The barmaid returns to her place behind the bar. She shows no sign of bringing me any change. No doubt she’s been calling the police about me.
I pull on my coat and leave. Out in the street I catch sight of the young woman with the short hair walking rapidly down the pavement some way ahead. I follow. As I walk I tell myself I know nothing about her, I may be falling into a trap. Thieves use attractive women to lure their victims. So do secret police organisations. I don’t have to follow her just because she looked into my eyes and wrote MEET—CAR PARK. Nevertheless I am following her. I’m alone and afraid and I’ve made a snap judgement that she’s a good person based solely on the fact that she looked into my eyes. Not much of a basis for tagging along, but like they say, if you can’t be with the one you love, then love the one you’re with. So I’m actually speeding up, because I don’t want to lose her. At least she understands English.
She turns down a side street and passes out of sight. I break into a run. When I get to the side street, I can see there’s a car park at the far end. I look for a band of robbers, but there’s only parked empty cars. Old cars, all of them, some of them seemingly abandoned. She’s standing by a car waiting for me. It’s an early model Volkswagen Golf, with a long crack down the windscreen.
I go to her. She has one of the rear doors open.
“Get in.”
I get in. Why am I in the back? She’s got into the driver’s seat. “Down!” she says. “There is danger.”
So I get down, squeezing myself into the space between the front and back seats. She starts the car and off we go. Once again I’m on the floor of a moving vehicle and I don’t know who I’m hiding from or where I’m going, but I do know she’s right about one thing. There is danger.
After a few minutes on the floor I start to feel sick. I need to see where I’m going. I need to know who she is.
“I have to get up.”
“No!” Her voice is urgent. She sounds afraid. This is convincing. “No one must see you. No one must know you’ve come.”
She speaks good English but with a strong accent. I try to place the accent. Russian? Meanwhile I decide to stay on the floor. I don’t know what she’s afraid of but nor do I want to meet men in bomber jackets wielding pliers.
Then she says, “Everything’s ready.”
“For what?”
“For you to do what you have come to do.”
She thinks I’m somebody else.
“No,” I say. “That’s not me. I’m not who you think I am.”
“Of course,” she says. “I know nothing about you. I must know nothing.”
I try again. I speak slowly and clearly.
“I’ve no idea where I am, or what it is you expect me to do.”
“The less you know the better,” she says. “Everything’s going according to plan.”
Now I’m quite sure she’s mistaken me for somebody else, but this is neither the time nor the place for an argument. Since there clearly is danger of some sort, I decide to do as she says until we reach wherever it is we’re going. I wriggle my bruised and exhausted body into a marginally more comfortable position. I review my situation. Helpless and afraid, I fall back on the faithful standby of all lives that are spinning out of control, the numbered list.
First: I don’t know where I am or what’s going on.
Second: I’ve done nothing wrong.
Third: None of this has anything to do with me.
Fourth: I should get out as soon as I can.
I tell myself that so long as I hold hard to these four points, everything will end up alright. I can be accused of naivety, for entering an unknown country in the vehicle of a criminal stranger, but I myself have committed no crime. The worst they can do to me is send me home.
“We will have music.”
The young woman switches on the car radio and suddenly I’m listening to the sound of Simon and Garfunkel singing The Boxer. I first heard this song played in my father’s workroom, long ago, before he left. It used to be one of his favourites. I’d gone into his workroom to ask him to help me with some school stuff and he let me stay to the end of the song. Usually he didn’t like us to go into his workroom. I must have been about eight. I didn’t understand a word of the song but my father liked it and so I liked it.
So I’m lying folded up on the floor of this car listening to The Boxer and feeling how all my body is throbbing and remembering my father with his funny crinkly smile, and I start to cry. I suppose I’ve just about come to the end of whatever it is that keeps people going because now as well as crying I’m slipping away into sleep.
I wake in stages. First I’m only aware that I’m waking. Then I feel the position of my body, which is sitting in a chair. Then I let my eyes open and see I’m in a dark room. Nothing’s moving. No sounds.
Little by little my memories catch up. I was in a car, with a young woman. How did I get here? I have no way of answering that. So I wake up some more, and look round me. At least I can establish where I am.
I’m in a long room, which seems to be some kind of a reading room. There are bookshelves down both sides. The books have uniform backs, like reference books or collected editions. There’s a door at the far end of the room, open to a passage. I’m sitting at the head of a long table that runs down the middle of the room. A faint light filters through the open door, not a direct light, but a light entering the passage beyond from some other room. So it’s not easy to see.
However I can see the gun. It lies on the table right in front of me. It’s a handgun, with a stubby barrel and a knurled grip. There’s nothing else on the table. But now as my eyes adjust to the low light I see there’s someone sitting at the table’s far end. He’s slumped over, so that his head lies on the table itself. I start to have a very bad feeling.
I get up and walk slowly towards him, one hand touching the edge of the table as I go. Now I can see that his head lies sideways, with one cheek pressed to the table’s surface. Round his head the table seems to be darker. I come closer, now dreading what I know I will see.
