What caught her attention was the groups of people running towards the far end of the beach. Perhaps someone had drowned. It was quite a commotion. Maddie and Jack came out of the sea and began to walk, then accelerated along the damp sand. In Maddie’s mind everything that had happened on the holiday began to shrink, to seem like a fantasy from a cartoon existence as she took in the scene.
*
The Toporovs had said they would arrive by eight thirty. Jack and Maddie were on the terrace, sprawled in wicker loungers. Maddie checked the time on her cell phone. It was now eight forty-five, but, she reasoned, this was what holidays were all about. Perhaps the Toporovs had been delayed. Vadim had certainly seemed attached to that phone of his earlier in the day, on the beach. Or perhaps, like she and Jack most afternoons, they’d gone for a lie-down in the cool of the apartment. The special hour, perhaps extended a little, but special nonetheless on account of its careless intimacy.
She ran her eye over Jack, who’d just reached for a G and T, lobbed in a couple of ice-cubes, and was now sitting back again. He was golden-skinned after eleven days in the sun and she was enjoying the rested, rinsed-out feeling which usually followed their afternoon retreat to the bedroom, like a stillness in her entire body.
Jack was that rare creature, an actor not resting, who had just completed a six month run on Broadway, playing Lear’s Fool in a contemporary reading of the play. Ben Brantley from New Village Icon had raved about it. She enjoyed the contrasts of their working lives, and hers as a theatre nurse in an over-crowded city hospital often pushed her to limits Jack could scarcely imagine, even if he was sympathetic.
This holiday was long overdue. But Maddie returned to her first concern: the Toporovs, who were late.
‘Eight fifty,’ Jack murmured, squinting into the sinking sun.
As if on cue though, there was a loud buzz from the hallway.
‘I’ll get it,’ Maddie said, swinging her legs down from the little ottoman on which they were resting.
She slipped barefoot across the polished marble floor of the plant-shaded livingroom and hallway, and opened the door. There was a flurry of greetings as the four embraced. Jack and Vadim shook hands and slapped one another’s backs, while Maddie and Asya kissed cheeks.
‘Come in, come in,’ Jack welcomed the couple.
‘Nice place,’ Vadim joked, ‘not as nice as ours though!’
They laughed, because it was identical to the apartment occupied by the Toporovs, except that theirs was three floors higher up, with a complete sea view and no noise, whereas the Davins enjoyed a partial sea view but an outlook on the new part of the town, still under construction. The apartment was high enough above the street to spare them the worst of the all-night music but once or twice they’d had misgivings about not paying that little bit extra for the sake of total peace and quiet.
Maddie invited the Toporovs on to the terrace. Drinks were poured, ice clinked, and the two couples wished one another good health in their respective languages, Zazdarovje, Cheers, and Jack’s Irish word, Sláinte.
The four had met on the beach. The Russians were sunbathing in full sun at noon, while Maddie and Jack were reading in the shade, both slathered in Australian desert factor 60. The man beside them had been in the middle of what sounded like a testy phone conversation, which Maddie had tried to follow, wishing she understood Russian. She watched as he waved away two Africans selling shawls and dresses. The men moved along, flip-flops sinking in the hot sand. She was glad the Russian had dismissed them with the back of his hand. She’d have been embarrassed if they’d had to conduct business with his partner, who was practically naked.
The Russian ranted on. He was certainly laying down the law, and his solid right hand sliced the air as he made his point. In his agitation – Maddie thought he was going to give himself a stroke – the man’s phone slipped from his grasp, but she spontaneously reached out and caught it deftly, preventing it from hitting the sand.
‘Great save,’ he said, in a gravelly voice. ‘You play sport, yes? Good co-ordination.’
‘No,’ Maddie replied.
It broke the ice. They introduced themselves as Asya and Vadim. The couples chatted for a while about where they came from, Moscow and Dublin, and how long they were staying. They too were staying in the five-star Sol Dorado with its vast golden sun sculpture fixed to the wall of the building.
‘Sure, it’s probably visible from the moon, like the Great Wall of China,’ Jack remarked.
