“We kept the boat afloat, all three of us, Fifi, Adam, and I. We wanted to live, if not then we’d die together. So no one would be left behind.”
The boy, who has been sitting at the table fitting the pearls onto the pink heart that I found in the hotel shop, now slides off the chair and positions himself beside his mother. He offers her his hand and they stand side by side with their backs turned to me. He understands she is upset. He looks at his mother and then over his shoulder at me. And then again. I hear him say something with a questioning tone. He wants an answer. He wants to know what’s going on.
“Did you know that blood turns black when it hardens?” she finally says, continuing to fix her gaze on the ocean.
Should I tell her that she can take refuge under my wings while she’s waiting for the light to reappear?
I walk over to her and say:
“You’ve done really well.”
She turns, but doesn’t let go of the boy’s hand, the sun is behind her and she stands in the middle of a radiant cloud of shimmering dust.
“We try to do our best,” she says. “As people.”
Flood calls unto flood
The word has spread that I’m helping out the siblings and I’ve received several enquiries and requests from other people in the town, mainly women, wanting assistance with this or that. The queries have multiplied over the past few days and this morning there were five messages waiting in the lobby. Fifi says he took the liberty to write down orders and hands me some folded notes. Most of the jobs concern red water in the taps, clogged sinks, leaking seals, broken stoves, and other domestic appliances.
I know where the residual-current device is, but there is a shortage of spare parts: tubes, wires, cans, washers.
Can I fix a washing machine? Know anything about computers? A mirror also has to be put up on the other side of town.
I do what I’m asked to do so long as it doesn’t send me down into the sewage system with a flashlight.
“Hi, Mister Fix,” it says in the first folded letter. That’s what they call me.
“People say you can fix anything,” the young man explains. “They also call you Mister Miracle.”
“They’re wrong on that account,” I say to him. “Besides, they’re only temporary repairs,” I add.
My insistence on the fact that I’m neither a plumber nor an electrician falls on deaf ears. They need an electrician. They need a carpenter. They need plumbers. They need builders.
“There are so few people who know anything about electricity,” says Fifi.
“Some people think it’s not fair that you’re only helping women,” I hear him add without looking at me. “I just wanted you to know that. And one other thing, there was a call from the restaurant. I’m supposed to tell you they’re serving blood pudding this evening.”
RED
I pluck up the courage to remind May of the need for paint, even though I suspect it’s difficult to come by.
“The rooms need painting.”
She puts down the vacuum cleaner.
“Just not red.”
Since the walls that don’t have any leafy wallpaper on them are light blue, her comment is bewildering.
I suggest they stick to the same colour.
“Don’t you want to keep the same colour?”
“There was blood all over the country. Every footstep was bloody, there were pools of blood on the streets. Blood streamed down the roads, it was raining blood, and in the end all the rivers were red with blood,” she says in a detached voice, as if she were delivering a lecture, staring at the light blue wall as she speaks.
“We poured red paint into the cracks the bombs left in the asphalt so that it would form blood roses. So there’s no red paint left in the country,” she concludes.
I remain silent.
“There might be some spackle,” she says, turning to me again, “but you need the right connections to get paint.”
She stands dead still in the middle of the floor and takes a deep breath before continuing:
“Human flesh is so delicate, the skin so quick to tear, steel bullets rip organs to shreds, concrete smashes bones, glass severs limbs,” she rattles off with a glazed expression.
“There, there,” I say, as if I were talking to a child who’s afraid of the dark.
“It’s such a short way to the heart,” she says.
“There, there,” I say, taking her into my arms. The door is open to the corridor.
It’s then that I notice that the boy is standing in the doorway and staring at us alternately. He had popped down to his uncle to hand him the tiles and to have a go at stirring the plaster and now he’s returned. I let go of her and turn away. Even though I’ve little sense of myself, I can feel the outlines of another living body.
The boy rushes over to his mother.
I’m about to say something else but instead ask:
“Where is that house you’re going to move into, you women?” On several occasions she has mentioned a house that she and some of her female friends were going to renovate and live in together. Seven women, if I remember correctly, with three children. And Fifi.
She looks at me. Eyeing me like a stranger. Which I am to myself and to others.
“If you like, I could take a look at it for you,” I continue.
She is silent for a long moment.
“You’re lucky you haven’t killed anyone,” she finally says.
HOUSE OF WOMEN
The house stands on the other side of the town centre, and on our way May explains to me that the women who are going to live there together have been roaming from place to place and are staying in temporary accommodations at the moment. They have nothing, just a suitcase each or less.
“One of them has papers that say she owns the house and she has invited the others to live with her. So there’ll
