The Unconsoled

  Boris, all the while, had been walking purposefully a few paces ahead, his excitement for our venture having apparently returned. He was whispering to himself, and the longer we walked the more his whispering seemed to grow in intensity. Then he began to jump as he walked, throwing karate blows at the air, the clatter of his feet echoing about us each time he landed. But he refrained from shrieking as he had on the stairs, and since we had not yet encountered a single person on the walkway, I decided there was no cause to restrain him.

  After a while I happened to glance down at the lake and was surprised to find I was now looking at it from a considerably different angle. Only then did it occur to me that the walkway described a gradual circle right the way round the estate. It was perfectly possible that we could walk in circles indefinitely. I watched Boris hurrying on in front of me, busily performing his antics, and wondered if he remembered the way to the apartment any better than I did. Indeed, it occurred to me I had not planned matters at all well. I should at the very least have taken the trouble to contact beforehand the new occupants of the apartment. After all, when one thought about it, there was no reason why they would particularly wish to entertain us. A pessimism about the whole expedition began to come over me.

  ‘Boris,’ I called to him, ‘I hope you’re paying attention. We don’t want to walk right past it.’

  He glanced back at me without ceasing his furious mutterings, then ran on further ahead and recommenced his karate movements.

  Eventually it struck me we had been walking an inordinate time, and when I glanced down again at the lake, I could see we had come at least a full circle around it. Ahead of me Boris was still muttering busily to himself.

  ‘Look, wait a moment,’ I called to him. ‘Boris, wait.’

  He stopped walking and gave me a sulky look as I came up to him.

  ‘Boris,’ I said gently, ‘are you sure you remember the way to the old apartment?’

  He shrugged and looked away. Then he said lamely: ‘Of course I do.’

  ‘But we seem to have gone right the way round.’

  Boris shrugged again. He had become engrossed by his shoe, which he was angling one way and then the other. Eventually he said: ‘They would have kept Number Nine safe, wouldn’t they?’

  ‘I should think so, Boris. He was in a box, an important-looking box. They would keep something like that aside. High up on a shelf, somewhere like that.’

  For a moment Boris continued to regard his shoe. Then he said: ‘We went past it. We’ve gone past it twice.’

  ‘What? You mean we’ve been walking round and round up here in this chilly wind for nothing? Why didn’t you say so, Boris? I don’t understand you.’

  He remained silent, moving his foot one way, then the other.

  ‘Well, do you suppose we should go back?’ I asked. ‘Or do we have to circle the lake yet again?’

  Boris sighed and for a moment seemed deep in thought. Then he looked up and said: ‘All right. It’s back there. Just back there.’

  We retraced our steps a short distance along the walkway. Before long Boris stopped at one of the stairways and glanced quickly up at the apartment door. Then almost immediately he turned his back to it and began once more to study his shoe.

  ‘Ah yes,’ I said, looking carefully up at the door. In fact the door – painted blue and with virtually nothing to distinguish it from any of the others – aroused no memories for me at all.

  Boris glanced over his shoulder up at the apartment, then looked away again, poking his toe at the ground. For a while I remained at the bottom of the stairway, a little uncertain what to do next. Eventually, I said:

  ‘Boris, why don’t you just wait here a minute? I’ll go up and see if anyone’s in.’

  The little boy went on prodding with his foot. I went up the steps and knocked on the door. There was no response. When I had knocked a second time with no result, I put my face up to the small glass panel. The glass was frosted and I could see nothing.

  ‘The window,’ Boris called from behind me. ‘Have a look through the window.’

  I saw to my left a sort of balcony – really no more than a ledge running along the front of the building, too narrow even to put out an upright chair. I reached out a hand to its iron balustrade, and by leaning my body right over the wall of the stairway I was just able to peer in through the nearest window. I found myself looking into an open-plan lounge with a dining table at one end against a wall and rather dated modern furnishings.

  ‘Can you see it?’ Boris was calling. ‘Can you see the box?’

  ‘Just a minute.’

  I tried to lean my body even further over the wall, conscious though I was of the gaping drop below me.

  ‘Can you see it?’

  ‘Just a minute, Boris.’

  The room was by now growing steadily more familiar to me. The triangular clock on the wall, the cream foam sofa, the three-tiered hi-fi cabinet; I found object after object, as my gaze fell on it, bringing with it a poignant nudge of recognition. However, as I continued to peer into the room, I gained the strong impression that the whole of the rear section – which adjoined the main portion to form an ‘L’ – had not previously been there at all, that it was a very recent addition. Nevertheless, as I continued to look at it, this same rear section seemed in itself strongly reminiscent, and after a moment I realised this was because it resembled exactly the back part of the parlour in the house my parents and I had lived in for several months in Manchester. The house, a narrow city terrace, had been damp and badly in need of redecorating, but we had put up with it since we were staying only until my father’s work enabled us to move away to something much better. To me, a nine-year-old, the house quickly came to represent not only an exciting change, but the hope that a fresh, happier chapter was unfolding for us all.

