 
A Story a Week 76

**A Story a Week**

Ewan Lawrie

Copyright 2012 by Ewan Lawrie

Smashwords Edition

1. Breaking the Curfew

'Dinardinardinardinardinardinar!'

Every stallholder in the Manama souk shouted it after Stu and I, our pale skins being a temptation too great to pass up. Every stallholder offered the same cat-in-a-bag, muezzin-alarm-clock tat, all at the no longer tempting price of 1 Dinar. It was a matter of pride to look them in the eye and shake our heads vigorously. Neither one of us would speak a word of Arabic to them. Contrary to what I used to think, it only made them worse. The biggest souk in Bahrain, naturally enough, was in the capital. You entered via a huge and eye-wateringly white marble gateway; Beib Al-Bahrain. The Bahrain Gate. The souk started at this end and it started with the tat. We had no interest at all in this end of the bazaar.

You could smell the next section long before you come upon it. We used to walk slower to savour this smell. The medicinal perfume of nutmeg, cinnamon's red apple tones, the liquorice tang of cardomom and anis, the sub-continental coriander and cumin and – permeating all of it – the king of spices, the treasure of the East India Company: black pepper. After what seemed like one hundred stalls the tat stopped abruptly, and the spices were piled high, waiting to be measured out into scales counter-balanced by shiny brass avoirdupois weights. It was around 7 o'clock in the evening. The foetid heat of the day was descending into the warm fug of early evening. We had broken curfew, of course. In twelve hours we would be rolling out for take off from Muharraq.

I spotted him first. Elbowing Stu in the ribs, I brought him up short, although I knew he liked him. We stopped, watched for a few minutes. The man haggled for every plastic bag full of spice. He must have bought a pound of every single powder, grain and seed on the stall, secreting each bag inside the large Air Force holdall at his feet. Every few minutes, he looked at his watch.  
Eventually, he paid his bill. I doubt very much whether it came to more than a couple of dinar. He turned to head in our direction, back to the hotel, kitbag on his shoulders as though it was a particularly badly-designed rucksack. As he passed us, he tapped his wristwatch, I looked at mine and raised my eyebrows at him.

'Don't be late, Stu,' he said. He didn't even look at me.

I laughed at him, but he went on his way without a word.

Stu stopped at the same stall, but I tugged his sleeve,

'On the way back, come on!'

Stu looked doubtful,

'You really don't want to miss this, Stu.' I told him.

About 30 yards further on the fabric stalls began. Linens, broadcloths and, though you might not believe it, tweeds. Around 20 percent of the stall operators were Arabs; the rest were exclusively from the sub-continent: Goans, Bengalis, Gujaratis, Keralans, Tamils, Kashmiris, Punjabis, young men from Sindh, Quetta and Balochistan and even Sinhalese rubbed along in a rich cacophony of Hindi, Urdu and English with far more equanimity than had ever been achieved at home. These men's brothers and cousins worked away at treadle-powered Singers in the back streets behind the souk, tailoring clothes for expatriates and visiting military types like us. Stu and I forged on, nearly at our objective and hungry to reach it.

I had found the place after picking up some shirts from a back-street laundry. Munshi had already had the keys in his hand when I got there at about 7 o'clock about three years ago. It had been my very first trip to Bahrain, not long after the No Fly Zone was imposed over central Iraq. The polite young man who had accepted my dhobi a day earlier had been transformed into a sullen youth who stuffed my clean laundry into my RAF holdall.

'What's up?'

'Very late, very late!' He looked over my shoulder at the door.

'In a hurry, Munshi?'

Munshi was very dark. He came from Bangladesh, but he'd been at pains to tell me he was Sylheti. I'd nodded as if I knew what that meant and he'd laughed explaining that when he'd lived in Brick Lane everyone had called him a Paki anyway. We must have chatted for twenty minutes when I'd left my washing. And now?

'Yes, yes, very late!'

It was as though he thought poor English would get rid of me quicker. As if he was insulting me by using it. I shouldered my bag and left the laundry. It was easy enough to hide on the corner of the side-street. There was a fruit juice bar, mobbed by USN personnel, I was just another white face. Munshi headed for the souk. I followed. He reached the long snaking street of the souk at about the middle of the spice stalls. He turned right, head down, shoulders forward. He passed all the smells and exhortations from the spice merchants. He did wave at someone selling bolts of gaudy material as he passed, but he didn't stop to talk. I thought he'd been heading for the Gold souk, this was separated from the bazaar by quite a few blocks. In reality, it was no more than a large mall and several dozen streets dedicated to selling gold and precious stones. You could purchase a ruby by weight, choose a bale, mounting necklace and follow the salesman into the back-streets to catch him dropping it off at a goldsmith's in the back room of a shop with no window. But Munshi stopped short of that area, these streets were almost entirely the garment and drapery shops that the Bahrainis, the American Servicemen and Saudis from across the causeway used, ordering tailor-made clothes that were actually sewn by the same tailors as a souk cloth-seller would use.  
Munshi stopped in front of one that I knew several of our officers had used.

He didn't go in. Instead he stopped at a narrow doorway beside the draper's. The door was open and a line of people were queueing up a staircase. I looked at the floor above the draper's. I'd not noticed anything above any of the ground floor businesses in the buildings in this part of town.  
The windows were dirty, dim light crept through the glass. Lettering had peeled from the glass: Surma was written in English and there was some lettering which might have been Hindi, Urdu or Thai for all I knew. I stood behind Munshi in the queue. He turned and glared

'Late, see!'

'Let me pay,' I smiled, and he smiled back.

'Sure, why not.'

So I had.

Stu and I were on our way there now. We were late too, but we were happy to queue.

When we reached the top of the stairs, the formica tables were all full. Ours were the only white faces there. Two middle-aged men were in front of us. As soon as two spaces on a 6 seater table became free they took them. I waved at Munshi, who was in a far corner with five... friends, I supposed. He waved back and the group huddled over their food for a moment. They waved at a waiter. He collected two tubular chairs from a stack and came over to us. Giving us each a chair he waved us over to Munshi's corner.

'Sit, sit,' Munshi said.

'We couldn't possibly...' Stu started.

'We have too much, why not share?' An older man next to Munshi smiled as he said it.

'Besides,' Munshi added. 'You paid last time.'

And there was a great deal of food on the table. So we crammed another two around the stained formica. We ate. How we ate! Salmon kofta, turned quite pink by the fish's flesh;sardines in tomato sauce, perhaps rejected by John West but succulent and pungently oily; tilapiu with nostril-clearing-strength mint; tiny keski mach emboldened by at least a handful of green chilis, tomato tok with monkfish. There were mounds and mounds of brown rice: not the constipatory sludge vegetarian friends might foist on you; separate, dry grains full of the earthy flavour of the sub-continent. When it was gone, Munshi summoned the waiter, he spoke many more than 20 words, the last two being something like 'Gulab Jamun'

Within a scant quarter hour, two waiters arrived with arms full of dishes. There seemed to be two of everything. As the waiters placed the dishes and bowls on the table top, Munshi declaimed the contents of each, in English and Sylheti,

'Baked Yoghurt, Mishti Dhoi!'

'Almond Candy, Badam Burfi!'

The procession of sweetmeats continued until at last one of the waiters squeezed the last two dishes onto the crowded table. This time he gave the Sylheti first,

'Gulab Jamun! Doughnuts!' He laughed, and so did we.
2 If This Is a Woman

Greta closed the door: another busy-body from the council. Oh, they said they were nothing to do with any kind of government, but what did they take her for? They had the knock. The 'we-know-you're-in-there' one Greta remembered from so long ago. At least they hadn't uniforms, nor did they jam a jackboot in the door, but one of them, the woman, had looked like she wanted to. Greta shuffled to the kitchen, grunting a little as she lifted her slipper over Schellenberg. The cat stretched a paw upward. One day she _would_ trip over that damned cat.

The kitchen could do with cleaning, she had to admit. Ein Blitzputz – a lightning clean. Well, it wouldn't get another now. Tomorrow was the 27th of January. One day. One day to remind people of the things that had been done. It was a gesture. Many remembered every day – or every night – in dreams made of sweat and screams. For Greta it was not so bad. There had been ways to get more food, even in those meshugganah gehennas. No, the nightmare had ended long ago, when the flat-Slavic faces distorted in disgust, the moment they passed through the gates. It had ended before that, for her parents, for Oma and Opa and Onkel Solomon, his wife and Greta's twin cousins, and the people who had travelled with them on the train to oblivion.

Greta stirred the tea, coffee made her feel sick now. Blockfὓhrer Hἃβler had drunk ersatz coffee constantly. His breath had been foul with it, as foul as the words he whispered into her ear as he leaned into her. Greta had concentrated on the pain from the splinters in her hand, and wondered why the guards' furniture was as poorly made as the prisoners'. Greta sipped her tea. Tomorrow, tomorrow was the day. She had bought the plastic jerry can, she would call at the petrol station on her way. 2005 and the Europeans had decided to mark the day too. The 60th Anniversary. Better late than never, people said. But sometimes it just wasn't true: Onkel Solomon had died on the 26th.

Yes, Greta thought, it was time: time for something to make them think. The Pastor had done it in Czechoslovakia, no-one had forgotten him. Greta stepped over Schellenberg and returned to the sofa. Doctors was on on the television, it was taking a break after today's episode. Definitely. It was the right time.

3. Chupe

In the mountains they believe. They believe that landslides are the mountains displeasure. They believe that the frequent floods are God's tears for the dead children and for the old men who still live. The mountains are no place for a policeman from Lima. Or even Llo. Garcia lit a cigarillo and leaned against the jeep. He looked at the buildings; low, flat, stone-built: identical whether barn or bar. He hoped the village was Chupe, but it could have been any other. The map in the jeep was crumpled in the passenger footwell.

Garcia headed for the one low building with a generator outside. It was off. An oil-stained patch of dirt beneath it gave a clue to why. A dirty sheet of material hung in the doorway. Garcia swept it aside and went in. Two storm lanterns hung from hooks in the ceiling – already lit since the dirt on the windows let very little of the twilight in. He squinted into the gloom. A glum figure stood behind a trestle bar, smearing a glass with a dirty cloth. Two wizened men crouched close over a table arguing in Quechua. Garcia walked to the bar.

'Whiskey, por favor.'

The man behind the bar said nothing, placed the smeared glass on the trestle table and tipped no kind of measure from a bottle with no label into it.

Garcia drank and half-stifled a cough. He undid the top button of his khaki shirt. Nothing fitted since his promotion. Not his shirts, not his pants, not even this maldito posting to the back of beyond.

'I'm here about the missing.'

The man behind the bar cleared his throat,

'Why? They are gone, Sargento.'

'Name?'

'They call me Paco.'

'Well, Paco, someone always misses those who disappear.'

'Ha! It is the American who is missed, Policeman.'

'Not at all.' Garcia pulled out his notebook. 'Luisa Suarez, 15, 2008. Maria-Jesus Quispé, 18, 2009 and Linda Huamán, 14, 2010.'

One of the weathered faces at the table looked up at Garcia,

'And the Americana student, last month.'

Garcia jabbed his forefinger at the man,

'You, who are you?'

'Victor Huamán.'

The policeman leaned close,

'Any relation to the 14-year-old?'

The man spat at the floor near Garcia's boots.

'Granddaughter.'

'My friend, in police circles we say look at the family first.'

Huamán laughed. He laughed and his eyes squeezed tears which travelled the wrinkles on his face like mountain water down arroyos.

'The mountains take them, Policeman, the mountains. That is what we believe, you should believe it too.'

Garcia turned away and ordered another whiskey.
4. The Infinite Scope of Memory

The Infinite Scope of Memory

Pass me my mnemo-scope,  
careful! It's versatile.  
Put it to your mind's eye;  
it's all the scopes –  
from micro to tele –  
from minutiae to mediation.  
Which one is it,  
today?  
Like all good scopes  
we use it to spy  
on the 'other'.  
Here, let's gather  
intelligence  
\- on that other  
country: the past.

**FROM THE REPORT:** 'How Could Matthias Rust Get to Moscow?'  
**BY:** Douglas Clarke, Radio Free Europe  
**DATE:** 1987-6-2

_In both the East and the West, people  
are asking how it could have been possible for a  
young West German student pilot, Matthias Rust,  
to fly a light aircraft unhindered through the  
vaunted Soviet air defenses._

'It's easy to forget what intelligence consists of: luck and speculation. Here and there a windfall, here and there a scoop.' **John le Carré in The Looking-Glass War, London: Heinemann, 1965**

_1. Microscope_

It's a grubby, cloudy slide under the scope.

It looked like any large institution's open-plan office – except for the radio-electronic hardware. A really close look would tell you it wasn't a standard computer room; oh yes, there were huge tape disks and servers the size of small vehicles. But the detail of the missing punch card machines would give it away. I remember the clouds. Of dense, aromatic tobacco smoke; Lambert and Butler, Bensons, – Gauloise for the pretentious few. Everyone smoked then. Tax-free in the NAAFI, why not? One 23 year old guy affected a meerschaum; he did look like the keyboard player from Sparks, though. It was a big room to fill with smoke. You could barely see the terminal in front of you. A hideous brown block of metal, green-screened with a lighter green font; Zenith Data Systems on a silver metal plate on the side.

It might have been a weekend. Empty seats everywhere you looked: just a few glum faces in the murk. The rest were enjoying 'Stand-downs'; gash time off in honour of the Soviet holiday, 28th of May, Border Guard Day. We had no pilots to listen to. The Soviet Tactical Air Force in the German Democratic Republic was having a well-earned rest; the pilots drinking vodka, the ground crews siphoning fuel tanks to brew white lightning. How did we know this? We listened: we monitored Soviet radio transmissions; we heard occasional drunken radio checks on common communications frequencies, streams of slurred words demonstrating the rich variety of Russian expletives. Every Soviet holiday was the same; for us as well as them.

The smoke – and the constantly flickering fluorescent lighting – was hard on the eyes. There were no windows in the top-secret listening station. Top Secret! I remember once seeing its phallic lines on the front page of the Sun during Geoffrey Prime's treason trial; a year later I was working in it. No real work to do; what did we do that day?

Change the slide; turn the knob; focus on the specimen.

Most likely I was listening to a 3-week old recording of a trainee helicopter pilot making landing after landing at an airfield north of Berlin; tapping Cyrillic keys as fast as I could. There were always recordings left over to listen to: we filled databases for faceless bean counters countries away. It would have been about five p.m. Unofficially, our shift had started a quarter of an hour ago, you had to takeover the reins from the off-going crew. You came in a quarter-hour earlier for a 30-second summary and a scrawled note. The hard core would just have been putting their headphones on:

\- 'The shift starts at five, ok? I'll start at five.'

Little victories. All they had while in uniform. I never saw the point.

Jock rolled his eyes at me; six hours of head-melting boredom in prospect. He used to string out the administrative duties as long as he could, putting off the donning of the electric hat as long as possible. And he had a hangover; he always did, then. The white noise and static bursts on the cassette recordings made it worse. Twenty years later, we all flinch at loud noises and fail to hear the quiet ones.

At this time the transcription desks would have looked like a '70s school language lab, right down to the empty seats. Eddie had a lurid paperback an inch from his nose and one headset earpiece wedged on the top of his head as far from his good ear as possible. Steve had his feet up beside the desktop control box for his cassette player.

Someone would have made a coffee – for the dozen or so people there – before half-an-hour was out. The TV room-cum-kitchen was in the basement. Big Paul McGill disappeared for over an hour once just to make six brews: but then he did once go AWOL for three days to work as a labourer on a building site. We all pretended not to see him as we drove past the Teufelseestrasse S-Bahn station, on our way to work in the Prick in the Sky.

I would have been working at Teufelsberg for five years – off and on – by then. Some took it very seriously: I did too. Only now does the absurdity of it all hit home. You need memory's lenses to look at the past: the microscope inflates it, the reversed telescope tells the truth; the past is always smaller, sharpened by distance.

_2. epocseleT_

See me: thinner, younger, smiling less. I run to a bench of radio receivers all set to loudspeaker, a lot of talking; agitated, guttural Russian. It should be brief, hourly checks, drunk or not. Do I hear panic over the ether? Someone has let the tape recordings run out. No-one panics in the room. I don't know what the disembodied voices said. Gone for ever now. Shrugs all round. Good job the Boss Man has taken a rare stand-down.

'Dinnae worry' says Jock 'It'll no be the Red Horde heading for London.'

'We'll never know now, will we?' I muse.

'Who cares who wins?' snorts Steve. Steve's dad is the Boss Man on one of the other shifts.

Jock tells me to reload all the cassette recorders in the room, five racks of 16 plus some 8 individual recorders at another listening station; unmanned because 'we've been recording them'. We man-up all the so-called 24-hour posts. The frequencies we monitor are active for a half-hour or so. It transpires the Soviets want to scramble some assets: the responses are vague and evasive: and quite, quite slurred. Things go back to normal. Their periodic radio checks become flat, atonal, perfunctory. An air of anticlimax spreads to the listeners from the listened-to.

Two more guys come in. In cricket whites, a beer or two to the good after the match. Sport is good for morale. They've heard the boss isn't in. They'll hide in the bogs at shift change and skip out of the building having cheated the Queen of the uniform for an evening. Little, little victories. They are the highest ranked people in the room.

Hours later, I'm nodding off. Back in the 'Language Lab' again. Auditory fancies coming through the headphones; helicopters landing by elephants – or landed by them. My head jerks spastically, tape-recording whiplash injury imminent. Someone's shouting:

\- 'Hurry, downstairs! Come on, the telly.'

Hauling myself from my seat, as if I can't bear to leave my vitally important work – it wouldn't do for anyone to know I've slept through most of a C60 cassette, after all – I follow the crowd down to the TV room...

_3. K  
S C A  
O E O L  
D P E  
I_

Where it was deathly quiet, except for the sound from the TV. In those pre-satellite days there was no rolling news; no buzz bars ticker-taped world events at the bottom of the screen. The nightly news was on ZDF, with the usual impossibly glamorous, slightly S & M, pastel-power-dresser linking the stories: we strained to follow the newscast German:

\- '19 year old Mattias Rust landed his Cessna light aircraft in Red Square earlier today...'

I looked round at the faces; Steve, Jock, Paul, the Cricketers: there must have been others – or were others, not these, actually there? Shift the tube and the patterns look different. A few months ago, in Fuengirola, a 50-something man told me he'd sat next to me on the back row of the 'Language Lab' for six months; I didn't even recognise his name.

So, perhaps, Steve sniggered. Maybe Jock's face was unreadable. I know I felt sick. It was too near shift change to call in the stood-down personnel. And what good would it have done?

\- 'Rust departed Finland and crossed into Soviet controlled Airspace before entering Soviet Territory 160 kilometres west of Leningrad,' the woman on the TV was saying.

Jock shrugged:

'We cannae hear that from here... It's no our responsibility.'

In my head, I was translating his words into Russian.

