He walks around as he eats his bread with chocolate spread, looking for his shoes. The sense of having forgotten something creeps over him. He walks to the van in the hope it’s nothing important and drives out of the street more slowly than usual.
For the past three seasons a boy with some kind of intellectual disability has stood in front of the last house. He addresses Alphonse as ‘scallywag’. He hasn’t been there for several days. Cancer again, no doubt. He tries to shake the word out of his head. ‘No. No,’ he mumbles. It’s a long time since he last talked to himself.
Then, just before the second road junction, he knows what it is he’s forgotten: Shaka Duran. He turns the van and drives back by the same route, this time at walking pace, behind a combine harvester. Once again he’ll get to his client later than intended. He squeezes the wheel, telling himself there’s no sense in getting upset.
It’s still quiet in the kitchen. When you visit your house unexpectedly it sometimes feels like someone else’s. He looks for the freezer box containing Shaka Duran and opens it carefully to check the sculpture is still intact—even the delicate spear is undamaged. With the box in a plastic bag between two freezer packs, he hurries out again.
‘Merci, merci!’ The owner of Pita Merci looks immensely tired. ‘Watch out, it’s slippery there.’ The floor is wet and clean, and in the corner there’s a bucket of water that smells of roses. Duran cautiously opens one corner of the lid. He nods his approval, closes the box again and carries it solemnly to the freezer.
‘What about your finger? When do the stitches come out?’ Alphonse asks his back.
‘In five days. But I’ll be in Japan then. They can do it anywhere, the doctor says.’
‘Ha!’ snorts a voice from behind the counter.
When Alphonse takes a step to one side and stretches his neck he sees a sullen sixty-something sitting on a low chair, head resting on an arm, the arm on a knee.
‘This is my father,’ says Duran.
‘A pleasure,’ says Alphonse.
The father gives a dour nod in response and tosses a few Turkish words in Duran’s direction. Duran gives a reticent answer, then adds something placatory.
‘My father doesn’t think it’s a good idea for me to go to Japan. We’ve been talking about it all night. He doesn’t see the point. I’m grateful he’s willing to keep the shop going while I’m away.’
The father stands up brusquely and shouts something at his son, gesturing toward Alphonse.
‘He says I’m not Argentinian. He thinks ice sculptures are for children and he’d like to know your opinion.’
‘I think they’re beautiful,’ says Alphonse. ‘Cleverly done.’
Duran translates triumphantly. The father raises his hands to the ceiling and shouts again.
‘“Another lunatic,” says my father.’
With his next statement the father stands up and puts one finger up close to his son’s nose.
‘He’s telling me to stop translating.’
‘I have to go, anyhow. Good luck in Japan. Good day to you, sir.’
‘Merci,’ say father and son in unison, both slightly thrown by their audience’s sudden departure.
Madeleine Claeys pretends to be lost in thought as the van comes up her drive, but behind the reflections in the window separating her from the front garden she keeps a careful watch on the driver. He’s a man who doesn’t like to arrive late. The fact that it’s nevertheless happened for the second time must have to do with some disturbance to the peace that usually surrounds him. You can tell that just by looking: he’s a person surrounded by peace. She wants to hear it from a person like this.
He’s startled by how quickly she opens the door.
‘Sorry,’ he begins, but she interrupts him.
‘Have you read them?’
Only then does he think back to the pile on the passenger seat. He can’t remember seeing it there this morning.
‘Only a few,’ he says. ‘These are strange days. Do you want me to read them?’
‘I want you to read everything, then tell me about them. Before you do any more work.’ Despite her slight stutter she says it with complete conviction.
He agrees and goes back to the van. The pile of letters is still there. He picks it up and arranges with Madeleine that he’ll read them all in the room and then come and find her.
They are variations on a single theme.
‘1993 when i sit next to him i draw little hearts on the ball of his thumb with my finger i casually say something about cowardly men and that the hands can go slowly but the years fast in the end and that i accept it can go even quicker but that i wont leave him alone i often say that i wont leave him alone i tell him about what ive seen that day or the night before its never much a swallows nest or once a procession a fanfare mostly i say nothing and wipe his mouth or look its no good really those eyes turn but real contact what is that i stroke him comb his hair usually with earplugs in because i feel i deserve routine and earplugs’
‘2001 in the end it comes down to limiting damage done to others which is why i agreed to it my brothers vocal cords were cut last month neighbours at the day centre have been complaining about the shouting and screaming for years and in the end even the social workers spoke to me about it i dont blame anyone he did shout most of the day never a whole day not year in year out and i know that for them it wasnt mainly about decibels but about how he shouted because anyone who heard it thought he was in unbearable pain now you only see that and you have to come close.’
When he’s read all of them he goes downstairs.
‘Gin and tonic?’ she asks. He nods and takes a cigarette from the pack she’s holding out. He smokes just a few a year. He waits on the poof that belongs with the sofa near the window until she comes to sit next to him. She puts his glass on the side table and her own to her lips.
He tells her the story she knows, about her younger brother who was born normal but after a fall or an infection would have been better off dead. He tells her she never doubted it was her fault, that her mother convinced her of that, blaming her not just for her brother’s condition but for her father’s disappearance as well. She’s never dared allow herself to see that there are a lot of things that guilt has nothing to do with, that a child can be inattentive and inattentiveness fatal. That events don’t even require inattention in order to be fatal. She was the only one to go and visit him every day, out of love and to punish herself. Sometimes a partner threatened to come between them, but never for long. Anyone who didn’t disappear of their own accord she chased away with double-glazed loneliness, her world of bedsores, severed vocal cords, and malicious fate, a sorrow so great and incontrovertible that everyone walked away from it. And that her brother then finally found peace and she went on living, he tells her that too. Now she must set the fire. He’ll paint the room and she must fill the decades that remain to her with what she enjoys, everything she can still love.
He waits for the sobs to subside before wiping back the grey lock hanging over her face.
‘Dropped, that’s what,’ she says.
‘Come on.’
She nods.
Outside, in the long narrow garden at the back of the house, they gather wood. He lights it with thin twigs and one of the letters. It burns quickly in the dry air. Without any hesitation Madeleine throws the other letters on, one by one so as not to smother the fire, until she’s finished and takes his hand. He doesn’t let go until the last blackened fragments have turned to white ash.