The Adjacent (49 page)

Now I just said, ‘Tomak! Please! Don’t you remember me?’

‘You look harmless enough. Why are you following me? Is it Ruddebet’s father? Has he put you up to this? Is he paying you? What are you trying to find out about us?’

‘I can’t see you with that light in my eyes!’ I cried. I was dazzled by the flashlight beam – he was just a dark shape. ‘I’ve been searching for you, Tomak. I heard you had been injured, suffered terrible burns. I came to find you. You must remember what we promised each other.’

‘What you’re doing is illegal. You probably think I’m not aware of you, but you’ve been following me all over town. Ruddebet too. What are you up to? She’s just an innocent girl. It’s a crime – you know that? Stalking is dealt with by populace vengeance. Do you want me to call my neighbours?’

‘Please listen to me. My name was Kirstenya when we were together. I’ve had to change it since I’ve been living here, but I was Kirstenya. Don’t you remember? Kirstenya Rosscky. We were brought up as brother and sister, but when we grew up we fell in love with each other. War was breaking out around us, and I flew back home to find you. I did find you, close to where we lived. You were with a squad of your troops, trying to rescue people trapped in their houses, and dealing with the fires. Shells were landing everywhere. There were awful explosions and aircraft were above us. Dive bombers! Don’t you remember those terrifying bombers, Tomak? It was as if the whole city was on fire. I wanted you to escape with me, but you advised me to flee while I could, while I still had an aircraft. You told me there was a plan for the army and air force to regroup. You told me to go there, to a city a long way south of the invasion.’

‘What’s your name? I’m going to report you.’

‘I flew to the other city, but although I waited as long as I could you never arrived. I had to move on, keep moving. I left messages for you everywhere I landed, because I was told I had to escape. I’m a qualified pilot – you knew that. They needed me, the generals
in charge. It doesn’t matter how, but I got away. Then when I was safe, weeks later, I heard that the enemy had rounded up most of our army officers and they were taken to an isolated place, a forest somewhere, or an uninhabited island, and then massacred. I was terrified you were among them.’

‘I’ll give you one last chance. If you promise to stop doing this I won’t report you to the policier.’

‘I just wanted to see you again. Don’t you remember me?’ I shouted the last words, losing control. ‘When we were children, then later as we grew up. The flying! You must remember that? Your father was a flying ace. We went together to races and festivals.’

‘Keep away from me. You understand? And if you see Ruddebet’s father, tell him to mind his own business too.’

‘Don’t do anything, Tomak – please! I’m sorry. I meant no harm.’

He still had not touched me, and he kept his distance from me. He switched off the torch at last.

‘How do you know my name?’ His voice was suddenly much quieter, less hostile.

Now I could see his face, half-lit by a street-lamp somewhere behind me. It was Tomak, it was not him. The physical resemblance was astonishing.

‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done this. I won’t do it ever again.’

I began to retreat from him, pushing around the ornamental shrub, but I was scared of turning my back on him. Thunder cracked suddenly, much louder and more frightening than before. It was like a physical blow. Tomak had become a stranger. He could not be the man I was hoping to find. Yet the dilemma remained, head and heart, heart against head. It
must
be him! Everything about this man was strange, threatening, but the threat came from my own foolish actions, not from him. Tomak was always gentle with me.

I was overcome with a sorrowful guilt, a realization of what I had done, seeing myself as he must be seeing me.

Something lay between us. It was intangible, inexplicable: we seemed to be shouting to each other across a divide. It was as if we were in sight, physically close, adjacent to each other but separated by misunderstandings, different lives, different memories. How could Tomak have forgotten me? That was impossible. Who was this man, if not my lover?

He was making no effort to detain me, so in a rush of rising shame I turned away from him and began to run, hurrying away from him down the dimly lit pathway. I looked back once – he was
standing where we had been, a tall figure in the dark. I was so sorry, so overcome with guilt.

