The Catastrophe

by Ian Wedde

  This she had to respect, and she did, with gratitude, although they would not see each other again once they had reached Italy in the morning and had gone their separate ways – she on the plane from Genoa to Geneva, to her appointment at the ILO, Mahfouz to sell the red saloon in Genoa, where it might once again become a taxi, even a white one.

  And Philippe? Philippe she would see for the last time in her life, a dignified old man rolling a small wheeled suitcase into the railway station at Genoa, where the train went inland to Turin, where he would disappear. Then, before long, she would be taking her shower in the apartment in Geneva, with its closet of good clothes and some drawers of the plain things she liked, Doctor Hawwa Habash, to report on behalf of Regional Office Beirut. How was it now, in Gaza, for the children? And, Doctor, how was your holiday on the Côte d’Azur?

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but now in any case it does not matter, because he is dead, Abdul Yassou. But as for the food writer.’

  ‘You must do what you have decided,’ said Philippe. He was calm again, but tired – there was a little flicking in his left eyelid, and he lifted first by mistake the hand in which he held his glass, but next the free one, to rub the tic. ‘Go, do it, I already support you. But I think we will leave earlier than we planned, before Antun arrives. I am not satisfied with that one.’

  ‘I will talk to him one last time, this Christopher Hare.’ Hawwa Habash lifted her glass to salute the tired old man on the other side of the table. ‘Mabrouk, Philippe, you are a good man. It has been my honour to work with you.’

  ‘And you, Doctor.’ He drained his glass and smiled. ‘How long do you need?’

  ‘One hour, no more.’

  ‘Then I will sleep for one hour, no more.’ As she expected, the hint of sarcasm. Philippe had recovered his guile. He put his glass upside-down on the table and lifted to his lips the little cross that hung on a chain around his neck. He bowed, the merest inclination, holding her eyes with his, correct and formal. Then he went to the stairs and ascended slowly, as if he had already begun to turn off the power to his body. She could see he was content with their decision.

  But also, she could see what he had just done.

  ‘And the one with whom you are not satisfied?’

  Philippe paused in his careful ascent, but did not turn around. He answered, as if he were merely reminding himself of something she already knew, ‘You mean the one left behind?’

  Then he lifted his hand from the banister in a gesture of dismissal and went on to his rest.

  Hawwa Habash sat alone in the unpleasant lower room of the building used by the Arab truck drivers and the importer of cheap Turkish kitchenware, furniture, and shoes, with its careless hygiene and the paper cover on the table greasy with chicken shashlik, and its pornographic calendar next to the shelves of canned goods, and its pot of scorched chickpeas and garlic that no-one had emptied and cleaned, and the pair of overalls greasy with diesel that had hung for two days on a hook behind the door to the garage at the back. She heard Philippe’s door close firmly on the floor above, the one below the food writer. She knew that Philippe would sleep efficiently and wake with precision.

  Yes, she understood what he had done, Philippe. He had left her with the shaduf of her decision and its consequences, that image he had gently mocked for its archaic sentimentality – he had even blessed the moment with his little gold cross and his courteous bow, his eyes holding hers because they were equals in responsibility.

  But he had also accepted responsibility for her decision without asking to know its details or predicting its likely consequences. He was exposing his back to her decision and trusting her. This was the meaning of his wave. That he would walk from the railway station in Turin to wherever he was going, and not feel on his back the eyes of any police, nor those of the well-informed friends of Abdul Yassou, or those dealers in abominations in New Jersey, or the agents of the Kataeb in Beirut and Paris, or the Israeli Shin Bet, or the Syrian Mukhabarat, or the Lebanese Deuxième Bureau.

  And mostly, that he would not be betrayed by any irresponsible ‘fate’ whose existence he had repudiated with such unique rage. There would be no ‘fate’. There was only her decision which he had blessed so that he could now calmly sleep ‘for one hour, no more’. And then leave her to continue with whatever had to be done next.

  For example, in this instance, with the one left behind.

  Before commencing a procedure at the Red Crescent hospital in Amman, or in the cliniques pédiatriques at Baqa’a, Balata, Deir el-Balah or the other camps, she would place her gloved hands on the sheet covering the child she was to operate on. She would breathe carefully and deeply, spread her fingers, and silently count on them the main points of her plan.