Vadim and Asya found this funny. The encounter didn’t have the usual arm’s length civil-but-cool holiday vibe. Maddie looked discretely but admiringly at Asya, who was slim and shapely, and wore a silvery thong which exposed the brown cheeks of her firm bottom. She sat casually topless, breasts with dark nipples gleaming with sun-oil as she gestured when speaking. In her mid-forties now, Maddie had only recently lost the nerve to go topless, and instead wore a black one-piece. She didn’t like Africans selling things to her when her clothes were revealing, not out of prudery, but because she believed they must think western women were shocking trollops.
As Vadim and Jack chatted, she could see that he was a good deal older than Asya, but with a muscular body and the kind of lines on his face that added to, rather than detracted from, his features.
Asya didn’t work outside their apartment in Moscow, she told Maddie as she lit a cigarette. Moscow drove her crazy these days. It was busy, everybody so greedy, rushing here, rushing there, no manners either, no, it suited her to work from home. The conversation between them paused then. Asya read her novel, Vadim texted, his dense fingers stabbing busily at his phone, Jack lay back and dozed, while Maddie resumed her observations of the other couple through her sunglasses.
‘Going to keep frying?’ Jack teased Vadim an hour later, as he packed up their belongings.
‘After our long Russian winter? You bet!’ Vadim replied, allowing his legs to go slack at the knees so that the insides of his thighs could catch the sun. He grunted, then adjusted his balls within his shorts.
‘Perhaps we meet later?’
Maddie perked up at this.
‘For a drink?’
‘Drink, meal, whatever,’ Asya in a lazy voice.
‘Come to our place for a drink beforehand,’ Jack had suggested.
On the terrace now, conversation rattled effortlessly between the four. Maddie wondered when had they ever met anyone on their travels who actually wanted to be in their company?
Asya was fluent in English, Swedish, and Icelandic. She used to work as a translator, but had given that up and was now working on a novel, she said.
Jack nodded approvingly. ‘And you have time to do it now?’
Asya laughed, revealing titanium-white teeth. ‘Of course. Thanks to my lovely Vadim who supports my project.’
She blinked slowly from beneath heavy eyelashes. Vadim returned an inscrutable look as he sipped his whiskey. Desire? Agreement? Affection? Maddie couldn’t tell.
‘What do you do, Vadim?’ she inquired, because he hadn’t actually said.
Now she felt the full force of his pale grey eyes. Don’t look at his crotch, for God’s sake don’t look at his crotch! she instructed herself mentally. But the texture of his linen pants was thin and pale, and did she imagine it or was he actually wearing no underpants? One downwards flicker of her eyes suggested a dark mass in his groin area, but she rapidly lifted her gaze. Too late, he’d caught her out. Shit.
He smiled. ‘I export goods all over the world. Chemicals.’
Then, in response to her questioning expression, ‘Potash and phosphorous mostly.’ He smiled again. ‘It’s not diamonds or valuables, but even so, we are the world’s second largest producer of potash.’
Neither Jack nor Maddie knew how to respond to this information, although they did exclaim at Vadim’s achievement. He went on to quote the zillions of Euros worth of fertiliser that Russia exported to Ireland every year.
‘Wow, who knew? That’s amazing,’ Maddie said.
‘Very big business for you people,’ Vadim replied, as if the Irish economy depended on his potash.
‘It’s a long way from Shakespeare,’ Jack said, sounding gauche.
‘A very long way,’ Vadim went on. ‘So when you are playing the Fool in New York, you must think of the reason why your country is so green!’ And he laughed vigorously. ‘Green with Russian potash, ha ha ha ha ha!’
Was he mocking them? Maddie wasn’t sure how much he appreciated Jack’s role as the Fool in Lear, or how crucial it was in that play. She’d have liked him to be impressed.
After an hour, they left the apartment and headed for the restaurant strip. Boats were moored in the harbour, colourful lights festooned along the fake cobbled street, and the stomach-rumbling, almost overwhelming waft of garlic and barbecuing flesh drew them along.
‘What do you like to eat?’ Asya inquired as they wandered around.