  ‘You won’t find anyone in there,’ a man’s voice said behind me. Straightening, I saw that the speaker had emerged from the neighbouring apartment. He was standing in front of his door at the top of a stairway parallel to the one I was standing on. The man was around fifty, with heavy, bulldog-like features. He was unkempt and his T-shirt had a damp patch around the chest.

  ‘Ah,’ I said, ‘so this apartment is empty?’

  The man shrugged. ‘Maybe they’re coming back. My wife and I, we don’t like an empty apartment next to us, but after all that trouble, we’re relieved, I can tell you. We’re not unfriendly people. But after all of that, well, we’d much sooner have it the way it is now. Empty.’

  ‘Ah. So it’s been empty for some time. Weeks? Months?’

  ‘Oh, a month at least. They might be coming back, but we wouldn’t care if they didn’t. Mind you, I felt sorry for them at times. We’re not unfriendly people. And we’ve been through difficult times ourselves. But when it goes on like that, well, you just want them to go. We’d rather have it empty.’

  ‘I see. A lot of trouble.’

  ‘Oh yes. To be fair, I don’t think there was physical violence. But still, when you had to listen to them shouting late at night, it was very upsetting.’

  ‘Excuse me, but look here …’ I came a step closer to him, signalling with my eyes that Boris was within earshot.

  ‘No, my wife didn’t like it one bit,’ the man went on, ignoring me. ‘Whenever it started, she used to bury her head in the pillow. Even in the kitchen once. I came in and there she was cooking with a pillow around her head. It wasn’t pleasant. Whenever we saw him he was sober, very respectable. He’d give us a quick salute, be on his way. But my wife was convinced that’s what was behind it. You know, drink …’

  ‘Look,’ I whispered angrily, leaning over the concrete wall separating us, ‘can’t you see I have my boy with me? Is this the sort of talk to come out with in front of him?’

  The man looked down towards Boris with a surprised expression. Then he said: ‘But he’s not so young, is he? You can’t protect him from everything. Still, if you don’t like talk of this kind, fine, let’
s talk about something else. You think of a better topic if you can. I was just telling you how it was. But if you don’t want to talk about it …’

  ‘No, I certainly don’t! I certainly don’t wish to hear …’

  ‘Well, it wasn’t important. It’s just that, quite naturally, I tended to side with him rather than with her. If he’d actually got violent, well, that would have been something else, but there was never any evidence of that. So I tended to blame her. Okay, he went away a lot, but from what we understood he had to, that was all part of his work. It wasn’t a reason, that’s what I’m saying, it wasn’t a reason for her to behave in the way she did …’

  ‘Look, will you stop it? Don’t you have any sense? The boy! He can hear …’

  ‘All right, he may be listening. So what? Children always hear these things sooner or later. I was just explaining why I tended to take his side, and that’s why my wife brought up the drinking. The going away was one thing, my wife would say, but the drinking was another …’

  ‘Look, if you carry on like this, I’ll be forced to terminate this conversation here and now. I’m warning you. I’ll do it.’

  ‘You can’t hope to protect your boy for ever, you know. How old is he? He doesn’t look so young. It’s not good to over-shelter them. He’s got to come to terms with the world, warts and all …’

  ‘He doesn’t have to yet! Not just yet! Besides, I don’t care what you think. What is it to you anyway? He’s my boy, he’s in my charge, I won’t have this sort of talk …’

  ‘I don’t know why you’re getting so angry. I’m only making conversation. I was just telling you what we made of it. They weren’t bad people, it’s not that we disliked them, but it sometimes got too much. Mind you, I suppose it always sounds much worse when it’s coming through a wall. Look, it’s useless trying to hide it from a boy his age. You’re fighting a losing battle. And what’s the point …’

  ‘I don’t care what you think! Not for a few years yet! He won’t, he won’t hear about such things …’

  ‘You’re foolish. These things I’m talking about, it’s just what happens in life. Even my wife and me, we’ve had our ups and downs. That’s why I sympathised with him. I know what it feels like, that first moment you suddenly realise …’

  ‘I warn you! I’ll terminate this conversation! I’m warning you!’

  ‘But then I never drank. That does change things. Going away a lot is one thing, but to drink like that …’

  ‘This is your last warning! Any more and I’ll leave!’

  ‘He was cruel when he was drunk. Not physical, all right, but we could hear a lot of it, he was cruel all right. We couldn’t make out all the words, but we used to sit up in the dark and listen …’

  ‘That’s it! That’s it! I warned you! Now I’m going! I’m going!’

  Turning my back on the man, I ran down the steps to where Boris was standing. I took his arm and began to hurry away, but as I did so the man started to yell after us:

  ‘You’re fighting a losing battle! He has to find out what it’s like! It’s just life! There’s nothing wrong with it! It’s just real life!’

  Boris was looking back with some curiosity and I was obliged to tug hard at his arm. For several moments we kept up a steady pace. More than once I sensed Boris trying to slow down, but I kept going, anxious to put beyond possibility any threat of the man pursuing us. By the time we slowed to a halt, I found I was badly out of breath. Staggering over to the wall – It was disconcertingly low, finishing only just above my waist – I put my elbows up and leaned over. I looked out at the lake, at the high-rise blocks beyond, at the pale wide sky, and waited for my chest to stop heaving.

