Field Study

by Rachel Seiffert

  – Mama, no.

  Marta knows he is watching her, but the stranger keeps quiet, and keeps his distance. She crouches down, shifting the weight of the bundle across her back. She lifts her baby boy, holds him tighter, full of misgiving. The river is wide. Thirty metres, maybe more.

  – I can help you. I swam across before.

  Marta waits one minute, two, and when he doesn’t move she shrugs the bundle higher onto her shoulders, walks down to the water, keeping a few metres between herself and the man.

  – Mama.

  – I know, Ani.

  She can see the bottom, but it is chest-deep. Over head-height for the twins. She looks over at the remains of the bridge. Each of the pillars has a wide base, a shelf just below the surface. The stranger points.

  – We can swim between the pillars, rest on the shelves.

  – It’s too deep.

  – We’ll take it in stages.

  Ani calls to her mother from where she stands with her brothers.

  – I don’t want to, Mama.

  – Only four metres between the pillars.

  – Quiet, Betim.

  – Only four metres, easy.

  – Leka, I said be quiet.

  Marta turns back to the stranger, shakes her head.

  – Our things will get wet.

  – It’s hot. You can dry them, camp for the night.

  – The bags are too heavy.

  Marta walks back to her children, lifts the bundle onto her back again. The stranger runs along the bank, gathering driftwood. The boys join in.

  – Only the big bits, boys. Bigger, twice the size.

  Marta watches.

  – What about a boat?

  – I’ve been walking the river for days. No boats.

  Ani kicks the ground next to her mother. Marta looks on as the man gathers driftwood with her sons.

  – How will I get the baby across?

  – Tie him to me. I’ll swim with him.

  – No.

  The stranger ties the wood together into a frame. A handkerchief at one corner, his shirt at another, Betim offers his vest for the third and Leka ties off the last corner with a sock. The stranger carries the frame down to the water. The bag sags through the middle, heavier on one side than the other, but it floats.

  – I can pull it, see? I’ll take this over first, come back for the bundle.

  Marta doesn’t look at him. She can see the road snaking off into the distance on the other side of the river; can feel the breeze on her face, blowing from the east.

  – It will take half an hour, an hour at most. You can dry your things. Walk on in the evening.

  Marta picks at the knot holding the bundle to her back.

  – It’s safe over there. You can rest, stop for the night.

  – I’ll take the baby, not you.

  – Very good.

  The stranger takes off his boots and ties the laces together, draping them around his neck. He wades out into the water until he is waist-deep and starts swimming, pulling the bag after him. When he gets to the first pillar, he waves. Water streams out of his sleeve in an arc, and the twins both laugh and wave back. They run to the water’s edge, but Marta stops them.

  – Yes, wait. I’ll come back and help you.

  The man gestures them away, then turns and swims to the next pillar. The boys crouch, watching, tying their laces together as the stranger had done. Marta squeezes her daughter’s hand and tells her to take her boots off.

  The stranger is past the middle of the river, now. Still swimming. He hasn’t looked round again, and Marta wonders absently if he will come back and help them. She calculates what is in the bag. Food and clothes. The last tins of meat. But no money, no valuables. No great loss. The stranger wades out onto the far shore, pulling the raft behind him. He doesn’t look round or wave. He walks up onto the road, out of sight. The twins both stand up and turn to look at Marta. She shrugs, makes a mental list. Three tins, the half loaf, the blankets, one coat. She still has the oilskins, the twins’ jackets, her wedding ring. No food.

  The stranger walks back off the road into the river. He doesn’t have the bag with him, and his jacket is tied around his waist. His chest is bright white against the brown riverbank. He waves and starts swimming again, only stopping at the middle pillar on the way back. He speaks to them as he swims, even before he is in earshot; skin glowing through the water, shoulder-blades working like sharp wings.

  – There’s a good spot for a fire, and I’ve spread the blankets on bushes to dry.

