“We ought to stay with him.”
“He isn’t going anywhere.”
“But he looks so ill.”
Fairfax was sleeping properly now. He couldn’t be pretending; the drink had struck him down. Again that peculiar emptiness invaded his face, as if whatever he lived through could be nullified, erased. Andrew said, more kindly, “Frances, come to bed. Let’s get a couple of hours’ sleep. He’s not going to tell us anything till the morning. If he did, it wouldn’t be coherent, would it?”
“No, I suppose not.” She tried to calm herself. “Andrew—” she took his outstretched hand—“you know the burglary?”
“What now? Something else vanished?”
All week they had been missing things; small, inconsequential items. With each discovery the business looked more random, more purposeless.
“I meant to tell you, but I only just realized this morning. They took our photographs. All the photographs of Africa, those pictures from our wedding … they were in that big brown envelope in the desk drawer, I meant to get around to doing something with them … they’ve all gone.”
“For God’s sake, why? That’s just stupid.” Andrew was angry; but he recovered himself. He put an arm around her, helping her along toward the bedroom. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “But they’re no use to anybody, are they? Why would they take those?”
“To upset us,” she said. “To make us unhappy.”
She lay down on the bed still dressed, on top of the sheet, her legs bent awkwardly, too tired even to arrange her body into a more comfortable position. Her head ached, a throbbing pain. He was right, the photographs were of no value. And she should not think of them now.
But when she closed her eyes they flickered behind her closed lids, blurred colored images, and she tried to fix them, before they slipped away: the only witness to their travels, the only testimony to their joint life. Andrew and Frances outside the DC’s office, marriage certificate held out for the camera. Groups of friends at a restaurant table, the New Stanley Hotel, Nairobi, 1978. Andrew frowning into the sun, Cairo Airport, 1979. Frances in Bulawayo. Andrew in the Mall in Gaborone. Our house, our dogs, the man who did our garden: alive only in errant fallible memory, that private mirror, which distorts more and more as the years go by.
I must sleep, she thought. She allowed the muscles of her face to fall, relax. Nobody knows how they look when they are sleeping. Would her face take on that same defenseless emptiness? It might as well. For who was she, when she was unobserved? The loss of the photographs had achieved its object, it had disturbed and shaken her. She felt as if their past had been wiped out behind them.
The alarm rang as usual at six o’clock. She was awake at once. Andrew stirred. He groaned softly. “Oh Christ, it isn’t morning?” Barefoot in her creased kaftan, she went down the passage into the living room.
Fairfax had gone. She pressed her lips together; her heart thudded painfully, and she put a hand to her ribs, and rubbed the spot where it beat—a vague, distracted gesture, as if she were offering consolation to someone else, to a frightened elderly woman.
And yet it seemed that he had made an orderly retreat. He had taken his jacket and tie, and picked up his car keys. His blanket lay draped over one arm of the sofa. She picked it up and folded it. Last night’s cup of black coffee was on the floor where she had placed it, untouched. He might have stayed for breakfast, she thought. He might have told us what the fuss was about. Perhaps the night’s events were illusory; perhaps, waking, he could not remember what had frightened him. It was a strangely lightless morning, the sun not visible or even in prospect: a hot morning, silent. Other cups of coffee, which she had poured for herself and Andrew, lay in other rooms: waiting for her to collect them up and pour them away.
The building, at eight A.M., seemed to have crept closer to the earth. There was no one on the roof, and nothing to see; but scraps of wastepaper skittered across the parapet, borne on a low, keening wind. The air felt gritty, sulfurous; a soupy lemon-brown dust haze hung over Ghazzah Street and obscured the view below her. The vacant lot had now become a building site. She could make out the figures of the laborers, moving slowly, scarves bound across their noses and mouths. In that bruise-colored light, hovering among the trenches and foundations, they looked like the natives of some razed city of the ancient world.
She went downstairs, and rang Yasmin’s doorbell. I could have a pleasant chat, she thought; see how the land lies. But there was no answer. It was part of the unprecedented silence of the last few days. She stood waiting, rang again. Perhaps she was being watched through the spyhole? But it had become second nature to think that.
Back in her own apartment, she picked up the phone. She thought of telephoning Yasmin, or Samira; if they were avoiding her, she would like to know why. But instead she rang the Sarabia Hotel. The desk clerk had a public voice, American singsong, the common currency of airport check-in desks, hire-car agencies, fast-food joints: untrained to listen, but pitched to please.
“You don’t have the room number, madam?” he said, slightly shocked. Reluctantly, he said, “Just one moment.”
Fairfax might of course be sitting in a traffic jam somewhere. He might be at the Turadup office. He might be back in his room, catching up on his sleep. She wanted to speak to him. I should have persisted, last night, she thought. I should have dragged it out of him.
The clerk was back on the line: still more politely incredulous. “You don’t have the room number, madam?”
“No. But you have it. If you will take the trouble to look.”
A pause: then, “I am trying for you.” Another pause, quite a short one this time. Then “No answer.”
“Please let it ring.”
“No answer, madam.”
“Okay. Thanks. I’ll try again later.”
“Okay, madam. Have a nice day.”
