“And have you ever known anyone who reached that point?”
“Oh no,” Eric said. “I wouldn’t know a person like that.”
Some days passed. She did not speak to Andrew, except about the trivial. She felt under threat; why should the threat extend to him? She said to herself, I will be careful from now on, and perhaps this will go no further. She did not believe this; either that she would be careful, or that there would be no repercussions. She had stepped into a parallel world whose existence she had suspected for so long, and she could not say, now, I lost my map, I did not mean to trespass, I will never do it again. Or, she could say it; it need not have any practical effect.
They were driving home; it was dark. Frances said, “There it is.” It was the gates she recognized; and they were open. The garden had gone. In its place was a white, foursquare, five-story office block, with three steps up to a large front door; a door of wroughtiron curlicues, and chrome-tinted toughened glass. There was a plaque on the gate: BOHKARI ESTABLISHMENT FOR TRADE AND COMMERCE.
Andrew slowed the car. He sounded puzzled. “That building’s always been there, Fran.”
“Nothing’s always been there. Don’t be silly.”
“Okay, let’s say it’s been there for months.”
“You must be wrong.”
“Look,” he said mildly, “I have an eye for a building, right? What you see there may not be a distinguished example of modern architecture, but I’m not likely to mix it up with anything else. Do me a favor.”
She didn’t answer; unclipped her seat belt so that she could turn round properly, craning her neck.
“We can go back if you like. What’s wrong?”
“I’ll tell you what’s wrong.” She felt enraged; why should he speak to her as if she were simpleminded? “When I last saw that plot there was a garden there. They had a lawn. It was the only lawn I ever saw. I told you about it. Now there’s a building. How can it have got there? How can it have got there without my noticing?”
“But we come this way twice a week.” His bewilderment was plain, she heard it in his voice. “It didn’t spring up overnight. They finished it before Christmas.”
“How could they? How could they?”
“I’ll turn round, so that you can have another look. Do a U-ey, as Jeff puts it.”
“That’s all right,” she said dully. “You needn’t.”
“I want you to be satisfied.”
He turned as soon as he could, drove slowly past the gates again. The garden had gone, and the ramshackle villa with its tin roof; the hanging lamp had gone, and the swaying light with its dappled flurry of moths’ wings. “Don’t worry,” he said, “there are places I passed in my first few weeks in Jeddah that I could swear I’ve never seen since, and yet they must be there, I know they must, it’s just that you’re coming at them from a different angle. And of course, you have to keep your eyes on the road.”
“I don’t.”
“No, but you must have lost your bearings. This town changes fast.”
Who would have believed it? That they could put up a five-story building, while your back was turned, while your attention was elsewhere? She has been looking at the external city; but the internal city is more important, the one that you construct inside your head. That is where the edifice of possibility grows, and grows without your knowledge; it is subject to no planner’s control.
They pulled up outside Dunroamin. “Fairfax is coming in a couple of days,” Andrew said. “He really is, this time. I spoke to him on the phone. He’s got his visa. I’m collecting him at the airport.” He got out, locked his door, opened the boot and pulled out a couple of the big brown bags which held their groceries. “Can I ask him over for an evening?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Will it be all right? Only you seem so distracted, Fran.”
“I want to meet him. I’ve been looking forward to it.”
She picked up one of the bags herself, holding it in her arms like a heavy child. Andrew wedged a bag against the outside wall, propping it up with his knee while he fumbled for the right key; but she pushed the metal gate with her foot, and said, “Look, it’s open.”
“Shouldn’t be,” Andrew said. “We’re supposed to keep the place secure.”
The front gate was ajar. “Perhaps Raji is just dashing in and out,” she said.
Andrew let them into the flat. As soon as he opened the door, she knew that something was wrong. Andrew switched on the light. He stood, staring at the mess, and then lowered the bags of groceries carefully to the floor. “We’ve been done over,” he said. “Okay, let’s not panic, leave everything just where it is and we’ll have a look.”
