No. 4 Imperial Lane

by Jonathan Weisman

  “I was thinking more of the murder victims, David, the earnest one with the curly black hair—your kind, I should think.”

  I laughed. I was still quick to think the worst of Hans’s intentions when it came to me, but he was coming around. In truth, he’d come around some time ago. I pushed Hans beside a booth, not worried we were taking up too much space on a quiet weeknight. I sat down heavily on the worn, lumpy velvet pillow covering the wooden bench and gave Hans a tender smile.

  “What’s that look?” he asked suspiciously. “Are you up to something?”

  “Hans, there is something I have to tell you. I’m thinking of leaving. In early May. My older brother’s going to be in Europe. I’ve got one last chance to travel around before having to go back to the States. And…”

  My chatter trailed off. We sat in silence for a moment.

  “I know Elizabeth’s counting on me until you go to Italy.”

  Again, silence. I thought Hans had tuned out; maybe he was going into one of his dormancies. Then he breathed deep.

  “What about Maggie?”

  “Maggie?”

  “Yes, Maggie.”

  “Hans, we split up ages ago. Well, she dumped me for some guy named Grod.”

  “You made that up, didn’t you?” he said with a slight, breathy chuckle.

  “Well, that’s what she told me anyway.”

  He was quiet for a while, letting that one sink in—had he really not noticed the bunnies had been stilled upstairs? I was saddened by his disappointment.

  “I understand you were a communist last year, a pretty pathetic one,” he spoke up.

  “You’ve been talking to Elizabeth, haven’t you?”

  “My sister doesn’t much like to talk to me, but she seems to like to talk to you, and about you. I should congratulate you, David. You’ve done more to bring us together than anyone, maybe ever.”

  “Cheers,” I said ruefully, holding up my glass to Hans’s sardonic smile. But Hans wasn’t being sardonic, I could see. It wasn’t hard to tell when the man was serious. It was almost comical. A smile seemed to be such an effort that when he let it go, his whole face drooped in a sudden swoon. It was as if gravity took hold with a violent yank.

  “Can you stick with anything, David?” Hans gave a short, raspy exhale, paused a moment, then breathed deeply, as deeply as he could. The conversation was taking a lot out of him. His lungs had little capacity left. He had to satiate every remaining alveolus. There was a long break. Then he continued.

  “I had a girl once. Segolaine.”

  “I know, Hans. You loved her name.”

  “Yes.” His eyes were yellow and watery, and he looked at me straight. I shuffled, and then offered him some water. He took a sip.

  “She loved me, David. She was a whore, but she loved me. Someday you’ll find a woman who loves you, and you’ll learn that’s something. That’s really something.”

  Cristina and I had a date the next night, at least that’s what I told myself it was. She had used the word, but to her, I was sure, it was just another study session. First, she promised, a drink at the Imperial Arms.

  We walked together down Imperial Lane in the almost-warm spring night. Once No. 4 was out of sight, she reached for my hand.

  “It’s like a date, David,” she said brightly.

  “Like a date?” I asked.

  “Just like a date.”

  She grasped my hand with both of hers, tucked it against her short skirt, and leaned her head playfully on my shoulder. A seductive thumb caressed my skin.

  We sat in a quiet corner of the nearly empty pub, Cristina sipping a half pint of lager while I nursed a full one of bitter. We talked easily about the future, about Elizabeth’s job search, about my final year of university, her coming first. She had been provisionally accepted to the University of East Anglia outside of Norwich, pending the results of her A Levels, which she’d take in June and hear back about in August.

  “I’d love you to visit East Anglia. It’s nothing like Sussex. The boys all wear khakis and polo shirts and talk about punting and the Fens,” she told me.

  “Sounds horrible.”

  She laughed a delicate, breathy laugh, and I reached for her hand under the table, clasped her fingers, and leaned in to her ear. “I’ll visit you anytime you like. Just say the word.” She pressed our hands against her thigh, cocked her head into my breath, and let her long hair envelop my lips.

