Balzac of the Badlands Page 12

  ***

  She spent months feeling her way in the relatively new world of refugees and asylum seekers. Her previous job was as a fundraiser for a small charity dealing with multiple sclerosis. She wanted to be involved in something more political. Surprised when the charity offers her the job, she throws herself into it with little regard for friends. Or boyfriends.

  ***

  My earlier screams are forgotten and I manage a brief smile at the thought of Balzac trapped under Mrs. Beckford’s corpse doing a fine interpretation of Jamie Lee Curtis – Halloween not Trading Places.

  ***

  Since that November afternoon on Green Lanes. A young man, armed, heading toward a group of other men, likewise armed.

  ***

  I push open the door, imagine it producing a horror-film squeak. Nothing. Silence. The hallway – a darkening light, like marmalade – pulls me in towards the kitchen. I close the door behind me. None of this seems real. Everything flickers in and out of focus as I try to remember the tearful and friendly woman with whom I, not long ago, shared a sofa, tea and biscuits. The thought of the biscuits makes me put my hand to my mouth – Garibaldis – dead-fly biscuits we used to call them - and, as if walking into a dream, I hear a growing buzz, the frenzied orchestration of insect wings. Festive. I make Mrs. B and her sister a cup of tea, and, nearly retching, fan out a selection of biscuits. I walk into the living room.

  ***

  Green Lanes. She watches the young man crouch and run, zigzagging among the cars. Ahead of him, a group congregating outside of one of the social clubs – she is not sure if they are Turkish, Cypriot, or Kurdish. People are leaving the Parade, leaving the shops, the air thickening, the sound of the traffic seems to be sucked toward London, lost in the city’s vastness. The crowd outside the club streams back into the road as if a giant has blown them there, exhaling garlicky fumes. The traffic, frightened beetles scurrying out of the light emanating from the violent energy, turns down side roads, or hurries forward and back, confused.

  ***

  The smell Balzac described earlier is more pungent now – putrescent mangoes boiled in old brass. Drag marks in the carpet pile lead from the sofa to the doorway. Other lines, clawed into the tough wool, serpentine from the dining room, and stop abruptly just before the arch separating the two rooms. A puddle of vomit hardens beneath a dining chair upholstered in a dirty pink satin with inset fleurs-de-lis. There is a haze of gnats or midges rising from and descending on to the setting crust. Two cups of tea and the remnants of a Dundee cake on a plate on the table. Why did she let them in?

  ***

  Unable to move, she watches as men surge from the club into the street wielding sticks and batons. People run. People follow. Some fall in the road, set upon by others, they scramble under cars, under buses, their pursuers aim kicks, thrash under the vehicles with knives and hammers. Some young men run into shops overturning wooden crates of fruits and vegetables that roll into the street, the gutter. She thinks, ‘How do they know who’s on whose side?’ She hears a bang, which she takes to be a car backfiring, the thought that it may be a gun never enters her head. Not then.

  ***

  Remembering those biscuits, I shoo away an imaginary tickle in my ear, run my finger along the sideboard. Photos show the Beckfords on holiday, in the garden, at a degree ceremony. Some show Mrs. Beckford’s sister, her two children. There are others of the pet corgi, jumping for a stick, wearing a Santa Claus hat. At the end of the row a recent one of Sarah, dressed in a bottle-green ball gown, a string of pea-size pearls around her neck, her hair worn high. She looks pale. A smile flickering over her face, but something else there, seriousness or pride. I pick it up.

  ***

  The grease from the food she has bought leaks through the paper bag on to her hands, she wipes them down her jeans. A young man, no more than sixteen or seventeen, pushes by her, she stumbles, falls into the doorway of an opticians, as she falls she sees blood running down the back of the young man’s head on to his football shirt. The blood, dark brown, showers off him in a fine spray.

  ***

  The room is quiet, a still descends on it. The picture becomes insistent. The frame wobbles in my hands, the glass liquefies, becomes moist, present. A patter, like leaves shaking in the wind, now fills the room. Sarah moves forward in the photo blurring the background. And, as if underwater, she begins to speak. The photo buzzes in my hand, I fight the urge to be sick, grip the frame, concentrating on Sarah’s nearly lost, not-quite- human words.

  ***

  I hear, ‘Leaks paper pushes stumbles falls blood running head blood showers.’

