The Rainy Day Man: Contemporary Romance (Suspense and Political Mystery Book 1) (9 page)

             
The command car was parked where I had left it, by the hedge.  The steering wheel and the seats were still warm from the afternoon sun, which was now deep into the horizon.  The windows of the priest's house were already all dark except for one, the one where an hour beforehand I had thought I had seen a light and a figure looking out.  I started the engine and even began moving forward when I realized that the square, dark figure leaning on a table had been the priest.

***

              Dura, like an enchanted river, flowed uphill.  I drove mechanically, perturbed and confused.  In the empty market square the blinds of the shops were half closed, like ailing eyelids.  Beyond them shadowy figures crouched on stools sipping their evening tea.  I glanced at them from the height of the command car and they returned knowing looks.  On the outskirts of the village, the smell of the area struck me: dust and dryness and the fermenting of fruit in the orchards.  The number nine was painted on a milestone.  I stopped beside it, trying to sort out my thoughts.

             
It was then that the engine ominously hesitated twice and fell silent.  I set the hand-brake and got out to take a look.  Globs of a sticky, gray substance had accumulated beneath the carburetor.  I hurried to the back of the vehicle.  In the metal groove around the mouth of the petrol tank were tiny white grains.  I picked one up on my fingertip and put it to my mouth.  It was sweet.

             
An old trick.

             
I kicked the tire in frustration.  Behind me the village was closing for the night.  At that moment I could have burned it down.  Three thousand people for one hoodlum.

             
I heard a honk.

             
I turned around.  The woman was sitting behind the wheel of the Rolls.  Her face, beneath the brim of a large, dark hat, was tense.  I went over to her, walking in the line of her gaze which, predictably, exuded hostility.

             
"I want to pass."  That lilting voice.  I touched the side of the car and jumped back.  It was boiling hot. 

             
"Sugar," I pointed to the large, useless command car.  "In the petrol tank."

             
She did not react.

             
"If you reverse I'll try and push it to the side."  She obeyed. 

             
When I came back to her, gesturing with my arm at the empty road, she said:  "A week has passed."

             
"Yes."  The subject of time bothered us both, though not for the same reasons.

             
She glanced into the mirror and put the car into forward gear, her face displaying anger and disappointment.  Accidentally or by design the clutch was released suddenly and I was left in a white, dusty cloud.  One of her tires threw up a stone, which hit the full pod of a lupin plant.  Small seeds floated into the wind.  I suddenly felt slightly itchy.  The contact with the woman had begun to arouse me.

             
I walked in a straight line, through the refugee camp into the back yard of the Athenaeum.  It was about eight o'clock.  The end of the day.  The air was heavy with the weariness of a summer night, an atmosphere of, "nothing of any significance is going to happen till the morning."  Fragments of conversations came from the soldiers' rooms.  A tow truck left with a clanking of chains to rescue the command car.  The books I had brought were waiting, emptied of all power, on the windowsill in my room.  I went down to the communications room, where the instruments were chirruping asthmatically. 

             
"What's our station called?" I asked the duty officer.

             
"Lighthouse."

             
I took a telegram form and wrote:

             
              TO: HQ

             
              FROM: LIGHTHOUSE.

(*) REQUEST INFORMATION RE: KHAMIS, ANTON. 
DOCTOR.  LAST PLACE OF RESIDENCE:  DURA.  ARRESTED ON 2 AUGUST 1982.

             
The duty officer numbered the telegram and fed it into the coding machine.  Then he crumpled the form and threw it into an empty oil can which stood in the corner and upon which the words 'Army of the Syrian-Arab Republic - Air Force' were stamped.

             
An irresistible wave swept over me.  For the first time since leaving Paris I felt close to the life I had loved, where reality beggars imagination.

CHAPTER FOUR

The next morning I awoke prepared.  The Syrian oil can was a body and I was about to give it a soul.  "Something small, not harmful but impressive, not painful but convincing... primitive, a little rural, giving the impression of having been produced by a local underground..."  The challenge embodied in those requirements filled me with a surprising sense of joy.

             
First I had to get a few things.  Dura was little more than a pile of junk which had been recycled over and over again and which years of battles, pillage and an erratic electricity supply had made useless.  The only chance of obtaining anything of any value lay in the dawn visitors, people who crossed the firing lines in the dark, waded through battlefields which had been abandoned for the night and avoided the various armies, militia and highwaymen merely to present themselves at first light by the entrance to the Athenaeum, get past the guard and hesitantly ask for Scheckler.

             
I looked on as they drove cars into the safety of the courtyard, parked them at a respectful distance and then, with a mixture of eagerness and reserve, displayed their wares before him, addressing him as "sir."  Scheckler examined everything patiently, in the pristine whiteness of his eternal under shirt. When he chose something he paid generously, with food from the kitchen or spare parts from the supplies store, and money too.  Whatever he judged imperfect was banished with a wave of his hand to the back of the courtyard.  It was there that I was waiting.

