“I am no different from Aar, say, who entrusts a password to his computer to Salif, the details of his banks in Europe to me, having also given me power of attorney to them, and who then makes you and Mahdi serve as witnesses to his most recent will. We guard our secrets in different ways and entrust some to those we feel close to.”
“We’ve always wondered why you never married.”
“With a brother like Aar, how could I?”
“I can see where you are coming from,” says Fatima. It seems to be confession time. “Mahdi never tires of telling everyone that Aar was every girl’s favorite boy. But I can tell you he was very hard to get to know, and it was difficult to plumb his persona, a smart, lovely guy like him. It is sad that he ended up with a woman who walked out on him.”
“I may have fancied him too,” says Bella.
Fatima pours Bella more tea, and then asks, “So what are your current plans?”
“I am thinking of moving here,” Bella says.
“There is nothing standing in the way, is there?”
“How do you mean?”
“A love, a mortgage, a professional commitment?”
“Nothing I can’t clear away.”
“It’ll be great for all of us to have you here.”
Ill at ease, knowing what she knows, Bella shifts her position as if awaiting a blow. She stretches her hand to touch Fatima’s, and then tears well up in her eyes and, with words failing her, her Adam’s apple moves up and down and, her breathing agitated, she seizes her opportunity to take Fatima’s hand, which she kisses. Then she says, “Do I hear cancer?”
“Yes,” Fatima says. “We didn’t discover it in time, my fault. I was never in the habit of self-examining. With me, it all started with an unusual swelling of the breasts as well as a lump in the underarm. I consulted my GP, who, after examining me physically, sent me to the breast clinic. The results of the initial biopsy came back showing that mine was in an advanced stage. I was put on a chemotherapy with a drug called Doxorubicin. I am feeling a great deal better, but you can see how the combination of the chemo and the drug has caused my loss of hair, and I am weak and sweat frequently and am moody. Mahdi has been very supportive, my other friends also. We are going to England to see a consultant at Barts, and maybe we will go to France or America later.”
“This is most sad.”
“Aar knew about it even before I told Mahdi, in fact.”
What a touching tribute to their friendship! thinks Bella.
Fatima continues, “He was sorry he wasn’t here with us. He tried to bring his return forward, intending to visit me at the cancer clinic where I had gone for a minor procedure. In a way, I am to blame, though, because I kept postponing my mammogram until it was too late.”
“It’s good you’re getting a second opinion,” says Bella. “When are you off to Barts to see the consultant?”
“In a month or so,” replies Fatima.
Bella clears her throat and says, “I’ll want Zubair and Qamar to stay with us when you do go. And if there is anything else I can do, please let me know.”
“Qamar and Zubair would love that, I am sure.”
“It would excite the children to be together,” says Bella.
“And I hope for their sakes and everyone else’s that Valerie doesn’t cause further upsets in the existing harmony,” says Fatima.
“I’ll make sure she won’t,” promises Bella.
“What are their mother’s prospects in the new setup?”
“None, legally speaking.”
“Is she going back to India or moving here with her partner?”
Has Dahaba been speaking again? Bella asks herself.
“I doubt they will move here,” ventures Bella.
“But it is true that they are trouble?”
Bella changes her position. “They’ve been indiscreet.”
“With movement in the small hours of the night?”
Bella then tells an edited version of the events as they occurred. “For all we know, Padmini may have gone out for a smoke when Dahaba saw the unoccupied couch. Not that it matters in the end.”
“Is it true that Valerie wants Aar’s corpse to be exhumed, brought here, and then cremated? Because in the will we signed as witnesses in London, there is no mention of cremation or where he should be buried.”
“Valerie has the habit of creating confusion.”
“But that’s madness,” Fatima says.
They sit in silence, not knowing how to move on.
Fatima is the first to speak. “What are your plans?”
“I am here to mother Salif and Dahaba.”
“You are relocating — completely?”
“At some stage, I can envisage setting up a freelance photography business when I feel things are more settled,” says Bella. “But not now. I want them to attend universities here. I feel very comfortable in Africa and I am glad I am back on the continent and delighted that I can be of some help to my nephew and niece. It’s been traumatic, a great deal chaotic — but calmness will reign and we’ll all be happy to be together.”
“These are challenging times, aren’t they?” asks Fatima.
In a flash, Bella remembers everything she has done since coming here, but remembers nothing of what happened before that. She thinks there is something amiss and the only way to cope with this sort of personal crisis is to take the tea things into the kitchen and then go to the bathroom, wash her face with cold water, and have a moment of quiet all to herself.
She then takes leave of everyone, shouting to the children upstairs, “I have things to do, my dears.”
14
Older but not necessarily a great deal wiser, Bella telephones HandsomeBoy Ngulu as soon as she sets off from Fatima and Mahdi’s house. The thought of postponing their meeting until she is in a less delicate state of mind crosses her mind, but this strikes her as a cop-out, and she dismisses it. When Ngulu answers, she pulls over to talk to him.
“Hello, sweetness,” he says. “What is up?”
It takes all her self-control not to tell him that in her current state of mind there are only two people she considers entitled to address her with such an endearment: Dahaba and Salif. True, Ngulu has in the past been in the habit of using that term of affection, both in person and in his texts and e-mails. And indeed, each time he used it (“Is that you, sweetness?”), it seemed to dispossess her of some inner strength, robbing her of the power she always assumed she had over men, quickening her with feelings from the past. Which is all the more reason why she doesn’t want to hear it now. Another day, perhaps, but not today. But how is he to know how fragile she is?
She asks if they are still meeting.
He says, “I’ve been looking forward to it all day.”
“The Serena, right?”
“Right, the Serena.”
“It’ll be good to meet and talk.”
“I’ll be waiting in the back of the café bar, my dearest.”
She wonders if she should call off the tryst. Despite the verbiage, she isn’t picking up the kind of feeling she expects from a lover she is seeing after so long an absence. She senses stress in his voice, maybe dread; he sounds like an unhappy man. Nor, she notices, does he go the extra mile to express his sorrow for her loss. But she says nothing.
The first time they slept together, she was putting up at a three-star hotel, the Meridian. It was a rainy October night, and she’d come from Rome to do a bit of camera work for Oxfam. She recalls that night with amusement now. He’d climaxed before he even entered her, without so much as bothering to knock on her door. He wasn’t much good as a lover at first, but he was so young and handsome that, ogling his naked body and touching him here and there, her eyes at least felt fully satiated. Hence her nickname for him, Bell’Uomo.