The Empty Family (v5)

by Colm Toibin

  Later, when everyone was awake and moving in and out of the room, Malik heard Abdul explaining that he and Malik had been working late helping Baldy move boxes and they would not be going to work until the afternoon. He knew that the story must sound strange, as they must know that Abdul had been at the concert and they might even have seen Malik there, but everyone seemed too busy getting ready for the day for any of them to question what Abdul had said. As soon as they were both alone in the room, Abdul fell asleep again.

  An hour or more passed before Malik heard the door into the apartment open. He lay still, ready to close his eyes and pretend to be asleep. He waited. The bedroom door was opened very quietly. He did not move as someone approached his bed.

  ‘Wake up, the two of you!’

  The voice was unmistakably Baldy’s. As Malik turned he checked immediately that Baldy did not have anything in his hands. What surprised him now was that Baldy appeared even more nervous than he had earlier that morning. Now he looked almost afraid. He wondered for a second if Baldy had the police outside but then as Baldy whispered to him to get up he guessed that Baldy was alone.

  Malik tried to get out of the bed, but his ribs pained him very badly and then his arm. He used his left arm to lean on as Baldy came close to him and pulled up his vest and, as Malik winced, asked him if he was hurt. Malik nodded.

  ‘Where?’

  Malik pointed to his right arm and leg and then to his ribs on the right-hand side.

  ‘Try to walk,’ Baldy whispered.

  Malik attempted to move but his right leg was too stiff. He cried out as Baldy touched his arm. He sat on the edge of the bed as Abdul woke and turned around.

  ‘Get out of the bed,’ Baldy whispered to Abdul.

  ‘Not for you, I won’t,’ Abdul replied.

  ‘Come on. I want to see if you are all right. I won’t hurt you.’

  Slowly, Abdul sat up and stood out on the floor. As Baldy moved towards him, Abdul put his arm out to prevent him coming too close. Baldy went to the window and looked out. When Malik glanced at Abdul he saw that he was angry. He seemed uninjured. He wondered how Baldy had managed to hurt him so badly and not Abdul so much. Abdul was bigger, he supposed, and perhaps knew how to defend himself from the blows, or else Baldy had not hit him as hard.

  ‘Can you walk?’ Baldy asked Abdul.

  ‘I can walk. No thanks to you,’ he replied.

  ‘Are you hurt anywhere?’

  ‘I’m probably bruised,’ Abdul said in a tone that was dry, almost disengaged.

  ‘I’m going to take this fellow to the hospital,’ Baldy said.

  Malik suddenly began to cry. He wished it could be an ordinary day and he could be at work, showing someone how to use a new model of phone. He had been in hospital once before when his brother was dying, and he remembered the long ward and the smells and the moans and cries. He did not want to go to a hospital; he knew now that he would have to do something to prevent Baldy taking him away. As he tried to stand up he leaned for a moment on his right leg and screamed in pain and felt that he was going to faint.

  ‘Put your shoes on,’ Baldy said to Abdul, ‘and get his on as well, and help him down to the car.’

  Baldy left the room as Abdul worked at putting Malik’s shoes on, but the right shoe would not go on, as the foot was limp and swollen. Abdul showed no sign of worry. Malik was going to ask him what would happen now but held back, knowing that Abdul would not reply. He seemed even more withdrawn than usual. Malik leaned on Abdul as he helped him to stand. He was reassured by Abdul’s closeness to him and by his calmness. Surely he must know how much trouble they were in? Or was it possible that they were in no trouble at all now that Baldy’s rage had subsided?

  But he still had to face the hospital. He did not know who would feed him, or what would happen to him. He began to say something but Abdul immediately put his hand over his mouth to stop him and led him gently and slowly out of the room towards where Baldy was waiting.

  Baldy spoke only once as he and Malik were driving across the city, having left Abdul standing in the street.

  ‘If they ask you how this happened, you must say you were attacked and they ran away, and if they ask you what they looked like, say they were black, say they were Africans.’

