‘The swifts were my favourite, though,’ he tells the boy now. ‘They’re a kind of bird … with a forked tail, like this.’
In a snatched half hour of idleness he had liked to lie on his back and watch the swifts’ movements. They could move together at will, as one, in perfect synchronicity, through some silent, mysterious knowledge. It moved him, though he could not quite say why. They came here because their ancestors had come, for thousands of years.
The boy’s eyes are almost closed, he sees. But he thinks that he might still be listening, so he continues, all the same.
‘In the evening they came to eat the insects. They were so fast, so precise. Like a needle moving, like this.’ He makes the darting movements with his hands. Then, hardly conscious of what they are doing, his fingers move to the embroidery that has slipped to the end of the bed. The gilt thread is rough against his fingertips. He can see that needle moving too, so fast, so precise.
The boy is fully asleep now. That is good; he needs to rest. And yet he feels a strange kind of loneliness, left as he is now with his recollections.
He had envied those swifts. To live in such a state of grace, unhampered by heat or cold, or all the problems that humans created for themselves in the needless complexity of their lives. Animals did not recognise the boundaries between lands – or rather, only the borders created by the seasons, the abundance or scarcity of food. Man had been like that once. Where had it gone so wrong? Long, long before this: before Alexander the Great, perhaps.
And where did it go wrong for him? His own slide from grace, hidden beneath a cloak of duty? Rather easier to pinpoint. It is going to be even easier to convince himself that he is doing the right thing, the moral thing, now there is a child to look after.
But the truth remains: Medical Officer George Monroe is, in fact, a coward.
The Traveller
From Lausanne to Venice there is a restaurant car. I sit and have a glass of white wine and a meal of tough chicken, slightly raw potatoes and green beans that have been overcooked into limp greyness. I eat as much of it as I can stomach, and promise myself that I will make up for the deprivation when I reach my destination. I can still taste the memory of the food there: that alchemy of sweet and sour, fruit and meat together, the sumptuousness of the oil.
I take a sip of the wine. It, too, is indifferent – but there is a certain decadence to it, this lunchtime drink, with the splendour of the countryside rushing by. An afternoon sleepiness comes over me: what is it about travelling that makes one so tired? All I have done since this morning is sit. But I did not sleep well last night on my hard foam bed. It was partly the discomfort and the racket of rain on the glass, partly the volume of my own thoughts. There is an emotional density to this journey, a burden I will carry all the way there.
Around me are pairings or quartets of diners. For the first time I wonder what they make of me. A lonely soul, perhaps, on a solitary journey.
I know exactly what is necessary to remove the sour aftertaste of the wine. Back in the couchette, I take from my suitcase a wooden box. Upon it is the image of a magnificent building, but faded over the years so that only the faint impressions of the gilded domes remain. The clever sliding mechanism of the lid still works smoothly, however. I draw it back to reveal the plump, sugar-dusted cubes within and allow myself one. I am getting stout: a combination of too much food and increasing age. No sign of the slim young man who had no fear of running to fat.
I let the sweetness and the delicate perfume fill my mouth before I chew. It is the perfect consistency, yielding, but not too soft, this piece studded with pistachio nuts. For a long time I could only find in England that insulting translation of loukoum, the stuff they call ‘Turkish delight’: food dye, cheap sugar syrup, that overpowering hit of synthetic rose.
It took me a long time to source loukoum like this, the proper sort, which we could serve to customers with their coffee after a meal. That would be worthy of keeping inside this box.
The Boy
Behind his eyelids the swarm of stars remains, like a secret. The doctor gave him liquid from a spoon. It killed the pain, and summoned the stars. No: now the stars are changing shape, breaking apart, elongating. They are becoming small, fast birds with forked tails – thousands of them. They move beneath his eyelids and he watches them, half in awe, half afraid … though he cannot say why.
The doctor has grey eyes. He is about the same age as the boy’s father was, but he is much taller. He does not wear this height like a threat. And yet the man – the doctor – is English. The boy knows
