Castro's Dream (22 page)

She hit someone in the face with a fire extinguisher and got sent to a place that was a lot worse. I wasn’t there when it happened but I was told that she nearly killed this woman. They were fighting about shifts. I found Ana in her office and she’d been crying. She looked up and smiled at me without bothering to wipe away her tears. She just said, I’m a stupid woman, and I put my arms around her. I remember how she held me as though I was the one who needed consoling.

There was a pause. Astrid watched the shadows on the ceiling.

When I got out, Kader said, I wasn’t fit for normal life.

What do you mean by normal life?

Job, car, girlfriend, he said. When I came out I felt like I was invisible. It was like everyone was living their boring lives and I was this … this ghost. A ghost would come back and think everything everyone did or cared about was pointless, wouldn’t he?

Probably.

It was like that. In a man’s prison you have to be dangerous or else you get shat on. When I came out, every time I went to a bar or a club, I’d get into a fight. My friend Amadou said it was like I was trying to wake people up. He was right. It was like everyone else was on tranquillisers or something.

In my prison there was very little fighting, she said. Mostly we lay about in a torpor. Frustration turned itself into self-loathing
more than anger. I got so used to the sound of women crying that I didn’t notice it after a while, like the sound of rain or bad plumbing.

They lay in silence. Astrid felt a wave of gratitude spread through her like heat.

Astrid? You said you made your sister promise to stop seeing her man. I want to know if that was because you hated him or because you loved him.

It was the right question but she knew that it signalled the end of her reprieve.

She pulled free of his arms.

I didn’t love him, she said. She stood up and walked over to the sink. He was ruining Lola. She turned on the tap, filled a plastic cup and drank.

Kader sat up and leaned against the wall.

How?

You wouldn’t understand, she said, walking over to the window.

What wouldn’t I understand?

The organisation. The people he worked for were killers. He murdered two people.

Kader kept silent. She pulled back the curtains and looked out at the moon, trailing a stripe of cloud. She wondered what time it was. She no longer wanted to sleep.

I don’t know the man, Kader said at last. But I know that sometimes it’s circumstances that make people kill.

I know, she said. And I wouldn’t care if it were just him. But he was pulling Lola into the organisation and I couldn’t bear that life for her. She started delivering pamphlets, then going to demonstrations. Then he taught her to throw Molotov cocktails, then before I knew it he had got her to plant bombs with him. She would have joined what they call a legal commando, then she would have been identified by the police and she would have had to go into hiding. She would have started killing people herself. It’s always the same path. If I hadn’t gone to prison, that’s what would have happened to her.

You were saving her from a life of crime.

You couldn’t possibly understand, she told him.

I don’t understand why you didn’t just tell your sister what an
arsehole he was to be writing to you behind her back. I’m thinking that you must have loved him, otherwise you would have told her.

She saw that he had removed the bandage from his arm. She could not see from where she stood if the wound had healed or not.

It was vanity, she said. I was vain. That was all.

Maybe.

Suddenly she wanted him out of the room.

You’ll know when you see him, he murmured.

Know what?

If you love him.

I don’t love him.

She stood on the other side of the room, and he saw that she was responsible for all this pain he was in.

Come here, he said. Fucking come here. I can’t move.

He watched her hook a lock of her hair behind her ear and there was the same feeling, like a string breaking in his gut, that he had felt when he had watched her walk around her car on the first day. The first day. He could not remember who he had been.

I want you to look at my fucking heel. It’s killing me.

He pulled up the leg of his tracksuit. She knelt by the bed to look at the wound.

It’s all green and yellow, he said. It looks like the fucking Brazilian flag.

She prodded the area around the bite. The pain was unbelievable. He closed his eyes.

It’s septic, she said. Is it a dog bite?

Yes. Fucking Raoul. Racist Raoul.

You need antibiotics.

I need a kiss.

She looked up. Her face was full of pity.

I can’t kiss you, she said.

Why not? I’ve been through hell for you, you heartless bitch.

I don’t feel anything, Kader. I can’t kiss you.