  Malik turned and studied Baldy carefully because he had noticed once again how nervous he sounded. It struck him that Baldy did not want anyone to know what he had done, and this meant that he would not easily be able to tell anyone what he had seen. Maybe attacking people like this was illegal in Spain, enough for the attacker to be deported, or maybe going to the police would cause them to come and ask questions and there were surely things about money and visas that Baldy and those he worked for did not want anyone to know.

  Baldy made him wait in the car as he walked into a modern building with a garden somewhere on one of the hills at the edge of the city. Eventually, he emerged with a man wearing a white coat pushing a wheelchair. The man helped Malik out of the car and manoeuvred him into the chair, nodding as Malik pointed at his right arm to indicate that it could not be touched.

  They used scissors to remove his vest and then stronger scissors to cut his trousers open. They took his clothes away in a black bag. For the next hour he was examined closely by two doctors, put lying on a table with just his shorts on as they shone bright lights on him. Then he was moved to a bed with wheels on it and pushed through the hospital. At the beginning, Baldy had spoken to the doctors but now, as he followed, no one asked him any more questions. It struck Malik for the first time how poor Baldy’s clothes were and how ill at ease he looked beside the young doctors and nurses in the clean, shiny corridors of the hospital.

  Later, he remembered that he was given an injection in the arm and then he remembered nothing else until he woke in a room with a window, everything painted white. He was alone. When he tried to move he found that his leg was in plaster and so was his arm and there was a tight bandage around his ribs. He wanted to go to the bathroom but there was nothing he could do until someone came to help him. There was no sign of Baldy.

  Over the days that followed, he was given food three times a day and helped to the bathroom any time he rang a bell. He liked the noises in the corridor and the doctors who came and spoke to him and gave him injections. Even though he could not understand them, he pointed to his arm and his leg in plaster and they responded with reassuring gestures and left him once more in the white room with the window. He was able to sleep and think and then sleep again. All the worry about Baldy and the police seemed to have faded, to be replaced by the image of Abdul and what had happened between them at the concert and in the barber shop before Baldy arrived.

  They gave him a frame with wheels after a while so that he could push himself towards the bathroom without leaning on his right leg. At first it was difficult to use because his right arm was in plaster but slowly he learned that if he leaned hard on it with his left arm he could stabilize himself and then push himself gently to the bathroom. When the doctors came and saw him moving of his own accord, they gave him a thumbs-up sign and left without giving him an injection.

  One night when he woke he found that he was suddenly afraid of the silence and afraid of the closed door and afraid of the cupboard. He turned on the light but the brightness in the room frightened him even more. At least, he thought, his brother had been in a long open ward as he died and there was never silence like this, even if there was always pain, or fear of pain. It frightened him now to think that he could call and a nurse would come and she would be clean and dressed in white but she would not understand a single word he was saying, it would sound like gibberish to her. He wondered now if prison cells in Spain were like these hospital rooms, all white and perfect and locked, and no one there would understand him either. Again and again it came to him that there must be some way to get to the airport, some way to get clothes and money and buy a ticket, some way to get his passport back. He realized that this was all he wanted a
nd that everything he did from now on would have to aim towards going home. A ticket. His passport. He whispered the two words to himself as he turned off the light.

  In the darkness he tried to think about Abdul but all that came to him now was Abdul’s indifference to him, which was there all the time. Even making him kneel in front of him and take his penis in his mouth was part of it. And it was Abdul who had led him to the barber shop, who had put him in danger. He tried, for a moment, to pretend that he was Abdul, to put himself in Abdul’s mind, and he wondered if it was possible that Abdul missed him or worried about where he was. But all that came into his mind were images of blankness, Abdul’s face expressionless, his attention fixed on other things.

  In the morning when Malik woke, Baldy was in the room. He moved closer when Malik opened his eyes.

  ‘Did they ask you any questions?’ Baldy enquired.

  He still seemed nervous. Malik felt he could smell him, some perfume, but also something stale like unwashed clothes.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I don’t understand anything.’

