The White Guinea Pig

by Ursula Dubosarksy

  ‘Embroidered rugs,’ said the man behind the counter thoughtfully.

  ‘Preferably eastern African,’ Marcus continued. ‘My mother has a particular interest in Kenyan handicrafts.’

  This sounded most unlikely to Violetta, now she had met Marcus’s mother. She more than suspected that Marcus was one of these people who buy presents for other people that they would like to receive themselves.

  ‘Eastern African embroidered rugs,’ muttered the man, obviously unwilling to admit they had no such thing.

  ‘Or tribal music of Zimbabwe,’ suggested Marcus, to show he was not being difficult.

  The man nodded, a blond lock falling over his tortoise-shell glasses. ‘Come this way,’ he said, with a sudden and masterful gesture, walking briskly down to the back of the shop. ‘There might be something here for you.’

  It didn’t take Violetta long to realise that this was going to be a prolonged evening, and one in which her advice was not going to be called upon with much frequency. Marcus was telling the man, whose name was Ted, according to the label on his red shirt, all about his long-term interest in African needlework, and how waterways of the Gobi desert was not quite the same thing. Ted was undaunted, however, and optimistically showed him a book on Egyptian cuisine, with the same admirable spirit as an estate agent who shows the client a two-storey shop with a spacious courtyard when what they asked for was a three-bedroom house with a lockup garage.

  ‘A beautifully presented book,’ remarked Ted, flipping over the glossy food-filled pages.

  ‘Ah, yes, the Moroccan influence …’ murmured Marcus non-committally, scanning the index at the back.

  Why on earth did Marcus ask her to come? If he really wanted her advice, she would have suggested getting his mother some fragrant drawer liners, or even some crystallised ginger, of which she had noticed the older generation was peculiarly fond. That’s what she was going to get her mother, anyway. Not that her mother was quite as old as Marcus’s. You couldn’t really compare the two at all, come to think of it, apart from the fact they were both mothers. But that must be bond enough, surely.

  Ted and Marcus had somehow gotten onto the subject of the spawning of tree frogs, and Violetta found herself wandering away. The shop was long and deep, with cards hanging above the aisles to tell you what category you were in, like in the supermarket, although instead of ‘Baking goods’, ‘Deodorants’, and ‘Confectionery’, there was ‘Australiana’, ‘Horror’, and ‘Sociology’. Violetta came to a stop in the ‘Humour’ section. She looked along the row at the various books designed to make you laugh, with pictures of people sitting on toilets or cats hanging upside-down from rafters. Then she noticed with a frown several copies of a sombre edition of On the Origin of Species. Surely that must be a mistake, unless …

  ‘Hello, there!’

  She swung around, her hand dropping down from the book. A man—well, a boy, really—stood there smiling at her. He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt with a slogan on it, and he seemed somehow familiar.

  ‘Hello,’ she replied. Perhaps he didn’t look familiar, perhaps he was a salesperson, or a Mormon.

  ‘You live next door to Ezra Perlman, don’t you?’

  Ezra Perlman. She had never known Ezra’s last name. It was rather beautiful, and suited that silent, oyster-like family.

  ‘Yes …’ she began, thinking. It was not difficult now to make the connection—she and Ezra had very few things in common. ‘You were there last weekend, weren’t you? At Ezra’s? With all those people.’

  This was the boy who had waved at her, as she had stared at him through the kitchen window.

  ‘Yes.’ Simon held out his hand to be shaken. ‘Simon.’

  Violetta took it. ‘Violetta,’ she said.

  ‘I thought you might be coming in to the meeting,’ said Simon.

  ‘Oh well.’ Violetta was not actually sure what the meeting had been about.

  ‘Are you interested in Animal Liberation?’

  ‘Oh well,’ Violetta repeated, nonplussed, and added truthfully, ‘I suppose I’m interested in most things.’ Except eastern African embroidery, she thought with a disloyal pang.

  ‘Have you read this?’ said Simon, pointing at On the Origin of Species.

