Read Online Dreams of Leaving by Rupert Thomson - Free Book Online Page A

places where they screw everything to the floor. The tables, the chairs, the waste-bins, even, in this case, the hat-stand. Nothing moves. Sometimes you wonder whether the people who work there have been screwed to the floor as well. And they always screw everything just that little bit too close together. Places like the Delphi Café reinforced his feeling that the world had been designed for other people: phone-boxes were too narrow, baths were too short, chandeliers were too low, and tables and chairs were too close together. It was a world of barriers and partitions. It seemed to divide into areas of confinement that caused him discomfort and, on occasion, pain. It pinched like a shoe that didn’t quite fit. How he longed sometimes to sweep the whole cautious miserly clutter aside. To run barefoot, as it were. Being so tall, of course, he felt it more acutely than most. Moving the tip of your finger across his forehead was like reading a braille history of his life. Bumps and swellings everywhere. It wasn’t that he was accident-prone; it was just that he stuck out like a sore thumb which, because it stuck out, became still sorer. It had taken him until now – twenty-four years old and 6’ 6” – to learn the words
duck
and
stoop,
to become accustomed to his size in relation to his surroundings, to begin to make the necessary compensations. Hopefully that was it, at least as far as vertical growth was concerned, and from now on, year by year, millionth of an inch by millionth of an inch, he would shrink, as his foster-father (once 6’1”, now 5’11”) had done.
    His thoughts were interrupted at this point by the pressure of a hand on his arm. Looking round, he saw an old woman sitting at the next table. Worn face. Sombre eyes. On the breadline, he thought. There were a million like her.
    â€˜I’ve seen you before,’ she said.
    He studied her. ‘I don’t remember you.’
    â€˜No, of course not.’ She looked away from him with a smile that was almost coy. ‘How could you?’ Then, though her head remained in profile, her eyes slid sideways until they rested on him again. ‘My name is Madame Zola.’
    â€˜And mine’s Moses.’
    â€˜An unusual name,’ Madame Zola observed. ‘A name with a destiny. You see this cup of tea?’
    Moses nodded, smiling.
    â€˜I made this cup of tea last until you came.’
    â€˜And now,’ she put her cup down, and leaned towards him with the air of a conspirator, ‘there is something I must show you.’
    â€˜Show me? What?’
    Madame Zola waved his questions away like flies. They were tiresome questions. He hadn’t understood.
    â€˜I have to show you,’ she said, ‘not speak about it. I cannot speak about it. Come. It’s not far.’
    Abandoning her cup of tea with a wistful smile – it was still more than two-thirds full; she could have waited another two days for him – she rose to her feet.
    â€˜Yes,’ Moses was saying, ‘but why me?’
    â€˜Because you,’ and her smile became indulgent, ‘you came through the door.’
    He followed her across the café.
    â€˜Who knows,’ she joked, as they stepped out into the September sunlight, ‘maybe it’s your future I’ll show you.’
    She was taking him to the building, the building where she had lived with Christos, the building where Christos had died. In those days it had been as white as the keys on a piano and she had told Christos that and he had said
That would be strange music,
meaning music played on a piano with no black keys. Since then the building had changed colour many times. It had been grey, cream, green and brown. Now it was pink. So many disguises. To forget the past and be young always. Like a soul passing through its different reincarnations. Some buildings had souls, she decided, and she had told Christos that too. He had laughed and