The Good Mayor (29 page)

Tibo did not bother with the lights. He walked down the hall in darkness to the kitchen where he took his coat off and shook it so the wet snow scattered across the floor and immediately began to melt. He put his gloves inside his hat and left them close to the big iron stove where they would be dry and warm in the morning. And then he sat down at the table with a lump of black bread on a wooden board and a plate of yellow cheese. Tibo ate. He read the paper. He decided to go to bed. He lay there, listening as the noise of the wind died away to be replaced by the deep, dark-white quiet that comes with heavy snow. What did it mean? What could it mean? And then it was morning.

Tibo wiped the steam from the mirror above the sink and stared at himself. He seemed suddenly a little greyer. He plunged his shaving brush into the scalding water, shook it and rubbed it on the soap. The mirror was steamy again. Tibo took the towel from his shoulder and rubbed the glass.

“Colourful,” he said. “Colourful! Colourful! Colourful!” Then, just as Agathe had said it, Tibo said, “Co-lour-ful.” Then, silently, gently “Co-lour-ful, co-lour-ful.” The razor slipped from his fingers and rattled into the china basin. “Co-lour-ful.” Tibo stared in astonishment as the man in the mirror looked back and mouthed, “I love you.”

HEN SHE LEFT THE GOLDEN ANGEL
, Agathe ran down Castle Street, faster than any respectable woman of Dot above the age of twelve has ever been seen to run—running like she was on fire and crying and sobbing so her make-up ran in oily streaks down her face. And people who turned to look heard her saying, “Eeeee-uh! Eeeee-uh!” over and over, like a cow with a broken leg. She ran like that, her shoes slipping over the frost-slimy pavement, her throat scorching with sobs, her face a gorgon’s mask of tears and snot, all the way down Castle Street, across White Bridge, past the pillar box where Tibo posted her card and right into Hektor who greeted her with an “Oof!” and something cursed. Agathe didn’t even see him. She bounced away from him as if she had collided with a wall or run into the side of a tram. She never even looked at him, just staggered a little, sidestepped and carried on running but she had only gone a pace—not even a pace, one foot still high in the air—when Hektor recognised her and hooked her by the elbow.

Agathe spun round like a bead on a string, spun round and collided with him again, her face in his shirt, her head folded between the lapels of his flapping coat, his arms wrapping her, stopping her, holding her up but still she was making that noise.

“Agathe!” There was fear in his voice. “Agathe. Stop it! It’s me. It’s Hektor. What’s wrong with you? What’s happened? Are you hurt?”

She rubbed her wet face across his shirt.

“Agathe, are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” she said and sniffed with a noise like a choked drain.

“You’re not fine.”

“I’m fine. Let me go.”

“I’m not letting you go.”

“Hektor, you don’t have to hold me up.”

“I’m not letting you go.”

Hektor stood there, rocking slowly and gently like an elm in a cornfield, breathing calmly and easily until her breath fell into step with his, until her fists unclenched and her arms unstiffened and wrapped themselves around him, holding him under his coat. “It’s snowing,” he said. “We should go.”

“We should go,” she said. And they walked off together, holding each other, saying nothing.

The tram route that links City Square with Green Bridge and comes back in a circular route along Cathedral Avenue to the top of Castle Street is one of the best served in Dot. If they had wanted a tram, they could have found one easily enough, but they walked together through the snow as it fell about them, muffling the noise of the city, sending the people of Dot indoors, drawing down a swirling curtain at every street corner and sweeping the town with frozen feathers that fell into the Ampersand with a hot hiss. They walked like that, hugging each other like sleepwalkers, until they reached the corner of Aleksander Street and the jangle of a broken piano in The Three Crowns woke them up.

“I should go in,” Agathe said but she kept her arms around him.

“Should you?”

“I should go in.”

“Is there anybody there?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Probably not. Not usually.”

“You can come home with me.”

There was a groan in her voice. “Hektor, I can’t.”

He said nothing. The snow fell. The sky was white.

“I can’t, Hektor. I can’t.”

“It’s snowing,” he said. “Still snowing. It’s snowing worse. I should go home.”

Agathe was standing there face to face with him, the buttons of her coat brushing his shirt, her face turned up to him, chin raised, nose in the air, eyes closed, snowflakes melting on her open lips, landing briefly on her pale skin and dying there.

Her body and Hektor’s were touching, belly and breast and thigh as he tried to wrap her in his coat, holding the flaps of it around her, warming her and protecting her. The scent of her filled him. She was waiting to be kissed. Hektor kissed her. Not hesitantly. Not brushing her lips with his. Not giving her the chance to draw back with indignation. Not hinting. Not fearing. Not asking if this was the thing she wanted to do because he knew it was. He kissed her and he kept on kissing her with the snow swirling about them now and the piano jangling and the smell of the stale beer and the noise of the bar.

“Is there anybody there? At your house?” she asked.

“No. Nobody. Never.”

She held him closer, laying her hands flat on his back, under his coat, against his shirt, feeling the heat of him, pressing her face into him, his neck, his chest, his throat.

“Never?”

“No, Agathe. Never.” He planted small kisses on her snowy hair, over her forehead, across her eyes, back to her mouth.

“Take me there,” she said.

