Page 37 of The Square

CHAPTER FOURTEEN - ALEC

“Mr. van den Berg, sir. Mr. van den Berg? Are you all right, sir?”

That does not sound like Christine.

One: the accent is not American. It’s very distinctly Saffie.

And two: it’s an oke’s voice.

Where am I? What the fokken hell is going on now?

“Mr. van den Berg, sir. Are you all right?”

My eyes spring open and I sit up. Oh, shit. That’s right. I know where I am.

Fok my poepol.

My ribs remind me quickly that they’re not all hundreds just yet, the hint of residual pain through my torso the last vestiges of the careening fall I took a few months back. Me and Lars, tumbling over the edge of that fokken waterfall back in the States like goddamn Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty at the end of The Final Problem.

Which one of us was Holmes and which Moriarty, I can’t be sure. I think perhaps we were both Moriarty. Both of us the villain.

“Yeah, Liam, I’m fine,” I call back through the closed bedroom door.

“May I come in, sir, and make sure?”

I sigh, because it’s been like this for a while now. Ever since I awoke from whatever comatose state I was in for however long I was in it, Liam and the other laaities who have been tasked with looking after my wellbeing refuse to take my word for it when I tell them I’m OK. Whoever is responsible for my being here has instructed them to ensure that I’m “proper cared for.”

They’ve apparently also been instructed not to tell me who the fok it is that brought me here, how the fok I was rescued from that tumble, or what the fokken plan is in my being here or for how long I am expected to stay. All I know for certain is that young men with guns are very eager to make sure I’m comfortable and well fed and seen to. And they’re also nervously emphaatic about not allowing me to leave the property. And since they’re the ones with automatic weapons and I’m only armed with silk pyjamas, I suppose they get final say.

“Yeah, man,” I say. “Come on in.”

The door opens, gingerly, and the laaitie called Liam who has, I reckon, been assigned as my principal caretaker, peeps his face through.

“Everything’s fine, sir?”

“Yeah, man. Aces. Why?”

“You were making… quite a bit of noise, sir.”

“Was I?”

“Yessir.”

“What type of noise?”

He looks down toward the ground, sheepishly, adjusts the rifle that hangs at his side, twists his neck back and forth a bit. “Sir… it just…”

“Liam, man, even though I do, in fact, have all day and am clearly not going anywhere, I still hate to fokken wait.”

“It just—and I could be wrong, of course! But it sounded a bit like… like crying. Sir.”

Under the pretense of scratching my cheek, I reach to feel if any teardrops seem to have moistened my skin. No. Feels dry, so far as I can tell.

“Does it look as though I’ve been weeping, man?”

He studies my face for a moment. “No, sir.”

“Right then,” I say, tossing the sheets off myself onto the mattress of the four-poster bed and sliding my legs over the side. I pop my feet into the lippers that wait for me on the floor and stand. “What’s for breakfast, Liam?”