Voices in the Dark

by Catherine Banner

  ‘Their mama is the pharmacist just over there.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Jared. ‘Well, I think they were mistaken. I have been out of the city on business. I have been back from Alcyria only a few weeks, and I’ve been so busy that I had no time to open the shop until now. And in any case, these bloody workmen have taken so long to set it up—’

  ‘Are you from Alcyria?’ said Jasmine.

  ‘Not originally.’

  ‘Where are you from, then?’

  ‘Nowhere in particular. Here, I suppose.’

  He did not look Alcyrian, and he had a wanderer’s accent; it moved from place to place and never settled down. ‘I spent a few years living out there,’ he said. He drew on his cigarette, then dropped it and crushed it under his heel. Leo would have smoked it down to the end. It was the mark of a rich man not to do that. ‘Look around if you want to,’ he told Jasmine.

  She wandered between the rows of tables. In the new gas lighting of the shop, she looked sadder than I had ever seen her. I wondered if Leo and my mother were arguing again next door. I wondered if there was any trace left of the Barones’ old shop.

  ‘Look at this,’ said Jasmine, bending to stare at a castle made from glass crystal that shone with a thousand lights.

  ‘Four hundred crowns,’ said Jared.

  ‘Are you joking?’ I said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean—’

  He laughed, and the tension vanished. ‘You seem very interested in those pictures,’ he remarked to me.

  I was not looking at the pictures. I had been looking at the walls between them, trying to find a single trace of the old red paint that used to be there. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Are they famous?’

  ‘They used to be,’ he said. ‘They pass through my hands, and I keep them for collectors. They are not to everyone’s taste nowadays, of course.’

  ‘They are copies, though?’

  He gave a quick laugh. ‘Originals. That one is a Joseph Cortez. You have heard of him?’

  ‘Cortez? Yes.’

  It was a lie, and I think he knew it. I had never heard of Cortez. I looked away, and my eyes fell on a rack of guns glinting over his head. They were the only objects in the shop that were not old or valuable. ‘You sell firearms?’ I said.

  ‘Evidently,’ said Jared. ‘You say it as though you have principles.’

  ‘We have a no-firearms policy.’

  ‘An eccentric way of working in these times.’

  I did not answer. It was true; it was eccentric.

  ‘Mr and Mrs Barone never sold guns,’ said Jasmine sternly. ‘So I don’t think you should either.’

  ‘All I’ve heard this week is Mr and Mrs Barone did this; Mr and Mrs Barone didn’t do that.’ He did not say it with exasperation; he just said it. ‘Don’t you think progress is a good thing, little one?’

  ‘No,’ said Jasmine. ‘Not if progress is just selling stupid guns.’

  Jared leaned on the counter and began polishing some kind of old dagger on a leather cloth. I went on studying the guns and wondered if I should apologize for Jasmine. I decided not to. Over the counter was a green flag that I did not recognize. The symbol in the centre was a black constellation with a red circle behind it. ‘What is that flag?’ I asked him.

  ‘Oh, that? It’s the government’s symbol.’

  ‘The Malonian government?’ I said.

  ‘A certain division of it. Not the royalists.’

  ‘Don’t you like the king?’ demanded Jasmine from the corner.

  Jared glanced over. ‘Who says I don’t like the king?’ he asked, very reasonably. ‘Our aims are different; our outlook is broadly the same. That’s philosophy for you.’ He pointed the dagger at us, half mocking, like a teacher driving a point home. ‘King Cassius is not a strong leader,’ he said. ‘The Party wants a strong leader.’

  ‘The Party?’ I said.

  ‘The Malonian Ruling Party, this division I’m talking about.’

  ‘But they are not ruling,’ I said.

  ‘They very soon will be.’

  ‘Is that really true?’

  ‘I don’t think you should have that flag up there,’ said Jasmine. ‘I don’t think that’s very civilized when the king lives just up there, and people want to kill him.’

  ‘People want to kill him?’ said Jared. ‘Who does?’

  ‘Everyone. It’s why he has guards all the time – that’s what Uncle said.’

