A HAZY SHADE OF WINTER

by Simon Bestwick

  Deep breath. Pick up the phone. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Lia?’

  She was silent at first; she hadn’t been called that in so long she’d almost forgotten the name had any relevance to her. She was about to ask the caller if he had the wrong number when he spoke again: ‘Lia?’

  And she remembered. Only one person had ever called her that. But it couldn’t be, couldn’t, it couldn’t . . . ‘Who is this?’ she whispered.

  ‘It’s me, Lia. It’s Juan.’

  She couldn’t speak.

  ‘Lia? You remember, don’t you?’

  ‘No,’ she whispered, ‘no.’

  ‘That time in the park, Lia. Remember that? In your lunch hour? Neither of us were hungry so we fed our lunch to the birds. Then we fought, and then we made up. And there was no one around, so we crept into the trees together, the stand of birches near that concrete shelter thing, and then we . . .’

  ‘We . . .’ Yes. She remembered. And no one else but him had ever known.

  ‘Lia?’ he asked again.

  ‘Juan?’ She whispered, and reached out unbelievingly to touch the framed picture beside the phone, with its border edged in black.

  A wind blew through the streets, and the remains of the day’s newspaper flapped and clattered along the gutter as Juliana ventured outside. Dawn was still a long way off, and there was a sense of desolation about the city at this hour, like the old, old ruins of a lost civilisation, like the ruins on the hills that overlooked the city, where she had gone with Juan that time, about a month after they’d first started seeing each other.

  The ruins had been their first time together, and her first time with any man. Juan was older than her. Not in years, no more than one or two anyway. But he’d seen things, and it had harrowed his face and put something in his eyes that was not in hers, nor in that of most of the men and women she knew.

  In a cool place beneath the ruins, in what might have been a tomb—sacrilege, perhaps, but by then she didn’t care—they’d lain down in the dark. Long afterwards, they’d still lain there, like the dead of old, as if rehearsing for their own coffins, and Juan had kissed her breasts and her face and her hair and she had felt a tear fall from him on to her cheek. Her own eyes had been dry; she’d thought it was the girl who was supposed to weep after her first time, and had said as much to him.

  ‘I must say something to you,’ he’d said, ‘but it might make you afraid of me.’

  She’d sat up, swallowing, and stared at him. Was he going to tell her that he was with the rebels? As it turned out, he later did, but that was much, much later, after almost a year.

  ‘What?’ she asked.

  ‘I love you,’ he’d told her. ‘And I never thought I could. Anyone.’

  Juliana had been walking for almost half an hour now, and positively missed the sound of the newspaper. At the time it had made her jump, sounding like the wings of some huge predator, but now the city was so silent she would have welcomed the noise. The oppressive quiet was like a held breath, drawn in and clutched tight in the instant before it could be uttered as a scream.

  The wind blew and occasionally she thought she could hear it keening in the city’s nooks and niches. It had a high, mournful quality to it. She’d heard it often before, on dark nights like this when she couldn’t sleep, through the open bedroom window, and sometimes thought it sounded as though all the mothers and the wives, the lovers and the daughters, of all the disappeared, were weeping for their loss.

  Juliana’s eyes stung abruptly, and she wiped them. It wasn’t the wind. She couldn’t tell who she was crying for; herself, or Juan, for a country where power lay in an iron fist that clutched an automatic rifle levelled at a crowd, a pistol pressed to the nape of a neck, a baton raised above a head, an cattle-prod touched to a groin, for a world left raped and bleeding by its cruel and selfish children, for all of humankind. For all, perhaps, and none.

  ‘It all seems so much simpler when you’re young,’ Juan had said to her once, lying beside her one night in bed. They’d both been smoking, long ghosts trailing upwards from their cigarettes and mouths towards the cracked paint on the ceiling.

  ‘Does it now, old man?’ she’d laughed. He’d grinned and flicked playfully at her hair.

