much more slowly than she had come up. The maid remained, standing, looking after her. She will stay there for a decent length of time, Frances thought, and then she will go back into her own flat, and she will pretend that she has delivered the food, and whoever is in the empty flat will have to go without.
It was not that the food exchange had fallen into desuetude; but this little dish of lentils had not been meant as a gift. Neither had this piece of bread, which could be bought for a few hallalas on any street corner. She put the bowl down on the worktop in the kitchen, and thought, it is not just recently I have been told lies, I have been lied to all along, or rather I have been in error as to what I chose to believe. Is lentils the food of love? Will they wake, in their dangerous postcoital languor, these mystery lovers, this man with no face, this woman with no face, but whom I do not now think is Yasmin: will they wake up for a beggar’s banquet? No, because there are no lovers. Someone is in the flat, but it is not who we think. I have swallowed down the rumor. It is a rumor that was tailor- made. It was tailor-made for Westerners, with their prurient minds; it was a rumor that we cherished, because it said everything about the Kingdom that we wished to believe.
She went into the hall again, and looked up the stairs. It was sunset, and she could hear the prayer call, and she wondered, casually, if Andrew had got to the shops in time. She thought of him driving away, fifteen minutes ago, by the clock; as if it were half a lifetime away, and in another country. She felt sick with knowledge.
She had taken the torch from the side of their bed. In Africa they had kept a pickax handle by their bed. Some people had kept guns.
It was still light enough, when she got to the roof, to survey the vacant lot. Holes had been dug; a few upright posts had been placed in the ground. No doubt that was progress. Cement bags blew across her path, and battered at the parapet.
She positioned herself carefully at the angle of the roof from which, yesterday, she had looked on to the balcony of the empty flat. The crate was still there. It was light enough to see; but she shone the torch anyway.
“I know it has moved,” she said.
Andrew said, “It’s dark.”
“It’s dark now. An hour ago it wasn’t. And I know it has moved because the corner of the crate has scraped a track through the mud.”
“Well, you say it’s moved. You make it sound like a mystery. What you mean is, somebody’s moved it.”
“How? By thought control?”
“No, just in the ordinary way.”
“To move the crate you’d have to step out onto the balcony. If you stepped out onto the balcony you’d leave your footprints in the mud. There are no footprints.”
“So it can’t have moved.”
“Yes it can. If somebody is inside it.”
What am I saying? Again that inner protest, incredulity. The doorbell rings. They look at each other sharply. He does not offer. She does not want him to.
She opened the door herself It was Sarsaparilla. She held a tray, covered with kitchen paper. Again she said, “From Madam.”
“You’re practicing your English this evening,” Frances said. “Come in.”
She held the door open. The maid did not move. Frances pointed to a spot on the floor of the hall, where she wished her to stand; and she kept pointing, as you might command an animal, a dog you were training; and after a moment Sarsaparilla stepped inside.
“Why were you going into Flat 4?” Frances said. “Who’s in there?” The woman shook her head, lost; and again that smell seeped out of her, out of her pores, out of her guts. “Who are you feeding? Who are you hiding in there?”
The woman’s eyes were blank. She withdrew them from Frances, and looked at the walls.
“Please tell me,” Frances said. “If you can.”
But she had not understood. She had not understood anything. Only the parrot phrase: “From Madam.”
Frances took the tray from her. This, no doubt, was the evening’s real food exchange. Frances dropped her head. She felt ashamed of herself. “Okay,” she said. “Go.”
Sarsaparilla moved toward the door. Then she stopped, and looked back imploringly at Frances. She raised her arm, and pushed back a fold of her
Andrew said, “I have to work out how to pay our Indian laborers. I have to find the money from somewhere.” He was pacing the living room, and what he was worrying about didn’t concern her at all. “I can’t repatriate them,” he said, “then bring them back when the next year’s budget comes through. But if I keep them here I have to feed them. Eric doesn’t seem to see that. I have to whistle up some funds from somewhere.”
Frances said, “Come up to the roof with me.”
“No.”
“I want you to see.”
“I am not interested in any trouble.” He spoke in distinct, obstinate syllables. “I am not interested in any trouble with our neighbors.”
“There won’t be any. Just come with me.”
“You don’t seem to have grasped, do you, even the fundamentals about living in this place?”
“Do you think I’m stupid?”
“No, I think you’re overwrought.”
“But can you explain what I’ve seen?”
