The Last Girl

by Stephan Collishaw

  I waited, hoping his ruminations were leading somewhere. ‘So?’ I asked finally. ‘Did you find them?’

  He was startled by the aggression with which I spoke to him. He stepped back, wiping his hands on his dirty jacket. ‘Did I find your documents? Well, I don’t know if l did. What night did you say it was?’

  I told him.

  ‘No, no,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘A plastic bag you say? No, I don’t think so. But wait.’ A thought struck him. He looked around to see that nobody was listening. He leaned forward, forcing me further back into the doorway. ‘There was a bag the other day,’ he whispered, conspiratorially. My heart leaped. Noticing my joy he seemed heartened. He nodded his head enthusiastically. ‘Yes, yes, there was one,’ he said, excited. He gripped my arm. ‘Wait!’ And he held up one of his spade-like fingers. He turned and disappeared around the side of the building. I followed him.

  A short dark alleyway led around the side of the café. The alleyway gave out onto a small courtyard. On the left of the courtyard bins overflowed outside the back door of the café. Wooden walkways sagged around the second floor of the bare brick buildings. The courtyard was cobbled. Weeds and grass grew through the cobbles, pushing them up. Whilst the street had been smartly plastered and painted, these courtyards remained untouched. They lay in sad neglect, falling slowly to pieces as the whole city, only a few years before, had been.

  Jonas ducked inside a doorway. I stood on the uneven cobbles, waiting, relieved. The next day opened rosily before me. We would lunch at the new café opposite the Filharmonija. I would be able to give her my opinion of her husband’s writing. I would be able to watch her across the table. The way her dark hair fell over her shoulder when she let it loose. The way her elegant fingers rested on the table. And those eyes. I would feel the slight pressure of our feet under the table.

  Jonas reappeared from the café doorway, grinning hideously. In his hand he held a large plastic bag with a semi-naked woman printed on the side. He held it up to me with a flourish, his good eye glinting in the dull light of the courtyard. ‘There!’ he declared.

  ‘That’s not it!’ I cried, sagging with disappointment. The idiotic grin on his face made me angry. He regarded me nervously, noticing my anger and disappointment.

  ‘No?’ he said, crestfallen.

  ‘No!’ I shouted at him. I took the bag from him and emptied its contents with one fierce shake. A pair of old shoes bounced on the cobbles and lay among the weeds. Jonas looked at them stupidly.

  In my disappointed fury I felt like beating him, and if I had been younger I might have given in to the impulse. He hobbled around in his old ripped shoes, red-faced. It took only moments for him to recover, however, and then he swore and shook his fist in my face. I demanded he tell me where he kept lost property. It soon became clear that it was dealt with according to its value. If it was something he felt to be useful he took it home, the rest was thrown away. I had little doubt as to the fate of my bag.

  ‘No, no.’ He shook his head. ‘Describe it again,’ he said. ‘A blue bag, the other morning.’ He shook his head again. ‘I certainly didn’t throw it into the bin. I would have remembered.’

  I left him scratching his scar ruminatively.

  ‘If I come across it,’ he shouted after me, ‘who should I call?’

  I stopped. There was little hope of it appearing. I turned, though, and taking a pencil from my jacket pocket wrote my telephone number on a scrap of paper. Holding it up in front of his good eye he examined it, then nodded.

  ‘I’ll look around today,’ he assured me. ‘You never know, it might turn up.’ He tucked the scrap of paper into his shirt pocket. I turned then and left with no hope.

  Be that as it may, for the rest of the day I did not go out. I hung around the apartment, my ear cocked for the telephone. The minutes dragged like hours and the hours were endless. The telephone sat like a squat, dark toad in the corner but failed to croak. By nine p.m. he had not rung. I kicked around the kitchen drinking brandy from the bottle, taking measured sips despite my desperation.

  Had I really expected he would call? At nine thirty I approached the toad and grabbed it firmly. I dialled the number on the small menu sheet.