‘We’re not fussy. Anything really,’ Jack replied.
Hand-bag hawkers were criss-crossing the marina, about to set up stalls in the shade of the old town wall. Further along, black women plaited bits of coloured thread into the hair of young European girls. Maddie caught snatches of their conversation. She remarked to Vadim that their French was more comprehensible to her than that spoken in France.
‘Colony French. Probably from the Gambia,’ Vadim remarked with a shrug, wading confidently through the crowds.
Eventually they agreed on an Italian restaurant at the top of a narrow street but with a view of the harbour. A perspiring waiter found them a table right on the street side of a quadrant of tables. Asya wasn’t pleased at this. They were too much on the outside, she complained, but Maddie didn’t mind. A hedge partition of plastic bougainvillea separated them from the waves of people moving along the street.
They scanned the menus. Maddie knew without looking that she’d have gnocchi con Gorgonzola, and instead glanced at the wine list. A man hauling a huge bag of handbags and sunglasses paused beside her.
‘Lovely designer handbags, Madame?’
She glanced up and shook her head. He shunted on without trying further. Less than a minute later two younger men approached, offering perfumes and sundresses.
‘No thank you,’ she said more firmly.
Vadim, who was sitting to her left, leant towards her. ‘The whole of Africa is here, Maddie. The whole of Africa is moving like a swarm of locusts about to bleed us northern people dry.’
Maddie was slow to react, but her facial expression was enough. Vadim looked wryly at Jack. ‘You are – as you say in English? – liberal leftie people?’
‘I guess we are,’ Jack said mildly.
‘Some of these people come to Russia,’ Asya said. ‘They think it’s a handy way to get to Europe, you know? But the Russian people don’t accept them.’
‘Who? Africans, or liberal lefties?’ Jack said softly, his sarcasm innocent-sounding.
‘Ha ha ha!’ Vadim went again, his aggressive laughter filling the air as he turned to Jack and slapped him on the side of shoulder. ‘You make a joke of Asya! Ha ha ha!’
Asya was not smiling. Maddie kept her mouth shut. She’d read a report on African
migrants in Putin’s Russia.
‘Anyway,’ Jack made a hand gesture as if waving the discussion off into the stratosphere. ‘We’re here to enjoy ourselves.’
Vadim agreed. ‘It is not for us to resolve these unpleasant things.’
Beneath the table Maddie stroked Jack’s leg. She caught his eye and winked, then sat back to listen. Every so often, Asya lifted her phone and photographed them. As she was on the same side of the table as Jack, she also leant over close to him.
‘Smile, Jack, you’re on camera,’ she whispered.
She arranged her face and smile, one arm draped around Jack’s shoulder, the other holding the phone at just the right angle. She scrutinised the picture, then took another. In this one, her head was somewhat closer to Jack’s.
‘I’ll send them to you when I get your number,’ Asya assured them. ‘A memento of the evening.’
Then Vadim took a selfie, his arm around Maddie.
‘You’re not smiling Maddie,’ he murmured to her left ear, ‘you must smile properly,’ and he waited with the phone held in front of their faces, until she smiled and showed her clenched teeth.
Food and wine arrived, and after a few mouthfuls they all agreed the meal was good. The wine was even better, Maddie thought, sinking a second glass. Already, Vadim had ordered another bottle of Bartolo Mascerello.
Vadim’s phone carolled out a few bars of Kalinka. He glanced at it, frowned, then answered it. There followed an angry volley of a reply and he rang off, stuffing a forkful of tagliatelle into his mouth. By then Jack, Asya and Maddie were embroiled in a discussion on which movies they liked or had seen. Asya and Jack agreed that Lars von Triers ‘Melancholia’ was really about depression and not about a comet hitting the earth. They both loved it, and also ‘Antichrist’, which Maddie had thought was revolting and indulgent.
‘Who are you talking about?’ Vadim interrupted a little gruffly.
‘Nobody you would know, my darling,’ Asya replied.
‘Somebody you intellectuals consider to be a genius?’