  ‘I mean it,’ he said. ‘You see the way the world is, the way it all goes wrong, and you think—why? It should be so simple to put things right, so nobody starves or wants, so the earth isn’t spoilt. It just seems like common sense, and you think, can no one really have seen this before? Am I truly the first to see it? And you honestly think you can set it straight. Just you alone.’

  He’d looked sad. She touched his face. She knew about the rebels by then, he’d told her two months before. ‘What happened?’

  ‘You see what people will do to hang on to their power. However petty, however crippling. You see just how selfish people can be. And worse. How pointlessly, thoughtlessly, stupid and cruel. . . .’ He shook his head and dragged on his cigarette. ‘And you don’t know why. And you wonder if maybe it’s just that something’s wrong. With us. Something flawed and rotten.’

  ‘Do you really think that?’

  ‘Perhaps. I don’t know. What else can I think?’

  ‘People get frightened easily. When they’re frightened, they’ll do things they wouldn’t otherwise. And change is frightening.’

  He’d nodded. ‘Freedom even more so.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  He smiled at her. ‘You’ll understand one day.’

  ‘If you think everyone’s so bad,’ she asked, ‘Why do you bother trying to change things?’

  ‘To prove myself wrong, perhaps.’

  It had been a hot summer’s day, that day when they’d met in her lunch hour and gone to the park, eaten a little and then fed the rest to the birds, tossing scraps of it to the cooing pigeons while they passed a bottle of cola back and forth.

  Juliana hadn’t slept well the night before. There had been a gunfight in the hills above the city; government forces had clashed with the rebels near the old ruins where they’d first made love. Six or seven rebels and four government soldiers had been killed. She hadn’t slept for worry. It felt like an omen. She had said so.

  ‘There’s no such thing,’ Juan had answered, a little testily.

  ‘I’m afraid for you,’ she said.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  She looked at him. The birds cooed and pecked. The sun gleamed like a coin heated to whiteness in a fire’s heart, burning through the clear blue cloth of the sky. Just for a moment, there was a breath of wind, and the green glossy leaves of the trees had rustled. ‘If I asked you to give it up,’ she said, ‘would you?’

  He didn’t answer at once. ‘It’s not that easy,’ he’d said at last. ‘You can’t just walk away once you’ve joined.’

  ‘If you could,’ she asked, ‘would you?’

  He didn’t meet her eyes. ‘What kind of a life would it be? How long would we have, the way things are now? We have to——’

  ‘Answer me!’ she’d yelled, and clapped her hand to her mouth, almost as startled by her own outburst as the pigeons, which flew away in a clatter of wings. It was the first time she’d ever raised her voice to him.

  She expected anger, perhaps even a blow. Not that Juan had ever raised his hand to her in the past, but most of the city’s men were macho, would think nothing of the use of a blow to remind a woman of her place. Juan didn’t, yet wasn’t weak or effeminate, nor was it ever suggested that he was; that was part of why she loved him.

  But he looked at her without anger, only sadness, which was somehow even worse, and he held her hand and kissed it, and said, ‘I’m sorry.’

  And then she’d torn her hand from his grip and cried. She wasn’t sure quite why. Because she was afraid she’d lose him to a government bullet? Or because she was second fiddle to his cause, to his ideal?

  And against an ideal, of course, who could win? An ideal wasn’t flawed or rotten. An ideal was
n’t like a person; it wouldn’t let you down. His fellow rebels might fail, might smirch themselves with compromise here, with moral darkness there, might cut deals or forswear oaths, bend or break their principles—but they were only human. The ideal would remain, gleaming like a diamond, clean and bright and pure . . . and inhuman and cold and sharp enough to slice glass.

  He had taken her by the shoulders then and turned her round to face him. There was the same sadness in his eyes, but worse now, and he took a deep breath and she was sure he was going to ask if she wanted to end it now, and she didn’t want to but was afraid of what her wounded pride might have her say before she could think. She knew her pride, knew how one word coming out wrong, cocked at the wrong angle by choice or placing or intonation, might be the spur to make it kick wild.

