Voices in the Dark (38 page)

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I see why.’

After I found out the truth about my father, my heart was always elsewhere. I went about as normal, but I felt strange and distant, as if my soul had left my body and I had not gone with it.

‘What is wrong with you, Anselm?’ Sister Theresa demanded one morning. She had been asking me about the Bible, and I had not heard a thing. I came back to the real world.

‘Nothing, Sister,’ I said.

The air of the classroom was dismal. The Alcyrian army had advanced ten miles, and the flag at the front of the room was raised as a mark of respect for the casualties. We had all gone to stand in the streets at the king’s most recent speech. Even my mother came to the window to watch the procession go past. But the Imperial Order was there, and people left early, even while the king was still talking. Every night, men stood in queues waiting to enlist for the army, the last stragglers rounded up for National Service. They had an old weariness that said they had seen all this before.

‘David and Jonathan,’ said Sister Theresa. ‘Tell me about David and Jonathan.’

‘“David made a covenant with Jonathan, because he loved him as himself,”’ I said, the first thing that came into my head.

John Keller sniggered at that.

‘What?’ demanded Sister Theresa, rounding on him. ‘What is so funny?’

‘Nothing,’ said John Keller, throwing me a glance. ‘Nothing at all.’

I did not look at him. I opened the textbook in front of me and bent my head over it. I had been going through all the old history books, looking for Ahira’s name. I had the town of his birth now, a place called Arkavitz, in the north. He had grown up there as a rich boy and had left his family at fourteen to come to the city. He enlisted for military service; he was involved with gangs in the city, then broke with them. He ended up homeless because there was no work. He only met the Kalitz family when Mr Kalitz took pity on him and invited him into an inn, where he was struck with his politics. I had written all this down again and again in the backs of my exercise books; then I had torn the pages out and burned them. It was what I did on the nights when I could not sleep. I had taken to stopping at the stalls we didn’t usually go near, dredging through the relics of Lucien’s regime for Ahira’s portrait or his biography in an out-of-date history book. I knew it was half crazy, but I couldn’t help it.

‘I know it was you,’ said John Keller loudly, making everyone glance up. He was talking to me. ‘Someone has been stealing things, and I know it was you. And you haven’t paid your rent.’

‘Quiet,’ said Sister Theresa. ‘This class is not the place to conduct your personal conversations.’

I did not look up, but I could feel my face burning. ‘I heard your friend Michael has taken up with some resistance men,’ said John Keller. ‘Apparently he’s getting
quite a reputation. He’s a mad bastard; I always said. He’ll get shot if he is not careful.’

That was enough, and Sister Theresa sent John Keller out. But I could not concentrate. My hands were shaking too badly to hold the pen. I kept my head down and waited for the class to end. I wondered if there was any truth at all in what John said.

Jasmine and I walked home in a dismal silence that afternoon. Every time I passed Ahira’s picture on a wall, my stomach twisted, and I had to hurry past it. I kept thinking people saw his face when they met me in the markets, as though they would suddenly turn and accuse me. I could not help it. I was dreaming about him now, worse than ever. I would wake up sweating, convinced a red-haired man with a patch across his eye had been standing in the corner of the room seconds before I woke.

‘Why aren’t you talking any more, Anselm?’ Jasmine asked as we walked home.

‘I am,’ I said.

‘You aren’t. And you look different, and you don’t come with us to Mass even though Mama wants you to, but the thing I mind is that you don’t talk to me.’

‘So what do you want me to say?’

‘You used to ask me questions about school,’ said Jasmine.

‘Tell me about school,’ I said.

‘No, not like that! Anselm, what’s the matter?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Is it the same thing you were sad about the other night?’

‘No.’

‘You can’t be like this!’ she said. ‘You can’t just hide away and pretend to disappear.’

Her hand on my wrist was suddenly ironlike in its grip.

‘Hey, Jasmine!’ I said.

‘I didn’t mean to!’ She released my wrist and stared at her own hand. She did this sometimes, and it always startled me. ‘It’s getting worse,’ she said sadly. ‘If Uncle was here, he would tell me how to practise, and then I wouldn’t keep getting angry.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘If Uncle was here.’

