She shakes her head. “Will you stay a little longer?”
It is my turn to nod. “Can I ask you something? When I first met you, you said white men have always told your story.”
Pó closes her eyes.
“Why me, then?”
She takes a deep breath. “When I told you Emmanuel’s story. How he had his left arm, his right hand, and part of his jaw hacked off. How he killed himself after that, too afraid to speak. I heard you snap your pencil. You care.” She smiles.
Ezequiel
I’M CROUCHING IN THE CORNER of my room. I don’t know how long I’ve been here. My eyes have been open for a time, but I can’t seem to take anything in. This is my room. That is my bed. Through the window, I see a plastic bag tossing in the wind.
In bare feet, I climb the stairs out to the backyard, open the gate to collect the bag. Before I can catch it in mid-air, it floats down the narrow walkway and skips out onto the road. I’m distracted by geese swooping in formation up above. They disappear, cut off by the angle of the neighbour’s roof. I make my way onto the sidewalk. There they are. From my backyard, I used to watch birds migrating. Pigeons flew by too, and wrens and sparrows, though it was impossible to identify what kinds of birds they were when they appeared as colourless specks fizzing across the sky.
Why did I come outside?
A woman is trailing a bundle-buggy behind her. She raises her hand as if she recognizes me. I cross the road. I continue walking toward Dundas Street. “I need milk,” I say out loud. Senhor Leonildo’s convenience store on the corner opens early, but when I tug at the door it is locked. Peering inside, I don’t recognize anything. I see half a dozen large chairs with foot sinks. The sign reads NAIL SPA. I don’t know where Senhor Leonildo’s store has gone. I’m certain it was here yesterday. I cross the street. Maybe if I stand on the grass of Trinity Bellwoods Park, I will get a better sense of where I am. A car screeches to a halt. The driver yells profanities and veers around me.
If I just sit for a minute or two, I’ll be able to get my bearings and figure out how to get home. People are bundled up, making their way to work. They see me and look away, stepping off the sidewalk onto the road before moving east, I think it is, on Dundas Street toward the downtown. I find a concrete bench and stretch out on my side, my head against the seat, my cheek on its surface. I cannot stop my teeth from rattling. Which way is home?
“Senhor Zeca?” a man says.
There is nowhere to hide. The man’s face is familiar. He says words but they are not formed in sentences: John. Live upstairs. You okay? Cold out here. He places his winter coat over my shoulders. When he speaks, his breath turns to mist. “It’s November, too cold to be out without a coat.”
I see I am wearing only boxer shorts and an undershirt.
“I’ll take you home,” he says.
* * *
—
Safely in my bedroom, I bite my lip till I taste blood. I need to go to the bathroom. I can’t hold it, but I can’t get up. My hands are at my mouth, cupped to the shape of the instrument I used to hold. I hear the notes in my head, “O Silver Moon,” to conjure a much happier time and place. I saw Pó in the water and I followed.
I hear the thud of the basement door closing. The nurse covers her nose with her forearm. I’m not certain how she manages to get me into the tub, how she straps me down to a plastic chair from some medical supply house. The shower head hovers over me. I close my eyes and breathe through my mouth. I gag and my stomach tightens. I pretend I do not feel ashamed. I want to scream. I can’t, the cry stuck like a hot coal burning in my throat.
“And when I’m done I’ll get you a fresh change of clothes. You’ll feel much better.”
It’s useless to ask her to leave.
“You were due for a bath, anyways,” she says.
I look down. The nurse has covered my genitals with a facecloth. The smell of coconut shampoo drowns out the other smells that have washed down the drain.
She works up lather around my neck and under my arms, and the smell of geranium and lavender oils tickles my nose. Mother Anke has told me I’m getting too tall to bathe in a barrel; I am a young man now and everything needs to be in perfect order, for this is what God demands of us—perfection in prayer and devotion. The sun goes down, a shocking pink streaming through the treetops. A dot appears in the distance, at the top of the hill where the road narrows. I am certain it is Papa Gilberto returning from his trip to Porto Amélia. I recognize his horse’s gallop kicking up dirt behind it. Papa dismounts in the clearing. He does not see me. I submerge into the barrel so that only the top of my head and my eyes are above water. His clothing is covered in red dirt from the long journey. He removes his hat and his hair is sweaty, plastered against his forehead. He walks toward the barrel and I notice the worry in his eyes. I sink under the surface.
The moment Papa Gilberto dips his hands into the water, I pop up. Papa Gilberto pretends he is surprised, and I love him more than I ever have. He kisses my forehead. “My little fish is getting big.”
“I’m washing up for my birthday,” I say.
“Is that today?” he asks, smiling, before splashing his face and neck with water. Papa Gilberto notices my slingshot on the bench by my towel. “Such beautiful work.”
“A gift from Lázaro.”
Papa takes the soap from my hand and begins to build lather between his palms. I think it is to wash his face, but instead, he lays his sudsy hands on my head and begins to dig his fingers into my hair. I close my eyes. When I open them, I see Papa’s have welled up. I plunge under the surface.
