No. 4 Imperial Lane

by Jonathan Weisman

  He breathed deep, then stepped toward the officers’ quarters, where his wife was waiting.

  Elizabeth was cooking dinner over the small communal stove. The two weak burners took their time, but João’s debriefing had provided plenty of that. Caldo verde, with potatoes, collard greens, and smoked pork sausage from the PX, simmered on one side. Carne de porco à alentejana, without the clams and with salt pork substituting for fresh, cooked on the other. For once, Angélica was not around to enjoy it. The smell of Portuguese cuisine pulled João to the kitchen. Elizabeth beamed with pride, and João could not suppress a grin. Some of the heaviness melted away.

  “A lot to tell, I’d imagine,” she said awkwardly.

  “Yes, a lot. I’m sorry that took so long,” he said, reaching into the simmering soup with a wooden spoon. Even in the heat of the West African night, the taste was exquisite.

  “I won’t ask you to repeat it all, not just yet,” Elizabeth said shyly, staring at the simmering pots. It was the most awkward moment of their relationship, more awkward than their first meeting in the clinic, their first beer together at the seaside bar, their first lovemaking. She was his wife, she was pregnant with his child, and she didn’t know what to say to him. Her mind flashed back to the pond in Hampshire where she chatted effortlessly with her dog as a little girl. She felt so far from home.

  João was immersed in his senses as he stole another taste from the pot.

  “Hmmm, a man could expect no more,” he marveled.

  “‘Small cheer and great welcome makes a merry feast.’” Elizabeth smiled up at her husband. She blushed like a girlfriend serving her first meal to a promising suitor.

  João stood behind his wife as she stirred, dropped his chin on her shoulder, and wrapped both hands around her belly. She sighed and leaned into him.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked.

  “I was going to, really. Then you were gone.”

  “How long has it been?”

  “Five months, I expect, maybe five and a half.”

  She spun around to kiss, but he was not done.

  “Have you seen a doctor, an obstetrician? Is there one in this bloody country?” he asked.

  She silently shook her head, looking shamefacedly at the ground. She felt like she was speaking to her disapproving father, his questions shouting, “How could you have done this to yourself?”

  “João.” She looked up into his eyes. “Before, before you…disappeared, we made love almost every night. We have done nothing to keep this from happening. How could you be so surprised?”

  Her words accused, but her voice pleaded for mercy.

  “I know,” he said, pulling her to him and lifting his head to nestle hers under his chin. “I know.”

  They still hadn’t kissed when she served him dinner quietly.

  They sweated over Elizabeth’s piri piri peppers and saffron creations as João told his stories of captivity. He did not dwell on the violent beginning and end. They were fleeting, ugly moments, not his real experience. He didn’t let himself think of them. Instead, he spoke admiringly of Henda, the young guerrilla commander, of Augusto, the medic he had nursed back to health, then abandoned, of the respiratory ailments he could not help and the guinea worms that were delaying the PAIGC’s ultimate victory. Young fighters by the dozen were laid up for weeks on end, doing nothing but wrapping the head of a protruding worm around a stick and slowly, painfully, pulling it out, millimeter by millimeter. And he told her of that moment, lost and with no real idea what to do next, when he ran into Luis buying bread for the agriculture station.

  “You’re kidding,” Elizabeth said, laughing uproariously. “Truth is stranger than fiction. You know, Raquel Brito said something about a bread man when I asked how you had escaped. She had no idea what that had meant.”

  “I was petrified, even after I had found Luis,” João said, laughing as well. “I was sure I would be captured again. I crept to his jeep like a thief. You know what he said? ‘You sure have a big opinion of yourself.’

  “He fancies you, you know.”

  “Who?”

  “Luis, the bread man, he wants you.”

  “Don’t be daft.”

  “No, he does.” Darkness swept down on João like a shroud. “He does. I’m sure he rescued me to get into your pants.”

  A moment passed.

  “‘Black men are pearls in beauteous ladies’ eyes,’” he said coldly, meeting her gaze.

  “‘O, beware, my lord, of jealousy; it is the green-ey’d monster, which doth mock the meat it feeds on.’” She tried to break the spell. “João, have you taken leave of your senses?”

