The Sudden Appearance of Hope

Chapter 87

A café near Hotel Madellena.

He’s already paying by the time I notice.

No, I say, no, I’ll get it.

Too late, he’s bought the drinks, but thank you. He has never had a thief offer to buy him a cup of coffee before.

We sit. Checked red and white tablecloth. Luca put a packet of brown sugar in his coffee, stirred, anti-clockwise, four times, tapped the spoon twice, held the cup by its little handle, sipped, almost slurped, head rolling back, put the cup down, the liquid drained.

I watched all this, as a supplicant might watch a priest, then looked slowly from the prophetic grains of coffee left behind in the cup to Luca’s more eloquent face.

“Hello,” I said.

“Hello.”

Silence a while.

Then at last, “I have a Dictaphone.”

“That’s fine.”

“Good. I’m… good.”

He laid the recorder on the table, digital, a single red light to show that you were winning, a USB portal at the back.

Silence.

At last, a laugh, a shake of his head. “I am being a bad policeman,” he said, “but now that we’re here, I’m really not sure what I want to say.”

I shrugged, and then to fill the silence chose bad words. “I heard you left Interpol.”

His head rose like a dog starting at the sound of a gun, and his bottom lip curled in and out before saying, quiet, “Sacked. Not left. Though the time was coming, I suppose.”

“Was it me?”

“Yes. You were part of it.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Are you?”

“Yes. I didn’t mean… sorry.”

Confusion; now that we’re here, nothing is what he imagined. Then leaning forward, hands palm-down on the table, pushing into it as if the world might drop away beneath him, holding on for dear life. “Did I ever arrest you?”

“Yes, once, in Vienna.”

He slapped the table top hard, leant back in his chair, shaking his head. “I knew it! All the notes, the paperwork, your fingerprints! We had it all but no one could remember — I thought it was a clerical error but the error was so big, it was all so neat, so perfect, in the end we let it go because thinking about how it had happened was more awkward than ignoring it, I told them, I said that we… how did I do it? How did I catch you?”

“You pretended to be a potential buyer.”

“I tried that several times, but it never…”

“It did. In Vienna I fell for it.”

“And how did you…?” He gestured feebly, looking for a word.

“You left me alone in the interview room. I waited for a while, then demanded to be released. Since the duty officer couldn’t remember who I was, he assumed I was what I claimed to be and let me go. Like you said, it’s sometimes more awkward to deal with a thing than to pretend it doesn’t exist.”

“So you just walked out of there.”

“Yeah.”

He let out of a puff of breath, a smile on his face, an injured man vindicated at last, justice, your honour, justice to the wronged.

“And any other time? Did I catch you in Brazil, or Oman?”

“No, I’m afraid not.”

“What about Hong Kong? The file, the information I received…”

“Yes, that was me.”

“Why?” The question burns, he shakes with the releasing of it, so many years, and now, the Dictaphone between us, his fingers white where they press into the table top.

I shrugged. “My buyer betrayed me, tried to have me killed. It seemed like a kind of… justice, I guess. And I wanted you to come to Hong Kong. I wanted you to be near me, You seemed like a good man. Sounds daft now.” A half truth, a half sentence, stopping myself short, frightened of everything the truth might mean, the truth of me, I am Hope, I am thief, I am stalker, I am the stranger you can’t remember kissing.

He leant back in his chair, fingers clinging now to the edge of the table, a climber just holding on. “In Hong Kong… no,” he stopped himself. “That’s not the order of things. A year ago I was contacted by the man you call Gauguin. He’d pulled some strings, seen the Vienna file, matched fingerprints he had from Dubai to your file. He said, ‘Look, you have her fingerprints, the paperwork from her arrest, you arrested this woman and now you can’t remember her.’ He was very persuasive. And I thought back through your crimes, and I thought back to São Paulo, Hong Kong, places where I’d followed you and where things had seemed… strange. In Hong Kong there was a night when I woke and there was lipstick on my neck. I hadn’t… but there it was and I thought… it was madness of course, but I checked the CCTV, saw… and there you were. I had to put your photo on the computer screen, tape it on to compare your face, but I knew, because I couldn’t remember you. We went into the elevator together. You were limping, I assume…”

“I’d been shot on Hung Hom Pier, yes. Said it was an accident at work.”

“And I believed that?”

“I don’t think you were expecting a thief to say hello. I’d approached you in São Paulo, I knew—”

“What did you do in São Paulo?” Incredulity, rage, beginning to rise, but he’s keeping it under control, just, pulling back the tempest.

“Nothing. We had a drink.”

“We had a drink?” The fingers of one hand grip white against the table, then jerk up, as if stung, hang for a second in the air between us, and for a moment I don’t know if he’s going to hit me or not.

