Love in Revolution Read online

  He dropped to one knee, scooped up a fingertip of bloodstained dust and smeared it on his face: two lines, across his cheekbones, like warpaint. He stood up – half laughing, half deadly earnest, the way he was when he fought with Papa – looked round at the last few groups of people, and called out, ‘Death to the oppressor!’

  I saw Mama’s hat jump and twist behind a knot of heads, and then she came out into the open, her face set and furious. Papa said a last word to the priest and followed her, frowning. Teddy was the only person smiling; and his smile wilted as he took in the situation.

  The priest said, not loudly, but very clearly, ‘God damn all revolutionaries.’

  Leon ignored him. ‘Hey, Teddy, listen – this boy, this man, not only is he a pello genius, he’s a symbol of justice – forget the Bull, you have to write a story about this man, Angel Corazon, a true man of the people, a peasant –’

  Papa said, ‘Leon.’

  Martin said, ‘Let’s go home. Come on.’ He pulled me sharply sideways, so I almost fell over.

  ‘What?’ I wanted to stay; not to watch, exactly, but because of Angel, and the sunlight, and the heat from the Zikindi girl’s body next to me.

  ‘Come on.’ He tightened his grip and tugged. ‘Please. I don’t want to see this. Please, Esteya.’

  I sighed and let him pull me away, taking a last look at the bloodstained stones, and the church, outlined in shadow, and the Zikindi girl. Then we half walked, half ran past the tavern and down the main street. It was quiet and cool, with the window boxes dripping water. All the shutters were closed against the sun.

  ‘Did you see Mama’s face?’ Martin said, putting his key into the lock of our front door and turning back to look at me. ‘It’s going to be horrible.’

  ‘It won’t be that bad,’ I said. ‘It’s just Leon being Leon. Or should I say, Comrade Leon being Comrade Leon . . . ?’

  ‘I’m sick of it,’ Martin muttered. His hair had fallen over his eyes, and he pushed it back. He took a deep breath and held it for a moment; then he shook his head and tried to grin at me. ‘Honestly! The best game of pello I have ever seen, ever, and Leon has to go and spoil it with his man-of-the-people act. All I can say is, if there is a revolution, I hope he gets put up against a wall and shot.’

  I rolled my eyes, and he laughed, reluctantly, and went through the doorway. I heard him say, ‘It will be horrible . . . I’m warning you . . .’ as he went up the stairs.

  But I wasn’t listening. There was a movement in the corner of my eye, a flash of dark trousers and pale linen, and I turned my head. The Zikindi girl had followed us; now she was leaning in the doorway of the Ibarra house opposite, watching me. She didn’t smile. Something in her gaze made my heart speed up, the way it had when her fingers gripped my wrist. I wanted to speak to her.

  I opened my mouth, but I couldn’t think of anything to say, except that if the Ibarras saw her they’d tell their maidservant to wash the doorstep with disinfectant. I shut my mouth again, feeling my cheeks blaze, and turned away.

  To my relief, Martin was wrong: by the time they got home, Mama and Papa and Leon seemed to have said everything already, and after Leon had washed his face and put on another shirt we had lunch in a kind of uneasy peace. Mama kept her attention firmly on us – ‘Stop playing with your food . . . Did you wash your hands, Martin? Esteya, is there something particularly interesting outside the window?’ – and ignored Leon, as if she was making it quite clear that he wasn’t her son. Papa talked about his patients, in a gentle monotone that went on and on and didn’t need any answer, and Leon listened and nodded and cleaned his glasses with his tie. Sometimes he joined in, so that they talked over each other in an impersonal, dispassionate duet. It was boring, but at least they weren’t arguing. I kept my eyes on my plate and thought about the pello game, and Angel Corazon, and the Zikindi girl.

  ‘Esteya, stop fidgeting, please,’ Mama said, shooting me a sharp look. ‘Eat your food.’

  I tore my bread into two pieces and pushed one into my mouth. It was like trying to eat a handkerchief. I chewed and made myself swallow.

  ‘Too much excitement,’ Martin said, nudging me with his foot. ‘Delicate constitution. Can’t take it.’

