Not yet morning and Obadiah sits in the paling darkness in his blue chair and caresses his new Grundig radio. The batteries are spent and the generator’s been off for hours, but still he imagines what it might tell him or what song it might play. So much going on—even now, even all the way out here—in this silent little box. A cacophony of unheard voices, and here he sits in a robe and slippers listening to possibility. Astonishing, isn’t it, that there is ever silence in a world so vast and full of voices? Today in class he will yank out all the great maps from the locked cabinet and tack them up all over the walls, show the children the North Pole, Siberia, Alaska, the Philippines, Addis Ababa, Cairo, Montevideo. He will thrill the children with the possibilities of maps. The world sits flat and conquerable. All pilgrimages possible! Maps—his heart soars—is there anything so glorious as a map? Even for a man who rarely ventures farther than the Pick ’n Pay in Karibib?
Antoinette sleeps. In the darkness he sees her without needing to look toward the half-open bedroom door. She sleeps with her feet sticking out from under the blankets like two paddles she’d smack him with. Her mouth gripped tight. She sleeps with her teeth clenched, in case she should die. Her soul might escape, she says. She breathes, noisy, out her nose. When they were younger, he used to kiss her as she slept. He’d pry her mouth open with his tongue. Was that myself? I’d like to do it now. Why can’t I? He lets go of the radio, but remains where he is, looking at nothing and everything. The newspaper photographs thumbtacked to the wall behind his head. Nkrumah, Bobby Kennedy, Miriam Makeba, a handcuffed Zephania Kameeta. They all stare at him, waiting for him to do something. Do what? What would you gallants have me do? He’d like a nip. A half-pint’s in his closet, waiting for him in a worn-out loafer, its copper top peeping out like a baby’s head. In the hostel, the boys are sleeping. In Windhoek, his sons, Thomas and Matti (both employed), are sleeping. In Tehran, two lovers, Tehranians, sleep. In Moscow, old cosmonauts gracefully sleep. In Peru, Morocco, Flanders. Why? Why can’t I?
The windmill behind the mission garage begins to move, one hesitant creech, then another and another until it reaches full squeal. He sees it looming above the mission garage in the dark. Aermotor Chicago. On the other blue chair is Antoinette’s unfinished needlework. He wants to touch it. Touch whatever it is she’s making now, to twist his fingers in that scrumble of yarn, but he doesn’t move, doesn’t reach for it. Only thinks about what it would feel like if he did. Which is different, isn’t it? He listens to her gusty breathing in the bedroom as the light turns from fog to yellow. Antoinette’s cocks crow all night. They never sleep either. To them it’s always dawn. Even so, he thinks, isn’t there always a darkening before morning? Why not touch? Why not go to her now? Why are there times—he’s thought this before—we’d rather want than grasp?