The Pickup

Chapter 42

Whether she dreams or whether a streaming profusion of thought was what she decides she must have dreamt, does not much matter. On the eve of moving out of some tentative anchorage it is either way the natural return of comparison, attempting the matching, somehow fitting together images, years, days, moments. The relative duration of these may be reversed in their significance. The moment is longer than the year. Whether this is a raided store of the subconscious or a wakeful night — when so-called dreams are recounted to yourself in the morning, how much is being invented in the urge to find the coherence between the conscious and subconscious; that must exist; is unattainable? Must be found. And if it could be found — there would be certainty. Of what? What does that mean? Of why you live as you do. And how that ought to be. No rules, not those of The Suburbs or even (not any more!) those no-rules of The Table — the elusive coherence is what there would be to go by — something of what is known grandly as the truth. But avoid big words, for Chris’ sake, for the Prophet’s sake. Well, the individual truth. Nobody else’s.

The stream of vision, thoughts, re-creation has a kind of narrative of its own; the desert is a good place for it to relate itself. On the terrace in California (which, like the child’s ship, she had never seen except in prototype in the media) there are assembled the guests of Nigel Ackroyd Summers’ Sundays, Danielle and her mother; or Danielle-and-her-mother one and the same. Men beside a sauna (sauna! where does that detail come from!) are talking about winnings and losses at Black Jack and buying into the Future on the stock exchange. The latest husband introduces Ibrahim to the right people, there’s the international website man who emigrated to Australia and the black lawyer turned business entrepreneur. Her mother/Danielle introduces Ibrahim/Abdu to women, bringing him forward by the hand: my son-in-law, an oriental prince (as The Table, she knew, used to laugh about her pickup behind her back) in Gucci shoes. Armani pants and Ralph Lauren shirt Danielle’s bought him, his beauty is an exotic dish to sample along with the pool-side lunch. He’s still wearing his old elegant scarf round his neck. All that is left of him. Whatever he was, had been, is? Sliding himself out from under the vehicle, sitting in silent judgment upon us at The Table, flung upon his back on the bed in the cottage, now carefully repacking the canvas bag in the lean-to. What was it she’d read. There was a poet’s novel, she didn’t remember the title or the writer, The Table poet had given her, insisted she must read — something in it was dredged up now its time came to be understood: for her to understand what she had done. ‘I was occupied in picturing him to myself; I had undertaken the task of imagining him.’ But he is himself. Nobody’s task. Tell it to the desert; that is safe. Each time she faced the desert from the stump of a wall and then rose and walked out a way, never too far, could be the last time; meanwhile she was continuing to do what she had discovered she could do, occupied her final days as she had since she bought the two air tickets and came with him here, to his place. Right up to the date they boarded the plane, she would continue; it was her small farewell gift to the school children, leaving them with another few words of the language he had to apply himself to acquire more fluently if he were to get what he wanted where he and she were going. It was her small way of thanking the conversational tea circle and others who had come to her, for— well — their need of her.

There is no last time, for the desert. The desert is always. It does not matter that she has turned and gone back up the street, buying three circles of warm fritters from the vendor as she returns to the family home, the lean-to for transients.

Out to buy fritters.

They decided together, often disagreeing and then giving in, each indulgent to the other, on what to take and what to leave behind. Some abandonments were reversed.

One of the brass trays? Just that little one. If you can squash it in at the bottom.

They regarded each other mock-questioningly a moment, laughed. With Maryam she had bought a supplementary suitcase at the market, a cardboard affair with tin locks instead of the digital combination one on the elegant suitcase. His mother, through Maryam as emissary, had provided two sets of flower-patterned bed sheets as a start, wherever they might find the next bed, and it was not possible to distribute these discreetly, like the other ‘wedding presents’ they couldn’t carry.

All right. Between my mother’s sheets, if you want.

They wrapped the family Koran like a mummy, to protect it in his canvas bag, and then discussed whether it wouldn’t be safer to have it in the cabin. She taped it once again in plastic film so that toothpaste or deodorant, which might leak under pressure changes in an aircraft, could not harm it in her overnight pouch.

What about that perfume stuff the women gave you. You like that.

No … no, Maryam and Khadija have it, I know from experience what can happen with perfume … and those phials don’t have proper stoppers. I wouldn’t think of putting them in there with the Book. And the sheets — you’d never get the scent out.

Her books, her humble Koran, were all that was left to be packed; they went into the cardboard case; Ahmad, handyman of the family, home from the butcher’s yard, supplied a length of rope and strapped the case to take the strain off cheap locks. He remarked something to his brother and he and Ibrahim both exclaimed and laughed.

What does he say?

Ibrahim’s face crumpled wryly. Emigrant’s case. It must break… if it even gets to the other side. Piece of rubbish.

And now there was nothing left, of them, him and her, in the lean-to, except the bed they still slept in, made love in, for a few more days. He had insisted that they should be ready, no object, nothing to look back for, roll out the elegant case (it has wheels, of course), pick up the canvas bag and the cardboard acquisition and walk out to the taxi already ordered in advance for when the day and hour came; so he had them on the point of departure three days ahead of the day.

That night, after he had slipped from her body and rills left of her pleasure had ended, she spoke; but then sensed from the rhythm of his breathing that his silence did not mean he had heard what she feared and shamed herself with so that she could hardly goad herself to say what she had to say. He was asleep.

Just say the word

It was better perhaps to be less cowardly and not choose the dark, where you would not have to see the other’s face. More honest in the morning. They were dressing two days before their departure for America when she chose the moment, the close space of the lean-to round them when his brother had long left for the butchery, his other brother had gone to his post at the café, the women in the kitchen, except Khadija probably still in bed, the children, little Leila, off to school, and the mother — the mother perhaps at her prayer rug asking divine help to protect her son on his endless journey— that was the moment to say to him, not with I have something to tell you as a useless preparation, but directly, right out for what was between them; I am not going.

Where’s it you’re supposed to go?

For him, they’ve already left this place; but she might have one of the women she’d known here who expected still to see her.

I am not going — coming to America.

What is it you’re saying?

His voice was normal, as if sometimes when he needed a simplified phrase for something she had said in English.

I’m not going to America.

Of course you are going to America. On Thursday.

No. I’m not going.

Julie, what are you afraid of? What are these nerves. You are never like this.

He is ready to come to her, embrace her, soothe her, they must get away from here, this place has taken the spirit out of her.

Her hands are up, palms open, fingers splayed, holding him off. No. It’s not that. I’m not going.

What is she, who is she now, this woman who beckoned him to her, if ever a woman did, who followed him to this place — bewilderment, rage, what is it you feel that you never knew before, never would get yourself into this kind of provocation. Are you mad? His whisper is louder than a yell. You have gone out of your head. We are going on Thursday, Thursday, Thursday. That’s it.