‘Anselm?’ said Jasmine as we walked on, her voice halfway to tears. ‘Is Harold North dead?’

‘Harold North?’ I said.

‘I mean Papa’s father.’

‘Yes.’

‘Is he dead for sure?’

I shrugged my coat up higher. ‘I don’t know. I think so. He disappeared years ago. There’s not much chance that he is still alive.’

‘Oh,’ said Jasmine. She studied the snow in front of her. Then she said in a rush, ‘The newspaper said he might still be alive. It said he might be in the city.’

‘I read it,’ I said. ‘But, Jas, this is what happens when there is a war – people start claiming the ghosts of famous people for their side.’

‘Is that all?’ said Jasmine.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Is there a chance he might still be alive?’

I could not make myself care much, one way or the other. The snow lay hard on the ground, and my heart felt as desolate and lifeless.

‘He might help us,’ Jasmine persisted. ‘If we found him.’

‘Leo tried to find him,’ I said.

‘
Papa
,’ said Jasmine. ‘Don’t call him Leo.’

‘I’m sorry.’

We crossed the new square in silence. The stalls were covered in Christmas candles and Nativity pictures and were edged with lanterns, because it grew dark so early, but all the stallholders had a gloom about them that the lights could not dispel. ‘Anselm?’ said Jasmine. ‘Take me to Mass tonight. Mama sometimes used to, before she was tired all the time.’

She was gazing up at me. ‘Is this a test?’ I said. ‘Is this some kind of challenge of my faith, because if it is—’

‘I just want to pray for the baby.’

‘Can you not pray for the baby at home?’

‘No.’

‘Jasmine, listen—’

‘We’ll go to confession first and everything, and we’ll pray for the baby and Papa and Michael.’

‘Fine,’ I said, giving up. ‘All right.’

Father Dunstan always held half an hour of confessions before the service. Jasmine and I set out together just as the lines of candles on the windowsills were brightening along Trader’s Row. Ice was creeping across the fountain in the square now; it hung in frozen drops from the horse’s mouth. Over the silence, the explosives on the border coughed ceaselessly. Jasmine pulled me firmly across the square and into the church, and we joined the queue of people outside the confession box.

The people in line all had the same edginess. An old woman stood with her basket of shopping on her arm, sorting through the vegetables she had bought. A thin man about Leo’s age was turning his hat around in his hand. We stood and waited while they filed in and murmured to
Father Dunstan, then took their places in the church. I sent Jasmine in before me. I could hear her confession clearly through the curtain: ‘I said a bad word to Mr Victoire, and I was cross with Mama, and I wished bad things would happen to my grandmama, because she smacks me and scolds me, and … that’s all.’

I could not help smiling at that. Jasmine emerged with a grin and took my hand. I wished I could just take my place beside her in the church, but I had promised her I would go to confession, and I had to do it. ‘Find a pew near the back,’ I told her. ‘I will only be a minute.’

That sounded ridiculous when I said it. As though a minute was all it would take to set my heart to rights. Through the latticed window of the confessional, Father Dunstan’s face appeared only dimly. ‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,’ I said, and did not go on. I had nothing to say. My voice felt strangled and I could not speak. Father Dunstan waited, watching me kindly. Eventually I muttered something about fighting and swearing, acts that I knew I was not sorry for, and Father Dunstan absolved me of them.

‘Anselm?’ he said then. He pushed aside the window of the confessional and turned over the pages of the Bible, then handed it to me. ‘Here,’ he said, pointing to the page. ‘“The Lord is compassionate and gracious,”’ he said, speaking the words by heart as I read them, ‘“slow to anger and abounding in love. He will not always accuse, nor will he harbour his anger for ever; he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.”’

I had thought he would give me a penance, four Hail
Marys or the Lord’s Prayer. He watched me read the words, then took the Bible back and closed it. The people in the church were moving restlessly now, waiting for Mass to begin. ‘If you ever need help or guidance …’ Father Dunstan said quietly.

‘Father,’ I said. ‘I found out something, about the past. About my history. And there’s something else that I suspect, about someone close to me. A bad thing that he did. If it’s true, I can’t forgive him for it.’

