One Secret Summer Page 6

  Maddy nodded, hoping she looked more confident than she felt. If she was scared of Ryan, Wally Loughlin absolutely terrified her. He was an intense man who’d worked with all the greats from Brando to Pacino, and his classes were a mixture of torture and stunned amazement at what he managed to get out of his students, even Maddy. She spent most of her time in classes torn between the longing to take part and the longing to just disappear. She drained her bottle and stood up. Sandy was right – she had to learn how to handle the criticisms that were levelled at them almost hourly; she had to develop a thicker, tougher skin. She had to learn how to fight back and not wind up in tears almost every afternoon just because Ryan didn’t think she had it in her. How did he know? Feeling somewhat braver, she followed Sandy out of the bar and together they rode the lift to the third floor, where Loughlin’s weekly improvisation studios took place.

  The class was already full when they walked in. Sandy found a couple of seats towards the rear and Maddy followed her gratefully. A few minutes later, Loughlin strode in. He wasted no time in organising the class. He picked out a handful of students, tossed out a few words and gave them each five minutes to come up with a two-minute sketch of whatever it was he’d thrown their way. There was a lot of nervous giggling as the ten students struggled, each in their own way, to think of something that would not only satisfy Loughlin but hopefully impress him too. A tall order. In the semester she’d been at Tisch, Maddy had never seen Loughlin impressed by anyone, let alone her. She sat with her chin cupped in her hand, watching, entranced, as he put the students he’d selected through their paces. ‘Fear!’ ‘Envy!’ ‘Desire!’ Someone who’d been given ‘envy’ to perform was suddenly required to improvise. ‘Give me hatred!’ Loughlin yelled. ‘Burning hatred!’ Suddenly the word she’d been fearing all semester slipped out. ‘Stiller!’ Maddy froze. ‘Get up here. You’re next. Gimme grief!’ He glared at her as she made her way unsteadily to the front of the class. ‘You’ve got two minutes, Stiller. Show us how it’s done.’

  Maddy felt her throat go dry. As always when she was nervous, she felt her body temperature begin to drop. She shivered. She closed her eyes briefly and tried to summon up the emotion he’d asked for. She couldn’t. She needed a starting point. Loughlin coughed. She tried to focus. Grief. Sadness. Tears. She swallowed. Loughlin coughed again. The palms of her hands began to itch. Grief. Come on, Maddy, she willed herself. Get a grip. ‘I …’ She opened her mouth but could go no further.

  ‘In your own time, Stiller,’ Loughlin drawled sarcastically. ‘But I’m not seeing anything that speaks of grief to me.’

  Maddy willed herself to concentrate. Grief. When had she last experienced it? She stood there trying to summon it up, but nothing came. She was sweating, despite the chill that had settled over her. She thought of the farm, of her mother’s face the day she boarded the bus for New York … surely there was something there? But there was nothing; just the usual carefully constructed wall she built around those emotions she felt she couldn’t handle. She could feel herself clamming up. Her mouth suddenly flooded with water as the old, familiar feeling of panic began to settle in.

  Loughlin slid off his stool and walked towards her. He was a tall, powerfully built man. He towered over her, saying nothing, but staring at her intently. For a brief, absurd second, she thought he might actually hit her. ‘Stiller!’ he roared. Maddy jumped. Someone in the class laughed nervously. ‘Grief! Anger! Fear!’ Loughlin roared, jabbing his finger at her.

  ‘I … I can’t …’ Maddy stammered, desperately trying to control her voice.

  ‘Can’t or won’t?’ His blue eyes flashed contemptuously at her.

  She looked up at him, failure flooding her senses. She’d seen Loughlin give other students a hard time, but this was different. She stood in front of him, trapped by her own fear – fear of him, of the class, of what he was asking her to do. She felt her stomach turn over. She’d never experienced anything like it. There was a dull, metallic taste in the back of her throat that she dimly recognised as tears. Oh God … please, no. Please don’t let me start crying in front of him. ‘I …’ Again she tried to get the words out, and again her mouth and tongue failed her.

  ‘Thought so.’ Loughlin looked down at her, the contempt in his expression all too clear. ‘Disappear, Stiller. You obviously haven’t got what it takes. Next! Anderson. Come up here. Show the rest of us how it’s done.’ There was another embarrassed cough from the audience.

