by Jim Crace
“What’s wrong with your place, Freda?” Lix asked finally. “You’ve got a couch to spare while George is in America, I’m sure. He can even sleep underneath your bed, with the cats.” Now he was looking at her, his leading lady for this scene, looking at her piled-up hair, her speckled throat, the clothy, hammock neckline of her top, imagining how he might stage a kiss with her. “This fellow’s very, very dear to you, you say.” His mimicry was faultless.
Freda, though, would not respond. She had no sympathy for Lix. How dare he even mention George? Was he inviting trouble? She smiled at him, an icy smile that said, Do as I want. Otherwise Mouetta will be reminded yet again of what she has so determinedly forgotten or ignored, exactly what went on between us, twenty-five years ago when we were undergraduates ourselves. When I was carrying your child. When you were truly dangerous to know.
She stretched her neck away from him. She’d let him talk. She’d let him huff and puff. She only paid attention once he’d dutifully proclaimed his list of predictable objections—the risk (for him), the inconvenience (for him)—and was prepared to accept what had already been agreed behind his back. There was no need to repeat herself for Lix. He was a spouter nowadays, not a sympathetic listener. Not an activist. She’d already explained herself to her cousin, how her own office and apartment at the academy were “always” being visited by police. Unlike Mouetta, a newcomer who’d “married in” two years before, she’d been a citizen of this “infuriating” town since her own student days. She was a well-known dissident, “a bit of a firebrand” herself. While Lix, born in the town forty-seven years before, despite his posturing, was not—not now, at least—a threat to anyone. The celebrated Lix would not be visited by police, not in a thousand years. His study couch would be the safest refuge in the town. Saving this brave “boy” (Lix winced at her transparent use of words: a cut, an edit, please!) would be a simple matter, then. They’d drive in to the campus, pick the hero up, and take him home to share their anniversary.
So Lix, defeated, left the Debit Bar, not hand in hand with Mouetta as he had planned, but as one of an ill-at-ease threesome and without a suggestion of any intimacy between them. They could be mistaken for little more than casual, frosty friends. The actor, naturally, looked grander and crosser and more thwarted than the other two, but then men always do, actors or not. They are Pierrots by nature. Smiling is for Columbines.
Lix was too irritated—and alarmed (for he was no longer an adventurous man)—even to acknowledge the greetings and congratulations from a couple who had seen his performance, onstage, that evening, a couple who had witnessed his dry kissing and his tremor from the balcony. He contemplated having Freda’s callow lodger, callow lover, in his house. Her “boy.” A week or so, she’d said. That meant three months, minimum. A stranger in the frying pan. His egg with theirs. The staircase always busy with the sound of running feet, the sound of running taps. Worse even than the alternate weekends when his acknowledged children came to stay, descended on his house and his routines, his two adolescent boys, Lech and Karol (the products of his first marriage), and four-year-old Rosa (the unplanned fruit of a short, bizarre, and punishing liaison not quite before he’d met Mouetta). At least their running feet were known and loved. For, yes, despite the evidence so far, the selfishness, the sexual jealousy, the lack of courage, the peevishness on this night of their anniversary, theirs was a house of love. Lix, for all his faults, for all his fickleness, was capable of love. He had been thwarted, though, on this occasion, by the unforgiving first love, second conquest of his life.
As it happened luck was on his side.
The rain was heavy now, disabling and hostile. It beat out its cacophonies on cars and roofs. The police had had to set up shop beneath the water-sagging canopies on the bar’s terrace and were painstakingly checking the identities of anyone who dared to enter or to leave. Their mood was volatile, resentful, tired. They’d welcome the chance—were it not for the journalists present—to burst inside to tip some tables over and to crack some heads. The Debit’s clientele was just the sort they hated most. Toffee-nosed and smart-arsed liberals with cash to spare, their lives ring-fenced by bank accounts abroad and properties at home. Provocative women with skin like confirmation cups and catwalk clothes. Men who never had to take the streetcar, or wear a shirt for three shifts in a row, or work—as they themselves were working now—after midnight, in the rain, for wages that were “held up” by the bank. A daylight robbery. Imagine how the Debitors’ blood would decorate the fancy tablecloths, or how dramatically those clever, brittle heads would bruise and crack if only someone with a bit of spirit and imagination in the government would give permission for the patriots to Proceed. They wanted their revenge for having to be dutiful when everyone else was having fun, for having to be young and unimportant, for being dull and out of place.
