”) had done.
His thoughts were interrupted at this point by the pressure of a hand on his arm. Looking round, he saw an old woman sitting at the next table. Worn face. Sombre eyes. On the breadline, he thought. There were a million like her.
‘I’ve seen you before,’ she said.
He studied her. ‘I don’t remember you.’
‘No, of course not.’ She looked away from him with a smile that was almost coy. ‘How could you?’ Then, though her head remained in profile, her eyes slid sideways until they rested on him again. ‘My name is Madame Zola.’
‘And mine’s Moses.’
‘An unusual name,’ Madame Zola observed. ‘A name with a destiny. You see this cup of tea?’
Moses nodded, smiling.
‘I made this cup of tea last until you came.’
‘And now,’ she put her cup down, and leaned towards him with the air of a conspirator, ‘there is something I must show you.’
‘Show me? What?’
Madame Zola waved his questions away like flies. They were tiresome questions. He hadn’t understood.
‘I have to show you,’ she said, ‘not speak about it. I cannot speak about it. Come. It’s not far.’
Abandoning her cup of tea with a wistful smile — it was still more than two-thirds full; she could have waited another two days for him — she rose to her feet.
‘Yes,’ Moses was saying, ‘but why me?’
‘Because you,’ and her smile became indulgent, ‘you came through the door.’
He followed her across the café.
‘Who knows,’ she joked, as they stepped out into the September sunlight, ‘maybe it’s your future I’ll show you.’
She was taking him to the building, the building where she had lived with Christos, the building where Christos had died. In those days it had been as white as the keys on a piano and she had told Christos that and he had said That would be strange music, meaning music played on a piano with no black keys. Since then the building had changed colour many times. It had been grey, cream, green and brown. Now it was pink. So many disguises. To forget the past and be young always. Like a soul passing through its different reincarnations. Some buildings had souls, she decided, and she had told Christos that too. He had laughed and she had seen the secret part of his beard that grew, black and soft, on the underside of his chin. Soul, he had scoffed. You have a head full of wool and no knitting needles. But she knew, you see. She knew the building would go on changing colour until it had been through every colour of the rainbow. Only then would it be allowed to die, to rest. She had seen visions of its destruction, but she had never been able to place them in time. It hadn’t surprised her to receive a vision of the building again that afternoon — she often saw it; it contained the ashes of her happiest years — but it was curious how it had merged with the vision of the tall dark stranger, Moses, who now walked beside her. She didn’t understand precisely in what way the two were connected, only that some connection must exist. She felt impelled to bring them together.
‘You see,’ and she stopped Moses with a light touch just below the elbow, ‘I knew you were coming.’ And then, a minute later, with a quizzical tilt of her head, ‘but I never believed you would be tall and dark. That is extraordinary.’
Moses grinned at her without understanding the reference. He had the feeling he was learning something, though he couldn’t have said what exactly. He couldn’t take his eyes off her hands. She clasped them together in front of her as if they contained something precious or fragile which she was in the process of delivering.
‘There.’ She had lifted one finger, and the blood rustled in her veins. ‘That’s what I wanted to show you.’
*
She was pointing at a pink building on the other side of the main road. It was so pink, this building. Almost fluorescent. He couldn’t understand why he hadn’t noticed it before. Perhaps it had only recently been painted. Not only pink, but triangular too, dominating the junction. It reminded him of a ship, the way it ploughed through the drab sea of surrounding shops and houses. Yellow flowering weeds fluttered on the roof like tiny pennants.
He crossed the road and tested the double-doors. Locked. He tried to peer through the ground-floor windows. The smoked glass, opaque and black, gave nothing away. Like somebody who answers a question with a question, they offered him only a few different reflections of himself. He turned. The old woman was standing beside him. One hand on her throat, she stared up at the pink façade.
‘I’m leaving now,’ she said. ‘You’ll never see me again probably, but maybe I’ll see you.’
‘I’ll keep a look out for you,’ he said.
‘That won’t make any difference.’
Reading between the lines around her eyes, he realised she was smiling, but with difficulty, through tears. He looked at the ground, then at the building again. This time he noticed a flysheet taped to the side-door. He moved closer. The Revelation Sisters, it said. A gay cabaret. The small-print told him more. The building was a nightclub, and its name was The Bunker.
When he looked round again, Madame Zola had vanished. He crossed the street and began to take pictures. He wanted to remember the building and, by remembering the building, remember her too.
He had almost finished the film when the double-doors slammed open. A black guy appeared. He was leaning forwards, hands bunched at thigh-level. Well-dressed. Furious. Without thinking, Moses snapped off another couple of pictures. He watched the black guy through the camera as he locked the double-doors, threw wary glances left and right, noticed Moses, and walked towards him, growing larger, more detailed.
‘What the fuck’re you doing?’ The voice was smooth and venomous, anger planed down.
Moses lowered his camera. ‘Taking a few pictures. Of the building.’
The black guy’s eyes were pools of yellow acid. Moses felt them eat into his face. ‘I don’t like people taking pictures, all right?’
‘All right.’
The black guy spun on his heel, and walked over to a white Mercedes parked in the shadow of the side-street. He drove past Moses in low gear, tyres trickling on the tarmac like something about to explode. Moses wound his film back thoughtfully, his eyes following the car as it turned the corner.
*
He returned to The Bunker twice that week. It was closed both times, lifeless. He wondered whether it had closed for good.
Two weeks later he was driving up to Soho to meet his flatmate, Eddie, for a drink when he happened to pass the club again. This time he noticed a few people clustered round the doorway. It was raining. A slab of violet light glistened on the slick black pavement. The place looked open. He stamped on his brakes and pulled into the side of the road. A horn blared behind him, headlights flashed full beam. Fuck you too, he thought.