Scribbling the Cat - Alexandra Fuller [91]
The cat yawned and fell asleep on Mapenga’s feet.
K got up and stretched. “I’m off to bed.”
“Me too,” I said.
Mapenga held up the wine bottle. “We haven’t put this out of its misery yet. Here, give me your glass.”
K asked me, “Are you coming?”
“When I’ve finished this.”
“We have an early start in the morning.”
“I know.”
“Very early.”
“Okay.” I lit a cigarette. “Good night.” I blew smoke into the sky.
K walked around to the swing door and I heard him letting himself into the cage. The lights came on in the house.
The lion started purring. I drank my wine and then I sat with the empty glass between my hands and stared into the fire until it died down into a heap of ashy pink coals. The lights in the house went out. The fishing rigs chugged out for the night’s catch, their lights reflecting like bright pearls off the oily-black water. Feeling stiff and sunburned I stretched and got up.
“Thanks for showing me that garden,” I said.
“Have some more wine.”
“We have an early, early start,” I said. “Thanks anyway.”
Mapenga put his hand up and caught my waist. “Come here,” he said.
So I bent over and kissed him. His lips tasted of salt and wine and cigarettes. “Good night,” I said.
“No,” he said. “Come here.” He stood up and his chin grazed my cheek. He held me in the small of my back. “Come.” He led me down to the lake. I glanced over my shoulder at the lion, who was following us slowly, tail wagging, head low and swinging—he looked sedate. “Don’t worry about the lion,” whispered Mapenga.
“I’m not,” I lied.
Now we were standing on a flat rock above the lake. Here, the edge of the island fell sharply into the water.
“Lie down,” said Mapenga.
“What?”
“Lie down.”
I lay down on the rock.
“On your tummy,” said Mapenga.
I rolled over on the warm rock and it was the temperature of blood, flooding the day’s heat into my stomach. Mapenga lay down next to me and put his hand over my shoulder. “Look out there,” he said softly.
I turned my head. The lion had sauntered out in front of us and was sitting, statuesque, gazing out at the deep night. Beyond the lion, the sky swelled over the lake, reached back again, and touched itself in the water. The world appeared perfectly round, a mirror of itself over and over and over. Mapenga and I were a thin slot of life wedged into the middle of the end of the world. The moon crept out of the lake, tentative and heavy and yellow, stained with heat and age, pieces of it dripping off its side.
“Which way is up?” Mapenga said, his lips touching my ear. “Everywhere you look, you’re surrounded.”
My arms prickled and I felt suddenly dizzy, too full of the drunken night and of the slow, ponderous moon and the stars and of the heat-soaked day.
“The edge of the world,” whispered Mapenga.
I rolled onto my back and Mapenga leaned over me. It was a moment before I could make out his face and then his lips were on mine. We kissed and it was some minutes before I felt the sharp edge of rock against my spine and turned my face away.
I sat up and the lion gave a soft grunt and started to clean himself noisily. I said, “Oh God, I must get to bed.”
Then I hurried off the rock, across the lawn, and back into the cage before the lion could get any ideas about ambushing me.
I shut the screen door behind me and I stopped, listening. I sensed immediately that K was not asleep. His breathing was uneven and angry. I brushed my teeth and climbed into bed as quickly and quietly as I could. I lay awake for a while, listening to K’s sleeplessness from the other bed, and then I dozed off.
I awoke an hour or two later into the sudden death of a noise, which in this part of Africa is not silence, exactly, but more a reduction of something steadying and reassuring and man-made. The generator had been switched off. The startling absence of its companionable throb and the corresponding stillness of the fan’s cooling arms above my bed had jolted me awake. I peeled the sheets off my legs and wiped sweat off my forehead.
Then I