The Adjacent (48 page)

I completed my errand with the laundry, dropped off the clean costumes at the theatre and then returned home. My thoughts and emotions were still running wild. That young man had been Tomak! But it couldn’t have been Tomak. He looked just like him, but the information I was given before I arrived on this island was that Tomak had suffered burns to his head and shoulders. It was this knowledge that had lent an edge of urgency to my search for him. The man I glimpsed outside the theatre showed no sign of injury.

And if that was the magician Madame Wollsten had told me about, then of course it could not be Tomak. Unless Tomak and he were one, unless Tomak had for some incomprehensible reason become a stage performer, an illusionist – it was too fantastic to consider.

After having been pushed into the background for a long while, Tomak became my obsession again. The thought that he might be living in the same town as me, not only alive but apparently unharmed, was something I could not ignore. That night I lay awake for hours, wondering what I should do, while an entirely separate part of my mind was arguing that it was a coincidence, that he was someone who only resembled Tomak, who was not him, who could not be him.

The next day I walked into the town, wandering through the most populous parts, scanning the face of every man I saw. I walked slowly through the streets for hours, sweltering in the heat, desperate to see him.

The only thing I knew, but then not with total certainty, was that the man I had seen leaving the theatre was almost certainly the magician. He must be living somewhere in the town.

I started to ask around, trying to find out if anyone I was in contact with knew or had ever heard of any magicians in Beathurn. None had. Later I contacted a conjurers’ professional organization in Prachous Town, but the only member they had in Beathurn was now elderly and semi-retired.

I made a habit of walking through the centre of town most days, sometimes even diverting to one of the outer suburbs, always hoping to find him. Several weeks went by with nothing, but then at last I saw him again.

CLOSE TO THE CENTRE OF BEATHURN THERE IS A PLEASANT,
tree-filled square, set aside for pedestrians and people who want to relax over a quiet meal in the open air: there are several restaurants fronting the pedestrian area, and a couple of café-bars. The square is virtually closed to traffic, which is confined to a narrow road running along one side. This peaceful and attractive place is in front of the main building of the Multitechnic University and is a natural meeting area, not only for the students, who congregate there in their hundreds, but for everyone else too.

While making my regular forays in search of Tomak I almost invariably went through the square, thinking it was one of the more likely places he would be.

And so it turned out. One morning, while walking to work, I passed through the square, not in fact at that moment thinking of Tomak or trying to see him. Then I did: he was sitting alone at a table for two, a newspaper spread out in front of him, a pen in one hand while he solved some kind of puzzle, and a cup of coffee in the other. Next to his hand was a plate with the crumbs left over from something he had eaten.

Of course I came to a halt, staring across at him. He was unaware of me, reaching forward with his pen from time to time to mark a square of letters printed in the newspaper. My first instinct was to approach him, but since I saw him at the theatre a few weeks had passed. I wanted to be careful.

I walked past the café, turned around, walked back. He was ordering something from the waiter, so I stood still until he had finished, thinking he might glance around, notice me. He did not. I waited until the waiter brought him his order, a second cup of coffee, then went to one of the empty tables. When the waiter came across I ordered a coffee for myself.

If the man I thought was Tomak noticed me, he did not act on it. If it was Tomak surely he would recognize me? I sat still at my table, trying not to stare, but being constantly aware of him. Who could he be? If not Tomak he looked identical to the young man I had lost when the war broke out. A magician? It stretched credulity, but all I knew was that this man reminded me in every way of Tomak – apart from the facial resemblance, which was uncannily close, he had the same hair, the same colouring, sat hunched over
his newspaper in a way that was completely familiar to me.

He settled his bill, folded his newspaper, which he tossed into a waste receptacle beside the main door of the café, then walked out into the square. He did not pass directly by my table, but he was close, so close.

I was thrown by this encounter to such an extent that as he walked off into the busy square it did not occur to me to follow him. By the time I thought about it he had disappeared into the crowds.

