by Ward Just
How could such a thing happen?
She had followed instructions to the letter.
She had done everything they told her to do.
Everything will be fine, they said.
In the corridor someone giggled, no doubt one of the young nurses. The doctors were brutes but the nurses were kind. Their voices rose in a British-accented lilt, asking if she was better, if the pain was manageable, giving her pills and a damp cloth to wash with. One of the nurses did May’s hair, washing and combing and giving her a mirror to see the result. Day and night she sweated in the heat. The doctors wanted to discharge her after four days but she resisted, and Harry told them she would stay an extra day, two or three days if necessary. She could not bear returning to the embassy residence, “home” as Harry said, but no longer home to her. The doctors told her quite bluntly that she would have no more children. Why in God’s name did you wait so long before coming to us? Sensible people did not wait so long. Americans especially were impatient. Unwilling to take precautions. Finally May told them to shut up. She found disease and death all around her, her days saturated with them. She did not know how she would resume her former life, one that now seemed to her pointless, almost a sham. She did not think it possible to resume her former life. She looked out the window at a flowering tree and burst into tears. Behind the tree somewhere were children roughhousing. Harry came into her room with a cup of steaming tea and she turned her face and waved him off. She did not want tea. She wanted to go home but was not strong enough to move. Harry put a cluster of flowers in the vase next to her bed and tiptoed out as he had tiptoed in. She called him back but her voice was too weak to carry. They had planned to call their daughter Josiana, the name of a character from one of Hugo’s novels, the one about the smiling man. May said the name out loud and was tormented. Near dawn, the day’s heat already beginning to build, May began to think more clearly. She had counted so on the baby, had thought of little else for months and months. The second-floor bedroom was fixed up with a crib and bright pictures on the wall, animal pictures, cats and cocker spaniel dogs, deer, raccoons, a Shetland pony. Harry’s secretary had given her a charming recording of verse, Jim Copp Tales it was called. Helen Sanders had sent box after box from the baby department at Saks, duvets and pillowcases, stuffed animals, teething rings, and little hats, and from Tiffany a silver spoon and matching cup. Harry Sr. sent her a check for a thousand dollars with instructions to buy something frivolous, and that caused her to laugh because there were no frivolous things in central Africa; few enough essentials, nothing trifling—and then at a stall in the market downtown she found a beautiful ebony sculpture of a bird and bought that and put it on the mantel of the second-floor bedroom in the baby’s line of sight; cost, fifty dollars. She would have it always, a souvenir of central Africa. May knew she was carrying a girl. The doctor guaranteed it.
Josiana’s room was air-conditioned. Of course for the first month she would stay with her mother. Not too long, though; sooner rather than later she would sleep by herself in the crib, the better to learn self-sufficiency. May would not raise her baby as she herself had been raised, willy-nilly, and later, when Josiana could walk and speak and think for herself, she would be encouraged. She would be loved unconditionally. Every night May would read to her and soon enough she would begin to read by herself. And then they would be long gone from central Africa, no place for small children. She and Harry would protect her always. They would be a real family at last. Their daughter would be surrounded by love. That was the main thing. Now all that, everything, was lost. May thought of the baby’s room as an installation in a museum, static, lifeless, and curated. And it would always be there, a snarl in her memory, and Harry’s, too. She hoped this snarl would unite them but she was not certain of that. She was not certain of anything except the ache of loss.
