by Lesley Lokko
‘Forty-seven,’ Mercedes said, not without a hint of triumph. ‘And he’s not married.’
Embeth’s eyebrows went up. ‘How d’you know all that?’
The corners of Mercedes’ mouth went up, almost mockingly. ‘What? You think I don’t know things?’
Embeth suppressed her own smile. She was right. There was little Mercedes and Sophia didn’t know or see. Forty-seven. It seemed veritably ancient, though Lionel Harburg certainly didn’t look ancient. ‘How d’you know he’s not married?’ she asked after a decent enough pause.
Mercedes shook her head. ‘His collars. They’re not pressed properly. No wife lets her husband out of the house like that. No, there’s no wife. You want another one, chica?’ she indicated the battered prawns.
Embeth shook her head and slid off the stool. She was already thinking ahead to what she might wear for dinner that evening. ‘No, I’m not hungry,’ she said dreamily.
‘Black,’ Mercedes said firmly.
Embeth looked at her blankly. ‘Black?’
‘Wear your black evening gown. You know, the one with the sleeves like this,’ she crossed her hands across her chest in imitation of the Halston pleated silk gown that was sheathed in tissue and plastic in her wardrobe upstairs. ‘And put your hair up. It’ll make you look más sophisticada. Not so young.’
Embeth blinked slowly. Truly, there wasn’t a thing the woman missed. ‘Okay,’ she said meekly.
He was very quick, not just in the way he talked, but in the way he listened. He caught every glance, every shift in mood at the table without ever seeming to look. She liked that. There was a knowing subtlety about him that contrasted sharply with the flamboyance of her own family, whose voices seemed permanently raised. She liked the way he listened, quietly, with the finger of one hand pressed into his cheek. There was always a small smile at the corner of his mouth, which he tried hard to conceal, as though he were permanently amused by something no one else could hear or see. A rather unsettling combination of lightness and intensity came off him, like a faint buzz. She heard it and was drawn to it, and to him. She’d done as Mercedes suggested and pinned her hair up, catching it with a red silk rose just above her left ear. The Halston gown offset the faint tan she’d acquired (without her mother catching her) since she’d been back. She saw from the way his eyes kept coming back to her that he was aware of her in a different way from the others around the table. He was a difficult man to gauge but the feeling that he approved of her made it possible for her to talk to him lightly, almost teasingly.
Her mother saw it, too. After dinner the men retired to her father’s study for port and cigars. Miriám waited for her as the women left the table. ‘He’s nice, no?’ she said quietly, tucking her arm into Embeth’s. ‘Very proper, although I don’t find him so English, I must say.’
‘Well, he’s German, isn’t he? I mean, from before?’
‘Yes, of course, I keep forgetting. Well, what do you think?’
Embeth blushed again. She kept her face slightly averted. ‘He’s . . . he’s nice,’ she said lamely. Nice seemed such a weak word to describe someone so powerful.
‘Nice?’ Is that all?’
‘I don’t really know him,’ Embeth said weakly.
‘Then get to know him,’ Miriám snapped suddenly, disengaging her arm from Embeth’s. She strode ahead, leaving Embeth staring after her in stunned disbelief.
He stood with his back towards her, just inside the pool of light cast by the dining room chandelier. She was in the doorway, hidden from him by the curtain that rose and fell in the breeze like a veil. They were so close she could have reached out her hand and touched him, had she dared. He was smoking, quietly, with slow, unhurried precision. He shifted slightly, but still did not see her. He ground out his cigarette with his heel and stood for a moment, looking at the ground. His expression was different from the one she’d seen at table – less guarded, more open as if he was too deep inside his own thoughts to be aware of what he might have to hide. As she watched him silently, she felt her stomach tense, but the little frisson of fear she’d experienced as soon as she saw him there was gone. She was calm, content to continue looking at him in absolute, perfect silence.
‘Who’s there?’ he asked suddenly, but his voice was low, as though he half-expected the answer. She must have made some sort of sound, a drawing in of breath, perhaps.
‘It’s me,’ she whispered.
