by Lloyd Jones
Late afternoon she made up her mind to swim. She has a plastic bag with her containing her hotel uniform and the sticking knife made out of the birdcage wire. She will take the buoy with her.
The first task is to get the knife out. Despite the hours spent in the sea, her uniform is still dry. Inside the plastic bag she can make out the fold of a sleeve. The knife is rolled up inside her skirt. She has to pick at the knot with the fingers of one hand. Her other hand holds onto the buoy. More than once she lets go of the rope in order to pick the knot with both hands. Each time there is some progress before the sea parts and she sinks. Once when she thought she nearly had it her head was underwater. But that time failed as well and she surfaced—panicked to think her sinking could happen so quickly, so easily, that it could happen with a lapse in concentration. She remembered once seeing a woman chew an umbilical cord off. When she bites the knot off the top of the plastic bag it releases a puff of domestic air, of laundered air.
She has to get the knife out without getting the uniform wet, and then re-tie the bag, not so tightly this time, or so loosely that the sea would get in.
It took an age to work through the mooring rope, a strand at a time; when she cut through the last one the buoy jumped away from her and she had to swim after it. Her body wouldn’t do what she wanted it to. It behaved like a board. Every limb felt stiff. Each time she reached the buoy, it moved away at her touch and she had to dog paddle after it. She thought she had lost the buoy, she thought that was it, she had made it this far, so close to land, when her hand came into contact with the trailing rope. Now, at least, she will not sink. The rest will be up to her. With one hand against the buoy and the other clutching the rope she begins to frog kick for the coast.
She was still kicking as the sun went down. She had the awful feeling of moving away from land not towards it. She kept on though, there was no other option. Then at some point in the night she had the opposite feeling. She could feel herself being drawn towards the shore. There were the lights she’d seen the previous night. It is not as far as she had thought.
As a child she drew pictures of the sea and the world above. Where the two met she used to draw a shelf that rose like a hotel ramp for wheelchairs. This is how Europe arrives too. She finds herself in that vapid ghosted water pissed in by dogs and humans. There, a soggy wad of paper. Here, the sightless eyes of a fish-head turning on a coil of memory. After two nights at sea she lifted her face out of the pissy shallows into a soft murmuring air and a row of sunbathing feet pointing out to sea.
One by one the sunbathers raise themselves off their recliners. They sit up, faces behind sunglasses and under white floppy hats. Pointing, she thought, but perhaps not. She struggles up onto weakened knees holding onto the precious plastic bag, manages a few steps, staggering like a crippled old woman. Because of all those people she feels she has to walk, she has to move. She forces a smile onto her tight face, picks a direction and keeps to the wet shingle. If she smiles any harder her face will split. She doesn’t allow herself to look up the beach. At the first hotel she used to experience the same flush of guilt whenever she looked too long at the bowl of fruit put out for guests in the reception area. That flush of guilt was a puzzle to her, because it wasn’t as though she had wanted for food at the hotel. It was something to do with abundance—and she knew that abundance lay just back from the beach. So she puts on her hotel face and keeps to the shoreline until she leaves the last of the sunbathers.
It is stony underfoot. The tide rushes around her ankles, dragging scraps and bits of plastic back into the sea. She won’t look, not yet. She will not permit herself a glance up the beach. In the same way she used to avoid the unwanted attentions of certain hotel guests. Then the air changes. It smells of the boat, that fishy smell. She has come to a breakwater, a sloping wall of boulders. There is no more shoreline to follow. Now she will risk it. She turns her head away from the sea and the wet shingle to a line of row boats resting on their sides. She walks up to the first one, drops onto the sand beside it and pulls the ribbed hull down on top of her.
three
The inspector
In May the south is the first part of Europe to warm. The birds awaken from the tiny monuments of winter. The first of the supersized tourist buses arrive. The gypsies begin their shift north. The flotillas from Libya and Tunisia resume their hazardous voyages across the Mediterranean. The surveillance flights increase—and with depressing regularity come reports of Africans in the sea, popping up like corks, Africans clinging to wreckage, arms slung over debris, they cling on, wait. Sometimes a rescue boat turns up, sometimes not.
