Yiza Read online

  Aspirin, said Yiza. Her eyelids drooped.

  Arian screwed the cap off the water bottle, put one hand behind Yiza’s back and helped her sit up. She drank, water trickling from the corners of her mouth. He opened a tin of mandarins, fished out one piece after another and put them in her mouth. He drank the juice himself. The rolls were hard now, and sandy. He pressed one into her hand, but she didn’t want to take a bite. So he bit a piece off, chewed it, spat the warm, soft dough into his hand, and she licked it up. He wrapped her in the tarpaulin, dragged the large flowerpots over and stood them in front of her. Only the biggest ones.

  He crept out of the greenhouse. Closed the latch. Crawled under the fence and ran down the dark path.

  There was a metro station not far from the supermarket. He got on the last carriage and ducked down between the seats at the back. But then he thought: that’s not good. If you duck, it means someone’s looking for you, and he sat on the seat, but he didn’t feel comfortable there. And ducked back down. And then sat back on the seat.

  For the first few stations he was the only one on the train. The closer they came to the city centre, the more people got on. He could see it wasn’t yet six o’clock in the morning. He wanted to be a good father-figure for their little household.

  He didn’t know which city he was in. He remembered which station he had got off at. He remembered which direction he had come from. He was quite good at remembering the shapes of words. He took a long look at the area around the metro station. There was a bridge in front of him. He couldn’t see the river. A bakery to the right; the scent wafted over to him. An illuminated red sign above the door. When the sun came up, the sign probably wouldn’t glow any more – he had to factor that in, experience told him things looked different when they weren’t lit up. In the middle of the pavement was a newspaper stand, an octagonal building with a roof like the top of a church tower. That was the safest landmark.

  Just then, the newspaper seller stepped out. He saw Arian, reached into his pocket and gave him a coin.

  Aspirin, said Arian.

  What?

  Aspirin.

  Aspirin?

  Aspirin.

  Are you sick?

  Aspirin.

  The man turned round and disappeared into his kiosk. He didn’t come out again. You couldn’t just stand around outside. It was too cold.

  The coin was enough for a currant bun. At first, Arian only meant to eat half of it. But as he was chewing he forgot about that and three bites later the bun was gone. He would have liked to stay in the bakery. He had hoped lots of people would be standing in front of him, waiting, so he could warm up. But he had been the first and only customer.

  Two women came towards him. Warm hats on their heads, scarves round their throats, boots, and short, thick jackets. He held out his hand.

  Aspirin, he said.

  What did he say?

  Aspirin, he said.

  He wants aspirin. I think he said aspirin. Do you have an aspirin?

  Why does he want aspirin?

  Aspirin, said Arian. But he didn’t say it again. He walked on. His hand was so cold he couldn’t hold it out in the open air any more, he didn’t want to. He hid his hands in the sleeves of his jacket, and inside the sleeves he pulled his hands underneath his jumper and his shirt and warmed his right hand under his left armpit and the left under the right. And he walked on. Turned down an alley, away from the river. He thought the cold was coming up from the river.

  One of the women ran after him and gave him two coins. For aspirin, she said. That should be enough. Her fingers touched his. She turned round and ran back. As if she was afraid of him.

  If he hadn’t been alone, he would have cried. Alone, he never cried. By this evening I want to have: aspirin, two currant buns, preferably four. Candles. Good food. Like sausages. Meat in a tin. Two tins. Bread. Butter. Bananas. He ran through the process of how he would heat up the meat in a tin over the candles. He would plant the candles in a flowerpot, so their light wouldn’t be seen down at the villa. At least three candles. As many as possible. Then he would open the tin. Then he would wind two pieces of wire around the tin, so that the four ends of the wires stuck out from the tin in all directions. He would rest the wires on the rim of the flowerpot, and the tin would be suspended over the flames. He had seen some wire in the greenhouse. So he didn’t need to get hold of wire. He would bend another piece to make a cooking spoon, and two more to make forks. He was excited. He was excited about going back to Yiza. He knew she would praise him. Warm meat and aspirin would make her better. He went through the process over and over again. Perhaps he could get milk and yoghurt, too. And cheese. And chocolate.