**FROM THE REPORT: '** How Could Matthias Rust Get to Moscow?'  
**BY:** Douglas Clarke, Radio Free Europe  
**DATE:** 1987-6-21

This dramatic incident has caused the dismissal of the head of the Soviet Air Defense Forces and the forced retirement of the Soviet Minister of Defense.  
Soviet embarrassment over Rust's choice of a  
landing spot–in Moscow's Red Square–might have  
been a factor in the severity of the official reaction.

'Fools, most linguists. Damn all to say in one language, so they learn another and say damn all in that.' **John le Carré in The Night Manager, Alfred A. Knopf , 1993.**
**6.** Leadville

It was a relief to step down from the carriage of the locomotive. Imagine my surprise when my guide, one Camphor Jack Stadtler, insisted we board something purporting to be a stagecoach. The rails had ended abruptly in Colorado Springs and I was most grateful that the engineer had maintained sufficient control over his charge to bring it to a halt several feet short of where the track petered out. I had held my kerchief to my nose all the way from Denver to the terminus, since Mr Stadtler failed singularly to live up to his name – either by smell or by the condition of his clothes. Said 'kerchief – though scented with lavender - was not sufficient to protect me from the former. I had whiled away the journey thus far in counting the holes left by moths in his frock coat.

The coach was not entirely un-sprung, but riding in it did entail clamping one's hat to one's head and several involuntary embraces with fellow passengers. Since none of my fellow travellers were youths, gilded or no, this did not offer the pleasure it might have done, in, shall we say, Oxfordshire.

The leaving of Colorado Springs showed it in its most pleasing aspect. Nothing, however, could have prepared me for the entering of Leadville. Vulgar ornacy stood cheek-by-jowl with abject dilapidation. Most vulgar of all seemed to be those buildings which bore the name of my sponsor for this way station on my tour of the United States. I saw a colonnaded bank worthy of the Pergamon and a false-fronted building housing the Leadville Herald, which doubtless was a compendium of the savage and ridiculous, from murder in front of the saloon to the next scheduled performance by Miss Lily Langtry. Worst of all was the venue for my lecture. Miss Langtry was to appear there the following autumn and I could not help but think she might indeed stoop to conquer, but never quite so far as at the Tabor Opera House, Leadville.

Tabor himself was an unremarkable and serious-looking man. Bald of pate and bushy of eyebrow, he lacked only the dog-collar to make him one of the Almighty's earthly intermediaries, if only of the less papist – and hence, more boring – variety. I find any religion that does not require its adherents to dress up, is no sort of religion at all. As well hunt the fox in a worsted suit. It was a glorious day. Late spring in the Rocky Mountains had blessed it with a dry heat that lay lightly on the skin. My sponsor's handshake was unexpectedly limp and clammy, in marked contrast to that of his wife. The couple seemed to have shared the joy and misery of life in much the same manner as Mr & Mrs Spratt disposed of the fat and the lean of their comestibles. The woman, dumpy though she were, attempted to play the coquette with me. I chose not to inform her of the futility of such an endeavour, were she Salome herself. Presently, Mrs Tabor suggested we repair to the Silver Bar Saloon.

In truth, I rather liked the Silver Bar. The miners were, in the main, rough young fellows and as such better company than either Mrs or Mr Tabor, or their entourage of the town's notables. Such entertainment as there was consisted of a pianist whose relationship with his instrument was at best strained. Mrs Tabor was at pains to point out the sign on the wall over the musician's head.

'Please Refrain from Shooting the Piano Player, He's Doing his Best.'

I remarked to the Tabors that it was the only rational approach to criticism, but I had as well cast necklaces of pearls before the filthiest of swine.

If I dared say I met anyone of consequence or interest in Leadville – a name apt for it's atmosphere, if not the source of its wealth – it were none other than the strange and outlandishly dressed fellow who appeared later in the evening in the Silver Bar. He was a tall man looking to be in the prime of life, no more than forty, but -in a kindly light – perhaps he could have been of an age with myself. Handsome, if a little coarse of feature, he outshone his clothes as a king would a beggar's rags. He spoke, if not beautifully, in a voice as mellifluous as it was hard to place in any kind of geographical context. I heard Edinburgh, London, New Orleans and an education in its tones.

I took the proffered hand,

'Moffat Anthrop' he said.

I gave him my own name and refrained from comment on the improbability of the one he had offered himself. He replied, neatly enough.

'Since you are famous enough to draw a crowd in Leadville, Sir. I expect even the piano player knows your name.'

He inserted a thumb in the pocket of his threadbare weskit. Its faded playing cards managed the feat of seeming grubby and garish at one and the same time.

'Would you care for a shot, Sir?' I replied in the affirmative.

The man regaled me for some hours with a fantastical tale involving murders, inheritance, assumed identities, Hebraic plots, a robbery of the old Confederate Mint and the Underground Railroad. He claimed this autobiographical phantasy as the honest truth, which it most assuredly could not have been, for the man would have had to have passed three score and ten several years since. Yet he looked, as I say, no more than forty and with a following wind would have passed for ten years less. One of the saloon girls affixed herself close to the man's long coat for a time, but he lost patience and shrugged her off without so much as a glance of acknowledgement. I was forced to refuse the offer of a game at cards and was glad of it when I saw his merciless fleecing of the miners foolish enough to sit at table with him. In short, he managed to show as venal a nature as ever I had seen in a man in no more time than it took him to drink an entire bottle of whiskey and threaten a poor loser with a knife.

I told the fellow before I left the saloon,

'You are a most intriguing fellow, Sir, I've a mind to put you in a novel.'

He laughed and seemed younger than ever,

'See that you do, but I'd like a name that sounds sweet on the ear, if your pen can manage such a thing.'

'You could give me your own, and I might use that, might I not?'

'Then use none that I gave you in my tale of earlier, Sir.'

'So, what name were you born with?' I asked him, blunt though it were.

He laughed again. 'No, Sir, I leave it to you.'

And though I felt the name Moffat suited him best, I called him Dorian Gray.
6. Sand and Glass

Glass. One or two, a pair, a pane. A mirror's made of glass. It fascinated him. Glass: how could you make it from sand? Sand, it's just silica, after all. All this because of something made of sand. A lazy laugh leaked from his lips: it had started with a glass, in a bar surrounded by sand.  
'Hi,' she'd said. 'I'm Mandy.'  
He'd have made a joke about an old song but she wouldn't have been born. So:  
'Hi, Mandy. I'm John.' He tried a smile. Got an almost-smile back.  
She was holding out a glass, they were sitting in a chiringuito on the beach in Banus. It was off season, wind blowing through the building. The roof looked like raffia, the bar didn't open if it rained.  
'What is it?' John asked.  
'I don't know,' she replied. 'You haven't bought it yet.'  
He came back with two sticky glasses missing the parasols, which disappeared out of season, like the tourists.  
She took a greedy slurp, licked some of the sticky fluid from her lips :  
'Mmm. I like it, Caipirinha. Not vodka though, is it?'  
'No, um, cachaça. Roberto smuggles it in when he comes back from Bahia.'  
'Not Spanish then?' she asked, dipping a finger in the drink and sucking the fluid greedily.  
'No,' he took a sip, held back a grimace at the yet-to-be-acquired taste. 'Who is?'  
She laughed. He thought it sounded like bubbling water in a spring.  
Mandy looked at him, her irises so brown they melted into the pupils.  
'And you, what are you?'  
'I'm here.'  
The spring bubbled again:  
'I like that.' The dark eyes fixed him again: 'so am I.'  
He waved a hand at Roberto, who was cajoling the other customer into buying one for the road, or at least the pavement. Two more drinks appeared on the barrel head. She moved her long-legged stool closer, laid a hand on his forearm:  
'What do you do?' she put her head on one side, waiting for an answer.  
'This,' he replied. 'I do this.'  
'What? Sit in beach-front bars?' She took her hand away from his arm.  
'Just this one.' He took a drink, a real one this time.  
'What's so special about this one?'  
'I own it.'  
Mandy's hand came back. He was expecting it on his thigh. But she was better than that. She laid her hand over his.  
'Just this one?' She had that almost smile again.  
'Nowadays.'  
'Why?'  
'The less you have, the less you need.'  
Her face hardened, 'never been poor have you?'  
'Not yet.'  
She laughed, 'I can fix that.'  
And he laughed too.  
So he laughed now at the memory of it and rolled closer to the wooden wall of the beach-hut bar he used to own.
7. 3-6-9

The seagulls squawked, swooping on the Sanitation Department truck; preferring trash to fish. Ernie Gantz smiled a crooked little smile. He unscrewed the cap of the bottle in the brown bag. Tossing the metal once in his palm, he hurled it out into the water. Gantz looked out over the harbour. The tall green lady was still welcoming visitors, but it was tourists now. You couldn't see Ellis from where he sat.

Friedrich and Irma Gans had told the immigration guy their name meant Goose in their own language. He'd still filled the paperwork in wrong. Ernie's mom used to tell the story most Saturdays at dinner. She always said there were worse things officials could do than misspell your name. So Ernie Gantz was his name, and that was fine. What difference did a name make, after all? Hadn't made much difference on the line. Ernie took a sip of Thunderbird, looked out at Liberty Island and thought about another island.

*

He'd first met Joe Mono on the West End Line. Ernie had bunked off doing chores in the apartment, hopped on at Windsor Terrace, though it wasn't the nearest stop. A weedy, Hispanic-looking guy had hopped on himself at Coney Island Avenue, near the end of the line. He was chewing tobacco. Ernie stared.

'Wha'?' the guinea had said.

'You like that stuff?' It kinda slipped out.

The chewing stopped, 'it's American, ain't it?'

'In Brooklyn?' Ernie caught his breath. The guinea looked tough, maybe he had a knife?

He laughed and held out his hand, 'Joe Mono; my father won't let me smoke.'

'Ernie, Ernie Gantz.'

They got off the streetcar at the end of the line.

'Where ya goin'?' Mono looked up at Ernie.

'Steeplechase. Damn' shame they closed Luna, though.'

'Too many fires'll do that.' Joe said.

They'd spent hours wandering round the park, but not much money. A couple of dollar bills, that was all. All Ernie's. Still , the noise and the motion and, yeah the girls. 'Course they weren't interested in two 14-year old boys, but you could look. And they did.

The draft came at the same time, Joe and Ernie reported to the same office, Joe learned to shoot real good, Ernie drove trucks, but they both survived. They both lucked into jobs in the Navy Yard, Joe got the better job working with the asbestos. Ernie worked on a production line, assembling metal parts.

Gantz's bottle was almost finished. He looked down at the cheap urn beside him. Thought about the day Joe and he had been laid off, five years to the day after the Navy had sold the Brooklyn Yard. They'd taken a trip down to look at the Lady Liberty.

'Never told you, did I?' Mono'd said, looking over at the verdigris statue.

'What, Joe?'

'What my name means. You told me what your mom useta say.'

'What does it mean?' Ernie had taken a slug of wine. They'd shared a bottle of T-bird that day.

'It means monkey,' Joe had said, before beginning a coughing fit that took a while to go.

When they'd finished the bottle, Joe had pointed over the water at the Statue,

'Look at her, she's reachin' up to heaven. Guess that's how I'd like to get there.' Mono had said, slurring a little and short of breath.

Gans picked up the urn, two black girls were running along the dock side. He checked to avoid them and went down the stone steps to the little boat. Laying the wax-sealed urn in the bottom of the boat, he picked up the oars and began to row. He looked up at the dock side. The two girls were jumping rope, he could hear a chant as he pulled on the oars and moved out towards Liberty Island,

'3-6-9  
The goose drank wine  
the monkey chew tobacco  
on the street-car line.'
8. International Relations.

Nada finished polishing the glass. Shook the cloth in Phil's face. It would have been a playful gesture a week ago, before he'd met her daughter. Phil's grin was glued in place by a gallon of Warsteiner beer and Yugoslavian schnapps. The lights were dim in Nada's: the pink-lettered neon outside said 'Treffpunkt' at the front and 'Meeting Point' on the side. Nada's could be found deep in the Ku'damm Eck, an indoor drinking precinct, with the odd shop. On the Kurfurstendamm; maybe it's still there.

It had been a funny night in Nada's: Julischka, her daughter, was out of bounds for chit-chat now. No point in asking about Nada's latest man. Her last romantic adventure was also a no-go area. There hadn't been much else to talk about. As usual, all the other custom had been casual: people may have met here, but few stayed. Except us.

It was after five: the last of the electro-pop had been played on the bar's cheap stereo; Howard Jones had given way to reels and wailing from somewhere round Zagreb. It was the signal to drink up and leave, bat-blind in the dawn. Unless, of course, you were favoured guests, foot up on the rail at the Stammtisch.

'Reckon we'd better go...' I said jerking my head towards Phil.  
'Aye, he's cocked it up alright... haha...' Jock slurred a little.  
'Very funny: I'm surprised she let us use the table.'  
' You're no' wrong. Phil's awfy gubbed, eh?'  
'Feeling guilty, I bet'.

I asked for the bill. Only in Berlin; a rootless Brit speaking fractured German to a Yugoslavian emigrée. She'd be a Bosnian Serb nowadays. Berlin was full of 'Balkan' restaurants, Yugoslav run bars -and clip-joints. Phil had complained one night in the Elephant Bar before the cabaret; a whore had hit him, he'd said, to a very large man with a shaven head and a silver-coloured front tooth.

'What you do?' The man had asked, his English as good as his German.

'Nothing, nothing,' Phil had protested, 'I only asked her what part of Balkania she was from.'

Maybe the heavy'd just decided against beating up someone already brain-damaged; he'd given an angry growl and thrown all of us out.

Nada offered one for the road; a Bismarck. A powerful schnapps she saved for special occasions. Like Phil's birthday, six months ago.  
The big galoot had got comatose on it: Nada had taken him home. Next days off, in the early evening, I'd asked her what went on.

-'Nichevo, nichts, nothing' the smile had spread across her face, making her look 30-ish – not forty something.  
-'What? What's the joke?'  
'First the British sink the Bismarck... then the Bismarck sink the British!'

She'd exploded with laughter. Tears rolling; the years falling off her as they did.  
She was an attractive woman; twenty years older than all of us; me, Jock and Phil. The offer of a schnapps for the road seemed genuine.  
Maybe Phil hadn't queered the pitch after all. Nada's brown eyes were blackly unreadable in the crepuscular gloom of the bar. I accepted the drinks for all of us.  
'He's had enough! Just you.' She hissed.

Phil didn't notice. The grin stayed, but he wasn't there. His body could have followed his mind and left us with the Cheshire teeth gleaming. Nada's lips were taut, every movement was accompanied by a toss of her black hair. Glasses clattered onto the shelves. Her heels machine gunned across the tiles behind the bar. I knew where she was aiming.

We should all have named Nada as a 'foreign contact'. Any foreign national you met more than once had to be declared to the correct authorities. I'd never have had time to go to work. Anyway, checking up on us gave the men in the sports jackets and brogues something to do. While they missed the real spies in the next door office at the base headquarters.

Jock eyed this one last drink warily, as if suspecting a mickey. That was ludicrous; we were on the Ku'damm not in Kreuzberg. I raised my glass.

'Zdorovye, Nada!' I tossed it off in the Slavic style, pretended to throw the glass, before carefully setting it on the copper bar-top. She didn't return the toast. Unusual, but not unexpected in the circumstances.

'Let us buy you something, Nada.' I suggested.

'You'll take a whiskey, aye!' said Jock, who never touched the stuff. 'You've the Talisker away up there.' Thereby proving he could read and bluff at the same time. Jock was always the most reluctant to leave this bar. After the night of Phil's birthday Jock hadn't spoken to him for a week. It had been quiet in Jock's car on the way to work. I'd felt like a SALT talks interpreter, a go-between for the irreconcilable.

-'Take him home,' she couldn't say his name.  
-'Of course we will'. We chorused, anxious to placate.  
-'Don't come back, not with him.'

She hawked, and spat with vigour on the gleaming copper, in front of the oblivious Phil.
9. Café Chani

Tuesdays and Thursdays I have a class at 9 a.m. I teach Ysabel. We shave an hour off her tour of duty in her parents' bathroom and kitchen centre on a side-road into the town. She's on her own in the shop all day. Like most Andalucians she has a flexible concept of punctuality. I, typically, arrive more than 5 minutes earlier: taking into account Ysabel's ten-minute tardiness, this means I have about 15 minutes to spare. Sometimes I use it to have coffee in Café Chani about 200 metres away.

I take my place among the builders , bankers and bums lining the bar inside. The owner cocks an eyebrow at me and nails my order, although I come in for about 5 minutes a day 5 times a month maximum. My poison is 'una nube doble grande' – milky coffee with two shots of expresso: I don't care what Starbucks' call it. The Coínos to my left and right order un café solo – an expresso as black as the Devil's heart – a shot of anis and a glass of tap water. This order repeats most of the way down the line. One old chap with a face as lined as an autumn leaf in the gutter orders ColaCao: a chocolatey drink that the Andalucian kids are reared on. This man looks at the clear glasses of spirit in front of the men alongside him, while his ColaCao cools.

The banter is difficult to follow, but I usually try. The owner is a woman, about 40 maybe, although I find it hard to tell with the Andalucians. She gives better than she gets and I think she must have been doing this for a long time, because she always gets the last word and the customers keep coming back.  
There are women customers. They sit outside and smoke if they are Spanish, or they sit at tables eating fry-ups and squawking if they are English.  
What I like best about this café are the packets of sugar. On the reverse side of each one there is a quotation, perhaps from Marquez, or Lorca or maybe Coelho. They are usually philosophical in tone, they might be anything from a quote from Cervantes' Quixote to a snatch of obscure verse. I give a wry smile as I read them and watch the anis glasses being drained of their last drop.
10. Weather Report

I'd been sent up on the roof to do a weather recce. They did that to all the new people, 'Get the keys, Airman – or Airwoman, it was 1982 – up on the roof, take a pencil and paper. We need a weather report. Are those Sovs going to fly today or not? Your stand-down depends on it.' The officer handed me a pair of binos. I nodded and kept my smirk inside. I snatched a log-pad from one of the 'live' positions. Jock was just about to insert the carbons and fill in the headers, he shouted 'Hey!' and I told him to fuck off.

It was a really beautiful day. The sky was as blue as the underside of a Mig-25. To the north I could see a faint contrail dissipating, ready to fool people into believing it was a mare's tail cloud. From the rooftop, between the giant globes and the phallus which gave the listening station its nickname, you could see the whole of the city. East and West. All the tit-for-tat landmarks,like the Funkturm and its Ostberliner counterpart. I fancied I could see the Brandenburg and the wide avenue of Unter den Linden on the other side. Perhaps I could, although I couldn't foresee a time when I would ever walk down it.

The wind was from the east, I was on the highest hill in the city. The Americans had bulldozed ruins into a big pile and put Teufelsberg listening post on it just after the war. A phallic salute to the Russians who had almost beaten the Allies to Berlin. I looked down and saw the green, luscious Grünewald. My first trip up to work had been disrupted by a wild boar running in front of the shift bus. We'd just passed the Grunewald S-Bahn station when it ran out of the forest. I'd been thinking about Platform 17 and the hundreds and thousands who left for Auschwitz without a return ticket. I scanned for the S-Bahn with the binos. Then I did a 360, stopping at Wannsee, watching one of a cruise boat crew mopping and cleaning the decks for another day showing the tourists round beautiful Berlin. My boat trip had been 2 days after my arrival, since I'd taken my embarkation leave at the business end. The guide didn't point out the beautiful building on Am Groβen Wannsee where the Final Solution had been dryly debated like some Pan-European economic policy.

