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A slither of moon cast a dull light over the street as the two men moved away from Silberling’s grand house, their hearts racing from what they had dared. A third man joined them, and the three of them couldn’t have been more different from one another in appearance, background and outlook.
Yusuf slowed the thoughts galloping about his head and turned to Isaiah. “Did you get all that?”
Isaiah’s fingers navigated his phone menu. “We’ll have to lighten the footage. Even with the lantern at his door, shadows obscured his face, but–”
“Have we got what we need?”
Isaiah grinned. “Bro, he admitted he knew Karl. He taunted him about his sister. We’ve got him pinned naked against a wall.”
Yusuf whooped, springing up into the air. He’d felt so small standing on Silberling’s doorstep, but they now had the admission Ellie needed on tape. Yes, the recording had been made secretly, and therefore might not be admissible, but surely it was in the public interest?
Perhaps they’d managed it; perhaps they’d saved the circus.
Excitement bubbled up inside him at the thought of telling Ellie and Doris.
Doris.
He’d heard an ambulance, but what if she’d not made it? Despair filled him at the thought of everyone he loved being taken away one by one. How could it be fair that some people had so many to love, while others had their joy stolen or never experienced love at all?
Karl revolted him. He may have helped tonight, but he hadn’t fooled Yusuf. Nothing but self-interest motivated him. But even Karl had a sister he would sacrifice himself for. Yusuf’s mind skipped back to Selim on that dusty street. The freedom of the motorcycle ride juxtaposed against his all too human body torn apart by the explosion.
At his side, ghouls chased across Karl’s face in the half-light. “We stuck our heads in the hornet’s nest. Silberling’s going to send the bulls after me, I know it. What have I done?” He shot Yusuf an imploring look. “Promise me you’ll find a way to take care of my sister.”
Yusuf nodded. He didn’t know how but he owed the man that much. He’d find a way.
Behind them, a din of sirens approached. The police cars skidded to a halt a few metres away, and men in green uniform leapt out, barking orders.
Karl flinched. “I’m not going to run this time.”
He hovered, waiting for the men to reach him, his hands in plain sight. His sad eyes met Yusuf’s. He needed comfort, but the walls between them were still too high. The strange night stretched out men’s dreams and fears, but in reality, he and Karl would never eat from the same table or fight the same battles. They occupied different trajectories and Yusuf was glad that his own brimmed with hope, not hate, even when it appeared all the light had been turned off.
The policemen shouted, still, demanding that Karl put his hands behind his back. He yielded, a wretch of a man caught in a trap. They cuffed him.
“Let’s go, bro,” said Isaiah. “He got what was coming to him.”
The boughs played tricks with Yusuf’s mind as he pressed on through Treptower Park; the trees crowded him, appearing human and unbending, villains of their terrain by moonlight. At this late hour, shadows shrouded the bright colours of the big top. The tent and the assorted buildings nearby seemed buttressed, erected in such a way to maintain boundaries between the circus folk and everyday Berliners.
As he passed the stable block, the horses whinnied. He lingered there a moment, although Isaiah had told him the ambulance had long since taken Doris to hospital. At the residences, he entered the key code and, seeing the communal areas cloaked in darkness, trudged to his room, though he longed to wake someone for news of Doris and Ellie. He’d never forgive himself if Doris hadn’t survived. He’d abandoned them both.
In his room, he flicked on the lamp and cast his eyes on the floor in case someone had pushed a note under his door. Nothing. He sighed.
Isaiah had entrusted him with the Silberling footage. Yusuf plucked the memory card out of his wallet with great care, and wrapped it in a piece of paper. Then he reached for the stuffed elephant his mother had made him long ago, and found the little chink in the cotton of the trunk, where the stuffing sometimes escaped. He pushed the card into the hole and returned the toy to his chair.
Remnants of the day floated through his mind in disparate pieces. There could be no hope of sleep now. The day’s filth lay heavy on his skin, and so he undressed to his smalls, grabbed the towel on his chair, and traipsed to the shower.
The tap screeched as he opened it, and soon, scalding water cascaded over his head, down his back, over his bruised rib cage and aching calves. He stood still, head bowed, hands splayed outwards, reluctant to adjust the temperature though it seared his skin. After a few minutes–excessive showering risked waking the others and drove up the bill–he soaped and towelled himself dry before scooping up his underwear.
