The Crying Machine. Greg Chivers
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an underpass. What can I say? He’s looking at me, waiting for an answer, a guy who just walked in off the street, like somehow my opinion matters.
‘Those kids don’t know what they’re talking about. Would I be here if your dad was gonna hurt me?’
‘I guess not.’ He looks happier, but not much. I guess he probably wanted me to tell him his dad was really the greatest guy on the planet, but he’d know I was lying. Sometimes the truth sucks, but it’s what you’ve got. ‘You know, the other guys who come around here don’t say more than two words to me.’
‘Well, they’re idiots. Maybe that’s why your dad has to shout at them.’ The sound of heavy footsteps on the stairs drags me back to reality. ‘Don’t worry about learning the business. All that “follow in your father’s footsteps” stuff is for schmucks with no imagination. You do you, kid.’
He gives me a grin that looks nothing like his father.
Shant Manoukian appears from an arched doorway with no door at the back of the room, big but lean in a loose tracksuit, all smiles and handshakes. A faint sheen of sweat gives his face a movie-star glow. He looks at the kid for a second, seems about to say something, then shrugs and turns to me.
‘I see you met Kyle. Sorry to keep you waiting. I was just finishing up my yogilates.’ I never heard that word before Leo said it. It must be some bullshit workout thing. I’m hoping for the purposes of this conversation it won’t matter. Whatever, he’s not sorry. White teeth flash every time he grins, which is a lot.
‘Yeah, Leo said.’
‘You should try it, man. Your posture could use a little work.’ My spine twitches with the urge to straighten.
‘You sound like my mother.’
‘Ha! I like you, Levi. You’re a funny guy. So, Leo tells me you got a job. What’s the deal?’
‘Ten K for a week of planning, executing next week, half now, half on completion.’
Shant nods in mock approval. ‘You sure you got five K, Levi? That pays for my time but what’s the job?’
I give him the same line Mizrachi gave me – listening to the details constitutes agreement to complete the job. His face tells me exactly how shitty that line is. The movie-star head starts to shake slowly, almost sympathetically. He holds up a hand like a traffic cop.
‘You’re talking about signing up blind. That’s not professional. Maybe Uncle Leo said something to you about risks. He looks out for me, but I run my own business. I can take risks; it just costs is all. One hundred K, fifty up front. You got fifty in your pocket, Levi Peres?’
I start making out that I’m good for the money, but when I get to the part about only ten K up front he looks like he’s sucking something sour. I stop talking and his expression softens.
‘Levi, it’s not for me. You’re a smart kid; I can see that. Leo would tell me to nod and smile and keep pumping you for info, but I respect you for coming here. I respect you for trying to make this work, but it’s no good. Walk away from this. Have you thought about Gaza?’
We shake hands. As I head out the door, Uncle Leo gives me a mock salute with the stub of his cigar. All that respect stuff was bullshit. Shant figured out it’s a job they don’t want to steal, so he found a quick way to end the conversation. In a way it doesn’t matter. They’ll forget about the job they didn’t do, but they’ll remember we had this conversation. After this, Levi Peres can sit down and talk business with anyone in this city, which is great, but it doesn’t get me out of my hole with Safar. Only money’s going to do that, but I have a manpower problem, and not enough money to fix it.
From a distance, the Mission is a white hole in the dark of the Old City. As Clementine gets near she can see the cracks the whitewash doesn’t cover. In the gothic-arched doorway the smell hits her: an intense urine tang. The deranged cluster in the shadows, dark piles of shambling rags drawn to this place of succour, but repelled by some ineffable magnetism from the door itself. A pair of yellow eyes, slitted like a cat’s, watches her pass from beneath a concealing hood, the expression impossible to read.
Inside, the Mission is true to its name, an outpost for a dying Europe. The walls are the same whitewash as outside but cleaner, with fewer cracks. Six rows of dark wood benches line up either side of an aisle pointing arrow-straight to a low altar covered with white cloth. For the first time since she left France, homesickness touches Clementine. This room could be in Lyon or Grenoble, but for the faint mist of dust that hovers golden in the yellow light.
A pale-skinned woman, the first she’s seen since she arrived, appears from a doorway in the wall behind the altar. She wears a simple brown robe tied at the waist with a cord. Her short, red hair is cut like a man’s in a style that would mark her as sexually deviant at home, but maybe the rules are different here. The shaven sides show her ears fully, but there is no glint of metal in either of them. For whatever reason, this woman does not embrace the technology the locals favour. She smiles in a manner that grants limited, conditional acceptance of Clementine’s right to be here and waits for her to speak.
The silence is wrongfooting. The conversational gambits she’d been running through on her way here all seem too obviously false now. This woman’s stern simplicity demands repayment in the same currency. Clementine’s concocted stories of a struggle against oppression, of loss and abandonment, evaporate, replaced by a single statement. ‘I want to disappear.’
The woman’s eyes wander over Clementine’s pale skin and inappropriate, form-fitting European clothes. There’s a glimmer of something that might be sympathy. ‘Are you ready to embrace our Saviour?’
A simple, binary question, loaded with two millennia of history, packed with an infinity of agendas. Which one does this unremarkable woman serve? What will it demand? Choice is a luxury reserved for those already possessed of food and shelter. Clementine does not hesitate. ‘With all my heart.’
The woman’s smile warms, but her eyes are still calculating. ‘I am Hilda. You can help in the kitchen for now. I’m afraid you’ll have to stay in the hostel dormitory tonight. You’ll need to change out of those clothes. They’ll bring trouble we don’t need.’ She walks with slow, smooth steps, leading the way to a darkened glass door behind the altar. It opens to reveal a small vestry that looks as if it serves as a bedroom. Despite conspicuous cleanliness, it is a tableau of a life improvised. Piles of things, mostly books and papers, cover every available flat surface, including a narrow, hard-looking bed. Hilda reaches into one of the piles, pulls out a brown robe identical to her own, and passes it over. For a moment Clementine watches dumbly as the reality of what she’s doing settles on her. Holy orders. Will there be a vow? Some sort of ritual? Will they accept someone like her? All she has is this woman’s tacit acceptance. Instead of hopelessness, the thought inspires a wave of calm. This is all she has. Perhaps a freedom from choice is the gift of the Holy City.
There is a pang of loss as she strips off her smart-fabric leggings and vest. Inappropriate they may be, but the temperature-sensitive weave and adjustable wicking properties made them valuable in any climate. The variable colour shift was a useless legacy of her old life – it wouldn’t hide her in the city. Clothes like this were hard to find, even in Europe, since the war on the Ural frontier had started up again. The gossamer network of goods between continents necessary for such sophisticated products had taken years to re-emerge after the first war, and now it was gone again.
She hesitates, wary of nakedness in front of a stranger, until Hilda looks away. The world goes dark as the robe slides over Clementine’s head. It’s heavy, and the coarse fabric scratches her skin where it touches. Her head emerges to see Hilda smiling now, perhaps