They had been burglarized before, in Africa; so often, so routinely, that Andrew was calm, summoning all the old feelings: a moderate, suitable annoyance, a measure of resignation, a calm, impervious front. But Frances felt that it was not something you got used to. She ran from room to room, sweeping each one with a glance. The wardrobe gaped open; some of their clothes had been dragged from the hangers, flung about the room. Drawers were pulled out. “Our camera’s gone,” she said.
“Let’s check the cash, that’s the first thing.”
They still had their housekeeping money. A bundle of it nested securely in its place underneath the dressing table; it had not been a convenient arrangement, lifting the furniture around every few days, but it had served its purpose. “I thought my African habits were overcautious,” Andrew said. “But seemingly not.” Casually, he heaved the dressing table back into place. “Found the rest?”
She had six five-hundred-riyal notes, crisp new purple ones, inside the Holy Koran. “Good girl,” Andrew said. “Although you never know if thieves can read, do you?”
“Are we going to get the police?”
He looked around the living room. It was obvious how the burglars had got in. They had come through the big window with its sliding panel; the length of wood that should have blocked the track lay on the carpet. It had been removed from the inside. “You forgot to put it back,” Andrew said. He saw her face. “I’m not blaming you. I know you want a breath of air sometimes. I can understand how it happened.”
“If I want air I go to the roof. I didn’t take the wood out.”
“You must have. Who else could it have been?”
“No one.”
“But look.” He held it up. “Here it is. It didn’t jump out by itself.”
“I don’t know how it happened.”
“The landlord’s not been round again, has he?”
“Not while I’ve been here. I suppose he must have keys.”
“Who else has been in?”
“Only Yasmin. Oh, and Sarsaparilla. She brought a plate of something, I gave her something back.”
“Was she in here on her own?”
“Only for a minute.”
“It’s just what they always say. Servants let thieves in. They take up with shady people on their day off, and there you are, they tell them your movements, they tell them the layout, and the next thing is you’ve been cleaned out.”
“But Sarsaparilla doesn’t go anywhere. They don’t let her out. She’s too frightened to go out.”
“Okay then,” Andrew said, indifferently. “If it wasn’t her, it must have been Yasmin. One idea is considerably less ridiculous than the other, but take your pick.”
On the desk, papers had been scattered, letters had been ripped open. Andrew moved them around gingerly, with a fingertip. “I reckon laborers must have done it, Yemenis or somebody. They think you stuff your letters home with banknotes for your old mother. Didn’t take the video, did they?”
“They’ve taken the Thamaga candlesticks. Some food has gone, out of the fridge. Just eggs and things.”
“There you are then. Not a professional job, is it?”
She shook her head. “It seems not. Unless it is in fact very professional. Professionals masquerading as blundering amateurs.”
/> “Still reading the detective books?” Andrew crossed the room, put his arms around her and pulled her gently toward him. He cradled her against his shoulder. She felt light and frail under his confident hands, just an assemblage of bones: and barely consoled. “It’s all right now, Fran. I don’t think they’ve got anything that’s worth much.” He held her tight, rocking her, solid and undisturbed; one of the sex war’s elite corps, one of the shock troops home on a family visit. “Listen, don’t panic, Frances, it could have been much worse.” He was comforting her, for her own carelessness in having let the thieves in; the theory about the maid, which he had worked up so carefully, had been to allow her to save face.
“I wish you could believe me,” she said. “But if you can’t you can’t. I’m just a woman after all, and unlikely to be able to keep track of my actions.”
She struggled free of him; went from room to room. She heard him pick up the phone, heard him speaking, calm and bluff and male; heard him give a little laugh. She went into the bedroom and sat down on the bed, fingering her mauled and despoiled summer frocks. They had rummaged through the drawer where she kept her makeup, looking for jewelry perhaps. Her soapstone tortoise had gone from the bedside table. What a stupid thing to take! How do burglars know, what sixth sense informs them, about the small, valueless things that you cannot bear to lose?