There’s a hole just above his nose. Nothing else registers: not the eyes, or the colour of his hair, or the clothes he’s wearing. Only that dark hole, and the ribbon of darkness that runs from it to the puddle of darkness on the table.
A second door, a closed door behind me, now opens, and the young woman in the leather coat comes into the room. She moves briskly, purposefully, entirely unsurprised. She examines the dead man, and gives a quick nod of satisfaction.
“Good,” she says.
“I don’t know—” I begin.
“No time. Get your gun.”
My gun?
But she’s already on her way out. So I grab the gun and follow her. There’s an unlit hallway, with a hard marble floor. A door out onto a long street. It’s night. A car waits, its engine running, a young man at the wheel smoking a cigarette.
“Get in the back.” To the young man she says something in the language I don’t know. The young man smacks the steering wheel with both palms, and turns to me as I get in.
“You do good!”
As he drives us at speed down the long dark street the woman leans over the front seat and fixes me with her eyes. “The movement will show its gratitude.”
“I don’t understand what’s happened,” I say. I feel giddy.
“Do not understand. It is better so.”
It’s like she doesn’t hear me when I speak. I want to shout. But when I speak it sounds more like I’m crying.
“Please. Listen to me. I don’t know who you are. I don’t know where I am. I don’t even know who the dead man is.”
“Of course,” she says. “You are a professional. You kill without knowing who you kill.”
Everything’s ready for you to do what you have come to do. Except I didn’t come to do anything. I’m the original man without a purpose. Don’t go pointing your finger at me. If I wasn’t feeling dizzy I’d laugh.
“I didn??
?t kill him.”
At this point the driver interrupts in his own language, and the two of them have an exchange that I don’t understand. This gives me a few moments for private reflection. The outcome is an uncomfortable new thought.
What if I’m wrong?
Maybe I did kill the man in the book-lined room. I have no memory of entering the room. How can I be sure that during that time of which I remember nothing I didn’t take the waiting gun and shoot him dead? It looks that way. This young woman believes it. Whether I actually did it or not begins to seem irrelevant. I had better start finding out the consequences.
She turns her attention back to me.
“We are taking you to a house where you will be safe for the rest of tonight. As soon as you are rested, you must move. You must leave the country.”
I ask the only question I can think of that will produce an answer I’ll understand.
“What’s your name?”
“My name is Petra.”
She gives me an unexpected and dazzling smile. She doesn’t ask me my name.
SIX
I’m sitting at a table in a big kitchen warmed by a tiled stove, eating some more soup I can’t identify, while the others smoke cigarettes and flick the ash into an empty beer-can and argue in low voices in the language I can’t understand. There are four of them, all quite young. The beautiful Petra has now shed her coat to reveal a figure so desirable I can hardly eat. I keep staring at her breasts without realising I’m doing it. She sees this but acts like she doesn’t. It’s not that her breasts are huge or anything, just very well defined by the tight T-shirt she’s wearing. Then there’s Egon, who is lanky and drooping and sunk in a permanent gloom. This has something to do with Petra, who I sense is his girlfriend, or perhaps was. Anyway he watches her with accusation in his eyes, and she takes care never quite to look back. Then there’s Stefan, who drove the car, who is the youngest and doesn’t say much. And last there’s Ilse. Ilse is watching me. She’s the only one who seems aware of my presence. This is not so much a source of excitement for me, because Ilse is strikingly ugly. Not only does she have too much nose, but her skin is pocked all over like bubble-wrap. I don’t like to be superficial in my judgements but it’s not easy to rise above this first impression. Sometimes you get ugly people with so much vitality and charm that they don’t seem ugly. But more commonly ugly people are so exhausted by their ugliness that they’ve just given up, and make no effort to join the human race. They accept their role as losers, punished for no fault of their own, and stare with wounded eyes from the corners of rooms. Ilse is one of these. She’s looking at me with no indication that she sees me. I’m just the latest manifestation of a world she views with a kind of generalised resentment.
Petra is the energy source for the group. She does most of the talking. They’re talking about me and what I’ve done, while I eat my soup. It seems they’ve all eaten earlier, no doubt while I was in the reading room shooting dead a man I’ve never met. I still have the gun, it’s in one pocket of my coat, which is hanging on the back of the kitchen door. Apparently it’s my gun. This is not the only gun. The room is full of guns, on the table, on the bench, against the fridge. They leave guns lying about like other people leave umbrellas. Also on the table between them is the book I pulled from the fire. I’ve already told them how I came by it, and about Marker, and how he died. Apparently the men in bomber jackets are a branch of the interior ministry police. The pliers are something of a trademark.
Petra now turns to me.
“This man with the truck. Did he say where he was taking the books?”
I shake my head. They go on talking among themselves. I finish eating. It’s time I learned what’s going on.
“Excuse me,” I say. “There’s things I need to know.”
They all look at me.
“So?” says Petra.
“Who is this man you say I killed?”
