“I will be taking you to Guiné,” Renato Marsola Araujo, the head of the medical corps, told João when he arrived at Caxias. “General António de Spínola pampers his medical corps there. You and your wife will find it, well, more comfortable than most. Guiné is a shit hole. I will not lie to you. It is useless to us beyond a decent port for refueling and some peanuts for export. Why the hell we are there I cannot tell you. But it has its charms. Besides, it will fall soon. Spínola won’t tell you that part, but he knows. Deep down, he knows. I don’t expect you will be staying long.”
Chapter Five
I knew what Elizabeth meant when she spoke of sewage, shit, and decay, of rotting refuse and spoiled slaughter, the stench of urban Africa. I’d been there myself, rebuffed legless beggars in Dakar, leaped across putrid, green rivulets in Banjul, and now I held a mild facsimile in my hands, inside a bulging paper bag, greasy on the bottom and breaking open as I rushed it into the kitchen. I couldn’t look inside. I was afraid to. I heaved it onto the counter and sat on the barstool as Elizabeth cheerily poured me a cup of tea.
After more than a year in Britain riding public transportation, I felt a guilty pleasure driving to the west side of town, past the local Sainsbury’s to the exotic butcher that met Hans’s peculiar demands. Having suffered through so many aging double-decker buses, slow-motion local trains, and endless chitchat about the miserable weather, I found driving alone to be a joy I had never experienced in the States. The air was crisp and biting now. The autumn mist was giving way to a clearer, thinner sky on most days. And I was driving a blue Vauxhall van emblazoned with the word “Ambulance,” heat and radio blasting. The traffic parted for me. I was invulnerable.
This particular run was to pick up pigs’ ears for dinner that night with guests, unfortunately from the pre-accident days. I figured pigs’ ears would look something like pork rinds, a meat product of indeterminate shape and origin. I was wrong. As Elizabeth rattled on, she casually lifted the enormous things out of the bag, two hairy, floppy, unmistakable animal ears joined by a flap of skin that was once a scalp. They were still pink. You could wear a pair for fun, like Mickey Mouse ears for the porcine, if they didn’t stink so much.
“Elizabeth, are you sure you can eat those things?” I winced.
“Never seen one of these?” she queried, picking a pair up casually. “Really, they’re quite edible, but I won’t lie and say they’re delicious—an acquired taste. Maybe not worth acquiring for you, I realize. ‘For sufferance is the badge of all our tribe.’” That one made her laugh to herself as she pivoted toward the sink. Not knowing any other Jews, she believed me to be somehow complex and secretive, a Shylock. How was she supposed to know I hated The Merchant of Venice?
“They’re a bloody lot of work,” she called over her shoulder as she reached under the sink to pull out what looked like two Brillo pads. She tossed me one and started scrubbing.
“Give us a hand, then. You don’t have to eat them, but we’ve got to get all the wax and hair out. Terribly bitter otherwise.”
Maggie didn’t believe me, but I was starting to enjoy life on Imperial Lane. Hans’s letters and Elizabeth’s stories kept me up late when Maggie wasn’t around, which, as the term progressed, was getting to be more usual. And then there was Cristina. She liked to leave black, laced thongs in the hallway outside my door. I hadn’t realized women really wore such things. Maggie, with her cotton Hanes French cuts, certainly didn’t.
I had by then become adept at hoisting Hans out of bed and into the world and found myself surprised at what good company he was, though he still refused to let Elizabeth tag along. Whether it was hostility or indifference I couldn’t be sure, but it was clear I was the communication bridge between them. Turns out his first-day dig at my choice between Woody Allen and Maria Callas wasn’t such an insult. He really loved Woody Allen, and I had taken it upon myself to watch the film listings and festivals at the Duke of York’s for showings. Hannah and Her Sisters had been playing a few weeks back, and I was proud as we left the theater, feeling like my country had something to offer Hans.
