Far-Flung (14 page)

Albert was right: The border was hot. That morning insurgents had invaded a mountain village. We returned to find Kunda tense with outrage and excitement and plans for a nationalist rally in the public garden that evening.

Tom and I observed from the refreshment tent, which was packed with curious, intoxicated tourists, including the two German couples from the fish cave. A marching band ringed the arid fountain, and on the grassy verges between the tree-lined paths different groups assembled. Schoolchildren, scrubbed and dressed in their blue uniforms, convened at one end of the park. They held placards—OUR BORDERS ARE SACRED—above their heads, while at the other end of the park the women milled, dressed in traditional costume, a little embarrassed by the hoopla, watching the more fervent, fist-waving men try to organize themselves into some sort of parade.

And as we watched, a parade evolved: The band led the children out of the park, followed by the women, and finally the men. It circled the large square, but since it appeared that everyone in town was marching, the parade’s effect was curiously hollow. We tourists, by the very fact of our foreignness, could not even succeed as spectators. We observed in polite silence. After one revolution the marchers halted; the men hushed the band and murmured among themselves. The women and children stood about, abject and quiet. And then the men emerged from their huddle and announced their solution, which, as they reconvened, became obvious: This time the men would march and the women and children would line the streets.

“Let’s go watch,” Tom said.

“O.K.,” I said. I tried to find our waiter, but he had joined the protesters. I dropped some money on the table, and Tom and I followed the mass exodus of women and children from the park. We stood behind the throng and watched over their heads as the all-male parade approached. Everyone seemed liberated by this new configuration; even the band sounded less rinky-dink.

The second parade was followed by a series of patriotic speeches, but as the evening waned the mood of the crowd mellowed: The schoolchildren were sent home to bed and the band began to play pop music. Couples danced on the plaza.

Tom and I were sitting on a bench near the fountain, watching the dancing, drinking beer from cold gold bottles. It had gotten late and we were exhausted, but there was something pleasurably transporting about being in the park. One felt successfully and completely in a foreign country, that one could return home and say, “One night there was a political rally in the public gardens …”

“I want to dance,” said Tom.

“We can’t dance,” I said. “It’s not a good idea.”

“Of course it’s not a good idea,” said Tom. “Forget the idea. Come dance. Over there, where it’s dark.”

“No,” I said. “It’s dangerous.”

“Everyone’s drunk,” said Tom. “They won’t notice.” He stood up and pulled me from the bench. We pressed through the swoon of dancing couples; everyone did seem drunk and self-intent. We made it to the other side of the park, away from the lights and the band, but even there it was obviously too public. Tom crossed the street and walked down a dirt alley. I followed him behind the buildings into a small enclosed parking lot crowded with pickup trucks. We sidled between them until we came to a place in the center where we were surrounded on all sides by trucks. None of the trucks had wheels, I noticed. The music from the park was faint yet audible. We stood for a moment, facing each other.

“Do you want to dance?” I asked.

“No,” said Tom.

“Then what are we doing here?”

“I don’t know,” said Tom.

“Let’s go back,” I said.

“Wait,” said Tom. He was picking rusted paint off the door of a truck. I stilled his hand with my own. I remembered them touching underwater at the fish cave. This time our hands were both hot, and I could feel his hand. I held it against the truck, but he pulled it away.

“Do you love Albert?” he asked.

“What makes you think that?”

“Just answer,” he said.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t think so.”

“But you’ve slept with him,” said Tom.

“Yes,” I said. “How did you know?”

“Irene told me,” said Tom.

For a moment I had to think of who Irene was. And then I remembered the moment Tom and Irene reappeared on the veranda, how we had all stopped talking for a moment. I felt a little woozy so I sat down on the truck’s running board. It had been Albert’s idea to have Tom to dinner: He had told me not having dinner would have been childish, uncivilized.

“She told me when we went upstairs,” Tom was saying. “While we were looking at her gold snuffboxes. At first I thought she was crazy. She thought I knew all about it.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“About what?”

“That I didn’t tell you myself. It’s just that, well, I didn’t tell you because it’s not a big deal.”

“It’s not?” asked Tom.

“No,” I said.

“Is anything a big deal to you?”

