London
Anders has carved out a few days for her in London, and now she is doubly glad because of Anzor. This is where he has his main base. She has asked him if she can pick him up in his flat, and in the end, he said yes, although she could hear his reluctance. “It’s just a temporary place,” he told her. “It’s not mine. It’s not how I really live. Or how I choose to live.” She insisted, lightly. She has some need to ground him to an earthly spot, to reassure herself that he actually lives somewhere, is
surrounded by furniture or books, some paraphernalia of ordinariness. A need at odds with the urge to leave him as ungrounded as she found him, to leave intact the sensation that he glides through the world unimpeded, following some unknown, not quite gravitational laws. So she feels uneasy as she ascends the poorly carpeted staircase of a terraced house in Camden, to the third floor.
It’s a while before Anzor responds to the doorbell. When he does, he’s running his hand through his hair, frowning, as though he didn’t quite recognize her or expect her. She looks back with bafflement, hurt by his lack of welcome.
“Did I …” she begins. “Is this the wrong time?”
“Sorry,” he says distractedly. “Some friends are here. We need to discuss something.”
For a moment, he examines her as if deciding whether to invite her in at all; then ushers her in with bare politeness, informing her curtly that his guests will leave soon. Maybe she can wait. The room he brings her to is small and cluttered with furniture, but not awful, as she feared. There are three other men there, and they get up stiffly when she comes in.
“Let me introduce Isabel Merton,” Anzor says, speaking as if in a formal tongue. “She is a friend.” One of the men—he’s dressed in a black turtleneck and jacket—nods at her, inspecting her warily. There is also the older man from Warsaw, the one she thought of as the leader. He is now wearing a kaffiyeh, but it is definitely him. She tries to extend her hand to him, but he has already turned away. He has not made a rude gesture, quite; but he has made it clear he does not want to greet her. She’s sure, though, from a flicker of his eye as he moved his head to ignore her, that he has recognized her.
“Please excuse us,” Anzor addresses her, without a hint of intimacy. “Please make yourself comfortable.”
She sits in a chair slightly distanced from the men, and has
no choice but to observe them, as they proceed with their business, speaking in their language, in this low-ceilinged, very English room, made stuffy by wall-to-wall blue carpeting. Not Anzor’s room, clearly. Nor theirs. The four of them, bent over a table with their severe expressions and big frames, look incongruous in this domestic space, their gestures too broad and abrupt. Only the man in the kaffiyeh has the stillness of posture which seems undisturbed by any surroundings. The sheikh, Isabel thinks, because he fits some stereotypical movie part so perfectly. But then she brushes away the feather of irony, for there is something about him that does not permit it, something in his expression, or stance, that suggests a perfectly focused concentration. Isabel understands concentration, and respects it; even if she doesn’t know what its object may be; what the man is gathering his attention toward.
The others try to talk quietly for a while, aware of her presence, but their voices rise to their natural level, guttural and brusque. They bend over a xeroxed piece of paper, covered over with Arabic lettering and point to parts of it, speaking in short, impetuous utterances. Then the man in the kaffiyeh clearly clinches whatever argument they’re having. He points at the printed page with an extended finger; then looks at the others to confirm, or demand, agreement. They nod, making noises of assent. She tries to overcome the intimation of fear, suddenly clutching at her chest. Fear of the men, their voices, the suppressed violence she senses in the discussion. Of Anzor’s sudden distance. Calm down, she tells herself sternly; these men are undoubtedly planning some propaganda campaign. In their circumstances, it is normal. Part of their work, their task.
The sheikh now holds Anzor at arm’s length, and looks at him with utterly sober appraisal. He then turns toward her, and says something to Anzor in an undertone. Anzor shakes his head in denial, and she’s chilled by the gesture, by the
men’s complicity. But the sheikh now clasps Anzor in an embrace which suggests that something has been agreed on; that a compact has been reached. The men shake Anzor’s hand with silent nods, without looking at her at all, and abruptly leave.
For a strange moment, Anzor stands unmoving in the middle of the room. Then he runs his hand through his hair again, as if to remind himself of something, to locate himself in the room, the actual space.
“Sorry,” he says absently; into the air. “This couldn’t be avoided.”
