The Radiant City (23 page)

Matthew’s pulse races and the room spins. He gets up, upsetting his coffee cup.

“Matthew?” Saida’s eyes follow him as he backs toward the door.

“Gotta go.”

“You going down there?” says Anthony. “Want me to come with you?”

If he does not get air, he will suffocate. “No. I’m not going there.” He pushes through the door, past a couple on their way in.

When he is out on the street, he takes huge inhalations. He must get to his apartment.

But in his apartment it is worse. He can hear the sirens. And there are all those pages about Rwanda sitting on the desk. He knows it is impossible, but he feels as though he has summoned the horror through his writing. Unleashed it like a demon. Called it to them through the threads of his memory. The phone rings. He does not pick it up. He goes into the kitchen, finds a bottle of vodka, and does not bother with a glass. He finds his pills. Takes four. Stuffs wax earplugs in his ears. Takes the bottle and gets into bed. The phone rings again. He ignores it. He waits for unconsciousness. The demons can’t get you when you’re there. Good drugs, he thinks.

The next morning dawn refuses to break, refuses to take a stand against the night—it merely infuses itself through the watery light. Smoke-coloured mist envelops Paris. The day becomes simply less dark than night. The boundaries between things blur. Street, sky, stone, smoke from chimney-pots, all have the same dull muffle of light. Shades of muffle it is, a damp wool scarf wrapped around Matthew’s head. At noon, he downs another handful of sleeping pills and crawls back to bed.

The next day he does not get up at all.

And so it goes.

When hunger drives him from his nest of blankets, which begin to smell sour even to his nose, he eats pale green flageolet beans, salad shrimp, or corn, all direct from the can. He drinks vodka and when the vodka runs out, he switches to scotch and then beer and finally just tap water and pills.

Seeking a fork, one afternoon (or is it evening?) he opens a kitchen drawer and shrieks when he sees what’s inside. He jumps back, hitting the edge of the counter behind him with sharp force, right in the kidneys. There is a nutcracker in the drawer. And not even his nutcracker. Something left from a previous tenant that he had meant to throw out.
Why didn’t I? Did I want to test myself?
Nutcracker nightmares from Tuzla. The man whose hands had been mangled by force of a nutcracker. It took hours, he told Matthew.

He avoids the stove, because the thought of the blue gas burner makes him shudder, as do knives. He forces himself to pick up and throw out the bag of sinister oranges because they remind him that being hit repeatedly with a bag of oranges turns the organs to mush but the bruises do not show for days. The radiators are malevolent, whispering that a small body will cook if tied to a hot one for long enough.

He is afraid to look out the window, for there are too many cars out there and cars have hood ornaments. They all morph into the car of a Croat war-lord who used the head of an imam for one. Cars also have antennas, which are the same as the Soviet jeep on the outskirts of Kabul with twenty or so human ears tied to an antenna
. Pull the fucking shutters!

Matthew stands in the middle of the apartment and in the reflection of the windowpanes, he sees a little girl trapped against a wall in Hebron. He presses his hands to his eyes until pain shoots up into his brain, but still he sees things, sees faces, and hears blasts and the sound of screams. His skin is a fester of futility, a gangrene of guilt. He breaks out in small blisters.

He drinks another scotch and takes another pill, unaware that he calls out to Kate. He covers his head with the blankets. And so on.

Anthony is not working this morning but he telephones around ten.

“I’m still worried about Matthew. Now he doesn’t pick up,” he says. Several days ago, Anthony told her he had talked to Matthew briefly but that he had been, to use Anthony’s words, distant and
muzzly
. “I went over yesterday after I left the restaurant. I knocked, but he wouldn’t answer. Nobody’s seen him.”

“He has not been in for maybe four days now, is that right?”

“Five, I think.”

The shutters on his windows remained closed for the past three.

“Maybe he has gone away,” says Saida.

“I don’t think so,” says Anthony. “I just don’t.”

“No, neither do I. He would have said.”

“What should we do?”

“Can you go over? See if you can get him to come to the phone at least?”

“Oh, Anthony. I don’t think I can.”

“I think you might be the best person for it. He won’t answer Jack’s calls either.”

Well, good for him, she thinks.

“Jack says he’ll break down the door if he has to.”

It is Wednesday afternoon when there is no school in France, and so Joseph is in the restaurant. Saida has bullied him into helping her. Now he stands, listening to her, cocking his head, and trying to make out what Anthony says as well.

“I’ll go over,” says Joseph. “I’ll go see him.”

“No.” Saida puts her hand on his arm to stop him. The look of those shutters, so tightly closed, so resolutely locked, hiding God knows what. No, it will not be Joseph who goes. “All right, Anthony. I will call you if I speak to him. What is the door code?”

She crosses the street briskly, with her shoulders back, pretending she is a woman capable of handling Difficult Situations. When she stands in front of his door her breathing is shallow, not because of the stairs, but because of the unwelcoming air that emanates from the other side. There is no sign saying
Keep
Away,
but there might as well be. The quality of silence that has seeped, even past the door, out here onto the landing, unsettles her. She fantasizes something hungry and parasitic has hold of Matthew, and now sits smugly on his chest sensing her through the door.

A noise from within, a soft thump, startles her and her hand goes involuntarily to the scar on her neck. Quickly, before she loses her nerve, she knocks.

“Matthew, are you in there? I know you are. Please open.”

She taps softly at first, and then louder.

“Matthew? I heard a noise. I know you are in there. Please. Open the door, just for a moment.”