Hektor’s flat was close by, just a little further along the river and round the corner in Canal Street. Now, when they walked, they walked quickly, not like people who wanted to linger together, not like people who went unwillingly towards a reluctant parting, but like people hurrying to something they had waited for and longed for, dreamed of for ages. The trees along the black canal held up bare arms to the sky. Snow was piling in the dips between their branches. It had already hidden the cobbles that ran in front of the tenements and smoothed itself over the rusty railings between the pavement and the water’s edge and the cascade of downy snowflakes falling all around made the street lamps sparkle like
the glitter ball that hangs from the ceiling of the Empress Ballroom in Ampersand Street.

Agathe and Stopak used to go dancing there and, just for a second, she had a memory of a handsome man in a blue suit, holding her in his arms and smiling at her. She drove it from her mind. “Come on,” she said and held Hektor a little tighter. “Is it far now?”

“We’re here. The green door. Number 15. Soon get you warm.”

She pressed her mouth on his again. He tasted of cigarettes. “I’m warm. I’m warm. It’s only my face that’s cold.”

“I believe it.” He grabbed her to him and stood for long minutes kissing her and kissing her, dragging his hands over her, skating over her curves, enjoying her. Even through the thick cloth of her coat, the feel of her was something wonderful and the smell of her perfume was filling him. The kissing went on and on, his hands grew more and more insistent until she was pressed against him and moaning deep in her chest, rubbing herself on him, grinding against him with his hands on her as her coat rose up over her hips and her skirt followed it, sliding over her thighs.

Agathe broke away. “No! Not here. Not in the street. Let’s get in the house. Come on, for God’s sake.”

Hektor patted his pockets, searching for his house keys.

“Come on! Come on!” Agathe was shuffling from foot to foot in an eager little dance behind him.

He searched every pocket twice—his trousers, his coat, his jacket inside and out and then he found them, jammed down under his sketchbook and his Omar Khayyám. The books strained the cloth as he tugged them out. “Hold these,” he said, passing them to Agathe and stooping to the keyhole. “I can’t see what I’m doing.” His hands were shaking. “I’m so cold.” And there was a tremble in his voice.

And then the door swung open and he turned round, ready to welcome her but she almost ran past him, out of the snow and into the darkened flat, her hand brushing his as she passed. “Show me the way,” she said. She had already taken off her coat.

Is it really necessary to say more of what took place then? Is this the kind of story that requires details like that—a record of
every last sigh and whimper and groan? “Show me the way,” that was what Agathe said. But that’s not what he did. Hektor didn’t show her the way. Hektor reminded her of the way.

All that he could give she soaked up like a sponge that’s been left to dry out on the bathroom shelf all summer long and then, when it finds itself in water again, it absorbs everything, it softens and it swells and it drinks in every drop and then it gives everything back again, willingly. Agathe was like that. Hektor reminded her how to be like that. Hektor reminded her that she had never really forgotten.

All afternoon, they made love in the old brass bed that stood in one corner of Hektor’s room and, when they were too tired to make love any more, he went to the cupboard under the sink and brought out a bottle of vodka that shone blue in the snow-light from the window and they sipped it until it was dark, holding the covers up to their chins and talking. And then they made love again.

At midnight, when Good Tibo Krovic was asleep, alone in the house at the end of the blue-tiled path, when Stopak was lying face-down on the sofa with an empty beer crate beside him and the front door swinging open to the landing, when Achilles the cat was trampling a nice, flat circle on Agathe’s bed and settling down for the night, Hektor was standing naked at his stove, making a six-egg omelette as Agathe leaned on one elbow, naked in bed, and watched him, smiling.

And, after they ate the omelette and after they drank a little more vodka, while the snow squandered itself silently all night long and the stove creaked and rattled and cooled, they made love.

HEN IT WAS MORNING. AGATHE LAY ON HER
back, awake, as she once lay in another life, naked, pinned under a snoring man who half covered her, half embraced her.

The curtains were closed but they were thin and unlined. They fitted none too well. The winter dawn was approaching, the street lamps were still burning outside and every scrap of light was dancing back from the snowy street and through the gaps at the edges of the curtains, through the gap at the middle where they didn’t quite fit, through the scalloped bite marks at the top where they sagged on the pole, filling the room with a mouse-grey light.

“A man did that,” Agathe thought. “I could fix those. I could make some nice curtains for this place.”

She lay in bed, her left arm pinned under Hektor and crooked around him, pillowing him against her breast, her right hand free and twisting his hair in curls around her finger. From time to time, she bent forward, awkwardly, and kissed him on the top of his head and lay down again on the pillow, smiling and whispering, “You are just gorgeous,” or “Thank you. Thank you,” and, once, “What have I done?”

She looked round the room. Things were appearing in the gathering light, stepping out of the shadows and taking shape—the stove, probably not the cleanest, a large china sink below the window with a cupboard underneath and dishes piled on the draining board, another cupboard (or a wardrobe?), a table in the middle of the room and three chairs round it.

The fourth was at her elbow, pretending to be a bedside table. The dirty vodka glasses stood there and a pack of cigarettes and a box of matches and two books—the books Hektor had taken from his pocket and handed to her at the door. Agathe picked them up and put them on top of the blankets in front of her, one large and black and plain, one small and greenish brown with worn suede covers, all bent and stained and faded. There were gold letters stamped on the spine and on the front—“Omar Khayyám.” A nice name. Carefully, so as not to move too much and wake Hektor, she opened the book, holding it in her one free hand and turning the pages with her nose. Agathe was surprised to find poems. Small poems. Lots of them. Some happy ones. Some about love. Quite a few about drink but mostly sad ones. Still, she liked them and decided to read some more a bit later.