  He is out of breath, greenish. He crouches down on the bank, breathing hard, the twins standing next to him, boots dangling ready around their necks. Marta takes the thinnest blanket and tears it in two. She holds her baby’s back against her chest and tells Ani to tie the blanket round both of them. She sees the stranger stand up out of the corner of her eye.

  – You should tie him to your back, then he’ll be out of the water when you swim.

  – I’ll swim on my back.

  She knots the other half of the blanket firmly around herself, angry. The baby’s arms are trapped under the blanket and he struggles as they walk down to the bank. The twins set the bundle in the middle of the frame, and the stranger tells them to wade first, then swim. He says he will help Marta, but Marta says he should help Ani instead.

  The twins wade out, holding the bundle at waist height, then swim, steady and serious, aiming for the first pillar. Marta watches them drift out in the current, shifting their course, kicking hard, her heart hammering in her throat. When they get to the pillar, Leka climbs up onto the shelf and waves. Marta waves back and the stranger turns to her.

  – Strong swimmers. Good boys.

  She watches her twins set off for the next pillar, small bodies working hard against the wide water, tells herself: they are strong swimmers, good boys.

  Ani allows the stranger to take her hand, and he leads her into the water. She looks round at her mother, but carries on walking until she is waist deep.

  – It’s cold, Mama!

  – But you are brave.

  Ani slides into the water and swims, shouting and splashing, but Marta is not so afraid this time. The stranger swims beside her daughter, and when Ani waves from the first pillar, Marta can see she is smiling.

  The twins are still swimming on, over half-way there. She can see their shoulders, hunched round their ears with the cold, but they keep going, jumping back into the water from the pillars, pulling the bundle between them, ever closer to the safer shore. Marta ties her boots around her waist and wades into the river. The stranger helps Ani up onto the shelf by the second pillar and treads water.

  – Go back! Wait. I’ll come for you.

  Marta ignores him and carries on wading. Her baby shifts against her stomach, uncomfortable in his blanket binding. He tries to look up at her face, breathing fast, soft head pressing against her chin. Marta has her arms around him, frightened to let go, although he is bound tight to her chest. The river bed changes from sharp pebbles to soft mud, silky against her feet and warm compared to the water. Marta sinks up to her ankles in the slime, and the water reaches her thighs.

  It is much colder now she is out of the shallows. Her ankle bones ache and her stomach contracts, shrinking back from the water. The slow pull of current bends her knees. Her baby’s feet skim the water and he shouts and kicks, bright splashes of cold in the sun. Marta knows the stranger is swimming towards them, shouting at her to go back to the shore. She turns her back to him and lies down into the water, keeping her arms wrapped around her baby, kicking her legs.

  The cold knocks the air out of her lungs. Her boots fill with water, drag down at her waist. She puts her arms out to keep her afloat, but too late, and she pulls her baby down into the river with her.

  When they surface, he is screaming rigid against her chest, arms straining to get out of the blankets. Marta has the gritty river taste in her mouth. She can’t feel the bottom, toes reaching,
legs straining, kicking. Her baby’s head is underwater again. She thrashes, pushes her arms out to steady herself, coughing, arching her back. She hears her baby’s screams through a wall of water, like ice around her neck. Her boots kick heavy at her thighs as she fights the current. The baby’s head is out of the water, but his body is in the cold river with hers. Water floods Marta’s mouth. She sinks again.

  The stranger swims underneath them; his arms under Marta’s shoulders, pulling her chest up out of the water and the baby with it. Marta retches, wants to cry. The stranger pulls them on towards the pillar, swiftly, steadily, murmuring, breathing, kicking beneath them. He pushes Marta up onto the ledge, jarring her cold bones against the stones. She stands up out of the water on weak legs and the stranger unties the blankets. He is not angry, which surprises her. The baby still screams, but with tears now, and not so stiff. Once his arms are free he pulls himself up against his mother and presses his face into her neck. Ani is standing and watching at the next pillar, arms wrapped round the stone; the twins are watching from the opposite shore. The stranger shouts to them to build a fire, and tells Ani to wait until they get to her. She nods, silent and shivering.

