I go? Where can I go?
As Sylvia walked back to her mother’s door, an image came to her. Aubergine skin, impwa eyes – Loveness, but from before Lee and his many varieties of drug, before the Hi-Fly, before their late nights at the shebeens and hotels. It was Loveness’s young face, from when the two of them were just girls, sitting face to face, knee to knee, pulling together, bathed in that soft light from the plastic-bottle roof.
She had lost touch with Loveness years ago, somewhere between a Virus conference in Berlin and a Virus workshop in Holland. What had brought that memory to mind? Sylvia tried the door to No. 74 and found it locked. She sucked her teeth and banged her fist on it. Greed, maybe. That was what connected those two. Lee and Loveness both had no limits. They were the kind of people who eye your plate even while they’re eating from their own.
* * *
‘Smaller,’ the General said. He and Jacob were circling the swimming pool together, their composite shadow undulating on the water. The General had been talking to some government contractors and it seemed that they were more interested in surveillance drones than delivery drones now.
‘Smaller will not be easy, bwana.’
‘You have already given us miracles! My left-tenant, ehn?’ the General laughed, his fillings a plague of metal in his mouth. ‘I have provided. And you will provide, ehn?’
He put his arm around Jacob’s shoulder and turned them to face the New Kasama house. It was crawling with its usual infestation of guards. The ground floor had a white facade now, though rainy-season mould was already reaching green fingers up it. The entrance had been fitted with sliding glass doors that reflected the garden and the pool and Jacob and the General standing side by side. The pillars still poked up into the sky, and hovering between them, where the second storey ought to have been, were Jacob’s first prototypes: three bird-sized drones that he had stripped to the bone and coated with solar tape so that they could travel long distances without refuelling. They dipped and bobbed, flashing in the sun like monstrous dragonflies.
The glass doors beneath them slid open and Pepa emerged, wearing a navy-blue bikini and a green and pink chitenge knotted at her hip. Her gold hair was plaited in a zigzag mukule. A diamond necklace around her neck flashed in the sun. Jacob waved but she ignored him, like he was just another of the General’s men. Perhaps he was.
By the time the General had sent the SUV to bring Jacob to the New Kasama house to show what progress he had made on the drone project, Solo and Pepa had been living there for two months. Solo’s eyes looked as if they had been swallowed up – too much labour, too many beatings? No, Jacob realised. Drugs. One time, Jacob had managed to get Pepa alone but as soon as he was done apologising and conveying his worries about Solo, she’d replied with just two words: ‘Too late.’ But it wasn’t too late. He had to believe that. He would prove it to her.
Now she walked to the deep end of the pool, untied and tossed her sarong, and jumped in feet first. Up, down, up – her sleek, riven head broke the surface. She wiped her hand down her face and began a gangly crawl through the water.
‘Okay, bwana. I have some ideas,’ Jacob said, turning away from her.
‘Good,’ the General murmured, still watching Pepa swim. ‘I already feel richer.’
* * *
When Sylvia had returned to No. 74 Kalingalinga, she had brought with her a particular smell – faintly reminiscent of Godfrey or of Matha’s fingers after she’d been gardening. It irked Matha. First, Sylvia had left her. Then she had dumped her son here. Now she had displaced him. Why had she come back? To show off her fancy robe and beery breath? Or her scarred skin and thin body? Wasn’t flaunting your death a sin?
Over the last few years, Matha had developed some new opinions, or rather some new words for opinions that she had long held, about what was and wasn’t a sin. Teaching her grandson how to read with Mrs Zulu’s Bible had reintroduced her to its lessons. She had been surprised by how familiar some of the passages were. At first she thought this was just because of how people in Lusaka spoke these days – God bless this, bless you