The Empty Family (27 page)

One night when he woke he found that he was suddenly afraid of the silence and afraid of the closed door and afraid of the cupboard. He turned on the light but the brightness in the room frightened him even more. At least, he thought, his brother had been in a long open ward as he died and there was never silence like this, even if there was always pain, or fear of pain. It frightened him now to think that he could call and a nurse would come and she would be clean and dressed in white but she would not understand a single word he was saying, it would sound like gibberish to her. He wondered now if prison cells in Spain were like these hospital rooms, all white and perfect and locked, and no one there would understand him either. Again and again it came to him that there must be some way to get to the airport, some way to get clothes and money and buy a ticket, some way to get his passport back. He realized that this was all he wanted and that everything he did from now on would have to aim towards going home. A ticket. His passport. He whispered the two words to himself as he turned off the light.

In the darkness he tried to think about Abdul but all that came to him now was Abdul’s indifference to him, which was there all the time. Even making him kneel in front of him and take his penis in his mouth was part of it. And it was Abdul who had led him to the barber shop, who had put him in danger. He tried, for a moment, to pretend that he was Abdul, to put himself in Abdul’s mind, and he wondered if it was possible that Abdul missed him or worried about where he was. But all that came into his mind were images of blankness, Abdul’s face expressionless, his attention fixed on other things.

In the morning when Malik woke, Baldy was in the room. He moved closer when Malik opened his eyes.

‘Did they ask you any questions?’ Baldy enquired.

He still seemed nervous. Malik felt he could smell him, some perfume, but also something stale like unwashed clothes.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I don’t understand anything.’

‘They didn’t send in an interpreter?’

‘No.’

‘I have the car outside. As soon as they check you and say you are OK I am taking you home.’

‘Home?’

‘Out of here. And what will you tell the others when you see them?’

‘I was attacked.’

‘By whom?’

Malik sighed and closed his eyes.

‘I know what to say.’

‘By whom?’

‘By black fellows, Africans.’

‘How many of them?’

‘I don’t know. Two or three.’

‘Three. You say three.’

‘Three.’

‘And, by the way, you’re not going back to the house. I have another place for you.’

‘Am I going home? You said home.’

Malik closed his eyes.

‘I have new clothes for you,’ Baldy said.

‘Where am I going?’

‘Don’t ask questions. You won’t be far.’

Malik used his left elbow to help him sit up. He looked at Baldy, let his eyes linger on his face and his frame. Then he held his gaze until Baldy looked away.

‘No one knows what happened,’ Baldy said. ‘I lost my temper, that’s all. I don’t tell, you don’t tell, but my advice to you is …’

‘Leave me alone.’

Baldy waited there silently until the doctor came and examined Malik and said that he could go, but that he would have to take the walking frame with him and not put too much pressure on his right leg. They could pay a deposit on the frame, the doctor said, and then return it on his next visit in a month’s time, when his arm would probably be strong enough for him to use a crutch.

He hated being dressed by Baldy and could smell the staleness from him even more powerfully now. In the lobby of the hospital he sat in a chair as Baldy went into a side office. He supposed that Baldy must be paying the bill, but he did not ask and they did not speak as they drove into the city through busy traffic. Malik’s leg was throbbing from the short walk to the car. He knew that he would not be able to use it for a while. He wondered for how long.

As Baldy parked the car in a side-street that Malik knew was not far from the mobile phone shop, he seemed almost furtive. His eyes darted back and forth as he helped Malik from the passenger side and then fetched his walking frame from the boot. As they moved along the street, he walked a few steps ahead of Malik, who watched him with care as the expression on his face grew close to panic at Malik’s slowness and the idea that anyone passing might notice they were together.

At a doorway, Baldy fumbled for a while with keys, trying and failing a few times to select the correct one from a number of bunches of keys he had in his pocket.

‘You know something?’ he asked Malik. ‘You have been nothing but trouble since the day you arrived.’

