“Laura, don’t keep at me,” I said. “I don’t know everything, I’m not a professor.”

Laura was sitting on the floor, in her school kilt. She sucked on her knuckle, staring up at me, disappointed. I was disappointing her frequently of late. “I saw Alex Thomas the other day,” she said.

I turned away quickly, adjusted my veil in the mirror. It was a fairly poor effect, the green satin: some Hollywood vamp in a desert movie. I comforted myself with the thought that everyone else would look equally faux. “Alex Thomas? Really?” I said. I should have displayed more surprise.

“Well, aren’t you glad?”

“Glad about what?”

“Glad he’s alive,” she said. “Glad they haven’t caught him.”

“Of course I’m glad,” I said. “But don’t say anything to anyone. You wouldn’t want them to track him down.”

“You don’t need to tell me that. I’m not a baby. That’s why I didn’t wave at him.”

“Did he see you?” I said.

“No. He was just walking along the street. He had his coat collar up and his scarf over his chin, but I knew it was him. He had his hands in his pockets.”

At the mention of hands, of pockets, a sharp pang went through me. “What street was this?”

“Our street,” she said. “He was on the other side, looking at the houses. I think he was looking for us. He must know we live around here.”

“Laura,” I said, “have you still got a crush on Alex Thomas? Because if you do, you should try to get over it.”

“I don’t have a crush on him,” she said with scorn. “I never had a crush. Crush is a horrible word. It really stinks.” She’d become less pious since going to school, and her language had become a good deal stronger. Stinks was in the ascendant.

“Whatever you want to call it, you should give it up. It’s just not possible,” I said gently. “It will only make you unhappy.”

Laura put her arms around her knees. “Unhappy,” she said. “What on earth do you know about unhappy?”

Eight

The Blind Assassin:

Carnivore stories

He’s moved again, which is just as well. She hated that place out by the Junction. She didn’t like going there, and in any case it was so far, and so cold then: every time she got to it her teeth were chattering. She hated the narrow cheerless room, the stink of old cigarettes because you couldn’t open the stuck window, the sordid little shower in the corner, that woman she’d meet on the stairs—a woman like a downtrodden peasant in some musty old novel, you kept expecting to see her with a bundle of sticks on her back. The sullen insolent stare she’d give, as if picturing exactly what would go on behind his door once it was closed. A stare of envy, but also of spite.

Good riddance to all of that.

Now the snow has melted, though a few grey smudges of it remain in the shadows. The sun is warm, there’s the smell of damp earth and stirring roots and the sodden vestiges of last winter’s discarded newspapers, blurred and illegible. In the better sections of the city the daffodils are out, and, in a few front gardens where there’s no shade, there are tulips, red and orange. A note of promise, as the gardening column says; though even now, in late April, it snowed the other day—big white sloppy flakes, a freakish blizzard.

She’s hidden her hair under a kerchief, worn a navy blue coat, the closest she could get to sombre. He said it would be best. In the nooks and corners down here, tomcat scents and vomit, the reek of crated chickens. Horse dung on the road, from the mounted policemen who keep an eye out, not for thieves but for agitators—nests of foreign Reds, whispering together like rats in straw, six to a bed no doubt, sharing their women, incubating their warped, intricate plots. Emma Goldman, exiled from the States, is said to live somewhere nearby.

Blood on the sidewalk, a man with a bucket and brush. She steps fastidiously around the wet pink puddle. It’s a region of kosher butchers; also of tailors, of wholesale furriers. And sweatshops, no doubt. Rows of immigrant women hunched over machines, their lungs filling with lint.

The clothes on your back come off somebody else’s, he’d said to her once. Yes, she’d replied lightly, but I look better in them. Then added with some anger, What do you want me to do? What do you want me to do? Do you seriously think I have any power?

She stops at a greengrocer’s, buys three apples. Not very good apples, last season’s, their skins softly wrinkling, but she feels she needs a peace offering of some kind. The woman takes one of the apples away from her, points out a punky brown spot, substitutes a better apple. All this without speaking. Meaningful nods and gap-toothed smiles.

Men in long black coats, wide black hats, small quick-eyed women. Shawls, long skirts. Broken verbs. They don’t look directly at you but they don’t miss much. She’s conspicuous, a giantess. Her legs right out in the open.

Here’s the button store, just where he said. She stops a moment to look in the window. Fancy buttons, satin ribbons, braid, rickrack, sequins—raw material for the dreamland adjectives of fashion copy. Someone’s fingers, right around here, must have sewn the ermine trim on her white chiffon evening cape. The contrast of fragile veil and rank animal pelt, that’s what appeals to the gentlemen. Delicate flesh, then the shrubbery.

His new room is above a baker’s. Around to the side, up the stairs, in a haze of a smell she likes. But dense, overpowering—yeast fermenting, going straight to her head like warm helium. She hasn’t seen him for too long. Why has she kept away?

He’s there, he opens the door.

I brought you some apples, she says.

After a while the objects of this world take shape around her once more. There’s his typewriter, precarious on the tiny washstand. The blue suitcase is beside it, topped with the displaced washbasin. Shirt crumpled on the floor. Why is it that tumbled cloth always signifies desire? With its wrenched, impetuous forms. The flames in paintings look like that—like orange fabric, hurled and flung.

They lie in the bed, an enormous carved mahogany structure that almost fills the room. Wedding furniture once, from far away, meant to last a lifetime. Lifetime, what a stupid word it seems right now; durability, how useless. She cuts an apple up with his pocket knife, feeds him segments.

If I didn’t know better I’d think you were trying to seduce me.

No—I’m just keeping you alive. I’m fattening you up to eat later.

That’s a perverse thought, young lady.

Yes. It’s yours. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten the dead women with azure hair and eyes like snake-filled pits? They’d have you for breakfast.

Only if permitted. He reaches for her again. Where have you been keeping yourself? It’s been weeks.

Yes. Wait. I need to tell you something.

Is it urgent? he says.

Yes. Not really. No.

The sun declines, the shadows of the curtains move across the bed. Voices on the street outside, unknown languages. I will always remember this, she tells herself. Then: Why am I thinking about memory? It’s not then yet, it’s now. It’s not over.

I’ve thought out the story, she says. I’ve thought out the next part of it.

Oh? You’ve got your own ideas?

I’ve always had my own ideas.

Okay. Let’s hear them, he says, grinning.

All right, she says. The last we knew, the girl and the blind man were being taken off to see the Servant of Rejoicing, leader of the barbarian invaders called the People of Desolation, because the two of them were suspected of being divine messengers. Correct me if I’m wrong.

You really pay attention to this stuff? he says wonderingly. You really remember it?