Martin’s bedsprings jangled and went quiet. His footsteps crossed the room, from the far corner to the doorway. When I opened my door he was standing on the landing in his pyjamas, looking down over the banisters. He looked round at me, but didn’t say anything. When I opened my mouth he shook his head at me.
There were heavy steps coming up the stairs; two, then a stumble and three more, before they stopped.
Martin said quietly, ‘It’s Papa.’
He’d dropped his bag on the floor when he came in; that was what had made the noise. Now he was dragging himself up the stairs again, with uncertain, clumsy steps.
Martin glanced at me, and in the moonlight spilling through the window his face was outlined in black and white like a woodcut. ‘He’s drunk.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ I said, and then stopped.
Papa was on the first landing now. He paused, and took his hat off, looking round vaguely for the hatstand that stood by the front door. Papa never got drunk; but he was drunk.
There was the sound of a door opening, and Leon stood in his bedroom doorway, blinking through his glasses. He was still wearing his clothes, as if he hadn’t been asleep. He said, ‘Papa?’
Papa looked round. ‘Leon,’ he said. ‘Still awake?’
‘Yes . . . writing a – something for my – a letter.’ A silence. Papa stood still, fumbling at his tie and swaying. Leon said, ‘Papa? You’re . . . back home very late . . .’
‘He’s dead,’ Papa said.
Leon took a step forward, reaching out as if he was going to take Papa’s elbow to support him, but he checked himself. He said, ‘The Bull? Dead . . . ?’
I saw Martin rock backwards, gripping the banister as if he was going to lose his balance. He breathed out sharply.
‘Deaf, are you?’ Papa said, raising his voice. ‘Dead. Got a headache, slipped into unconsciousness, and then died. All in – what? – four hours. I expect you’re pleased, Leon. “Death to the oppressor.” Isn’t that your line?’
‘No,’ Leon said. ‘I mean . . . Papa, he’s dead? I never . . . It was only . . . Papa . . .’
‘You disgust me,’ Papa said. ‘You and your bloodthirsty, childish politics. You should have been there tonight. You’d have been ashamed of yourself.’
Leon stood there, watching him.
‘Death to the oppressor, eh? Pray God you never know what death looks like. A little boy, playing at violence and cruelty . . . Why don’t you go tomorrow to offer your respects to the Widow Toros? That will teach you some respect.’
‘Papa, you’re drunk,’ Leon said.
Papa raised his hand, as if he was going to hit him. He stood like that in the moonlight for what must have been ten seconds. Then he dropped his hand and laughed. It didn’t sound like his voice.
‘My Communist son,’ he said. ‘What did I do, to deserve you? If your mother could see you now . . .’
There was silence. I felt Martin look at me, but I couldn’t turn my head. Leon was very still, the planes of his face pale and smooth, his rumpled shirt like marble. He stared at Papa for a long time. Then he went back into his room and shut the door.
Papa put his hands in his pockets and stood rocking gently, looking at Leon’s bedroom door as if Leon was still standing there. Then he made a noise like a hiccup – a kind of hoarse gulp – and turned away. He stepped out of sight, and I heard their bedroom door opening and Mama saying, ‘Darling? What time is it? What’s wrong?’ before Papa shut it again, muffling her voice.
I didn’t want to look at Martin, but in the end I had to.
He said, ‘The Bull’s dead.’
‘Yes.’ I hadn’t said anything; I would have had to mention Skizi. But I looked away, ashamed, because out of all of them Martin might have understood.
‘You don’t seem . . .’ Martin cleared his throat, pressing his fingers into the banister as if he was playing the piano: something loud and slow, like a funeral march. ‘Don’t you care?’
I shrugged.
‘We saw him get killed. I mean . . . We saw Corazon do it.’
‘Yes.’
He looked at me for a moment longer, and then turned and went into his room; but he left the door open behind him. I followed.
Martin walked towards his bed, but he didn’t lie down; he just stood there, looking up at the press clippings. Hardly any moonlight came through his window, but there was just enough to see the grey of the newspaper against the plaster.
‘Do you . . . ?’ He paused.
I waited.
‘Do you believe what Leon says, about the revolution coming?’
