He smiled. ‘You’re not ordinary at all. How can you say that? You’re really . . . pleasant-looking.’
She didn’t say anything.
‘We made a vow, Madalena.’
‘Is that why you’re staying with me? Because when you were fourteen years old you made a promise?’
He didn’t know what to say.
‘We were children, Mauro. We thought things would never change between us, but they
have
changed. I know you would never say so, you’re too kind for that, and I know you would never abandon me, but I want you to know that I’ve thought about it – I’ve thought about it a lot, and it’s OK. I’m letting you go. Go to her, before it’s too late. Tell her I’m your cousin, or something like that.’
Mauro shook his head. He reached below the table and gently stroked her fingers with his thumb. ‘Madalena,’ he said, looking deep into her eyes, ‘listen to me: you are the most wonderful person I have ever known.’ With a final squeeze of her hand he stood up and walked over to the woman.
Madalena could hear every word. ‘My cousin said I would be crazy not to introduce myself,’ he said. ‘My name is Mauro.’
‘I know your name,’ she said, smiling and extending her hand, her nails long and red, sharp ends to her soft, slender fingers.
As Madalena passed their table on her way out the woman flashed her a conspiratorial smile, as if to say,
Thank you, Mauro’s cousin – I owe you one.
Mauro didn’t notice her leave.
Madalena made her way through the corridors. A man in a cap and gloves held the door open as she went into the street. She had no idea what to do or where to go, so she just walked and walked, following routes she knew, revisiting the places she and Mauro would go before the madness had begun. She stood alone on bridges and walked along the back streets, which without him by her side seemed not romantic but menacing. She hurried to find a street that was busy and well-lit, and when she found one she heard a band playing in a bar, and went inside. Sitting alone with a glass of beer she let the songs take over her emotions. It was a show aimed at tourists who had read about the incomparable melancholy of fado music in their guidebooks, and felt they should experience it while they were in the country. It was all the old songs beautifully sung to a half-empty room, and as she thought of what she had done the words crept under her skin, and she began to cry. There were no sobs, just tears which she let run unhindered, falling from her face onto her clothes.
Other members of the audience noticed her with a sense of satisfaction.
I can’t understand a word
, they thought to themselves,
but if it’s got that local girl crying her eyes out then it must be the real thing.
X
In Room Ten,
Count Your Blessings
, a tall, thin boy of nineteen was huddling behind a large display board, listening as echoing voices, some sombre and some emotional, spoke of the sadness of a skeleton. He wished they would stop, and go away.
When the museum first opened, Room Ten had been called
Worse Things Happen at Sea
. Designed to help visitors put their problems into perspective, it had told various tales of human misfortune. Along with the accounts of sinking ships was a series of photographs of a village lost to a mudslide, only its skewed rooftops visible above the new ground level, then there had been a short video presentation about a city decimated by a cloud of toxic gas, and an interactive timeline of global pandemics. Pavarotti’s wife had been pleased with this room, but as time went by she started to worry that it might not lift everybody’s spirits in the way she had intended, that some people might think it just a little on the negative side. After many sleepless nights she had decided to dismantle it and approach the same territory from a more positive angle, one that was in no way open to misinterpretation. This room being one of the smaller spaces the required upheaval would not be too great, so the old man had allowed this plan to go ahead.
The room was now lined with cork panels, and on a table in the middle were felt pens of different colours, and a pile of blank rectangular cards. On a large display board was an invitation, in several languages, for each visitor to write something good about their life and pin it on the wall so others could be reminded of the good things in their own lives. Pavarotti’s wife had gone first, with her card that said
I have four wonderful daughters
, and Hulda had been next, pinning up
The trials of my middle-to-late childhood are over now
. A lot of visitors had joined in, and there were notes that read
I treasure the love of my family
;
I can see;
Ice skating is my passion, and I often find opportunities to enjoy it
;
I have many valued friends;
and the single word
Horses
. Earlier in the day the boy had read these cards, and many more, and found them all to be smug, or hectoring.
I have food, clothes and shelter; I have fantastic legs; I am in relatively good health; My uncle is fun; My apartment has a lovely view of parkland in one direction, and rooftops in the other
. These were other people’s blessings, and each one was a kick in his face. Everything that ought to have been good about his life, that should have brought him joy or satisfaction, had been suffocated by the emptiness that would not let him go, and the words on these cards meant nothing to him. He was sick of counting what were supposed to be his blessings.
Some of the cards had been written in languages he didn’t know, and he was glad to have been spared from reading them. The old man, though, was able to understand most of these cards, and as he passed the room on his rounds he had noticed that some had not been written in the spirit in which Pavarotti’s wife had intended. One, in Bulgarian, said
Hairy spunk bubble
; another, in Spanish,
I am blessed with a big, hard cock
; and another, in Welsh,
Alun caught VD off his sister
. The old man had left them there, not because he wished to support this subversion of the room’s intentions, that was a matter of indifference to him, but because taking them down would have been an unnecessary effort.
The voices moved to the lobby, and at last the goodbyes came to an end, and were followed by the sound of footsteps going upstairs. The light in his room went off, the footsteps went away, and then, at last, there was quiet. He got out from his hiding place, stood up and stretched his long legs, which had gone to sleep.
For a few days letters on the subject will be written to newspapers. Professionals in the field will offer level-headed perspectives on what had gone on, and there will be emotional and articulate outpourings from people who had lost sons or daughters, siblings or parents, and who were struggling to make sense of what had happened. They will all offer their own ideas about preventing such tragedies, and each one will be heartfelt, each one different, and each somehow the same.