Andrew stood in the doorway. He had not taken offense, he understood her outburst; what’s one little squawk, when the nest has been invaded? “I’ve just talked to Eric,” he said. “He says that unless we’ve lost something important, we shouldn’t bother with the police. For a start we’d have to get all the booze out of the house. Then he says they sprinkle black fingerprint powder everywhere, and you can’t get it off the carpets. I’d have to go down to the police station, and he says I might be there all night, we’d have to get Hasan over to interpret, there are endless forms to fill in, and they never catch anybody at the end of it all.”
“And if they did …”
“Yes, that’s a thought. I wouldn’t want that on my conscience. What about your clothes? Have they taken much?”
“Most things seem to be here. I can’t be sure.”
“Shall we clean up then?”
She rose, tiredly. “We may as well. Just let’s get the stuff off the floor and back in the cupboards, and I’ll do the rest tomorrow.” She thought, I wonder if they have taken my diary?
Andrew looked at her searchingly. A serious, responsible expression took over his face; he frowned. “You look pale,” he said.
“It was a shock.”
“You must put your feet up. I’ll do the clearing up. I’ll make you some tea.”
“What about that Scotch Rickie gave us?”
“Good idea. Where is it?”
“It’s under the kitchen sink. With the cockroach spray and the bottles of bleach.”
Andrew grinned. “That’s a good place for it. Not even our thieves are interested in bottles of bleach. I’ll pour you a large one, Watson.”
“Okay, Holmes,” she said.
She remained where she was, limp, dispirited, as if the strength had run out of her limbs. Andrew, she thought, his powers of recovery … he’s a wonder. She should not resent it, should she? Then she heard his voice from the kitchen. “Oh, you bastard,” he said.
She scrambled up, hurried after him. Andrew glowered over the remains of the bottle of Scotch; smashed, it lay on the drain board.
“Oh well,” she said. “At least somebody’s had a good time tonight. If he drank it, of course. He might just have poured it away.”
She was not sure why the thought had occurred to her. They exchanged a glance; then Andrew turned quickly and made for the little bathroom where they kept their wine supplies. As soon as he opened the door a ripe heady odor from the upturned jerricans rolled past them. Almost tangible, it billowed down the passageway, and washed through the flat. “Keep back,” he said. “There’s glass all over the floor.”
There had been twenty-four bottles, in a cardboard box; even the box was ripped to shreds, and its remnants bobbed on the frothy tide from the jerricans, a scum of yeast and water and half-fermented fruit. Standing behind Andrew, she touched his elbow. “Imagine what it will do for the drains.”
But he was not going to laugh. “I wouldn’t have minded,” Andrew said. “If they’d drunk it. I wouldn’t have minded.”
“I think,” Frances said, “that we have been left a message.”
“Message? Rip off the khawwadjihs and save them from sin, is that what you mean?”
“Something like that.”
“I don’t think so,” Andrew said. “I think that all they are interested in, from the Council of Ministers to the common thieves, is just making sure that we rue the day we ever saw this bloody place.”
She looked up into his face. “I thought you said we had to stay at any price?”
“You don’t need to tell me what I said. I said I’ll see the project through. They said they wanted it done and I contracted to do it and I’m not going to be frightened off by the vagaries of my bloody imagination.” Andrew looked dangerous now—mutinous. She recognized his bull-in-china-shop face; as if he had been breathing in the alcohol, or had absorbed it through his skin. She felt afraid of him; of any impulses he might have. A few months ago, it might have made them laugh. She might have described them in her letters home, comically pitiable figures, wringing their hands in this pale pink yeasty sea. But now even above the stench of fermentation she smelled violence in the air, recognized the savage concentration with which the intruder had gone to work, smashing each bottle on the tiles, fragmenting it, and standing finally, one must suppose, with bleeding hands and feet, tidemarked with alcoholic foam.
