Nothing changed. That was the way of things up there. One day resembled another in the sameness of its intentions, the level graph of its ambitions; and I’d become used to it. I wanted to keep everything fixed and rooted in its place, for ever.
Not even the seasons changed much. We were too near the tropics for that. There was a dry season and a rainy season, but the temperature that ran through them both didn’t rise or fall too much on the chart.
When Laurence arrived we were in the middle of summer, the rainy season: in the afternoons there was a restless, electric sheen to the sky and thunderclouds clotted into a solid mass. When it stormed, the lightning was spectacular. Then often it cleared and in the evenings the flying ants swarmed. In the mornings the floor was full of their transparent wings. But now we had moved into winter, with its clear, brittle light. Certain trees in the forest were bare and on some mornings a thin frost lay on the ground.
None of this was different; the same things happened every year, all in their usual place. My life looked as it normally did. But somewhere deep down, underneath, it wasn’t the same.
One night when I was visiting Maria, just as we’d settled down on the blanket together, I felt my sexual desire – which was almost habit by now – give way to something else: another feeling completely, subversive because it was strange.
‘What’s the matter?’ she said.
My hands had fallen away from her, I was looking at her in the dark.
‘Let’s not do this tonight,’ I said. ‘Let’s do something different. Let’s talk.’
‘Why don’t you tell me something.’
She sat up, pulling her dress straight, staring at me.
‘Tell you something what?’
‘I want you to tell me everything about your life.’
‘I told you this everything.’
‘No, but I mean really. I mean everything. I want to know where you were born. I want to know about your mother and father. Your brothers and sisters. I want to know what you thought about when you were growing up. I want to know how you got married. About your husband. Everything.’
‘I told you this!’ Alarm disguised itself as indignation, as if I was accusing her of something.
I went on, as if this thought was a continuation – and for me it was: ‘Maria. If you want to, we can stop this. You know that? If you want me to go and never come back, you can say that to me.’
‘You want finish this?’
‘No. No. But if you want to, I will do what you want.’
But she shook her head. ‘I don’t want this talking,’ she said, and rolled over on to me. She’d heard, perhaps, a false note in my voice, and her hands moved me back into the old, true tracks of habit. And nothing was different after all.
One day, while we were playing table tennis in the recreation room, Laurence said to me, ‘Listen, Frank. When you have people up here to visit, where do they stay?’
‘Nobody comes to visit me.’
‘Never?’
‘No.’
‘Oh.’ The plastic ball bounced off the table and rolled.
‘Who’s coming to visit you, Laurence?’
‘Zanele. My girlfriend. You know, from Lesotho.’
He hadn’t mentioned her for months. Every week or so, the letters on fine coloured paper came and went between them, but nothing more than that. The little shrine of photographs above his bed was gathering dust. There were none of the breathless phone calls, the urgent longings, that I remembered from when I was young. I’d begun to doubt her existence.
But now she was coming up for a weekend. She hadn’t been able to come before now, he told me, because of her commitments in Lesotho.
‘There must be a hotel or something.’
I shook my head. ‘There was Mama Mthembu’s place, but she closed down that side of it. No business.’
‘Maybe she’d let out a room as a favour.’
‘Listen,’ I said. ‘I’ll get out of our room if you need it.’
‘No, no, that’s not right. But it would be great if you asked Mrs Mthembu. She likes you.’
That night, on my way to visit Maria, I stopped in at Mama’s to find out. I didn’t think she would help, but an odd coincidence was at work. Standing around the bar were two or three men I’d never seen before, strangers in town. They were in civilian clothes, but their haircuts and their bearing looked military to me. And yes, Mama said, they were part of a group of soldiers who’d been sent up here, who were being billeted in her hotel. The old rooms were being cleaned out and made ready. Good for business, she said, smiling broadly.
‘Soldiers? But what for?’
She leaned towards me confidingly. ‘I think they are a border patrol. To keep foreigners out.’
‘How many of them?’
‘I’m not sure. Five, six. So far there are only three. But more are coming soon.’
And even this was part of the different feeling in the town. All the old rules bending, solid objects rolling out of place.
‘So is there any chance that you will have an extra room for the weekend? There is a woman coming up who needs a place to stay.’
‘Hmm. Maybe. But you must check with me on Thursday. You have a little girlfriend?’
‘Not mine. She’s visiting Laurence Waters. He’s the young man who sometimes – ’
‘Yes, I know Laurence. He is my friend.’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Yes.’
She had never learned my name, but Laurence was her friend. And still he sent me down to talk to her about a room, as if I had some special influence.
