He found her by chance. It was a spring evening and he was walking in the streets behind the flower market. She came out of a corner shop and stood on the pavement, looking up into the sky. All the light was up there, above the rooftops; down on the street it was almost dark. He stood beside her, facing her. He waited. At last, sensing his presence, she turned and looked at him. He showed her the photo. She stared at the photo, then at him. Then at the photo again. She asked him who he was. He didn’t answer. He was still holding the photo up for her to see.
‘Where’s the baby?’ he said.
She glanced beyond him, waved her arm. A taxi appeared. She opened the door and climbed in. He watched the taxi pull away with her inside it. Why had she left like that? What had he done?
Edith Hekmann’s chair creaked as she shifted on it. I was still sitting on the bed. Nina in profile, gliding out of reach. I remembered Kolan talking. She saw it as an omen. Then he’d corrected himself. A warning. I put my head in my hands. My face was wet.
‘People say men don’t cry,’ Edith Hekmann said, ‘but they do. They’re always crying.’ She paused. ‘I think it’s a sign of weakness.’
I spoke into my hands. ‘I don’t give a fuck what you think.’
‘My husband used to cry.’ She paused again. ‘But I already told you that.’
She was still moving that object around. It sounded more like a bottle now. Or maybe it was an ashtray after all. One of those heavy ones. Cut-glass.
‘Anyway,’ she said.
Each time Mazey was in the city, he went to the corner shop in the hope of seeing her again and getting an answer to his question. He always appeared at sunset, which was when he’d seen her last. He stood and stared at soap-powder, cereal, canned fruit. Sometimes he was in there for over an hour. He never bought anything. Finally the owner became suspicious. Threw him out. But Mazey got it into his head that the girl must be hidden there somewhere. He pushed past the owner, back into the shop. Then he began to look for her, pulling tins and packets off the shelves. The police were called. Mazey spent a night in a prison cell on a charge of disturbing the peace. When they released him, he hitched a ride north, one and a half days in a lorry that was piled high with grit.
Three weeks later he was back again. He stayed with Ackal and Moler in their two-room apartment near the bus station. He lay on the bare mattresses and drank vodka out of dirty glasses. They taught him card games. Teased him about his photograph. During the long hot evenings he watched the corner shop, but the girl did not appear.
It wasn’t until December that his luck changed. On his way south he stole a van. He’d been waiting at the service station for hours; nobody had even looked at him. He was cold and tired, and the van had a cassette machine in it. He forced the door. Soon he was driving past the petrol pumps and out on to the motorway. His tape was playing, the tape of Miss Poppel’s chimes. He turned it up so loud, he could hear the wind moaning in the background. His mouth widened a fraction, which meant that he was smiling. Later, Ackal asked him if the van was stolen. He nodded. Ackal turned to the man with the jewel in his ear. ‘Learns fast, doesn’t he.’
One afternoon Mazey was driving through the western suburbs when he saw the girl walk out across the pavement and climb into a car. It wasn’t excitement that he felt. It was more like a kind of recognition or contentment: things had fallen into place at last. The car was a gold colour. He followed it. His photo lay on the dashboard, weighed down with a stone.
The girl drove through the city centre and on into what used to be the railway yards. As she passed a low, concrete building she slowed down. The building had a pink flashing sign on it and no windows. She parked just beyond it. He watched her from across the street as she walked up to the black man who was standing by the door. They talked for a moment, then she disappeared inside.
Mazey waited there all evening. It was a wide street, badly lit, with rubbish blowing over it. Just traffic-lights and tramlines. And that sign, of course — flash, flash, flash. He stared at it so long, it was printed on the air in front of him, even when he looked away; he had to shake his head like a money box to rid himself of it. Every now and then he got out of the van and walked up and down the pavement, but he never took his eyes off the girl’s gold car, not for more than a few seconds. Once, he went up to it and wiped the window with his hand and peered in. There was nothing much to interest him except the objects dangling from the rear-view mirror. He couldn’t quite make out what they were — there was too much condensation — but he knew why they were there. He nodded when he saw them. Chimes.
By the time she appeared again, it was after midnight. The black man walked her to her car. He leaned on the top of the open door while she sat behind the wheel. Mazey could hear their voices. Finally the man took a step backwards and her door slammed shut. She sounded the horn as she pulled out into the fitful late-night traffic. She seemed to enjoy driving through orange lights. He often had to drive through red ones to keep up with her. Though she drove like someone who was being followed, she didn’t seem to realise he was there.
She stopped on a street that was lined with trees. He watched her climb a flight of steps. A door opened. She was inside the house for almost an hour and when she came out again, there was a man with her. He was wearing a leather jacket. They drove back to the city centre and parked in a side street behind the railway station. The man said goodbye to her and left. Mazey followed the girl into the station. It was the middle of the night, but there were still crowds of people around, some walking in unsteady circles, others asleep on benches. They didn’t surprise or upset him at all; he’d often done the same thing himself.
The girl disappeared into the café. He stayed outside, leaning against the hot-drinks machine. He liked the sound it made when someone put their money in, the way it shook and rumbled. He hadn’t been there long when a man with dark glasses and a white stick passed by. Mazey didn’t know what a blind man was. He’d never seen one before. The dark glasses, the white stick. It worried him, somehow.
It worried him even more when the blind man walked into the café and sat down opposite the girl. The blind man was facing the window. After a while he took his glasses off and wiped his eyes. Was he crying? Mazey pulled back from the window, puzzled. But there was nothing he could do — nothing he could do except go back to the drinks machine and wait. And wait. The hands on the station clock only moved if you didn’t look at them.
At last the door of the café opened and the girl came out. She was alone. Mazey took a step towards her, then he stopped. She looked up and saw him standing there, staring at her. Just then, the café door opened again. It was the blind man. He called the girl’s name several times. As she turned to speak to him, Mazey drew back into the shadows.
The blind man and the girl left the station together. Mazey followed them. It was snowing now, bitterly cold, and the wind cut through his coat. He reached into his pocket for the vodka Ackal had given him. His hands were numb; after he’d drunk from the bottle, he could hardly screw the top back on. Halfway down the street the blind man swung round and stared at him. The girl, too. Mazey stopped, uncertain what to do. But then they hurried on again. It looked as if they were making for her car. When they reached the car, though, the blind man turned his back on the girl and walked away. Mazey was relieved. The blind man had begun to frighten him.