“You won’t want Jiijo to live in it?”
“Why complicate matters?” Kiin says.
“I see what you mean.”
“If I understand correctly, you want to turn the ballroom into your rehearsal space, once you are ready to start working on your play, yes?” Kiin asks, eyes widening, voice rising a little irritably and head shaking. “Isn’t that what you had in mind all along, to repossess it and use it?”
“That’s right.”
“Remember why you are here?”
A scintilla of Cambara’s memory of her anger at Wardi, which spurred her into action, is now stirring in the bottom of her eyes, and prompting her to look away. Her recollection touches off a precipitate return of the many terrible things that men have done to her: Wardi causing Dalmar’s death; Zaak crossing her, and so on.
Sumaya’s soft tread awakens Cambara from her reverie just before startling Kiin from a similar woolgathering. Such is the sweetness of the little one’s contagious smile that both Cambara and Kiin invite her, her mother saying “Come and give me a hug, darling,” and Cambara blowing her a kiss and saying “Come, my cutie.” Sumaya goes to her mother, who wraps her generous body around her.
Kiin’s antennae are alert to an abrupt change in Cambara’s mood and, attributing this to the fact that she is reliving the sad death of her Dalmar, decides to perk up her spirits.
“Why not?”
Cambara hauls herself up and then focuses her gaze on Kiin and Sumaya. Even so, the thoughts that call on her preclude her gaining solid purchase on a toehold in her scuffle with her demons.
“Please let someone walk Gacal back to the hotel when he is done in the kitchen,” Cambara says, preparing to take leave. “Meanwhile, keep the film for your daughters.”
“Gladly,” Kiin says.
“And if I may impose on you…” Cambara begins and then trails off.
“Yes?”
“It is about Gacal’s accommodation.”
“What about it?”
“Can you organize a place for him to sleep,” Cambara says, “perhaps with the other youths until we find a more agreeable solution for him?”
“No problem.”
“Thanks a lot.”
“See you at the party, if not before.”
“Pleasure.”
TWENTY-ONE
Waiting for Gacal, having already spoken on the phone to the deputy manager, who confirmed that Kiin called him and that he has set in place the arrangements for accommodating and feeding Gacal, Cambara sprawls on her bed, her eyes closed, her thoughts far away in pursuit of some memories that are eluding her. She is relaxed. The air conditioner is on, the noise of the generator a distant hum, even if the voices of some of the daytime sentries sound a little bit too close for comfort.
She is in a loose-fitting outfit into which she changed soon after returning from lunch with Kiin. In place of a pillow, her hands are under her head; she is reviewing the events of the past few days. She sits up after these few intense moments to remind herself that she knows less about Gacal than she needs to if they are to share a rapport solid enough to serve as a workable foundation.
Yet how strange that her expression turns unexpectedly so sour all of a sudden, making her think that it might curdle into milk that has gone bad. She feels bitter that she has rushed into committing herself to Gacal against her current, that is to say, better judgment before finding out much about his background. No wonder Arda has tended to describe Cambara’s discernments as not being of top-drawer quality. “Your gut feeling reigns supreme,” Arda said to her once, “and you pledge your affections fast, not on the basis of what you know but on the strength of your passion at that moment.”
Cambara removes her hands from under her head, and she closes and opens her fist to bring her fingers, which have gone to sleep, back to life. She contemplates the ceiling, convinced that she is set on a course that will bear fruit, thanks to Kiin, who has jump-started her varied plans, some of which have stalled to the point of inaction, others forging forward. She feels justified in safeguarding the gains she has made, yields that may provide her with a rock-steady anchor in the city’s realities. In some measure, she considers herself lucky, in that she has become a key factor in the lives of several people whose paths have crossed hers. It falls to her to take care, wary that a single misstep can give rise to irreversible results.
Now she hears a gentle knocking on the door, assuming it to be no other than Gacal’s. But she waits and listens for a second tapping before she attends to it, for she wants him to identify himself, as if hearing him speak his name might help her form an opinion, assist her in settling on how to proceed, eventually, with their talk. However, when he keeps knocking without confirming his identity, she takes the initiative at the fourth rapping. She asks, “Who is it?”
“You’ve said to come, and I am here,” Gacal says.
She moves toward the door, relatively sanguine about the rightness of her initial visceral reaction to Gacal, now that she is about to meet him. This is because she finds his choice of evasive answer — saying that she said to come and that he is here instead of giving his name, as asked — winsome, circuitous, challenging, original. Whatever else she may think after they have spoken, Cambara is positive that Gacal is brimful with a mix of self-confidence and bravura. She does not remember ever encountering these qualities in any boy his age, except perhaps in Dalmar. Or in SilkHair to a smaller extent.
Finally, the door open, she meets his smug smile, presumably because he too is playing his own game in which he scores high marks. Moreover, he has his hand outstretched. Is he daring Cambara to ignore it or to shake it and then hug him? Looking at Cambara, you might agree that he has won this round.
She doesn’t take his hand, nor does she embrace him. Instead, as if to prove a point to herself, she turns her back on him and says, “Come on in.”
He enters, no longer in smug satisfaction. He closes the door gingerly behind him, his sense of gaminess tapering off a little. He tiptoes farther into the room and waits anxiously, his whole body tense; it is as though he is preparing for her reprimand.
“Tell me,” she says.
Readying to answer her command, he does his best to replace what someone might describe as ragamuffin behavior with a kind of deportment that can win someone like Cambara over. He sits down, unbidden.
“Who are you?” she asks.
“Depends.”
Cambara flinches from the hostile thought that has presented itself to her, a not-so-friendly go-hang-yourself catchphrase, the kind of braggadocio his answer deserves. On second thought, she does nothing of the sort, in part because he reminds her of Dalmar, who kept the motif of dialog in vibrant relief long after the exchange had lost its flair. She relives the fury with which Wardi often greeted Dalmar’s back-talk bravado and how he threatened him with violence if the boy did not stop provoking him. She recalls advising Wardi to desist from browbeating Dalmar into becoming a different child and saying “You might as well instruct a bird not to sing as tell Dalmar not to back talk.”
Another reason why she indulges Gacal’s boldness is related to the fact that he is clearly as capable of resisting adult pressure, especially when someone bludgeons him into toeing the line, as he is of accommodating himself to an acquiescent mood, if he puts his mind to it.