Lovesong

by Alex Miller

‘I spent most of the time sitting waiting in the passage.’

  The cold blue light of dawn was beginning to lift the sky over Paris, as if someone was stealthily lifting the lid on a well.

  Neither of them had slept.

  ‘You never know what the police are thinking,’ he said. ‘I felt as if they suspected me of Bruno’s killing. They suspect everybody. I think they’ll probably hold Nejib until they find his brother.’

  There was another long silence between them.

  He said, ‘I could have saved him. I just stood there and watched. I can’t believe I did that.’

  Bruno’s murder had changed everything. She said, ‘I am an evil woman.’

  He looked at her. ‘What’s this for?’ he said. ‘Don’t start saying that sort of thing. Not even jokingly. This had nothing to do with you. You’re exhausted. We’re both exhausted. Why do you say a thing like that?’

  He turned to the window again and looked out into the street. The street-sweeping machine was grinding and trembling along the kerb. He thought of a wounded horse trying to find its way home, a ghost from the days of the old abattoirs trying to find its way back to the fields. There was a park now where the abattoirs of Vaugirard had been when he first came to Paris. A horse would find a field there now, instead of a slaughterhouse.

  Sabiha made a strangled noise and he whipped around. She was bent over with her head in her hands. He stepped across to the bed and sat beside her and he lifted her up and held her in his arms. He sat holding her, the yellow light of the street-cleaning machine flashing on the ceiling.

  He said, ‘When Nejib’s brother put his arm around Bruno I thought he was making peace with him. Just for that second or two I relaxed. I thought I’d completely misjudged the man. I failed Bruno. I was no help to him at all. I saw it coming and I did nothing to prevent it. They must have hated each other, those two.’

  She said, ‘I’m pregnant with Bruno’s child.’

  He leaned away from her and looked at her.

  She said, ‘Bruno was in love with me.’

  ‘Pregnant?’ He gave her a little shake. ‘You can’t be pregnant.’

  She turned to him, her dark eyes grave. ‘I am having Bruno’s child.’

  He made an impatient flinging gesture with his hands and stood up. He swung around. ‘What are you trying to do? What do you mean, you’re pregnant? How can you be pregnant?’ He took two strides to the window, then turned. ‘Why are you doing this?’ he said. ‘What are you doing?’

  She held his gaze steadily.

  ‘My God,’ he said quietly. ‘This is true, isn’t it?’ He laughed emptily. ‘Jesus Christ! I thought you were going through your change of life.’ He stared at her incredulously. ‘You’re pregnant? That’s it? You’re having a baby? Jesus! Bruno’s baby.’ He spun around and reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a crumpled cigarette packet and stood frowning at it, the light coming up in the sky behind him, an iridescence suddenly around his thinning hair. He took out a cigarette but did not light it. Instead he unbuttoned his overcoat impatiently and took it off and threw it on the floor.

  ‘I can’t bear it if you hate me,’ she said helplessly.

  ‘Of course I don’t hate you. I’m not going to start hating you now.’ He searched in his trouser pockets for matches and couldn’t find any and gave up. He looked at her. ‘I’m just trying to believe this. Did you love Bruno? Did he love you? Is that it? How long have you been pregnant? Are you saying that’s why he came here drunk tonight?’ He flung out his hands in an exasperated, helpless gesture. ‘You and Bruno! I can’t believe it. I mean, where? When? You and Bruno were always so formal with each other. He was always so courteous and respectful to you.’ He stood there frowning. ‘All this! This stuff with Bruno, these moods and this carry-on with you, this is what it’s all about? How does it involve Nejib and his brother? What did they have to do with it?’ He stopped suddenly and stared at her with a look of anguish. ‘If you were seeing Nejib as well, I will hate you. Tell me you weren’t seeing Nejib. Were you?’

  ‘Of course I wasn’t seeing Nejib,’ she said.

  ‘Of course nothing!’ he said, bewildered. ‘There’s no of course about any of this for me. I mean, where are we? What are we doing? You and me? Bruno rushing in and out, then staying away, then getting excited. All that shit. You, carrying on.’ He looked at her. ‘I just can’t believe it of you. You! You did this?’ He went over to the dressing-table and picked up a book of matches from the glass tray, struck a match and lit his cigarette. He took a deep drag on the cigarette and blew out the smoke.