  ‘And no telegraphese from you, Martin,’ Mama said, and I caught his eye and smirked and kicked him back. ‘Try using a pronoun once in a while . . . What are your plans for the rest of vacation, Leon? Will you be helping your father in the dispensary?’

  Leon looked up, seemed to see a new smear on his glasses and took them off to wipe them again. ‘I’m not sure. I might go back to Irunja before term starts.’

  Papa blinked, and his mouth tightened, but all he said was, ‘No doubt you miss your friends.’

  ‘Irunja is the heart of the country, Papa,’ Leon said, leaning forward and letting go of his tie, so that it dipped into the tomato ketchup on his plate. ‘Here you wouldn’t know there was anything brewing. But there . . . if you went there, you’d realise. The world is changing. I know you like to pretend that everything is fine –’

  ‘Please, no politics at the table,’ Mama said, but Leon didn’t even look at her.

  ‘The injustice you see there, Papa – you wouldn’t believe it. The King has his palaces and water gardens and stables, like something from the nineteenth century, and there are beggars on the streets, starving workmen, policemen standing at the fountains to charge the workers for a midday drink, and if anyone complains they don’t even have time to finish their sentence before they’re taken away and beaten up –’

  ‘All cities are like that, Leon. There are rich and poor. Bad things happen everywhere. But revolution is not the remedy.’ Papa’s egg yolk spilt out on to the plate, and he poked at it with his knife, frowning.

  ‘And in the country – you saw that peasant kid today, so thin, and he can’t have washed for weeks –’

  ‘The Communists will make baths compulsory, will they?’ Martin muttered.

  ‘At least you gave him your shirt,’ Mama said. ‘Thereby making a spectacle of yourself in front of everyone.’

  ‘Oh –’ Leon stared at her, and then shook his head. ‘That was a gesture, a symbol of equality. That kid will remember it, when he’s a famous pello player he’ll say, yes, I like the Communists, they understand –’

  Papa raised his voice. ‘Leon, I wish you would give this a rest! Not only are your politics adolescent and rather naive, they are dangerous. There are men arrested every day for writing things like that, or saying them too loudly, or to the wrong person . . . You have simply been lucky, so far, not to have been –’

  ‘So we should just shut up and let the police get on with it?’

  The telephone rang. For a moment we sat without speaking. Then Papa sighed and got up to answer it. We heard his footsteps in the hall, and then the murmur of his voice. When he came back he looked tired. He said, ‘That was the Toros widow. I must go.’

  ‘Probably an attack of pique,’ Leon said. ‘Her famous son getting beaten by a peasant.’

  ‘It’s not her that’s ill,’ Papa said. ‘It’s the Bull.’

  No one said anything. Martin looked at me, but I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. Papa sighed, kissed Mama, reached for his jacket, took his bag from the sideboard and left.

  The pause went on. In the end Mama said, ‘Leon, your tie . . .’

  He glanced down and hooked it back. It left a trace of tomato sauce on his shirt, a little river of red. Mama bit her lip.

  ‘Do you think the Bull . . . ?’ Martin said, but he didn’t finish the question.

  ‘Pello players are as tough as old boots,’ Mama said. ‘He probably wants some aspirin and sympathy.’

  No one replied. I pushed my food around my plate; the little heavy ball of – what? fear? excitement? dread? – in my stomach tightened and tightened.

  Leon finished his food with a blank look in his eyes. Then he sat staring into space, rubbing absently at his cheeks, as if he could still feel the
tracks of blood and dust sticking to his skin.

  Papa didn’t come back. The silence grew and grew as we drank our coffee; it hung in the hot air like moisture while Dorotea cleared away our cups, until it felt as if there’d be a storm. As we went upstairs for the siesta I felt the sweat prickling between my shoulder blades and behind my knees. I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep, so I sat at one end of Martin’s bed, while he threw a ball against the wall, over and over again.

  After a while he said, ‘He should be back by now. If it’s only aspirin and sympathy . . . Shouldn’t he?’

  The silence came back, like water soaking up through a sandbag. Martin fumbled the ball and bent to retrieve it. Then he sat on the bed next to me and looked up at the mess of press cuttings pinned to the plaster. I followed his gaze. The Bull with the King’s Cup. Hiram Jelek and the Bull together, winner and runner-up of the Euxara Tournament. The Bull serving, in a blur. The whitest, most recent cutting, with Teddy’s headline: LOCAL PLAYER IS THE BEST IN THE WORLD.

