Those Who Knew

by Idra Novey

  Well before the unavoidable round of Sunday Warnings, however, came the locked gate in the wall that rimmed her family’s home. Then came the driveway with her family’s squadron of Land Rovers—her father’s and grandfather’s, and those of her twin brothers, who were ten years older and now worked at Sunny Juice as well. Her uncle was the only liberal in the family and the only man in the family who didn’t drive a Land Rover. He was also the only one who had never walled in his home even though he’d been robbed several times, including once when he’d hidden himself in the closet in the maid’s room off the kitchen, which the thieves didn’t bother to enter.

  As Lena passed her uncle’s compact two-door tucked like a toy behind the Land Rovers, she thought of her small first-floor home, how she’d have nowhere in it to hide if whoever Oscar had seen lurking outside came back and tried to break in. That morning when she woke up, she had checked her jacket and found no stain on it, which only increased her fear that her perceptions were becoming unreliable. How had she let herself become such a nervous wreck last night, too paralyzed to even turn on her own lamp?

  Opening the second gate to her family’s garden, she knew she had to get a hold of herself.

  She was well past the roses now and fully visible to her family. One of her nephews on the swing set had already spotted her and jumped off the slide. He ran over and held up his arms for her to pick him up and she did, grateful for the simple, physical pleasure of squeezing such a small being, of pressing his little warm face against her own.

  My queen! her mother called, rushing up next.

  My rebel! her beloved uncle said as he approached, his deep, resonant voice overtaking her mother’s, and Lena wrapped her arms around her small, bald uncle with relief.

  I assume you’ve seen this, he said, tapping her with the weekend magazine. There’s an interview with your senator from the port talking up his free tuition plan. He’s really stirring up the students again, isn’t he? Though he sounds like a rather rigid creature, to go after his own brother in an interview for eating a chocolate bar that’s been in every gas station in the country for years. But I bet you adore this guy, right? Your students must be crazy about him.

  Lena took the magazine from her uncle before he could tap her shoulder with it again.

  * * *

  Victor hunched closer to the microphone to shout over the jingle of the ice cream truck passing along the other end of the park. He hated speaking on Sunday afternoons, although he’d been the one who’d told the students they needed to organize rallies on the weekends, when more working people would be able to stop and listen. He had no one but himself to blame for being stuck again, both days this weekend, behind a microphone.

  Social progress, he shouted into it, never happens without a battle! No government has ever granted greater access to education without people gathering like we are doing right now, in the street on a Sunday, and demanding it. No seat in any university on this planet was given to a poor kid whose family couldn’t pay for it without an all-out revolt. All of you out here giving your Sunday afternoon to fight for everyone’s access to an education, you’re the reason every newspaper and every member of Congress is paying attention. And you’re the reason it will happen!

  Victor waited a beat for the cheers and shouts to die down. The fish chowder he’d had with Cristina and her family for lunch had been too rich and heavy. He wished he were on his couch at home, or could at least loosen his belt. Gripping the podium more tightly, he stiffened his face, waiting for the distended feeling in his stomach to subside.

  Because it will happen, he repeated, and I will be here fighting with you until it does! He shouted louder, forcing the passion in his voice as if it were a horse beneath him and if he just kicked at it hard enough he could get it to gallop. By the end of his remarks, his pulse was racing, the urgency overtaking him. When a pretty student turned off the mike and offered him a new bottle of water, he gulped it standing up.

  God, I could listen to you speak all day, she gushed, flicking her hair behind her shoulder. It’s like listening to a preacher. You have that kind of resolute belief. It really moves people.

  Victor smiled as he set the empty water bottle down on the podium. He liked that choice of word, resolute, and she really was quite attractive, fawn-like, with her large, thick-lashed brown eyes and slender arms. Keen intelligence in a delicate face like that had such an alluring radiance, and the widow’s peak at her hairline was striking, too.

  Victor asked what she was studying and watched how the girl’s eyes widened in response to his interest, how judiciously she articulated her answers in pursuit of his approval. It was like a perfume, to be on the receiving end of that kind of eagerness, of a young woman’s gratitude for his willingness to hear her out. No, it was stronger than a fragrance—inhaling the yearning in a girl for him to recognize her intelligence, to reiterate even one thing she said that had impressed him. Other people were lining up behind her but Victor ignored them.

  Already in your last term in political science, he said, how excellent. I hope you’ll consider something with the government when you graduate. I mean that. We really need more smart young women in office—in absolutely every position.

  When the girl sucked in her breath, Victor suggested she contact his office the following spring about working on his reelection campaign. We’ll just be getting started. He met her eyes and watched her nervously flick her hair again, felt his body willing itself closer. But then a diesel bus roared to a stop along the edge of the park just behind them. At the sound of its hissing brakes, he stepped away.

