Eating Air

by Pauline Melville

  ‘Have you given in to her ideas?’

  ‘No. I’m just frightened of having a stroke.’

  They laughed. Hector paid the bill while Khaled put on his jacket.

  ‘What brings you to England?’ asked Hector.

  ‘I thought it was time to find out about my real father. The Scotsman. I have children now and they should know their true history. Apparently my father was already married when he met my mother and he had a son in Scotland before me. What is really driving me is that I have this brother – a half-brother. I want to find him. I’ll give it a shot anyway. I’m going to see Eddie Sursok, my ex-stepfather, while I’m here. Always good to see how the other half lives.’

  Outside the two men exchanged mobile numbers.

  ‘You see that cinema?’ Khaled pointed over at the Empire. ‘Once in the eighties I came to England. I took my mother to the movies. Standing in the foyer of that cinema was the notorious leader of the Lebanese Phalange, the group I hold responsible for killing my wife. He went up to the cashier’s desk and bought a ticket for the movie. Why should I have been surprised? Terrorists go to the movies. Of course they do. Terrorism is only a part-time occupation. Terrorists live most of their life outside their balaclavas. A few hours later he was probably giving orders to the Druze militia back in Lebanon. I was close enough to have killed him. But I just went in and watched the movie.’

  They embraced with affection as they said goodbye. Hector watched Khaled’s back as he disappeared into Leicester Square underground station.

  Chapter Three

  Hector made his way to Victoria station. When he arrived there he first thought that the crowd milling around the station must have come from a football match. Then he realised it was the tail-end of the May Day demonstration in Hyde Park. Abandoned placards and damp leaflets littered the station entrance. Police vans remained parked out of sight in side roads.

  He caught the 3.15 to Ashford. A small group of demonstrators clambered into the compartment with him. They were young, fresh-faced and carried a banner that proclaimed them to be Kent Valley Anarchists. They had painted their faces and wore bright woolly hats and rainbow-knit scarves. Two of the girls had nose-rings and long hair plaited with pinky-orange twine that made their heads look like unravelling baskets of raffia. The group exuded a wholesome type of rebellion, a mischief that belonged to the time of the hobby horse and the Lord of Misrule. There was a gaiety and innocence about them. They ignored the thickset middle-aged man with the leather jacket and the scar on his lower lip who sat in the window seat.

  Hector tried to read his newspaper. Spermatozoa of rain wriggled along the glass window by his side. After a while he shut his eyes and leaned his head against the warm glass. The image of his old second floor apartment in one of the poorer quarters of Milan floated into his head. The front door of the apartment was open.

  During his apprenticeship Hector lived in a scruffy part of town near the Stazione Porta Romana. That was where he returned after visiting Khaled in Jordan.

  The apartment was inhabited by a succession of students and activists who had painted it dark red throughout. Beneath the windows stood enormously thick black-painted radiators whose thermostat didn’t work properly so that they became ferociously hot in winter. The varnished wooden floors were old and scuffed. From somewhere the students had acquired a giant moth-eaten Russian bear, an example of botched taxidermy which stood about seven feet tall and still wore its muzzle. It guarded the hall and sometimes served as a hat stand or somewhere to chuck a winter scarf. The flat buzzed with activity. These were the young activists at the heart of the merry-making of the time: revolutionaries pulling insurgency out of the top hat; throw-it-all-up-in-the-air chancers jostling on the revolt and encouraging crises. Ceaseless rebellion. Members of the Brigate Rosse and the Ponte della Ghisolfa anarchist group came and went; some visitors were young workers from the Fiat factory; full-time conspirators; part-time conspirators; all alchemists of revolution. The commonplaces which their parents had learned from the Second World War – that peacetime was to be cherished – had not been passed on to them. Everywhere was the vague desire for confrontation and disorder. What had been passed on to them by their parents and the movies were the stories and experiences of fascism, and they felt the winged beast still breathed close behind them ready to take flight again.