  Maddy stood still for a second, rooted to the spot, unable to take it all in. Todd Anderson, tall, impossibly handsome and impossibly gifted, strode confidently to the centre of the stage. He ignored her as he prepared himself to take on the role she clearly couldn’t. There was nothing for it but to exit the classroom as quickly as possible. She fled.

  It took her less than half an hour to empty her closet of her possessions and stuff them in her suitcase. Tears were streaming down her face but she couldn’t feel them. Her heart was racing. She had never, ever been so humiliated in her entire life. Loughlin’s words sang out endlessly in her ears Clear out, Stiller. You obviously haven’t got what it takes. A turnip-headed Midwesterner. They were absolutely right. She didn’t have what it took. Better to get the hell out now before she was humiliated any further.

  Suddenly the door burst open. Sandy stood in the doorway. Her mouth dropped open as she surveyed Maddy’s suitcase. ‘What’re you doing? You can’t be serious! You’re quitting?’

  Maddy picked up a sweater, folded it and placed it in her case. She hoped her voice was steady. ‘Loughlin’s right. I’m not cut out for this, Sandy. I don’t know what I was thinking—’

  ‘Maddy, I don’t believe you!’ Sandy was incredulous. ‘You’ve had a couple of bad days and you’re going to quit?’

  ‘They’re not just bad days,’ Maddy said defensively. ‘Loughlin’s right. I … you’ve got to have talent, Sandy. It’s not enough just to want to act. I can’t.’

  ‘Bullshit. Maddy, we’ve only been here a couple of months! You can’t quit before the first semester’s even ended! That’s absurd!’

  ‘It’s not absurd!’ Maddy closed the lid of her suitcase with a snap. ‘I’m not like you, Sandy. I’m from a farm in Iowa, for God’s sake. I just wish I had your confidence. You grew up here, you’ve been all over the world … you’re tough. I’m just some country hick—’

  ‘Will you stop it? Listen to you! We’re all scared, Maddy. It’s hard for everybody, not just you.’

  ‘That’s not it! Of course I know it’s hard for everyone. But I’m no good, Sandy. I can’t do this. I can’t! Every time he asks me for … for these emotions … I can’t!’

  ‘That’s because you won’t let yourself, not because you can’t. Don’t think I don’t know what’s going on with you, Maddy. Don’t think I don’t know where you disappear to every night.’

  Maddy stared at her. Embarrassment rippled up and down her spine. ‘Wh … what’re you talking about?’ she whispered, her voice suddenly failing her.

  ‘Oh, come on. It’s so obvious. You starve yourself all day long, then you go and stuff your face with all kinds of shit. You think I don’t know what you’re doing?’

  There was a sudden silence. Maddy felt her knees give way. She sat down on the edge of her bed. Her head felt heavy and there was an unfamiliar tightness in her chest. She couldn’t speak. She opened her mouth to say something, but nothing came out. Shame flooded her senses. Her dirty little secret was out. ‘I … I’m …’ she stammered, unable to look up.

  ‘Look, Maddy … you don’t have to explain. I know what’s going on. My mom’s a shrink, remember? You need help. Quitting’s not the answer.’

  Maddy’s eyes flooded with tears. Help? How could anyone help her when even she didn’t know what was wrong? ‘I …’ She tried to speak. ‘I … I’m OK,’ she stammered, wiping furiously at her cheeks. ‘I’m fine. I … I’m just a bit tired, that’s all. I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
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br />   Sandy’s eyes narrowed. She looked searchingly at Maddy. Finally she lifted her shoulders, spreading her hands out before her. ‘OK. Fine. Whatever.’ She gave her another piercing glance and then left the room. Maddy was suddenly alone. She looked down at her hands. They were shaking. Her whole body felt as though it was on fire. She’d come dangerously close to being found out and it was all her own fault. She’d made the mistake of allowing someone to get too close to her; she’d been careless, she’d let her guard down. She had to make sure it would never happen again. As much as she liked Sandy and as grateful as she’d been to have a friend in this cold, lonely city, she simply couldn’t afford to let anyone come any closer. She was on her own again, just as she’d always been. It was safer that way.