Andrew laid his arm across her shoulders. “You know those cages,” he said, “in the terrorist trials in Italy, those glass cages they have for the defendants?”
“Yes, I’ve seen pictures of them.”
“No, you haven’t. You can’t take pictures of glass.”
“I’ve read about them.” Reports describe the cage; you believe that it is there; you see the prisoners, their foreheads laid against walls of air, their gestures cut short by invisible fetters.
“You have dozens of people crammed together month after month in those cages,” Andrew said. “The other year two terrorists had sex in the cage, and then nine months later when the trial was still going on the woman terrorist gave birth to twins.”
“Yes, I think I remember that.”
“I keep thinking about those terrorists, I suppose I must have a fellow-feeling with them. They have a kind of parody life inside those glass cages, and I feel it’s just like mine. And the months go by, and I feel I am being convicted of something.” He added calmly, “And that is what I mean, before you ask me, about the vagaries of my bloody imagination.”
She slipped away from his grasp. “I must clear up. I must clean up this mess.”
“I’ll do it. You sit down.”
She went into the living room, to the desk. Some of the drawers had been wrenched out. This had not alarmed them; they did not keep anything of importance there. “They’ve stolen our postage stamps,” she called, and Andrew’s voice came back, very practical now, very matter-of-fact:
“That’s about par for the course.”
One of the drawers had been upended on the carpet. She picked her diary out of the mess. She flicked over the leaves. It was untorn, unmarked. There were no greasy fingerprints on its pages, no smudges that had not been there before. If I were to put my life under scrutiny, she thought, this is where I would start. But she had stopped keeping the diary. The pages had been filled, the space had run out, and now it seemed that events must cease to occur. Could she find anything if she had the policeman’s aids, the magnifying glass, the test tube, the graphite powder that marked the carpets? She had laid the book against her face, as if she might find a scent of something; alien sweat, nitroglycerin, the metal smell
of blood.
Daphne telephoned next day, to commiserate. “Still, you were wise not to involve the police,” she said. “They make everything ten times worse. And, as Eric said, you might have ended up in custody yourself. That’s the trouble with this place. Even if you aren’t doing anything wrong, you always feel as if you are.”
Frances said, “Can I borrow Hasan and the office car? The doctor rang me up, they want me to have some kind of tests.”
“I can recommend a gynecologist,” Daphne said swiftly.
“I don’t think that’s what I need.”
“Oh, I see. Nothing wrong, Frances, is there?”
“Probably not.” She regretted beginning the conversation. “Daphne, please don’t tell everybody. Don’t go spreading rumors that I’m ill.”
Daphne sounded startled. “Of course not. I can assure you, my dear, that whatever you chose to confide in me would go no further.”
Liar, Frances thought. “What about the car then?”
“There’s a tiny problem—it’s still at the garage, and when it comes back this man Fairfax is borrowing it. You’ll have to get Andrew to take a couple of hours off during the day.”
“That doesn’t sound a very good idea. About Fairfax, I mean. He’ll get lost. He’s never been here before. Someone should drive him around.”
“I’m not best pleased myself,” Daphne said, thinking of the batik workshop she would be forced to miss. “But Eric says he simply hasn’t the wherewithal to provide people with chauffeurs.”
“What’s Hasan for?”
“My dear, would you like to be entrusted to Hasan on your first visit to the Kingdom? That man’s only thought is to ditch you and sneak off to those smoking parlors they go to. Many’s the time I’ve been stranded—” Daphne’s voice ran on. Frances pictured her, teetering on the pavement outside the Pâtisserie Franco-Belge, a box of dissolving cream cakes balanced on her fingertips; helplessly scanning the traffic by the gold souk, while the morning sun burned, and her own ethnic trinkets seared her flesh. “Fairfax,” Daphne said, “will just have to shift for himself.”
Eight Months on Ghazzah Street Page 24