I don’t know what I was expecting him to say, but it wasn’t that. I said, ‘Sometimes.’
He glanced at me with something warm in his eyes. He said, ‘I do. I think he’s right. Like before a storm. You can feel something coming. Something’s going to happen.’ He took a breath. ‘It scares me. It scares the hell out of me. It feels like the world’s going to end.’
I thought of Papa, drunk, shouting at Leon; of the Bull, dead. Then I thought of Angel Corazon, and the Zikindi girl, and the pello ball under my pillow.
‘It doesn’t scare me,’ I said.
There was a silence. Leon was moving about downstairs, making the floorboards creak.
Martin turned away, tilting his head to look at the grey grainy cloud of newspaper on the wall.
He said, ‘I wanted him to lose. I was glad when he got knocked down. I liked seeing the blood.’
There was another pause, as if he was waiting for me to say something.
‘I liked it,’ he said again. ‘Didn’t you?’
I didn’t answer.
He reached up, took hold of the nearest corner of newspaper and pulled, ripping the paper away in a great strip. He let it hang for a moment, tore it loose, and dropped it on the floor. He grabbed at the last rags of grey with both hands, scrabbling at the wall until it was clear, with only the lighter patch of plaster to show where the cuttings had been.
Then he sat down on his bed and pulled his knees into his chest.
I said, ‘Martin . . .’
‘Go away.’
‘It’ll be all right.’
‘Go away,’ he said again. So I went.
Three
The schoolyard was heaving, full of red uniforms and faces to match, already flushed and sweaty in the heat. I shouldered my way through, ignoring the snippets of sentences: ‘Dead? Really, properly dead? – No, just a little bit dead! What do you think? – Honestly, where have you been? Haven’t you seen the papers? My favourite player ever – Urgh, no, give me Hiram Jelek any day . . .’ Yesterday afternoon, as the news spread through the town, there’d been people crying in corners, sobbing into one another’s shoulders; but now everyone had settled down to enjoy the drama. Everywhere there were black ribbons and black garters and black stockings; Ana Himyana even had a huge black rose pinned to her shoulder. I pushed past her, and the silk petals rustled and skimmed my cheek. One of her friends said, ‘Hey, watch it!’ but I didn’t look round. I heard someone else yell, ‘Esteya! Is it true your father was –’
I caught sight of Miren across the other side of the yard and made a beeline for her. Good old Miren; she wouldn’t ask about Papa . . . I threw myself down on our bench, dropping my satchel at my feet. ‘Phew, it’s hot. I can’t wait for the end of term . . .’
Miren jumped and yelped. There was the clink of glass on wood, a glugging noise, and then a pool of black ink spread out and started to soak into the grain of the bench. A half-empty ink bottle rolled off the edge of the seat and smashed. ‘Now look what you made me do!’ She was holding a soggy bit of black rag, ink dripping on her skirt.
I swiped at the puddle with my handkerchief, but it turned my hands and the handkerchief black in a few seconds without making any other difference. I said, ‘Sorry . . . what were you doing, anyway?’
‘Dying some toilet paper black,’ she said, looking down at her skirt. She winced and hurriedly put
the soggy clump down. ‘For a rose. Did you see Ana’s? Hers is silk, naturally, but I thought if I . . .’ The toilet paper sat in a black mush, oozing ink.
I looked at it, turned the corners of my mouth down and said, ‘I’m not sure it’s going to work, Miren.’
She nodded. ‘I had a black ribbon, but Mama borrowed it, and she said black garters with red socks were cheap and fast, and when I saw Ana’s rose . . .’
I looked at Ana and her friends, in spite of myself. She was laughing and stroking her rose with her slim white fingers. She was wearing red nail polish; no one else could get away with that.
‘Doesn’t it look lovely?’ Miren said. ‘And the poor Bull . . . I’ve cut out every single article and photograph. I wish we’d been here on Sunday.’
‘Why?’
‘Because . . . well, you were there, weren’t you? It must have been . . . so dramatic. The very last game he ever played . . . What was it like?’
I shrugged. I didn’t want to tell anyone about it; or not Miren, anyway, not like this.
Miren said, poking at the black mess on the bench, ‘If my silly cousin hadn’t been getting married, I would have been there.’