Then there it is, the copper’s sigh, getting control of himself, pulling it all back together, jaw tight, eyes narrow.

“We had a drink,” I repeated. “I pretended to be a policewoman from the local service. It was just a drink.”

“Why?”

“You were…”

“Investigating? A good man?” The words came out edged with bile, and he heard it, and half closed his eyes again, and when they opened again he was calm, flat, listening, a cop on the job.

The café turned, the door opened, the door closed, cold air drifting in from outside. A woman laughed at the counter, the checkout till pinged shut, we sat in silence.

Then I said, fast and flat, surprised to hear myself speak, “In the short term, these deeds are yours, as well as mine.” His eyebrows flickered, fingers tight, but he said nothing. “You met me. Spoke to me. Formed an impression. Your short-term memory can hold me long enough. You made a judgement. Would you like me if you knew who I was? Probably not, you have long-term impressions that a short-term experience cannot trump. But for a second, forget that. Meet me now, for the very first time. In this moment, who do you see? Create a picture of me second by second, no past, no future, no care, no responsibility. You do that; I do not do it for you. I can position myself in a certain way, say certain things, but in the end, the choice is yours. You chose this. In Hong Kong—”

“We went up in the elevator together,” he interrupted, stopping words he didn’t want to hear.

I shrugged, let him finish.

“And six hours and twenty-eight minutes later, you got into the elevator on my floor, and took it to yours.”

Silence.

“Would it make a difference if I told you?” I asked, chin resting on the netted top of my hands. “Everything I can tell you is just words, and you’d have no way of knowing if it was true. Only trust, or rejection, or something doubtful in between. Your choice.”

Silence a while. Then: “I am a good man.” He said it so softly, I wondered if he knew he had spoken at all. Then he looked up, and a little louder, “I am a good man. I don’t forget the people I’ve slept with; that’s not who I am.”

“And here we are. Is that why you wanted to meet? To ask all of this?”

“Yes.”

“Why did you think I’d come?”

“Because of Hong Kong. Because I think you’re obsessive and lonely.”

I shrugged.

“Do you want pity? A thief is a thief.”

“How would you live, in my shoes?” I replied. “It’s tough drawing housing benefit when no one down the Jobcentre remembers you. You’d think that stuff would be automated, but hell no, government can’t have slackers, slackers have to be assessed, interviewed, catalogued. Tough getting catalogued, when people forget to file the report. Try getting flatmates, doing an interview, getting treated by a doctor, finding friends — what would you have done?”

“Isn’t it your fault, that you’re forgotten? Isn’t it something you choose?”

My turn to consider hitting him. I contemplated the idea with cool detachment, and found it surprisingly easy to let it go. “No. I never chose any of this.”

“You chose to steal Perfection.”

“Yes.”

“You chose to manipulate me. To… to…”

His voice trailed off. He rolled his teaspoon between his fingers, one way, then the other; reached a decision, and turned the Dictaphone off. Put it in his jacket pocket.

“We slept together in Hong Kong,” he said at last.

“Yes.”

“And in Brazil?”

“No.”

“What about here?”

“No.”

“Do you want to?” Not an invitation; a simple question.

“Are you sure you don’t want to keep recording?” I replied.

A shaking of his head. “I don’t want to remember this.”

“If you don’t remember it, it doesn’t mean anything.”

“It’ll mean something to you.”

“Is that enough?”

“I don’t know. I am what you could call a coward. You say that you are a thief, you say it like it’s… it’s something of what you are. I say that I was a policeman, a career man. They knew my name at the local deli, I was in the community choir, a would-be family man. I was many things that made me who I thought I was, and now I am not. All of that was taken away, and I followed you. You pulled on my strings and I followed, and I lost my job and I would have done it again to catch you, you became… finding you became a part of who I am, just like the rest of it. You were… my obsession. Does that excite you? Are you aroused by that, to know that I needed you, needed to catch you, just as you needed someone to fuck?”

Anger, rising, though his voice hid it, his face tightening, compressing with the effort of keeping it in.

“No,” I replied quietly. “It doesn’t excite me anymore.”

