by Monica Ali
‘Right,’ said Gabriel, vaguely. ‘Good idea to get out.’
‘There was fighting. I ran away.’ Benny shrugged.
‘You came straight to London?’ Gabriel was grateful for this abbreviated history. On the one hand he was idly curious to hear Benny’s background, on the other he did not wish to be burdened with it. If he had to yell at Benny about something, or even give him the sack, he preferred not to know about any terrible things he might have been through. He was only keeping him talking to put off the inevitable: going home.
‘I went with some others to Cairo because I heard that they help Liberians there. After two years of waiting I was interviewed by the United Nations officials and after another year of waiting I was offered resettlement here. I used these years of waiting to improve my English.’
‘Your English is excellent,’ said Gabriel.
‘Thank you. English is our official language in Liberia. But if I talk Liberian English,’ he said, his accent thickening, ‘it g’wan vex you plenty-plenty.’
How did I get myself into this thing with Lena, thought Gabriel. But it wasn’t even something he had got himself into. It was something that had happened to him. He didn’t, after all, ask for her to appear like that in the yard. ‘So,’ he said to Benny, ‘Liberia is not a good place to be.’
‘I can tell you another story,’ said Benny. ‘Perhaps it is more interesting than my own.’
‘Please,’ said Gabriel, ‘go on.’
‘This friend, Kono, is also Liberian. He is around my age, and we are very close. He is from Nimba county, one of the Gio people.’ Benny stopped. He appeared to have a change of heart. ‘Well, it is getting late.’
‘We haven’t finished our drinks,’ said Gabriel. Lena, he thought. Oh, God.
‘All right,’ said Benny. ‘When Charles Taylor’s men first came through this area, in 1989, Kono’s village was untouched because the Gios supported Taylor. But the following year the trouble began. Taylor’s men – he was the rebel leader and later he was the president – had some disagreement with the headman of the village. This man was Kono’s father. Two days later, these rebel soldiers, they returned.
‘They dragged Kono’s mother and father and his four brothers and sisters out of the house. The parents they shot. The children they beat to death with rifle butts. It saves on bullets, you see. Kono lived because he was the eldest and a boy and the rebels recruited him in this way. He was twelve then.’
‘Christ,’ said Gabe. He knew what was going to happen with Lena. That was what he was trying to avoid, sitting here listening to this stuff that nobody, to be honest, wanted to hear.
‘I know,’ said Benny, laughing, ‘I know. The rebels took Kono and they put him to work. At first he fetched water and dug latrines. After a while, he was taken on a raid and ordered to shoot one of the prisoners – a pregnant woman. The rebels beat him, but still he refused. Are you sure I should go on? A short time later, on another raid, he was told, “It is time for your initiation now.” Kono was reluctant but the unit leader took a knife and started to cut Kono. This gave him the encouragement he needed.’
‘So now he was a rebel soldier himself?’ He knew what was going to happen with Lena. But where was the knife at Gabriel’s throat? He was free to choose, was he not?
‘A child soldier,’ said Benny. ‘This is what my country is famous for. They put him on a checkpoint, another Liberian speciality. This one was decorated with human skulls and it was called No Way Back because … well, I think you can guess, eh, heh, heh. For nearly three years Kono went on raids and guarded the checkpoint. This was his life.’ Benny, it turned out, was quite a raconteur, once he got going. ‘All the child soldiers had nicknames. Death Squad, Lethal Weapon, Killer Dog … Kono was not very tall for his age and his nickname was General Shoot-On-Tiptoes, for obvious reasons I think.’
‘I get it,’ said Gabe. He had to admit there were places, there were times, when your life was taken out of your hands.
‘He did what child soldiers do and had cornrows and cowries in his hair, and every day he got high.’
Gabriel had no such excuse. If he wanted to sleep with Lena, how could he kid himself that it was ‘just going to happen’? As if he were the victim of history, of war, of fate.
‘Then one day Kono went on a raid and they did the usual stuff, raping, looting, killing. When they had finished this work they relaxed for a while in this village. Some of the boy soldiers began playing football and Kono went to join in. He saw that they were using a woman’s head for a ball. Kono joined in the game.’
