The Color of Night

CHAPTER 26

SPLIT, CROATIA

The old woman was seventy-four years old. Her left leg had been blown off just above the knee in a little town called Lijeska in Bosnia Herzegovina, late in the war. She was taken away to Gorazde to a grim little hospital, where she waited out the remainder of the fighting. Her husband had been killed early in the conflict, one daughter had disappeared, and the second daughter had fled to Split, where she had friends.

When the fighting had been over several months, her daughter from Split had shown up at the hospital one day and taken her away to live with her. Now, thanks to French doctors, she had had three operations on her leg and had been fitted with a prosthesis that she kept under her bed in her daughter’s house.

The mother and daughter waited patiently in line at the ferry quay. The daughter was very thin, with lifeless, dusty brown hair that hung to her shoulders. Her face portrayed no expression at all, and she seemed resigned to waiting, in silence. The old woman was sitting in a battery-powered wheelchair, also provided by French relief programs. Unfortunately the batteries had lost their charge a week earlier, and the daughter had not had the time-she worked the night shift in a small laundry-to have the battery recharged. During the last week the daughter had had to push the wheelchair wherever the old woman needed to go. The old woman was carrying a small suitcase in her lap. Her daughter was taking her to visit her sister, who had fled the former Yugoslavia well before the war and now lived in London.

The ferry left very early in the morning, passing through the Split channel and heading out into the open Adriatic. The old woman sat at the observation rail near the front of the ferry, staring across the hazy sea toward Italy. After an hour she opened her suitcase and took out a plastic bag from which she withdrew a loaf of bread, a large wedge of cheese, and a bundle of little green onions. The two women proceeded to eat, watching the blue gray coast of Italy grow larger in the approaching distance.

When the ferry arrived at Pescara, the two women disembarked and took a taxi to the Stazione Centrale, where they boarded a train for Rome. A bus would have been much quicker, but the wheelchair presented a problem. In silence they watched out the window of their compartment as the train wound across the middle of Italy from sea to sea, from the Adriatic to the Tyrrhenian.

The train finally pulled into the Stazione Termini near the center of Rome late in the afternoon. Tired now, the two women took another taxi to the Leonardo da Vinci International Airport. After half an hour of waiting in lines the daughter finally purchased two budget tickets to London. But the flight didn’t leave for two hours. They settled down in one of the terminals. Again the plastic bag came out of the old suitcase, and the rest of the bread and cheese and onions were consumed as the two women watched the milling crowds with the weary but fascinated eyes of two provincials waiting on the brink of the twenty-first century.

When it came time for their departure, the old woman was told that she would have to be taken out of her personal wheelchair and put into one of the airline’s wheelchairs to be boarded. She panicked. That wheelchair was the only way she could move. The French doctors had given it to her. It was hers to keep. She could not leave her wheelchair, no, under no circumstances could she leave it. Where would she get another one in England? The French doctors…

She was assured that her wheelchair would be folded up and put in the cargo bins in the belly of the plane, and she would be able to return to it in London. To placate her, they let her watch them put a tag on the chair that said it belonged to her and put it on the conveyor belt that would take it to the luggage carts that would carry it to the plane.

She boarded first, was installed in the first row in the cabin-there were no first-class seats on this economy flight-and her daughter showed her out the window how the little electric carts were loading the baggage into the plane. Strangest of luck, they even saw her very own wheelchair itself being loaded into the plane. The old woman settled back restlessly, leaned forward several times to check the progress of the loading, and, finally, resigned herself to having to trust the blind promises of absolute strangers.

There was a thunderstorm on the flight to London. Twice the passengers all gasped in unison as the plane dropped suddenly into the rainy darkness. The old woman and her daughter grasped each other’s hands in the dim cabin gloom, staring unblinkingly at the flight attendants, who had strapped themselves into their tiny seats against the back wall of the cockpit.

The Alitalia flight finally landed at London Heathrow, the last flight from Italy for the night. The daughter followed meekly as the old woman was wheeled off the plane and was put on one of the courtesy trams. Together they rode swiftly through the concourse, the tram beeping to part the crowds as they sped past the fluorescent-lighted gift shops, through the invisible but distinct odors of the quick-food eateries, past the lounges and the pubs and the gateway waiting areas filled with bleary-eyed travelers.

The tram waited until their wheelchair arrived on the conveyor, and the old woman was helped into it and her daughter pushed her along the way to the customs stations. Their papers were examined, and they were questioned. Two customs officers came out of a back room and told the daughter, who spoke a modest amount of heavily accented English, that they would have to ask her mother to sit in the waiting area for a few moments while they examined her wheelchair.

Once again she was helped into one of the chairs to one side in the waiting area. She watched as the two customs officers examined her wheelchair in detail, using an odd kind of metal rod to tap-tap-tap on every inch of the tubular steel frame. They pulled off the cushions and put them through the X-ray machines. They unscrewed the black plastic armrests, looked at them, and put them back again.

They tested the wheelchair’s motor. Why wouldn’t it work?

The daughter explained.

The two officers unscrewed the battery from its brackets and took it off the wheelchair. They told the daughter they were sorry, but they would have to keep the battery. Her eyes grew large, and the old woman began to protest.

Please, please understand, the officer said. Electrical batteries were lined with lead and could not be X-rayed to check for explosives. To make sure there was nothing in it, they would have to dismantle it, which would ruin it. The old woman began to tell them that the French doctor had given it to her. She said she would not be able to get around, couldn’t shop, couldn’t go to the market without her wheelchair. She waved her arms, protesting vociferously to her daughter.

The daughter tried to placate her, but she began to wail. The English were ruining her French wheelchair. Finally one of the officers left and returned with a piece of paper that he called a voucher, a check for the approximate amount of the cost of a new battery. They were sorry, but this would have to do. It would be quite easy to get a new battery in the morning.

The daughter comforted the old woman and helped her back into her French wheelchair. The customs officers put the battery on a cart and took it away to be dismantled.

The old woman was finally able to lie down on a lumpy, swaybacked bed in a dowdy flat on the outer edges of Basildon on London’s east side. She was asleep in moments. Her daughter made a telephone call.

At two o’clock the old woman was awakened. Her daughter told her that the people had come for the package.

The old woman pulled herself up on one elbow and looked at the young woman with wiry red hair who was standing at the foot of the bed.

“We’ll just have a look, ma’am,” the girl said.

The old woman said something to her daughter. The daughter looked at the redheaded girl.

“She wants her money first.”

The redheaded girl smiled and took a small bundle out of her purse. She gave it to the old woman. The old woman gave it to her daughter, who unwrapped it and counted the money. The daughter nodded, said it was the right amount, and then gave it back to the old woman. The old woman eyed the redheaded girl, put the money in her lap, and raised her dress on one side, exposing the stump of her leg.

The girl sat on the edge of the bed and pulled an elastic stocking off the leg. A cotton sock covered the stump. The girl removed the sock, revealing a packet attached to the stump by wide bands of a flesh-colored adhesive. The packet was the same diameter as the stump and molded to appear to be the end part of it. It added about ten centimeters to the length of the stump.

The girl began undoing the adhesive and in just a few moments removed the packet, which was wrapped in heavy plastic. The material in the packet was dense, doughy.

“Thank you very much,” the redheaded girl said.

The old woman nodded and lay back on the lumpy bed, looking at the girl with uncaring eyes, clutching the bundle of bank notes to her stomach.

The redheaded girl took the packet and left.