You can let me kiss you.

But he could not move. Pain was waiting for him everywhere.

You know you smell like a dessert my mum’s sister Leila used to make, he told her. It was a white dessert. I think it had almonds
in it. My mum kept it in a plastic box in the fridge. I used to scoop spoonfuls of it off the top, thinking she wouldn’t notice. When she brought it out for lunch with the family, there was hardly any left. It tasted of cold flowers, flowers soaked in sugar.

Astrid smiled.

My mum is Kabyle, he said. She had a beautiful voice. She wanted me to be a Rai singer. Do you know Rai?

Yes.

But I wanted to be a footballer.

You said. Astrid stood up. I’m going to get you some antibiotics.

I’ll come with you.

No.

I’ll come, he said, swinging his legs off the bed.

The chemist will be closed, she said. I’ll have to get them to open up for me. It’s better if you stay here.

And she grabbed her handbag and left the room.

Kader lay on his back, ankles crossed, hands behind his head. He closed his eyes and saw his mother’s lovely face floating in the darkness. She was smiling, showing the gap between her two front teeth:
les
dents
du
bonheur,
teeth of happiness, the French called them. How, with a mother so happy, could he love a woman as sad as Astrid? Because Astrid’s sadness was what made her beautiful. It hung in her eyes like a lantern, it floated on her forehead like a veil. Kader began to hum a tune to go with the words. He hummed with his eyes closed, the words forming in his mind. The smile spread on his face and his stomach filled with heat. The song began to float out of him into the room: an Arab song in French. He was an Arab, singing a French song for the Spanish woman he loved.

He threw back the bedclothes and got out of bed. He looked at his face in the mirror above the sink. It had changed. Or he had changed and didn’t recognise his face any more. That face no longer belonged in Nanterre. He grinned. You’re free, he told himself.

He bent over and drank from the tap. Then he went and climbed into bed. In the morning they would go and buy him some decent clothes. In the car on the way, he would sing her his song.

The village was quiet. As she walked down the hill past Txema’s bar, she braced herself. This time she would not be caught off guard. She would not forgive him for what he had done to Lola. And me, she thought, feeling her hatred gather momentum as she walked. She searched for ways to hurt him. She knew that she had shaken him with her mention of their arrest. Perhaps something had happened up there on the mountain. There had been four of them and all of them had been caught or shot except for Txema. The circumstances of their arrest had always been strange, not just to her. For a short time everyone was discussing how lucky Txema had been. They had been discovered in the hills by a mobile unit of the Guardia Civil called the FAR. But while Mikel had been taken into custody by the Guardia Civil and given life, Txema had been arrested by the French gendarmerie, had spent nine months in Bayonne prison for possession of a weapon and then been put under house arrest, which meant in those days that you could come and go as you pleased, so long as you did not try and cross the border.

Why had he eluded punishment? She cursed Mikel for having taken his own so meekly.

The chemist was dark and the metal grille was drawn across the window. She walked round to the side door and rang the bell. At length a man’s sleepy voice came across the intercom.

Milo, is that you? It’s Astrid Arnaga. I’m sorry to wake you. I need antibiotics.

Astrid, he chuckled. Wait. I’m coming.

Milo was wearing pyjama bottoms and a string vest. He grinned at her as he scratched his side. He had not changed: still the same weary good humour.

Good to see you here, he said. At this time of night at my door. Strange but good.

When he returned with the medication, he held it out to her and pulled it back as she reached for it.

Will you come back and see us before you go?

Yes Milo.

In the daytime, he said.

She took the drugs and smiled.

And Lola? he asked.

She’s here.

Good. Come back and see us, both of you. Mirabel and I have a baby boy. That’s why I have these, he said, pointing to the shadows under his eyes.

Suddenly she felt tears rising. She had to get away. She squeezed his hand then turned and walked off. It was a few moments before she heard him close the door.

Kader was asleep when she got back to the room. She crept to the sink and prepared the injection.

I thought you weren’t coming back, he said.

He was lying on his back with his arms behind his head.

