by Minot, Susan
A couple in their fifties stood at a bar crowded with bottles and an ice bucket. They introduced themselves as Chip and Deedee. The man was in all khaki, and the woman looked as if she’d come straight from a country club with a pink polo shirt and a tortoiseshell hair band. They spoke in thick British accents and were getting drinks for the two men whom she’d seen come off the plane. Jane picked up that Chip and Deedee lived a few farms away and had recently had a run-in with a croc. It had nearly attacked a servant.
What it was doing way up on the drive, Chip said, shaking his head.
Deedee was picking up one bottle after another. Do they have the decent vodka? she said.
The men from the plane were introduced. Roy the fair one lit a cigarette. He shook Jane’s hand. Damian, wiry and unshaven, had a surprising smile. They all seemed to know each other.
At dinner everyone drank with enthusiasm. On one side Jane had Chip, whose face grew pink, and Roy on the other side. He turned out to be a doctor, from South Africa. What does everyone think is going to become of that president of yours? he said, but didn’t wait for an answer. I think you need more wine. He refilled her glass. You leaving that meat? He started to pick at the food on her plate. You don’t mind, do you? I eat nothing all week. I’m starving.
The children appeared in their nightclothes, bathed and brushed, to kiss their mother good night. They frowned toward Damian beside her. Their nanny stood near, then followed their orderly procession up the stairs.
Roy was whispering in Jane’s ear. I don’t have a wife yet, but I’m working on it. I do want one. I’d be a good husband. I mean it, if I were married to you I’d come home every night and never stop shagging you. Jane looked at him. His eyes were bloodshot and nearly crossed. He seemed to be talking to someone else. So—what d’you say?
I think not, she said.
Why not?
Otherwise occupied, she said.
What, that guy? He pointed down the table to Harry.
Lana had her arms draped over Harry’s shoulders and was speaking close to his ear. Harry cut his meat, chewing, listening with a pleasant expression. Lana drew back her face to look at him, as if waiting for an answer. He nodded, thinking. Across the table, Don frowned at them.
That kid? Roy said. His head rolled back in amazement. Some slacker? I bet he still lives with his mother and has a motorcycle and goes hang-gliding.…
Paragliding, actually, Jane said.
Exactly! Roy’s hands went up. What’re you doing with him? Don’t you want a man?
Guess not, Jane said, smiling.
Okay, he said. Then his face went stony and he swiveled away from her to Deedee on the other side. Tell me, when was the last time you performed surgery? he said.
Oh God, she said, not for ages.
Released from conversational duties—on her other side Chip was describing generator problems—Jane looked around the table. With everyone engaged she was free just to look. She watched everyone’s hands. Some were holding cigarettes, some set down a glass. Lulu fingered a choker with bitten fingernails as Pierre rolled a cigarette, listening to her with low-lidded merriment. Lana gestured as if she were opening a fan. Beryl held a long strand of her hair across her bottom lip, watching Damian draw something with his knife on the table.
The wings are double like this for sexual attraction, Jane heard him say, not for flight at all. Harry’s hand lay along the back of Lana’s chair. Looking at his hand gave Jane a peaceful feeling.
For dessert out came a layered kiwi tart with strawberries and a silver bowl of whipped cream. Lana, noticing Don’s expression, brought him over to the couch by the fire and settled him beside her. She crossed her boots on his knees, anchoring him down. Soon his face lost its frown and grew flushed and merry. His hand disappeared in her clothing.
At the end of the table Jane heard Beryl whisper to Damian, Man is way out of his depth. Low laughter followed.
Jane went back to the room to use the bathroom and found a candle lit on the bedside table and ironed white sheets folded back like in a hotel. She hadn’t planned on turning in yet, but it looked so inviting and she lay down for a moment. As she closed her eyes she found herself searching for the place inside her that didn’t care whether Harry came in or not.
When she woke it was dark and his body was beside her, asleep. She felt like an animal in the woods watching the lights in a house, waiting for him to come out and look for her. People said that men were the ones who thought about sex all the time. She was like a man then. Except that after sex she thought about it more, not less. It didn’t seem to matter that sex didn’t necessarily get you where you wanted to be: satisfied with yourself. But you had momentary satisfactions, the beautiful release and a feeling of wholeness. Sex was the wire in the dark, a jolt to the spirit, like the shocks they give people with massive coronaries to get things beating again. His arms around her infused her with calmness and she felt herself shimmering.
In the morning she woke. She pictured him reaching over and pulling her across the sheet or dropping a heavy hand on her hip to check she was still there before dragging her over. She waited for his head to turn and his eyes to open in her direction. The hope felt like a thread whipped in a frantic wind; it was terrible.
He stirred and her heart leapt, vibrating. He rolled to his side of the bed and stood up. His hair stuck out like dark straw. He pawed through a crumpled pile of clothes. The muscle in his lower back was a nice square shape. He found a shirt. He pulled on dusty shorts with an automatic air, then, noticing her there, said, Coffee, in a neutral not unfriendly way and left the room. Her gaze fixed itself on where he’d been and she felt as if she were dangling from a hook high in a tree.