In two days the whole place was full of news of the soldiers. Different rumours flew around. But it seemed that they had been sent to plug up this stretch of the border, which was notoriously porous. Not just people, but all kinds of other illegal and dangerous goods were going back and forth: arms and ammunition, drugs, poached ivory. The name most consistently mentioned in connection with this traffic was that of the Brigadier, but all of it was gossip and innuendo, no hard facts. Now of course speculation was rife as to how the soldiers would deal with him.
‘He will work with them, of course, yes,’ Claudia said gloomily at the breakfast table. ‘It is only corruption, corruption.’
‘No,’ Jorge said. ‘They will arrest him, they will take him away. It is obvious.’
Variations on these two points of view were repeated by everybody, from the kitchen staff to the casual patrons at Mama’s place.
‘What do you think?’ Laurence said. The presence of the Brigadier had impressed itself on his psyche often enough to finally register there.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Let’s wait and see.’
The truth was that I wasn’t sure about any of the rumours surrounding the Brigadier. He was such a mythical figure by now that any scraps of idle talk stuck to him like facts. It was possible that he was just a lost and burnt-out piece of the past, not really here at all.
Not all of the speculation had to do with him. There was a sense that the arrival of the soldiers somehow marked a fresh life for the town. Rooms that were sealed up and empty were going to be occupied. Who knew what else might follow? Maybe shops would open, people would come, something at long last might happen.
But I couldn’t see it. There were only three soldiers around the bar that first day; Mama had told me there might be three more. Six soldiers weren’t going to make any difference to anything, but I didn’t speculate about this either.
I went back on Thursday. Another four soldiers had arrived, and they were still awaiting the commander of the unit. But there would be a place for Laurence’s girlfriend, Mama told me.
He was delighted. ‘Thank you for organizing that, Frank.’ He seemed to think that the room wouldn’t have been available without me.
‘What would you have done if there wasn’t a place?’
He considered this soberly. ‘Put off the visit, I guess.’
‘You could’ve just shared your bed while I was here.’
‘Oh, no. That wouldn’t be right.’
He went down to Mama Mthembu’s to see the room for himself. It was noisy, he told me, just above the courtyard, but fine. He put a vase of flowers, which he’d picked in the veld himself, on the table, as well as a framed photo of him and his girlfriend in the Sudan.
But his mood, late on that Thursday night, was melancholic and troubled. He seemed preoccupied with private thoughts.
‘When did you last have a lover, Frank?’ he asked me.
‘Not since my marriage. Why are you asking? Are you worried about your girlfriend?’
‘Well. You know. It’s been a while since we saw each other. The last time was about a month before I came up here. I went to Lesotho to stay with her for a week.’
‘And how was it?’
‘Oh, that was wonderful. Great. Yes, we had a wonderful time.’ But he spoke too forcefully, and avoided my eyes.
‘You’ll just have to see how it goes.’
‘I was thinking of having a little party for her. Tomorrow night. Nothing too elaborate, just the people who work here. Would you come?’
‘Me? Sure. Of course.’
It seemed a bizarre notion to me.
‘Okay,’ he said, his face warming a little. ‘Say seven o’clock. That would be good, Frank. Thank you.’
I wouldn’t have been able to avoid the party, because it happened in our room. When I got back from duty the gathering was already in full swing. I stood in the doorway, staring. It was an amazing picture. Everybody had come. Even Themba and Julius from the kitchen. Even Tehogo – who was there with the young man I’d seen hanging around, apparently his only friend. It was just Claudia, who’d taken over from me in the office, who wasn’t there.
Nobody noticed me at first. Laurence had borrowed a music system from somewhere and a slightly stretched tape was playing too loudly. He’d filled several hospital bowls with peanuts and stale crisps, and bought a few litres of cheap boxed wine. Some kind of coloured plastic was tied around the light and in the lurid yellow glow people were sitting around and talking with uneasy jollity.
‘Frank! Where were you? I thought you’d run away!’ Laurence was very tense. He had a sort of desperate brightness as he came to get me at the door. ‘Come and meet Zanele, I’ve been wanting to introduce you.’
I’d already noticed her from the doorway, standing rigidly in a corner, holding a glass of wine. She was small and pretty, with braided hair, wearing a bright West African dress; when she shook my hand I could feel the tension communicated through her long, thin fingers.
‘Oh, hello,’ she said, ‘yes, Frank, yes.’