The cafes around the station provide coffee, ashtrays, snacks. The barmen look like barmen, raised from birth to become barmen. They have the same large faces, lower jawbones that weigh the face down beneath folds of flesh that enclose secrets. They have been trained to listen in such a way that they do not remember what is said. They are like the elected representatives of ghosts.
They accept that she may have passed through, yes, they are quick to accept that possibility but no one appears to remember. Was she tall? So, so? No? Shorter? They can’t be sure, they are reluctant to say. Given their uncertainty, to say one thing and not another would be misleading. You know how it is. They do not wish to mislead.
They cannot possibly notice every crab abandoned by the tide.
So where might one look? A hint, please.
They come as far as the door and point to the ramp leading onto the autoroute. That is the way a ghost might disappear into Europe.
At a small truck stop the man behind the cash register inclined his head to one of the corner tables where a large driver, all stomach and round knees, sat open-mouthed and frowning at a newspaper spread between out-held arms. He lost his glasses a few days earlier, and his wife’s don’t work for him as well as his own. So his eyes burn holes in the newsprint—an obituary of someone important, a shocking sports result, a new tax proposal, his horoscope for the day. He doesn’t mind the interruption. He snaps up the newspaper and peeks over the female frames. His gaze was direct, helpful. He rolled his thick tongue. Pushed out his chair. Tugged at his trouser belt, transferred his weight, and then we were at the window. But how did the truck driver get there? Without any discernible movement of his feet. His breath comes in rapid gasps, each word a new gasp. Antonio is the one to ask. His truck comes across on the ferry from Messina. And if he asks for the name of the man who pointed him out? Gatti. You may say Gatti. Who Gatti? Just Gatti. Gatti. Gatti. There, ask Antonio.
Antonio is sitting in his cab, the long mileage visible in his face. His window is down. He was about to light a cigarette, but stopped in order to listen. Then without a word spoken he pointed to the passenger-side door. These trucks are high. It takes effort—how is it that so many truck drivers such as Gatti are fat? Not Antonio though. He is whippet thin. Skin and bone. Shirt sleeves buttoned down to the wrist. One hand resting on the gear stick. Face pale. His eyebrows are dark, so is his hair, not a single grey hair either. Possibly mentally slow. How old? Late thirties, early forties? Forty-one would be a good guess. The skin around his throat is the colour of rash. At different moments the rash makes it up to his cheekbones, at other times it subsides to a full pale face, non-committal. His breath is unsteady, nervous around authority.
He took his hand off the gear stick and pushed the cigarette back in his mouth and lit it. He directed the smoke out the side window and then held the cigarette in front of his face and slowly nodded. There was such a person, he said. She stood up the road away from the prostitutes. Black? Yes, it was her. Because it was clear she was not a prostitute he stopped for her. Why would that be? Why did he stop for her? He’s thought about stopping for one of the prostitutes, one of the Albanian or Bulgarian girls. He’s thought about it, then afterwards he’s felt regretful. By his own admission some of these girls are brazen. They compete with one another. One may pull her top down and shake her tits in his headlights. Anoth
er lifts her skirt, and in a passing flash he notes she wasn’t wearing panties. Then he might drive off with a memory that might make him regretful, wishful, and so when a woman emerges from the trees further up the road this time he might find himself responding with heart-racing decisiveness to slow down and pull over.
four
The truck driver
She wore a coat. A scarf around her neck. When she climbed up to the cab she unwound the scarf and put it in her coat pocket. I do not remember what colour. It was dark. I asked her where she was headed. At first she did not understand. No lingo. No Italiano. She pointed to the map on the dash. She spoke English. I understand some words. Beckham. Manchester United. Sally. Words to some songs. Yesterday. Summertime. I showed her which road we were on. So I ask her again. Where does she want to go? This time she understands. It is clear. She wants to go north. North, I understand. Buono! I don’t mind. Sometimes it is good for a driver to have someone to talk to. I have my radio. Whenever there is a football match I listen. I have my mobile. Every night I ring my children. My wife is often too tired to speak. Sometimes she is in bed when I call and from my lonely stretch of road I will sing to her. People tell me I have a fine voice. I like to sing. Sometimes at the other end I will hear my wife sigh and it is like we are young again. So, to pass the time, I sing to the black woman. Everyone understands music. Why? Because in my humble opinion music bypasses the meaning. It addresses the heart.
