Which is how I came to be holding Phoebe the Pomeranian as Gertrude ran her fingers over the Polaroid of Petra.
Your wife, Gertrude said. You make it up with her?
Let’s not talk about Sarah, I said.
But I can feel it from you, she murmured, and took a sip of her greenish liquid. Something burning inside.
What is that? I asked her. Crème de menthe?
With a mixture of wheatgrass. Quite disgusting, she said.
So, I said, you’d better tell me what you know.
You’re septical, she said. I can feel it.
Sceptical, I corrected her. And I’m not, not really.
I cannot work with sceptical.
Was I sceptical about Sarah?
No, she said. You were burning. Still are. With gelozie. But about this little Petra, you are septic.
Sceptic, I corrected her again.
Whatever, she said. My English is bad. But if you suspend your disbelief, I can try for you.
Try what? I asked.
Map-reading, she said.
So I sat, finally, and stroked the Pomeranian’s fluffed hair until the whining stopped.
You will take her to vet for me? she asked, with a hint of a smile. And she was clever, dear Gertrude.
Yes, I said. I will take her to the vet for you and suspend my disbelief if you agree to try.
Map-reading, she said again. And she laid down her cocktail glass of green stuff and unrolled a map from her dresser.
The city, she said.
I can see that.
North, south, east and west. The river between.
You said the east side.
Yes, she said, the old industrial side.
It was the new industrial side, in actuality. Or it had once been planned as new, gleaming avenues of serried concrete structures that now sat peeling, crumbling and never quite abandoned. Pools of oil-slicked mud in which children rode their bicycles, parks overgrown with ivy and weeds, the copper-coloured river flowing beneath them. But they had their own poetry, these places; the symmetry of their rectangular windows, the broken window panes and the rusting window frames retreated in a perfect perspective which promised a future that would never arrive.
And I wondered, was it that promise that had dragged me here in the first place, as she smoothed the map with her still-billowing electronic cigarette? I was a sentimentalist, a severe one. I followed instincts that I only got to understand when they were past, long past. And the clove-scented perfume of her electronic cigarette was making me queasy. I felt sick most days, but was in danger now of being nauseous.
Could you, I asked, and pushed it gently aside.
You would prefer I smoked a real one?
If you want, I said.
And of course she then did it, she lit a real one and offered another to me. I took it, again for sentimental reasons. And as the odour of real tobacco conquered the odour of fake tobacco, she sat back and smiled, the cigarette dangling from her crimson mouth.
She looked like an ageing Marlene Dietrich and she knew it. All she was missing was the eye-patch, the one Dietrich wore as she gazed through a wisp of curling smoke at the sagging hulk that was Orson Welles. They were both old then, and almost past it, and they knew it, too. And Gertrude now fluffed through her lips in that old movie way and took the Polaroid of little Petra between her old dry palms and began to rub it, as if to warm the girl who was no longer there.
In Haitian voodoo, she said, they are afraid of photographs. And you know what? they are right.
They are?
Most certainly. The chemical – what’s it called?
The acetate.
The acetate. The crystals. The accretions of the light. They are jealous crystals. And they keep a little of the image they display.
You mean the soul? I asked. I was ready for anything now, even philosophical exegesis.
The crystals know something we don’t. They know the face we present is just a shadow and they retain a piece of – how do you say—
If we can admit to such a thing.
And she rolled the Polaroid in her hands again, as if it was a tobacco leaf and she was in some Haitian basement, preparing a cigar.
And I can feel it now.
What can you feel?
The heat, she said. The real Petra.
So she may be alive, I thought. If I was to believe in this charade. And as I had promised to suspend my scepticism, I had no option but to believe. And the charade, if charade it was, had its own logic, its own rituals and its own absolute persuasiveness. It would have been hard, standing beside her, not to be convinced of something. Gertrude was, if nothing else, a convincing actress. Like that old Marlene.
Hold the map, she said, flatten it, over table.
And I did so. I smoothed all the crinkles from the old parts of the city and the once new ones. The broad snake of the river between both sides, the wide bridges over it, the grids of the grand avenues and the filigreed mazes of the little streets. I made the city flat and manageable, with my own palms, and held it down at the edges as she laid the Polaroid to one side and moved her own palm slowly over it.
Her hand was as steady as a piece of metal. And I could not help but be impressed by the rigour of it, as it moved, slowly and inexorably as a mechanical lathe, over the monochrome shapes of the city streets. If she was ever to be a junkie, I remember thinking, she would have no trouble finding a vein. Because they were raised, like pulsing iron cords, over the bone structure of her hand. The skin on the hand was pale, and I could see a hint of a red edge around the palm. Too much alcohol, I remember thinking, too much crème de menthe.
And I was engrossed in particularities like these when I caught the smell of something burning, which wasn’t tobacco smoke.
It was paper.
She raised her hand a little. There was a tiny brown singed spot somewhere to the east of the river, amongst the regimental grids of the industrial suburbs. And there was a small whorl of something like smoke coming from it.
And I knew it had to be a trick and I knew it wasn’t a trick, and both certainties were battling for precedence when she spoke again, softly blowing out tobacco smoke.
Somewhere here, she murmured.
Her eyes were half-closed, and the cigarette stayed between her lips and a small tumble of ash fell from it.
Down, down, down, she murmured again. And maybe she was talking about her hand, because she lowered the palm again, ever more slowly.
The curl of smoke rose from the city map. And I could smell something like paper burning.
She pulled her hand away with an involuntary gasp, and I saw the small burning hole in those city streets and put my own hand down on it, before the whole map caught fire.
There, she said.
Where? I asked.
She is there, somewhere in those buildings.
It is the map that burned, not the city.
Can you be sure? I asked.
And I could picture a portion of the city aflame now. It made as much sense as what had happened in this room did.
You try to joke, she said. Joking won’t help.
So where is she? I asked.
Somewhere, she said, in those burnt streets.
A brothel? I asked.
Who said brothel? I said a small room that she cannot leave.
Sounds like a brothel to me, I said. And to her father too, I thought.
And I am done for the day, she said. With you, with Phoebe and with little Petra.
Could you do the same, I asked, on Google Maps?
No, she said. I am an analogue kind of girl. No digital for me. I will rest now, if you don’t mind. You take Phoebe to the veterinarian’s for her luxating patella and Gertrude will charge you nada.
Nothing?
Free. How you say? Gratis.