The next morning I went to the same place at the same time, and to my relief he was there again. I took a table on the far side of the café’s concourse, from where I could look at him without feeling obvious about it. I ordered a croissant and a cup of black coffee, and while I toyed with them I thought again about the dilemma presented to me by this man. I now understood that the conflict was between heart and head.

If it really was Tomak, the man I had known and loved, why did he not recognize me? Why did he show no trace of the injuries about which I had been given such explicit, shocking and authoritative information? Of course, he might be pretending not to know me, but I could not think of a single reason why he should do that. Or another possibility: the injuries he received might have been different from the ones I had heard about: maybe he had suffered traumatic amnesia, so that much of his past life was forgotten?

On the other hand, my calm head told me that it was not Tomak at all, that it could not be him, that it was an amazing coincidence. A coincidence of his dark and often untidy hair, of his wide eyes, his high cheekbones, his broad shoulders, his easy way of sitting. When the man smiled I saw Tomak smile and I went rigid inside, uplifted by remembered happiness, laid low by a sense of abandonment.

I knew there was only one way to find out. I had to resolve it by speaking to him directly. I signed for what I’d eaten, then stood up and started across the café concourse, my heart thumping with sudden nervousness. As I did so a young woman made her way quickly towards him across the square, waving her hand. She wound her way sinuously through the tables, went directly to him and leaned down to kiss him on both cheeks. Laughing, she sat down on the chair opposite his. He squeezed her hand across the table, smiling.

I halted. I backed away.

I stood by the edge of the café area, staring across. Who was she? She was young – I guessed she was still in her teens. She was barely out of childhood, on the brink of womanhood. A student at the
university? She had come across the square from that direction. She was glowing with youth: she had a slim, agile body, long delicate hands, her fair hair was drawn back in a pony-tail. She was wearing tight white jeans and a loose jacket. Sunglasses were propped up on her brow. As she sat with Tomak, she crossed and uncrossed her legs, spoke vivaciously, made him laugh. She rarely looked away from him. He was her first love, the one she would remember just as I was remembering, for the rest of her life, for the rest of mine.

The waiter brought her a soft drink with ice, which she sipped, staring at Tomak across the rim of the glass. He was telling her something, waving his hands expressively. I knew that gesture. I knew all his mannerisms.

She was too old to be his daughter – or he was too young to have a daughter of that age. But could they be lovers? She looked as if she was at least seven or eight years younger than him. They were acting together as if they knew each other well, were close or intimate friends, but once she had sat down opposite him he let go of her hand and seemed to be content just to chat casually with her. They were both smiling a lot and the girl was leaning towards him with her elbows on the table, holding her drink in both hands.

I was incapable of moving away. I stood there at the edge of the square, where the paths crossed the grassy parkland and the tables belonging to the restaurants and cafés spread out across their allotted areas. I knew that I was probably making myself prominent by standing so still, staring so obviously across the café concourse, but I felt paralysed by the discovery of this young friend of his.

Tomak sometimes glanced around expressively while he spoke to her, and once or twice his gaze came in my direction. He must have noticed me there, yet somehow he still did not recognize me.

They left the table, scraping back their chairs, then straightening them before they walked away. He let her go first. They walked past me, as close to me as Tomak had been when he left the café the day before. Once they were in the open he walked beside her, his arms swinging at his side. They did not touch each other.

I let them get a long way ahead of me, then I followed. I maintained the distance, but because they were walking slowly, sauntering, wrapped up in each other’s company, I was soon catching up with them. I went more slowly. I dawdled behind them for a long time, certain they must realize they were being followed, but they were preoccupied with each other. I was confused, anguished, but also full of a kind of awkward happiness.

I knew I should turn away, walk home, leave these carefree and infatuated young people to each other, but it was just not possible. My rationale for being here on this island was Tomak, and in some mystifying, unsatisfactory but undeniable way, I had at last found him. Walking away was not a decision I felt I could take.

