These Are the Names (11 page)

The boy took a bus westward, and by that evening was already further from home than ever. He ran through the words of counsel he'd been hung with like talismans. Don't talk to strangers. Give policemen a wide berth. Be frugal. Avoid the company of people with red hair.

Around his neck was a string bearing an oval of blue glass, to protect him against the evil eye.

He slept in a corner of a bus station. He sat curled up against the wall, hiding himself in the shelter of his arms.

A guard woke him. He took him along to a cafeteria close to the terminal and bought him a spicy pastry and a cup of tea. The first buses of the day pulled in as an awesome blue unfolded across the sky. The boy slurped at his tea and felt protected for a time.

The guard gave him directions and he travelled on. In the next city he went looking for a coffeehouse called ‘Darius'. Strangers pointed the way.

He asked the barman about Nacer Gül. That was the name drummed into him; if he forgot that name, he was lost.

The man showed him to the back, where he waited amid buckets and crates for Nacer Gül to arrive. Gül was the gatekeeper; no one crossed the frontier into the other world without him. The boy waited until his thoughts died down and he forgot time.

With a great ruckus — the stamping of feet, and a bossy voice — Nacer Gül made his appearance at last. The door swung open. His head was shaven, like the children in the boy's village. Perched on his forehead was a large pair of sunglasses.

‘You're late, boy. We almost left without you.'

He laughed. The boy didn't move a muscle.

‘The money,' Gül said.

The boy held out the bundle to him, and his ringed fingers rustled through the banknotes. Gül stuck the wad in the pocket of his tracksuit. Money was something he dealt with offhandedly; it flew to him on obedient wings, so that he didn't have to do a thing. The boy would remember everything he saw. This was how he would be some day — the money would fly into his pockets, too, and his mother would be proud of him, of her son who had made a long journey and triumphed over circumstance.

The darkness of the trailer deepened; night must have fallen almost. A river of asphalt rolled by beneath them, the road never ending. At times they fell asleep with their backs against the cargo, but most of the time they stared wide-eyed into the darkness.
Everything will turn out all right. God is with us
.

Those who once possessed proof of identity now possessed it no longer. Nacer Gül had said they should tear up their papers. It was better to arrive without an identity in the country of refuge. A person with no name or origin overwhelms the protocol. Procedures bog down; the chance that you'll be allowed to stay increases. And so they destroyed the papers they had gone to such ends to obtain. Everything was formless now, except for the words of Nacer Gül, which were solid as coinage.

Now they are no one anymore. The woman who had to leave behind her suitcase looks back on her life in surprise and sorrow. She lives with her back to the future; the gentle glow of nostalgia has already spread over the memories of her hard life back there.

The men are willing to forget. They would, if they could, have placed not only their money and their fate in Nacer Gül's hands, but their memories, too. They want to move on. They are prepared to lose themselves, to chop their lives in two like a worm.

Countries and continents had once stood open to those seeking their fortunes, borders were soft and permeable, but now they were cast in concrete and hung with barbed wire. Like blind men, travellers by the thousands probed the walls, looking for a weak spot, a gap, a hole through which they might slip. A wave of people crashed against those walls; it was impossible to keep them all back. They came in countless numbers, and each of them lived in the hope and expectation that they would be among the ones lucky enough to reach the far side. It was the behaviour of animals that travel in swarms, that take into account the loss of individual members but will survive as a species.

The truck slowed. They saw the whites of each other's wide-open eyes. The truck crept forward; they heard voices, men's voices, and the barking of dogs when the truck stopped. The motor was still running. How could they have imagined they were invisible? Nothing but thin sailcloth separated them from the border guards and the dogs. How could the animals not smell their acrid sweat of fear, not hear their pounding hearts? At any moment the tailgate might open, and the men would come in with a flood of light at their backs. All the way at the back they would find them, drained with fear.

What was going on out there? Why were they laughing? Was it about them? Were they prolonging the torment on purpose?

A beam of light bored its way in boldly, as though taking a quick look around before the men themselves would enter. Everything resonated with the idling of the engine. The men seemed to be going away. Slowly the boy stood up; the man beside him grabbed at his arm to stop him, but the boy was already beyond reach. He squeezed his way through the crack between two stacks of pallets and stood, almost pressed against the sailcloth. On tiptoe, he looked through a rip in it, then pulled his head back quickly. A little later he looked again, longer this time. Then he crept back to his spot, careful not to stumble. His heart hopped about like a frog in his chest. He sat and held his face in the crook of his arm to muffle his heavy breathing. They heard the truck door slam. Hope sprang up. Then the voice outside came back. Dogs barked wildly, as though they had smelled blood.

The border guards were now so close that they could make out almost everything. Oh, the urge to just stand up and walk out, to put an end to the shrill fear. A sneeze, a cough, and all would be lost. Their lives had contracted to this narrow ledge: they could fall or they could reach the other side, but they had no say in it.

A shout, and the truck's door slams. Motion! The truck is moving, slowly at first, and then faster and faster. The tires zoom in abandon over the asphalt; none of the travellers dare to think the impossible.

Deeper and deeper into the night they drive. They know for sure now that they've crossed the border! Cautiously, they admit impressions of the luck they may have had.

A man leans over to the boy and whispers in his ear: ‘What did you see?'

‘Soldiers,' the boy whispers back. He thinks for a moment, then leans over to the man's ear again. ‘A fence, and cars.'

The man passes on the report to the others, a silver line of melody going from one ear to the next, their excitement filling the darkness. It's hard to keep the joy inside their bodies.

