by Melanie Finn
She tells me she had a revelation. She takes a long drag, exhales through her nose—a talent which secretly intrigued me as a child, for I thought of dragons. ‘I was in the dentist’s office, back in Ashland, looking through an old National Geographic and there’s a thing about children in Africa with AIDS. I was just about to start reading when the nurse came in and said Doctor Babbits was ready for me. I sat in the chair and Babbits gave me the gas. I have terrible trouble with my teeth. As I was sitting there with him drilling away and feeling a bit floaty, I saw those children. They were alone. They were hungry. They were scared and helpless. I started crying. It was unbearable. Babbits thought it was pain and gave me another hit. But it was the children.
‘I went home—trailer home, trailer park. I kept thinking how I was this fat, useless, middle-aged woman with rotting teeth. Eating, watching TV, waiting tables in an economically fucked, bigoted little town in semi-rural Michigan. “More coffee, sir?” “Can I take your order, Ma’am?” Ten bucks, keep the change on a $9.47 bill. The sum of my life. “Will that be all?” What if it was all? Fifty-three lousy cents.’
Exhale. Fresh cigarette.
‘I have got to quit these damn things before the kids come.’
The housekeeper brings in a tray of coffee and small, dry biscuits. Gloria looks at me enquiringly.
‘White, no sugar,’ I tell her.
‘Figures,’ she says, handing me a cup.
‘Does it?’ I recall my own deductions about black coffee drinkers.
‘Ladylike, careful.’ She takes hers white with three heaping sugars. ‘So I sold my trailer, emptied my savings. You’d be surprised how much money you can save up when you’ve got nothing and no one to spend it on. I flew to Dar, didn’t know anyone, anything. Sure, I was worried that I didn’t have enough money, didn’t know what I was doing. But that was just brain blah-blah. I had conviction: I had to do something about those poor kids, they were all that mattered. That was two years ago.’
I’m genuinely impressed. ‘Just like that?’
Gloria snaps her fingers. ‘I even changed my name. Used to be Mary. Plain old Mary. Tired Mary. Mary of the sore feet. The other waitresses, we’d call ourselves Sisters of the Blisters. On the way to the airport I heard The Doors. And I thought, Gloria. Yes, I will be glorious. And you?’
These last two words jump out at me, unexpected as a barking dog. ‘Me?’
She raises her brow inquisitively.
‘I don’t have a story, Gloria.’ I can’t hold her gaze, so I turn to regard the toys, clean and neatly sorted in boxes. ‘Just the divorce.’
‘Everyone has a story.’
‘Tom was the interesting one.’
‘Tom? The ex? Did he tell you you weren’t interesting?’
‘It wasn’t like that.’
‘Then what was it like?’
‘Usually,’ I say. ‘Usually, people don’t notice I don’t talk. They’re happy talking about themselves.’
‘Now, that is certainly true. I love talking about myself.’
‘He left me.’ I know it’s what she wants, the petty drama. ‘For another woman.’
‘Kids? Kids make a divorce real messy.’
We didn’t want children. We wanted each other. Tom in the doorway, watching me put in the diaphragm. Pushing me against the sink, ‘I need you all the time.’
‘No. No children.’ I start to tear up. It’s like someone’s sliced open an onion.
Gloria truly appreciates the tears. Her voice softens. ‘You’re still young. You’ve got plenty of time.’
‘And you?’ Ping! Lobbing back.
‘Children?’ She puffs out her cheeks. ‘Son. James. But he’s passed.’ She reaches for the cigarettes. ‘Yes, James passed quite a while ago now.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Maybe you wouldn’t be if you’d known him. He turned out wrong.’
It seems so much to reveal, this wrong, dead son, but she wants me to know about him. Who he was and his being dead defines her, pins her like an insect on a lepidopterist’s board. I study her face and search for him. Did he look like her? I wonder where he fits into the dentist’s office, the need to save.
At any rate, Gloria moves on. ‘Hey, I’m being pushy, too direct. That’s the American in me. And, crap, am I going half crazy waiting for this permit. How about I show you around? We could do a little tour of Tanga’s finest tourist attractions.’ She adds this with a little smirk.
She won’t take no for an answer.
