Radiant City

by Lauren B. Davis

  It had been a bad day. I was travelling with Ray, from Texas, and Jack. It was one of those places. Best to travel in a group. We were driving south from Travnik when we saw a roadblock.

  Ray was from Texas and had been studying to be a priest when he decided the Church was too passive and switched to the press corps. He looked at the delegation of eight thugs posing as army regulars and said, “Gentleman, I do believe we have a problem.” He rubbed his hand over his jaw. “This is not good.”

  By then, it was too late to turn around. We came to a halt as men fanned out around us.

  “Just stay calm,” said Ray. He rolled down the window and one of the men, his thick beard flecked with old food, stuck his head in and looked around at the floor of the car.

  “Afternoon,” said Jack. The stench of beer wafted in on the man’s breath. Another came around the passenger side and tapped on the glass. I rolled down the window. The rest of the men, all of them in Chetnik uniforms, stalked the vehicle the way a hustler stalks a pool table.

  I felt my balls crawl up inside my belly. Hands grabbed and dragged us out of the car, slapped us around, guns in our faces. Jack took a lunge for his Leica and got a pistol butt across the back of the head. They took us out to a muddy field, made us kneel in the mud, hands behind our heads. The mud smelled like rotting hay and manure, and one of the Serbs pissed on Ray’s legs while the rest of them roared with drunken laughter.

  I tried to breathe through my open mouth. I couldn’t believe I was going to die with that smell in my nostrils.

  Then Jack said, “Well, I like a joke as much as the next guy,” and he stood up, slapping at the mud on the knees of his jeans. “But if I stay down there any longer I’m going to go to bed tonight smelling like a pile of pig shit.”

  The men looked at one another and the first man, the one who had leaned his head in the car window, yelled something and gestured with his rifle that Jack should get back into the mud. Jack smiled, moved slowly and, never taking his eyes off the bearded man, he pulled a package of Camels out of his shirt pocket, offered them all around and grinned as though there was nothing wrong in the world.

  Staying alive cost us three hundred Deutschmarks.

  We climbed back into the car, smiled nicely and waved good-bye. Ray looked sheepish and said, “That smell may not just be from the fields, boys. I think I’m gonna rename this place the Brown Underpants Pass.”

  When we got into town, we dumped our gear at the hotel and cleaned up, especially Ray. Then we headed for a bar a soldier had told us about. As soon as I came through the door, I noticed a girl leaning up against the bar wearing thigh-high boots. Her hair was dyed several shades of blond and her face had the bone-white complexion of a vampire. I told her what had happened.

  “Papci,” said the un-dead girl. “Our beautiful country is raped by criminals spilled out from broken jails.”

  I drank a number of glasses of bitter wine. I told her I was brave. Told her I’d been the one who gave the papci cigarettes and negotiated our release. She took me to her mother’s house, where the second floor was nothing but rubble and wind and we fucked to the rumble and shriek of shells exploding and sniper fire. We fucked while Prince’s “1999” played on a tinny cassette player. She smelled sour and her hair was dirty, but it didn’t matter. I never knew her name, she didn’t know mine, and when we were finished she asked me if I could get her some food. I said I’d try, although I knew I wouldn’t and from the look on her face as I left, I thought she knew this, too. I put a few bills on the cassette player and left her lying on the mattress on the floor, her hands tightly clutching the blanket, even though she was asleep.

  A couple of weeks later, when I swung back that way again, I asked about the girl with the Nosferatu skin.

  “You mean Mirjana,” the busboy said and shrugged. “She don’t come here no more since mother is shot.” He put a pistol-shaped hand to his head. “Pow. Sniper.”