  ‘Well, parts,’ replied Violetta cautiously. Perhaps he was a Mormon, after all, as well as an Animal Liberationist. And what did Animal Liberationists think about evolution anyway? They might have some extreme theory that showed it all to be a human conspiracy against the so-called lower orders of life. She did not especially want to get into that kind of conversation.

  ‘I’m studying Scandinavian languages, actually,’ said Simon, as if this were somehow obscurely relevant.

  ‘That sounds very clever,’ suggested Violetta, relieved to abandon the question of evolution, but Simon grinned at her, rather endearingly.

  ‘Well, I’m not much of a student, you know,’ he confessed. ‘Not much concentration. I should give it up, really. But I suppose once you start these things, you just have to keep going.’

  Violetta did not suppose so at all. It seemed to her a very unsatisfactory way of running your life—the sort of thing that Geraldine might say. ‘Well, I do think,’ she said, ‘you should be able to know when you’ve made a mistake and do something about it.’

  ‘Violetta!’

  Marcus’s voice boomed out. Violetta jumped. ‘Oh, I better go. It’s my friend.’

  Simon nodded, looking at her thoughtfully. ‘Well, see you later,’ he said.

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Maybe at Ezra’s place.’

  Violetta nodded, smiling politely. She wondered, as she turned down the middle aisle of the shop, why she hadn’t called Marcus her ‘boyfriend’. And why she hadn’t offered to introduce them. Marcus stood at the cash register with Ted, three expensive-looking books on the bench. He smiled at her.

  ‘Meet someone you know?’ he asked, sounding like an indulgent uncle.

  ‘Well, sort of …’ she began, looking back down towards the ‘Humour’ aisle. Perhaps she should introduce them after all …

  But Simon had disappeared. The aisle was empty. Violetta was not to know, but he had gone to find a public telephone.

  10 · Sisters

  Inside Ezra’s house, his father was watching television, while his mother was frying onions. The room felt comforting, warm and low-ceilinged. Ezra’s father stood up in surprise when Geraldine and Ezra came in, pressing the ‘mute’ button on the remote control.

  ‘It’s Geraldine,’ said Ezra. ‘You know, from next door.’

  ‘Of course I know Geraldine,’ said Ezra’s father heartily, as if they had an intimate acquaintance, rather than the occasional nod or good morning when their paths were forced to cross. ‘Come over to play, have you?’

  Ezra rolled his eyes. It made them sound about eight years old. Geraldine, frightened that Ezra would mention the two men in the car outside, said quickly, ‘Yeah. Ezra’s going to show me some books.’ Ezra must have a lot of books, being such an egghead. That was a safe thing to say.

  Ezra’s mother came out of the kitchen, smiling. ‘Hello, dear,’ she said to Geraldine, but her gentle brown eyes were focused on her son. The onion crackled unseen in the kitchen, popping and spitting like an experiment in a scientific laboratory.

  ‘Geraldine’s parents have gone out,’ Ezra explained.

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Ezra’s mother. ‘All night?’

  Geraldine shrugged.

  ‘What will you do for dinner?’ asked Ezra’s mother, for she was the sort of person for whom a meal was as important as a prayer.

  ‘Oh, I’ll find something,’ said Geraldine, beginning to see pathos in her situation, quite removed from the two strangers outside. ‘My sister’s gone out too. With her boyfriend,’ she added, to make her sound even more neglected. Ezra’s parents wo
uld probably think Violetta had gone gadding off to a glamorous nightclub with some gorgeous man in a red sports car, to eat lobster and strawberry ice-cream, while her little sister chewed on cold peanut-butter toast at home.

  ‘Well, I hope she’s got a helmet,’ was all Ezra’s mother said, rather obscurely, but she had noticed Marcus from time to time dropping in on his bicycle, and she imagined Violetta somehow perched on the back of it.

  ‘Have dinner with us,’ said Ezra’s father, unexpectedly, to Ezra at any rate.

  ‘Yes, you must,’ agreed his mother. ‘That is, if you don’t think your parents will mind.’

  The state Geraldine’s parents were in at the moment, she couldn’t imagine them minding anything she did, if they even noticed. She wondered if Ezra and his family knew about what had happened to them, and how her father had gone bankrupt. Was this the sort of thing neighbours knew? In movies, neighbours either knew everything, standing at the window with their binoculars, or absolutely nothing, not even noticing when six people were murdered right next door. What category did Ezra’s parents fall into?

