* * *
—
I did not hear the drip-drip in the morning. Fatima snored when she slept on her back. She had been sleeping longer at night and often lay down to rest two or three times a day. Her legs could not carry her easily and she was not eating. Padre Theuns, a priest in Beira, had given us the wheelchair. He had also helped us secure passage to the foot of Gorongosa. At first, Fatima had refused, but after praying with her priest she allowed the man to load the chair on the back of a truck. Carrying Fatima up the mountain, strapped to her chair with vines, took three days with the help of some villagers. Fatima paid them well to get her to the top of Gorongosa.
When I stepped outside the next morning, an audience of six children sat waiting for me.
“Bom dia,” I said, presenting them books from behind my back.
Ezequiel rolled out from underneath his shelter. The children giggled when they saw him. The hair on his head where he’d slept stuck up like the tail of a mating bird.
The look he had when I first found him lying by the pool on the side of the mountain—the hollowed-out face of a man lost in the world—had left him.
“A story!” one child cried.
“Yes! A story,” Ezequiel said, echoing the excitement of the children.
Fatima had brought two books with us up the mountain: the Bible and Kipling’s The Jungle Book, the book her father had given to her as a girl. Both books had been translated into Portuguese. I never read Kipling’s book to the children. I only showed them the pictures of animals they recognized, elephants and snakes, and lions with zebra stripes, which Fatima called tigers.
* * *
I stop. My voice is growing hoarse. I allow myself to remember how Ezequiel looked at me. He did not gape at me like the soldiers in Dar es Salaam. They would crouch against the wall in front of Fatima’s shop, laughing and smoking. They tracked me with their eyes and whispers. I would shift and hide behind a pile of khangas. Here, I was exposed. Ezequiel did not turn away. I start again.
* * *
The days passed. The rains continued to fall and the mountain grew greener.
Every day Ezequiel busied himself in the village. The tribesmen had been away hunting for a long time. When a few of them returned, some of the women reassured the men that Ezequiel meant no harm. Others would not talk to him or meet his gaze. They watched him constantly and wanted him to leave. His lean-to was once lit on fire. They did not trust Ezequiel. By the time the men set out again for another long journey, they allowed him to stay. They knew of a rifle’s power, recognized that he could offer protection while they were away. The men decided he could stay for two months. When they returned, they would revisit their decision.
“Why must the men leave?” Ezequiel asked.
“They will not kill the animals on the mountain.”
My answer did not satisfy Ezequiel.
“They fear the fighting will make its way up the mountain,” I told him. “They are looking for another place to live.” Then I asked about what had been worrying me. “Will you tell me about the fighting?”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“What happened to you?”
He shook his head. “I don’t remember.”
“You ran away?”
Ezequiel looked down at his hands. He considered me but could not find the words.
* * *
I am aware that Serafim is still in the room. I allowed my thoughts to carry on ahead of me. Perhaps it was that first real exchange with Ezequiel that I wanted to keep all to myself.
* * *
Ezequiel tried to reassure the women in the village. He dug for roots and picked berries with the women who allowed him to come near them. He stood by the blind man, Vasco, every day until the man gave in and taught him how to grind maize and sharpen machetes on the village stone. He stopped carrying his gun. He grew more comfortable with walking barefoot on the mountain.
I fed Fatima bits of food, whatever she could keep down, and she would fall asleep. When she began to snore, I would crawl out of our hut to stretch.
Ezequiel would build a small fire between his lean-to and our hut. He would sit on one of the two logs he had arranged around the stones he had lined for a pit. He’d scribble notes or play his harmonica. One night I found him there. He was bare-chested. His rifle leaned against the log next to him. He stopped twisting his hands and looked up.
“What do you have there?” I think I asked. I remember protecting my head from mosquitoes with one of Fatima’s saris.
Ezequiel reached over the fire to show me a piece of wood. “I like to carve things. Animals, mostly. It passes the time.”
“What will it be?”
He held the crude carving close to my face. He knew my eyesight was weak, but I didn’t feel self-conscious. “I’m not sure yet. Soon its shape will tell me what it will become.”
It seemed that every day it took Fatima longer to get up. She would lie in bed, tangled in her saris, rubbing her swollen legs to get the blood flowing. I used the ointment Machinga had made, rubbing it between my hands until they grew warm. I touched Fatima’s feet. I knew the salve only numbed the pain. Fatima swore the pain disappeared, if only briefly, and she would sink back on her sleeping mat.
“I have something to show you,” Fatima said one day. “I have only found it now, tucked in a book.” She reached into the slip that covered her pillow. She offered me a fine leather booklet. I opened it. Fatima rolled over and handed me the magnifying glass. She said, “It’s the only thing I have left of her.”
It was a small black-and-white photograph of a much thinner and younger Fatima dressed in safari gear—a linen suit and a scarf wrapped around her head. She sat in an upholstered chair. Behind her stood a young black woman, strong and beautiful. The woman was dressed in a shuka. The pattern of her beaded necklace and earrings was instantly recognizable to me. Her hand rested on Fatima’s shoulder and was greeted by Fatima’s hand over it. “When I saw you at my door that day, I recognized your mother’s hand in that collar. And then I looked at you, took a good look at your beautiful face, and I recognized Namunyak’s features in you. Behind your pale skin, your bones and your blood are your mother’s.