  She said quietly, ‘You trusted me.’

  He said, ‘I still trust you.’ He laughed. ‘You tell me you’ve been having an affair and I tell you I trust you.’

  ‘I wasn’t having an affair,’ she said. She sat hunched under her blanket as if she was in physical pain or had been beaten with a stick. She was looking up at him, her features grey in the uncertain light, her hair thick and black and hanging in disarray around her face. ‘I wanted my child.’

  He actually felt quite calm. Strangely calm. Inside. But felt it was necessary to make a bit of a show of his emotion. In an odd way, he wasn’t even surprised by any of this. That was the really funny thing. He felt as if he had known it all along. He was not deeply, shockingly, wildly surprised by it. He had always been calm in any kind of an emergency. He had felt calm before the murder. Even when he thought there was about to be a fight between Bruno and Nejib’s brother he had felt completely calm. He had felt as if he was in charge. As if he was in control. But he hadn’t been, not really, only of himself. But to no use. Uselessly calm. She looked so utterly at his mercy, sitting there on the bed, as if she expected to be abandoned and tossed into the street with her baby.

  He said gently, ‘It’s the child you’ve always had in your dreams, isn’t it? I know that. Ever since the day we met. That day we lay in the grass on the bank of the river in Chartres. You told me about your child then. You didn’t have to tell me. I felt it. I knew even then. I felt your warmth then towards this child. I still think about that feeling. Yours was different from the warmth of any other woman I’d ever met before. Your warm body pressed against mine. I remember it. I thought of you then as a mother as well as my lover.’ He smiled and took a drag on the cigarette. ‘I know you’ve never given up hope of having this baby. Through everything. I know that. You don’t have to say anything.’ He went over and sat beside her and put his arms around her and held her against him. ‘This is your child, darling. It’s yours.’ He said softly, ‘Bruno!’

  She was crying.

  They sat in silence for a long time, Sabiha weeping quietly, John rocking her. Eventually he said, ‘If it’s a girl we’ll call her Houria.’

  Sabiha gave a choking sob.

  He was so tired he felt sick. He was trying to recall the details of the scene. What had he told the police? One moment it was a peaceful Saturday night in the café, Sabiha singing her songs, Nejib playing his oud, the men quiet and enthralled and happy. Then suddenly the place was empty and Bruno was lying dead on the floor. Under the police questioning he had found himself getting confused and had started contradicting himself. He had felt they didn’t believe him and this had annoyed him and he’d got a bit upset with them. They had been suspicious and rude and had kept him waiting for hours, sending him out then calling him back in again. Sitting out in the passage waiting for them to call him back inside for more questions he had felt exhausted.

  He said, ‘We must get some sleep.’ He pulled back the bedclothes and took the blue blanket from around her shoulders and helped her get into bed. He stood and tucked her in and leaned down and kissed her.

  She looked up at him.

  He put his finger on her lips. ‘Don’t say anything. I’ll come to bed. It’s happened. We must get some sleep.’ He went over to the window and pulled the curtains closed against the day. ‘The café's done for,’ he said. ‘None of these fellers is coming back,
that’s for sure. I don’t even know if the police will let us open again. I could have been nicer to them. We’re not going to need Sonja on Monday either. I’d better give her a call. What’s today?’ He stood trying to think. ‘Sunday morning. I’ll call her at home later. It’s impossible to believe Bruno’s dead. I just can’t believe it.’ He was thinking of Angela and the eleven children and what they must be going through tonight.

  He got undressed and climbed into bed beside her and held her against him. ‘When you come back from El Djem we’ll go home to Australia. There won’t be anything left for us here. We’ll start again.’ He kissed her on the cheek. ‘Don’t worry, we won’t forget Bruno. We’ll think of some way of remembering him.’

  There was the slam of a car door and the sound of an engine starting. The street was waking up. The mournful howl of Tolstoy from the back lane greeting the new day—the beast waking from his dreams to find himself alone on the snow-covered steppes of his ancestors.