  Ezra led her into his room. On the wall above his bed hung a placard—‘Would you take your child to an abattoir?’ Geraldine dropped her eyes from it quickly, to a framed photograph on Ezra’s desk.

  ‘Who’s that?’ she said, pointing.

  It was a photo of a little dark-haired, dark-eyed girl. She had on blue corduroy overalls, with a pink cloth hippo sewn on the front panel, and she had red, round, lovely cheeks.

  ‘That’s my sister, Tory,’ said Ezra. ‘She’s dead.’

  ‘Oh.’ Geraldine felt sick. Dead?

  Ezra sat down on his bed. ‘Well? What do you want to do?’

  Dead.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. She looked like Ezra, a rounder, redder Ezra. This little dead sister.

  ‘I’ve got some books about guinea-pigs,’ he said, getting up and going over to one of the shelves. ‘You might learn something.’ He pulled out a book and gave it to her. It was clean and well kept, as she imagined all Ezra’s books would be. She looked down at the crisp, cool page. ‘The guinea-pig is a chunky, furry animal with a benign but timid disposition,’ she read.

  Dead.

  Ezra said something, but his voice sounded muffled, as if he were speaking underwater. Her heart, her mind, fell still. Dead.

  ‘Ezra!’ His mother called out from the kitchen. ‘It’s Simon on the phone again!’

  Ezra left the room, but she hardly noticed. Dead.

  When they sat down for dinner, she was placed between Ezra and his father. They had fried potatoes, fried onions and fried chicken schnitzel, with a free-range omelette for Ezra. Ezra’s parents drank wine, while she and Ezra drank blackcurrant juice.

  ‘So, what did Simon want?’ asked Ezra’s father, pouring Worcestershire sauce all over his meal. It looked like melted chocolate.

  ‘He wants to drop round after school some time,’ replied Ezra, sounding puzzled. ‘A few things he wants to discuss, he said.’

  ‘He’s not bringing his aunts, is he?’ Ezra’s father looked suddenly alarmed. ‘By any chance?’

  ‘Well, he didn’t say,’ said Ezra.

  There was an uneasy silence.

  Geraldine noticed more photos of the dead child on the sideboard and the mantelpiece. Nothing to show what had happened to her, just what you might have if she were still alive. In none of them did she look older than two or three. That must have been when she died. When did it happen? Geraldine wondered. Why? Was she sick? Was she in hospital and did they shave off all her hair?

  ‘Funny, wasn’t it,’ interrupted Ezra’s father, making the fork jump in her hand, ‘that thing they saw the other night in your backyard?’

  ‘Thing?’ gulped Geraldine. She looked at Ezra, but he was cutting potato with the concentrated precision of a great European chef.

  ‘Some sort of animal, I think,’ said Ezra’s father. ‘White, you know. Like a cat.’

  ‘Perhaps it was a cat,’ said Ezra’s mother, in a voice that had made this suggestion before.

  ‘It wasn’t a cat,’ said Ezra.

  Ezra’s mother got up and went over to the front window of the living-room. She pulled the curtain aside a little.

  ‘I’ll tell you what’s strange,’ she said. ‘There’s been a car parked out there with two men inside it for hours now. Did you notice it, Geraldine?’

  Geraldine put her knife and fork together in the middle of the plate as she had been taught. She willed Ezra not to say anything.

  ‘Anyway,’ Ezra’s mother continued, ‘I think that’s your sister coming in. Should you let her know where you are?’

  Sister. Suddenly the word seemed vulnerable and very precious. Geraldine leapt gratefully to her feet. ‘I’d better go,’ she said quickly. ‘Thank you for the lovely dinner.’

  ‘You don’t have to go right now!’ protested Ezra’s father. ‘Stay and watch a movie. Have you ever seen Paint Your Wagon?’

  ‘Well, no,’ confessed Geraldine, and her eye caught the photo of the little girl, smiling into a great distance. Paint Your Wagon, whatever it was, might be more than she could take. She wanted to get inside her room, under her blankets. She wanted to listen to the radio through an earphone and close her eyes tight. ‘I really better go.’

