Arabesk (99 page)

The fox coughed, its bark close to laughter.

Just because something is chaotic doesn’t make it random. Raf remembered a man in a white coat telling him that. Years before. The term
phase space
kept cropping up but the surgeon had been talking about his brain.

“Are you all right?”

“Ibrahim was family?”

Two questions asked together, voices male and female but both worried, though the man at least glanced away from the tears that had sprung into Raf’s eyes. Wiping them clumsily with the back of his hand, Raf laughed. The small embarrassed laugh of a man who has let emotion get the better of him.

“My mother’s cousin,” he said with a small shrug. “I’m fine but I know she will be upset.”

To make up for Raf’s disappointment the woman insisted on showing him where the office had been, walking slowly so that he could keep up with her in his crude shoes. Kairouan was Ifriqiya’s most important city, she told him on the way. A place of real learning, unlike Tunis, with its crowds of
nasrani
and unsavoury way of life. If he was lucky he might find a job at the market.

From Kairouan to Tunis was maybe 150 kilometres by road, perhaps less; although, as no railway reached the city and Raf had been forced to leave at M’aaken to catch a bus, the distance would be more than this by the time he returned to M’aaken and rejoined one of the local services for Gare de Tunis.

“There you go,” she said, pointing to a window above a dusty shop front. “That was where your cousin used to work. We had to reach his office from the back…”

Raf thanked her, then did so again, leaving her standing on the pavement a hundred paces from her own shop as the first customers of the day came out to buy pastries and fruit for breakfast.

On his way to catch the return bus to M’aaken, Raf detoured into an alley that ran parallel to that side of Rue Ali bel Houane and walked slowly along the narrow street, counting openings and looking at signs painted directly onto the peeling length of wall. He found the one he wanted halfway down, faded and partly lost under a smear of concrete that someone had used to patch a hole in the plaster.

Isaac & Sons: Commissioners for Oaths. The only words he’d been able to read from the letter in Lady Nafisa’s hand. The door to the office was bolted from the inside and had an extra padlock hooked through a rusting clasp at waist height, as if locking an empty office from within might not be enough. Next to the door was an odd cast-iron blade set into a small arch at ground level, which Raf eventually worked out was for scraping mud from boots during the winter months.

“Talk to me,”
said the fox.

All Raf gave him was an angry shake of the head. He knew how absurdly easy it always was to give in. To welcome Tiri back and make it speak to him or, rather, make Tiri speak
for
him, because that’s what the fox did, they both understood that now.

And Raf wanted the cold deep in his bones to go away and the memories that flooded his veins like iced water to vanish. Most of all he wanted to spend the rest of his life, however long that was, knowing that when he woke each morning the room in which he slept would not have changed colour, that no hedges would have grown to maturity from seedlings outside his window, that the season when he awoke would be the same as when he shut his eyes.

If banishing the fox from his head was the price Raf had to pay to achieve this, then the fox would have to go. And it had been a stupid idea of Tiri’s anyway to go ask advice of a lawyer who was already dead.

Flashback

Sometime around noon, with the sun burning down on
the outside of Sally’s airless carriage, three men wearing combat trousers, khaki T-shirts and checked
kufiyyeh
came by to throw passengers off the stalled train. At least that’s what Sally assumed was happening given that the nuns suddenly stood up and began to collect together their baskets, wrapping what was left of the salami inside its white cloth and burying the package at the bottom of the biggest basket, as if bandits might have stopped the train to steal their food.

“I find out what’s happening,” said the boy and nodded to Sally, pointedly ignoring the nuns as he jumped down onto the track. Sally watched him walk away, dodging between exiting passengers until he disappeared from sight. After a while she realized he probably wasn’t coming back.

Everyone waited in the sun for two hours beside the train. And then its diesel engine fired up and the abandoned carriages began to reverse slowly away from where the passengers still sat, picking up speed as they went. True to type, the nuns immediately formed a small circle with their baskets in the middle, as if they were the wagons and their luggage the settlers waiting for an Indian attack. Occasionally one or another would glance over to where Sally stood, too nervous to sit, but that was all.

