Jigsaw

by Campbell Armstrong

  But Streik had already drifted, down and down into some whirlpooling dream, into caverns under roiling surfaces of water, a world of green tendrils and silver floating things – and there, swimming toward him, hair swept back by currents, eyes open and knowing, was Bryce Harcourt, good old Bryce.

  Hi, Jake.

  Streik’s last puzzle was how anyone could talk under water without drowning.

  TWENTY-THREE

  VENICE

  GAZING AT THE CEILING, THE WOMAN KICKED ASIDE THE BEDSHEETS, ran her fingertips around her nipples in a gesture of lazy interest that might amount in the end to self-arousal, then drew the palm of her hand down across the flat of her stomach. A while ago, the rumble of voices from the room below had silenced. She knew Barron’s little group had been talking about Helix, a word she found strange and mysterious. She’d looked it up in a dictionary and found a plethora of meanings, but the one she liked best was its original Latin derivation – a kind of ivy. She considered spirals, vines, the shells of molluscs. Her thoughts took an abstract turn, shapes formed and disintegrated in her mind; she had the feeling that her internal gyroscope had gone out of control.

  She tried to force her imagination in more specific directions, the body of a Norwegian girl she’d once met on the Cherbourg ferry, say, or Barron’s tanned flesh as it glistened against her own white skin. She stroked her fibrous pubic hair in a detached way. Then she pulled her hand aside and let it linger against her hip. No memory inspired her. Nothing particular materialized. Faces, bodies, moments of brief passion: nothing.

  She sat up, ran her fingers across her eyelids, closed her eyes. She was thinking of her father suddenly, the blind old man in the wheelchair whose only interest in life was his estate outside Raleigh, North Carolina. Surrounded by servants, half-crazy from the stroke that had crippled him in his mid-forties, he tended to speak in creepy racist monologues about the family history, about slavery, the old days, the sexual misadventures of his ancestors. Goddam mulattos everywhere. Every shade of skin known to man.

  He laughed at inappropriate things. He found merriment in malice. He had a psychotic hatred of Roman Catholics for reasons he’d never specified. One time he’d said to her that he suffered from papaphobia. In the presence of a priest he found it hard to swallow and his muscles became locked. When he passed a Catholic church he always shuddered, shut his eyes.

  She hadn’t thought about him in years. Nor about her mother, a Southern belle in the fabulous tradition, a vague, lacy figure given to drunken speeches on the state of the nation, the way blacks and Hispanics were taking over everything and pretty darn soon whites would be a minority, just like in South Africa. Her mother was a transparency with pale glassy hands who floated ghostlike across the memory. She could still hear her say, in that zombie voice of hers, Darling, your Daddy and myself, well, we’re thinking of putting you into Doctor Lannigan’s clinic, he’s a wonderworker, he can perform miracles for people with problems, honey. Problems, she thought. Honey. She wondered what had become of her parents, if they were still alive. What did it matter? She’d severed herself from her own history.

  She went inside the bathroom, closed the door carefully. Under recessed lights her shadow fell across the tiled floor. She turned on the water and stepped into the shower. She heard Barron enter. Through opaque glass she watched him undress. He slid the shower door open, stepped in naked beside her.

  ‘Everybody’s gone,’ he said. ‘We have the place to ourselves.’

  Ourselves, she thought. Just you and me, Barron. She wiped water from her eyes and gazed at him. She wanted him, but the yearning was in some way detached from her. She had these times in which she became a spectator at her own life.

  ‘You were talking about Helix,’ she said.

  ‘And you were eavesdropping.’

  ‘I don’t understand why you can’t tell me more.’

  ‘Patience.’

  ‘It isn’t one of my virtues, Barron.’

  She adjusted the balance between hot and cold, let the stream run directly into her face and hair. Barron drew her closer to his body, she lowered her hand instantly between his legs, directed him inside her. She tilted her head back against the tiled wall, opened her mouth, let water splash against her lips and teeth. Barron thrust against her hips. Unlike other men she’d known, he had a sense of rhythm attuned to her needs; he was capable of intuiting her physical impulses, as if he were listening to the measure of her inner metronome. She stared into his eyes. He was looking at her, his expression one of intensity, concentration: what she wanted to see in his eyes was something else – tenderness, compassion, sympathy. Maybe these qualities were there and she didn’t have the capacity to recognize them. How could she know for sure? Everything was tainted by uncertainty: even identity.