A rap of knuckles sounded on the door, followed by a whisper.
Yusuf slung the towel around his hips and opened the door to find a bleary-eyed Emir standing there, wearing too small shorts and a threadbare white vest, his moustache spiking in different directions.
“I thought I heard something. I’ve been waiting for you,” said Emir. He shook his head. “I didn’t think we’d see troubles like these again.” He took a deep breath and his stomach shook with emotion. “Ellie called with news of Doris. I’m sorry. I know you were close. At least she wasn’t alone, shukkar.”
The ground swayed beneath Yusuf’s feet. His chest constricted, and he needed to be out in the park, anywhere but in this small space where demons had found him.
“She’s gone?”
“I’m sorry, son,” said Emir, embracing him.
“What happened? Why couldn’t they save her?” His voice was that of a child, not a grown man.
“I don’t know much.” He paused. “I have something for you.” He handed Yusuf a scrap of paper.
Yusuf gripped the paper, knuckles white. “What is it?”
“Ellie’s mobile number. Her mother stopped to collect Doris’s belongings on her way to the hospital. She wanted you to have the phone number. Ellie might have the answers you’re looking for.”
“How can Doris be gone? What will we do without her? I miss her already.”
“The sands of time don’t wait for anyone.” Emir set his shoulders. “Doris believed in the circus, son. She was a part of this family. I know you don’t want to think about this right now, but we need you on the trapeze for our very last performance. Let’s change up the routines a bit. We’ll put on a show this city will never forget. We’ll do it for Doris.”
Though his insides churned with the loss of his friend, a slow resolve crept up on Yusuf. He wouldn’t let Doris die in vain. She’d want him to fight on. The circus ring beckoned, and even if it all were to end, there was nowhere he’d rather be than with the strangers who had become his family.
And Ellie.
He needed to call her, listen to her voice and hear about Doris’s final moments. He needed to share his grief with her and to borrow her strength. In light of Doris’s death, the Silberling recording amounted to a joyless victory, but Ellie needed to know what had happened.
Emir manoeuvred Yusuf out of the bathroom, like a father fussing over his child, and switched off the light. “We can sit together in the common room for a while and talk about Doris, if you like.”
Yusuf’s words garbled. “It’s late. We should probably sleep. Perhaps we can meet in the morning? There’s something you should know.” His fingers jittered around the scrap of paper.
Emir, tufts of hair visible on his back, retreated down the corridor. “As you wish. Then I will save my energy to say my prayers for Doris. Everything else can wait until the sun rises.”
The rawness of Yusuf’s sorrow accompanied him as he dressed in a fresh t-shirt and shorts, then padded to Doris’s apartment in bare feet. He knew he shouldn’t be there, but his instinctive need to be close to her overrode logic. Her unlocked door didn’t surprise him; she had always welcomed whoever came to her door. He picked up a family picture from her windowsill, feeling like a thief, and sank into her sofa. Tears pricked his eyes as he memorised the angles of her face, the happiness of this memory of a young married couple with their teenage children, before ill health and death stalked them.
Once he had composed himself, he replaced the photograph, eased her apartment door shut behind him, and headed to the common room. A phone booth with minimal lighting hung on the adjacent wall. Tangy smoke drifted over to him, a telltale sign that Old Sayid had been smoking shisha.
He hovered for a moment by the booth. Some of the circus folk called their relatives, but Yusuf hadn’t spoken to his own mother in over a year. The telephone nearest their family home had been blown apart in an air raid, and the one next to that also, and so Yusuf had stopped hoping to hear her voice.
It was enough to hope she lived.
Someone he loved had to live.
One day, maybe he would see his mother’s face again, and say sorry for leaving her, and trace the outline of her face with his fingers, and give her the money he had saved for her in fistfuls under his mattress.
One day, his guilt and fear would dissolve like salt, leaving no residue.
One day.
He lifted the receiver and cupped it under one ear, and dug in his pocket for a few Euros. The machine accepted his money greedily, and the receiver emitted a series of high tones as he dialled Ellie’s number.
Her voice seeped through the phone, distracted, sleepy. “Hello?”
