Читать книгу The Storyteller - Pierre Jarawan - Страница 17

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6

Could I possibly have guessed how much that moment would change our lives? How the seeds of disintegration became slowly and imperceptibly embedded in our family from then on, like a malignant growth discovered too late. It’s only a photo—that’s what I thought back then. A picture of my father with a gun. How was I to know I’d be haunted by that photo forever?

What happened over the next few days is as I’ve described already. Father’s behaviour changed. I sensed that it had something to do with the photo, and several times it was on the tip of my tongue to ask him about it. But I got the feeling that he didn’t want to talk about it, so I held back. I was only seven. I found the world of grown-ups terribly confusing, and when it came to making decisions, I often felt like I was lost in a huge building with way too many doors and corridors, out of which I was supposed to pick the right one. Gut instinct told me it would be better not to ask Mother or Father about the photo. So I trusted my gut.

Now, some twenty years later, I frequently tell myself I should have listened to my head rather than my gut. People tell me it wasn’t my fault. “You were only a child,” they say awkwardly, because that’s all they can think of. “A child can’t read those kinds of signals.” They say that he abused my trust when he made me promise not to tell anyone about the strange phone calls. And that I wasn’t deceiving Mother when I kept quiet about it all. They say this because they don’t know about all the times she shook me and begged me to tell her the truth. They say, “Even if you had done everything differently, what difference would it have made?” But the truth is, their words mean nothing, because I know better.

Even though Father’s behaviour scared me, I still wanted to be close to him. One day I decided to collect him from work at the youth centre. When I set off, the sky was clouding over and the air was so humid that my skin felt clammy, but there was no sign yet of the storm that broke just minutes later. First, big fat raindrops hit the street and a wind gusted up, whipping the newspaper right out of a man’s hands at the bus stop across the road. Waiters came scurrying out of cafés, holding trays over their heads, and glancing suspiciously at the sky or clearing away outdoor tables and chairs while the awnings flapped like startled pigeons. Then the intervals between the raindrops grew shorter and shorter, and seconds later everything turned grey. The rain came down in sheets of lead—and my clothes were far too thin. A cold wind whistled round my ears, and rainclouds trailed across the sky like giant turtles. There was no point in turning back; I was nearly there. I hurried along the pavement, shoulders hunched, hands stuffed into my pockets, trying to avoid the spumes of dirty water sprayed by passing cars. Near the entrance to the youth centre, a bunch of teenagers were sheltering under an overhanging roof, waiting for the storm to pass before going home. One of them—a guy with a striking horseshoe-shaped scar on his forehead—spotted me and held out a packet of cigarettes the way you’d offer a chimp a banana; the others burst their sides laughing. I entered the building. The empty hallway was quite a contrast to the noisy street. The air was stale, the oxygen all used up during the day. I walked past glass cabinets displaying photos of kids playing football or sawing big planks. Father was in some of the pictures, and I recognised the guys from outside too. My shoes left a wet trail on the lino floor. My father’s office was behind one of the last doors on the corridor. Beside his name plate was a registration sheet for a night hike. I went in without knocking. I knew he had a desk with stacks of files on it and expected to find him half-hidden behind them. But he wasn’t. He was standing in front of the desk. And when he saw me come through the door, he hung up the phone in shock.

“Samir! What are you doing here?” The way he said it sounded slightly cross—it wasn’t Samir, what a nice surprise, or Oh dear, you’re all wet.

“I wanted to pick you up from work.” Suddenly I felt like a complete idiot, like someone who turns up at a friend’s house for a surprise party but got the dates mixed up. I felt way too small for this big room I was in, soaked to the skin, and didn’t know what to say.

He looked at me blankly for a minute, as if I’d addressed him in some rare language like Tofalar and was expecting him to decode it for himself. Then he muttered an “Oh,” followed by, “Right. I’m finished here. Let’s go.”

We left his office together, but he didn’t take my hand until we were outside.

“I’m parked over there,” he said, pointing somewhere beyond the curtain of rain. He pulled me along; it was hard to keep up and I nearly tripped. Just before a mighty clap of thunder, I heard one of the gang from before say to the guy with the scar on his forehead, “Hey, guess what? You just offered Brahim’s son a smoke!”

With Father in this kind of mood, it was hard to be positive. I’d never seen him like this. His dark moods were every bit as contagious as his cheerfulness could be. All of a sudden, the walls of our flat didn’t seem so white and bright anymore. And I began to notice little stains and flaws on the wooden floor where we scuffed it pulling chairs in and out from the dinner table. The shiny oval keyhole plate in the living-room door had ugly scratches I had never registered before, and if the autumn sunlight fell at the wrong angle, I could see how dirty our windows were. I went traipsing around our neighbourhood breaking branches off trees and crawling through waist-high wet grass in the hope that my torn, sodden clothes would grab Father’s attention.