  After a while I became aware of Boris standing alongside me. He had his back to me and was fiddling with a loose fragment of masonry near the top of the wall. I began to feel a certain embarrassment about what had just occurred, and realised I would have to offer him some sort of explanation. I was still trying to think of something to say, when Boris, keeping his back to me, muttered:

  ‘That man was mad, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Yes, Boris, completely mad. Possibly deranged.’

  Boris went on fiddling with the wall. Then he said: ‘It doesn’t matter any more. We don’t have to get Number Nine.’

  ‘If it wasn’t for that man, Boris …’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter any more.’ Then Boris turned to me and smiled. ‘It’s been a great day so far,’ he said brightly.

  ‘You’re enjoying it?’

  ‘It’s been great. The bus trip, everything. It’s been great.’

  I was seized by an impulse to reach out and embrace him, but it struck me he would be puzzled, possibly alarmed by such a gesture. In the end I lightly tousled his hair then turned back to the view.

  The wind was no longer troublesome, and for a moment we stood there quietly side by side, looking out over the estate. Then I said:

  ‘Boris, I know you must be wondering. I mean, why it is we can’t just settle down and live quietly, the three of us. You must, I know you do, you must wonder why I have to go away all the time, even though your mother gets upset about it. Well, you have to understand, the reason I keep going on these trips, it’s not because I don’t love you and dearly want to be with you. In some ways, I’d like nothing better than to stay at home with you and Mother, live in an apartment like that one over there, anywhere. But you see, it’s not so simple. I have to keep going on these trips because, you see, you can never tell when it’s going to come along. I mean the very special one, the very important trip, the one that’s very very important, not just for me but for everyone, everyone in the whole world. How can I explain it to you, Boris, you’re so young. You see, it would be so easy just to miss it. To say one time, no, I won’t go, I’ll just rest. Then only later I’ll discover that was the one, the very very important one. And you see, once you miss it, there’s no going back, it would be too late. It won’t matter how hard I travel afterwards, it won’t matter, it would be too late, and all these years I’ve spent would have been for nothing. I’ve seen it happen to other people, Boris. They spend year after year travelling and they start to get tired, perhaps a little lazy. But that’s often just when it comes along. And they miss it. And, you know, they regret it for the rest of their lives. They get bitter and sad. By the time they die, they’ve become broken people. So you see, Boris, that’s why. That’s why I’ve got to carry on for the moment, keep travelling all the time. It makes things very difficult for us, I realise. But we have to be strong and patient, all three of us. It won’t be much longer, I’m sure. It’ll come soon, the very important one, then it will all be done, I’ll be able to relax and rest then. I could stay at home all I wanted, it wouldn’t matter, we could enjoy ourselves, just the three of us. We could do all the things we haven’t been able to do. It won’t be long now, I’m sure of it, but we’ll just have to be patient. Boris, I hope you can understand what I’m saying.’

  Boris remained silent for a long time. Then suddenly he straightened and said sternly: ‘Move off quietly. All of you.’ With that he ran a few steps away and began his karate movements again.

  For the next few minutes I went on leaning against the wall, looking out at the view, listening to the sounds of Boris whispering furiously to himself. Then when I glanced at him again, I realised he was enacting in his imagination the latest version of a fantasy he had been playing through over and over during the past weeks. No doubt the fact of our being so close to its actual setting had made irresistible the prospect of going through it all again. For indeed, the scenario involved Boris and his grandfather fighting off a large gang of street thugs, in this very walkway, directly outside the old apartment.

  I continued to watch him moving busily, now several yards away from me, and supposed he was coming to that part where he and his grandfather, standing shoulder to shoulder, ready themselves for another onslaught. There would already be a sea of unconscious bodies ove
r the ground, but a number of the most persistent thugs would now be re-grouping for another assault. Boris and his grandfather would wait calmly side by side, while the thugs whispered strategies in the darkness of the walkway. In this, as in all such scenarios, Boris was in some vague way older. Not an adult exactly – which would make things too remote, as well as raising complications as to his grandfather’s age – but somehow old enough to make credible the necessary physical feats.

  Boris and Gustav would allow the thugs all the time they required to take up their formation. Then once the wave came, grandfather and grandson, a smoothly co-ordinated team, would deal efficiently, almost sadly, with the assailants flying at them from all sides. Eventually the attack would be over – but no, one last thug might leap out of the dark wielding some hideous blade. Gustav, being the nearest, would deliver a quick blow to the neck and then the battle would at last be over.

  For a few silent moments, Boris and his grandfather would gravely survey the bodies littered about them. Then Gustav, casting his experienced gaze one last time over the scene, would give a nod, at which the two of them would turn away with the expressions of men who had undertaken work they had had to do, but had not enjoyed. They would ascend the short stairway to the door of the old apartment, take a last look at the defeated street thugs – some of them by now beginning to moan or crawl away – before going inside.