In the Shadow of Sadd

He dreamed. It was one of those dreams where everything seems normal, but you have a terrible feeling that something is about to happen.

He was inside Jimmy Sadd’s apartment, but in the dream it wasn’t Sadd’s place, but his own. It felt good at the start. He awoke on the zebra-skin rug, wearing a long, bronze-colored, terry cloth robe. It was warm, and for once it wasn’t raining. He walked over to the window and looked outside. Everything was clear and motionless. The buildings looked like they were dry for the first time in years. Everything was lighter, sharper and dry.

But there was something wrong.

He walked across the floor, out toward the foyer, where he expected to see the newspaper lying on the mat. It was the same paper his father read at home. This he knew. He planned to make coffee and read the paper.

But there was something wrong.

The newspaper lay where it was supposed to, and he felt a fleeting sense of security. Someone had made this newspaper and delivered it to him – there was order in the world. He picked it up, and in his bare feet went back toward the living room while unfolding the paper. On the front page there was a big picture of a tiger that was growling at the camera. A caption over another article read CHINA’S SHIFTING. He started toward the kitchen, where he knew the espresso machine stood at the ready. He would make a cup of coffee with hot milk and read the paper.

But there was something wrong.

He was aware that he felt light on his feet, that there was a bounce in his step, his bare feet against the smooth mahogany parquet. He had the feeling that he could jump high into the air, if he wanted to. He was full of energy.

But there was something wrong.

For some reason he changed course and moved toward the telephone. He picked it up, but the line was dead. Not so much as a buzz or a whistle, like in a conch shell. Nothing. He hung up, went over to the bookcase and grabbed the remote so he could watch the news. The appliance turned on, but there was no signal. He zapped through the channels, but there was nothing to see. Only static snow.

There was something wrong.

He saw a man on the roof of the building across the street – a very large man, who was waving his arms. Paul opened the window.

“Look!” shouted the man, as he jumped high into the air. It was a bizarre sight, a heavy man shooting several yards straight up into the air. Paul could hear the man laugh a demented laugh.

“And now for the grand finale!” screamed the man, as he landed on the roof, took a giant bounce and jumped out over the street. Paul watched in horror, expecting to see the man twirl to his death down on the empty, dry street.

But the man floated down, and Paul could hear him laugh resoundingly when he touched down on both legs, bent deeply at the knees, and once again shot up between the buildings on the street.

He gave a start when a voice said, “And therefore there is no longer any doubt that the force of gravity will slowly abate, as our planet’s fragmented parts gradually achieve separation.”

He stared at the television. An oddly anonymous man in a suit filled the screen. It looked amateurish, as though the man were alone in some studio, without the benefit of a cameraman.

The man said, “It appears that Earth’s core has imploded, and that the tremendous forces at play have split the planet into several pieces, which will individually drift through the universe for a short time in close proximity to one another, after which they will drift farther and farther away from each other. I can’t conceal my distress. This marks the end of the story of man, the animals and nature as we know it on this planet. This is ... the end.

Paul stared at the man, who now took his glasses off and dried his eyes. His own body was a mass of horrors. He could feel a slight vibration, but he couldn’t determine if it came from within him or up through the floor. He turned his gaze away from the man, who was still drying his eyes, as though trying to retain some level of dignity.

“We believed the sun would burn out in five billion years, but we had not considered the cancer of lava and the enormous pressure in the center of our own planet. I wish you … I wish you peace in the cosmos.

“No!” screamed Paul. He could see the big man hopping around the roof across the way. Now he could see the sun, which stood where it usually did in the afternoon. But it was morning. He could feel a whistling rumble that seemed to engulf the entire world.

***

“Wake up!” said Victoria sternly next to him. “You’re having a nightmare! Wake up!”

He twitched and came to. He took a couple of deep breaths. He wasn’t sweating. His skin was cold and dry.

“Baby,” said Victoria, and snuggled up next to him. “Baby, you’re dreaming bad dreams! There’s nothing wrong. It’s raining. What were you dreaming?”

Paul exhaled deeply, his heart still pounding. He didn’t dare direct his thoughts at his dream.

“It was something about a tiger,” he whispered up toward the ceiling.

“My little tiger-baby ...” said Victoria. He could hear she was already on her way back to the infantile dreamland she called home when she was not awake. “You spend too much time with animals.”

***

He lay awake a long time, afraid of going back to sleep. Where was Victoria’s dreamland, and how could he ever find it?

His thoughts moved to Jimmy Sadd’s money.

Money.

He tried to think clearly, to think big. They had to get away from here, away from Hispaniola and the slave trades of phone sales and AnimalCity.

It was suddenly clear to him that everything depended on money. It was like an adventure, where the young man sees the treasure in the cave. Does he dare to take it? Does he dare to risk a meeting with the dragon that guards the treasure? The treasure is his guarantee of happiness. Gold, gems and jewels will bring him happiness. He can move freely, if he’s cunning enough to avoid the dragon.

It was no longer a question of stealing some of the greasy cash. Only a slave would think like that – a wretched slave, content to purloin a trickle of wealth, with which he could buy more sugar, more lard, and more alcohol and tobacco. And Paul would not be a slave.

