Morag Joss - Among the Missing aka Across the Bridge

“Okay. But I don’t even know who-”

“No names! No documents, you understand? No papers. That way it’s all private, okay?”

“Yes, but how much-”

“Listen. You come back here tomorrow. Just you. You understand?”

Just then I heard the cry of a young child in the background. “Wait,” he said. He spoke a few words in another language. A pause, then I heard him speak in English. “Ssh, hey, hey, Anna? It’s all right, wait just a minute, Papa’s busy…”

I caught my breath. His voice had grown musical and soft.

There were some noises of movement and murmuring from the child and then, “Good girl, Anna. Papa’s baby…”

He would think me insane if I began to cry.

“Okay, listen,” he said to me. “So you come back tomorrow. Exactly same place. Then you call me again, same time, I tell you where you bring me the car. If car okay, we agree price, I pay, you get cash, we both get discretion. We don’t say to nobody.”

His voice was changed, young and rounded and cadenced. I was certain this gentler, slightly shy voice belonged to the person he really was.

“I’ll be here tomorrow,” I said.

Since last year, a certain mood would come over me at nightfall. When night masked the trees around the trailer and turned the river water to ink and the far bank was a steep black hulk against the softer dark of the sky, I couldn’t tell what country this was, or what season or century. It was night and it was anywhere and any year, that was all. The moon made me feel smaller and safer than the sun. If it was a fine evening, I would go outside alone. I liked to walk with my head thrown back, following the moon. I could go in any direction I chose along the shore, and often I missed my footing and nearly fell, but somehow I would still always be following the moon. Wherever it led I followed, until my neck felt stiff or I finally stumbled. I must have looked so silly. Then I would do it all over again but imagine this time the moon was following me, and it always did. Dreamy and drunk on moonlight, I needed a while afterward to steady myself and get used to being back on the river shore by the trailer, for it really did feel as if I’d been a long way away. Moonbathing was how I thought of it.

I didn’t speak of it to you; I knew you would have found the idea of it amusing. You’d have snatched it away and held it out of my reach while you scrutinized it, you would have tossed it around for fun and handed it back to me, a little spoiled. Though you never meant to be unkind.

And though it was funny, I didn’t do it for amusement. Though I was soothed by it, it wasn’t for relaxation. It was surrender. I gave myself up to it long, long before it was dark. Even when Vi wasn’t being difficult, I would be looking forward to the day at work being over. Part of me would yearn all day long for the coming reward, to be absorbed and lost in the moon. You knew that much, I think. You would gather wood while it was still light and stack it around the circle of rocks we’d built on the ground between the trailer and the riverbank, and you would bring out chairs for us and a blanket for when the evening got colder. You’d light the fire while I was settling Anna in bed, so I would be guided down to you by the orange glow and the crackle of burning sticks. At night the noise of traffic passing on the bridge far away downriver settled to the occasional whirring rise and fall, as cars in twos and threes approached and crossed over. That was soothing, too.

I liked it best when you found silvery fallen tree branches for the fire, which burned with the baking smell of old, sun-parched timber. Sometimes we had to burn scrap wood that people had dumped along the edge of the road at the top of the track: bits of old furniture, broken doors-once, nearly the whole side of a garden shed-and then the fumes would be harsh and chemical and the fire would flare with blistering paint and melting glue.

That night the flames were different, a sulky, wavering yellow giving off greenish clouds of smoke with a sharp, rotten smell.

These sticks are damp. They must have been lying in the water, I said, poking at one with my foot. Did you pick them out of the water? The smoke smells of weeds. And dead fish.

You grunted. It’s all I could get, I didn’t have time to go getting dry stuff. We’ve used up all there is round here; the only dry stuff’s a mile down the shore. Anna was too tired.

You didn’t have time? What else did you do today?

Nothing much. Went up to the service station to fill the water cans. Anna ate nearly a whole muffin.

That’s a long walk for her. No wonder she was tired.

Well anyway, after that I didn’t want to take her along the shore. I can’t carry her and drag wood back all this way. It’s enough just getting the water.

You need to get something to fetch it in. Maybe you could make something. You could get some old wheels from somewhere, make a little cart. You could give her rides in it, she’d love it. She’d look so cute! You could pretend-

I saw your face and stopped speaking. You glared into the fire, then you got up and kicked a sticking-out branch farther into the flames.

Little rides for Anna? Little rides in a little cart? Yeah, let’s pretend. Let’s make Stefan play fucking games all day. But we won’t let him do any proper work, will we? Not for money.

Stefan, don’t. You can’t-

You turned and stood away, out of the circle of warmth.

You treat me like a kid! he said. I should be making proper money so we can get out of here. But you don’t want that, do you? You want things as they are, you want me wasting my time making little fucking carts!

Of course I don’t. You know I hate us being like this.

No, you like it. You like us right here, living like this. Well, I don’t, I’ve had enough. I’m going to change things.

Don’t be stupid! Somebody’s got to look after Anna. Okay, I’m the one with the job, is that my fault? Tell me what I’m supposed to do. Give up a job to let you borrow money we’ll never pay back? So you can drive people around all day in a cab that’ll never belong to you?

I’ll get a cab some other way.

What other way is there? Everybody needs a loan to get started, and we are not borrowing money from those bastards. We’d never get away from them. I’m not stopping you from making things better, I’m stopping you from being stupid, I’m stopping you from walking into trouble.

I have to get a car! Can’t you see? As soon as I’m getting fares, we can pay rent, get a proper place, and we’re out of here!

Stefan, if you borrow from the kind of people who’d lend to you, the car will never, ever be yours. You can’t own your own car in this country. You don’t even exist in this country.

Loads of people do it! Tell me how else we get out of here?

You haven’t been talking to them, have you? Is that where you were today, in the city? You haven’t talked to them, have you? Stefan!

Listen, in two years, maybe three, we’d have good money. We’d owe nobody.

But suppose it goes wrong? Suppose you’re on somebody else’s patch or the car’s stolen? Suppose there isn’t enough business? Those bastards, you think they’re going to say, Oh, Stefan, you’re a nice guy, that’s okay? They’ll burn the car, that’s the least they’ll do. They could burn it with you in it.

Oh, come on, those are fucking scare stories!

No, Stefan, they’re not. And you know what else? They take the woman and sell her to get back at him, they sell her to other men. Children, too, even children.