  She came with surprising quickness and was at once flooded with an unexpected loneliness. She slid away from Barron, went down on her knees. He reached down and caught her by the elbows and helped her to her feet. He opened the shower door, draped a large white towel around her shoulders, then led her inside the bedroom. Damp, she lay across the bed. He held her hand, studied her face. She looked pained and sad. He stroked her fingers, touched her wet hair.

  ‘I’m not some fucking invalid,’ she said. ‘You don’t have to treat me like one.’

  ‘Was I doing that?’ he asked. She was gone again, drifting off into that territory of self he had no way of charting.

  ‘Stroking my hair. Like I’m lying on my death-bed, Barron.’

  Barron stretched out alongside her. He reached for her hand. Her fingers lay unresponsive in his palm. She said, ‘Take me out, Barron. I want to go out. I want to walk to the Rialto. Or take me to Harry’s Bar. I want to do something normal. Something ordinary. I don’t care what it is. I want air. I need air. I feel so goddamed confined here.’

  He swung his legs over the side of the bed. It was growing dark outside.

  ‘We’ll take the launch,’ she said. ‘We’ll go to Burano. To the trattoria. The Pescatori.’

  He stared into her face, thinking how difficult it was to deny her anything. This weakness for her was beyond his comprehension. Her life might have been some perplexing scented maze in which he was doomed to wander. She walked round the room. Her expression was focused and hard. He’d seen that look before: she was keeping her temper in check. She could explode any time. Or she could slide off into one of those defiantly brooding silences that might last days. He found those worse than anything else.

  He thought for a moment. ‘OK. This is what we’ll do. When it’s dark, we’ll take the launch. We’ll go as far as Burano. But we won’t get off. No restaurants. No bars. No public appearances. Just a quiet trip to Burano and back by the Porto di Lido.’

  She looked at him and said, ‘We’re always waiting for nightfall, aren’t we, Barron? I’m the fucking dark lady of your sonnets.’ She rose from the bed. She bared her teeth at him; there was malice in the expression. ‘I’m your personal vampire.’

  ‘We don’t live ordinary lives,’ he replied.

  ‘Tell me about it.’

  The launch, driven by Schialli, ploughed the cold black waters of the Grand Canal in the direction of the Bacino di San Marco. Barron and the woman stood at the stern. They wore heavy overcoats, scarves, gloves. The night sky was clear, starry. There were lights in the palaces along the canal. A motoscafo churned past and its wake caused the launch to rise and fall slightly. Barron put his arm around the woman’s shoulder. The sky, the sound of water knocking upon the launch, the extraordinary buildings along the banks – these things combined to make him feel expansive, talkative.

  He kissed her forehead and said, ‘You never ask me about myself. Where I come from. My background. In all the years we’ve known each other – why?’

  ‘Should I be interested?’ Her face, wrapped in a headscarf, caught a passing light. She looked suddenly very young, breathtakingly so.

  ‘Interested or not, I’m going to tell
you. Tobias Barron’s secret background. I was that creature known, perhaps rather quaintly, as a foundling. My dear mother, whoever she was, left me on the doorstep of a convent in Poughkeepsie, New York. The Sisters of Mercy.’ He was plunged back suddenly into a world of catechisms, confessions, incense, the stale smell of nuns’ habits, the terror of priests. He remembered it as a man might recall years in a dungeon.

  For a moment the woman seemed attentive. ‘I don’t see you in that setting, Barron.’

  ‘I got out as fast as I could. Sixteen years of age, I ran away. I went to New York City. I found I had some talent for acting. A little off-Broadway stuff.’

  ‘Oh, you’re a good actor,’ she remarked. The Grand Canal opened into the Bacino di San Marco; the lights of the city receded.

  ‘What I didn’t like was waiting tables between jobs,’ he said. ‘So I took myself off to California. Land of opportunity. Where I found I had other talents.’

  ‘Let me guess. Women flocked to you. Rich women.’

  ‘Rich and lonely.’

  ‘And so you became a gigolo and they made you wealthy.’

