by Minot, Susan
Oh God, she said rather loud. He covered her mouth.
He was there close, but too dark to see. She thought of the rough wood on the walls. She felt his face sort of become her face. She heard the river nearby foaming down the hill and saw the line of the mangled trees she’d seen earlier in silhouette against a pale yellow sky. Then she felt she was in a green forest. Then she was on a porch. It was not a porch she knew, it was a porch in America. There were children playing down the block under leafy branches and it was summer somewhere in the South with beds and white chenille bedspreads and old light fixtures on the walls and railings twisting up the stairs inside. A man and a woman were having sex in the hallway. Then it was Jane having sex with a man in the hallway. Wisteria vines filled the screen door and the door banged shut. Another man was getting out of a truck; he was partly Harry. He came over the threshold wearing boots and pulled open her shirt. No, he came into a side room and threw her on a table and pushed her legs apart ignoring her face. He’d seen her earlier in town, he said. His face gazing at her breasts had only one thing in mind driving him. He shifts her to the side and lifts her against the door, holding her underneath, having to crouch and bend his knees. I’ve been thinking of this all day, Harry said with his legs pressing her knees out and her back against the rough wood, pinning her, legs dangling, toes just touching the floor. One foot has a sandal on, a strap tight on her ankle. He held her from beneath, lifting her against him, pressing his hips so she’s on the verge of collapsing but is thrown back, her wrists braced against the frame. He grabs her ass and her feet slip off the floor into the air, with one hand flailing to get a grip on the sink anchoring her, inside the sound of their breathing, and she feels in a sort of tornado as if she’s going up a hill powered by wind with gusts rolling dust around and still going up farther and not quite at the top, reaching a crest. Everything starts to shake and unravel with the earth splitting at her feet and the road cracking sideways and air erupting like glass shattering. Her legs flung wide sent off needles of light or song and she had the feeling of falling at the same time rising, of going out and out as she’s gathering in, feeling her arms and legs dissolve into a bright bank of dust and finally stillness.
I’m old, you know.
Which means?
I don’t know, just I am.
I happen to like old.
Right.
The older the better, he said.
Okay, so—what—you’re perfect?
More perfect than you know.
They were twisted into a bound shape on the bathroom floor. They untangled themselves and shuffled, attached, back to the living room.
In the morning they woke next to other lumped bodies under blankets and thin covers, pushed like waves against the stone walls. Jane opened her eyes to see a shirtless man unbend himself from their Indian bedspread and stand in rumpled underwear. He walked slowly toward the sound of the river picking his way over the bodies and disappearing in the light at the door, the back of his head in a rooster’s plume of hair. She thought it was the pilot. On the other side of Harry were two heads touching and four arms draped toward each other.
Her head rested on Harry, on the shoulder of this new person. Her mouth was dry and her eyes heavy, but her body felt loose and light. Some people you met and right away knew they were important. Or it might take a while for you to understand how that first moment when you felt taken aback was a jolt not away but to this new person. And if it turned out the other person had a similar thing happen, then it was one of those connectings that happen not often.
She lay on his shoulder and thought that Harry was now important. What important meant she could not have said, but the word was there. She pictured the letters carved in wood. She thought of his voice in the dark, saying, Take this off. It sounded a little cruel. She drifted on the thought of it, playing it over in her mind.
Later that day they were in the car driving back to Nairobi.
Harry told her about the girl he liked, Rosalie. He saw her at a party, wearing a jumpsuit with zippers. She was small, with skin so pale you could see her veins. Everyone was dancing. Harry had broken his foot and was dancing with a crutch which he threw across the floor and she jumped over. After, they went driving and stayed up all night, sitting on the top of her Jeep and watching the sun rise over Lake Elementaita. She had a boyfriend, so nothing happened. That is, no touching happened, but something had happened. Her hands, he said, looked like an old person’s hands. Rosalie told him that she had to give some thought to her boyfriend now, now that she’d met Harry. Afterward he wrote her a letter and she wrote back. She still loved her boyfriend, she said, and didn’t know what to do. They kept writing letters to each other. She was still deciding.
