‘Can you stand?’
The young man nods and allows himself to be helped to his feet.
His name is Duran. On the way to the hospital and in the casualty waiting area, his expression evolves from appalled confusion to resigned gloom. Every time his bandaged finger stump sinks dispiritedly to his lap, Alphonse urges him to bring it up to his ear again, which reduces the bleeding and raises the spirits.
‘My father said, “Duran, you live too far away. What are you going to do in that hole? Your family can’t help you run the shop and you can’t do it alone, with your eyes.” I tell him, “My eyes are good, that’s all in the past.” I used to have a lazy eye, a patch on my spectacles, difficult for a child. “You can’t see the butterflies,” my father said—he meant that test, with the butterflies and so on, hidden among blots, everyone saw them jump into view except me. “I don’t need to see those butterflies,” I tell him. Lots of arguments, but I made the move anyhow. I thought: just you wait, Father, there are blots everywhere, keep looking and eventually I’ll jump out from them. You’ll see me then.’
He holds the bandaged stump in front of him, horrified by it. Alphonse is just about to urge him yet again to keep his hand vertical when a round-chested doctor comes marching along the corridor. She must be in her late forties and she has orange brushed-up hair, as if her head is on fire.
‘Lost a finger?’ she asks.
‘I’ve got it with me.’ Alphonse points to a plastic bag on the seat next to them. The towel with the ice inside is soaked through.
‘Can I have a look?’ She can’t wait, plainly. He hopes he’s not about to disappoint her. He’s wrapped the finger in a wad of cling film, fearing it might otherwise be damaged by the cold. Duran looks the other way, as nonchalantly as possible.
The doctor takes the wrapped finger and gently taps it on the arm of the seat. ‘Good. Not frozen.’ A delighted little laugh escapes her. ‘Follow me!’
‘But you have to look! How often do you get the chance to see the inside of your finger?’ She’s talking to Duran, who might perhaps have preferred to be given a general anaesthetic.
The doctor stops sewing briefly to turn her attention to Alphonse, who has gone to sit on a chair by the wall. ‘You can come a bit closer if you like.’ The fact that neither of them responds to her cheery invitations seems to disturb her. She’s meticulously described and named everything she’s done; surely a patient could expect no more of her than that?
‘Will he be able to use the finger again?’ Alphonse asks, sensing that her bemusement is subsiding into annoyance.
‘If I’m the one putting it back on, that’s just about guaranteed,’ she says, with a hint of defensiveness but mainly with pride.
Duran’s ring finger is encased in a tight bandage stiffened with a strip of metal. In the car he takes his hand out of the sling that was secured around his neck in the hospital.
‘A ring finger is better than an index finger,’ he says, determined to get back to work that evening. ‘And I’m left-handed.’ He looks askance at his driver.
Strange, thinks Duran, that this man is the only person ever to have seen him unconscious. He didn’t leave him for one moment, not in the shop and not in casualty. He’s struck by how normal that seemed.
‘Thanks.’
Alphonse takes his eyes off the road and raises one corner of his mouth.
‘No, I mean it. Is there anything I can do to thank you?’
‘There is something, actually. Those little figures in the freezer—I’d like to take another look.’
Sometimes air can be displaced by a feeling. Suddenly the car is filled with embarrassment from floor to roof. Am I the only one who knows about the ice men? Alphonse wonders. ‘They’re beautiful. That’s why I’d like to see them again.’
‘It’s a strange hobby, but then all I do the rest of the time is work. I work really hard. Often fourteen hours a day. And I go to the gym, too.’
Alphonse doesn’t insist. He agrees to let Duran make him something to eat. He parks right in front of the shawarma shop. In this part of the country there’s never any shortage of parking spots.
With the good fingers of his injured hand, Duran moves a teabag up and down in a cup of hot water. ‘You can take a look,’ he says. ‘But over there if you don’t mind.’
‘Of course,’ says Alphonse. ‘Otherwise they’ll melt.’
They place two chairs next to the open freezer and bend down over the drawer.
‘They all look like you,’ says Alphonse, at the risk of rekindling Duran’s embarrassment.
‘That’s why they’re all called Duran,’ says Duran. ‘This is Duran Khan, dressed like Genghis Khan, and this is Ataduran.’
Apple tea steams on a low table close to Alphonse’s legs. The sweating pillars of meat have resumed their dervish dance and the floor is daubed with blood. Companionship comes in strange guises, he thinks merrily.
‘Here,’ says Duran. ‘If you can guess his name you can have him.’ He shows Alphonse a Duran dressed in straw and feathers, with a loincloth, a spear, and a shield.
‘Shaka Duran?’
‘Yes. So he’s yours. Never show him to anyone.’
At home Alphonse liberates the ice man from the freezer-block flat Duran has shut him into. He puts Shaka Duran in the smallest plastic box he can find and lays him to sleep between two packs of spinach in the freezer compartment at the top of the fridge. If Cat finds him, he’ll have to explain it was a well-intended gift.
-
28
On Sunday it rains. In the early morning the wind hurls hard drops at the windows. The salvos continue till Alphonse lifts his head from the pillow.
He sits on the edge of the bed and realizes that in his dream the sound of the rain was the stutter of automatic weapons, fired by uniformed men at naked figures up against a wall. He was not among them.
With his first sip of coffee he wants to hear Cat, who answers out of breath. She has no time now, she’s in the middle of a storm that broke just when all the mats, cushions, and blankets had been dragged deep into the woods. Now they’re fetching everything indoors again. The atmosphere has hit rock bottom. The guest lecturer is as much of a disappointment as the weather.
Alphonse says he misses her. She misses him too.
She once taught him a headstand. Sirsasana is said to rejuvenate the brain cells, optimize the metabolism, and combat both grey hair and varicose veins. Could he still do it? Aware that no impulse is ever risk-free, he takes a folded blanket from the sofa and lays it on the floor. He puts his elbows at the edge, shoulder-width apart, slides his fingers together and presses the crown of his head to the blanket, nestling the back of his skull in his hands. The trick is to keep your shoulders low, he recalls, to avoid straining the neck. He takes small steps toward his face, straightens his back and stretches his legs. He’s vertical. It’s improbably pleasant, until the desire to stand like this for a long time is replaced by an awareness that he doesn’t know how to stop without pain. When he bends his legs to begin the descent, it’s as if he’s about to snap, so he stretches them again.
Someone knocks on the front door, which only his neighbour, Willem, is in the habit of doing.
‘Door’s open!’
‘Don’t leave it open! This isn’t Brussels, but all the same!’ Willem shouts from the hall, and then,