‘We do consider him to be one, at least Jack and I do,’ Asya said with a smile, then reached across the table and stroked Vadim’s arm. Her fingers rested there and caressed the dark hair that led towards his wrist.
Vadim, it appeared, was like an unexploded volcano to whom Asya had to make votive offerings. She wondered what Asya had to do to get to write her novel in a plush Moscow apartment.
They drank more wine, then Vadim turned to Maddie. ‘So, can you save my life if I end up in your hospital theatre with my first heart attack?’
Asya was eager to hear tales from the surgical front, and asked what it was like to deal with the inside of people’s bodies all the time. Did the blood bother her?
‘I’ve never been afraid of blood,’ Maddie answered, ‘It’s mostly water, you know,’
‘But every day you are exposed to the mess we make of our lives, right inside these bodies?’ Asya persisted.
Maddie agreed it was a challenge. Each life saved was a victory.
‘So, you are returning to Ireland on what date?’ Asya inquired.
‘On Friday. Three days’ time,’ Jack said.
She looked at Vadim, wide-eyed.
‘Oh, then perhaps ... I am wondering now –’ For the first time, Vadim was hesitant.
‘This might be serendipitous,’ Asya said.
It was like this, Vadim leant in close. He had an Irish contact, an agricultural scientist, who had requested a small sample of a new potash product that has just come on stream in Russia. As it happened, Vadim had brought the product with him to the island. ‘Only 250 grammes,’ he said reasonably. A tiny packet in a soft padded envelope. They’d left home in an incredible rush and he’d had no time to arrange a courier.
‘I was going to post it myself tomorrow.’
Neither Maddie nor Jack spoke. Asya watched them.
‘And before I go any further, let me assure you I am not some mad Russian drug dealer trying to make mules of my friends,’ he grinned.
Maddie almost snorted, but suppressed the urge.
‘Aha, that’s just what you think, am I right?’ he said, wagging his finger at her as if she was a naughty child.
Now she felt both embarrassed and annoyed.
‘So would it be an imposition if I were to ask you to take the little packet in your luggage?’ Vadim continued, an imploring expression on his face, then putting both hands together in a praying gesture. ‘I can give you my contact’s phone number, email, everything,’ he added, as if laying all his cards on the table.
Jack looked uncertain, so Maddie thought she’d better speak up before he did his Friendly-Irishman-at-Large thing, willing to please everyone.
‘I think you should just follow your original plan, Vadim.’
‘Oh, but it’s so hard to organise a courier here at short notice,’ Asya pouted softly.
Maddie held her silence.
Vadim nodded. ‘Of course my contact could be at the airport to meet you. No problems, my friends, no problems!’
Jack leant in close, and put his hand on Vadim’s shoulder, emptying his wineglass as he did so. ‘It’s like this Vadim. Look, you’re great people – really, you are – but we really don’t know you.’
The Russian began to stammer, looking mildly insulted. Asya sat up like an
indignant chicken, her long neck extended and her eyebrows slightly raised.
‘Well no, of course, and we don’t really know you, but we are all civilised people of the world, world travellers who know the ropes, we – I thought – '
‘As Jack just said, we don’t know you,’ Maddie interjected.
The conversation was scuppered. To smooth away embarrassment, Jack called to a waiter and was about to order a digestif, but Vadim stopped him. He was not smiling.
‘No, my friend, it’s getting late. Asya and I will return to our apartment. Any more alcohol – you know how it is? We are not Irish, we don’t have your eh ... capacity, shall we say?’
Asya reached over and told Maddie that they must connect on Facebook.
‘I’m not on Facebook,’ Maddie replied in a voice that conveyed by its mean tone that even if she were, she would not be friending Asya.
‘I am,’ said Jack, but Jack was being mischievous. Maddie threw him a look. ‘Sure we’ll see you around the beach, so’ he added lamely.
She was aware of taking part in the most hypocritical of hugs as Vadim and Asya stood up. Air-kissing and backslapping and thanks. Vadim dropped fifty Euros on the table, their share in the cost of the meal. Jack and Maddie waved after them, then turned to one another.