Each of them sits in the dark with his own imaginings, impatient, wanting to trade in a life as contraband for that of a person who decides for themselves where to go and where to stop, when to talk and when to be silent.

The truck slows again, this time to negotiate a curve, and then travels along a dirt road. They crawl along a bumpy track for an eternity, until the vehicle stops at last. Someone fumblingly lowers the tailgate, and coolness billows into the trailer.

‘Hey!' a man shouts. ‘Come on. We're there.'

They shake the sleep from their legs, stretch, and climb over the cargo towards freedom.

It is a clear, chilly night. The driver hands out cigarettes with a grin. ‘I almost pissed myself!' he says a few times in a row. ‘You people thought you were up shit creek back there, but what about me?'

Awkward as cattle leaving their shed in spring, they stand beneath the freshly scrubbed span of stars, and feel reborn.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Behind the names

‘Your feet,' Zita said. He lifted his feet. The nozzle of the vacuum cleaner slid beneath them.

A little later, she asked: ‘What's this? Can I put it away somewhere?'

Beg looked up. On the table was a package wrapped in newsprint.

‘It's for you,' he said. ‘A gift.'

‘Pontus!'

‘It's nothing much.'

Zita frowned. ‘As long as you don't go figuring …'

‘I'm not figuring anything.'

‘In a few days.'

‘I know.'

‘All right.'

She unwrapped the present.

‘A hairdryer,' she said. ‘How sweet.'

‘You deserve it.'

Her hand brushed his shoulder. Then she went into the kitchen, holding the hairdryer. Her butt had a nice wiggle to it, he thought; he liked looking at it. Her hair had once been black, but lately it had become streaked with grey. It wouldn't be long before she could forget about having a child. Sometimes he begged her for it, during the night's embrace. ‘A child. Of our own. You and me. Why not?' He heard the sadness in her laugh. ‘Come on, Pontus, don't say that.' She rolled to one side, he crawled up behind her and cupped a breast in one hand, beneath the nightie. More than having his lust sated, it was this he wanted: to feel her breathing slow and deepen, to wrap one hand around a breast and press his loins pleasantly against her backside. That was how he slipped into sleep, reassured. But not a night with Zita went by without him being awakened by her conversations with her mother in the other world. They would chatter about this, that, and the other. Beg could put up with anything from Zita, except for that jabbering about so-and-so's illness, ‘And did you know that Vaida's got another bun in the oven? Number seven already! Poor soul. But she's holding up well. You know what they say: God fits the back for the burden.'

He couldn't sleep through that, not with all the earplugs in the world, and so he would retreat to the living room until mother and daughter fell silent. He sat in the dark, smoked a cigarette, and had another drink while Zita's voice sounded from his bedroom.

‘Pontus, the phone!' Zita shouted from the bathroom. He was already in the living room, staring at the phone as it rang. No one ever called him at home. He got up from his chair and walked over to it, expecting the thing to suddenly stop when he got there.

He picked up the receiver and listened, as though to the sea roaring in a shell.

‘Pontus? This is Eva.'

His sister's voice. A foolish poignancy. The only other survivor of his past, she had taught him to read; come to think of it, what hadn't he learned from her in those early years?

‘Pontus? Say something.'

‘Hello, Eva. How are you?'

‘What did you call about? Tadeusz says you called.'

‘That's right … I was going through my book … An old address book … I saw your name and I thought … well, why not.' He was silent for a moment. ‘That's pretty much it.'

‘Ah, I see,' his sister said. ‘Well, things are going well here, thanks. All things considered.'

Silence rushed into the gap between them.

‘Tadeusz is going to school to become a mechanic,' she said then. ‘The security business turned out not to be his thing.'

Beg was relieved to find her less defensive than her son.

‘He kept falling asleep all the time.'

‘Who?'

‘Tadeusz. The night shifts were too much for him.'

A lazybones, just like his father, Beg thought.

Eva still drove a streetcar; it hadn't been easy for her, working such irregular hours and raising a child alone, but now that Tadeusz was grown up she was her enjoying her independence.

‘No man for me, never again,' she said. ‘All a bunch of big babies.'

They didn't talk about the things that had created the rift between them; they both wanted to ignore that. Maybe, Beg thought, the cause had become trivial. Maybe she was as lonely as he was.

He brought up the song about Rebekka and the roses, and said: ‘I sing it sometimes, it's so weird, it just popped into my mind. Do you remember it?'

It was nice to hear her laugh. ‘I haven't thought about that for years.'

‘I just found out what the words mean. It's a love song, someone told me. I figured you'd know how come Mama sang it for us. Your memory works that way. It's Jewish.'

‘Yiddish,' she said. ‘Mama used to sing it, that's right.'

‘Where did she get a Jewish song from, that's what I'd like to know.'

She was silent for a moment, then she said: ‘So that's why you called.'

Beg said nothing.

‘I wouldn't know,' she said. ‘It's funny, you coming up with that. They say the past comes back to you as you grow older, whether you like it or not. Is that why you've started singing old songs, Pontus?'

After talking to his sister he felt like crawling up against Zita's broad backside and burying his nose in her hair, but it was indeed not his time. Once, when he had tried to buy that time, one extra night, she had grown cold and hard, and said: ‘I'm not a whore, Pontus. What do you think, that I'm a whore?'

‘No, no, of course not,' he said quickly, even though he couldn't quite have pinpointed the difference. The situation was complicated, all things considered, and one he didn't want to think much about.