Gabriel looked sharply at Benny.
‘I can see what you are thinking,’ said Benny, ‘heh, heh, you are thinking how can a human being do this? Even myself, I am thinking the same. What is it that makes us human? Are we just animals, after all?’
‘This is your friend?’ said Gabe. Lena, he thought, with a sudden, low ache, would be pacing, waiting for him to get home. How could he be thinking of Lena, right now, this second? What was wrong with him?
‘We are very close. After this day, he knew he had to get out. He decided he would rather die than stay. So when he was sent to the market one day to get food – take it, not buy it, you understand – he ran away. For a while he lived on the street in Monrovia, expecting every day to be his last. Then he met a friend of his father’s, a Libyan businessman, who helped him get to Cairo. That is when I met him, ex-General Shoot-On-Tiptoes, Kono, my good friend.’ Benny laughed. He clapped his hands, wrung them together briefly and then put his jacket on. Gabe caught a flicker of understanding. For an instant he saw it clearly, knew why Benny laughed. He knew it deeply, instinctively, momentarily before he lost the perception again.
‘Now,’ said Benny, getting up, ‘all he has left of that time are the nightmares. But nightmares won’t kill you, he says.’
They left the bar and Benny walked towards Oxford Street to wait for the night bus. Gabriel watched him for a few moments, the tiger dancing on his back, stepping in and out of the shadows, his stories packed and stowed; a small black man on his way to or from a shift, hurrying, looking down and walking away, until the city claimed him and Gabriel turned and hailed a cab.
CHAPTER EIGHT
HE WATCHED HER SLEEPING NOW, HIS HAND HELD AS IF IN A force field directly above her throat, as though to absorb or else heal her through the pulse that throbbed at the base of his thumb. Lena, in the marbled moonlight, was a carved beauty, a dying swan. Her lips were sheened to perfection, her flawless cheeks were pearled, and the unfathomable beauty of her eyelids would make a convert of any man. There she lay, his irritant, his ache, his skinny girl, colourless hair spread across the pillow, his salvation, his ruin, or neither, but simply his release.
Lena stirred and opened her eyes. Gabe, on his knees at her side, pulled back with guilty speed, as if he had been stealing. Her mouth stretched to form an ‘O’ and closed again. For a long, frozen moment they looked at each other and Gabe’s ears filled with the pounding of blood. She raised an arm and put her hand against his chest. She slid it inside his shirt. When he moved on top of her it was with a grace and ease he had not known he possessed. Her hard little fingers moved through his hair. Am I the kind of person who does this? he thought. Is this me, am I this type? And then there was only the movement, the heat, the wet, the rub, the glide, the ripples across his back, and he dissolved, no I, no me, no who, but only this, their bodies, and nothing more.
They unwound from each other and parted, Gabriel sitting on the sofa and Lena tugging down her skirt but still reclining, head against the sofa’s arm. Gabriel came back to himself. Oh shit, he said silently, but it was mere experiment, the regret that he expected had not reported for duty yet. He ran his fingers around her kneecap and stroked her thigh, waiting for his breath to settle down. Lena was looking at the ceiling, her lips pressed together, arms crossed on her chest, laid out like a graveyard statue.
‘Lena,’ said Gabe, tenderly pinching the thin, soft
flesh. ‘I looked for the money.’
Lena let out a slow exhale. ‘I know what you will say.’
‘I went down there,’ said Gabe. ‘I counted the bricks, four from the right and …’
‘I know what you will say.’
Gabe removed his hand from her leg. He was accused, but of what? He reached for the lamp and switched it on. ‘What am I going to say?’
Lena snapped upright as if jolted by her own internal current. ‘You say you did not find. I am right or not?’
Was she saying that he had not bothered to look, or that he had taken her money for himself? He looked into her eyes, trying to gauge the level of her anger, but he could not see inside her, could as soon see her liver or intestines as the state of her heart. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘I didn’t.’
‘No,’ said Lena, drawing up her knees to form a barrier. ‘No.’ She plucked at the rings in her ears, stretching the lobes.
There was another possibility. The money never existed. She was working some plan to twist cash out of him. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
‘Why sorry? For what?’ She pulled harder at the earrings. ‘How I was so stupid, leave money like that?’