“Yes,” I said. “Of course.”

“What?” asked Tom.

I tried to think of what was a big deal, but nothing came to mind, so I didn’t answer. We were both quiet for a moment. The band seemed suddenly loud, but then I realized it wasn’t the band but a sort of rickety explosion. Fireworks, I thought. I actually looked up at the sky, watching for their bright and sudden unblossoming, but the noise continued and the sky remained dark. And then the noise stopped, and I could hear the people on the plaza screaming.

As I entered my apartment the next afternoon the phone was ringing. I knew it would be Albert, and I let it ring, for I wanted to know how long Albert would wait. I stood and listened to it ring, not counting, just listening. It rang a very long time before I picked it up.

“Hello,” I said.

“You’re back,” said Albert. “Thank God. I was worried. I heard about the violence. Are you all right?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Were you at the rally? I heard there were a lot of foreigners there.”

“We had just left. We were across the street, in a parking lot.”

“What were you doing there?”

“Nothing. Tom wanted to dance.”

“He wanted to what?”

“Dance,” I said. “Everyone was dancing.”

“Not for long, poor things,” said Albert. “Well, thank God you’re safe. Are you heading south?”

“No,” I said. “Tom’s gone back.”

“Has he?”

“Yes,” I said. “It was difficult.”

“It often is,” said Albert. “Well, I can’t say I’m sorry. So you’re alone?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Are you going in to work?”

“No.”

“I could come over.”

“No,” I said.

“What about dinner?” asked Albert. “We could have a nice dinner.”

“No,” I said.

“My, what a lot of no’s,” said Albert. He paused. “Nothing’s changed, has it?”

I didn’t answer.

“You must be exhausted,” said Albert. “Have a stiff drink and go to bed. I’ll call you later.”

He hung up. So did I. I looked around the room. Tom’s dress shoes stood by the terrace doors. By departing so hurriedly, he had left some of his things behind. That morning we had flown from Kunda to the capital; Tom changed planes and flew directly home. We had said good-bye in THE MEETING AND GREETING AREA. In the country to which I had been posted, leaving, saying good-bye, hadn’t yet been officially sanctioned.

See, now we two together must bear

piece-work and parts as though it were the whole.

Helping you will be hard. Above all, do not

Plant me in your heart. I should grow too fast.

—Rainer Maria Rilke, “Sonnets to Orpheus” (I, 16)

M
ISS
A
LICE
P
AUL WAS IN
a quandary. Ever since Rose had died, everything had gone wrong. And it wasn’t getting better—it had been a month already, but it was no better. It was worse, she thought: much worse. Right this minute, Rose’s grandson, a man named Knight, was up in the attic going through Rose’s things, and there was nothing she could do about it. She stood in the upstairs hall, clutching the folding stairs that had collapsed from the ceiling. She had tried to climb them, but she couldn’t. She had trouble enough getting up the regular stairs.

The problem was, nobody was telling her anything. It looked like they were moving Rose’s stuff out of the house, or maybe Knight was moving in? Miss Alice Paul had lived in this house for about twenty years, ever since she met Rose at the Del Ray Luncheonette counter. They were both eating BLTs on white toast. It had made perfect sense for them to move in together—Rose was widowed and Miss Alice Paul was the tragic victim of a brief, annulled and (she hoped) forgotten marriage, but now that Rose was dead it turned out the house was really her daughter’s, and nobody was talking about what would become of her. It was just too awful for words.

“Knight?” Alice Paul called up the stairs. He had a radio going up there. “Knight!” She shouted louder.

He turned the radio down. Good. “Yes?” he said.

“Are you sure I can’t help with that? What are you doing?”

“Just going through this stuff. It’s mostly junk, Miss Paul. I don’t know the last time anyone’s been up here.”

“Yes, but what are you going to do with it?”

“Well, throw it out, most likely.”

“Oh, dear. You don’t suppose I could see it first? I mean, there might be something that was special to me, something you’d overlook.”

“Well, sure you can see it. I have to bring it all down anyway. You can look through it then.”

Well, that was a relief. God only knew what was up there, and what that boy might throw away. “Would you like a cold drink or something? Is it hot up there?”

