22

Lena and Armin sat for a while longer at the bumper car table, listening to the music. They were absorbing the story of the English couple. Or maybe trying to talk about something else. She wanted to dance, but it didn’t feel right.

And then, Lena says, a man came in and started watching us from the bar. I would have paid him no attention, only that I sensed Armin was anxious. I got the impression that he felt threatened by this man. Big guy, wearing a leather jacket. At one point, Armin went over to speak to him. They stood at the bar looking at the row of spirit bottles in front of them.

I assumed it was some kind of business.

Who’s your friend? I asked him when he came back, Lena says. Would he like to come over and join us?

My sister’s boyfriend.

Is he the guy who cut the page out of the book?

Ex-boyfriend.

I looked over and saw him leaving, Lena says.

Armin gave her the man’s name. Bogdanov. Ulrich Bogdanov. It’s become a bit obsessive at this point, Lena says, he’s stalking her in places where she performs in public. Armin said there was nothing she could do to stop him turning up at her gigs. He behaves like a fan. But then he interrupts her performance.

Madina went to meet Bogdanov in a café one afternoon, Lena says. She told him once more that it was over, there was no going back. She berated him for extracting money from her brother. If he ever did anything like that again, she would go directly to his wife and tell her they’d had an affair behind her back.

Don’t push it, she said to Bogdanov. I will tell your wife the whole truth, believe me.

And guess what? Lena says. The guy just laughed.

It’s over, but Bogdanov doesn’t get it. From what Armin told me, Lena says, Bogdanov even tried to get her to go to a psychotherapist to fix the affair. He was never going to leave his wife and kids. She didn’t want to break up a family.

This is the thing, Lena says. He thinks he owns her. In the café where she was warning him to stay away from her and her brother, he kept saying he loved her. He’s never been with anyone like her before. His life is meaningless without Madina. He will do anything to get her back, walk out on his family, kill himself, all that stuff. Armin says he’s good with words. Totally credible. She had gone back to him a couple of times. Then he started saying to her that she was nothing without him. She couldn’t function, couldn’t be a singer, couldn’t make her own coffee. It was thanks to him that she made it in the music business. Her career was going nowhere until he discovered her.

She told him to fuck off, Armin said.

Without his backing, Bogdanov insisted, she would come to nothing.

She shrugged him off, Lena says. Told him it was over, finished, end of story. Then he threatened her. Bogdanov must have realized that her weakness was not inside herself but in somebody close to her. She was exposed by having a younger brother. Leaning across to look straight into her eyes, he said – I’ll take it out on your brother.

Something to that effect, Lena says.

Asshole, Julia says. I know the type.

Armin’s sister said she would go to the police.

Bogdanov laughed. He said the police were his friends. They keep the law so he can break it.

Madina said to him – Uli, have you no heart?

She turned to the other customers in the café and said to Bogdanov – tell them what you just told me. I’ll take it out on your brother. That’s what you said, Uli. Isn’t that so? Your brother gets it. That’s what he said to me.

Everybody in the café was watching. Bogdanov sat with his arms folded, insulting her with a comical face. Instead of being embarrassed at hearing his own words, he turned around to the other customers and said –

She’s Muslim.

That did it, Lena says.

Madina reached under the table and unhooked her prosthetic leg. It took no more than a few seconds, like taking off her shoe. She stood up on her good leg and brought the artificial leg down on the table with a furious crack. It smashed Bogdanov’s cup to pieces. There were specks of coffee on his face.

The customers in the café must have been astonished at the sheer velocity of the leg coming from nowhere. Not to mention the accuracy with which the heel of her shoe hit Bogdanov’s coffee. The noise alone brought an immediate silence. Everyone stopped talking. How does a woman do that kind of thing? they must have thought. Swing her leg one hundred and eighty degrees? The athleticism was inhuman. Standing there on one leg while the other leg performed an impossible arc over her head, more like a baseball bat coming down with a smack.

Bogdanov didn’t bother wiping his face. He grinned. He turned to the customers and held his hands out in a gesture that seemed to say – look what I have to deal with – blaming her for making such a spectacle.

She was crying at that point. Crying in anger. She repeated the whole raging manoeuvre, just to show Bogdanov that she meant it. Also, perhaps, to show everyone else in the café that it hadn’t been a fluke, she could do this kind of circus show with her leg as often as they wished. It had nothing whatsoever to do with being Muslim, which she isn’t. She brought the false limb down once more with an even better second swing. There was nothing left of his cup and saucer. Then she sat down and began to fit the leg back on again.

Everyone was waiting.

Bogdanov didn’t mind being stared at. He calmly stood up and pushed his chair back into position. He allowed her time to finish putting her prosthetic leg in place and sit up to look at him. He leaned slowly forward and knocked on the table with his knuckles, a minimal applause. Then he pulled his leather jacket around his stomach and left.

Julia says – bet the customers were on her side.

The café staff wouldn’t take any money, Lena says. They told Madina it was on the house.

And then he turns up at the bar, Julia says.

He’s not going to let it go.

Did she tell his wife?

No way, Lena says. She would never do that.

Armin began to talk about the possibility of going on tour with his sister. Rotterdam. Antwerp. He’s thinking he might take up the job as their roadie. He could map out the best routes and plan out the logistics, what places to stop for lunch along the way. Where to stay overnight, what the band need in terms of riders. He could design their stage show, lay out the equipment, be the rigger. Have her accordion ready on a small stand, get the guitars tuned up. He would be good at keeping the crowds back, Armin joked. Good at slipping her out the stage door unrecognized, wearing sunglasses.

Lena and Julia agree it might be a good idea to get some sleep.

Can I borrow your book? Julia says.

Rebellion.

I wouldn’t mind reading it.

Sure, Lena says.

So, I find myself staying awake with Julia as she lies down beside her son in his bed. He is quietly breathing in and out. Now and again he snorts and his legs jump as though he’s running in his sleep, then he utters a startled sound like a word half-formed. Julia puts her hand on his arm to calm down his nightmares and turns him on his side for a while. Then she continues reading until dawn, until she finally falls asleep herself and leaves me lying face down on the bedside table like a sunken roof.