The Radiant City (19 page)

He decides to wait outside for fifteen minutes. Let fate dictate what will happen next. He leans against the wall, staring at his shoes. Maybe Anthony is wrong. Maybe Suzi threw a drink in Jack’s face because she was pissed at him for some reason totally unrelated to her bruises. Either way, like most things, it is none of his business. He looks at his watch. Five more minutes and he will leave.

“Matthew?” Suzi stands before him, her swollen lip discoloured, with a fair-sized scab. A bruise stains the skin on her neck, purple and green above the collar of her wool coat; another mars her cheek. Still, her face is not as bad as he imagined it would be if Jack had taken his fists to her. “What are you doing here?” She does not sound pleased.

“Anthony told me you’d been hurt. I wanted to see if you were all right.”

“Anthony told you my address?”

“Yes. Is that a problem?” He is confused. This is not the Suzi he knows. The Suzi he knows is always happy to see him.

“I thought Anthony understood. I give my address out to people I want to have it. I do not expect them to pass it along like a number on a phone booth wall.”

“I only came because I was concerned.”

“Oh, you are worried about me? Is that it?”

“Well, yes.”

She shrugs, in that way that only Frenchwomen can, pursing her lips, raising an eyebrow. “And now you see me. I’m fine.”

“Somebody hit you.”

Another shrug. “It is a dangerous profession.”

An old lady pulling a shopping cart passes between them and gives Suzi a dirty look before entering the building.

“The neighbours talk too much.” Her eyes are jittery and she rubs her finger under her nose. “What do you want? I am in a hurry.”

He had not expected her to be angry with him, and does not know how to respond. “I guess this was a bad idea. Sorry. Just wanted to make sure you were all right.”

She says nothing, but stands looking down the street to the right and then to the left and behind her. Anywhere but at him.

“Okay. Well. You’re all right then. Sorry.” He turns to leave.

“Matthew,” she reaches out.
“
C’est moi.
A very bad mood is all. Don’t pay attention to me. I suppose you better come in.”

The apartment opens directly into a kitchen, painted white. There is a sink, cupboards and workspace with a hotplate on it, along the right wall. A few photos and a child’s drawing are taped to the front of the refrigerator. Above the sink is a window, boarded over. At the back, a door leads to a paved courtyard. There is a table in the middle of the room, with two chairs, and a colourful braided rug on the floor. In the corner a spiral staircase leads down into what Matthew assumes is a below-ground bedroom. A box filled with worn stuffed animals stands in a corner. The walls are bare.

As they enter, Matthew can’t help but ask, “Who’s M. Roussel?”

“The last tenant, I suppose. I’ve only been here a few weeks.”

“Oh, I thought for a minute . . . well, that it might be your name.”

Suzi laughs. “You think Suzi is my real name? Men are such fools. You never see that movie, about the Chinese prostitute,
The World of Suzi Wong
? It is a name that works well for me at your bar.”

“So, what is your name?”

She looks at him and frowns slightly. “Suzi, you call me Suzi, okay?” Leaving her coat on, she says she will be back in a minute and disappears down the spiral staircase.

Matthew sits at the table and a fat Himalayan cat pads up from the basement and jumps onto his lap. It purrs loudly and looks at him with proprietary eyes. After a few minutes, he hears a toilet flush and Suzi reappears. She looks much less jittery. She takes the cat from his lap and sits across from him. She has taken off her coat and shoes. She wears a short black skirt, black wool stockings that come just over her knee, and a red sweater, very low cut. She has not attempted to hide the damage. She curls one foot under the other, so her legs part slightly
.

“Why are you here?” Her lids are heavy now and her mouth more relaxed.

“Did Jack do this?”

“What does it matter?”

“It matters to me.”

“Why? What are you going to do? Beat him up for me?” She laughs.

“Maybe.”

“He would kill you. You are too skinny.”

“That’s probably true.”

Suzi arches an eyebrow. “What is a little violence between lovers, eh?”

“So Jack did hit you?”

“And so? I hit him back. I threw a drink in his face. I am not so fragile.” She pulls down her sweater to reveal another storm-coloured bruise on her breast. “You Americans know nothing of passion.”

Matthew opens his mouth to speak, but closes it again, for he can find nothing sensible to say. This is not what he had expected. Where were the tears? The anger? The fear? He watches her fingers caress the cat, gently tickling the fur, and then kneading, massaging. “That’s ridiculous,” he says at last. “Like something out of a bad French farce, all that slapped-face and slammed-door nonsense.”

He stands and starts to leave but she pulls at his sleeve and he sits down again.

“No. It is not ridiculous. What is ridiculous is you coming here, acting the noble hero, when it is not nobility you want at all.” She stands up, dropping the cat on the floor, and stands very close to Matthew, puts her hands on either side of his head. She straddles his thigh.

“Hey! Hey!” He stands up and steps back from her. “You’ve got the wrong idea.”

In one quick motion, she pulls the sweater over her head. She is not wearing a bra and her nipples are brown and small. The bruises stand out like too-fresh tattoos. There are other bruises on her arms. She puts her hands over her breasts, and begins to caress herself. “I’m never wrong about such things.”

Arousal flows through Matthew like a shot of whisky. He glances at the refrigerator with the child’s drawing on it.

“We are alone.”

“Jack’s my friend.”

“This has nothing to do with that.” She steps out of her skirt and stands before him, with only those black stockings on, and tiny white panties. There are more bruises on her thighs. “I can give you what you want, Matthew. What you came here for.”

Her breasts rise out of her thin ribcage, all the bones visible. The bruises are vivid against her skin. The tale of violence they tell is pornographic, the images of brutal hands on her body. And then she puts her hand on the front of his pants and her tongue in his mouth. Her bones are tiny beneath his hands; her eyes, with their pinpoint pupils, are like those of something wicked.