Eventually, having opened the door, he helped Malik up the stairs while impatiently pulling the frame behind him. At every landing Malik stopped, presuming that they had arrived, but each time Baldy indicated to him that they would have to go farther. Finally, when they reached the top floor, Malik saw that one door, which was ajar, opened on to a roof. Baldy fumbled with keys again and opened the door opposite, which led into a small hallway. There was a door into a larger room into which they went.

‘You’ll be all right here,’ he said. ‘There’ll be food every day and I’ll have keys cut for you. And I don’t want any more behaviour, do you understand? You’re lucky …’

‘That you hit me?’ Malik interrupted. He had found a stool and was sitting down.

‘Yes, that is exactly what I was going to say.’

‘Is there anyone else here?’ Malik asked.

‘No,’ Baldy replied. ‘It’ll keep you out of harm’s way.’

He moved quickly to the hallway. Malik could hear him locking the door from the outside.

There was a bed with a bedside table and a sofa near the door with a table and two chairs near the window. His suitcase was on the floor beside the bed. Someone must have carried it from the other house. There was a television in the corner. Outside, off the dark hallway, there was a bathroom with a washing machine, and a small kitchen with a cooker and a fridge. There was nothing in the fridge. Neither of these rooms had any window. The window in the main room was long and led out to a rooftop that was bright with sunshine. There were a few rotting plants in bowls. He opened the door to the rooftop and, with the help of the frame, made his way out.

It was a small space enclosed by three walls, but it was overlooked only by his room. There was a low wall on the fourth side that looked over the back of some buildings below. No one, he realized, could see him on this rooftop. And no one, he imagined, could hear him if he screamed. He was at Baldy’s mercy here. If Baldy decided to forget about him, or if a car ran over Baldy in the street, he would languish here, he realized. No one would ever find him. He looked around him but all he could see were blank walls and the sky. There was a hum of traffic but it was faint and distant. He sat and waited to see if he would hear a voice, or any human sound, until he noticed a shadow moving gradually across this open space. The day was waning. He was hungry and thirsty and, as the shadow edged towards him until he was sitting in the only square of sunlight, he was afraid.

He wondered now what he would have to do to convince Baldy that he should be sent home. It hardly mattered that they would not want to see him at home. If he had the number of his father’s mobile phone he could call to say that Baldy had injured him and he would deny that he had done anything to deserve it. But he knew that his father would not insist that he come home. His father would probably say instead that he would find one of Baldy’s brothers and threaten him, or warn him that Baldy was his boss and he should learn to get on with him.

When the sunlight disappeared from the small rooftop, he moved inside and lay on the bed. He was dozing, half dreaming when Baldy came with a bag of supplies that contained bottled water, rice, some legs of chicken, ground garam masala, oil, beans, onions, a bag of salt and some tea and sugar.

‘You’ll have to learn how to cook,’ he said. ‘Can you stand up?’

Malik nodded.

‘Well, just boil the rice and fry the chicken and onions in oil.’

‘How long do you boil it for?

‘Until there’s no water left.’

‘How much water do you put in?’

‘How would I know?’

Baldy handed him a box of matches.

‘There’s a full bottle of
butano
and there’s a frying pan and a saucepan.’

‘Did you get the keys?’

‘What do you want keys for?’

‘If there was a fire or something I would need to get out.’

‘If there’s a fire, you can jump off the roof. Someone will catch you.’

‘I want keys,’ Malik said.

‘Look at you. You’re useless, worse than useless. I’ll bring you keys tomorrow.’

Over the next month Malik cooked chicken and onions and rice every day. He slowly worked out how much water to put into the saucepan for the rice. The television had only Spanish stations; sometimes he watched them, but mainly he did nothing. He sat in the sun and when the sun disappeared he lay on his bed. Baldy brought him a set of keys and took away his clothes and returned them washed and folded. He kept the keys safely but he did not want to risk the stairs on his own or go out into the street. At night he thought of things he might say to Baldy or to his father on the phone, angry things, or demands, but in the mornings he knew that he would never say anything to either of them.

