Private House (29 page)

Her mind kept drifting like that; she had to pull it back. She listened. Apart from her breathing, it was very quiet. And then a brick rattled away as her shoe hit it. But now she'd emerged safely from under the scaffold. She'd taken her bag off her shoulder, and was clutching it in front of her, using both hands. She stood quite still. She was in the courtyard now, and straight in from the door—she could see the door—was a small apartment, like a porter's lodge. Her steps crunched as she walked over to it. She peered in at the window: all she could see were bags of cement, four rows of them, piled six high. She stepped back. Beyond the lodge, stairs led to the floor above, and clearly that's what she'd have to do, go up; but here she
paused, her right foot on the first step, her knee bent. She listened. She thought, If I scream, someone will hear on the street.

But she didn't scream. Indeed, by the time she reached the first landing, she was sure the building was empty; it was not frightening, merely spooky, as if she'd dropped into a dark, Gothic fantasy world, in which the twisted wires of the electrical service, sagging in great loops from the walls or knotting into clusters as tangled as Medusa's hair, were the tentacles of some terrible monster she was tracing back to its lair: it was amazing, she thought, that the place hadn't burned down years ago. Now simple curiosity filled her. Who had lived here? What had happened to them? She strolled past the apartments, looking into each, and wondered how people could have lived in places so tiny. They were all empty: not a stick of furniture, a single picture on the wall: everything, whatever this might mean, had been taken. It was obvious that people had been ordered out. When she reached the next level, this was her only fear, that the floor would give way beneath her or another wall come down. Yet everything felt solid. Nothing shook. Poverty and time had settled into an implacable inertia. The landings, running around the court, made three sides of a square; only when she came around to the outside, where the wall had collapsed, was she anxious: she stepped cautiously ahead then as if she were walking on ice. Even if everything felt solid, there'd clearly been more damage here. A window frame had been twisted right out of shape, and was falling out of the wall. She looked in. And now she saw a sign of life . . . a mattress pushed into a corner.

She stared at it a moment. Again, her heart began to beat more quickly. But when she looked around there was no one about, and when she listened there was nothing to hear: only a scratchy sound under her foot as she shifted her weight. The window was obviously the way to go in, but was a little too high to step over; she used her
bag to brush away some bits of brick and lumps of mortar, then straddled it, and lifted her other leg across.

Inside, she stood quite still. The wall—the far wall—was part of the one that had come down; the window there was broken and twisted as well. But the floor was level, and if Almado was staying here—if anyone was—that was presumably a guarantee of its safety. Still, she trod carefully as she stepped toward the mattress. She looked down at it. It was filthy, and the only blanket was pushed up like a dirty rag at one end. She remembered that the mattress at Hugo's had caught her eye, too. But this was worse. It was an awful sight. And yet now she knelt, sinking down through her own astonishment, and placed the palm of her hand on it and then forced herself to clench her fingers, seizing a fold of the cloth. Pity flowed into her, when she might have expected disgust. She reached out again, and with the tips of her fingers touched a dark, stiff patch of the fabric, like a scab or the lesion of some ghastly disease. Now she wanted to weep: behind her eyes was the pressure of tears, and it was all the worse because she couldn't weep. She knew she wasn't pitying Almado, certainly not, not even Hugo. Was it Murray? Dear Murray, lying on this bed. He had lain with this man. He had shared his body, on some bed. And wasn't it only chance, or the grace of God, that had placed Murray in his bed, and Almado here? But then that was true of everyone, including herself. She reached out, trailing her fingers across all the dreadful stains she could reach, blood, shit, semen, whatever they were; but they were what everyone was, even if their feather beds and their silk pyjamas allowed them the delusion that they were deserving, and something else. She closed her eyes.
You can pray anywhere
, Don used to say, but no, I can't, I can't pray here, she thought. It was too terrible a place. And she was relieved to think this, for it carried the sound of her own voice: and she wanted to say it out loud, to reassure
herself, but all she could do was whisper it, “What a terrible place.” Then she looked around the room again, and saw a cardboard carton, pushed into the opposite corner. It was filled with rubbish. She picked it up, tilted it and shook it, and then picked over its contents. There was no actual garbage—would that not attract rats?—but there were two empty Buccaneer beer bottles and some food wrappers. A cigar end. She found a condom, used, and it was streaked with blood, but this was so expected, so fitting, that she only noted it. What more attracted her interest was a ball of paper, scrunched up. She put the carton down and worked out the paper, stretching it out and smoothing it between her hands. She recognized what it was at once: a page from
The Lonely Planet Guide to Cuba
. It was too mangled and filthy to read easily, but she didn't have to, for she could make out the page number—425—and she had her own copy of the book in her bag. Her hands, taking it out, were trembling. Why would Almado Valdes need a guide to Cuba? Her hands trembled as she turned to the page. He
must
have taken this from Hugo. And the topic that would interest him was exactly the one to which the page referred:
Getting There and Away
.
AIRPORTS
&
AIRLINES
. . .
AIRLINES FLYING TO
&
FROM CUBA
. . . Air Canada (
www.aircanada.com
) . . . A box in the lower corner had been circled in pencil,
DEPARTURE TAX
. . .
Everyone must pay a US$25 departure tax at the airport. It's payable in cash only.
This was out of date, she thought; the Cubans didn't want American dollars, but convertible pesos. Would he get it wrong? It was something you wanted to know, if you were leaving. And Almado
was
leaving, there was no doubt about it—with Hugo's ticket and his passport, she was sure.