  ‘Your uncle sounds like a wise man,’ said Jared.

  ‘He was. But he’s not here any more.’

  ‘Are you an antiques trader, sir?’ I asked before Jasmine could say anything else.

  ‘Antiques,’ he said. ‘Fine art, jewellery. I suppose we deal in the same things. To a point.’

  I did not answer. Our shop was a poor imitation of this one, no matter how many years longer we had traded in this street. L. North & Son was full of secondhand goods, and gaudy prints and line drawings, and gold and silver people had already pawned a hundred times.

  ‘Go on, look around,’ said Jared to me. ‘You are an antiques trader. Give me your expert opinion on my stock.’

  I began examining a cupboard without touching it. It was well restored, like nothing I had seen. ‘Do people buy these things?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, of course. That’s why I sell them.’

  ‘I only thought …’ I shrugged. ‘They are very good quality.’

  ‘Certain people will always buy them,’ he said. ‘I don’t concern myself with the others. I don’t think much of these junk shops you see clinging on everywhere, when the economy is in such a state that they will only wither and die. These pedlars should break free and leave while they still have a few coins to their name. Still, life is tough and perhaps I should not judge.’

  It came to me that he did not think much of L. North & Son and was trying to tell us so. But perhaps that was uncharitable. I was still trying to make out his expression when Jasmine gave a muffled cry. The glass castle, glittering, had slipped off the edge of the table. I heard myself shout, ‘Jasmine!’ and saw her horror-stricken face, like a tragic mask. Then she reached out her hand, and the castle leaped back into it, and the disaster was averted.

  Jared drew in his breath. ‘Did she just—’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘I could have sworn,’ he said. ‘I could have sworn on my own life that it came back to her.’

  ‘It was good luck,’ I said, crossing the room and replacing the castle on the table in front of Jasmine. I could see my hands shaking.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Good luck, or else your sister is a magic child.’

  ‘She doesn’t have powers,’ I said.

  ‘She would be rare, in this city. They say magic is dying out.’ He ran a hand over his oiled hair thoughtfully. ‘Ah well,’ he said then, as if to dismiss it. I pushed the castle further onto the table. ‘That piece is very fine,’ he remarked. ‘I would have been sorry to lose it. Well caught.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Jasmine said.

  He raised one hand, as though to push away all apologies. ‘It’s no matter. Do you know why it’s valuable? This is an interesting story. Would you like to know?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jasmine, all her former hostility crushed under the weight of the disaster that had almost befallen us. ‘Why is it valuable, sir?’ she said.

  ‘It once belonged to Ahira.’

  ‘Ahira?’ I said. ‘The war criminal Ahira?’

  ‘He was many other things. But, yes.’

  I bent down to study the castle. I did not want to touch it. Every window was etched into the glass with painful care; the towers glittered like diamonds. I had never thought of the war criminals caring much about beauty. Jasmine tugged at my sleeve, but I was transfixed by the lights in that crystal. I thought of that man, whose face I had studied in a hundred history books, staring into the crystal too, seeing the same lights I saw. Then the wind blew more fiercely beyond the windows, and I came ba
ck to the present. The sky was losing all its brightness now. ‘We should go home,’ I said.

  ‘Wait one moment,’ said Jared as we crossed the threshold.

  ‘What is it?’ I said.

  ‘Perhaps you will think this a strange question. But have I met you before?’

  ‘Me?’ I said.

  ‘Yes. Not your sister, just you.’

  ‘I saw you once at the markets,’ I said. ‘I was with my friend, and you were at a jewellery stall.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘A few weeks ago.’

  He shook his head. ‘I don’t mean then. I never saw you at the markets; not that I can remember. It was a long time ago, but I know your face. I knew it as soon as you walked into the shop. It’s only that I cannot place you.’

  I must have looked blank, because he raised his hands to dismiss the question. ‘Think no more about it,’ he said. ‘I am probably mistaken.’

  I looked at him properly. He had what people call an honest face, made strange by his gold teeth. The lamplight revealed every detail of his appearance, even the lines in his oiled black hair where he had smoothed it back with his fingers. He was like no one I had ever met, and I was certain that if I had ever seen this man before, I would remember it. ‘No,’ I said again. ‘No, I have never met you, except that one time, and then I just saw you from a distance.’

