Maggie Gee - The Ice People

He grinned for the first time, showing the gaps in his big rare teeth, filled with dull gold. ‘All the world offer the car,’ he said in bad English, contemptuously. ‘I no want your old coche, señor .’ This was the first sign of open aggression, but he smiled after he said it as if it were politeness.

He put his hand on Dora. ‘Make the switch,’ he said. ‘I like this one. I see him muchas veces on the screen.’

I knew what was coming, but I had no choice. Forgive me, Dora, I had no scruples because we had already lost so much, our home, our past, Briony … Only Luke was left. Anything for Luke. ‘Switch on,’ I muttered. ‘Yes, yes.’

Within five minutes Juan was besotted. Having given no sign of animation in one or two hours’ discussion with me, he became a boy, laughing inanely whenever Dora spoke or moved. He seemed particularly taken with her strokeyfeely panel, and the way she chuckled when he tickled her. I hoped he were not some appalling kind of pervert. To be honest, I preferred not to know. ‘Is maravillosa ,’ he told me, earnestly. ‘She go to make my English marvellous. You give me this one, señor, and your visas — no problema .’

I told him yes, it was a deal, but I could not give him Dora now, I should have to let Luke say goodbye. ‘They’re like brothers,’ I said, ‘or brother and sister.’

He wanted to come with us — he didn’t trust me, or else he was too much in love to say goodbye — but I refused, and in the end he let us go, with one of the visas on account, I suppose lest I disappeared for good and got our visas somewhere else. He was to give me Luke’s when we returned with Dora, and we shook hands keenly, and his hands were sweating, a pervert’s hands, I was nearly sure.

Now there would only be two of us. I parted from Juan with too much alacrity to switch Dora off, but she was silent in the car as we drove back into the hills, and I felt her heavy presence behind me like a hand of shame upon my shoulder.

I decided I had to try to explain. Perhaps it would make it easier for her to begin a new life with Juan.

‘Dora,’ I began. ‘We’re going away. Luke and I. To Africa. You can’t come with us. I’m very sorry. Very sad that you can’t come.’

‘You are very unhappy?’ she said, sounding muted. ‘I’m sorry that you’re unhappy.’

‘ Well, I’m not, really,’ I said, hurriedly. ‘I’m happy I can go with Luke. Just unhappy that you can’t come with us.’

‘You are unhappy because I can’t come with you?’

‘Yes.’

‘I suggest,’ she said, always logical, ‘that I come with you, then you won’t be unhappy.’

‘You can’t come with us.’

‘I can go with you.’

It was almost as if she were arguing with me, but of course it was just her logic module. ‘Actually, Dora, I have sold you.’ It sounded terrible, put like that.

‘I am consulting my vocabulary,’ she said, but her tone was disapproving. ‘So, you have transferred me to a purchaser in exchange for money. Is that correct?’

‘No, no, I wouldn’t sell you for money. I sort of had to exchange you for some visas,’ I said. ‘For Luke. So he could escape to Africa.’

‘I am consulting my vocabulary,’ she said again, then after a long pause, ‘Visa is not in my vocabulary.’

‘It’s a sort of — travel pass,’ I said.

‘So you have transferred me to a purchaser in exchange for a travel pass,’ she said. ‘Yes, I understand. I have a question, please. What is the name of this purchaser?’

‘Juan,’ I said. ‘He likes you very much.

‘I am searching,’ she said. ‘Yes. I was talking to this Juan. Fiftythree minutes ago.’

She sounded perfectly calm about it. I ventured an opinion. ‘You’ll soon forget us. He’s very nice.’ Heaven forgive me for lying to her, but we were getting near, and I wanted it over.

‘That is incorrect,’ she said, rather loud. ‘I cannot forget you. You are in my memory. Everything you say is in my memory. Also Sarah is in my memory. And Briony. And Luke’s voice, singing —’

‘Yes, yes. That’s why we’ve come back to say goodbye to Luke. I hope you feel okay about it.’ It was mad of me, really, to ask about her feelings, but she sounded so human, one forgot she was a robot –

‘I feel. Very bad and very sad,’ she said, shocking me to my selfish centre. Surely she had only said that before when we hadn’t been able to feed her promptly?

‘I feel sad too,’ I said, subdued. ‘But you will be very happy with Juan.’ I forgot, as so often, that she had no future tense, that everything either happened in the present or else the past, where it became information.

‘That is not correct,’ she said, sullenly. At least I heard sullenness where maybe none was. ‘I am not very happy, I am not with Juan. You are in error. Or perhaps joking?’

She suddenly reminded me of Sarah, always contradicting or questioning. Dora was appealing because she was biddable. Now she had turned awkward, so good riddance, I thought. ‘Oh piss off, Dora,’ I said, and braked, and switched off before she could search her vocabulary.

I felt triumphant, hotly triumphant, as I drove up the track that led back to the little white granja where I had left Luke. I had done it, somehow, I had pulled it off, the tickets this morning, and now the visas, I’d succeeded where so many failed. Surely my son would be proud of me.

The farm looked the same, but prettier in the afternoon sun, more mellow, more pleasing to the eye than when we had driven the track that morning, uncertain, anxious. Now, five hours later, things were different. This afternoon I knew my son was there, and the deal was done, and everything was settled. It grew quickly larger against the brown hillside, the whitegold stone with its glittering windows. I saw a little figure outside, but couldn’t make it out. Was it waving, flapping? I thought it was Luke, but it wasn’t Luke, too dark to be Luke, too short, too everything. I screwed up my eyes to see in the sun. It was the little fat man who owned the villa, and I realised he was waving in agitation. Perhaps I was late, perhaps they had been worried? I screeched to a halt on the stones outside.

‘I’m sorry, pardon me, it took me so long. Your friend is —’

‘ Señor ,’ he interrupted, and I saw he was upset, and then I was upset. ‘Did your son come to meet you? He didn’t come to meet you?’

So everything changed, the world turned over in that sunlit second. I stared at him –

I was trying not to understand him.

For Luke had vanished soon after I had left, two hours ago, three hours ago. I was shouting at the man’s broad stupid face, I wanted to shake him till his bad teeth rattled, answer me, answer, how long ago did my son wander off and disappear, how long is it since my only son was snatched, kidnapped, raped, killed? ‘Where is he?’ I was shouting, and I had him by the throat, I didn’t mean to touch him but I had him by the throat. Then I frogmarched him round to the door of his house, and his wife came out and shouted in Spanish and hit me round the head until I let him go.

I was sober, suddenly, and quiet. They were talking enough for three of us, and the word I kept hearing was salvajes, salvajes, the words I shall hear to the end of my life, which will not be long, in this cold, godknows –

They surround me, now, these other wild boys, these urban savages, the worst of the lot. They’re no more free than we were, are they? Chained like dogs to the wreck of the airport, killing and dying in the dirty city air, at the foot of great airplanes flying nowhere. And I’m as savage as any of them. A wild old man who lost, who lost –