"He wants me to sleep with him, for God's sake! He wants a wedding night, Jose. Doesn't that stir you slightly? He's taking me over where Michel left off. He didn't like him. He's going to even the score. Do I still go?"
She held him so fiercely that he had difficulty breaking her grasp. She stood against him with her head down, against his chest, wanting him to take her back into his protection. But instead he put his hands under her arms and straightened her, and she saw his face again, locked and bolted, telling her that love was not their province: not his, not hers, and least of all Khalil's. He started her on her journey, she shook him off and went alone; he took a step after her and stopped. She looked back and hated him; she closed her eyes and opened them, she let out a deep breath.
I'm dead.
She stepped into the street, straightened herself and, crisp as a soldier and quite as blind, marched briskly up a narrow street, passing a seedy nightclub displaying illuminated photographs of girls of thirty-something baring unimpressive breasts. That's what I should be doing, she thought. She reached a main road, remembered her pedestrian drill, looked left and saw a medieval gate tower with a sign for McDonald's hamburgers written tastefully across it. The lights turned green for her, she kept going and saw high black hills blocking the end of the road and a pale, clouded sky twisting restively behind them. She glanced round and saw the Cathedral spire following her. She turned to her right and walked more slowly than she had ever walked in her life, down a leafy avenue of patrician houses. Now she was counting to herself. Numbers. Now she was saying rhymes. Jose Goes Down Town. Now she was remembering what had happened in the lecture hall, but without Kurtz, without Joseph, and without the murderous technicians of the two unreconciled sides. Ahead of her, Rossino was pushing his motorbike silently out of a gateway. She walked up to him, he handed her a helmet and a leather jacket, and as she started to put them on, something made her look back in the direction she had come from, and she saw a lazy orange flash stretch towards her down the damp cobble like the path of the setting sun, and she noticed how long it stayed on the eye after it had disappeared. Then at last she heard the sound she had been dully expecting: a distant yet intimate thud, like a breaking of something unmendable deep inside herself; the precise and permanent end to love. Well, Joseph, yes. Goodbye.
At the same second exactly, Rossino's engine burst into life, ripping the damp night apart with its roar of triumphant laughter. Me too, she thought. It's the funniest day of my life.
Rossino drove slowly, keeping to small roads and following a carefully thought-out route.
You drive, I'll follow. Maybe it's time I became Italian.
A warm drizzle had cleared away much of the snow, but he drove with respect for the bad surface, and for his important passenger. He was yelling joyful things at her and seemed to be having a great time, but she wasn't interested in sharing his mood. They passed through a big gateway and she shouted "Is this the place?" without knowing or caring from Adam what place she was talking about, but the gateway gave on to an unmade road over hills and valleys of private forest, and they crossed them alone, under a bobbing moon that used to be Joseph's private property. She looked down and saw a sleeping village draped in a white shroud; she smelt Greek pine trees and felt her warm tears being dashed away by the wind. She held Rossino's trembling, unfamiliar body tucked into her own, and told him: Help yourself, there's nothing left.
They descended a last hill, came out of another gateway, and entered a road lined with bare larches like the trees in France on family holidays. The track climbed again, and as they reached the crest, Rossino cut the engine and coasted down a footpath into a forest. He opened a saddle bag and pulled out a bundle of clothes and a handbag, and tossed them to her. He held a torch, and while she changed he watched her by the light of it, and there was a moment when she stood half naked in front of him.
You want me, take me; I'm available and unattached.
She was without love and without value to herself. She was where she had started, and the whole rotten world could screw her.
She poured her junk from one handbag to the other, powder compact, tampons, bits of money, her packet of Marlboros. And her cheap little radio alarm clock for rehearsals--press the volume, Charlie, are you listening!Rossino took her old passport and handed her a new one, but she didn't bother to find out what nationality she had become.
Citizen of Nowheresville, born yesterday.
He gathered up her old clothes and dumped them into the saddle bag, together with her old shoulder bag and spectacles. Wait here but look towards the road, he said. He'll shine a red light twice. He had been gone barely five minutes before she saw it winking through the trees. Hooray, a friend at last.
twenty-six
Khalil took her arm and almost carried her to the shiny new car because she was weeping and trembling so much she wasn't very good at walking. After the humble clothes of a van driver, he seemed to have put on the full disguise of the unimpeachable German manager: soft black overcoat, shirt and tie, groomed and swept-back hair. Opening her door, he took off the overcoat and tucked it solicitously round her as if she were a sick animal. She had no idea how he expected her to be, but he seemed less shocked by her condition than respectful of it. The engine was already running. He turned the heating on full.
"Michel would be proud of you," he said kindly, and considered her a moment by the interior light. She started to answer, but broke out weeping again instead. He gave her a handkerchief; she held it in both hands, twisting it round her fingers while the tears fell and fell. They set off down the wooded hillside.
"What happened?" she whispered.
"You have won a great victory for us. Minkel died as he was opening the briefcase. Other friends of Zionism are reported to be severely wounded. They are still counting." He spoke in savage satisfaction. "They speak of outrage. Shock. Cold blooded murder. They should visit Rashidiyeh one day. I invite the whole university. They should sit in the shelters and be machine-gunned as they come out. They should have their bones broken and watch their children being put to torture. Tomorrow the whole world will read that Palestinians will not become the poor blacks of Zion."
The heating was powerful, but it was still not enough. She pulled his coat more tightly round her. Its lapels were of velvet and she could smell its newness.
"You want to tell me how it went?" he enquired.
She shook her head. The seats were plush and soft, the engine quiet. She listened for cars but heard none. She looked in the mirror. Nothing behind, nothing in front. When was there ever? She caught Khalil's dark eye staring at her.
"Don't worry. We look after you. I promise. I am glad you are in grief. Others when they kill, they laugh and triumph. Get drunk, tear off their clothes like animals. All this I have seen. But you--you weep. This is very good."
The house was beside a lake and the lake was in a steep valley. Khalil drove past it twice before he turned into the drive, and his eyes as he scanned the roadside were Joseph's eyes, dark and purposeful and all-seeing. It was a modern bungalow, a rich man's second home. It had white walls and Moorish windows and a sloping red roof where the snow had not managed to lie. The garage was joined to it. He drove in and the doors closed. He switched off the engine and drew a long-barrelled automatic pistol from inside his jacket. Khalil, the one-handed shooter. She stayed in the car, staring at the toboggans and the firewood stored along the back wall. He opened the door.
"Walk after me. Three metres, no closer."
A steel side door led to an interior corridor. She waited, then went after him. The drawing-room lights were already lit, a wood fire was burning in the grate. Pony-skin sofa. Suburban rustic furniture. A log table laid for two. In an ice bucket on its wrought-iron stand, one bottle of vodka.