A shadow fell across the wood, and there was a kind of whispering, over my shoulder. I looked round. Ana’s friends were standing there, looking down at me. One of them said, ‘Ana wants to talk to you.’
‘Tell her to come and talk to me herself.’
They swapped glances; then, without a word, the smallest one detached herself and made her way back to Ana. I couldn’t hear what she said, but after a few seconds Ana met my eyes and glided over, graceful as a dancer. She had something in her hand: a little flag of greyish paper, held between finger and thumb as if it might rub off on her skin. She said, ‘Esteya Bidart.’
‘Ana Himyana,’ I said. Miren shifted nervously beside me.
‘Your father was the last person to see him alive, wasn’t he?’
I shrugged. I didn’t ask who she meant by him. ‘He’s a doctor, Ana. He sees lots of people who are ill. Some of them die.’
She tilted her head to one side and tugged at the tiny pearl in her left ear. ‘And Leon Bidart is your brother, isn’t he?’
‘Half-brother,’ I said. I could feel the blood already mounting in my cheeks. Most people had gone home before Leon took his shirt off, but someone must have told her . . .
‘He writes for the Clarion, doesn’t he?’
‘Er . . . yes,’ I said. ‘Sometimes. Teddy – the editor – is a friend of his, so –’
‘Did he write this?’ With a quick movement she thrust her hand out, and the scrap of paper fluttered and then went limp again.
I took it from her and looked down at it.
The picture was of the Bull serving, his face a grimace of concentration, and there was a blurred shape in the foreground that must have been Angel’s shoulder or head. It wasn’t a great photo, but it showed the Bull clearly enough. The headline was: DEAD PLAYER LOST LAST GAME.
Distantly I heard the bell ring, but I didn’t move.
Dead hero of the bourgeoisie Pitoro ‘the Bull’ Toros was defeated in his last ever game, by an unknown peasant boy, the Clarion reveals. In a dramatic prelude to the champion’s unexpected death on Sunday, he was challenged to a pello game and was vanquished in front of a crowd of local fans . . .
I looked into Ana’s eyes and swallowed. ‘He might have done,’ I said. ‘I don’t know. But it’s true. Why shouldn’t he write it?’
‘?“Hero of the bourgeoisie”?’ Ana said. ‘It sounds like your brother, don’t you think?’
. . . a symbol of hope for those fighting against oppression . . . the King, who expressed sorrow for Toros’s death, may well be uneasy at this salutary reminder of the strength of the working classes . . .
‘You’re not wearing anything black, are you?’ Ana said. ‘I suppose that means you don’t care about the Bull. Or is it just that you’re a Communist?’
‘I said I don’t know whether Leon wrote that. It might have been Teddy.’
A cool, low voice said, ‘Well, Esteya, I hope it was Mr Edwards. Otherwise your brother would be guilty of a reckless, selfish act.’
We turned to look. Sister David was there, holding the bell. She held out her hand for the paper, and the bell’s clapper made a little clanking noise as she moved. ‘Esteya, please give that to me.’
I handed it to her. She took it and read it, briefly, as if she was already familiar with the contents. She said, ‘So you think there is no reason why your brother shouldn’t have written this, morally speaking?’
‘Well – he, the Bull, he did lose his last game –’
‘I notice that there is no signature,’ Sister David said. ‘We can hope that your brother, not being a foreigner like Mr Edwards, would know better than to write anything so . . . seditious.’ She handed the paper back and gave me a long look that I couldn’t read. ‘Unfortunately Mr Edwards is being interviewed by the police.’
‘What?’
‘Please say pardon, Esteya, not what. Mr Edwards, so I am told, was escorted from his home early this morning to answer a few questions about this article.’
‘But –’ I felt the pit of my stomach drop.
Sister David glanced from me to Ana, and then back again. There was something in her eyes: not quite sympathy, not quite sadness, but something close. ‘Now, let’s not dawdle any longer, girls. Didn’t you hear me ring the bell?’ She looked round, and the crowd that had gathered dispersed rapidly, draining into the schoolhouse through the door marked PUPILS. ‘Esteya, you can wait here for a moment.’