  The receiver buzzed in my ear. On the third buzz it was snatched up. Distantly I heard the sound of shouting. A young woman’s voice came on the line. It was the same girl I had spoken to earlier. I asked for her father. Dropping the receiver onto a hard surface, causing it to echo sharply in my ear, she shouted. Moments later Jonas grunted into the phone. I noted at once that he was drunk.

  ‘Daumantas,’ I said.

  ‘Who?’ he shouted down the line, aggressively.

  ‘Daumantas,’ I repeated, enunciating each syllable with pedantic care. ‘We spoke this morning. The bag?’

  ‘What?’ Jonas shouted back, stupidly. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’ He turned his mouth only slightly from the mouthpiece to shout back into his own apartment.

  ‘Turn that music down! Blyad!’ The line clicked and then growled in my ear. I slammed my receiver back onto its squat body.

  Chapter 12

  Aware that it was almost twelve, the time we had arranged to meet, I trudged slowly up Castle Street. I could not force myself to walk faster. With each step I longed to turn back and make my way home; I could not face telling her I had lost the manuscript. Somewhere a church bell began to toll and the sound rolled across the rooftops. I glanced at my watch; it was twelve o’clock exactly. I hurried a little then, not wanting to be too late, but the streets were crowded and it took a good ten minutes to reach the Filharmonija. As I drew closer I glanced ahead gloomily to the restaurant where we were due to dine. Tables had been placed outside and the wind caught the edge of their cloths, lifting them, revealing legs suggestively. I braced myself and, like a man on the way to the gallows, forced my feet on.

  The small restaurant was bustling with activity. I glanced around the diners, searching out her face; hoping, fearing, I would see her. I sat by the window, close to the door. Not studying the menu, I gazed out past the brightly blooming window boxes. It was quarter past twelve. I rehearsed my speech.

  Late the previous evening, after my call to Jonas had convinced me there was no hope left, I realised I would have to tell her. I had half entertained the idea of pretending I still had the manuscript, explaining that I had not yet had the chance to read more than a few paragraphs of it, but that what I had read was good, that it had caught my imagination, the idea of the moral dislocation of war. It would be a good excuse to meet her again. But it would only delay the inevitable. The bag was not going to reappear. I could not doubt her response: disgust and fury at an old drunkard.

  No waiter came to serve me. I watched for her. She had been late for our previous meeting, I remembered. Where was she? Another bookshop? I pictured her looking at her watch, suddenly noticing the time. Rushing out.

  An unoccupied waiter strolled over. Not taking out a pad to write my order, he raised his eyebrows, questioningly, hands in his pockets. I glanced at my watch. Half past twelve. I hesitated.

  ‘I’m waiting for somebody,’ I said finally. ‘I’ll wait until she comes. She won’t be long now.’

  He turned away, unconcerned. The street looked dismal and cold. Thick clouds had rolled rapidly over the city; the wind whipped the skirts of the tables viciously. A rose toppled over. The couple sitting outside called for their bill and hur­ried off. I found a cigarette and lit it. The blue smoke curled away above me, caught on a warm stream of air coming from a heater close to my feet. There was no sign of her.

  She had still not appeared by one o’clock. I worried. I hadn’t for a moment considered that she would not meet me, my nervousness over the lost manuscript had erased any other worries from my mind. My eyes searched the street. Twice a minute I glanced at my watch. Where could she be? Not late. Not this late. I beckoned the waiter.

  ‘There hasn’t been a message left for me?’ He shook his hea
d.

  ‘Perhaps you could ask at the counter?’ I said.

  Irritation passed like a swift cloud across his face. He straightened up, however.

  ‘What name?’ he asked curtly.

  ‘Daumantas,’ I said. ‘Steponas Daumantas. I was expecting to meet a lady called Jolanta.’

  ‘Jolanta?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, Jolanta,’ I said flushing with embarrassment; I did not know her surname.

  He smirked and traipsed away slowly. Leaning against the counter he joked with the girl. She shook her head. Not bothering to walk back across to where I sat he shook his head at me, then continued his conversation with the girl.

  When I realised she would not be coming I ordered a drink. It had started to rain and the wind took the drops and threw them against the glass. The waiters ran outside and gathered up the tables and chairs. Emptiness replaced my fear. I wished she would come. Gladly now I would confess my carelessness; would have those beautiful eyes reproach me.