While I sang she kept her eyes on the road; they did not budge but she smiled. I sang and when I stopped she kept smiling. I always carry chocolate. I offered her some and she put it in her coat pocket. That annoyed me. I felt angry. But why? I offered her chocolate and she accepted. That part did not make me angry. That’s what I hoped she would do, that is why I offered it. But why did she put it into her pocket? That’s the part that made me feel angry. I don’t know why it should. She did not look at me. She look at the road. I wondered if she was late. The way she looked at the road, you see, as if it was in the way, and there is still more road to cover before she will get to where she has to go.
I offer her a cigarette, this time she shakes her head. She is like a zombie woman. She can’t take her eyes off the road ahead. Now I wish I didn’t pick her up. I turn on the radio. It is not the same as my singing. The music makes it worse, adds to the strain I am feeling in the cab. The silence, the black road rolling away from the window, the night closed all around me and this black woman who does not speak or eat chocolate or say anything about my singing. Which if I may be immodest is unusual. I used to sing for my village choir. We entered competitions. I might have been a singer. My wife who was not my wife just then but a beautiful girl got pregnant. Timing is everything in this world. A rabbit runs across the road and is crushed beneath my tyres. Another runs out and makes it to the other side.
Finally we come to the turn-off. I know she wants to go north, so this is where we part. I begin to slow down, switch lanes. For the first time—no, perhaps it is the second time—since I picked her up she looks at me. She doesn’t understand why we are stopping. I show her on the map where I have to go and then I point to the road north. But she refuses to understand. Refuses. She does not understand the divide in the road that we have come to. I find some paper and draw her a picture. I draw a picture of her and one of me. ‘North,’ she says. I understand. It is clear. I direct her attention to the map. I show her the road I must take. We have pulled over. I am a very safe driver. At this hour there is not a lot of traffic. Mainly trucks, a few cars, not many.
We sit there as the traffic rushes by. Outside, the tall shadows of the roadside trees shift. I wind down the window. It is colder. We have been climbing. It is not a nice feeling to drop a young woman off in the night. It is very late. At that hour things happen that good people asleep in their beds cannot imagine. I don’t feel good about it. I think—what if she was my own daughter? Would I drop her off? I offer to take her west. She can come with me, and at first light I will drop her at the railway station. ‘North,’ she says. ‘I must go north. Please,’ she asks. So I look at the map. There is a loop road that I can take. But it means driving an extra hundred kilometres. The company will want to know why I went through so much diesel. I will be asked to account for the roads taken. That is a future conversation. For now I don’t bother the girl with my concerns. Then I change my mind again. I decide then and there. She must get out. I point outside. I explain to her, here we have to part. I have to get on my way.
Deaf ears. She stays put. Says nothing. She stares at the road ahead, but not as before when she appeared to lean forward seeking north. Now she sits there stubbornly, her arms folded. She is thinking. She takes a deep breath and breathes out. Then she unhooks her belt and she leans across to rest her hand on my thigh, she moves her hand to my crotch, just a little, like bath water rising up the sides, like so, nice, very nice. She smiles but not like before when I was singing, this is a different smile. I wouldn’t like to say how but it is, and it is a smile I understand. I have seen it on the faces of the prostitutes talking up to the drivers who have pulled off the road.
‘I must go north,’ she says. I light a cigarette. Her hand is still on my thigh. Though the feeling is dead now, not like before, just a weight. Three cars go by, a truck, a big one that shakes the cab and blows its horn into the night. A lonesome noise that leaves us alone once more. I feel responsible. She won’t get another ride until daybreak. She is someone’s daughter. While I’m smoking and having these thoughts she undoes my trouser belt, she unbuttons me. No one is holding a gun to my temple, it’s true, but I feel just as helpless. We all have our weaknesses. So I show her on the map where she will have to get out of the cab, just so there is no misunderstanding. She agrees. Fine. It is another hour and twenty minutes. Road works force a detour, a much longer one. Now the company will ask difficult questions. What will I tell them? I have no idea. Still, I keep this matter to myself. She keeps her hand on my crotch. It is a nice feeling. I won’t deny it. I don’t lie about such things. I understand the nature of the arrangement now. It is late, 2am. While driving I wonder what north means. Ask people in the north and they will direct you to a point further north. I suppose you arrive at some point where north suddenly turns south. The way I see it, we all live with north and south inside of us.