The binoculars swung to the Mercedes Building, over by the Blue Church and I felt a shiver not entirely due to the wind.

Later, I took a seat on a concrete block. I filled 10 pages of the log pad with the longest weather reconnaissance report I could come up with. Eventually someone – a Corporal, just in case, I think – was sent up to bring me down.

'Finished?' He asked.

'Yes, Corporal!' I replied.

He blushed, he was no older than I was.

We returned to the set room. Nothing much was going on. I gave the officer my report.

He started to laugh, but stopped suddenly when he realised he couldn't read the Russian.
11. On the Roadkill, with Jack (and Bill and Neal)

Got up this morning. Jottify for me. Checked out the writing, good stuff, cool stuff. Gonna lay down some curlicues and descenders on the paper, with my trusty Remington. Damn! Ain't I punctuated already? No prize for this effort, says Mr Cassady! Maybe I'll make like Bill and take myself in hand until the Pure Electric O. Should've called them (and maybe me) the Beat-off Generation. Coffee. Walked the dogs after the getting up thing. Were those guys so domesticated?

Idon'tthinkso.

Gotta have coffee. The only thing the Beats and I have in common is the lizards. Still, Jack had the mojo, why not follow his advice?

Spontane – spontay- spontai – spontaneous prose. How spontaneous is that, man?

Okay, number one... _"scribbled notebooks"_ , yup. Got them, can't read them though. "Wild typewritten pages"? Listen, Ghost of Jack – I lied about the Remington. I've got an obsolete computer. You'd have loved it... maybe. (Don't tell anyone, it kills the spont- spontan: the noun related to that word up there). Well, ok, it's for my (yr) own joy – nobody else likes it, anyway.

Two: _"Submissive to everything, open, listening"_. Hell, Jack you sound like a goddamn swinger! Here in Southern Spain you don't want to contemplate that: Bingo wings and beer bellies. Uh-uh.

_"Never try to get drunk outside yr own house"_? Whattahellya talkin' about Jack? Never try to get out of the house before you're drunk, maybe. All the same, gotta go out and meet (other) drunks, who you going to write about, else?

_"_ _Be in love with yr life"_. A misprint? Don't think so, after all Bill shot Joan, buddy. Hmm... in love with my life? Parts of it, maybe.

_"_ _Something that you feel will find its own form"._ Well, duh, this is just aping yours, Uncle Jack. Why'd I start this, this ain't a normal day for me. Except, of course, I'm wasting time writing crap.

Six. _"Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind"_. Six is a lucky number, as in you'll be damn' lucky if you know what the hell that means, I sure don't. _Be sane geniusdevil of the soul_. Hell, I can make this up too, Jack.

Next. _"Blow as deep as you want to blow "._ Mr K, you have genito-oral issues. You still anally retentive up there in writer heaven?

_"_ _Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind.'_ Hell, I'm really glad you're dead, Jackie-O. We could fall out and I wouldn't trust ya with guns in the house. Reckon I'll just write what I want off the top of my head, if that's ok with you.

Number nine: " _The unspeakable visions of the individual"_. Hey, you _are_ a pervert. And I ain't writing mine, not even here on jottify, my man.

This is a beauty, Mr Kerr-oooh-ack. " _No time for poetry but exactly what is_ ". No idea what you talk about but roughly why do? That sounds like you chose the wrong door at reception, and nothing to do with something that rhymes with that, I gotta say.

" _Visionary tics shivering in the chest_ ". Hey Beat Boy! That's crazier than the lizards. What do you mean what lizards? You mean you didn't see lizards? What kind of Junkies were you and Bill? Still, insect prophets in side a treasure-filled box, you da man!

_"_ _In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you"._ Aw.. c'mon. It's a cup of coffee in front of me, not Bill's Steely Dan. I'm gonna get famous writing about a java?

Unlucky 13: _"Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition"_ U-huh. Yep, sound advice Jottify-ers and I'll see you in the soup kitchens when we've spent the money we earn from writing. Listen, Ghost of Jack, I like you and all, but y'know... I'd just like to get something published.

_"_ _Like Proust be an old of time"._ What's that smell? Sponge cake? Naww... hash brownies.

Half way. Have you had enough yet? _"Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog"._ InthebeginningwasthewormandthewormwasGod. Pshaw!!! I like pshaw, I don't think you'll find it in On The Road.

Downhill now, 16 hmm... glad we've reached 16, now it's legal! _"The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye"._ My eye! That's eyewash – reckon you boys were just interested in the Jap's eye, not the third, myself.

_"_ _Write in recollection and amazement for yourself"._ Way to go, good for your friend Mr Old Bull Lee! Only, teensy-weensy itsy bitsy yellow polka-dot bikini-sized quibble. How about some amazement for the reader, huh?

We're all grown-up now, we're at number 18: _"Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea"._ Are you taking the pith, Jacko? Throw me a goddamn' lifebelt, Moondog!

_"_ _Accept loss forever."_ Okay, I'll do that, but less of the Hallmark, Jack-Be-Nimble, what the hell has that got to do with resolving the plothole in my novel, tellmethatwhydontcha?

_S_ aved a good one for 20, dincha? _"Believe in the holy contour of life."_ Yeah, right. Did you join the Moonies, before you went?

21 today. (It is still today, isn't it? I started writing today, but this stuff is mind-expanding, I now have no concept of time. Nor do you, if you're still reading) _. "Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind"._ Now I don't want an argument J-fucking-K, but goddamn' if it don't seem to me,if it's a flow intact in mind, I won't need a struggle of any kind. There, look whatcha made me do! Man, I h a t e poetry.

That majoun was strong stuff... hey! Only one letter more and we got majnoun... that's arabic for mad. I think one of Bill's Moroccan boys wrote this one. _"Don't think of words when you stop but to see picture better"._

_"_ _Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning"._ I can't remember what year it is now. This was supposed to be about a typical day, I could follow all this advice but I don't think I'd ever write again. **("Good!" Ed.)** _._

_"_ _No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge"._ Dignity? Dignity! Oh, man.

_"_ _Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it."_ Yr exact pictures. He'd have loved txtspk, Jacky-Boy, for sure. He's saved two key-strokes. Did he have a Remingtn, an Livetti, an Nderwd?

_"_ _Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form"._ That's high-concept thinking, that is.

_"_ _In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness."_ Mr Kerouac, I'm losing the will to live, and so are the people reading this. Did you do the cut-ups thing? Any codfish bolthole in the analysis, you know?

Nearly home. _"Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better"._ From under what? The influence? Yeah, the crazier the better, got that one "write", brother.

El penultimo, the last drink you buy in a Spanish bar. Never buy the last, no-one wants to invite Death to the party. Anyway, _"You're a Genius all the time"._ Thank you Mr K, but no, I'm not.

30! Thank God. Shit, how appropriate. _"Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven"._ Not me, Jack. Thanks for the advice, but no thanks.

But thanks for side-tracking me. Why would I write about a typical day? Who'd read it? Thanks for making me write something. There's a cold beer waiting for me on a copper-topped bar. Salud.

http://www.poetspath.com ransmissions/messages/kerouac.html
_12. Tug of War_

_Jiddah seems closer. A yellow crescent in a damask sky, looming large. Khalil can't work this out: Azimov's Tug of War formula* clearly shows that Jiddah will one day escape Medina and head for Sol. Any boy of 10 knows this. The Madrassahs teach this and other things that good Muslims need to know. Today, Omar Bin Jadeed taught the boys about the Allah Particle. He wrote the other name in the air with his finger. The strange script moved in the wrong direction. From Shaitan to Allah, instead of the reverse. Khalil remembers the pain from the strap. Some questions are discouraged in the Madrassah Jafar Al Sadiq. Even so, Khalil thinks the word of Allah should travel from evil to good, left to right. The outcome is important, not the starting point, after all._

Khalil wishes he could ask Jasmeen about such things, as he used to do. Jasmeen is in Purdah now. On the other side of the planet. She will only return when she is a mother. Khalil is no fool, he has heard whispers of old men, he knows that Purdah takes women away from men. How do they come back with babies?

History is an unpopular class in the Madrassah. Teachers are careful to refer to the New Hijra. Words like exile and banishment are whispered far from the walls of the school. Only two scientists boarded the Spaceliner. 10,000 men, women and children were launched to a prison planet on the far side of the sky. Few mechanical skills accompanied the teachers and their families. The Spaceliner, 'Good Riddance' is a site of interest out in the Empty Quarter. The planet's madrassah's make a trip annually to see the rusting hulk. Khalil was surprised so much remained after 250 years.

Particle Physics are a waste of time, Khalil's friend Usama says. Astronomy is most important on Mecca. How else to ascertain Qibla? Maybe so, Khalil tells Usama in their not infrequent arguments, but what about knowledge for knowledge's sake? Usama calls this dangerous thinking. Thinking which caused the New Hijra. Usama stood below Abu Bakr's statue in the square only last week. About 20 boys from the school listening, rapt by the 12 year old\s words. Khalil's other favourite subject at the Madrassah is English, that's why he knows that rapt is close to rapture. Only two boys take English now. Usama's father controls the Madrassah's Waqf. Khalil has heard that they won't teach it from next year. Or particle physics. Usama's father believes the time better spent on Qu'ranic studies.

The teacher of Particle Physics has objected to this; on the grounds that the faithful cannot return to Mecca if they do not master Space Travel. Khalil secretly agrees with the teacher, but then a boy should respect his father. It is a lucky boy who can admire him too.

* **tug-of-war value = m1⁄m2 × (d1⁄d2 )2**
**13. Special Delivery**

******  
The bottle hit the copper surface hard. The beer stayed in it, just. Andres turned his back on 'El Ingles'. A couple of Gitanos smoked – close as lovers over one of the two tables in the bar. Other beers had been spilled on the green-tinged bar top. Kiss FM was playing the soundtrack to someone's life. Some electronic euro-kack from the 80's: Vic had hated them; he'd been too old for pixie boots and high-waisted pants. The clothes had been worse than the music, but only just. There'd been money though: enough to drink in better bars than this one.**

'¡Gracias, hombre!' Vic said, 'cheers, geezer'.

Andres looked back over his shoulder, rattled his adenoids in true Andalucian style.  
The bar was the size of someone's lounge. In fact, it had been – once. The plastic strips hanging over the entrance wafted in the breeze, the flies dodging and weaving to get out of the heat and into the bar. Vic's mobile rang:

'¡Digame!' Safer to answer in Spanish.

'Vic? It's Rhys.'

'Yeah?' Vic lipped the bottle neck and chugged.

'They're on it. It's on time, I checked.'

'Good. I'll be waiting.'

Vic thumbed the button and slid the phone shut. He tossed two Euros onto the copper: they rattled long after the strips had closed behind him.

The 'taxistas' glared over their cab roofs as Vic double parked opposite the rank. Sodium lights punctured the dark, occasional dud tubes allowed the night more territory.

'Vic! Vic!' The voice, sharp as the sodium, pierced the hubbub.

Vic looked across the road. The tall woman and her companion were fake-baked to an orange glow. They stood in front of arrivals, designer luggage as counterfeit as their tans. Vic waved. The shorter of the two squealed like an excited pig. Vic saw Roni's eyes roll even from two lanes away. He reached them and picked up two of the lighter bags, made his way across the road to the Peugeot Partner Rancho. The luggage fit snugly, in the rear – and on the women's laps.

Traffic was backed up in front of the San Miguel brewery. Vic sighed.  
'Put the fucking window up! Let's use the effing A/C, eh?'  
The younger one pouted, but wound the handle anyway.

Roni stared out of her window, the alternative was Vic's bald spot.  
'Fu-uck!' Roni shouted. Vic jumped forward, eardrum inconvenienced, if not perforated.  
'Wha'?'  
'He nearly hit us!'  
'Didn't though, did he?'   
The quasi-van cleared the roundabout and headed down the side street.

They passed other bars crammed into the front rooms of terraced-houses. Occasionally, double gates yawned wide offering admittance to unofficial airport parking. Vic thought it was a nice earner, people never checked the speedos when they picked their cars up. Too busy rushing for the holiday home. Perfect vehicles for moving certain commodities around the Costa.

'Have you got it?' Vic barked.

A snarl came from the passenger side:

'Like we'd be welcome without it!'

Vic's eyes slid to the young woman. He felt his forearms bulge and his knuckles cracked as his grip tightened on the wheel.

'Nikki, show some respect!' Roni said.

Vic saw her shoulders shrugging in the rear-view mirror. He thought about respect: how it was earned and how it felt when you no longer had it. Vic flicked the indicator stalk, pulled in, double parked in the narrow street. The horns started blaring behind him.

'Hand it over.' he said.

The young woman had it. A girl really: 18? Who knew nowadays? She reached into a huge handbag. Except for the garish colour John Wayne could have used it as a saddlebag. The girl withdrew a terracotta storage pot. Like one from a middle-class kitchen, except for the absence of 'Original Suffolk Canister' on the outside. The tape securing the lid came off easily. Vic checked the contents, re-secured the lid and handed it back.

'OK, let's go.'

Vic raised a middle finger out of the window and pulled out, the horns behind still blaring.

'Busy?' Roni asked.

'This and that.' Vic said.

'Reggie says...'

'Stuff Reggie, Roni. I'm not coming back.'

'But it's squared, safe...'

'So what?'

'So you're a dogsbody for some Spanish firm. Come on!'

'It's OK.'

But it wasn't. Vic spoke Spanish, of a sort; enough to make him useful, once: Russian, or even Romanian, was more use nowadays and didn't people know it. Besides, he was too old. A teenaged girl could mug him off without a second thought.

The car-cum-van pulled off the road into Barrio Zapata. Vic skirted the potholes gracefully until he reached the end of Calle Paraiso. He bumped the motor into the parking space, adding damage to the cars at front and rear – without reducing their value. The house opened directly onto the street. It stood in a row of two-storey terraced houses. Andres' bar was further up . Some young people stood under a lamp a few metres away. Vic nodded at them. The clink of bottle on glass proved that the "Bottellon" would never die, no matter what the law said. Vic helped unload the bags.  
The girl looked up at the building:

'What a fuckin' dump!'

'It's my home, girly.' Vic hissed.

'It's not exactly Benalmadena, is it?' she whined.

'No, no it's not.' He shrugged.

Vic threw the front door wide, and waited. Roni and the teenager picked up a bag each.

'Upstairs. On the left.' he said.

The cigarette tasted good; someone had to stand guard outside with the rest of the bags. Vic blew a couple of rings before shouting:

'Come on, I've got things to do.'

Roni came down, stood outside, lit one up herself:

'She's in the lav.' She said.

'How old is she now?'

'How long have you been here?'

'Fifteen years, give or take.'

'There you are then.' She dropped the cigarette, ground it out with a vertiginous heel  
andpicked up two of the remaining bags:

'They're all hers, you know.' Roni said.

'For a week?'

'I was hoping-'

'No way.'

'There's a boy.'

'There always is.'

'He's not one of us.'

'Good. Let them get on with it.'

'Don't be daft.'

She gave a crooked smile at the thought of it. Vic thought she was right: it was daft. It had been daft forty years ago when he'd been nineteen, and it was still daft now. He picked up the rest of the bags and motioned Roni into the lounge.

'She can take them upstairs at least.' He winked. 'Give her a shout, tell her to get a move on.'

Vic stepped outside, out of range of Roni's strident bellow.

He'd lit another Ducados by the time they came out. The girl still had her pink monstrosity of a handbag. She let the door slam behind her. Vic winced.

'Give it to me.' He held his hand out. The terracotta was heavy, he hefted it, nodded once.

'Come on.'

'Where are we going?' Roni asked.

'For a drink.'

'Like, where?' the girl groaned, gaze fixed on the group under the lamp-post.

'My local.'

She rolled her eyes and followed with the slap-footed slouch of disaffected youth .

They followed Vic and a swarmlet of flies through the plastic strips into Andres' bar. Roni raised an eyebrow:

'Not the Hat and Beggar is it?'

'It's not so different.'

Vic gave a nod to the group huddled in the corner, the flash of high-denomination notes as eye-catching as the gold in their teeth. The girl was staring round in disbelief:

'This place is so not me.'

'Thank God for that,' said Vic

He pointed at a round wooden table in the opposite corner.

'Sit down. Voddy tonic, Roni?'

'And me,' the girl said. Vic ignored her, his mouth twisting a little.

He stood at the bar. The owner was in the back, behind another plastic-strip curtain. Andres claimed to offer tapas. Vic had never seen so much as a nut come out of the kitchen. God knew what actually happened back there. Whatever, Andres spent a long time doing it. Vic banged the copper bar top:

'Andres!'

He came out:

'Buenas Tardes! You come back.'

'Si, had to get out of the house.' Vic placed the jar on the copper, avoiding the puddles of beer.

'What you want?' Andres smeared beer along the bar top, missed most of the puddles with a filthy rag.

'Vodka Tonic, beer, Fanta.' Vic listened to the hiss as he put his dog-end into a puddle.

'For them, Table?'

'Yeah.'

Andres raised his eyebrows: 'Que raro!' How strange!

'Can't a man take his family out for a drink?'

Andres got the drinks. He'd never win Barista of the Year, Vic thought. The beer was placed in front of him. The big publican danced light-footed out from behind the bar and served the females with a flourish. Back behind the bar, he asked:

'Are you daughter, Veek?'

'One of them is ' Vix exhaled.

'The other?'

'Her mother.'

Andres laughed: 'I knew she you wife.'

The heat had peeled the tape from the terracotta lid . Vic lifted it, showed Andres the dust and ashes:

'She's not; this is.' He said.
14. The Great Callimachus

The mirror was foxed. He took in the baggy-kneed trousers, grubby cuffs and beer-stained dicky with its bow-tie askew. The Great Callimachus's next trick might produce a coin from an empty pocket. He made an untidy pass and flourished the metal disc at the tired looking glass. A token from a Harlesden laundrette. He did the swallow fake and pulled the dull metal from his left ear. His reflection winked at him and he left the flat, leaving the door to swing on its hinges.

***

The Glasgow Empire was full. The Scottish Entertainer had departed after reprising 'I Belong to Glasgow' three times. At least he'd pleased the crowd. Callimachus had thought the man's performance remarkable, if one-note. The American pianist had been jeered from the stage, though perhaps this had been due to his colour. Certainly he had played very well. Callimachus hummed a few bars of Honeysuckle Rose, as he listened to the master of ceremonies' introduction;

'Aw the wey fae the Levant, the stew-pendous, the must-eerious, the... furreign Cally Muckes the Great!'