  Gladly I would have seen her elegant fingers tremble on the tablecloth between us. I would take them between my own thick, clumsy fingers and beg her to forgive me. Allow her to think what she would of me, only to see those eyes. How were we to meet again? I did not know her address or telephone number and she did not know mine.

  Leaving the restaurant I set out quickly in the direction of Gedimino. My first inclination was to get a trolley bus up to Karoliniskiu. I hesitated after a few steps though. Who was to say why she had not come. And what was I to do, go banging on all the doors in her block? How would I explain to her how I knew where she lived? No, it would not do. Tired and confused I stood in the road. I knew I should be sensible and make my way back to my apartment but the thought of sitting alone in the darkness filled me with horror. I wandered slowly along the gutter, knowing with a bleak sense of inevitability I would end up in a bar getting drunk.

  As I wandered, however, I remembered that Svetlana had paid me a visit the previous evening while I had been out. I was puzzled as to what she had wanted. She knew where I lived as on some occasions I had asked her to drop my clean shirts off at my apartment. She had never, though, been to my apartment for any other reason. It was possible, I thought, that she was in need of money. Not that she would have come begging. She was proud despite her difficulties. She might have come to see if I had need of her services.

  The idea of going to see her restored a certain amount of purpose. I hurried back to my apartment to collect some shirts for Svetlana to clean. They were not really dirty and I could not afford to have them cleaned too frequently, but I needed someone to talk to. I threw the shirts into a plastic bag, making sure the bag was a good strong one with an attractive picture on it. I had to crumple one of the shirts to make it look as if it needed her work.

  I hurried back through the old ghetto to Stepono Street, with its crumbling, decaying buildings and rutted cobbles. Plaster peeled from the walls and grass grew in the guttering. Ahead of me, turning out from Svetlana’s courtyard, was a familiar figure. For a few moments I could not place who it was. The man crossed the street, limping slightly, his shoulders hunched. He had disappeared around the corner before I realised it was Jonas, the cleaner.

  The cold, blustery weather made the buildings more dismal than ever. The wind drove the rain against the little glass panes in the windows, blowing back the rags and paper covering the gaps where the glass had broken. Plaster dropped in heaps onto the broken paving slabs. I bent beneath the sagging walkway and knocked on the door. Waiting, I tried to shield myself from the wind, which eddied around the courtyard. Behind the door I heard noises, but for some time nobody answered. I banged on the door again. It shook beneath my fist.

  ‘Svetlana?’ I called.

  ‘What do you want?’ a male voice answered irritably.

  ‘I’m looking for Svetlana,’ I called. There was further shuffling behind the door and then, finally, the sound of a key turning in the lock. The door scraped open and in the darkness I saw the face of a man, perhaps in his fifties. He was unshaven and his hair was matted and dirty. He wore a coat. His puffy face was a raw shade of red.

  ‘She isn’t here,’ he said, leaning against the doorjamb. He looked me up and down reflectively.

  ‘When will she be back?’

  He coughed, a rasping cough that racked his thin frame. ‘How do I know?’ he growled.

  ‘She didn’t say?’ I persisted.

  He did not answer. He did not even look at me. He scuffed his ragged sports shoes against the doorjamb.

  ‘I’ve got work for her,’ I said, indicating the bag I was carrying. He looked up then.

  ‘Where’s the money?’ he said.

  ‘I pay her when they’re done,’ I said.

  He pushed out a hand. ‘Give me the money now and I’ll give it her.’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘No money, no work!’ His voice rose, setting him off into a paroxysm of coughs, doubling him up.

  ‘You’re her husband?’ I asked, when he had managed to half straighten up.

  He nodded his head. ‘Yeah, I am. So, you can trust me and give me the money.’

  I gave him the bag of washing and pulled out a few Litas.

  ‘This is for you, if you give the washing to Svetlana. Tell her that Steponas Daumantas left it. If she brings it around to my apartment I will pay her a little extra,’ I said.

  ‘She’ll do it,’ he said, nodding his head. He had grabbed hold of the money and stuffed it into his pocket.

