Force Majeure Read online

  ‘Oz was in America,’ Kay said quietly. Her contact flicked his tongue over his lips. ‘It doesn’t mean anything,’ she explained. ‘I’m tired, I’m free associating. I’m off to see the Wizard. Bollocks.’

  She had one more day in Buenos Aires, then made for Candida via Patagonia, first on a small plane that flew just above the clouds with only the distant blue peaks of mountains visible. It landed at a provincial airfield, surrounded by scrubland, where her handbag was snatched with all her cash – US dollars, which still had sentimental value in this part of the world. She boarded a packed bus for the long ride into the Andes. The suspension rattled even when it was stationary, and the interior stank of oil and turning meat. It became the smell of tiredness and sickness. Kay, sweltering with sudden fever, pressed her face up against the icy window pane, her head turned to the floor, where flecks of dirt and crumbled food rolled back and forth in puddles. With her eyes closed, she could imagine she was aboard a coach or a bus in London, while the weight of her bag, clasped firmly against her stomach, reminded her of her student travels on this continent, now replayed in her old, wearier body. This time she was alone.

  There was another leg of the endless ride, by train, by steam, but she wouldn’t remember it.

  ‘Candida,’ said the file, stolen with her cash, ‘does not recognise standard international agreements on border control and immigration.’

  She was still sickly when she woke mid-morning on the bench outside the station. She’d curled foetally with her long limbs folded round her bag, under a swaying sign strung from the rafters, which named the city and gave her no more clues. She hadn’t yet begun to feel truly hungry or truly dirty, but that would come. She was alone. She was tempted to call out. She resisted.

  A stark red mural stared at her from the wall opposite. It was a man’s face magnified to cinema size, an illusion created from abstract images, watching her. She wished she had a camera to watch him back, but it had been in her stolen handbag. She walked away and forgot the face, which was in fact the true and unmemorable likeness of Doctor Patrick n’Gopaleen Daley O’Mara Arkadin, explorer, amateur, and proud bastard father.

  She dived out of the way of a bike that barrelled towards her with its bell clamouring. She was close enough to see the rider’s goggled face. She bashed her forearm against a wall – more dull pain. She hefted her bag, which swung like a tumour at her hip, and ventured into narrow streets. They were alleys or rat-runs, built for pedestrians, bikes and carts, squeezed between buildings that rose like sheer cliff-faces. They were cobbled not paved, grooved rather than guttered. Her self-consciousness gave way to a more comfortable amusement at a city still clinging to the fashions and habits of a less frantic age. It was, she thought, picturesque. It would be a good place for tourists, once Prospero offered it up to the outside world.

  In Candida, everything ran uphill towards the peak, even water carried on underground screwpipes built by trickster-engineers to confuse the valley springs. The churning subterranean drone had been audible and distinctive when she arrived; now it faded into the background. The buildings round her felt thoroughly occupied and haunted by the impressions of generations of the living. They were mostly tenements at the lower end of the city, built lopsided to create spirit-level roofs. Banners – or maybe laundry – flew from many balconies. At the top of the city, suckling at the peak, was the great, off-white edifice called, politely, the old free house.

  She still had her migraine, a delirious slice of pain inside her head. She still reeked of oil, sickness clinging to her skin. It got worse as she climbed. In a market-run, she buttonholed the first passer-by – ‘Can you help me? I’m looking for this address,’ – but the old man flapped his arms in apology and drifted away. She tried a passing boy (who ran from her, howling), a cyclist (head-shaking, but did that mean no or yes?), a brace of clingy teens, nothing. A trader at a quiet stall gave her a vegetable roll ‘out of trust,’ after she made the honest empty-palmed gesture that meant she had no local currency – but he spoke little English and didn’t respond to her prompt-questions in Spanish and Portuguese.

  Her enquiries gradually turned to pleas of ‘Do you speak English?’, becoming more frantic with each repetition, with each empty-eyed reply or slow turn of the head.