  ‘They didn’t send in an interpreter?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I have the car outside. As soon as they check you and say you are OK I am taking you home.’

  ‘Home?’

  ‘Out of here. And what will you tell the others when you see them?’

  ‘I was attacked.’

  ‘By whom?’

  Malik sighed and closed his eyes.

  ‘I know what to say.’

  ‘By whom?’

  ‘By black fellows, Africans.’

  ‘How many of them?’

  ‘I don’t know. Two or three.’

  ‘Three. You say three.’

  ‘Three.’

  ‘And, by the way, you’re not going back to the house. I have another place for you.’

  ‘Am I going home? You said home.’

  Malik closed his eyes.

  ‘I have new clothes for you,’ Baldy said.

  ‘Where am I going?’

  ‘Don’t ask questions. You won’t be far.’

  Malik used his left elbow to help him sit up. He looked at Baldy, let his eyes linger on his face and his frame. Then he held his gaze until Baldy looked away.

  ‘No one knows what happened,’ Baldy said. ‘I lost my temper, that’s all. I don’t tell, you don’t tell, but my advice to you is …’

  ‘Leave me alone.’

  Baldy waited there silently until the doctor came and examined Malik and said that he could go, but that he would have to take the walking frame with him and not put too much pressure on his right leg. They could pay a deposit on the frame, the doctor said, and then return it on his next visit in a month’s time, when his arm would probably be strong enough for him to use a crutch.

  He hated being dressed by Baldy and could smell the staleness from him even more powerfully now. In the lobby of the hospital he sat in a chair as Baldy went into a side office. He supposed that Baldy must be paying the bill, but he did not ask and they did not speak as they drove into the city through busy traffic. Malik’s leg was throbbing from the short walk to the car. He knew that he would not be able to use it for a while. He wondered for how long.

  As Baldy parked the car in a side-street that Malik knew was not far from the mobile phone shop, he seemed almost furtive. His eyes darted back and forth as he helped Malik from the passenger side and then fetched his walking frame from the boot. As they moved along the street, he walked a few steps ahead of Malik, who watched him with care as the expression on his face grew close to panic at Malik’s slowness and the idea that anyone passing might notice they were together.

  At a doorway, Baldy fumbled for a while with keys, trying and failing a few times to select the correct one from a number of bunches of keys he had in his pocket.

  ‘You know something?’ he asked Malik. ‘You have been nothing but trouble since the day you arrived.’

  Eventually, having opened the door, he helped Malik up the stairs while impatiently pulling the frame behind him. At every landing Malik stopped, presuming that they had arrived, but each time Baldy indicated to him that they would have to go farther. Finally, when they reached the top floor, Malik saw that one door, which was ajar, opened on to a roof. Baldy fumbled with keys again and opened the door opposite, which led into a small hallway. There was a door into a larger room into which they went.

  ‘You’ll be all right here,’ he said. ‘There’ll be food every day and I’ll have keys cut for you. And I don’t want any more behaviour, do you understand? You’re lucky …’

  ‘That you hit me?’ Malik interrupted. He had found a stool and was sitting down.

  ‘Yes, that is exactly what I was going to say.’

  ‘Is there anyone else here?’ Malik asked.

  ‘No,’ Baldy replied. ‘It’ll keep you out of harm’s way.’

  He moved quickly to the hallway. Malik could hear him locking the door from the outside.

  There was a bed with a bedside table and a sofa near the door with a table and two chairs near the window. His suitcase was on the floor beside the bed. Someone must have carried it from the other house. There was a television in the corner. Outside, off the dark hallway, there was a bathroom with a washing machine, and a small kitchen with a cooker and a fridge. There was nothing in the fridge. Neither of these rooms had any window. The window in the main room was long and led out to a rooftop that was bright with sunshine. There were a few rotting plants in bowls. He opened the door to the rooftop and, with the help of the frame, made his way out.