‘So, my friend,’ Maddie mimicked Vadim’s heavy rolling rs.
‘A close shave, comrade,’ Jack replied.
‘Obviously thought we were a right pair of greenhorns.’
‘Which we are. Class One eejits.’
‘Liberal lefties,’ Maddie went on.
‘The Potash Mafia,’ Jack responded.
Then they were snorting hysterically into glasses of Cointreau.
The street sellers continued to pass by. An older African paused to rearrange the baggage on his shoulders. On impulse, she signalled to him. One of his smaller sacks contained fake designer sunglasses. She examined these, bought three pairs.
They spent the next day sunning themselves, breaking the rhythm only to buy an ice-cream from one of the beach bars. As the holiday was almost at an end, they allowed themselves a few hours in open sun, rubbing factor 30 sun-cream into one another’s backs and legs.
‘This is the life,’ Jack murmured. It was late afternoon and the sun had lost its intense heat.
‘Fancy a swim?’ he asked then.
She got up. The Atlantic grew calm at the same time each day on that stretch of coast, and a slow swell dropped gently, like an easy breath, on the shore. They would swim far out, then tread water, looking back towards the bleached waterline at the clusters of sun-worshippers, children darting in the shallows, strolling elderly women.
Maddie hovered in the shallows. This was perfection. It announced itself like a sliver, a sweet, awareness, and entered her, a paradisal dart of pleasure.
And then it was gone, her attention caught suddenly by the sight of people running, voices raised, the wrong kind of cry.
*
From the water further along the beach – like sea-spectres – people slipped from a disintegrating vessel, half-raft, half-boat. A few women carrying babies staggered through the shallows, rags of garments trailing from their bodies as they held infants clear of the water. The majority though, were youngish men, eyes hollow from dehydration. Maddie ran forward as one collapsed, unable to go further.
‘Vous venez d’ou? Vous venez d’ou?’ someone was asking urgently.
‘Nous venons de Mali,’ came the whisper.
She hurried towards one of the women, and took her baby as the woman collapsed
lightly on the sand. Although the child’s body was still warm, its brown eyes were already filming over. From steely, professional habit, she pushed feeling out of mind. An appalled silence had fallen, apart from the rhythmic thump of music from the beach-bar. Children with snorkels and lilos were being herded from the water by screaming adults as if there’d been a shark attack.
Other people tried to help, making phone calls, administering first aid. Maddie sat with the woman whose baby had just died. Her lips were salt grimed, grey. Jack and a couple of other men dragged people from the water, carrying them to the shelter of umbrellas. Water was ferried, litres and litres from the beach-bar. Then even the music was switched off. All that remained was the sound of frail cries, a lapping, slow tide.
She stayed to help the weaker ones on to stretchers, into ambulances, was asked to set up a few drips once the paramedics realised she was medically trained. That part of it came automatically, no time to think.
That evening, they moved through the town square again, then passed into a side-street. Jack insisted that a light fish meal and a glass of dry white wine would settle her stomach. She’d thrown up in the beach toilets after the Malians were taken away. Then she had diarrhoea, her intestines and stomach gripped by disgust, at themselves as much as anything else.
She listened now to all the confident voices, clusters of people like themselves, mad for sun and hot weather, a chance to dress up in the evening and feel carefree. Glanced to her left at a familiar Irish-sounding whoop of agreement about something being absolutely fantaaastic. Then another voice with greater gravitas joining in encouragingly. Of course. Vadim and Asya. Asya saw her and waved, then said something to Vadim, who fluttered his fingers at them, an ironic smile on his face that briefly dissolved to puzzlement as he took in Maddie’s appearance.
She turned away. The sight of the dead child, its exhausted mother, had created the strangest reaction, a savage need to have the one thing neither she nor Jack had ever wanted. To bear fruit, because perhaps this was all any of them could do. Be instinctive. Abundant. She marvelled at the simplicity of it, even if it was too late for them.
They found a table and sat down. Immediately, a waiter approached with menus. Further down the street, handbag sellers moved from table to table.
Mary O’Donnell is an Irish writer and poet.
