The Radiant City (34 page)

She rinses her hands under the tap and wipes them with a paper towel as she crooks the phone up next to her ear. “
Oui? Allo?”

“Is this Madame Saida Ferhat?” A man’s voice. Deep. Official. Her heart skips.

“Yes.”

“This is Inspector Bertrand of the BDM. We have your son Joseph here.”

The BDM. Brigade des Mineurs.
The Police Youth Brigade.

“What has happened? What is wrong? Is he all right?”

Anthony reaches for her, and she holds up her hand to ward him off.

“He’s fine. You need to come and get him. We’ll want to have a chat. We are on the quai de Gesvres. Perhaps you know where?”

“Where are you?”

His voice is impatient. “Quai de Gesvres, madame. At
Hôtel
de Ville Metro. You will be coming now, I assume.”

“Yes,” and she wants to tell him she has never been there before, never to a jail to pick up her son, or for any reason, never to the Office of Public Assistance, but he has already hung up.

“What is it?” says Ramzi, who has come up behind Anthony. She looks from one face to another, to her father sitting at the table near the counter, his coffee cup half way to his grey lips.

“Joseph. He is at the police station.” Her voice cracks. “I have to go. Now.”

“You want me to come with you?” says Anthony.

“No, I will go with her,” says Ramzi.

“No one will go with me,” she says and she grabs her coat and runs headlong into the street, where car horns and her brother’s voice calling after her barely register. She runs up the street, her heart racing, her fingers tingling, her breath short.

In the metro there is a delay, a passenger is sick and Saida bites her knuckles to keep from screaming. There is no air in the metro and the woman in front of her smells of cigarettes and coffee. She stamps her foot and the man next to her takes a step away. She transfers at Concorde, cramming her way onto the car, pushing at rush-hour commuters who huff with disapproval.

At
Hôtel
de Ville the square in front of the mayor’s office is oddly empty after the crush in the metro. The people crossing the square hurry, with their heads down into a wind that has come up, its cold scent foretelling rain. The sky is a charcoal glower that nearly matches the dark rooftops of the ornate building. Statues of soldiers holding flags stand guard on the roof peak. Statues in every niche and along every ledge. A building guarded by heartless stones. The lamps are old, wrought iron, each post holding four glass chambers that flicker on when Saida half-jogs past as though they are security lights searching for her.

At the quai de Gesvres the traffic going across the bridge from the
Île
St. Louis is backed up into gridlock and the horns scream. The building she seeks is a new one and looks severe, harsh, impersonal. She puts her hand to her heart and says a quick prayer as she skitters up the steps. The door is heavy and she must use two hands to pull it open.

Inside the air is overheated and dry. It smells of men, sweat and cigarettes. Police walk about as though nothing upsetting happens here. Three Eastern European-looking women sit on a bench against the wall. They seem old and tired, like potatoes that have sat too long in the bin. There is a glassed-in booth and a man presides behind it talking into a phone. She waits for him to finish.

“Yes?” The man has a large nose and he puts his finger in the right nostril, flicking.

“I am Saida Ferhat. I was called. My son is here.”

“Name?”

“Saida Ferhat.”

“His name.”

“Oh. Of course. Joseph Ferhat.”

“Wait there.” He points to the bench where the three women sit.

There is no room for her on the bench and so she stands next to it. The women talk to each other in a language that may be Russian and do not look at her.

After a few minutes a small policeman comes out of a door with a file in his hand. He holds the door open and calls her name. She steps forward.

“Come with me, please.”

He does not say anything else, and Saida follows him down a hall. There is a large room to the left full of desks and computers. On the right are more doors. There are more police here and there are boys sitting on chairs. One is wearing handcuffs. Some are smoking. Some are Arab. Some are not. One is crying and one is trying not to. One lounges with his legs far out into the corridor. The policeman kicks his foot as he walks past and tells him to sit up. The boy does.

They go into a small room where there is a metal table and four chairs. He indicates she should sit down. When she sits she holds onto her purse tightly so the shaking in her hands does not show.

“Madame Ferhat. I am Inspector Bertrand. As I said on the phone, we have Joseph here.” He is a tidy man, this policeman, with hair in a crewcut, his scalp showing beneath. He has small hands and his nails are very clean. There are lines around his dark eyes, but not so much between his brows, which means he must smile a good deal, although he is not smiling now.

“Yes.”

“He was detained by the police on the Champs Élysées with two other boys.”

“What was he arrested for?”

“I didn’t say he was arrested. I said he was detained.” There is almost a smile.

“What was he doing?”

“Do you know what tagging is?”

“No.”
Was he cutting tags off things?

“Tagging is when they spray paint something, graffiti if you like, on the walls. But it is not mindless graffiti. It has a meaning. A way of staking out territory. Rather like dogs. Each tagger has a special symbol. This is his ‘tag’ you understand?”

“Yes. I think so.”

“Good. Is your son in a gang, madame?”

Saida’s purse drops to the floor. “No! Joseph is a good boy. He is not a gang boy.”

“We have all the tags, all these images, in a computer, madame. We know to whom they belong. This particular one is the tag of Rashid Charef. He is a known member of one of the Aubervilliers gangs,” he said, naming one of the more dangerous
banlieue
to the north of Paris.”

“But Joseph is not in the
banlieue
, there must be a mistake.”

Inspector Bertrand taps his pencil on the tabletop, turning it in his short fingers so that first the eraser touches, and then the graphite point. He watches the pencil turn as though this movement is out of his control, something apart that he merely observes.

