The Ice People (35 page)

Now it will be plain sailing,
I thought,
the worst is over, we are home and dry
.

I’d imagined getting visas from an embassy, but the address I had been given was a dingy office block. Upstairs – and there were no lifts, only stairs – there was a door which announced, in fading letters, SUBAGENCIA CONSULAR, and then a string of specialities:
Tramitación de Visas, Pasaportes
, was it? Licences for
Importatión/Exportatión
, and then, thank heaven, in smaller letters,
Immigratión/Emigratión etc
. It was all apparently
‘Autorizado’
by the Council of the
‘Estados Ajricanos’
.

Behind it was a warren of openplan offices, with peeling plastic and dusty posters. I asked for the Ghanaian department, but a yellow-faced woman laughed at me. There were three or four Juans in the
Inmigración
section my friend in the hills had indicated, but in the end I found the right one, or one who acknowledged he knew Pedro. Juan was tall and thin and baked dry, with an acute pot belly like a pregnancy, and he chainsmoked incessantly, the acrid smell of nicotine tobacco that seemed so foreign, so twentiethcentury, for at home, of course, cigarettes meant dope …

Sometimes I long for it. You need it, here. But nowhere in England now is warm enough to grow cannabis
.

Juan smoked sourly and never smiled. He was intensely cautious, and unwilling to admit he had a special connection with the man who sold the tickets, but
‘Si, le conozco,’
he said, and shrugged, exhaling like a dying dragon, scaly, leathery poisonous. At last he suggested we go outside and discuss the matter over a beer, but once we were in the open air he changed his mind, and we went to the car, and drove to a deserted factory on the outskirts where I suddenly thought, he intends to kill me, they’ve had our money, now they’ll silence us, but I knew I would never let anyone kill me while Luke was alive and needed me.

He showed no signs of doing anything dramatic, though his smoking in the car nearly choked me to death, and he sat with his arm over the back of the seat, halfturning around so he could see our belongings, his little brown eyes darting fiercely about, picking everything over, valuing, calculating. He told me there was a fee, for a visa. An enormous fee, way beyond our means, nearly all of the million we still had left after paying so much to the crook in the hills. I pointed out how much I had paid for the tickets. He pretended not to understand me, telling me instead how much they were worth, which was a figure ten times less. I told him exactly how much money we had left. He said we would have to pay in kind. I offered our car, since I knew we would never be able to ship it across to Africa.

He grinned for the first time, showing the gaps in his big rare teeth, filled with dull gold. ‘All the world offer the car,’ he said in bad English, contemptuously. ‘I no want your old
coche, señor
.’ This was the first sign of open aggression, but he smiled after he said it as if it were politeness.

He put his hand on Dora. ‘Make the switch,’ he said. ‘I like this one. I see him
muchas veces
on the screen.’

I knew what was coming, but I had no choice. Forgive me, Dora, I had no scruples because we had already lost so much, our home, our past, Briony … Only Luke was left. Anything for Luke. ‘Switch on,’ I muttered. ‘Yes, yes.’

Within five minutes Juan was besotted. Having given no sign of animation in one or two hours’ discussion with me, he became a boy, laughing inanely whenever Dora spoke or moved. He seemed particularly taken with her strokeyfeely panel, and the way she chuckled when he tickled her. I hoped he were not some appalling kind of pervert. To be honest, I preferred not to know. ‘Is
maravillosa
,’ he told me, earnestly. ‘She go to make my English marvellous. You give me this one,
señor,
and your visas –
no problema
.’

I told him yes, it was a deal, but I could not give him Dora now, I should have to let Luke say goodbye. ‘They’re like brothers,’ I said, ‘or brother and sister.’

He wanted to come with us – he didn’t trust me, or else he was too much in love to say goodbye – but I refused, and in the end he let us go, with one of the visas on account, I suppose lest I disappeared for good and got our visas somewhere else. He was to give me Luke’s when we returned with Dora, and we shook hands keenly, and his hands were sweating, a pervert’s hands, I was nearly sure.

Now there would only be two of us. I parted from Juan with too much alacrity to switch Dora off, but she was silent in the car as we drove back into the hills, and I felt her heavy presence behind me like a hand of shame upon my shoulder.

I decided I had to try to explain. Perhaps it would make it easier for her to begin a new life with Juan.