  ‘It’s too hot up here,’ I said. ‘I’m going to sit in the garden.’

  ‘You don’t think it could be serious – that there could be something really wrong –’

  ‘Martin, for goodness’ sake, I don’t know! Honestly . . .’ I lifted my plait away from my neck and wiped the moisture off my skin. My stomach was churning, but I didn’t know why. It wasn’t to do with the Bull; or, rather, it was, somehow, but to do with Angel Corazon too, and the Zikindi girl . . .

  Martin looked at me, his head on one side. He pursed his lips, as if he was about to whistle. Then he shrugged. ‘Go on then. I’ve got homework to do.’

  I went. In the mid-afternoon silence the sound of the door shutting behind me seemed to make the whole house shake. I walked softly down the stairs, past the bedroom where Mama was resting, past Leon’s room, and down the last flight to the back door. Then I stepped out into the garden and stood blinking in the sudden sunlight.

  I hadn’t thought about what I was going to do once I was outside, only that I couldn’t bear to be shut in Martin’s room under the eaves, roasting. I took off my shoes and stockings and ran over the hot stones to the shade on the far side of the courtyard. Then I sat down on the bench, leant my head back against the wall and closed my eyes.

  I heard a rustle from somewhere over my head and a little percussive scatter, like a shower of tiny stones.

  I looked up, blinking. The Zikindi girl was sitting astride the wall above me, swinging one bare brown foot a little way away from my face.

  ‘Are you awake?’ she said.

  I shaded my face with my hand and nodded.

  ‘Is the doctor your father?’

  I nodded again. I wanted to say something so that I had an excuse to stare at her, but I had no idea what to say. No one I knew ever talked to the Zikindi, apart from telling them they were on private property. I said, ‘I’m Esteya.’

  ‘Skizi,’ she said, and grinned suddenly. ‘Do you want to know something?’ she said, as if we were in the middle of a conversation. ‘I’ll tell you a secret.’

  A Zikindi secret. I half expected her to get out a ragged pack of cards, to tell my fortune. I said, ‘Do I have to cross your palm with silver?’ and then could have bitten my tongue clean off.

  She gazed at me, levelly, the warmth gone out of her eyes. She swung her leg up and over the wall, as if she was about to drop down the other side, out of sight.

  I said, ‘Wait, it was a – I was joking – yes. Please.’

  She carried on staring at me; then suddenly she laughed, shaking her head, as if I’d passed some kind of test. She said, ‘I could do with some silver, anyway . . .’ and spun herself round to sit with both her feet dangling in front of my eyes. They were dusty on the soles, long-toed and bony, and they were the nicest feet I’d ever seen. I forced myself to look at her face.

  ‘Your father went to see the Bull, didn’t he?’

  ‘That’s not a secret,’ I said.

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘But I bet you don’t know he’s dead.’

  For a nauseous, spinning moment I thought she meant my father. It was only when she said, ‘That boy killed him,’ that I realised that she meant the Bull.

  ‘The Bull? Is . . . He died?’

  She nodded. She had a quiet, triumphant expression in her eyes, as if she’d given me a present and was watching me unwrap it.

  ‘Are you sure? How do you know?’

  ‘They called the priest. And then the widow came out into the street and started howling, like a wolf.’ She said it without contempt, as if she liked wolves.

  ‘Are you sure?’ I said again, but I didn’t need an answer.

  Skizi kicked her heels against the wall. From the sound of it I could tell her feet were hard, like hoofs, from not wearing shoes. She let the silence go on for a few more seconds. Then she said, ‘It would’ve been worth a handful of silver, anyway.’

  I looked down, into the dark margin of shadow on the ground, and thought of the Bull, flat on his back, bleeding into the dust. I’d wanted that. I’d been pleased.

  And Leon, with the Bull’s blood on his face: death to the oppressor . . .

  When I glanced up again, she was watching me. I said, ‘Why did you tell me?’

  ‘Didn’t you want to know?’