May saw the future as a void, formless, without boundaries, without context, without—beauty. She could not see the next step. She was torn up inside, and that, too, was void. What had she done to deserve this? Nothing at all except to take an airplane ride on the wrong day. Perhaps to take an airplane in the first place instead of trusting the kindly doctor who was so disappointed that he would not assist at the birth of her child. He was insulted, scorned. May was embarrassed to tell him that they were trusting the English, the white people. As if he were a clumsy back-alley practitioner. But everyone said that was what she must do. Harry insisted on it and she had gone along without complaint. It was inconceivable to her that anything could go wrong. Such a thought had never entered her mind. She looked to the window, the sun streaming through; it hurt her eyes to look at it. The heat continued to build and she remembered her father’s word for such days: scorchers. She heard noises in the corridor and then the door opened. She closed her eyes, pretending sleep, and whoever it was went away. May wanted to believe in a future with promise, she and Harry happy together in a pretty house somewhere, a home as opposed to a residence. She feared her own life was disappearing into Africa, and Africa never yielded. You accommodated yourself to it like an aerialist on a high wire, watchful every minute. The void was unforgiving. Yellow sunlight advanced in the room. She closed her eyes once again and tried to sleep. She was weary of enigma, realizing that she knew so little about them, what they believed in, their hopes for themselves beyond food on the table and a bed to sleep in and protection from hunger, disease, and gangs of armed men, usually drunk. Probably the people would want a grade school within walking distance and qualified teachers and books to go into the classroom and some sense of what was in store when the children could read and write. The rule of law would count for something. She had no idea what was required actually.
Sleep approached. The silence was strained, something sinister about it, a held breath. May turned toward the door and saw it was open a crack, and as she watched, the door eased shut. The window curtains closed and the room was abruptly dark. She did not wish to speak with anyone. She was exhausted but sleep would not come. The room’s heavy atmosphere closed in around her. The medicinal smell went away, replaced by something else. She felt crowded so she screwed her eyes shut and wondered what to think about. What would bring sleep? She willed herself not to think of Josiana or anything to do with Josiana but she found Victor Hugo in her thoughts, his huge heart and vast knowledge of the good and the corrupt. Maybe when they left this place she would give her Hugo books to the school, if there was one by then. Hugo had a fine eye for corruption, perhaps too fine for an African child. Parisian corruption was on a special scale. It required a highly developed civilization and a government to go with it, that is to say complement it. What need for a Kalashnikov when you had a learned notaire? May wondered if Victor Hugo had ever seen Africa. Surely not, unless it was North Africa, another milieu altogether. Hugo would not have trouble sleeping. He rarely slept. Instead, he wrote. She remembered then that Hugo was born well after the French Revolution. Her forehead was damp. The smell of the bush was in the room, but how could that be? She felt a slight breeze. She was covered by a single counterpane but felt its weight. She forgot about Hugo.
She said, Go away.
I must sleep.
Sleep crept closer, then backed off. She heard the door open and close. She believed she was hallucinating and tried to put the hallucination to good use. She was riding horseback in the desert when she came upon an ancient house, a house centuries old, uninhabited. She drew near but had difficulty controlling the horse. At the horizon the sun began to set and then above the sun an enormous blue moon. The desert was flooded with light as her horse moved off at a trot. She was having trouble with the saddle, and then she floated free, wrapped in the counterpane. Her body pain seemed to ease. Sleep came at last, accompanied by a kiss on the forehead. Harry.
May told Harry she was self-conscious every day. She said she didn’t feel she counted for anything, and she wondered if that was one reason she had counted so on their child, perhaps in the way a composer counted on
producing a beautiful piece of music, unique in all the world. Once born, the music would find its own way, the composer a bystander. That was how she thought of their little girl and was consoled, partly. She said, I had a child and I lost her. I lost her because we stepped on an airplane a day later than we should have. And my life changed forever. Your life, too. And when I was told I would never again have a child, that the music had stopped for good, I realized I was living in a shadow world where I am a visitor and not a very welcome visitor, anyhow no more than a visitor. I am that anonymous woman you see in the railway station looking at the arrival and departure signboard. You look away. Minutes later you look up again and see that I have not moved. You look away once more, as you have no wish to become involved with one who is so plainly distressed. And when next you take a sidelong glance I am gone, God knows where. Your first thought is relief. Your second is chagrin because your natural curiosity will never be satisfied. I am gone, vanished. Often arrival and departure are different words for the same thing. And what I am wondering is whether it was wise for me to leave the Northeast Kingdom, dreadful as my life was with my family. Perhaps some people are meant to remain where they were born. Not an American thought, I agree. I wonder sometimes if I do not have the mentality of a European peasant, fearful of the outside world, suspicious of it, frightened of it, knowing that it is not my place. I am not an ambitious person. I do not wish to be a senator or a film star or a corporate executive. I wish to live at peace, find my own life. Read my books. Did I tell you I bought a camera? I intend to photograph the things that are in my vision, the life around me, the surroundings that appear to me so alien.