Arnau, April 17
Two days after the inquest, I saw Mrs Berger. She was walking along the path from Arnau to the bridge. I was on the way to the bus and hurried to catch up with her.
‘Mrs Berger?’
She stopped and turned. Her face was tightly drawn. Her forehead was deeply furrowed and the skin under her eyes smudged so dark a tone of blue I thought she had been beaten. She was a neat person, dressed so that everything matched her olive wool skirt. The neatness only exaggerated the disarray of her face. She looked at me blankly.
‘Do you know who I am?’
‘Of course.’ She glanced behind me, to see if anyone was coming up the path.
‘I…’
I began.
‘I…’
‘What?’ she said.
‘It’s a relief,’ I said at last. ‘About the inquest.’
‘A relief?’ she said astounded. After looking into the hollows of her eyes for a moment, I looked down, as if on the ground among the wet leaves I might find what it was I should say. I’d chosen the wrong word. There was no relief. There was just another day.
She spoke instead. ‘William is dead.’
‘William?’
‘My dog. He was poisoned.’
‘By whom?’
She waved her gloved hand. ‘One of them.’
‘Are you sure?’
She began to cry, half turning away to hide herself. ‘The vet. Yes. It was rat poison. Placed in a piece of meat. He died in agony.’
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘It’s because I said I loved him like a child. You’re not supposed to love a dog like a child. A child is a sacred thing, oh, the only beloved, not a dog, a stupid animal.’
‘Have you talked to the police?’
‘And should they care?’
‘But it wasn’t your fault.’
Now came a bitter eruption: ‘Of course it was my fault. It was your fault. We together.’
‘The inquest—’
‘The inquest? What does the inquest have to do with anything?’
‘Maybe William saw something—a cat, and you couldn’t have—’
‘And maybe you, maybe you accidentally stepped on the accelerator instead of the brake.’ She spoke in a rush, as if she had to get it out, had to lose control for just a moment. ‘Maybe not even accidentally. Maybe you are crazy, your husband left you and you drove at those children. Maybe you are wicked and spiteful. People say this, and maybe it’s true.’
‘People say—’ but I couldn’t finish. I stepped back, but she stepped forward, her face close to mine. ‘You keep to yourself. Don’t think I will talk to you. Don’t think we will commiserate. You will leave and everyone here will forget about you. But this is my home. For the rest of my life I am not who I was before, I have the story. Always behind me they whisper, “She was the one, those three children, it was her.”’
Tanga, May 26
I unhook my shopping basket from the handlebars and leave my bike with Mickey at the market. I take the daladala to Raskazone. Its route ends a couple of hundred yards before the Yacht Club. I’ll have to walk the last mile to the cottage. The tout urges me into the back. He says I’ll be one of the last off. Never having told him where I’m staying, I wonder how he knows. I assume I’m marked: a single, white woman, a circus freak or celebrity; everyone knows I’m renting the white cottage at the end of the peninsula road. Hopefully, everyone knows: no computer, no TV. Just a small suitcase an
d a box.
The daladala defies physics. Clearly, the center should not hold: the doors, floor and side panels should fall off. The wheels should pop like buttons, roll into the sea. But somehow it proceeds down the street, the tout hanging out the sliding door, Arabic music blaring. We are crammed inside: a total of eighteen adults.
Outside the Bomba Hospital women are ululating. Someone they love has died, a not uncommon event at the Bomba according to Gloria. Three people want to get on the bus, but only two get off. One of the aspiring passengers is a woman holding a baby against her chest with one hand and a young boy in the other. She argues with the tout, and he lets her on, directing her to the six-inch space next to me. She looks at me, then shifts her eyes to the boy, a question.
I nod and the boy climbs onto my lap.
He does not fidget, sitting solemn-eyed. He wears a school uniform, a blue shirt with striped tie and khaki shorts. I study the back of his neck, the deep groove of his nape and the perfect shape of his head. His skin is polished and smooth. He smells faintly of soap, a local brand like Lux.
The daladala jolts along the road, hitting a pothole so he is thrown back against my chest, his head on my shoulder. His mother chides him in sharp Swahili. ‘It’s okay, it’s okay,’ I say. Because I want him there, I want him to lean his head against me, I want my body to hold his, to protect him from the road.