What did the dream mean?

It had seemed so real.

Now, as he slowly regained his composure, he could make sense of it. Life was short – not just his, but everyone’s. The ground could split open under you, before you even felt it. Everything could be scattered in space.

All the more important to live in the moment.

And the money.

The money, which could deliver them to a place where money meant nothing. There was an island somewhere with a little town on a mountainside. It wasn’t just a poster in the window of the travel agency. Somewhere, that town actually existed – a place where you could live in a cool, quiet house with thick walls. Where you could stroll along the streets with stiff, large-leaved plants in stone vases, and palms growing along the park’s iron fencing. Where you could linger in a large, old cafe where big mirrors on the wall behind the bar reflected everything in a golden hue, and where old men read their newspapers through thick glasses, and where the earth didn’t implode or split into pieces. Where the fans spun around slowly under the ceiling. And where Victoria was seated opposite him, deeply tanned, without the obligatory cigarettes, without the twisted, greasy telephone cord and the voices on the other end of the line. Without the thundering, pouring and relentless rain in Hispaniola’s cheerless, run-down streets.

The money.

All the money.

He was about to wake her and tell her what he was thinking, but suddenly he felt sleepy. Not heavy, not sad, not just determined to sleep in order to forget, but tired – as in, what ‘being tired’ had meant when he was a boy. He lay flat on his back, breathed evenly in and out, and when he shortly afterwards fell asleep, he dreamed only about the calm lapping of waves in a little lagoon. It could have been anywhere. But he knew that the lagoon would lead to a little gravel road, which in turn would lead east to the street in the mountainside town with the cafe where the old men read their newspapers.

***

When he awoke, Victoria was looking at him.

“Did you sleep well?” she asked. She smiled.

Paul rolled on to his side and lay just opposite her. “Yeah, when I finally got to sleep.”

“What did you dream about?”

“The first time or the second time?”

“Second time.”

Paul told her about the lagoon and the waves, the gravel road that led to the town, and the cafe where the old men read newspapers, looking like they didn’t really expect to read anything new.

“Sounds good,” smiled Victoria. She shifted closer to him, then got under his duvet.

Afterwards she said, “You know what I dreamed about?”

“No.”

Victoria sat up. He could see the sweat glistening on her narrow back. “Money,” she said.

***

It felt as though they had never really discussed whether they should steal the money. When they finally began talking about it seriously, it had already been decided.

They had reached the point Paul had longed for. Victoria was now leaning forward. There was no wavering, and she went about the matter with zeal.

“I say we go all in,” she said. “I mean, why settle for just some of the money?”

“Okay,” said Paul. “All in.”

“We’ll need a whole bunch of moving boxes. We pack the boxes, carry them in here, and then we load them into my car late at night. And then we hit the road.”

He nodded. It felt strange. She was ready – much more ready than he would have thought – not just to steal the money, but also to get in the car and leave Hispaniola, putting the twisting exit roads, roundabouts and traffic pretzels behind her, to get away from it all.

“So where do we go?” he asked.

“North, to the border.”

“North to the border ... How do we get the money out?”

He took it for granted that they would leave the country and search for the lagoon where the waves lapped calmly against the shore.

She smiled. “No problem. I know somebody who will take the cash and establish an account for the amount in our name.

“Who?” he said.

She was still smiling. “Someone who needs unmarked bills.”

“Are you sure?”

The whole plan didn’t make much sense if they couldn’t exchange the money.

Victoria turned on her computer and logged on to the Internet. “Look,” she said, “this is my net-bank. If you’re not sure, we can do it some other way. My contact up north gives us large bills, and we put them into my account here. It’s an international account, honey. It makes no difference where we are in the world. We can always withdraw cash on our credit cards. We can always prove that we’re good for the money.

He nodded again. Victoria knew those kinds of things. She was a pro. She used her net-bank every day and received money transfers from her clients. If she thought it would work, he was prepared to trust her.

“Okay. You take care of that,” he said. “I’ll pack the bills in small boxes.”

“When should we do it?” she asked. He could see she was ready to do it right away.

“Next time I talk to Bruno,” said Paul. “Maybe he’ll say something about Jimmy Sadd. It would be nice to know that, say, he isn’t coming home for a few months. It would be nice to know we have a good head start.

She nodded. “Fine.”

“It’s a shame about the fish,” said Paul.

***

Bruno Hanson popped up fourteen days later. There was no pattern to his visits, he simply came by now and then to pay Paul.

It was Paul who opened the door when the big, bald man knocked on Victoria’s door. Paul stepped out onto the landing.

“Hey, Bruno,” he said, “I was just about to feed the fish.”

“Okay,” said Bruno. “I got your money.”

No, thought Paul, Jimmy Sadd has my money. And I’m not talking about the bills you’re taking out of your wallet, my good Bruno.

He unlocked Jimmy Sadd’s door.

“Everything okay?” asked Bruno behind him as they walked inside and Paul turned on the light.

“Yeah, no problems. The fish are fine.”

