Hold: An Observer New Face of Fiction 2018. Michael Donkor

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СКАЧАТЬ women held hands, their rings clicking against each other and their bracelets jangling again. ‘Belinda,’ Aunty exhaled, ‘is a total heartbreak and pain for me to let you go. Feels too soon. Like you have been here some matter of days, and already –’

      ‘Six months and some few weeks.’

      ‘What?’

      ‘Mary and I have been here six months and maybe two weeks in addition.’

      ‘Yes,’ Aunty said, now touching the papery skin at her throat. ‘And that is a heartbreak. But this is what my great friend says she needs and what Amma needs. So, out of a loyalty and from a care, I let you go.’

      Belinda traced the silver pattern marking the napkin’s edge. The cicadas played their long, dull tune. She had so many questions but found that her mouth only asked one: ‘You mentioning just me. What of Mary? She stays here?’

      ‘Yes,’ Nana said without eye contact, ‘she stays here.’

      ‘Oh. Oh.’ Belinda concentrated on the napkin again but its busy design became too much for her.

      Nana and Aunty behaved like everything would be easy. Belinda worried it would not be. Even so, she nodded along then got down on her knees to thank them because she knew her role and place, understood how things should be. And, at their feet, she bowed her head and gave praise in quiet phrases because getting further away from what she had left in the village was more of a blessing than either Nana or Aunty could understand.

      It was decided that Belinda should take Mary out for a day trip to tell her the news. Let her have a bit of sugar to help swallow the pill. It was decided that a visit to the zoo would be just right. It was decided that they had struck on a great plan. And so, in a voice faraway and unlike her own, Belinda told them Mary would like the zoo, especially seeing the monkeys, because Mary loved the cleverness of their tails.

      But now, as Belinda and Mary stopped at a water fountain near the snakes’ enclosure to wait for the stewardess to take a gulp, Mary seemed much more interested in ostriches than monkeys.

      ‘So, where are they hiding?’ Mary demanded, pointing at a grainy picture of the birds in the brochure.

      The stewardess wiped her mouth and admired the lushness in front of them, a wooden stick clutched under her arm. Belinda studied the view too. Sighing, Mary snapped away with the tiny camera borrowed from Aunty. The zoo was beautiful, rich with orchids shooting from dark bushes like eager hands, thickening the air with sweetness. Cashew trees were everywhere, loaded with leathery fruit. Even the lizards here seemed different, striped with hotter colour. Small streams cut across the land, flickering with unknown fish. Every now and again, the tops of trees rang with cries.

      ‘The ostriches?’ Mary asked firmly.

      ‘If you revise your memory of the noticeboard encountered on your entry, you will recall that we have sadly to inform you of this suspension of this ostriches. They have been removed from our care due to budget cut. Me, I’m not supposed to be revealing to you such. I’m to declare this ostriches has been loan to a Washington Zoo, in United States of America, so it gives us a prestige and you feel proud your nation’s zoo-oh, giving its animals to the West.’ The stewardess pushed the sweaty licks of hair from her eyes. ‘Sorry. Is lie. We have sold our ostriches. Sold. Because how can you be keeping grand big birds in country like this when too many here still have no simple reading, writing and such things?’

      ‘Cro-co-diles here!’ Mary pointed to the words on a sun-bleached arrow. Belinda’s arm swung as Mary released her grip and skipped up a dirt track.

      ‘Careful, oh! He come from the Northern region – and we have left him unfed for some four days – budget cuts!’ The stewardess headed in Mary’s direction.

      Following, walking through foliage, Belinda bit her nails, spitting out the red varnish that broke onto her tongue. Belinda wanted the right sort of place: somewhere hidden; theirs for that moment. But visitors busy with their own intimacies occupied all places the path led. An Indian couple wearing matching baseball caps, necks looped with binoculars, sat on a bench. A father near the porcupines opened his briefcase in front of three waiting children. The three nurses from the entry queue unlinked their hooked arms; one stopped to rub her hip. And if that wasn’t bad enough, there were no pockets on Belinda’s dress, and so after Mary got a generous share of the cash Belinda had been given to pay for the day, Belinda squeezed the remaining cedis into her bra, giving herself an uncomfortable, monstrous breast. The high-heels Aunty and Nana said made her feet ‘feminine’ pinched her toes and were more painful than stomach cramps.

      ‘I face the most severe of high recriminations if the girl comes lost. Akwada bone! Wo wein?’ The stewardess hopped, checked the air around her, shouted in the direction in which Mary had sped off. ‘This crocodile will be bearing the most emptiest of stomachs, small child. He will come, snapping for even your no-meat ankles. You must exact caution!’

      Mary jumped up from behind a tree. Belinda leapt with shock.

      ‘Why does budget cut have to mean bad signs?’ Mary asked the stewardess. ‘I mean how long we have been walking for and have I seen one cro-co-dile? No, Mrs. No even one of them to snap at my size-five feet.’

      ‘This one has so much lip!’ The stewardess became suddenly playful, extending her hand to Mary.

      ‘You will take me?’

      ‘I will take you.’

      Mary asked the stewardess her name, then asked if she was married and about being married. Behind, wrestling with the layers of her long gold dress, Belinda remembered what women claimed about fat-cheeked babies who did not cry when they were passed between relatives. ‘Oh, he is such a good boy – he goes to anyone!’ Though she would have hated being compared like that, Mary had that same ease. Belinda wiped away something sticky from her neck, fallen from the canopy above. She considered beginning with reassurances about the smallness of the loss. There would be a new Belinda soon, surely. Another plain girl from some bush-place, come to clean Aunty and Uncle’s fine-fine retirement villa nicely. All Mary needed to do was introduce herself politely, show this housegirl where the towels and things were, and then they could start. It would be easy to go to this new Belinda. Good for Mary, even. Yes. But Belinda knew Mary would ask if she herself was so replaceable; if a new Mary would be found so easily. Belinda could not mention Amma.

      Ahead, through the heat’s shimmers, the stewardess ‘Priscilla’ lifted her staff, pushed a curtain of leaves aside and ushered Mary beneath. Belinda stumbled forward. Tired fencing and browning grasses ringed the swamp. Dragonflies and midges rose and fell in the steam. Broken wood and lengths of something like soiled rope drifted across the surface and Belinda understood their slowness. Peaks of mud forced up through the water. A dripping sound worried the silent air and the sickly light.

      ‘Ladies and no gentleman, I am presenting … Reginald!’

      Mary applauded, but soon Belinda saw her face squash when it became obvious that the clapping fell deafly. Cross-legged on the wet soil where Priscilla joined her, Mary said, ‘I don’t like Reginald for a crocodile’s name. Tell me his local one. On, on which day was he born?’

      ‘He arrived here some three years. Big men brought him in a truck all far from Bolgatanga.’

      ‘Which. Day. Please?’

      ‘I believe the delivery came on a Tuesday, so –’

      ‘So СКАЧАТЬ