He takes her on the tabletop. She is very good at what she does and makes him believe her cries are real.

When he is finished she goes downstairs and comes back wearing a Japanese kimono. “I’m sorry, Matthew, normally I arrange the price before.” She names her price and he pays it, his face burning. “You are very silly,” she says, kissing him on the cheek.

“I didn’t come here for this, you know,” he says, because he must say it, must say something.

“Of course you didn’t. But still, it is a good idea, non?”

“I don’t think we should tell Jack, do you?”

She throws back her tousled head and laughs. “Matthew. I am like a doctor. No, like a priest.
Absolument
confidentiel
!” She puts her finger up to her damaged lip. “Shush,” she says, and giggles
.

He leaves her apartment, gets on the metro. A bunch of loud teenagers push and shove as they enter the car and he wants them to push him so he can feel someone’s bones crack beneath his knuckles. Disappointingly, they keep their distance.

When he gets back to his apartment, he takes three times the recommended dosage of sleeping pills and still has to wait half an hour before unconsciousness overtakes him. He dreams of girls and soldiers and an old woman biting his hand.

Saturday mornings Saida shops at the open air market on rue Dejean. She walks up rue de Faubourg Poissonnière toward the Barbès Métro and her thoughts are of Joseph. He had said little this morning, merely hunched over his bowl of café au lait. She suspects he was hung over, although he denied it. She tried to smell him, to discover the telltale sweetish sweat-reek of alcohol seeping through the skin, but he dove into the shower the moment she vacated the bathroom.

“Where are you going?” she had said as he put on his jacket. “I want you to take your grandfather to the restaurant.”

“Can’t. Soccer game.”

“This morning? But we need you at the restaurant.”

“I can’t. I promised I’d be there.”

“Where? Who with?”

He scooped change off the tabletop and stuffed it in his pocket, and then stooped to kiss her on the cheek. “Just some guys in Square Léon.”

“I don’t want you spending all your time up there. I want you at the restaurant this afternoon.”

“Okay, okay,” he said as he opened the door. His shoelaces dragged, untied, from his running shoes.

“Tie your shoes,” she called after him.

Now, as she walks toward the market, pulling her cart behind her, a basket on her arm, she decides to go by the square where the boys play soccer. Across the boulevard de Chapelle the streets become twice as congested, with both cars and pedestrian traffic. Outside the Tati department store, the sidewalks are nearly impassable because of the vendors hawking everything from pots and pans to hats to hams. She crosses Barbès and walks onto rue de la Goutte d’Or, entering the heart of the tiny, mostly Arab immigrant neighbourhood. At Le
Case@Café
, which is advertised as a cyber-café, the men inside are clearly more interested in the off-track betting that goes on than anything having to do with computers. The smoke drifts out of the grey-and-beige-tiled cubbyhole in a blue cloud. She stops and looks in the windows of the textile shops, with gloriously luxurious cloth from Algeria, from Tunisia, from Morocco, deep blues and rose and white and bright yellow, twinkling with gold thread and sequins. At Toualbi, she passes the Muslim butcher on the corner of rue de Chartres—sides of goat and lamb and waffled strips of tripe hang in the window. The lamb looks good, but she knows she can get it cheaper in the market.

She turns up rue des Gardes to the square and goes up the stairs past the metal gates, ignoring the four men drinking out of paper bags by the children’s climbing bars to the right. The children of the area, being streetsmart, shun them as well and high-pitched voices come from the other play area where there is a sandbox and teeter-totter. The older boys play soccer on two fenced-in, asphalt squares, one on a level lower. The intermittent shouts and soft thuds of footfalls make her smile. It will be nice to watch Joseph at play. When she looks over the waist-high concrete wall, however, she sees only black faces. All North Africans. No sign of Joseph. Perhaps on the upper square. She strains to see but cannot, and so climbs up to the next level. These are all Arabs. She scans them. No Joseph, and in truth she thinks these boys—ten, eleven, twelve at the most—are too young for her son. Three boys lean against the chain-link with their backs to her.

“Excuse me,” she says.

The boys turn to her and stare blankly.

“I’m looking for my son. His name is Joseph Ferhat. Do you know him?”

“No, we don’t know him,” the boy nearest her says. He has a scar slicing through his left eyebrow, making it look as though he has one regular-sized and two smaller brows.

One of the other boys clears his throat, spits and smears the spittle on the ground with his shoe. It is clear that even if they do know Joseph, they will not tell her.

Saida has not really expected to find him here. She has hoped, of course, but did not really believe it. He lies to her. When had that begun? What was the first lie? Why doesn’t he know it is wrong? Has he learned from his stepfather that this is the way a man is? She blames herself, for she waited too long to leave him, afraid of the shame her father would feel. Ashamed herself at the bad choice she’d made, the ridiculous belief they had all had, that marrying a Frenchman would make her, and by extension them, less strange here. She fears now that Joseph will pay the price for her stupidity. And how to stop it?

She goes into the church, Saint-Bernard de la Chapelle, to be quiet for a moment, to light a candle and ask Mary for intercession. As she walks up the aisle, toward the great statue of Mary behind the altar, the Holy Mother standing on a clouded crescent moon, she sees a jumble of rags on the steps. When she gets closer she realises it is a person, a man, not old, sleeping but not sleeping, his shoes off, his feet on the warm-air grate. His head nods, he tilts incrementally, until he almost falls and then snaps up again. Nods, sways and begins the tilting journey once more. The caretaker, an Algerian, tries to move him, but the man is too much under the influence of whatever narcotic he has taken to be roused. Saida sees his face; he is younger than she thought. Not much older than Joseph.