  First: If Abdul Yassou was unguarded, the window seat of the restaurant was to have been left empty, as a signal that she could proceed; that was Antun’s task. Second: had the food writer therefore been a decoy, to protect Abdul Yassou? Third: was Antun therefore in the employ of Abdul Yassou? Fourth: if so, he was a dead man, because he had failed. Because she had decided to do it anyway, to kill her husband, after checking the window from the other side of the road. Fifth: because now either the friends of Abdul Yassou would kill Antun for his failure to protect their comrade in crime, or, sixth, those of Philippe would do so for his betrayal of their cause. Seventh: but risks such as these were beyond the reach of Antun’s weak character. So, eighth, it was likely that his action was either a foolish error, or, ninth, an attempt to prevent Abdul Yassou from becoming suspicious of the empty table.

  This much was clear – she folded her hands on the table, but moved her tenth finger up and down, like a little shaduf: what, then, was the consequence of this?

  If Antun had betrayed them to the police, they would have arrived at the truck drivers’ house by now. But if he had done so, the police would also be content with the death of Abdul Yassou, in which case they would not hurry, and they would also be content with the death of Antun, who had signed his own death-warrant, because that would excuse them from further action, since their source of information would be stopped.

  So, probably, he had not betrayed them to the police whose protection he knew better than to trust.

  If he had already betrayed them to the friends of Abdul Yassou, on the other hand, then he was a dead man even sooner, because his usefulness was at an end while his untrustworthiness was now clear. This he would have known. So, probably, he had not betrayed them to the friends of Abdul Yassou – or not yet.

  What would be Antun’s chief fear? That he himself would be betrayed for his part in this procedure. That the safe circle of secrecy had been broken – by the food writer.

  Therefore she would leave Antun to make his own decision. About what to do with the food writer. In any case, to accomplish the task of the one left behind.

  She stopped the tapping of her finger, folding it in her other hand.

  And the food writer, Christopher Hare, whose hands had resembled begging bowls empty of answers? Could she explain this to him? His excessive expression had been overflowing with the question can you please show me the way? This question was hidden inside his own words: this is the only place from which I can go forward. So he had already made his decision, he did it many hours ago when he ran after her, or ran after the present time he had lost – at any rate ran from the restaurant; and now only he could choose and discover where that decision would take him.

  How could she tell him this?

  CHAPTER 7

  He woke from a kind of dream – unsure if he’d been sleeping – because of the noise. He couldn’t believe it: they were singing downstairs! Or rather, the woman was. Going for it. These long phrases that twisted and turned. He’d heard that kind of stuff in restaurants all over the Middle East, and Edgeware Road for that matter, as well as from crackly loudspeakers above rickety tables on the jetty, where was it? With the grilled red snapper, and waves breaking against the riprap? And even at Ducasse’s
rubbishy Tamaris joint in Beirut, was there no stopping the guy? A woman’s voice winding around and around, over an orchestra that sounded like a roomful of clowns rattling coat-hangers and blowing kazoos.

  Only, to be fair, it was only her voice, this time: the doctor’s, Hawwa Habash’s, strong and not young, a bit hoarse, and though faint from where he was, obviously quite emotional. So not exactly a party, with some ‘Maya Yazbeck’ cabaret entertainer.

  But it was his grandmother’s strong voice that the doctor’s reminded him of, even though Nana Gobbo’s became screechy with age. He thought he could remember his mother’s singing, but he couldn’t distinguish it from the singing at her unveiling in the graveyard with its view across the bay. The Maori and the Italian songs, and Uncle Antonio’s tear-soaked, drunken baritone out-of-synch with the women dressed in black. That was something like the view he thought he’d been dreaming, but maybe it was just the doctor’s singing downstairs that pushed that image into his mind?

  At any rate, he was awake and had the sense of a wide-open space, of a song that went out into the sunlit distance. And how bizarre that he associated his own view into that possible future with the scary doctor, not with the intriguing cabaret singer whose reality the doctor had kicked aside with that mixture of sarcasm and disdain. Once, not so long ago, he’d have run salivating after the cabaret singer, Maya Yazbeck even sounded hot.