He gave a wry smile, strode out to the spot and bowed. The tails and trousers shone satin under the kliegs. He began with a simple production: a fan of cards from thin air. A beautiful Visconti-Sforza Tarot although the audience could not know this. A quick vanish and another bow to a silent audience. Time for the patter. The hardest thing to learn. The magician had almost eradicated his accent altogether; a vanish better than many skilled conjurors could achieve. A line of willing volunteers mounted the stage, transformations, restorations, penetrations. As each victim returned to their seat whispers spread outward, the words 'Ah dae ken how!' as transformative as a pebble in a pool. The Illusionist saved the Vanishing Lady until the end. She wasn't even a glamorous blonde. A dumpy matron from Dundee.

***

The wizard stopped on the corner. The Rediffusion shop was just closing. The Milk Bar was still open. The Red Lion would open soon. As good a place as any. Callimachus laid the top hat gently on the cracked pavement. Everything would have to be cards until there were coins in the hat. No vanishings though. Elspeth had made page two in the Scotsman. There hadn't been a trial, the Procurator Fiscal hadn't wanted to look ridiculous. But Silverman had called, told him to lie low, he could call him later. Callimachus did, but his agent was always out.  
'Pick a card, sir. Any card...'
15. Darla

'Don't leave yet,' She said.

I shrugged, 'Have to.'

'Five minutes, you haven't told me about your book thing.'

Her gaze slid down to the side. I hadn't told her about anything. We hadn't had a conversation. I'd endured a monologue and some pitying glances from the other patrons of the roadside bar. Those glances had been different when she'd arrived. I saw them licking lips and sucking in bellies and thought, just wait.

She was as beautiful as a china doll. Ten years on the Costa and she looked as though the sunlight had never touched her skin. Naturally, I'd been waiting for her inside Venta Dolorosa. The sign outside read Dolores, but people didn't call it that. The bar was inland to the side of what was once the main thoroughfare, once upon a time. Euro-built autopistas skirted the coast and ploughed north to Madrid without coming near the Venta now.

Darla put her hand on my arm and I sat down. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see shaken heads and shrugged shoulders. Farmers, builders and truck drivers all, there was no work and no need for conversation. They just kept racking up the coffees and brandies on the stained bar top. I supposed it was Darla's voice that disturbed them so. She spoke above the normal register, with more volume than required, whatever the situation. But that wasn't it. Darla's voice did not modulate, a true monotone: it was odd, it was wearing, it was hell to listen to.

She'd come for money, of course, and she wasn't going to let her fish go, not yet. I resisted as she attempted to pull me closer, turned my head so her lips collided with a bristly cheek.

'Don't,' I said.

She sniffed. 'Come on... How about..?'

'No.'

She sat back on the high stool. The truckers, farmers and builders looked away, sucking in cheeks, hissing through teeth and shaking heads. Perhaps they felt there ought to be some compensation for listening to the woman.

Darla bit her lower lip. 'Please? It's the last time, I promise.'

The TV overhead the bar let out a blast of canned laughter at something the chat-show host said. I took out my wallet, started to slip out the green 100 Euro note.

'No dealer's notes, Honey.'

She accepted two fifties instead.

'What the hell are you doing out here, Darla?'

One shoulder shrugged. 'The client was here.'

'Was?'

'Figure of speech. I've finished with him now.'

'Didn't pay you?' This I could not believe.

'It was complicated.'

I watched her eyes widen and turned to look behind me. The Guardia Civil had come in pairs and the two women ' cuffed Darla's hands behind her back. I didn't envy the policeman who drew the interview.
16. Duende

Duende.

They tell you it can mean Goblin or Sprite, in a fat enough dictionary. If so, the only duende in the bar was the owner. A Sevillano? No, not on the other side of the Big River. A Trianero. The man was a wizened little creature whose chip on the shoulder had grown into a hump. It was 11 in the evening: early for the bars and clubs along the Calle Betis. I had liked the look of the bar's owner the minute I saw him. The way he spat into the spitoon just as I passed him on the terrace made me want to stay.

The tourist traps further up on Betis had not appealed. The digitised Flamenco coming from the docked mp-3 players was distorted by the PA systems until you couldn't tell the feedback from the doleful wails of the singers. Despite this, the music seemed flattened by the process, as though turning Flamenco into zeros and ones had drained it of 'Duende'.

In the Hobgoblin's bar, there was no music at all. Just a woman of an age with the owner sharing a table with a much younger man who was picking idly at a guitar; an occasional arpeggiated dischord that even the most dedicated jazz fan couldn't claim as music. The room wasn't full by any means. Maybe half the tables were occupied. There was no-one even as young as I, apart from the gitarrista. I took a straight-backed wooden chair facing into the bar, enjoying the comfort of a stained wall behind me. No-one spoke. Everyone but me had a drink. There were occasional whispers and several people went outside to smoke on the pavement. In the darkest corner I spotted the olive green uniform of a Guardia Civil, which accounted for the slavish obedience to the letter of the law. The policeman seemed unconcerned about the haloes of recently exhaled smoke around the dim lights.

There were candles on a few of the tables, offering feeble help to the dull bulbs overhead. The Guardia shoved back his bar-stool and strode out, catching the eye of no-one at all on his way to the night outside. As he cleared the threshold the flames in the candles guttered and flared and one or two backs stiffened while some customers breathed in.

Duende. Spirit? Maybe. Afro-americans once upon a time might have called it Soul. Whatever, it entered the room and we noticed when the guitar player strummed a loud and extravagant chord. Before it had faded, the woman stood. I'd like to say she was transformed, but she was not. She remained a woman nearing sixty who had endured hardship. A woman fighting age with rouge and lipstick. Nevertheless, her back was straighter than I had expected. She began with a howl of impotence and rage, stamping her feet as though every man who had let her down was supine on the splintered floorboards of the bar. The song lasted two minutes or twenty. There were yips and cheers of appreciation from the bar's customers. I saw a red-light in the owner's eyes. Stray tufts of hair threw shadows like horns on the wall behind him.

The song finished, the woman sat down. People began speaking, one or two even caught my eye and nodded. The owner finally came over and poured me a drink. I finished it in one.

It was time to leave, Duende was on its way to another bar, and so was I.
17. Dead Men's Socks

The horse was limping. It would soon be time to lead it, maybe shoot it. Might even be time to eat it. Well, that didn't make no never mind, he'd eaten worse. Helluva thing. Pete not shooting him dead. Why'nt he do that? Carlita, turkey-trussed, was gagged and the damnfool sheriff had been hiding under the bed. Why, most ever body woulda shot. An ambush. The young man laughed. Carlita's bush an ambush. Maybe so. Whatever way you looked at it, Johnny Mayo shouldn't have been astride a lame horse half-way to Sonora.

He looked up, shielding his eyes with the brim of his hat. Stunk, that hat. Too much sweat. A guy could sweat a lot regulating, that was a pure fact. He liked the shooting best: the noise, and the smell of the powder. The whites of their eyes, they said, didn't they? Sure you were close enough to see'em, but 'tweren't nothing to do with that. No, not at all. You got in a gunfight, your eyes got wide, you could see the white all around the other guys' baby blues. Damn' sure yours looked just the same. Anyways, that's what Johnny liked. Pete had liked it too, once upon a time.

Mayo reckoned it was about noon. Might as well try and use the shade from the mesquite in the arroyo up ahead. A dry gulch. Time was only a fool would ride alone into one of those in Lincoln County, New Mexico. Billy Bonney's boys did some regulatin' themselves. Dirty Little Billy was dead now too. Garrett had shot him. Mayo had heard it was pretty much the set-up Pete had tried on him, but that was rumor. 'Sides ,people also said Garrett wrote it down different in his book, so that musta been what happened. Still, old Pete never woulda thought it up on his own.

The horse was foam flecked, even though he'd been slower than molasses for the last hour. Mayo uncinched the saddle and took out the Winchester, might as well be ready. He took an old gunbelt out of the saddlebag and hobbled the horse, tying the leather in a tight figure-of-eight. Horse wasn't about to head off, but some things just had to be done right. Hellfire, his boots were tight. Took 'em off Pete after shooting him through the eye. Looked brand new, fit nice at first too. Was going to take a turn with Carlita, 'ceptin' the damn hoor fouled herself when he waved the Navy Colt under her nose. Maybe he shoulda shot her too. No. Nary a sign of a posse on his trail and he was already three days ride from Perdition, so cold-cocking her had been enough.

Hell, that was better. Mayo flexed his toes. His blackened and cracked toenails poked through hose worn since stealing a buffalo soldier's horse; dead man didn't need no socks anyhow, he'd thought at the time. He took the tattered wool from his feet and threw them over the mesquite bush. Might could start a fire with'em, when they dried out.

Mayo lay his head back on the folded blanket and dozed off.

The rattle woke him just before the bite on the ankle. The gunman laughed, damn if he wasn't right again, dead men didn't need socks.
18. Dragoman

'That's him? Really?'

Suleyman turned to the grey figure beside him, lifting his eyebrows above the scimitar nose.

Frenk İbrahim Pasha looked at His Munificence, and noted that similar thoughts would have occurred to many on seeing Suleyman the Lawgiver for the first time.

'It is he, O Khan of Khans.'

A slight figure, of no great stature, or perhaps length, was approaching the divan -on all fours – as was the custom. Suleyman flicked his fingers, curious to see how short the fellow would turn out to be. The youth got to his feet. It was the slimness of the figure which caught the eye, in fact. The Sultan was a tall man, well-used to looking down on the majority of those he encountered. Some way behind his go-between, the emissary himself stood just beyond the threshold, avoiding the necessity of any obsequy. Janissaries stood in front of each pillar of the entrance. Further soldiers lined the walls of the divan.

Suleyman whispered to the Grand Vizier,

'He looks no more than a boy, Ibrahim.'

The Sultan's adviser addressed the petitioner.

'State your name and your request.'

Suleyman sighed. This was mere form and foolishness. The whole of Constantinople had known that an emissary had been sent in the name of the callow Shah of Iran. Tahmasp, it was said, could barely ride a horse as yet, and Chuhu Sultan had surely sent a Qizilbashi cat's paw to treat with him.  
The whispers concerning the appearance of the Dragoman had accompanied them, from the moment they had passed the Sublime Porte.

The voice was a high and pleasing tenor, not entirely out of keeping with the soft down on the speaker's cheeks.

_'O Imperial Majesty The Sultan Süleyman I,  
Sovereign of the Imperial House of Osman,  
Sultan of Sultans,  
Khan of Khans,  
Commander of the Faithful and Successor of the Prophet of the Lord of the Universe,-_

The Successor of the Prophet of the Lord of the Universe waved a hand and the Grand Vizier spoke,

'Consider the formalities observed, your name and your petition, if you please.'

The youth blinked, forced his chin down towards his chest pitched his voice a little lower. The Sultan of Sultans stifled a laugh.

' _In the name of His Opulence Tahmasp, Abu'l Muzaffar 'Abu'l Fath Sultan Shah Tahmasp bin Shah Ismail al-Safavi al-Husayni al-Musav, Shahanshah, Sahib-i-Qiran, Sultan bar Salatin -'_

Suleyman yawned.

_'I present His Excellency Ali Beg Ghulam, representative of His Opulence Tahmasp, Ab-'_

The boy brought himself up short with a polite cough.

The Grand Vizier and his Sultan exchanged smiles, each behind a covering hand.

The Persian entered, executing bows that were barely more than a nod of the head. The crimson of Haydar's Crown as he did so caught the eye even amidst the rich damask and silks of the Diwan-e-Khas.

Suleyman spoke in Arabic to his minister and glanced at the go-between.

'Look at it, Makbul Maktul! Ali Beg's thiker is growing out of his head!'

Eyes wide, the Dragoman's downy cheeks turned as crimson as the head-dress of his employer. He swallowed and eyed the offending item on the Persian at his side.

Ali Beg turned to the young man,

'You know what to say, I gave you the letter. I shall stand here and look inscrutable.'

Both of the Turkish noblemen laughed out loud, garnering looks of suspicion from the Dragoman and Ali Beg.

Dressed in a fabric of velvet ground with a floral pattern, the Dragoman nonetheless looked uncomfortable. The cut of the long coat was looser than one might expect of someone in his position. Indeed, it hung from his frame like a poorly-pitched tent. He wore no weapon of any kind. Suleyman noted that Ali Beg was festooned with sufficient blades for both to give some account of themselves, should it come to that.

The boy spoke better than passable Turkish: Suleyman could not place the accent, the boy was not Persian, though his eyes were blue enough for an Ariani guard outside the gates of Persopolis. It had to be admitted the youth was saying nothing of any remote interest to the Sovereign of the Imperial House of Osman. Suleyman hoped that the Grand Vizier was paying a little more attention.  
No, the emissary of the Shah had only been admitted because the Sultan wanted a look at the boy.  
It was rumoured that he had slit the throat of at least two unwanted admirers during his wait of several months outside the walls of the Topkapi. The more outlandish details of these tall tales could not possibly be true, Suleyman reflected. One of these unwanted admirers had supposedly been a Janissary; the Croatian Giant, he'd been called in the bath houses. He had been popular among a certain class of resident, in certain places near the port. Still, Constantinople was a dangerous place, and the youth had survived it, doubtless without any help for his popinjay employer.

'The Sultan of Sultans will deliberate and give his wise pronouncement directly.' The Grand Vizier was saying.

Suleyman whispered in Makbul Maktul's ear,

'The Sultan of Sultans has no idea what they want! Get rid of them! No, make the boy our guest,  
Vizier. Throw Ali Beg Ghulam out of the palace. May his landing be a hard one.'

The Grand Vizier clapped his hands and it was so.

ۏڷڔڳ ڛڿۍڕ ۏڏڷڔڳ ڛڿۍڕ ۏڏڷڔڳ ڛڿۍڕ

'Hfffft', the intake of breath pained the Dragoman's chest. The chamber was small, but such a bed was rarely found in a cell. The bars on the high window threw long shadows across the mosaic floor. The Dragoman let out a slow sigh and stared at the high ceiling.

ۏڷڔڳ ڛڿۍڕ ۏڏڷڔڳ ڛڿۍڕ ۏڏڷڔڳ ڛڿۍڕ

Suleyman laughed, low in his throat, like the growl of a cur.

'Did he squawk, the Shah of Shah's envoy?'

The Grand Vizier gave a simple nod and then gave a cough,

'The interpreter, O Benificent One, it has been two days.'

'Indeed? Has no-one visited him? Not even Roxelana?'

Frenk Ibrahim Pasha shrugged and touched his beard.

'Send for the Dragoman, and for the Hürrem Sultan, I want to know what Roxelana  
thinks of him.'

The Vizier clapped once, and two Janissaries left at the trot. The soldiers returned with the youth held by the arms between them. His head was tilted upward, his gaze firmly fixed on Suleyman's face.

Suleyman waved a hand, Frenk Ibrahim shouted,

'Release him!'

To his credit, the youth barely stumbled, although his cheeks flushed as he did so. Suleyman stared at the boy, fascinated. Where had he come from? The rumours in Constantinople were as varied as they were unlikely. There was little doubt he was a European, but some said he was from Danemark or Suomi. Other rumours claimed that he was the son of an English Seafarer, but he looked far too clean, in the Sultan's opinion. Well, what did it matter? He was Frankish, like the Vizier. The Sultan of Sultans determined not to speak directly to the Dragoman, until Roxelana arrived.

'Frenk Ibrahim, he is an uncommon handsome boy, is he not.'

The Vizier nodded, Suleyman noted the boy had coloured once again.

'I wonder, does he have a name? Doubtless it will be as outlandish as your own, or those of the Hurrem Sultan. I am glad you both have discarded your Godless Frankish names-'

Roxelana had swept in, a miasma of Attar of Roses preceding herself and her retinue. No less than six handmaidens waved filigreed censers airily. Suleyman sighed.

'Godless, Muhibbi? Godless? The Franks are no more Godless than the Turks, O Sultan of Sultans. Am I not your Istanbul, your Caraman, the earth of your Anatolia? How then Godless?'

The Sovereign of the Imperial House of Osman sincerely wished he had never written that poem, or at least not shown it to her.

'Roxelana, mine own heart, we are not alone!'

' **Гавно**! Muh– O Sultan of Sultans, a thousand pardons.'

On seeing the accompanying snarl, Suleyman realised it was as well they were not alone. His beloved wife looked at the Dragoman.

'Husband mine, you are as dull as the Vizier.' She aimed a delicate foot at the prostrate dragoman's crotch and gave it a gentle kick. 'Anyone can see that this is but a girl...'
19. An Occurrence in Sierra Mojada

The Gringo sat a horse well. Even with his hands tied. Capitan Suarez marvelled at the straightness of the man's back. It _was_ a marvel for a man purporting to be 71. Excepting the occasional shortness of breath, his health seemed remarkable. Well, dying healthy, not many did that. The horse was a good one. The Yanqui said he had brought only this and his notebooks to Mexico. El Capitan knew that this meant he was a spy. Why, the fool had practically admitted it. An observador, riding with Villa, what else was a soldier supposed to think?

'El proximo pueblo?'

Suarez flinched at the man's Spanish. He spoke it like a Yucatan goat.

'Sierra Mojada, Seňor Biyerse.'

'Llamame Ambrose, Seňor Capitan.'

The Mexican grunted and rode off to the head of the troop. 2 mounted men and 7 irregularly dressed soldados. One man wore a poncho and crossed bandoleros, it could have been Villa himself, rather than the son of a poor farmer from Chihuahua. Suarez rode ahead a little further and held up a hand. The ragged column slumped to the ground. Suarez sighed and ordered Sargento Lopez to help the Yanqui down from his horse.

There was a clump of mesquite, the only interruption to the burnt siena dirt for as far as the eye could see. The officer staked his horse and motioned Lopez to do the same with the Yanqui's.

'Cabo Fortuna, head on to Sierra Mojada. Arrange forage and billets.'

The corporal spat. Suarez' own mouth was dry, so he said nothing.

Fortuna had re-mounted and turned to look at Suarez,

'And the Yanqui?'

'He won't need a bed.'

The Yanqui had not demurred when El Capitan had suggested a walk. The officer's subordinates were either asleep or answering calls of nature of various kinds. Suarez was glad, and they took the opportunity to move upwind. He tried his English, learned in a whorehouse while training in Vera Cruz.

'What ees he like? Villa?'

'Well, I'll allow he ain't a conservative.'

'Conservativo? What is thees?'

'A politician enamoured of existing evils, Seňor Capitan.'

'He talks of revolution, but he is no more than a thief!.'

'I guess it remains to be seen if he is a liberal.'

'Don't make a fool of me, Billerse!'

'I could leave it to you, at that.'

Suarez turned abruptly and left the man to the wheezing brought on by his laughter.

The town square was deserted. The alcalde's house had the shutters locked. No-one had come out to witness the event. The sun had just begun to stain the sky the colour of damsons. Suarez and his Sargento inspected the squad. Corporal Fortuna was finishing up the loading of all but one of the Mondragon rifles. Tradition was important, Suarez believed. The Yanqui was already tied to the hitching post outside the Cantina. He hadn't said much. Just,

'We'll see how it is, now.'

Suarez wrote it down in one of the man's own notebooks.

The squad got themselves ready. Suarez noted the Yanqui's still straight back and gave the order. Six puffs of smoke and a click. The man jerked on the post and shouted. Suarez wrote it down how it sounded.

'Ow-ool Criik!'

