not Cat, it’s Duran. He knows straight away that he’s talking to the young man of the finger but doesn’t immediately understand what he wants.
‘I got your number from the Yellow Pages,’ Duran begins. ‘It’s only because I have a chance to go to Sapporo. With a group from Argentina.’
‘Sorry?’
‘I’m going to Japan. It’s much bigger out there.’
‘What is?’
‘Ice sculpture. Sapporo, haven’t you heard about it? They found me via internet, the Argentines. They were selected months ago. They rang me on an old number and mailed me. I saw it just in time. So I can still go.’
‘Fantastic. I didn’t know your sculptures were on the internet. I thought no one was allowed to see them.’
‘I like to keep this separate from the shop,’ he says seriously. ‘Anyhow, I’m in the Argentine group. They’re very good. They want Durans from all over the world. And Shaka Duran is one of them.’
‘I can bring him round.’
‘I don’t like to ask. It was a present. I tried to make a new Shaka Duran but I can’t with my bandaged hand. Otherwise I’d make them there, like the other participants, but in the circumstances I’ll have to take them with me, see?’
‘When do you need him?’
‘As soon as possible. The moment I’m back from Japan he’ll be yours again. Thanks.’
‘I’ll be round tomorrow morning early, all right?’
‘That’s really very good of you.’
He has to go to Cat, even though he’s done far less work than he intended. It’s a long time since he felt a sense of embarrassment steal over him. It permeates the general unease of the day. Not only has he done little work, he’s breached this woman’s confidentiality, although that didn’t occur to him as he was reading. He decides it would be pathetic to stuff the envelopes back into the crack so he piles them up on the floor.
‘I’ve found some letters,’ he says as he walks into her living room.
She’s still sitting in the same position, but now with a flowery shawl over her shoulders.
‘Just take them with you,’ she says, her expression shrouded in cigarette smoke.
‘Ça va,’ he says, in no fit state to think of a better answer.
He doesn’t want to take the letters into the house so he leaves them on the passenger seat.
Cat has cooked. She talks about her parents, how she’ll go and see them this week after all, and about the translations she’s working on: a sixteenth-century Spanish mystic and a folder for a timber company. She thinks it’s absurd that she finds herself financially obliged to take on the latter sort of jobs. As he’s aware.
He wants to ask her if she’s scared, but despite her communicative mood, which makes him think of Madeleine’s notes, she continues to avoid eye contact. In bed she falls asleep immediately. Several hours later he wakes aroused and confused with her lips around his member. She licks and glides, climbs him and rides him; he can’t keep up with her, wants to slow down, to turn on the light to see her, but she’s a whirlwind, a beast with a hundred tongues that gives him no chance and then suddenly escapes him again. He throws an arm around her warm stillness and hopes for a night without dreams.
-
24
With the morning light, he strokes her back. He needs to talk to her, soon, to penetrate the unfamiliar shield she’s put up, but now she must sleep, for as long as she can.
Wash, dress, coffee and newspaper: acts you perform at fixed times fail to stimulate the memory sufficiently to be remembered, but on mornings like this, at the start of pleasant days, the rituals take a firmer lead.
He walks around as he eats his bread with chocolate spread, looking for his shoes. The sense of having forgotten something creeps over him. He walks to the van in the hope it’s nothing important and drives out of the street more slowly than usual.
For the past three seasons a boy with some kind of intellectual disability has stood in front of the last house. He addresses Alphonse as ‘scallywag’. He hasn’t been there for several days. Cancer again, no doubt. He tries to shake the word out of his head. ‘No. No,’ he mumbles. It’s a long time since he last talked to himself.
Then, just before the second road junction, he knows what it is he’s forgotten: Shaka Duran. He turns the van and drives back by the same route, this time at walking pace, behind a combine harvester. Once again he’ll get to his client later than intended. He squeezes the wheel, telling himself there’s no sense in getting upset.
It’s still quiet in the kitchen. When you visit your house unexpectedly it sometimes feels like someone else’s. He looks for the freezer box containing Shaka Duran and opens it carefully to check the sculpture is still intact—even the delicate spear is undamaged. With the box in a plastic bag between two freezer packs, he hurries out again.
‘Merci, merci!’ The owner of Pita Merci looks immensely tired. ‘Watch out, it’s slippery there.’ The floor is wet and clean, and in the corner there’s a bucket of water that smells of roses. Duran cautiously opens one corner of the lid. He nods his approval, closes the box again and carries it solemnly to the freezer.
‘What about your finger? When do the stitches come out?’ Alphonse asks his back.
‘In five days. But I’ll be in Japan then. They can do it anywhere, the doctor says.’
‘Ha!’ snorts a voice from behind the counter.
When Alphonse takes a step to one side and stretches his neck he sees a sullen sixty-something sitting on a low chair, head resting on an arm, the arm on a knee.
‘This is my father,’ says Duran.
‘A pleasure,’ says Alphonse.
The father gives a dour nod in response and tosses a few Turkish words in Duran’s direction. Duran gives a reticent answer, then adds something placatory.
‘My father doesn’t think it’s a good idea for me to go to Japan. We’ve been talking about it all night. He doesn’t see the point. I’m grateful he’s willing to keep the shop going while I’m away.’
The father stands up brusquely and shouts something at his son, gesturing toward Alphonse.
‘He says I’m not Argentinian. He thinks ice sculptures are for children and he’d like to know your opinion.’
‘I think they’re beautiful,’ says Alphonse. ‘Cleverly done.’
Duran translates triumphantly. The father raises his hands to the ceiling and shouts again.
‘“Another lunatic,” says my father.’
With his next statement the father stands up and puts one finger up close to his son’s nose.
‘He’s
