Say A Little Prayer (A James Palatine Novel Book 2)

by Giles O'Bryen

  I feed him eggs and toast, then get him to drive me out to Talinic. I dread Grandmama’s wails, but I have to speak to Sammy again. And Kezia and Silvio. The older boys are not smoking cigarettes outside the gas station and it seems to me that the village is deserted, silent and frozen with shock. We turn into the street where Grandmama lives and I see a crowd outside the stairwell to one of Talinic’s apartment blocks. There’s a girl, teetering and voluminous in white chiffon, inside a palisade of strutting, smoking men in black suits.

  ‘Shit,’ says Piotr. ‘Sasha’s wedding party – I forgot.’

  It’s easily done – the Roma are avid celebrants. Aside from the weddings, christenings, funerals, memorial days, birthdays, confirmations and first holy communions, there are innumerable contests and competitions: fistfighting, cockfighting, dancing, musicianship, horsemanship, and a host of other feats whose importance is in no way compromised by their obscurity. The prize is eagerly sought and always the same: the victor wins the right to trumpet his (always his, the women have better things to do) supremacy in the contested sphere until the next competition is held. Not long after we were married, Franz was obliged to absent himself for an entire weekend in order to celebrate an elderly Talinic man’s victory in a competition for the best collection of Turkish music on cassette (the judging based on each contestant’s ability to inspire foot-tapping, dancing and tears among his audience). Furthermore, the men of Talinic are inclined to declare incidental triumphs in their endlessly recurring feuds with neighbouring villages and families, and to call for these to be properly observed.

  My daughter’s kidnapping by a gang of Serbian militia is now the lesser priority. I must drive Piotr to his apartment, wait for him to change, then drive him back to the community hall opposite Block 3. It’s only two hundred yards each way but he’s ashamed of being late. The confection in white is being corralled indoors by a supernumerary constellation of bobbing pink clouds. There is panic inside me, aching for release.

  ‘Wouldn’t be fair to spoil her day,’ Piotr mutters. ‘Do you want to come in?’ He looks shiny and, I’m suddenly and painfully aware, quite beautiful in his clean white shirt and burgundy suit.

  ‘What do you think, Piotr?’

  He looks down at his hands.

  ‘I’ll be at Grandmama’s. Send Sammy over as soon as you can. Make him come.’

  I drive slowly across the village. I was part of this once, but now I’m an outsider again. The ties that were weakened when Franz ran away have been severed entirely by the abduction of his daughter. I’d assumed Grandmama would be at the party but she isn’t. She’s sitting by her stove, weeping.

  ‘Oh Anna, you have news for me, Anna? Say you have news for me.’

  I shake my head.

  ‘I know in your heart you blame me. You say to yourself it was the fault of that cursed Roma family. And where was Franz? He should have been here to protect his own darling Katya. Where was he, the lazy wretch! There was nothing, nothing I could do, Anna. It was over before I even knew. That sweet girl who we all loved—’

  I can’t bear it. I step outside into the cold.

  ‘He should have been here! Franz. . . His own dear daughter!’ Grandmama shouts after me.

  I start to walk. I’m not necessarily seeing things the way they are just now, but still the village looks ugly. Four apartment buildings in cream-painted breeze block, eight overseers’ houses, all built for the cement plant a kilometre to the south. When the plant closed and the workers left, Franz’s extended family (over a hundred of them, eventually) moved in. The uncongenial concrete of the unlovely village became overlaid with the richly patinated fabric of their lives, so in the end you could hardly even see it. Or I couldn’t, anyway, not the way I can now. Talinic was the scene of my seduction, it was my Verona, my Baghdad, my Kathmandu. A handsome, black-haired man sold me a cast-iron scallop shell basin at a flea market, then offered to carry it home in his strong brown arms. So handsome and black-haired that a week later he is walking me along this pounded-rubble street, flashing his teeth at passers-by. He’s put on a clean white shirt for me, a strong brown arm has taken ownership of my waist. We turn here, step down behind the yard at the back of Grandmama’s, where he bends and picks up my ankles one by one so he can take off my shoes.

  ‘They’ll get dirty,’ he says.

