recorded on the cartridge. In the memory Harold makes love to Alma twice. Luvo feels he should leave, should yank out the cartridge, send himself back into Alma’s house in Vredehoek, but the room is so clean, the sheets are so cool beneath Alma’s back. Everything is soft; everything seems to vibrate with possibility. Alma tastes the sea on Harold’s skin. She feels his big-knuckled hands hold onto her ribs, his fingertips touch the knobs of her spine.
Near the end of the memory Alma closes her eyes and seems to slip underwater, as if back into the film at the moviehouse, watching a huge black urchin wave its spines, noticing how the water is not silent but full of soft clicks, and soon the pastels of coral are scrolling past her vision, and little slashes of needlefish are dodging her fingers, and Harold’s body seems not to be on top of hers at all, but drifting instead beside her; they are swimming together, floating slowly away from the reef toward a place where the sea floor falls away and the bottom is too far away to see, and there is only light filtering into deep water,bottomless water, and Alma’s blood seems to swell out to the very edges of her skin.
S UNDAY, 4 A.M.
Alma sits up in bed. From the ceiling comes the unmistakable sounds of footfalls. On her nightstand there is a glass of water, its bottom daubed with miniature bubbles. Beside it is a hardcover book. Though its jacket is missing and half the binding is torn away, the title appears sparkling and whole in her mind.
Treasure Island.
Of course.
From the ceiling comes another creak. Someone is in my house, Alma thinks, and then some still-functional junction in her brain coughs up an image of a man. His teeth are orange. His nose looks like a small brown gourd. His trousers are khaki and stained and a tear in the left shoulder of his shirt shows his darker skin beneath. A faded jaguar winds up the underside of his wrist.
Alma jerks herself onto her feet. A demon, she thinks, a burglar, a tall man in the yard.
She hurries across the kitchen into the study and opens the heavy, two-handled drawer at the bottom of Harold’s fossil cabinet. A drawer she has not opened in years. Toward the bottom, beneath a stack of paleontology magazines, is a cigar box upholstered with pale orange linen. Even before she finds it, she is certain it is there. Indeed, her mind feels particularly clear. Oiled. Operable. You are Alma, she thinks. I am Alma.
She retrieves the box, sets it on the desk that once was Harold’s and opens it. Inside is a nine-millimeter handgun.
She stares at it a moment before picking it up. Blunt and colorless and new-looking. Harold used to carry it in his glove compartment. She does not know how to tell if it is loaded.
Alma carries the gun in her left hand through the kitchen to the living room and sits in the silver armchair that offers her a view up the stairwell. She does not turn on any lights. Her heart flutters in her chest like a moth.
From upstairs winds a thin strand of cigarette smoke. The pendulum in the grandfather clock swings back and forth. Out the windows there is only a dim whiteness: fog. Everything seems irradiated with a meaning she is only now recognizing. My house, she thinks. I love my house.
If Alma keeps her eyes straight ahead, and does not look to her right or left, it is possible to believe Harold is about to settle into the matching chair beside her, the lamp and table between them. She can just sense the weight of his body shifting over there, can smell something like rock powder in his clothes, can perceive the scarcely perceptible gravitational tug one body exerts upon another. She has so much to say to him.
She sits. She waits. She tries to remember.
L EAVING THE Q UEUE
At 4:30 a.m. Pheko and Temba are still twenty or so people from the clinic entrance. Temba is sleeping steadily now, his arms and legs limp, his big eyelids sealing him off from the world. The wind has settled down. Clouds of gnats
Near the end of the memory Alma closes her eyes and seems to slip underwater, as if back into the film at the moviehouse, watching a huge black urchin wave its spines, noticing how the water is not silent but full of soft clicks, and soon the pastels of coral are scrolling past her vision, and little slashes of needlefish are dodging her fingers, and Harold’s body seems not to be on top of hers at all, but drifting instead beside her; they are swimming together, floating slowly away from the reef toward a place where the sea floor falls away and the bottom is too far away to see, and there is only light filtering into deep water,bottomless water, and Alma’s blood seems to swell out to the very edges of her skin.
S UNDAY, 4 A.M.
Alma sits up in bed. From the ceiling comes the unmistakable sounds of footfalls. On her nightstand there is a glass of water, its bottom daubed with miniature bubbles. Beside it is a hardcover book. Though its jacket is missing and half the binding is torn away, the title appears sparkling and whole in her mind.
Treasure Island.
Of course.
From the ceiling comes another creak. Someone is in my house, Alma thinks, and then some still-functional junction in her brain coughs up an image of a man. His teeth are orange. His nose looks like a small brown gourd. His trousers are khaki and stained and a tear in the left shoulder of his shirt shows his darker skin beneath. A faded jaguar winds up the underside of his wrist.
Alma jerks herself onto her feet. A demon, she thinks, a burglar, a tall man in the yard.
She hurries across the kitchen into the study and opens the heavy, two-handled drawer at the bottom of Harold’s fossil cabinet. A drawer she has not opened in years. Toward the bottom, beneath a stack of paleontology magazines, is a cigar box upholstered with pale orange linen. Even before she finds it, she is certain it is there. Indeed, her mind feels particularly clear. Oiled. Operable. You are Alma, she thinks. I am Alma.
She retrieves the box, sets it on the desk that once was Harold’s and opens it. Inside is a nine-millimeter handgun.
She stares at it a moment before picking it up. Blunt and colorless and new-looking. Harold used to carry it in his glove compartment. She does not know how to tell if it is loaded.
Alma carries the gun in her left hand through the kitchen to the living room and sits in the silver armchair that offers her a view up the stairwell. She does not turn on any lights. Her heart flutters in her chest like a moth.
From upstairs winds a thin strand of cigarette smoke. The pendulum in the grandfather clock swings back and forth. Out the windows there is only a dim whiteness: fog. Everything seems irradiated with a meaning she is only now recognizing. My house, she thinks. I love my house.
If Alma keeps her eyes straight ahead, and does not look to her right or left, it is possible to believe Harold is about to settle into the matching chair beside her, the lamp and table between them. She can just sense the weight of his body shifting over there, can smell something like rock powder in his clothes, can perceive the scarcely perceptible gravitational tug one body exerts upon another. She has so much to say to him.
She sits. She waits. She tries to remember.
L EAVING THE Q UEUE
At 4:30 a.m. Pheko and Temba are still twenty or so people from the clinic entrance. Temba is sleeping steadily now, his arms and legs limp, his big eyelids sealing him off from the world. The wind has settled down. Clouds of gnats