Submergence by J. M. Ledgard

across from her, so boyishly tucking into his dessert, was concealing another history. She did not know what, she had no reference, only that the bones in his soft hands were broken, and he was scarred about the nose and the ear. There was some shutting down in him. His eyes showed it. He had been abraded by the world.
    They took coffee in the bar. Another guest slotted euros into a vintage jukebox which had on it a picture of Johnny Hallyday.
    They had no choice. I believe when I fall in love with you it will be forever .
    She rolled her eyes.
    ‘Even so,’ he said, and raised his cup.
    She stared at him. His pupils were dilated, the effect darker. She was a little drunk.
    They parted at the foot of the stairs. She went up and he went out into an afternoon that appeared to have no up or down. The snow swirled. He could not see his way forward. He heard the sheep. He thought he had arrived at the railings, but a few more steps brought him back to the hotel. All that was visible of the building was the sign over the entrance spelling out its name in light bulbs, and the green figurines of mermaids backed by dark green tiles of the highest quality purloined from a Persian mosque.
    Without warning he was battered with conflicting emotions and identities, as if a train had braked hard and all the baggage had come crashing down on top of him. He took the lift up. He closed the cage door and pressed in the button. It was a rosewood box, slightly larger than a coffin. He tried not to notice the ascent. He sat in his room, staring out of the window and only occasionally shifting his focus from the blankness to the icicles hanging down. He did not draw the curtains when it got dark and allowed the maid who came to turn down his bed only to switch on a lamp and to bring him a bottle of water and a pot of hot chocolate.

    She worked into the evening. She was befuddled by the alcohol, by him. Maths was like playing the piano, in a way. You had to keep practising to keep fluent and supple; eventually the discipline became a pleasure.
    She turned on the television and watched a tennis match being played at the Albert Hall in London. The acoustics in the hall were such that the man’s serve sounded like a detonation.

    He was hauled up by his wrists and made to stand. His legs shook.
    ‘I’ll shit myself,’ he said.
    His bowels softened; a watery mess flowed down the inside of his thighs.
    There was shouting in Somali. He was struck in the back of the head and in the face and doused in seawater. He was dragged into an alley. It was blinding. He could not look up. The sand burned and was littered with thorns and with glistening donkey droppings and palm fronds. There were wattle-and-daub shacks on either side. He heard children playing. He sensed the women stopping as he passed. He was nauseous. His head spun. He tried to concentrate on the feet of the man in front of him. He said to himself, the flip-flops are red, they are red, the calloused heel lifts, now it strikes the sand, now it lifts.
    They came out into the open. The wind gusted. Crabs scuttled back to holes in the sand. When he finally raised his head and looked at the world he saw surf exploding on a reef and a monumental orange sun hovering over the Indian Ocean.
    The fighters got on their knees and prayed to Mecca.
    After some minutes one of them stood up. ‘We will kill you now,’ he said, without emotion.
    They pushed him towards the sea. He saw it. They would shoot him in the water. There would be no need for a shroud.
    When his body was drained they could dump it in the infidels’ cemetery. With what prayer, with what damnable prayer?
    The fighters were young and thin, but he was too weak to take advantage. He was a white man in a part of Somalia controlled by jihadists. Even if he cracked heads, snapped necks and took a gun, there was no place to run. So, he straightened himself and prepared to die.
    But how does a man do that? Nature is pre-contracted, her demands