  One of Hector’s flatmates in Italy was Mark Scobie, son of Vera Scobie the actress. His PhD studies on Garibaldi required him to travel back and forth between Milan and London. Mark had a wide, pale heart-shaped face. He wore black-rimmed glasses. His face was beautiful and unearthly. His complexion was waxen and his hair was thick and black and rose in a straight square block from his forehead. He spoke quietly in a way that managed to be both hesitant and absolutely assured. Because of his well-heeled background, Mark felt it more necessary than most to prove his revolutionary credentials. In England he sometimes organised meetings in his parents’ Chelsea house. The others in his political group were impressed and rather enjoyed it when his mother’s famous face peered around the door and asked if they would all like tea. They excused themselves for this bourgeois lapse by pointing to the fact that his father, despite being a lord and holding high office in government, was the direct descendant of one of those Cromwellians who ordered the execution of King Charles I.

  In June 1971 Mark informed Hector that they must leave the flat in Milan empty on 17 July for a month. Other comrades needed it for some operation or other. Hector arranged time off work and returned to England. He spent less time in London on this occasion. Back in Kent a romance blossomed between him and a nurse called Barbara. On 12 August 1971, Mark contacted Hector and told him it was safe to go back. Hector made the journey to Milan on his own but with his heart reinvigorated by this new love affair.

  To get into the old tenement apartment residents used a small entrance set into a pair of great arched wooden doors which opened on to a courtyard. These huge doors, patterned with bronze studs, were only used when a vehicle of some sort needed access. It was midday. Cooking smells greeted him as he entered the yard. He went up the stairs to the second floor and was puzzled to see the door of their flat partially open. There was no-one inside. Hector entered to find a tin bath full of blood standing next to an armchair under the window. A dark blood-soaked cloth hung over the side of the tub. At first he did not realise what it was. Perplexed, he walked over to examine it. For a moment he thought that someone must have been dying clothes or making banners. The liquid had spilled onto the floor. It was black with huge crimson clots in it. It was only when he pulled his foot up and the congealing blood stuck to the bottom of his boot, gluey and elasticated, that he recognised what it was. A tingle of shock moved through the flesh over his jaw and down his arms.

  In an instant everything was transformed. Through the window he could see a baker’s van and other traffic moving normally along the narrow Via Mantova. It was like looking at a previous life from which he was now excluded. He tried the door to Mark’s room. It was locked. Hector picked up his bag and rushed out. As he ran, the strap of his bag caught the Russian bear’s outstretched paw in the hallway. The huge bear rocked on its plinth and crashed to the ground. Hector leaped down the stairs two at a time and ran out into the bright light of day.

  He dashed to a nearby house in Via Decembrio. The occupants were preparing to leave for a Popular Unity carnival and were listening to news of a kidnapping and murder on the radio. Breathless, Hector tried to tell them what he had found. There was a crash and the noise of splintering as the front door was broken down. Nine armed carabinieri in flat-peaked caps and uniform burst into the room brandishing pistols and told everyone to lie on the floor. Hector was in a state of paralysis as he was dragged off into the police van with blood still on his boots. Somebody was yelling that there was an informer amongst them.

  *

  The body of the murdered man had been found by the roadside not far from the Stazione Porta Romana.
He belonged to the Agnelli family who owned Fiat. Both the jugular and the carotid artery had been severed with one jagged cut. A further wound showed that someone had jabbed the knife blade right through the man’s open mouth and palate. The murderer had tugged the knife out and struck again. This time the knife blade thrust right up into the brain. It had been wrenched out to one side so hard that the handle snapped off. Fragments of teeth had flown out and bits of grey cerebellum were mixed in with the blood. Although the knife handle was found nearby in the gutter forensic experts assessed that the murder had taken place elsewhere.

