Heart Belongs Only to You.’ “
I was pleased to find Genet knew nothing of this radio station. The cousins in Asmara couldn't be that cool if they never tuned in to this show.
The next song began without any introduction. I jumped up. “This is it!” I said to Genet. “This is the tune I was telling you about.”
In all the evenings of listening to the radio, here for the first time was the song that I'd heard in the probationer's room.
I was shimmying and twisting to the music, blind to Hema's shocked expression and the stares of Ghosh and Genet. I cranked the volume up; Rosina and Almaz came out of the kitchen. They must have thought I was mad. This was out of character for me, but I couldn't stop myself, or I chose not to, and something told me this was the day for it.
Now Shiva stood up and joined me, and his dancing was smooth, silky, and so polished, as if all his lessons with Hema had been a way of biding time till he heard this song. That was all it took for Genet to jump in. I pulled Hema up from her chair, and soon she moved in time to the music. Ghosh needed no urging. I tried to pull Rosina in, but she and Almaz fled to the kitchen. The five of us in that living room danced till the very last note had sounded.
That was the name of the artist. The song was “Sweet Little Sixteen”—so the announcer said.
When it was time for bed, Genet said she was going back to Rosina's quarters. Hema looked hurt. “I'll keep my mother company,” Genet said. “I have my own bed now. There were six of us on the floor in Asmara. Having a bed for myself will be a real luxury.”
The next day in the Piazza, I found the Chuck Berry 45 in a record shop. I realized from the dust jacket that “Sweet Little Sixteen” was a number one hit—but in 1958! I was crushed. The rest of the world had heard this song more than a decade before I knew it existed. When I thought of how I had danced to it the previous night, it felt like the dance of an ignoramus, like the awe of a peasant seeing the neon beer mug on top of the Olivetti Building.
ON THE EVE of the new school year, Hema and Ghosh took us with them to the Greek club for the annual gala to celebrate the end of “winter.” Genet surprised me by saying shed stay back and get her school clothes ready; she, Rosina, Gebrew, and Almaz planned a cozy dinner in Rosina's quarters.
The big band was made up of moonlighting musicians from the army, air force, and Imperial Bodyguard orchestras. They could play “Stardust,” “Begin the Beguine,” and “Tuxedo Junction” in their sleep. Chuck Berry wasn't in their repertoire.
The expatriate community back from vacations, was out in force, looking tanned. I saw Mr. and Mrs. G——, who weren't really married, and the word was they'd abandoned their spouses and children in Portugal to be with each other; Mr. J——, a dashing Goan bachelor who was jailed briefly for a financial shenanigan, was in full form. The newly arriving expats would quickly learn their roles; they'd find that their for-eignness trumped their training or talent—it was their most important asset. Soon they'd be regulars, smiling and dancing at this annual event.
I'd always thought the expatriates represented the best of culture and style of the “civilized” world. But I could see now that they were so far from Broadway or the West End or La Scala, that they probably were a decade behind the times, just as I'd been with Chuck Berry. I watched the ruddy, sweaty faces on the dance floor, the childlike brightness in their eyes; it made me sad and impatient.
Shiva danced first with Hema, then with women he knew from Hema and Ghosh's bridge circle, and then with anyone who looked keen to dance. Suddenly I didn't want to be there any longer; I left early, telling Hema and Ghosh I'd take a taxi home.
I thought of the probationer as I walked up the hill to our quarters. I'd been avoiding her. When her students were with her, she made no sign of recognition. When she saw me with Shiva, she greeted us without comment. The first time I ran into her alone, she stopped me, and said, “Are you Marion?” From her eyes I knew that nothing had changed, and that her door was still open to me. “No,” I had said. “I'm Shiva.” She never asked again.
I heard the murmur of the radio in Rosina's quarters, but their door was closed and in any case I wasn't looking for company.
I went to bed alone, went to bed with my thoughts—I felt older than my thirteen years.
I woke when Shiva came home. I watched him in the mirror. He was taller than I saw myself, and he had the narrow hips and the light tread of a dancer. He slipped off his coat and shirt. His hair was parted and combed to one side when he left the house, but now it was an unruly mass of thick curls. His lips were full, almost womanly, and there was a dreamy, prophetic quality to his face. When he was down to his underwear, he studied himself in the mirror. He held one arm up, and the other out. He was imagining a dance with a woman. He made a graceful turn and dip.
“You had a good time?” I said.
It stopped him in his tracks. His arms remained where they were. He looked at me in the mirror, which gave me goose bumps. “A good time was had by one and all,” he said in a hoarse voice that I didn't recognize.
33. A Form of Madness
THE TAXI DROPPED SHIVA and me across from Missing's gate, in front of the cinder-block buildings, just as the streetlights came on. At sixteen, I was captain, opening batsman, and wicket-keeper for our cricket eleven and Shiva was a middle-order batsman. As opener, my forte was whaling away at the ball and trying to weather the first salvo while demoralizing the bowlers, while Shiva's strength was to doggedly defend his wicket, anchoring the team, even if he scored few runs. After practice it was always dark when we came home.
I saw a woman framed by the bead curtains and silhouetted against the light of the bar, at the end of the building closest to Ali's souk.
“Hi! Wait for me,” she called out. Her tight skirt and heels restricted her to mincing steps as she crossed the plank that forded the gutter. She hugged herself against the cold, smiling so that her eyes were reduced to slits.
“My, you have grown so tall! Do you remember me?” she said, looking uncertainly from me to Shiva. A jasmine scent reached my nostrils.
After her baby died, I'd seen Tsige many, many times but only at waving distance. She had worn black for a year. That rainy morning when she brought her baby to Missing, Tsige had looked quite plain. Hers was a simple, guileless face, but now with eyeliner, lipstick, hair in waves down to her shoulders, she was striking.
We touched cheeks like relatives, first one side, then the other, then back to the first side again. “Uh … this is … may I present my brother,” I said.
“You work here?” Shiva said. Shiva was never tongue-tied around women.
“Not anymore,” she said. “I own it now. I invite you to please come in.”
“No … but … thank you,” I stammered. “Our mother is expecting us.”
“No, she's not,” said Shiva.
“I hope you won't mind if I come another day,” I said.
“Whenever you want, you are welcome. Both of you.”
We stood in awkward silence. She still had my hand.
“Listen. I know it was a long time ago, but I never thanked you. Every time I see you I want to talk to you, but I don't want to embarrass you, and I felt ashamed … Today, when I saw you this close, I thought I'd do it.”
“Oh no,” I said, “it's I who worried that you were angry with me— with us. Maybe you blamed Missing for …”
“No, no, no. I'm to blame.” The light dimmed in her eyes. “That's what happens when you listen to these stupid old women. ‘Give him this,’ ‘Do that,’ they told me. That morning I looked at my poor baby, and I realized all those