The tout bangs the side of the daladala. We’ve reached the end of the route. The boy turns and looks at me with large, dark eyes, ‘Thank you, madam.’ I smile, ‘You’re welcome.’ I want to kiss him, I want to hold him. Absurdly, I want to make everything right for him, everything, forever; I’ll pay for his schooling, his college, his shoes, his books, he’ll become a doctor.
He and his mother get off ahead of me. Tightening the sling that holds the baby, she takes his hand roughly, pulling on his arm. Don’t, I want to say. He hurries to meet her step, and they walk away up one of the sandy roads that spoke outward. He doesn’t look back.
When, I ask myself, was the last time I held a child? I have no idea. But in that moment I realize I will never hold my own child. I cannot allow that life when I’ve taken it.
Kindermörderin.
Something tears in me, something structural. I give way, my legs buckle. I’m kneeling on the sand.
‘Mama,’ a voice says. A warm hand on my arm. ‘This way, this way.’
I’m walking. There are arms around me, holding me up. Voices. The word mzungu.
I see a pair of feet in sandals scuffing the sand. I realize they are mine.
Down steps, a long flight of stone steps. Familiar, but I’m not sure.
A little girl in a red dress swoops down, as if on a swing. I see bouquets of flowers on her dress. Her mouth in a little ‘O’ as if in song.
Now I’m sitting.
A man says, ‘It’s the heat.’
There’s a cold glass of water in my hand.
Wa—wa—
The thirst I felt in hospital, waking up. Months ago, years ago, in another person’s life.
‘Come on, love, drink up, you’ll be fine.’
He’s smiling. His teeth are terrible, he’s missing half of them.
‘Slowly now,’ he says. ‘You’re Gloria’s new friend.’
The water is sharp, too cold against my teeth, so I press the glass to my cheek.
‘Thank you.’
He puts his hand on my forehead. ‘Burning up. Are you taking anything for malaria?’
I shake my head.
‘That’s a bit daft, then. It’s bad here, especially this time of year.’
‘It’s not malaria,’ I say. It’s a boy, a small boy on my lap, the weight of him and smell of him. Not a story, not words: but a child of marrow and blood. How does a child cease to be?
‘Let’s get you something to eat. And keep drinking that water.’ He shouts out to the barman, instructions in Swahili. I look past him, out at the sea. I know where I am now.
‘Harry,’ he says. ‘That’s my name.’
‘Hello, Harry.’
He hands me a plate of greasy chapatti. Where has this come from? ‘Best food in the world,’ he says. ‘That and a Coke.’ And like a magician he pulls a Coke from the air. And a beer for himself.
The chair I’m in is comfortable, and the fan turns slowly overhead. I take a bite of the chapatti and a sip of the Coke: it is the best food in the world. He’s sitting opposite me, leaning forward, his elbows braced on his knees.
Bit by bit the world puts itself back together, like a Lego house. The sea, the clubhouse, the gathering dusk, the somnolent town on the edge of a continent. And Harry, grinning.
‘Better now?’
‘Yes, much.’
‘I once had a spell like that in Bujumbura. Heatstroke. Out for days. This very nice Indian fellow kept visiting me. He brought the latest TIME and a basket of fruit, took excellent care of me. And then he jumped out the window, I saw him go right off the balcony. A few days later, when I was feeling better, I asked the nurse about him, what a tragedy, I said, such a nice chap. What Indian? she wanted to know. No one’s jumped out the window.’
It turns out that Harry has lived all over Africa. In 1973, for instance, he drove a bulldozer all the way from Khartoum to Kampala. ‘I was contracted to make a road but there was a war. I made the road anyway. There’s always a bloody war.’ He smuggled khat into Somalia when the government decided to make it illegal in the 1980s. ‘The ban only lasted six months, but it was good money while it lasted.’ He flew over the Congo, low on fuel, searching for a missionary’s airstrip, the details of which he’d written on a bar napkin. ‘It was like looking down on broccoli. Goddamned broccoli as far as you could see. Four hours, five hours, six hours. I’m watching the fuel gauge going down, down, down.’