One day he'd ask someone what it meant.
20. Lovebite

The purplish mark peeped above the unaccustomed high-necked blouse. Livid. Like a birthmark; only neither of us was born yesterday. The over- complicated coffees sat in front of us, steaming. The soulless chain coffee shop was empty. Just us. And something we weren't going to talk about.

'Today?'  
'5.'  
'Worried?'  
'No... Yes... I... Maybe.'  
'You'll be fine.'

I sipped the coffee. Hot; I blew on it, lips pursed. She watched me and licked the froth from her lips and I shivered at the thought of my breath on her skin raising goose bumps.

'This time, really.'  
'You think?' She looked at me doubtfully.  
'I think.' I laughed. 'Sometimes, anyway.'  
'You can visit. Telephone, MSN, video calls...'  
'Carrier pigeon?'

She said nothing; just raised the garish Styrofoam to her lips.  
We sat silent for a while. I looked at my watch, it said 3.15. We both nodded at each other.

'Good luck.' I said. I kissed my fingers and put them to the mark on her neck. She looked at me sadly.

'It is the Philharmonic, Jo'  
'I know'

She picked up the violin case, with my rival in it. The one who marked her neck with her own passion.
21. Thursday Afternnon at the Venta

Paco stood on the terrace. Across the carretera, smoke was rising from behind the Ayervic Retreat. Tiny figures were running around the blaze. He laughed. Not much contemplation going on today. Those Scandinavians were too old to be doing that kind of exercise. They came down to the Venta from time to time. Mixed Grills in the winter, Paella in the summer. Didn't drink much for Scandinavians, it was true. He looked at his watch. A first anniversary present from his wife. Good things came from Switzerland. It read 4.15. The locals were finishing lunch and the guiris hadn't arrived for what they called dinner. 7 o'clock! What kind of time was that to have dinner? Paco liked this time of day. Two hours to escape from behind the barbecue and have a smoke on the terrace in the shade of the pergola.

Over the Sierra Gorda, something glinted in the sun. The drone of the helicopter grew louder. Three fire engines were already as near as they could get to the retreat. Cars were slowing down to look. Every third one seemed to be turning into the car park. They wouldn't be eating if they even came into the Venta. The others could take care of their drinks, if they did. He himself was going to have another cigarette and watch the show. There were a couple of English stragglers from lunch, but they were on coffee and brandy and would soon drive home. He let out two jets of smoke. They curled out of his nostrils and hung in the air. Lucky there wasn't much wind. That would keep the fire on the other side of the road at least. Four fires in as many weeks. Surely even tourists could not be so foolish as to keep hurling glowing dog-ends from their cars?

Melita came out to join her husband. Paco smiled. He shook two Ducados from the packet and lit them from the last embers of his own. It wasn't really chain-smoking. After four hours behind the barbecue, a man was entitled to a cigarette. He thought Melita looked tired. People came for the meat, the t-bones, the entrecotes, the rump, the sirloin, the pork fillet, the long skewers and the sausages. Of course they did. So many of them had patatas fritas. 'Cheeps', Paco knew that wasn't quite right, but English was so hard to pronounce, truly. He wiped the back of his hand across his forehead. Melita narrowed her eyes. Paco shrugged.

The door into the bar swung open. Mario backed out carrying 4 pintas and several long drinks on a tray. Paco smiled at his son. He had seen that some English had decanted from a pair of all terrain vehicles with their strange number-plates. The cars looked battered and were dusty: Paco doubted they were less than 10 years old. They had dragged two tables together out in the sun and sat down to watch the conflagration. Mario put the drinks in front of the four couples. Their over-loud chatter paused long enough for ' Grah-see-arse!' Mario simply said "nada!" Paco winced, but his wife just laughed.

"You'd better have a word with your son, Paco."

'Por que?

'I don't think he meant you're welcome, it might have been a comment on our latest customers.'

But Paco shook his head,

"Melita, your son is not that way...'

Then the bar-owner embraced his wife and whispered,

'But your daughter..."

Paco felt his wife shake with laughter and hoped he too seemed as young as the person he had married so many years ago.

22. Café Corto

Jane's cup rattled in the saucer. She set it down on the bottle-scarred table. It was her third café corto. Too strong, really. Still, she wasn't up to explaining how she wanted it. In Salamanca it was 'Manchado'. That meant stained. Hot milk stained with very little coffee. Made sense, if you thought about it. Here at the other end of the country it just meant, well, stained, as in marked, or even dirty. She'd given up on it after the waiter's blank look. So Jane was on her 3rd murderously strong espresso and she was still waiting.

She wiped her forehead with the back of her hand, then peered again into her handbag to see if another wetwipe had appeared in the packet. Keeping the empty avoided having to ask in the shop. Point at the packet and say 'Hay aqui?' Eventually you'd get what you need. Part of living abroad, not being understood, wasn't it?

From time to time the bar's owner stood in the doorway staring out to sea. The Café 's tables were empty. Terrace and bar. The rollers disturbed the turquoise surface of the Med, but there was not a boat in sight. 35º outside and not a tourist for miles. The man looked to Jane like gaoler with no-one in his charge. A fat tortoiseshell cat was curled up under the table nearest the doorway to the bar's interior. There was a faint smell of urine at the foot of the canvas marking the Mermaid's territory on the Paseo Maritimo.

Jane picked up the Nokia. Flicked through the menus, as if she wouldn't have heard the tone in the silent Café . Of course there was nothing. She opened the last message.

'Of course I'll be there. You know I will. Don't forget what you said you'd bring.  
X'

'X' One measly 'X'. At least it was an odd number. Such things were unlucky in even numbers, everyone knew that. He loves me, he loves me not. Clever girls checked the petals before picking daisies, Jane never had. Jane flicked to the option to call message sender. The number rang out. A Spanish voice said out of coverage or something, same as it had all morning. Of course, he wasn't late, not yet. Two hours was nothing, almost on time in fact. MSN, Facebook, Twitter, an appointment was a moveable feast. Why he said a time if he couldn't make it was a mystery. Still, he'd been the one fussing about the time. To tell the truth he'd been more punctual in person, after they'd finally met. That time in Puerto Banus, well, he'd said it was the Guardia Civil's fault and maybe it had been.

Waiting. Sometimes it was delicious, the anticipation. Jane replayed moments. The first time, the first shock, as she looked down to see the dark, shining skin between her white thighs. It had been exhilarating, despite the cheap Hostal in Estepona. He still hadn't come to the 2nd Line apartment she'd rented in Cabopino. Wouldn't come, he said. They were looking for him, people from home, best to keep moving. Some of the Hotels had been better. The phone beeped. It wasn't him. It was Jose Maria.

'Hope you are enjoying your break. Faculty meeting the week before start of term. Friday 10 a.m. OK? XX.

He'd been the one to interview her for the post. Comparative Literature, visiting Professor. Two years in Salamanca. Why not? She hadn't foreseen the boring nights alone in her studio flat in the university town. Going _on_ -line had been a _life_ -line. The dating site had been just a bit of fun. She'd never been going to meet anyone. So what did it matter if she ticked the ethnicity box Afro-Caribbean?

It had been funny, rather than a bit of fun. Mis-spelled e-mails detailing strange inheritances and business opportunities. Several pictures of Denzel Washington purporting to be lonely guys looking for love. She'd almost answered the person whose profile showed Idi Amin. Then she got the one. The e-mail with no spelling mistakes, no once-in-a-lifetime offers. Just a conversational introduction, the kind someone might give if they met you in person. Oh, and there was the picture. He'd said it was old, over ten years. It was a scan of a black-and-white studio shot. A university graduation thing, judging by the gown. It showed a handsome man of about 22.

When the video-calls started she could scarcely contain herself. He was beautiful, mid-thirties. As handsome as a film-star and a real person. Jane kept the light dim at her end at first. Until she actually told him she was fifty-five. The next mail begged her to meet him. She couldn't get away, not until the end of term. Summer Vac. She'd taken the lease in Fuengirola on impulse. It had a week to go. The summer had evaporated in the heat of the sun and the bedclothes.

Jane looked at her watch. Checked through the bag one more time. Passport, Birth Certificate, Divorce papers. He'd come. He wanted to marry her, Jane. If that was what it took to keep him, she'd do it. Hopefully today.
23. The Woman on the Beach

I met her on the beach. The most beautiful woman on the sand, standing sleek and wet. Her feet were still being lapped by the Mediterranean waves. It didn't look like she was with anyone. So I spoke to her.

'Not coming ashore?'

'I'm not Spanish,' she said.

Her English was accented, with the careful fluency of someone who had worked hard to get it.

'Neither am I, but are you ,then? Coming ashore?'

She laughed, 'For a while.'

I tried to be discreet and noted she wore a black one-piece. A striking thing in contrast to the day-glo, multicoloured bikinis all over the beach.

'Do you like it?'

She ran her hands down her sides as she spoke. So I swallowed and said I did.

'Let's get your towel and things, I'll buy you a drink!'

I waved in the direction of a nearby chiringuito.

'No towel, I have all I need. Let's go!'

So I followed behind her confident stride and admired the view.

We ordered cocktails and I suggested lunch.

'Sardinas?' She asked as she ran her tongue over her upper lip.

We ordered twelve and I ate two. She devoured them. When I asked her if she liked them she told me that she preferred raw herring and then laughed.

'Silke, my name is Silke', she said when I insisted on knowing her name.

'German?'

'No, you'll never guess.'

And I didn't.

Later, we walked to my hotel. I wondered why the hot pavements didn't burn her bare feet.

In the morning, I took her one-piece to a laundrette below some nearby holiday apartments. The Spanish matron used to do me a service wash once a week. She said nothing as she put the swimming costume in with my faded shorts and singlets, just smiled and gave a slow wink.

'Una hora y media, vale?' she croaked and I promised I'd be back in an hour-and-a-half, for sure.

My hotel room looked like Hurricane Katrina had passed through it. The dressing table mirror was smashed. Silke was sobbing on the bed, which it least looked no worse than when I'd left.

'Where is it?' She screamed.

'What?'

She rubbed her hands down her sides as she had done yesterday. It seemed much less provocative now.

'Your bathing suit? It's safe. I'll have it back in an hour or so. I thought maybe...'

Her clawed hand missed my face by a feather-breadth and I realised that maybe we wouldn't. My hands were locked around her wrists and she was spitting something Scandanavian that I didn't recognise – although I had a few words of Danish, Norwegian and Swedish. The kind of thing you picked up from girlfriends.

'Calm down.' My voice was a little hoarse.

But she didn't. She lay on the bed for all the world as if she'd suffered a catatonic fit. No movement at all for well over an hour, not even when I left for the laundrette.

My plan was to use humour to defuse the situation, so I dumped my clothes on the floor after I got back and held up the black one-piece against my body.

'Suit me?"

Silke almost knocked me over on her way out. Maybe she put the swim-suit on in the lift. I don't know, I never saw her again. She left me with only the memory of the smell of kelp and the ocean on my fingers. 24. Playing Away

At the far end, perched atop each post, two hook-beaked birds eyed each other. From time to time, one or other made a movement which would have entailed the ruffling of feathers, had they not been quite such poor specimens. I turned to Giles, who was about five metres away.

'Bedknobs and Broomsticks, eh?'

The referee blew the whistle before he could answer.

***************************************************************************

It had seemed such a good idea beside the pool. I'd spotted the short haircut patrolling the sun-loungers and tables soon after he came through the archway that led to the beach. He walked stiff-backed, stopping occasionally for a polite exchange with any man between 20 and 40.

Jem looked over at me,

'Policeman,' he said, nodding towards the khaki-shorted, polo-shirted Caucasian making the rounds of the hotel pool.

'Nope,' I replied. 'Military, no question.'

'How do you know?'

'It takes one to know one.'

I scratched my week-old beard and took a drink of my mai-tai, then waved at George, who was the daytime waiter for this side of the pool terrace. George loomed over me, dark skin gleaming in the Banjul sun.

'Yessir,' his smile was as wide as the Gambia river.

'Who's that, George?' The short-haired guy was about four tables away.

The waiter grunted, looked down at his own military style white jacket and the incongruous shorts and flip-flops,

'Army. Another drink?'

He must have caught my look, because he said,

'British army man. They come a couple of year, go home. Army stay the same.'

I gave George a 10-delassi note and declined a drink. He looked both ways over his shoulder, before slipping the money into the pocket of his shorts.

Jem was yawning. He'd arrived on holiday the same day I did, a week ago. I knew how he felt. Our wives rolled over onto their backs and began the basting process on the front of their bodies. Funny how neither of us offered to rub the suntan lotion in. The Army bloke had arrived at the next group. We'd spoken earlier in the week. Giles, Jacinta, the two kids; Harry and George. And the au-pair. Of course. Giles was a solicitor from Henley-On-Thames. Jem and I weren't. Jem had been an Assistant Stage Manager at the Bristol Old Vic years ago. Now he sold fax machines. I didn't talk about my job. There were two kinds of people then: people for whom any military person was Thatcher's storm-trooper, and those for whom the armed services were the finest people they'd never met. I usually preferred the company of the former, as long as they didn't want to talk about my job.

Khaki shorts finished with Giles. I hadn't quite been able to hear the conversation. Just made out the words 'tomorrow, I'll pick you up, ' as the Army fellow was on his way to Jem and me. He looked about 30, so I reckoned he'd be a Staffy; a Staff-Sergeant, with his own unit, whatever that was. His glance passed over Jem, and he gave me the hard stare.

'Army?' he asked.

'Air Force,' I said.

There was a tiny movement in his cheek.

'Can you play rugby?'

'I do.'

'There's a game tomorrow, if you want it.' He nodded over at Giles, the beginnings of a smirk on his face, 'Giles is up for it.'

'No kit,' I said.

He looked me up and down, 'I've got boots that'll fit you.'

I looked over at my wife. She looked at me over a Danielle Steele paperback and shrugged.

'Okay,' I took a last sip of the mai-tai.

'I'll play,' Jem chirped.

'Played much have you?' The soldier raised an eyebrow.

'Not since school, no.' He looked like the fat boy picked last for the playground kickabout.

The soldier held out his hand,

'Kevin, Kev, come along tomorrow, I'll see you get a few minutes.'

They shook hands. Kev held his hand out to me. I shook it, gave him my name.

'What position d'you play?' he asked.

'Scrum half.'

'So does Giles, you'll have to toss for it.' He jerked his head over to where Giles had been, I could see him splashing the au-pair in the pool.

I laughed.

'See you tomorrow,' Kev said. 'I'll pick you up at 3.'

************************************************************

The field was dust. Not a blade of grass. The posts were rust-scarred and at our end of the pitch one was quite bent. At the far end the posts accommodated the two vultures awaiting the outcome of the game. Giles and I had tossed a 1 dalassi coin in the changing room after we'd taken our first look at the pitch. I'd lost, so I was playing scrum-half. I could already feel the dust behind my contact lenses. God knew what they'd be like at the first scrummage.

It wasn't a great game. We were playing for the Gambian Army team. Kev had wanted to put some ringers in the technical positions. Giles was playing fly-half, I'd be passing to him for most of the game. Jem was at full back, looking clueless. One of the Privates had been arrested in Banjul the night before, not even Major Jammeh could get him out of Banjul Jail, so Jem got to play after all. The opposition should have been quite tasty. Royal Naval Officer Training Vessel, HMS Achilles. The ship had pulled into Abidjan for some shore leave. A bus ride had brought the team down to Banjul. The sailors were drunk for the first half and hung over for the second. We lost 11-8. Jem scored a try.  
Kev oversaw the delivery of some crates of the local beer. There were photographs, Major Jammeh and the Gambian soldiers beaming with their arms round Giles, Jem and I. The Navy guys and all of us in a group shot, cans raised in mutual salute. The local fire service came and the Gambian players got a post match shower. Kev offered the three of us the use of the shower at his house, before the party at the British High Commission.

********************************************************

Kev was in uniform by the time I got out of the shower. Tropical KD, long slacks. Obviously not an entirely formal do. Sharon, his wife, had been down to the Novotel to pick up ours. She gave a loud blast on the horn of the Lada Jeep and we followed them to the High Commission in a Toyota. Two very smart and tall Gambian soldiers wearing metal and feathers atop something resembling a Grenadier Guardsman's uniform waved us in. It was a big place, mock Grecian colonnades and huge verandahs to the front and rear. It had certainly been built when Banjul was still called Bathurst. Achilles' Captain and his officers monopolised the High Commissioner. I'd expected that. Giles looked a bit put out, as he was clearly the kind of person he'd been to school with. I talked bollocks with Kev, gave him a totally invented history of my military career. He probably didn't even know the RAF had a base in West Berlin.

One of the navy Chiefs, my oppo on the pitch in fact, drew me aside. His face was hard.

'Not even the bloody Major!' He spat the phrase out.

'What?' I said.

'Do you see any black faces not carrying a tray?'

Of course, there weren't any. I couldn't believe he had been so naïve.

I like to think he was the one to leave the odoriferous little gift in the sink in the High Commissioner's en-suite bathroom.
25. A Bent Nail

It was at eye level in the peeling door. If you were sitting down that was. A bent nail that wouldn't hold a coat. A shred of an old newspaper fluttered in the draught coming under the door. George liked the outhouse. A quiet place most of the time. Long as his Pa was in town at the package store or Jiminy's or staying at her place. He was out now, had been since Tuesday last. Ma was in bed. Louisa and Henry were running round the corn-field, trampling Farmer Bruin's best. He closed the book. Better go out and see what was to be done. He sighed and dog-eared the page, then slid the book into the pocket of the heavy overcoat. It was damn' cold for October. Lou and Henry probably weren't doing much more harm to Bruin's crop.

The door slammed behind George. He'd take a walk over to Bruin's place, ask if he had any chores. Some days the old fool let George chop wood, or feed his mules. Didn't pay much, some beans and biscuits for a half-day. Better some food than none, 'sides, Lou had been 'sicker than a drunk dawg' that morning. The 'drunk dawg' was something Pa said. Could be he knew more about being a 'drunk dawg' than most. A wind blew up, George looked to the sky, half expecting the black dust. There was none, of course. The blackened winds had chased the five – no six, until Grandma died in a ditch by the side of Route 169 outside of Fort Dodge – of them all the way from Oklahoma to Iowa. The Iowa farmers said they had just blown in like dust themselves. They said worse things about the Okies who'd come north, that was a fact.

***

Fort Dodge had been okay, for a while. Ma left less red on her handkerchiefs then. Pa had had an honest-to-goodness job. Used to come home all covered in white powdery dust. Gypsum from the plaster mills. Ma got sicker when he came home with bloodstains in the gypsum and a wild look in his eye.

'Git in the truck,' was all he said.

They'd stopped in a tiny burg called Contention. Two bars, a Lutheran church and a general store stood with a half-dozen clapboard houses on one mean street. The Sheriff had run them out.

'Keep goin' five miles. They's a empty place over by Bruin's. Ain't much, and you'll be squattin', but I don't reckon even the bank want the buildin'. Don't come back less'n you got money in your pocket or somethin' to sell.'