  But instead he had said to her, ‘Do you want me to give it up?’ And she realised that she had been wrong, that if he had to, if it could only be one of his two loves, then she, not his cause, would win.

  And she could have said yes; it would have been the easiest thing in the world to say yes. But she couldn’t. Because as through a crystal ball she could see their future. There might be the resentment, of a man whose love had forced him to give up his dream; but even if not, something would have been gone out of him, some integral part of what she loved.

  And so she’d squeezed her eyes shut, though still they’d bled a river of tears, and said ‘No.’

  They had held each other for a long time after that, and not long after had slipped into the trees together.

  She’d been late back to the office with grass-stains on her skirt, the butt of a reprimand from her boss and endless teasing from the other girls, but she hadn’t cared.

  That had been the last time she’d seen Juan.

  Her skirt was clean now, and flapped like a lowered flag in the brisk wind. She’d reached the alley the call had summoned her to. She swallowed hard, then ventured down it, fists deep in the pockets of her coat, where a small knife rested as protection against harm.

  Down the alley, a match flared, and she jumped. But then the fear fled, and the disbelief returned—and at last, as she saw that long-loved face pulled from the shadows by the brief sulphurous light, it was gone.

  She came forward slowly. Even after the call, she had believed yet not believed. But now the proof was before her, lighting its cigarette, and she couldn’t deny it now.

  ‘Juan?’

  ‘Lia.’

  His gloved hands found her, and drew her close. In the bitter night, his lips were cold on hers.

  They had been due to meet, that last time, in a café in a small square lying in the quieter part of the city. There was nothing for the tourists here, only houses, the odd block of flats, a couple of small, unremarkable parks and playgrounds. And those little cafés in the squares. The city’s best kept secret. The disappeared were no secret, nor their resting places—the deep seas, the unmarked graves in the flatlands past the city outskirts—but this place was.

  She’d sat and smoked her cigarettes and sipped her coffee. It had been a Saturday, the day after their tryst in the park, and Juan had been due to meet her at midday. By ten past, he still hadn’t arrived, but Juliana wasn’t unduly worried. He was never on time. Occasionally she’d wondered if he was like this with the rebels. The private joke usually made her laugh, but not today. Today, for some reason, there was nothing funny about it.

  Later she thought that she knew then, right then, what had happened. But at the time, if she did, she denied it. And sat and smoked and sipped until one o’clock, when at last she couldn’t deny it anymore, and ran through the streets to where he kept his flat.

  His landlady was a widowed old crone, dressed from head to foot in black, her face seamed and withered like a dried apple to a reptilian texture. Her mouth, lipless with age, was like a lizard’s, as were her small, dark eyes. From beneath her head-dress, only one or two thin stray wisps of grey escaped, so that she seemed hairless. She stood outside the boarding-house. The window of Juan’s room was smashed, the curtains flapping like discarded shrouds. Some of his belongings lay smashed and trampled on the pavement. There was a patch of blood there too. The landlady’s beady black eyes fastened on Juliana. Did the lipless mouth smile, or was it simply an effect of its withered look? She couldn’t tell, but it seemed to smile, as the old woman, eyes unwavering from the young girl’s before her, shook her head, slowly and deliberately, from side to side.

  She had run after that, through the streets. She’d gone back later, and braved the landlady again, only to be told what she’d already known. Juan was gone. They had taken him.

  But now he was back. He was pale, almost grey, and tired-looking. He’d always dressed in bright clothes before; it was strange to see him in a long black coat and hat and gloves, the black relieved only by a thin white scarf, like a plume of cigarette smoke that had refused to leave. He put his arm around her shoulders and drew her close, then passed her his cigarette, placed another in his own mouth, and struck a match for it one-handed.

  ‘Come on,’ he said, and led her out of the alley through the streets.

  They soon passed on into one of the more disreputable parts of the city. Juliana faltered, nervously, but Juan squeezed her tightly round the shoulders. ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘You’re safe with me.’