I went down the road, took a side turning, ran down that, then another. A terrible flash of sheet lightning, flickering blue-white four or five times, lit the road and the houses around me. I was alone in the night, running and stumbling, frightened of the dark, frightened now of the ferocity of the storm. Thunder again thudded deafeningly above me. I finally came to the main road and from there was able to work my way back through the silent streets to find the place where I had left my car. The rain broke about me as I arrived there, but I wrenched the door open, scrambled inside. My dress was already soaked through, my arms and legs were wetly glistening. I sat in the car for several minutes before I felt able to drive. I was trembling and shivering, and alone in a violent storm. Hard rain fell, swamping visibility and drumming like huge beating hands on the roof of the car. Cascades of floodwater poured down the street outside. I was terrified the car would be washed away. I started the engine, moved the car to the centre of the road where the flood was not pouring so deeply. I felt the welcome relief of the breaking weather after weeks of torrid heat, but my inner life was as suffocated and undecided as ever before. I knew I had lost everything, that my quest had ended. I had made the search for Tomak central to my life but now I had to put that behind me.

Eventually, I put the car in gear and drove slowly back to my house. The roads were littered with fallen leaves and branches, rain continued to fall, the streets were awash. The storm moved on as I drove up the hill to my house, the thunder rumbling away in the distance. I parked the car, then walked through my garden to the house. I felt the blessed relief of the rain-washed air, the temporary cool of the dripping trees and the puddled earth.

THE NEXT DAY I CHANGED MY CAR IN CASE TOMAK RECOGNIZED
the old one. I began to wear different clothes, I made superficial changes to my appearance: I arranged my hair differently, wore dark glasses, tied scarves around my neck. I felt ridiculous, and constantly in danger of him carrying out his threat to report me, but in spite of what happened during the night of the storm I could not let it go. I knew I was edging down into something more psychologically
dangerous than obsessive curiosity, but I was trapped in a dilemma of my own making.

Then something happened that brought closure for me. It was perhaps a timely intervention, saving me from myself.

I was in my new car, watching the old restaurant building Tomak and his young girlfriend went to whenever they met. A few minutes earlier I had noticed them meeting in the café in the square, so I guessed where they would be next, and not long afterwards I saw them entering the tall building. Once they were inside I left the car where it was and went to a small café a couple of streets away, where I bought a cold drink. I knew that they always stayed inside the building for at least two hours, so I had time to kill. I sat at a table under the canvas canopy and browsed the daily newspaper. After an hour I strolled back to the old restaurant building, intending to stand at the intersection where the traffic turned, and where there was a clear if distant view of the door to the building. I took up position beneath a tree and opened a book to read.

I became aware that someone was approaching me in a deliberate way, crossing against the traffic, waiting for cars to pass then stepping forward quickly. I kept my eyes on my book. My heart leaping, I assumed it must be Tomak, but when I looked up I saw it was an older man, dressed in casual shirt and shorts, striding towards me. His manner was anything but casual. He raised a hand towards me, pointing a forefinger at me.

‘Are you waiting for my daughter?’ he said. His manner was forthright, but unthreatening.

I shook my head, uncertain what to say. ‘No – a friend.’

‘That magician, the illusionist. I’ve seen you before, hanging around him. You keep following him.’

I felt it was none of this stranger’s business, so again I simply shook my head. He was close beside me. He took my arm in a gentle hold.

‘I don’t know your name,’ he said. ‘But you and I have interests in common. We need to speak. Shall we go somewhere that we don’t have to shout over the traffic?’

There was a park beside the intersection, so I allowed him to lead me, not discourteously, through the wrought-iron gate to the area of mown grass and flowerbeds beyond. We walked to the shade of a grove of trees planted on a shallow slope. A brook ran down through the trees towards the edge of the park.

I made sure that where we stopped was a place from which I
could still see the door to the building. We were now much further away, but it was in sight.

‘You should know who I am,’ the man said. ‘My name is Gerred Huun. The young woman who is currently inside that building is my child, my only daughter. Her name is Ruddebet.’

In the Prachoit custom he removed a plastic ID card from his pocket and let me see it. I responded with my own.

‘I am Mellanya Ross,’ I said.