The holidays were approaching, and even Hans was making some effort. He suggested we make a shopping run, and I took him out hunting for a piece of jewelry—I had suggested a necklace—for Elizabeth. The Bromwells were feeling temporarily flush. Haversham, their London antique dealer, had come down to offer more than ten thousand quid for a desk out of the upstairs living room. The wood tones were a deep, rich red, the grain smoothed from hundreds of years of use. The pulls had a delicate, lotus shape. Even an untrained eye—mine, for instance—could appreciate its beauty. I imagined it carved from the forests of Burma and gracing a colonial parlor somewhere in Singapore. As his lads carried it out, the antique seller riding herd on them to avoid even the slightest scratch, I could feel the ebb of empire, I swear.
“That was a beautiful desk,” I said, sidling up to Elizabeth, who was leaning casually against the open doorway as the men loaded the truck.
“An escritoire, if you must know. Konbaung Dynasty, before ornamentation was forbidden in Burma,” she said, watching the little antique dealer direct the movers into his truck. “British Colonial is quite big these days. I should have asked for more”—she gestured toward him—“but the little Jew—” She pulled up short. “Oh, David,” she stammered, “I am so sorry.” She looked away from me.
Elizabeth was studying hard now for an eventual career as a secretary or an even less distinct office-girl post. The furniture and its proceeds would last only so long.
“See you in a few months,” the dealer called out cheerfully as the engine of the truck idled.
“We’ll call you,” Elizabeth replied. She wasn’t angry or sad or wistful. Losing a desk or armoire was nothing like losing the farm or her father—or her brother, for that matter. The end had been approaching for some time.
Hans and I had decamped to The Lanes, the warren of precious shops just above the Royal Pavilion. There was a jewelry store I knew of there, and a Belgian chocolatier. I wheeled Hans down the ramp of the ambulance and swung him into the street. A hippie was striding purposefully toward us, his woolen poncho and woven, Andean Indian hat dulled to a kind of beige but his eyes intent. His breath blew from his open mouth in little dragon puffs. Hans’s eyes moved toward him, alert to the danger I hadn’t detected.
“Is this fur real?” the stranger hissed in my face, sneering at the coyote straitjacket cinched around Hans’s torso and the fur cover-up warming his legs. “Is it real? Because if it is, you’re really gonna need an ambulance, mate.”
I stood there, dumbfounded. Hans said nothing, but the belligerent man, somewhere nearing thirty, hadn’t asked for a reaction from Hans. He didn’t seem to notice him. In public, there were two reactions to Hans, staring and denying he was there. I guess when you’re attacking a cripple’s fur, it’s best to ignore his presence.
“Are you going to say something?” he shouted in a vaguely East London twang, now an inch from my face.
I took a step back, turned, then hit him in the cheek with a gloved right fist. Besides sex, it was the most satisfying thing I had ever done. And sex usually ended in disappointment. This didn’t. The hippie bent over, holding the side of his head.
“Bloody hell, bloody hell, bloody hell,” he kept muttering. “I’m gonna kill you, I will. I’m gonna kill you.”
But he made no move to do so. He just crept away, overmatched by all five nine, one hundred fifty-five pounds of me.
I’ll admit it, I had a violent streak in me. I kept it well hidden. It didn’t clash with my effete image, but it was there. When I was in fifth grade and Frankie Hellman was in fourth, I had beaten the crap out of him for no reason at all. We were both little, but Frankie was pathetic. It wasn’t a fair fight. Later, much later, in high school, when Frankie was still an underdeveloped, snot-nosed tenth grader, I had lunged at John Rich, a junior like me, after John had dumped a bag of dirt on Frankie’s head to please the other footb
all players. That time, I was taking on someone a lot bigger than me, but righteousness and surprise won out. John Rich fell back against the lockers, took a harmless punch to the jaw, raised his hands in surrender, and walked away. He knew he was in the wrong. Frankie scurried away, trailing dirt in the hall, too embarrassed to thank me.
Rebecca had been in the hospital when I gave Frankie that beating. I couldn’t stand visiting her. I couldn’t stand seeing my big sister like that, pumped full of steroids, her head shaved, puffed up and orange as a pumpkin, a livid scar across her scalp where the surgeons tried—and failed—to remove every vestige of brain cancer, tubes tumbling from under her sheets, from her wrists, from her elbows, from her nose. I didn’t understand what those tubes did, whether they were delivering to or taking from her depleted body. I couldn’t ask, and by then she couldn’t answer anyway. Toward the end, I begged my mother to leave me at home, and sometimes she did. One of those days, I beat up Frankie Hellman. His mother did nothing to punish me. Mine never found out. Later, I punished John Rich for my transgressions.
