Eating Air

by Pauline Melville

  ‘How are you, Stephen?’ asked Lillian.

  He still had the same bright expectant smile:

  ‘Hello Lillian. Hello Felix. Nice of you to come. I won’t be here long. Look, there’s a cat in here somewhere. It’s a very hot day and I need to help the poor thing out of its fur coat. Can you help? I want to get him into his pyjamas. I can’t think much beyond that, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Do you remember anything about work? About the bank? Have you heard what’s happened to Johnny?’ Lillian asked in desperation as she held his hand. Butterfield did not reply. He just stared into space.

  ‘Have you seen the cat?’ he said after a while. ‘It’s a tabby. Lovely little thing.’

  The next time Felix visited him he had been moved to a long-stay hospital. He wore a plaid and corded dressing-gown. His eyes were dull with medication and he remained glued to the TV set in his room. He waved an arm for Felix to pull up a chair next to him:

  ‘Sit down. Do sit down. The four horsemen of the apocalypse have all come to tea in my television set.’

  ‘It’s hopeless,’ Felix told Johnny when he reached home. ‘He can’t remember anything. He’s barking.’

  Johnny made an effort to continue his life as usual. But when he tried to organise his house parties many of the invitations remained unacknowledged and unanswered.

  Felix observed his father carefully. His life as a banker had seemed safe and watertight. Now it was as if his father had launched himself on a river which was in reality a tomb he secretly desired. He discussed his plans for the future but he talked of life as if all the time wishing for death. His business acquaintances mostly deserted him. He smiled at those one or two who still came to see him. He never stopped smiling and his eyes shone constantly so that everything – all worried glances – rolled off them. In the evenings Felix found Caspers upstairs listening to his beloved Mahler. His father would put his finger to his lips, shutting his eyes to indicate that he did not wish to be disturbed.

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  Mark Scobie chose to telephone Buckley from the red light district in Amsterdam. Shahid or Massoud would never go there. Shahid had walked once down Damstraat and along Beursstraat and returned to Javastraat with his revulsion and hatred of the decadent West confirmed. Massoud had not even bothered.

  Mark could hear the cold annoyance in Buckley’s voice.

  ‘You say that your abduction target, Butterfield, has disappeared?’

  ‘He seems to have had some sort of breakdown. We’re thinking of postponing everything. The others are not keen to go ahead. They wanted to raise money with the kidnap and encourage them to pay up with the attack on the bank.’

  ‘You personally have a lot riding on this, Mark. The whole venture seems to be breaking down. We made an agreement. If you don’t fulfil your part we won’t be fulfilling ours.’

  Mark pulled his leather jacket closer around him against the cold wind. He moved into the shelter of a strip club doorway. The neon lights danced and blinked over his head:

  ‘Buckley, you told me yourself that when you keep people under surveillance you need between fourteen and twenty people just to tail one suspect. How did you expect me to do it on my own?’

  ‘You managed in Italy all right.’ Buckley’s tone was sharp. ‘Look, we need you to push ahead with the attack on the bank. A home-grown conspiracy is what we need. Try and persuade them it’s necessary. We don’t want Special Branch sneering at us even more than they do already. We told them to pick up Khaled. We’ll look idiots unless there’s some sort of substantial outrage to back us up. After the event we will liaise with the Dutch secret service and we will be there for the arrest of Shahid and Massoud. The Dutch can arrest their own citizens. Sort it, please.’

  Buckley hung up. Mark walked around the city, along canal banks, over bridges and down alleyways. He took deep breaths to control his emotions. Every now and then his feelings rose, agitated, like a flock of birds and settled down again. Eventually he caught a tram back to Javastraat.

  *

  When Mark returned to the cramped flat Shahid was sitting cross-legged on the floor, disconsolate and downcast. He had packed his bag. Massoud was smoking a cigarette and looking out of the window. Neither of them spoke when he came in. Mark ran his hands through his hair and took off his jacket:

  ‘Look. We need to have a serious meeting about what to do next.’

  Shahid looked at him with suspicion:

  ‘What is there to do next? We don’t know now whether we should ever have trusted you in the first place, grey-boy. It was a crap plan.’

