A Change of Climate: A Novel

“How can you not? You have to make him into something. A victim. Or a hero. One or the other.”

“Yes. Perhaps you’re right.”

“But it’s not like that. He’s just an individual.” She considered. “And I think as an individual he’s a waste of time.”

Ralph shook his head; he wouldn’t have it. “We can’t know what his life has been. How can you know? You are talking to him and he walks away.”

“And yet he understands you. He understands what you say.”

“Oh yes, that’s not his problem. He reminds me of Clara sometimes—do you remember how she would freeze you out? I used to wonder if something so terrible had happened to her that she just couldn’t bring herself to speak about it—she seemed numb. And Enock’s like that. Oh well,” Ralph said. “If I think I can help him, I must be patient and persist.”

Enock was about thirty years old, a handsome and composed man, with the same thin features as Felicia, an even, impassive face. He wore tattered khaki shorts and the cast-off jacket of a European-style suit. Ralph wondered about the original owner—who would have bought such a thing? The jacket was tan, and it was tight under his arms, and shiny from wear. Sometimes, when he went about his tasks, he would take it off and hang it on the branch of a tree. One day, the puppy took it down and worried it; Anna dragged it from his jaws in a state not too far from the original, but she felt that this was one more grievance for the gardener to chalk up on his soul.

This dog of theirs; your dog, she said to Ralph, when it ate books and dragged blankets outside into the dust. Ralph had brought the puppy home from a trip to Palapye, a settlement on the railway line; he had climbed out of the truck dazzled by the sun, thirsty, weary, coated in dust, and put into her hands a baffling fur bundle, an indecipherable animal like a tiny bear, with boot-button eyes and a dense, lemon- colored coat. “Whatever is it?” she had said, alarmed, and Ralph had said, reassuringly, just a dog. The

McPhersons gave him to me; they said, this is what you need, a dog about the place.

“What a strange thought for them to have,” Anna said. “Don’t they think two babies are enough?”

“The babies don’t bark,” Ralph said. “That’s what he’s for, a watchdog, not a pet.”

“I suppose he can be both.”

“When I was a child I was never allowed to have a dog.”

“Nor me,” Anna said. “I had a goldfish once, but it died. Just as well. I always thought that my papa would usher some customers through from the shop, and tell them he could get two fillets out of it.”

“So,” Ralph said. “So, you see, the twins, they’ll have a dog, and we didn’t have.”

“What is it, anyway, what breed?”

“The McPhersons claim its mother is a pure bred Alsatian, and they did—Anna, give me another glass of water—they did show her to me, and she looked authentic—but then they say his father is a yellow Labrador, also of good pedigree. I can’t believe that. I think his mum climbed out of the compound and took potluck.”

That was what they called the dog: Potluck. Potluck, as young things do, passed through a phase of great beauty. His button eyes grew large and lustrous, and his lemon fur turned to the color of butterscotch. His temperament was mild, and when the twins were fractious and unrewarding Anna would pick him up and kiss the velvet, benign space between his ears. Even Salome and Felicia, who did not see the point of dogs, would sometimes take time to speak to him, and caress him in a gingerly way.

At the age of eight months Potluck grew ugly. His head was huge, his muzzle blunt, his ears pointed different ways; he developed brusque, selective barking, like an old colonel suddenly moved to write to the papers. Almost grown now, he shambled around the mission compound, winning friends and giving offense. “It is a horrible, English trait,” Ralph said, “to despise people who are afraid of dogs.”

“Enock’s not afraid,” Anna said. “He just affects to be.”

“I like to think well of Enock,” Ralph said, “and in fact I make it my policy, but it has to be said that he’s becoming a bloody nuisance.”

It was Salome who had begun the complaints. “He has stolen from me,” she said. “My straw hat.”

“Do you think so?” Anna said. “What would Enock do with your straw hat?”

“Sell it,” Salome said. Anna almost asked, sarcastically, and what do you think it would be worth? She checked herself. These people negotiate in pennies, rather than shillings, so perhaps it’s true, perhaps Enock has sold her hat.

She said to Ralph, “Salome is always complaining about Enock, and now she says he’s raiding her wardrobe.”

“Then I must have a word with him. We can’t have Salome upset. Do you think she’s telling the truth?”

Anna frowned. “Hard to know. She has a preoccupation with clothes at the moment. She thinks she should be given dresses, castoffs. But I have a difficulty here, because I can’t manufacture castoffs, no one can. I could make her a dress, that would be no problem, but it wouldn’t be the same, it’s my clothes she wants.”

“Nothing of yours would fit her,” Ralph said. “Even if you wore your clothes out, which you don’t.”

“I gave a skirt to Felicia—that one I made in Elim, out of the roll Mr. Ahmed gave me. That gray-green paisley skirt, do you remember?”

“Yes,” Ralph said, lying.

“I was pleased with that skirt, it was the nicest thing I’d ever made for myself. Now I’m an inch too big for it, so I thought I’d give it to Felicia, she’s so smart and neat.” Anna smiled. “She doesn’t like it much. She thinks it’s drab. Still, I like to see her wearing it. It hangs well.”

“So Salome is jealous?”