  The baby screams when he is pulled away from Marta’s chest, fists and feet attacking the air in fury. The stranger lies him quickly down again, high up, against Marta’s shoulder blades, and the baby wraps his arms round her neck. The man re-ties the blankets around the baby and around Marta’s chest. He pulls them tight and the baby cries, but Marta makes no protest. After he has checked the knots, the stranger slides back down into the river. He holds out his hand, bare arm reaching out of the water.

  – Ready? Come on.

  Marta stops. Her eyes fixed on the reaching arm, her heart working, painful. The stranger’s words resound in her ears: same voice, different rhythm. Same language, different accent. But familiar too.

  The beat of fear in her chest. The shouting outside her house. The rhythm of the day the men were taken away.

  Marta looks at the stranger and he meets her gaze. Eyes dark, lips moving.

  – Come on.

  No pretence now. One of them. The stranger has a stranger’s voice. As if the river has cleaned his throat, icy water washing the lie from his tongue.

  He takes Marta’s hand and she sits obediently down on the ledge, slides into the water. Her children are up ahead, she can’t go back, she has to go on. The baby grips her neck, but he is quiet now. Marta swims with the stranger to the next pillar and he smiles encouragement, swimming alongside her on his back. Ani helps her mother up onto the ledge and they rest in silence while the stranger treads water. They swim on together. When they get to the last pillar, they wave to Leka who is waiting for them on the shore.

  – We’ve built a fire!

  He gestures over the rise, where Betim stands, eating a chunk of bread. The baby starts to cry again as they wade out of the water, but he is not angry any more, just cold. Ani’s lips are ringed blue and Marta can’t feel the stones under her feet. None of them can undo the knots in the baby’s blankets, even Leka’s hands are still weak with the cold. Marta turns to the stranger for help, but he is back in the water, jacket on again, swimming away, already beyond the first pillar.

  Betim calls from the rise and waves, but the stranger doesn’t look round. Just swims on in silence to the eastern shore.

  Winner of the International PEN/David TK Wong

  short story prize 2001.

  Dog-Leg Lane

  The family – the boy, his mother and father – have lived on the lane since shortly before he was born, and he knows no other home. Three now, he can talk. And walk with his mother to the shops at one end of the street, his nursery school at the other. If they go to the playground or the market, then he still gets wheeled in the pushchair. The lane makes a dog-leg turn at the far end into a cul-de-sac where the slides and swings and the weekly veg stalls are found. Not far from the flat, the parents-to-be were happy about that when they moved here, but still too far for a just-turned three-year-old’s legs to carry him there and back. He sleeps in the pushchair on the way home. Dozing lips parted, head swaying over to one side. And when his mother reaches to straighten his neck, he wakes slightly, rustle of carrier bag in his ears, blue-white, red-white plastic stripes framing the view from the corners of his half-closed eyes. Stuffed with tomatoes sweet potatoes leeks bananas and slung over the pushchair handle-bars for the rolling journey home.

  His mother tells him:

  – We’re very lucky.

  Nursery school, shops, doctor’s surgery, library.

  – Everything we need, it’s all here.

  And when his father comes back from work and lifts him up to their second-storey window, the boy can just about see it all, too.

  __

  – Promotion!

  His father stands in the hallway with flowers. Home early, very happy, he smiles and tells his boy this is really good news.

  – Shall we go out? Clare? Have a meal.

  His mother pulls the largest bloom from the bunch and sticks it behind her ear. Laughs.

  – What do you think?

  They go out all together for the first time ever and eat in the Indian across the road. The sun is setting, the street lights are lit, and the way home takes only three minutes, the boy between his parents, feet on the tarmac, arms stretched high and wide. One hand held by mother, the other by father, they swing him high over the single yellow line, the grey kerbstone, the cracks and sweet wrappers of the pavement, to their front door.