The hippie gone, Hans did about the best thing I had ever seen. He laughed. It was a breathy, faint laugh. He couldn’t muster anything more. But it lasted a good two minutes and nearly stole what little breath he had left. His head had slumped into his woolen muffler, and as I watched him, I realized that he had enjoyed that altercation more than anything I’d done for him so far. Short of pushing him in front of a bus, it was the greatest gift I could have given him.
Elizabeth was still laboring over the pigs’ ears in the kitchen when the doorbell rang. “Could you get it, David? That’d be Julian and Simon.”
I had heard tell of Hans’s old university pals. Elizabeth insisted I would enjoy the evening, though she hadn’t been very convincing. Simon Fellowes stepped in first, taller than me by a good six inches and carrying it imperiously. Julian, whose chin was nowhere to be seen, followed.
“Ah, you must be the American volunteer we’ve heard so much about,” Simon said, handing me his coat and rolling his eyes. Julian peered around to look for a coatrack. Seeing none, he tossed his long, tweed cover-up over the banister. In unison, they pivoted to the right and waltzed into Hans’s room without a knock.
“Punctual as always.” Hans sniffed, glancing at the clock but smiling. I had propped him up well for the occasion, combed his hair, trimmed his nose hairs, and strapped on his pointer tool. Music was at the ready.
“Well, Hans, some of us have things to do, places to go, little walks along the promenade,” Julian replied.
“Maybe even a little jog,” Simon chimed in, “like the Americans do.”
The abuse was what Hans loved from these two. They had taken so much of it from him in university, they were not about to let paralysis and pity get in the way of revenge.
“Hans, I see you have still not bothered to learn bladder control,” Simon said, playfully squeezing the catheter bag hanging beside the bed as if he were pinching the poor invalid’s scrotum. “Volunteer,” he shouted over his shoulder, though I was standing not three feet behind him, “please dump the piss before dinner. It’s mildly revolting.”
“Mildly?” said Julian, an arching eyebrow cutting through the folds of skin piling on his forehead. “Well, at least it’s not streaked with blood.
“Hans, you look positively revolting. Whatever happened to that hot little nurse who was supposed to stretch out your fingers and ride your willy? You never did take her up on that, did you? Refused to live up to your end of the bargain, as I recall, letting her straddle your face for a little in-and-out on the cripple’s tongue. Well, you get what you deserve, lying there, shriveling. ‘I’m meeeellllltiiiing,’” he said in mock horror, folding toward the floor before thinking better of it.
“You never were one to please the ladies on their terms, were you? Anyway, enough of all that. I’ve brought you a little something. Papa’s latest,” he said, fishing from a deep canvas bag a label-less, dusty bottle of deep red wine, which he put on the chest next to the bed, “some porridge”—he pulled out a sealed tin of something—“and your favorite.” Out came maybe ten tins of foie gras, again unlabeled. “To get you ready for the summer.”
Hans smiled. “If it’ll ever come. David, open that bottle and pour three glasses. I’ll sip a bit.”
“Here’s two more,” Julian said, pulling out a couple more dusty bottles, then tossing the sack on the floor.
Elizabeth was pulling a pan of sizzling parsnips from the oven, baked in olive oil and rosemary. The house smelled of sweet, sautéed pork, baked parsnips, garlic and onions in a reduction sauce for the ears. And vodka, which Elizabeth was laying into with gusto. As I poured three glasses, two full, one just a nip, Elizabeth grumbled, “S’pose Julian didn’t invite me to partake.”
“’Fraid not, but here, let me pour you a glass.”
“No, no. I wasn’t expecting any. Special stock. I’ll stick with my own,” she said, throwing her head back and finishing her shot.
“You mean Elizabeth’s learning maths?” Simon was saying incredulously as I walked back in, carefully carrying the wine glasses on a small tray. “Elizabeth, doing something useful? What would your parents say?”
“They bloody well should’ve thought about that before they spent the inheritance,” Hans said wearily as I propped his head up more and leaned the quarter-filled glass to his lips.
