Colum McCann - Zoli

She is brought across to a brown swivel chair. She leans back in it: “I'm all right, it's just been a long journey.”

And then she wonders, as she takes the glass of water, in which language she has said this, and what, if anything, it has meant.

“This is my cubicle,” says Francesca.

Zoli looks up to see photographs of herself and Enrico, standing in the valley on a summer afternoon. She reaches out to touch his face, dark with sun. There is also one of Francesca as a child of eight, a kerchief on her hair, standing outside the millhouse, the turn of the wheel slightly blurred. Did we really live this way? she wonders. She wants to ask the question aloud, but nothing comes, and then she snaps herself back, pinches her wrist, and remarks how nice the office is, though clearly it is a temporary structure, cramped, leaky, tight.

“What were you saying about eiderdowns, Mamma?” I m not sure.

“You're pale,” Francesca says again.

“It's just a little hot in here.”

Her daughter clicks on a small white fan and directs it at Zoli's face.

“I have always had some paleness,” says Zoli, and she means it as a joke, but it's not a joke, nobody gets it, not even her own daughter. She reaches forward and turns the fan off, and can feel Francesca's warm breath on her cheeks, can hear her saying: “Mamma, maybe I should take you home.”

“No, no, I'm fine.”

“I'll just make some phone calls.”

“You go ahead, chonorroeja.”

“You don't mind? It's just a few calls, that's all. A couple of other things and then I'm all yours.”

“Headscarves,” says Zoli for no reason that she can recognize or discern.

When they emerge through the back door, there is a group of young boys swinging along, carrying a giant radio on their shoulders. They wear baseball caps turned backwards and wide baggy trousers with brightly colored shoes. The beat of the song, loud and jarring, is not entirely foreign and Zoli thinks that she has heard it somewhere before, but perhaps all songs come around to the same song, and she wishes for a moment that she could walk with the boys, over the hill of rubbish to the cluttered construction site, just to figure out where exactly she has heard it before.

“Drive me around, Franca,” she says.

“But you're tired.”

“Please, I want to drive around.”

“You're the boss,” says her daughter, and it's meant as something sweet, Zoli knows, though it comes out barbed and strange-sounding. They round the back of the makeshift cabin and her daughter stops short. “Oh, shit,” she says as she leans over the hood of the car, pulls back the windscreen wipers. “They took the rubber,” she says. “They use them for catapults. That's the fourth time this year. Shit!”

A pebble lands at the back of the car and rolls on the tar.

“Get in, Mamma.”

“Why?”

“Get in! Please.”

Zoli settles in the front seat. Her daughter leans against the car, her breasts against the window, and Zoli can hear her talking urgently into the phone. Within moments the security guard is out, his radio crackling. Francesca points at a number of children scampering away in different directions. The security guard bends down to Zoli's window: “I'm very sorry, Madame,” he says in a broad African accent, then walks wearily towards the construction site.

“Can you believe that?” says Francesca. “I'm going to get you out of here.”

“I want to see it.”

“What is there to see, Mamma? It's not exactly the valley. Sometimes the gendarmes won't even come in here. There's a few vigilante groups now, they keep it quieter. Mamma, don't you think-I shouldn't have brought you out here, I'm sorry.”

“And where are ours? ”

“Ours?” Yes, ours.

“Block eight. There's a few out near the highway too. They've built little shelters for themselves. They come and go.”

“Block eight, then.”

“It's not a good idea, Mamma.” Please.

Francesca shifts the car into gear and drives past the shuttered shops, pulls up at a series of yellow bollards. She points across a gray courtyard at the buildings, six stories high, where laundry is strung from balconies and shattered windows are patched with thick gray tape.

Zoli watches a tiny girl running through the courtyard, carrying a folded red paper flower stuck on the end of a coat-hanger. The girl picks her way across the gloom, past the hulk of a burned-out van, and begins to climb a set of black railings. She twirls the coathanger above her head. The folded flower takes off and she jumps and catches it in midnight.

“How many live here, Franca?”

“A couple of hundred.”

The figure of an enormous woman looms out onto a balcony. She leans over the railing-the fat of her arms wobbling-and screams at the little girl. The child darts into the shadow of the stairwell, pauses, flicks her wrist, and the paper flower takes off again in the air, and then she is swallowed by darkness. Zoli feels as if she has seen her before, in some other place, some other time, that if she spends long enough she will recognize her.

The girl appears on the top balcony, where she skips along and is suddenly dragged into the doorway.

“I'm sorry, Mamma.”

“It's okay, love.”

“We try to help as much as possible.”

“Go ahead, horse, and shit,” says Zoli, and the engine catches and the car pulls away.

By the motorway Zoli catches sight of the camp, strung out along a half-finished piece of road. The doors of the caravans are open and four burnt-out vans stand nearby, their front bonnets open. Three barechested men are bent over one engine. A teenage boy drags a stick in the dirt; behind him, a wake of pale ash. Some older men sit on chairs, like stone figures quarried. One of them dabs at his mouth with a flap end of shirt. Smoke rises from sundry fires. An array of shoes are strung on a telephone wire. Tires lie strewn around an upended wheelbarrow.

They pass in a raw, cold silence.

Zoli stares out at the blur of the cars, barriers, low bushes, the quick whip of white lines on the road.

“Who are all these people tonight?”

“Mamma?”

“At the conference, who are they?”

“Academics,” says Francesca. “Social scientists. There are Romani writers now, Mamma. Some poets. One is coming all the way from Croatia. There are some brilliant people about these days, Mamma. The Croatian's a poet. There's a man from the University of-”

“That's nice.”

“Mamma, are you okay?”

“Did you see that wheelbarrow?”

“Mamma?”

“Someone should turn it the right way up.”

“We'll be home soon, don't worry.”

In the apartment she falls asleep quickly, hugging the pillow to her chest. She wakes in the afternoon, the room silent. In the adjacent bathroom she drinks deep from the cold-water tap. She dresses and lies on the bed with her hands on her stomach. She could stay like this, she thinks, for quite a while, though she would need a view, maybe a chair, or some sunlight.

In the early afternoon Henri comes breezing through the door. He stops at the sight of her, as if he ‘d forgotten she ‘d be there. He is dressed in crisp white trousers and a light blue shirt. He clamps a phone to his ear, smiles broadly, blows her an air-kiss. Zoli has no idea what to do with the gesture. She nods back at him. This is his room, she thinks, these are his shirts, his cupboard, his photo frames, one of which she herself inhabits.

In the bathroom, she sprinkles some water on her face and readies herself for the living room. She is glad to hear the sound of Francesca's voice, from the kitchen, talking about some catering accident. Henri, it seems, is on the lookout for a band of musicians, drunk somewhere and due to play at tonight's opening tonight.