“When I first came to Tanganyika, I didn’t know how to be African. My feet were soft, and I couldn’t bear to go barefoot. Now I can’t even feel my feet.” Fatima stared at my boots. “And there you are, your feet always stuffed in men’s boots. Your mother was the same way. I couldn’t convince her of anything.”
I was looking at my mother for the first time. In her I recognized my oval face and long neck, the way my lips puckered into a kiss, our broad foreheads, narrow noses, the almond-shaped eyes.
“I remember the first time your mother came to my shop, a satchel slung across her back. She did not say a word, simply walked up to my counter and opened the bag. It was filled with the most exquisite jewellery. Fine and delicate. I had never seen anything like it. I had never seen anyone like her. For three weeks, she stayed. I supplied the beads, and all day she’d work on her creations. She came back to me several more times. On her last visit, we went to a photographer before she left. I knew she would not return.”
* * *
Serafim switches off his recorder. “Fatima had this photograph all that time and chose to share it with you only then? Two years after you first met?”
“You do not see,” I say, reluctant to show him how disappointed I am in what he is suggesting.
“What is it I’m missing?” Serafim asks.
“Only then did I understand what Fatima was giving me permission to do.”
Serafim
I’VE ALWAYS FALLEN ASLEEP to sounds. Often to the sounds of cars or people on the streets or shouting in their apartments. Here, these sounds mix with the waves rolling farther and farther across the sand. But it wasn’t like that yesterday. My head is heavy and fogged in the grey hotel room. I rub my eyes; a shooting pain surges to my forehead. There are empty bott
les on my night table. Beside them lies a mountain of ash and cigarette butts crowding an ashtray. A boy stands by the sliding door to my balcony. He is looking out, his finger racing with beads of rain down the glass.
“Who are you?” I say, my throat slashed with razors. I wince, swallow. But I know who he is.
“Cigarettes?” the boy asks. Today he is wearing only shorts and sandals.
“Who let you in?”
Boys like this were part of my growing up as well. They littered the streets, and for the right price anything could be bought.
“Vodka?” the boy says, raising an invisible bottle to his mouth and guzzling.
“Get out!”
The boy comes and stands at the foot of my bed. He’s not afraid of me. My head feels like a boulder. I couldn’t chase him even if I wanted to.
I sit up in bed, swing my dumb legs over the side. “What time is it?”
“Past two o’clock,” the boy says. “Wednesday.”
He’s mad. I reach for my wristwatch. The boy walks out the door. I’m wearing my boxers, drenched in sweat, and I’ve slept on a made bed.
I’ve been out two full days, almost three. When I last met with Pó I insisted it couldn’t have been that easy for the villagers to have embraced Zeca the way she described. She reprimanded me for my insincerity, for pressing her on how little she knew about Ezequiel. I couldn’t push her any further than she would allow. I needed to be patient.
I stagger to the door, my head not yet able to send clear messages to my legs. I wedge a chair under the doorknob, bump into a wall before making it to the bathroom. Lights on, I see my chin and cheeks. My skin looks sallow. I blame it on the lighting. A vague memory of sending the boy for hash. I needed something to smooth out the hard edges after seeing Rosalia a second time. She had followed me to the beach. Thin, barefoot in a cropped T-shirt and jeans, she was jittery, possibly high. Her eyes were red and swollen. I asked if she had seen Ophelia. She spoke softly, asked for a cigarette. I tapped one out of the packet. Rosalia didn’t answer my question. I saw the tear in the shoulder of her shirt and didn’t press her. She gave a shy smile and took the whole pack from my hand. That was Sunday. Three whole days lost. It’s been so long since I went on a drinking binge, and this local stuff is potent.
All my notes, pages and pages of them, have been torn out and are scattered around the bed and on the floor. Some are crumpled; others have lost their ordered place. I read an excerpt, one of my first meetings with Pó. In it she described the various graves robbed for albino bones. Pó has memorized the crimes. The police won’t keep records, so she does.
The room spins. I lay back down on my bed and light a cigarette. The first drag sears my throat. I look for a drop of liquor—just to douse the flame, I say to myself. Nothing in any of the three bottles scattered on my nightstand and on the floor.
I’m thinking of the triggers. It is always the same thing, a woman, or not having one, to be exact. I hadn’t been with a woman in a long while. I thought of Rosalia, how easy it could have been to bring her back to my room, to wake up with her legs knotted with mine, feel her breath on my neck as I slept.
* * *
—
The rain has slowed and the streets are left with a sweet smell. It’s short-lived. In the dying afternoon, hawkers call out bargains, all the while packing up their unsold goods. The flies have returned to swarm around carcasses of meat. The smells of animal flesh and warm and spoiled fruit make me queasy. But I have not eaten in days and there is nothing to throw up. I try to breathe, calm my thoughts, focus on students wandering home from school in clumps. Some of them crowd stairways up to apartment buildings, hang over balconies. Their voices meld into a buzz in my head.