  * * *

  Oscar wandered twice around the fish market, wishing he knew what to do with himself and his dwindling inheritance. He stopped at one display after another, studied the fish scales glistening behind the glass like sequins. He wished he knew if Lena even liked fish, or what her phone number was. He didn’t even know her last name. After their omelets Friday night, Lena had led him to the front door and said good night with no more than a perfunctory kiss on the cheek. For all he knew, she would be appalled that he was returning this soon and uninvited, annoyed that he’d wrongly assumed he could just show up again with an offering of fish and zucchini.

  But was there not—and there was—also a slim chance she might welcome the sight of him and his offer to show what kind of dinner he could assemble with a proper set of ingredients? She’d told him his omelet was the best she’d ever eaten. Maybe this time he’d even get to stay the night.

  At the thought, he bought the thickest, whitest piece of fish in the display, labeled under a local name he didn’t recognize. Outside the market, he hailed a taxi.

  A cold, damp darkness was descending over the hills around the port by the time he arrived at Lena’s front door. A light was on in her kitchen but no one answered. She’d told him on Friday that she saw her family most Sundays but got tired of them by late afternoon and headed home.

  He knocked again, certain he had the right place. None of the other houses on her street had a purple door, and through the window he recognized the green squiggles painted on the backs of her kitchen chairs. The chilly evening wind off the ocean pressed against him and he shivered, squinting harder through the window. He’d made over a dozen cheddar scones, and it had been such a lonely Sunday, though all his Sundays in the hostel were lonely, watching families laughing together on their way into the seafood restaurant across the road.

  After a few more minutes of squinting and self-pity, a giant Land Rover pulled up, white and gleaming as a chariot. The passenger door opened and Lena emerged with her lovely heart-shaped face. She pointed at him and made a remark to whoever was inside the car. When she reached the porch, she kissed him on the mouth. Can you wave at my brother? she asked. He was alarmed that you were sitting out here. I had to tell him we’ve been dating for a while or he wouldn’t leave.

  No problem at all. Oscar
jauntily placed his arm around her shoulders and waved at the man in the Land Rover. He’d assumed from Lena’s modest first-floor rental that her family was working class. He hoped her brother wasn’t involved in some kind of shady business, or a drug cartel. Once again, fearful of saying something potentially ignorant or offensive, he didn’t ask about her brother’s line of work or even his name. Inside, he went right to slicing the zucchini.

  Lena put on a soulful melancholy song and he tried to make out what the chorus was about. The song was in the language spoken on the island but the singer seemed to have a different accent. He asked Lena where the song was from and she named a country on the mainland, where the language was also spoken. She told him it was a protest song about the long presence of his army there.

  I’ve never thought of it that way, as my army. Technically, I guess that’s true. Oscar slid the zucchini into the pan and told her he knew the regime there had been particularly bad but couldn’t remember the name of the head of it or why his government had gotten so involved.

  I never did well on history exams, he confessed, spreading the slivers of zucchini out more evenly across the pan. I always wanted to remember the dates and names, but they just didn’t stick. He shrugged. I guess I’m basically just a pastry and poetry man.

  He saw Lena press her lips together with disdain at this confession and Oscar lowered his head, regretting his honesty. But once Lena tried his cheddar scones, the pinched judgmental expression on her face went away, and after she finished the fish, she placed her hand over his and sighed with pleasure.

  Beneath the table, he ventured a brush of her knee. While he scrubbed the dishes, he gave a few furtive checks for anybody outside the window but saw no one. Lena didn’t bring up the man he’d seen outside, and Oscar didn’t either. When she drifted from the kitchen to the living room, he followed, his hope rising like dough inside him.

  Transaction Log for Olga’s

  SEEK THE SUBLIME OR DIE

  September 10th

  All cheap tea and unease today, S.

  Still no news from Lena. She hasn’t called or come by since she came in here full of trust and I shut her down. I left two messages on her machine. I hope she’s just disgusted with me and the reason she hasn’t answered isn’t Victor. If there is an art to emotional isolation, S, I have mastered it spectacularly.

  On the other hand, Oscar the Baker has not loped in here all weekend either.

  Out of guilt, I loaned a copy of your favorite translation of Requiem to a girl who buys far too much weed.

  Official Sales Report for the Tenth of September

  No income whatsoever.

  Unofficial Report

  A girl with blue hair and a large mole on her cheek may read a line or two today of the poet you called the Goddess Akhmatova. I told her if she learns a stanza of Requiem by heart and comes back able to recite it, the book is hers to keep. But I shouldn’t have bothered calling it a loan in the first place. She probably won’t come back at all. Most likely she sensed my desperation and was relieved to get out of here and away from me.

  4:49, Sunday Panic

  I’m starting to crack along every seam, S, like the derelict swimming pool of some abandoned ranch in the interior. Maybe everyone who comes into the Sublime and steps close enough now can see it—my loneliness seeping out all over the place.