What do you write to her? Jane asked.
That I’m waiting for her.
Jane lay across the seat with her head in his lap. Harry pushed back her hair. It had been a long time since she’d touched a person. It made a person feel transformed. Before falling asleep in the bumping truck she thought of how she had come to this other country wanting to disappear, but now felt more vivid than ever. It seemed possible that she might actually be finding herself in some new form.
They reached Nairobi after nightfall. On the Langata Road less than a mile from Harry’s, their tire blew and they thumped to a stop. Harry changed it as Jane sat on a dead tree watching in the eerie quiet. A lone streetlight shone amber far down the road like a figure from another era. Harry popped the tire off and cranked the jack, and she watched how youthful his quick movements were and how smooth was the skin of his neck between his parted hair and how nicely shaped were his strong arms, and the perfect contentment she’d felt all day deflated a little with the arrival of her first wish—for more. If only she were that young. She had a keen longing then to be a younger girl whose freshness would make him delirious, the way his was making her.
They were back from their mission, she told herself. Mission was what Harry called it. They’d had a nice moment, she explained to herself. So that was probably that. She would be happy with that, then. Happiness came in pieces anyway. One had to be happy with the pieces as they came. She was trained in gathering pieces. When you had the bad luck to love a person who cared for drugs more than you, then you adjusted to the netherworld of Nothing’s perfect and Whoever said you got what you wanted and It will get better. Those pieces were sharp and cut you, but you still collected them. You justified the cuts.
They went back to Harry’s house. He referred to it as his parents’ house, even though he’d grown up there. A few spotlights shone outside a garage and at one end of a large roof. She followed him across a dark lawn of stiff tropical grass to the guesthouse. Inside was a wide stone fireplace and heavy wooden furniture and to the side a small bedroom with a mattress of clean sheets in the middle of a cement floor. Harry was under the covers when she returned from the bathroom and she switched off the living room light. She slid in next to him and had the lovely surprise, which always remained surprising, of the first contact with the skin of another warm body which felt, well, like a miracle.
He turned her sleepily. She wasn’t wishing for anything then, only this. All right, more of this, then. She felt as if she were on a train, jerking to a start. The slow chugging of the engine was her body coming alive again. As the speed increased, possibilities of the trip expanded. Maybe the journey would not be short. There was hope in the body against her. Maybe it would be a long trip. The Orient Express or the Trans-Siberian Railway. She was riding the shaky rails. She was going faster. Now she was being hurled up against the ceiling.
When she landed in slow motion some time later, her gaze drifted to a blurry window where dawn had turned the sky glass-blue through a pane of lead squares like the windows you see in old churches.
In the late morning, returning to the cottage, Jane found Lana having breakfast in bed with her silver tray. Lana patted the pillow beside her and poured Jane a cup of coffee from a silver pot. R
aymond has buggered off, Lana said. He’s tossed us for a safari job. Don’t blame him, really. But—she used a pointedly hopeful tone—Don wants to come.
Don?
Lana shrugged, as if uncertain whether she was ready to promote the idea. He thinks it might be interesting. He has a car.…
Jane looked at her.
Lana bit her toast and studied Jane’s face, gauging her reaction. He can always help with the cash flow? she said, chewing.
Later after dinner Lana and Don peeled themselves up off the Balinese bed and slipped away to Lana’s room. It was an early night. Jane and Harry stayed collapsed on the pillows, upholstered in hemp and stamped with a black and beige triangular pattern. In the deeper cushions Pierre was asleep.
I’ll take you, Harry said out of nowhere.
Where?
To Uganda. I’ll drive.
You will?
Sure. I’ve got a truck.
That would be great, she said. Really?
He looked at her. His face was an inch from hers and his lowered eyes were cool. I just said I would.
What about the cows? she said.
Screw the cows.
Really?
Keep saying really and I’ll change my mind.