  There was a pause, a moment when João could choose to escalate or not.

  “Yes,” he said, shaking his head in short, violent spasms. “Yes, I’m sorry.”

  He made love to his pregnant wife that night, roughly, possessively, heedlessly. He buried his hands in her thick nest of hair and held on to her head. It had been a very long time, she thought. She held her tongue as he propped himself over her on outstretched arms and tucked-in knees, trying to avoid her belly as he thrust inside her, avoiding a look into her eyes even as he averted his gaze from her body. Elizabeth was overwhelmed with shame. She was ugly, she too had thought, round in the front, plump from behind, breasts turning pendulous, disgusting. But she needed his love, his reassurance. She had prayed a man would like what she was becoming; certainly a man who loved her would. And yet, she could not allow self-pity. Who knows what this poor man has been through? she thought, over and over, as her hands reached around his head and her fingers soothed his long hair. She looked up into his face, but his eyes were turned elsewhere. And soon, he was asleep.

  Then, in the early hours of morning, one o’clock, maybe two, João set himself on her.

  “João, the baby,” she whispered, slowly waking to what was happening.

  He was half-asleep. Maybe it started as a dream, but he too was waking now, fiercely. He was tearing at her nightgown, pushing it over her swollen belly, pulling her legs apart, heaving himself onto her.

  “João, João, slow down. João, please. Please, stop,” she whispered, urgently.

  He didn’t respond. He just pushed, pushed hard. It burned and tore.

  “Wait, wait,” she cried, not willing to reject him but not ready for this, not ready to accept him. “You’re hurting me,” she said, crying now, tears pouring down her face. Her body heaved, not with excitement but with sobs. He was in now. Her hands dropped into the small of his back and felt the violent, insistent rise and fall of his hips, each thrust burning and tearing. “Please stop, please, please stop,” she cried.

  He collapsed, his head buried in her pillow. He too was crying. Neither spoke for a long time.

  Then finally, “I’m sorry, Elizabeth, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Can you forgive me? I’m sorry.”

  “Shhh,” she said. “Shhh.” She stroked his head, smoothed his hair from the crown of his skull to his thin, muscled neck. “It’s alright. It’s alright.”

  She lay on her back, wide awake, hurting, bleeding, and petrified. He slept.

  “It’s not rape if you’re married to him.” Angélica shrugged as she fried up an egg for Elizabeth over a single gas burner in the low-ceilinged kitchen of the dormitory the Portuguese army put her up in. She slept in a room with four other Africans in the employ of the metrópole—cooks and washerwomen. Her light skin and New England accent may have helped her get a roof over her head, but it did not get her much more than that.

  “Angélica,” Elizabeth responded with a huff. “I thought…”

  “Did he hit you? Did he kick you?” she asked, pausing just long enough to register her friend’s silence.

  For so long, Angélica had indulged what she viewed as Elizabeth’s spoiled streak, the weakness of one who had never struggled, even in her neglect. She was a student after all, a task to be accomplished, and Angélica had grown fond of her pupil. But for one u
sed to misuse by men, this was too much.

  “You know, you’re like the white women I used to see sometimes in the nicer restaurants in New Bedford, in America, always complaining about their men not coming home on time, not buying them flowers and such. You’ve got funny ideas about men. I half thought João was never coming back, not ’cause he was dead or something but because he found something better.”

  “Angélica, just shut up,” Elizabeth wailed.

  “I’m sorry, girl, but—”

  “I thought you were my friend. You’re being mean. It’s hurtful.”

  “I am your friend. I’m trying to save you from yourself.”

  Angélica was voicing just what João had been thinking that morning. He rose stiffly, muttered another apology to Elizabeth half under his breath, showered, shaved, and left before his wife had gotten out of bed. She was awake, listening to every sound he made, shuffling through drawers for pressed fatigues, blowing his nose in the shower, urinating in the flush toilet. She kept her eyes closed, not fooling him but avoiding conversation, not that he wanted any.

