by Monica Ali
There was a sound in the corridor. He ran outside. Across the hall his neighbour fumbled with his key.
‘Oh, sorry,’ said Gabriel, ‘I was expecting someone.’
‘Hi,’ said the neighbour, smiling absently. He went into his flat.
It was typical, thought Gabriel. That was how selfish people were. Wouldn’t exchange a few words. Wouldn’t give you the time of day. Those neighbours, whenever he saw them, they didn’t even break their stride. Hi and that was it. Gabe hadn’t done much better, he admitted, but at least it was in his mind to invite them over, he’d been on the point of doing it, nearly asked them round for dinner when he’d first moved in.
He resumed his pacing. The fact was things had gone downhill. When he was growing up it wasn’t like this at all. In those days people took an interest. They rallied round. They knew your name, at least. Now nobody had the time. They didn’t keep an eye out for anyone. If he went over and knocked on the door and said, have you seen her? they would smile politely and say, who?
Gabriel chewed on his fingernail. He smoked a cigarette. He looked out of the window, which put the jinx back again. He had to stay away.
He found himself standing in the kitchen, turning the tap on and off. The rucksack was on the counter. He hadn’t unpacked it yet.
When he had a son he would say to him, when I was growing up, and the boy would think to himself, that was the last century, the last millennium. He’d take the boy to work sometimes, if he wanted to come.
Where was Lena? Stop worrying. Without money, how far would she get?
What would he show the boy at work? Would the boy have been proud of him yesterday? Well, there were pressures, too complicated for a child to understand.
It was nearly seven o’clock. Where was she? If she didn’t come by seven she wasn’t coming. That was clear enough.
When he used to go to Rileys with Dad it was different. He preached loyalty, honesty, respect, as if those things were woven into the fabric of his work. But now it wasn’t like that. The world was a different place.
It was seven. This could not go on. He seized a knife, the devil’s own blade, and plunged it into the solid beech worktop with all his God-given strength. The black handle shivered as he retreated, issuing a silent plea. If you’re out there, if you can hear me, let me not be mad.
* * *
He opened a bottle of wine and forced himself to sit on the sofa with the television on. He was OK. He was rational. Lena was probably at the cinema. She wouldn’t expect him back until after ten. If she could see one film then why not two, a double bill? Everyone got wound up once in a while. It hardly made them insane. Gleeson … why should he even think about anything that viper had to say? Jenny … well, Jenny, bless her, had got hold of the wrong end of the stick. She said it runs in families. But he wasn’t Mum. He didn’t go on crazy spending sprees. He didn’t run off with the milkman. No, his life was still his own.
He shifted uncomfortably, tried a cushion behind his head, removed it, put his feet on the coffee table and then down again. He swung his legs on to the sofa and stared up at the ceiling.
What if his life were a series of blunders based on misreadings, on misconceptions, on a series of childish mistakes? If he made choices without understanding, what kind of choosing was that? It was like some madman, believing himself the King of Spain, carefully deciding if he should wage war on France, or if it should be Brazil. Working out his options in his padded cell, weighing and deliberating, playing with his own shit.
When he looked back it seemed to him … no, wait, better not to look. Things were better the way he used to remember them.
If he’d listened to Dad, he would have gone to university. One thing followed on from another. You didn’t walk a path, you got on a train and the stations were few and far between.
What happened between you and Dad? You couldn’t reach a finger into your past and touch something and say, there, that’s it, right there. There were too many reasons, too many ways of looking, thinking, remembering. Ah, yes! What was important was not what happened but how you remembered it. It was Dad who told him that. You’re so right, Dad. Dad, do you know how true that is?
Gabriel rose from the sofa and resumed his pacing. Now all he had to do was choose the right way to remember. It was clearly up to him. Although, having said that, it wasn’t so easy to put thoughts out of your mind. What he needed, no, what he needed was an adjudicator, someone who knew him, who knew what he was really like. A friend, you see, a friend could say impartially, oh, you were always destined, you were cut out, there’d be no stopping you. Someone with faith in him.
