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 and 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.’