  ‘There was one woman in particular. Amanda Wrigley. She lived in La Jolla. When she died I discovered I was her sole beneficiary. So, armed with two million dollars I didn’t expect, where could I go wrong? Those were the good old days in America when you could invest money and be assured of a return. I developed market fever. Real estate. Stocks. Bonds. The market was very kind.’ He laughed suddenly, and the woman, surprised by the sound, stared at him.

  ‘You might find this amusing. I used to keep changing my name back then. The nuns called me Paul Smith. I never wanted to be this Paul Smith person. Some of my pseudonyms were absurd. I had my pretentious French phase. Michel Leclaire. Then I wanted something vaguely British-sounding. For a while I called myself Roger Dickinson-Brown. I liked the hyphenation.’ He was quiet a moment, thinking of the years of his reinvention, the way he’d smoothed his way through those clear blue waters where wealthy women in Palm Springs and Beverly Hills needed playthings, emotional flotation devices against drowning in solitude.

  ‘By fucking sad middle-aged women you reached your present elevated state,’ she said. ‘Houses everywhere. Cars. Boats. Planes. You’re another American success story, Barron. Thanks for sharing.’ Barron’s past depressed her, mainly because it afforded her an insight into how much she resembled him, how she’d rearranged her own identity the way he’d done. The idea that she was like Barron bugged her. Were she and Barron twinned in some ungodly way? Was it more – was she imprisoned in Barron, as if he were a mirror and she a reflection of his needs? Maybe she’d done far more than reassemble her identity. Maybe she’d lost any sense of self she might ever have had; maybe her only definition was whatever Barron bestowed on her.

  She shivered in the cold air. ‘And now you’ve succeeded in changing yourself, you’re changing the world next. It’s quite a step, Barron.’

  ‘Changing the world? I wouldn’t go that far. I’m only helping certain people to get what they want,’ he remarked. ‘I’m a provider. That’s all.’

  ‘Oh? Like one of your charities? Is that it? Get real. Barron, you get your kicks out of the power bit. You get off on being the centre of your own little planet. See Tobias Barron pull the strings. Watch the puppets jump. How clever Toby is. That’s how you get off, Barron.’

  ‘Is that what you think?’

  ‘Sometimes. Sometimes I don’t think at all. My mind goes gloriously blank.’

  He turned the woman’s remarks around in his head. How clever Toby is. Watch the puppets jump. Perhaps she was close to the truth. He pulled strings and people danced. He made phone calls that had consequences in places he’d never been, places he’d never go. He sent ships and trains on journeys he’d never undertake himself.

  ‘The trouble with power,’ she said, ‘is how it insulates you. You’re all wrapped up in a big protective Band-aid. Nothing touches you.’

  ‘That’s not strictly true,’ he said. He looked out over the darkened water. The launch was heading toward the Porto di Lido. Clouds, blown in from the Gulf of Venice, obscured the stars.

  ‘Have you ever loved?’ she asked.

  A question characteristic of the woman, he thought. Out of nowhere. He smiled. ‘I have feelings for you.’ He considered this statement, fumbled toward articulation, but he wasn’t sure how to say what he truly felt.

  ‘I don’t know anything about feelings,’ she said. ‘What they are. Where they come from. How you identify them.’

  He turned her face toward him, put his arms around her. She said feelings as though it were a word from a dead language. This saddened him; he experienced a tiny jab in his heart.

  ‘How do you define your feelings for me?’ she asked.

  He sidestepped the matter of clarification. ‘That’s far too complex a question. I’ve had too many complicated things recently. I’d like more … simplicity. I can foresee a day when Tobias Barron will have to reinvent himself from scratch.’

  ‘Another incarnation.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘And do I figure in this scheme of things?’

  ‘I hope so. I want to think so.’

  She wasn’t sure she wanted to participate in Barron’s future. Some days she did, others she didn’t. Moods were trapdoors through which she kept falling. She’d managed on her own before Barron, she could do so again. She resented the control he thought he had over her; she didn’t want to be just another string he pulled.

  Barron put his hand in the inside pocket of his overcoat. He took out a small flat laminated card. ‘Here. I have something for you.’

  ‘A present?’

  ‘Of a kind.’