  10

  NIELA

  Vienna, January 1992

  Without a shadow of doubt, it was the waiting that was the hardest part. From the mile-long queues that formed before dawn at the store where the food packs were handed out to the interminable wait for their visas to come through, each and every day was spent in anxious anticipation. Niela could no longer remember what it was like not to wait. But it was astonishing how quickly they adapted – Niela herself had grown so accustomed to the routine of watching her father leave every morning and return empty-handed with no new information that it had become normal to her. It was almost as if he was going to work. He rose before sunrise, dressing himself in the dark without a sound. He stepped outside the tent to pray; then her mother got up, fumbling her way in the darkness to the box of matches that sat on top of the radio. In silence she lit the stove and prepared his breakfast in the way she’d once ordered her own servants to. She served him coffee and njera, the sour, flat Ethiopian bread that Niela had grown to hate. He ate quickly, pausing only to wipe his mouth and pat down his beard, and then he set off on his daily journey to the UN offices, where he waited all day for the interview or the request for information that would take his family a step further in the long, arduous process of leaving. Only he knew what pride he’d had to swallow in order to make that three-mile round trip, sitting patiently in front of college students barely older than his daughter, answering their questions and demands with the correct aura of humility and the right amount of subservience that would ensure he would get his family out, intact and alive.

  One morning, about three months after their arrival, Niela was squatting uncomfortably on her haunches trying to slice onions with a not-too-sharp knife when she heard the commotion. She opened the flap of the tent and peered outside. People were running down the dusty track towards the tent. She looked up at her mother.

  ‘Keep slicing,’ her mother instructed her briskly, holding back the flap to look herself. She worried constantly about men catching a glimpse of Niela – as if anyone would look at her, Niela often thought to herself with half a smile. From the three or four showers she’d taken daily in Mogadishu and her once-weekly trip with her mother to the salon, where her hair was washed, conditioned and braided, to the twice-a-week visit to the female ablutions block, where she washed her hair with soap – no conditioning oils here – it was a miracle anyone still thought of her as female, never mind anything so ridiculous as pretty. She’d long since given up looking at her own reflection.

  Through the opening she could see their neighbours running towards them. In the centre of the small crowd, clutching a sheaf of papers, was her father. She dropped her knife and jumped up, ignoring her mother’s reprimand, and ran outside. Her father was running towards them, his long djellabah flying behind him, his worry beads jerking from side to side. Niela’s mouth dropped open. She’d never seen her father run in her entire life. They got the visas! They’re going to Austria! They’re leaving! People were shouting and laughing excitedly. Her heart began to beat faster, and she searched her father’s face as it came towards her. They’d waited so long for this very moment, she thought to herself wildly. It couldn’t be true. It couldn’t possibly be true.

  It was. After weeks and months of pleading his case, Hassan’s requests had finally found their way to the right department, the right pair of ears. No one could know the private depths of strength in a person, Niela saw that night, as her parents lay awake a few yards from her, whispering to each other. God alone knew what sort of understanding had passed between them in the last few months as they struggled to keep the family together. But they’d done it. Somehow, through the means and channels available to them, they’d managed to secure the visas they so desperately needed to get out of Africa to the safety of a new life.

  It took them less than a week to pack up their few belongings, make the journey from Hartishek to Addis Ababa and from there, at long last, to Vienna. As the plane carrying the Adens and a few other families, whose shocked, dazed expressions revealed their status as refugees more clearly than any travel document possibly could, flew steadily northwards, Niela looked down on the finger of water that was the Red Sea and felt a part of her slipping away, sloughing off. For the third time in as many months a new, different side of her was struggling to emerge – now, for the first time in months, there was a sense of optimism mixed in with the pain she’d been struggling to contain.

  11

  Vienna. A city, a country, an entire continent buried under a suffocating blanket of snow. It was winter when they arrived. Days contracted to become brief intervals between the longest nights Niela had ever known. She came out of the warm, steamy fug of Uncle Raageh’s apartment each morning into a seizure of cold. His large, comfortable flat was on the first floor of an old building on Wallnerstrasse, close to the Volksgarten and the Rathauspark, both jewel-encrusted landscapes under layers and layers of glittering ice. Every morning on their way to German language classes that Niela and her brothers were required by law to attend, they walked down by the River Donau, muffled in clothing borrowed from neighbours and friends to protect them from the cold.