He had friends. He’d call one now. Of course he had friends. Did he? But what he needed was a witness. Someone who knew what made him. Someone who would stand up and say it. Yes, I vouch for this man.
When Jenny picked up the phone she was still speaking to someone at the other end.
‘Jen,’ said Gabe, ‘it’s me.’
‘Oh, Gabe,’ said Jenny, ‘hang on a minute.’
Gabriel heard raised voices, followed by a muffled bang.
‘Like World War Three in here,’ said Jenny. ‘Bailey’s grounded, but she’s just walked out the door and I said to her, Bailey, don’t even think about it because there’ll be hell to pay and she looked at me like … yeah, go on then, and off she goes and Harley, don’t get me started …’
Gabe smiled. ‘What’s he done now?’
‘He’s only gone and … no, don’t get me started. I’ll tell you when you come up because I’ve the ironing to do tonight. You coming up, Gabe? Dad’s not doing so good.’
‘I will,’ said Gabriel. ‘Soon.’
‘Don’t leave it too long.’
‘Jenny,’ said Gabe, ‘I was thinking about when we were kids.’
‘You saying I’m too strict with mine?’
‘No,’ said Gabe. ‘I was just thinking when we’d go down and play by the railway track …’
‘Which definitely wasn’t allowed.’
What could he say to make her understand? Jenny had worries of her own. ‘Those summer days, they went on for ever. Remember how long they were?’
‘I get it,’ said Jenny, ‘we were no angels, never home on time. But Harley and Bailey, they think they’re grown-ups, think they can do whatever they like, and I suppose they’re right but not under my roof is what I tell them, there’s lines you cannot cross. Gabe, when do you think you’ll come?’
‘Soon,’ said Gabriel. ‘Next week or the week after, whenever I can get away.’
‘Good. I best get on,’ said Jenny, distracted, ‘nice to hear your voice.’
‘Yours too,’ said Gabe, trying to keep the misery out of his. A deep hole opened inside him, a big black space. Everything he tried to hold on to was sucked into the vacuum and he stayed empty, this hollow at his core.
‘Well,’ said Jenny.
‘Wait! Michael Harrison’s tattoo parlour, do you know the name of it? Thought I might try to track him down, sink a couple of pints, you know, for old times’ sake.’
‘Be easy enough to find him,’ said Jenny, ‘but you might have to make do with a brew. Bev heard it off Mrs Tisdale who got it off Sandra Sharples who’s going out with—’
‘Jenny!’
‘Keep your hair on, Gabe. Plenty of time, he’s not going nowhere. He’s in Warrington, got eight years for assaulting a police officer, aggravated something or other and GBH.’
‘But you said …’
‘I know, but that was ages ago. So anyway, looks like you won’t be going for that pint.’
‘What happened? What went …’
‘… wrong? I don’t know. But, tell the truth, I’m not surprised. I mean, I was shocked, of course, it’s terrible, but when you think what his dad was like. It was the drink, probably, for both of them. Alcoholic, you know.’
‘Such a …’
‘… shame, and he was such a bonny lad,’ she said, sighing, as if this was what wa
s lost. ‘Don’t suppose you’d have that much in common, though, not after all this time. Even if he weren’t banged up.’
‘No,’ said Gabriel. ‘Probably not.’
‘Right,’ said Jenny, ‘we’ll expect you soon.’
‘That’s right.’ He cast about desperately for a way to keep Jenny talking. It was like fishing in a dried-up well, he couldn’t dredge anything up. Oh, there was that time, Jenny would love this, at the top of Twistle Tower and Bev was there … or was it Jackie? It’d come back to him if he closed his eyes.
‘I’ll tell Dad,’ said Jenny, ‘but you better call him too. See you, Gabe. Bye-bye, then. Cheerio for now.’
* * *
When she saw him at the kitchen table, Lena started. She put a hand to her chest. ‘It’s you,’ she said, and smiled.
‘Yes,’ said Gabriel, ‘who else? Who else would it be?’
‘I make tea,’ said Lena. ‘You want I make for you?’
‘I mean,’ said Gabe, ‘you wouldn’t be expecting anyone, any visitors? Nothing like that.’