  ‘Yes – but – why . . . ?’ I gestured at the wall she was sitting on, and then towards the street. I meant, why me?

  She shrugged.

  ‘You followed us home. Me and my brother, I mean.’ It came out like an accusation, and I wished I hadn’t said it.

  ‘Is he your twin?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I thought so,’ she said. ‘Yes, I followed you.’

  ‘Why?’

  A little crease appeared between her eyebrows, and she laced her fingers together and stared at them. She said, ‘I didn’t think you’d mind.’

  I felt a rush of heat, as if I’d stepped out of the shade. I thought of how Mama would call the police if she knew there was a Zikindi girl sitting on her wall; how Dorotea would come out, cracking a tea towel like a whip to drive her away. Leon would keep his distance and not deign to call her “comrade”.

  I said, ‘No, I don’t mind.’

  She looked straight into my eyes. I stared back. Her eyelashes were short and surprisingly dark against her eyes. She had freckles across the bridge of her nose and her cheekbones, tiny flecks of brown on golden skin. I thought of my paintbox: gold ochre, Chinese orange, burnt sienna.

  The church clock struck four, distant and clear in the heavy air.

  She said, ‘I have to go.’

  ‘Where to? Where do you live?’

  ‘You go to the nuns’ school, don’t you? With the red uniforms?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, and suddenly prickled with sweat at the thought that she’d seen me in my uniform, my lumpy red jumper and high red socks. ‘It’s nearly the end of term, though . . . You –’ I stopped. No, I couldn’t imagine her in school uniform – in anything other than her shabby boy’s shirt and ragged trousers – let alone actually at school. It was like trying to imagine the sky wearing clothes.

  She laughed. ‘Me, at school? No. But I might see you around.’ She swung one leg back over the wall, ready to drop out of sight.

  ‘No, wait – wait –’

  She stopped, and waited.

  I didn’t have anything to say. I stared for too long. I blushed again and fiddled with my plait for an excuse to hide my face.

  There was a pause. Then I heard her trousers rustle, as if she’d got something out of her pocket.

  ‘Catch.’

  She half threw, half dropped something over the wall at my feet. It thumped on the stones and darted into the shadows in the corner of the courtyard, so I had to crouch down and scrabble for it.

  The ball. Angel’s ball, scratched and dusty, the leather giving at the seams, the stitching darkened and rusty for the length of a fingernail. I held it in my hand, not quite believing it
.

  ‘You took it,’ I said.

  ‘He left it.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  Her eyes narrowed. ‘Then give it back.’

  I looked down at it. The ball that killed the best pello player ever. If she’d stolen it . . . The Zikindi stole everything that wasn’t nailed down. That was why no one wanted to get too close – that, and the smell, and the lice . . . But Skizi didn’t smell, I thought stupidly. Or if she did, it was of something good, like grass or olive oil . . . I kept hold of the ball, pressing it against my leg like a bruise. I said, ‘Give it back?’

  She blinked, unsmiling, then drew one knee up on to the wall and rested her chin on it.

  I tried to hold her stare. But I couldn’t do it. When I looked back at her she was laughing.

  ‘Keep it,’ she said. ‘You know you want to.’

  I felt myself smile, reflecting her grin back to her. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Thank you.’

  We looked at each other. The sunlight had softened from the midday glare into something richer. She had a sheen of moisture over her cheekbones, deepening the gold of her skin, like varnish. I wanted to touch her.

  She raised a hand to me, in a sort of salute. Then she slid off the wall, disappearing in one swift movement like a lizard, so quickly I hardly believed she’d been there at all.

  I brought the ball up to my face and touched it with my mouth, smelling the dust and red-dyed leather. I breathed in, not quite knowing how I felt or what I was thinking. Then I went inside.

  That night I couldn’t sleep. It was hot; even though I’d opened my window as wide as it would go, there was no breeze coming through it. The moon was lopsided and bright white.

  In the room next door, Martin’s bedsprings clanked and resonated as he turned over. There was a thump and he swore, as if he’d banged his elbow against the wall. He couldn’t sleep either.

  There was a noise from the street below my window. A key in a lock; then the front door creaked as it swung open, then slammed. Something made a muffled noise halfway between a crash and a tinkle.