Since seeing the black cat she hasn’t given one thought to the shooting, convinced that it was the result of some local unpleasantness. In the news there are more important items: patchy home footage of the uprising in Homs. Chaotic and sketchy. Mobile footage of civilians skittering in terror, running in a crouch, people taking a stand, one at a time. Long grey roads stippled with chunks of concrete. People lined on sidewalks watching tiny acts of defiance and courage, as if receiving instruction. Isa weeps every time: covers her face and sobs. As soon as the TV is switched on she seeks out the news and has to watch, then cries because it makes her wretched.
The road behind the complex is too narrow for cars, so narrow that when the company come to clean the communal pool the van must be parked on the main road and the hoses extended all the way to the compound and heaved over the wall. It’s a job the men accomplish with great effort. They lug, they haul, they brace like men in a tug-of-war. They slowly take off their shirts to make the job easier. A thin and empty street, nothing more than a rat’s tail, with the compound wall running on one side and the chain-link fence of a new development on the other. The development behind the fence is vacant, in the afternoons small powdery dust devils whip through the site and raise twists of sand and dry grass. This, a sign announces, will be a world-class hotel, The Meridian Hiat. She wonders if there is a lawsuit over the name: Hyatt, Hiat. It’s a little close. Perhaps this is why building work appears to have stopped? All that stands so far is a shell, poured floor and pillars, the Hiroshima-like framework of a cupola. Midday and the sun falls directly down: in the street another dead cat, ginger, fur faintly striped, shot in the head. In the centre of the street, dry now from the sun, lies a sack of dry cat food slit open.
Rike kneels beside the cat. Appalled. A fresh kill, the head pulpy, wet and repugnant. It doesn’t bear thinking about that someone would lay out food, then wait. She reports these shootings to the number Henning left with her. Because this is starting to look like a warning.
* * *
In the evening Rike prepares her lessons in the garden. Isa sits half in, half out of the apartment, her feet aligned to a rutted edge of sunlight. Already halfway through her book her thumbs stroke the unread pages.
Feet up, Rike stretches under the fragrant lemon tree with Isa’s computer on her lap, a certain pleasure at how familiar this is: holidays camping in Bavaria or at Punta Sabbione on the Venetian lagoon were always alike. Isa, book in hand, lounged across a chair, slack and happy, reading with a kind of fury. Sometimes a book a day. Rike, on the other hand, even now, takes her time and prefers to become immersed, her chair set in the same place, a coffee and iced water to hand, early to mid-morning, so orderly that her sister calls her autistic. Isa and Mattaus read thrillers. Rike reads subjects, as if revising for an exam, ideas tested first through fiction.
This is almost the holiday they planned, and two weeks into a ten-week stay, Rike already feels time melting, just going. It’s hard to stick in the moment, to fix at one point. Seven weeks’ teaching, one final week to recoup, then on to Hamburg to her brother’s apartment, everything already sent ahead, luggage and bedding.
Done with her preparation Rike checks her email and finds a message from the language school withdrawing the offer of employment. For one day she has enjoyed the idea that she will be a teacher, even if the job is temporary, even if she has to teach English. She has decided on the exercises she will use for her first lesson, and the examples she will show in case the class are too timid — and now there’s an email taking the job away. Surprised at her disappointment Rike calls to her sister.
‘What is it?’
‘It’s from the school. I don’t have permission. The British won’t let me onto their base. Security.’
‘Wouldn’t they know that before they hired you?’
‘You’d think so.’
‘You have a contract, don’t you?’ Isa reads as she talks. ‘You did sign a contract?’ Isa looks up, a finger marking her place. ‘Seriously? You didn’t sign anything?’
‘It’s all word of mouth.’
‘Anyway, why do you have to teach on the base? They wouldn’t hold language classes on a military base. They have offices, don’t they? Get them to change venues? Surely none of the students will have clearance?’
Isa’s clarity on this, on any issue, is irritating.
‘I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. Now they want me to teach one-on-one.’ Rike reads from the screen. ‘Private lessons.’
‘Private?’
‘Conversation.’
‘That’s good?’
‘Apparently.’
‘And the money?’
‘More for an advanced class.’
‘There you go, then.’ Isa closes her book and awkwardly draws herself upright. ‘I don’t know why you complain so much.’
Easily stung, Rike resents having to explain herself. ‘They want me to go to his apartment. It says that he wants to practise his conversation. There won’t be any exams. I get more money for exams.’
‘For how long?’
‘One month.’
‘Why don’t you have Henning look into it? I’m sure he can arrange whatever you need to get onto the British base. Then you can do both. Classes and private one-on-one.’
Rike’s frown remains fixed. ‘This was supposed to be a holiday.’
‘You don’t need to be looking after me. And anyway it’s money.’ Isa leans into the garden, serious now, touching a subject Rike doesn’t want to discuss. ‘And money is a good thing. Remember?’ She turns as the doorbell chimes, first puzzled, then remembering.
Isa is in a bad mood. Her day started with a broken washing-machine. One month in the apartment and already equipment is beginning to fail. The owner / owner’s son / first or second cousin (nobody can quite figure out the dynamic) is a handsome boy who studied in New York. Isa doesn’t trust him the way she would trust an ugly boy. Rike watches him walk about the kitchen. Cocky. Self-assured. He’s comfortable with women asking him to check out things which actually don’t need checking out. Sadly the washing machine is legitimate, and the boy, who misuses American phrases all the time, stands back from the machine and mumbles, ‘Shit the bed.’
Isa, enraged, hands on hips, belly round and protruding, asks him what, exactly, does he mean by this?
Rike sucks in her breath. ‘It’s a phrase,’ she explains. ‘He means it’s broken.’
‘Even so.’
Shade from the lemon tree sheds a map across the patio. Rike looks up at the canopy, picks out the angled pockets of blue sky and wonders if the boy is responsible for shooting the cats.