These Dreams of You (9 page)

I
n the pub, one of Zan's two remaining credit cards is declined. Later that night, with the little girl snoring next to him in the double bed while Parker sleeps in a perpendicular single bed, the father goes online to check the limit on the card and finds the bank has lowered it to below what he already owes. This leaves one card left with credit. Zan monitors as well, each time with that familiar knot in his stomach that he brought with him eight thousand miles across the Atlantic, the website that posts foreclosure dates.

Zan can't risk lying in the dark thinking, because hopelessness will overcome him. To distract himself, he composes in his mind playlists for the radio show, as if Sheba could transmit them to the canyon an ocean and a continent away. After mentally compiling countless unrelieved hours of Joy Division, Nine Inch Nails, Rammstein, Celtic Frost, Cradle of Filth, Carnage, Dismember, Revolting Cocks, Dark Tranquility, Morbid Angel and Kevorkian Death Cycle, Zan dreams of rats streaming out of every crevice of the house in death-metal mode the moment the family locked the door behind them on the way to the airport. A mosh pit of revelrous rats stampedes across his imagination.

I
n Addis Ababa, Viv sits in the car outside the orphanage walls lost in thought, discouraged and wondering what to do next, when the young guard from the gate taps on the window. As he exchanges words with the driver, the guard peers back over his shoulder toward the walls and orphanage beyond; he motions to the driver with his hands, indicating the road ahead.

The driver turns to Viv in the backseat and says, “I can take you to the girl's family.” Viv looks at the guard and says softly, “Thank you,” pressing five hundred birr toward him through the window that, after a longing glance, he refuses. She gestures, insisting, but he shakes his head emphatically. The driver explains, “He wants to say he loves the little girl,” and Viv nods, raising her hand to the guard in a final goodbye.

T
he house where Sheba spent most of the first two years of her life is two rooms, the larger one a square nine meters, the smaller one with a single cracked window, one large bed, two chairs, a tiny table and, most prominently among the belongings, an injera maker.

Sheba's father is in his thirties, maybe nearing forty in that way that's impossible to determine among Ethiopians, more than six feet tall and limping slightly from his time as a paratrooper in some Somali War or another.
Solemn tho forthcoming
Viv describes him in the last email that Zan will receive from her,
seemed at first a little awkward & I think in this male-oriented culture he feels inadequate he couldnt care for his daughter. His mother (Sh's grandmother) had 10 children, 2 died, her husband died & she had difficult time raising & feeding them
, and though Sheba's family weep to see her again, Viv can tell they're wary. There have been questions from the police about the money, and the family doesn't seem especially surprised by Viv's return. When she raises the subject of Sheba's mother, trying to explain that now she's less concerned about contacting her than helping her if she's in trouble, a heated exchange takes place between Sheba's aunt and grandmother, during which Sheba's father is even more circumspect than usual.

I
t's obvious to Viv that the aunt and grandmother are upset, maybe even angry. Later, as translated to Viv by the driver, the father describes Sheba's mother as beautiful and “fat”—Viv realizes after some back and forth that what the father and driver mean is voluptuous. The father and mother were together less than a year, maybe more briefly than that, when she became pregnant, and as Viv asks more questions it becomes less clear that any of them, including perhaps the father, ever met the mother's family.

The grandmother declares, through the translation by Sheba's aunt, You are her mother now, we chose you. You will make the best decision. Only at the last moment does she impart to Viv something new, which on the tape of Viv's recorder is almost impossible to hear over the rain: instructions where the driver should take her, with no indication who or what will be found there.

Z
an barely can bring himself to return J. Willkie Brown's phone calls or overcome what petty satisfaction lies in making the other man call first. When they meet at a bookstore near Montague and Great Russell Street, sipping cold coffee drinks—the new London seems to have more coffee than tea now—on the afternoon of the family's fifth day in the city, Zan spends most of the first few minutes fretting over whether the young woman behind the counter neglected to decaffeinate Sheba's mocha. Maybe decaffeinated coffee, he worries, is one of those notions that Europeans find oxymoronic to the point of senseless.