She was filling the kettle and humming her tuneless hum. ‘I have hear,’ she said, laughing, twisting her catlike back, ‘I have hear something funny today.’
She spoke and he listened and he thought he had seen this before; it wasn’t happening, it was something remembered, yes, it had been just like this. There was music, that’s right, she’d put the radio on and she was swaying and giggling, even dancing a few pretty steps. Such simple things fill a heart. Telling him how a man had been locked in a public toilet for two days. He laughed because she laughed, and her hair which she had plaited swung behind her shoulders and she had a bright dress on.
What happened now? Did he go to her? Did he take her in his arms?
‘Where did you hear it?’ he heard himself say.
Lena looked in the breadbin. ‘I make toast.’
‘Who told you? Lena, who?’
‘Is news,’ she said.
He got up and moved closer. His shadow fell across her.
‘You don’t watch the news. You don’t read newspapers. Where did you go today?’
She turned away from him. ‘I go out.’
‘Yes. Where? Where did you go? Look at me, Lena. I said, where.’
She whipped round. ‘Why you ask like this?’
The scene went bad from here, as he remembered. What could he do? He felt sick. He was sweating. All he had to do was keep his mouth closed.
‘It’s a reasonable question,’ he said.
‘You keep me here like … like prison. Like animal in cage.’
He could see what he was doing wrong. He looked at himself with a mixture of pity and disgust. What a sap. What a fool. Would he never learn?
‘Do I lock you in? Do I beat you?’ He should know better than to shout. He did know better. But here we go again. ‘Don’t I give you everything you ask for and more?’
‘You promise,’ said Lena, attacking her fingernail, ‘but you don’t give.’
‘What?’ he said, the poor fool. ‘What don’t I give?’
‘You say you look for Pasha. You say you pay someone. But I don’t believe.’
The idiot stood with his hands on his hips, attempting to be affronted by the idea. Anyone could see what he was like. Wake up and smell the coffee, buddy boy.
‘I can prove to you …’
‘You say you give me money. How long I wait for it?’
He was watching her twist the end of her plait around her finger. He was looking into her glazed blue eyes, trying to make them focus on him. He was thinking a thousand thoughts and none of them was right.
‘I didn’t find that money. Nikolai took it and sent it to Yuri’s family. It was Yuri’s all along, wasn’t it, the money wasn’t yours.’
Oh no, no. Stop looking. Don’t hear any more.
‘I have earn that money. I have earn it. Here, with you, is not for free. Why you don’t pay me? Pay me what you owe.’
* * *
He took Nikolai down to dry goods to help with the stock check. The shelves laddered up each wall, bustling with bottles and boxes, jars and packets, containers and cans, shouty labels, eye-test print, cloudy canisters, glinting glass, nasty tin. The floor, an obstacle course of sacks and cardboard cartons, begrudged Gabe’s presence, always trying to trip him up. It was a madman’s bunker down here. And still they would order more.
‘Fava beans, haricot beans,’ said Gabriel. ‘Arborio rice.’ He watched Nikolai writing on his prescription pad. ‘Tell me something,’ he said. ‘Are you happy? Being a commis, it’s not what you expected to do.’
Nikolai made a gesture of indifference with his hands.
‘I suppose,’ continued Gabe, ‘a lot of people aren’t.’
Nikolai nodded, still assessing the patient, perhaps.
‘I mean,’ said Gabe, ‘even if they’re rich and successful and all the rest, they feel unhappy, they get depressed.’ Last night he’d smoked cigarette after cigarette, walking round the block. Lena could not feel anything, was incapable. It was that client who had made her like this. If he ever saw the man he would kill him with his bare hands.
‘It’s normal,’ said Nikolai.
‘I don’t mean me. I’m all right. On the whole.’ Gabe, staring at a hessian sack, wished he could curl up on it and sleep. But if he went to sleep he would have the dream he didn’t want to have.
‘In my home town,’ said Nikolai, his long white fingers caressing the pen, ‘when I was a boy we had a Happiness Day Parade. Everyone had to go. We mocked it, of course. We were ordered to be happy and so, to be subversive, we went out of our way to be miserable, and nothing could have made us happier than this forbidden misery.’