“Hans,” Julian chimed in, “it was you that spent the inheritance, you bloody fool.
“Well, you know,” he continued, “maybe it’s best we British start letting the cream rise and the waste fall, like the Americans, a bit of meritocracy. I think Elizabeth will make a jolly good secretary. She’s been wiping your arse all these years. Let her kiss someone else’s. At least he might have the strength to pinch her bum.”
“That’d be a thrill,” Simon said with a sneer.
“I think you tried once,” Julian said accusatorily.
“I bloody well did not. I was never that desperate.”
It went on like that for a long time. They tried to cover their snickers when Elizabeth approached to ask my help serving dinner. They sat in momentary silence as the steaming plates of food came to them. They accepted the service naturally. They were used to it. But on their own turf, they would not take such delight in insulting the servants. That would be no fun at all. Elizabeth, on the other hand, was fair game. They had been insulting her most of their adult lives.
I cut Hans a small corner of ear and fed it to him gently as the conversation veered from the cruel to the dull. “Have you seen the new newspaper, the Independent?” Simon was asking. “Not sure what to make of it. It’s bloody wide, though, lots of flash.”
“I’m still reading the pink,” said Julian, stifling a yawn. “Best paper in Britain. Bet young David over here reads the Yankee,” he said dismissively, no doubt assuming I wouldn’t recognize the nickname for the International Herald Tribune.
“The Guardian,” I said defensively.
The three of them looked at one another for a moment, then laughed. They had been talking to hear their own voices and chase away the silences. What a strange kid this was, they must have thought, taking the conversation seriously enough to defend his choice of reading material.
“That’s a good boy,” Julian said, pretending to reach toward me to pat my head.
As I entered the kitchen with a tray of greasy dishes and half-eaten food, I found Elizabeth on the barstool, her plate of reheated baked beans and white-bread toast barely touched. She was silently weeping. Her face was turned away from me, but I could see the wracking of her shoulders, the fluttering of her thick head of hair. I took the few steps across the galley and laid a hand gently on a shoulder blade, tenderly, I hoped. It was enough to elicit a low moan, a barely audible wail of grief.
“You’ve been listening to them, I suppose,” I said feebly.
“‘Why should a man whose blood is warm within sit like his grandsire cut in alabaster?’” s
he cried softly, but so clearly I was startled. It was a voice that could hardly emanate from this hunched, wracked figure. Deep, resonant, thespian—like something from a lit stage in the West End.
Simon and Julian let themselves out, calling good-byes to Hans as they fetched their coats from the banister. A cold wind blew down the hallway, then stopped with the slam of the front door. The two were still chattering to each other as they got in their car and sped away.
I put a tentative hand on Elizabeth’s back again, this time just below the nape of her neck. She reached over her shoulder to clasp it. She didn’t let go for a good long time.
“I gather Elizabeth did not take the evening well,” Hans whispered as I prepared him for sleep.
“No, how did you know?”
“One knows. You must think me cold, David.”
“I don’t really like your friends.”
“No, you shouldn’t.”
I rolled him a quarter turn to smooth out the sheets and take a quick look for the beginnings of any welts that could blossom into a bedsore.
“There are things you don’t understand about my sister and me. We don’t like to speak of it, but it creeps in. We were born with so much, and look at us now. We destroyed each other.”
Chapter Six
António de Spínola reached for another bottle of Portuguese red as he implored his guests, “Don’t believe everything you read in the newspapers. Reporters are gullible creatures, easy marks for rebels and communists and anything emanating from the well of the United Nations.” The West African night air was thick as porridge. The general poured for his guests before taking a glass for himself.
Elizabeth sat uncomfortably across from this imperious man, at a rough-hewn table in what passed for an officers’ club. She understood almost nothing. His Portuguese flowed beautifully but torrentially, sparsely translated to her by her husband hours later, then filled in by her creative mind until it made sense. She tried to dab the sweat from her forehead inconspicuously, but it was pouring out. Night had long since fallen. The air smelled of bodies, wine, peppers, and fragrant smoke from the mosquito coil on the table, a cheap, glowing centerpiece at a very downscale restaurant. Major Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho, a favorite of Spínola’s, sat with them at the table, smiling serenely.
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