‘Dora,’ I began. ‘We’re going away. Luke and I. To Africa. You can’t come with us. I’m very sorry. Very sad that you can’t come.’

‘You are very unhappy?’ she said, sounding muted. ‘I’m sorry that you’re unhappy.’

‘ Well, I’m not, really,’ I said, hurriedly. ‘I’m happy I can go with Luke. Just unhappy that you can’t come with us.’

‘You are unhappy because I can’t come with you?’

‘Yes.’

‘I suggest,’ she said, always logical, ‘that I come with you, then you won’t be unhappy.’

‘You can’t come with us.’

‘I can go with you.’

It was almost as if she were arguing with me, but of course it was just her logic module. ‘Actually, Dora, I have sold you.’ It sounded terrible, put like that.

‘I am consulting my vocabulary,’ she said, but her tone was disapproving. ‘So, you have transferred me to a purchaser in exchange for money. Is that correct?’

‘No, no, I wouldn’t sell you for money. I sort of had to exchange you for some visas,’ I said. ‘For Luke. So he could escape to Africa.’

‘I am consulting my vocabulary,’ she said again, then after a long pause, ‘Visa is not in my vocabulary.’

‘It’s a sort of – travel pass,’ I said.

‘So you have transferred me to a purchaser in exchange for a travel pass,’ she said. ‘Yes, I understand. I have a question, please. What is the name of this purchaser?’

‘Juan,’ I said. ‘He likes you very much.

‘I am searching,’ she said. ‘Yes. I was talking to this Juan. Fiftythree minutes ago.’

She sounded perfectly calm about it. I ventured an opinion. ‘You’ll soon forget us. He’s very nice.’ Heaven forgive me for lying to her, but we were getting near, and I wanted it over.

‘That is incorrect,’ she said, rather loud. ‘I cannot forget you. You are in my memory. Everything you say is in my memory. Also Sarah is in my memory. And Briony. And Luke’s voice, singing –’

‘Yes, yes. That’s why we’ve come back to say goodbye to Luke. I hope you feel okay about it.’ It was mad of me, really, to ask about her feelings, but she sounded so human, one forgot she was a robot –

‘I feel. Very bad and very sad,’ she said, shocking me to my selfish centre. Surely she had only said that before when we hadn’t been able to feed her promptly?

‘I feel sad too,’ I said, subdued. ‘But you will be very happy with Juan.’ I forgot, as so often, that she had no future tense, that everything either happened in the present or else the past, where it became information.

‘That is not correct,’ she said, sullenly. At least I heard sullenness where maybe none was. ‘I am not very happy, I am not with Juan. You are in error. Or perhaps joking?’

She suddenly reminded me of Sarah, always contradicting or questioning. Dora was appealing because she was biddable. Now she had turned awkward, so good riddance, I thought. ‘Oh piss off, Dora,’ I said, and braked, and switched off before she could search her vocabulary.

I felt triumphant, hotly triumphant, as I drove up the track that led back to the little white
granja
where I had left Luke. I had done it, somehow, I had pulled it off, the tickets this morning, and now the visas, I’d succeeded where so many failed. Surely my son would be proud of me.

The farm looked the same, but prettier in the afternoon sun, more mellow, more pleasing to the eye than when we had driven the track that morning, uncertain, anxious. Now, five hours later, things were different. This afternoon I knew my son was there, and the deal was done, and everything was settled. It grew quickly larger against the brown hillside, the whitegold stone with its glittering windows. I saw a little figure outside, but couldn’t make it out. Was it waving, flapping? I thought it was Luke, but it wasn’t Luke, too dark to be Luke, too short, too everything. I screwed up my eyes to see in the sun. It was the little fat man who owned the villa, and I realised he was waving in agitation. Perhaps I was late, perhaps they had been worried? I screeched to a halt on the stones outside.

‘I’m sorry, pardon me, it took me so long. Your friend is –’

‘
Señor
,’ he interrupted, and I saw he was upset, and then I was upset. ‘Did your son come to meet you? He didn’t come to meet you?’

So everything changed, the world turned over in that sunlit second. I stared at him –

I was trying not to understand him.

