Jo Baker - A Country Road, a Tree

He blinks at his watch, wipes his lips; they’re tacky with spit.

“They should have come by now,” the man says.

He raises the watch to his ear, listens to its tick, then winds it.

“They should have sent word by now, at least,” the man insists.

He sits up, swings his legs over the side of the bed. He rubs his forehead. “Did you sleep?”

“No.”

“Maybe they did send word. Shall I go and ask?”

“She’d have come and told us. It’s the network. They’re blown, I reckon.”

“No.”

“Or they’d be here. That’s what I’m telling you.”

“Maybe someone’s bike’s been stolen, or they’ve got a flat tyre. Or they’ve got lost. They’ve forgotten the address.”

Out in the street, distant at first — rounding the corner and the noise increasing — the sound of diesel engines: two, three. The man stiffens; his eyes widen.

“It’s them.”

“No—”

“It’s the Geste.”

“No.”

“I’m telling you. German car — two trucks. It’s the Gestapo.”

He pushes up from the bed, springs jangling. And then just stands there. The noise gets louder, the vehicles approaching — and then passing, and rounding the corner, and gone. A breath released. The man crosses to the window, edges back the curtain. They peer down together through the closed shutters; their faces are raked across with stripes of sunlight. In the street below, there is quiet, not even a pigeon strutting. The passing-by has swept the place quite clear.

“Do you know what they do if they get hold of you?” the man asks.

He tilts his head. He has heard stories.

The man nods slowly at something going on inside his head. He says, “When she was expecting our first, my wife wasn’t at all afraid. Our first child, I mean.”

“Oh.”

“She thought she could just, you know, stand it. That she would be brave and strong and that it would be all right. Second time, though, she was terrified. See, the thing is, you can’t imagine pain. You can’t foresee it. You think you can still be yourself, endure it and go on, but you can’t. Pain makes an animal out of everyone.”

“You should sleep.”

The man just looks at him. His eyes are red.

“Really. It’d do you good.” He sinks down on his bed again and peels off his socks. They are stiff and stinking. He bundles them up and stuffs them into his trouser pocket. “Lie down, at least,” he says. “We just have to wait it out.”

A long look, and then, “I don’t know how you can stand it.”

“It’s better than the tree.”

His friend blinks acquiescence. He leans closer to the window. Peers out again.

—

The hall is dim and stuffy and smells of old polish. It’s wearing on the nerves, of course it is, being stuck together like this. He leaves the other fellow to himself for a while.

He finds the little room with its high cistern and dangling chain. Outside a fire-escape switchbacks down into the courtyard, past guano-streaked brick walls and a blanket-stitch of pipes. He runs a bowl of water, soaks his socks and rubs them with a slip of hard green soap. Sounds rise up from the yard below, bouncing and echoing in the shaft — women’s voices. The neighbourhood chars are lost in recollection. It’s almost pornographic. One lusts for vanilla sugar, for a coffee Liégeois, for, oh my God, warm June strawberries and cream; another craves savoury foodstuffs; the seashell salt of pistaches, slippery fresh oysters, a briny crumb of Roquefort.

He leaves his socks marinating in the cloudy water. He unbuttons and sinks down on the lavatory seat.

The problem is, of course, not just the fear; it’s also the being dragged out of normality. Sleep, yes, and space, and clean clothes, and food — all these things are reassuring because they suggest that everything is as it should be. He hopes the fellow’s sleeping by now. He’ll spin it out a bit, his absence. He’ll wash, and then he’ll go downstairs and ask if there is anything to be had. A fried kidney; a gorgonzola sandwich. Where would the old man have gone anyway after the Wake, where was there left to go — the last book that Paul Léon had wanted, was there ever any chance of that? — but to the grave, God help him, and ill for so long too, permanently unwell, if only fifty-eight.

He tugs a square of old newspaper from the copper wire and wipes, and stands and pulls up his breeches, flushes, buttons, dips his hands in the soapy water with the socks, and rubs and twists and rinses them and wrings them again and shakes them. He drapes them over a pipe while he strips to the waist, runs fresh water, douses his face, puffing at the cold. He rubs round the back of his neck and under his arms, and dries his prickling flesh with the crusted loop of hand-towel. The socks gather up what’s left of their wetness and drip it on to the tiles. He squeezes them out again into the basin.

He is crossing the landing, barefoot, socks in one hand, boots in the other, when he hears the voices welling up from the lobby. Both are speaking French; one accent is German.

Bare bony feet finned out on the worn matting, he stands stock-still.

There are some rooms occupied, she is saying. There always are. She has a lot of businessmen here, up from the provinces. She always has had. They are busy men; they come and go. Sometimes they leave their keys, sometimes they forget. Men can be so careless; they have other things on their minds.

“And there has been nothing of late that seems at all suspicious?”

“Things are as they always have been.”

“Of course. Because if there had been anything out of order, you would already have reported it.”

A silence. It can only be supposed that she nods.

“I shall need to see the register.”

Upstairs, on the landing, he takes a step, breath held, towards their room. He thinks: fire-escape, courtyard, away along the back alley and put distance between themselves and the hotel. Where next, he doesn’t know. His friend will have some idea.

He eases the bedroom door open.

And the light is brilliant; it dazzles him; it makes no sense. The curtains billow, and there’s fresh air on his face, and the window is open, and the shutters wide, and it makes no sense at all. And his friend stands there, framed in the wide-open window, his back to the room; he is silhouetted against the autumn sky.

“Hello there—” he calls, but he doesn’t have a name to call him. “Hey, my friend—”

He sees the blank panes of the building opposite reflecting the sky, the potted red geraniums on a balcony, a pigeon shuffling itself along a balustrade. He sees his friend put a foot on to the little wrought-iron railing, and step up, and spread his arms wide across the light. He sees his friend dive out into the empty air.

The pigeon flaps away. He sees the scarlet blotches of geraniums, the gunmetal windows, the drenching white light.

Then there’s a crunch like a sack of coal fallen from the coal wagon. And then somebody screams.

And then there are other voices. Yelling.

Two strides to the window and he peers down. His friend lies like a comma on the pavement. A woman stands, her hand to her mouth, frozen. Others run towards the body, but then they stop short. A circle forms. Nobody goes closer, nobody hunkers in to check for breath. Nobody will touch him.

People look up though, to the window, so he steps away, out of sight.

He stuffs his wet socks into his pocket and snatches up his boots. He grabs his bag, his jacket, his coat and muffler. He is out of the room and racing down the corridor. In the WC, he tugs up the window and folds himself out through the narrow gap. The fire-escape creaks; the air is sour with rubbish; the metal gantry sways queasily underneath him. He clambers down barefoot to the dustbins and the scratting pigeons and an empty yard, the cleaning women and their voices gone.