“I think I am a coward. If you walked away now, I would forget you, and then I could enjoy being seduced. It would be a pleasant short-term interruption to a long-term malaise. I might hate myself afterwards, finding that the reality of my actions does not conform to who it is I like to believe myself to be; and then I would forget, and wouldn’t hate myself after all. An easy option, yes? The coward’s way out. The man you stalked was an illusion. You created him from your own loneliness, fabricated someone you needed in your life. It’s all pathetically obvious, really. As Matisse says, you are infinitely more interesting to a scientist than to a shrink. Does this horrify you? I wanted to turn the recorder off so I couldn’t hear myself say this, I would hate myself for these words too, you see, not good, not courteous, not who it is I think I would like to be, but of course, with you, I can say whatever I want now and forget, I won’t remember myself calling you bitch, whore, fucked-up little infant, child, slut, thief. It feels incredible to have those words out, it’s like — I am ashamed and frightened and excited and this must be how you feel, how it feels to be a criminal! Christ it’s like… cunt! Fucking bitch, I hope you tear your fucking eyes out. Eat razors, piss fire, remember and shed your tears alone in the night, die alone, this is wonderful! Saying this is… fuck you, fuck my fucking life!” His hands, locked on the edge of the table, knuckle-white, eyes red, tears pooling in the bottom, blinking them away, hands not moving to wipe the salt as it rolled down his cheeks. “I am a failure, so fuck you, whoever you are, fuck the truth!” He lunged across the table, one hand wrapping around my throat. I grabbed a fork instinctively, ready to drive into his eye, his neck, any easy target — but his hand didn’t squeeze, just pressed there, ready to dig, his body arched up and forward in an awkward L, leaning on the elbow of his left arm for support, the tears flowing free.

Faces turned in the shop; someone screamed, someone else said, call the police.

He was frozen there, and I held the fork in my hand and wondered if I needed to hurt him, and the tears rolled and his lips moved and he said nothing and did nothing and finally, slowly, let go. He let go, and sank back into his chair, and held himself, wrapping his arms around his chest, and wept in silence.

A while, we stayed there.

The café watched us, and when we did not move, they turned away.

Quiet, a while, save for Luca’s tears.

Quiet.

I put the fork back down on the table. Said, “You are a good man.”

Only the sound of tears, of little ragged breaths from a rag-doll man.

“Funny, the things we do when we think no one will remember,” I mused. “Tempting, sometimes, just to punch a stranger in the street, just to see what it feels like. Is it like the movies? Or to sleep with the guy you really, really shouldn’t, but hell, go on, today, just today. Or to steal something from a shop. A packet of crisps, a chocolate bar, nothing big, nothing that anyone will mind, really, but just… go on. Break the rules. Just a little bit. Just today. Most of the time, people stop themselves. They stop because they think they’ll be caught, or because they’re afraid. Or because their conscience kicks in and whispers, if you break this rule, you’ll be breaking the trust on which society runs. You’re not scared of going to prison — I mean, maybe you are, but more likely you’re scared of a world in which anyone could just attack you as you walked by. Or in which your property wasn’t your own, and the only thing that mattered was might and power and the will to act. Goodness is a concept as loose as any value imposed by man throughout the ages. Good: correct or proper. Of high quality. Agreeable. Pleasant. Virtuous, commendable. He’s a good’un, that’un. Fighting a good war. Good: good wives, good daughters, good housekeepers, good women in their place. Good: burning witches. Good: catching thieves, putting that druggie away behind bars, blowing yourself up in the name of… whatever. Allah or Jesus, Vishnu or Jehovah, everyone’s got their thing. And everyone, no matter who, at some point, hears the call, go on, go on, go on, say it, do it, hit it, smash it, go on! And usually they stop themselves, or if they do not, they remember their actions later, and are ashamed.”

I reached over, into his jacket, pulled the Dictaphone out. Turned it on. Put it between us. Sat back in my chair. He watched it, holding his breath, stifling the sound of tears.

“Two commandments,” I mused. “Know thyself, and know everyone else. Having no one else to know me, having no one to catch me or lift me up, tell me I’m right or wrong, having no one to define the limits of me, I have to define myself, otherwise I am nothing, just a… liquid that dissolves. Know yourself. But finding definition without all the… the daily things that give you shape — Mum, Dad, friend, sister, lover, work, hobby, job, home, travel — without the limits of place or society, I could define myself as anything. I am breath. I am mercy. I am the sea. I am knowledge. I am beauty. I am perfection. I am… anything at all. What am I, then? I look at the world and it seems like a distant thing seen through the window of a speeding train. A glimpse of a field where a woman sows, a child waving from the platform, a man fixing his car by the side of the road, I move and the world passes by, untouchable. But in the act of seeing, in the act of moving, I gather memories and they become me. Others do not remember me, so only I remain. You try to remember me by words, and you only remember the words, not me. I become formless. I don’t know what my destination is, but I keep on travelling, surrounded by other people’s stories, absorbing them, and in their way, though they are not me, they become me. I am just… travelling. Nothing more. I am me. I used to think there was no goodness in men, not really — just laws and fears. But you are a good man, Luca Evard. You are a good man.”

So saying, I stood up, turned off the Dictaphone, pushed it towards him, left a tip on the table, and walked away.