  She rounded a corner and found herself on a level concourse between elegant houses. This seemed to be the smart district of town, though still far below the severe gaze of the old free house. Residents, passers-by and the curious had gathered here, leaning back against the walls or stretching out on the warm concrete pavement, to watch the performance unfolding in their midst. There seemed to be urgent betting going on at the fringes of the crowd, the more excited spectators waving browned and withered leaf-notes at angular, crooked men Kay assumed must be touts. They had the look. At the lip of the concourse, a young officer in a dusty Prussian-cum-Pepperland tunic stretched languidly on the seat of a bicycle. No one was watching him and he wore the amused air of a man pleased to be well away from the embarrassing centre of attention. He looked up as Kay passed, meeting her gaze, then passing cartoon-wolf eyes up and down her body. He was clutching a broom-handle decorated with a tattered, home-painted banner. Kay smiled neutrally.

  The officer lost interest in Kay, cocking his head instead towards the line of houses and particularly at a woman standing on a high balcony. She detected his interest and threw a kiss at him. She was dark, dressed in a smooth, white sheen of sunlight. She leaned forward on the rail, the only person present who shared the officer’s relaxed demeanour. The waiting crowd were surly and impatient; their faces ticked with frustration.

  There was a second officer at the far end of the concourse, dressed as distinctly as the first in a scarlet decorated cavalry jacket. He was arguing over a bicycle – literally, it lay floored between them – with a hopping, metal-headed insect-person. A knot of men had gathered behind the officer, shouting imprecations in their own language; they seemed to be on his side. A top-hatted emcee, otherwise shabby in Harlequin-elegant rags and fingerless gloves, kept the combatants apart.

  Now desperate, Kay padded towards them.

  The insect was green like a grasshopper, with grasshopper antennae growing from the smooth bowl of its head. It had one foot pressed firmly down on the bike frame. The officer bunched fists, then held them in a limp aggressive pose, as if he had no idea what they were for. The grasshopper swivelled suspiciously as it detected Kay’s approach. It had a tiny body, swathed in multilayered leather wings, and opaque plastic eyes. A flapping mouth-cloth covered the lower half of its face.

  Lost in the heat of the argument, the insect’s opponent hadn’t noticed Kay’s approach. ‘I’m an Officer of the White Horse, a fawn running in the woods of the old world –’

  ‘So go write a bloody poem, arsehole!’ The grasshopper, muffled.

  ‘– I have the right of duel and the right to a bike when I need one.’

  He spat on the ground and stalked away, foul tempered. Spotting the rival officer on the opposite end of the concourse, he flashed hand gestures Kay assumed were obliquely obscene. ‘Hey! De Brocccccccccca! You might go home already! This is the only thing you can do where you won’t get hurt! I win today! This is your last chance to walk away with dignity!’

  ‘You speak English,’ said Kay, aware suddenly of how weak she sounded.

  The curious insect head bobbed towards her, plasticked eyes drawing her in.

  ‘So do you.’

  It was the most obvious thing in the world.

  ‘Are you English?’

  ‘Do I sound English? Do I look English?’

  ‘Well, yes. Well, no.’

  ‘You look English. You’re an Appeared?’

  It pulled back its goggles and unhooked its mouth-guard. Beneath the helmet, it had the face of a girl, no, the girl-like face of a woman. The lines of her nose and chin and cheek
bones were sharp. Everything else was soft, not unformed as a real child’s would have been, but smoothed down by experience.

  ‘These bastards want to steal my bike!’

  ‘Borrow,’ said the officer, diving into the conversation. He tugged at the handlebars, but the frame caught on the insect’s stubborn leg and refused to give.

  ‘You should have a bike of your own.’

  ‘I’m an officer and a pedestrian. De Broca’s is borrowed too. Be reasonable.’

  ‘De Broca’s is borrowed from a fishmonger’s boy. I’m voladora. It’s not mine to give. It’s trust of the old free house.’

  ‘You’ll get it back.’

  ‘And if you damage it, huh? If you wreck it? Piss off!’ She sounded less frightening without the muffle of her mouthguard.

  The emcee – an old man with lineless skin and grizzly eagle-hair around his face – removed his hat and dashed it to the ground. He stood still and staring at it for a moment, as if debating whether or not to crush it underfoot. What remained of his hair bristled and curled in the windless air. Then he spoke, good English but heavily accented: ‘She’s not a voladora yet. She’s a courier, a wingless rider, common as any other. The old free house will not complain.’