  ‘Ich fahre. Du färhrst. Er fährt.’ The teacher paused in her declensions to look expectantly at the class of foreigners sitting patiently in front of her. ‘Jetzt bitte wiederholen Sie … ’

  Niela joined in the chorus. After three months, she was finally beginning to get her tongue around the difficult language. She no longer stood in silent embarrassment at the supermarket, pointing dumbly to things she couldn’t name. She no longer had to shake her head in frustration when someone spoke to her. Like a complex piece of music, the individual notes had slowly begun to fall into place. It helped that Ayanna, her cousin and so far, at least, her only friend, only spoke German and a little English. Niela dimly remembered the fuss that had been made when her Uncle Raageh had declined to marry the young Somali girl who’d been chosen for him and had married an Austrian girlfriend instead. She couldn’t understand how anyone could possibly have objected – his marriage to Ulli had produced Ayanna, not only the most beautiful young woman Niela had ever set eyes on, but also one of the nicest. Ayanna was twenty, only a couple of years older than Niela, but she might as well have come from another planet. She was in her second year of a psychology degree at university. She still lived with her parents – hers was the large, almost empty room at the end of the corridor that had been given over to the Adens’ suitcases – but she spent most of her time at her boyfriend’s flat on the other side of the city. Niela regarded her comings and goings with amazement. Ayanna wasn’t married and yet she slept at her boyfriend’s home? And he wasn’t Somali either! He was Turkish. Uncle Raageh seemed unperturbed. She overhead her father asking him one day how on earth he could let it happen. ‘Oh, they all do it, Hassan,’ Raageh said, laughing. ‘What’m I to do? I can’t stop her. Better we know where she is.’ Niela didn’t hear her father’s reply. She wasn’t sure she wanted to.

  By the time spring was over and the city emerged from under its blanket of snow, the Adens, each in their own way, had begun to settle in. Hassan found work, although it was nothing even remotely like that which he’d been qualified to do. He no longer had a professi
on. His profession had become the task of putting food on the table for his family. He left every morning to work in the Turkish wholesaler’s, where he managed to find a bookkeeping position, and returned every evening. His work had no place in their lives. He did not speak of it, and neither did they. The refugee housing authorities had found them a small flat in Simmering, to the south of the city. Niela’s mother spent her days cooking and cleaning, much as she’d done in Mogadishu, though without the help of half a dozen servants or the support of her close-knit community of friends.

  In June, after almost four months of the government-mandated language courses, Korfa and Raageh were deemed fluent enough to begin school. Niela’s position was more precarious. She was too old for high school, but her German wasn’t yet good enough to sit the entrance exam for university, even if they’d have been able to afford it. It was a strange hiatus. The past was no longer available, but the future was too uncertain to believe in. Suspended between two worlds – one to which she no longer belonged and another to which she couldn’t – she waited. As her German improved and the boys were swallowed up by school, it fell naturally to her to become the family’s eyes and ears, to interpret the what was happening around them and to do whatever she could to make sense of their new lives. She struggled against it at first. With her father and brothers gone from morning to evening, she couldn’t bear the routine of helping her mother prepare the flat every day for their return, cooking, cleaning, fussing around the men when they came home at the end of the day. She began to look around for something else to do.

  The relationship between her uncle and her cousin fascinated her. Her Uncle Raageh was a lawyer. After a particularly hard day in court, he would come home, loosen his tie and, if Ayanna and Niela happened to be around, beckon them into his book-lined study. ‘Come. Set up the board. I’ve had a hellish day. Let’s play.’ The three of them would play chess, Niela and Ayanna on one side, Uncle Raageh on the other, until Tante Ulli came in with wine and cheese and the game was abandoned in favour of talk. Niela, who had always considered herself close to both her parents, was astonished to find a different sort of closeness here. With Uncle Raageh and Tante Ulli she talked about other things. Life. Politics. Sometimes even boyfriends. She could feel her cheeks turning hot with embarrassment as Ayanna and her mother discussed things that Niela couldn’t even imagine thinking about, much less talking to Saira about. Although she loved her parents dearly, it came to her slowly, listening to her aunt and uncle and cousin, that the aloof inflexibility her father displayed back in Somalia, so useful back at home, would be of no advantage to him whatsoever in Europe. Here it was all about change and adaptation. How to move with the times, not fight against them. As she sat between her parents one night and at the dining room table with Ayanna and her uncle and aunt the next, she had the strong, uncomfortable sensation of her two lives coming together, not in harmony, but in collision. Something would have to give. And soon.