  But now, here he was. He’d woken up with his mind reaching out after Hawwa Habash, reaching out to the places where that was who she was, not Maya Yazbeck – where he wouldn’t be Rosenstein any more, either.

  He had indeed fallen asleep in the armchair, and had a nasty taste in his mouth, so he took a swig of the mineral water, then opened the window and the jalousie to spit a mouthful into the street. Looking out, he took a long swallow. It was still dark, and his only watch had been the one in his cellphone, now smashed to bits somewhere along the route the white taxi had taken to get here. He could still remember the sensation of the woman’s strong, bony fingers digging the phone out of his jacket pocket, and the brief rush of cool air as she opened the window to chuck it into the street. Perhaps it hadn’t broken, and someone had found it, or would in the morning? What would they do? Try the numbers in it? ‘Hello? I just found this – on Quai de Lunel. Perhaps you should try to locate the owner?’ Yeah, right.

  Quai de Lunel was his best guess – seemed like they’d headed for the port – but really, he didn’t have a clue. It was mostly quiet outside but he could hear some big trucks manoeuvring somewhere on the other side of the building, and an arterial road of some kind in the middle distance. It couldn’t be very long until dawn if the produce was coming in. Probably about 4 a.m. Chefs’ hour.

  It was chilly with the window open so he closed it and the shutters again, hesitating for a moment over the small lurch in his stomach that told him he was deciding not to scream or jump or anything. And why was that? He reached down to touch his toes, feeling the slightly unyielding obstacle of his stomach, and then did some stretches side to side, running his open palms down the outsides of his trousers, then rotated his head and neck, hearing somehow inside his skull the grinding of cartilage – how did that work?

  And why was he sticking with this shit-hole of a place? With the possibility that these people might decide to kill him?

  Because he’d chosen it. Because his choice had opened something up, let the possibility of some kind of light in, given him a sense of future. Try explaining that to TG, supposing she’d be interested these days. Or to Bob, the miserable prick. Could he have explained it to his mother, whose peach-fuzz cheek he still remembered, or thought he did? She’d chosen to get pregnant with a shearer called Hare who’d fucked off and left her to it, and then one day she’d chosen to get in a car with a pissed driver and been written off against a bridge along the coast towards Te Kaha – the Kereu River, he went there with the aunties and uncles, the ones with funny Italian names, and Nana Gobbo, they sang and did karakia and a blessing by the chipped concrete of the bridge and took a stone from the river back to Mietta’s grave at Tolaga Bay. Then the unveiling – Uncle Antonio throwing himself on the stone.

  Did that matter now? Did anything matter from that long ago? It mattered a lot more than what was just outside the window, which was the past that was so close he could still almost return to it if he chose. He could yell and scream, chuck the table or a chair out the window – ‘Au secours! Au secours!’ – and get the cops to come, and go back to where he’d left off in the mediocre cuisine traditionnelle Provençale restaurant, and even get some good magazine copy out of it, maybe an interview or two ...

  Or not. Or he could go on in the direction that would open up as soon as the door to this room did again. When the rooster-box would be lifted, in the morning, when it would be too late for him to disturb anyone, when no one would pay any attention anyway.

  And, despite the squirm of nausea that was really fear in his stomach, he still felt pretty calm – was there any reason to think Doctor Hawwa Habash wasn’t intending to put a bullet in his head? There was no good reason why he should believe she didn’t plan to do that. But if she’d been serious about it, he’d be dead by now, wouldn’t he? In the harbour, probably, with a truck axle or something tied to him. And then there was the way she’d said, On the contrary. It make very good sense, I understand completely. For me it is also perhaps not so different.

  ‘It make very good sense,’ he said to himself, imitating her slightly odd English. ‘It ma-ke ...’

  How did he get here, how did that make sense? Watching the shit the cooks churned out at the back of the Castaway on Oriental Parade, Wellington, the greasy schnitzels that came back with cigarettes stubbed out on them, while he scraped and washed pots, or loaded up the dishwashers with caustic powder. His knife-set when he graduated from cooking school, and the beautiful seven-inch cleaver that Uncle Antonio wrecked by showing off how to sharpen it on Nana’s doorstep – which he suspected at the time was a message that he’d better not get too big for his boots.

