and turns away from her. “No, no, you don’t. Up. You have to go to school.”

“No school today. Teachers are on strike,” he mumbles into the back of the sofa.

“You are a liar and a lazy boy,” she says, but her voice is not angry.

Joseph tries to hide a smile. “Donkey boy.”

“Yes,
walid
himar.
Now get up or the donkey will bite your ass.”

“Oh, that’s terrible!” he laughs at the pun and rolls off the couch as his mother goes into the bedroom. “I have to dress and get down to the café. Make sure Ramzi meets the delivery. And listen to me, Joseph,” she calls to him as she pulls a navy blue dress from the closet, “I mean it. You go to school today. All day. And come to the café as soon as you’re finished. I want to see what the homework is.” She hears him in the bathroom. “Do you hear me?”

“I’ve got soccer after school.”

Saida knows this is not true. She wants it to be true, but she knows he does not go to soccer, although it is an excuse he uses often. There are never any soccer clothes to wash. Never a soccer ball in the house. As far as she knows he owns no soccer shoes though he says he keeps them at school.

She does not want to call his bluff and telephone the school. Although she would never say this to her son, she dislikes the teachers at his school almost as much as he does. The tone of voice they use, as if their mouths are full of sour pickles, makes it clear they hold no respect for her—just another Arab woman raising a child alone, and one who bears the taint of her hardscrabble life in the texture of her very skin. The headmistress, Madame Brossard, lumps her into the same stew with Algerians, Tunisians, Moroccans. How can she explain who she is to the Parisians, who never go into Barbès, let alone beyond the pé
riph
é
rique
, into the housing projects where most of the immigrant population live? Her father once an engineer, her mother once a teacher just like them. Saida speaks three languages, how many do they speak? It’s no use, and she suspects it’s as little use for her son, who doubly condemns himself because he makes his friends among the
beur
s, those hard-eyed, slouching, baggy-clothed boys who try so hard to look like American rappers and who everyone assumes steal wallets on the subway whether they do or not. And her son does not. Of this she is sure.

She pulls her tights up under her dress. “I will call the school, Joseph; I will find out if you have soccer or not. Don’t make me do that.” He says something she can’t hear over the flushing of the toilet. “What?”

“Call if you want. I have soccer.”