Читать книгу Mike Bond Bound - Mike Bond - Страница 19

7

RAIN STREAKED the windows. Holland is the only place on earth, Neill thought, where the rain comes down sideways.

In Beirut there’d be no rain now. The wind down from the hills, pine and lavender, the cafés on Rue Hamra full of espresso and cigars and sweet liquor and sex, the sounds of traffic, music, laughter.

No, Hamra's barricaded and bombed. And the only people who go out become the dead ones on the pavements.

“You've been married nineteen years,” Inneka said. “No one else I know, but for my parents, their generation, has stayed married so long. How are you going to explain divorcing to Edgar? Even worse, to Katerina?”

“They'd barely notice if I went.” He slid his hand slowly up the curve of her waist. So smooth, he thought, nothing stops you.

“I refuse to be the one who makes that happen. If you're going to break from her, do it for yourself, not me.”

“I'm crazy,” he let his hand fall, “to be thinking of going from one of you to the other.”

“You're the one you have to learn to live with, darling.”

They dressed in the hesitant glow of the streetlight through the window; he couldn't find one sock till she put on the lamp. “We'll have to go all the way to Rembrandts Plein,” she said.

The rain had cleared, white clouds dashed across the moon. Wind cut up Prinsengracht, ruffling the black canal, sharp as a knife at his neck. She wrapped her coat tighter, hugging his arm as they walked. “You should've worn trousers,” he said.

A bell tinkled coming up behind them on darkened Keizersgracht by the Advent church, making him jump up on the pavement. “Just a bike,” she said.

It was a black rattletrap ridden by a girl in a long blue wool coat who took the bridge across Reguliersgracht, parked the bike and went into the Coffeeshop African Unity.

“It's because you don't want to go on this trip,” Inneka said. “That's why you're so jumpy.”

The Rhapsody on Rembrandts Plein was still open. At a chilled table on the terrace they ate Greek salad, tournedos and spaetzle. The couple at the next table were arguing gently in Italian, under the Motown on the café stereo. On the pavement an electric sign of a woman in blue, a gray cat, and a red-labeled black bottle of instant coffee: “Sheba. Een teken van liefde.” The sky had lifted, the moon's light slinking down the slate roofs, the wind chasing scraps of paper and dust around their ankles. On the far side of Rembrandts Plein flashed a red neon sign, “La Porte d’Or – Live Music”, and he realized he'd been thinking of going in there as if it were a place where he could forget everything, as if there'd be a truth there. A secret.

A trolley ground past, absurdly painted. “Damn graffiti,” she said.

“This used to be a nice town.”

Behind them three dealers were talking low in French, one with great wide hairy ears. “Seventy balles,” another said, “I'd take that.”

“We should try seventy-five,” great ears said.

The first pointed at a car outside. “Look at him, turning round in the street!”

“Like Paris, do whatever they want.”

The third raised a finger. “Je veux dire un truc, moi. Let me say something.”

“But he's not so great. He hustles sometimes but then he just lets himself go...”

“Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, still on your side,” sang the stereo.

“That's four thousand balles each.” Great ears held up his cigarette, shrugged. “Not so bad.”

The third raised his finger. “Moi, je veux dire un truc.”

Going down Reguliersgracht, the canal kept catching the moon, its reflection ducking under the bridges. Cars passed furtively like hunted animals. Inside the tall peaceful living room windows, books stood seriously on shelves, pictures hung meaningfully on white walls, and people dined under crystal chandeliers at long tables, all talking animatedly. What, Neill wondered, do they have to talk about? What can they believe?

Outside a girly bar a kid in jeans with torn knees, a cloth cap, and holey coat was playing a beaten white Strat hooked to a twenty-watt Peavey, the wind so cold his fingers were blue, his caved-in junkie face all caught up in the music that soared out of the black box as the blue fingers raced up and down the strings. A shorter man in a white jacket came round with a cup.

“Amazing,” Neill said.

“My student,” the man in the white coat said.

Neill dug out his change. Three guilders. “All I have.”

The man nodded peremptorily, moved toward another couple. “He's amazing,” Neill repeated.

Inneka tugged herself closer to him as they walked. Why am I so nervous? Neill asked himself. Is it about this trip, like she said? He should've given more money to the guitarist – it'd been a lie, about the three guilders; he had guilder notes in his wallet. He could have given him five guilders, even ten. You don't hear that every day, someone so connected to God. To hear someone play like that. It was as if it was a lesson, a test, to see if you were willing to pay for what you get.

“Why do you keep turning round?” Inneka said. “What are you afraid of?”

TEN TO MIDNIGHT but the men hadn't left. Four of them, Rosa had decided. With M16s and handguns – Christians hiding in a deserted factory while Beirut raged around them and their brothers battled to their deaths.

One of the Christians kept too far apart, a sentry – she couldn't be sure to get him with the first grenade, he might have time to dive among the rubble, and then it'd be his rifle against her grenades. She should have disobeyed Walid, brought a pistol. But a pistol in this darkness was like having a flare to show people where you are.

If she used two grenades there'd only be eleven left, and Mohammed's men would be angry. But if she waited any longer the grenades might be too late. Then she'd never get to see Mohammed.

She eased the pin out of one grenade and placed it softly on the ground. One man farted, another laughed. “I'm a happy married man,” said a third. “I wouldn't even look at his sister.”

“Now we know you're a liar. To have said happy and married in the same sentence.”

“For someone who complains so much about his wife, Sylvain, you're always ready to go home.”

“Who wouldn't be when you're the alternative?”

Holding down the lever of the first grenade she took a second from her pocket, pulled the pin with her teeth and spat it quietly on the ground. A grenade in each hand, she inched on hands and knees toward the voices.

“I have to admit,” one was saying, “Muslims cook the best lamb.”

“So why are we killing them?”

“Because they're killing us, remember?”

She reached the last jumble of concrete before the open doorway, their voices five yards beyond. Fighting down her fear she released one lever, then the other.

One second plus one makes two. Two seconds plus two makes three. Three plus three makes four. Four plus four and you always have an extra half a second and she threw one far and one near and dived behind the broken concrete.

A clatter of steel, a yell. The air sucked in, glared white and the boom threw her up and smashed her down among flying chunks of steel and concrete in the first grenade's enormous roar that grew and grew, crushed through the hands she'd clasped over her ears down into her skull, her heart, her soul. Great pieces of concrete were smashing down as the second grenade blew, cleaner, hot steel ringing off the shuddering walls. She tried to roll to her feet but couldn't.

Something warm and wet on her neck made her reach up for the wound but it was only a piece of one of the men. Chunks of ceiling kept ticking down. None of the men was moving; their guns were smashed. She stumbled through boiling dust and smoke out the back door of the warehouse into what could be Rue Hussein, she couldn't tell. In the moonlit rubble she could not discern where the Roman arch had been, the square where the old stone houses had grown together like ancient married couples, like old trees.

She could hear nothing, as if at the bottom of the sea, new pain shooting through her ears with every pulse. Mohammed's men would surely be angry that she'd used the two grenades. Four hours late too. Lazy, cowardly slut, they'll have given up on you. She crossed the street and entered the darkness of battered houses on the far side. In four years she'd never been caught; don't start now.

“You can stop now,” a voice whispered, behind her.

“Right now!” said another.

“Please, sirs, I'm hurrying home –”

“Hah! Abdul, it's a wench!”

“Lucky you didn't kill her!”

A match scraped, flared toward her.