  It was too cold. He ran back down the steps into the metro station. But it was too cold there as well. He got on a train. It was one of the new ones. He could walk from the last carriage to the first without having to get off in between. On the one hand that was good, Shamhan had told him, because you could see a ticket inspector coming a long way off. But on the other it wasn’t so good, because you couldn’t play cat-and-mouse with the ticket inspector. But Shamhan had preferred the new trains. Plus, the new trains had better heating.

  Arian pulled his hat down over his forehead so the passengers couldn’t see his eyebrows. Then he went from one to another, looking each one in the eye. Holding out his hand to them.

  Aspirin, please.

  After he had been down the train twice, he had collected twelve Euros and seventy cents. He also had four tablets. He could hardly believe it. He waited two stops, sitting right at the back, watching passengers leave and passengers get on. Then he conducted his experiment. He pulled the hat back down over his eyebrows, went from one passenger to the next, looking each of them in the eye.

  Please, he said. This time all he said was: Please.

  He went down the train again twice. He got one Euro and thirty cents.

  He went a third time, this time without his hat on, so they could see his eyebrows.

  Twenty cents.

  He had discovered a trick all by himself. The greatest people were the ones who had invented a trick. They were the greatest. He was one of the greatest. He thought he understood people. They were afraid of his eyebrows. And someone begging for aspirin was new to them. That was the trick: bringing people something new. He had brought something new to the streets. He would have liked to tell Shamhan about it. In the afternoon he went to the river. He couldn’t remember exactly where he and Shamhan had met for the first time. He thought he could remember, but then everything looked the same. He marched up and down for an hour, a hundred metres one way, a hundred metres back again. In one direction the sun was in his face, in the other it was on his back. But he didn’t meet Shamhan. Maybe this wasn’t even the same city.

  He had thirty-four Euros and ten cents. He climbed into a lorry and stole two blankets, white and soft as a cat’s fur. Lorry drivers seldom lock their doors, Shamhan had taught him, but car drivers always do. He wrapped everything he could get for his money in the blankets, and a few more things besides. A pharmacist had given him a big box of aspirin for free. After he had used the trick on him as well. Even the pharmacist had fallen for the trick.

  There was a tap in the greenhouse. Yiza had tried to turn it on. She couldn’t do it. She was thirsty. Arian was stronger than she was, and he managed it. The water was rusty. He put a bucket under it so the floor wouldn’t get wet. That would definitely not have been good. After a while clear water came out, icy, clear water. Yiza had sweated through all her clothes. She was still feverish. Arian stripped her naked, wrapped her in the soft white blankets and folded the tarpaulin over her. Just as he had planned, he stuck half a dozen candles into a flowerpot, rinsed out an empty can, wound the wire round it and heated up some milk. Yiza drank cautiously. He showed her that she might cut her lip on the rim of the can if she wasn’t careful. She was careful. He filled the can with water, made the water hot, wiped off the soot and gave her the can to wa
rm her hands on.

  The sun went down, but they had light. The candlelight coming from the flowerpot. That was their light. The flowerpot sat between them, and the candle flames warmed them.

  Arian heated up some cat food in the can. He ripped the labels off first. He needn’t have. Yiza liked the cat food, and she would have liked it even if she had known it was cat food. There was bread, too. In a little supermarket he had shoved a twelve-pack of the cat food, wrapped in plastic, under his shirt. It was only later that he’d seen the cute kittens on the labels. He had thought it was human food. They had bananas, too. And aspirin. It had been a good day.