The American accent, in this room of flat vowels, was startling. And it was a shock to realize, after all the occasions when she’d been mentioned, that she wasn’t African. I didn’t know what to say and after an awkward moment I moved away. I’d seen Dr Ngema when I came in, perched unhappily on the edge of my bed, sipping from her glass and sneaking glances at her watch, and I went to sit next to her now; she turned to me with relief.
The first thing she said was, ‘Frank, I’ve got to go in a moment.’
‘Oh. All right.’
‘I’ve got lots of work to do. But it’s a lovely party, lovely.’
She said it with such insincere emphasis that I realized she thought I’d organized it.
‘This is Laurence’s party,’ I said. ‘Nothing to do with me.’
‘Yes, yes. We should have little get-togethers more often. It’s good for … for morale. Which reminds me, Frank. I wanted to ask you. In connection with your idea.’
‘What idea?’
‘Well, you know. The project. The outreach thing.’ She dropped her voice in a secretive way. ‘Laurence has talked to me. But I want to know: how did you know where to go?’
‘What? I’m not with you, Ruth.’
‘I mean, why that particular community? I didn’t know you were interested in community work, Frank. You kept that very quiet.’
I stared at her, my head whirring. But the beginning of comprehension had started. I said, ‘Did he tell you …’
‘Shh. Shh.’ She hissed it urgently at me. I broke off as Laurence came up to ask if we wanted more wine. ‘No, thanks,’ she said to him, ‘I have to go in a moment.’
‘So soon?’
‘Work, work.’ When he’d gone she turned quickly back to me. ‘This isn’t the moment to talk about it, Frank. But come and speak to me, all right? I’ve got some views on it.’
‘I’m not sure about the idea, Frank, to be honest. I don’t think it’ll work … I like change and innovation, you know that. But it’s how you change. Or in this case, when. That’s what matters. But here he comes, so shh. But talk to me soon, all right?’ She drained her glass and set it down on the floor. ‘Now I’d better go. Work, work. The office is calling me. But it’s been a lovely party, Frank. Thank you so much.’
‘It isn’t my party,’ I said again, but she was already on her way to the door.
Laurence hurried up with a glass of wine for me; he sat down on the bed. ‘Did she have a good time? Dr Ngema? She didn’t stay long.’
‘Laurence, she said something I don’t understand.’
‘What?’ He looked around at the awkward cheeriness in the room, which felt, like the tape, slightly stretched. ‘Is this music all right, do you think?’
‘It’s fine.’
‘Are you sure? And the party? Is everyone having a good time? Is it okay?’
‘It’s okay, Laurence.’ But when I looked around, the peculiarity of the scene struck me again: Zanele talking to Jorge in the corner, Tehogo on the bed opposite me, an arm draped around the shoulder of his friend, and, in a space near the bathroom door, Themba and Julius dancing together. I almost didn’t know where I was.
‘Really? I wanted to do something to make Zanele feel, you know, welcome.’
‘She looks happy.’
‘Does she? But she always looks like that. She’s a happy person.’
She did look a little more relaxed, nodding as she listened to Jorge. It was from Laurence, staring across at her with his wide, alarmed eyes, that the unhappiness seemed to come.
‘You didn’t tell me she’s American.’
‘Didn’t I? Where did you think she came from?’
‘The Sudan, obviously.’
‘Sudan?’ he said, amazed. ‘No, no, she’s from the States. I wanted to ask you,’ he went on, in an offhand way, ‘if you could do me a little favour.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Do you think you could hang out with her for a couple of hours tomorrow night? I’m on duty, I don’t want her to be alone.’
‘Um, yes, sure, I could do that. But if you speak to Dr Ngema, she could change your shift.’
‘No, no, it’s okay.’
‘But she’s come up here to see you. Don’t you want to – ’
‘No, no, my shift is a commitment. I don’t want to change it.’
In the past few weeks Dr Ngema had taken to giving Laurence shifts of duty on his own. He was absurdly proud of this change in status. But in truth he was only manning the office as a front; if any serious case came in, he had to call one of us. Nothing would be easier than for him to change his shift.
‘She doesn’t want me to change it, anyway,’ he said.
‘Who doesn’t?’
‘Zanele. Work comes first for both of us. And I’ll see her on Sunday. Thanks for this, Frank. I appreciate it.’
Maybe Laurence’s desperation had infected me, but I found myself getting very drunk very quickly. I downed glass after glass of wine, till at some point in the evening the merriment around me felt suddenly genuine. And I was part of it.
The configuration of bodies in the room had changed now. Themba and Julius were sitting on my bed. Claudia had somehow appeared while Jorge had gone, and she was locked in earnest conversation with Zanele and Laurence on the floor. I was sitting on the other bed, between Tehogo and his friend.
