‘Anna died and then Misha died. I can never go home again.’
‘Anna? Was she his god-daughter?’
Vera stood up and came over to the window. She stood near me, but leaning against the wall. So I won’t see her face, I thought.
‘Our god-daughter,’ she said, closing her eyes. The song from outside rose and fell like a wave between the buildings, wrapping the night in blue sorrow.
‘Listen,’ she said. ‘It’s the music of the night. It’s the fado. They are singing about everything that they’ve lost.’ She fluttered her hands to the music, the tones intertwining in a minor key. ‘It’s the music of the freed slaves, the conmen and the whores, the music of the alleyways. It speaks to my Russian soul. Misha agreed with me. It’s a dirge, he said. They say it took its melody from the waves of the sea. Can you hear it?’ She fluttered her scarf, back and forth, swaying her enormous breasts. ‘It means fate, you know. The fate that keeps the lovers apart.’
Fate, I thought, in the form of your husband’s previous gangster cohorts. And if that was the case, I realized at that moment that it was a fate uniting me with the grieving Vera Yechenko.
‘Thirty-six years we are married.’ She poked at me with the hand holding the sloshing port wine. ‘Don’t you think I would know what was in those papers?’
‘What?’ I said.
‘Well, I don’t remember. You’ll have to read them yourself.’
I stared at her. She must have had too much to drink.
‘But you said he took them with him. You said he took the documents along when he went to meet Patrick.’
‘Yes, yes, he did.’ She smiled, showing all her teeth. ‘But not the copies. Ha ha.’
‘Are you saying there are copies? And you have them here? Here in this apartment?’
Suddenly I understood why Vera Yechenko didn’t want to be seen. Quickly I stepped back into the room, away from the window.
‘Misha didn’t trust that American. He thought he might take the papers and then run off and take the money for himself.’ Vera threw out her hand. ‘Americans. All they think about is money.’
She left and went into the bedroom. Don’t tell me you’ve put the papers under the mattress, I thought.
She had.
It was a brown folder. Vera held it pressed to her chest.
‘A hundred thousand,’ she said, closing her eyes for a moment. ‘In euros.’
‘I don’t have that much money.’
‘Then I’ll just sell them to someone else.’
‘Go ahead,’ I said, going out into the front hall. ‘I really don’t give a shit about those documents.’
That wasn’t entirely true.
Vera Yechenko came after me. ‘There are plenty of people who would pay for these papers.’
‘OK. Just sit here and wait for them to show up. Sit here and rot in the dark and wait for them to come and throw you off some cliff like they did your husband.’
‘Fifty thousand,’ said Vera.
I reached for the door handle and turned it to open the door.
‘I don’t give a shit what those papers say,’ I told her. ‘I want to find my husband, and he’s obviously not here.’
Her fingernails bored into my arm.
‘Take them for twenty. I don’t want them here. I keep dreaming that they’ll come and ring the bell and finish me off the way they finished off Misha.’
‘Five hundred,’ I said. ‘And I promise you’ll never have to see them again.’
‘A thousand.’
I took out ten rolled-up bills from the front pocket of my jeans. I had the rest of the money in my wallet and at the hotel. ‘This is all I have,’ I said.
Vera muttered something in Russian and reached out to grab the money. At the same time I took the folder and glanced at a few of the pages. Long columns of figures. Some sort of bookkeeping, which was not my forte even though I’d been running a business for eight years. Various transactions recorded, and locations. Names. I leafed through more pages. 2004, 2006, 2008. Names and place names, dates in long columns. Notations such as: Man, Sudan, Woman, Kiev. Number: seven. Number: eight. Money that had changed hands. Several hundred thousand euros for a single transaction. Alain Thery’s name screamed at me in black ink. There were other French names, as well as British, German, and Polish names. I closed the folder, clutching it tightly, feeling the heat rise to my face.
No matter what he’d done to Patrick, he was going to pay for it. That bastard.