I need an espresso, a double, some fresh bread to fill my stomach.
I haven’t seen Pó in a few days. I’ve been careless. I can’t jeopardize her trust. I need her story to finish.
Rosalia stands outside the VIP Inn Beira, a swanky hotel near the bakery. She is preening under the awning, her compact held up over her forehead. She catches me looking. I’m about to cross the street when a well-dressed man stops to speak to her. I’ll go to the bakery, clear my head. If Rosalia’s still there on my way back, I’ll ask about Ophelia.
Down a narrow street, I pass between the iron-barred windows and step inside Padaria Indico. The generator’s buzz competes with a football game on the TV. Men have gathered, drinking their espressos and small tumblers of booze. They tear at bolos and chew with mouths open, chase everything down with a shot of clear liquor—gin, vodka, Cashu. Just the sight of the sour stuff makes my stomach churn.
I’m saved by the smells. When I was ten, I came down from the favela to live with my grandmother’s friend, a baker who, on those first cool nights after my grandmother’s death, let me sleep by the layered ovens. She helped in my schooling and I became hers, until a man came to share her bed when I was thirteen.
Without looking at the board above the counter, I order half a dozen buns and a few things from the hot table. The girl stuffs a foil container with rice and what looks like goat stew, the food I had simply pointed at through the glass. I order a double espresso and drink it while the girl packs up all the food.
Rosalia no longer stands by the hotel entrance.
* * *
—
By the time I arrive at the Grande Hotel it is getting dark. I lean against the mosque’s wall, next to the Coca-Cola machine. I need a smoke before going up to see Pó. I’m uncertain what I will tell her.
Two women drag a plastic bucket with laundry inside. One of them, a person with albinism, is missing an arm. She was a young mother and hid under her bed. The attackers offered her child a chocolate bar to disclose her whereabouts. The bucket bumps and scrapes over the broken concrete surrounding the pool. The mechanical whine of the Coca-Cola machine melds with the songs of prayer vibrating from within the mosque. The women dump their clothing into the deep end of the pool, where the day’s rain must have diluted the putrid water. I take a long drag, watch the women drop to their knees to knead and slap and twist their haul. The maimed woman keeps up with her friend. She uses her feet to grip the washboard, her one arm rolling and flipping an article of clothing. She puts her whole body into the task and I am filled with shame. I look up at Pó’s balcony.
I wish Rosalia had remained at the hotel. If she knew exactly where Ophelia went every night, who she was meeting, I could share it with Pó. If I told Pó I was paying Rosalia to keep an eye out for Ophelia, make sure she was safe, it might relieve some of Pó’s concerns, distract her from my absence. I throw my cigarette down and snuff it with my shoe.
I find Pó sitting on her three-legged stool. She does not stir. I place the bag of bread and food on her bed and move to my chair. “I’m sorry,” I say.
Pó raises her hand to stop me. “You owe me nothing,” she says.
I’m not certain that’s true. The truth is, time is running out for us both.
I undo the top two buttons of my shirt to settle in. The heat in Pó’s room is insufferable. I thought the day’s rain would have cooled things off. Still, Pó is bundled up—layered in saris and a light blanket over her shoulders.
I press Record. “I have a few questions about Gorongosa.”
“I said it before. Ezequiel was lost.” Her voice is barely audible.
“Lost how?”
“He did not know where he was going.”
“And you brought him home. Up to the mountain without a worry—”
“The world is full of fear. It is a burden.”
“He made a home there with you?”
“It was never a home. A stopping place.”
“I can understand that,” I say.
“Can you?” she mumbles before shifting around to face me.
I’m caught off guard.
“I know very little about you,” she says, her voice low and drawn out.
“There isn’t much to know,” I say, and a
s I say it I know I’m opening myself up to more questions.
Pó leans in, waiting for me to elaborate.
“I never knew my parents,” I tell her. “I was raised by my grandmother. I was cared for and loved. It was all I needed.” There is some truth to my words. “And now I choose to live alone.”
Pó nods. “You have no family. No one is waiting for you back home.”
“My life is underwhelming, I guess.”
“So you give yourself over to a story. But it is always someone else’s story, isn’t it?”
“You could say that.”
“I once saw a boat floating out to sea,” she says, her voice laboured. “Its rope was cut. No fisherman sat inside. I watched it all day. It moved with the current. Until it drifted out to sea and disappeared.”
“You really should eat something,” I say. I rise to unknot the bag of food. Finally, I just tear the plastic handles apart and lay out the buns atop her bed. When I lift the lid of rice and goat stew, a rich smell is released. I’m queasy and hot.
“I cannot eat. Leave it for Amalia,” she says, struggling to get up.
I take a few steps toward her, ready to catch her if she should fall. Her whole body shakes.
“Forgive me if I am too tired to talk tonight.”
I reach out to her and she takes hold of my forearm, presses down with her weight. She shuffles a few steps back into the room to sit on her bed.
“I do not have much time,” she says.
“I’m here,” I say.
Pó considers my words. She places her hands flat on her bedspread and smooths it out. She sits in silence. I’m afraid to move.
“Can I get you something? Some water?”
Children of the Moon Page 11