He’s a drunk now, he laughs. Fixed almost permanently to the bar stool. No one else sits on his stool, and if a stray yachtee or tourist tries to, the old boys warn them off. ‘I should be holding it down right now,’ Harry says, looking over his shoulder with mock concern at the empty stool and the two other old boys on theirs. ‘They’ll be worried about me.’ But he settles in the chair, tells me he almost died eight times. ‘Three plane crashes, a puff adder bite, a car crash, cerebral malaria twice. Oh, and some woman stabbed me.’
‘Some woman?’ I say.
‘Wife.’
‘How many wives have you had?’
‘My own? Or other men’s?’ He gives me a wolfish grin. ‘Eight. Eight wives. Of my own. Two more than Henry the Eighth and I didn’t kill even one.’
I imagine the young incarnation of Harry—the other face he once had. The blackberry-dark eyes and straight nose, even if he wasn’t handsome, he’d have been a buccaneer.
He’s studying me right back. ‘What an arsehole,’ he says.
‘Who?’
‘The arsehole who left you.’
I sip the Coke. ‘How do you know he left me?’
‘Gloria mentioned you were divorced,’ he winks. ‘With a certain relish.’
‘Why do you assume he’s an arsehole?’
‘The way you are.’
‘And how am I?’
‘Scooped out.’
I’m very careful not to look at him but out at the evening, the swifts in the sky, the dark mass of the sea.
Harry, however, continues to look at me.
‘I never left a woman,’ he says, and this return to jauntiness is for me, I sense, to bring me back. Whatever his physical disrepair, Harry is a sensitive man.
‘Eight wives and you didn’t leave one of them?’ I say, jaunty too.
‘Oh, I made it impossible for them to stay.’
‘How?’
‘Drinking, whoring, wandering.’
‘Why did you keep getting married?’
‘I loved the words. The promise, the hope. That I could be a husband.’
‘And what is a husband?’
Harry takes his beer. ‘We’re going to dri
nk properly, then?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Drink, talk about love.’
‘Is that the proper way?’
‘What else do you talk about when you drink? Politics?’ He offers me his hand.
Insects swarm under the security lights outside the club. We get in his old Land Cruiser with one very weak headlight. There are rust holes in the floor. ‘Watch your foot.’
He drives into town, the main road above the port, parks on the street, and leads me into Le Club Casa Chica.
It is very dark and loud in here, so I feel muffled and semi-blind, and I think this is the purpose of a nightclub, to hobble senses: to obscure, to mute, to subdue, render hostage the self that discerns.
People know Harry, wave their arms, call out his name. I can’t hear, but I see their lips move. Harry old friend; Harry, me matie. I notice the women in here are exceptionally sylphlike, narrow-hipped and long-limbed. Harry slides into a booth, taps the space beside him and I think this is for me. But a slinky, bony girl materializes in seconds, melting over him. I sit opposite. A waitress with shining red lips brings drinks with paper umbrellas.
‘Sugar,’ Harry puts his arm around the girl. ‘This is my friend, Pilgrim.’
I extend a hand, and as Sugar takes it I notice her exquisite, impractical manicure and the hugeness of her hands. Sugar is, of course, a man. They are all men. Harry winks, holds up his drink.
‘I assume the arsehole wears suits.’
‘What?’ I say as if I can’t hear him, but I can, I’m just not sure I want this to go any further. He leans in, repeats, ‘The ex wears suits.’
‘Very nice suits.’
‘He’s a lawyer.’
I’m taken aback. ‘How did you know?’
He laughs, ‘I have many years of experience with a wide variety of arseholes. The suit narrows the field to professional arseholes. I think to myself: an arsehole who wears a suit; so not a pilot or a doctor, both really very chronic arseholes. The suits are nice, you said. A successful arsehole. An arsehole who dumps his beautiful wife in a crummy way; therefore an arrogant, self-righteous, selfish arsehole. A born arsehole, not a circumstantial arsehole. Because, let’s face it, we can all be arseholes if we get stuck at Customs, if another man is fucking our wife. An investment banker? Real estate tycoon? No, not quite right. Something he represented, something you were looking for. You liked his goodness, what he stood for. Conclusion: had to be a lawyer. Probably a defence lawyer, death penalty cases something like that.’