Petra starts to answer and then changes her mind. Stefan asks her what I said and she tells him. Egon looks at me and I meet his eyes and it’s like going out of a doorway into winter rain, the chilly drizzle of his unhappiness. Unexpectedly, this makes me like him. Maybe I’ve been there too. Anyway, it’s Egon who gives me an answer, or part of an answer. His English isn’t as good as Petra’s, but at least he’s talking.
“He is chief of security,” he says.
It’s a start. Little by little I piece together the situation. I’m in a country that is currently under a state of emergency. The authorities are crushing all opposition groups, using as cover the claim that they are fighting terrorism. The group protecting me is a cell of an underground organisation which they call the movement. This alone, they tell me, among all the groups that oppose the police state, has the will to inflict real damage. My action in the reading room is proof of this.
“But of course,” says Petra, “you are now in very great danger.”
Thanks for telling me. That makes me feel just great. I guess she sees how thrilled I am because she puts out one hand and rests it on my arm and says:
“The movement will protect you.”
Here I am in very great danger and all I can think about is Petra’s breasts. Mankind is not as evolved as we suppose. On the other hand maybe this is my way of dealing with an unmanageable situation. These people seem to think they hired me to carry out an assassination, which I would class as a simple case of mistaken identity were it not for the corpse in the reading room and the gun in my coat pocket, and none of it makes any sense, so I might as well focus on tits.
Ilse is still gazing at me. Now she speaks.
“They will hunt you,” she says. Her voice is unexpectedly soft, coming from that corrugated face. “They will hunt you and kill you. They have information. They are well trained. They will find you.”
She almost sounds like she’s pleased about it.
“That’s enough, Ilse.” Petra’s voice carries authority, like a mother correcting a wayward child.
“Yes, Petra,” says Ilse, soft and submissive. “That’s enough.”
To me Petra says again, “The movement will protect you.” Then, prodding the book on the table, “These people will not protect you. He will not protect you.”
She means Leon Vicino, author of this book that it seems she does not respect, but for which Arnie Marker died.
“Who is he?”
“An old man. An irrelevance. A failed poet. An exile.”
That’s a lot of dismissing for someone who doesn’t matter. Egon starts to shift in his seat. He looks at me, and alongside the sadness there’s a wrinkle between his brows that looks like a plea.
“I admire him,” he says. His tone is regretful. “He was a great man once.”
“Once,” says Petra. “Twenty years ago. Thirty years ago.”
“Why did they burn his book?”
“Anything which questions their authority makes them afraid. What Egon said is true. Vicino is well known. He has influence. This book of his, it makes people question the actions of the state. So they ban it.”
“Is Vicino part of your movement?”
“No.”
Her answer is swift and sharp, as if she’s snapping shut a lid on a box I’m not to open. Stefan asks her what I said and she tells him. There follows a brief argument between her and Egon. I gather that Egon is urging her to tell me more than she believes is necessary. So, grudgingly, she tells me a little more.
“The movement understands that the police state can only be overthrown by the use of force. We do not shrink from what is necessary. Leon Vicino is an old man. He is sentimental. He tells us to fight torture with poems. His approach has failed. His methods are discredited. His day is over.”
Again I get the feeling she’s burying Vicino under too many words. It’s like she’s afraid of him. I reach out for the book and turn again to the title page. It’s frustrating, staring at printed words and getting back no meaning at all.
“It’s called The Soci
ety of Others.” This is Ilse again. Now she wants to please me. “I have a copy in English, if you like.”
“The book is unimportant.” Petra speaks sharply, and her eyes reprimand Ilse. “Our friend must sleep. Before dawn we will move on.”
She stands and stubs out her cigarette and puts the butt carefully in the beer-can.
“I will show you where you can sleep.”
Egon stands too, and holds out his hand for me to shake. A curiously formal gesture. As I hold his hand I feel his brief grip and I sense that he is trying to communicate to me some wordless fellowship. This is like being befriended by the class loser in school, and I don’t much like it. We have nothing in common. Except maybe being told what to do by Petra, and wanting to touch her, and never getting close.
So meek as a dog on a lead I follow Petra into the little outer hall and up the stairs. We are in a suburban house built cheaply maybe thirty years ago. The unseasoned timber has warped and none of the doors close properly. Upstairs, the rooms are un-heated.
I am to sleep in what is clearly the main bedroom. The bed is wide, and there are curtains on the window. Petra turns on the single centre light and closes the door. We’re alone together in a room with a double bed.
“I hope you will be comfortable.”
“I’m sure I will.”
Why has she closed the door? Or almost closed it, because it no longer fits its frame.
“Is there anything else I can get you?”
She’s looking at me in this odd way.
“I guess I’m okay for now.”
“We are grateful,” she says.
Then she comes right up to me and puts one hand on my shoulder and looks into my eyes. What am I supposed to think? Beyond her I see the door quietly open a few more centimetres. Ilse is standing on the other side, watching.
Petra kisses me.
Nothing makes any sense to me. I don’t know how I got into this mess or how I’m going to get out of it, but just for now this is feeling good. Petra’s lips taste smoky from her cigarette. She’s pressing her body against mine. Ilse is watching through the crack in the door, expressionless.