They walked slowly past the shopping area of the town then entered a narrow street, a place of deep shade created by the tall houses on each side. He led her to the door of an old building, where there had once been a restaurant at street level, with several storeys above. The windows were all bricked up. Tomak unlocked the door and she went in before him. He followed, slammed the door and I heard the lock turn.

I hurried home, collected my car, and when the couple emerged from that secretive-looking building some two hours later I was parked unobtrusively at the far end of the street.

By keeping them at a distance, driving deviously, watching, following, I eventually discovered where Tomak lived.

WHAT THEN FOLLOWED WAS A SEQUENCE OF EVENTS WHICH I
am not proud of, and was not proud of at the time, but such were my intense feelings about Tomak that I could hardly have acted otherwise. Every spare moment I had I devoted to trying to solve the deeply personal mystery that this man presented. I had to come to some kind of understanding of the turbulent feelings he aroused, and the enigma that surrounded him.

I soon learned his regular movements about the town: there were certain bars or restaurants he favoured, houses or apartments he sometimes visited. He walked everywhere, having no car or other vehicle. Once I saw him being driven again by the friend who owned the small grey car I had seen outside the theatre.

I followed him whenever he went to meet his young companion. He saw her once or twice every week, always in the café in the square by the university, and after a relaxed conversation they would walk to the large old building and lock themselves inside. I had to wait for them to emerge, fighting down my feelings of sadness and jealousy. I envied what appeared to me to be their unworried life together.

In the evenings, when he appeared never to meet her, I regularly
went to watch the entrance to his apartment from the darkened streets outside the building.

On one evening of intense humidity, in a wave of hot air flooding across the town from the simmering interior of the island, I took up what I believed was a secure position close to his apartment. Thunder rumbled out at sea. I was in a shadowed place from which one window was visible, often uncurtained at night. I could also see the main door to the apartment block. I could observe when he left or arrived. The lighted window did not give on to a room – it was a hall or passageway of some kind. I rarely saw him there, except when he moved to and fro between the rooms, but it was enough of a view to prove to me, more or less beyond doubt, that he never took his young girlfriend to the apartment. But I was more obsessively interested in the man who had been Tomak than in the girl.

I was aware of the torpid stillness of the town. The oppressive weather was bearing down on the houses, keeping people inside. The storm seemed to be approaching no closer to the shore. Sometimes I saw lightning flickering far off to the east. Traffic moved in the distance but there were no cars in the streets around me. The normal noises of the city seemed hushed, muted. The birds were still. Leaves rustled above me as the hot, slow wind blew. I heard insects stridulating in the trees and bushes. Wherever my bare arms touched the side of my body, I felt the burning of inescapable heat. The town was waiting for the storm to break, relishing the prospect of a cleansing downpour.

‘Who are you, and why the hell are you following me?’

He was there without warning. He must have left the apartment block by another door, approached through the gardens or yards at the back of the buildings. He had emerged from a gated entrance close to where I always stood.

I was shocked into silence. Embarrassed by being caught. Frightened of what he might do. But above all electrically aware of his closeness to me.

‘You’re stalking me. Why?’ His voice was raised, angry.

I stumbled back, away from him, but there was an ornamental shrub behind me, bulging out into the street, above the containing wall. I normally depended on its foliage to conceal me as I waited but now it was blocking my escape.

A light came on, dazzling me. He was holding a battery torch, shining the beam into my face.

‘Let me have a look at you!’

I said at last, but feebly, ‘Tomak? It is you, isn’t it?’

‘Has someone sent you? Is it blackmail? Is that what it is?’

At last I was hearing him speak. Although he was angry his voice was the same as I remembered it, but now he was speaking in the Prachoit demotic, the popular language of people who were born on the island. I understood demotic but found it difficult to speak, unless I had time to think ahead about what I wanted to say.