Love in Revolution (23 page)

I glanced around for Martin. There were red handkerchiefs everywhere I looked, everyone in the same trousers and shirts, dressed like peasants. It was hard to spot anyone; they all looked the same. I caught sight of some girls from school, laughing with their heads together. It made me think of Ana Himyana.
That tip-off you had . . . that girl . . .
I felt sick. I turned aside, afraid someone would notice the expression on my face.

I found myself face to face with Martin. He was leaning in a doorway, frowning. When he saw me he straightened and moved towards me, but his face didn’t change.

‘Est. Are you all r–’

I looked at him, and he stopped and swallowed. I watched his face, somehow shocked by how quickly he seemed to know what had happened. I didn’t realise my own face was that transparent.

I said, ‘Don’t ask me anything. Please?’

He blinked, and nodded. He held out his hand, as if I was a child, and I took it, holding on as if he could help.

‘He lost,’ he said. ‘Angel Corazon lost.’

‘Of course he did,’ I said. I felt as if I’d known already, from the moment when I saw Skizi’s hut all broken and empty. Of course Angel had lost.

Martin opened his mouth and hesitated. He said, ‘Let’s go home,’ but I thought it wasn’t what he’d meant to say.

I let him tug at my hand, leading me home. The streets were emptying already, the crowds receding like a tide, slipping back into their houses as soon as they decently could, leaving little pools of guards and Party members and drunkards. One of them called out as I passed: ‘Hey, gorgeous, give us a kiss!’ I should have felt vulnerable, but I didn’t quite believe in my own existence. Martin gave me a sidelong glance and didn’t say anything, but he sped up.

Then we were back at our own door, and inside the house, the thick walls cutting out the noise from the street.

Martin stood looking at me, in the dimness of the hall. I could smell the filth on my face, and the acrid scent of ash.

‘Est . . . what happened? Are you all right?’

I stared back at him. I could have told him; I could have told him everything, and he would have understood. But if I told him, I’d cry, and it would all be real, and Skizi would still be far away, in a labour camp or raped or dead.

I heard myself laugh, a long shuddering laugh that sounded like the symptom of a disease. I turned away and started to climb the stairs. Without looking over my shoulder, I said, ‘Long live the revolution, Comrade.’

I don’t remember very much about the rest of that spring, or summer. The only thing that’s clear is the letter I wrote, a few days after Skizi – after the pello game that Angel Corazon lost. It was to the Comrade Captain of the People’s Guards, who happened to be one of Papa’s friends. I didn’t sign it.

Dear Comrade, I thought you should know that Ana Himyana has Anarchist sympathies. She spends all her time trying to distract the Communist guards and is a bad influence.

The second draft said,
Dear Comreyde, I thort you should no that Ana Himyana has Anakist simpathys. She spends all her time triing to distract the Communist gards and is a bad inflooence.

But in the end I just wrote:
Ana Himyana is an Anarchist.

I shouldn’t have sent it, but I did.

Later I told myself that they would have taken her away even if I hadn’t.

After that, the summer, when I think about it, is a blur of dust and thirst and politics. I didn’t care; nothing seemed to make any difference to me. It was as if I’d left my life behind in Skizi’s hut, and there was nothing left of me but a kind of hopeless determination to carry on. And hatred, of course. I used to sit on the edge of my bed, thinking about Ana Himyana, wishing I hadn’t written that letter so that I could have the pleasure of doing it all over again. It gave me something to hang on to, something to think about, something to
feel
.

School had stopped for good, and we hung around, running errands for Papa, waiting for news from Irunja, sleeping during the day through sheer boredom. For a few weeks everyone was supposed to work in the fields, but the farmers got angry when we didn’t know what to do, and after a while fewer and fewer of us went. We wore the same clothes every day – the Communist uniform of trousers and shirt and kerchief – and I cut my hair short with kitchen scissors, because bothering about how you looked was bourgeois, and dangerous. Not that I cared about the danger, but my hair made me hot, and now Skizi was gone I wanted to be ugly. One of the Ibarra boys taught me how to shoot a rifle.

There were more food shortages, and now Leon sent us nothing, not even letters. We ate lentils and oranges. The water kept being cut off, and we had to get our water from the stream, carrying it in buckets like peasants. Gatherings of more than ten people were banned; then more than five; then there was a curfew. The King’s Cup was cancelled. No one played pello any more, not even kids in the street, because if too many people stopped to watch all at once they might have been arrested.

But people were arrested anyway.

Ana Himyana disappeared in the middle of August; but she wasn’t the first, by a long way, or the last. I heard about it from Miren, who lived near the Himyana place. She sent me letters sometimes – her father came to visit Papa, to give him news and smuggled antibiotics – and I remember taking the envelope and opening it in the garden, in the shade of the wall, the place where Skizi and I had first talked. It was so hot that there was sweat dripping off my forehead and on to the paper before I read it.

Dear Esteya, I really miss you . . . Things are horrible here and I’m so bored!! My skin is all pimply, I’m so glad you can’t see me, I think it must be the lack of vitamins. Mama says oranges are packed with nutrients but when that’s absolutely all there is to eat I don’t think they’re enough, do you? And garlic soup for dinner and supper every day! If I see another garlic clove I shall DIE . . .

Papa’s friend in Irunja says things are bad there too – the streets are quieter, but it’s because everyone’s leaving, and going over the border or into the country to find food. The water keeps getting cut off there too – I never thought I’d be glad I lived somewhere with a well . . .

How are things in town? Papa says a lot of people are hiding inside with the shutters closed, but I expect you’re all right, aren’t you? I mean, no one would dare to arrest YOU! Did you hear about Ana Himyana? There were guards on the road in the middle of the night a few days ago, and then we got woken up by someone pounding on the door. We were pretty scared, I can tell you, but when Papa opened the door it was only Mrs Himyana in hysterics, saying they’d taken Ana away. I never would have thought it, she was always so thick with the guards. I thought she was like you, not needing to be scared like the rest of us.