“It’s me.” Stupid man, thinking in his arrogance that she’d recognise his voice.
She tripped over her words, suddenly alert. “Oh God, Yusuf, I’m so sorry. I wanted her to make it so badly. I can’t believe this has happened.”
Her grief didn’t add to the weight of his; it comforted him instead.
His voice caught in his throat. “I’m sorry to have left you both alone. She deserved better.”
“She knew you loved her. She loved you all. I understood that from the moment I met her.” She slowed. “How did you get my number? What happened with Karl? Where have you been? I thought you might have been hurt...I was worried.”
He drew in a ragged breath, soaking up the sound of her voice, the signs that he was special to her. He’d forgotten what it felt like to be important to someone; not just as one of a number, but more special than others. To her, he said only, “I need to see you.”
He knew it to be true even before he vocalised it. It was about Doris, and two people providing a balm to each other after loss.
It was also more than that.
His admission hung in the air between them, a weight that meant something, not a throwaway comment, and in that moment, it was only the two of them and nothing else mattered. He held his breath, holding on to the sparks that flew between them, the promise of what could be.
“Can I come over?” she said.
He imagined a shyness to her voice, but the Ellie he knew brimmed with courage. She could never be hesitant or timorous; his nature was full of fear, but hers shone like the sun, regardless of what life threw at her. He thought of Doris, her body cold with no hope of warmth. He thought of his mother, and whether it would be improper for Ellie to visit when respectable men and women slept at this hour.
How could he say no to Ellie?
He wanted to say yes. So he did.
“Shall I meet you at the S-Bahn?” he said, pleased that she couldn’t see how he’d twisted the phone cable round and round his wrist in his nervousness, how it had caught fast. How his emotions had become so muddied that he could no longer form a coherent thought.
“I’ll take a cab. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
“I’ll wait at the door,” he said.
She hung up, and Yusuf untangled the cable, his thoughts ricocheting through his mind, like wayward bullets failing to find their mark. He waited at the door for her, grounded by grief but expectant, as if the night held intimacies that the day couldn’t offer. Close to half an hour later, he glimpsed headlights in the distance, and sure enough, Ellie came darting across the lawn with a satchel across her body, using her mobile phone as a torch.
He opened the door and she tumbled into his arms as if it were the most natural thing in the world. She smelt of spring grass and daisies. Her breath came in rasps from how she had hared across the park.
“I’m so sorry about Doris,” she said, lacing her fingers with his and squeezing.
“I need to know she was at peace,” he said, searching her face for the truth.
Ellie bit her lip. “She looked beautiful.”
He took her satchel from her and led the way to his room. They walked in silence, lest they wake anyone. Neither wanted to explain themselves, nor invite anyone else to join them. When they reached his room, Yusuf fumbled with the door, distracted by the pressure of Ellie’s thumb on his palm and how her body pressed against his side. Inside, he let her satchel fall to the floor and heard a thump.
She winced. “My computer.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t worry.”
They sat on the bed and she told him about Doris’s final hours. Her story soothed him, as did her presence. Although Doris hadn’t been with family or even friends, she’d been surrounded by kindness. That had to count for something.
Ellie unbuttoned her cardigan, a verdant green that contrasted with her fiery hair. Underneath, she wore a pale vest.
“Now your turn,” she said.
He swallowed. “Excuse me?”
Ellie met his gaze, as if she knew, as if each of them held the knowledge inside of what would happen between them, as sure as a seed unravels and pushes through the earth to flower.
“Don’t hold back. What happened with Karl?”
“Oh.” He jumped up and retrieved his stuffed elephant.
She smiled. “When I came here tonight, that’s not really what I had in mind.”
Heat flooded his cheeks. He used his forefinger to hook out the memory card and offered it to her.
She unravelled the folds of paper, and held the memory card with care. “What is it?”
“Take a look.”
Understanding dawned and her voice rose an octave. “You did it? Did you really do it?”
“Shhh, don’t wake anyone up.”
Her mouth fell open as she watched the video. “I can’t believe you managed this. It’s brilliant. Is that Karl? Oh my word, we’ve got the sucker. We’ve got him!” She threw her arms around him and planted a kiss on his lips.
