Scribbling the Cat - Alexandra Fuller [69]
“This was all under water when the floods came two years ago,” Connor said, kicking the door of my room open and revealing a simple cement cubicle with two beds, a sink, and a rickety bedside table. “Place was knee-deep in fish and snakes and frogs and scorps. Helluva mess.” A thin orange curtain sagged over the lower end of a screened window. The heat had settled itself like a great, hairy animal into every corner of the room, so it was breathless and stifling. “There,” he said. “I’m sure you’ll be comfortable.”
“Thanks.”
“You need to keep the door shut,” said Connor, “or the snakes will come in here after the rats. Or the wild cats want to follow the rats and the snakes—and then they piss everywhere. Man, this place is solid with wild cats. I don’t know why.”
Perhaps the pervasive scent of fish in the air might have offered one explanation, but I felt it polite not to give voice to my suspicion. Instead, I thanked Connor for his generosity and watched through the window as his flashlight bobbed back toward the dining room.
The moon, which would be full within the week, pulsed huge and silver in a deep black sky. The lake, black and secret and long, stretched out as far as I could see, joining with the sky in a seamless circle of darkness. I pulled back the mosquito net, climbed onto the sheets, and stretched out to make the most of the flaccid breeze that puffed unreliably through the window. I listened to the calling frogs, the anonymous splashes coming from the lake, the intermittent baying of village dogs, and the shrill sawing of the crickets until sleep came.
IT WASN’T YET DAWN when K materialized next to my bed with a cup of tea.
“Bobo?”
I started out of sleep, battled with the mosquito net, and emerged with heart thumping and ready for flight. “What is it?”
“Good morning.”
“Bloody hell. You nearly gave me a heart attack.”
“I brought you some tea.”
I slumped back against my pillow and looked out the window at the sky, barely smudged gray with dawn. “It’s the middle of the night.”
“It’s five o’clock in the morning.”
I groaned and felt around in the gloomy light for the tea. “I feel like I’ve been through a washing machine,” I complained.
“That’s what comes of too many beers,” K admonished.
“No. It’s what comes of not asking for directions and driving over minefields half the night,” I said, blowing on my tea.
“Do you want to come for a walk?”
“What? Right now?”
“Ja. Right now.”
“Okay. You bring the flashlight and I’ll bring the flares.” I struggled out of the net and fingered about for my clothes. “It’s not very civilized of you not to at least allow me to drink my tea.”
“You can bring it with you.”
I pulled on some shorts and a T-shirt.
“I couldn’t sleep,” K said as we made our way out of the camp and headed toward a path that seemed to lead from the lake’s shore into the mopane scrub east of us.
“Which does not necessarily mean that no one else shouldn’t,” I pointed out.
The sun, flat and dispassionate, had begun to filter over the horizon, a careless riot of orange, red, yellow.
“It’s going to be a hot one,” said K.
A herd of goats came tripping out of the trees and tottered down to the lake, heads bobbing, legs like thin sticks. Behind them, two fat black pigs scowled out at their world. One lay down with a depressed grunt in a smear of smelly black mud, upsetting a cloud of gnats into a swarm above his head.
“As soon as the sun rose,” said K, pulling aside a wait-a-bit bush so that I could pass, “the damn mopane flies were out.” He was speaking in a slightly louder than necessary, reminiscing voice (one that sounded slightly rehearsed to me, as if he had gone over and over these lines