‘Embeth?’ He put out his hands and it had become a kind of game now. His fingertips brushed her arm through the curtain and he stepped towards her. He was so tall. She had to tilt her head quite far backwards to see him. The light was fully upon him but she was drawn not to the outline of his body or the gradual coming into focus of his face, but to his eyes, to the look she’d seen earlier, a kind of nakedness that she’d never seen in a man. But strong, not weak; there was no vulnerability in it. Just an openness that was utterly disarming. It seemed as though he was letting her see straight through him, right to the centre of who he really was, not who he showed himself to be to others. They stood very still for a moment or two, not touching, with the curtain rising and falling all around them with the breeze. Behind her she could hear Mercedes and Sophia clearing the table and behind them, further still, the muted sounds of conversation coming from the living room. Soon her mother would come looking for her, she knew, when a decent enough interval had passed. She had again the strong sensation of being part of some well-worked-out game in which she, despite its importance to the course of her own life, was only a minor player. Her parents, the dinner invitations, the enigmatic older man from overseas . . . there was a pattern and a strategy at play but what astonished her now was her willingness to join in. After so many years of growing rebellion, she was falling in with a suggestion that hadn’t even yet been made.
He took her wrist very gently, tightening his grip. ‘Don’t,’ he said, so softly that at first she wasn’t sure he’d spoken. ‘Don’t be afraid.’
She looked up at him. They were suddenly in an intimacy that was so strong they both had to pull back from it. ‘I’m not,’ she said slowly, wonderingly. ‘No, I’m not afraid.’
12
1965
SYLVAN
Paris, France
There was a telephone in the other room, shrieking its head off, like his grandmother used to when she felt those around her had ceased listening. His head was buried somewhere in a tangle of sheets, ladies underwear, and in his mouth, the fragrance of a woman’s skin mingled with the rather unpleasant taste of stale cigarettes. Not just any woman’s skin, he reminded himself as he blearily roused himself and forced himself upright. Anouschka Malaquais. It was her perfume, her sweat, her sweet secret fluids that were still on him. Anouschka Malaquais herself lay snoring lightly beside him.
He staggered out of bed, his penis bobbing stupidly, proudly before him as he strode to the adjoining study. He picked up the phone. ‘’Allo?’ His voice was that particular gruff mixture of drink and cigarette smoke and the bleary torpor of one who hasn’t yet properly slept. There was the faint bleep of the international call and he felt, just for a moment, the fleeting tremor of disquiet that accompanied every overseas call. A short burst of static, like gunfire, then the high-pitched whine that said the caller had hung up. He stared at it for a second, and then shook his head. He turned, running an appreciative hand over the hard plane of his stomach. He could hear Anouschka Malaquais (he found it hard to think of her simply as ‘Anouschka’) stirring next door. The sun had come out and threw long, luminous streaks across the carpeted floor. He was almost at the door when it started up again. He walked back and picked up the receiver. ‘Allo?’
‘Sylvan?’ It was his stepmother. She was gasping for air. He felt the hackles of fear across the back of his neck. ‘Sylvan? C’est toi, Sylvan?’
‘Yes, yes, it’s me,’ he said impatiently. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘C’est ton père. Sylvan—’ The line crackled an
d fizzed alarmingly. ‘Que Dieu le protège . . . il est mort.’ He gripped the phone. His stepmother had been his enemy in that far-off place called childhood. His own mother had died when he was too young to really remember her, but now that he no longer lived at home, or even in the same country, the ages-old enmity between them had lessened slightly. She was a religious woman with a worldview that had clashed with his own. It was not surprising, really. Drink, drugs, women. Everything he did, she abhorred.
He gripped the phone again. He’d broken out into a cooling sweat. It wasn’t the time to think about that. ‘Dead? What d’you mean? He wasn’t ill.’
‘No, not ill. There was an attack,’ her voice dropped several octaves. ‘Last night. Il a été assassiné.’ She began to cry, a fearful sobbing noise that sent a shiver down his spine. The throb of dread rose up, up in his throat.
