Jihadi (8 page)

His eyes closed without him meaning them to. He opened them and leaned toward the spot where he had last presumed her to be. She was still there behind the glass. She was consulting a chart.

‘We did run tests. We do prefer not to put the animals down. Some people do feel quite strongly that there is a plan. Some people don’t. People do have beliefs about these things.’

Thelonius’s nose was touching the glass. He shouted: ‘What the hell is wrong with him?’

Melanie Del Rey looked up, calm, and eased her chair back a few inches, away from the barrier that stood between them, which somehow made Thelonius feel closer to her.

On
One Life to Live
, still playing in the next room and on the little TV screen in Melanie’s workspace, Victoria berated her bitter rival, Dorian Cramer. Victoria was defending her daughter, Jessica. Shouting something about revenge. Jessica, like her mother, had a split personality problem. Both of her daughter’s identities, Dorian whispered, had been born for trouble.

Thelonius grasped his head with both hands.

Some people (the dead guy telling this story among them) do feel quite strongly that there is a plan.

‘Well, whatever your beliefs, I don’t think it would be prudent of me to speculate about the cause of Child’s problems,’ Melanie Del Rey said with exquisite politeness. ‘Now back away from the glass, please.’

Thelonius did move away from the glass, but he also took his hands away from his head and made them into fists, which did not sit well with seated Melanie Del Rey.

The youthful imam set down his teacup. He looked toward Fatima, then toward the heavyset woman, and back toward Fatima again.

He thanked Fatima once again for accepting his invitation, as though beginning the conversation afresh. He had been so bold as to conduct a minimal amount of research in order to make a responsible decision about the present matter. Her name, place of employment, that kind of thing. He hoped she would not take offence at this. Fatima assured the imam that she took none.

The imam understood that she had recently lost a relative in the attack that had spurred the protest at the embassy. He extended his condolences. He understood also that she had been hired by the BII, and suspected she wished to keep her position for the sake of her mother and sister, an aim he considered praiseworthy. He appreciated the desire to avoid controversy. He wished to inform Fatima, however, that the matter under discussion was extremely serious, serious enough for him to cancel a meeting he had scheduled today at the refugee camp where he served as a member of the board of directors.

Quite important, their discussion today, he repeated. A great deal depended upon the question of whether or not both of them had witnessed the same behaviour from the same man. Her accounting of events, he insisted, was critical, for her, for her family, and perhaps for the country as a whole. He wished to be sure she grasped this.

Fatima assured the imam that she did.

He inquired as to whether Fatima was absolutely certain that the uniformed American she had observed inside the compound was the same man her friend had observed.

Fatima supposed he was. (She suppressed the instinct to correct the imam by pointing out that the heavyset woman was far from being a friend, and that she, Fatima, did not even know her name.)

The imam was curious as to whether Fatima was certain the man had actually been urinating.

Fatima was not. It was possible he had been pouring some substance or other on the ground from a container that she had not seen and that he then hid away.

The imam wished to know if she had seen the man’s face at any time.

Fatima had not.

The imam asked whether she had noticed anything about the man’s height. Was he particularly short or tall?

Fatima had not recalled anything in particular about this. She supposed him to be of average height.

His race?

Fatima was certain he was a white man. She remembered his hands. They were white.

The imam wondered if perhaps she had noticed any identifying characteristics on the man’s hands or forearms. Tattoos, for instance. Many Americans were fond of those.

Fatima had not.

The imam was curious as to how Fatima explained the differences between her recollection of the event and that of her companion.

Fatima declined to speculate about this. The heavyset woman looked at her scornfully.

Would Fatima permit the imam to remain in contact with her if he made a commitment to her to keep all of their communications confidential?

She would.

Would she be willing to give the imam her family’s phone number? He knew she did not want this issue discussed at her place of work.

She would, and she thanked the imam for his understanding. She wrote her mobile number on the slip of paper he provided, using the fine pen he lent her for the purpose. She folded the paper in a way that prevented the heavyset woman seeing the number, and returned both the pen and the sheet to the imam.

Did she have any questions for the imam or for her friend?

Fatima had one.

And what was that?

Fatima asked the imam to inquire of the heavyset woman whether she spoke any English. He glanced over at the other woman, who curtly informed him that she did not speak English.

Fatima asked whether the heavyset woman had heard the American soldier speaking in their own native tongue.

She had not.