* * *
Most evenings we share the fire and food between us, away from the other villagers. I have been here six weeks and look forward to this time of the day most. I help carry Fatima to her sleeping mat. To thank me, Pó returns to the fire and prepares coffee. It is weak and full of grounds, but I don’t tell her. Pó holds the small elephant carving in her hand. Her fingers move around it.
“I am happy to have found this place.”
“We are all safe here,” she says.
It would be safer to move off the mountain, I think. Perhaps cross the border into Rhodesia—but I know Pó will never leave Fatima behind, and Fatima is too weak to travel.
“They all left,” I say, poking at the fire. I tell her that when I was thirteen the workers fled the mission; all that remained were a couple of goats wandering in the clearing, gourds and spilled baskets, ropes scattered outside the workers’ huts. “The war was closing in. I tried to fill the emptiness in the pit of my stomach. Everything will go back to the way it always was, I kept saying. The workers would return to the mission, Papa would spread the word of God, and Mother Anke would get better.”
“Your mother was not well?”
It is difficult to answer Pó’s question. “She was out of her head, Papa said.”
I picture Mother Anke lowering herself into the chair by the well, lost in her thoughts. She had demanded the well be built and Papa Gilberto had humoured her. He knew there would be no water. But when the walls collapsed on a worker, Papa put a stop to construction. To appease her, he built a circular stone fence and even fashioned a bucket on a pulley. Some mornings she would lower the bucket into the well, draw it back up, empty.
I picture Mother Anke sitting in the chair, her eyes glued to the dirt road, her foot tapping the ground, as if waiting for something to happen or someone to appear.
Come here, Mother Anke said, let me take a closer look at you. She brushed my cheek with the back of her hand. The news that morning of an increased military presence to crush FRELIMO guerrillas had given her a glimmer of hope. She appeared much larger spread out in her chair. I have some mussiro paste for my little man.
It burns, I told her. I don’t want it. She had laced the paste with bleach.
It beautifies the skin.
I tried to pull away. She held firm.
Ezequiel, stop! We’ll be leaving this place soon. You
need to be ready.
“Fatima calls you a scribbler. I can hear you at night. I like the sound you make.”
Pó gathers her shuka and blanket and steps to the fire to pour me more coffee. “What do you write about?”
“The people left behind.”
The war spreads like a bush fire. Pó has no idea that it will catch up to us. It always does.
“I have been here long enough,” I say. “I must leave soon. Will you come with me?” I fear her answer.
“Fatima wants to die here. She believes this is God’s garden.”
“Do you believe that?”
“Anything is possible.”
* * *
—
I do not sleep well after Pó leaves me by the fire. The world is a big place, but Commander Fonseca will eventually find me; he is never far behind. All night, sudden jolts from the first sign of sleep have me reaching for my rifle. Land mines explode in my head, bloated bodies drift downriver, the image of Beatriz with the barrel of a gun in her mouth haunts me. The smells and the sounds cling to my skin.
Going down the mountain’s side has become easier. I’ve built up my strength in the time I have been here.
I follow Pó down the narrow path. I am far slower, but my eagerness today steadies my pace. I have another twenty feet to climb down when I see her at the pool’s bank. She slips out of her shuka and I see the flash of her white figure. I swallow. Clumsily, I scurry down the last few feet, trip over some vines. I look out and see that she is smiling to herself.
I cross over the rocks and lower myself on one knee. I take her shuka into my hand, close my fist around it. I bring it up to my nose, take in her sweet smell.
I unbutton my shirt, unbuckle my belt, my pants drop to my ankles.
Pó breaks the surface and freezes.
I can’t swim, but far greater than my fear is the desire to touch her skin. I step into the water.
Pó
“AMALIA, STOP PLAYING with that record player. I need your young eyes to thread a needle.”
“I’m fixing the music box,” Amalia says. She throws herself onto the mattress. The glass beads I had separated by colour are sent into the air.
“Filha!”
“I’ll help,” she says, and begins sorting the beads into small piles. “We’re almost running out.”
“You will have to go to the market soon and get some more.”
I only ever work with glass beads, as my mother and Simu had before me. I bring my hand up to touch the beaded collar my mother once wore.
“I don’t like going to the market. They say mean things.”
“Who does?”
“Mwanito makes fun of me. He calls this the ghost hotel and I’m its ghost keeper.”
“You can’t listen to nonsense.” I remember Mwanito as a boy. He once lived in the Grande Hotel, in Block C. Overnight the hotel became a safe place for refugees from what was once Rhodesia during their civil war. The common rule for living in the Grande Hotel is respect. As squatters, the refugees are given the nickname whato muno—not from here. Like the albinos, they are not accepted in Beira. Mwanito shed his skin and has reinvented himself. “Mwanito is not a bad man, filha. He’s a young man. He does not understand the world.” It strikes me then that I did not wake up to the scratching song of women sweeping the courtyard. The hotel grounds are deserted. I see a few children pulling a calf up the beach road and a load of soldiers together in the bed of a truck. The truck swerves, and with each jolt the men in the back roar in laughter, only to resume their shouting and singing with their rifles raised high.
“How come you don’t sit with the other women to make jewellery anymore?” Amalia says. “They miss you.”