  Mark’s mouth became a little dry with apprehension lest some instinct had led Shahid to guess what he had been doing. He spoke calmly:

  ‘We shouldn’t give up yet. We owe it to all those people who are in jail or who have suffered under Dutch colonialism. You don’t need to pack your bags. When you see Sadiq and Abukar at Friday prayers tomorrow ask them if they could come here for a meeting.’

  *

  The next night it was raining. Sadiq arrived, an imposing figure in his white dishdasha. Abukar, similarly attired, tramped up the stairs behind him. Five minutes later Lukman abandoned his publishing activities downstairs and slipped quietly into the room. He then went out again and returned with some wooden chairs that he used for a children’s educational group that met on Sundays. He also brought an electric fire. The men sat in a circle under the unshaded electric light bulb hanging from the ceiling. Sadiq blew his nose on an enormous handkerchief and spoke first:

  ‘I’m not sure it’s worth going on with this. We should postpone everything – then work out an alternative plan with a new kidnap target. There are other bankers working for HCB.’

  Massoud sounded worried:

  ‘But we can’t afford to keep coming and going. I have to provide for my family. Besides the more often people like us travel the more likely the police are to pick us up. And you wanted to involve people from another country so that the Dutch police were not alerted.’

  Mark leaned resolutely forward in his chair and looked round at everybody:

  ‘Let me be quite candid. I know I’m not one of you but in my experience you Muslim guys are the only really radicalised force around. Coming back from Australia I’ve found the same feeling in Bradford and Brick Lane and now in Amsterdam. An energy. An optimism. A sense of fellow-feeling and courage. I can’t tell you how much I admire that and miss it. I’m certain we should continue with the plan and I’ll tell you why. People are beginning to see that Western democracy is a sham. They are beginning to see through it. It’s been rumbled. Democracy is a fig-leaf. It covers up that big prick that tries to fuck everything in sight. Capitalism. The banking system is at the heart of it. Politicians are subservient to it. Torture, state and military power are at the bottom of it.’

  Shahid was frowning and making patterns with his foot on the floor. Mark stood up and began to walk round the room. Then he came back and stood by the group, his speech gathering momentum:

  ‘We have a chance to do something. Terrorism, like revolution, has an illustrious history, doesn’t it? We should continue that tradition of resistance. I think we should go ahead and attack the bank. There might not be another opportunity for all of us to act together. I’m sorry that the Butterfield kidnap didn’t work but we can, at least, do something. It’s a wonderful thing that we’d be doing. Striking a blow for a billion oppressed people.’

  There was silence. From outside they could hear the pneumatic wail of a tram in the night air.

  Abukar removed the green wad of khat from the side of his cheek:

  ‘I just want to be practical. Would it work? That’s all I want to know.’

  Mark put his foot up on the seat of his chair:

  ‘We should do it now. Who knows when there will be another time? There’s a banking crisis. Most people in Europe loathe the bankers and their bonuses. It would be a popular gesture. A beacon for others.’

  Shahid fli
cked a half-smile at Mark. He played with his long hair as he spoke:

  ‘We don’t tolerate usury. Maybe you’ll come round to the idea of a caliphate after all.’ He got up slowly from his chair and spoke, staring at the floor: ‘I agree with you in so far as I hate these corrupt democracies.’ He looked up. ‘Why is it that anything done in their name is made to sound acceptable? Just because the voting cattle are too apathetic to stop them they carry on with their wars, mass killings, torture. They’ve caused destruction and misery worldwide.’

  ‘Who’s for going ahead?’ asked Mark. Sadiq rocked back on his chair, put his hands behind his head, rolled his eyes back and looked up at the ceiling. Then he rocked his chair forward again:

  ‘Let’s do it.’

  A sort of electricity went around the room.

  ‘I think so too,’ said Lukman in his soft voice.

  Shahid kicked his packed bag away:

  ‘I’ve changed my mind. I can’t wait. We’ll go ahead. Some other time I’ll go to my own clouds of glory with Allah.’ His eyes suddenly glistened with tears.