  ‘Sarah?’ I say.

  ***

  What is that? Her name. She hears her name as if someone’s shouting it, whispering it. A woman’s voice. Must be the trees, the leaves rubbing against each other in the wind. Itching. Scratching. Listening to herself breathe. Fear creeping in. Not the fear of last night or the fear of that November afternoon. But a selfish fear, a fear that she’ll never get out of this. Will she?

  ***

  I hear, ‘Name shouting trees wind breathe fear night selfish out she.’

  ‘I can’t make out what you’re saying, honey. Tell me where you are.’

  ***

  The fight lasts twenty minutes or so. She sits on the pavement listening to the thuds, the cries, the thumps, the cheers. When it quietens, and all she can hear is the prefatory bips and woos of sirens, she stands, shaking, starts to walk back to her flat. The street, reassembling itself to its accustomed chaos, buzzes and slumps at the same time as if energy, winding down, recognizes its demise yet rallies in a fit, a start. Her shirt is soaked with sweat. She feels sick.

  ***

  I hear, ‘Minutes listening cries hear shaking chaos energy demise start sweat.’

  ‘Sarah, listen to me,’ I say but I can think of nothing else to add. My head aches. I can barely keep my eyes open, pressure forces them to close.

  ***

  Standing on the step of a club further down the street, his arms folded, his chin thrust forward, a large man, well-dressed, bearded, with a hard belly protruding over his trouser belt, talks to two police officers. She has seen Ozan before. She walks past the club at least twice a day. But this is the first time she really notices him. The police listen to him, scribble in their notebooks, call others over, nod, point.

  ***

  I hear, ‘Further arms forward talks past day first really him their others.’

  ‘Jesus!’ The frame shakes more urgently. I have to fight to hold it.

  ***

  Her friends arrive unaware of what has happened, they think the police tape has something to do with a robbery or mugging. They sit on the roof terrace, drink wine, eat the soggy pastries, talk nonsense about the Kurds and the Turks. She knows nothing. Not then. She thinks Kurdistan is a real country – that it exists. Has borders. She goes so far as to fetch the Oxford atlas from her bookshelf, opens it only to see Syria, Turkey, Armenia, Iran, and Iraq. No Kurdistan. Not then. That’s what gets her interested. She goes to bed that night alone, thinking about the violence, the alcohol-fuelled arguments, and drifts off to sleep thinking of Kurdistan as an Oz or a Narnia. She wakes determined to make this fantasy country real.

  ***

  Balzac showed me a photo of Sarah when he took on the case but she just stared back at me, cold, flat, silent. I look at the figure of Sarah, her ball gown glowing, viridescent, her eyes black as beetles, a tiny point of light giving them life, just. Her hair, as if about to burst into flame, coils red and orange into its dark lustre. The background, some municipal hall or hotel, reasserts itself, pulls her back into the photo, she begins to lose definition as the building behind gains it.

  ‘Sarah!’ I shout. ‘Sarah!’

  ***

  She knows nothing about the politics, the people, the history. She strides into the Qedrî Can social club and confronts Ozan. He is eating, lifting small pieces of food from the plate with his r
ight hand and daintily dropping them into his mouth. She cannot remember exactly what she said to him but he gives her leaflets, phone numbers, titles of books she should read. On her way out she hears him say, ‘Miss, please wait,’ and he walks into his office and brings from his desk a copy of Mehrdad Izazy’s The Kurds: A Concise History and Factbook. She stays up all night drinking stale red wine, reading.

  ***

  I hear, ‘Nothing politics people remember history stale.’

  I say nothing. My body shakes. My lips tremble.

  ***

  The frame calms like a dying bird in my palm. The glass cold, solid, the room ticks with electricity, the flies settle around my ankles, the smell of vomit sour, shameful. She is gone. A tear drops down my cheek, splashes on to my collarbone. I hold the photo out in front of me. I don’t know what to do.

  ***

  She’ll try to find her way out of the forest. Find the road. Call her parents. If she can remember the number. Did she pass a phone box? Are there still such things? Can you reverse the charges? Is the number for the operator still 100? Why doesn’t she know these things? And again, the leaves whisper her name.

  ***

  I hear, ‘Forest road phone reverse things leaves.’

  ‘Sarah!’ I shout under my breath. ‘Sarah, where are you?’

