One Tuesday, Odette begged seventy-five cents, cooked a meal of boiled fish and carrots, collected eight buckets of water, four bundles of scrap wood and chopped it. Leonard begged ten cents, watched his mother for a few hours, talked with her for ten minutes and helped Odette find some rope. Maude begged nothing, and felt her husband hang over her like a huge leaf, or a steady, personal shower of rain.
On Diego Garcia he had smelt of fish, salt, sweat and hair, a hint of woodsmoke and sometimes rum. Never much. Unlike other Ilois men, he’d always been careful with drink. He believed that the sea could smell drink. It would get jealous; drown a two-timing man. ‘You never know,’ he’d say, and sometimes stroke her hair or her cheek.
She stroked her own cheek. Odette watched for a moment before going outside, kneeling over a pile of sticks and striking a match. She fanned flames, fetched a pot of water and set it on a square of bricks around the fire.
Leonard was in disgrace. He sat on a wall by a wheelless car and shared a cigarette with other boys. He didn’t notice the weather and didn’t know what day it was. He wanted to but other things blocked his mind. Food, drink, clothes. Clothes were why he was in disgrace. His sister was ashamed of him, all his mother could say was, ‘Is it cooked?’ A short story.
He’d walked into Port Louis. He rubbed his stomach, picked his teeth and nodded at women by taps and children carrying baskets to school. People on buses, policemen directing traffic. He counted cars, the sun was hot all day.
He sat under the royal palms on Place d’Armes, enjoyed the shade and admired the clothes smart people wore. Bankers, merchants and civil servants. Officials in long cars swept into Government House. He watched them.
He was joined in the shade by a man who unwrapped an ice cream and sucked it. ‘Lick?’ he said to Leonard.
‘Me?’
‘Sure.’
‘Okay. Thanks.’ Leonard wiped his mouth. ‘Thanks,’ he said again, and licked.
The man asked questions. Leonard didn’t have any answers. All he knew was his name, the name of his home, the few things Paul taught him on Peros Banhos, the few things Odette and his mother had shown him, the fact that Ilois couldn’t go home. ‘I don’t know,’ he said.
‘But you live in Port Louis?’
Leonard nodded.
‘And you’re Mauritian?’
‘No. I don’t think so. If you wanted to know, really, you’d have to ask my sister. She knows.’
‘Your sister?’
‘Yes.’
Leonard looked at the man and wondered why he was asking questions and sharing his ice cream. He asked him, ‘Why you want to know?’
‘Just curious…’
‘Curious?’
‘Sure.’
‘Why?’
‘I like to know about people.’ The man bit a piece of the ice cream and chewed it. ‘It’s my hobby.’
‘Hobby?’ Leonard didn’t know the word. ‘Where is your hobby?’
‘Where? It’s not anywhere.’
‘Then…’ said Leonard, but didn’t know how to finish. He had feelings about the man. He stood up. ‘Then I have to go, anyway.’
‘Goodbye, then.’
‘Goodbye.’
He crossed the road and cut down an alley to the market. On Diego Garcia you could rely on people not to be strange. Port Louis was full of different people, but he couldn’t understand why about anything; Ilois couldn’t. However many times they asked questions about home, no official person gave them a word, or came to visit them in their shacks.
Leonard idled his way between market stalls. Many different types of goods were for sale. Racks hung with kitchen utensils, baskets full of chickens, tables of herbs and spices. Busy women picked their way through fruits and vegetables, children yelled at each other and squashed discarded tomatoes. Shirts and trousers hung from rails, T-shirts for tourists and dresses. Leonard’s eye was caught by a dress.
It was red and swung from a wire hanger. Other dresses hung on the same rail but it stood out. It wasn’t patterned, but its colour appealed to him. He couldn’t understand why – no different from any other time or thing – he went to it and touched its shoulder.
Cotton. Three buttons down the front. A shiny belt for the waist. He fingered it and looked around. No one was minding the shop.
He stole it in a flash. He didn’t think. He’d never stolen before. He crumpled it up, stuck it up his shirt and ran away, through the crowds.
Mothers with babies got in his way, traders carrying trays of cakes stopped to let him pass. A policeman shook his head and rolled his eyes. No one yelled, ‘Stop thief!’ No one noticed a thing. Market was where anything went on. One man running was as good as another.
He reached Roche Bois before daring to take the dress out and smooth it down. He smiled at it. Odette’s size. Odette’s present. She kept him and their mother alive. He had to do something. He had done something. He laughed and grinned from ear to ear when he gave it to her.
‘Where did you get it?’
‘Market!’
‘But, but you couldn’t have enough money for something like this.’ She flicked it. ‘How did you…’
‘I took it. It was…’
‘Took it? What do you mean? You can’t just take things! Did you pay for it?’
‘No. But…’
‘But you stole it!’ She brushed a mark off the dress. ‘That’s what you mean, isn’t it?’
Leonard nodded. He should have known better. ‘Yes.’
‘Then take it back!’
‘But…’
‘Take it back!’ She stamped her feet. ‘Go on!’
Leonard wanted to say something about how their home had been stolen. He wanted to point at the rags she wore and say that one dress from so many didn’t matter, but he couldn’t. He walked back to the market and left it hanging on the entrance gates. It flapped there, more like some flag than clothes.
Odette didn’t call him for food. She decided to let him stay on the wall. Maude could eat his share. She deserved it. She sneezed.
‘You want some fish?’
‘Is it cooked?’
‘Of course it’s cooked! There’s rice too.’
‘I’ll call Leonard.’
‘No! Leave him. He can get his own.’
Maude shrugged. She would let her daughter decide. She had done enough for one day – days rattled through her head like bones and she saw Raphael behind her eyes. She said, ‘He won’t be eating either,’ and chewed some fish.