“We do not believe there is a mistake, madame. Rashid Charef was with your son.”

“God! This cannot be true!”

The policeman shrugs. Then he walks around the desk and picks up her purse and, handing it to her, says, “Is Joseph’s father with the family?”

Saida blushes and adjusts the collar of her coat over her scars. “No. I am with my brother and my father. There are good men in Joseph’s life.”

“That’s good. Very good. Madame Ferhat, I’m going to be straight with you. Joseph had a can of spray paint in his pocket. We found it on him. But he wasn’t doing the actual tagging. At least not when they were seen. Rashid was, and another boy, who is also known to us. Your son has not been apprehended before. He has no record.” He sits on the edge of the table and leans forward with his arm across his chest so that their eyes are almost level. “Yet. This is a crucial day for your son, madame. And for you. This day I am letting him go home with only a warning. The next time we are not going to be so kind. And now his name is here, with us, you understand. We will know him the next time. You do not want us to know him. Do you understand?”

“I understand.” She wishes he would not sit so close to her. His small eyes never leave her face, but trap her, pin her, and she cannot break away.

Abruptly, he smiles, pats her on the shoulder and stands up, moving to the door.

“I’ll go get your son,” he says.

Saida is left alone in the little room. Her knuckles are white on the straps of her purse. Her breath comes in small puffs, as though something thick and rubbery wraps around her lungs. She cannot move the weight with her breath.

When the door opens behind her she jumps up. Joseph is in the door, taller than the inspector, who holds him by the upper arm. There is a bruise on Joseph’s cheek. She wants to press her palm to that bruise, to pull all the blood out of the darkening stain. She wants to slap him.

“Hi,” he says.

“Oh, Joseph,” she says.

“You have to sign a few papers and then you can take him home,” says the inspector. “Let’s go.”

They walk down the hall past the boys. Following behind them, Saida sees one of the boys wink at Joseph, and smile. She has never seen this feral-looking boy before, with his bad skin and bald head and his gold tooth. She stops in front of him and says, in Arabic, “And where is your family to come for you, tell me that?” But the boy just looks at her as though she were a stone, a tree, a wall.

“Madame Ferhat,” the inspector says, “do not tease the animals, please.”

She signs a paper that says she has been fully informed of the incident and that her son is in good physical condition and has not been harmed and that he has been warned.

“You’re lucky we’re not making you pay for the cleaning,” says the inspector at the door. “You’re lucky you’re not scraping dog shit from the sidewalks for a month or two.”

“What do you say, Joseph?”

“What?” He looks at her blankly.

“I said . . .” she grips his arm and pinches, but he does not flinch. “What do you say? You do not thank him for not charging you? For letting you go home instead of to the detention centre?”

“Thank you,” says Joseph, but he skews his eyes away to the left as he says it.

“Don’t come back,” Inspector Bertrand says as they step out. “Make me lose my bet.”

They do not speak on the way home. Saida begins to speak a hundred times but the words catch behind her teeth and twist into screams, and so she clamps her jaws around them. She manages not to cry until she gets off the metro and crosses le boulevard de Rochechouart to rue du Faubourg Poissonnière. Then the tears spill out. She wipes them away, but they are faster than she is and soon they drip down her chin.

“
Imma,”
Joseph says, and he puts his arm around her.

“No,” she chokes.

“I’m sorry.”

“No,” she says and tastes salt.

In the apartment, she lurches into her bedroom and closes the door, saying only, “Call your uncle. Tell him what has happened. You tell him.” She lies on the bed, pulls the pillow over her head and cries herself to sleep.

It was the worst kind of night, not one in which Matthew could not sleep precisely, but rather one when he could not stay asleep. He would fall unconscious and suddenly awaken ten minutes later, his stinging nerves hyper-vigilant; then he was wide awake for half an hour or more of restlessness followed by ten minutes, black and finally the giant, full-body twitch. At five o’clock, he gave up and stood in a warm shower until the ghosts melted down the drain.

He leaves the apartment before nine, stalking a landscape that fits his mood and at last wanders over to the Medici Fountain in the Luxembourg Gardens. He sits on a green metal chair by the side of the long reflecting pool that is surrounded by plane trees. At the end of the pool in a tumble of stone looms the statue of Polyphemus, the jealous Cyclops, spying on the lovers Acis and Galatea as they embrace. Stone walls border the pool, rising as they approach the statue. And at the same time the ornamental vases on the wall get smaller, creating an optical illusion that the water slopes downwards. Matthew meditates on the brooding, disturbing statue. It is the moment before murder. Its stasis is a mercy for the lovers, however it is a cruel piece of amber in which to catch Polyphemus, doomed forever to watch his beloved, the uncaring Galatea, in the arms of the man she has chosen instead of him. In the myth there is no such reprieve for love or for revenge, because moments later, the tale tells, Polyphemus lets out a great anguished cry and Galatea escapes by flinging herself into the sea, but Acis is not so lucky. The Cyclops hurls an enormous boulder at him, crushing him to death. The place is a reminder of the inevitable slaughter of joy, a bower dedicated to melancholy.

Matthew’s muscles begin to relax as he sits there staring at the moment just before brutality wins. Yet he cannot help sympathizing with the Cyclops. Betrayed by the tyranny of unrequited love, he could not help what he became, neither his nature nor his horrible passions. Matthew wonders whether it is his compassion for these volatile, malleable creatures, irrevocably transformed into brutes that cripples him. He wonders too, if he is becoming one of them.