Call Me Joe

by Martin Van Es

  A feeling of barely suppressed panic and imminent gloom hung over the whole international military and security community as they waited helplessly to see what would happen next and tried to think of things to say which might reassure the frightened politicians and public.

  The Russian President, however, had no intention of waiting for his people to be able to furnish him with facts before looking for ways to benefit from the mysterious occurrence.

  “Issue no denials,” he instructed the men who ran his propaganda machine. “Let the rest of the world think that it might have been something to do with us. Suggest perhaps that we have computer hackers at work in St Petersburg who are clever enough to achieve such a feat. Then find out if there is any way we could do it, if we wanted to.”

  “Find a way to extinguish the sun?” someone bravely asked.

  “If it can be done then we need to be the ones able to do it,” he snapped.

  Six

  After the final class ended on the day that the sun went out, Sophie was on the rota to go to the dining room to oversee supper for the boarders, delaying still further her chance to return to the man she had been thinking about ever since parting from him so hurriedly. The meal didn’t go on for more than half an hour before the fastest eaters were clearing their plates away and peeling off to amuse themselves until bedtime. She had to wait for the last few stragglers but was far more lenient than usual in letting the fussier ones leave unwanted food on their plates, much to the indignation of the catering staff.

  As soon as the last child had left the dining room she found herself running with undignified haste to get to her apartment. She forced herself to slow down and breathe deeply, not wanting to arrive red in the face and gasping for air. She was also keen not to alert any children who might be watching to her eagerness to see him again. They enjoyed teasing her at every opportunity, even when she didn’t supply them with ammunition, and this would be a gift for them. Normally she didn’t mind the jokes because they were usually centred around the various causes she was fanatical about like veganism and animal rights, and always seemed to be done with affection, but at that moment she was too unsure of her own thoughts and feelings to want to open them up to ridicule, however good natured it might be.

  She arrived at the outside door of the block at the same time as one of her colleagues, which slowed her down because she had to endure an agonisingly long conversation about the episode of darkness before she could escape into the apartment. Her colleague obviously expected to be invited in to continue the conversation over coffee but found the door shut firmly in her face.

  Inside the room the stranger welcomed her with the same smile she had been thinking about all afternoon and she noticed that he was reading one of her books, a treatise on re-wilding the planet. He was sitting on her couch, a pottery mug of water on the table beside him, decorated with a painting of a dolphin.

  “You should have helped yourself to coffee or tea,” she said, gesturing towards the modest kitchen area. Only now that she was looking at it anew through the eyes of a hostess did she realise just how modest and untidy it was. It occurred to her that the cramped bathroom would probably look even worse to a visitor and she cringed a little inside.

  “I was fine with water,” he said. “I thought it would be nice for us to eat together. It’s not much fun eating alone, is it?”

  “Oh,” she laughed, pleased to think he planned to stay a while. “The children said that you looked like you have been living as a hermit up a mountain in a cave.”

  “Children see things very clearly sometimes, don’t you think?”

  “I certainly do.”

  Was he telling her that he had been living alone in a cave? Or was he teasing her? She was unsure how to respond. She knew she was breaking school rules by having someone from outside in her room without reporting it to the security staff, but she didn’t care. She was pretty sure that if she went for permission they would take one look at him and demand to know everything about his past, to make sure that he was safe to have around children. It seemed like too undignified an ordeal to put such a dignified man through.

  She wasn’t sure why she felt so sure that she was entirely safe with him. Was it just because she found him so attractive? If so, then she was not behaving like a sensible teacher and custodian of children, especially as a number of them actually boarded at the school and were therefore the sole responsibility of the staff, twenty-four hours a day. The school specialised in taking international students, many of whom boarded full time because their parents were constantly travelling or lived far away. There were others who boarded at the school during the week and went home at weekends.

  How many of the parents would be happy to know that a figure as eccentric as this was wandering around their children’s school without knowing something about his past, or his intentions?

  But she had met plenty of predatory men in her time, some of them the fathers of the children in her charge, and she got none of the same vibes from this man. She wanted to be able to trust her instincts. At that instant she felt so happy to be in his company that she could not even contemplate doing anything that might spoil the moment. If he was removed from the premises by security she might never see him again. The thought of going back to the routine of her life as it had been that morning, before he materialised outside the classroom window, was unbearable. In fact, if they had made him leave she was pretty sure she would feel compelled to go with him, even if it turned out that they were taking him back to a secure institution. It was weird because up to that moment she had been completely content with her life as it was. Why did the concept of returning to it now seem like such an unutterably dreary backward step?

  “Are you hungry?” she asked, opening the fridge and peering inside at the sparse contents.

  “Yes.”