The doctor who visits twice a year has told me that the lesions on my neck and shoulders are cancerous and the disease is now in my blood. I cannot tell Amalia that it is safer for me to stay inside my room now. Murderers lurk in Beira’s crowds. They have heard that my bones will fetch a high price on the market. They will see I am not as strong as I once was and they will pounce.
“The necklace I am wearing will be yours one day. My mother never put similar colours next to each other. That was her way. A dark bead is always set against a lighter colour. And every bead has meaning.”
Amalia holds up a large, flat beaded disc. “What is this one for?”
“It’s for young girls like you,” I say, poking her belly. She smiles.
“And this one?” Amalia thrusts a red bead up close to my face so I can see.
“That colour is for bravery and blood. Blue is the colour of the sky. It provides water for the cattle. Green for the grass. Black is the colour of the people.”
* * *
As I wait for Serafim’s visit, I think about what I have left to share with him, which parts will remain mine.
* * *
I stood at the pool’s bank and slipped out of my shuka. The mountain air was cool. Two steps in and the water met my knees. Two more steps and the water lapped my thighs. I spread my arms and thrust myself into the water. A chill. A rush.
When I surfaced, Ezequiel had crossed over the wet rocks and was kneeling by my shuka.
I took another plunge, stayed under as long as I could. I surfaced breathlessly to the rumble of the waterfall.
Ezequiel now stood at the edge of the water. I turned and swam away from him, towards the waterfall.
“What do you want?” I said, my voice as calm as I could make it.
He did not answer but dropped my shuka to the ground.
“I can’t swim,” he said.
“Trust the water,” I said.
He took one step onto a slippery stone. I could see him, arms wide out, trying to balance. I swam closer to him.
He was unbuttoning his shirt. His belt was next, the slap of leather loud. His pants dropped to his ankles. He stepped out of his pants and onto another rock.
He took one step into the water. Then another. I swam out farther. When I surfaced, the water reached his waist. I held his hand and led him into the pool. Three, four, five steps more. He tugged back and wouldn’t go any deeper. “Trust me,” I said.
“One step after another,” I heard him whisper.
* * *
—
The sun was disappearing. I lay next to Ezequiel on a bed of moss.
Giant ferns surrounded us, their tips dipping into the water.
“You are quiet,” I said.
“I don’t want anything to change.”
We had been there all day. I had told him about my childhood, about Simu and Koinet and Lebo.
Ezequiel lay motionless. Quiet.
“I don’t remember things as clearly,” he finally said, swallowing hard. “The workers on the mission had left. Papa grew a beard, I remember that. He wore a brave face when he fried eggs every night for dinner. That was all he knew how to cook, which was fine with me because he fried them until their edges turned bronze. Mother Anke sat across from Papa. She did not eat. She looked smaller, diminished in a way I couldn’t understand.”
Ezequiel talked about Macaco and his men and when he was captured by the Portuguese. He would begin to tell me what he had seen and then his lips would close. Side by side, our arms and legs touching, I watched his chest rise and fall. It slowed sometimes and I thought his burden had been lightened.
* * *
—
Ezequiel moved away from me. He sat up, curled into himself.
“What is it?”
Metal flashed through the open spaces in the canopy of trees.
He covered his ears and rocked gently. “My rifle. Give me my rifle!” His eyes were on fire.
I did not understand. I was afraid. I crouched beside him, held him tight, until the rocking slowed.
“He is near,” Ezequiel said.
“Shhh,” I said.
“The Commander is near,” he sobbed, his head dropped into his hands. “It’s over.”
It had been a while since
a plane had come so close, but it had been no different than the other times.
“He’ll find us,” he mumbled.
I felt his panic and held him tight. My shuka turned into a pillow to prop up his head. I left his side and brought back water.
His eyelids closed, softly. I kissed his forehead. “I taste sadness,” I said.
* * *
—
Kwazi was sent down the side of the mountain for supplies. He returned with rumours. Both FRELIMO soldiers and the Portuguese army were looking for clear vantage points in the area. He did not know what these groups represented. I bribed him with honey to keep the news to himself.
Serafim
I STAND BY THE SHORE watching the waves roll in, churning sand, debris half-hidden in the ocean’s foam. Using my toes, I wedge one shoe off, then the other. I roll up each sock and tuck one in each shoe, far enough from where the water reaches dry sand. Rolling up the cuffs of my pants, I take those first few steps into the cold water. There is immediate relief.
This may be my last meeting with Pó. I will be leaving Beira soon. Taking with me all the effort that Pó has put into crafting her life.
A wave crashes against my shins. I stagger back. My calves are pulled by the undertow into deeper water, knee-high.
Sunday, and most of the city is closed now. There are hardly any lights except the blue glow from fluorescent bulbs in billiards halls or all-night cafés. Gradually I become aware of only the Grande Hotel. When I stand on my balcony it appears as a black hole erased from the city. I think of the dream realized when it was built. No money was spared. The idea was that they would come to safari in luxury, feel compelled to stay in this unknown city, and the place would fill them with wonder.
Ezequiel
Children of the Moon Page 12