“Of course,” she says, uncertainly; and then, because she’s feeling unsure of how to speak, she indicates the room with her hand and says, “This is not too bad.”
He shakes his head as if to swat something away. “It’s not mine,” he says, as he did before. “It’s not how I choose to live.” Then, more bitingly, “None of it is of my choosing.”
She decides to be more direct. “What was this about?” she simply asks. “It looked so … conspiratorial.”
He looks at her sharply, somberly. “Of course we have to plan our actions,” he says. “We have to be at least as smart as the others. Or smarter.” His eyes have gone hooded, and he looks at her appraisingly, as the sheikh looked at him. “If I were you,” he says, “I wouldn’t mention this to anyone. Not, for example, to McElvoy.”
“McElvoy?” she asks, utterly confused. “But why … what does this have to do with him?”
“Nothing,” Anzor says impatiently. “He’s just the one person we know in common. That is why I mentioned his name.”
“I hardly know him …” she says, her disorientation now infused with the chill of rejection. “Anyway, I don’t know what you were talking about.”
They stand there, facing each other; his face unyielding. She
feels a sort of panic, tries another tack. She needs to bridge this distance, to get him to acknowledge her presence.
“Have there been new developments?” she asks, softening her tone, assuring him of her sympathy.
“There are always developments.” His voice is just short of hostile. “Horrible things are being done to my country. Even if the world is not paying any attention.”
“What is happening there?” she asks again.
“People are getting killed,” he says. “That’s all.”
“Anyone close … this time?” she asks.
“When you fight together, you are all close,” he says acidly. “You are all brothers.”
She nods, forlornly. She knows that anything she might say will be wrong.
Anzor finally looks at her with actual recognition. “Oh, Isabel,” he says, his voice altering as he approaches her and puts his arms around her. “I’m sorry. Let’s have our day in London. That’s why you are here. We must have our day.” She stays close to him, listens to his heartbeat, feels his warmth. She thinks, I do not want to lose him, not yet.
And so they drift through Camden Town, bits of rubbish drifting up in the breeze, among the familiar flotsam and jetsam of the young and the disaffected; the outrageously dressed and the bland-eyed, the drugged-up girls with bright pink hair and exposed navels, the genderless boys with metal studs affixed across belts and ears, a woman’s tongue extended toward ice cream showing a large rhinestone pierced through it. Isabel winces at the sight; Anzor grips her elbow more firmly. Smells of overused oil waft across the breeze from a grubby eatery. “It’s all going to the dogs,” Anzor says, grimly. “You’ve let it go to the dogs.”
“What do you mean, you?” she asks, though she is slightly repelled too by the spectacle, the greasy smells and the aggressive ugliness. A youth, thin and sharp, with a spiky tomahawk
hairdo, strutting braggingly but unsteadily on his high platform shoes, weaves in her direction, hitting hard with flesh-less elbow against her upper arm. She brings her other hand up instinctively. The arm has to be protected, everything depends on it. In the same instant, Anzor grips the youth by the thin shoulder, and pushes him away with sudden and surprising force. He doesn’t let go instantly, but retains his grip on the shoulder, as if considering what to do next. He’s regarding the scraggly figure with utter hatred.
“Hey, man, I didn’t mean anything,” the youth protests.
“You … punk,” Anzor says. His tone is low and menacing.
“Let him go,” Isabel says, feeling jittery.
“Hooligan,” Anzor says, packing a punch of almost comical contempt into the word.
“Lemme go,” the youth says. He doesn’t look strong. Anzor beholds him as if he were a piece of rubbish among the other debris, and pushes him away disdainfully.
“Please,” she says. “Let’s go. It doesn’t matter.”
“Doesn’t matter?” Anzor repeats. His anger is turning toward her. Authentic anger, flaring suddenly, in ways she’s beginning to recognize. “Look at this … this … rubbish. In the center of London. The once great Empire.”
“It hasn’t been an empire for a long time,” she hazards.
“Do you think these … hooligans could behave with such impunity, if they didn’t think they were at the center of the world? Do you think they could be so … arrogant?”
She shakes her head wonderingly. “This is supposed to be the West,” he continues, with over-heavy irony. “The wonderful West.”
