The couple of days I was there before Luka came home I got used to the apartment, dared turn on the CD player, the TV. In the end I had to get the guy from next door to show me how to turn on the hot water and then I deliberately got soap and water and talcum powder all over the bathroom to muss it up. I panicked then and cleaned it all up but it felt good at the time.
I went to visit him of course, spent hours there, took him the stuff he asked for, put up with his grumbling and wanting to leave, wheedled information about his blood count out of the staff, and once, when the blinds were drawn and no-one was around my mouth found his mouth and my hands found their way under the sheets and his eyes were wide and he protested. But not for long.
So now he was home and sleeping in those clean sheets. It had been heaven last night. Oh not that, he was too tired, but we had a whole huge bed and crisp sheets to ourselves, it was like a honeymoon, better than a honeymoon.
That first morning I didn’t turn on the radio, I crept around in my bare feet even though Armageddon might have had a tough time waking him. I made coffee, watched the streets come to life below, decided to fix him breakfast in bed. As I set a tray on the table I knocked the envelope the neighbour had handed me onto the floor. Out of it spilled a couple of sealed letters, some other papers and a wallet, very old, worn very soft. The wallet had fallen open and looking up at me were a pretty, dark haired woman and a little girl, maybe four years old. I didn’t need anyone to tell me who the father of that little girl was and I dropped the wallet like it had bitten me. Shit. I picked it up again and made myself look at their faces.
“My children were dead”.
Children; more than one. I took a deep breath and sifted through the wallet but there was nothing else, no other little face. I sat down and thought about that. The picture was small, worn, creased, a black and white snap but it was too precious to risk losing in Africa, wasn’t it? Too precious. Too precious.
Too precious. Jesus – the only one? All he had of them? Of all of them?
Before I could process that thought a hand reached over my shoulder and plucked the wallet out of my fingers.
“I – it – I dropped –“ I was making a bad job of it.
“OK.”
“It just fell out of the envelope.”
“I said OK.” He put the wallet back in the envelope and made for the stairs.
“I was going to make breakfast.”
“Not hungry.”
“You have to eat.”
He stopped at the foot of the stairs, hand on the rail and dropped his head.
“OK. Whatever you’re having I’ll have.”
“I didn’t mean to pry.”
“I know.”
He didn’t move and I went to him, resting my head on his outstretched arm.
“Don’t be angry.”
“I’m not angry. Not with you.”
I insinuated myself under his arm so that he had to look at me. “Keep it safe, OK?”
He nodded and I let him pass and stood at the bottom of the stairs and I could almost hear the swish of the condor’s wings.
You’d think you couldn’t get any more real than the agony and degradation of somewhere like Kivu, but you can. I’d – we’d – left that behind and here was a whole other real world that seemed more alien to me than anything the Congo had thrown at me. This reality was much more frightening because it was his and I wasn’t part of it.
When I was little we visited some of my mother’s family who lived in a house which stood by a wood; through the wood ran a stream, and over the stream reached the branch of a tree, and on the branch of the tree was a knotted rope and on the knotted rope my cousins, all much older than me, swung and got to the other side of the stream where they whooped and jeered and knew I was too little to do what they’d done, too scrawny to keep hold of the rope, my hands too small.
I went for it anyway, took a running jump, and for a few moments, with the soles of my feet hard against one knot and my hands held in place by another I was sure I could do it. But I wasn’t big enough, hadn’t gotten up enough momentum to set the rope swinging in a wide enough arc and it never even got close to the other side. There I was, stranded, my hands losing their grip. Slowly, slowly my hold loosened. I should have just let go and not prolonged the agony but I clung on until my fingers gave up and I fell into the cold water, my cousins laughing as I coughed and shivered and floundered. My mother was cross with me, and I spoiled my new holiday T-shirt. She never asked why they’d let me do it.
I’ve kept my hands on the rope pretty well since then, except for that one time years ago in Africa when I let myself go. And, you know, sometimes letting go is OK. But now, now I’m trying really hard to keep hold, to stop myself falling into the cold water because I think there are maybe rocks under there this time, wife and children shaped rocks which will tear me to pieces. I feel as though if I look up Luka will be there like my cousins, laughing at my miserable attempts.
Fact is, since that first night in Kisangani I don’t think I ever really had hold of the rope in the first place.
