She held the pearls in her hand as the dog made scraping sounds around the parquet floor.
She can walk now, I said, to fill the silence.
Yes, said Gertrude, patella is fine. But there will be other reasons to keep her housebound.
So it is time to leave?
How do you say it? High time.
The pearls seemed to glow blacker in her pale, manicured hand.
You bought these?
In the jeweller’s, by the opera house.
But they went on a dance then. Like in that play by Schnitzler.
What play?
La Ronde. Someone should make an opera of it.
I would like you to have them.
Why me? she asked.
Because, I said, they would suit you.
So they will end their travels here? In this old hand.
Elegant hand.
Nice try, Jonathan. It was elegant once.
Keep them for you? If you ever return?
Something like that.
Among my other souvenirs.
She held them towards the window and turned them in the band of sunlight coming through it.
Black pearls, she said. Be still, my heart.
They can’t hurt you.
Can they hurt, these pearls?
Others, maybe. Not you.
Is there something you’re not telling me now?
Too many things.
I closed her hand around them.
Please, I asked. Take them. Do me one last favour.
She smiled then, and raised her face towards mine.
I can take them, Jonathan, she said. But don’t think it will help.
Help what? I asked, rather stupidly.
She’s not attached to these. She’s attached to you.
I looked at her face, in that band of sunlight. It was unkind to her. The lines showed beneath the impeccable make-up. She looked for once like what she said she was. A retired croupier. Or a charlatan. Somewhere beyond, I heard a siren wail.
But I’ll hold them for you.
I kissed her, on the corner of her pencilled lips.
Goodbye, Jo-na-than.
Would I hear those three syllables again, separated just like that? I wondered, as I made my way back across the river. Some part of me hoped I wouldn’t. And some part of me knew I would.
I walked to that grating, where what she had called the river god blew hot air from underneath. I waited there, feeling the hot wind fanning my hair upwards, but Sarah and Jenny didn’t come. I heard the sounds of running feet then, all around me, but could see nothing moving on the street, and realised the sounds were coming from below.
It was a ventilator for a metro platform, the hot air was coming from the passing trains and I saw a mass of coloured balaclavas then, through the grating, surging towards some exit way beyond.
There was a metro entrance by the half-built mall and I could see police running towards it, blowing whistles, pulling guard sticks, black vans screeching down the roadside, more police spilling out of the opening doors and the pastel-coloured mob trying to burst through, and I saw Sarah hurrying towards me, her arm around our daughter, as the mayhem spread about behind them. Then Jenny broke free of her and ran into my arms.
Mummy bought me sandals, Daddy, she said.
Just get us out of here, said Sarah, so I took one hand of Jenny’s as Sarah took the other and we hurried towards the river, half-swinging her between us.
Pretend it’s a game, Sarah said, so I pretended, and swung her, with those coloured canvas plimsolls, across the wide empty road to the parapet on the other side.
There was a thundering sound then, of a hundred running feet to my left, and I took her in my arms and pressed her body into the granite steps cut into the parapet wall and something hit me, a placard or a riot shield, and I fell and could see Jenny’s coloured sandals against the blue sky beyond through the wave of running figures like bright coloured hummingbirds in Doc Marten boots. I could see Sarah, pressed against the granite wall, and was trying to rise when they swarmed all around me in their coloured balaclavas and I was pushed to the ground and lost sight of them both. All I could see were the black-camouflaged ones and after them the Kelvar-suited military police. There was a chaos of boots, all of the same colour, rounding on the bridge, and I could see the real encounter happening there, the pastel-coloured dervishes running past the giant hawsers, underneath the monumental angels where they were trapped, by a phalanx of black ski masks coming from the other side.
I heard a scream of loss, of hysteria, of pure unbridled terror. I hoped it was coming from the bridge. But when I got to my feet I realised it wasn’t. It was coming from Sarah.
She was leaning over the parapet, like a drunk about to vomit. I pulled her back. I had seen what she had seen. A pair of coloured sandals, kicking in the brown water below. I jumped on to the parapet, and for the second time I dived.
I hit the river badly and thought for a moment my back had broken. But I managed to turn in the soupy murk and could see a figure above me, arms spread-eagled, face down, the sunlight pouring all around her in fingers of amber. I flailed up towards it and managed to turn her body when I broke the surface.
I could see that she was breathing, and called out her name.
She spewed water from her mouth. She took a gulp of clear air.
Jenny.
She managed a word. It sounded like yes.
Hold me.
I’m saying goodbye, she said, with another huge inhale. To the river.
Put your arms around my neck.
I’m saying goodbye to her.
Hush.
But she doesn’t want us to go.
Please, love. Please. Don’t talk. Hold me.
I could hear the deep-throated rumble of police barges moving towards us. I could hear distant screams from the bridge. And I could see those pastel-coloured, vainly flailing figures subsumed in wave after wave of black.