Metro Winds (2 page)

I should understand something, she thought urgently.

When the girl turned to pass through the door to international departures, the woman found herself remembering with sudden shocking clarity the lumpy slipperiness as the midwife pulled the child from her womb and swung it up onto her flaccid belly; the rank animal stench of the fluids that flowed out of her, and the purplish swollen look of skin smeared with white foam and strings of bloody slime; that black hair and the dark bottomless eyes that looked through her skin and into her soul.

The airport doors closed with a smooth hiss, severing them from one another. The woman stood for a time looking at the ambiguous smear of her face in the dull metal surface, feeling grief, longing, fear.

The girl spent much of the journey gazing out at the sky, surprised at how substantial the clouds appeared from above. For of course she had only ever seen their undersides, which must have been grazed to flatness by the mountains they passed over. When the sky darkened as the plane entered the long night, a steward asked if she wanted chicken or beef. She never ate meat but the travel agent hadn't thought to ask when booking the ticket. It did not matter. She liked the way hunger gnawed at her belly from the inside with sharp little teeth.

When she slept, it was to dream an old dream of wandering in dark tunnels searching for something she could not name.

The girl's aunt had been tremulous and moist with emotion before her niece came at last into the arrivals foyer, yet the first sight of the girl caused the older woman to draw a swift breath. A moment later she could not have explained her reaction; she had seen photographs so the child's appearance was no surprise. In the taxicab she fussed and tutted over the late flight and told herself it was pity that had made her gasp, for the girl's clothes were so severe they only accentuated the vagueness of her features.

The aunt's apartment was large but managed to be cramped as well, being filled with fringed lamps, occasional tables, plump tasselled cushions, painted china ornaments, little enamel boxes, carved animals, winged armchairs, frilled curtains, and vases of stiff dried flowers. The floors were carpeted in dove grey, but exotic rugs coloured henna red, turquoise and emerald were laid here and there atop it to form gorgeous pools of colour. The sound of movement was altogether smothered.

The girl slipped off her shoes and wiggled her toes, searching for the bones of the place under its fat pelt. She thought of the hard wooden floors of the house by the sea, which had been limed the icy hue of a winter sky. Noticing the pale slender feet, the aunt assumed she had removed her shoes out of consideration for the carpets.

She ushered the girl to a bedroom where rose-coloured lamps gave off tiny pools of blushing light. The walls were covered in a velveted indigo paper and the window and four-poster bed were draped in thick folds of violet lace surmounted by an overdress through which gold ribbon had been intricately threaded.

Having noted the lightness of the case, the aunt left the girl to unpack to avoid embarrassing them both by witnessing the paucity of her possessions. Her sister had clearly made a worse marriage than she had feared. She smiled in pity at the girl over a late supper laid out on gold-rimmed plates. There was a silver pot of hot chocolate, rich cream puffs, jam horns, sugary slices and little sandwiches. The girl ate one corner of a cucumber and lettuce sandwich, and when pressed to try a paste sandwich, explained politely that she did not eat meat.

‘But these are only fish,' the aunt said, taking a bite from one of the sandwiches. She was discomfited to be so frankly watched, but the girl made no comment, other than to ask if she might go to bed soon. In a gush of guilty relief, her aunt promised a shopping expedition on the morrow.

In the bedroom, the girl removed her outer clothes and laid them aside. She was wide awake, for her body told her that it was early morning. Wanting to taste the air of the city, she struggled until she opened the window, which had been painted shut. Gazing through it, she stared at the city beyond, blanketed in shadows and pricked here and there by light. There was a breeze and she watched her hair float up in tendrils that seemed to quest as blindly and voraciously as the tentacles of a sea anemone. She thought of the icy wind that slipped up through the cracks in the bone-pale floorboards of her old bedroom, shuddering the window glass in the frame as it tried to get out again. Sometimes it was so strong that when you opened the drawers in the kitchen, the wind blew out into your face, so loud that people telephoning would ask who was screaming. If one looked through the windows at night, there were not the thousand and one lights visible from this lean window, but only darkness laid like a film over shadowy trees, and beyond them the lines of foam that trimmed the relentless waves. If she opened a window, the air would fly like a dervish into her room, smelling of icebergs and open grey seas.

There was nothing green or wet or wild in the air of this city. It was heavy with the odours of people and their machines. She imagined it as weary and sour as the breath of an old man who had lived too long. She thought that she would find it hard to breathe or move quickly in this dense air with so many people and their lives pressed up against her, but she was not afraid. If she felt anything, it was curiosity to see how she would manage it.