  “I’m afraid I’m a vegan, so there’s a limited choice on offer.”

  “Being a vegan is not a sin,” he said.

  “Some people seem to think it is.”

  He didn’t say anything and when she turned back he was sitting forward on the edge of the couch, still holding the book and watching her with an amused look in his brown eyes which took her breath away all over again, making the blood rush back to her cheeks. The intensity with which he seemed to be examining her face made her feel certain that he found her attractive, which stained her blush even deeper. She never usually gave her appearance a second thought but as she turned away she glanced in the mirror on the far side of the room and realised that she was actually looking beautiful in her own, very natural way. It was like she was glowing. She felt ridiculously pleased with her own reflection and simultaneously irritated with herself for wasting time on such vanity.

  “I’ll just make us something, shall I?” she said.

  “That would be very kind of you.”

  “Do you drink?” She held up a bottle of red vegan wine which had been sitting on the shelf ever since the beginning of term.

  “Yes, if I am thirsty.”

  “Open that for us then.” She handed him the bottle and a corkscrew and started unloading ingredients from the fridge onto the cramped work surface, deliberately avoiding looking in his direction until the blush had faded from her neck and cheeks and she could trust herself not to say anything gauche. She set to chopping vegetables. As he handed her a cup of wine their fingers brushed and she could have sworn she felt a crackle of electricity pass between them.

  “I don’t even know what your name is,” she said as she went back to preparing the food. “Mine is Sophie.”

  “I know,” he said. “It is a good name for you. It comes from Sophia, the Greek name. It means insight, intelligence and wisdom.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Hagia Sophia, means Holy Wisdom. I believe it is from Sophie that we get the words sophistication and philo
sophy.”

  “A bit of an expert in languages are you then?”

  He didn’t reply.

  “How do you know my name?”

  He shrugged. “The caretaker must have said it.”

  “You still haven’t told me your name.”

  “What would you like to call me?” he teased.

  “I’ll call you annoying if you keep playing games like this. Do you ever just give a straight answer to a straight question? Are you deliberately trying to create an air of mystery?”

  He was standing so close she could feel the heat from his skin and was aware of the scent from his beard, a mixture of musk and jasmine. She wanted to turn to face him but forced herself to keep looking away, continuing to chop the vegetables even though they were already chopped small enough. He returned to the couch, leaving her feeling instantly bereft, and held up the book.

  “This is very interesting,” he said. “I assume you have read it.”

  “Of course. The whole planet is on the brink of total collapse,” she said, always excited by the prospect of discussing the subjects that obsessed her, subjects like the imminent extinction of most of the world’s species and the dangers of global warming. “The planet won’t be habitable for much longer with the beating we’re giving it. You don’t look like you are leaving much of a carbon footprint. Do you have any possessions at all?”

  “No,” he laughed as if the very idea was ridiculous. “What possessions do you think I need?”

  “Still answering questions with more questions – annoying!”

  “Do you think there is an answer for every question?”

  “There you go, doing it again!” she laughed as she dropped the vegetables into a pan of water. “Do you have any money?”

  “No,” he smiled at her fondly, “I don’t have any money.”

  “Well, there you go. A straight answer. That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

  “No, that was an easy one.”

  “So, where were you planning on sleeping tonight?”

  “I have no plans,” he shrugged, apparently unconcerned by his homeless status.

  “No money and no plans? Maybe the kids are right, maybe you are a tramp.”

  He laughed and she realised she had never felt so happy in the company of another person in her entire life.

  “You are welcome to stay here if you like,” she said, gesturing towards the couch. “I have a sleeping bag which has accompanied me to a fair few places over the years.”

  “Thank you. That’s very generous of you.”

  She turned the television on. “Do you mind if we watch the news? I would like to find out more about what happened this afternoon.”

  The subject of the blackout was on every channel and they both watched as the cameras revealed the amount of damage that had occurred in those twelve minutes. The reactions from many world leaders appeared to annoy Sophie’s guest.

  “None of them seem to be telling the truth,” he said. “They are all pretending that they know what happened and that they will make sure it never happens again. If they were wise leaders they would just admit that some things are beyond human understanding and that they are entirely helpless to do anything about it.”

  “Politicians believe they have to put people’s minds at rest; make them feel that their futures are in safe hands.”

  “Like talking to small children?”

  “Exactly.”

  “And do you think people believe them?”

  “Not always,” she laughed, “but more often than you would suppose possible, given the repeated evidence we get of their fallibility. We seem to want to give them the benefit of the doubt each time and then they end up disappointing us all over again, but we never seem to give up hoping.”

  “Why do you think they are so aggressive about everything?” he asked as two rival politicians tried to talk over one another and ignored the questions being put to them by the interviewer.