  *

  The police station where Hector was taken was a five-storey building constructed around a courtyard of dove-grey stone. He was frog-marched up three flights of stairs. They put him on his own in a bare cell with no furniture. In the August heat sweat rolled down the back of his neck and made Hector wish he’d cut his hair. He tried to lever himself up to see out of the small barred window but the window ledge sloped downwards and he could not get a grip on it. At that moment all the enthusiasm he had felt at meetings, the excitement of being swept along with unknown comrades, his passion for justice and equality, evaporated. There was no public, no platform, no singing of the Internationale, no support of any kind. He was on his own and not immune from the shock of arrest.

  The interrogation room was on the fourth floor along a harmless-looking corridor. There was a small barred and wire-netted window high up on the right hand wall. The only furniture was a wooden table and three chairs. It had the simplicity of a peasant dwelling or a Van Gogh interior.

  On the first day of Hector’s interrogation a bluff young Englishman with a florid pink complexion introduced himself as John Buckley, a junior member of staff from the British embassy. The man was short and had a pleasant reassuring manner. He asked Hector a few questions. Hector’s brain was a busy spider running around weaving together his story, patching it up where there were holes, even creating snares to trap his interrogators. His own clothes had been taken from him and he was wearing a misshapen shirt and a pair of ill-fitting trousers. They were soon joined by an Italian inspector with grey pomaded hair. The inspector sat at the table and took over the interrogation. He noted down the details of Hector’s actions on the day of his arrest. Hector explained that he had just that day returned from England. He did not admit to entering the flat. He said he had gone straight to the Via Decembrio.

  On the second day when he was brought into the room the Englishman was no longer present and he was faced with a different inspector, a man in his forties with a face like an eighteen-pound hammer. Two jailers stood on either side of Hector. On the table stood a magneto or dynamo. The magneto had been adapted from one used for small marine engines. Bulky and ugly, it squatted on the table in front of him like some mysterious car part. They had told him to undress down to his underpants and his clothes lay in a little pile by the chair. Until the first shock was administered Hector somehow thought that he was about to be subjected to some sort of outdated medical examination. But then his hands were suddenly seized and handcuffed behind the back of the chair. Two electric leads were connected to the dynamo. The police officer hand cranked it to generate an electric charge. When he realised what was about to happen his diaphragm contracted in uncontrollable spasms. The two jailers had strapped him into the chair. The wires were first of all applied to his tongue. A searing pain exploded like a car crash in his head and his mouth filled with the acid taste of metal. Apart from the shock itself he feared memory loss and brain damage. He looked down and saw the two alien stumps of his bare knees trembling. He was given two more shocks. Someone brought in his boots still with dried blood on the soles and placed them beside the magneto. Once he saw that they had his boots as evidence he told the truth about entering the flat and discovering the bath of blood. He knew nothing more. He was shown a list of names, some of which he recognised, and told that if he signed a statement saying they were involved in the Agnelli murder he could go free. It was the first he had heard of the Agnelli murder and his interrogators could see from the shocked look on his face that he knew nothing about it. But they insisted he sign all the same. There were no witnesses to see whether or not he signed in exchange for his freedom. He managed to refuse and pretended to faint. After that they left him alone. That afternoon he was charged with conspiracy to kidnap and murder and was transferred to the San Vittorio jail.

  By the time he was brought to court in a mass hearing with other members of the Brigate Rosse and the Ponte della Ghisolfa, most of whom he had never seen, Hector was weak and disorientated. The appearance in court was chaotic. The authorities had constructed a vast cage over the dock in which the defendants made their appearance all together. People were shouting and yelling. Ventilation fans wafted hot air through the court. Hector could not see his lawyer anywhere and felt sick with apprehension and powerlessness. Supporters in the public gallery fanned themselves and gestured wildly to the defendants. He was struggling to keep his footing in the crush of some thirty people in the dock who were calling out to relatives and comrades. The two defendants next to him had been badly beaten during interrogation and were screaming slogans. Hector’s lawyer arrived at last and grinned encouragingly at him. They were all remanded in custody until the trial. Eventually, after six years in jail on remand, Hector was acquitted of all charges and returned to England. Mark Scobie, he heard, had escaped the round-ups in both Italy and England and disappeared. He was pleased for Mark’s sake.