             
When he noticed me he crowed proudly, "Choose something, anything you want..."

             
At his feet were radios, watches and videos, cassettes and batteries, bottles of liquor and tins of food.  In front of the pile stood two of the strongest soldiers from the repair shop, tire repairers.  Their heavy hands rested on their hips, guaranteeing order and cooperation from the other soldiers. 

             
"Something that can heat things up," I explained, "to make coffee."

             
Scheckler laughed. "There's nothing you have to heat."  This was his moment of glory and everyone around him had to enjoy it.  He put a skinny arm around my shoulders and called to the soldiers of the repair shop who were stowing the goods he had chosen into hidden compartments in the bellies of the trucks.  "Whenever this guy wants coffee or anything else, give it to him.  He's my friend."

             
"All the same," I protested, "I'd rather..."

             
His hand was still gesturing towards one of the soldiers, who was walking around carrying a tray laden with cups of coffee, but his head was already involved in the purchase of a gold watch in a presentation box.  "To our friend, Kamal," was engraved on the lid in letters of gold, "to mark twenty years of productive work."  Further on a jumble of goods and salesmen in groups were waiting for his verdict beside their cars, sipping coffee and murmuring among themselves. As I wandered through them no one urged me to buy or even to look at the merchandise.  It was a relaxed kind of market, bathed in gratitude and subdued conviviality.  In the places these dawn traders had come from, young soldiers had exchanged their physical wholeness and their lives for medals and sometimes even less.  Anyone who had escaped from there knew perfectly well that history might remember those who had conquered routes or opened roads, but life would smile upon those who smuggled out a transistor radio or a good watch.

             
I had almost given up when I saw the toaster.  It was lying on the trunk of an old car together with a few other worthless, somewhat damaged, slightly burnt items.  The man who was selling them stood at the side, away from the others, as though he was there by chance.  After he had accepted payment from me he resumed smoking the dying cigarette in his hand.  A moment later, when I returned to my room and looked out of the window, he was gone.

             
The others left too and the courtyard was once again the parking area of the garage.  I went down to the garden, where I picked up two red bricks.  In the petrol booth I filled the Syrian oil can with petrol.  No one chided me;  I was Scheckler's friend.

              I shut myself in my room.  The toaster was of some unknown make and fell apart with three turns of a screwdriver.  I spread the sides, which were made of battered metal, on the floor of the cupboard, to serve as radiators and intensify the heat.  I laid the heating elements across them on chips I had broken off from the bricks.  On several large chips I placed the tin with its contents.  Then I plugged the whole device into the electricity.

             
The heating elements reddened slowly, giving off an odor of burnt dust.  I touched the petrol with my finger.  It was still cold.  The base of the tin was barely warm.  I went back to the garage.  The officer in charge gave me a sour look.  The innards of a car, maybe the carburetor of the command car, were spread out on the metal table in front of him.  I asked for some soap, "the simplest kind..."  He gestured towards the corner where there was a dripping tap and an almost empty can of soap powder.  Beside it were two full, sealed cans.  One of the mechanics scraped some of the remaining soap out of the can and washed his hands in a river of black suds.  When he had finished I washed my hands too, squinting at the full cans.  How long was it till the next coffee break?  I went out and sat on the bench from which, eight days earlier, I had watched the doctor giving out vitamins.  A group of children recognized me and ran to the fence.  This time they merely stood in silence and looked.

             
At ten the soldiers of the garage went to have their break.  The can beside the sink was lying on its side, quite empty.  The other two were still sealed.  I took one of them and turned to go.  In the doorway I turned back and took the empty one too.  Then I carried the two cans, one full, one empty, to the back door of the Athenaeum, carefully passing the kitchen door, and up the stairs to my room.  As I had expected, the petrol was lukewarm.  One heating element had melted and the other had stopped working.  I disconnected the device from the electricity and sat on the edge of the bed to plan everything all over again.

             
My next stop was the bathroom at the end of the corridor, where I filled the empty soap can with water.  Then I dismantled the steel wire from the water tank of the toilet and took the copper rings from the empty curtain rail.  Inside my cupboard every item received a new mission.  The Syrian oil can came to rest in the soap can, which was filled with water.  Beside it floated the copper rings, hung on two long arms which I had fashioned from the steel wire.  I detached the electricity flex from the toaster and connected it to the steel arms.  Then I switched on the overhead lamp and put the plug into the socket.

             
The light stayed on, meaning that my improvised device had not damaged the electrical system.  But there was nothing to be seen in the water.  I dragged a chair over to the corner of the room, as far away as possible from the petrol fumes, lit a cigarette and waited.  By the time I had finished my cigarette tiny bubbles were already floating beside the rings.  For the first time in ages I felt slightly satisfied.  I took a book from the windowsill and lay down on my bed to read.

             
I had read about a hundred pages when faint steam rose from the water and the petrol was hot enough to absorb all the soap powder.  The unlikely smell was like that of burning washing water.  I breathed it in deeply, with gratification.  Then I opened the window wide and the smell mingled with the almost embarrassing sweetness of the afternoon bread which wafted up from the houses in the village.