Hugo had been murdered. Here was the evidence to prove her conviction. Yet, as she folded the paper neatly in two and tucked it into her bag, some hint of her previous doubts returned. There was,
after all, “no sign of foul play.” Her piece of paper was hardly proof of that. But these doubts, and all the reasoning around them, and all the imaginings, were revolting. Lorraine recoiled. She was disgusted. It was all so . . . dirty.
Filthy
. Like the taste of a copper penny in your mouth. It was all so dark: which was surely the reason she now sought the light. She went over to the window in the outside wall and looked out over the way she had come in: the hole that led in from the street, the pile of rubble, and the steel dumper that was being used to haul it away. From here, she was looking down into the bin. A few bricks, and one big timber, were scattered in the bottom, and the whole of the inside was coated with the white, floury dust of mortar and plaster . . . except for one corner, which revealed, as perfect as an angel in the snow, the outline of a man, the stain of a man, blood red: a ghastly, ghostly impression, a tracing, a palimpsest, of a man spreadeagled. She stared. And she drew her hand up to her mouth, in the classic expression of a woman dismayed; and then, quite slowly, she made the sign of the cross. She turned then. She fled. She tore her skirt getting out of the place. She ran down the stairs. Desperately— she could not pass by that terrible box—she tugged at the door, the proper door to the street, and with a screech it came free. Now she was into the light. Her eyes were dazzled. She wanted to cover her face. She felt she would die. She tried to run but the gravel sank under her feet like quicksand. She was gasping. She felt herself flailing, drowning. All the impressions that had made the world so real before now broke away and flew at her, darting like shards of glass into her eyes. There was too much, much too much, to see. Oh, no, she thought. Oh, no. It was happening again. Now. Oh, how could it. She could hardly move. Not now, not now. Her back was stiff. Her thighs had locked, her gait became a jerky goose step. And then she could go no farther. She sank down, in the blinding sun, against a filthy wall. Her heart was racing in her chest and her mouth was dry. She tried to spit: the taste of herself was gone.

A few minutes later, a young woman, very fat, floating within a cloud of pure white cotton, came strolling up. Her broad black face stared down at Lorraine and she frowned. From far away, she spoke in Spanish.

Lorraine shook her head. And then she gathered herself. “I'm afraid I only speak English.” And when the young woman didn't respond, she added, “I suffer from—” But the word
agoraphobia
forming in her mouth seemed too preposterous to pronounce. Instead she said, “Would it be possible to get a glass of water?”

The woman laughed. “Water. Yes. Is possible.” She put her hands on her hips. “You come in. I help you. Okay? Come”—she pointed— “my mother's house.”