“Please,” she says again. “It’s only Camden Town. A kind of … spectacle. A scene.”
“Only. It’s always only. But it’s not only. It’s for real.” He fuels the colloquialism with fury. “These … wretches could kill you from not caring. Or themselves. Just for the hell of it. Because it’s
a …
scene
. Maybe we can have some ritual murder. Maybe we can call it
art
.” The force of sarcasm brought to the last word is considerable. “Because they don’t care. That’s what makes them so … ugly. Not caring. They make everything ugly with their callousness. Their stupid … cynicism. That’s for real, even if you think it’s all part of a
scene
. Even if you think it’s cool.”
“I don’t,” she says. “For the sake of accuracy. I don’t think it’s cool. I just don’t think it’s that … important.”
But he’s in no mood for fine distinctions. “They’re perverted, don’t you see that? Twisted … They twist themselves into something … graceless. They’re not even clean.” His contempt is eliding into disgust, and he is breathing almost painfully. “They have no dignity because they have no … legitimate purposes.”
“Legitimate?” she repeats. It seems an improbable word, to apply to these scruffs and strays.
“Yes, legitimate,” he repeats. “Because you can have legitimate purposes, even if you’re not … very important. You can choose to live with dignity. You should see the people in my country. Simple peasants. But they have more dignity, more grace … than these punks will experience in a lifetime.”
He’s gripping her elbow too tight again, and she eases it out decisively. The flow of energy through the arm has to remain unimpeded. Anzor winces, as if he’d been hurt himself, and removes his hand. They’ve reached the tube station, and they enter its inhospitable interior. On the escalator going down, he stands behind her and places his hand on her shoulder lightly; a kind of apology.
They walk up the grassy incline of Primrose Hill, sloping at a mild but long angle that Isabel associates with the morphology of the English landscape. The day has uncovered itself as gloriously autumnal, sunlit and through-woven with quick white clouds and feather-light breezes. The sky, adjusting to the hill’s
contours, is a diagonally bent blue overhang. They pause at the hill’s top, contemplating the low London skyline. A group of Indian women, in swaths of color, proceed across the hill’s ridge, a row of human figures moving with easy grace. London, which can accommodate so much, and yet remain itself.
Some dogs are playing friskily with their owners, and Anzor bends to pick up a stray ball, and unbends to throw it with that strong, effortless arc. Yes, the gesture that started it all; that ignited it all. She thinks, I’m in for it, for even through the anxiety of this morning, she feels connected to him, literally connected, as if by a web of tendrils, except this is more intermingled and more dangerous. It is as if part of her has been poured into him, and part of him is now within her; so that a tearing away would inflict a wound. No matter what she knows about him, or doesn’t. She shudders a little, and gives him her hand. He must feel something like this too, because he picks up on their last nighttime conversation, as if it had not been interrupted, as if they were still in their undercover, underwater darkness.
“You know, the other thing I didn’t tell is that he killed my dog.” Who, she asks, who killed it? “My father,” he says, and she watches his face fill with gloom.
“Why?” she asks. “Why did he have to kill the dog?”
“It was to hurt me,” Anzor says curtly. “To show me. The dog snatched some chickens from a neighbor’s yard. It was my dog, I was supposed to train it. And I had trained him, he was a good dog … But the neighbor was furious. The dog came to my father with its tail wagging. And my father …”
“How?” she asks, recoiling from what is coming. “With a stone,” Anzor says, and his voice lowers and dims. She pulls slightly away, out of his reach. She tries to imagine the awful gesture of bringing down a stone on the animal’s head, the animal not understanding … Kolya, not understanding, his hurt child’s face. She is suddenly suffused with pain.
“I loved that dog,” Anzor says simply. She realizes she has never heard him use the word “loved” for a particular creature. Only for his country.
“Why was your father so … violent?” she asks.
“I told you, he was practically a peasant,” Anzor says, his voice shifting to defensiveness. “He was doing what he thought was right.”
They stand silently for a while. “The only person who understood him was Aslan,” Anzor resumes. “My friend. Remember, I told you about him.”
“The one who died,” she says.
“Yes. I went to him after the dog … expired. It took a while.” He pauses, and she feels, again, that she has walked through a thin membrane into another landscape, far from this benign and sunlit hill.