“Has anyone been here?” asked Bruno and looked around. “Deliveries, the guy who checks the gas meter?”

“Not a soul,” said Paul, as he walked over to the illuminated aquarium and picked up the container of food. “But I’m only in here for a few seconds, so it’s possible someone might have come by during the day.”

Bruno nodded from the middle of the living room. “No mail?”

“Just junk mail.”

“No message that there’s a package for Jimmy at the post office?”

“No.”

Bruno nodded again. “Fine.”

“It’s a nice apartment,” said Paul. “It’s a lot different than Victoria’s. You wouldn’t think they were both in the same building.”

Bruno flashed him a quick smile. “Jimmy likes to do things right,” he said.

“Yeah, I can see that. It’s a shame he isn’t here more often.”

He didn’t dare go any deeper into the subject of Jimmy Sadd.

“It’s the climate,” said Bruno, as he crossed over to the windows to ensure they were properly closed.

“Yeah, it’s nothing to brag about,” said Paul.

“Jimmy likes sunshine,” said Bruno.

“Well, who doesn’t like sunshine,” said Paul. “You look like you’ve been in the tropics yourself.”

It was true, and surely there’s nothing wrong with noticing the man’s tan, after so many rain-filled days here in Hispaniola.

But Bruno wasn’t giving anything away. He smiled at Paul and said, “Yeah, I suppose I do.”

But that was all right. Paul had formed a picture of how everything fit together. Jimmy Sadd simply lived somewhere else – perhaps a place that represented his own version of Paul’s dream about the lagoon, the gravel road and the little town on the mountainside. The apartment here was nothing but a safe, a strongbox. He was just a humble, ignorant security guard. And as long as Bruno could return to his master and tell him that the fish had been fed, Jimmy Sadd would know that his own private Fort Knox in Hispaniola was a secret to the rest of the world.

***

They said goodbye on the stairs, Paul holding the money Bruno gave him in his hand.

“I’ll see you,” said the bald giant, lifting a clenched fist with a raised thumb. He walked off down the staircase.

“Okay,” said Paul. “And thanks.”

There was no answer.

Paul heard his footsteps disappear down through the half-darkness of the staircase. He tried to assess how it had gone.

Did Bruno suspect him of anything?

No. True, the big man had passed by the bookcase with the built-in steel handle, but he didn’t so much as glide a finger over it. He didn’t even look at the hidden door behind the bookcase.

Bruno had also admitted that he’d been in a warmer, sunny climate – probably while visiting Jimmy Sadd in his home.

It wouldn’t get any better.

That was true – Bruno Hanson, Jimmy Sadd and the whole network of violent offenders and gorillas that Sadd undoubtedly presided over – could presumably come up the stairs tomorrow. Or tonight. Or in ten minutes. But Paul didn’t think so.

Let’s get the show on the road, he thought, and went in to Victoria.

***

They bought a bundle of small moving boxes, and Victoria went about folding them into form. She placed them along the living room wall to get an idea how many they would need. Paul helped her. They didn’t speak much to each other. The excitement was beginning to get a hold on them, and he realized that it would not abate until they were long gone. As he folded the flaps of the boxes and assembled them into proper moving boxes, he considered briefly whether the excitement would ever disappear.

Would he awake with a start one night, in their cool house of stone on the mountainside in the little town, and see Bruno Hanson’s smiling face over him. Or would he just dream that he did? Would he pull Victoria into a shop or gateway every time they saw a tall, bald man farther down the street? Would he freeze if a Mercedes drove calmly by their house, and a little man with a hard, dark gaze stared at the house from the backseat?

Maybe.

He thought about that lifestyle being the fugitive’s lot.

He thought about other fugitives – old Nazis in the jungles of Uruguay, men with old, red-veined skin, who with expressionless faces visit the safes of South American banks, squinting out of the corners of their eyes, on the lookout for members of the Israeli secret police. Doctor Mengele, who had lived in the jungle for all those years, always on the move, at one point lodging with Mennonites, who didn’t know who he was (or did they?), or other Nazis, who ran their large plantations on the other side of the world, far away from the continent where their true names were synonymous with evil.

But then he watched Victoria methodically stacking the moving boxes.

Do you want to be a slave? he asked himself. Or will you take a chance and go off to look for Paradise?

He no longer had any doubts. Victoria hadn’t had any doubts for some time. There was only one question: could his courage compare to hers?

***

“Okay?” said Victoria.

“Yeah,” he said.

The time had come. Everything was prepared, and they were in agreement. Victoria had explained to him that it was a question of logistics. It sounded impressive, and once more he was confronted with the fact that she was much more capable than he was when it came to staying cool and committing a crime.

The first problem was the small moving boxes. They were good for storing bundles of cash, and they could be hidden in many different places, but they were difficult to transport. They had discussed this at length. Should they move the money in several rounds? That was too dangerous, thought Paul. Once was enough. They should get it over with. Doing it in several rounds would be unbearable.

“I’m only going in there once,” he said.

Victoria nodded while she contemplated the reply. “Okay,” she said.

***