  It was a small space enclosed by three walls, but it was overlooked only by his room. There was a low wall on the fourth side that looked over the back of some buildings below. No one, he realized, could see him on this rooftop. And no one, he imagined, could hear him if he screamed. He was at Baldy’s mercy here. If Baldy decided to forget about him, or if a car ran over Baldy in the street, he would languish here, he realized. No one would ever find him. He looked around him but all he could see were blank walls and the sky. There was a hum of traffic but it was faint and distant. He sat and waited to see if he would hear a voice, or any human sound, until he noticed a shadow moving gradually across this open space. The day was waning. He was hungry and thirsty and, as the shadow edged towards him until he was sitting in the only square of sunlight, he was afraid.

  He wondered now what he would have to do to convince Baldy that he should be sent home. It hardly mattered that they would not want to see him at home. If he had the number of his father’s mobile phone he could call to say that Baldy had injured him and he would deny that he had done anything to deserve it. But he knew that his father would not insist that he come home. His father would probably say instead that he would find one of Baldy’s brothers and threaten him, or warn him that Baldy was his boss and he should learn to get on with him.

  When the sunlight disappeared from the small rooftop, he moved inside and lay on the bed. He was dozing, half dreaming when Baldy came with a bag of supplies that contained bottled water, rice, some legs of chicken, ground garam masala, oil, beans, onions, a bag of salt and some tea and sugar.

  ‘You’ll have to learn how to cook,’ he said. ‘Can you stand up?’

  Malik nodded.

  ‘Well, just boil the rice and fry the chicken and onions in oil.’

  ‘How long do you boil it for?

  ‘Until there’s no water left.’

  ‘How much water do you put in?’

  ‘How would I know?’

  Baldy handed him a box of matches.

  ‘There’s a full bottle of butano and there’s a frying pan and a saucepan.’

  ‘Did you get the keys?’

  ‘What do you want keys for?’

  ‘If there was a fire or something I would need to get out.’

  ‘If there’s a fire, you can jump off the roof. Someone will catch you.’

  ‘I want keys,’ Malik said.

  ‘Lo
ok at you. You’re useless, worse than useless. I’ll bring you keys tomorrow.’

  Over the next month Malik cooked chicken and onions and rice every day. He slowly worked out how much water to put into the saucepan for the rice. The television had only Spanish stations; sometimes he watched them, but mainly he did nothing. He sat in the sun and when the sun disappeared he lay on his bed. Baldy brought him a set of keys and took away his clothes and returned them washed and folded. He kept the keys safely but he did not want to risk the stairs on his own or go out into the street. At night he thought of things he might say to Baldy or to his father on the phone, angry things, or demands, but in the mornings he knew that he would never say anything to either of them.

  Baldy brought him soap and shampoo and he kept himself as clean as he could. Sometimes, his arm and his leg grew itchy under the plaster and he tried to think about Abdul and this made him excited but soon he had to be careful because after the excitement he grew depressed and angry again and felt like banging his fists or even his head against the wall or going out on to the rooftop to scream.

  Some days he was content and liked the idea that nothing would happen except that Baldy might come with a bag of food. Baldy, when he arrived, would never stay long or say much. He knew that Super must miss him and wondered if there were something he should say to Baldy about Super, or if he should try to find out what Baldy had told Super. And then there were all of the others in the bedroom, and Mahmood, and the two who worked with him in the mobile phone shop. All of them must miss him and must have asked about him. And then there was Abdul. Even in the morning, when most of the thoughts he had had seemed heated and exaggerated, he still felt free to imagine that he had a bond with him and that Abdul often thought about him, and that what occurred on the night of the concert was not an accident or a mistake or something that had casually come to pass. Abdul, he believed, had wanted it and planned it, even if he had done everything not to show it.

  When Baldy took him back to the hospital, they examined his leg and his arm and removed the bandage from his ribs. Once more, he noticed how cowed Baldy was in the presence of the doctors, how badly shaved he was, and how large his hands seemed, the fingernails all bitten to the quick. Beside him, the doctors appeared almost delicate, everything about them perfect and sleek, like rich men. Malik watched them, enjoying how they moved and spoke, even though he could not understand a word they said.