is now the head of a skinny man. Lumps where there were none.
He is an old man now. They have broken his ribs, five or six, maybe more. He is older than that old sick man who dug the sunken garden and gave him the hot pepper seeds. He is broken in more places than he can count. His nose, pushed to one side, blood clotted underneath. Traveling under the hearse, he thought he would die. He knows now he was not even close to death then. He can feel the line between life and death in this place, has prayed to cross it, to be granted peace.
Amen. Meeting Amen was where it began. If he’d walked down that footpath a quarter of an hour earlier, a quarter of an hour later, he would have slept somewhere else that night. Who knows where he would have ended up? But it would not have been with Amen and Kagiso. It would not all have unfolded.
Why are they not coming for him now? It has been a day, perhaps two. How often has he prayed to God to let him die, a God who has proven to be deaf, blind, criminally indifferent.
How is it that a small voice, even now, is saying, live! Some stubborn, reptilian creaking urgency wants to draw one more breath. And after that, one more. And again and again.
Surely death will be like water merging with water.
They have not been coming for him for several days now. He believes his usefulness to them has ended. What is the chaff to the wheat? saith the Lord. They will come with their sharp threshing instruments and beat him small and blow him away as chaff.
Surely death will be like the earth dissolving in the rains, running before the deluge, merging with the moving waters. Or like letting your hands go from the branch of a tall tree and dropping, falling through space, the fall never ending, black nothingness forever.
51
Workmen had been banging on the roof of the Ministry of Local Government and Lands all morning when the phone rang. “Hello!” Alice yelled into receiver.
It was Heavenly Mosepe. The nurse had found an egg on Moses. “You must come get the children.”
There was silence on Alice’s end.
“Hello?”
“Yes, hello.”
“You must wash everything made of cloth in the house, then they will stop.”
“They will never stop.”
“They will stop, madam.”
She slammed out of work and picked up the children. “Still?” asked Ari Schwartz. He pulled out another bottle of vile brown liquid. One of his eyes wept easily. When Alice first knew him, she thought he was grieving for his wife. He held out the bottle, dabbed at the corner of his eye, and shoved his handkerchief back in his pocket.
“Don’t you have anything else? That stuff doesn’t work.”
“I have one more thing. Surefire, but you must use it very carefully. Not a drop in the children’s eyes.” He went behind a curtain and came back with a cork-stoppered bottle filled with black liquid. “The instructions are written on the back. Follow them closely.”
“It won’t hurt them?”
“No, just keep it out of their eyes. Use it every day for three days. By the end of that time, the lice will be dispatched.”
“I’ll make you a cake if it’s true.”
“Chocolate is my favorite,” he said, pulling out his handkerchief again. “Looks like rain.”
“Let’s hope.” Alice paid him, and he wished her luck.
The wind was blowing low and steady, sweeping dust across the length of the mall. The title of the movie at the cinema was obscured by brown haze. The dust clung to everything: windshields, foreheads, shoes, the umbrellas under which the Mbukush women sat in their stalls. They were folding them now, gathering their wares, taking cover. The wind seemed to increase in ferocity as they walked back to the truck. It tossed hats. A can rolled across a flat expanse between the electrical shop and the road. White Dog put her ears back, and Lulu covered them with her hands.
“Pula e kae?” said Alice. Where’s the rain? There’d been so little, and soon winter would come, with no possibility of more.
“She is coming,” said Moses, practicing his English.
Alice drove home while the wind nudged the truck sideways. In the driveway, a few drops fell. “Hurry!” she said, gathering her papers. A lightning bolt rent the sky, followed by a jolt of thunder. She took Lulu’s hand and ran toward the house. Moses had already ducked inside.
White Dog refused to cross the threshold. “Come!”