Harry looks straight ahead.
‘No,’ I say because I don’t want to hear this. I don’t want to hear any more stories. I want to leave quickly, but I’m a little drunk and I can’t get my bag off the back of the chair. The strap is all tangled.
‘The woman’s husband was away in Nairobi — Betty, wasn’t that her name?’ Gloria is merciless. ‘So Harry decides to fly in and fuck her. It’s late in the day and he’s been drinking at a bar in Arusha, the Discovery Club, I think it was, but that doesn’t stop hero Harry. Oh no. It’s a bush strip at dusk, and when he lands he hits a herd of goats.’
Harry says, quietly, ‘Do you want me to finish the story?’
Gloria hesitates, and for a moment I see Mary revealed, a woman brutalized by life. Gloria could stop this right now, could wave a hand and laugh, move the conversation on to something benign. But she doesn’t. She looks to Harry.
‘They weren’t goats,’ he says.
There’s a nasty pause.
‘They were children. Playing football. The propeller killed some of them and mutilated others.’
I have my sandals on now.
‘And their parents put a curse on me. That’s what I was trying to tell you. They cursed me.’
‘I have to go.’ I walk out of the bar. I hear Gloria’s hard laugh. Harry calls her an old hag. I hear him demand, ‘Why’d you take her to the caves? That bloody awful place.’
‘Oh, you and your stupid curses, you filthy old drunk.’
Up the steep steps, I’m on the road now, walking south along the headland. The road is sporadically lit by the houses. The streetlights have no bulbs, and I wonder who would want their gaudy brightness exposing the sweet wrappers, cigarette packets, cow dung. Let us find relief in obscurity and this still quiet strip of potholes, hemming a continent, defining the end of something and the beginning of something else. For just a moment, rest, then continue the stolid walk of the unforgiven. Drink and drink, for in the bottle there is absolution.
Is that what I must do, then? Drink?
Or seek some other form of self-annihilation?
The shadow of some other curse.
You and your stupid curses.
Why did she take you to that godawful cave?
When did the couple realize they were going to die? Was there something beyond fear, to be entombed in the sleepy, absorbing dark? They reeled back through that morning, looking for the moment when their trajectory fixed in time. A specific set of circumstances aligned, locked in place.
Perhaps they reached the end of the driveway and turned back because they’d forgotten the phone bill. Seeing the dog, panting and excited, they decided he could come after all. Perhaps they forgot the leash. Perhaps it broke.
At this end of the road, the houses don’t have lights; there is only the occasional glow of a kerosene lantern. I pass the dukha where a woman sells eggs and soap. And other commodities. I have seen her walk with men toward the abandoned mansion behind her stall. She makes no effort of allure — she wears curlers and flip-flops. Her big, loose breasts sway recklessly beneath a dirty T-shirt. She scuffs her feet on the sandy earth as she takes her customer to an old bed in the back with no sheets. I imagine her scratching her nose as he works toward his conclusion.
She is in her shop, almost a silhouette in the chiaroscuro light. Her chin is in her hand, the whites of her eyes very bright, her skin very black. The shop contains her and frames her like a Vermeer, with that densely suggestive narrative. She sees me but slides her eyes away, uninterested.
Now the bitumen surrenders to the sand track. In the darkness I step carefully, trying to gauge the depth of the potholes. Jamhuri has put on the outside light. I call his name as I open the gate and there’s silence. I call again, louder, and finally he answers in a rush, ‘Mama! Karibu!’ and hurries around the corner to give me a salute. I can see the wrinkles on his cheek from where he’s been asleep. He escorts me to the door, and I step inside. I’m thirsty from my walk, so I go to the sink.
There, on the sideboard, is the box, the flaps frayed, the messy knots of sisal string. Did I put it there? I feel certain I didn’t. But in the next moment, the next breath, I can’t be sure. Did I forget?
Or is the universe arranging itself? Moving objects, shuffling them, dealing them like cards, ha ha ha: a cup, a child, a dog. If it can move a car toward a bus stop, it can surely move a cardboard box.
Something flickers at the edge of my vision, like a face at the window in a horror film. I turn, look out. But there’s no one. Of course. Only Jamhuri, shuffling in the dry leaves of the tulip tree.
And in the breathless silence I put out my hand to touch the box. But it moves through the cardboard — as if through a hologram. I pull my hand back and hold it with the other. Again, I reach out. This time I feel the rough paper, the shape of the box: corners, angles, planes.
I go to the door. Step out.
‘Jamhuri,’ I say. ‘Jamhuri.’
Arnau, April 19
The cup, the black grounds therein. I almost welcomed the little routine: how I would wash the cup tenderly, and put it back in its place for next time. This was our slow waltz, a kind of courtship.
But today: he hadn’t drunk the coffee. The cup was on the table, still full, the dark brew still lukewarm. The chair was askew. Not how he normally left it, neatly returned against the table.
I went from room to room, trying to figure out if he’d been there, too. And what he’d done. I wasn’t ready for change. I was dwelling in time like a nest.
Everything was just as I’d left it. As I lifted the cup from the table my sleeve caught on the chair and I spilt the coffee all over my skirt. I was a good housewife, and under the sink I kept a bottle of seltzer for such mishaps. I crouched down, pulled open the cupboard door. The seltzer stood among the extra dish soap, laundry detergent and white vinegar. But as I took it in my hand I noticed something else: a large roll of duct tape. The heavy silver kind.
I hadn’t bought it. I was sure Tom wouldn’t have bought it. And even if he had — for some unimaginable reason, because what on earth would Tom do with duct tape? — I felt sure I would have known it was there.
Perhaps Mr Gassner?
I could hear both Gassners downstairs. The French doors were open to the first real spring day. Sounds drifted up, a stray Gassner cough, the clatter of cutlery being put away, the inevitable TV.
Perhaps Mr Gassner, what? Came up here and put a new roll of duct tape under the sink?
The plastic wrapping was intact. I held it for a while, wondering what I should do and what it could mean.
I just put it back.
Tanga, May 31
Jamhuri leaves me at the edge of the track.
‘Just go, Mama. Someone will meet you, someone will take you to him.’ He is already backing away. He doesn’t want anything to do with this. He has no idea what’s in the box, but he knows it’s something important, something that brings a white woman to a lonely stretch of coastline with evening drawing close.
To Mr Sese.
The path leads into a grove of tall, thin palms. Goats nibble on patches of rough grass that manage to grow on the pale sandy earth. Beyond the palms, the path disappears into thick bush. I try to reassure Jamhuri again, but he turns on me with frightened eyes and hurries down the track. It is several miles back to the main road.
I take off my shoes. The path invites bare feet with soft, yielding sand and the gentle sway of its route. I can just hear the sea. The leaves of the palms clatter in the barest breeze. Something of Jamhuri’s fear has stayed with me like a trace of his sweat on my skin.