Pa gunned the engine and a cloud of dirt-dust covered the Sheriff. Lou laughed but George reckoned the man had done them a favour and deserved better than a face-ful of Iowa dirt. When they got to the property, his Ma had cried. It was a one-room shack with tarpaper windows and a ramshackle outhouse.

***

It might have been nine in the morning, judging by the milky sun. Old Man Bruin was out on the stoop in his union suit. George reckoned he hadn't lifted a finger since sun-up. He never did.

'Tcha want, boy', the old man spat a jet of tobacco juice at the boy's dusty boots.

'Got any work, jes' fer food. Like always.' George looked down at the man, took in the holes in his socks.

'Kin fetch my boots, they's in the barn, sonny.'

Bruin's barn had no door, no cows and no point as far as George could see. A few broken wisps of straw blew over the hard-packed mud of the floor. The old man's boots were neatly set in the very center of the barn. They'd been polished and the cracked old leather shone like the old man's own head.  
'Put 'em on me, boy. I'm too old to bend over, even for boots.'

The old man's boots went on after a short struggle. George had learned to be a little rougher with Bruin's feet. The joints were swollen and his toes pointed pretty much every which way. And the smell wasn't too sweet either, come to that.

'Firewood?'

Another jet of tobacco juice hit the ground, turning a dollar sized patch from dust to mud.

'It'd be a start.'

The boy chopped logs for an hour, until he ran out of wood.

Bruin liked to grow pumpkins on a patch in back of the barn. He told George to fetch a shovel from the tool shed and extend the patch by half as much again. He was going to have to dig a quarter acre over. Then dig in the mule's manure that the old man had been hoarding for months.

Every so often the boy would spy a bent nail in the soil. If it wasn't too rusty he'd put it in his pocket. Nails were a penny a dozen in the general store in town. He'd straighten them out at home. He could get a penny for 50 from Parminter at the store. It was pointless, he knew, but maybe one day he'd have enough for a quarter. Deep down, George knew he'd never take the nails to the store, probably just use them around the dismal shack.

***

The old farmer passed by every hour or so. George wondered if the tobacco juice might sprout and interfere with the pumpkin plants. He was just finishing at about four when he heard the familiar slurring shout.

'George! Git on home, got food and you gonna cook it, damn' sure your momma won't.'

'Gotta finish here, or I won't get the food Bruin promised.'

'Don't need it, boy! Tole you I got some at home.'

'Ain't seen you in six days. I'll finish up here if it's all the same.'

The boy's father lurched forward, fists raised.

***

About six in the evening, George lay down the shovel. The dust and soil had covered the blood, pretty much. He'd used the flat back to flatten the barn's dirt floor. Bruin was back on the stoop.

'Done a good day's work there son,' the grizzled farmer held out the paper sack of provisions and George took it.

'Guess I did at that,' said George.
26. The Last Pair of Levi's

The light glinted in the pooled water on the uneven flags of the pavement. One in three streetlamps threw out any light. More water filled the potholes in the tarmac. At this end of the development quite a few houses were unoccupied. It had stopped developing long since. The man kicked a stone into one of the puddles in the road. Further in, the urbanización became more decrepit and ragged. At the top of the triangle of roads, the last four or five houses were uninhabited. The house at the apex itself had never been lived in at all, save by rats, bats and feral cats. Or so people said in the nearby venta. The man turned his collar up and the side of his head towards the rain. Knut would soon pass the murder house for the second time.

The venta crowd were surprised anyone had bought it. There had been gruesome tales of blood over the mantelpiece. Lights had switched on and off long after Georg had been sent to the local penitenciaría.Knut had been there when he'd handed himself over to the Guardia Civil in the venta. One last drink for the road, he'd joked. Over 16 years ago. He wouldn't be having another any time soon. Knut wondered what it was like for a German in a Spanish jail. Anyway, the young couple who'd bought the house where Georg's wife had died could be seen arguing most nights. The living room window was close to the street. They had a working streetlamp too.

The rain was sluicing off the hem of Knut's coat and soaking his last pair of Levi's. The last Timberlands had been replaced by knock-offs from Lidl's down the road. It had been an uncomfortable walk back in new boots. They didn't pinch so much now, although they were no longer watertight. Knut was sweeping down the left side of the triangle towards the base, where the retired Brits stretched ever decreasing pensions over ever longer-seeming months. Victor and June had sold last week after four years on the market. Two Belgians had moved in. They were still okay for a euro or two if you rang the bell on a rainy night. You had to time it right. Too early and people hadn't had a drink to loosen their purse strings, too late and they might be afraid to answer the door. No more than once a fortnight at the same doorway was best. Knut used to sell pegs pilfered from the Chinese shops, now it was just a case of begging door-to-door. The British slammed the door in his face a lot less than they used to. Funny how some people were more generous when they had less.

Nobody remembered Knut on the urbanisation now. No-one knew that he'd been a partner with the promoter, had sold 10 of the first 30 houses to people in his home town near Øresund. He'd felt set with a house of his own on the development. What a fool. Arne had been the last of those Danes to leave, over 10 years ago, at the height of the boom. Knut had been renting rooms for years by that time, since the 90's bubble had burst and left him out of a job.

One more time round the triangle. One more time to look at his old house. Two Germans, several Spanish couples and some shifty Romanians had lived there over the years. It was empty at the moment. Knut was going to climb in the window on the back patio. Nothing was surer than it hadn't been replaced in twenty years. It wasn't the kind of house that people replaced the windows in. The window would still open from the outside if you had the knack.

The chain on the gates had rusted through. He managed to prevent it creaking or squealing. The rain helped with that. He swung the near empty rucksack off his back, grabbed the only thing in it and dropped the bag to the muddy ground. The window round the back swung open and Knut's cheap boots slipped only once on the frame as he climbed into the kitchen. In the front room a bare bulb hung from the ceiling and he almost didn't go upstairs. It was there though. The iron chandelier that ceiling had been reinforced for, back then, when he'd done whatever Birgitta wanted. Knut looked around their old bedroom. No bed, not even a mattress on the floor. A few crumpled newspapers in a language he couldn't read lay on the floor. A chair was against the wall by the door. He dragged it over to the middle of the room.

Knut looked down at the hole in the knee of his jeans. He began tying the knot in the oil-stained rope.
27. The Golden Days Return

Guy blew out air between his lips. Who had done that at school? Glasses with thick black rims and very red cheeks. What was his name? Definitely something non-PC, avant-la-lettre as it were. They – no, make that we, he thought – had made what's-his-name's life a misery. Childish jibes about windscreen wipers on the inside of his glasses. Didn't even make sense, when you thought about it. Wonder what he ended up doing? Pharmacist or something, wasn't that what his dad had done? Guy looked out over the water. The Med was grey aside from the off-white of the breakers. He'd been counting them for a while. Just to see. Whether the seventh wave was bigger, that was. He'd given up when he'd realised : you could tell yourself it was, or you could say you couldn't have known which wave was number one. Still, it was never the eighth.

The waiter brought a creased menu and a saucer of olives. Guy gave half a grin in return. The man, boy really, shrugged at the Guiri out on the terrace in the miserable weather. Guiri – Guy, Guy the Guiri. It was almost worth a smile, Guy thought. The menu wasn't extensive, the names of the dishes looked interesting enough. La Paloma served imported Argentine beef. Guy came because it was a stone's throw from the sea-shore, on Pedregalejo beach's Paseo Maritimo. The boy came back, notepad and cheap biro ready.

'Lluvia en Mayo, que cosa!' Guy said. Rain in May!

'Mejor que en... casa,' the waiter replied, better than in...doors. Almost a joke.

'Just coffee.' Guy tossed the menu onto the table, just missing a pool of rainwater

The waiter clicked his heels and Guy thought about uniforms, parades and Berlin. He tapped a Ducados out of his crumpled packet. The first deep draw was always the best, that and blowing smoke out of both nostrils, like Smaug on his pile of jewels.

Benny. That had been it. Nothing too bad at all. Benny, after Benny the Ball in Top Cat. Benny the Ball who was never, never in his life, on it. It was funny where your mind went. Hopscotching the past, picking up the pebble from wherever it fell. Benny to Berlin, wherever next? Guy glanced out to sea again, his eye caught by the lone kite-surfer over the grey water. He jerked in the wind like a marionette in the hands of a child or a drunk. Guy wondered if he was any good, how could you tell, on a day like today? Further out there was a fishing smack. Just one, rising and falling with the waves; waves well beyond the rocky perimeter of the bay.

Guy took his wallet out, laid it on the table beside his coffee. The leather was cracked and creased, the black faded to a dark grey. It had been a gift. Wallet open, he checked the notes. Forty euros in fives. A drug dealer's float. He laid the mobile on the table beside the coffee and the wallet.

An old man in a hat shuffled past on the boards of the Paseo Maritimo, weathered stick tap-tapping at the wood. When Guy had first come to the Costa, he couldn't believe how many of the older Spaniards still wore hats. Panamas, Trilbies, Hombergs and Fedoras: all worn by men between sixty and a hundred, smoking on street corners, eyes-slitted, unfashionable trousers flapping in the wind. Guy looked down at the old man's legs as he passed out of view, the trousers doing the wind justice and more.

His coffee was cold. The price of taking it on the terrace in such weather. Guy drained the cup. He opened the wallet again, took out a photograph. A smiling face; short, short hair and the uniform. He laughed. The one day he'd ever looked smart in Air Force blue. The photo he tucked under the saucer, dropping the wallet beside it. Rainwater from the pool on the table top splashed onto the white border of the picture. Guy stood up. Benny, Berlin, Be Bop Deluxe. Hopscotch: but nothing is chance, not really. Walking towards the Paseo Maritimo, he started humming: New Precision.... great song... he thought, especially the refrain at the end.

Footnote:  
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OR09AoE-ES8>  
the information about this track is wrong: it's from Drastic Plastic in 1978, so I imagine it's a bootlegged live version from the US, somewhere around that time.
28. Jimmy Blue/Stan

**This is two for the price of one; I've always thought they go together....**

**Jimmy Blue**

We were so close, we could hear the squeak of his fingers on the strings. Jimmy Blue was playing jazz-lite. Caiaphas's fingers stroked the high end keys and the piano made a sound like cocktail glasses clinking. The bass-player clung to the shadows and the long neck of his only friend. These places used to be full of smoke, full of women with a cigarette cocked for a light and an eye cocked for a smart-mouth line. Even the music seemed cleaner now, somehow. Jack and I blew out a sigh at the self-same second: his fingers were tracing the rings on the low table's tired-out top. People think we all chew gum: fact is we just fidget in general. A cigarette is as much about how you hold it as how it sits between your lips. Guys trying to look tough use the prison cup: butt end between forefinger and thumb, lit end concealed by the cupped palm. Shouldn't be called that at all, tell the truth: dough-boys learned it from the Britishers in the First War. Least that's what my Grandfather told me. 'Sides, if you've been in the joint, you want your smokes on display. No point hiding them, from the bulls or from the gang-boys.

'We stayin'?' Jack looked at the tip of his forefinger, sucked I didn't know what off of it.

'I promised Jimmy, you know that.'

The coin I'd been knuckle-rolling fell onto the table, the rattle giving some percussion to Jimmy's trio.

'Guess it'll be another beer, 'at case.'

Jack waved at the waitress. She would have looked better through the smoke too.

On the dais, Jimmy played a tricksy suspended 4th and looked at the other two. Jimmy hit a studied rhythm and Caiaphas picked out the melody from 'Stardust'. The bass-player looked out into the half-empty club with a wry smile.

Jack's mood was no better, 'Who listens a' this shit, anyway?'

I guess his granddad might have, or my father come to that. Jimmy Blue might have played on some demo-version of it, in the sweet bye-and-bye. Who knew?

Maybe I shouldn't have told Jack to go out for a smoke. Maybe I should have gone with him, but I'd promised Jimmy Blue. People think a jail-house promise isn't worth spit, but they're wrong.

The arrangements were nice, just enough to freshen the standards up a bit, not enough to frighten the clientele. All the same, I was glad when the set finished and Jimmy Blue came over to the table. He didn't sit, just gave me the cell-mate's stare he'd given me and later Jack on our first days inside. Jack's had come a year or so after mine. He'd stared Jimmy Blue down and then beat him up. Couldn't punch him, see: a fist-fight is a danged-fool thing for a guitar player to get into. Anyways, Jimmy must have been 60 years old, even back then.

'Kep' yo' promise, knew ya would.'

'A promise is a promise, Jimmy Blue.'

'Jack outside?'

I nodded. Jimmy smiled:

'Guess he's out there, findin' out I keep mine.'

But he'd found out already, for Jimmy was still grinning as the patrolmen came in handguns raised, looking for whoever Jack had run into.

**Stan**

'Call me Stan, it's close enough.'

He threw the line away, and I couldn't catch it, although I noticed his smile. A Cheshire Cat would have been proud of it. If I think back, that smile is all I do remember. He didn't seem unduly tall, or short, come to that. His accent fell firmly between the Pale and the promised land of the United States. I couldn't take my eyes off him, but he was as slippery as a decal; he might have had a hare-lip or a third eye, but he had the art of being unmemorable – at least as far as looks went.

'What'll you have, Stan?' I asked.

The smoke curled around us. Cigarette ends glowed in the half-light of the juke joint. Someone played stride piano on a beer-ringed upright. The joint had asphalt out front that was covered in pick-up trucks and the stains from Saturday night fights or fucks. I'd blown in on a eight-wheeler full of string beans out of Gospel across the state-line in Utah. The driver had dropped me like a hot potato on the outskirts of Testament, spooked at the sight of the state troopers smoking by the highway. Stan said he didn't mind if he had whatever I was having and I said I was having another so he laughed. I was still racing from the trucker's benzedrine. We took a beer each that the barkeep slid along the bartop. They stopped half-way to us, slopping suds on the polished wood, and I thought that the West wasn't like they showed in the movies.

Stan picked up his beer, blew a few more suds off the top and his breath turned to steam, though it wasn't cold in the bar. The rollocking, roundhouse, barrelhouse piano stopped when the beefy negro fell off the piano stool and Stan flicked his eyes over to the tired instrument, then hopped off his barstool saying, 'listen, brother, to all of the best tunes.'

I saw Blind George later that year in Harlem and it put me in mind of what Stan did with those keys that night. Stan was the Bird of the keyboard, as white as those natural notes and as black inside as the sharps and flats. He was possessed by something, the bop, the blues or the breaking hearts of all of us who were listening on a cold October night just a stone's throw into Colorado from Utah. A swell-hipped woman sat next to me at the bar and told me he was playing her life with all the no-good, never-weres and never-would-bes who'd promised her the moon and given her a dime. I tried to kiss her but it was no dice. She'd have kissed Stan if he'd been uglier than a hog, I knew that.

When he stopped I felt punch-drunk, shocked that the beautiful chords, dischords and chaos had gone just like that. I tried to grab his jacket as he passed, but he slipped away like smoke and his laugh echoed around the bar – or in my head – long after he'd gone.
29. The Experiment

The clock is ticking, tocking, talking in morsels of code. There are two of us in the room listening to the timepiece measuring out the hours remaining until midnight in percussive onomatopaeia. I don't know why we chose the library, it seemed appropriate for an experiment of this nature. We wait, hoping they will come, secretly praying they will not. For proof will complicate matters, as it always does. I cannot sit and neither can she. She is wearing brown again. She says it is expected of her, where she has conducted such experiments in the past. I deferred to her greater experience, since I have only recently begun my investigations from this new and exciting angle.

I am pleased she has agreed to come to Windlesham, although she assures me it was no imposition to travel from Raynham in Norfolk. There is a pleasing serendipity in the date. If ever an experiment of this kind might succeed it should be tonight. In any event, my circumstances would not have allowed any researches before a few days ago. There are observances to be made, wherever one finds oneself. My fellow researcher looks a little faint, I hope this will not affect our results. The clock strikes 11. If the instructions I left behind several months ago are followed, we may expect them at the midnight hour.

I gaze along the rows of books, many of them written by me. The Land of Mist gives me pause and I smile; I am in territory even the good Professor would find a challenge. I can see that the lady is bored. She is drifting from the door to the french windows between the shelves. I feel restless myself of late. It is our lot, I am sure. When I stand at those same french windows myself, I see my reflection – so translucent I can see the trees of the gardens through it.

The lady has her head on one side. There may be some music of the spheres inaudible to me, I do not know. She sighs. I make a signal and we retire to the shadows in the corner of the book-lined room. The clock will soon strike midnight.

The door opens and they come in. Mary, Denis, his wife Nina and Jean. I see that the newspaperman has decided not to come. No matter. They sit at the table, which was moved into the library last July. They look awkward, but join hands as the clock strikes twelve. Their resigned looks show that they have indeed done as I asked. I am so pleased they have continued to come on the last of every month. They ask the question. The Brown Lady and I step out of the shadows, but they do not see us.

They repeat the question,

'Is there anybody there?" 30. A Winter's Tale

The cold got in the bones. Cardboard was the best, if you couldn't get a blanket. Or newspaper – if you couldn't get cardboard. Of course, none of it was any good the moment the frosts came. They came early that year, before October was out. We moved out of doorways and under bridges, or if the Community Support Officers were too enthusiastic, under the over-passes at the edges of town. And that was the pity of it. If the frosts came later, you could still be in the town centre streets when December began. It was nice to be visible: to slowly materialise before the guilty shoppers – as if only the Christmas lights illuminated us sufficiently to be seen. But that year, the year of the cold in the bones, we became like commuters: tramping from the outskirts to the centre, daily. Some believed it was worth staying long after dark, keeping faith that the drunk would be more generous than the sober. The Captain died for that particular dogma. He had been something military: at the heady top of the bipolar swings he used to shave, tell anecdotes about one or other Gulf War and sing songs about others. As the swing came back he'd become mute and, it had to be said, quite filthy. Someone took exception to a ditty from the Peninsular Wars outside Walkabout and the Captain's last battle was in a foetid alley.

In any case, one afternoon – the sky already dark with threat and misery – I was on the pavement outside W.H. Smith's. A broken-handled saucepan sat beside me. I hadn't emptied it in the two hours I had been there, though no doubt passers-by believed I had. It must have been close to the big day. The men all looked dubious, as if not sure that what they were about to buy – or had bought – would be well-received when the wrapping came off. Women tended to look purposeful, if harassed.

I was going to give it five more minutes, when he arrived.

He was swarthy, the beard made him look scruffy. He looked down at me, didn't say a word. The clothes fit, but were old. There was something off about the cut. He might have been thirty or so.

'Spare change, Mister.' I said, just in case.

'I have nothing, I am sorry,' he replied.

'Me neither,' I rattled the pan.

'Perhaps you know... I need shelter, it is cold. We have come a long way.'

'We?'

He looked over at a woman standing under the street lamp, in front of Lloyd's Bank. She wore a head-scarf. The buttons on the man's overcoat she wore were straining mightily. The light shone behind her head, and she smiled over at me.

'No money?' I asked.

'No, we have nothing.'

'There's nothing here. The Sally Bash closed last year. The council turned down Shelter's application for planning permission on the Methodist Hall...'

'Excuse, what is Sally Bash?'

'It's... never mind.'