  In the night Yiza curled up in a ball, and Arian lay behind her and warmed her back with his belly. He held her little feet in his hands and rubbed them. He kept rubbing them even in his sleep. Sometimes he had to lift the tarpaulin to let in fresh air. Yiza coughed, and it sounded hollow and manly and strange, as if there were someone sitting inside her chest. Arian reached for the can of water and pulled it under the tarpaulin. The water was icy cold, even though he’d boiled it over the candles before falling asleep. He lifted Yiza’s head and gave her a drink from it. Cold, she said in her language. But Arian understood her and remembered the word. He wrapped Yiza in both blankets and crawled out from under the tarpaulin. He was so cold his teeth chattered and his arms and legs trembled. The candles in the flowerpot had burned down to stubs. He lit them with the lighter, filled the can with fresh water and hung it over the flames. He crawled under the tarpaulin and cuddled up to Yiza, who was now like a ball of wool and didn’t stir. When the water was hot, he hung a teabag in the can, and Yiza took it in her hands and drank in little sips.

  Tea, she said in her language.

  Tea, he said in his.

  Tea, she said. Arian tea. She smiled and coughed.

  Aspirin, he said.

  She nodded, and he gave her a tablet.

  Yiza?

  Yes.

  Are we dreaming?

  I think we’re dreaming, Arian.

  Are we dreaming the same dream?

  We’re dreaming the same dream, Arian.

  And you can understand my language?

  You understand my language, too, Arian. We’re grown-ups, Arian.

  Maybe you’re my wife.

  I’d like you as my husband, Arian. You look after me. You protect me.

  In the evenings we would listen to music. Have you ever listened to music, Yiza?

  No, not yet. But I will listen to music. And I’ll cook for you, Arian.

  Have you ever cooked, Yiza? Rice or pasta, little balls of meat?

  No. But I’ll learn how. Do you like football, Arian?

  Yes, I like it a lot. It must be wonderful to score a goal. Scoring a goal in an important match, that must be wonderful.

  Yes?

  Yes.

  What can I do, Arian?

  What do you mean, Yiza?

  So that people praise me like they praise a footballer who scores a goal in an important match.

  I don’t know, Yiza. People don’t praise women.

  Would you praise me?

  If you were my wife?

  Would you praise me if I was your wife, Arian?

  I would, Yiza.

  Every day?

  I would praise you every day, Yiza.

  I’d praise you every day, too, Arian.

  Sleep now, Yiza.

  We are sleeping, Arian.

  Sleep now.

  They had enough food for the next day and enough candles, too. Arian had gone into a café and taken the teabags as he walked past the counter, putting them in his trouser pocket. And had then forgotten about them. He remembered them in the night. He hadn’t thought about sugar. But he had thought about chocolate. He thought Yiza refused the chocolate because she knew he loved it so much. But then he saw that she was just giving a slight shake of her head. That she wasn’t thinking anything. That she was feeling even worse than she had in the night. He took off his socks, kneaded them in some cold water and laid them on her forehead. She drank tea and ate bananas and apples. And swallowed aspirin. She coughed hard, and when she had finished coughing there were tears in her eyes, and she smacked her lips and swallowed and spat. He lay down beside her, pulled the tarpaulin over their heads and told her things in his language, unimportant things that no one would have wanted to hear if they understood his language. But Yiza didn’t understand his language, and she liked to listen to him. When he tired more quickly than she did, she tugged at his collar, and he went on talking. In the end he stopped saying words and just made sounds, emphasising them as if they were words and as if the words were stories. Then they both fell asleep at the same time. When Yiza woke up because she was thirsty, he helped her sit up and put the can of tea to her lips. He had a bite of chocolate. And a drink of cold milk. And chewed bread for Yiza, who licked it off his hand.

  On the third day Arian begged well and stole well and was given sausage and bread for free and a big bag of sweet pastries that were too stale to sell. When he walked back into the greenhouse in the late afternoon, before sunset, there was a woman there with Yiza in her arms. And the woman shooed him away. He dropped his haul and ran. Ran off down the road without looking back.

  The woman carried Yiza down the garden to the villa. She descended the stone steps carefully, she put one foot in front of the other on the gravel of the winding paths, she kept pausing and balancing out her load so she didn’t stumble, she was a petite woman, not very strong and not young any more, either. She said: My little one, everything will be alright now.