  ‘Very well,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Good evening, then.’

  Once we were out in the street, Ahira’s face glared at us from every wall. ‘Ahira,’ said Jasmine. ‘Everyone talks about Ahira. What did he do?’

  ‘Bad things,’ I said.

  ‘What bad things?’

  ‘It was a long time ago,’ I said. ‘Let’s get inside.’

  ‘All right, but I want to know what bad things.’

  I did not answer, and she followed me reluctantly, back round the side of the shop where Leo’s axe lay abandoned beside the wreck of the cupboard. ‘And why did he say he knew you?’ she asked as we reached the side door.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘He must have made a mistake.’

  ‘No, he didn’t. I saw his face, and he didn’t. He knew you, Anselm, for sure.’

  ‘I’m certain it was someone else he was thinking of.’

  But there was something about the man that made me uneasy. Perhaps it was just that old trader’s law, never trust the rich. Because this man, in spite of everything, was rich. The contents of his shop could have paid the debts of the rest of the street. ‘Come on,’ I told Jasmine, glancing back at his lights. ‘Let’s go inside.’

  We passed Jared again on Monday morning, gingerly polishing the window of his shop as though he had never cleaned a window in his life. But that day things changed, and I had no time to think any more about him. When I got to school, the rest of the boys were crowded around a notice at the front of the classroom. ‘Settle down!’ Sister Theresa was calling vainly, rapping with her knuckles on the blackboard.

  ‘What’s this about?’ I said.

  ‘It’s about National Service,’ Gabriel Delacruz muttered to me. ‘They want us to sign up.’

  ‘This is a provisional list,’ Sister Theresa said, parting the crowd and striding forward to rip the notice off the wall. ‘The king has tightened the laws on National Service and has asked that all able-bodied sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds sign up too. There is no compulsion.’

  ‘Good,’ said John Keller, the doctor’s son. ‘Because I’m damned if I’ll fight for the king.’A few people muttered their agreement.

  ‘I am under orders to put this notice up,’ said Sister Theresa. ‘Don’t come to me with your complaints. The government has ordered that this notice be put up in every school and that I read it out. Which, if you will be quiet, I might be able to do. Sit down!’

  The class drifted reluctantly to their desks. Sister Theresa cleared her throat and read, in a voice without emotion,‘“A statement issued by His Majesty King Cassius in alliance with the government of Malonia, now the Malonian Ruling Party."’ People shifted mutinously. '“During the early hours of last night, the Alcyrian army made hostile advances across the border of Malonia. As a result, the government has taken full control of the ruling of the country. The government orders all able-bodied men of eighteen and above who have not yet signed up for National Service, either labour or military, to do so within the next two days. Those who fail risk arrest and prosecution-”’

  ‘Prosecution, indeed?’ said Gabriel, who thought himself something of a politician. ‘Where was the king’s government when the poor were dying in the streets last winter, and where was the king’s government—’

  ‘Silence!’ said Sister Theresa. ‘ ‘The government also asks that all able-bodied sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds register their willingness to volunteer, in order that the government can draw up a list for the quicker deployment of labour should a state of emergency arise.’ ’

  The class glanced round at each other, and I could see the same expression on their faces that must be on mine. None of us wanted to sign up. ‘This whole thing is ridiculous,’ said John Keller. ‘Why should people like us have to sign up just because we’re still in the country, when half the class has already got the hell out of here?’

  ‘Half the class?’ said Sister Theresa, fixing him with a cold glance. ‘What do you mean, half the class?’

  ‘People like Michael Barone. He must have known this was coming and decided to get out, because he was too scared to fight.’

  ‘That’s not why he left!’ I said, startling even myself.

  ‘Why did he go, then?’ said John Keller, turning to me. ‘Did you have some kind of lovers’ quarrel?’

  I began to stand up, but Sister Theresa said, ‘Sit back down at once, both of you!’ I could feel my face turning the darkest red. John Keller knew nothing about Michael or me, and yet he could still drive me to anger.

