The Empty Family (30 page)

Authors: Colm Tóibín

BOOK: The Empty Family

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A few times Malik raised the subject of Abdul’s family with Ali and he learned that what he had said was true, but he still did not know what it would be like to live in a house with other people who did not know why he was really there, until he realized that this was how he lived now.

He waited in the apartment for Abdul to come. It had been a quiet morning in the shop. He opened the window and stood out on the roof and felt that the season was changing, that it was warm now only in direct sunlight. He had put some cold food on the table and made a place for himself and Abdul. When he heard the key in the lock he moved out to the hallway to greet him. Abdul kissed him on the forehead when he came in the door. He pulled two cassettes from his pocket.

‘These are new,’ he said. ‘Salim recorded them for me.’

Malik smiled and gave him a mock punch in the stomach.

‘When we get the CD player, what will we do with the cassettes?’

‘Ali can cut them up and cook them.’

They sat together eating in silence and then, once Abdul had put the chair to guard the door into the apartment, each of them went in turn to have a shower. Then they made love quietly on Abdul’s bed. Later, as Abdul slept, Malik went to the roof in his shorts and T-shirt and sat on the cushions in the sun.

When he heard Abdul moving, he looked up. He heard the shower going again and was standing at the open window when Abdul came back naked, drying himself. He put on fresh clothes. As Abdul put his finger to his lips and left the apartment, Malik had a shower and dressed himself. After a while, when he himself was on the street, he followed the directions that Abdul had given him some weeks before. He moved casually on the shady side of the street until he was on another street where he was sure no one would know him. Then he walked in the sun. Soon, he could see a huge ship in the harbour that was there some weeks and not others; it was, he thought, like a city in itself. He knew now to cross the street and turn left and head down to the waterfront. He ambled slowly, as Abdul had told him to do, looking at the small fishing boats and the palm trees and trying to pretend that there was nothing special about this.

When he came to the end of the walkway he crossed another street when the lights went red for the cars and green for the pedestrians. He followed the line of the waterfront until he saw Dino’s ice-cream shop. He made his way to the opposite side and then down a side-street, walking in a straight line until he came to a boardwalk with palm trees that looked over a beach and the sea. Even though he had seen seagulls every day and had heard the foghorn at night, until he began to come down here he had never realized how close the apartment was to the sea.

Abdul was sitting on a seat as arranged. He stood up when he saw Malik coming, and as Malik put out his hand Abdul slapped it and smiled as though they were ordinary friends meeting. They walked along by the sea, stopping sometimes if there was anyone on the beach they could look at, or if there was a boat or ship coming into port they could examine.

Although Abdul did not talk as they walked along, there was, Malik felt, no tension in his silence. He was amused by things, by people who passed, or by anything Malik said. He knew that they would walk as far as they could and then turn back and walk together to the seat where they had met and part there, Abdul going ahead, Malik leaving twenty minutes and then following him. Abdul, he knew, would collect some meat from Ali’s shop and they would both follow Ali’s cooking instructions and have supper ready for him when he came in. Since they had a DVD player, they would finish supper early and watch a film before they went to bed.

But all of that was hours away, the hours after darkness fell. Now it was still bright. And all Malik wanted was for this walk to go on, for him to say nothing more and for Abdul to leave a silence too, for both of them to move slowly by the big strange bronze fish, both of them looking at the tossed sand and the small waves breaking and being pulled out again, out to sea. Both of them were on their afternoon off, away from all the others, away from the street; both of them were slowly walking away from everything as though they could, but not minding too much when they had to turn back and face the city again. Brushing against each other, they both knew that they should do that only once or twice, and only when no one was watching them.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Angela Rohan for her careful work on the manuscript; to my agent Peter Straus; to my editors Mary Mount at Viking/Penguin in London, Nan Graham at Scribner in New York and Ellen Seligman at McClelland and Stewart in Toronto; also, to Catriona Crowe, Deborah Triesman, Brendan Barrington, Enrique Juncosa, Javier Montes, Jonas Storve, Vija Celmins, Dave Eggers, Paul Whitlatch, Jennifer Hewson, Aidan Dunne, Robert Sullivan, Marie Donnelly, Edward Mulhall, Cormac Kinsella, Pankaj Mishra.

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