Gabe took hold of her wrists. ‘Don’t,’ he said, ‘you’ll make them bleed.’ Gently, he lowered her arms and held her hands, or rather her fists. ‘I’ve got some money saved,’ he said. So what if it was her plan? He didn’t care. ‘I can let you have some, we’ll call it a loan but you can pay me back whenever that’s going to be possible for you. OK? Lena, OK?’
She turned her sharp face up to look at him. Her beauty had a fragile quality; it could break at any moment. ‘If you think …’ she said, trailing off. She released her fists and they held hands.
‘I think that would be fine. How much do you need? How much did you have?’
Lena hesitated. He imagined the calculations running through her head. How much to ask for? How much was too much? How much not enough? ‘Two thousand,’ she said, finally. ‘But … is up to you.’
‘Two thousand?’ Gabe whistled. ‘OK.’
‘I accept this offer,’ said Lena, and Gabriel understood the attempt to make it real, binding, a done deal.
He pulled her into his chest and they sat for a while in silence, Gabriel smelling the anxious, unwashed smell of her hair, so different from Charlie’s, which was safely fresh and citrus, as full as Lena’s was thin.
‘When?’ said Lena. She said it softly. ‘When you will make this loan for me?’
‘I have to … you know, make the withdrawal. I have to actually go into the bank. Can’t get that kind of cash out of the machine.’
Lena pulled away. ‘Yes. I understand, yes.’ She smiled. He could see the tension in her neck, the way the tendons stood out. ‘When you will go?’
‘Soon as I can,’ said Gabriel. They were walking the high wire, both of them, facing each other over the canyon of their conflicting desires. ‘Might be tricky the next couple of days, lot on at work.’ He wanted her to go, of course he did, as much as she wanted to leave, but he didn’t want it now, not yet.
‘Two days,’ said Lena, ‘is nothing. I wait.’
In bed, while Lena finished up in the bathroom, Gabriel looked at the furniture: the pine chest, the melamine stacking chair, the home-assembly chest of drawers, and thought about putting them into storage. He should get some furniture of his own, choose stuff that was more ‘him’, though he was not sure of his taste in furniture, and it would be better to get Charlie to help. This room was so anonymous. But maybe he liked it that way. In Plodder Lane every chair, every object had a history so that nothing was just what it was.
Lena came in wearing her blouse and pants. She hadn’t brushed her hair. She sat down beneath the pastel-framed print of the water lilies, half in, half out of the circle of lamplight, back bent, hands on thighs.
He looked at her serious little face. He said, ‘Have you heard the one about the chef and the kitchen porter? The chef says, see these pans here …’
‘You want to make fun for me. I am not care,’ said Lena, her accent thickening. ‘I am not give shit.’
Gabriel patted the empty pillow at his side. ‘Come here. I’m not making fun, I was trying to, you know, keep it light.’
Lena stared at her knees.
‘You can’t sit there all night. Come on, hop in.’ He lifted the duvet. She sat still, resisting, wretched, and he decided to be firm with her to put her out of this self-inflicted pain. ‘Get in bed, Lena, now. Stop pissing around.’
She got in bed and he covered her with the duvet. Lying propped on one elbow, he traced the lines of her thin high eyebrows.
‘When you were growing up,’ he said, ‘when you were a little girl, what did you want to be?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Lena. She looked directly at him. Her eyes were a clear, dark blue but he saw nothing in them, as if they were clouded by cataracts.
‘Ballerina,’ said Gabriel, ‘princess, acrobat, Eskimo.’
She made a dismissive sound. ‘Tchh.’
If he could make her laugh, he decided, there was nothing to be sorry about. Though she had started it, touched him, she was behaving as if he had taken something from her.
‘Astronaut, actress, lion tamer, mystic. Bank manager, accountant, florist, mortician. Am I close? Damn.’ He rolled on to his back. ‘Got it,’ he said, punching the headboard. ‘Kitchen porter at the world-famous Imperial Hotel. Your dream came true.’
‘You are bad man,’ said Lena, but she gave a short, dry laugh, and it was she who came to him, sliding across the bed and fitting under his arm.