Along with these, a small amount of letters, written by people with no professed connection to the subject matter, will declare the reported upturn of young men ending up this way to be a direct result of the decline of the French Foreign Legion. Historically, they will say, it had been there as a refuge for the desperate and the lost, giving structure to lives that would otherwise have collapsed, but modernisation had rendered it pointless, its decline having become fatal the moment it was announced that in the spirit of equal opportunities women must be allowed to enlist. They will acknowledge that this ruling had yet to be tested, and for the time being the Foreign Legion remained all male, but the damage had already been done. Such men would no longer be inclined to join up, knowing that at any moment a button could be pressed in Brussels and this edict would be implemented. A charabanc would arrive at the barracks, bringing the first batch of new recruits. The men would be bombarded with reminders of what they had been trying to escape as the garrison filled with pretty girls topping up their tans, tying each other’s hair in elaborate plaits, fanning themselves with fashion magazines and doodling love hearts on scented paper. A glimpse of dainty fingers, or a gentle chime of laughter tinkling through the desert heat would, in an instant, render their escape pointless.
Had these incandescent correspondents seen the boy in the museum they would have been obliged to admit that their theory did not apply to him. His limbs were skinny and flaccid, eel-like as he moved awkwardly around the room: women or no women, army life would never have been an option for him. He would have been laughed out of the recruiting office.
The boy’s heart raced. He walked around the table, then out into the corridor and through the other rooms, reaching out and running his fingers along the exhibits as he went: dioramas, dummies, latex models of Gadarene swine. He knew that touching exhibits in museums was forbidden, but he didn’t care. He found himself excited by the possibility that an alarm would go off, that his next step might trigger it. He waved his arms around, wondering if there was a sensor. Nothing happened. Everything was still again, and quiet. He knew there was somebody else in the building; he had heard them walk upstairs. They could appear at any moment, and the thought made his heart beat faster still. He kept on going, from room to room.
He pressed the light button on his watch, and was surprised by how much time had passed. He had been expecting everything to be over by now, and he supposed he should get on with it. But first he would walk around just a little more. He went into Room Seven, and there before him, its whiteness making it seem luminous in the darkness, was the skeleton they had all been talking about. He stared at it. Then he reached out with both hands, and gently held the skull, and looked into the holes where its eyes had been.
Every once in a while an independent foundation with deep pockets will fund a team of scientific researchers. To give credence to their findings, the scientists they choose will often be Swedish. The instant the money hits the Swedes’ bank accounts, instead of vanishing into their laboratory they head straight for the Mediterranean, where they spend their days sunbathing, snorkelling and racing jet skis up and down the coast, dark glasses wrapped around their tanned faces as their fair hair flutters behind them. In the evenings they go out dancing, or stay in and mix extravagant cocktails, throwing their heads back in laughter as they drink them in hot tubs on the roofs of their rented villas. At no point do they spend so much as a moment on research. After a year or two, when the money is running low, they contact the foundation and tell them their study is nearing its end. With heavy hearts they return to Stockholm and, having waited a few weeks for their tans to fade, they hire a conference room and don slightly ill-fitting business wear. The press is summoned, and the scientists sit in a row as their announcement is made.
‘We have discovered,’ their spokesperson will say, ‘over the course of our research, that, in the night-time, the average person will, in their life, eat . . .’ Here they leave a pause, building the suspense. ‘. . . one thousand, nine hundred and seventy-seven spiders.’ They would have reached this number by deciding, over calamari and lager the night before leaving for home, that an average of somewhere around one a fortnight sounded about right. With their findings presented, they bid the press farewell, and the item is sent on newswires around the world.
Because only the very brave or the very foolish would ever dare to challenge a Swedish scientist, it is reported as an incontrovertible fact. The sponsors of the independent foundation, usually a manufacturer of mouthwash, will be happy with the outcome of their scientific patronage, knowing that for some time to come people will be a little more inclined to take care with their oral hygiene. Having booked a global advertising campaign to coincide with the announcement, they sit back and watch their sales rise by a small but significant percentage.
Had these scientists done their research, and had they chosen to observe the old man, they would have noticed an unexpected pattern, one which, because they were scientists, they would have discounted as a coincidence. They would not have seen any connection between what was happening in the rooms below, and the spiders that crawled into the old man’s mouth.
The old man had noticed this pattern, and having seen an elbow protruding from behind the display board in Room Ten as he had made his way upstairs, he had an idea that a spider would be near.
When he woke in the night, though, it was not the spider’s touch that stirred him, but the slam of the fire exit door, and a whoop of what sounded like joy. The old man closed his eyes and began to go back to sleep. This happened from time to time: somebody would change their mind.
He was relieved that he would not have to wake up early for the second day in a row.
The spider scuttled back to where it had come from. The old man’s breathing slowed, and the rattle returned. In and out, in and out. It all sounded the same.
PART THREE
I
The first people to be identified will be those who had been reported missing, and whose trails had ended in the city with a final phone call, postmark or cash withdrawal. A photograph from the doctor’s collection will be matched with one already in the police files, and for a few days name after name will be released to the press. And then things will slow down.
Having looked forward to months of frenzied coverage, news editors will be disappointed as the story, thwarted on several fronts, stalls much sooner than they had hoped. Early on they will be disheartened by the balanced reactions of the families – instead of the emotional outbursts they had anticipated, their statements will be simple and quiet. Where they had hoped to find condemnation they will find resignation. What anger there is, at the doctor and at those who have gone, will be kept inside. Sometimes there will be an expression of relief at finally knowing what had become of a son or a daughter, a mother or a father, or a few words of self-reproach from somebody who feels they could have done more to help, and there will be sincere, though fruitless, attempts to convey the emptiness left by the knowledge that somebody who ought to have been there, and whose return had been longed for, has gone for ever. There will even be words of pity for the doctor, and sadness for him having turned out this way. In news terms, none of this will propel the story forwards.