  ‘Can we help you, miss?’ A man’s voice asks from the living-room doorway. I slip the photo into my bag. I look round. Dumar.

  ***

  At some point on the journey, I relax as much as the day will allow and begin to study the taxi driver’s head. My cabbie is fiftyish, a full head of hair, Grecian 2000d to the max, greased back and playing dirtily over his shirt collar. When he turns, his chins comes first followed by his cracked and chewed lips; and then a curiously feminine nose seemingly too small for his large face; his ears small, streamlined, aquaphibian; and his eyes red and bunched, small, round, like those candy roses used to decorate cakes. Tooled for hammer and tongs. Car-iron proficient. A smashed and jagged bottle in a dark corner of a North London boozer. The sort that plays football and gee-gees with his grandchildren the night after he’s sorted and vinegared someone in a crisp-packet- strewn car park. Could take you where you didn’t want to go, leave you there.

  As the taxi pulls out from behind a bus and into traffic, a motorbike appears by the side of us, matching the taxi for speed, hogging the central lines. The taxi driver turns to his right, says something. The motorcyclist, hooded in one of those Darth Vader helmets, ignores him, jockeys back and forth between the driver’s door and the rear door. I take hold of the leather strap, pull myself to the window, stare out at the bike, the bike accelerates, makes as if to pull in front of the cab, so the driver has to swerve and, as he does so, I am thrown across the back seat. The driver’s head begins to fizz, crackle, and he pulls himself forward in his seat, guns the engine. The motorcyclist pulls back level with my door, turns his head to look in. I look back at him, seeing nothing but a wraparound elongated London taxi backlit by the kebab and charity shops of the Holloway Road. I hear the plastic window slide back. The taxi driver says,

  ‘He’s gonna get fucking killed if he ain’t careful. Fucking idiot.’

  He looks to his right, pulls in to the bus lane. The motorbike speeds on, overtaking the cars that until just now were in front of us. The bus lane is empty, a bus beating the traffic lights ahead of us. We stop. The taxi driver turns around, leans his left arm on the divider.

  ‘You know him?’

  ‘No,’ I say.

  ‘Looks like he was following you.’

  ‘Don’t think so,’ I say.

  ‘Ah, well, he’s gone now. Good fucking riddance. Whereabouts on Highbury Fields you want?’

  ‘Crescent. Top of Queens Walk. Fuck me!’ I shout.

  The motorcyclist presses his helmet against the window. I watch incredulous as he brings his head back, head-butts the glass, making it shake and me jump.

  The taxi driver tries to open the door but the motorbike is wedged against it. The lights change. The motorbike roars off.

  ‘Fucking nutter,’ the taxi driver says.

  ‘Yeah,’ I say.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ he says.

  ‘Not your fault,’ I say.

  ‘Here do ya?’

  I look up and see the trees lining Queens Walk, the people returning home from work or on their way to the pub, the club, the bingo. Oblivious.

  ***

  What a mess! What a fucking shambles! Or so it seems, as I walk up to the door of Mikey’s house, a mousy squeak from the intercom, and I can hear voices coming from different parts of the building all trying to answer at once.

  ‘Balzac for Mikey,’ I say, looking up into the fish-eye camera.

  There’s a buzz and I’m into the house. Now, I haven’t got time to describe Mikey’s home but imagine that you can read my mind and think of this visit as if you’ve been here before. Right? Right. Now, of what does it remind you? Think about it for a sec while I deal with the O’Goons.

  ‘Mikey is it you’re after, Balls Ache?’

  ‘Balzac. Father Goriot, Cousin Betty, Gobseck.’

  ‘Who are you calling a gobshite? No need to be rude now, Ball Sack.’

  ‘You started it, Sean. Balzac – The Wild Ass’s Skin, Cousin Pons.’

  ‘I’m not after being called a ponce now, Balzac. What is it you’re wanting? Mikey’s got things on his mind.’

  ‘I’ll think he’ll want to see me.’

  Sean pulls a walkie-talkie from inside his jacket – Mikey and his gadgets – and pushes a button.

  ‘Mikey, Sean. That fella Balzac’s here. Wants a word.’

  ‘Send him up,’ Mikey crackles.

  ‘He says to go on up. Use the back stairs.’

  ‘I know the way,’ I say, ‘And, Sean?’

  ‘What?’ he says.