Tehogo’s friend was called Raymond and his name felt comfortably familiar to me, so I must have been sitting there for a while. I’d seen him around often before, but we’d never exchanged more than a few terse words. He was young and almost girlishly pretty, with a smooth plastic skin and a charming smile. He had the same slick sense of style as Tehogo, so that with their short hair and gold jewellery and trendy city clothes neither of them seemed to belong here. The friendliness between the three of us also felt misplaced, unreal. Tehogo and I had hardly done more than grunt at each other, but there was a free flow of conversation tonight, which seemed to have risen up from nowhere. And we were sitting close to each other, so close that our shared body warmth was too hot, and Raymond had one elbow resting on my shoulder. Both of them were wearing their dark glasses, even in the under-lit room, giving a curious impression of blindness.
We were talking about me sharing a room with Laurence. How we had got on to this topic I have no idea, but I found myself announcing suddenly that I had wanted Tehogo’s room.
His smile froze as he understood. Immediately I had to explain and justify: ‘But no problem now. I don’t want it any more.’
‘You want my room?’
‘No, no. I’m happy now. I talked to Dr Ngema about it once, but no problem any more. Really.’
Raymond said something to him and they both burst out laughing. Then Raymond said to me, ‘You want his room, you wait.’
‘No, no, I’m telling you, I don’t want it.’
‘One month, two month,’ Raymond said. ‘You wait.’
‘You don’t understand,’ I started saying, then I thought about it. ‘What’s happening in two months?’
‘He’s getting a new job,’ Raymond said.
‘Is he?’
‘New job,’ Tehogo said. ‘Good job.’
‘What job?’ I said. ‘You can tell me. I’ll keep it a secret.’
‘Good work, bad work,’ Raymond said. ‘It’s a good-bad job.’
Tehogo patted me reassuringly on the back. ‘Don’t worry. You stay here. You take my room. Then I come and cut off your head.’
They both laughed uproariously again. Then they spoke together across me and a more sober mood descended.
‘This is joking talk,’ Raymond said.
‘No job,’ Tehogo assured me. ‘Everything is joking talk.’
Before I could speak again Laurence ducked anxiously into view. ‘I’m worried about this music, Frank. Is the music okay?’
‘Don’t worry about the music.’
But Tehogo overruled me. ‘The music is no good,’ he announced sternly. ‘I have better music. Wait. Two minutes. I’m coming now.’ He went out to get it. While he was gone Raymond kept leaning on me, talking into my ear. He was saying something about Laurence’s girlfriend that I couldn’t quite hear, but the tone was genial and insinuating; it sounded as if it might be funny, if I could catch it.
Then Tehogo was back with a handful of loose cassettes that he spilled over the floor. And the beat changed, becoming faster, more mindless and energetic, and somehow everybody was dancing. Everyone except Laurence. He sat on my bed and watched us with a puzzled, mournful expression. I called to him to join us, but he shook his head.
I was amazed at myself. I hadn’t danced, I think, since my wedding. But now I found myself weaving and bouncing opposite the most unlikely of partners, Tehogo. And I didn’t recognize in him the locked, earthbound body he slouched around in all day; he could really move. He was sinuous and supple, but strangest of all, he was happy. His grinning, sweating face seemed mad to me, till I recognized in it a mirror image of my own.
Something had happened to us that night; it was as if we’d fallen through a wall that normally bricked us in too tightly to move. The room opened and closed like a lurid flower around me. I wasn’t myself. The loose abandon that had come over me was something foreign and lush. I felt as if I was up on a height, from which I could look down on the usual contours of my life and see how narrow and constricted they were. But I would never go back. I knew that all of us would stay where we were, in this high place, in this benevolent state of friendship that had fallen like grace upon us.
And then everyone was leaving. The music was played out, the wine was finished, and Tehogo and Raymond wanted me to go with them to Mama Mthembu’s for more dancing and drinking. But I knew that I was done for the night. My head was already tender. I stood at the door, saying goodbye to everybody, as if I was the host and they were all my invited guests.
‘See you in the morning,’ I said to Tehogo. I enfolded him in an embrace, feeling his thin shoulder-blades moving under my hands.
‘Remember,’ Raymond said. ‘In two months you can have your own room.’
‘He is joking,’ Tehogo said. ‘It is not true.’
‘I don’t know what’s true any more,’ I said.