Vera stuffed the euros into her wallet. She was holding an elegant little purse. I noticed it was a Dior. Genuine. From her wallet she took out a business card and handed it to me. Gilt-edged, with the words printed on linen cardstock.
‘The address is no longer valid, of course,’ she said. ‘But I still have that phone number. In case you need to contact me.’
I stared at the card, uncomprehending. The address was for a perfume shop in Kiev.
‘I thought you were claiming to be dead,’ I said.
Vera laughed.
‘Right! I wonder where they’re going to send the bill.’
A mangy dog crossed the lane. The produce vendor dragged the boxes of vegetables into an alcove. I pressed the folder to my chest and looked over my shoulder. No one there. Just as I reached the viewpoint, the sun went down behind the hills, turning the thousands of tiled rooftops a shimmering gold.
On the tram I called Benji. I thought: I’ll talk to him the whole way. Then somebody will know who I am when they find me.
‘Lisbon? You’re kidding,’ he hollered. ‘Oh, God. That’s so romantic. Don’t tell me you’re listening to fado. Amália was a goddess.’
I could almost sense how it hurt him when he bit his tongue.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I forgot. Have you …?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I haven’t found him.’
A bend in the road and I almost fell over. I had to scramble to grab the strap hanging from the ceiling. It felt as if I was getting an injection of my old life through the phone, by hearing Benji’s voice. I couldn’t remember when we’d last talked. It felt like so long ago. Was it only two days? Three? Before I checked out of the hotel in Paris I’d received a bunch of emails from him. Something about a meeting. A job. I couldn’t even recall what it was about.
The brakes shrieked as the tram strained to turn and began heading downhill.
‘What’s all that noise?’ asked Benji. His voice sounded so bright and real. It made me feel grounded. I was Ally, his employer, a friend.
‘You wouldn’t believe your eyes,’ I said. ‘This city is a museum, and the maintenance department is no longer operating.’
‘Is that why there’s no Internet service? I’ve sent you tons of emails.’
‘You should have tried a telegram,’ I said. ‘What do you need?’
‘Oh, nothing really, just a small matter of Cherry Lane Theatre wanting to book you for Medea next season, and maybe for a show in the fall too. They need to know this week.’
‘Is that all?’ I said.
‘Should I tell them yes, or do you want to call them yourself?’
The tram made a sharp turn around a cathedral. I longed for straight streets in numerical order. I tried to recall what the head of Cherry Lane Theatre looked like. What his name was. I couldn’t remember.
‘We’ll talk about this later,’ I said. ‘Do you have a wifi connection right now?’
‘Of course.’
‘Could you look up the Lisbon post office? I need the address.’
‘Sure. What else is a stage designer’s assistant good for?’ I heard the clatter of his keyboard. ‘By the way, they’re playing to sold-out crowds at the Joyce. Duncan is threatening to cancel all his future contracts. He’s going through some sort of personal crisis. He’s never had any commercial success before, so now he thinks he has to go to India to search for a deeper meaning. And Leia has signed a contract with American Ballet. I pity them.’
I let hi
s chatter run through my mind as I looked around the tram. Tourists with guidebooks and digital cameras, a few young girls out shopping, two very old men — so old that they might have even taken part in building the tram system. A couple of Portuguese citizens who looked as if they were on their way home from work, and a black woman with braids. I felt confident that no one was following me. Had Patrick been equally confident?
The street levelled out and I was now down in Baixa, the flat part of town between the Lisbon hills where all the government offices and international clothing stores were located.
‘I assume you want the main post office,’ said Benji. ‘Praça dos Restauradores, Avenida da Liberdade. Does that sound familiar?’
‘Perfect,’ I said. ‘That’s where the Hard Rock Café is. Can you find the opening times?’
‘They close at six.’
One of the very old men was winking flirtatiously. I looked at my watch.
‘Yikes. When does it open?’
‘At nine.’
The document folder was rubbing against my chest. I was going to have to keep the papers at the hotel overnight.
