Read Online Black Vodka by Deborah Levy - Free Book Online

favourite Leonard Cohen song. A passing truck knocks him into the gutter. Simon Tegala is bleeding and bruised and he can’t stand up. Apparently someone has called an ambulance. He wonders if Naomi would leave him if she knew Leonard Cohen was his hero. And then he remembers Naomi has left him anyway.
    12
    The nurse in Casualty asks Mr Tegala if he knows anyone who can drive him home. Simon Tegala winces because she is taking out the glass shards in his thigh with long silver tweezers. The nurse says, ‘Now look up, because I’m going to put some antiseptic on your chin.’ When he looks up he sees Naomi leaning against the wall, holding a brown paper bag full of apples. Look over there, Naomi says, and she points to the door. Simon Tegala sees his father waving at him with his right hand because his left hand is holding a steel crutch. His father is wearing a hat and an overcoat and he is speaking. The only person in the room who can understand him is Simon Tegala because his father can only whisper. We’ve come to get you son, the taxi is waiting outside. Next time keep your eyes open when you ride a bicycle. Naomi’s red heels click across the floor towards Simon Tegala and then she is just one centimetre away from his lips.

Roma
    Her husband who is going to betray her is standing inside the city of Roma. She is talking to him over the wall because she is not invited inside. She says, ‘You’ve broken my heart,’ in the way an actress might say it. Standing by the fountain in the centre of Roma is the woman who admires her husband. She walks past him in jeans and trainers. Her neck and cheeks are flushed.
    When she wakes up from this dream about her husband betraying her, the traitor is lying by her side. A radio in the room next door announces that the Federal Reserve has dropped interest rates in the USA and European markets are expected to follow suit. She puts her hand here and there on her husband’s warm body and tells him nothing about her dream. In five hours they will be out of the British weather. They will spend four days in Portugal and then return to the UK for Christmas. Their bags are packed. A cab will call for them. The lodger in the room next door, Mr Patel, the man who listens to the radio all day long, has bought her a present for the trip. A slab of Ayurvedic soap made from eighteen herbs.
    It has been raining in Portugal for three days and nights. She walks down to the sea with her husband. The drenched succulents and rotting fishing boats have the same atmosphere of betrayal she experienced in her dream. She stares into the shallows of the salt lagoon. A stork stands in the mud.
    And another.
    Her husband takes a photograph of the two storks. When she holds his bag for him he comments on how pleasant her hands smell. She tells him it’s the Ayurvedic soap that Mr Patel gave her and that he should try it too. That night they eat in the Cafe Emigrante. A shack restaurant in the poorer part of the village. Varnished bamboo poles line the crumbling walls inside. The cook throws bloody fish onto smouldering charcoal. They break bread, scoop up white cheese and shrivelled, sour olives. Outside it is raining again. Their hotel room is not a place that invites intimacy. The cold marble floor. The thin blankets that are not warm enough for December in the Algarve. Two single beds pushed together. She finds Roma once again in her dreams and it is a warmer place to be.
    The river is full of stars in Roma. Baroque water flows over rocks and stones. Her husband who is going to betray her sits at a table with his admirer eating almond Easter cakes, iced white in the shape of small bells. His admirer is strong. Desire has made her strong. Her skin is tanned. Her eyes and hair are black. She shakes the three green bracelets on her wrists and says, ‘I have thought about what you have to say and it’s interesting.’ His wife watches from the other side of the wall. ‘He is in love,’