I missed his stories, how he’d sit on my bed in the evenings and spin yarns, his eyes shining. It was a tradition and a ritual, this story time. Something that created a bond between us. The stories allowed this invisible bond to grow, and I had assumed that it was so strong no one would be able to break it. The worlds Father created in these stories were realms only the two of us could enter, through secret doors to which we alone had the keys. If he came to my room with a new story to tell, he’d hop from one foot to the other, rub his hands furtively and exude such an air of childish excitement that I knew he could hardly wait. Then we’d shut the door so that Mother wouldn’t disturb us, dim the light, and dive into new worlds. The closed door was a signal to Mother to keep well away. She’d know that we were busy pursuing the adventures of the characters and creatures Father brought to life. I wanted my old father back, the one full of laughter, enthusiasm, and joie de vivre. My proud father, my patient father. Not the one who barely noticed me, no matter how hard I tried. Not the one who took my little sister in his arms and rocked her, but gave the impression that it was unbearably painful to look at her.

I missed Yasmin too. I missed her sticking her curly head round the door and coming in. Without knocking, naturally, because our flat was her second home. She too had sensed the change in Father, and she stopped coming up to us so often after that. His strange behaviour had unsettled her as well.

“What’s wrong with him?” she asked me, after he’d once again passed her on the stairs without a word. All I could do was shrug.

The night after the slideshow, I lay in bed and heard my parents having a row, arguing the way parents do when they don’t want children to hear—behind closed doors, in intense, hushed voices. I pressed one ear against my pillow and pulled the duvet over the other, but it didn’t help much. I tried to focus instead on the blobs that seemed to float weightlessly in the lava lamp on my bedside table. They merged, separated, nudged against the glass, and formed new shapes all over again. But my parents’ voices still slid under the bedroom door like toxic smoke. They were in the kitchen, and I could not block out their voices.

“But you promised,” said Mother.

“I know.”

“Do you realise what would have happened if they’d found it?”

Silence.

“Do you realise that we wouldn’t be here today?”

Silence.

“We could be dead, Brahim. Tossed in a grave or thrown into the sea like the others.”

Still no response.

“Why did you keep it?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“No. That was ten years ago.”

“Ten years in which we’ve created a life for ourselves. A life together.”

Silence.

“We came here so that our children might have a better chance. You were putting that at risk.”

“We didn’t have any kids then.”

“But surely you expected us to have kids eventually.”

“It’s only a photo,” my father yelled, in a voice that carried all the way to my room.

“It’s more than that,” my mother spat back. “I want you to throw it away. Even if it’s ten years too late.”

“Rana,” he said, “that photo is of no interest to anyone in this place.”

“I don’t care what you say.” Mother was furious. “Get rid of it once and for all!”

“That photo means something to me,” he said.

“I know,” she retorted angrily, “I know all too well what that photo means to you. That’s why I want you to get rid of it! You’re here now, with us. That should mean everything to you.” She was sobbing now. Then I heard footsteps in the corridor. She walked past my room into their bedroom and shut the door.

I held my breath under the bedclothes. My teeth were clenched so tight that my jaw hurt. My ears were still pricked, but now all was quiet. Slowly, I pushed back the duvet, slid out of bed, and carefully opened the door. To my left, there was still light from the kitchen. Father was still in there. There was no sound from my parents’ room. I hitched up my pyjama bottoms so that I wouldn’t trip on the hems and tiptoed down the corridor to the living room.

I wasn’t really thinking about what I did. The projector was still there on the table, in the dark. The slide was still in the slot. I withdrew it carefully. All I could make out in this light were vague shadows. I turned around and scurried silently back to my room.

Seconds later, I heard Father heave a sigh and leave the kitchen. He went into the living room; I held my breath. Then I heard a rustling and pictured him searching through the slides spread out on the table. The rustling didn’t last long, though, because next thing he was coming towards my room. I closed my eyes, heard him open the door, and sensed him watching me from the doorway.

“Samir?” he whispered.

I didn’t react. My heart was in my throat. I had the slide clasped in one hand, and the hand shoved under my pillow. Father entered the room slowly; I could hear his breath as he leaned over. Then it went dark behind my eyelids. He had switched off my bedside light. With heavy steps, he made his way back to the door.

“Goodnight, Samir,” he said, as if I was still awake.

That’s when I knew that he knew.