  I tried, then, to see if I could find her, just to see if she was all right, to bring her the food I’d promised her, but the house where she had lived was empty and no one knew where she had gone.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  She has turned on every light in the apartment. She has lighted four candles. It does not help. Anxiety has pushed, elbowed and hefted its way into the room as the hours pass, so that now there is no space for anything else, only the metallic sliver of fear when she realizes there is no one she can call. Ramzi is out. She cannot bother her father, who sleeps down the hall unaware that his grandson is not home in bed. She cannot call the mothers of Joseph’s friends. The truth is that she does not know who Joseph’s friends are. She is furious with herself and ashamed as well, for she has failed at being a good mother in so many ways. There is no other parent she can call in the middle of the night, in the middle of this night and say, “Is he there? Is my son with your son?” No one who can reassure her and say, “Do not worry, he is with us. He’s safe.”

  She sits on the couch and pulls rhythmically at the end of her braided hair. How did it happen that she is so far out of his life? When she lived with Anatole, she used to know the boys in the neighbourhood who played soccer in the courtyard together. But that was then, when he was young; and it was there, in the 13th arrondissement. Another life. Maybe she should have stayed there, or gone back after Anatole went to jail. Joseph had had his little friends in that neighbourhood. Maybe it would have been worth the looks, the pity and the contempt the women in the building had felt for her, an Arab, a woman with more bruises than good sense. Would it have made a difference? Regrets and second-guesses flash into her mind like warning lights on a railway crossing, on a police car. Like lightning bolts, each one with its charge of danger.

  She stands, walks to the bathroom and splashes water on her face. She straightens the towels. Takes a cloth and wipes at marks on the mirror. She returns to the couch, and almost at once is on her feet again. She turns the gas on the stove to heat water for coffee, takes out a mug and then turns the gas off again. Her stomach is already churning; coffee will only make it worse.

  It is almost two o’clock in the morning. Where does a boy go at two o’clock in the morning? She has heard stories of boys who go down into the catacombs and play dangerous, drug-infested games; of packs of youths who pit themselves against each other in the cemeteries; of vacant houses overrun by drug addicts and perverts and pimps who buy and sell pretty children and teenage girls from places like Romania and Bosnia. She puts both hands over her mouth as her imagination conjures images too vivid to bear. She wonders if she should call the police, find out if they have—she can barely say the word, even to herself—arrested him for something. She shudders, pulls her sweater tighter and paces the floor.

  The love she feels for Joseph is so great her ribs crack against the strain of her swollen heart. She gnaws at her nails. Every noise in the building makes her jump. There is never silence in this place. Always there is some hum, some rustle just beneath the surface of quiet. Like the noise of a refrigerator, you notice it only when it stops—except it never stops. A bump from somewhere down below. Footsteps. A door. Even at this hour. Do they never sleep? She has a headache from straining to hear his footsteps on the stairs.

  She pulls back the red curtain, opens the window and sticks her head far out into the cold air, trying to catch sight of him swaggering down the street. The street is nearly deserted—a couple walk arm in arm, a man with a duffle bag and a bedroll ambles along, looking in doorways. She waits. Once she thinks it is Joseph, with three other boys, but she is mistaken and that clutches at her heart, too, that she could mistake her own son’s walk. She lets the curtain fall, walks to the couch, sits, stands, and then sits again. She folds her hands in her lap and bends over so her chest rests on her knees, trapping her already-fidgeting fingers. Still. If I stop acting like a lunatic, he will come home. I will count to one hundred. One, two, three … At one hundred she decides, no, she has to count backwards. One hundred, ninety-nin
e, ninety-eight …

  At three o’clock, she can stand it no longer. Something must be done. He does not stay out this late, not without phoning. Never has he done this before. But she cannot go out and look for him alone; she needs help. She considers Anthony, but she does not want to wake him. There is only one person she can think of who might help her, who will not be disturbed so late at night since he has said he is often up until nearly dawn.

  In her little blue book she looks up Matthew’s number, thankful that Anthony had given it to her during the time when Matthew was so depressed and they were worried about him. He picks up on the first ring and sounds neither surprised nor sleepy. She tells him what is wrong, the words spilling out like eggs from a basket, breaking everywhere.