  Sadiq laughed and put his hands on Shahid’s shoulder. ‘Come on. Come on. Let me show you the sword-dance. It’s an old Bedouin tradition. Abukar drum out the rhythm for us.’ Abukar pulled up a chair and began to drum with his flat hands on the wooden seat of his chair. Massoud put out his cigarette and joined them. They put their hands on each other’s shoulders and began to move around in a circle, stamping their feet. They went faster and faster. Mark stood next to them clapping his hands. In the end the circle broke apart as they stumbled over the chairs and stopped.

  Lukman’s wife could be heard calling him down to eat.

  ‘Let’s go now and check out the bank,’ suggested Mark, capitalising on the excitement that had seized everyone in the room. ‘We can just drive past. We need to remind ourselves of the layout. Decide on timing and so on.’

  Half an hour later five of them were in Sadiq’s old car. Lukman stayed behind to eat. They drove slowly through the rain relishing the power of what they were about to do. They passed the illuminated towers and front lobby of the bank and pulled up opposite the complex of buildings. Through the glass doors could be seen the gigantic atrium constructed of quartz and steel and glass illuminated by halogen lamps. A steel rainbow arched across this entrance lobby and extended over the whole of the ground floor. Shahid became both grave and euphoric at the sight:

  ‘This is what I came to do, inshallah. It makes me feel that I’ve finally become an adult, as if I am doing something serious for my own people. As if I’m being tested by Allah. I feel proud of myself.’

  ‘We will do it on Monday night. Midnight,’ said Sadiq. ‘We’ll bring the car and park it further down the road at about eight o’clock. The truck will be ready nearby. We’ll wait and then after midnight we can rig the truck with the explosives and put a paving stone on the accelerator.’

  That night Mark lay in his sleeping bag on the floor. Despite the changed circumstances there were the same gut-churning nerves that he had felt in the seventies as well as that overwhelming adrenalin rush of excitement. He could hear Shahid in the next room listening to a CD of one of Abu Qatada’s fiery sermons. A faint feeling of hilarity came over him. He had believed every word of what he said at the meeting. Now he would be able to bomb a bank and get away with it.

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  The Ladies Night at Mambo Racine’s started late to accommodate all those dancers who were appearing in shows. Before the dance floor became crowded Ella sat with Manuela having a drink at one of the tables.

  ‘This will be fun. I don’t like the blue underfloor lighting though, do you? It makes us all look dead. Apparently there’s going to be a DJ,’ said Ella.

  ‘That girl in the sound box,’ said Manuela.

  They looked up at a girl in the sound box. Behind the glass window she could be seen with her headphones on. She wore black lipstick and a black satin dress and her permafrosted blonde hair fell into a neat bob as she bent over to inspect the decks. Next to her stood a black girl with a fibreglass helmet of straightened and lacquered hair surveying the scene below. Behind them was a red plastic crate of records and CDs.

  Just then the swing doors opened and about twenty girls came in shrieking and sliding over the polished floor. Some brandished bottles of Vodka and cans of Red Bull. A few of them had tied their hair up in great bows with ribbons or scarves. They wore every possible combination of dance gear: tights, leg-warmers, frilly cotton knickers, leotards and short chiffon overskirts.

  ‘I mustn’t go too mad,’ continued Manuela. ‘I’ll embarrass my daughter. She’s coming with the others as soon as the show is finished. These girls must be from one of the musicals. There are some coming from Carousel and Mamma Mia, I think.’

  Ella and Manuela also wore a mixture of mad dance attire. Ella wore a yellow ochre and black striped lace camisole with black tights and black woollen leggings. Her hair was pulled back and lifted into a tight knot. As a joke she had six inch oval gauze wings perched on her head. Manuela was bursting out of a lizard green leotard. Manuela sighed as she examined her bulky legs and thighs:

  ‘I’m so fat. Look at my cleavage. It looks as though someone has stuffed an arse down my blouse. We’ll all look like idiots at our age.’

  Ella laughed:

  ‘No we won’t. Dance doesn’t bother with age. You should see the ninety-year-olds winding their waists at Carnival in Brazil.’