  ‘Oh, they will,’ the officer sulked. ‘For the mischief of it, they will.’

  The emcee drew the officer aside and jabbed a finger in the direction of the balcony and the gleaming woman in white: ‘Captain Esteban, is she really worth the grief?’

  Esteban blew air out from under his tidy moustache. He made shallow nods, which grew more vigorous. ‘Yes. Yes, she is. She has to be worth it. Yes.’

  ‘Stupid romantic sod,’ spat the insect.

  ‘Your name, iníon?’ the emcee asked, mock-courteous.

  She affected it back at him: ‘Azure.’

  ‘Your address?’

  Her eyes flicked, westwards, upwards. The emcee licked his lips and found them sour.

  ‘Honestly? Hah, well, forgive the captain, his brain’s in his scrotum.’

  His hand struck his palm in a swift chop; at this gesture, three men budded from the mob, seized Azure and dragged her away from the bike. She kicked, but another two men took her ankles. Pinned, she let out a squeal of vicious, helpless fury. The sound juddered through Kay’s skull and harmonised with her illness, a sick chord.

  Esteban, his brow creased uneasily – half-triumph, half-dismay – reached for the now-liberated bike. Kay took a sea-sick step in front of him and laid her hands on the crossbar. ‘I don’t think –’ she begun. Hard hands gripped her shoulders and waist and tossed her back onto the ground. She thumped. Her glasses were dislodged and skittled across the pavement. There was a moment when she felt perfectly still, calm, at peace. Then her stomach revolted. She retched violently but nothing came.

  Azure swore in her ear, loomed over her, reached down and hoisted her up onto her haunches. ‘I’m fine,’ Kay protested, through phlegm-wet lips. ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘You’re lying,’ Azure snarled, as if she had been insulted. ‘Hey!’ She flicked fingers at the emcee. ‘Hey, wanker! She’s sick. She needs water. It’s the least you can do.’

  The proud emcee turned his head away. Nevertheless, within a minute, a local came running with a sloshing mug and pressed it into Azure’s hands. Kay tilted her head back and let the girl drip water, bead by bead, into her mouth.

  ‘They like you,’ Azure murmured, ‘because you were trying to help me, and I was just making a scene.’ Kay couldn’t place her accent, which put an unfamiliar lilt into every syllable.

  ‘What’s going on here?’

  ‘They’re fighting for the love of a beautiful woman. What else did you expect? Tossers.’

  Kay raised her head wearily, but without her glasses the woman on the balcony became a dark, fleshy blur and her dress – all that picked her out from the fish-coloured façade of building at her back – was a blank white hole in the world. Her suitors wheeled aggressively on their borrowed bicycles. Both riders flew tattered standards from tumescent broomhandles. They snarled at one another playfully over the length of the concourse. It was display, not aggression. Courtship, not combat.

  Bloody hell.

  The emcee strutted between them, below their prize. He’d filled his hat with his gambling receipts and restored it insecurely to his head. With every shout and every emphatic gesture he shed money like dandruff.

  ‘Good people! Officers! Citizens! Friends!’ He half-stole a glance at Kay: ‘Appeared! I give you the Captains of the White Horse, Ernesto de Broca and Emilio Esteban, who for your delectation and amusement – no more bets please! – will duel to the blood. The winner to receive a prize of her own devising from our fair and delightful hostess! The loser to crawl away on his belly in shame and ignominy! Agreed, gentlemen?’

  Both men roared and rattled their banners. The emcee snatched rabbit glances at both quarters then leapt nimbly out of the way, leaf-money streaming in his wake. ‘On your signal!’ he hollered.

  The blur shifted on the balcony. Something – white, a handkerchief? – drifted to the ground. The duellists in faded-peacock jackets hoisted their brooms to make points. They rose from the saddles, pushing forwards. They howled harder, expelling mock-violence and masculine heat from their stomachs. It became the battle hymn. Lances erect, bikes shaking, they charged.