I turn on the radio. The music feels right now. It helps me to relax. I hum and she keeps her hand steady on the rock. The time passes quickly. Too quickly if I am honest. Yes. I am honest. Why not? I am a hardworking truck driver. I don’t earn much but enough, and I have my beautiful wife and my beautiful children. And I am a man. I have nothing to hide. Nothing at all.
We reach the junction. It is up ahead, some lights, there’s some movement. I slow down. In the lit windows of the truck driver’s stop people are up. They sit swaying back from one another, trying to stay awake. I think she will be safe. So I park. As I release the brake she takes her hand away and suddenly sits up. As she reaches for the door I lock it from my side. I am surprised. I did not take her for such a woman. In my part of the world a person’s honour rests on their word. I am very disappointed. I have shown good faith. I have gone out of my way. I have done so with a selfless regard. There will be the questions concerning fuel. But she… she has forgotten the nature of our arrangement, I don’t need to remind you, that she initiated. I am not really a political person. My wife’s family were Communists, every one of them. When the old man asked me for my political affiliations I told him I am a singer. I am not led by belief. I am led by the heart. Goodness has a way of singing that everyone recognises. It is what makes us human. This is sincerely my belief. Honestly. One’s word. These are the things that I go by. To some extent the world depends on such understanding and compliance. I have acted in good faith. I have driven out of my way. This is time I will have to make up.
Well, she understands her mistake. She tries the door again, then she understands some more. She must do what she must do. She unbuttons he
r coat. And she takes me in her mouth. It is a lonely life. A lonely life. But there are moments of happiness. And one must not take them for granted. We can’t ever be sure when our luck will shine again. I am happy. I unlock the door. She is free to go. Instead she kicks it open with the back of her heel, like the Carabinieri kicking down the door to a criminal’s house, she does that in my cab, and at the same time, although it cannot be exactly at the same moment, perhaps I am mixed up, perhaps I am still fuming at her treatment of the door, I am still in that moment as she leans across to say ‘Thank you.’ Yes, why not? ‘Thank you,’ she says. It was on this second thank you that she spat my seminal fluid over my trousers, and in my face. It was not an accident. No. Of course not. I’m afraid I lost my temper. It was a spur of the moment thing. I struck her. Then she wrestled with me. She bit my hand. I thought my hand was in the jaws of a dog. She broke the skin. I can show you. There is some discolouration, some damage. For months after I had the tooth marks on my hand.
Two days later I arrive home. I am eating the meal that my beautiful wife has cooked when she notices the tooth marks on my hand. I am the luckiest man in the world, and I wish for nothing ever to disturb that happiness. Do you know what I told her? I told her I was attacked by a dog. When I told her that I did not think for a moment that I was lying.
five
The elderly snail collector
A snail leaves a viscous trail. At a certain hour the rooftops of the traffic blur, turn back into their core element, and melt. I wonder what the hills see, I wonder about centuries-old patience. Why is it the sky cannot be trusted, but hills can? Does it have to do with the quarrelling respective values of stillness and shiftiness? The discreet hills. The same cannot be said about the sky. Whenever I look for the remaining vestiges of ‘before’—before the devastation caused by mass transport, the roads, the autoroutes, the trucks roaring into the night, and without any of the delicacy of ships dissolving into the horizon, without the subtlety of the railways, I look to the sedate movement of the snail. I collect snails like others collect vintage model train sets. I am a collector. I collect the Roman snail and the larger Helix aperta. They are remarkable. The shell is so delicate. What creature would create its work of art out of the very fragility that condemns it? Look at its whorls. Look at its colour. At first glance you think, Ah, yes, a brown shell. It is brown only because that is what you expected it to be. In fact it is green, but it is unlike any green you have seen. Unlike any. I detest the word ‘like’, by the way. ‘Unlike’ is only marginally better. What I mean is this. The shell is its own thing. Unlike any other. Sufficiently alike, or like, but subtly different. Its uniqueness is woven into plain everyday ordinariness.