For God’s sakes, she said to herself. She was here for a reason. She had a story to write, something more substantial than her pathetic yearnings.
At breakfast the reports of early rains washing out the border crossing to Uganda at Malaba made them decide to stay in Naivasha another day. And Leonard was supposed to return that night. Any reason could change plans; no one objected.
Jane read her book on the veranda among red hibiscus trees. Harry returned from wandering around the farm with directions to a good flying place near Eldoret. A few hours later Jane was standing on the side of a treeless hill in tall dry grass, camera strap around her wrist, looking up the slope where Harry’s figure grew smaller as he trudged with his oversized knapsack to the top. The plain below was green and brown brush with wisps of smoke here and there.
Jane sensed movement nearby. Out of the beige grasses three small figures came running up the slope toward her, chests open, arms pumping. About ten feet from her they stopped abruptly, as if hitting a wall. Two boys and a girl stood staring.
Jambo, Jane said. Habari. Hello.
The boys giggled. Hello, they said, covering their mouths. Their T-shirts were in varying stages of disintegration. The girl wore a pink dress with torn ruffles. Her hand kept hold of the older boy’s as she regarded Jane with a penetrating frown.
Wewe kijiji? Jane pointed to the cluster of thatched huts farther down the rutted road where they had parked the truck. Direct translation: You village?
The children stared. Maybe she had the words wrong.
Pitcha, pitcha, said the biggest boy.
You want a picture? Jane said. She lifted her camera and they ducked into the grass, swatting at each other and laughing.
Okay. No picture. Jane turned and kept walking up the hill. The tops of the grass brushed her knees. The children followed. She stopped and turned; they stopped too, smiling. She went on and they followed. She arrived at a rock and sat.
The older boy pointed to Harry, now a silhouette on the moonlike curve of the hill. Mzungu?
He’s flying, Jane said. She put her arms out and flapped. She had picked up the word for bird. Ndege, she said.
The children stared at the tiny figure with incredulity, then back at Jane.
You English? said the talle
st boy, surprising her.
No, American.
America, he said. San Francisco. You San Francisco?
No. I’m New York City.
America, said the boy, nodding. Monica Lewinsky.
Yes, said Jane. That’s right.
The three pairs of eyes, close to each other, did not take their gaze from her, sizing her up. No matter where you went, it was always the children who came up to strangers. They were interested.
Ndege? the smaller boy said, and pointed up the hill.
She nodded.
The children dissolved again in laughter.
It doesn’t look as if he’s getting any wind though, Jane said.
Harry had reached the top and was standing, unmoving in his helmet. The parachute was out of view.
The children sat on the ground, curling around each other. Children had time to chat with strangers.
You married? the boy said.
What? No. Not married. She held out her left hand as if in a Doris Day movie.
Babies?
No, no babies either.
You should have babies.
God, she thought, him too. You think so? she said.
The smaller boy jumped up, pointing up the hill. Harry was airborne, dangling below the fat caterpillar of the parachute.
He’s up, Jane said.
They watched him drift along in a straight line, not too high, as if sailing on a calm sea. He wasn’t riding a thermal, he was just being blown.
From below in the area of the huts came the sound of pots clattering and a woman calling. The smaller boy cuffed the back of the girl’s head and took off running. She didn’t flinch but stood, looking a little longer at Jane, as if to memorize her face, then took off, following. Jane thought how little she could envision what their lives were like.
She walked in the direction of Harry’s drifting. He was going fast now. She ran, feeling the curve of the hill as if it were the globe she was transversing. She stopped and walked, looking at her short boots, and thought how different she would feel if she were here alone. Even the air was different if someone was nearby and you were following him. Having spent a lot of time alone, she could easily imagine how it would feel if no one else were there, walking in the high grass, connected to the ground and grass. Images of other people would appear at the back of her mind in a sort of random collage. When you were alone, they visited you. With a person nearby, even if he was drifting through the air, you felt the lines attaching you and did not have the same inward gaze.
By the time she reached him, Harry had his sail packed up.
You had an audience, she said. They were impressed.
I think it’s safe to say that no other humans have probably flown off that hill.
But they knew about Monica Lewinsky.
Children know everything, Harry said. He glanced back to the hill. If there were more wind … I’d like to try again on our way back.
They stepped off the lumpy grass onto a rough road and headed for the truck.
Behind them a woman screamed. Harry put his hand on Jane’s shoulder, stopping her. They looked back toward the huts and saw a woman in a yellow shirt screaming from a doorway. A man could be seen scurrying off in an odd crouched position. The woman’s arm was raised as if she’d just thrown something, and the hand stayed up, with fingers spread. Harry studied the scene for a moment, then he turned Jane’s shoulders around.
Come on. He moved her forward. She glanced back. The woman was bending over to pick up the girl, whose pink dress was streaked with red.
She’s bleeding, Jane said. The woman lifted her and carried her back inside.
Family business, Harry said. Not for us.
She trusted Harry, so she went, but thought how children, the ones most needing protection, were perhaps the hardest to save.