  As if to prove her point an elegant old lady in her eighties with a sprightly gait came towards them.

  ‘Oh goodness. It’s Madame Sourikova.’ Ella jumped up to embrace her old Russian dance teacher. As the teacher smiled, deep cracks – the crazy-paving of age – opened up all over her face but her eyes burned with life. The hum of the sound system being turned on and the crackle of a microphone stopped further conversation as the night started with an announcement:

  ‘I am Cream-Tease, your DJ for tonight working the decks alongside Lady Krylon. A big range for ladies only. Some dance-hall stylee. Mash-up and Re-Mix. I’ll have mixes by Terra Diva and others. Reggae. Soul. Hardcore. Garage. Jungle and Hard House. The sizzle has gone underground, girls. Rock is stale. Pop is dead. It’s soul-sizzle all the way so join us in the underground. But I’m kicking off with something cool and icy – Subliminal Session 2 from Cookie Dough Dynamite.’

  Trance-Master music swept through the venue and a hypnotic bass drum pumped out like blood from a stab victim. Manuela’s daughter turned up with the ballet crew and waved to her mother as they moved straight to the dance floor under the strobe lighting.

  One girl with a body like a swan’s neck, long, sinuous, bendy and seductive started the dancing. Any observer could see that this was not going to be a normal dance-club evening with people jigging on the spot. Groups of dancers from their various shows entered into physical dialogue with each other. One set would do a sequence of movements with leaping twists and outrageous high-kicks, half improvised and half taken from the choreography they knew. Another set copied them. Then dancers from the ballet replied by executing a series of flying turns across the floor, ending with provocative wiggles of the hips and backbends over each other’s arms. The DJ watching from above orchestrated tunes that moved the crowd from one mood to another. The dancers responded, flooded with an inextinguishable energy that surged up from their feet.

  Amongst those quick limbs of youth one awkward girl stood out. She had long blonde hair and a fringe. She wore a short black dress and attracted attention by hurling her uncoordinated arms and legs around the dance floor, caught up in some fantasy that had not been translated to her body. People assumed that a friend must have brought her. They sniggered and exchanged glances and then had to move out of the way as she spun ecstatically around the room, unaware of the spectacle she made, bumping into other dancers.

  Ella, Manuela and Madame Sourikova were soon up and dancing with the crowd. Even Ella had forgotten the excitement of d
ance liberated from the constraints of choreography. Below the level of reason the angels and ogres normally kept in the cellar came out to dance, to rove and roar, growling and singing. One girl did a solo turn with spinning, can-can kicks, her torso arched back like a bow before she jumped into a back-flip. It was as if she had burst out of some two-dimensional region into a third dimension, her body scrawling its own message on the air in explosive hieroglyphics. Everyone started to scream and clap in time to the music.

  Ella let go of Manuela’s hand and went over to their table to catch her breath. Then she glimpsed a figure in the doorway. The figure stepped back out of sight behind the doorpost in order not to be seen. It was Donny. Ella ran over to see him. Her eyes took a minute to adjust to the dark outside the strobe lights of the dance floor. He looked grim and serious.

  ‘I’m away,’ he said.

  ‘Where to?’ she gripped his elbows.

  ‘I don’t know. I’m just away. That’s all.’

  He disentangled himself. His features were set and grave. She saw him clearly set against a ragged fire of darkness, a radiant blackness. Eventually he spoke:

  ‘Get back to your dancing.’ Then he was gone.

  Ella went back to the dance floor. The coloured strobe lights flashed around her and she felt as though she were balancing on top of a plain of sadness. Manuela was fanning herself by their table and moving gently from side to side with the music.

  The music began to pump out a ferocious beat. The body has its own language. Ella crouched half-way to the ground with bent knees and started stamping her feet. It was the Djuka dance she remembered from her childhood in Surinam. The movements were grotesque and required tremendous physical stamina. She looked like some giant insect. Others copied her. Soon the floor was filled with a seething mass, a swarm of crouching insect creatures drumming their feet. The whole room became intoxicated with a raw and rowdy sort of violence.