  Exhausted, Kay closed her eyes.

  It hadn’t been a handkerchief falling but the whole white dress, sustained on the cool afternoon air. It didn’t reach the pavement but draped itself around the limbs of a lamp-post. The blur-woman herself had gone, retreated into the dark as the victor scrambled up foliage, across piping and over the balcony ledge to reach her. The crowds, mostly pleased at the outcome, beat their hands and stamped and cheered. The emcee and other touts dished out rewards to the successful gamblers, carefully, very carefully.

  Azure knelt in the middle of the courtyard, clutching the broken frame of her bike. Its front tyre was folded almost in half and she cradled it as if it were the head of a newborn. A grief posture; she might have been crying.

  The loser, with a stunted shadow hanging round his ankles, loped into Kay’s view. ‘These are yours,’ he said, and pressed a shape like infinity into her hands: her glasses. She held them up to the light, seeing scratches and dirt on the lens. She sighed her thanks. The winner was hauling himself in an ungainly sprawl head-first over the balcony. The loser sat on the pavement beside her. He smelled of sweat and grime and grease.

  ‘You trashed her bike,’ she said, thin-lipped. Watching Azure was painful.

  ‘It’s not an arm or a leg. It can be mended.’

  ‘It’s her livelihood.’

  ‘Voladora are much too precious. I’ll have it mended. Who’re you to care anyway?’

  ‘No-one special. Just make sure you get it mended, Captain Esteban.’

  ‘Milo. My friends call me.’

  ‘I’m not making friends. I’m telling you your name. I’m telling you I’ll remember it.’

  He had been staring at her, but she felt no inclination to meet his gaze. She pressed her glasses against her stomach; without them, he was a brownish haze in the corner of her eye.

  ‘You’re an Appeared?’ She blanked him. ‘A newcomer,’ he explained.

  ‘I arrived this morning.’

  ‘Then you’re my job, and fate has put you in my way,’ Esteban declaimed. She looked at him, at the deep-eyed feminine face radiating friendly insincerity. ‘I work for the Bureau of Appearances. You should make yourself known to us.’

  ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘The Appeared don’t. What the outside world knows of Candida is often out-of-date. We’re’ – he groped for the right English expression – ‘too quick for you. Don’t look so worried. I won’t bite.’

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nbsp; Kay, who prided herself on giving nothing away in her face, didn’t rise to his bait. She shrugged. ‘Business. Indefinite. This is my address.’ She thrust the necessary piece of paper at him. ‘If you could give me directions it would be helpful.’

  ‘I could take you now.’ He studied the address, frowned, slipped it smoothly into his breast pocket. ‘Perhaps not. This is old news. You may have to find alternative accommodation while I investigate.’

  He hesitated. She didn’t allow a flicker on her expression. ‘I can sort myself out.’

  Esteban brushed the stray hairs from her face and placed an unwelcome hand on her forehead. The cold dry press of his palm made her realise how hot she was and how sweaty. ‘No. Not in your condition.’

  ‘Tell me something,’ – she restored her glasses and brought the scene back into the hard and the clear – ‘what was the point of this today? Fighting with bikes and brooms like kids. Don’t you have anything better to do with your time?’

  ‘You’re such an Appeared. You’ll get used to it.’

  Irritated, she hauled herself to her feet. Her legs quivered and she found herself lowering, reluctantly, back into the warm spot she’d made for herself. Esteban wore a sad, droopy smile under his sad, droopy moustache. He seemed pettily pleased with his meagre power over her. He clapped his hands together and called for Azure, though the girl didn’t react, not straightaway.

  ‘You can’t just land me on her,’ Kay protested, though feebly.

  ‘She’s from the old free house. They’ll cope. So will you.’

  Azure crouched at a blank space on her wall and, with one smooth and apparently thoughtless movement, drew a silhouette-outline in red chalk. It was taller and leaner than the rest of the crowd, with curved hips and exaggerated bangs at the side of the head. A woman, then. The artist crept back to inspect the outline, froze for a moment in her caveman crouch, then rolled her head in satisfaction. She had the long, brittle fingers of a pianist or a pickpocket.