Baldy brought him soap and shampoo and he kept himself as clean as he could. Sometimes, his arm and his leg grew itchy under the plaster and he tried to think about Abdul and this made him excited but soon he had to be careful because after the excitement he grew depressed and angry again and felt like banging his fists or even his head against the wall or going out on to the rooftop to scream.

Some days he was content and liked the idea that nothing would happen except that Baldy might come with a bag of food. Baldy, when he arrived, would never stay long or say much. He knew that Super must miss him and wondered if there were something he should say to Baldy about Super, or if he should try to find out what Baldy had told Super. And then there were all of the others in the bedroom, and Mahmood, and the two who worked with him in the mobile phone shop. All of them must miss him and must have asked about him. And then there was Abdul. Even in the morning, when most of the thoughts he had had seemed heated and exaggerated, he still felt free to imagine that he had a bond with him and that Abdul often thought about him, and that what occurred on the night of the concert was not an accident or a mistake or something that had casually come to pass. Abdul, he believed, had wanted it and planned it, even if he had done everything not to show it.

When Baldy took him back to the hospital, they examined his leg and his arm and removed the bandage from his ribs. Once more, he noticed how cowed Baldy was in the presence of the doctors, how badly shaved he was, and how large his hands seemed, the fingernails all bitten to the quick. Beside him, the doctors appeared almost delicate, everything about them perfect and sleek, like rich men. Malik watched them, enjoying how they moved and spoke, even though he could not understand a word they said.

‘Another month,’ Baldy said as he drove back into the city. ‘Another month and they’ll take the plaster off and you can go back to the shop and make yourself useful.’

‘Does Super know where I am?’

‘He’s in the mosque day and night.’

‘Is he not in his supermarket?’

‘Of course he is, but he has more to think about than you. He thinks about his prayers, him and his friends. You’d think they were the government the way they go on. He gave me the holy book to give to you.’

‘Where is it?’

‘I forgot about it. I’ll bring it tomorrow. Don’t tell him I forgot or I’ll get a long lecture from him.’

In the days that followed, the temperature in the city went up. Instead of wind, there was humidity. Whether the long window was open or closed made no difference, the room was a small oven, and this did not change even when night fell. Malik’s arm and leg began to itch so that he could not sleep; at times he would have pulled the plaster off if he could. He asked Baldy for a fan but it took him a few days to deliver it. He brought it, Malik believed, only because he himself needed to cool down after his long climb up the stairs, which left him sweating and panting.

When Malik asked him when they were to go back to the hospital, if he had an actual date, Baldy shrugged and said that it would be more or less a month from the last visit. When Malik said that he would like to have the plaster removed sooner, Baldy said that he would call the hospital but he did not mention it again. Malik was worried that Baldy would tell him not to overuse the fan and thus cause expense so he did not draw any further attention to his discomfort but waited, hoping that the temperature would go down or that a breeze would blow from somewhere.

By the time Baldy drove him to the hospital again, he had not slept properly for weeks. On the journey, each time they seemed to be coming close to the car in front Malik braced himself, certain that they were going to crash into it. For the last part he fell asleep and had to be woken by Baldy in the hospital car park. In the hospital itself, he noticed only the air-conditioning and kept looking around to see where it came from so that he could move closer to its source and bathe himself in it. Once more, as he waited for the doctor, he fell asleep and wondered when he woke if he might be kept overnight, or even for a few days, as they took the plaster off. But it was all done quickly and, as he waited in the lobby while Baldy went into the office with cash in his hand to pay, he realized that he could walk, he could go where he liked in his spare time and this meant he could pass by the barber shop and look in at Abdul, or he could visit Super. And soon, he hoped, the heat would go. He touched his leg and his arm, the skin seemed raw and foreign and almost exciting to him. In the car, as Baldy told him that he would be starting work again the next morning, he wondered about Abdul, he saw him in his mind as he stood working on someone’s haircut glancing out the window for a moment and seeing Malik on the street. He would, he thought, walk by the Four Corners as often as he could.