Let the water restore you, the woman said, replacing her glasses and falling back onto her beach towel.
He closed his eyes and listened to the waves, feeling the spray on his face. It did feel good.
Without looking at him, the woman spoke: I know this seems wrong, not like justice, but here we take freedom day by day, moment by moment: What else is there?
She was right. What did he know? He’d been gone ten years. My name is Sunil, he said. It seemed important to state who he was.
She smiled, still not looking at him. Welcome home, Sunil, she said.
Thank you, he said.
What the fuck did you say, Salazar asked him.
Nothing. I was thinking about Cape Town, about the time I went back. I was having a coffee in this café and I saw Robben Island from the window. I said to the old waiter serving me, if the island was visible every day how come they pretended nothing was going on? He smiled and said, It was often quite foggy in those days, sir, the island was rarely visible.
It’s a skill, Salazar said. Like witnesses who can’t remember anything at a crime scene.
Selective blindness made Sunil think of White Alice.
White Alice got her name from the locals in Soweto when she moved there from Cape Town. Her name wasn’t a result of her complexion — she looked somewhere between colored and Indian, no different really from the thousands of biracial South Africans who were caught between apartheid’s denial of mixed unions and its fear of miscegenation. It wasn’t unusual for people to try to pass as white. Those who couldn’t pass settled for delusion: claiming to be white, which is what White Alice had done. She told anyone who would listen that she had been born white but had turned black after an illness. No one believed her, but no one minded either. This was Soweto.
White Alice was Dorothy’s best friend. The two women became inseparable, spending at least an hour or two a day over at each other’s house, drinking sweetened tea and eating biscuits, complaining about life and the difficulties of loss. White Alice talked about her three children in Cape Town, all white, whom she hadn’t seen since her husband took them away from her on account of her sudden and mysterious blackness. When Sunil asked his mother about White Alice’s condition, she told him White Alice was probably just a very light-skinned colored who had passed for white for much of her life, but, as Dorothy said, blackness will always exert its revenge, and Alice had just grown into her true shade. It made sense. Sunil found out in medical school that White Alice might have been telling the truth. He discovered a condition called hyperpigmentation, a result of Addison’s disease, which had been known to darken the skin of white sufferers enough to alter perception of their racial heritage. But by then, White Alice had betrayed him twice, and his discovery of her condition and the pain it must have caused her wasn’t enough to engender his sympathy or his forgiveness. Not even when, on his eighteenth birthday, a strange white man who identified himself as Colonel Bleek visited him with a generous scholarship package for college. What good would it have done to stare such a gift horse in the mouth, so to speak? He’d asked only one question: Why me?
Alice Coetzee spoke highly of you, Bleek said. She recommended you for this.
Oh, was all he said at the time. But Sunil had since lived with the regret of not asking more questions. Like what would the gift cost him? He thought it particularly poignant that while taking German at college to better understand Freud, he found out that the word “gift,” in German, meant poison. In many ways, it seemed that the Germans had a real philosophical handle on life.
He wanted to tell Salazar all this. Instead he said: I’m sure you’re right.
Forty-four
A blue sky but not night. An eerie dusk, an unearthly light. A blue mist alternately obscures and reveals a field of blue grass in the shadow of a darkening sky. Alone, in the middle of the field, a dark tree spreads its black foliage across the frame.
Water walks toward the tree in the middle of the field, but no matter how fast he moves or how much he tries, he can’t reach the tree. It never moves but it is always just out of reach. The blue sky gets bluer and the blue grass waves through the blue mist like blue algae in water. Still, Water can’t reach the tree.
And the blue tree morphs, shifting in agony as its trunk twists to form a bristlecone pine, standing in the middle of an empty muddy field.
Twisting slowly from a branch bent so low it seems like it can’t hold its terrible burden is a young woman, eyes closed peacefully, something close to a smile on her face.
Selah, Water calls, softly at first, then louder, Selah, until it is a scream.
He wakes abruptly; alone, Fire fast asleep under his caul, sitting in the chair by the window. If anyone heard his scream, they don’t respond. Reaching out, Water touches the cold glass of the window.
Selah is a cloud, he says, a star cloud, constellation of the dog.
Forty-five
The moment’s awkwardness when Asia answered Sunil’s door to find Sheila was compounded by the fact that Asia was wearing lacy underpants, sporting a black eye and a shirt that could only have been Sunil’s, two buttons keeping it on.
I’m sorry, Sheila said, not knowing what else to say.
About what, Asia asked.
Is, er, Sunil home, Sheila asked.
No, Asia said, not stepping away from the door but not shutting it either.
Asia was curious about Sheila, but not unduly worried. She knew she was the only one Sunil was sleeping with, and he’d never mentioned this woman. Still, the day had been full of surprises.
I’m Sheila. I work with Sunil. He hasn’t been answering his cell. I was worried.
Hello, Sheila, Asia said. I’m Asia.
Hi.
Asia didn’t like that Sheila had been calling Sunil on his cell and felt comfortable enough to come over, clearly unannounced. I haven’t heard from him either, she said. I thought he was at work.
No, I checked, Sheila said.
He’s never mentioned you, Asia said.
This is the first time I’ve come over. I’m really embarassed. Look, I’ll go, just tell him I came round, Sheila said.
You should come in, Asia said, stepping back and holding the door open. That is, if you want to.
Are you sure, Sheila asked.
Asia wanted to say, I don’t want to be alone. Not right now, not today. She wanted to say, I’m confused and terrified, because I found out that not only have I been sleeping with my lover’s best friend, but he also tried to kill me. And my lover is not really my lover, but my client. And I love him. I do, but now I don’t know why because I really don’t know enough about him. Instead she said: I’m sure.
Sheila walked in and stopped in the hallway as Asia closed the door. She followed Asia into the living room, where she felt herself stiffen and draw a sharp breath even though she hadn’t meant to. Were you robbed, Sheila asked.
Asia took in the ruined living room, feeling good at the implication that Sheila assumed she lived with Sunil. I don’t live here, she said.
Oh, I’m sorry, I just assumed, Sheila said.
Assumed what, Asia asked.
I’m sorry, Sheila said.
About what?
I’m not sure, Sheila said, acutely uncomfortable. About coming unannounced.
Yeah, that is kind of forward, Asia said, checking Sheila out. Thinking: late thirties, fashion still caught in the ’80s, tight body, cute face. Still, she thought, no competition.
So what happened here?
None of your business, Asia said.
So this has nothing to do with that, Sheila said, pointing at Asia’s black eye.
Like I said, none of your business.