  “’Ello, Cristina, fancy meetin’ you ’ere,” a loud voice interrupted. A lad in a black shirt, opened well down his chest, Doc Martens, and black skinny jeans stood over us. Peroxided hair, long on top and parted in the middle, was feathered along pocked and hollow cheeks.

  “Hello, Leander, how are you?” Cristina answered flatly.

  “’Oo’s your friend? You’re thick as thieves.”

  “Sorry, this is David. David, this is Leander, a bloke from school.”

  He knelt close to her other ear.

  “Not your usual type, Cristina. He doesn’t really have a chance, right?”

  “A chance for what?” she answered caustically.

  A naked toe touched my bare ankle and climbed up my calf, caressing rhythmically, up and down my leg. A surge of heat and blood rushed to my groin, and I squeezed Cristina’s hand hard.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I said.

  “I’ll come with you two,” Leander said. “Night’s young. Where to?”

  “No you won’t,” Cristina barked.

  I watched the numbers count down along Imperial Lane, praying for liftoff, but as we neared No. 4, Cristina dropped my hand and a space grew between us.

  “Do you think I was rude to that bloke back there?”

  “Leander?” I mocked. “No, not at all. Cristina, you’re always gonna break hearts. You’ve gotta accept that.”

  “What are you saying, that Leander fancies me or something?”

  “Cristina.” I smiled, and she smiled back.

  She turned the key in the door, then led me up the stairs, back into the parlor, grabbing her literature textbook as we went in. My heart sunk. This time, though, she went to the remaining sofa, which sat bereft, without end tables or a coffee table to adorn it. She sat hard against one end. I took my place at a respectable distance. Then I looked at her. There was something in those eyes, surrender, acceptance, desire maybe. Her mouth was open just slightly, and I could hear her breathing. She locked a gaze on me, and I lunged—without a thought, without a plan. We were together in an instant. My left hand grasped her hip, then slid up the gentle curve of her waist, my right wrapped around her head, fingers rising through her hair at the nape of her neck. I pulled her to me, and our lips met, her hand pressing my head to hers.

  This woman, this beauty I had desired and dreamed of and wanted for so many, many months, just there. It was so easy. My hand reached to feel her narrow frame, to caress the supple rise of her breast, to graze a nipple through silky fabric, to pull her toward me from the small of her back. She slid down slightly, and I reached a hand between her knees, then up her skirt, along her impossibly soft, surprisingly delicate inner thighs, slowly, deliberately stopping a fraction of an inch below the apex to feel the heat rising, to tantalize. Her hips trembled. Her legs parted ever so slightly farther. Her breath grew at once shallow and insistent as we kissed, tongues gently touching. I ached for more.

  Where I expected relief or wonderment I felt instead gratitude. I was grateful, to Cristina, to Elizabeth, to Hans, to a world and a God that had delivered this moment to me, against all expectations for what would happen, what I deserved.

  “Cristina, Cristina, Cristina,” I whispered, over and over, wanting to hear her name in my voice, wanting her to hear my reverential thanks. “You’re so beautiful.”

  “David,” I heard back. “David, wait,” she said more insistently, sitting up.

  “What is it?”

  “Uncle Hans.”

  I looked at my watch.

  “Oh,
shit. Cristina, wait for me.”

  “This will sound peculiar to you, but I used to love scratching my back, just like a great, filthy bear.”

  I was shuffling around Hans’s room. I was trying to be consciously diligent as my head hummed with excitement. Cristina was upstairs, but we both knew such duties could not be shirked. His back and thighs had been checked for bedsores, his urine bag emptied, his catheter given a gentle tug to see that all was set. I sat down on the barstool by his pillow to hear his quiet voice.

  “I had this rough-hewn four-poster bed in Paris. Sounds posh, but it wasn’t. The finishing had been rubbed off the posts, which were plain and sharp-edged. Every night, I would lean my bare back against a post and scratch. ‘Ahhh.’ It drove Segolaine mad. ‘You look like an animal, Hans. Come to bed. I’ll scratch your back.’ ‘No, darling, I prefer it my way.’” He chuckled. “I miss that, a lot.”

  “Would you like me to scratch your nose or something?”

