Jim Crace - Genesis

You do not notice them, in this half-light, a couple almost middle-aged, not smart, not purposeful, but simply grazing on the streets with time to spare. The city’s full of couples like them at this time of the evening, too late to work or shop, too soon to eat or drink, too restless to go home. They follow the streetcar route which leads up from Deliverance Bridge into the ancient city, crossing Anchorage Street and Cargo Street, old haunts of his, two high and fertile rooms with no views of the river, until they reach the last remaining stretch of the city wall and the medieval gate. They could go straight to the cafe district. Instead they negotiate the puddles and turn into the narrow Hives to window-shop for Turkish carpets, hand-built furniture, unlikely children’s clothes. Just like the cinema, the dream is lit and organized, a row of plate-glass screens. They pass a shop that only deals in cutlery, a framing store, a potter’s workshop, an antiques studio, until they reach the cobblestones of the great, cold square where commerce becomes history and where the odor of the rain is overlaid by kitchen smells and the early, flaring coals of braziers as the beet and kebab vendors set up their stalls.

Mouetta wants to try a new bistro she’s read about, the Commerce Supper House, on the east side of the square behind the Debit Bar. It’s quiet enough for them to talk, for Lix to eat unrecognized. He usually leaves the choice of restaurant to her. He chooses films; she chooses what to eat. But they have reached the terrace of the Debit Bar and the maître d’ is standing underneath the canopy, smoking his cigar and curling smiles at everyone who passes. Mouetta grips her husband’s arm more tightly, but as soon as Lix has stooped to say hello she knows her choice of restaurant is lost.

It isn’t comfortable to admit it to herself, but Mouetta is resigned to sacrificing the Commerce Supper House with its advantages because she’s almost certain that her cousin will not be inside the Debit, waiting to deride her pregnancy and Lix’s gift of parenthood. There’d be no risk of Freda, for a while at least.

Mouetta is ashamed to feel such comfort at her cousin’s continuing misfortune: she’s been in jail since that wet and riotous night in August, charged that she’d abused her public duties as an employee of the university, that contrary to Conduct Codes she’d had intercourse with a student in her charge, that she possessed a canister of mace and documents belonging to the state, that she’d received dollars from her son in America without declaring them, that she had out-of-date IDs, and two passports, and cannabis. These are only trifling charges, peccadilloes hardly worth a fine, although already she’s been fired from her faculty and lost her campus rooms. The charge that threatens her with more imprisonment is that she’d assaulted a militiaman outside the Debit Bar, exactly where the maître d’ was at that moment shaking Lix’s hand.

Lix and Mouetta had witnessed Freda’s arrest themselves, and knew she hadn’t laid a hand on any militiaman. Lix had said they ought to contact Freda’s lawyers, to act as witnesses, but hadn’t done so yet. Two waiters at the Debit Bar had already put themselves forward, so perhaps there wasn’t any point in stepping into the spotlight. He cannot say how fearful he’s become that if he speaks for Freda at her trial, then all will be revealed about how he’d tipped off the militia that they’d find the student activist in Freda’s room that night. Such information never disappears. It bides its time behind the scenes. So Lix gave his practiced, helpless smile as his excuse for hanging back. And now he gives the smile again, to say how sorry he is that his wife’s choice of restaurant will be deferred until another night. Mouetta shrugs. The Debit Bar is home-away-from-home for him.

The maître d’ rests his cigar on a dry sill to smoke itself for a few moments, and leads the couple to their preferred corner table, away from mirrors and doors. Lix takes the seat that lets him set his back against the room, as usual. They are, so far, the only customers. Mouetta thinks she has felt the first of many thousand kicks.

THE OWLS, the hawks, and the peregrines come to the city in the colder months, as do the gulls these days, drawn in by thermal banks and easy pickings. The temperature is slightly higher here — our cozy, gas-warmed rooms, the car exhaust, the street lighting, the millions of breaths exhaled each hour keep frosts at bay — and so the rodents and the beetles can earn their living for a month or so longer than their country cousins and provide the raptors with their winter meals. The daytime birds of prey prefer the riverbanks, the highway shoulders, and the parks, but most of all they love Navigation Island with its cover of trees and its grasses rich in food. The gulls raid dumps and garbage cans.

The owls, though, like the nighttime hunting grounds of yards and roofs and patios where they can treat themselves to household tidbits such as tile roaches, hearth crickets, larder mice and rats.

It is a larder mouse that Rosa sees tonight. She’s lined her dolls up by the sliding window to the balcony, already bored, but keen to do what her mother, An, has told her to — keep out of the bedroom for half an hour — because she’ll be rewarded if she does. Her mother keeps a jar of chocolates. And so with the great unconscious gravity of a five-year-old, Rosa makes the minutes pass. She rearranges all her dolls, by favorites, by size, by age. She has them sitting in a group. She has them with their noses pressed against the window. She presses her own nose up against the window to see what they can see. They can see a little animal amongst the pots, a little cuddly toy no longer than her mother’s thumb gnawing at a loaf of rye bread that they’ve thrown out for the birds. It’s made a cavern for itself so that only its gray tail hangs free. Rosa thinks she’ll bring the mouse indoors and play with it. She’ll introduce it to her dolls. Too late. A dark reflection on the glass, a great wide bird, flat-faced and ghostlike, hits the bread and hits the glass with its spoon wing. The noise it makes is hardly louder than a falling piece of cloth. But — a heartbeat later — the bird has disappeared, the cave of bread has rolled across the balcony, a pot is lying on its side and spilling soil.

Rosa gathers up her dolls and puts them safely on the far side of the room. She knows she’s witnessed something memorable and frightening, much more important than the chocolate jar and its rewards. She doesn’t know the proper words. She only knows “a great big bird,” “a little animal.” Still, she hurries to the bedroom door, where her mother’s friend has dropped his vast black shoes, and goes in. They’re on the bed. Her mother is not dressed. Nor is the man. They seem to be characters from television plays, entwined and shivering and damp. But nothing Rosa can see in there, and nothing that her mother says, could be more startling or sad than what has happened on the balcony. She is in tears. Her mother has to let her into the bed, amid the odd and disconcerting smells, and fake belief in what she takes as Rosa’s jealous lie.

The man is leaving anyway. He’s slept enough. He’s getting dressed. Rosa has to tell him where he’s left his shoes and where the toilet is. “Can I still have a chocolate?” she asks her mother, and then, “Can I phone Lech and Karol?” She’s sure her half brothers will want to know at once about the death scene on the balcony.

LECH AND KAROL are not home. Alicja, their mother, has a Lesniak Trading creditors meeting to attend. Now that her father has retired she is in charge. So she has driven her two sons by Lix out of Beyond and into town for tennis coaching at the new floodlit courts on Navigation Island. Karol is the natural sportsman of the two and already taller. He’s on his college football team, has diving ribbons and vaulting cups, but most excels at racket sports. He will be fourteen in a month and then eligible to represent the city in the junior tennis leagues. His elder brother, Lech, does not excel at anything, except the competitions of the tongue.