As dusk arrived so did the soldiers. Teenage conscripts with hard haircuts and soft eyes, the clash between appearance and their friendliness not yet kicked out of them. They carried stubby submachine guns stamped out of cheap metal which they played with endlessly, flicking the safety catches and snapping out quarter-curve magazines only to snap them back again. The conscripts seemed to have no more idea of why they were there than Sally did.

Night never really came. The moon was too bright and, though air convected and a warm wind blew from the distant sea and a whole orchestra of insects finally fell silent, darkness stayed away. Sometime after midnight a new train rolled up. It looked much like the old train but dirtier, with carriages that were separate, unlinked by any corridor. The man driving wore combat fatigues, with an AK49 slung across his back.

“Great,” said Sally. No corridor meant no loos. And that meant six hours locked in a carriage with an uncertain stomach.

“Need help?”

Sally turned to find a barefoot boy wearing a samurai topknot, the baggiest Fat Boys she’d ever seen and a leather choker with a plum-sized amber bead tied round his neck. The orange lettering across his T-shirt proclaimed
Rock and Ruin.
And underneath in much smaller letters was a line that read
archaeologists do it in spades.

Sally sighed. “Help with what?”

“Getting on the train.” The blond boy pointed at her rucksack, then nodded to the nearest carriage which stood empty with its door still shut. It was, Sally suddenly realized, going to be hard enough clambering up without having to drag her luggage after her.

“Yeah,” she said, “that would be good.”

Still smiling, the boy pushed out his hand and announced, “I’m Per.”

“Sally,” said Sally without thinking about it and remembered too late that she’d meant to travel as someone else.

Together they clambered up into a dusty-smelling carriage and Per yanked down the blinds on the side where everyone stood, blocking out moonlight and the shuffling crowd beyond. For about five minutes it looked like this might work, as compartments either side filled with noise but no one tried their door.

And then, with the train shuddering as its diesel fired up, the door was jerked open and a close-cropped skull gazed up at them. Whatever doubts the conscript felt about being faced with two
nasrani
lost out to his need for a seat. Pulling himself up, he was about to shut the door when someone shouted his name.

Five conscripts tumbled in after him, pushing and swearing until they saw Sally by the far window with Per opposite.

“Hi,” said Sally and six faces blinked as one. They were kids she realized, only a few years younger in age but a dozen in experience, uncertain how to react to some foreign girl in men’s clothes. Their problem, Sally decided, not mine, and nodded to one of them to shut the door.

“Sleep tight,” said Per, settling into his seat.

Sally wasn’t sure if that was the Swedish boy’s idea of a joke.

Along with everyone else in the carriage Sally found herself slipping down in her seat as the minutes turned into hours, until her head rested on her arm and her legs were supported by the seat opposite. She had Per’s bare toes almost in her face, clean but dirty (if that made sense). And her own sandalled feet were being used by Per as a cushion. Without even thinking about it he’d wrapped his arms round her knees, pulled her feet in close and fallen asleep, so that now his breath came slow and regular as waves against a summer beach.

“Sleep tight,” she said but he was already.

Headed for sleep herself, Sally hardly noticed Per shift onto his side and brush one hand along her calf. For a second she imagined it an accident but then the touch came again, so softly she could have been dreaming if not for the rattle of rails and dark sky scudding past outside.

Shutting her eyes, Sally decided to be asleep; remaining asleep as Per’s fingers crept up from her ankle to knee before smoothing down towards her ankle again. He moved his fingers in time to the lurch of the wheels. As if that somehow made it coincidental, merely part of the journey. And she kept feigning sleep as Per’s stroking became heavier and his hand moved higher, until the top of every stroke almost reached her buttocks.