  He gave me a long, sad look of pity, one that told me I hadn’t grasped the point of his story at all. “Don’t let this go to your head, David, but I’ve grown to like this time of day. I used to hate it, all the fussing around the bed, for what? So I could lie in bed some more.”

  He paused.

  “Now we have a little ritual, don’t we?”

  I reached gingerly under the blankets and fished out a hand to hold. It was an awkward, self-conscious gesture. His skin was so thin I could feel the sinew of useless tendons binding the bones. Hans lifted his head to see the spectacle.

  “You know I can’t feel that, David, not a thing. You might as well be fondling my urine bag.”

  I let out a frustrated breath.

  “I’m trying here, Hans.”

  “I can feel my face,” he said that night.

  The whispered voice broke into my thoughts. I leaned over and, with the back of my fingers, tentatively stroked Hans’s cheek. He let his head sink back into the pillow and smiled.

  “I’m glad I have something to offer, Hans. Really, thank you.”

  “Thank you,” he repeated, as if trying out the words for himself. “People used to always be thanking us, for this charity ball or that bit of magnanimity or perhaps just the Bromwell presence. Funny how we British can be with our aristocracy. My father never really stretched to serve, mind you, but he had his moments, sometimes even when he wasn’t campaigning for reelection. Just showing up at some village dinner was considered an unbelievably noble gesture on the part of my parents.”

  He sighed, but he often sighed. I had a difficult time discerning an exhale from an expression of feeling.

  “I haven’t been thanked in a long while.”

  I slicked back a greasy wisp of hair threatening to fall in front of an eye.

  “Do you think Elizabeth will make it, you know, when I’m gone? Is she still studying?”

  “Yes, Hans, I think she’ll make it.”

  “I don’t have life insurance, you know, and it’s not as if when I’m gone Haversham will give her a fortune for my hospital bed and tin cabinets.”

  I laughed. “I hardly think she’s counting on that, Hans. I think she really wants to work, you know, be normal, like everyone else.”

  “So she’s looking forward to…”

  “No, that’s not what I meant.”

  “Yes, yes, I know. And Cristina?”

  I blushed and smiled shyly.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “Can you imagine Cristina not making it, Hans?”

  “No, no, I suppose not. There was a time, but not anymore.…Thank you, David.”

  I covered his head, turned the knob to make sure his door closed silently, then ascended the stairs to make love to Cristina Gonçalves.

  Dearest Elizabeth,

  Now you have me worried. I do love our little communications, but I fear we should be widening our circle. There comes a time when all children of privilege must use their privilege, claim their birthright. I’d imagine a lady of the realm, beaten by her ne’er-do-well of a husband and swirling in the cauldron of African revolution, has found her moment.

  It sounds as if by the time you receive this letter, you may not even be at the address of this Nova Lisboa place of yours, lovely as it may be. But if by chance this correspondence should find you, please write back as soon as possible to advise. I do not wish to betray your trust, dear sister, but I am sure our Member of Parliament of a father could effect a rescue of some sort. It pays to be a militarist Tory in times of strife. That’s why our benighted countrymen called on that drunk Churchill after all.

  Father, apparently, is gaining some stature in Whitehall with the insistent clamouring of this wench named Margaret Thatcher, conservative revival and all that sort of thing. I believe he is finally allowing himself some enjoyment in politics. Until now, he’s just been the humbug on the backbench, yammering on about foxhunting and inheritance taxation. I like to get his goat with my debauched-son act, but I suppose it’s nearing time for me to return to England and assume my dull position in society, to the manor born are we.

  Is it terribly presumptuous for me to ask whether I should be taking you along, dragging you along even? You have a husband of sorts, and a lovely child, but remember, Elizabeth, you have a place here as well, a comfortable nook carved out of English society by generations of Bromwells. It can be a claustrophobic little notch, no doubt, but it’s a safe one. I’m quite sure it can accommodate all three of you if that is what you wish.