The bell rang for the tram stop where I was supposed to get off. From there it was a ten-minute walk to the hotel. The streets were packed with people. Benji was still talking in my ear as I turned onto Via Augusta, the shopping street through Baixa. Red signs in the windows advertised sales. I thought I must be overdramatizing. Nobody would be following me, since no one knew that there were copies of the documents. And no one except Vera Yechenko knew where they were.
‘I’m so jealous,’ said Benji.
‘Because of the fado?’ I asked. ‘Or because I’m a better set designer?’
‘Because of Patrick,’ said Benji. ‘Because you have someone in your life.’
‘He’s gone,’ I said.
‘You’ll find him,’ Benji told me.
I clutched the phone tightly, lowering it to my chest. I heard Benji continuing to talk, and raised the phone to my ear again in the middle of a sentence.
‘… never had anyone to lose,’ I heard him say. ‘… dare to love and be loved, but I realize that’s not much consolation.’
‘Just keep talking to me,’ I said. ‘Just tell me about something that’s totally uninteresting.’
‘Like my love life?’ said Benji.
I laughed and felt tears sting my eyes.
‘That would be great.’
Chapter 13
Lisbon
Wednesday, 1 October
I was running through a labyrinth of lanes and dark stairways, carrying the child in my arms. From a bar I heard the song, a plaintive woman who glared at me with her toothless mouth, howling into the night. It’s the freed slaves, said a man in the audience. That’s who is singing. Then the baby was gone. I ran, and the shadows tore at my clothes. I came out near the river where the boats had come in, loaded down with people hanging over the railings, bound with chains. Then I caught sight of Patrick further along the dock, and I shouted, but my voice was drowned out by rattling carts and screeching steam whistles, and I saw him walking in the opposite direction, and there stood a woman, she was petite and dark and wearing a blue coat, and she joined Patrick, and side by side they disappeared in the swarms of people, and I ran after them, pushing my way forward, wanting to tell him that our child had arrived, and I caught sight of the blue back of the woman, and I grabbed her arm, but when she turned around, it was Patrick’s mother who pressed her face close to mine. ‘He doesn’t need someone like you,’ she said, and at the same time the building behind us collapsed, and I tore myself loose from the sheet that was twisted around my legs, and I realized that the sound was coming through the balcony doors, which stood open, facing the street. Glass shattering. The muted rumble of a garbage truck. Metal striking the cobblestones.
I pulled up the blanket, which had tumbled to the floor, and wrapped it around me. The cool night air filled the room, illuminated by the streetlamps. I had left the balcony doors open so I’d be able to flee quickly, if necessary. No one would enter that way. It would be easier to come in from the hotel corridor.
I’d hidden the folder in the basement when I came back to the hotel and asked to take another look at Patrick’s suitcase. Mikail Yechenko’s documents were now under a red cashmere sweater. As soon as the post office opened, I was going to put all the papers in an envelope and send them across the Atlantic.
The images from my dream still lingered in my mind: the harbour, which looked like the picture in the bar downstairs, the boats filled with slaves from the past. I abruptly sat up in bed. Stared at the dark windows in the building across the street, and the grimy sign advertising rooms for rent. My heart was pounding.
The boats! The sea and the boats. The people who died and were washed ashore.
That was something I’d seen on my computer screen when I was reading articles about slave trading and illegal immigration.
A sea, a beach.
I got up, not caring whether anyone could see me through the window. I gathered up my clothes from the floor and put them on, noting that it was four in the morning. Downstairs I found the desk clerk asleep on a sofa in the bar.
‘Does the hotel have free Wi-Fi?’ I asked.
He sat up with a jolt and rubbed his eyes.
‘Just a moment,’ he said, and disappeared into the office. He came back holding a small card.
‘This is the code. Three euros an hour.’ He pointed towards a dark wooden table in the far corner of the bar. ‘There’s the computer,’ he said, and then he headed back to his place behind the front desk.
‘Excuse me,’ I called after him. ‘Is it possible to get a cup of coffee this early in the morning? And a sandwich?’