  As they walked on, the street lighting grew more and more fitful and erratic, bulbs flickering here, gone altogether there, till at last they reached a street where it was all dark. As they walked, Juliana could just about make out the contours of a church, its spire raised darkly against the night.

  ‘Where are we going?’ she asked. For answer, Juan raised his arm and pointed at the church.

  ‘But why?’

  ‘You’ll see,’ he said, then softly brushed her cheek with his gloved fingers and smiled.

  As they reached the doors, they swung open. Juan ushered her through, and they swung closed again. Then, one by one, two by two, and finally dozens at a time, small points of light began to gleam inside the church. As the glow spread, Juliana saw that there were thousands of candles all about, the wicks all catching flame of their own accord, one after the other after the other.

  The church, she saw, was also derelict, long abandoned. No Christ reared and suffered above the altar; the stained glass windows were covered by boards. Juan walked down the aisle. Slowly, he took off his hat, his gloves, his coat, his scarf. Then he turned to face her.

  She neared him. He was so pale, so grey. His hair so dry. And his hands, and then his lips were cold on hers, his body so cold, beneath its clothes.

  She looked up at him in terror as she knew, not questioning, knowing it made perfect sense at this time, in this place, and not panicking, not screaming or struggling or running. She simply looked into his dark, dark eyes and said: ‘You’re dead, aren’t you?’

  He stroked a chill finger sadly down her cheek, eyes sorrowing at the fear in hers, and nodded slowly. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I am.’

  ‘It isn’t like they tell you in places like these,’ he said, gesturing round the church. ‘Death, I mean. It’s . . .’ He shook his head. ‘I talked to one of the first of all the dead while I was there. A Babylonian. They believed the dead lived in darkness and ashes, and cold, stagnant water. He was right. That’s the realm of the dead, Lia. It’s a cold place.’

  She swallowed hard. Juan stood before the altar, the scarf once more around his neck, like a bleached mockery of a priest’s purple stole. Juliana sat in one of the pews.

  ‘There’s not much to do, except swap stories, and listen to the tales that come in from the land of the living,’ he went on. ‘And those tales have been getting worse and worse.’

  He sighed. ‘Do you want another cigarette?’

  She nodded numbly. Juan lit two more, gave her one and drew deep on his own. ‘We know what life is worth, there,’ he said, ‘far too late. How it should be seized and made good use of, not wasted in suffering and want,
in petty games of power, in squandering all the wealth that life offers, destroying and befouling the earth given us as a gift.’

  There was no evangelical madness in him here, no Pentecostal fire, only a sad and sober statement of the truth. I died, I came, I saw. That was the most chilling thing of all.

  ‘And we see it being wasted,’ he said. ‘All you, the living, have. And we get angry. And jealous. So many of the dead would make such use of life, if they had it again, now they know what it’s worth.’

  ‘But it doesn’t work that way,’ said Juliana, finding her voice at last.

  Juan shook his head. ‘No. It doesn’t. You have your chance and that’s it. I didn’t do too badly with mine, but I died under torture in a government cell’—Juliana flinched—‘and so that’s it for me. Or rather’—he smiled—‘that was the idea.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Some of us got together and looked at things. So much that we could do, if we had the chance again—and so many of the living who’d be better off down here. After all, we reckoned, where there’s a will, there’s a way. And so we’re coming back.’

  ‘Back?’

  ‘Back here,’ he said. ‘The dead. It’s easy enough, as long as the main rule s obeyed. Balance. The door isn’t meant to open both ways. So for every one of us that crosses over into this world’—he seemed to tire of the priest act and slumped wearily into the pew in front of Juliana, before turning to look at her—‘one of the living must cross over into ours.’

  And Juliana saw it all, and rose with a gasp, the blood draining from her face, her stomach. Run, she thought, run, run! But then Juan’s hand had seized her arm and she couldn’t run.

  She looked up and expected to see triumph on his face, or perhaps regret for what he had to do to live again. Was death so terrible you’d consign your true love to it? She was about to find out, she thought, except that . . .