Their corporal, a townie boy though not this town, made a corridor of tables through which Debitors must pass. His comrades crowded around to take offense. Now here was someone that they recognized and did not like. Not Lix. They hadn’t seen him yet. But Freda. “Freedom Freda.” The firebrand lecturer whose rants they’d had to endure at far too many public meetings, in far too many television interviews. A critic of the army and the police, indeed. There was no mistaking this giraffe. She was a handsome woman, tall and set, to use the current phrase. Frisking her and requiring her to stretch her arms above her head, her fine teeth biting on her documents, was a duty and a luxury. Even Lix could see what satisfaction it was providing them, could sympathize with their wide eyes, their gaping mouths, caused just as much by how she looked as by what she was saying (for she could still create a din, could shout and curse, through her clenched teeth). They’d never heard such legal threats, such posturing, such statements of intent, such growls. They’d never detained such hair before, such long and capable arms, so willowy a neck, such arrogance, such heavy fabric in the dress, so hectoring a voice. And what good luck! The woman was not carrying an up-to-date ID with her. She’d not renewed. On a point of principle, she said. Well, on another point of principle, a legal principle, the corporal had no alternative but to send her to the barracks for some questioning. If only she would show a little more respect and quiet down, then possibly they would allow her to be taken there “without handcuffs.” The policemen looked—and smiled—at Freda’s narrow wrists, her bangles and her amulets. A pair of extra cuffs would finish her.
What none of the policemen or Lix had spotted was the sudden transfer, just before Freda’s hands were raised, of her shoulder bag to Mouetta. So he was baffled and relieved when, rather than arguing for her cousin’s immediate release, as he expected, as she was prone to do, his normally plucky wife simply took his arm and, without a glance back or a word of farewell, steered him through the uniforms, across the terrace, and out into the driving rain. No one tried to stop him, obviously. Too familiar. He was starring every Tuesday night in Doctor D on Channel V&N. He was in the ad for Boulevard Liqueur. He’d won a celebrated Masters Medal for his solo version of Don Juan. He’d gone to Hollywood, appeared in several films, and come back almost undefiled. He’d even had success as a singer: his Hand Baggage: A Travelogue of Songs, recorded fourteen years before, was selling still. He was, as Freda had made clear ten minutes earlier, a threat to nobody.
The car—their large but unpretentious gray Panache sedan, perfect for the family with adolescents—was parked behind the theater, a leisurely five-minute walk on any other night. But it was far too wet for leisure and they were far too fearful. Fearful for Freda, of course, but also for themselves. Her shoulder bag was dangerous. What might it hold? And fractious men in uniform are always frightening. Any second now and they might hear beyond the clatter of the rain the sound of running boots, the cliché call for them to stop and raise their hands. So Lix and Mouetta didn’t speak as they hurried through the rain, encountering what everybody knows but needs reminding of, that speed is no protection from a storm. He ran ahead of her
to open up the car but both of them were sopping and sobered by the time they’d slammed shut the doors. For a few moments, the smell of drenched clothes was stronger than the seat leather, even, richer than the perfume and the gasoline.
Mouetta—wet—looked flushed and beautiful, Lix thought. Why hadn’t he noticed before how much trouble she had gone to, to be attractive for him on their anniversary? A bluish calf-length skirt, a favorite blouse he had brought her from L.A., front buttons even, that pretty necklace a child might wear. Cousin Freda, the radical, had blinded him, had shouldered out his wife. She always did. She always had. There’s something deadening about the vivacious company of prettier and older cousins. Mouetta was a sort of beauty too, although a quieter sort, not theatrical but … well, homely was an unfair word. Unaffected, perhaps. Contained. She was the kind—and this was cruel—whose company was supportive rather than flattering. She’d only turn the heads of wiser men. But now that she was wet and dramatized by their short run, her beauty seemed enhanced, her perfumes activated by the rain, her hair shining like someone found soaked and streaming in the shower room, her blouse and skin a clinging unity. He should have been thinking of Freda, her arrest, what they should do for her release, their duties as citizens and their obligations as radicals. But he was not.