  João kept his justifications to himself. He had taken what belonged to him. He had been through a lot. She was lucky to have him. Unlike Elizabeth, who at least had Angélica, unsympathetic as she was, he had no one to share his experiences with, no one he could unburden himself onto honestly. He thought of his father. Maybe for once in their lives, they would have something to talk about—women, desire, anger. But he was not there. Had he known Angélica’s response, he may well have tried to confide in her. Instead, he grabbed a ride to the hospital from an army private and tried to get back to work.

  “Doctor Gonçalves, please, come in,” the voice of Renato Marsola Araujo boomed through the open doorway of his office.

  He stood to clap his left hand hard on João’s shoulder as his right arm reached for a handshake. “My friend, you look remarkably well for a prisoner of war.” He laughed. “You must tell me about your little adventure.”

  “Must I?” João asked ruefully.

  “Very well, João, when you are ready. They fed you well, I see.” Renato patted his hands on his own belly and laughed again. “Good French bread on that side of the border.”

  João turned to go, but Renato pulled him back.

  “João, I know a lot has happened in these last six months or so, out there. A lot has happened here as well. Please, sit down.

  “Maria,” he shouted.

  A raven-haired nurse attentively appeared. “Maria, please get Doctor Gonçalves some coffee.” She nodded to João and ducked away.

  “Spínola’s gone, Elizabeth tells me,” João said.

  “Spínola’s war is gone too.” Renato sat down heavily in the chair behind his desk. He propped his feet up, laced his fingers together, and looked at João quizzically. “Look out there,” he said, motioning to the emergency ward. “You won’t be seeing many Africans flown in here anymore. No more guerrillas and no more civilians. They’re on their own now. There’s fewer of everything really. Brito’s in charge. This is an air war. Not many small-arms wounds to mend when the infantry stays in barracks. We get the odd wounded soldier from a lucky mortar strike, but even those seem to be diminishing.”

  “Then we’re winning?”

  “We’re pounding the shit out of them, if that’s what you mean. Bombs, napalm, defoliant. Everything’s fair game, to the gates of Conakry.”

  “We’ve bombed Guinea?”

  Renato shrugged. “Oh yes. Senegal too, but you would know more about that than I.”

  João was silent.

  “We’re at a stalemate, though,” Renato sighed. “We’ve pushed back the guerrilla lines. Militarily, we have them on their heels, but Cabral isn’t going anywhere. He was in New York again, delivered Caetano an ultimatum at the UN: Guiné would be declared independent by the end of 1972, the beginning of 1973 at the latest. We’ve lost the world. They hate us.”

  He sipped his coffee and fell silent, his eyes drifting to an unadorned corner of the office where a bloom of mold was taking hold.

  “We’ll lose soon enough, when we’re broke.”

  João waited for Renato’s final pronouncement. This was leading somewhere, he thought. Maybe he would be going home soon.

  Renato smiled.

  “There’s no place for us here anymore, João,” he said. “You’ll be moved soon, I expect to Angola, unless the Cabora Bassa project takes off, then maybe Mozambique.”

  “Not Lisbon?” João asked expectantly.

  Renato laughed. “Maybe Nova Lisboa, in the Angolan highlands. You don’t get time off for good behavior or heroics, João. Caetano’s not giving up southern Africa. You’ll like it in Angola. The cities are real, the architecture, the food, walks on the waterfront. Luanda is full of Portuguese cabdrivers and chambermaids, bartenders and cooks, all the fools who got swept up in Caetano’s promises of land and help. They’d never picked up a plow in their lives but figured, ‘Hey, how hard could it be if an African can do it?’ They failed in the highlands just as they failed in Lisbon. Now they’re back doing the menial jobs they left, only they’re doing them under the African sun.

  “Nova Lisboa’s nice, I hear,” Renato continued. “It’s cool and green. It could get hot, though, in the military sense. If it falls, it’ll be a shock. A big, beautiful city, movie theaters, pink ministries, yellow palaces, cars, motorcycles. There’s a big car race there; famous, I guess.

  “When this place falls, no one will care. If Nova Lisboa goes, they’ll care. They’ll care from Washington to Moscow. They’ll care from Johannesburg to Lisbon. It won’t be so easy for Caetano to keep that quiet.”