A warmth spread in her chest.
She couldn’t pay him, she told him, but could cover the gas and his room and board. She had a minor expense account from the magazine, she said, actually, hardly believing it herself, since she had no real credentials as a journalist.
It’s better if you don’t hire me, Harry said. If I’m hired I usually get sacked.
The guest room where Jane was staying had been painted by Lana, salmon and green. Its lantern threw half-moons of light on the stucco wall. Harry got in with her under the pink mosquito net.
He had been with her now three nights and each night in a different bed in a different place. She was in that early lull of physical happiness when going over it was a pleasure, with no real qualms yet. She felt a sinking deeper. And now he was coming with them on her trip. It’ll be what it is, she said to herself, as proof she was without illusion, but having no more idea what It’ll be what it is meant other than a hope against the sinking.
Again departure was postponed so Lana threw another dinner party.
She went into action, arranging what needed to be done, talking to the cook, unruffled and focused. Her energy spread outward and Jane helped her push three tables together and move brass elephants. Lana shook out a long white tablecloth stamped with silver and blue paisley which landed like a sail.
From Jaipur, she said. Lana’s things each had a story—linen napkins were from Porta Portese in Rome, gold-dotted plates passed down from her grandmother in Paris, the striped red and green Venetian glasses from the lover trying to woo her back. That worked, she said, for a while.
The cottage had four small rooms packed like a treasure chest. In her thirty-six years Lana had covered a lot of ground. There were the small business ventures: lanterns from Morocco, the alabaster Indian lamps, the belts with Maasai beading. She’d worked as a set designer and fund raiser, started schools for the Rendille in the bush. Her tastes were both extravagant and rustic. A chandelier hung from a water buffalo horn on the terrace. She was generous whether flush or broke. For all the pleasure she found in things, she did not have the hoarding instinct of the materialist. You liked her bracelet? Here. She would unclasp it from her wrist and snap it onto yours.
She held up a conch shell filled with salt. Sweet, she said. She had dressed for dinner in a short satin slip, boots laced to her knees and dark lipstick. Now, she said, most important, the lighting. They lit lanterns and candles which had been placed in abundance around the cottage on stands and floors and tables crowded with silver cups.
How old is Harry? Jane said.
What do you think?
Twenty-six? Jane said tremulously. Five?
More like twenty-three, darling.
You’re kidding.
Or twenty-two. What, you care? Age doesn’t matter.
It doesn’t?
For dinner there was a platter of grill-marked chicken sprinkled with singed herbs, roast pork beside peeled potatoes, stewed eggplant in tomato sauce, green beans shiny with butter and garlic, curried lentils, ribs, shredded cabbage, sliced avocado. Lana’s housekeeper and another woman carried dishes in and out of the kitchen, taking orders from Lana in Swahili, without seeming to hear them.
By the time the cook’s specialty, coconut flan, was brought out, no one at the table seemed to notice, deep in conversation or having left altogether. Many were out on the concrete terrace, dancing to the turned-up music. By the end of the night however there was no pudding left in the dish. The servants slipped in and out, clearing the plates, leaving glasses and candles and flowers, and a spotlessly washed-up kitchen. The music pounded.
Jane, feeling dazed from drink, from Harry, looked around the room at the people she didn’t know, at ones she barely did, in this place where people returned from war zones, from managing famines, from living in tents among the elephants, or being gored by buffalo, a place where everyone seemed matter-of-factly to lead a life of extremity and daring. Harry was with his parents tonight. They’d just returned from a trip vaccinating livestock before they were to leave again. In his absence, her thoughts of him were more vivid. He was young. He was quite young. She kept thinking of him being young. She remembered how easy it had been at that age to take up with a person. It happened all the time—new people came, you were with them. When they were gone, more new people would come. When she looked at it from that point of view she saw they were no big deal. She thought she’d try to adopt that viewpoint. Adopting other people’s viewpoints, you could convince yourself you were being empathetic—never mind you were ignoring your self.
