‘I’ve been dead all this time,’ I said, laughing, ‘and I didn’t even know it.’
Fernandez studied me for a few moments, then he finished his drink and set the glass down on the desk. ‘You’re tired.’
‘Yes. Very.’
‘You’d better stay here tonight. You can sleep on the sofa.’
I was about to thank him when I heard a creak on the stairs outside the room. We watched in silence as the door-handle tilted towards the floor. A small face appeared round the edge of the door and gazed at me.
‘My daughter,’ Fernandez said.
I let my breath out slowly. ‘I didn’t know you had children.’
‘Two.’ He walked over to the little girl and lifted her into his arms. ‘Come on, Rosie. I’ll take you back to bed.’ Her solemn dark-brown eyes still trained on me, she rested her head against her father’s shoulder.
Before he left the room, he told me to stay where I was and not make any noise. There should be some bedding in the cupboard, he said. The toilet was outside the door. He’d come and get me in the morning.
Later, as I lay beneath a couple of rough wool blankets, I heard a ticking and though I knew there must be a clock in the room it was the pale dog that I could see, patrolling the corridors of the asylum, blunt head lowered, jaws ajar …
Somebody let out a cry, and I sat up quickly, blinking. The centre-light had been switched on.
A man with a black beard and glasses stood by the door with a tray. ‘You shouted so loud,’ he said, ‘I almost dropped the whole thing.’
‘I’m sorry. I was asleep.’ I pushed the blankets to one side and put my feet on the floor.
He set the tray down beside me. He had brought me a cup of coffee, a plate of scrambled eggs and some toast.
‘Is it late?’ I asked.
He told me it was after ten. He had waited until his wife and children had left the house, not wanting them to know that I was staying.
‘What about your daughter?’ I said.
‘Luckily she’s always making things up. When she said there was a strange man in the basement, my wife just told her to get on with her cereal.’
‘I’m sorry to have caused you all this trouble.’
He glanced at me over the top of his glasses, as if he suspected me of sarcasm, but I pretended not to have noticed, and he looked away again. He had made a few calls, he told me. While I ate, he outlined what he’d been able to arrange. A boat was leaving the north docks at four o’clock that afternoon, bound for the Blue Quarter with a cargo of religious artefacts. Once it reached its destination, however, I would be on my own. Usually, customs officers were paid to turn a blind eye, but there hadn’t been enough time to set up anything like that. He couldn’t guarantee I wouldn’t be arrested as soon as I stepped out of my container.
‘Container?’ I murmured, still dazed by what he had just told me. All I had expected from him was a temporary refuge, the chance to catch my breath. Now, suddenly, I was on my way to the Blue Quarter.
‘Keep eating,’ Fernandez said. ‘We have to leave soon.’
When I had finished my breakfast, he took me up to a bathroom on the first floor, where I had a shower and a shave. He left some clean underwear and socks outside the door. Though I had questions for him, somehow I didn’t feel I could ask. He was doing so much for me. Curiosity would seem like a form of ingratitude.
Dressed again, I went downstairs and waited in the kitchen. The air still vibrated with the presence of his wife and children, the silence so recent that it had yet to settle properly. I glanced at the remains of breakfast — a slice of toast with a bite taken out of it, small pools of milk in the bottom of bowls, the rim of a white cup smudged with lipstick. A home, a family, routine — all things that people took for granted, and yet they had never seemed more inaccessible to me, or more unlikely. I felt a stab of nostalgia as I stood there, then a loneliness. Was it because I was looking at the kind of life I had been denied, or did I wish I could simply abandon the difficult course I had taken and somehow attach myself to all this security, this warmth? Maybe both were true. But perhaps it was also true that nothing of any value could be achieved without a measure of apprehension and regret.
Given that the authorities might already have issued a warrant for my arrest, Fernandez thought it best if I remained out of sight for the duration of the car journey, so I wedged myself behind the two front seats and let him cover me with some newspapers and an old blanket. I didn’t speak until we had been driving for several minutes, but then I couldn’t hold back any longer.
‘You said last night that you thought I’d seen through you,’ I said. ‘What did you think I’d seen?’
A snort of disbelief came from the driving seat. ‘You really expect me to tell you that?’
‘Why not? You’ve got nothing to lose.’
He stayed quiet for a while. I assumed he had decided not to answer.
‘What was so clever about the way they divided us,’ he said at last, ‘was that it more or less guaranteed that we would hate each other. I can’t help feeling a kind of contempt for you, for instance. It might be because of what you’re doing, and the effect it has on others, but it might simply be because of who you are. I’m from the Yellow Quarter, and you’re from somewhere else. That’s probably enough. And yet, to answer your question, I’m one of the few people who believe in that great pipe dream, that we should be able to live in the same country. All of us. You, me — even Rinaldi.’ He allowed himself a brief wry laugh. ‘Then I see myself succumb to prejudice, and I realise how insidious it is, how easy …’
It was silent except for the ticking of the indicator. I chose not to say anything. The honesty and bluntness of what I’d heard had caught me unawares. I hadn’t expected Fernandez to be so open, but perhaps, with me hidden, he felt alone in the car. In a sense, then, he was talking to himself.
‘It’s like racism, really, if you think about it,’ he went on. ‘I don’t mean the old racism. That’s dead and gone. I’m not interested in the colour of someone’s skin. It’s their thoughts that bother me. The new racism is psychological. What’s strange is, we seem to need it — to thrive on it. If we don’t have someone to despise, we feel uncomfortable, we feel we haven’t properly defined ourselves. Hate gives us hard edges. And the authorities knew that, of course. In fact, they were banking on it. They force-fed us our own weakness — our intolerance, our bigotry. They rammed it down our throats.’ He paused. ‘They took the worst part of us and built a system out of it. And it worked —’ He blasted his horn, then swore at another driver, but it was the authorities that he was angry with, and clearly he was also angry with himself.
‘You asked me what I thought you saw,’ Fernandez said. ‘I’ll tell you. I thought you realised I was bluffing, or even double-bluffing — my talk on terrorism, and so on. I thought you knew I was against the system. I even suspected you might pity me because I was so obviously fighting a losing battle, and I hated you for that. And I thought you could feel me hating you.’
‘I felt something,’ I said. ‘Not that, though.’
‘I was classified as choleric,’ Fernandez said, ‘which is something I dispute, of course, something I resent as well, and yet I seem to be getting more and more choleric with every year that passes. It’s ironic, don’t you think?’