‘Chy’ort vozmi!’ shouted Alexei suddenly, dashing after them. ‘Get them! GET THEM!’
But the shock had taken the wind out of Marisa’s sails; she stared, open-mouthed, at the scene of dancing manuscript paper and found herself frozen at the top of the steps, just as she had always been. The sandworms had returned. The world was cold, noisy, hostile. Her feet were retreating of their own accord.
Alexei moved nimbly for a big man, and was snatching papers out of the sky, but Marisa could do nothing at all; she was completely paralysed by fear, even as one soared straight through between roofs where their houses met and carried on to the sea. Several came to rest in the deep puddle next to where the drain ran down the hill, caught up in the filthy brown water. The ink on the sheets – she could see even from where she stood that it was not printed, but instead was just handwriting ink – was running off the page even as she looked, and she saw dissolving black blobs that were musical notes, and writing on it, half dissolved; but it was Cyrillic and she couldn’t read it.
‘HELP ME!’
She wanted to. With all her might. But she couldn’t.
When he finally picked up all he could of the ruined manuscript he turned back to her, his expressive face like thunder.
‘Why you not helpink me?’
His face was completely uncomprehending.
‘Look,’ he said, holding up a sheet, the ink running and completely illegible. The water dripped off his nose and down his hair, making him look crosser and sadder than ever.
‘But! Your hair is important? You not get wet?’
‘No . . . I . . . I didn’t . . . Can I buy you another music book?’
He snorted, too distraught to speak. The piece beside Marisa, the messy ink blots running, was completely washed away now, ground into the mud.
He stormed up the steps.
‘I’m sorry . . . I’m sorry. I thought I explained—’
‘How can you not go outside? Is not real! YOUR HEAD IS LYING TO YOU! IT IS TELLING YOU LIES! DO NOT BE LISTENINK TO IT!’
He was properly yelling now, shaking the sodden ruined paper.
‘DO NOT BE LISTENINK TO WHAT IT IS TELLINK YOU!’
Abruptly he turned and stormed inside, banging the door hard. The motion made the little peaked room above her front door judder slightly, sending water straight down the back of her neck.
That night the discordant music started again; loud, furious, over and over again, never the same, never right, as he tried to retrieve what had gone for ever.
Marisa sat in the bath, feeling back where she started. He had known she wasn’t well. He was completely unsympathetic and horrible about it. Didn’t give two shits as long as he was shovelling her food down his gob every bloody night. And now he was punishing her for messing with a few stupid pieces of stupid paper. When obviously he was the one with anger management issues. Well, sod him. Sod him.
What happened next was almost certainly caused by a combination of things: the kind words of friends like Polly and bosses like Nazreen, and Anita’s hard work, and her nonna bringing fresh ingredients and good food and family back into her life just exactly at the point where she truly needed it.
But Marisa didn’t see all that. She just heard, sitting in the bath, the heavy loud angry music and it stirred something in her. She wouldn’t say it was a good thing it stirred in her; it made her feel angry, because the music itself was so angry. But somehow it fitted; she found it fitted with the storm outside which, even as it had grown darker, had intensified, was now howling through the house, making the lights flicker, pounding rain against the windows and the roof, making the wooden chalet that she loved so much that felt so sweet and secure suddenly feel flimsy and lightweight.
The music rose to a great discordant crescendo, just as the wind howled outside and suddenly Marisa stood up. She felt wild, and furious, and pent up, and full at the same time and as if she didn’t quite know what to do with herself, even through the fury, and she realised that, of all the odd things to feel, this was important; because it was life she was feeling. Not being removed from life, or dull to it, or simply removed. She felt real, passionate, irritating, infuriating life pulsing through her veins, her blood rushing to every part of her, and almost without warning, because her stupid brain could take over and second-guess or talk her out of it or panic, she moved towards the door. She remembered the furious man in the rain, screaming ‘YOUR HEAD IS LYING TO YOU!’
Your head is lying to you. Everything, she felt, in the world was lying to her. That things would be all right. That adulthood would come naturally; that she would grow up, and own her own home and be great at her job and have loads of friends and a buzzing social life and know where she was going in life. And instead she was trapped indoors by her own mind, terrified of her own shadow and desperately, horribly sad.
The music grew even louder, it seemed, following or focusing on the movements of the storm.
And suddenly, she was there. She flung the door open, hard, let it bang against the side, and, before she could think about it, dived into the rain.
She charged up to the end of the street – she’d never even been there before – in her light striped pyjamas, nothing on her feet. She didn’t notice anything; not the water beneath her feet or the mud squelching. Her brain was bursting, her blood pumping and these things overcame her mind, overcame her worried side, her anxiety, and once she felt fully out of range, she came to the top of the road, overlooking the wild sea, the sweeping clouds, the distant lightning, and she found herself screaming at the top of her voice.
Alexei thought he heard something outside in the storm, and stopped playing abruptly. He had been trying to reconstitute the music he had lost in the rain. Of course he knew he should have made copies, he was always being told to take copies and how important it was, but he had got caught up in the moment, been too impetuous. It wasn’t fair, he knew, to blame the poor girl next door. It wasn’t her fault. He realised that. He had been cruel and angry about something else, and taken it out on her, and he absolutely hated himself for it.
He remembered that he had shouted at her and felt worse than ever. Shouting at women wasn’t something he would ever have thought of as part of his make-up and he was heartily ashamed of it now, especially as he knew she was unwell.
He put down the lid of the piano, feeling guilty, and got up and went out into the filthy night.
It was still wild outside and he knocked sharply on the door.
‘Marisa? Marisa? Is me. I am sorry.’
There was no answer from the little lemon house, and he left it a moment or so and tried again. Still nothing. He tried harder, but then realised he had to give up.
He’d absolutely messed it up and she wouldn’t forgive him and frankly he didn’t blame her for not opening the door in the dark to a strange and possibly deranged man. It wasn’t news to Alexei how physically imposing he was; people had been remarking on it since he grew fifteen centimetres in a year when he was fourteen years old. Normally he tried to pre-empt the situation by being gentle. Because he knew, when he wasn’t, he was a more frightening proposition than most pissed-off people would be.
Deeply disappointed in himself, and vowing never to bother her again – and regretful too, both about his missing music, which she hated so very much, but also that he would now lose access to her frankly astonishing cooking– he trudged through the rain back into the little blue house, just in time to miss Marisa, drenched to the bone, black hair plastered down her back, taking big gulps of the electric air, slowly walking down the middle of the road, that was now more like a stream, soaking, freezing, but somehow feeling better than she had in months and months.