I looked up and down the street. It must have been about 6 or so. The crowds had thinned out. It was too early for the office parties and people were heading home for dinner and domesticity. I picked up the pan.

'Come on.'

I took them to the underpass, out by the sewage plant. They didn't even have a blanket between them. I gave them mine. I introduced them to the others with whom I shared a few square yards around the huge concrete pylon. Cass, whom I had known since she had teeth, looked at the woman and said she hadn't long. And then Mel, who hadn't spoken in the three years we'd been on the road.

'I'm Belle,' I said. But the man didn't give his name. Just looked at his wife, brow knotted in a frown.

When the baby came, the father was calm; possibly because Cass knew what to do. Afterwards, we found some water. Cass had some perfumed soap, why I didn't know. She washed the baby.

'We cannot thank you enough.' The father said.

Mel had been staring at the baby for five minutes or so. I was beginning to worry, I nudged her.

Her eyes shone and she spoke, the word dry and crackling:

'Gift,' she said, and she rooted in a pocket, bringing out an old broken joss-stick that she laid on the blanket beside the baby and his mother.

The mother smiled. The father sniffed and his voice broke:

'Thank you so much, my name is Josep.'

I laughed, and tossed a shiny pound coin on the blanket.
31. Nothing New Under the Sun

Kehoe put the shovel down. Nellie hadn't protested at being put in the wheelbarrow. The nurses at the St. Lawrence had nixed the wheelchair, on account of he hadn't paid the hospital for a week or two. She sure wasn't protesting now. The wheels creaked: hadn't seen any grease for a long time. He himself hadn't had his wheels greased since the sickness had come on his wife. The consumption was supposed to be a disease for the poor folks. Well they were damn' poor now.

He left the wheelbarrow outside the chicken coop. The silverware, Nellie's jewels and the cashbox he jammed around the wheels. He looked inside the coop, the pyrotol was in the canisters and the wires looked intact. His back hurt as he bent to roll out the rest of the wire as far as the box and plunger out front by the car. The detonation shook the Ford Model A as it pulled out of the farm.

_'He beat his horses, y'know.'_

_That's what the old-timer told me in the Bath Township Waffle House over cold coffee. I said nothing. '_

_Darndest man for machines, reckon he could dicker with jes' any thing with movin' parts.'_

_I waited while he coughed something into a handkerchief.'_

_'Course the dang fool couldn't farm for shit. That didn't help' m, fer sure.'_

_The man's bib and brace and plaid shirt were old, but looked clean. I guessed the prosthetic arm put paid to doing much manual work. He caught me looking._

_'Lost that back then, 7 years old. Helluvathing.'_

Kehoe sat in the car, the engine idling. The town looked busy. He had passed the fire-truck on the way in . The alarm clock would have gone off in the basement of the north wing by now. Just had to drive in. Just one last look in the trunk and then... back to school.

_The old man had finished his coffee. I made to put my notebook away. He spoke again._

_'Piles a' legs and arms, y'know? I saw Kehoe, jes' laughin' at the wheel a' the car.'_

**Footnote:  
Bath Consolidated School, Michigan, May 18, 1927**
**32. A Name is No Accident**

**'Yeah?' Never give a name. Never give a number.**

'Weissman?' A dry, papery voice. Crackly, as though coming through an old, analogue land-line.

'Weissman's.' Wait: people usually get to the point.

'Ahh... It's difficult. Do you have an office? I'd rather....'

'No, I'll meet you.' They'd always rather. Some things are hard to admit, over the phone.

'Yes, yes, I see.' Perhaps he did. I let him ask the question:

'Where?'

'Fengy. The Prom: the Jolly Fisherman.' His answer would tell me something.

'Um, that's Fuengirola, Paseo Maritimo, isn't it?'

He'd get there, and he lived on the Costa del Sol.

'Eleven,' I said. 'You can treat me to breakfast.'

I pressed my favourite button on the mobile.

The chalked items on the blackboard outside such places wear apostrophes like jewellery. More for decoration than meaning. They are not, as the law dictates, translated into Spanish. Outside this example the artwork was like a pub-sign. It showed a relative of Skegness's own jolly fellow, tanned instead of wind burned. The owner himself was a miserable guy, then. One of a long line of disappointed dreamers, not quite making ends meet in the Malaga sunshine. Vic it was, at that time. He said he'd been a very successful sales director for an international company. Perhaps he had; he certainly knew nothing about running a bar.

''A croissant, Vic.' I took a seat inside. The terrace was for tourists.

'Drink?' He was pouring himself something. It didn't look like a smoothie.

'Carajillo.'

Coffee and brandy was good enough for most of the locals, at that time of day: besides, I enjoyed Vic's sigh as he pondered the prospect of another battle of wills with the coffee machine. It ran almost the length of the shelf behind the bar and the noise it made prevented any conversation.

I was early. I always find it best to see guys arrive.

He was late. And old, a little older than the norm. Older people had 'phoned Weissman's in the past, but not often. Usually, they didn't take up the service. No tan. So new, or sensible. I knew which I would prefer it to be. After a few minutes looking round the empty bar, he realised he must be meeting me. I stood: he got close, hesitated, then held out a hand.

New, then.

'Will you... you know?' He looked uncomfortable – as if his garish shirt were too tight, although it surely wasn't.

'I might, it depends.' I sat down

'On what?' The height his eyebrows had reached suggested either horror or amazement. Or both.

'The prospect. Your needs. A lot of things.' I lit a cigarette, offered him one. He refused.

'You've done it before?' It had been horror.

I shrugged. 'What is it you want?'

'My wife, you know. She's....'

'Probably won't be me, then.'

'No, no, you don't understand.' The wattles on his neck shook.

I blew a smoke ring in his face: 'Tell me.'

'She has... it's...' he gulped. 'There's someone else. Someone younger.'

I laughed. Uncrossed my legs.

'Maybe I will do it.'

He hunted in his pocket, pulled out a sealed envelope. I put it in my bag. Looked at him.

He was half-way out of his seat;

'What's your name?'

I didn't see why I couldn't give the old codger my working name:

'Honey Trapp,' I said.
33. Winter

The windows were dark with rain. The dust had turned to ichorous mud on the cracked glass. Perhaps there was nothing to see in any case. There hadn't been much since the big flash somewhere over the horizon. His bones had shaken, his dentures had come out, the top-plate cracking on the bare floorboards. Still, he had plenty of soup in the cellar. He wondered who'd stored so many cans of Campbell's and against what catastrophe. The snort of laughter produced a stream of mucous. Wiping a forefinger across his upper lip, he flicked it to the wooden floor. 500 cans of cream of chicken: sufficient to survive long enough to make it seem forever. But the unknown hoarder had not been here when Balsam arrived, a day or two before the bright light.

About two weeks before, Balsam had left the coast: after the fire in the abandoned Hotel. The rats had warned everyone, screeching at the heat of the first flames. Balsam had looked back as the Kempinski Estepona's walls crumbled into the cracked blue of the pool. He'd stuck to the old autopista, through the rusting toll-gates as far as Mijas Costa, travelling at night; sleeping during the day under overpasses or in abandoned villas. You shared with the rats, and the other nomads: Moroccans, Rumanians, Germans, Danes, a few Brits, like Balsam. Most travelled in groups, although it was no safer. The fourth night he'd spent in the company of the dead. The Moroccan family's blood was still tacky on the marble floors. No-one knew what had happened to the Spanish. They'd just gone. Not in one day, of course. It had taken one Summer, May to September. Only two years ago. The terrorist attack on the reservoirs above Malaga had started the problem. No-one knew where they had got the biological agent. Perhaps from the Americans. The rumours were naturally wild, if not insane. The customers in Balsam's bar in Benahavis used to hint at DNA specific viri created by some mad professor in Massachusetts. That couldn't have been true, could it? Although after the first 1,000 fatalities, the Spaniards began to leave.  
And in October they sealed Andalucia off. The planes had stopped arriving in Malaga the month before; the last flight had been to Madrid. Not a Guiri on board: by that time most had given up trying to leave.

Balsam had turned inland at Mijas Costa, thinking to head for Mijas Pueblo. Maybe it wasn't as bad away from the coast. It was worse. He'd almost walked slap into a group of teenagers. They wore as many layers as any bag-lady. They were screaming in some lingua franca, magpie picking words from each of their languages. Balsam hid behind a hillock while they finished with the two corpses. They slept beside the remains; lions after the feast. He'd circled wide around them. He was barely a mile from the centre of the pretty mountain town, when he turned back into the hills. The church was burning. People ran naked around the pyre, though it was bitterly cold.

Eventually, Balsam had stumbled on the Cortijo. It hadn't been a working ranch. 4 stalls in the stable block and the schooling ring was tiny. Some retiree playing at being a horse-breeder. Even so, the house itself was almost intact. The roof was weather tight, although every pane of glass was cracked and crazed as though the owner had thrown stones at every single one before abandoning his property. No-one had been in the house since then, it had seemed to Balsam. There was not a stick of furniture, though Balsam had found a barley-twist chair-leg in the fire place. He'd found some blankets in a cupboard in the kitchen, of all places.

In the days before the flash, whilst exploring the ranch-house. He'd sat down and done his accounts: reasons to go on, reasons to give up. Live or die. He'd finally decided he liked Chicken Soup, when the flash went off, and his decision didn't matter.
34. Interview

Finlay looked across the table at someone who might have been his own age. His skin looked smooth apart from the lines around the eyes. The peaked cap with its braid sat near the man's left hand which was palm down, fingers spread, on the table. His other hand gripped the pistol tightly, but was resting on the scarred table top. The whiskey bottle stood between the two glasses. Finlay's was full, but then his arms were tied behind him, and to the back of the chair.

A fly crawled across the man's dark cocoa skin, making the trek across the high dome of his head. Not a blink, much less a twitch. Finlay stretched his neck, thrusting his jaw out. The man opposite him laughed.

The gunshot was loud. Finlay flinched twice, the second time when the concrete splinter pierced his scalp. Two other soldiers had left the room hours ago. The whiskey bottle was almost empty. A trickle of moisture slid down the wall behind the bald man's head. Two rags hanging over the window blew in the draft from the cracked panes. A tap protruded from the concrete of one wall at about the height that would have suited a sink-unit, had there been one. Finlay shifted in the wooden chair and his knees must have cracked if the popping sensation was anything to go by. A dull buzz in his ears was the perfect soundtrack to his headache.

Later the door opened. One of the enlisted men peered into the room, nodded and gave the door a slam for luck.

The officer smiled, pulled a notebook from a pocket. The pages riffled like cards in a sharp's hands. A finger landed under a word on an otherwise empty page. The smile widened.

'Señor Kafka? That is funny. Everyone reads in Havana, Mr Finlay, didn't you know?'

The muzzle of the revolver was pointed at Finlay's chest.
35. The Radio

One. Two. Stop. One, two, three, stop. One, two, too many. Jose-Maria Garcia Alvarez de Lorca -Txema in the village schoolyard – lost count. You couldn't count the raindrops on the chapa roof of his father's workshop for long. The sound of the water on the corrugated tin merged into the badda-badda-badda of drums or the machine guns Txema and his friends pretended to shoot at each other in the fields outside Villafranca. Taller Lorca; even to a boy of eight it sounded a little grand for a two room-shack. One room contained the tools and his father's workbench; its wood as black as the village priest's soutane. The other was where Txema spent weekends, fiestas and days when the school might close for some reason. Like torrential rain, for example.

The boy looked over at his grandmother. Her hands covered her ears and the chair rocked. Txema hoped it would just be rain today. If the thunder came, his grandmother would hide under the table. And Txema would have to sit with her and sing. That wasn't right. His grandmother had used to sing to him, not so very long ago. Besides, a boy could only repeat the story of Don Gato a few times and as for Elefantes, well, after your 8th birthday you were too old for such things. In any case, you ought to know that an elephant could not possibly balance on a spider's web by the time you were that age.

Txema's father was in the workshop proper. Turning an old boot over in his hands. Just the one. The boy had been there the day Pepe Burgos had dropped it off.

'Chico, there's nothing wrong with the other one. I'll keep wearing it thank you. You just fix that one before the rain starts.'

Well the rain had started, and the toe cap of Pepe Burgos' boot, which had separated from the sole, flapped about like the jaws of the village gossip still. Txema supposed his father had thought the boot was not so urgent. There were pans to fix, wooden chairs to mend and, of course, the wireless. The boy's father repaired things. When boys had first asked Txema what his father did, he could not answer. He had punched the nearest boy. Federico had punched him back, but the fight ended as small boys' disagreements often do: in comparisons of bruises and swellings and a declaration of firm friendship. Txema told people now that his father owned Taller Lorca on the edge of the village. Grown-ups generally smiled, the men would ruffle his hair and the women, especially the older ones, would pinch his cheek. Occasionally they would give him a peseta coin, although he wasn't sure why.

The boy saw his father throw down the old boot.

'Jesus himself could not repair this filthy thing!'

His father picked up the wireless. Only yesterday it had been in more pieces than Txema could count easily. Now, it was whole again, rattling only slightly when his father had picked it up. Miguel Alvarez de Lorca placed the radio back on the rough surface of his workbench.

'Look, Txema! An Invicta, a 6470. A beauty.'

The boy looked at the hard-looking exterior, the fabric above the tuning display and the two sturdy looking dials. He walked over to stand beside his father, knocked on the top of the radio with his small fist.

'Is it plastic, Papi?'

'Plastic? Oh no, my boy, dear me no. It is Bakelite, king among plastics.'

The boy's father ran his palm along the radio's surface; a smile invaded the deep creases in his cheeks.

'Can we listen, Papi? Can we turn it on?'

The smile disappeared. 'No, Txema, not just now. I have a boot to fix.'

Pepe Burgos came for his boot. He limped in wearing the other boot and an old tennis shoe. By way of payment he scattered some coins on the workbench in front of Txema's father. A few centimos bounced off the radio's Bakelite and onto the floor. The boy picked them up and handed them to his father, who put them in the pocket of his overalls. They were blue, torn at the knee. On the back was some writing that Txema could not make out. When he asked his father what it said, he would not reply.

It rained for two weeks. Sometimes there was school, sometimes there was not. There were two electrical storms and Txema sang again about elephants and a lonely cat to his shaking grandmother.

One sunny Saturday, the woman came about the radio. The boy was fascinated by the woman's shoes. Tacones. Older boys in the village called them whore's shoes, although the woman was dressed in a two-piece suit in a black material. The boy thought it looked nice, although perhaps the woman had grown out of it a little and needed a new one. The car was a Mercedes, Txema knew that. Black to match the lady's suit. She had driven it herself, all the way from the big house where Don Fernando lived, when he wasn't in Madrid advising El Caudillo.

'Señor, is my radio repaired?'

'I'm afraid not, Señora...' he did not add the surname. In any case the woman's hand was raised palm forward.

'They tell me you can fix anything. Is that another villager's boast?'

'It is a valve, Señora,' he held up the radio and it rattled. 'Without a spare.'

'Well get one, idiot.'

She turned on her high heel and made to leave. She turned to look over her shoulder at the boy's father,

'And it's Señorita Marquez. Don Fernando is not my husband.'

The boy stared at the woman; she seemed as exotic as a parrot in a chicken coop. Grandmother began a coughing fit, though she might have been laughing at first.

Later that night, after bread and soup. The boy watched as his father put on his wedding suit. It was no effort to get into it. In fact the waistband bunched under the military belt and there was little point in fastening the jacket's buttons. Txema felt ashamed for his father.

'Look after, Abuela, boy. I'll be back after midnight.'

But midnight had long passed according to the Church bells and Txema fell asleep long before his father came home.

On Monday, his father announced that there would be no school that day. Txema gave a loud cheer until his father glared at him. He held up a pair of boots, worn but polished.

'Put these on, Son. We have a little walking to do.'

They lifted his Grandmother from the chair and each took an arm. The boy looked to his father.

'She'll be alright at Tio Juan's, boy. It's only a few days.'

They walked through the centre of the village, as far as a neat row of houses behind the Church of the Blessed Virgin. Txema's father lifted the brass knocker and let it fall. Grandmother was humming 'Elefantes'. The door opened. A still slimmer, much younger version of the boy's father scowled and took his mother in.

'Three days, that's all. Or you know what.'

The door's slam reverberated behind them along the deserted street.

Txema took his father's hand and they walked along the main road out of town until they reached the gates of Don Fernando's quinta. The great house was not visible between the bars of the great entrance to the estate. The boy peered along the drive which veered off, obscured by a coppice of trees from another country.

'Come on, boy, we haven't time.'

His father had already kicked the stand of the moto away and was astride the decrepit looking machine.

'Get on, Jose Maria – and hold tight.'

They stopped fairly soon after the boy almost fell off before they reached the main Malaga road. He had fallen asleep. They had stopped to allow a goatherd and his flock to cross the track in front of them. The boy's father called the man over and borrowed a length of rope in exchange for a Ducados cigarette and a light. The rope felt tight around the both of them, but the boy did not complain. He did not want his father to shout again.

The sun was low in the sky, although it must have been well past midday. It was a milky light, the kind that fooled you into thinking you could look directly at it. Txema knew better than that. His father pulled the moped into Venta Cortes. It would take them no more than a few hours to reach Malaga now they were on a real road, he said.

They sat outside, the waiter took the order and his father's crumpled note at the same time. The dishes arrived accompanied by two sets of spoons and forks, but the boy noticed his father did not pick his own up. He drank his Victoria beer straight from the bottle, holding it to his forehead from time to time, although the day was not warm.

It was strange. No sooner had the entered the city, than the boy began to feel warm. After several minutes of the boy's wriggling, his father brought the cycle to a stop.  
'We'll push it from here,' he said, and they began to walk. Txema kept expecting his father to ask for directions, but he never did. They walked and walked until the boy's feet swelled in his boots, making them pinch for the first time. They stopped at a building near the port. The writing outside seemed familiar, somehow, to the boy. It named the company which owned the building, but still.  
He was made to wait outside, even a peon's moped was worth stealing in the city, his father warned.

He came out wearing a smile, holding a small cardboard carton in his hand. The boy wondered what it was. His father told him it was our future, but he did not understand what he meant.

They reached the gates of Don Fernando's quinta late in the evening, long after dusk. They propped the bike against the iron gates. His father whistled all the way home.

When Txema returned from school the next day, there was music in the workshop. His father was dancing with his grandmother, although she could not quite master the steps.

'It works,' said the boy.

'Of course it does.'

But the woman didn't return. Txema's father did not switch on the radio again until the day that Franco died.
36. A Miracle in Villablanco

It was the talk of the pueblo. From the cramped bars near the fairground to the Plaza in front of the Church of the Sacred Heart, the whispers, chatter and shouts repeated the strange news. The strangest birth since Pepe's two headed goat just after the Guerra Civil, which the farmer had had stuffed and sold to El Corcho to hang from the ceiling in one of those cramped bars. The retired bullfighter collected oddities. He had a display of antique prosthetics in a case in his bar. They called him El Corcho because he could no more be kept down than a cork in water. At least until he lost his leg to his last bull. One solitary poster from la corrida adorned the walls of his business, the one promoting his last bullfight. The letters were smaller than they had been on other posters. That was life.

