TE17 Mysterious Montenegro

John Saul

not someone said: if I had to ask why, everything would grow dark at once, well that might be true, or not, in all events the search for clarity would almost certainly produce a confused chaos, of competing explanations—the birds were keeping out of the wind from Storm Caroline and that was it, they were right to suspect another storm trailing after Caroline, Storm Dan, Storm Dizzy perhaps, and as for the fact he passed nobody in the rain, so what, and since no one was around to hear he spoke out loud, just as the path dipped towards the big main gate, Now shape up, he told himself. The yellow sun behind the dark cedars already looked impossibly low even though the time on the clock was surely what, ten, eleven, he had to get a move on if he was to get to the hot tub in decent if not good time, before the others—to where for twenty, thirty minutes his mind would finally let go and rest, in the place behind Arlington Park Mansions. Out of the main gate the Chinese presence vanished poof! All he had to do nowwas cross the road, without the traffic mowing into him, walk briskly beside the cemetery, get to the underpass, slip up the other side, cross the Green and let himself be swallowed up by the iron gate and then the apartment blocks that made up Arlington Park Mansions. Ah, the tub: at the first person stepping in a thick jet of hot hot water greeted them, creating a shake and tremble of the body he called a hot shiver, a hot thrill. But first, this road. Stepping towards and back from a stream of mopeds, the riders in sinister helmets impressing themselves on the traffic with such determination, all displaying the one personality, the moped-forming personality: determination, it made him want to attempt the whistle, to vent his frustration, but how foolish would that have been—eventually he had to step out and there he was, in the middle of the traffic, his heart going 222