  ‘There are things I’ve kept from you too,’ he said. ‘Nothing like this, of course. I’m not even sure what these things are. Parts of myself, I suppose. My ambitions. Perhaps it will all be clearer to me when we’re in Australia. There must be things about ourselves we can only know properly when we’re at home.’ He was exhausted but he didn’t feel sleepy. He would be returning to Australia after sixteen years in France, having accomplished nothing. What had he done? His mind was racing.

  ‘Men fighting,’ he said. ‘It’s so stupid. The cops must see it every day.’ He was silent for a while, listening to the sounds in the street. ‘I’ve wanted to be a father,’ he said. He knew it would not matter to him that he had not fathered their child himself; he would become the child’s father. He would look after them both, Sabiha and the kid. And he would find a way to dignify the memory of Bruno in their child’s life. That would be necessary. One day he would tell the child about its real father. He held Sabiha close against him, feeling the warmth of her body, the tiny baby growing inside her, its perfect unknowing, the absoluteness of its innocence. To begin! The small beginning. A new life. His own life had been such a waste.

  He began to drift towards sleep, images of the terrible night springing into his mind, André and Simone and their daughter, bewildered, standing in the wet street in the lights of the police cars, like refugees who have been kicked out of their home. Old Arnoul Fort, and the Kavi boys and their customers, ringed around and staring silently, their eyes bright with the mad lights, the rain falling through the lights. The strange silence of the frenzy, not an Arab in sight. The pointlessness of it all.

  Sabiha’s leg kicked out in a nervous spasm and half woke him. He longed to relive the night and be given another chance to save Bruno. He imagined himself quietly removing the knife from Nejib’s brother and telling him to leave Chez Dom. Normality restored. Sabiha finishing her songs. Bruno sobering up and apologising to everyone … Sabiha was asleep. He would have to get an advance on his credit card for their fares home … He was dreaming Tolstoy’s howl was a train hurtling towards him, its trembling light dazzling him. He could not get off the tracks as it flew towards him out of the dark. He wrenched himself awake and lay there breathing heavily, his heart pounding. Suddenly he was weeping. He couldn’t stop. He wept for everything.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Sabiha arrived home from burying her father on a Tuesday. The café was silent and empty. The chairs upended on the tables in the dining room. The curtains closed across the window—for the first time ever. A few minutes after midday Sabiha was in the kitchen preparing lunch for herself and John when a shadow fell across the wall in front of her. She turned around. A young man of eighteen or twenty was standing in the doorway to the lane. He was so like Bruno it was uncanny. He was holding a box of tomatoes in his arms.

  ‘Good morning, Madame Patterner,’ he said. ‘I am Bruno Fiorentino, my father’s son. I will carry on his business as he would have wished me to.’ He was very nervous and delivered his speech as if he had rehearsed it. ‘My father greatly respected you and Monsieur Patterner. My family does not blame you or Monsieur Patterner for this tragedy which has befallen us. I understand that you have just buried your own father. For this I would like to extend to you my family’s condolences. Such a loss is terrible.’ He took a step into the kitchen. ‘Please accept this box of tomatoes as a gift from my family. I shall be carrying on the business as my father would have wished me to.’ He leaned down and set the box of tomatoes on the floor by the door and straightened.

  Sabiha could not take her eyes from him. She had one hand to her throat, her chest tight with emotion. She was not sure she could speak to the young man without crying.

  ‘I can’t accept your gift,’ she said. ‘There’s no point in you coming here ever again. We have no customers left. They have fled from the police and are either in hiding or have gone back to Tunisia.’

  ‘New customers will come,’ he said. He smiled. ‘Your cooking is famous.’

  When he smiled Bruno lived in his eyes. ‘Chez Dom is closed,’ she said and had to turn away to hide her tears. ‘We’re going to Australia. Please go,’ she urged him gently. ‘Please go.’ Tears were running down her cheeks. She did not wipe them away. ‘I am so sorry. There is nothing I can do.’ She turned around to face him and said gently, ‘Go away, Bruno, please!’

  He looked down at the box of tomatoes and murmured helplessly, ‘They are a gift from my family, madame.’ He picked up the box and held it, his eyes on her.

  She saw his humiliation and went to him and put her hand on his arm, touching him as a mother might wish to touch her son, farewelling him on a long journey. She was weeping and was unable to speak.