  We start across the meadow but the soles of my feet wince at the thistles and stones and I lean on him and beg him to carry me, which he willingly does, his broad hand flirting with the small of my back. He walks to the river, this warm little chit in his arms, and ducks below the lowest branch of a huge alder tree. There’s a little bower he’s made, the cunning bastard, with a bolster of hay and a bottle of wine cooling on the riverbed. He reaches for me and I feel the easy power that rolls in his limbs. The cool air and his warm lips bring goosebumps to my naked shoulders, shudders to my breast. The demure academic with her dusty passion for the nomads who once galloped the high plains of eastern Turkey now yields to a wanderer of her own, feels the rude tickle of crushed hay beneath her thighs. He could trace his lineage back through centuries, as if he cared. The feel of my lips parting for his kisses is all that matters to him now. I wrap my arms around my Roma prize, while the alder shakes its great boughs and the swallows skip down to the river to drink.

  How the aunts and uncles whispered! Meek, modest Anna Galica, in the arms of a swarthy Horahane! And before you could say How disgraceful, she was married! And then (Aha!), pregnant! They could say what they liked, I was drunk on it, woozy and ravenous as a bey’s whore in the foothills of Mount Ararat. I wanted it all, every drop of it. I lay in his arms and invented our delicious future: we travel to Paris where, because of his exceptional talent with horses, Franz has been offered the reins of a prestigious racing stables. I have several more beautiful children and bring them up in a sunny maison de maître. I write books, instead of merely translating them, novels and essays and memoirs and who knows what. I look up from my desk to watch my husband canter across the field in front of the house, the limbs of his powerful bay flowing beneath him. Later I find him in the stables grooming the mare he has entered for the races at Longchamp. He is whispering something in its ear and I tell him to stop and whisper in mine.

  I walk down to the river, to the place where Katya was begotten and then taken away. There’s nothing to see or understand here, only a yawning melancholy in the clumps of trodden yellow grass, the shivering alder trees, the passage of brown water between sodden riverbanks. There’s a patch of wet ash and charred wood where the children had their bonfire, and a circle of sticks that forms an arena for dancing or other kinds of ceremonial play. Weddings are the most popular, Katya said, followed by christenings. I look for her footprints in the mud, and perhaps I find them, but it’s been drizzling and the outlines are smooth. There are bootprints, too. Men have stood here and considered taking my child away. They’re in a dangerous mood, their fragile manhood offended by the sight of Sammy’s bared arse. The one who’s in charge sees Katarina. She’s different. She doesn’t belong here with these filthy Roma, he thinks. She can come with us. That’ll teach the gypsy scum. One of them takes hold of her, but she kicks him. She kicked and kicked, Sammy said. My heart gulps and I find I am moaning as I circle the damp cinders.

  It’s evidence. It needs to be preserved. There should be red-and-white-striped tape like they have for car accidents. How can this be less important than a car accident? I’ll come back with a camera. Dread heaves inside me. I’m going to show Inspector Jankovic some photos of a muddy field. He’ll take them with a smirk and file them in the bin with the notes he wrote on his pad of lined yellow paper. The very few notes he took because he thinks her Roma father took Katarina, abetted by his Roma family in Talinic, all of them habitual liars and practised child abductors. He’ll see Grandmama’s stricken face and think, She can’t fool me, the old fraud. Why should he waste his time because some overheated Kosovar bitch can’t keep her knickers on whe
n a bit of Roma rough strolls by?

  I’m rescued by the sight of Sammy, Silvio and Kezia standing by the fence round Grandmama’s backyard. I set off towards them, stumbling like a mad thing in the dank, sticky field.

  ‘I wrote down everything,’ I say to Eleni in the Italian Café next day, handing her a photocopy of my notes. ‘Descriptions of the men. How they were dressed, their accents. One of them sounds very distinctive: He had clothes like a soldier. He was bald with a tattoo of a snake on his neck. When he talked, the snake’s mouth moved.’

  ‘The very model of a Serbian policeman,’ says Eleni. ‘Bald as in no hair, or shaven-headed?’

  ‘I don’t know. Another was fat, wearing blue overalls. Two of them had cowboy hats, one in black leather, one in what I guess was felt. That one was carrying a shotgun – a shotgun, Eleni. To deal with a bunch of mouthy kids.’