  * * *

  Victor woke from a nap in his office to the thought of pigs. Of their little twisted-up tails. Their vile squeals. The sickening stink of them. He did not want to ruin his Monday afternoon coercing his cousin to grant a permit for a thousand more pigs to some man neither of them knew anything about. He knew his cousin would say that many pigs would mean that many more kilos of shit, which had to be dumped somewhere, and which was surely the reason this phone call was necessary. What political favors were not ultimately about pig shit and how to get rid of it?

  But it was too late to reconsider. Their engagement news had run in The Islander this morning with a quote from his soon-to-be father-in-law about how much he admired Victor’s history of activism and his bold ideas for how to provide a free college education for any student who qualified. His father-in-law had set up a lunch for him next week with a journalist who covered the island for the London Times. He insisted Victor needed to start getting his name in papers beyond the island. Their tacit exchange of favors was already under way. In every email he received now, a mention of his father-in-law surfaced within the first few lines. The wedding date hadn’t even been determined yet and Victor already felt like a political pet, expected to roll over on request, to repeatedly perform his gratitude for the shelter he’d been given.

  On the other hand, when he’d arrived at Cristina’s, she’d had a tremendous lobster waiting for him. She’d also answered the door in a lace robe and nothing on underneath it. There were certainly worse ways for a man to end a workday.

  Victor pushed back in his chair and lifted his feet up onto the desk. Once he had them comfortably crossed, he clicked down to his cousin’s number on his cell phone. Hadn’t his mother told him a few months ago that his cousin was engaged? She loved to berate him with the news of other people’s engagements.

  Congratulations, Victor said when his cousin answered, I heard you’re heading down the aisle soon.

  His cousin laughed and said he’d just read the same in the paper about Victor, and to such an influential family.

  You’re really moving up in the world, his cousin said. I’m proud of you.

  Victor brought his feet to the ground, his mind filling with the sickening squeals of pigs—their little dirty behinds releasing pile after vile pile of shit—and he did not want to ask the question.

  But he did.

  * * *

  While Oscar slept on blondly beside her, their second morning together in bed, Lena thought about her students gathering again today with their signs, the questions they were going to ask about her absence during the strike. She’d have to invent a convincing health problem, something severe but easily resolved—an abscessed molar, maybe, that had caused a high fever and required urgent oral surgery. Whatever she said, her credibility on campus would be diminished regardless.

  In May, when the students first started organizing, she’d invited them over to help with flyers and strategies. She’d ordered them pizzas and planned to offer as much of her time and guidance as they asked of her. But then Victor started showing up at the protests, promising to take their demands to the Senate. The more involved he became, the more she’d withdrawn and holed up at the Sublime. With Victor’s presence, the news cameras arrived and Olga assured her that other professors would come forward to help and have their pictures taken—and they had. The head of her department, who’d done nothing until then, had immediately strutted up to the reporters to announce his commitment to the strike and declare Victor the most laudable candidate for president in years.

  Following it all online, Lena had felt muted, the volume of her existence on zero except for her hours with Olga. Impersonating the head of her department and making each other laugh as they stacked books and smoked together had felt alchemical, the only way to spin her anger into something bearable—or at least until the evening, when she was alone again in front of her computer, scrolling through the latest commanding poses of Victor in the news.

  But there would be no way to convey any of this to her students. No matter what health crisis she invented when the strike ended, she’d still be the professor who lectured about social action who hadn’t been there.

  Under the sheets, she clenched her toes and rolled onto her side to distract herself with Oscar, how white-blond his hair was even in his armpit. She had never slept with such a pale man. How had she let an entire Monday go by doing nothing but baking and having sex with this freckled man whose country had bankrolled Cato?

  When her cell phone rang in the living room, she didn’t mo
ve to answer it. She just went on staring at the startling lunar whiteness of Oscar’s skin above the T-shirt line on his arm. She had not expected the wave of affection that came over her when Oscar washed the whole sink full of dishes without demanding any applause. He had just done it, scrubbed one pan after another and with such unassuming expertise.

  When they’d wandered naked into the kitchen for some water and he suggested they bake something, she had been surprised how readily a yes escaped her. Whatever song she put on, Oscar had hummed along to her choices, and it occurred to her he had no urgency to resume his life at the hostel, would likely stay on at her place if she asked him, keeping her company until the strike ended and she returned to class. If she gave him the right encouragement, he’d probably stay on even longer. Then she scolded herself for indulging in such a thought. She didn’t belong with some oblivious, uninformed northerner.

  Although what a reprieve it had been to have sex with someone who didn’t make even a single subtle reference to her family, to feel no pressure to denounce them for once, to dismiss her Sundays as no more than obligation. She had been so grateful when Oscar waved at her brother without a single snide remark about his Land Rover.

  Even after they went inside, Oscar hadn’t inquired what her brother did to afford such an extravagant car rarely seen in the hills above the port. To kiss a man who understood none of the connotations of her country had been like a vacation from herself. She had felt relieved from her own gravity, from the continual pressure of having to decide how much self-recrimination any given conversation required.