  But the meal he cooked for them all at Tolaga Bay the first time he was going to Italy, after making sous-chef over in Noosa. First the octopus-paste crostini to whet the appetite and get the wine open, then an antipasto of stuffed vegetables, then a silk-handkerchief pasta with pesto sauce, then the fish, crayfish and paua on a bed of peas and potatoes, then the meat of wild pork with salsa verde and a big dish of green beans with garlic and anchovies, and finally a rhubarb and ricotta tart.

  A couple of the uncles and aunties were gone, his mother too, a long time ago – but Nana Gobbo was still there, she was in her late eighties. She took her teeth out to eat the soft foods, put them back in to deal to the pork, and drank half a glass of wine with each course. At the end she grinned at him with her teeth in, kissed her fingertips, and blinked tears of pride.

  Uncle Antonio fell asleep under a shade awning they’d stretched from the clothes-line to the back fence. The rest of them began to sing. The guitars came out, and even a squeeze-box. They sang Dean Martin standards, Pokarekare Ana, and Nana Gobbo a screechy song in Italian. One of the distant cousins came on to him and they committed an indiscretion up the back of the orchard. Probably shouldn’t have. Sheep were bleating hoarsely and there were late-summer cicadas. He was some kind of local hero.

  He was drunk and pleased with himself, and he left the next day with a list of distant Ligurian relatives who might or might not be alive, to catch the bus to Gisborne, and the plane to Auckland, and the next one to Rome, and the train to Genoa. Nana Gobbo gave him a Saint Christopher to hang around his neck. ‘Food is love, Christopher. And don’t you forget it.’ The last time he saw her. Now she was next to his mother, Mietta, with a view of the bay.

  What was that supposed to mean, food is love?

  The recipe-book greed at book-signings. The floor-manager ripping his headphones off and throwing them on the floor at a TV recording session. Cussac screaming at him in Monaco. Bob: ‘You�
��ve had a good run, Chris.’ The arsehole. ‘If only you hadn’t stuffed handfuls of it down the toilets of the exotic food Meccas with which your brand is now associated.’ Or words to that effect.

  Food is love – at first his mantra, but in the end his SOS.

  He seemed to remember paying his respects at Mietta’s grave on the day of his famous lunch, and how his wonderful future had opened out like a view across the bay to pillars of light-filled rain marching across the horizon, and his mother’s voice, his uncertain memory of it, singing in that bright, teary space.

  But then he also knew, because the memory made him sob, that he couldn’t trust it. Because what was it, really, that moved him? That he couldn’t remember? Or that he could remember something, but didn’t know what it was? Or that the lovely, light-shafted view from the home he felt as though he was now leaving all over again to seek his future fortune was in fact empty? Mietta wasn’t there, nor was her voice or even his self-indulgent memory of it. TG wasn’t there. What was really filling up the space reserved for memory was his own familiar self-pity.

  So when the sound of Hawwa Habash reminded him of his mother singing, could he trust that memory of hope? Or his new sensation of a view of his future opening up again? As it had years ago on the day of his legendary lunch at Tolaga Bay? He hadn’t been wrong then – why should he be wrong now? Was it wrong to hope? Was he just being the fool – the dolt – that TG mocked but had also loved? Did Hawwa Habash see the fool that TG saw? Or did she see an opportunity in him, something that could be cooked, as she’d said? ‘Maybe we cook it?’

  This is the only place from which I can go forward. She’d understood that at the same moment he’d astonished himself by saying it. So, maybe.

  He just couldn’t go past it, the distant sound of the doctor’s singing, the intensity of it, some kind of emotion he couldn’t tune in to. It reminded him. Not of the actual aunties and uncles starting their repertoire all over again, with slurred gusto, over the ruins of his forever famous lunch, in late summer on the Coast, but a memory of how he’d remembered it. How he’d made a point of recalling it, until it became a kind of recording he could put on, with rich effects of summer heat and his tough-girl cousin’s practical hand yanking his pants down in the dry grass at the back of the orchard.