There was more, but I didn’t read it. I sat, feeling my heart pound, fiercely pleased. It was justice, that was all. She deserved it. I thought about how it must have been: the guards pulling her from her bed, her hair tousled, her eyes red with sleep, not looking like a film star any more. Or did they wait downstairs for her, with insolent good manners, or pat her bottom as she walked out with them, head held high? I hoped not. I wanted it to have been horrible for her. I hoped they’d trashed the Himyana house while they were there, and spat in Ana’s mother’s face and hit her father with the butt of a rifle. I hoped they’d put Ana up against the wall and ripped her shirt off her and –

I put my hands over my face, feeling sick. I hated Ana. I did. I hated her. This was what I’d wanted. Wasn’t it?

I took deep breaths. I felt exhausted, empty. I realised, distantly, that I
didn’t
hate her, any more. I was too tired to hate anyone.

And then, in a flash, I was afraid. If I wasn’t angry any more, I wasn’t sure I was
anything
.

I stayed where I was for a long time, until the heat had lessened. Then I went upstairs, to where Martin was sitting at his desk, reading one of the bourgeois novels that he’d wordlessly refused to surrender. I stood in the doorway until he looked up.

I said, ‘Ana Himyana.’

He blinked, and nodded. Then he stood up and went over to the wall, stepping over the mess on the floor. He wrote her name on the plaster, the most recent name in a long list.

I watched him write it. He spelt it wrong, with two
n
’s, but I didn’t say anything. Then he stood back and looked at the wall. He opened his mouth, as if he was going to say something, but he didn’t. He just looked.

I followed his eyes, and for a strange split second, instead of seeing Martin’s wall, I saw the wall of Skizi’s hut. Instead of Martin’s neat handwriting, I saw the scrawls of excrement.
LEECH. WHORE. BOURGEO
I
S
.

I raised my eyes to the space at the top, too high for Martin to reach easily, above the names. Skizi’s name should have been there; Skizi’s name should have been there, first on the list. But there was just a blank space. No one would even know there was anything missing. When everyone else disappeared, they left their names at least; but it was as if Skizi had never existed.

I reached out and grazed Ana Himyana’s name with my fingertips. Glamorous Ana, flirting with the guards.

I said, ‘At least they get it right once in a while.’

Then I went and sat in my own room, on the bed. I got the pello ball that Skizi had given me out from under my pillow. And I threw it against the wall, over and over again, like a prisoner in solitary confinement.

The list grew longer and longer, spreading across the wall like mould. From time to time I went into Martin’s room to look at it. It was always the same; he would be at his desk, reading, and I would pick my way over to the wall and read the new names. Sometimes I knew about them already; sometimes one would be a surprise.

Then I’d leave again, without saying anything.

But for some reason it never occurred to me that it was dangerous, just for the names to be there.

Autumn

Thirteen

The summer died slowly. The weather cooled, going straight from white-hot to grey, and autumn came, the storms giving way to endless, misty rain. The shops had notices in the windows.
NOTHING OF NOTHING.

And then, one afternoon in October, Miren’s father came to see us, unannounced. I was in the attic with Mama, sorting through clothes to find some that were shabby enough to wear but still thick enough to keep us warm, and I heard the door open and close. The sound was faint but unmistakable; so few people came to see us that Mama and I both froze, sharing a look. If it was one of Papa’s patients, they would have knocked at the door to the dispensary, at the side of the house . . .

We stood up, without a word, and clambered down the ladder to the landing, careful not to make any noise. Then we heard Miren’s father’s voice, and grinned at each other in relief.

Papa said, ‘Come in, I was just sorting some –’

‘Are you alone?’

‘Well, I –’ In a lower voice he said, ‘My wife and the children are upstairs, but I don’t have any patients here, if that’s what you mean.’

‘I must talk to you, Anton.’

‘Certainly,’ Papa said.

‘And your son – none of your son’s Party friends – you’re sure no one’s here except your family –’

‘Yes,’ Papa said, ‘as I said, only my wife and the children are here. Bernardo, are you feeling quite all r–’

‘Good, good,’ Miren’s father said, interrupting him. He was speaking too quickly, as if he was running out of breath on every word.

I heard my father open the door to his study, and two sets of footsteps as they went in. The door shut.

Mama took hold of my wrist and pulled me towards the top of the stairs. When I turned to frown at her, she put her other finger to her lips and pointed down through the banisters at the door of Papa’s study. She breathed, ‘Come on . . .’

It took me a second to understand; then I said, too loudly, ‘You want us to
eavesdrop
?’

She smiled. Suddenly, disconcertingly, I saw what she must have looked like when she was my age; but it only lasted for a split second, and then I saw the new creases round her eyes, the strain in her expression. ‘You know Bernardo,’ she said softly. ‘If he knows there are women listening, he won’t say anything sensible.’

‘But . . .’ I wanted to laugh – at her, at how shocked I was.

She started to walk down the stairs quietly. She didn’t look back at me, but she didn’t let go of my arm either, so I had to follow. She had grey in her hair; I hadn’t noticed that before.

When we got to the hall, she let go of me and leant to put her ear against the crack between the study door and the door frame. I stood there, watching her face. She seemed to have forgotten I was there. Very faintly, I heard Papa’s voice, forced and jovial, as if Bernardo was one of his patients.

‘ . . . on then,’ he was saying. ‘What’s the trouble? More shootings in Irunja? More corpse pits?’ His tone was brisk and businesslike, as if he was enquiring about a rash of pimples or a nasty cough.

Mama closed her eyes, as if that would help her to hear better.