"Why don't you sit yourself over there?" he asked, indicating a kitchen chair. As she moved toward it, the blue lamp moved behind her, to settle on the floor at the center of the doorway to the tukul. "That way nobody gets to see in," he explained. "We've got fulltime tukul watchers here. Take a Coke?" He handed it to her at arm's length. "Sarah says you're a trustworthy person, Ghita. That's good enough for me. Tessa and Arnold didn't trust anyone except each other in this. And me because they had to. That's the way I like to work too. You came up on a Self-Sustainment jag, I hear." It was a question.
"The Self-Sustainment focus group was a pretext. Justin wrote to me asking me to find out what Tessa and Arnold were doing in Loki in the days before she died. He didn't believe the story of the gender workshop."
"He's damn right. Got his letter?"
My identity paper, she thought. My proof of good faith as Justin's messenger. She passed it to him and watched while he stood up, pulled on a pair of austere steel-framed spectacles and stepped obliquely into the arc of the blue lamp, keeping himself out of the eyeline of the door.
He handed the letter back. "So listen up," he said.
But first he turned on his radio, anxious to establish what he pedantically termed the level of acceptable sound.
* * *
Ghita lay on her bed, under a single sheet. The night was no cooler than the day. Through the netting that surrounded her she could watch the red glow of the mosquito coil. She had drawn the curtains but they were very thin. Footsteps and voices kept passing her window and every time they passed she had an urge to leap out of bed and shout "Hi!" Her thoughts turned to Gloria, who a week ago, to her confusion, had invited her to a game of tennis at the club.
"Tell me, dear," Gloria had asked her, having trounced her six games to two in each of three sets. They were walking arm in arm toward the clubhouse. "Did Tessa have some kind of crush on Sandy, or was it the other way round?"
At which Ghita, despite her addiction to the altar of truth, lied straight and fairly into Gloria's face without even blushing. "I am quite sure there was nothing of the kind on either side," she said primly. "Whatever makes you think that, Gloria?"
"Nothing, darling. Nothing at all. Just the way he looked during the funeral, I suppose."
And after Gloria, she went back to Captain McKenzie.
"There's this crazy Boer who runs a food station five miles west of a little town called Mayan," he was saying, keeping his voice just below Pavarotti's. "Bit of a God-thumper."
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
His face had darkened, its lines deepened. The white light of the huge Saskatchewan sky could not penetrate its shadows. The little town was a lost city, three hours' rail ride out of Winnipeg in the middle of a thousand-mile snowfield, and Justin walked in it determinedly, avoiding the gaze of rare passersby. The constant wind from the Yukon or the high Arctic that all year round whipped across the flat prairie, icing the snow, bending the wheat, buffeting street signs and overhead wires, raised no points of color on his hollowed cheeks. The freezing cold-twenty and more below zero — only spurred his aching body forward. In Winnipeg before he took the train here, he had bought a quilted jacket, a fur cap and gloves. The fury in him was a thorn. A rectangle of plain typing paper nestled in his wallet: GO HOME NOW AND KEEP QUIET OR YOU JOIN YOUR WIFE.
* * *
But it was his wife who had got him here. She had worked his hands free, untied his hood. She had raised him to his knees at the bedside and by stages helped him to the bathroom. Cheered on by her, he had hauled himself to a standing stoop with the aid of the bathtub, had turned on the shower tap and hosed down his face and shirtfront and the collar of his jacket, because he knew — she warned him — that if he undressed he would not be able to dress himself again. His shirtfront was filthy, his jacket was smeared with vomit but he managed to mop them fairly clean. He wanted to go back to sleep but she wouldn't let him. He tried to brush his hair but his arms wouldn't go that high. He had a twenty-four-hour stubble but it must stay there. Standing made his head swim and he was lucky to reach the bed before he toppled over. But it was on her advice that, lying in a seductive half swoon, he refused to pick up the telephone to the concierge or invoke the medical skills of Dr. Birgit. Trust nobody, Tessa told him, so he didn't. He waited till his world had righted itself, then stood up again and reeled across the room, grateful for its miserable size.
He had laid his raincoat over a chair. It was still there. To his surprise so was Birgit's envelope. He opened the wardrobe. The wall safe was built into the back of it, its door closed. He tapped out the date of his wedding day, almost fainting from the pain each time he prodded. The door popped open to reveal Peter Atkinson's passport slumbering peacefully inside. His hands battered but seemingly unbroken, he coaxed the passport out and fed it into his inside jacket pocket. He fought his way into his raincoat and contrived to button it at the neck, then at the waist. Determined to travel light, he possessed only a shoulder bag. His money was still inside it. He collected his shaving things from the bathroom and his shirts and underclothes from the chest of drawers and dropped them into it. He placed Birgit's envelope on top of them and closed the zip. He eased the strap over his shoulder and yelped like a dog at the pain. His watch said five in the morning and it seemed to be working. He lurched into the corridor and rolled himself along the wall to the lift. In the ground-floor lobby two women in Turkish costume were operating an industrial-sized vacuum cleaner. An elderly night porter dozed behind the reception desk. Somehow Justin gave his room number and asked for his bill. Somehow he got a hand into his hip pocket, detached the notes from their wad and added a fat tip "belatedly for Christmas."
"Mind if I grab one of these?" he asked in a voice he didn't recognize. He was indicating a cluster of doorman's umbrellas that were jammed into a ceramic pot beside the door.
"Many as you like," the old porter said.
The umbrella had a stout ash handle that came up to his hip. With its aid he crossed the empty square to the railway station. Reaching the steps that led up to the concourse he paused for a rest and was puzzled to find the porter at his side. He had thought it was Tessa.
"Can you make it?" the old man asked solicitously.
"Yes."
"Shall I get your ticket?"
Justin turned and offered the old man his pocket. "Zurich," he said. "Single."
"First class?"
"Absolutely."
* * *
Switzerland was a childhood dream. Forty years ago his parents had taken him on a walking holiday in the Engadine and they had stayed in a grand hotel on a spit of forest between two lakes. Nothing had changed. Not the polished parquet or the stained glass or the stern-faced chatelaine who showed him to his room. Reclining on the daybed on his balcony, Justin watched the same lakes glistening in the evening sun, and the same fisherman huddled in his rowing boat in the mist. The days passed uncounted, punctuated by visits to the spa and the death knell of the dinner gong summoning him to solitary meals among whispery old couples. In a side street of old chalets, a pallid doctor and his woman assistant dressed his bruises. "A car smash," Justin explained. The doctor frowned through his spectacles. His young assistant laughed.