Scribbling the Cat - Alexandra Fuller [31]
In the evenings—marirangwe, the Goba say, “when the leopard calls out”—we took cold beers down to the banks of the river and watched the sky turn from a sun-wrecked wash of pale yellow-blue to a vivid display of reds and yellows and lurid, clashing streaks of purple. Doves called and trilled prettily to one another from the fig trees, crickets buzzed in the whispering dry grass, and, from the villages, an intermittent volley of dog barks and the wails of children shattered the air. Hippos, pink and gray humps scattered like rocks off the edges of eddies, occasionally surfaced under a spray of water and honked a warning at the shadowy dugout canoes that skimmed past them.
Late on the afternoon of the third day, after Mum and Dad had gone down to the tanks to admire a fresh crop of fingerlings, K appeared, looming under the arch at the top of the camp as he had the first time I had met him, and blocking out the sun, which spread indistinctly in a pale explosion behind a mile-thick choke of dust and wood smoke.
“Hi.” I shaded my eyes against the beat of light.
“Huzzit?” K took the steps that lead down from the archway to the tamarind tree in his characteristically greedy gulps. “I heard you had come home,” he said, pulling up a camp chair next to me and pouring himself a cup of tea, draining the pot.
“Should I brew some fresh?”
K swallowed down the tea and said, “Please.” He followed me into the kitchen. “You’ve been okay?” he asked.
This time, when I lit a match, the firewood was parchment dry and caught easily onto the flame. I put the kettle over the hottest part of the fire. “Ja, I’ve been fine.”
The little dogs—those that had not gone with Mum and Dad to stare down into tanks and tanks of identical fish babies—had barely lifted their heads at K’s arrival. Now a couple of them thumped their tails in greeting and K bent down to fondle their ears. They lay in panting crescent-shaped heaps across the relatively cool kitchen floor, miniature lakes of saliva forming in silver pools below their mouths.
When the water boiled, splattering and hissing and adding to the general atmosphere of hellish heat, I poured it onto the small pile of tea leaves in the enamel pot and set the tea tray with a jug of milk and two clean cups.
“Here,” said K, “let me take that for you.”
We went back under the tamarind tree. K put the tray down on the picnic table and then sat down next to me. I poured the tea and handed K a cup.
“How long are you here for?” he asked.
“A couple more days,” I said.
“How are things in the States?”
“Fine.”
“The kids and Charlie?”
“Well.”
“Cheers.”
We sipped our tea. A redchested cuckoo predicted, without any basis for her optimism, “It will rain! It will rain!”
“What are you working on?” asked K, looking at the computer and the sliding avalanche of notes and tapes.
“A newspaper article,” I said.
“Is it going all right?”
“Not really.” I lit a cigarette. “I’m trying to make sense of the mess in Zimbabwe in twelve hundred words.”
K let this sink in for a moment and then he gave such a guffawing laugh that he sprayed tea over the table and then I started to laugh too. I slammed the lid of my computer shut, losing all unsaved work in one careless gesture, and said, “Oh God, how arrogant. You’re right. Crazy to even try.”
“No,” said K earnestly, “you’re not crazy to try. Sorry for laughing.” He made an attempt at a straight face. “Sorry,” he apologized, laughing again and covering his mouth with his hand. Then we were both laughing more than the comment had any right to.
“How’s the farm?” I asked, when I had recovered my breath.
“Going strong.”
I smiled at K. He smiled back. We drank tea. The heat sighed up from the earth and curled around my neck. I waved my cigarette smoke toward some flies that had settled on the edge of the milk jug. “It’s warm, isn’t it?”
K nodded. “I’m glad I’m not a gorilla.” He showed me his