Mike Bond Bound. Mike Bond

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СКАЧАТЬ hand up his ribs. “I'm sorry about your father.”

      “At least I had a chance to see him, one last time.”

      “What did he want to tell you?”

      “He wanted to make peace. The doctor wanted me to make peace. God wants me to make peace.”

      “No one knows what God wants.”

      “If I'd never come to see my father I'd never have been wounded and you would never have found me. I'd never have known...”

      She tickled his ribs. “Known what?”

      “How much I owe you.”

      She snuggled closer. “Nonsense.”

      He kissed her temple, the skin so soft, the hair so soft, the hair so fine. This is the flesh, he thought, that saved me. By which I am reborn.

      THEY HAD BEEN SHELLING so long André could not remember, could not think. There was no air in this sweaty fearful cave where somebody had vomited and the sewer main was broken in the wall, and there comes a point, he realized, when you just no longer care, when the next shell comes down straight for you. It was coming now, loud and angry, won't miss this time, you already know how it'll feel, how it will blow you apart or knock the building in on you, squashing you an inch flat between concrete floors. Is that what happened to you, Yves? Is that why they'd never tell us?

      In between the falling shells and the searing jet runs with their awful crunch of buildings and crackle of anti-personnel bombs you could hear the screams of people trapped in a building somewhere, more and more frantic, till either they got out, André decided, or the fire overcame them. Shells were coming down in tandem now, several batteries, shells hitting two and three a second, their constant, uneven wham-wham wham making the ground shake crazily. Things kept falling but still the building hadn't been hit. Maybe it's good luck, he thought, to hide under a place that's sure to come down.

      “It's them again,” wailed an old woman in the dark in front of him.

      “Quiet!” someone hissed in French. “Grandma hears something.”

      But everyone could hear it now, the double-thrusting jets, the fiery air screaming over diamond wings, another Mirage on the same run, low over Christian East Beirut and up the hill into the West. “It's the big one!” someone yelled, and for two or three seconds there was just the jet's departing roar then everything crashed in, crushed in his head, sucked out his mind, into the white.

      AFTER MIDNIGHT the shelling died off and Neill stood at his paneless window watching the last of the bright Israeli afterburners streak up into the southwest sky. Behind their roar was the constant crunching of flames; the Israeli Army had shut off the water into Beirut and now the city was burning, so hot the stones themselves were catching fire.

      “Where are you, Layla?” he said to the night, remembering layl means night, that she was out there, somewhere, nearer than she'd been in years, almost within reach. Any night now she could be among the new ones entombed under some building, shot down in some street. When he was so close. What if, he thought, I could take her from Mohammed?

      The sky was full of smoke, pink on its undersides from the fires up by the Conservatoire. Up there people are trapped and burning alive, Neill thought, and here I stand helpless by my window. That's what I've been all my life – outside the pale. Depersonalized, not able to give, not able to take. He thought of Nicolas and Sammy sleeping in the basement, wondered, does it screw up your sex life, all this bombing?

       Come close to me, oh beloved of my soul; the fire is cooling and fleeing under the ashes.

      Where are you, Layla?

      39

      THE AIR WAS AFIRE, impossible to breathe. Huge heavy concrete was crushing André's chest into the floor. Chunks of concrete jabbed up into his back. When he realized where he was, the terror made him thrash and beat at the concrete but he could not move it. You're down here forever, he realized. Entombed.

      “Don't fight,” a woman whispered. “Uses air.”

      “What?” He could barely speak, he was shaking so crazily with fear of this concrete slab on his chest.

      “Calm down,” she said. “They'll find us.”

      He took deep breaths, trying to calm. “Where are you?”

      “Over here in the corner. The floor – or something. It's bent down on us. Where are you?”

      “On the floor. There's a floor on my chest. Who's with you?”

      “Two kids.”

      “The others?”

      “The building fell in. I think they're all dead.”

      “How are the kids?”

      “They're fine. I've told them exactly what's happened and that we must be quiet and save energy for when the rescuers come.”

      THE LAND FAR BELOW was tanned and crinkled under the blue light, speckled with the shadows of small white clouds, the air sharp, cold and very thin. Mohammed could see the wide curving earth and every path and house upon it. He dived and rose on canyons and peaks of wind and cloud, perfectly alive.

      The cry came again and he realized it was a lamb in the stables. He wasn't free, couldn't fly. The lamb was calling its mother and should be suckling – what did it fear? He took the Makarov, slipped from bed, opened the door and went naked down the corridor and stood in the darkness watching out through the window to the garden.

      The small moon hung in the mulberry branches like a hapless skull. The garden of bare peach and pear trunks and freshly turned strawberry beds gave nowhere to hide. Moonlight glittered on the broken glass set like fossil teeth in the top of the wall. He went to the door, opened it and peered round it. The narrow street lay in moon shadow, smelling of flowers and manure. Again the lamb bleated.

      He shut the door and relocked it, the dark house quiet and warm, a lingering odor of his father, of thyme and drying cheese, the cool dampness of the well in the garden. His feet rustled over the stone floor. Be silent, he thought, don't wake her, wishing she were awake, wanting to talk to her. Soundless, he entered the corridor.

      He sensed the gun, ducked and dove forward to snatch it before it fired, twisting it, twisting her wrist, hand clenching her throat.

      “Let me go!” she hissed, yanking at one wrist.

      He dropped his hands.

      “Where were you? I damn near shot you!”

      “I damn near shot you!”

      She sat naked, trembling on the floor in his arms. He made her get up and they went back into the room. He lit the candle. Her face was white. “I almost shot you,” she said again.

      “What were you doing?” He picked up her gun; she had mounted a black silencer on it. “Where'd you get this?”

      She got under the blankets. “I keep it in my bag, like that. I woke up and heard a noise in the СКАЧАТЬ