  She held it under the pale light that burned on the stern. She saw an ID card issued by the Russian Intelligence Service, the successor to the KGB, in the name of a certain Alyssia Baranova, 37 years of age, height 1.71m, hair brown, distinguishing features none. The photograph inserted in the centre of the card was of herself.

  Carlotta’s identity had been reinvented yet again.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  BERLIN

  KARL-HEINZ BUCHBODEN WATCHED THE FIRST DEMONSTRATION, WHICH began at ten o’clock in the evening outside the Palast der Republik on the Marx-Engels-Platz. It was an unexpectedly muted gathering of about five thousand people intent on expressing their frustration and disappointment and fear. Muffled in scarves and heavy overcoats, a few of them masked to avoid identification on account of the fear of some vague retribution – a hangover from their conditioned pasts, from the days of the STASI and the Wall – the demonstrators saw themselves as the victims of reunification. The point behind the march was evident from the placards and posters they carried. They’d lost their homes, their jobs, and the security once afforded them by the socialist State had dissipated. They were third-class citizens in a new Germany they’d at first embraced with enthusiasm, because it promised freedom and opportunity, but it had become a country in which they were misfits, a place they didn’t understand and where they were misunderstood.

  Lost souls, Karl-Heinz Buchboden thought. Their leader, Heinrich Gebhart, a fierce white-haired figure whose bearing suggested that of a prophet coming out of the wilderness, walked in front of the procession. Buchboden followed at some distance.

  The marchers moved in a rather eerie silence along Unter den Linden. Some carried flashlights, others held candles aloft, flames fluttering in the chill breeze. A police helicopter, blades slicing the night, hovered above them. A motorcade of police cars followed the marchers warily: any form of demonstration had the potential to turn sour and violent. Buchboden noticed how some onlookers shook their fists in derision, how some jeered, while others watched warily, the oldest among them perhaps remembering different kinds of parade along Unter den Linden in the 1930s.

  The Ossis, the former East Germans, paid no attention to their detractors. It was as if the five thousand or so individuals had a single will,
a blind purpose they shared. Traffic snarled around them, horns blaring, headlights flashing angrily. Now and then the marchers broke ranks whenever a car or truck threatened to run them over, but for the most part they managed to maintain a semblance of order. They were dissatisfied, but Gebhart’s key word was dignity. Dignity at all times.

  Karl-Heinz Buchboden continued to follow. Every now and then he beat his gloved hands together against the cold. He passed the stand of a vendor selling frankfurters and a faint wave of heat embraced him momentarily.

  The vendor, a man of Turkish extraction, remarked, ‘Lazy fuckers. Always looking for a handout from the State. That’s all they’ve ever been used to, I suppose. But why should we support them? Why should we support the Ossis? Let them work.’

  Buchboden gestured in agreement, but without any enthusiasm.

  The vendor commented, ‘I never thought I’d hear myself saying this. But the Wall served a purpose. They should have left the damn thing in place.’ He looked angrily at Buchboden, who merely nodded his head. All the euphoria of the Wende had long since evaporated, hot air rushing from a balloon. Now there was discontent and resentment; the initial joy of a united Germany had disintegrated in a series of grudges and raw resentment. Buchboden knew that when you had resentment, you had at least one of the ingredients for turmoil, because it had a way of festering, spreading bitterness.

  He kept moving. The marchers reached the junction of Friedrichstrasse and headed towards the Brandenburg Gate, by which time traffic had become chaotic around them, and the number of spectators, many of them howling in a hostile way, a few amused, had grown along the pavements. Ossis would always be Ossis. Who needed these people and their problems? They’d lived under a different system all their lives, and that system had collapsed, and if they couldn’t adapt, too bad.

  The march came to a stop at the Brandenburg Gate. From somewhere a small platform was produced and Heinrich Gebhart clambered up on it, loudspeaker in hand. His message was lost in the sound of traffic horns from buses and taxicabs. Its gist was direct, though, for those close enough to hear him: Germany reunified was nothing more than a shoddy piece of political carpentry. Politicians had made wondrous promises, none of which had come to pass. Property had been seized from the East Germans by pre-war claimants from the West. There were no jobs. There was no future. The Ossis were as much misfits as any guestworkers, any Gastarbeiter. Gebhart had an orator’s flair, an actor’s presence.