“Not for a minute, darling,” she said, catching her breath. “Whoever’s in charge of giving omens wouldn’t be so obvious.”
He laughed with her. The honor guard re-formed its ranks and saluted the newlyweds, slapping their rifles smartly. Followed by a procession of chanting women, they walked the road to the garrison, arriving at the house as the sun was going down, tinging the sky primrose. They went inside. She was Quinette Goraende. There was no going back, and that, she knew as she undressed, was what she’d wanted.
He took off his uniform, and she lit the lamp and beheld him beholding her. She took all of him in.
“I love the way you look in this light, I love the way these walls look,” she said softly.
They had been rubbed with graphite, he said—that was what gave them their blue tint. He had dug up the graphite clay with his own hands and spent many hours polishing it with his thumbs until it shone as it did now.
She touched the raised marks on his brow and, letting out a long, slow breath, allowed her head to fall on his arm.”The first time we made love, you beautified me. Would you again? The first time when a girl is ten, here.” She took his hand and placed it on her stomach.
“And what design would you like?”
She looked at the wall and pointed at a canted figure with a bulging belly and outsize hips.
“A pregnant woman?” He drew her down to the floor mat and squeezed a piece of her flesh between his thumb and forefinger. “This is the thorn that lifts the skin . . .”
“And then the cut of the small knife,” Quinette said, and felt the bite of his fingernails. “A pregnant woman because I want to have a child with you, a son. I want to give you back what you lost.”
“You are a generous soul to wish to give me that. How I love you.” And he pinched her sharply, below the breasts. “This is where a girl is tattooed the second time, when she is fifteen.”
“She goes high up into the rocks,” Quinette said.
“Yes, to that ledge where I brought you.”
“The thorn, the knife . . .”
“And then”—his palm rubbed her belly—“the ash of the acacia to heal the cuts and make the marks stand out in all their beauty.”
“The third time would be here,” she said, drawing his hand to her back. “After I’ve had my first child.”
“Yes. There and here, up and down.” She turned over. His fingernails nipped up and down along the edges of the welts, the scars of her sisterhood, and at her bottom, massaging it afterward with the healing ash. “After you have borne our son.”
Borne our son. The words rilled through her, and she bent her body like a bow, her cheek resting on the mat. He crouched over her, kissing the back of her neck as he thrust into her. She moved against him until he quivered, flooding her with his seed.
“THERE’S A POEM,” Mary said in a tired voice as they taxied into central Nairobi from Jomo Kenyatta. “ ‘Do not go gentle into that good night.’ But that’s what Dad did. He took a breath, and then the numbers on the life-support machines went to zero. The nurses and the doctor came in and unplugged him, like he was an experiment that didn’t work out. I’ve gotten so used to people being shot and blown up that I almost forgot someone could go out that way. One breath, and then gone.”
At the bleak hour of one in the morning, just five days after watching her father die in a Winnipeg hospital, Mary’s grief acted as a brake on Dare’s happiness at her return. He wanted to kiss her but confined himself to sitting with his arm around her. It didn’t seem right that he should feel so good while she felt so bad. Through streets darkened by another blackout, they rode on to the New Stanley, where he had checked in earlier. In the elevator Mary mentioned that her two younger brothers would be looking after their mother, “but you know how it is with guys their age. It’s me she needs right now, and Christ, I hated leaving her so soon. If it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t have come back.”
“Africa’s losing its charms?” he asked.
“All I’m saying is that I don’t like being so far away from her.”