I looked at the little card, and entered the code in the password box. Then I logged onto Google.
I typed in: Illegal immigrant. Boats. Death.
Then I leaned back and waited.
For several days now it had been right in front of my eyes, yet the thought had never occurred to me. I hadn’t allowed myself even to consider the idea. I had fooled myself into not seeing. Hope was a lie. A fucking lie.
The first hits were new, all referring to something that had happened over the past few days. Another boat had capsized off the Turkish coast, several bodies had washed ashore in a tourist area on a Greek island. I scrolled down, but didn’t find what I was looking for.
The desk clerk set a cup of coffee on the table next to the computer.
‘Obrigada,’ I said. It was the only Portuguese word I’d learned so far.
I typed: man, dead, beach, immigrant. Again I pressed the search button.
I sipped the bitter coffee as the ancient computer searched over a sluggish connection. Aside from the light coming from the partially open door to the kitchen, the screen was the only light source in the closed bar. The windows were covered with velvet drapes that reached four metres, from floor to ceiling.
The third hit was something I instantly recognized.
I clicked on it, and the bar where I was sitting vanished.
I was looking at a beach in Spain, in a town on the Atlantic coast. Tarifa. A Swedish tourist had found a dead man on the beach. The article said he was an African immigrant.
‘It was so horrible,’ said Terese Wallner, twenty, who had suffered quite a shock. ‘He almost looked alive in the water. He had only a tattoo, otherwise he was naked.’
My hand flew up to my left shoulder and squeezed hard. A tattoo. That was what had settled somewhere in the back of my mind, lingering in my subconscious.
I checked the date. The article had been published on Wednesday, 24 September. One week ago. Seven days after Patrick was last seen, up near the terrace look-out in Alfama.
I read the brief article again and again. How did they know he was an African immigrant? That wasn’t clarified in the text. On the other hand, more bodies had washed ashore in the areas around Cádiz over the following days. The Spanish police
thought they had come from a capsized rubber boat carrying illegal immigrants.
I pulled up a map of Spain on the screen. With my heart hammering, I zoomed in on the southern portion and located Tarifa, at the tip of a promontory, just west of Gibraltar. The distance to the African continent was no bigger than the tip of my chewed fingernail, ten to twenty kilometres tops. And from Tarifa, the Atlantic spread westward, towards the Portuguese border where the earth’s crust curved upwards, and the sea was sucked into the estuary where Lisbon was squeezed in, at the mouth of the Tejo river.
It might be possible.
I could hardly breathe.
Dear God in heaven, I thought. It might be possible.
My head throbbed as I tried to find out more information about the man on the beach, but the brief article was all I could find. Nothing more about who he was. Nothing more about the tattoo. I went back to the text.
‘It was a terrible shock,’ said Terese Wallner. ‘People go swimming and surfing at that beach all the time.’
I glanced at my watch. Four minutes left of my computer time. I searched ‘Sweden, addresses’ and then typed in Terese Wallner’s name. There seemed to be only one person by that name, with a cell phone registered to an address on Hemmansvägen in a place called Järfälla.
It was 5.03 in the morning. Sweden was much further east, almost all the way to Russia, which definitely meant it was in a different time zone. So it had to be at least six o’clock.
I logged out and went up to my room. In the shower I let the hot water run over my body until my skin felt wrinkled and warm. For a long time I watched the water swirl at my feet until it was sucked down the drain.
When it was six a.m. in Lisbon and possibly seven in Stockholm, I tapped in Terese Wallner’s phone number. It rang eight times before anyone answered. The voice sounded groggy with sleep.
‘I’m sorry for calling you so early,’ I said, hoping that the person spoke English.
‘Who is this?’ she asked.
‘You don’t know me, but my name is Ally Cornwall, and I live in New York, although right now I’m in Lisbon.’ That was more information than Terese needed to know, but I wanted to give her time to wake up.
The Forgotten Dead Page 25