More laughter, rootless and excessive. Then the place was emptied out. In the weak light of the lamp I recognized my room again, full of rubbish and rubble. From the speakers came an endless soft crackle of static.
‘I’m just taking Zanele home,’ Laurence said. ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’
She was smiling self-consciously, tucking a strand of hair behind one ear. She didn’t look at me.
‘Come back in the morning.’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t leave you with all this to clear up. That’s not fair.’
‘We can do it tomorrow.’
‘No, no. I’ll be back in a minute.’
When they were gone I contemplated the debris and skewed furniture while the buoyancy in me started to flatten out. I couldn’t believe that I’d danced and drunk like somebody half my age, but the youthfulness felt good, and from its gassy glow it was Laurence Waters who looked old and tired and jaded. Why wasn’t he spending the night with her?
He was back in fifteen minutes or so. Though he’d said he was coming back to clean up, he only looked at the disorder of the room and sank on to his bed. ‘Was that all right?’ he said.
‘How do you mean?’
‘The party. Was it okay? Did people enjoy it?’
‘I think so.’
‘Really? How did it compare with other parties?’
‘Laurence, in all the years I’ve been here, nobody’s ever had a party. Yours was the first.’
‘Really?’ he said again. A dim smile broke through the anxiety. ‘You were fantastic, Frank.’
‘That’s because I’m drunk.’
‘Are you?’
‘I’m so drunk, Laurence. Jesus Christ. It’s been years since I felt like this.’
‘Oh, good, good,’ he said vaguely. His face clouded again. ‘But why did Dr Ngema leave early?’
‘I don’t think parties are her thing.’
He nodded distractedly and made a show of collecting some paper cups together. I watched him for a while, then I said: ‘What’s this outreach project she was talking about?’
‘Oh, that.’
‘Well, what is it?’
‘You should know, Frank. You’re the first person I told about it.’
‘Your travelling clinic.’
He nodded. ‘But I must thank you. It was your idea that I try Maria’s village first. It was a great suggestion.’
‘You’ve been to Maria’s village?’
‘A few times. It’s ideal. So the plan is to hold a trial clinic there in a week or so. See how it goes. And if it’s successful …’ He laughed. ‘No more symbols, Frank. You were right.’
‘Why has nobody said a word about it?’
‘Dr Ngema’s going to tell everybody at the staff meeting on Monday. Let’s not talk about it now, Frank. I’m not in the mood.’
So we let the subject drop and soon afterwards we fell asleep. It bothered me that this project had taken shape at Maria’s village without anybody telling me, but it was part of the weird harmony of the evening that it also didn’t matter. The past was complex and fractured, but it was past. Tomorrow was another day.
I woke in the morning with a terrible headache suspended between my temples. We had left the lamp on and its wan glow mixed with daylight to reveal the mess in the room. Crisps trodden into the floor, broken plastic cups holding the dregs of wine.
When I got up I saw that somebody had knocked the wooden fish that Laurence had given me off the table; it lay broken on the floor. I threw the pieces into the bin and peered through my pain at Laurence sprawled face-down, his mouth open, a string of saliva on his lip. The day already had a used and ugly look to me.
A hot shower and an aspirin didn’t help. Laurence was still asleep when I went out. I wasn’t sure yet where I was going, but I just wanted to get away.
As I emerged into the corridor, Tehogo was locking his door. He seemed in as much pain as me. I knew I ought to smile at him, but the smile just wasn’t in me this morning.
He said to me, ‘My tapes.’
‘What?’
‘You’ve got my tapes. In your room.’
It took a moment for my blurred brain to understand. Then his rudeness irritated me. ‘Laurence is still sleeping,’ I said shortly. ‘You can get them later.’
He grunted and in an instant it was there with us again: all the dourness and sourness and mistrust. The past, recharged and renewed. Nothing was different after all.
I carried this with me all day. The headache didn’t lift and my mind felt crazed through with thin lines of unease. I was thinking, not very coherently, about Laurence and his girlfriend and the party. I knew I had undertaken to spend some time with Zanele tonight, but the reason wasn’t clear to me any more. I was resentful at being entangled in Laurence’s personal affairs and it felt to me that if I stayed away, on my own, for long enough, my obligation would fade.
But it didn’t fade. When I went back in the late afternoon he was busy cleaning up the room. The first thing he said was, ‘Oh, thank God. I thought you’d run out on me.’
‘Laurence, listen. Let me do your duty for you. Then you can – ’
‘No, no, forget it. I told you, it’s a commitment.’
I lay and watched him, toiling on his hands and knees, a wet cloth in his hand. There were stains on the floor that would never come out.