Give it time, darling.
I have. I will.
You didn’t tell me about the camera.
I did. You weren’t listening.
When was that?
Months and months ago. When I was pregnant.
I’ll be damned. I don’t remember at all.
It was late at night.
Maybe I was asleep.
Maybe, she said with the beginning of a smile.
I’m sorry about all this, Harry said.
Then May said, Do you know who I met the other day? A girl reporter.
Harry said, Which one?
She worked for one of the American magazines. She was the first female reporter I’ve met, not that she had any interest in talking to me. She was all over the place, interviewing people, getting their names and ages, listening to their complaints. She was tireless. She never shut up. And after she’d loaded up her notebooks with the complaints she went to the village chief and his deputy and your man Axel and demanded that something be done. Where was the food that was promised? What about the medicines? She was in their faces writing down what they said. Their excuses. She kept saying that she had a “hell of a piece, just a hell of a piece” and that she would try to put things right. She was very aggressive. She was a dervish, that one.
I know the one you mean. She’s a pain in the ass. She thinks everything should have been done yesterday if not the day before. She’s smart, by the way. Watch yourself when you’re with her.
Are there many of them?
More all the time, Harry said. Thank God we don’t attract much attention here.
She was remarkable, May said.
On the other hand, she has been helpful to me once or twice.
What do you mean?
Publicity at the right time can grab the attention of the State Department like no cable ever does.
She never gave up. She’d ask a question and refuse to shut up until she got the answer. I can’t say I cared for her much. She walked in a kind of strut. She was like an actress. Your eye went to her.
She takes some getting used to, Harry said. Her name is Zoe.
I suppose she’s younger than me by ten years. Not an especially attractive girl. She wore a bush hat and a safari jacket. Rolex wristwatch, by the way. Sandals. She’d painted her toenails pink. But we were so different. She loved what she was doing. Loved it to death, Zoe. She fit right in.
That’s their specialty, Harry said. Fitting in. They want you to forget they’re writing everything down.
I don’t fit in, May said. I am unmoored except to you. Is that a burden? I imagine it is. My efforts here are provisional. Cosmetic, I would say. Validated only in the photo opportunity at the orphanage or clinic. Ambassador’s Wife Dedicates Child Care Center. And that’s me, wearing a pair of sensible shoes and a smart American smile, a mannequin in a shop window.
Oh, come on, Harry said.
You try it sometime.
I do it all the time. It’s part of the damned job.
You’d be better off with Zoe, with her bush hat and her Rolex. Did you find her attractive?
May, he said. Don’t say that.
Thing is, May said, I’m not certain we belong here at all. I’m not certain that the people wouldn’t get along better if we were gone. They got along fine without us for hundreds, thousands of years.
They did not get along fine without us.
They’re still here, aren’t they?
What we do here is valuable. We should be doing more, not less.
I wish I could be convinced. I’m not.
They depend on us, Harry said.
That’s another problem. Dependency.
You have a point there, Harry said.
May did not reply to that.
We have a year to go, Harry said. Can you bear it?
I can bear it.
Later this month we’ll go somewhere.
I’d like that, she said.
You choose, he said.
All right, she said.
You can forget about the photo opportunities. I’ll put a stop to them.
Thank you, she said.
Christ, he said. This place. It’s so—
Strenuous, she said.