3

She had wanted to take a pill, that had been the idea; but after handing her a glass, the young woman in white stood there, watching. Lorraine took a sip of the water. She was reluctant, somehow, to go into her bag.

Where was she? Her heart was pounding, but remotely now. Yet it was frightening. Her heart was pounding all on its own, as though it did not belong to her, frightened by something her mind could not understand. Lorraine closed her eyes. She wanted to cry. She wanted to cry out—and that was almost a relief, because she mustn't do that, she had to get control of herself. I mustn't, I mustn't.

“Drink.”

The young woman, her legs planted slightly apart, stood before her, rooted in place by the enormous inertia of her f lesh. Who was
she? How had this happened? How had she ended up here? It was a kind of protest, thinking this. She was too weak—that was the truth. She couldn't even walk on her own. She had to wait, get a little strength . . . I need to call a taxi, she thought.

“Do you have a telephone, please?”

But the black woman was now making gestures with her hands, “Drink, drink,” and finally Lorraine tilted up the glass, and she drank thirstily, greedily, until water trickled over her chin.

“Is very hot.
Hot.
”

“Exactly. Yes.” Lorraine nodded. It was true, after all. And she told herself she was feeling slightly better. This room was small and dark; not cool, but beyond the sun's reach. The sun was so intense. Everything was inflamed. Her eyes, out there, became burning coals . . . she thought, Pathetic fallacy again. But the dark did cool them like the water on her throat, and she said, “Could I have some more?” She held out her glass, and the young woman went away, calling out to someone Lorraine couldn't see—this person called back . . . an interrogative? When they'd first come in, the young woman had also disappeared, and called out in the same way, before returning with the low, light armchair Lorraine was sitting in. Now she realized it was the only piece of furniture in the room, at least of a conventional kind. The room was small; three of the walls were grey, cement, plastered, but the fourth was covered with wallpaper, white, with a pattern of silver metallic flowers. Pushed against this wall was an odd construction, a display of drapery, falls of ornamental cloth spread out, bunched, gathered. The fabric was obviously heavy, and had a lustrous sheen, like the cloth in religious robes. It created the effect of an altar, though once she looked at it, Lorraine decided it must be the couch. The left arm and back were draped with yellow cloth, the right with blue, and the centre was white, but the
white section was lifted up, higher than the rest, by something placed on the seat of the couch, probably the coffee table tipped up on end. Regardless of colour, the pattern of the cloth was the same, branches of silvery leaves—so not quite matching the wallpaper behind.

She was distracted, looking at this; and she forgot her original thought, to put a pill into her mouth while the Santeria girl was out of the room.

The more she looked at it, the less sure Lorraine became of its intention. Because it almost seemed that the cloths covered three people, sitting side by side on the couch. It was rather eerie, in fact. And in the corner, a fourth figure had been created from red cloth, perhaps draped over a tall bar stool, so it was exactly like the others, but apparently standing. Yet all the figures, even the red one and the white one, would have been on the small side; childish; and the total effect was beautiful but in a childish way. Moreover, enhancing the impression of a doll's house, or a child's dress-up game, a number of objects were arranged around the feet of the figures on the couch, one of which was a tiny wicker chair with a real doll sitting on it, a black boy in white trousers and a red gingham shirt, topped with a red cap, like an old-fashioned bellhop's. Beside the doll were a number of dishes, a pestle and mortar, a rattle, two covered jars, one red and one blue; and yet more cloth, but variegated in colour—purple, emerald, bronze—and gathered into a pouf.

Lorraine was still taking all this in when the young woman returned, accompanied by an older woman dressed in a plain blue skirt and a blouse of a lighter shade of blue—rather ordinary amongst all this splendour. It was the older woman who had the glass of water and she extended it to Lorraine. “You are better?”

“Thank you, yes.” Lorraine took the glass and drank; and as she began taking the glass away from her mouth, the woman made a
small gesture with her hand to drink more. Lorraine did. She finished it. Now she was going to ask again about a telephone; but there was no sign of one at all. She decided there was no point, and instead she said, “This is very beautiful . . . your altar. It is an altar?”