“We’ll have a big bed at the Great Lakes. They must have big beds.”
“Will we get there in one day?”
“We’ll just keep on driving, mmh?” He had his hand on her face and he felt her smile.
Sometime later the rain came. Thunder bore down grandly upon the roof, he half-woke and saw his foot coming down on the quick cockroach, a shiny almond. He had softened and fallen away from the warm tunnel of her. The forest of heavy rain hid them, and they slept.
In the morning there was a world that had cast its skin. All the green glistened like dragonfly wings drying in the sun. The jacarandas had shed their shape in fallen flowers on the ground. Glossy starlings flashed about; Hjalmar was out there, seeing how his brick mosaic had stood up to the wet.
Mahlope put the three suitcases and the basket with Gordon Edwards’ spear-fishing equipment into the car. Kalimo trotted back and forth with his hands under his apron, watching. Bray had told him Doña was going to her friends in the capital. To him the capital was the two Poles and all the great cities and places of the earth: if you got there, you were near everywhere. “And bring my greetings to the children, please,” he said in English to Rebecca, smiling and repeating in a comforting rumble, “Yes … yes … mm’h …” When they said good — bye he handed over the basket they always took with them for picnics at the lake. “Is it eggs with small fish in, as well?” Bray said. The old man hunched with laughter— “Those eggs you like it, blead, litt’e bit cheese—”
“No roast chicken?” Rebecca said.
Kalimo’s eyes were rheumy at the good old joke. “Well, Mukwayi he didn’t tell me you driving today! I don’t cook chicken for roaste’ yesterday night—”
“As long as we’ve got those eggs, Kalimo.”
Hjalmar kissed Rebecca. “Walking out on the job, eh? Where’m I going to get another bricklayer’s assistant? You’ll see when you come back, it’ll all be finished for you.”
Hjalmar and Kalimo were left, the one with hands on hips, the other’s under his apron. Mahlope, chatting outside his room with a friend, waved cheerfully. Rebecca settled herself more comfortably, lit cigarettes. “I feel as if we were going off to the lake.”
As the old Volkswagen left Gala behind they left the whole anger and disruption of the country behind there as well. The boma under guard, the smashed stalls of the market, the scars and stains where flies hung, marking the place of street battles, the dead smell of charred buildings — all this that they lived among was undertow beneath their wheels: it seemed that the light screens of forest and bamboo around the firm wet road provided no surface to reflect turmoil, to be seized by the violent charge and make it manifest; the current was earthed.
He pointed out the track leading to Tippo Tib’s Arab fort.
“We never ever managed to go—”
“I must take you one day. It’s quite impressive.”
The road ran empty for many miles. Now and then there were the usual bags of charcoal waiting for custom; a barefoot man appealed from the forest. Where rain had fallen parties of women were out with their hoes. The few villages looked lean and wispy after the drought. In patches of scrub, one night’s rain was enough to have brought the wild lilies blooming straight from the sand. They had an eye for everything; the past week became a prison from which they suddenly found themselves let out. Talk rose and died down; sometimes they let the repetition of trees and giant bouquets of bamboo flow over them dreamily. Thoughts broke up and formed like spume on a sea. They laughed at the prospect of the household consisting of Hjalmar and Kalimo quietly following their private obsessions. “But Kalimo will be in charge.” “Oh without question. He will play Margot to Hjalmar’s Hjalmar.”
“I can’t help feeling sorry for Margot,” Rebecca said. “A weak man makes you into a bitch. Even I felt like beginning to bully poor old Hjalmar a bit over that paving.”
“Even you? You’ve always been able to smell out a weak man?”
“Mmm. If I’m attracted by one, there’s still something that protects me.”
“When first I knew you — knew about you from other people — I thought you were very much the type to be exploited. Emotionally and in other ways; by everybody. And your friends gave that impression. Vivien was always anxious about you.”
“Oh well, I got into a bad way down there. They didn’t trust Gordon, any of them. Oh I mean, everybody always likes Gordon — but they didn’t think Gordon treated me properly. I knew they were sorry for me. They persisted in being sorry for me. It made me behave funnily; I can’t explain, but when they made passes at me — Neil, the others — I saw that they felt they could do it because to me they could risk showing that things weren’t so good for them, either. I felt sorry for them. I felt what did it matter …” She put a hand on his thigh. “You don’t like to hear about it.”
“Vanity, I suppose. Stupid male vanity, not much different from theirs. I ought to be ashamed of it. I’ve always believed in freedom in sex. Not that I’ve taken much of it. But on principle.”
She laughed. “I’m glad. I don’t want you to have made love to a lot of women.”
“Although you’ve made love to a lot of men?”
“I’m not like you. It doesn’t matter for me. But there’s one thing that matters a lot — I’d decided I couldn’t stay down there among my friends any longer, before it began with you and me. I came to Gala because I wanted to get away from that.”
A moment later she said, “You’re thinking about the first time, in your living-room.”
“Yes.”
“You’re right. It did seem it was like the others.”
“You wanted to show me I had a need of you before I could begin to feel sorry for you.”
“You were, already. That poor girl with her kids. And where’s the husband?”
“Yes. I ought to have offered you my house instead of letting you pay for those weeks at the Fisheagle.”
“But after you went down to see Mweta and came back again you made it right. From the day we went to the lake it was all different. I was different.”
“Were you?”
“You made me different.”
“Have I reformed you, my darling, your paunchy old lover. You don’t want other men any more.” But he knew it made her sad to hear him refer to himself as getting old.
“Living with you is different from anything else.”
“But it has been for me, too.”
“Oh don’t say that.”
“Why not?”
“Not has been.”
“My darling! I just mean the time at Gala, that’s all. Kiss me.” He turned to her quickly a moment.
She rested content, against his shoulder; she waved at a solitary figure at the roadside.
“You don’t think Gordon has … well … presented you with a certain element of weakness?”
“How d’you mean?”
“Well you told me he would never dream of thinking you could be interested in men.”
She gave a small chuckle. “That’s because Gordon’s so sure of himself in everything. Gordon can cope.”
“But that’s arrogance, pride. You’ve proved it a weakness in him, haven’t you?”
“In a way. But you say you believe in sexual freedom.”
“We’re talking about Gordon — he doesn’t see it as sexual freedom, it’s quite the opposite — he doesn’t even see the possibility of sexual freedom for you.”