I
t seems to Zan that Brown visibly labors not to go out of his skull at the children's very presence. Always thin with a loping gait, he's lost even more weight since Zan last saw him years ago, in a way that appears distinctly unhealthy; his once long hair is now cut short and he's as disheveled as writers are expected to be, or as disheveled as Brown expects that writers are expected to be, anyway. Appraising the kids with an affected patience, he has a voice and manner of speaking that's less bombastic than slightly and quietly superior.

Sheba gives not the slightest evidence of decaffeination. “I trust this is all right, then,” Brown finally says uncomfortably, looking at the place around them; the two men shift where they sit. “Fine,” says Zan. “I was going to suggest a pub we were at yesterday called the Ad Lib—or it used to be called that. I don't know what it is now.”

B
oth of them perpetually uneasy, Brown nods, musing, “Swing­ing London. Sixties landmark,” he remarks to Parker sitting in the next chair. “The upstairs part, actually.”

Parker tries to be polite about it. “My dad said.”

“Dawn of Man as far as they're concerned,” says Zan.

“How is Viv?” asks Brown. Good for you, thinks Zan:
Let's get to the elephant in the room.
“She's fine,” he answers. “Parker, you think you can keep an eye on her?” Sheba is starting to gyrate; soon she'll be toppling glass cases of rare Eighteenth Century manuscripts.

“Why me?” Parker protests.

“Still at it with the photography, the art . . . ” says Brown.

“Sorry?” says Zan.

“Viv. The art. . . . ”

“Yes.”

“Heard about the great scandal, of course. Arsehole.”

Z
an says, “What?” For a moment he thinks J. Willkie Brown is slipping insults into the conversation, like the bank officials on the telephone.

“He's an arsehole,” says Brown, “everyone knows he's a plagiarist. You should sue him.”

“Oh,” Zan answers, “yes. We would if he could afford to.”

“Surely there's a solicitor who would take it on, contingent on the outcome? Of course it's a hard thing to prove, plagiarism. Nothing's original, I suppose.”

“No, nothing's original,” Zan says, “but this comes damned close. Stained-glass windows recreated in butterfly wings? There's not a single documented example of anyone doing that before Viv.”

“Well there you are.”

B
rown says, “Off to Africa, then, is she?” watching Sheba and appearing to become even more nervous than her father.

“It's complicated. I . . . ” Zan glances at the girl, “ . . . should explain another time.”

“Right,” says Brown. “But I trust she'll be back before the lecture next week.” Discernible in his eyes are images of Sheba amok on the university grounds.

“I hope so, for all kinds of reasons. Mainly I'm worried about her.”

“Viv always was resilient,” Brown shrugs.

He's trying to be reassuring but Zan doesn't need any reminder of how well Brown knows Viv or whatever way it is he thinks he knows her. “She gets lost,” Zan says, “she has no sense of direction.”

“Mount Kilimanjaro and all that, as I remember.”

“Mount Kilimanjaro is
up
,” Zan points out, “that direction she's mastered. Most people would have taken the Mount Kili­manjaro experience as a warning, given that she missed the only flight out that week. Viv took it as a lifetime Get Out of Insane Situations Free card. Except when she's being a mom and worrying the kids are going to drink the Drano. Listen, James,” Zan announces somberly, “here it is in a nutshell: I'm the family's sanest person. Do you understand? Can you wrap your head around the implications of that? Can you envision the . . . the . . . state of general derangement this portends?
I'm the most stable member of the family.
That's like Ahab being the captain of a Carnival Cruise line. Sheer dementedness increases in direct proportion to the decrease in physical size, until you wind up with the world's worst dog, who finally breached an electric fence for the sheer thrill of it, like someone tasering himself.”

B
rown says, “I'm certain you'll hear from her soon,” which is curious, since Zan hasn't actually said anything about
not
hearing from her. Brown clasps his hands together and rubs them, torturing the empty space between his palms. “Hotel is satisfactory, I trust.”

“Sure,” says Zan.

“Working on anything these days?”