I could tell the priest did not know what to make of that. I could not blame him. The service was about to start, but his thoughts were still running over what I had just said. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said. I turned and went to the pew beside Jasmine, with all the worst guilt still lying on my chest unresolved.

Snow was falling in the square again as we left the church, coming down grudgingly out of a dirty sky. ‘What did you confess about, Anselm?’ Jasmine asked me.

‘I didn’t,’ I said. ‘Not really. I asked him about something.’

‘Did he tell you?’

‘No.’

She put her hand in mine. Sometimes now, when Jasmine took my hand, she did not feel like my sister any more.

‘Anselm,’ she said. ‘I’m not going to give you anything for Christmas. I’m sorry.’ I glanced down at her. ‘I wanted to give you oranges and a gold-coloured notebook and a pen like Uncle’s and a new overcoat,’ she went on, all in a rush. ‘And Papa coming home, and Mama being well, and lots of money and maybe a shop of your own, but …’

‘But what, Jas?’ I said, squeezing her hand.

‘But I only have two pennies.’

I tried to remain serious, but I could not do it. I held out for several seconds. Then I burst out laughing, startling myself as much as her.

‘It’s not funny at all,’ said Jasmine tragically. ‘It’s a terrible disappointment.’

I swung her up into my arms, and the sadness of the moment passed, and she was my sister again. ‘Listen, I don’t need anything,’ I said. ‘I’m coming to see your play, aren’t I?’

‘Then I’ll make sure I act well,’ said Jasmine.

That evening, I went out to the yard and stepped into the freezing shower and stood there until the cold clouded my brain and washed all traces of warmth from my skin. Then I carried the coal up for the living-room fire. I pretended that this was a penance for my sins, however far they extended, and every lump was an act of contrition. It was a crazy thing to do, but I did it anyway. My mother lay on the sofa watching me. Every time I caught her eyes, she smiled, then let the smile fall again, like she was too weak to hold it there. ‘Anselm,’ she said. ‘Your friend John Keller was here, with a note from his father.’ I looked up. ‘Apparently we owe him three thousand crowns.’

Her voice broke on the word
thousand
, and she could not look at me. I put down the coal bucket and stood helplessly in front of the fire. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ she said. ‘Why didn’t you say something? You must have known.’

‘I didn’t want to worry you.’

‘Worry me? Anselm, you didn’t want to
worry me
?’

‘It was the day you took ill, and I didn’t know what to do.’

‘There isn’t anything,’ she said. ‘There is nothing we can do.’

‘Go to Grandmama’s,’ I said. ‘I suppose that’s all now, isn’t it?’

She shook her head. ‘Anselm, the landlords in the city are losing a lot of money fast,’ she said. ‘The debt collectors are busy. Do you really think he will let us leave and make that an end of it?’

‘We’ll find the money,’ I said. ‘Somehow. If he just gives us time.’

‘Tell me how.’

‘We’ll think of something.’

She looked at me for a while, then forced her face into a smile and squeezed my hand. ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘We will.’

On the coldest night of that winter, all the cups that Jasmine had fixed cracked into pieces. They did it without ceremony on the shelves of the back room, and it was only the next morning that we found them. That was the night the Alcyrian troops advanced as far as Ositha. They were clear on the horizon now, a grey line with fires burning between them. The tension of the city rose almost to breaking point. Carts piled with possessions rattled past the school windows all day.

When I came in from the markets that night, my fingers motionless with cold, Jasmine was studying the broken cups. The cracks had appeared where they had once been, as though they had never been mended. ‘You said so,’ she told me. ‘You said I couldn’t mend what was broken.’

‘They held out for a while,’ I said.

‘What use is that?’ She glared at me. ‘What use is a
while? What use is anything? Why doesn’t stupid Papa come home? Doesn’t he know we need him?’

I did not know what to say. After that outburst, Jasmine fell very silent. My grandmother was kept late at the markets. I cooked the last remains of a stew, and we began eating without her. My mother kept glancing at me as she sat in front of her untouched food.

‘Try to eat something,’ I said at last.

‘I am trying.’

‘Mama, you’re looking all white,’ said Jasmine, creeping onto her lap.

‘All right,’ said my mother, her voice rising. ‘I’m trying. Don’t you both start.’