There were footsteps in the courtyard. People went out there sometimes in the night to smoke. The traffic maintained a steady rumble, a soft underblanket of noise on which to float off to sleep. When she spoke again he realized he had been drifting.
‘Italy,’ she said. ‘I want for long time, go to Italy.’
‘Oh, Italy. Why not? Italy is beautiful.’
‘For work in care home, be carer for old people. Is not dream. Little girl dream … I don’t know, not this. But now, seem like dream, even this.’
‘London’s not so bad,’ said Gabe. ‘We’ll get you back on your feet. You’ll see.’ The police weren’t looking for her. Even if they interviewed her they wouldn’t care if she was illegal or not. There was no need for her to hide. He thought about telling her but it was almost the middle of the night and he didn’t want to think about all of that. Something else to keep in the bank, sterling currency in his gift. ‘What do you think of this room? Bit characterless, would you say?’
Lena sat up. She looked into the middle distance but whatever she was seeing it was not the pine chest, the stacking chair, but something in her head that made her pinch her arms. ‘In my home, in Mazyr, there is gypsy woman. She have big gypsy nose and one eye green and one eye blue. This gypsy woman she tell for me fortune. You know what is fortune? Yes, future. She use tea leaves for this. She tell me, you will meet man, beautiful man, tall and dark hair, yes, like fairy tale, and beautiful man he have mark on neck, back here, is mark from birth, yes, birthmark, and he will take you to your life.’ She rocked gently, back and forth. ‘He will take you to your life.’
Gabriel ran his hand up and down her spine. She grew still.
‘There’s time,’ said Gabriel, ‘your life’s only starting. What are you, twenty-five? Twenty-four?’
‘My father say, in old days, Soviet days, is easy to tell what is lie. Everything is lie. Now, he says, is more hard. What is truth and what is lie? How we can know?’ She pulled her shoulders up by her ears and let them drop. ‘But he is wrong. There is no truth. Is only a new kind of lie.’
‘My father,’ said Gabriel, not realizing what he would say until the words left his mouth, ‘is dying.’
She wormed down and lay on her side, their bodies not quite touching. ‘He is old?’
‘Seventy-five.’
‘He is old,’ said Lena.
&nb
sp; Gabe looked into her cold blue eyes.
‘But is sad,’ she said, without a flicker of emotion.
Gabriel took her hand and pressed her fingers to his mouth. He kissed the bitten nails. He kissed the palm. She was hard and cold, and he was grateful for it. Their exchange, after all, was equal. They wanted something from each other, and what was theirs was theirs to trade freely, they didn’t need to deceive themselves.
He descends again into the aquarium glow of the catacombs. He is drifting on the light, and the light is not light, it is dark like the sea, the night sea but lit from within, a current of dark-light that sucks him down, sucks him in, and he is nearly at the place though he would turn from it if he could. He crouches over the body and begins with the feet, yellowing nails, a bunion, dry skin on the heel. He tries to move to the legs but is held, and must consider the feet again. Hair on the big toes, left little toe is bent, insteps white and purple with an eggshell texture, a wedge of tissue under the right big toenail to stop it growing in. Why must he look? They are only feet. He has seen feet before. And he is hungry. Oh, he is hungry. He calls for food. Who will feed me? I, who have fed so many, am hungry. Bring me food. Let there be food. Oysters on a silver salver. He drinks them from their shells. Sweet skewers of pork with a peanut glaze. He tears them with his teeth. Filo parcels of feta and spinach. He breaks them with his hands. His prayer is answered. The feast surrounds him. He is loved. He is loved. In gratitude, he weeps.
‘Caught you,’ said Charlie. ‘Admit it.’
The phone was at his ear. He must have answered it in his sleep. He tipped out of bed and went to the kitchen, leaned a forearm on the cool black granite. ‘No,’ he said. ‘What?’
‘Sleeping and what time do you call this?’
‘I missed you, sweetheart. What time is it?’
‘Ten thirty. I called you at work.’ Charlie laughed. ‘Oona covered your arse, said you’d probably gone straight into a meeting, but that’s after she’d said you hadn’t turned up.’