  Six

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  When I came home yesterday evening after a session with John at the Paradiso, I was looking forward to having a quiet drink on my own. I needed to spend a bit of time on my own digesting what John had told me. He had surprised me. He had shocked me, and I wasn’t sure how I was going to deal with it.

  When I came into the kitchen, Clare and her new man, were having a drink together. One of his horrible CDs was on loud. Clare was leaning against the stove with a glass of wine in her hand. She looked a bit rumpled and red in the face, as if she’d already had a few. It wasn’t a good look. Her man, Robin the Cap, was sitting at the table as usual, his chair pushed back and his head down on the table, chin on his left arm—cap on, of course. He was squinting along his outstretched right arm at a can of Foster’s Lager in his fist. Stubby was lying under the table, his head on his paws too, his usual position. Was the Cap mimicking the dog? Was that something a stand-up would practise? When I was young, stand up meant your girlfriend had ditched you.

  Like Clare, I didn’t sit down. How could I? The Cap was spread all over the table. I said hello and Clare said, ‘Hi, Dad,’ as if she was trying to sound younger than her years. We don’t usually say hi to each other. I didn’t actually hear the Cap offer me a greeting. But then my hearing is not as good as it once was and the music was very loud, so I may have missed it. I don’t want to be unfair to him. Prejudice is a nasty thing. Haven’t I spent half my life writing about it? In fact I have given the matter a great deal of thought in my books one way and another over a period of several decades. I poured myself a glass of wine and stood drinking it, looking down at the Cap. He was looking back at me, his head on the table. He was smiling.

  I raised my glass to him and shouted, ‘Cheers!’

  Clare yelled, ‘Cheers, Dad!’

  When I looked at her she gave me a pleading smile.

  The Cap was looking up at me from under his frayed peak. He yelled, ‘So what did you used to do for a living, Ken?’ Yelling seemed no effort to him. I suppose it was necessary to yell in the house where he lived with his friends all playing loud rap, or whatever it is. I don’t know what it is. I know Shostakovich’s string quartets. Particularly the Sixth. That’s what I know.

  I looked at Clare.
So she hadn’t told him proudly that her dad was a famous novelist? I felt sad to know this. But why should she have? She saw my pain and leaned and turned the music down. Didn’t any of this matter anymore? ‘I used to be a writer,’ I said. ‘Until I retired.’

  ‘Books? Or what?’

  He was still squinting up at me, evidently intrigued by the unusual angle from which he was viewing my features.

  ‘Novels,’ I said shortly.

  ‘Fiction novels?’

  ‘That’s the kind.’

  ‘I might read one,’ he said. He examined the can in his hand with interest, as if he had never seen a can of Foster’s Lager before.

  I don’t think he’s ever going to read a book. Him reading one of my books is not something I can imagine. There’s a limit to what you can make up. He lives in a post-novel world—fiction novels or not. Not that Clare herself has ever been much of a reader. I think she read one of my books when she was in high school. And that was about it. And maybe she didn’t quite finish that one either. I remember her carrying it around in her school bag for a very long time. Every now and then she’d hold it up and show me and give me an encouraging smile.

  Clare said, ‘Hawthorn won, Dad.’

  The Cap sat up and raised his can in the air. ‘We thrashed Collingwood! And I was there to see it, Ken!’ He drank from the can and put it down on the table in front of him. ‘We’re third on the ladder.’

  I realised he was waiting for a response from me. I said, ‘Terrific, Robin. Good old Hawthorn! Here’s to the Hawks!’ I leaned and touched my glass to his beer can. ‘Up the Hawks!’

  These two make me feel dumb and inarticulate. My grasp of language closes down on me when I’m with them and I stumble forward helplessly while they look on, unsurprised by my awkwardness, my fragility, the failure of my remarks to make any sense, my complete lack of a cool understanding of what’s going on. They don’t expect anything better. That’s the trouble. When I’m with John I feel youthful and optimistic. I feel like my old self. My viable self. The man in charge. With these two I am an old man and they are telling me I am an old man in every way it is possible for one person to tell another person something without actually putting the matter into so many words. Literalism, the enemy of art, is not needed. They do it without thinking.