Strenuous, Harry agreed.
Thank God we’re together, May said.
As spring turned to summer, May’s mood improved and once again she pitched in, organizing relief efforts, volunteering at clinics and schools and the other places where there was need of the ambassador’s wife. She tried to set herself apart, recognizing the limits of compassion. Her new attitude was successful at first, then less so. She did not thrive. She grieved for the victims, and there were so many of them, children especially, most of them famished, some of them suffering from diseases too exotic to treat with any confidence that the medicines would actually work. She was astonished at the forbearance of the mothers. One afternoon a child died in May’s arms and she did not know it until a pair of ragged hands tore the child from her and disappeared into the bush, leaving May aghast. How could she not have realized that the child was gone? But the very young children were so small, scarcely larger than dolls, with a doll’s eyes and a doll’s rubbery skin and unnatural hair. The rosebud smile was missing. They were passive like dolls and often when they opened their mouths no sound came forth. The act of speech was too much for them, and each day word came of a fresh disease that turned healthy men into skeletons. Nothing had prepared May for this experience—and then she remembered the doctor at the English hospital asking if she wished to see her stillborn child, and she recoiled in despair and turned her face to the wall. Words failed her. If you asked her, as Zoe did one day, if she felt she was effective in her rescue work, she would have replied, Yes, within limits. Within the bounds of what she was called upon to do. Yes, in the sense of an amateur mariner successfully navigating a rowboat on the open ocean. Within the boundaries of time and tide and the weather and God’s will and her own morale. She asked the reporter Zoe, Is it true that conditions are much worse in Ivory Coast? She opened her mouth to say more but her escort Axel, the embassy’s aid administrator, observing her distress and finding trouble ahead, cut short the interview and hustled her into the embassy van. One more clinic to visit.
Home at last, May stepped through the front door and into the foyer. She heard th
e servants rattling plates in the kitchen. Through the porch door she saw Harry having a drink beside the pool. The water was a soft turquoise. The day’s heat was beginning to lift. Harry wore a planter’s hat, its wide brim casting his face in shadow. His skin was brown from the sun. May stood a moment watching him. Harry had an open book in his lap but he was not reading. He was staring into space and smiling, preoccupied as he so often was. May was exhausted, and when she looked at the pool she thought it could have been a suburban pool anywhere in America, a low board at the far end, wooden tables and chairs here and there, a portable bar under the awning. Then she noticed a copy of Newsweek at Harry’s feet. May had a sudden desire for a swim and went at once to their bedroom and pulled on her bikini. Downstairs, she ran through the door and dived over Harry’s feet into the pool. She swam one lap and another and gave it up after four laps. She hung on the side of the pool and Harry handed her a gin and tonic, the lime bright in the failing sun.
Harry said, You ought to check out the water before you dive in. They found a cobra in there the other day. Little one.
She said, I. Don’t. Give. A. Shit. About. Cobras.
That’s what I told Gamal. Let the cobras flourish, I said.
We had timber rattlers in Vermont. Seldom seen, but once seen, never forgotten. Nasty brutes.
They say the same’s true with cobras.
Do they now? May said.
They surely do, Harry said.
She dipped her head underwater and remained there for a count of fifty while she rubbed her forehead and cheeks, feeling her sweat dissolve. The dead child at the clinic was still on her mind. When she rose from the water, shaking her head like a sea lion, she felt better. The gin helped, too, and she took another swallow, the glass cool and slippery in her hand. She stared at Harry’s feet and legs, brown and taut as a lifeguard’s. Under the brim of his planter’s hat she saw curly locks of hair, hints of gray here and there. He looked ten years younger than his age, a curiosity because he rarely exercised. And then he moved and she saw the scars on the soles of his feet, ugly ridges with suture marks still visible. She gave his foot a soft squeeze. She asked him if he wanted another gin and tonic; she certainly did. Don’t bother, she said. I’ll get them.
