Reif Larsen - I Am Radar

It was the piano player and his dog. They were entering a room down the hall.

“Who is it?” said Radar.

“I never knew their names. A man and a woman. They left some time ago. Fabien won’t rent it out, though. He keeps it for them. Not that he could rent it out. No one comes here anymore.”

Radar stood there, swaying.

“I like your dog,” he said. “What’s his name?”

“Pascal,” the man said, and disappeared into his room.

Radar followed the hallway, running his palm along the walls. He found another staircase and went up and up until he came to a door. He assumed that the door would be locked, but when he tried the handle it opened, and he found himself in the cool open air of the rooftop. It reminded him of the deck of the ship. He looked out across the city and saw the Aleph lit up at the docks. Suddenly, he desperately wanted to be back there. The ship had become his home now. He could barely remember New Jersey.

One half of the roof was taken up by a giant billboard, illuminated by two large fluorescent lights that buzzed into the night. Insects swirled and dived around the lights in a frenzy. Radar walked over to the front of the billboard and saw a giant smiling man in a tie, talking on a mobile phone. PARLEZ À L’AFRIQUE! PARLEZ AU MONDE! declared the sign to the citizens of Matadi. Radar stepped forward to the edge of the roof. Normally he was terrified of heights, but he felt very calm. He looked down to the street below. He thought he saw Horeb in his white tunic, waiting by his motorcycle.

He placed his toe against the ledge, felt the spot where the building ended and the air began. He knew that if he jumped he would survive. This would not be the way he died — not here, not now, not in a mangled heap next to Horeb’s rickshaw. If he jumped, he knew he would get up and walk away from the fall.

“Don’t go so close,” he heard a woman’s voice say behind him.

He turned and saw Yvette standing on the roof. She looked unsteady in her heels. Behind her in the doorway, Ivan appeared. She took a step toward Radar.

“Please, Harpo, mon chéri, ” she said. “I don’t want you to fall.”

Instinctively, he inched backwards. Ivan came up beside her.

“Ho,” said Ivan. “Come back from the ledge, my friend.”

“What’s your business here?” Radar said to Ivan.

Ivan took a step forward, and Radar raised his arm by his side, as if he were about to jump.

“Captain Daneri said you had business interests here. What do you do?”

Ivan reached out. “Come back from the edge. You had too much to drink, my friend.”

“Please,” breathed Yvette. “I don’t want you to fall. We only just met.”

“What is it?” said Radar again, raising his arm threateningly. “What do you do, Ivan? What did you not tell me?” For an instant he felt himself lose his balance and thought he might actually fall. He flapped his arms, and both Ivan and Yvette flinched before Radar righted himself.

Ivan sighed. He pursed his lips and then looked at the ground.

“I have a child,” he said. “I have a little girl. Her mother lives here.”

Radar blinked. “What?”

“In one week she will be four,” he said. “Her name is Anna, like her grandmother.”

Radar took this in. The lights from the billboard buzzed.

“She does not call me her father. For her, she has no father,” he said. “I have not earned this, to be her father. It is very hard for me to see her and not to tell her. I can hold her, but I cannot give her what she needs.”

No one moved. And then Yvette said quietly, “I had a child. He was taken from me.”

She did not say more, and no one asked for more. Then Radar took several steps toward them, and Ivan and Yvette each seized one of his arms. She laughed nervously, and they stood on the roof in silence like this, the scent of burning still around them. The sparse lights of the town beneath, the ship, the river that swallows all rivers, the sky.

Ivan pointed. “It’s difficult to see, but there is a star there.”

“Where?” said Yvette.

“There.” He took her shoulder and pointed. He was pointing with the hand that was missing a pinkie. The absence of the finger somehow made his pointing more precise.

“Alpha Centauri,” he said. “It is brightest star in sky. You can only see it here, in the south. I did not see this star until I was eighteen. It was greatest night of my life. I had read about it, but I had never seen it with my own eyes. Seeing it with your eyes changes everything.”

They huddled and looked.

“There, do you see? It is brightest.”

“Yes, I think so,” said Yvette.

“It looks like one star, but it is actually two, Centauri A and Centauri B. And a little red dwarf named Proxima. All three form star. You can’t tell them apart with your eyes.”

“Who is little red dwarf?” whispered Yvette, leaning into Radar. “Who is my Proxima? Is it you, Harpo?”

“This is nearest star to us besides our sun,” said Ivan. “That light we see is only four years old.”

“So young,” she murmured.

Radar was staring at the immensity of the sky. “We are really alone, aren’t we?” he said.

“Not so alone,” said Ivan.

“Come down to my room,” said Yvette. “Both of you.”

It was not a request. They descended back into the hotel. Yvette’s room was decorated with hanging tapestries and various wooden masks. Clothes were draped everywhere, drawers open. A smell of what he realized was her perfume.

“How long have you been here?” asked Radar.

“Long enough,” she said.

She fished a record from the shelf and put it on. The vinyl was in bad shape. The dust and scratches could be heard, but the singer was French and sang so beautifully that the three of them sat there in a stunned silence, listening to the little miracles of heartbreak. Then Yvette got up and walked over to the table. She picked up a long tube.

“You don’t want any, Vanush?” she said to Ivan.

He shook his head. “I must see the stars.”

“You can always see the stars, my love,” she said.

All of a sudden, he began to sing. “Yvette, Yvette, she’s loveliest woman I’ve never met. .”

She smiled, clutching the tube to her chest. “Go on,” she said.

“Have you two met before?” asked Radar.

“Only once, I promise. .” said Yvette.

“Someday I’ll write song about all this,” said Ivan. He shook his head. “ Tonight I will write song about this. Do you have guitar?”

Yvette held out her hands. “Ma chambre est nue.”

“Okay,” he said. “Okay. I will find.” He got up and left the room.

Yvette came to Radar and held out her hand. “Come,” she said.

“Where did he go?”

“Come.”

They parried open the mosquito nets and slinked into bed. She took off Radar’s hat and placed it on her head. Even in his drunken haze, he winced, thinking she would be repelled by his baldness, by his tuft, by his Radar-ness. But she only smiled, letting her hand drift down his face before unzipping his jacket and pulling off his undershirt. He was suddenly aware of his skin as a surface that could be touched. She shivered out of her frock and lit a candle by the bedside. He thought of Ana Cristina then. He wondered whether she would be mad or not. It was too late to be mad. It was too late to be anything.

“Have you ever smoked before?” she said. She was wearing his hat and nothing else.

He shook his head, staring into those eyes. What had those eyes seen?

“The flame will bring the smoke to you. Don’t breathe too hard. Hold it in. And remember to smile.”

She spat on her finger and moistened the tip of the pipe and then brought it to his lips. He shut his eyes and drank in the smoke until his lungs stopped working. When he exhaled, his whole body went up into the ceiling. The smell familiar and not familiar. He had been here before, in this bed, with this woman. He had been here before, but then, he had never been anywhere at all.