Jim Crace - Genesis

What none of the policemen or Lix had spotted was the sudden transfer, just before Freda’s hands were raised, of her shoulder bag to Mouetta. So he was baffled and relieved when, rather than arguing for her cousin’s immediate release, as he expected, as she was prone to do, his normally plucky wife simply took his arm and, without a glance back or a word of farewell, steered him through the uniforms, across the terrace, and out into the driving rain. No one tried to stop him, obviously. Too familiar. He was starring every Tuesday night in Doctor D on Channel V&N. He was in the ad for Boulevard Liqueur. He’d won a celebrated Masters Medal for his solo version of Don Juan. He’d gone to Hollywood, appeared in several films, and come back almost undefiled. He’d even had success as a singer: his Hand Baggage: A Travelogue of Songs , recorded fourteen years before, was selling still. He was, as Freda had made clear ten minutes earlier, a threat to nobody.

The car — their large but unpretentious gray Panache sedan, perfect for the family with adolescents — was parked behind the theater, a leisurely five-minute walk on any other night. But it was far too wet for leisure and they were far too fearful. Fearful for Freda, of course, but also for themselves. Her shoulder bag was dangerous. What might it hold? And fractious men in uniform are always frightening. Any second now and they might hear beyond the clatter of the rain the sound of running boots, the cliché call for them to stop and raise their hands. So Lix and Mouetta didn’t speak as they hurried through the rain, encountering what everybody knows but needs reminding of, that speed is no protection from a storm. He ran ahead of her to open up the car but both of them were sopping and sobered by the time they’d slammed shut the doors. For a few moments, the smell of drenched clothes was stronger than the seat leather, even, richer than the perfume and the gasoline.

Mouetta — wet — looked flushed and beautiful, Lix thought. Why hadn’t he noticed before how much trouble she had gone to, to be attractive for him on their anniversary? A bluish calf-length skirt, a favorite blouse he had brought her from L.A., front buttons even, that pretty necklace a child might wear. Cousin Freda, the radical, had blinded him, had shouldered out his wife. She always did. She always had. There’s something deadening about the vivacious company of prettier and older cousins. Mouetta was a sort of beauty too, although a quieter sort, not theatrical but … well, homely was an unfair word. Unaffected, perhaps. Contained. She was the kind — and this was cruel — whose company was supportive rather than flattering. She’d only turn the heads of wiser men. But now that she was wet and dramatized by their short run, her beauty seemed enhanced, her perfumes activated by the rain, her hair shining like someone found soaked and streaming in the shower room, her blouse and skin a clinging unity. He should have been thinking of Freda, her arrest, what they should do for her release, their duties as citizens and their obligations as radicals. But he was not.

“What now?” he asked. They hadn’t had sex in the car for months.

“We’ve got the keys to Freda’s office,” she replied. She held up the shoulder bag. “We’ll get the guy. And then we’ll have to find Freda a lawyer …”

“Don’t worry about Freda. They’ll let her out in the morning. She’ll dine off this for years. ‘My night in chains,’ et cetera!”

“Don’t be small-minded, Lix. What’s done is done.” She meant that both of them should always do their best to bury the embarrassment of George’s provenance. “What would the world be like without its Fredas?”

“A lot less complicated.” Lix was blushing, not inexplicably. This was not a good time for an argument.

“We still have to get her guy,” Mouetta said.

“Forget the guy!” He touched her wrist. He had the sense, though, not to put his hand on her leg and not to ask for what he wanted most, a kiss. Not heroism, but a kiss. A kiss inebriated by the rain. A wet, wet kiss. “Can’t we just forget the guy?”

“Just drive,” she said. She never knew — or, at least, she preferred not to know — when Lix was being serious. Or when her irritation with her husband was unreasonable.

The streets, of course, were busier than you’d expect on such a night, at such an hour. In addition to the men in uniform, causing trouble where they could, and the remaining groups of demonstators, there were civilians sheltering in the arcades and the bars, unable to get home or prevented by the road and sidewalk blocks and by the weather from reaching their cars. The streetcars and transit buses were not running: services suspended by order of the civic police. Taxis were not allowed into the Central Zones. You either had to walk or shelter from the rain or beg a bed from someone you knew downtown or end up as a bludgeoned passenger inside an army bus. Even those who’d reached their cars were being turned back at the Circular and were obliged to park for the night until restrictions had been lifted. For once, the city was not dull. It was dangerous. Young men are always dangerous.

Lix crossed the river by the only open route, Deliverance Bridge, and drove around the park on Navigation Island through stands of tarbony trees and ornamental shrubs, through puddles, ankle deep, which dramatically accessorized his car with arched silver spoilers of rainwater, until he reached the second bridge, which still allowed some access to the river’s eastern banks. Beyond the bridge, the traffic was at a standstill. Even those drivers who had tried to reverse onto the sidewalks or turn back toward the old town’s center were gridlocked. Beyond the traffic were the academy and Freda’s office and Freda’s sanctuary desk.

“We’ll not get home, you realize,” Lix said. “They’re not letting anybody through.”

“They always let you through.”

As it happened Mouetta was wrong, or so it appeared. All the city campuses were closed to traffic, even to the stars of stage and television, it seemed. Militia volunteers, always the last to be deployed and the most unyielding, were squeezing through the traffic, ordering drivers from their cars and searching them, both the drivers and the cars. No permissions asked, no explanations given, no patience or civility. They were determined to enjoy themselves. You had either to stand and lose your dignity or to argue and lose your liberty — that mischievous predicament, as old as humankind. You had to count yourself lucky, as bags were emptied onto seats and trunks were opened for evidence of insurrection — a box of matches, say, a couple of leaflets, a fruit knife — that on this occasion the men had not been issued with their electric cattle prods. Pedestrians, mostly students trying to return to their dorms, were being turned back. They could either spend the night outside or, if they protested or seemed too smart and arrogant, a wooden bed could be arranged for them in some dark cell. A thorough drenching would be good for them, as would a taste of prison life. Then they’d be “graduates” indeed! They had the choice: Clear off or they’d matriculate in Practical Cell Studies.

Lix raised and stretched his arms as he was instructed and let two of the young men search his pockets and his waistband and check his ID card. Unlike the other women travelers, Mouetta had not been summoned from the car. She took this as a promising sign that yet again her husband’s public gift was making life easy for them. She hated it, this privilege, but she was grateful as well. She watched her husband through the hand-jive of the windshield wipers, waiting for the look of recognition on the volunteers’ faces and the invitation to go ahead.