“What now?” he asked. They hadn’t had sex in the car for months.
“We’ve got the keys to Freda’s office,” she replied. She held up the shoulder bag. “We’ll get the guy. And then we’ll have to find Freda a lawyer …”
“Don’t worry about Freda. They’ll let her out in the morning. She’ll dine off this for years. ‘My night in chains,’ et cetera!”
“Don’t be small-minded, Lix. What’s done is done.” She meant that both of them should always do their best to bury the embarrassment of George’s provenance. “What would the world be like without its Fredas?”
“A lot less complicated.” Lix was blushing, not inexplicably. This was not a good time for an argument.
“We still have to get her guy,” Mouetta said.
“Forget the guy!” He touched her wrist. He had the sense, though, not to put his hand on her leg and not to ask for what he wanted most, a kiss. Not heroism, but a kiss. A kiss inebriated by the rain. A wet, wet kiss. “Can’t we just forget the guy?”
“Just drive,” she said. She never knew—or, at least, she preferred not to know—when Lix was being serious. Or when her irritation with her husband was unreasonable.
The streets, of course, were busier than you’d expect on such a night, at such an hour. In addition to the men in uniform, causing trouble where they could, and the remaining groups of demonstators, there were civilians sheltering in the arcades and the bars, unable to get home or prevented by the road and sidewalk blocks and by the weather from reaching their cars. The streetcars and transit buses were not running: services suspended by order of the civic police. Taxis were not allowed into the Central Zones. You either had to walk or shelter from the rain or beg a bed from someone you knew downtown or end up as a bludgeoned passenger inside an army bus. Even those who’d reached their cars were being turned back at the Circular and were obliged to park for the night until restrictions had been lifted. For once, the city was not dull. It was dangerous. Young men are always dangerous.
Lix crossed the river by the only open route, Deliverance Bridge, and drove around the park on Navigation Island through stands of tarbony trees and ornamental shrubs, through puddles, ankle deep, which dramatically accessorized his car with arched silver spoilers of rainwater, until he reached the second bridge, which still allowed some access to the river’s eastern banks. Beyond the bridge, the traffic was at a standstill. Even those drivers who had tried to reverse onto the sidewalks or turn back toward the old town’s center were gridlocked. Beyond the traffic were the academy and Freda’s office and Freda’s sanctuary desk.
“We’ll not get home, you realize,” Lix said. “They’re not letting anybody through.”
“They always let you through.”
As it happened Mouetta was wrong, or so it appeared. All the city campuses were closed to traffic, even to the stars of stage and television, it seemed. Militia volunteers, always the last to be deployed and the most unyielding, were squeezing through the traffic, ordering drivers from their cars and searching them, both the drivers and the cars. No permissions asked, no explanations given, no patience or civility. They were determined to enjoy themselves. You had either to stand and lose your dignity or to argue and lose your liberty—that mischievous predicament, as old as humankind. You had to count yourself lucky, as bags were emptied onto seats and trunks were opened for evidence of insurrection—a box of matches, say, a couple of leaflets, a fruit knife—that on this occasion the men had not been issued with their electric cattle prods. Pedestrians, mostly students trying to return to their dorms, were being turned back. They could either spend the night outside or, if they protested or seemed too smart and arrogant, a wooden bed could be arranged for them in some dark cell. A thorough drenching would be good for them, as would a taste of prison life. Then they’d be “graduates” indeed! They had the choice: Clear off or they’d matriculate in Practical Cell Studies.