  ‘Did you speak to them separately?’

  ‘No. I thought it would help them remember if they were together.’

  ‘So they took it in turns to speak and the others listened and agreed?’

  ‘Yes. Sammy came in to Pristina and we went to the Toyota dealership and identified the pickup. It’s a Toyota Invincible fitted with something called—’ I check the notes—‘a Road Muscle Body Kit. Surely there can’t be many like that. Look at it!’

  I show her the printout. The red toner was low and the vehicle looks like a cartoon.

  ‘If they weren’t telling the truth, Anna. . . Well, you made it easy for them.’

  ‘Not telling the truth? What do you mean? Why wouldn’t they?’

  ‘Because. . . Maybe Franz really is behind this.’

  ‘Not you too, Eleni. You can’t believe that.’

  She sees my furious expression and blushes. ‘I’m sorry, Anna. I just don’t see how you can rule it out.’

  ‘Er, because he was my husband?’

  ‘I know, and he was a lovely man, I always said that. But not exactly reliable. Men can be possessive of their children, just as much as women.’

  Eleni is a social psychologist and we are straying into her area of expertise. She is also one of the least tactful people I have ever met. These are both good reasons for curtailing this conversation, even though there is nothing else I can talk about. I look into her big, anxious face – anxious because she loves me and shares my grief with a sincerity that makes me long to fold myself into her arms and weep (something I do often these days).

  ‘If it was him, we’ll soon find out. And at least she’ll be safe.’

  Safe with Franz; with anyone else, not safe. Eleni sets out the options with her unerring instinct for causing distress without meaning to.

  ‘I’m going to carry on with this line of enquiry, anyway,’ I say hurriedly, standing up to leave.

  Eleni stands, too. Her big, clumsy body knocks the little table and I have to lunge to prevent two espresso cups and a side plate sliding to the floor.

  ‘I’m sleeping at yours tonight,’ she says, bringing the hefty flaps of her dark green boiled-wool coat under control.

  ‘You don’t have to. Piotr is still there.’

  ‘All right, tomorrow then. Or as soon as he’s gone. I’ll read these notes and see if I can think of anything. Go now, Anna, or you’ll be late.’

  Line of enquiry. . . Who are you kidding? You’re a distraught mother, drifting uncontrollably between immobility and hysteria. You’re also hosting a seminar called Worship on the Road: Religious observance among Turkish nomads, 1450–1530. Only three people have signed up for it, but I can’t back out or the university will dock my pay.

  15

  When I get back there’s a note from Piotr on the table. Had to go home. Call tomorrow. P. The apartment is empty of everything except loneliness and loss. This is how our home is now, how it will be. Silent. I step into Katya’s room and there’s enough of her there to sustain me. I curl up on her bed and cry for a while – not sobbing but whimpering from deep within.

  I won’t give up, I won’t abandon hope for fear of despair. I go and make a cup of coffee. On the fridge door is a photo I took on a picnic in Germia Park last summer. I’ll use it for the leaflet I’m going to do. Katya’s sitting on a rug with her legs folded beneath her. There’s chicken sandwich quarters, a sliced tomato and a stack of potato chips neatly arranged on a yellow plastic plate in her lap, and she’s coiled her hair behind one ear so it doesn’t get in the way while she eats. Such an orderly girl! She saw my camera and sucked in her cheeks. ‘Mum! Why’re you always pointing that thing at me?’ The protest was not credible. A few weeks later I came across her and Sofia practising to look cute, pouting at the mirror in the hall. ‘Ooh, you look gorgeous,’ said Sofia with a giggle.

  I lay out the text and the words stare back at me from the screen of my laptop. The gulf between what they mean and what they mean to me is so great that I’m momentarily confused. Missing. . . Last seen in Talinic. . . Please contact. . . Is this all that need be said? You see leaflets like this in news reports from refugee centres, held up by weeping mothers or pinned to noticeboards behind rows of craning heads.

  I’ll have to scan the photo on the machine in the faculty office. If I had a key I’d drive over there right now, but instead I go to bed and all night I’m tapping on turned shoulders and stumbling past bare-faced doors, whether awake or asleep I cannot tell. At nine the next morning I’m outside the university building, waiting to be let in. However, the bulb on the scanner has broken and the replacement has to be posted from Germany.