On the drive back, nearing Naivasha, the sky lost its ochre glow at the horizon, and the air quickly darkened. No one drove at night if you could help it. You were more likely to be robbed on the road at night. With no streetlights outside of town and only a few other headlights beaming by, it was like driving at the bottom of a dark sea. Out the window Jane saw no signs of life in the blackness. She knew the animals were out there though, awake and on the prowl. The black tunnel of road was lit only as far as the headlights reached. Going down a hill, Harry braked abruptly. In the headlights was a dark lump in the road, a roll of clothes in their lane. Harry put the car in neutral, the motor idling in the quiet night, and peered over the steering wheel close to the windshield, trying to make out what was there. He looked out the black windows to his left and right and behind. Carjackers flagged you down for help, then people hiding in the bushes would pounce out. Flat tires happened all the time, but if you were going to help anyone, you took a risk. Stopping at night at all was a risk. Harry pulled on the emergency brake and opened the door, leaving the car running. He got out.
Lock it, he said, and shut the door.
He strode, not quickly but not slowly either, in front of the dim headlights. He stood over the bundle, looking at one end then the other. He bent down and slid his arms underneath, hoisted it like a sack onto his shoulder and across his back. A head appeared, dangling down. Harry carried the body off the road and set it down. Back in the headlights he had his usual expression—as she’d seen in the five long days she’d known him—internally focused and untroubled. Even carrying a passed-out, possibly dead, stranger on his back. He crouched down to see the person more closely, gave the body a pat, then stood up. Jane unlocked the door.
Just drunk, he said, and shifted into gear.
They weren’t far from Beryl’s. She thought about the bed waiting for them there. When they got back, there was a delicious curry dinner and a smaller group at the table. Leonard, however, had not returned.
Beryl’s guest Damian turned out to be not only a paleontologist but an environmental consultant who flew around East Africa. He and Harry were discussing wild dogs. Jane was surprised to learn that when Harry had worked for a couple of years he’d become rather an expert. The wild dogs were, like most every other mammal on the continent save the human, on the decline. Weeks were spent tracking dogs to locate their dens so they could be coaxed out and transported to areas where they’d less likely vanish. There was a movement among those trying to save them to call them by a less off-putting name—painted dogs.
Either way, Harry said, wild dogs are a lot cooler than people realize. Like all dogs, they are a submission-based species, but it’s not to do with sex. Females rule some packs, males rule others. The packs hunt for food together and never fight over it, even when they’re starving. When they want food, they beg for it from each other. They don’t fight.
Jane looked across the table at Harry. Maybe she looked at him a little longer than usual. He winked, unsmiling.
Later they fell into bed like trees and she lay beside him motionless. She listened to his quiet breathing, asleep. Her leg under the covers against him felt alert. The longing had started. She wanted to wake him but didn’t. Mustn’t let them know you need them.
Before dawn, he woke her. They were out before sunrise, carrying their bags off the terrace. Beryl was up to see them off, holding on her hip the youngest boy, chewing at her gold necklace. As they drove away Jane watched her figure in the murky light, her brown arms around her son, still standing as they drove down the alley of eucalyptus trees, still unmoving when the truck crossed the fields and turned out of sight.
An unpaved road took them up small hills where in the dawn light the ground looked sprinkled with pale blue sand between ghostly bushes. The sun rose and the road became pink then turned to pavement and the truck slammed the potholes.
On a steep hill the motor started to sputter and buck. Everyone stirred from their drowsiness. The truck strained upward, slowing to a crawl. Harry’s expression showed no concern. He stopped, put the car in neutral, revved the engine, then put it back in gear. It popped and stalled. He turned the ign
ition key. Nothing. The emergency brake screeched on.
Before anyone had even opened a door Lana was out and on her knees in the pebbly dirt. She flung herself underneath the car so her sandals stuck out with their dark red toenails. Her hand thrust out, holding a cap the size of a shot glass, which Harry took, dumped out, and swiped with his shirt. He handed it back to Lana’s open palm waiting.
When she slid out and stood, her backside was stamped with white. She rubbed her fingers on tufts of grass to clean off the oil and patted herself down. Now let’s give her some juice, she said, and hefted herself back into the truck. The engine started.
Farther down the road, the tire blew.
III
First Days
You are filled with a new intention. Something stretches beyond you, drawing you along, and as you move forward in a dark place you can barely make out shapes and your face feels invisible. No one sees you anymore. You don’t think it, but you have the odd feeling: Maybe this will lead me home.
5 / The You File
YOU TURN NEW in a new place. Where are you being taken?
You will go further and take the way you have not planned.
You wonder where you belong. It seemed you used to belong somewhere. Maybe you never did.
Different things matter.
Sometimes, in longing there is a homesick feeling. But when you picture yourself home, you look out of place, a cutout figure, not fitting in.
You think you have control, but there is no control. Again you are with strangers, in a foreign place, all far from home.
You wait. What else can you do? You wait, and not so patiently either, for moments when clarity and meaning visit you. You try to arrange for their coming, but those moments visit you regardless of—well—regardless of anything.