  “All right, Saida. Calm down. I’ll be right over. What’s your address? All right, then. Don’t panic. He’ll probably be there before I am, but if not, we’ll find him.”

  She knows it is foolish, what he is saying, for how are they to find a boy in the midst of a city like this, with enough alleyways and subterranean vaults and hidden worlds to fill a whole other dimension?

  It is less than half an hour later when his feet sound on the stairs. She has the door open before his head comes round the corner, and she tries to hide her disappointment.

  “He back?” says Matthew.

  “No. I am afraid. I did not know who else to call.” The phrase sounds pathetic. He comes into the apartment and closes the door behind him. His presence in the room, the first man who is not a family member to be in her apartment since she moved in, makes him seem taller than usual. She walks to the table and chairs, puts a chair between them. Her hands clasp in front of her, under her chin, her elbows tight in beside her body. She is aware that every gesture she makes, every word she speaks, is a parody, a caricature. She puts her hands down, then behind her back, then in front again. “I shouldn’t have called you. I panicked. I guess I panicked. He will be home any minute. I’m sure of that.”

  Matthew comes toward her, reaches out quickly and puts his arms around her, trapping her against his chest. “It’s all right. And yes, he’ll probably be home any minute. It isn’t that late, for a boy his age, is it?”

  She freezes against him, partly from shock and then for an instant she craves the comfort. Not to be alone anymore is a great temptation. But she knows where such temptations lead. She pushes away from him, from the pressure of his hands, and their eyes meet briefly, and if there were room for another emotion she thinks he, too, might be embarrassed by the implications of such an embrace. Saida looks out the window. “He comes home no later than one o’clock. But then, yes, sometimes he is later. He calls, though. Most always he calls.”

  “So why is this different?”

  Why is it so different? This is a reasonable question. It is different because it is three o’clock in the morning now and she does not know where her son is and she should know, and she has been afraid, more every day, of the way he slips through her fingers like angry smoke. “It is too late. He should be home.”

  “Okay, so where does he hang out? You’ve called his friends?”

  “Yes. I called. No”—she looks down, shakes her head—”I do not know many of them. They are not from this neighbourhood. I do not know them. There is no one to call.”

  “Did you call the police?”

  “For a teenaged Arab boy gone not even twenty-four hours?” He knows nothing. As if they would care.

  Matthew runs his fingers over his skull. “All right. Okay. Where does he go?”

  “If I knew that, don’t you think I’d go there?” She has made a mistake calling him. She wants him to leave.

  “Listen to me, Saida. I’ll go out and look for him, if you can give me some clue, anything, about where he might be.”

  She tries to think, her mind a whirl of streets and doorways and parks and alleys and bodegas and fetid apartments in the banlieue. “He is often in Barbès, I think. He might be there, anywhere. There is a park, Square Léon. The boys hang out there. But any of the streets … out in the suburbs with a gang, if he’s gone out there he can’t get back, the metro has stopped—oh, I do not know!” She must calm herself. If she crumples now … Matthew steps toward the door. “I’ll start there, then.”

  She turns and reaches for her coat.

  “I think I should go alone,” he says.

  “No. I am going with you.”

  “What if he comes home? What if he calls?”

  She does not want to see the good sense in this, for if she has to stay, has to sit and do nothing, she will surely go crazy. “I cannot.”

  “Look, Saida, I know you’re worried, but there’s really no reason to go off the rails. Joseph’s probably just running the streets with his friends, or maybe he’s with a girl or something. Believe me, sixteen-year-old boys can find a million reasons not to call their mothers and ask permission to stay out for the night. I’ll call you in an hour, but you need to stay here.”

  He puts his arm around her shoulders and, whereas before she wanted only to scurry away, now it is different and she does not like that it is different. She wants to pull away and wants, at the same time, to grab the front of his jacket and bury her burning forehead there. The indecision means she stands still.

  “It is okay,” she says. “He is fine. He is fine. You will call me every hour, or more, yes?” In her mind, she sees the minutes, a flight of steep stairs, each riser three-feet tall, climbing up into the night. She will never be able to haul herself up that far. She looks up at Matthew. His eyes, shadows and light, hold hers. “Please, Matthew. I am so sorry to involve you.”