‘Assassinated?’ he repeated slowly. He could hear Anouschka Malaquais yawning next door. He shook his head, trying to clear it. ‘How? When?’
‘Don’t come home. Not now. Stay where you are. For now.’
‘But . . . I don’t have . . . I don’t have any money,’ he heard himself say. That was the real and immediate fear. He’d overspent last night at the casino. Wildly. His monthly allowance was gone before the month was even a quarter way through. It had been on his mind when he went to bed the night before. He’d gone to sleep with Anouschka Malaquais’s mouth on his cock and his head full of the ways he might ask for more.
There was a long, horrid silence. He thought she might have hung up. She did, but not before the word exploded out of her mouth like a gunshot. ‘Cochon.’ Pig. And that was it. The line went dead.
13
ANOUSCHKA MALAQUAIS
Paris, France
‘Cut!’ The director yelled out the command. There were audible sighs of relief from the crew who’d been struggling to please him for over an hour, not least from Anouschka. She’d stumbled on set that morning after barely getting an hour’s sleep. Sylvan had been woken up by a telephone call just before dawn and had rushed from the hotel room without saying a word. She’d phoned François to send a driver to pick her up. She yawned as discreetly as she could. The rhythm of a day on set with Patrice de Santis was always the same: sixty, seventy, sometimes even ninety minutes of intense concentration, then an hour or more of waiting around, then another burst of frenetic activity, hair and make-up people fussing, teasing, powdering, soothing, smoothing . . . and then another period of waiting about . . . and then back on set for it all to begin again. Film sets had their own rhythms that seemed to have nothing to do with the outside world. Perhaps, Anouschka thought to herself in a momentary flash of insight as yet another junior stylist approached with eyeliner and a powder brush, that was the whole point? That it wasn’t like real life?
But it was certainly her life now. Ever since that fateful Friday afternoon when she’d been spotted coming out of her school gates with a group of friends and a photographer had spotted her, aiming his camera at her like a gun. She’d stuck out her tongue and he’d snapped away, one frame after another, and then he’d come over to talk to her. His name was François Languet. Her name back then was Anne-Marie. Anne-Marie Malaquais. She was sixteen. He was much older, charming and camp as hell. She knew immediately she was safe with him. He said she was prettier than Bardot. That he would make her a star. That together they’d become rich and famous. She didn’t know why but she trusted him, right from the start. It took him six months but then he sold the photograph to Time magazine. Paris in Spring. Paris au printemps. François and that photograph set her on the course that changed her life. Anne-Marie Malaquais became, quite simply, Anouschka. She started modelling, skipping classes at school without saying a word to her parents or her friends. She slipped her mother the extra money, claiming she’d been working part-time in a bar. Within a year, just as he’d said, François moved her on and up in the world. After her first catwalk appearance, her first proper pay cheque arrived – more than her father earned in a year. The game, so to speak, was up. She left school without a single qualification – who needed one? In one year she’d earned more than her father had his whole life. He was a factory worker. She was on her way to becoming une vedette. A star. How was he supposed to argue with that?
But it wasn’t all smooth sailing. Having made her a model, François wasn’t content to stop there. He wanted her to work on television, in commercials, in films. It took nearly ten years but he got her there in the end. Now, at twenty-nine, she was a bona fide movie star, one of the most photographed women in France. The fact that it had been two years since her last movie made no difference. She’d finally crossed the magical line from ‘actress’ to ‘star’ and was as famous for her outfits and lovers as for any roles she might have played. Her latest conquest, Sylvan Betancourt, was the icing on the cake. François was beside himself. They made such a striking couple: Sylvan with his dark, mocha-coloured skin and political pedigree, and she, blonde and honeyed, a French Grace Kelly. ‘Good move,’ François said approvingly when the very first picture was taken of them coming out of a hotel together. ‘Very good move.’