“Uh . . . ”

Brown can't be certain what this means, since Zan isn't either, but replies, “A novel, I presume?”

“Yes.”

“Brilliant. It's been a while, hasn't it? Since the last.”

“Yes,” says Zan, “and you?” changing the subject:
Let's talk about what you really want to talk about.
“Still the journalism, of course.”

“Yes,” Brown says, “a proper piece about the impact that torture at Guantanamo has had on the Muslim world. The waterboarding, sexual humiliation. All that.”

Zan struggles to suppress a nationalist impulse, though not as much as the impulse to puncture what he regards as the other's pomposity. “The president signed an order,” he says.

“Oh well, then, right,” Brown answers, “it's all sorted.”

“I think an order against waterboarding is a good thing, James.”

“Yes, though he won't let us see any photos, will he? The sexual humiliation, none of that.”

More fed up than he expected, Zan looks at the kids. “That's not torture,” he says, surprising himself.

“No?” says Brown.

“Tawdry, stupid, puerile, counter-productive. Pick one or all of them, but not torture.”

“Really?” not actually said as a question.

W
hat is it about the fucking British? Zan seethes, mostly at himself for being baited into this. Politely hostile. Gracefully aggressive. Zan says, “Torture is fear of death—like waterboarding, thinking you're going to drown. Infliction of pain. Drilling someone's teeth like that movie where Laurence Olivier is a Nazi”—he goes for the British actor, of course—“pulling out fingernails, hanging by eyelids on meat hooks. Being tied to a chair and made to watch a naked woman? You pay money for that in Vegas.”

“I see,” says Brown. What happened to the trusty silence into which Zan reliably falls when confronted by the indignation of others? It's like the woman on the plane berating him for irresponsibility; suddenly he's surrounded by people whose politics take on the tone of personal accusation. Or is it just a sign of Zan's newly less-than-robust objectivity about things concerning the new president, a deeply dangerous protectiveness? In his own way, has he gone off the rails about his country no less than everyone else?

Z
an rises from his seat. “Abdul,” he continues, “probably goes back to jail afterward and all the jihadists have a good laugh about it. Parker, are you watching her?” he barks at his son, gazing about a bit madly for his daughter only to realize she's at his feet, staring up at him. Neither child says anything, watching their father intently; Zan is aware he's slipping into a rant. “Gets back to his cell and it's, you know, ‘Feature this, guys, they
tortured
me with the naked woman today!' A routine, like Br'er Rabbit and the briar patch. ‘Oh no, whatever you do, not the naked woman! I might tell you anything if you make me watch the naked woman!'” He looks at the kids and it's clear that, while slightly scandalized, they find this the most interesting thing their father has said in years.

Brown peers up at him from where he sits. “Of course,” he ventures calmly, “given the attitudes some of these men are raised with about such things, it
is
torture, isn't it.”

“Sincerely,” Zan says, “maybe that says more about some fucked-up attitudes about women and sex than it does about what can objectively be called torture.” He's abashed at his lapse. “Sorry,” he snaps at the kids, “you know you're not supposed to say that word.”

“Sex?” says Parker.

“The other one.”

“Fucked-up,” volunteers Sheba.

“We've heard you say that before,” Parker observes.

“You say it all the fucked-up time,” Sheba agrees.

“Thank you, children,” says Zan, “for that authoritative consensus. Sheba, don't say it again.” He sighs. “The waterboarding was horrific,” he quietly gathers their things, “a disgrace to everything we're supposed to stand for. Let's leave it at that. Listen,” he says, uncertain if he's disappointed in himself or has discovered something new, “I've got to get them back . . . ”

“We'll carry on next week,” says the other man, “catch the train out to the college together, if that's agreeable.”

“How far is it?”

“Twenty minutes from Waterloo. Longer if we miss the express.”

“James,” Zan says, “if Viv isn't back by then, I may need to line up a nanny of some sort. Sorry, I know this isn't what you signed up for. It's not what I had in mind either.”

Images of Sheba's havoc receding in his eyes, Brown emanates unmistakable relief. “I'll look into it,” he says.