  Before he closed the door, I asked, ‘A man called Jonas didn’t just call here, did he?’

  For a long moment he looked at me without answering. Then he said, ‘Yes he did, if it’s got anything to do with you.’ His voice was so threatening I did not ask anything further.

  ‘The quicker she can get the shirts done the better,’ I said.

  But he had closed the door and was locking it behind him. I trudged home.

  As I pulled off my shirt, about to go to bed, the telephone rang. I answered it quickly.

  ‘Daumantas?’ a man’s voice asked. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Jonas, here.’

  ‘Yes, I recognised your voice.’

  ‘I’ve got something that might interest you,’ he said. His voice trembled slightly, excited. Or maybe drunk.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Well, I say I…’

  ‘What have you got?’ I asked, impatient. ‘Did you find it? Did you find the bag?’

  ‘You were looking for some papers, yes?’ he said. ‘A kind of book that you had written?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, my heart lifting with joy. ‘You’ve found it? That’s wonderful!’

  ‘Hey, hey, hold on. Don’t go jumping the gun. I didn’t say I found nothing.’

  ‘Well, have you or haven’t you?’ I asked angrily.

  ‘You want to talk about it, I suggest we have a meeting,’ he said. ‘You know the Red and Black?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, annoyed and bewildered by his opaqueness. ‘Meet me there, tomorrow. Eleven thirty.’

  ‘You’ll bring…’ I began, but the telephoned growled in my ear. I dialled his number. The telephone rang. It rang and rang but nobody answered. Excited and annoyed I went to bed.

  Chapter 13

  At eleven thirty I sat in the Red and Black cradling a brandy. The whole night I had tossed and turned, unable to sleep. When finally, just before dawn, I managed to drop off, I dreamt a series of very vivid dreams. The first was of Jolanta. We were sitting at a table in the restaurant opposite the Filharmonija. She was angry. ‘How could you have lost it?’ she said. Over and again she said this. I insisted, ‘I have not lost it, Jonas has it.’ But my words made little difference. After this I dreamt of Rachael. She did not speak but there was no anger in her eyes. She looked at me and I wanted to turn from her but I could not. Her eyes cut deep. By the time Jonas pushed open the door and limped into the bar I was tired and angry.

  He nodded, seeing me, and limped
over to the bar. He ordered himself a drink and came over with it. Sliding into the seat opposite me, he winked. His breath reeked of vodka; he had obviously been drinking already.

  ‘Well?’ I said, seeing that he carried no bag.

  He raised his glass. ‘Maybe we should toast to good business?’ he said.

  ‘I wasn’t aware that a missing bag was business,’ I said sharply.

  ‘Ah, there you go, you see,’ said Jonas, a lopsided grin disfiguring his face. ‘You have a need, the bag, I have a way of satisfying your need. That is business. That is what we have been learning from the West, isn’t it? Capitalism!’ He raised his small glass. ‘To the West and capitalism,’ he laughed.

  I did not lift my glass. ‘Are you telling me that you have the bag?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Let’s get down to business, no time for chit chat. Here we are then. I know where your bag is.’

  ‘You know where it is?’

  ‘Yes!’ he said, the same idiotic grin twisting his face.

  ‘And where is it?’

  ‘Ah!’ He tapped his nose. ‘I don’t actually have the bag. If I did, of course I wouldn’t be here bargaining with you.’ He paused. ‘However, the person that does have it says that if you want it so bad then you’ll be happy to pay for it.’ He shrugged his shoulders, as if such logic was alien to him.

  ‘How much?’ I sighed, reaching for my wallet.

  ‘One hundred dollars,’ he said without hesitation, fixing me with his eye. He downed his vodka and shuffled out of his seat. Indicating the empty glass he limped off to the bar. I leaned back in my chair. When he returned, he raised his glass to toast me once more, cheerfully, as if his bargain was the most reasonable that could have been expected.

  ‘You are expecting me to pay one hundred dollars for a plastic bag and some paper?’ I asked, incredulously.

  He shrugged his shoulders again. ‘I tried to argue him down, but that was his final price,’ he said, reasonably.