She pleads for several more minutes and when he opens the door at last, it is all she can do not to step back in shock. His hair is greasy and flat against his skull. He is unshaven and so thin that his bones are visible under the fabric of his shirt.

“Are you all right?”

He blinks as though the red of her sweater hurts his eyes.

“Can I come in?”

“Come in,” he says.

He looks embarrassed and she realizes she has wrinkled her nose at the smell of him, which is sweetish, thick and unwashed. She blushes. The room, too, is grimy and cluttered, the floor scattered with discarded pieces of clothing, shoes, sheets of paper, a spoon, a piece of hardened and crumbling toast. Sheets drape over the radiators and over the mirror, like the house of a Jew in mourning. The air is musty and the odour of something unpleasant wafts from the kitchen. Her eyes follow her nose, and there on the table sits a half-eaten bowl of tomato soup and an open can of sardines mutating into a science project.

Saida stands in the centre of the room and slowly turns until she faces Matthew again. He steps past her and opens a window, and then the shutter beyond. Although the day is overcast and gloomy, still the light spills in, invading the room, claiming territory.

“You want to sit down?” he says, shielding his eyes.

She clears herself a place on the worn brown leather couch and perches there. She tries to take stock of him. His voice, his way of moving is slower even than usual. He seems stunned, or drugged.

“You sit down, too, Matthew.”

He picks up several sheets of paper lying on the floor, and then opens the desk drawer, tossing the pages in as though he does not want her to get a good look at them.

“Please don’t fuss because of me. Sit.” Her voice is softer and he obeys. “Are you sick? Do you have a migraine? Do you need a doctor?”

She is shocked to see tears well up in his eyes. His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows.

“What are you doing here?” he says when he has regained control of himself.

“Anthony said he hasn’t seen you and was worried. He came here. You did not answer. Apparently he called, and, sorry, but you were rather rude, and—how did he put it—
muzzly.
I understood you were not well.”

“Anthony? He called here?”

“Yes, and Jack, but you didn’t answer.” She looks around for a phone, sees it, on top of an answering machine with a blinking red light. “Joseph wanted to come over, but I thought I should.” She lowers her eyes to her hands resting in her lap.

“Maybe I forgot they called. Is that possible?” he says, more to himself than to her. “I’ve been in sort of a fog, I guess. I think I talked to Anthony, sure. Sure, I remember. A day or so ago, right? I don’t know. Time seems to have taken on an elastic quality. The bombs. Have there been any more?”

“No. There is a lot of security. But no more bombs, Matthew.”

He smiles, unconvincingly. “Do you want coffee or something?”

“Yes. That would be nice. Do you want me to make it?”

“No. I want to do it.”

Saida watches him through the open kitchen door as he looks for the things necessary to make coffee. It seems like a very complicated process. Coffee maker. Filters. Coffee. Water. Cups. Sugar. He opens the refrigerator, pulls out a plastic bottle of milk, smells it and immediately drops it in the trash. He blows dust out of the mugs. He moves as though everything is stiff, from the taps to his wrist joints. He puts his finger up to his mouth and smacks his lips. Saida turns away as he comes back into the living room and she pretends to pick a hair off her skirt.

“Excuse me,” he says as he walks into the hall. “Brush my teeth. My mouth tastes like somebody crept in there while I slept and put small woollen socks on my teeth.”

When he returns, the coffee has brewed.

“What do you take?” He shakes his head. “Sorry, I should know. But it’s always you getting me coffee, isn’t it?”

“Just black.”

Matthew hands her the coffee and she puts it to her mouth, blows on the steaming liquid and sips without checking the rim for dirt.

Matthew sits down across from her and keeps his hands wrapped around the mug. She notices that, left to their own devices, they shake ever so slightly.

“We are worried about you.”

“Don’t be.”

It takes some courage to speak. “Sometimes I think you are someone who is drifting. Not in a good way –but as though you will drift too far from shore. Look at my father. He has drifted. It is not very safe, always worrying these memories. Not good for you.” She sips her coffee again. “Maybe I should stop talking. It is not my place.”

“Look, I’m all right, okay?”

“I’m sorry. I am intruding.”

“No, look, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to bark at you. I appreciate it. The concern and all, really I do.”

“I think . . . well, it is only that I think I know a little of what you are remembering. We have been through very much, my family. Joseph’s father, my mother, my grandparents, my brother, his wife, their son . . . very many people. Terrible massacres. I know how bad dreams can be, sometimes not even when you sleep.”

“Yes. Of course. I’m sorry.”

“No, you do not have to be sorry, Matthew. I only say this to show I understand, maybe a little, yes? I have nightmares, sometimes, of things that have happened.” Her left hand strokes her right, running her thumb along the burn-lines. Sometimes it is good to talk about these things. I just say this, to tell you, if you want . . .”

“I think I want to leave it be, Saida.”

“Ghosts do not like to be ignored.” She wonders if she has gone too far. The only sound in the room is his ragged breathing and the angry bleating of car horns in the street. “How is your work going? This book you’re writing?” she says, because the weight in the room is too much and she must cut through it with the only thing she has.

“I don’t know. I mean, what’s the point?”

“Can I use your phone? I said I would let Anthony know you were all right. And Joseph. He was worried, too.”

“Jesus. Fine.”

She makes the calls and keeps them brief, because it is embarrassing to say, “Yes, yes, he is fine. We are just having a cup of coffee,” when the subject is in the room. She realizes her back is to him, and she turns, a smile of reassurance on her lips, but Matthew has put his cup down on the floor and his head in his hands, rubbing at the temples as though he has a headache. Hanging up she can think of nothing to say and gazes around the room, trying to find a safe topic of conversation.