She yawned again and got up from the chair. She was listless and needed a cigarette. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Patrice eyeing her nervously. He needn’t have worried. Unlike some stars she could name (but wouldn’t, of course), Anouschka Malaquais was a consummate professional. She showed up on time, learned her lines, didn’t throw tantrums or make outrageous demands. She got along with cast and crew alike, was unfailingly polite and displayed the sort of good-humoured willingness to pitch in at all times, in all weathers and at all hours that had gone a long (very long) way to making her the darling of all who met her and several million more who hadn’t. A quick drag would perk her up – that was all. Christ, if Patrice or any of the other directors knew how long and hard she’d worked to get where she was, they’d know she wasn’t about to throw it all away by behaving badly.
‘Chérie,’ she murmured to one of the many assistants running haphazardly around the set. ‘You couldn’t find me a cigarette, could you, ma p’tite? I’m dying for one!’
‘But of course, Miss Malaquais! Just one second!’ And the girl rushed off to do exactly as she was bid.
She was sitting on one of the plastic chairs outside on the terrace, finishing her cigarette when she became aware of the static buzz of a radio presenter’s voice, coming from the street below. A word caught her ear. Betancourt. She stubbed out her cigarette and leaned over the balcony. There were two workmen in white overalls painting the wrought-iron balustrades outside the hotel where the film was being shot. A tiny portable transistor stood on the ground between them. Neither saw her; they were both engrossed in their work. She strained to hear. At 11.27 last night, the president of the tiny West African country of Togo was assassinated in what appeared to be a military coup d’état. The president, Crístiano Betancourt, was pronounced dead at 5.18 this morning. His only son, Sylvan Olympio Betancourt, is currently residing in Paris but it is believed he will be recalled . . . Anouschka almost toppled over the railings.
‘François! François!’ she ran back into the room where they were filming, ignoring the looks of surprise. François was in the editing suite with Patrice. She burst through the door. ‘François! Quick! Get me a car!’
‘What’s going on?’ François looked up in alarm. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘It’s Sylvan! His father . . . it’s his father. His father’s been assassinated!’ She put a hand to her throat. ‘Last night. Get me a car, please!’
14
‘Phosphate?’ Sylvan looked uncertainly at the man who had just spoken.
‘Phosphate,’ the man repeated firmly. ‘The largest deposits in Africa. Who knows . . . perhaps even the world?’
‘Er, I see.’
‘With all due respect, Mr Betancourt, I’m not sure that you do.’
‘It’s like this, Sylvan.’ Dominique de Valois, whom Sylvan
remembered from his teenage years, turned to him. He’d been deputy foreign minister under Pleven and was now minister of finance and economic affairs. Sylvan remembered him primarily for his cigars (Cuban) and his sense of humour (dry). There’d been many a night he’d stayed up listening to his father and de Valois talking and laughing in the Paris apartment whilst he pretended to do his homework next door. But de Valois wasn’t laughing now. ‘We sent out a team of French engineers in May to take a preliminary look at the Hahatoe site. Their initial reports were encouraging, but it was the chief engineer’s report last month that we believe set the whole thing in motion.’
‘Wh . . . what do you mean?’ Sylvan’s mouth was dry.
‘You guys are sitting on potentially the largest lime phosphate deposits on the continent. As Antoine said, perhaps the world. There’s no way in hell the timing of this coup d’état isn’t connected to the report. D’you know how much all of this is worth?’
Sylvan shook his head. He’d never even heard of lime phosphate until that afternoon. ‘How much?’
‘Enough. It’s used in fertilisers and there aren’t many places on earth where it’s found in such concentrated quantities. Moscow’s got its eye on Hahatoe. And I’ll wager that the thugs who killed your father on Monday were armed by the Soviets. This isn’t a game, Sylvan. Moscow’s been looking for ways to get into Francophone West Africa for decades. This is as close as they’ve ever come and if you think, for one second, that de Gaulle is going to sit back and allow that to happen, think again. You’re on a flight first thing tomorrow morning. Pack your bags. You’re going home.’
‘Phosphate?’ It was Anouschka’s turn to look blank.
‘Phosphate.’ Now he was the one to sound firm. He paused in the task of flinging more clothes into a suitcase. ‘Lime phosphate. It’s used in making fertilisers.’