How then, Fatima asked the imam calmly, had the heavyset woman understood the nature of the curse that she said she heard the man utter against the Koran? In what language had he expressed his opinion that it was authored by a devil?

In 1966, when you were five years old, a campaign took hold in the southeastern United States to declare a certain British rock band’s recordings to be the work of Satan.

Records were burned. Death threats were issued. Opinions were shaped. In August of the same year, with George and Irene on the outs, Wiley Clare, a lanky, itinerant North Carolina advertising man visiting San Francisco on business, encountered Irene in the bohemian restaurant where she earned a meagre income as a waitress. Was she one of those hippies? Had she ever seen those English boys with the long hair? Was she a fan? Did she know that one of them had said he was more important than Jesus? Did she believe that? Would she like two tickets to their concert, tickets that he had gotten straight from the record company and couldn’t dream of using,
since he had promised his wife he wouldn’t, after what that boy had said about Jesus?

(So the guilty dead guy writing this book reconstructs the event, which he did not witness.)

That afternoon, with you still at the babysitter’s, your mother began an affair with Clare. She accepted his tickets, visited his motel room, and took his seed, which struck home.

(Nor that event, of course.)

She attended the Candlestick Park concert, with you in tow. Swore you to silence about the trip. Introduced you to Wiley, who, having somehow materialized in the parking lot after the performance, tried and failed to make you laugh. He smelled of too much cologne. On the way back, in his car, he kept talking to you and you kept on not answering. Irene turned to you from the front seat and insisted you make an effort to be nice to Mr. Clare. Which made you say a coarse word or two about his history of maternal incest, right out loud, with him right there in the driver’s seat.

She turned away from you.

It could not possibly have been your last discussion with your mother, but it is the last one you remember.

‘It wouldn’t be
prudent
to tell me how my cat got sick?’

‘Mr. Liddell, I have been directing traffic here at the shelter for some time. Long before this incident.’

‘I beg your pardon? It’s not an
incident
.’

She scowled.

‘Nineteen years,’ Melanie Del Rey went on, ‘and in that time I have learned never to involve myself in domestic disputes. This being a litigious community.’ She raised her eyebrows meaningfully.
‘That means people sue each other around here over these incidents.’

‘I know what litigious means.’

‘I see. Then tell your wife the law is not on her side. One more such encounter as we are having today, and she might find herself dealing with a visit from Animal Protection. Nobody wants that. Such cases are sad for all involved. Couples may be prosecuted for animal abuse as a single legal entity in Massachusetts, you know. Do you want her to go to jail?’

Here she left a meaningful hole in the conversation, one that he could not fill. The pain in his throat returned with special vigour.

‘Take a seat.’ Thelonius did not move. ‘I will check to see how Child is for you. Touch and go, frankly. There is going to have to be a regimen of medication, if he pulls through. And as I say, no one knows for sure what happened to this cat.’

There was a faint but unmistakable accusation in her tone. Thelonius put his fists on the glass.

‘Hold it. Are you, what? Are you saying my
wife
poisoned our cat?’

Melanie Del Rey said nothing.

‘Are you calling us
murderers
?’

He didn’t get an answer for the longest time and soon found himself staring at a different place. He kept waiting for the reply, but Thelonius, who had only killed people when specifically instructed
to do so by the United States of America, did not see Melanie Del Rey anymore. He saw two bodies, one grown and one small, lying face-down in the street of the Kareem, a business district of Islamic City.

The street is called Malaika Street. Malaika means ‘Angels’. Each of the bodies had been struck in the head. Cars weaved carefully around their pool of mingled blood. Collateral damage.

‘We are not
murderers
, you know,’ Thelonius persisted.

Although she did want to save her job, this desire was not what kept Fatima from disclosing all she had seen inside the gates of the embassy compound. She also had a sense – sudden, impossible to overlook – that something ugly, beastly, rough and relentless would find its way through to her if the marine’s actions were to become widely known.

Fatima did not have a name for whatever it was that wanted to be born, and she did not know of any way to stop it wanting that. Perhaps it was built into the city and impossible to stop. Perhaps it was
going to be born anyway. She only knew she did not want this thing to be born on account of something she had done, or failed to do.

She had not, from a formal point of view, lied to the imam. He had asked her whether she could recall certain details. She had replied that she could not recall them. She believed recalling them to be dangerous to herself and others. So she could not.