‘What’s so urgent about the medicine?’
‘It’s a tonic.’
‘A tonic? What kind of a tonic?’
‘It’s a secret recipe … ’
‘A secret recipe?’ The shopkeeper wasn’t angry any more, she was intrigued. I pictured her holding the pot to her chest, as if to say, I’ll only give it to you if you tell me about the recipe.
‘A kidney tonic,’ my neighbour muttered.
She came back down the steps, cradling the pot in her arms, and looked for a taxi. She stood there in the darkness on the windswept street. Maybe I could pretend I just happened to be passing by. We could share a cab back home — a shame I hadn’t brought the car — or we could just stand there in the wind and the dark. But she would insist on getting home. She was brewing up a kidney tonic. She clasped the pot in her arms as if it was a baby. She didn’t have a baby, would never have one. It was as if she was holding her husband, or rather, her own life.
Where were the vagrants, the gangsters that prowl the streets? Would one of them accost her as she stood there in the dark?
That night I had a dream. She was in her kitchen making up the tonic. Her husband was out and the door to their flat was ajar. I burst in and embraced her from behind. I knocked the pot on to the floor with my elbow and it smashed to smithereens. All the mixture poured out. She reached for the pot but I gripped her tight. She started to struggle. ‘Damn it, why are you making kidney tonic soup?’ I shouted. ‘Don’t you know how your husband has weakened his kidneys? Don’t you know? When you’re getting your thrills, he’s thinking of another woman! And you’re still faithful to him? Why? You stupid, useless woman!’ She shook like wheat in a winnowing machine, her mouth wide open, gasping for air. But I showed her no mercy, I just kept shouting, on and on. She collapsed to her knees and I sat astride her, as if she was a mare. I grabbed at her nightie and yanked it up to her neck. She was naked, the nightie hanging forwards across her face like a dog wearing a cone. I whipped her and she writhed in pain. There was tonic all over the floor, there was no saving it now. I was hurting her, she was hurting me, whipping me with the cloth in her hand … I came.
Then one day, she wasn’t there.
8
I longed to see her, but she had disappeared. Her husband was alone in the flat — nervous, uneasy. Did he have some idea where she had gone? He slept alone that night. He didn’t sprawl all over the bed, he rolled her quilt up into tube and stretched out beside it. Then he wanked himself off on to the quilt.
Every evening he went out for a stroll, on his own. He always went for his walk, even when there was a storm. He took out his umbrella and held it out, as if she was walking along beside him. I was stuck at home watching TV, channel hopping. I’d just caught a glimpse of him from the balcony when I heard the news reader say there had been some progress in the kidney theft case.
‘After the arrest of a nurse and the housewife who bought the kidney, a third suspect has been detained in connection with this case…’
Three portraits flashed up on screen, the faces pixellated to protect the suspects’ identities. But I could tell it was her.
Her husband was walking around outside in the pouring rain, holding out the umbrella, one shoulder soaked right through.
A day or so afterwards, the flat upstairs exploded into banging and clattering. I ran up to find the police turning the whole place upside down. There was herbal medicine all over the floor. They eyed me suspiciously and wouldn’t let me in, but I stood my ground. And who should be standing right by the door looking bemused but her husband. The man who did that thing. The man I’d seen doing that thing. He was almost close enough for me to touch. It was unreal. He glanced at me, then looked down again. He must have thought I knew why the police were there. Did he know I knew all their little secrets too? He was completely crushed. She had trusted this guy and he had betrayed her. I could have wept for her.
When the police left I asked him if there was anything we could do. He just said ‘No.’
‘So you’re going to leave your wife in prison for ever?’ My heart skipped at the words ‘your wife’. Then I flared up. ‘She did so much for you and now you’re going to see her rot for life?’
‘I can’t do a thing about it,’ he said. ‘I’ve pulled all the strings I can, but it’s no use…’
‘Maybe I can do something,’ I said.
He looked up at me.
‘Do you know where this kidney came from?’ I asked.
‘She didn’t say. They never said either. A nurse got it, my wife’s friend. She said the hospital was just throwing it away.’
The nurse … that elegant woman who always kept her hand in her pocket?
‘How could she do such a thing?’ He was angry now. ‘It was perfectly obvious it would be discovered before she’d got her money. That nurse was crazy. We’re powerless. People with power do these things and people without don’t, but she did it anyway. She must have been crazy. And my wife must have been crazy too. She never said a word about what it was. I just thought it tasted strange. It made me feel a bit sick, but she said it was a wonderful tonic … ’
How could she have believed such rubbish?
I thought back to the woman’s words: ‘Remember, whatever you do, don’t wash it. Just put it in as it is … ’
‘That tonic was made with Bin Laden’s kidney,’ I said, fixing him with a hard look.
‘Impossible!’ he cried.
‘Just because you didn’t know about it doesn’t mean it isn’t true.’ I couldn’t be sure it was Bin Laden’s kidney, but I knew what I had to do to save her.
‘Are you really sure it was his?’ he asked, faintly.
‘It was!’
He threw up all over the floor.
‘That Chinese-American was a bastard too!’ he shouted. ‘He must have reported her. He’d come here specially to get himself a new kidney. He was already in hospital, waiting for the operation.’ He grabbed my hand. ‘Please help me. Please, please, I beg you … You’re my only hope.’
There he was, begging like a dog. The man who did that thing. Her husband. The man she’d done everything for. The man she’d trusted. I wanted to weep for her. I wanted to kick him away.
‘Why should I help you? Why should I? Why?’
9
The only way I could save her was blackmail. Someone must have had their eye on Bin Laden’s kidney for a long time. He had to be killed, and killed in the name of the law — there was no way the hospital could have removed it unless the court was involved. They probably even sentenced him to death so someone could get hold of his kidney. But the courts wouldn’t have dared to do anything without a nod from those in charge. This was a society that killed people for personal gain. Obviously the courts would insist they’d handed down a sentence according to the law, the hospital would protest that it wasn’t Bin Laden’s kidney after all. But with the evidence I got from Water, no one would believe them. Those in power would be afraid that they’d all be dragged into the ensuing scandal. They’d come down on me like a ton of bricks, of course. And my old friend Water, the man who’d helped me sell those Hami melons all those years ago, would get in trouble too. I was confronting the entire regime. But I didn’t care about myself. All I wanted was to save her. Nothing more.
I did what I had to do.
I went into the detention centre on my own. I told her husband to wait outside, said they would only let me in if I was alone. I don’t know if he believed me. He had no choice. I was the only one who could save her. I’d be in there myself soon enough, paying the price. There’s no way the people I had threatened would let me off. It would be my turn next. And I’d bring down a lot of people with me. The trial would follow its inevitable logic to the end.