  “They mistake aggression for strong leadership. It’s a man thing.”

  “Oh, really?” He raised a quizzical eyebrow.

  “No offence.”

  A knock on the door made her jump and a feeling of dread tightened in her stomach. Had somebody alerted security to the presence of a strange man in her room? Were they going to evict him from the premises? Would he allow her to go with him? Without saying a word she wiped her hands on a less than clean tea towel and opened the door, aware that he was watching every move she made.

  “Please Miss, sorry to disturb you, Miss.” A group of children, apparently led by Hugo, stood on the doorstep, all of them craning their necks to see round her into the room. “Can we come and talk to your friend?”

  “How did you get in here?” she asked. “Why aren’t you in your dormitory block?”

  “The door was open downstairs and we wanted to make sure you were okay,” Hugo said, blinking up at her through his glasses with magnified eyes.

  “I’m fine, Hugo, thank you for your concern. But you guys are not allowed up here in the evening without permission from the headmaster, so skedaddle!”

  “Oooh, Miss,” they moaned.

  “Let the children come to me,” the stranger said, appearing behind her at the door, his body close to hers, exuding the same relaxing warmth. “What harm can it do?”

  “Thank you, sir,” Hugo said, leading the charge into the room, past their speechless teacher. They settled themselves expectantly on the floor and couch like a flock of noisy starlings coming to land in a tree.

  Seven

  Hakizimana had been in New Zealand several days, visiting the sights, and had already made it as far as the hotel in Christchurch where he had agreed to meet up with Tanzeel when the sun was extinguished.

  The blackness chilled his soul, bringing back memories of the dark days and nights of the genocide in Rwanda, which he spent hiding in excrement in crudely dug village cess pits or beneath piles of corpses, many of them the raped and slaughtered bodies of people he had known and loved. Even at the worst moments of the hundred days which had defined his childhood and destroyed every other member of his family, the spark of hope had flickered on inside him. That ability to hope did not desert him during those twelve minutes of darkness when it looked as if the end of the world might finally have arrived.

  “My name means ‘It is God who saves’,” he would tell the audiences who came to listen to him in universities and at peace conferences around the world, “and so it proved to be during those hundred days.”

  Yung and Liang had met Haki, as most preferred to call him, at the inaugural One Young World Conference in London ten years earlier. The couple had immediately warmed to him and with their backing he had set up a number of reconciliation centres around countries that had been scarred by ethnic cleansing campaigns and genocides. Haki was a strong believer in God and in the teachings of the Bible. They were the stories that his late mother had recounted to him and to his late brothers and sisters when they sat around the fire in the evenings.

  He had never thought to question his beliefs until he met Yung and Liang and they explained why they did not feel the need for religion, and that the secular teachings of Confucius were enough for them, just as they had been enough for many generations in China before them. Their long conversations had given Haki much food for thought, but nothing they had said had ultimately rocked his own faith in the God his mother had told him about in all the stories.

  When the sun went out that afternoon in New Zealand, Haki assumed it was the will of God and so sat quietly in his hotel room, staring out at the blackness. He simply waited, breathing slowly, switching off the parts of his brain which in others would have stimulated a sense of panic and the urge to flee. It was a skill he had mastered naturally by the age of eight and refined later through meditation and t
hrough his friendship with Tanzeel, a neuroscientist, spiritual leader and author.

  At that moment Tanzeel himself was no more than a few metres away in another room in the same hotel, sitting cross-legged on his bed, also staring calmly into the blackness and nothingness, his mind entirely cleared of all thoughts, ready to accept whatever happened next with complete serenity.

  Tanzeel, having written many best-selling books on meditation, consciousness and the power of the human mind, had been one of the elders at the One Young World conference in 2010 and had introduced Yung and Liang to Haki, his favourite disciple.

  “As you know, when I was a young man I lived in Beirut,” he had reminded the Zhangs, “at a time when the entire city was self-destructing, riven with civil war and hatred. I thought I had seen the worst that man could do to his fellow man, but young Haki has seen things and been to places that I do not think I would have been able to survive, and I believe he is a young man of considerable potential. There is something indestructible about him.”

  “You think we need to recruit him?” Yung had asked.

  “I certainly do.”

  And so Haki had become the youngest member of their “club”, as those who wanted to destroy them liked to refer to it.

  The twelve minutes of darkness ended and both the men in the separate hotel rooms took deep breaths as they stood up and went closer to the windows to watch the light and warmth flood back across the city landscape. Tanzeel took out his phone and typed.

  I have ordered a car for five o’clock. Care to join me?

  Haki replied. Thank you. That would be great. I will meet you downstairs.