Despite his sadness, or perhaps because of it, a quickening overcame him, a stirring that he’d long forgotten.
He didn’t understand these signals. He knew from movies that Western girls differed from the ones at home. Ellie didn’t wait to be kissed; she took what she wanted. He stood in awe of her passion, the way she presented herself to the world. He’d realised she was special as soon as he found himself confiding things to her only his brother had known. With her, he became the man he was always meant to be: bold and valiant, not a blot on society.
Esme hadn’t acted this way when she had been sweet on him. She’d taken extra care to look pretty and had looked at him from under long lashes. She’d brought him treats she’d made with Leyla, and had gone quiet when they were alone. He’d pretended not to notice how Esme had felt because he thought of her as a sister. Still, wouldn’t she have been the better fit for him?
Spiky thoughts weaselled forward from the back of his mind. Wouldn’t he be more suited to someone more like Esme, someone who had replicated his experiences? Ellie made him feel less alone but she didn’t share his history or culture, or a knowledge of the sights and sounds, peculiarities and tragedies of his life. He knew the term coconut for those who seamlessly adapted to the West and forgot their roots. But didn’t Doris prove that differences in culture and origin could be bridged, and that only love mattered? His heart lingered on the stills in his mind that captured his mother and Selim. Was walking through this door with this woman a sign that he’d abandoned the people he loved best?
Perhaps he was only an adventure for Ellie. Perhaps this was her way of relaxing at the end of the day. Western women gave themselves more freely than the women he’d been accustomed to. Worse, maybe he’d become an extension of Ellie’s liberal upbringing; perhaps her affection for him was a masquerade, less about his individual qualities than about symbolism, a notch on her bed post, a brown man to taste but not to love.
He wanted love more than anything.
He wanted Ellie to love him, because he knew–from how his breath caught in his throat, how his thoughts drifted to her when they were apart, the way she made him face her fears, and how his fingers itched to comb the tendrils of her hair away from her face–that he loved her.
She peeled off her vest and there could be no doubt what she wanted.
Refusing her would make him seem less of a man somehow.
He didn’t want to resist.
Together, they stumbled to the floor, there, in his meagre room, in a paper thin building populated with broken souls. His lips found hers, but he shut his eyes to hide his emotions. Their closeness healed the fractured parts of him. She straddled him, tangling her fingers in his beard, dusting feather-light kisses on his eyelids, her breath warm on his cheek. He held still, worrying about his beard scratching her soft skin.
She stopped, and when he opened his eyes, he found her studying him. Suddenly, the dull glow from the table lamp bothered him, as if it highlighted his vulnerability.
“Shall I turn the light off?” he said.
Ellie shook her head, stopping to untie her hair so it fell across her breasts.
He couldn’t take his eyes off her.
She tugged at his t-shirt and he wriggled out of it. He didn’t tell her that he’d hardly done this. He didn’t need to. They fell into the dance together. Her hot palms explored him, and his fingers brushed the pink peaks of her breasts. She entwined her fingers in his hair, more roughly now, writhing against him until neither of them could bear the clothes that still separated them, until they craved skin on skin, breath against breath and entangled limbs. A language all of their own.
They shrugged off their remaining clothes. He gasped when she touched him, then there was only her and him, and no-one else. She guided him to her and it took a superhuman effort for him to pull away.
“Wait. A condom,” he said, fumbling to put one on before reaching for her again.
He kissed her, tugging at her bottom lip with his teeth until she opened her mouth to his tongue. Then he entered her, and she arched her back to meet him, and it had never felt this right. He didn’t know what the morning held, but it didn’t matter.
Only this mattered. Ellie and him.
Their bodies moved as one, and although she was protected from pregnancy, he imagined his seed pushing through the dark burrows of her body. In his mind, her womb became a cave with soft blossoms underfoot, where new life took root.
If this moment created life, it would be a clean start. The child would be full of potential. The world would lay at her feet, and no one would harm her. No brutes would come for her. No wars would steal her childhood. She would know the privilege of growing older.
They rocked together and his urgency took over, his need for Ellie, for her softness and her scent, and the scraping of her nails against his back.
When it was over and they had crested the wave, he held her to cushion her from the cold floor, and his melancholy mixed with something earthier, as if he were finally rooted to this place and its people.