  Yiza stood in the bathroom, naked, wrapped in a towel. The woman put a hand under the water coming out of the bath taps to check the temperature.

  In a minute you’re going to feel like you’re in heaven, she said. The bathroom was spacious; the bathtub was freestanding and rested on cast iron feet shaped like a lion’s paws. The walls were tiled in a soft shade of vanilla. There was a mirror in three sections above the sink. The room smelled of perfumed soap.

  I’m going to wash you and put some cream on you, said the woman. Then I’m going to get you into a clean bed, and you’re going to sleep and get better.

  Yiza didn’t look at her. She didn’t look at anything. She wasn’t cold any more. She wasn’t hungry. She wasn’t thirsty, either. She was tired. She wasn’t thinking about dreams and she wasn’t thinking about Arian. Her feet seemed a long way off. As if she had grown in the last few hours.

  Come on, said the woman. Come on!

  She took off the towel, led her over to the bathtub and made a sign. Yiza got into the bath. Sat down in the water and stared straight ahead, just as she had before. The woman stopped talking to her for a while, she just gestured. Then she felt it was too quiet, and started talking again.

  That’s your head, said the woman, soaping Yiza’s head. Your head is made up of your face and your hair. But you know all that, don’t you?

  She put a finger under Yiza’s chin and tilted her face towards her. But Yiza looked through her.

  My poor child, said the woman, it’s a good thing you came to me. My name is Renate. I’m Renate. Renate. Renate. I’m Renate, who are you? My name’s Renate, what’s yours? And those are your shoulders. And that’s your neck. That’s your chest, that’s your back. And that’s your hand. These are your fingers. What have you got in your hand? Show me! Open your hand! Can I see, please? Open your hand.

  Yiza opened her hand and showed the woman the thimble.

  Beautiful, said the woman. I’m not going to take it away from you. We’ll put it here. When we’ve finished our bath, you can have it back. There it is.

  Yiza didn’t let the thimble out of her sight while the woman washed her, and when she got out of the bath, she picked it up again at once.

  The woman dried Yiza, rubbed moisturiser into her thin body, wrapped the towel round her and carried her into the bedroom. She put a nightshirt on her and tucked her in. She sat down in an armchair in the corn
er.

  You don’t understand me. Or do you? If you understand me, could you nod your head? Or put a leg out from under the covers?

  But Yiza didn’t nod, or put a leg out from under the covers. She coughed, and it didn’t sound good. Soon she fell asleep, and soon it was a new day.

  The woman gave her tea to drink and porridge or lightly salted potato soup and steamed carrots. She tucked a thermometer under her arm. When her temperature rose to 40 degrees, she laid cloths soaked in vinegar on her calves. It’s a good thing you came to me, she kept saying, and then it was evening and night and morning again and evening again and night again.

  Yiza was dreaming, or else she wasn’t: A man was standing in the doorway, looking at her. His arms hung down by his sides. His head was tilted slightly to one side. He was far away, but also close by. His head reached past the top of the doorframe. He was wearing dark clothes. She fell asleep looking at him. She would have liked to say her friend’s name, but her lips wouldn’t make any sounds. She had hidden the thimble under the mattress. Pushed it in as far as she could reach, so it was underneath her head.

  The man was standing in the doorway again. The door was wide open this time, and there was a light on in the hall. This time the man was shorter, his head didn’t touch the doorframe. Yiza heard voices. The voices came from behind the man. But the man didn’t say anything. He looked at her with his head slightly tilted to one side.

  On the fourth or fifth day her fever broke. She drank a lot. Sat up in bed, propped on the huge scatter cushions. She held the cup with both hands. She drank hastily, and red tea dripped onto her clean nightshirt. She glanced hurriedly up at the woman sitting beside the bed, to see if she had noticed her carelessness. The woman smiled and nodded and closed her eyes.