More people arrived and the dancing grew wilder. One man took off his shirt and was rolling around on the lawn, a dog barking at him hysterically. In between songs you heard the high squawk of an animal, the hyrax who lived and shat on the roof.
Monday morning, readying for departure at last, Jane sat on a bed piled with linen pillows and watched Lana pack. Lana was tall but seemed larger than a normal tall person. She surveyed her room, eyes narrowed, hands on leather shorts. She was accustomed to packing and moving her caravan, but not having to restrain herself in volume. The room was as full as a bazaar, and indeed she had either bought or sold most of the things in it: piles of vintage fabric, leather-trimmed suitcases, necklaces draped on rusted hooks. She picked up an ancient wicker picnic basket with cylindrical holders for wine bottles.
This we take, she said. She opened the lid to show Jane the relics of the 1920s inside—tin plates with embossed leaves, miniature glass salt bottles fitting in felt holders, a silver-rimmed martini shaker.
What else? she said to herself. The tucks on either side of her mouth deepened in concentration. She strode across the room. Unlike some tall people who try to shrink themselves smaller, Lana strode with the confidence of a giant, jangling when she moved. She hoisted a trunk from behind a stand overloaded with brimmed hats and oilskin jackets and fished out a stack of brand new T-shirts. These we bring for the children, she said, and stuffed them in a canvas bag decorated with beadwork, another one of her ventures.
Jane told Harry that Don was coming with them, too. He shrugged. It struck Jane how lightly people here held on to agendas. She was used to a world of people wielding control in order to have things run smoothly which, she noticed, often caused more tension than peace.
Maybe he’ll learn something, Harry said. From Lana.
Jane thought of what Harry had learned from Lana. To fill out the thought, she said, She’s an expansive—Jane was going to say soul but thought it sounded pretentious—spirit.
You mean she sleeps with everyone? Harry did not say it unkindly.
No, I—
Well, she does. He paused then added, Me among them, you know.
Yes, Lana did say … J
ane waited for him to elaborate. It seemed that many people here had, if they’d been here long enough, slept with many other people.
Lana’s got a lot to give, he said.
It was a surprise to Jane when someone was not cynical in the least.
Lana was now examining a pair of breakable crimson Moroccan glasses with gold designs. She shook her head and returned them to their hammered brass tray. She found a stack of tin Mexican cups pressed in the shape of bells. Yes, she said, these we can use. It was hard to say which gave her more pleasure—having the things herself, or the thought of offering them to someone else.
When they left Nairobi at last, they got caught in the afternoon traffic. Though if they’d left in the morning it would have been the morning traffic, or in the evening, the evening. There was always traffic around Nairobi, except for late at night when all the cars disappeared and there was no one at all.
Harry drove with Jane beside him. Her body now felt linked to his, and with it came the certainty that his person inside was good and unique and inspiring, regardless of the fact that only a smallest amount of Harry was known to her.
Pierre and Don were in the back on either side of Lana who was tucked into Don’s shoulder. Finally they left the traffic behind and the truck hummed over unsmooth road. The passengers fell asleep, bumping awake over potholes. When Jane woke, her window overlooked a valley dropping off the roadside with houses scattered among greenery and Lake Naivasha a purple disc below. The pink lace at the edge of the gray flats was a flock of flamingos. They stopped at a pull-over overlooking the valley when Lana spotted a display of Maasai blankets strung up on sapling branches, and could determine from a distance they were the old wool ones, not the new polyester blend. A woman sat in the shade with narrow shoulder blades and rectangular beaded earrings and was surprised by Lana’s speaking Maasai to bargain. Harry hunched down to a blanket spread with collar necklaces and belts dangling arrows and beaded leather bracelets. The old bracelets used gut, the new, plastic thread. He bought one, with red and green diagonal bands. Lana pointed out to Don where they were headed, to the right of the lake, her sister Beryl’s house. They were stopping for a night or two. Beryl’s husband Leonard was an artist and Lana was keen to show Don his work.