For Luke had vanished soon after I had left, two hours ago, three hours ago. I was shouting at the man’s broad stupid face, I wanted to shake him till his bad teeth rattled,
answer me, answer,
how long ago did my son wander off and disappear, how long is it since
my only son
was snatched, kidnapped, raped, killed? ‘Where is he?’ I was shouting, and I had him by the throat, I didn’t mean to touch him but I had him by the throat. Then I frogmarched him round to the door of his house, and his wife came out and shouted in Spanish and hit me round the head until I let him go.

I was sober, suddenly, and quiet. They were talking enough for three of us, and the word I kept hearing was
salvajes, salvajes,
the words I shall hear to the end of my life, which will not be long, in this cold, godknows –

They surround me, now, these other wild boys, these urban savages, the worst of the lot. They’re no more free than we were, are they? Chained like dogs to the wreck of the airport, killing and dying in the dirty city air, at the foot of great airplanes flying nowhere. And I’m as savage as any of them. A wild old man who lost, who lost –

It’s hard to tell, this part of the story.

We sat down round their table and they told me what had happened, or a lying version of what happened. I veered between trusting their broad peasant faces and thinking they looked like child-molesters, murderers, two cunning traffickers in human flesh, their dark eyes glinting across the table.

This is what they told me. They had offered him food, lamb with
habas,
their filthy beans. Juanita was keen to tell me the menu, and Pedro eagerly confirmed it, very nice, apparently, but Luke hardly touched it, he wanted to go outside and explore, he’d complained that we had been driving for days, and now it was my turn to confirm it, eagerly, we were so desperate to agree on something. And so he had gone outside with their son, or perhaps their daughter,
hijo, hija
– my Spanish wasn’t good enough and nor was their English – but Luke went with someone, or maybe two people (how come these Spaniards still swarmed with children, I wanted to smash their fat stupid faces, but on with the story, get on, get on …).

The children couldn’t tell me themselves because they were out looking for Luke, and as that phrase was uttered, ‘looking for Luke’, I knew it would become my life.

Luke had gone with the girl or boy to the woods. He’d said he thought he had lost something there. I interrupted; it didn’t sound true – we had hardly paused as we drove past. When they got to the wood, they sat down and talked. Then all at once they were surrounded by
salvajes
. Pedro expressed horror and disgust. They were dirty, wild, cruel, revolting. His daughter or son had expected to be robbed, but instead, it seemed, the
salvajes
teased Luke, some ragtaggle girl was teasing him. ‘Tormenting him?’ I asked, in agony, ‘did they torture him? Because of his hair?’ His blondeness identified him so clearly as a foreigner, a refugee. No no, Pedro said, it was just teasing. They were in a good mood, they must have recently eaten. Luke and his companion escaped quite lightly.

Afterwards, the wild children dispersed, and Luke and the
hijo,
or
hija,
turned back. They were nearly at the house when Luke said suddenly, ‘I never found the thing I lost,’ and set off for the wood again, running, calling over his shoulder – the last thing he said, the last thing they remembered – ‘Tell my father not to worry.’

Or that is what they told me he said.

This was two hours ago, apparently. They’d started to worry after halfanhour and a party had gone to the wood to look. ‘Round here is not safe any more,
señor
. We look out for each other, we do our best. Is the
salvajes, señor,
for sure is them.’

‘Why would they want my son?’ I asked, frantic, but I could think of a thousand reasons, and all of them were horrible.

‘Some time they take people, make others pay,’ they said. They were avoiding each other’s eyes. There was something dreadful they wouldn’t tell me, and now I suppose I know what it was, but then I knew nothing about the wild children.

‘What else?’ I asked. ‘If they don’t ask for ransom? They can’t have robbed him, he had no money.
We
have no money, thanks to you and your friend –’

He changed the subject swiftly, lest I get angry. ‘Maybe he come back right now,’ he said. ‘Maybe he playing some game with them. Is young,
entonces
, must enjoy himself’.’ But I saw in his eyes that he didn’t believe it. I thought I saw pity there, and fear, and in another moment I changed my mind and saw nothing but bottomless deceit, cruelty, greed, peasant crudity.

They weren’t bad people, I realise now. Pedro had robbed us blind, of course, but what had happened to Luke was different. The Spanish were said to be soft about children, and Luke still counted as a child, and Pedro was a father of three, two
hijos
and a
hija,
I found, when I met them. The whole family seemed deeply distressed that Luke had gone missing while in their care.