that I have it. I am content for things to remain that way. Are you?’
Calque watched Sabir silently for some minutes. Finally, awkwardly, he stood up. He nodded his head.
POSTSCRIPT
Alexi kidnapped Yola when the summer was at its height. They ran away to Corsica and Alexi took her virginity on the beach near Cargese. As he made love to her for the first time, a flight of ducks travelled over them, casting their shadow across the mating couple. Yola sat up the moment he withdrew from her body and told him she was pregnant.
‘This is impossible. How can you know?’
‘I know.’
Alexi never doubted her. To him, Yola possessed a mysterious understanding of secrets beyond his ken. This suited him, as someone out there needed to know such things – and to carry their weight – if Alexi was to be allowed to live his life in the present, with neither a backward nor a forward glance.
The moment Sabir heard of Yola’s kidnap, he took a plane across to Europe and waited for the couple at the camp in Samois. In his new position as Yola’s brother and the titular head of her family, it was inconceivable that she should be allowed to marry without his presence and permission. He knew that this was the one final thing he needed to do for her and that his appearance at her wedding would at last free her of the blood taint from her brother’s death.
Yola had kept the towel she had lain the at beach in Cargese and when this was displayed before the wedding guests, Sabir formally acknowledged that she had been a virgin before her kidnapping and that her lacha was untarnished. He agreed to pay Alexi her bride-price.
Later, after the ceremony was over, Yola told him that she was pregnant and asked him if he would be kirvo to her son.
‘You know it’s a son?’
‘After Alexi plucked out my eyes, a male dog ran up to us on the beach and licked my hand.’
Sabir shook his head. ‘It’s crazy. But I believe you.’
‘You are correct to do so. The curandero was right. You are a wiser man now. Something happened to you while you were dying. I don’t want to know what it was. But I feel that you can see things sometimes, just as I can, after the eye-man gave me my two half-deaths. Are you a shaman now?’
Sabir shook his head. ‘I’m a nothing. Nothing’s changed. I’m just happy to be here and to see you married. And of course I’ll be kirvo to your son.’
Yola watched him for a few seconds, hoping for something more. But then a sudden understanding dawned across her face. ‘You know, don’t you, Damo? What the curandero told me about my child? About the Parousia? It was all written on those pages that you burned. This was why the secret of the prophecies was given to my family for safe keeping? That was why you burned them at the risk of your life?’
‘Yes. It was written.’
Yola pressed her stomach with her hands. ‘Was anything else written? Things I should know? Things I should fear for my son?’
Sabir smiled. ‘Nothing else was written, Yola. What will be will be. The die is cast and the future written only on the stars.’