But there was no answer. He had turned the radio back up. Miss Alice Paul went downstairs to the kitchen. She made a cup of tea and then put on her coat and went outside. It was a sunny day, mild for November, and she had read that sunlight can cure depression, so she was trying to sit outside whenever possible.

Deirdre Kassbaum was hanging out her wash next door. Or no, she was taking it down, folding it. Miss Alice Paul walked over to the fence.

“Do you need some help?” she asked.

Deirdre took a clothespin out of her mouth. “Oh, hi, Miss Paul.”

Miss Paul repeated her offer.

“No thanks. I’m just going to finish these off in the dryer. They’re still kind of damp.”

“It’s a nice day for air drying,” Alice Paul said. Maybe I could go live with the Kassbaums, she thought. They’ve got that whole upstairs they never use. I could rent a room. Mr. Kassbaum drinks, but he’s not a mean drunk.

“I see Knight’s here,” Mrs. Kassbaum said. “Is that his truck?”

“No. He rented it.”

“Is he moving you out?”

“No,” said Miss Alice Paul. She was trying to think how much people rented rooms for nowadays. The last time she rented a room, it was twelve dollars a week. Double that: twenty-five dollars—would that be enough? “I mean I don’t know. I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

“Well, are they selling the house?” Mrs. Kassbaum left the laundry basket on the lawn and walked over to the fence.

“I don’t know,” said Miss Alice Paul. “They won’t tell me anything. It’s driving me crazy.”

“Well, that’s a shame. But you shouldn’t get all worried. I’m sure it’ll work out just fine. Plus, you’ve got your rights. They can’t just kick you out after twenty-two years. It’s a thing called squatting, squatter’s rights. They had an article about it in the
Digest.
Not that they’d kick you out. But you got to find out what’s going on. She left the house to Knight?”

“Well, not really. Her daughter up in Norwell owns it. She was renting it to Rose.”

“Well, can’t she rent it to you?”

“I doubt I can afford it. I’ll probably have to rent a room someplace.”

“Oh, you don’t want to do that. Rent a room? Living with strangers, sharing a bathroom. That’s would be so depressing, don’t you think?” Mrs. Kassbaum patted Miss Paul’s arm. “What you have to do, honey, is talk to him, find out what they’re planning. Knight’s a nice man. You know that. Go in and talk to him, and put your mind at rest.”

Miss Paul turned around and looked back at the house. She could hear the radio coming out of the open attic window. The sun had gone around to the front, leaving the backyard in shadow. I missed the sun, she thought. It would be shining in the living room window now, creating a familiar pattern on the rug and the couch. If Rose were alive she would put down the blinds, so the sun wouldn’t fade the upholstery.

Miss Alice Paul was trying to check her pocketbook under the table without Knight seeing her. They were sitting at a booth in the Casa Adobe, a Mexican restaurant, and Miss Alice Paul wasn’t sure who was paying. Knight was the one who had suggested going out to dinner, and before she could think of an excuse not to he had her in the car. She was pretty sure she had a five-dollar bill, so she had ordered a taco plate, which was the cheapest thing on the menu, even though she had no idea what a taco was, but Knight had said that wasn’t enough for dinner and had changed her order to a deluxe burrito platter—something she just knew she couldn’t afford, let alone eat.

“You lose something?” Knight said. He was drinking a beer. He had peeled its foil collar back and was drinking it straight from the bottle. At a restaurant. Just imagine.

“I just want to be sure I have enough money,” Miss Alice Paul said. “I don’t want to have to do the dishes.” She tried to laugh, but it didn’t sound too good.

“Oh, forget that,” Knight said. “This is my treat.”

“Well, many thanks, but I couldn’t allow that. Though it is sweet of you.”

“Oh, come on.” Knight reached across the table and grabbed her pocketbook from her hands, putting it on the seat beside him. “Now just relax,” he said. “Are you sure you don’t want a glass of wine? They have sangria, I think.”

“No, thank you.” Miss Alice Paul leaned back and tried to think straight. He’s taken my bag, she thought. Good God. “Could I have my bag back?” she asked.

“Of course,” said Knight. “On one condition.”

“What’s that?”

“On the condition that you don’t open it until we get home. O.K.?”