El Corcho pressed the button on the coffee machine and the volume of chatter increased to that of the bellows customary when the men on the high stools wanted to finish a conversation or a joke, whatever discouragement the ancient machine offered. The bar owner hopped to the kitchen hatch and gave Inmaculada an order for pork chops with patatas pobre. Who ate that at 11 a.m.? The stranger had pointed at a photograph behind some grimy transparent plastic. Perhaps he was foreign, or from Malaga. El Corcho shook his head, a hard-earned skill for someone who hopped everywhere, still it was good to try to live up to one's name. The stranger was staring about him; recording every detail. The tobacco-stained walls, the peanut shells and paper napkins littering the floor; his eye passed rapidly over the case of wooden, tin and plastic legs and arms, El Corcho noticed. Ha, foreign then, definitely not from Malaga. He might have come down from Madrid, he supposed. Those people weren't really Spanish up there. Too many Mercedes cars – and American fashions on the women – in the capital. Besides, no-one from nearby would wear a suit that fit so well. Inmaculada shouted from her less than immaculate kitchen and clattered the plate of potatoes and pork chops on the counter of her hatchway. Her husband placed it down in front of the stranger with only slightly more delicacy. El Corcho watched the man raise his eyebrows and then shrugged. He fetched the vinegar and olive oil and placed it gently next to the man's elbow.

The man in the suit ate slowly, like someone trying something for the first time: like someone not sure whether they would try it again. The men on the stools either side of him had somehow managed to edge away from the stranger and found something extremely interesting to read in the local papers from several days ago. El Corcho poured himself a chupito and knocked the cheap brandy back as though it were some foul medicine. When the man finished his lunch, he dropped too many coins on the bar and El Corcho swept them into the old cash-register under no sale. Caveat Emptor, didn't they say? The one-legged bar owner watched the man disappear out of the door. Stools edged closer together and old news was returned to the bar top. The buzz of conversation returned and the ex-bullfighter breathed out. El Corcho and the Martinez brothers agreed that the man probably hadn't come about the big news. It was just coincidence. Juan Martinez said he'd drink to that and El Corcho stood them their first drinks on the house since De Stefano had stopped by Villablanco when he'd got lost on the way to Seville.

Sister Dolores De La Virgen Madre clicked her rosary. She sat alone on the bench outside the Ermita, not far from the Church of the Sacred Heart. It was warm for December, but there were few people out although it was past noon on a market day. A smartly dressed man was admiring the church's gothic spire, whilst avoiding the broken flags and holes in the plaza. There was elegance in his movements. This was a man who had never dragged a plough through autumn mud. The country tired a man. What was such a man doing here? She hoped it had nothing to do with the new postulant at the convent. Sister Dolores suspected that the man might have come from a city. His shoes certainly had. The nun crossed herself; a venial sin only, to look so closely at a man that you noticed his shoes. She looked down at her own feet. Comfortable, black, worn and the polish only slightly dulled by the dust of the pueblo streets; how she missed the click-clack of her tacones. Only yesterday she saw La Viuda Garcia wearing heels as high as those Italian women in the Yanqui films. A woman with a husband only two years dead ought not to wear such things – and at fifty years old too! Sister Dolores made the sign of the cross once again and pondered the sin of envy. It was more comfortable than contemplating why she watched the man's back as he disappeared down Calle Ilusión. Sister Dolores waved at the Widow Garcia as she entered the Plaza. A woman should greet her own sister, however she behaved.

Guardia Civil de Primera Jose-Antonio Guerrero La Paz scratched a buttock through the olive-green serge. Warm for December, and the winter uniform itched. He looked down at his boot. Dusty, the left. He rubbed the toe on his trouser leg behind his right calf. Better. Might take a walk to the Post Office. Chato polished shoes there most days; buzzing around the customers' feet on his little tray with wheels. He liked to say he didn't make such a bad living for half-a-man. Guardia Primera La Paz thought that was a bit rich. Chato had legs. At least as far as just above the knee. That made him three-quarters of a man, stood to reason. People were so inexact. How would it be if the Guardia Civil were so slapdash? Why, the wrong people might end up in jail! The policeman caught sight of a figure coming down Ilusión. A stranger, in his town, in Villablanco. Fede Ramirez had not called from the Hostel Bella Horizonte about any new guests. La Paz eyed the man's suit, it looked more comfortable than his own uniform. The material shone. A flashy suit meant the wrong kind of people for his town, for sure. A confident looking fellow, mind you, the kind some might call handsome. The Policeman held up a hand palm out, to keep the man at the optimum distance for asking to see his papers. That is, within reach of La Paz's baton, whilst out of range of the stranger's fist. But the man said, 'Guardia Primera Guerrero La Paz, isn't it? Congratulations!' La Paz felt his mouth opening and closing like that of a fish won at the hoop-la. The promotion had only come through yesterday. The thanks the policeman offered sounded graceless even to his own ears, but in any case the man was still talking. Oh yes, they knew about him, La Paz, where knowing things was important. Could La Paz tell him whether anything unusual had happened recently? Only if it weren't confidential, that was. The torrent of words kept the young policeman from thinking. His outstretched palm slowly dropped, beaten down by the man's bonhomie. The man was looking at him, waiting. It occurred to La Paz that he was expected to say something. The one thing that the man wanted to hear was not, however, going to come from him. No, not at all. So he gave the man directions to the abandoned farm at the edge of town. He watched the man walk away, still confident, too good-looking for the town. Enrique Benitez stumbled out of the Widow Garcia's front door. He looked a little drunk. Guardia Primera La Paz strolled off to do some police work.

The girl looked down at her feet. Chipped nails and both grubby with dust. Her father had gone into town to buy her a new pair of shoes, before... Well, just before. She sat down on the bench outside the doorway of the farmhouse. Just a moment, a moment of peace, whilst there were no cries coming from inside. Far down the track leading to the road to town, María Magdalena could see a tiny figure approaching. Even at that distance she could see it was not her father. He would not come back now, in any case. The girl put a hand to her hair for a moment and then she remembered her bare feet. She crept inside and put on an old pair of her father's boots. When she still went to the village school the children had delighted in remarking on the size of her feet. The boots were still too large so she rummaged in her father's trunk until she found some old woollen stockings that had belonged to her mother. There, better than a stranger seeing her feet. She looked into the cot. Still quiet, thank goodness.

It was a man; he walked, mindful of the ruts, but with steady progress. Straight-backed, he looked as though he'd never shouldered the burden of living in the country. He was passing the entrance to their neighbour's olive grove. The harvest was long past and the pruned branches lay in piles of ash between the rows of the skeletal trees themselves. He looked tall. Not from the South, then, she thought. Her father had told her that Madrid and the northern cities were built on manure and that was why people from the North were so tall. Maria Magdalena did not know if this were true in any way at all. That northern people were tall was just something that people said. She hoped there would be no interruptions from indoors. It was bad enough that there was no sleep to be had throughout the nights. The very least she could hope for was an hour of peace during the day. The Northerner had reached the limits of their (her?) property. Two wooden posts joined by a rusted chain across the track marked the entrance, but of course you could just step off the track and walk around one or other of the posts. 'Who could afford fences?' her father used to say. The girl waved and the man raised a hand. She stood up and said the words of welcome. The man stared at her for a few moments.  
'There is water, it is all I have,' she said.  
'The earth was formed of water, and by water.' the man smiled.

Maria Magdalena looked down at the man's shoes. They shone; as though he had floated over the dust between the town and the farm.

The stranger looked at the girl, standing with a ceramic tumbler of water held out toward him. About 15, probably. Large boned, a peasant. Attractive eyes, if you didn't mind being reminded of the dairy cows of Asturias. Her accent was as thick as mud. He took the water, almost dropping it in his attempt to avoid touching her dirty-fingernailed hands. Really, quite why His Eminence had sent himhere was beyond comprehension. They hadn't bothered with the Galician Fisherman's stigmata of last summer, nor with the crippled Catalan's remarkable recovery on winning El Gordo the Christmas before. Why this? Why now? The answer was the same as it always was. Orders from Rome. He'd never been so far from Madrid. It was all very well for the Nuncio with his feet up. How kind of Monsignor Ildebrando Antoniutti to send him down here where you'd as likely find a taxi as an 18 year old virgin. He straightened his tie. The girl had not moved, her bovine docility irked him. She gave him her name, when he asked for it.

'Tell me Maria Magdalena, tell me all of it.'

Father Ignacio Alvares de Santiago de Compostela Ruiz, the Apostolic Nuncio's Special Roving Representative for the Authentication of Miracles listened. He wished he'd worn the soutane, or at least the clerical collar. It was a scarcely credible tale of shared linen and nocturnal emissions.

She finished her story saying, 'I have it on paper, a what-you-call-it – an affidavit from Dr. Dominguez. Era virgen.'

Well, well, he thought, it had possibilities. It was, after all, a virgin birth of sorts. With the father out of the way, who knew? He asked to see the child.

The girl did not escort him to the door of the shack. He let the door slam behind him. It had been touch-and-go whether he would vomit in front of the girl. He sincerely hoped the thing in the crib would not live too long, and promised himself the celice when he got back to Madrid. Better to let matters take their course with this Malaga Miracle and never come back. These backward villages were no place for Opus Dei, it was a fact. Father Alvarez de Santiago de Compostela Ruiz looked down at his shoes; dust and dirt. Well, it was time he had a new pair made; a man with insufficient shoes to change them every day was not to be taken seriously, after all.
37. Strike Like Lightning

'Number withheld.' I swiped the cell screen.

'Marshall.'

'You here?'

'On base, checked in with OSIHQ.'

'Chili's, off I-95, a strip mall towards Morningside.'

The connection was cut. I called Captain Kierkegarde in the Office of Special Investigation, to report leaving the base. They had my number, doubtless they'd follow me on GPS.

It was a biker place. My haircut stopped conversation, much as I assumed Specialist E-7 Steenburgen's entrance had, when she arrived. We were both in civvies, so the conversations began again, but in whispers punctuated by glances. She had a beer in front of her, I pointed at it and waved at the owner. No-one would have hired a bartender that ugly.

She waited until Brad Pitt moved to the other end of the bar.

'ID?'

I flashed my DD-2 and her eyes widened at the red color.

'Reservist, Jeez.'

'It's complicated,' I shrugged. 'Tell me... Everything.'

Perhaps she wondered why I hadn't asked to see her own ID.

'No way, tell me why OSI let you on base. What the hell could you be investigating?'

I read the words she'd left out in her eyes: Old Fart. Not too old to remember that I'd enjoyed the company of many attractive non-coms, back in the day.

'SH at Tucson Air National Guard. An everyday story of victimised women. It's a real investigation. They called me.'

'IMSO?'

'Yep, another International Military Student getting felt up by some peckerhead.'

'I pressed buttons for Power Point there as an E-3. Got transferred out for creaming a peckerhead.'

I smiled, 'Where would the military be without peckerheads?'

She smiled too and gave the punchline,

'Without Generals.'

Another beer came unbidden and I let it stand. The woman chugged the last of her previous and took a swig of the next.

'Spill it then,' I said.

'The Lightning II, you read it?'

'Nothing classified: just internet, Julian's joke pages – the usual'.

'It's not true.'

'Didn't think it was. No big deal is it?'

'Depends.'

I finally took a drink of the second beer.

'Why d'you call me?' I knew the answer, and she gave it.

'You served with Dad.'

'He was a good guy. I miss him.'

'Do you?'

Steenbergen Senior had died in Baghdad at the tail end of Gulf II. I remembered the round entering his back.

'You were there, at the end.'

'He died well, like you would.'

'You don't know that.'

One more swig and she let it out.

'Thing is, it's sort of half-true. We've sold the Israelis a batch with that fault. Ours are clean. No F-35 is going to fall out of American skies.'

'Is that all? They'll ground their own and find the fault, won't they.'

'They're not operational yet. Some expendables are going over to Nevatim to train with them.'

She looked at me.

'Come on, ours will be found clean and they'll have a disaster on their hands. With American casualties.'

I shot her and called OSI for clean up. 38. Little Pete

It rained somewhat biblical the day they buried Little Pete. Not much of a burial, it's a fact. An old pine box and a drunk preacher outside the town limits. Couple of mangy dogs and me were all that mourned, while the preacher stumbled over ashes and dust both times.

Little Pete got buried in his Mexican boots, though he wasn't wearing them when he died. I helped the preacher away from the hole in the ground. He seemed about fit to fall in himself. I shovelled half the pile of stony dirt on top of the cheap wood and went into Langtry for a drink with the Reverend Coxcomb. We spent the dollar I'd paid him for the service in the Jersey Lily.

Roy was hollerin' drunk – as he normally was before, during and after a trial – two swarthy men wearing trail-dust over their clothes stood at the opposite end of the bar and the Reverend and I doubled the custom in the saloon.

'Wut'll it be?' Roy squinted at me and plain ignored the Reverend

'Whiskey, thanks. My good friend will pay.'

The Judge put a bottle and two greasy glasses on the bullet scarred bar-top.

'Reckon he might. Even a man of god gotta face his maker come the Day of Judgement.'

The old judge cackled until he coughed tobacco juice into his long beard.

Long about half-way down the bottle Reverend Coxcomb decided the floorboards deserved closer acquaintance, so the judge and I sat at a deal table and played a hand or two of pinochle. The two cow-punchers had left in a cloud of dust and bickering not long before. I lifted my glass,

'Little Pete.'

'Lil' Varmint,' the judge said.

'You let more'n a few horse thieves go afore now.'

'So what if I did? They hadda give 'em back, didn't they.'

'So did Little Pete.'

'Kin I help it if the dam' fool stole an owlhoot's horse?'

'John Wesley is a respectable man of the law like yourself, Roy.'

I wondered if Roy would wash the beard before tomorrow's court proceedings in the Jersey Lily. He finished coughing and said,

'He's a lawyer alright. Musta learned a lot in Huntsville. Hope he rode his dam' horse all the way back to El Paso with a burr under the saddle.'

'Think I'll be movin' on myself, come to think.'

They say Roy died in his bed, and that John Wesley died in a saloon. Little Pete died in the gutter in Langtry and that's about all I know.
39. The Appliance of Science

Ms. Baumgartner sure was upset today. The new smart board worked fine. I don't know why Ms. Baumgartner was worried. It was as easy to use as my Blackberry. Jimmy Gomerill put gum on her chair but I know it weren't that. He does it most every day. She was ok all through the morning. The boys in back of the classroom got the evil eye while we sang the Star-Spangled Banner and so they used the right words. Home E was just fine too. The janitor came in to clean up the eggs from the floor. Our teacher didn't come out for recess, but she don't as a rule. Jimmy Gomerill says she goes for a smoke in back of the Janitor's office out by the trash.

After recess we had Religious Education. Ms. Baumgartner don't teach this class. She prob'ly does something in the staff room, like mark a science test or read a magazine. Religion class ain't so hot to tell the truth. Doctor Baramin speaks with a loud voice and he uses the smart board and plays music and all kindsa things, but some teachers are just nat'ral bores, it's a fact . Tell the truth and shame the Devil, we was all pretty glad when Ms. Baumgartner came back to do citizenship. Only bad thing was she started off again about 'Freedomaspeech'. I don't mind so much, but there's always a smartass at the back who shouts out somethin' dumb. 'Course when Ms. Baumgartner mentions how she won't stand for shouting out and they better put their hand up if they wanna speak, well you can guess what those trailer park boys say.

Lunchtime the entire William Jennings Bryan Elementary School eats in the big hall. I can never remember the big word Ms. Baumgartner uses but it's refec-somethin'. Anyways I always sit next to Jimmy Gomerill, cause he makes me laugh and there ain't many boys in 6th grade who can make me do that. I had hamburger, Jimmy had grits just so he could do gross things while he was eatin' 'em.

First after lunch was Science. When the fight had stopped at the back, Ms Baumgartner pressed the clicker. It was neat how the Smartboard put up the date and the EXACT time the class started. It took a coupla presses on the button to bring up the title of the class on the board. Maybe Ms. Baumgartner had a bit of high pressure like my Grandma gets. Makes her hand shake too.

I looked at Jimmy. He smiled, we both love Dinosaurs. They're so like neat-o.  
Anyhow, Ms Baumgartner put up the first slide for 'Genesis and the Dinosaurs' and she just sat down on the floor and started to cry. Principal Butler and Mrs. Baker Eddy took her out and we heard the Ambulance arrive later. Doctor Baramin gave the rest of the science class. That man can even make dinosaurs into a visit to Snoozeville. I sure hope Ms. Baumgartner comes back.
40. 100 Zlotys

'Goodbye,' my mother said.

I thought she had been taking me to school as she did most days. She said goodbye every morning before going to work making uniforms.

'Polish Uniforms, for the army, Mama?'

She shook her said and said,

'No, Jerzy, not Polish.'

She held my hand as we passed the Judenrat building. My mother spat on the floor. I had never seen her do such a thing. I still remembered the blow to the ear she had given me – and my friend Waclaw – over a year ago, when she caught us trying to reach across to the opposite pavement with our spitting. Waclaw was my very best friend until he left suddenly last May. Many people left suddenly in those days. Mr Staffens from next door left the previous winter. I did not miss him, he smelled of being foreign. He had come from Luxembourg. My mother said it was good riddance, but she never said why. Dziadek Grigor left too, only the previous May. Mother cried for days and so did I.

That day was like any other, I believe. Perhaps I remember another day's weather: perhaps I do not wish to remember the details. Late September in Lodz. It would have been cold, windy perhaps, maybe with a milky sun. What I do remember is all the children and older people. My mother and I were swimming against the tide. I did notice that we passed the school immediately we did so, but I said nothing. The tears on my mother's cheeks were surely caused by the chilly breeze.

We eventually came to a narrow street at the very easternmost edge of the ghetto. There were no more streams of the old and young to prevent our progress. I asked the question,

'Where are they going, Mama?'

'Chelmno' was all she said.

It was a name I heard whispered at the table on Friday evenings, while my cousins' parents and my mother spoke of serious things after Seder. We learned, my cousins and I, not to ask, what sort of thing a Chelmno might be. My older cousins would tease me with it, a boy of 9 is easy to terrify with any name, after all. I did ask at school once, but the teacher would not say either.

'It is not to be discussed.'

There were several things not to be discussed.  
The murdered boy down by the railway station. The one or two boys who disappeared and were never seen again.

One night after Seder I was sent to bed. My tantrum was most theatrical, but I went to bed all the same. I did not remain. I crept to the head of the stairs to listen to the talk around the dinner table. The voices were hushed, except at points of disagreement.

'Is such a thing better than Chelmno?'

'At least he'd be alive.'

'As what?'

My father left the house that night and did not return, as far as I know.

One week later, my mother and I were standing outside a rotting door in a narrow alley near the railway to the eastern edge of the ghetto. She knocked at the door. A man came. I did not like how he smelled. It was perfumed soap over rotten meat, it seemed to me. He grabbed at my hand, seized it at the second attempt. My mother gave him a 100 zloty note. The man smiled,

'You have made the right choice, he will live. I will see to that.'

It was the smile of the greedy boy who knows his sister is ill and that he will finish her dinner.

'Goodbye.' My mother said.

