The Network - Jason Elliot [125]
I reach the palace at exactly six o’ clock. There’s no one around. I walk across the central courtyard and marvel as I always do at the volume of gunfire that must have once filled the air. But it’s silent now, and nothing stirs but the light breeze that so often rises in the moments just before dusk. I observe my feelings of disappointment as if from afar. The first few times I came I was full of expectation, but the emotion’s gone now and I’m forced to admit that I’m merely a solitary spectator at a forgotten battlefield of which the world knows nothing.
I’m full of morbid thoughts about the uselessness of the destruction around me and the folly of the people who inflicted such misery on themselves, albeit with considerable help from abroad. I walk on impulse along the arcade of the eastern wing and enter one of the ruined rooms. The empty windows stare back at me, but then something catches my eye. It’s a tiny fire, burning at the far end of the building. It’s in the north-east corner of the building and corresponds exactly, I now realise, to the position of the pinprick I made in the note.
I hear the crunch of my footsteps amplified by the bare walls as I approach the flickering light, beside which a human shape is crouching. For a moment I allow myself to believe that at last Manny has made an appearance, then curse myself again because I know it can’t be him. The figure is wrapped in a dark pattu and doesn’t move as I approach. But the coincidence won’t let my mind rest, and I have to make sure.
‘Peace be to you, watandar. May this traveller warm his hands on your fire?’
In a slow gesture, as slow as a man on the point of death, a lean and dark-skinned arm emerges from the shadowy bundle as if to offer me the place opposite. A ripple of shock passes through me as I register how thin the arm is, like that of a starving man. There’s not enough light to make out the face, and a nightmarish train of thoughts suddenly spins across my mind. Perhaps it really is Manny, but he’s been disfigured or suffered some cruel affliction that’s left him withered and prematurely aged.
‘Manny?’ I say his name experimentally, because I’m not sure. I can just make out the grey bundle of beard that hangs from a chin and the vague contours of a face within the shadows. The outstretched hand looks horribly old, and repeats the beckoning motion for me to sit. I’m only a few feet from him, and the fire is between us. The stone floor is cold.
‘Manny? Say something, Manny. You’re scaring the shit out of me.’
Then with unexpected suddenness the face looks up at me. It’s not Manny. It’s a half-toothless old man, whose gaunt and almost fleshless face looks into mine as the flames bring to life a mad glint in his eyes, and from his ruined gums comes a wheezing cackle.
‘Oh Christ.’ I leap up in fright. ‘Oh Christ.’ My heart’s pounding and the spell is broken. I take several steps backwards, slipping on the rubble as the old man’s dreadful laughter subsides.
And then I hear the voice.
‘As you were, Captain.’
I whirl around in reflex, and my right hand flies by instinct to the grip of the Browning. Behind me, ten feet away and emerging from behind one of the plaster pillars, I see Manny, dressed in a black shalwar with a pattu thrown over one shoulder. He’s tanned and lean and has a full beard, but it’s him, unmistakably, and he’s smiling now and throws his arms open towards me.
‘You bastard. You absolute bastard,’ I say. ‘Didn’t anyone ever teach you how to stay in touch?’
‘Sent you a postcard,’ he says as we walk towards each other. We embrace, and I feel his chest trembling, as he does mine, with the breathless rush of feeling somewhere beyond laughter and tears that expresses all the long-awaited relief of deliverance.
Sometimes, just sometimes, your hopes are exceeded beyond all measure. What you dared to hope for is not only granted but heaped up with unexpected dividends you haven’t been able to imagine. It’s akin to falling in love with someone whom it seems likely will never glance at you, and then finding