‘I’m concerned about the effect your friend might be having on my daughter. I need your help.’

‘I know nothing at all about your daughter,’ I said, mentally thrusting away from my mind the hours I had spent obsessively imagining and worrying about what her relationship with Tomak must be.

‘If you’ve seen her with your friend, you know that she is barely more than a child. In fact she is just eighteen years old and in a couple of months she will be starting university. She’s an intelligent, talented girl. She has been accepted for a degree course that is academically demanding and yet will allow her to develop her love of sport. I was once a sportsman myself, as was my wife. My wife, unfortunately, died three years ago. Ruddebet is now the only family I have, and I am concerned that she should not be led astray. This man, this idle magician, is several years older than her, and I don’t know what he’s up to.’

‘I don’t see how I can help,’ I said, but a sympathetic understanding was starting to grow in me. Interests in common, indeed.

‘You could tell me what you know of your friend. He moved into the town only recently, and has kept himself to himself.’

‘It’s complicated. I thought he was a friend, but I was wrong. I thought he was someone else, someone I knew in the past. I made a terrible mistake. It’s not the same man. I’m not even sure what his name is.’

‘I can tell you that. He calls himself a thaumaturge, and his name is Tom, or perhaps Thom.’ He pronounced it with a soft ‘th’, but then corrected it.

‘Would that be short for Tomak?’ I said.

‘No, I’ve never heard a name like that. It’s Tom or Thom. But he doesn’t even use a second name. Few people seem to know anything about him. Who is he? Where has he come from?’

‘Those are questions I can’t answer.’

‘It was my own fault,’ Gerred Huun said. ‘I was the one who
suggested to Ruddebet that she might be suitable to apply for this job.’

‘Job?’ I said.

‘As his assistant on stage, when he performs his magic. She has to wait a few weeks before starting her course, and I thought she might find it interesting and make a little credit. I had no idea she would become emotionally involved with him.’

‘Are you sure that’s what has happened?’ I said, surprising myself with the quickness of the thought, but I was remembering what I had seen of them when they were together. They were affectionate to each other, but it was the affection of friendship, not of lovers. This was what had puzzled me, because they went to a place where it was obvious they would be alone together. That implied something much more physical was taking place. But their behaviour outside was not at all suggestive of that. ‘Do you know what the job involves?’

‘I was shown the apparatus once. He had it set up in that building in the street across there.’

‘So they’re using it as a rehearsal room?’

‘That’s what Ruddebet calls it.’

‘They are rehearsing while they’re there? Why do you think that means they have become lovers? That’s what you fear, isn’t it?’

‘It’s just the way she acts now. She’s become secretive, she is angry with me if I ask too many questions. I’m losing her, I can’t do or say anything right any more. We used to be so close all the time, but now it’s becoming difficult.’

‘If she’s eighteen,’ I said, ‘then she is an adult, no matter what she is doing.’

‘Yes, but she’s my daughter and she is still living with me.’

I sat silently for a while, thinking how I too had misunderstood what was going on. In my single-minded need to find Tomak I had been making a lot of assumptions. It had not occurred to me they might be working together. I liked Gerred Huun – he seemed a decent man, over-protective of his daughter, but perhaps it was only that his concern for her was greater than it needed to be. Our brief conversation had already made me see the young woman differently, and now I began to imagine how Ruddebet herself might feel. We sat down on the grass together and spoke for a long time. Gradually, we became more relaxed in each other’s company, speaking frankly. I tried to describe from a woman’s point of view what his daughter might well be seeing in this slightly older man. As I spoke I realized that I was no longer thinking of him as Tomak, that I had somehow accepted it was someone different, Thom or Tom, Thom the
Thaumaturge. My head was at last resolving the dilemma of the heart. I pointed out that when Ruddebet started at the university their relationship, whatever it was now, would certainly come to a natural end and that in the meantime no harm was being done.

‘You understand, Ruddebet and I find it difficult to speak openly to each other.’

‘She’s growing up,’ I said. ‘A lot of fathers find it difficult to adjust as their daughter becomes an adult woman. Things have to change.’