The Eyes of Lira Kazan (27 page)

As he climbed back up to his house, he had the feeling that he must now empty his mind. He thought he might go walking the next day, or the next, he would go past the Lac de Pise and climb up to the Col de l'Homme Mort: up there you felt so small and yet so high up, you wondered who the dead man was and why he died, and
then you went down again without ever knowing. A neighbour shouted as he went by: “Hey you're getting a lot of visitors these days.” He didn't reply, he just smiled and thought to himself that it might be a good idea to burn those papers after all.

 

 

When Nwankwo arrived back in London, the customs officer asked him to follow him into his office. A policeman came in and informed him that his residency permit had been rescinded, as had his post at the university, and that he was under arrest for theft on the premises of the Serious Fraud Office. Nwankwo listened calmly to all this, as though he was just letting himself be carried along, as though finding himself under arrest was the ultimate stage of the journey embarked upon by the ex-head of the Nigerian fraud squad.

Late that afternoon he appeared before a judge who would pronounce on whether he would be extradited, placed in detention or allowed out on bail. The judge asked him to be seated, and gently took his glasses out of their case, almost regretfully, as though extremely reluctant to pass sentence on a hero. He cleared his throat before each question. This man he was supposed to be judging had the looks of a stranger, but none of the fear that usually showed on the face of the hunted men he normally saw, who seemed like children in the dark; he had nothing in him of those miserable men who had thought they could find a better life in another country. There was something quite different about Nwankwo's expression – an incandescent stare that was hard to look back at, as though his exile was already complete and internalized.

Nwankwo replied to the questions. Yes, he admitted having copied the film before leaving the premises of the Serious Fraud Squad; yes, he knew Lira Kazan, but he had heard nothing from her since leaving her in Paris at the Gare du Nord with her husband. Félix? No that name meant nothing to him. The judge showed him the reports from the secret-service team in charge of the Oxford surveillance operation.
Nwankwo acted the fool. “Oh yes, that was a friend of Lira's. He came to see her. I had forgotten his name.” Nwankwo felt no compunction in lying here, as so many had done before him. He was just waiting for one question, one single question. Finally it came. The judge said:

“Does the name Uche mean anything to you?”

And then Nwankwo beamed happily, like someone who knows but won't betray a comrade. Thanks to an @ sign Uche's wanderings were over. He could finally rejoin the world of the spirits who haunted the roads and paths by night.

In the end the judge granted him bail. Nwankwo returned to the Oxford house. Once again there was a policeman outside. Some of Lira's strings were still stretched along the walls. Nwankwo was now just waiting to be deported. He heard about Helen's resignation on the television. She held a press conference, refusing to testify against Nwankwo. She praised his expertise and knowledge of the law, and she gave the name and position of the person who had yelled at her over the telephone on the video which had now been seen by millions on the Internet. He was the Prime Minister's legal adviser, she said.

Nwankwo listened in amazement. He didn't hear Ezima coming in. She had knocked at the door, entered and was looking around this house that she had once thought was hers. He finally turned around, smiled sadly, and got up without approaching her. She had that closed expression that he knew so well; she refused the chair he offered her. She appeared to have rehearsed what she proceeded to say:

“I know Tadjou took something for you. You put your own son in danger. I don't want you coming anywhere near the children.”

“Everything I have ever done has been for their sake,” Nwankwo repeated. It was as though they were just repeating an old conversation.

“Stop it,” Ezima sighed.

He approached. She backed away.

“So are you leaving then?” he asked.

“Yes, we're going home, we should never have followed you. I know I insisted on coming and I was wrong. I hadn't realized what you were capable of.”

“Don't stay in Lagos, or in Abuja. Go across the border to your cousin. Finley will be like a madman.”

“Tell the uncle where you are. He'll know where we are.”

Then she left without waiting for an answer.

 

 

“Madame, I am afraid that there is a profound necrosis and we will have to consider the removal of the eyes. After that you can decide whether to insert glass eyes, or leave the sockets empty and close the eyelids…” Lira fainted. The doctor's voice, and that of the interpreter, and Polina's involuntary cry of horror seemed far away. Lira imagined her eyes rolling out of her head, she saw the empty sockets, she saw herself dead and buried.

When she came round, she was lying in an empty examination room. Polina was talking to her in a gentle voice, stroking her forehead, and she heard a nurse's voice too, interrupting, saying that she needn't worry, that it was a normal reaction. Lira lay there in silence. Only Polina's words could reach her now.

“You had blue eyes, Mum. I need them to be blue again, even if they're glass ones. You should have the operation.”

And so Lira agreed and the operation was fixed for two weeks later. Polina wrote down the date in her student diary. The days passed, each one the same, in their new apartment in a red-brick building south of Paris, near the campus of Polina's university. It was like a countdown to the operation.

Lira kept asking herself, sometimes quietly, sometimes out loud, why the loss of her eyes seemed so unbearable, when she had already lost her sight. It was a question that had no answer, for her, or for others. Tanya rang from St Petersburg; Lira could visualize her apartment, all that mess on the table, and both of them sitting on the floor not so long ago. Her parents rang too, begging her to come home. Never, she said.

Every day Polina came back with a new promise.

“You'll be able to write and look at the Internet, using a computer with a voice synthesizer. I went to a demonstration, it's brilliant. And you'll be able to run, there are people with dogs who will accompany you. You'll even be able to carry on with the karate, I've found a club for blind people—”

“Stop,” Lira would say gently. She was haunted by the thought of the operation, and she couldn't bear any pity or compassion. She was drowning in nostalgia, and she had nightmares too. It was as though a part of her was about to be removed along with her eyes, as though they contained all her memories.

“When I was little they said I looked like a doll, because I was blonde and had blue eyes. Now I really will look like one with my glass ones. But I never liked dolls.”

Félix came to see her on his way to London. He had left the law courts and was going to join Mark, hoping he would get through customs without any trouble. Lira fell into his arms and stayed there a long time, silent and fragile, something she had never wanted to be in the past. She asked him if he had any news of Nwankwo.

“He was deported eight days ago. I don't know where he is. But I'm quite sure he'll get in touch before too long.”

“I'm frightened, Félix.”

“I know.”

“It's like putting my head on the block.”

“No, Lira. You've been through the worst. I've never known anyone as strong as you.”

“Do you really think we'll hear from Nwankwo?”

“I'm positive we will.”

 

The operation went well. They cleaned out and emptied Lira's eye sockets, bandaged them and prepared for the implant of two deep-blue glass eyes.

When Lira, still unconscious, was wheeled out of the operating theatre, all that remained on the chrome table, waiting to be thrown away, were two small spheres, white,
black and bleeding. Perhaps inside them, rolled up like the reel of a film on an old and outdated projector were the last things she had seen: a winding Thames, a bit like the Neva; Nwankwo drawing circles and arrows on a board with his long fine hands, London, with its big wheel next to the bankers' skyscrapers, and all the streets, the pavements, the boutiques in which she and Polina had planned to try on clothes. Lira's eyes had not been able to withstand the cruelty of the world. They were like two minuscule planets whose oceans had disappeared for ever.

BITTER LEMON PRESS

First published in the United Kingdom in 2012 by
Bitter Lemon Press, 37 Arundel Gardens, London W11 2LW

 

 

First published in French as
Les yeux de Lira
by
Éditions des Arènes, Paris, 2011

 

This book is supported by the Institut Français
as part of the Burgess programme