‘Did you have to march through the town?’
‘With banners,’ said Nikolai. He paused. He was preparing to give his diagnosis, Gabe could tell by the look on his face. ‘Crude ideology, easy to laugh at it. Yours is more sophisticated and so dominant that it has been internalized and it works much better that way. Unhappiness is normal but if we are unhappy we think that we have failed. Every day in this country is a Happiness Day Parade, but we don’t march shoulder to shoulder, each must march alone.’
Gabe sat down on a packing crate. ‘You know, if I could get a good night’s sleep I’d be happy. I’d be ecstatic, in fact. It’s this bloody dream.’
‘The dream,’ said Nikolai. ‘You told me.’
Why didn’t he say anything? Why did he look like he knew more than he chose to say? ‘What does it mean?’ Gabriel burst out. ‘It must mean something. It’s doing my head in.’
‘The interpretation of dreams,’ said Nikolai, ‘a subject close to Freud’s heart. Personally I find this part of his work less satisfactory, and I know you are not a big fan of his. There are people who claim to read dreams much as they read tea leaves or palms.’
‘Why do I keep having it? Over and over again. It might mean,’ he said, wildly, ‘something significant, like Yuri’s death was no accident. It might mean that the dream won’t stop until the killer is caught.’
Nikolai looked at him with his rodent eyes. ‘You mean,’ he said, in his precise little way, ‘that Yuri’s ghost is haunting you?’
‘No, of course not, no. Christ. It’s just the same thing, over and over, so I’m down here in the catacombs somewhere and there’s this horrible light, it … it beats, sort of pulses like a heart or something, and it’s kind of pulling me along. Or sometimes it’s chasing me, I don’t know, and I think it’s going to – it sounds stupid – drown me. And, anyway, I always end up in the same place, with Yuri’s body and – did I tell you about this? I told you – I have to kind of crawl around and examine it and then there’s the food …’
‘The food. Do you eat it?’
‘Yes. No. I used to but now it’s full of maggots and stuff. Or maybe it’s not rotten any more, I don’t eat it, I just try to stop it burying me alive.’
‘So the dream doesn’t stay the same,
it changes.’
‘Sort of, but basically it’s the same.’
‘I see,’ said Nikolai. ‘And this light you mention, what happens when you stop by Yuri’s body, does it catch up with you?’
Gabe scratched his head two-handed. His elbows flapped. ‘No, there’s no light then.’
‘So how do you see the body? How do you examine it?’
‘It’s not dark, it’s normal, you know, I don’t know, it doesn’t all make sense, it’s a dream.’
‘But you want to find meaning in this thing which doesn’t make sense?’
Gabriel laughed. ‘Think I’m losing it. Can’t get a grip on myself. Never mind. Let’s get on. What’s up at the top there? I can’t see. Is that where the flour is?’
Nikolai stood on tiptoe on a twenty-litre drum of Frymax. ‘Dried fruits, sugars, nuts.’ He turned round. ‘But what is this self you are losing? You mean a kind of soul?’
It was pointless, thought Gabe, to have these conversations with Nikolai. He wouldn’t allow himself to be sucked in. ‘I only mean what ordinary people mean when they talk about themselves.’
‘Ah,’ said Nikolai, ‘but that’s going round in circles.’
Gabriel raised his hand as if to ward Nikolai off. ‘It’s pretty obvious to everybody. Everybody except you.’
‘Scientifically speaking …’
‘Oh, stuff your scientific speaking,’ Gabriel barked. Nikolai said he was a doctor. A likely story. You don’t go around believing every story you hear.
‘I understand,’ said Nikolai gently. ‘After all, it seems that we are biologically programmed to have what we might call a sense of self.’
Look at him, thought Gabriel, standing on his soap box, his oil can, about to address a meeting. He wasn’t a scientist, he was a politician, always trying for another convert. He looked like he lived in a cellar, like he’d never seen the light of day, a little albino revolutionary stirring it up from underground. ‘Oh, whatever,’ he said.