  She scarcely acknowledged Ezra as she left the house, although he came out and watched her climb over the side wire fence. It was dark now, as dark as midnight, and the street lights were blazing. It was still there, that grey car. How long had it been now? Perhaps she should call the police. She could ask Violetta. She would know what to do.

  Geraldine tossed her chin slightly at Ezra, which he accepted as a gesture of goodbye. He stood watching her, like a patient father, until she reached the door of her home and was safely inside.

  11 · Late At Night

  ‘I had dinner at Ezra’s,’ said Geraldine, coming into the kitchen through the side door from the dark.

  Violetta switched the electric kettle on to make herself a cup of tea. ‘You shouldn’t leave the house open like that,’ she roused. ‘Anyone might come in. I didn’t know you were going out.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t know either,’ said Geraldine. ‘They just asked me all of a sudden.’

  Violetta crouched down to look for a biscuit in the cupboard below the sink. ‘Mum still not back,’ she observed, finding an unopened packet of gingernuts. She straightened up.

  ‘No.’ Geraldine paused. She must tell Violetta about the two men. The two men still outside waiting in the car. They would have seen Violetta come in—maybe they thought she was her mother? It was dark, and they looked alike. Maybe they were coming to knock on the door again right now. But no, Violetta was in school uniform.

  ‘I …’ she began. ‘There …’

  ‘Mmmm?’ Violetta looked up from pouring the boiling water over the tea-bag in her mug.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Geraldine. Nothing? Why nothing? What was wrong with her? Why didn’t she say something? Why keep it a secret?

  ‘Ezra’s sister died,’ she found herself saying, in a rush.

  ‘What?’ Violetta stared at her. ‘Ezra? Ezra Perlman?’

  ‘How do you know his surname?’ asked Geraldine, diverted for a moment.

  ‘Oh, I know lots of things,’ replied Violetta complacently, dipping the round hard biscuit into her sweet black tea. It was true, after all, she did know a lot of things other people didn’t.

  ‘Well, she died,’ said Geraldine. ‘He showed me a photo of her.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Geraldine was always getting things the wrong way round. ‘Maybe you didn’t understand him properly.’

  Geraldine shrugged. She knew she had understood him. He could hardly have been more explicit. But she didn’t want to talk about it. Any more than she wanted to talk about the two men in t
he car outside. She shivered.

  Violetta looked at her with some concern. Gerry had really been very odd lately. So nervy. Ezra with a dead sister? It was possible, of course. But they would have heard about it before now, surely. Simon might know, she found herself thinking. Simon.

  ‘Are you okay?’ she said to Geraldine. ‘You look so pale.’

  Geraldine looked more yellow than pale, but it was the sort of thing their mother said when she was worried about them, hoping it might spur them on to further revelations as to why they looked so pale. But Geraldine only scowled.

  ‘I’m going to bed,’ she said.

  By the time her parents came home that night, Violetta was sitting at her desk, studying ionic bonding and sucking the ends of her hair. She heard the sound of her father’s car in the distance—the sound of a familiar car can be as distinctive and unmistakable as that of a familiar walk, or even a voice. She looked out the window of her room and could see easily over the front fence to the street junction where the car would turn and pull into their garage. But it didn’t happen.

  It was their car—she was sure of that, although it was almost midnight and the street light was flickering. It was their car’s sound, and their car’s colour, and it had her father and mother, shadowy, but themselves, sitting in it. But as it slowed down at the junction, ready to turn, it suddenly swung back to the main road, sped up and drove away again. That was odd enough—although she supposed they must have remembered they wanted to buy some milk or post a letter, and had rushed off to do it before coming home.

  But then Violetta noticed the other car, the grey car that had been waiting all night in the street like a sleek, predatory cat, the car she had ignored as she came home, her thoughts full of Marcus and Animal Liberation. But now it shone its deep-reaching lights up the crest of the hill, filling the small space with bright whiteness, and the engine turned on. Then it, too, sped up and disappeared around the corner of the main road.