  I for one am feeling the tug. Sloth has been kind in a meaningless sort of way, but I can’t stay in Paris forever. My first mistake was taking the initiative and finding work at a bank. If that isn’t enough to propel me across the Channel for more edifying assignments, I don’t know what will. But before I drag myself from my flat on the Rive Gauche, I could take a little jaunt into the Heart of Darkness to fetch my baby sister, if that’s what’s been called. Mistah Kurtz, I presume, is not yet dead.

  Please, please, let me know your wishes on this front soonest.

  Your loving and anxious brother,

  Hans

  Chapter Nineteen

  On November 10, 1975, Commodore Leonel Cardoso, the last Portuguese high commissioner in Africa, lowered the flag flying over the palace in Luanda and boarded a skiff for a troop ship bobbing in the bay. Four hundred ninety-two years after the king’s caravels dropped anchor at the outpost to be christened São Paulo de Loanda, the remnants of empire set sail for Lisbon, retracing the route Diogo Cão had blazed—in reverse.

  Elizabeth Bromwell followed the collapse of Angola the way most everyone did, if they chose to: She read it deep inside the newspaper. She was adjusting fitfully to a new life in Johannesburg, biding her time, waiting to leave Africa—soon, she figured, though she didn’t know how.

  Her escape train had pulled into Benguela in the early morning darkness, just weeks before Independence Day. Electricity was already running scarce, but the lights of the station were kept off anyway to avoid mortars. The screech of the wheels awoke the passengers in the sumptuous last car. Samuel hushed his companions.

  “Stay quiet, and don’t light anything. Best not to attract attention. We’re staying on until Lobito,” he said in a whisper. “Not much further.”

  Maybe half the train disembarked in Benguela, hoping for rail transit south, into South-West Africa, or a plane ticket out. The rest remained on board for Lobito and the faint hope of a freighter. Elizabeth and João had not asked Samuel what awaited them at the end of the line. Their guide seemed confident enough. He had produced a magic carpet out of the highlands. They could trust him not to improvise the last, most crucial leg.

  An hour and a half later, they reached the great natural seaport of Lobito in the early dawn. On the wide beachhead just beyond the station, a tide of African refugees huddled around driftwood campfires, cooking rats or cats or dogs or whatever could be found. Children heaved jerry cans, still smelling of gasoline but filled with water fr
om a single faucet outside the Benguela Railway office. A ragged line, maybe fifty meters long, of disheveled women and children waited their turn at the tap. In the deepwater harbor, just meters from shore, was a flotilla of freighters. Some were there to get the refugees out. Most were there for one last looting; whole factories and warehouses waited on the docks in massive wooden crates and on pallets.

  Samuel Vanderbroek pushed two of the child soldiers out the door in front, weapons at the ready, then led Elizabeth, João, and Cristina out, followed by the other two boys with guns. They were steps from the offices that housed the railway and port authorities, which appeared to be empty, barred and barricaded. The refugees kept their distance, watching the party with a mix of anger and envy as they crept around the back of the building. Samuel pounded on the door in a rhythmic knock. No one came. He did it again. Still no one. He gave his companions a “don’t worry, everything’s under control” kind of look, then pounded on the door again, this time with such ferocity the wood splintered around the lock. Finally, a faint voice came through, muffled and unintelligible to anyone but Samuel. He shouted something back in Portuguese, and the door opened just enough for the crew to pile in. A little African man, light of skin and bespectacled, bowed obsequiously as they passed, even to Cristina, but not to the soldiers. Samuel barged past.

  “What took you so long, man?” he barked.

  Samuel knew where he was going. The others had to hustle to keep up as he burst into the radio room.

  There sat two large white men, in uniform, sipping tea from military-issue tin cups. Dutch blood had given the South African army an imposing stature.

  “Samuel, nice of you to join us,” one man said in his clipped accent, a rueful smile crossing his face.

  “Good morning, Captain Van Heerden, Lieutenant Roos.”

  “You’re a bit late, Vanderbroek, almost a week,” Roos said.

  Samuel shrugged. “I had a little problem to attend to over the border”—he gestured to João—“with this man. Doctor Major Gonçalves, I’d like you to meet the forward guard of the South African army, Zulu Company.”