  ‘You’re a son of the soil, so you are,’ and while he’s thinking about it, I walk to the back stairs.

  Any idea? What I said earlier? Of what Mikey’s house might remind you? Come on. It’s easy. I’ll give you a clue. Chocolate. These stairs are knackering me. They’re tight, twist back and forth like the metal ones you see zigzagging down the sides of buildings in American films, ones that cops are always chasing guys who have jumped out of bathrooms down. Got it? Huh! Give up? OK, then. A Walnut Whip. Ah, see? You got the spiralled chocolate on the outside, that’s where the O’Goons patrol – that’s where all the surveillance stuff is, the hard part, the bit you can get your teeth into. Perched on the top is the nut himself – Mikey in his 22nd century loft with his weird cat and – oh, shit, I forgot – lunatic of a dog. ‘What’s in the middle then, Balzac?’ I hear you all ask. What stands in for the vanilla fondant-cream centre? You’ll never believe it. Right in the middle of Mikey (Crikey) O’Reilly’s four-storey Highbury Fields townhouse is an exact replica of the terrace house he grew up in on Upper Sheriff Street, Dublin. Once you’re through the main doors, if you walk straight on and open another door, you step out on to a swept pavement and are faced by a door with a dolphin knocker and the number 117 above it. If you knock loud enough, the door will be answered by Mikey’s mother who still thinks she lives in the North Wall area of Dublin’s Northside. She’ll ask you in for tea, and if you accept, you’ll be able to smell cabbage and bacon cooking. Mad.

  I’m at the top of the house, the flooring up here is made of some fancy wood, there are lilies in vases, I have no idea how they stand upright. The air is chill and sharp. The door is ajar, I push it open. Mikey stands at the window looking out on to the fields, the night sky slowly riveting sheets of dark grey clouds on to the daytime. I have a feeling something has happened here. Mikey turns sideways, his whole body not just his head, he looks at the black-and- white painting on the white wall, the painting I always think looks like Brooklyn Bridge, then he looks back at the trees, the great shadows of starlings winding, unwinding in the sky.

  ‘Balzac,’ he says. No puns. No
jokes.

  ‘You all right, Mikey? Heard you wanted to see me.’

  ‘I prefer cats to dogs,’ he says, his Irish accent quivering under the Cockney,’ and I prefer dogs to humans.’

  Thinking this is leading up to an excruciating wordplay he’d spent the afternoon concocting, I play the straight man and say,

  ‘Why’s that then, Mikey?’

  He turns. His eye, swollen, the colour of a gas flame, throbs in the whiteness of the room.

  ‘Jesus, Mikey. Accident?’

  ‘Not so you’d notice. Jonathan Eaves paid me a visit. He’s looking for you. Says you know something.’

  ‘Know nothing,’ I say.

  Mikey is in my face faster than I can say custard pie.

  ‘This ain’t a fucking joke, Balzac. You see me laughing? Do you?’

  ‘No, Mikey. Where were the O’Goo – your boys?’

  ‘Shopping for Ma. I thought Jonathan Eaves was coming around for a chat. This has nothing to do with me. I’m not getting mixed up with bloody towelheads and smuggling shite in condoms. What do you know, Balzac?’

  And I tell him. I tell him about Sarah. About Mr. and Mrs. Beckford. About Ozan. About the fact that this all started off as a bloody missing persons. Simple. Not.

  ‘If I were you, I’d go see Jonathan Eaves. Call him. Sort this out before it gets out of hand,’ Mikey says.

  Mikey O’Reilly is not used to being slapped.

  ‘OK, I will. I’ve got to see Ozan first. He knows more than he’s letting on.’

  ‘Take one of my boys with you. Sean.’

  ‘No, thanks, Mikey, I’ll be fine. Got H covering me. Could do with a lift back to the ladder, though.’

  ‘Sean’ll drop you. Sort this out, Balzac. Call me.’

  ‘I will.’

  Mikey is about to say something else but his words fade. He turns back to the window, places his hand against the cool glass, the sun flaming its last. Birds. Cinders.

  I open the door, step on to the landing. As I’m about to close it, something runs between my legs, skitters down the stairs. The dog. Its claws slipping, scrambling on the waxed floorboards. It’s some kind of terrier thing, ginger hair, wiry and thick, short legs, black nose, doll-like eyes. It looks around. Damn!