  ‘But I don’t see,’ he continued from his seat,‘why people like us have to sign up and bloody cowards and debtors and criminals are still hiding in their houses dodging the draft.’ He flashed another glance at me, and I was certain suddenly that he meant Leo.

  ‘What the hell are you talking about?’ I demanded.

  ‘You don’t have to sign up,’ said Sister Theresa. ‘This list is provisional and voluntary. Now please be quiet, both of you. Let’s get this over with and carry on with our severely disrupted lesson. Does anyone want to sign?’

  We were still glancing about uneasily. No one wanted to. And yet under the pressure of those glances and the silence, everyone except John Keller did.

  On the way home from school, we passed a line of men queueing at an old butcher’s shop with a paper sign on its front window. Jasmine ran to look at it. It was a volunteering post, and the men, shifting from foot to foot with their hats in their hands or smoking grimly, were signing up for National Service. We passed another line and another. In the third was Mr Pascal, studying a newspaper and lecturing the man beside him between paragraphs. ‘Ah!’ he said. ‘Anselm and little Jasmine. How are you two?’

  ‘Well, thank you,’ I said. ‘Are you signing up, sir?’

  He spread out his hands, losing several sheets of his newspaper to the wind. ‘There is no point avoiding it,’ he said. ‘And perhaps it is not so bad. A man like me will never be called on to fight. No, they’ll ask me to repair some uniforms every fortnight and then leave me alone, I shouldn’t wonder.’

  He nodded to us, and we carried on along Trader’s Row to the door of the shop.

  ‘Anselm,’ said Jasmine. ‘Is this a real war?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ I said.

  ‘It doesn’t seem like one.’

  ‘No.’

  It was not how I had imagined war either, when my mother and Leo talked about it. Although people were dying for our nation all along the eastern border, it felt like a bad dream that the country would wake up from. And yet by order of the king, or his rebellious government, Leo should be in tha
t queue where Mr Pascal stood. He should have signed up by now.

  Leo was out in the yard when we got back. Jasmine ran to him, but he did not pick her up. He had piled up half the contents of the shop against the back wall and was sorting through them.

  ‘What’s all this?’ I said.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Leo.

  I stepped forward and turned over the most recent layer. Two history books, a dingy oil painting, and a coronation medal in its box. ‘What is this?’ I said again.

  ‘Papa, why is everything out here?’ Jasmine murmured.

  ‘No reason,’ said Leo.

  ‘Papa?’ she said, tugging his sleeve.

  ‘I’m working – leave me. Jasmine, for heaven’s sake, can’t you behave?’

  Jasmine caught my glance, and for a moment I saw tears start in her eyes. Leo never spoke sharply to her. Then she drew herself up to her full four feet, marched inside, and banged the door. We listened to her stamp up the stairs and across the living room. ‘If Aldebaran was here, he would tell her to behave,’ said Leo, and went on working.

  ‘Papa, what’s wrong?’ I said.

  ‘Nothing is wrong. Honestly, it’s nothing, Anselm. Go on inside.’

  I watched him from the doorway. His hair was troubled by every wind that blew; his eyes were glittering from the cold. He looked like someone I did not know. He was wearing a holey old scarf that Jasmine had knitted him; that was the only clue that he was still Leo. As he worked, he kept throwing the scarf back over his shoulder with a quick impatient sigh. ‘Papa, tell me what you’re doing,’ I said. He did not answer.

  I went inside. The shop was different – I could see it at once. It looked strange and bleak with half its contents gone. I boiled water for tea and stood at the misted back window watching Leo work. After a while, I began to see what connected every object that had vanished. They all had some royalist link, from the medallions with the king’s face to the patriotic history books. And I knew what Leo was going to do even before he did it. He took out his matches, threw paraffin over the pile, and set it all alight.

  Jasmine and I were at the back door at the same moment. ‘Stay there,’ I told her. I stumbled out into the thick smoke and caught hold of Leo’s coat. ‘What are you doing?’ I said. ‘What the hell are you doing?’