Lix raised and stretched his arms as he was instructed and let two of the young men search his pockets and his waistband and check his ID card. Unlike the other women travelers, Mouetta had not been summoned from the car. She took this as a promising sign that yet again her husband’s public gift was making life easy for them. She hated it, this privilege, but she was grateful as well. She watched her husband through the hand-jive of the windshield wipers, waiting for the look of recognition on the volunteers’ faces and the invitation to go ahead.
The man who asked Lix to raise his hands did not proceed with his interrogation for very long. Nor was their car searched. Nor were they required to unlock the tailgate. This, then, this rescue bid, thought Mouetta, would be a simple matter, though alarming in ways that she found inexplicably stirring. Her heart was jumping like a pan-fried pea. Yes, she was stimulated by the thought of having a young man about the house, a young man needing to be saved. This would be her contribution to the night, her solidarity—to steal a “wild and innocent” suspect, “known to the authorities,” from underneath the very snobbish, starstruck noses of the police.
Indeed, her husband had been recognized. She could tell by the way he stood, by the laughter, by the parting handshake, by the way a route was being cleared for them. There was no danger, then. They’d not be caught. They could simply drive into the parking lot underneath the academy, take the elevator to the seventh floor where Freda’s office was, and do their good deed for the night. She could imagine the young man—painfully idealistic, sweet to look at, awkward, grateful, very scared. They could curl him up beneath the car rugs in the back and drive home through all the blocks and barricades, untouched and undelayed, because her Lix, her acting man, would have the passport of a famous face, would have the visa of a celebrated birthmark stamped on his cheek.
Then, when they were home, in their quiet cul-de-sac with its unprying neighbors, she’d make a fuss over that young man. Find towels, a spare toothbrush, some underwear. She’d cook for him at night, while Lix was at the theater. She’d let him have the run of the house. She had to smile. The very thought of it. She could provide a sanctuary for both of them.
Mouetta was hospitable and motherly, two undervalued attributes these days. Taking care of people was her public gift. One day, please God, she’d have a child. At thirty-nine she wanted very much to have a child. She’d soon be passing through the Great Stone Gate of forty, beyond which were towns and villages without babies. Stepmothering was not enough for her. Though she was very fond of George and Lix’s children from his first marriage and the “intervening” four-year-old (she loved all but one of them, in fact), they were not hers, not flesh and blood and bone. As anyone with half an eye could tell. Neither was the student hers, of course. But then he wasn’
t Lix’s either, and that made a difference. She’d drive this student mad with care as soon as her husband returned to the car and they were summoned to proceed.
So she was baffled and surprised when Lix slid back into his driver’s seat and said, “There’s no way through. We have to turn around.”
“They wouldn’t let you through?”
“No. So it seems.”
“Not even you?”
“Those numskys don’t know me. You think they’re theatergoers? We have to turn around.”
“Not recognized?”
“Not on this occasion. Evidently.”
“So what do we do about Freda’s student?”
“What can we do? Nothing! It’s not my fault. I don’t think it would be sensible to argue with those guys. You want to try?”
Already he was turning the car into the space they had cleared for him and was nosing through a crowd of appalled, thrilled students standing in the rain with nowhere to spend the night except the streetcar shelters and underneath the bushes in the park. What awful fun.
“Why don’t you tell them who you are?”
“I promise you it wouldn’t count.”
“What now?” Her turn to ask.
“Back home.” A home without houseguests! He stretched a hand across and rested it, palm up, in her lap. Still damp.
“You’re trembling,” she said.
They’d not get home that night. There’d be no copulating on the stairs. The Circular was still cordoned off and already flooding, anyway, on the uptown highway, and all the other routes out to the hilltop suburbs where Lix and Mouetta and many of the rich and famous had their houses were blocked. There’d been a rumor that these houses where the guilty bankers and civic bosses lived would be targeted if things got out of hand down in the city. There were incendiarists about and anarchists, expert in breaching cordons. So the police protection of their home would stop Lix and Mouetta from getting home. Safety at the price of freedom? Another awkward, ancient choice. Besides, here was an unexpected bonus for the uniformed defenders of the city. They could turn the rich and famous into the homeless for the night.
