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Lee started to get crabby as the father had to search for the tickets, at last finding them in Pablo’s coloring book. Coach Attendant Lee was not charmed by the decorations Pablo had added to the tickets. His voice kept getting louder.
“What you don’t seem to understand Mr. …” Lee brought the license up to his face. “Mr. Moyo, is that I need to see the papers for these children.”
Carmen sat up. Lee was talking so loudly now, the entire car could hear.
The father, understandably, was looking flustered. He presented the tickets again. “See … for the … boy,” he said. He didn’t have a proper ticket for Clara, but had some sort of baby voucher. “The baby … small.”
“I see the tickets. I don’t need to see the tickets again!”
The father looked at him in bewilderment.
“Do you understand a word I am saying to you? Mr. Moyo? I need to see the papers for the children. Are these your children?”
Lee was talking so fast and so loudly, Carmen could see and understand that the father’s shaky hold on English was failing him. She felt her heart and her head beginning to throb. She was thankful that both children were sleeping.
“Excuse me?” the father said tentatively.
“Are these your children?”
The father’s face was frozen for a moment. “Yes. My children,” he said finally.
“Thank you,” Lee said with a sneer. “Now, what you need to do is prove to me that these are your children and that you are traveling with them legally. And if you can’t do that, I am going to need you to get off this train.”
The father shook his head. “I am sorry?”
“I am going to need you to get off this train.”
Carmen couldn’t take it anymore. She got to her feet. “Excuse me,” she said. “Mr. uh … Lee.” She wanted to call him motherfucker, but she resisted. “It seems to me that you don’t speak Spanish very well, and Mr. Moyo’s English is not quite up to your hounding, so maybe I can help,” she went on in a quiet, smooth, and friendly voice. “Why don’t you tell me exactly what you need from Mr. Moyo.”
Coach Attendant Lee glared at her. He couldn’t seem to decide to what extent she was insulting him. “I am doing my job, miss,” he spat. “And I need to see ID for the kids.”
The father was turning from one to the other of them.
Carmen gave the father a look that did not include Lee, and tried to offer a comforting smile. “This man is an asshole,” she said to him in quick Spanish, “but he will not leave you alone until you show him some kind of identification for the children. Do you have something? Passports? Birth certificates?” she asked sympathetically.
The father looked at her in surprise. “Oh, is that what he wants?” he replied in Spanish. “Of course. I’m sorry. I should have understood. I have the birth certificates in my suitcase.”
Carmen helped him hold things from the suitcase so he could get to them quickly. He produced two birth certificates for Coach Attendant Lee, who looked at them grudgingly. “If you’re gonna be in this country, you ought to speak English,” he muttered as he passed into the next car.
Carmen stood there shaking her head. The father let out his breath. He put out his hand to Carmen. “Roberto,” he said.
“Carmen,” she replied as she shook it.
She went back and sat in her seat and looked out the window. When she glanced across the aisle, she saw that Roberto was looking at her. “Thank you, Carmen,” he said to her, serious in his tone.
“You’re very welcome,” she said, serious in return.
When she closed her eyes she kept seeing the way he looked at her. There was something in it that stirred her, not uncomfortably, but in a way she needed to grasp. What was it? Something that reached down to a deep, almost forgotten part of her, and she needed to figure out what it was.
She watched the trees dashing by mile after mile, and suddenly a wide lake opening up in front of her eyes and then closing again. And at last she figured it out. Or at least she figured out some aspect of it: Roberto looked at her like she was an adult. For a moment he’d brought her across the chasm to stand with him on the other side. He looked at her with respect.
That was what it was. And the effect of it on her was incalculable.
Lena’s adrenaline wasn’t quite as helpful in mapping out step two of her plan. Here she’d overcome a lifetime of reticence and arrived in London with lion cuff links, armed with a bolt of thunder, and now she had nowhere to fling it.
Might Kostos be at work? Could she possibly find him there? She pictured herself arriving at his fortress of finance and the moment of their reunion taking place in the hallway in front of five secretaries. My, that would be awkward.
It was six in the evening on a Monday night. It was possible. She knew the name of his firm because he’d once sent her a letter in an envelope from his office. So she got the number through an automated operator and called it.
“May I speak with Kostos Dounas, please?” she asked after she’d been transferred from the main reception desk.
It must have been his secretary. “I’m sorry. He’s not here.”
Lena felt her thunderbolt weaken a little. “Will he be in tomorrow?”
The silence felt uncomfortable. “No, I don’t believe so. I believe he’s traveling outside of the country.”
“Do you know when he’ll be back?”
“No, I’m afraid I don’t.”
“Well, can I ask if—”
“I’m afraid I can’t give out any further information.”
Could he be in Greece? That was her next possibility. She still had the phone number of his house there, so she called it.
After a vast number of rings, one less hopeful than the last, the phone was answered by a woman’s gruff voice. She knew the voice.
“Is this … Aleta?” Lena asked in Greek.
“Yes, who is this?”
“It’s Lena Kaligaris. A friend of Kostos’s. Is he there?”
“No, he’s not here. I talked to him two days ago. He said he was traveling somewhere. He didn’t know when he was coming back.”
“Oh. He didn’t say where he was going?”
“No, he didn’t say.”
And you cannot go on
indefinitely being
just an ordinary,
decent egg.
We must be hatched or go bad.
—C. S. Lewis