The following day, the aunt came bustling into the room and shut the open window at once in a fluster of incoherent warnings. She did not believe in fresh air. In fact, moving air of any kind troubled her. She bade the girl rise, for she meant to keep her promise: they were to go shopping. First they caught a taxi to a market of little stalls to buy food. This expedition was undertaken with great seriousness. The girl had never seen fruit laid out with such reverence. Apples gleamed a wicked, tempting red, and each flawless cherry seemed to have been polished to gleaming crimson. Pears and mangoes glowed gold, and there was a mound of queer intricately spiked green orbs she had never seen before. The aunt discussed everything with the stallholder and they seemed to come to a joint decision about what should be bought. They went to a bread stall and a cheese stall, and again the aunt spoke with the proprietors, who were assertive but courteous. They carried nothing from the stalls, for their purchases were to be delivered to the apartment where the maid, D'lo, waited to put them away.

They ate lunch at a restaurant where, the aunt said, a man had once come with a gun to shoot his lover's wife. She relished the details of the anecdote in the same way she had enjoyed dissecting the composition of her favourite dishes on the menu. The girl listened solemnly but asked no questions, to the aunt's regret, for she had withheld several salacious details she would have alluded to if pressed.

The room they were in was decorated with huge vases of lilies and on the spotless white tablecloths, which the tables wore as if they were ball dresses, were small vases of violets. The girl chose a clear vegetable soup and bread, a lemon sorbet and strawberries drizzled with Armagnac. The aunt was disappointed by her poor appetite, and enjoyed her own food less as a consequence.

Afterwards they walked along a boulevard of shops with wide windows. In one, lights converged to worship a single stiletto shoe with a transparent icicle for a heel; in others were a red dress, a baroque pearl and a diamond dog-collar. The girl was led from one dress shop to another where skeletally thin women with white china complexions and slick red mouths discussed cut and fabric. The aunt was puzzled by the girl's passivity. One would think she was being dressed in a bazaar for all the interest she showed in the clothes. Perhaps she was mildly retarded. Her sister had not said so, yet in looking back, hadn't there been something unspoken in the letters she had sent over the years? Something struggling to be revealed?

The girl was unaware that the clothes were more important than the people who sold them. She was fascinated by the languid gestures of one woman ordering this or that dress to be brought out, with a ferocious smile that reminded the girl of a panther she had seen once in a cage, lying perfectly still with a bored expression in its lovely eyes. Only the flick of its tail had revealed its savagery. Pale, pastel-clad acolytes scurried to do the woman's bidding. The girl saw that despite the identical pastel smocks and neat buns, they were quite different. One had a saucy look and quick nimble fingers, another smelled of cigarettes, and yet another had red-rimmed eyes which she had tried to mask with powder.

The aunt's taste for frills and beading and what she called dramatic colours was gently but firmly directed towards more delicate fabrics, paler hues and plainer styles. The only thing she resisted was a white voile dress.

‘Not white,' the aunt had said. Could they not see how it increased the insipidity of the girl's features? Besides, white was the colour of confirmation dresses and shrouds. Privately she thought the use of white for brides was unfortunate; if she had ever wed she would have worn violet and peacock blue.

Like the foodstuffs, the clothes were to be delivered, so they made their way unhampered to an open-air restaurant within the main park in the city for afternoon tea.

‘I thought you would like the wildness of it,' the aunt said, pleased by her own generosity, since open-air restaurants were not to her taste. She fancied the girl might be missing the primitive beauty of her home. She spotted an acquaintance who was invited to join them, a thin woman with glistening eyes snuggled on either side of a long sharp nose, who proceeded to whisper an interminable story about a man and his doctor wife.

The girl gazed around. It was the hottest part of the day and she could feel the dampness forming in the curve of her upper lip and along her spine, pricking at her palms. Beyond the awning roof of the restaurant, the park shimmered. There were green hedges manicured into animal shapes but they cast no shade. Carefully edged rose beds surrounded a small marble fountain where a woman with bare stone breasts endlessly poured water from a jug into a bowl. The paths were made from crushed white gravel that radiated a bright, white heat. Grass grew only in circles marked off by chains from which were suspended signs forbidding feet. Wrought-iron chairs stood about the edge of these pools of dazzling green and a few people sat in them and stared at the grass as if it were a pond where their faces looked back at them or fish swam.