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The nurse took his father’s temperature, noted it on his chart, then returned the
ballpoint pen to her hair and brushed back her bangs. “I wonder if I could hear you
read
for a bit,” she said.
“I don’t know if you’ll like it,” Tengo said.
She sat down on a stool and crossed her legs. They were sturdy looking, fleshy, but
nicely shaped. “Just go ahead and read, if you would.”
Tengo slowly began to read from where he had left off. It was the kind of passage
that was best read slowly, like time flowing over the African landscape.
When in Africa in March the long rains begin after four months of hot, dry weather,
the richness of growth and the freshness and fragrance everywhere are overwhelming.
But the farmer holds back his heart and dares not trust to the generosity of nature,
he listens, dreading to hear a decrease in the roar of the falling rain. The water that the
earth is now drinking in must
bring the farm, with all the vegetable, animal and
human life on it, through four rainless months to come.
It is a lovely sight when the roads of the farm have all been turned into streams of
running water, and the farmer wades through the mud with a singing heart, out to the
flowering and dripping coffee-fields. But it happens in the middle of the rainy season
that in the evening the stars show themselves through the thinning clouds; then he
stands outside his
house and stares up, as if hanging himself on to the sky to milk
down more rain. He cries to the sky: “Give me enough and more than enough. My
heart is bared to thee now, and I will not let thee go except thou bless me. Drown me
if you like, but kill me not with caprices. No
coitus interruptus
, heaven, heaven!”
“
Coitus interruptus
?” the nurse asked, frowning.
“She’s the kind of person who doesn’t mince words.”
“Still, it seems awfully graphic to use when you’re addressing God.”
“I’m with you on that,” Tengo said.
Sometimes a cool, colourless day in the months after the
rainy season calls back the
time of the
marka mbaya
, the bad year, the time of the drought. In those days the
Kikuyu used to graze their cows round my house, and a boy amongst them who had a
flute, from time to time played a short tune on it. When I have heard this tune again, it
has recalled in one single moment all our anguish and despair of the past. It has got
the salt taste of tears in it. But at the same time I found in the tune, unexpectedly
surprisingly, a vigour,
a curious sweetness, a song. Had those hard times really had all
these in them? There was youth in us then, a wild hope. It was during those long days
that we were all of us merged into a unity, so that on another planet we shall
recognize one another, and the things cry to each other,
the cuckoo clock and my
books to the lean-fleshed cows on the lawn and the sorrowful old Kikuyus: “You also
were there. You also were part of the Ngong farm.” That bad time blessed us and
went away.
“That’s a wonderful passage,” the nurse said. “I can really picture the scene. Isak
Dinesen’s
Out of Africa
, you said?”
“That’s right.”
“You have a nice voice, too. It’s deep, and full of emotion. Very nice for reading
aloud.”
568
“Thanks.”
The nurse sat on the stool, closed her eyes for a while,
and breathed quietly, as if
she were still experiencing the afterglow of the passage. Tengo could see the swell of
her chest under her uniform rise and fall as she breathed. As he watched this, Tengo
remembered his older girlfriend. Friday afternoons, undressing her, touching her hard
nipples. Her deep sighs, her wet vagina. Outside, beyond the closed curtains, a
tranquil rain was falling. She was feeling the heft of his balls in her hand. But these
memories didn’t arouse him. The scenery and emotions were distant and vague, as
though seen through a thin film.
Some time later the nurse opened her eyes and looked at Tengo.
Her eyes seemed
to read his thoughts. But she was not accusing him. A faint smile rose to her lips as
she stood up and looked down at him.
“I have to be going.” She patted her hair to check that the ballpoint pen was there,
spun around, and left the room.
Every evening he called Fuka-Eri. Nothing really happened today, she would tell him.
The phone had rung a few times, but she followed instructions and didn’t answer.
“I’m glad,” Tengo told her. “Just let it ring.”
When Tengo called her he would let it ring three times, hang up, then immediately
dial again, but she didn’t always follow this arrangement. Most of the time she picked
up on the first set of rings.
“We have to
follow our plan,” Tengo cautioned her each time this happened.
“I know who it is. There is no need to worry,” Fuka-Eri said.
“You know it’s me calling?”
“I don’t answer the other phone calls.”
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