***

Towards evening I disconnected the heating unit from the power supply.  The mixture in the tin solidified slowly, changing color from murky-white to gray and then to light blue.  I watched it, enchanted, as if it was the first time.  I shook the tin carefully twice.  The glycerin left from the soap hissed, and some bubbles splashed onto the sides of the cupboard, the floor and the opposite wall.  I wiped it all away lovingly, as if it were the vomit of a sick child.  For a moment the old Vincent was awake within me.  'Isn't it a miracle?' he asked, 'that in any hole, anywhere in the world, we can produce matter as full of life as this from lowly and readily- available materials?'

     The process soon ended.  The material became solid napalm, of a pale green hue, which cooled slowly, along with my satisfaction. I would now have to think about a detonator.  An electrical process was out of the question in a place so wild and crawling with rodents which would chew through wires, and rivulets which could appear overnight and cause a short circuit.  What was needed was a controlled and protected chemical process. 
Something which would generate tremendous and concentrated heat and slowly ignite the tin of napalm, taking a relatively long period of time, so that I could get away.

             
I went to the office, sat down on my chair and rocked back and forth, listening to the outpouring of guttural cursing which came from a quarrel in the refugee camp.  In the middle of my desk lay a folded sheet of paper, another telegram which had come during the day.  Absently, I began to read it:  "IN REPLY TO YOUR CABLE 90087: KHAMIS, ANTON, DOCTOR, DURA: NOT ON OUR LISTS." 

             
How could that be?

             
I wrote in pencil on a new form:  "PLEASE CHECK SPELLING: KAMIS, HAMIS, KOMIS, KHOMIS;  ANTIN, ANATOLE, ANTOINE."  I could not find any words similar to Doctor.  As for the name of the village, I decided to bet on "TURA, DORA, DAURA."

             
I folded up the form with a new sense of concern.  Of the thousands of people arrested by the army since the start of the war, it was in registering my prisoner that there had been some slip-up.  I wondered if Scheckler had kept his promise to contact the detention camp and demand the form which proved that he had brought the doctor there.  After that I chided myself for not having kept the doctor's letter as evidence.  I took the copy I had made out of the drawer.  The time that had passed gave the hints and convoluted phrases a romantic air.  Only the sentence about his fear of "the moment when the blind open their eyes" radiated a certain gravity, like someone suddenly becoming serious while telling a joke.

             
And then, in that circuitous way in which the unraveled ends of thoughts come together, I saw in my mind's eye the detonator I needed. It consisted of three bottles tied together and sealed with wax.  The material inside them was clear, scented and easily transported, but splendidly inflammable upon contact with the air. I saw the nature of the material, the level of heat it generated, the way it would be connected to the tin of napalm I had made and, primarily, the source from which I would obtain it:  the medicine cabinet in the clinic.

             
Butyllithium.  The impersonal, somewhat complicated name rapidly settled itself within me, soon becoming a need which could be satisfied with just one bottle of simple antibiotic.  I glanced at my watch.  Twenty past nine.  Did anyone sleep at the clinic at night?  I tore the telegram form off the block, put the letter in my pocket and switched the desk lamp off.

             
The usual duty officer was in the communications room.  I shoved the telegram in front of him, waited until he had finished typing the list of words and went outside.  Everything was as usual:  the drivers were throwing the backgammon pieces onto the faded board, an engine was revving up in the garage and night insects were circling the lamps in the courtyard.  Beyond the guard post lay the road, dark and inviting.  Possessed by a kind of enchantment, I jumped over the chain to the expected, inevitable course: the church, the market square and the road up the mountain.  I walked quickly, exposed and unarmed, thinking about the way I would heat up the antibiotics to a temperature at which the various elements would separate by means of a drill I would have to steal from the repair-shop and turn into a mixer which would combine the Butyllithium with something oily and free of neutralizers, maybe hair oil which I could get from Scheckler.  More than anything else, this almost obsessive march was the true essence of my life: a perpetual, frantic advance, lined with plans and contrivances, towards the chasm between everything and nothing, between sudden, glorious death by explosion and Hannah, the dreariness of home and the bursts of mild affection I could obtain from Jonathan.

             
I descended into the wadi.  Darkness enfolded me in cool, alien wafts.  The anxiety of a lone man exposed in a huge expanse mingled with an intoxicating fluttering of my senses. The other side of the wadi flowed down toward me, as steep and bare as a dyke.  Solitary seedlings had emerged in the row of radishes.  The three buildings were dark.  The dogs were quiet.

             
The clinic was the building to the east.  I tried to chart my course on the basis of a vague recollection of that afternoon encounter.  I felt my way across a slippery slope and jumped lightly over the irrigation channel.  Then I sank silently into some muddy ground and turned towards a shiny white wall and the dark window in the middle of it.

             
Then the dogs discovered me.