  ‘I ordered it three months ago,’ says V-P Ongoric’s secretary. ‘There’s a print shop on Ceruleska Street we sometimes use. It’s not far.’

  It’s not far but there’s a notice on the door: DUE TO ADVERSE TRADING CONDITIONS, WE HAVE BEEN FORCED TO CLOSE. By the time I’ve found a printer who has survived the adverse trading conditions, it’s already three o’clock. The man at the counter declares he can’t do a thing until tomorrow. As a Serb born and bred he would usually defer jobs from Albanian women for weeks or even refuse them altogether, his manner implies; but he is prepared to rise nobly above the ethnic divide on behalf of the missing child.

  ‘No, not tomorrow morning, tomorrow afternoon. You’re lucky to get it done at all, given the way things are,’ he says accusingly.

  The way things are is all over the news. The World Service of the BBC has been reporting the massacre of forty-five civilians during a raid on the village of Račak, a KLA stronghold not fifty kilometres from Pristina. The attack was co-ordinated by men dressed in black, with black gloves over their hands and black balaclavas over their faces. The first body the reporters discovered had been decapitated. Meanwhile, a peace conference is mooted. Serbian and Kosovar-Albanian leaders must sort out their differences under the stern gaze of representatives of the six Great Powers. If not, NATO has legal authority to bomb Kosovo into oblivion.

  I make a start on the letters. Dear President Rugova. . . Or perhaps, given the personal nature of the letter, I can get away with Dear Ibrahim. I was introduced to the president of the widely unrecognised Republic of Kosovo at a reception held by the Writers Union three years ago; he favoured me with a wan smile. Since then, I’ve translated for him five times – three diplomatic papers and two circuitous legal opinions from a barrister in London who I hope was not paid by the word, as I was. Dear President Rugova, I hope you will not mind this approach, but. . . Why so apologetic? Because it’s shameful to lose your twelve-year-old daughter – everyone will think so. She should have been more careful, especially with the way things are. I wasn’t careful. While Katya was being abducted, I was licking espresso froth off a wooden spill in the Italian Café.

  Dear President Rugova, as a consequence of my careless and naive disregard for the way things are, my daughter has been taken from the town of Talinic by an unknown gang in a Toyota Invincible with Road Muscle Body Kit. They carried shotguns and wore stupid leather hats. Probably Serbs – who else could get away with snatching a
child in broad daylight? I am keen to get her back before we are bombed by NATO. Please help.

  I delete it all and start again, a sober, respectful letter, and by the end of the day I’ve written twenty more in the same vein. I’ll send them by both email and post, although neither service is reliable in the Kosovo of January 1999 – whether this is a form of oppression or a symptom of general collapse is impossible to say. I tramp along the ice-crusted street to buy stamps, then go back to the police station with the pack of evidence I’ve prepared for Inspector Jankovic. I’ve included the picture of the Toyota Invincible with Road Muscle Body Kit Sammy and I got from the dealership, beneath which I have written: This was the type of pickup driven by the men who took Katarina Corochai away from Talinic on 15 January 1999. Signed by her cousin, Sammy Corochai. Sammy managed to write out his name in the space below, though the effort made him go bright red and the letters are uneven in size. I’ve also attached copies of the statements of Sammy, Kezia and Silvio, and the pictures I took of the meadow behind Grandmama’s. I lay the pack down on the counter for the duty sergeant to inspect.

  He inspects me instead, then turns back to his more important paperwork. ‘Leave the stuff with me, I’ll make sure Jankovic gets it.’

  ‘No. I want to speak to him in person. Do you have children?’

  He doesn’t answer.

  ‘Last time I was here, you rolled your eyes when I said my twelve-year-old doesn’t have a boyfriend. It sounded as if you had experience of girls of that age. Do you?’

  He’s a neatly turned-out man with short, greasy hair and a trim brown moustache shaped like the cow-catchers you see on pictures of steam trains in the Wild West. Half policeman, half communist bureaucrat. His eyes are watery and the skin of his cheeks is flaking. I suspect that rustic militiamen make him snuffle with disapproval.