I stood still by the bench, holding on to the bit of paper so hard I couldn’t feel my fingers.
Miren and Ana stayed where they were too, but Sister David ignored them and stepped closer to me. Her eyes were narrowed against the sunlight. ‘I’m not going to ask you whether your brother wrote that article or not,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to know. But what I will say is . . . this: be careful, Esteya. Prudence is as great a virtue as courage. No one – no one – gains from unnecessary suffering. Do you understand?’
‘Who saw Teddy being taken away?’ I said. I didn’t have time to be polite. ‘How do you know?’
It was as if she hadn’t heard what I’d said. ‘Your brother has made his own choices. He’s chosen to put himself in danger. But you needn’t let him endanger you. Esteya, are you listening?’ She held my look for a few seconds longer, as if she was trying to tell me something else silently. Then she walked away, looking to left and right and shepherding the littlest girls into line.
I swallowed. I could taste the egg I’d had for breakfast. The sun was too hot and too bright and there was too much noise. I thought of the police smashing down Teddy’s door in the dead of night, dragging him out into the street, shoving a canvas bag over his head and driving him away. I thought of the silence, and the bag sucking in and out as Teddy breathed. He would have panicked; or worse, tried to reason with them. They would have hit him to shut him up.
And he would have been in his pyjamas. I’d seen Teddy’s pyjamas, flapping on the washing line he’d rigged up between his windows. They were dark green, with a faded paisley pattern, and an iron-shaped scorch mark on the collar.
Ana said, ‘How does it feel, knowing your brother is a murderer?’
I wanted to tell her to shut up, but my mouth wouldn’t obey my brain.
Miren stood up, sat down, fiddled with her satchel strap and stood up again. ‘I’m just . . .’ she said, and gestured at the schoolhouse door. No one answered.
‘Mind you,’ Ana said, stroking the rose on her shoulder, ‘the Englishman was probably asking for it, wasn’t he? If he was stupid enough to let your Communist brother write a cheap, nasty article like that – and then publish it . . .’
Something gave way. I heard myself raise my voice, the words blurring and overlapping one another. ‘So the police are right to take him away, are they? If the police come for my b
rother, and my father because he’s Leon’s father too, and my mother because she happens to be married to him –’
‘I’m going inside,’ Miren muttered. I didn’t turn my head, but I heard her hurry across the yard towards the door. Ana and I were almost the last people left.
Ana said, ‘Everyone knows what happens to people who say stupid things. Your brother is lucky he hasn’t been arrested already.’
‘And Mr Arcos? And Bero and Jone Carkaya? And the priest from Zurian? They all had it coming, did they, for saying that the harvest’s going to be bad and the poor people are discontented and the King has a lot more money than anyone else?’ I heard my voice get higher.
Ana opened her mouth and then shrugged. ‘I’m just saying he’s stupid to risk it, that’s all.’
I stared at her. I wished she hadn’t said something I agreed with.
I said, ‘As if you’d know what’s stupid and what isn’t. With that pathetic thing on your shoulder. What is it, anyway? A very small, rotten lettuce?’
‘It’s a ro–’ She stopped. She glanced over her shoulder, and I followed her gaze. Everyone else had gone in. We were going to be late for prayers.
Suddenly she reached forward, grabbed something off the bench and pushed it into my face. I felt a cold, damp mass hit my cheek and wetness trickle down my neck, and smelt ink. I pulled away. She tilted her head, smiled at me and dropped the wet mess of ink-soaked tissue paper on the ground. It landed in a flat, dark splat. I put my fingers up to the wet stuff running down my face and they came away black. When I looked down there was a long stain on my jumper, already starting to soak down into my skirt. My jaw dripped.
‘Now you look like one of us,’ Ana said. ‘Mourning suits you.’
I went to wipe my fingers on my skirt, and stopped myself just in time. I wondered what Mama would say about the stains; ink didn’t wash out properly, not ever.
I looked up at Ana. She was smiling, still, and her hair was falling over her shoulder in a perfect curve, as if she was posing for a photograph.
I didn’t move.
‘Not very stylish,’ Ana added, ‘but then you always look a little bit scruffy, don’t you?’
Love in Revolution Page 4