  Elizabeth and João circled each other for days like two giant planets, permanently in each other’s orbit but unable to touch. They were pulled apart by centrifugal force but bound by gravity, at equilibrium in their shared helplessness. He would make attempts, mumbled apologies, an outreached hand, a guilty glance. But each pass whooshed by her, and they were back into the circular dance of a couple unsure of the next step.

  For Elizabeth, Angélica had become worse than worthless, an unsympathetic scold.

  “Look around you,” she’d say. “Look beyond these gates. You think you have it so bad?”

  João whiled away time at the half-empty hospital, tending to guinea worm and dysentery, directing hot compresses onto botfly boils and doses of Flagyl to giardia sufferers. At night, he’d often eat at the officers’ mess without his wife, who seemed to grow heavier and more distant every afternoon when he wasn’t watching. Elizabeth tried to cook and eat for herself and the baby. At night, with nowhere else to go, they’d come together in silence, dress in pajamas that were too hot for West Africa, and climb into bed, each clinging to the outer edge of the foam rubber.

  Ultimately, it was boredom that brought détente. Elizabeth liked her husband still. She was carrying his child. She wanted it to work.

  João had no one else to talk to.

  “Let me take you out tonight, Elizabeth, in the city.”

  “The city?” She chuckled. “Bissau?”

  “There’s a restaurant, believe it or not. It serves passable Portuguese food. It’ll give us a chance.”

  “I can’t pitch a fit there?” she said with a quiet, slight smile.

  “No,” he answered, and released a laugh more like a long-awaited exhale. “No, there will be no fits. At least that’s the plan.”

  “You’ll be humiliated by me. I look awful, a fat cow.”

  He looked at her for a good long time. The silence hurt.

  “No,” he said finally, “I’ll be proud.”

  The restaurant was a white concrete slab perched atop a narrower concrete block, with a staircase leading up to the dining hall. It looked like a giant’s large white table, somebody’s idea of space-age architecture. It might have worked as a modernist conceit elsewhere with good building codes. Los Angeles, say. In Bissau, it looked like it would topple over. There was an attempt at a
picture window opening up on the Rua Da Boe, but large support slabs traversed the panes, as if the architect had taken a look at the unsupported exterior wall and thought better of it at the last minute. Portuguese men—officers, businessmen, traders—dined with thin Guinean women with gloppy mascara, wearing taut African fabrics clinging to their finely shaped buttocks, prostitutes mainly but well-mannered after so many years of colonial trade.

  João ordered a dish of bacalhau and an espada of grilled fish to share. There was no music, just the low murmur of Portuguese and the practically whispered Kriolu of the Guinean waitstaff.

  “How did you know about this place?” Elizabeth asked, straining to keep her suspicions from her voice.

  João shrugged. “Renato, the other doctors.” He understood the accusation in the question but held back.

  Elizabeth looked at him straight. “Do you come here with these women?” she asked, a flick of her head taking in the entire population of female diners, their long, braided hair extensions piled flamboyantly atop their heads, bright red, shiny lipstick accenting provocative, rich mouths.

  “Elizabeth,” he sighed. “No, I don’t have the courage for such things.”

  It was not an encouraging answer, just a pathetic one. Her next question was a thought—Would you if you did?—but she kept that one to herself, afraid of the answer, which was obvious. It would be humiliating to them both.

  João spoke now of captivity, of missing her and worrying. He allowed himself to tell her of his guilt, his failings of courage as a soldier, the scorn of Augusto, his fellow captive and the only real man to have survived that first attack, his belief that he had abandoned her. She talked of the baby, of names—if it was a boy, maybe António, after Spínola, she laughed; if it was a girl, something English but not too, something passable in Portugal as well, like Isabel or Cristina—of leaving Africa as a family, getting her figure back, such as it was. She talked of the things first-time pregnant mothers talk about—her fatigue, troubles sleeping, the first trimester, hiding nausea at first, then giving in to it when he was gone. And she talked of things most women of her background don’t think about.