  *

  Hector was half asleep but aware that he was still on the train. The Dürer woodcut of the angels floated in front of his eyes. Terrorists are avenging angels, he thought. Self-appointed, of course. Avenging angels are never elected and always at risk of burning their wings. Now he saw that the actions and ideas with which he had been involved were mere tracer bullets, brilliant flak against a dark sky, brief manifestations against a world enveloped in its own daily concerns. He had expected the sparks from those revolutionary fireworks to leap from bank to bank and cathedral to cathedral, law court to law court, school to school, generation to generation in one huge conflagration. That had not happened. The whole period was just the flash of lightning which momentarily lit up a dark landscape, the shining edge of a dark cloud.

  The train stopped and the group of demonstrators grabbed their belongings and tumbled out.

  The compartment became quiet again. Hector forced himself back to reading the Kent Messenger. On the second page there was something about an explosion at the electricity sub-station in Dartford. A small bomb had caused some damage there the day before and there were likely to be widespread electricity cuts in Kent. He hoped it was not going to affect his train. Barbara would be even more annoyed if he was late back.

  As the train continued on its way something caught Hector’s attention. A glimmering white shape lay on the ground beside the track. For a moment he thought with shock that it was a naked body sprawled on the muddy embankment. Then, as the train rattled slowly alongside he realised that it was the great blue-marbled body of a dead white hog. The long carcass stretched out peacefully on the ground just in front of the brick support wall of the bridge. As the train passed Hector was close enough to make out the colourless lashes of a half-shut eye.

  He changed trains at Ashford and caught the small train to Sandling. The walk home from the station refreshed him. Soft damp breezes gusted over the hedgerows as he made his way along the country lanes. He puzzled over the fierceness which seemed to take hold of him in the city. As soon as he returned home and took breaths of the country air all those feelings began to dissolve. It occurred to him vaguely that the word politics came from the Greek word ‘polis’ for city. Politics had to do with cities. In the country, surrounded by nature, it seemed possible to look at the world with different eyes.

  *

  Dawn ran from the kitchen to greet him. She had on a baseball cap, bright clothes and new trainers. Both he and Barbara had refused to let her be dr
essed in the dowdy middle-aged clothing sometimes given to Down’s syndrome children. He knelt down and she hugged him. Her blue eyes brimmed with affection under their slanting epicanthic folds. He brushed her lank hair away from her forehead. Her nose was running. She laughed with an infectious gurgle.

  In the kitchen Hector began to rake the ashes in the grate. Dawn knelt on a chair at the kitchen table and carried on with her drawing.

  ‘What are you drawing?’ he asked.

  ‘God’s face,’ said Dawn.

  Hector frowned, irritated that she was being exposed to religious ideas at school.

  ‘Do they teach you about god in school?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He felt the pettiness of what he was about to say but could not stop himself.

  ‘Even if there is a god nobody really knows what he looks like.’

  Dawn continued drawing, ferociously grinding her crayon into the paper.

  ‘Well they will in a minute,’ she said.

  Hector threw coal from the scuttle onto the unlit fire and backed away from the cloud of dust that billowed up from the grate. Kneeling in front of the hearth he remembered something from his school days. He had returned to Rome for a year with his Italian father after his mother died. The first thing he had learned about at school in Italy was the pantheon of Roman gods. He had taken an immediate and violent dislike to the Lares and Penates, Rome’s deities of the hearth. In fact, at the age of twelve, he had been shocked and infuriated that gods should even exist for such a dull and inglorious arena as the household. Gods of the washing-up and scrubbing brush? The hearth and home? They had none of the adventurous scope and panache of the other gods. He found the whole idea of them offensive. Now, as he looked at Dawn making a pattern in the ashes of the hearth with her foot, he was not so sure. Perhaps they were the only gods worth their salt after all. He could hear Barbara moving around upstairs.