He stayed near his hut because lately, when he had taken a walk in the village or out to the road, small children — some skinny and potbellied, others cadaver thin, all wearing castoff T-shirts — had followed him and, laughing, had thrown small stones at him, or darting closer tried to hit him with dried maize cobs or the large blown-open fruit from the sausage tree. He tried not to be angry — anger was not a source of strength here but something that could be dangerous. He cautioned himself to take care.
After Aubrey had left, backing out of the hazy shadows of early-morning darkness, Zizi’s mood changed. She became unusually silent, which Hock took to be sullen resentment, seeing Aubrey pocketing the money. Hock approached her and put his arms around her, to comfort her.
“My friend,” he said.
She stiffened, her body like a bundle of sticks wrapped in loose cloth.
Instead of saying more, Hock let a day pass. Zizi brought him his meals as usual, with tea; she had her own cooking fire now, and no longer depended on food from Manyenga’s compound. She pounded maize, she spread the flour to bleach on the big mat, and by now she had several fat bags of flour she’d made, stored on the veranda of her small hut in the proud manner of Malabo women, visible proof of their hard work and their homemaking.
Seeing that she was unresponsive, Hock said, “That man Aubrey, do you like him?”
Zizi said nothing, but sniffed a little, which he took to mean no. She was holding a bucket of plates in soapy water, from the meal, which she intended to wash.
Assuming she had spoken the word, Hock said, “Why not?”
Zizi made her reluctant face, nibbling her lips, twisting her mouth, then said, “He is not afraid of you.”
Burdened by the heavy bucket, taking short steps, her shoulders wagging as she shuffled, she walked away, the plates knocking and gulping in the water. With the bucket bumping against her leg she seemed slow and careworn, like a little old woman — skinny body, big feet. But when she swung the bucket up and hoisted it on top of her head and she straightened, balancing it, she became tall, erect, poised, and Hock desired her again. But it was futile desire. She was the only friend he had; he couldn’t risk changing that friendship to anything else, nor did he have the right.
Normally, Snowdon would have chased her and watched her do the dishes. But he sat near Hock with his stumpy forefinger in his mouth, gaping at him, perhaps smiling, perhaps wincing because of the strong glare.
When Zizi returned, Hock said, “Maybe it’s true. Maybe he’s not afraid of me.”
“It is true,” she said.
“What about you?”
Zizi folded her arms as if to defy him, and seemed haughty with her head lifted.
“Are you afraid of me?”
She said, “Now I am.”
“Why?”
She mumbled some words. He heard the word for rat. He asked her to repeat it. She gave him part of a Sena proverb he recognized: Koswe wapazala—the fleeing rat…
“The fleeing rat exposes all the others,” he said. “That’s what you think of him?”
She crouched near the dwarf and made that face again, twisting her mouth like a reluctant child, screwing up one eye.
That was another reason his desire was dampened: she was not a child, but she could seem childlike. She was still whole, as Aubrey had slyly intimated — locked, kept from her initiation. Still innocent: Hock couldn’t take that from her. In the village it mattered more than anything. Her virginity was a form of wealth, the value of her bride price, her pride, her only possession.
The day was hot, and the fact that Aubrey had already set off for Blantyre helped raise Hock’s hopes. If Aubrey succeeded, he might not be in Malabo much longer, but Hock quickly dismissed this forbidden thought. It was still early. How to give a point to the day was always a problem. The days in Malabo were shapeless and empty, and he felt assaulted by them — the emptiness, the screech of the cicadas, the squealing of bats; the days were idiots.
Toward noon, he said to Zizi, “Help me find some snakes.”
She frowned, pretending to sulk, but she got to her feet, gathered the basket, the burlap sack, the forked stick, the collecting equipment. And in the heat of the day, when everyone else was inside or in the shade, they walked across the clearing in the weight of the full overhead sun, to the creek, to look for snakes.
Hock was happy. A hunt for snakes — one of his pleasures from long ago — gave the day a purpose and some meaning, gave the flat and hot and undifferentiated landscape certain subtleties: the sandy patches where the snakes slept, the overhanging limbs that might hold the drooping length of a boomslang, the shallows in the creek where small narrow snakes like the snouted night adder whipped along just below the surface. The presence of snakes gave features to the monotony of the land, and looking for them, he was able to revisit his previous life here and to forget he was a captive.
Walking just ahead of him, the basket on her head, Zizi stirred him, since she was like the embodiment of his other, earlier Africa. Her granny, Gala, had seemed like a new woman then — educated, self-possessed, quick to respond, unexpectedly witty. Yet Zizi had no education, could not read, wore that simple wrap, went barefoot, and shaved her head, and apart from being kept by Gala from her initiation, she observed all the other customs of the Sena people that Hock remembered, even quoting proverbs to make a point. She was restrained in the old way, too, merely frowned at Hock’s wristwatch, and had taken no interest in his radio — chuckled when he told her it had been stolen.
The strangest habit she had, and the most endearing, was her singing deep in her throat when she was anxious. The melody was usually a dark, many-angled descant, a growly harmonizing that Hock followed with an aching heart.
She was singing now, the growl growing fainter, as they trod the gravelly hard-packed sand of the worn path at the perimeter of Malabo, through the head-high elephant grass.
Was it fear? It seemed that fear inspired her singing — or, not singing, but a vibrant harmony that rang through her whole slim body as she steadied the basket on her head, the basket in which they’d bring back the snakes.
“What else are you afraid of?” he asked.
Zizi whinnied in reply, a singing in her sinuses.
“Tell me.”
“I’m afraid to get married,” she said, and that sentence ended with a melody that seemed like an equivocation.
“Yes?” He wanted to encourage her to say more, but he was distracted, searching the hot gravel for snakes.
“But I’m not afraid to die.”
As she spoke the words, he saw her dead. It was an amazing pair of pronouncements and made her seem both wise and vulnerable. Virgins were so often martyrs. He thought of Aubrey again, who seemed to mock her for being innocent and yet was intimidated by her. And he remembered his asking her what men wanted, and her replying, They want what all men want. He wondered how to tell her that a man can be kind, that marriage can bring children. A husband would protect her and give her status: the Sena pieties that were part of the initiation. But Zizi was wise enough to know that a villager in Malabo chose a wife as he would a field hand, and that the role of a wife came to much the same thing.