Part of Sally, the part to which she usually refused to listen, regretted changing out of her shorts, because those were baggy and, well, short really.

“You awake?” His voice was soft, concerned.

Sally almost shook her head.

Shifting in her seat, she moved lower so she was almost balanced between the seats. At the same time she kept her eyes shut and her breathing regular, even when his fingers found the backs of her thighs and slipped between them, smoothing along a seam.

That was where Per’s fingers stayed, their movement so slight Sally could barely sense it though the effect was like water rising behind a flood wall. The warmth between her legs more than mere body heat, the dampness not just sweat.

“Per…”

The Swedish boy stopped. One bare arm still hooked round her leg and his hand crushed between her thighs. A barrier was formed by his half-turned body, screening them from the others, those sleeping children with their cruel haircuts and faces made soft by rest and dreams.

“Too much?”

Sally wondered what he’d do if she said yes. Not that she would.

“Wait,” she told him and sat up in her seat. Switching sides quickly, Sally snuggled down facing Per. Only this time round she was the barrier between the woken world and the snoring conscripts.

“Better,” she said.

“Much,” Per agreed.

They kissed or rather Sally kissed Per. And when his hand reached for her, Sally didn’t move away but put her own fingers over his and snuggled closer, holding it there.

Per skipped several of the stages she’d come to expect from boys her own age, stages that Wu Yung had also ignored. And when Per removed his hand it was to reach between the buttons of Atal’s shirt and expose one breast.

“Small,” she told him.

“Perfect,” he replied, dipping his head.

When Sally eventually opened her eyes, it was to see one of the conscripts watching her in the window, his distance doubled by reflection. The boy said nothing but neither did he look away.

“Okay?” Per asked, his head still buried between her small breasts, licking salt and a distant echo of cheap soap from a bath she’d taken in Catania; so distant as to be almost lost under the dirt of five days’ travelling without a break.

“Sure,” said Sally, “everything’s fine.”

Per’s back was to the window and his head was bent, his arms tight around Sally and little doubt could exist as to what his reflection tasted. On the other hand, for two strangers making out in a railway carriage they were being unusually discreet. So Sally shrugged and shut her eyes again.

Somewhere between barest dawn and reaching the Italianate Gothic monstrosity of Tarabulus station Per dropped his fingers to the waist of Sally’s jeans and discovered she’d already freed the top button. As she wouldn’t let him ease the jeans past her hips, he made do with sliding his hand inside.

She bit his shoulder so hard when she came that Per was the one who cried out. A muffled yelp, hastily swallowed. Although had Per turned round he’d have discovered how redundant that was. Every conscript in the carriage was already awake, wide-eyed and envious.

Discreetly, so that her move wasn’t too obvious Sally put her hand down and held Per, watching him tense. She waited until he shut his eyes at the intensity of her grip, then let go.

“Your turn after Tarabulus,” she said. “That is, if you’re not getting off at this stop.”

Per hesitated.

“I’m going on to Gabes,” Sally added.

“Take a break,” he suggested. “Spend a few days in Tripoli.”

“No time.” Sally shook her head. “I’ve got stuff to do.”

“What stuff?”

Sally dropped her hand into his lap, making it look casual. “I’m on a quest,” she said.

“For what?”

“The Libyan striped weasel,” said Sally, and gave his trousers a squeeze.

As they pulled out of Tarabulus less than an hour later, sat in a carriage that was once again theirs alone, Per asked what had been troubling him from the first moment they met beside the stopped train.

“How old are you?”

Without even stopping to think Sally lopped three years off her age. And tried not to grin when the Swedish boy looked suddenly appalled.

Monday 14th February

“Yeah,” said Raf, “I already know…”

A life of brain-rotting boredom awaited Tunisia’s last bey, who took with him into exile his wife, his German mistress (standard
Thiergarten
-issue, one), a dozen, French-educated ministers, most of his children and a 392-piece set of china made in the Husseinite colours by Noritake.