  He gives her a strong squeeze. “Look, no worries, all right? I’ll take a look up the street in Barbès, and call you from there, either way, okay? Write your number down for me. Tell you what, how about making us something to eat? When we get back I bet he’ll be hungry. I sure as hell will be. Soup or something, okay?”

  She smiles a little. “Busy hands, is that it?”

  “Empty stomachs is more like it.”

  “Thank you,” she says, and in her mind she sees herself kissing his cheek, feels the prickle of stubble under her lips. No. This is only need. This is only fear. She pats the front of his coat, buttoning the top button for him. “Thank you.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  On the street, he heads toward Barbès, and with every step his conviction that he is out of his mind grows. One tall, thin, white guy roaming the streets of Barbès in the middle of the night is an invitation for trouble.

  Why is he out here? Because Saida asked me. Saida, who works so hard and came to drag me up from the pit. Saida, who was burned and is still beautiful. Saida, who cooks lemon and chicken, serves customers, and washes dishes while her brother reads the paper and her father stares out the window, and Saida, who still has time to grow jasmine in the courtyard. Saida, who smells of sandalwood and whose hair is like a black velvet rope. Saida. Because she needs me. Because her son needs me too, maybe.

  Think of the son. Don’t think of the mother. Matthew remembers what it feels like to be one of the lost boys. Never Never Land is not all it is cracked up to be. Especially if it never ends.

  Paris this late at night is a different world. Vacant and hidden. The quiet unsettles Matthew. Few cars. A lone, half-frozen bicyclist along the boulevard de Rochechouart. Symbolically, ironically, inevitably, a lone black cat in an alleyway. As he crosses Rochechouart he notices the bums in the doorways, set up for the night in sleeping bags laid over cardboard and scattered with empty bottles and plastic bags, their half-wild dogs at the watch. The homeless can’t be forced into shelters if they have dogs, and so, of course, they all have them. Yellow eyes follow him as he walks, hackles raised, soft growls. Farther on, several men stand, waiting, watching for business, he assumes.

  Turning right on rue de la Goutte d’Or he hears voices from somewhere nearby. His hearing becomes more acute with every step and he finally identifies the voices as
coming from a television on a third floor. Metal security gates cover shop windows and graffiti emblazons the walls: dozens of different tags in red, orange, white and black paint. Light spills softly from a half-open shutter and along with it the voice of Cheb Hasni, the young rai singer gunned down by Islamic radicals in the streets of Oran a couple of years before. A pair of drug addicts, quietly nodding away the night, slouch against each other in front of the butcher’s. The air smells different here than in Matthew’s neighbourhood, full of leftover lamb tagine, cumin and incense mixed with the garbage and the smell of drains. Parfum des égouts.

  He passes the police station just as two cars pull up. Out of the first the police haul a blond girl with a wide-boned Slavic face. She is no more than twenty, in tight jeans and sneakers, her hair a rat’s nest falling over her eyes, and she is handcuffed. Two more police get out of the front of the second car and two girls get out of the back—one Arab, one African. These girls are not handcuffed, and the African looks pleased, the smile on her face and the swollen eye telling most of the story.

  Even before he climbs the steps to the Square Léon, he hears more voices. Louder, slurry. Three drunks wrestle with a bottle, until it falls to the ground and shatters, the smash followed by loud curses. One man tries to slap another, only to misjudge the distance and land on his hands and knees, where he quietly, effortlessly, vomits. The soccer grounds are empty; the houses around the square locked up tight.

  A group of young men loiter at the corner of rue Myrha. He counts six but cannot tell if Joseph is among them.

  “Hey,” he calls, “Joseph? C’est moi.”

  He is answered in French. “Who you looking for?” says a small man with sharp eyes and two missing teeth.

  “Friend of mine. Joseph Ferhat.”