  __

  Perhaps they tell their son that night that they will be moving. Perhaps in the restaurant, or maybe one evening in the week which follows. Over a dinner time or bath time, or on one of those mornings when he gets up early and climbs into their bed. An unremarkable moment which passes without incident, a small part of a larger routine.

  Every new job, every couple of years or so, it’s just what they do. Eleven years together and five homes, Dog-Leg Lane by far the longest lived. The promotion is to a different branch, and has immediate effect. The other side of the city, a long train ride away and, unless they move, the boy will hardly see his father. Besides, the schools are better, there is less traffic and litter, more green space.

  __

  Coming home from the nursery at lunchtime, the boy’s mother decides to take her son to the top floor. Their building has six storeys. Hardly a tower block, but still she remembers the upper landing window being high enough to look out over the rooftops facing east. They went up there, she and her husband, when the council offered them the flat. It was a sunny day, clear sky and they looked good: the red roof tiles against the blue.

  – It’s a surprise for you, sweetheart.

  She wants to show her son, the place where they will move.

  The stairwell has been cleaned in the morning. Smells of disinfectant and of lunches being cooked. She makes a game out of climbing, racing her son up each flight and letting him win. They look out on the third floor, but the view is not so different from their own, downstairs. On the fourth floor, she says:

  – Look, we can see the next street from here.

  – But not ours.

  And her son presses his cheek to the window, trying to look down, but the angle is too steep.

  On the fifth floor, the boy doesn’t want to play race-games any more, so his mother gets to the sixth floor first. She can see further than she remembered: over to the hospital chimney and mosque, along the dark brown run of the railway tracks which her husband now travels. She holds her son up at the window, points and describes. His eyes follow her fingers and lips and she enjoys the touch of his breath on her face, his weight in her arms.

  – You see?

  And he nods and they stand with their foreheads and fingertips pressed to the glass. It is not so blue today, the tiles not so red. But still, she thinks. It’s still a nice view.

  – Pretty, don’t you think?

  – No. I don’t like it.


  The boy shakes his head.

  His mother looks again for something nice out there to show him, but her son pushes against her arms and she has to put him down.

  __

  She is sad, of course, that her son didn’t like his surprise, but she knows him, and that like all children, he has his tired days, his moods. She thinks he might be coming down with something: he doesn’t eat much dinner that evening, and then he cries in his bath.

  Over breakfast the talk is of council swaps, housing associations and new nursery schools. The boy watches his parents and pushes the banana slices around on his toast. His mother says:

  – Come on sweetheart. Eat your breakfast, please.

  But he doesn’t, and now she is only half listening to her husband, mostly watching her son.

  – Do you want some honey maybe? On your banana?

  The boy shrugs and his father is watching them both now, wife and boy.

  – Or peanut butter?

  – Clare?

  – Yes, sorry. I am listening. I just don’t think he’s well.

  – I should get going anyway.

  – Peanut butter.

  The boy pulls his plate along the table with him, leans against his mother while she spreads peanut butter on his toast, mashes the banana into it, and then spoons honey over the top. His father has shoes and jacket on now.

  – We’ll talk about it tonight then?

  – Yes, promise. Tonight.

  They smile, kiss goodbye, two, three times, and the boy climbs between them into his mother’s lap. Mouth full of banana honey peanut butter toast breakfast, his face and voice sticky.

  – I don’t want to move house.

  __

  They have a morning routine. Watch Dad going to work from the second-floor window. After breakfast and before teeth-brushing, mother and son. He always stops at the dog-leg corner and waves back in their direction before he makes the turn. He can’t see them, of course, not from that distance, and the angle is all wrong. But he knows they watch him, and likes the fact that they do this, so he always does his wave, every day.

  That morning, though, the boy eats his breakfast very slowly. And when his mother holds out her hand to take him into the living room, he ignores her. She stands and watches him chewing for a minute or so, then decides not to force the issue and loads the washing machine instead.