She went over to him and knelt down beside him with the syringe pointing at the ceiling.

Show me your ankle.

Kader pulled up his tracksuit and closed his eyes.

In the morning, she said as she injected him, I’m going to drive you to Bayonne and put you on the train to Paris.

I’m not going back to Paris. I have nothing there.

You have even less here.

I can start again here, he said. That’s the whole point. Back home I’ll just go straight to jail.

What do you want to do here? There’s even more unemployment here than there is in Paris.

Not for an Arab from Nanterre.

What can you do?

I can drive a forklift truck, open mussels, operate a crane. I can train attack dogs. I can fight …

There’s a world of trouble to get into here unless you know how to work, Kader.

He shrugged.

You can teach me.

Astrid looked at his eyes. They were like Lola’s, full of mischief. It occurred to her that Kader and Lola were the same species: unafraid of life.

She stood up.

I don’t think it’s something I can teach you.

Lola told me to go home too, he said.

Her face lit up.

Did she?

Suddenly Kader was sick of looking at her. He was sick of his desire.

I’m tired, he said.

Go to sleep then.

Don’t run out on me.

I’m going to find Mikel, she said.

Is that his name?

She nodded.

Why? he asked sadly. The idyll was over. He had lost her already. He felt weak.

For Lola.

I can help you, he said. I’m tough.

No you’re not.

You don’t know that.

You may be tough in Nanterre but you’re not tough here. This is a place where everyone is involved in a war that’s been going on since before they were born.

Kader exhaled through his teeth dismissively.

Some war zone, he said.

You don’t always feel it but when you do, it’s frightening. I promise you.

He grinned.

That’s what I’m here for, to protect you.

On crutches with an infected foot, she said.

I can still help you, he said. I can use a gun.

Go to sleep, she said.

Fuck you.

Astrid went and turned off the light, then she undressed and got into bed.

Don’t leave without me.

But she did not answer. Soon he was asleep.

Chastel’s call woke her.

What time is it? she whispered.

Six.

Have you been operating?

No. I can’t sleep. I love you.

You don’t, Jacques.

Don’t say that! You have no idea who I am.

His voice was angry.

I’ll be back for the conference, she said.

There was a pause.

You’re wrong, Astrid. I do
love you.

His voice had softened. He sounded a little drunk.

I’m sorry about what I said about my abortion. It wasn’t your fault.

We can start again, he said.

Yes, she answered. Once again she felt the toxicity of deceit. It occurred to her then that if only she could be truthful to one person, she might be saved.

I’m going to tell Laetitia, he said.

She already knows.

I’m going to leave her.

Please Jacques. I don’t want to be responsible for destroying another relationship.

What do you mean another relationship? Anyway it’s not a relationship. It’s an arrangement and I wouldn’t hold you responsible.

It
is
a relationship. Of course it’s a relationship. You’ve had children together.

Astrid made him promise not to do anything until the conference on 5 September, in six weeks’ time. Then she hung up. The thought of the meeting of the Transplantation Society filled her with dread. It would be like attending a religious ceremony after losing one’s faith. Bopp would be there with his big hands making one of his dull presentations about transgenic pigs. Since he had sold out to Novartis and its pig lobby, Bopp had grown smug when he should be hugging the walls in shame. As far as she was concerned, pigs as organ donors were a waste of time and money.

Since 1985 she had performed over five hundred transplants. Vincent, her lab assistant, kept count. She was not a cabinet maker: although she was accomplished at it, the craft itself did not interest her. The only thing that gave her satisfaction now was her relationship with certain patients. She thought in particular of a man called Romero Bazzanella who had played the violin every night in a Russian restaurant off the Champs-Elysées. He had end-stage cirrhosis and watched death approach with his
brawler’s shoulders set firmly against it, ready for the impact. When she told him they had a donor, he had laughed at her and told her that she could believe what she liked but he knew when the bell had rung. Bazzanella was a wonderful patient because he had not treated her like God when he woke up with a new liver. He had simply sent her an invitation to Raspoutine’s and told her that he considered that they had both been lucky to get away with it.