Brazzaville Beach (23 page)

Usman had borrowed this beach house from a Syrian merchant he knew. It was freshly painted but only half repaired. The jutting deck was strong, with new timber and supports, but when you opened the door to go into the house you discovered that the roof had collapsed. But it was fine on the deck. It caught whatever
breeze there was and we were high enough from the ground to escape the sand flies.

Usman had prepared an odd lunch of garlic sausage and a sweet potato and onion salad. There was some bread and processed American cheese and a pineapple. We drank beer from a coolbox.

We sat on aluminum chairs—an aluminum table with the lunch on it was between us—and rested our feet in the balustrade, watching the waves tumble in. Usman told me that the Syrian had offered to sell him the beach house.

“What's the point?” I said. “You won't be here much longer.”

“But it's very cheap. And anyway I've got nothing to spend my money on.”

“Don't you send it home?” I had never really questioned Usman about his domestic arrangements.

“I send some to my brother and sisters, of course.”

“What about your wife and children?”

He looked at me, then laughed. “Ah, Hope. I'm not married.”

“I don't mind.”

He took a long pull on his beer, still smiling, amused at me.

“I was too dedicated to get married,” he said.

“Dedicated to what?”

“To outer space.”

He told me he had trained for many years to be an astronaut. When the Russians opened their space program to certain Third World countries—notably India, Vietnam and Egypt—Usman had been one of the six Egyptian air force pilots selected for initial training. He had spent four years at Baikonur itself, he said, waiting for the day. Then the six had been reduced to two, Usman and one other. There was always a backup, he said: two Indians, two Vietnamese, two Egyptians. No one knew who would be chosen.

“I knew it would be me,” he said matter-of-factly. “You see, it was my dream to go in space. I talked to the others who had been, who had looked down on the world. I saw the photographs….” He smiled sadly. “I think that was my mistake. The photographs were so beautiful, you see.” He screwed up his face, wincing at the memory of their beauty. “I stopped being the perfect technician. I even began to write poems about the earth, seen from outer space. I think that was my mistake.”

“So they chose the other one.”

“I was there right up to the blastoff. In case something went wrong with him. But it didn't.”

“That's sad.” I felt full of love for him then.

He made a resigned face. “And now the Americans go to the moon,”

“So you can speak Russian?” I asked, trying to change the mood.

“Oh, I've forgotten most of it…but it was a long time, you know, to be there, to be so obsessed with one thing, and then not getting it….” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “When I came back to Egypt, nothing was the same, I couldn't settle. I had to leave the air force.” He turned and smiled. “I saw an advertisement, looking for ‘instructors.' So here I am fighting someone else's war.”

“Don't you have a home?”

“I have a small flat in Alexandria. My cousin's living there just now.” He stood and hitched up his swimming trunks. “It's not really a home. That's why I'd like to buy this place.”

“Well, you should buy it. If it'd make you happy.”

He came round the table and kissed me.

“Hope. Clever Hope. It's not so simple. I don't think one old beach hut can make me happy.”

 

In the night, very early in the morning, before dawn, someone came to the door to wake him. I heard them talking softly for a while, then Usman got dressed. There was a mission to be flown at dawn, he said. They had to go now to be briefed. An UNAMO column, he said, heading for the marshes and river systems in the north. I was still half asleep when he kissed my cheek and said goodbye.

“When you come back, Hope, next time. I'm going to buy that beach hut. We'll stay there.”

I left the hotel for the run back to Grosso Arvore a few hours later. Just as I was turning onto the road that led past the airport, I heard the rip of jet engines and saw six Migs take off, two by two, afterburners orange, and climb up and away into the misty blue air of the morning.

THE COSMIC DAWN

Hope feels sorry for Usman and his lost dreams of space flight. She too has seen those photographs of the home planet shot from high above our misty atmosphere. She can understand his longing to be up there in the infinite blackness, spinning through the vacuum of space at five miles a second, looking down at the blue-and-white ball
.

To watch the raspberry colors of a cosmic dawn. See the furry haze of the fragile biosphere. Check out the moonrise and the moonset, climbing rapidly like a bubble in a glass of water, falling like a Ping-Pong ball off the edge of a table. Observe the vast spirals of plankton blooms in the oceans, hundreds of miles across. Count the sixteen sunrises and sunsets you see every twenty-four hours as you orbit the beautiful planet…. Maybe he might have gone farther out and had his eyes lit by earthshine, or—who knows?—seen the earthrise itself, blue and lazy over the sallow moon surface, like those American astronauts he so envied
.

Usman's dreams were out of this world. They could be hard to live with
.

 

Hope made a plan. She would watch John in secret, covertly, over a weekend to see what happened. So she telephoned, said she was coming home and then, late on Friday evening, rang him again to cancel. An important meeting, interviewing Winfrith's replacement, her presence required. John said he was sorry; he had been looking forward to her coming.

So she took a train up to London, hired a car and drove to one of those anonymous large hotels off the Cromwell Road and booked herself a single room.

On Saturday morning she drove to their street and parked. She saw John emerge from their flat, alone, and walk to college. She watched the college, almost uninterrupted—she had to eat and relieve herself—until seven in the evening, when he went
home. He did not leave the flat again that night, and had no visitors.

She was up early enough on Sunday morning to see him returning from the news agent's with the Sunday papers. She felt strange to be spying on him in this way, to be looking at a person you know intimately as others see him. Facets of John's appearance that had grown familiar now seemed singular again: his neutral, unfashionable clothes, the tight fit of his jacket, his wiry driven-back hair. When he walked he rolled slightly from side to side, almost a swagger. He smoked constantly.

The afternoon was bright, cold and crisp, but warm in the sun. At about three, he left the flat with a ragged bundle of newspapers and a notebook. He walked to Hyde Park. He sat on a bench and read for a while and then jotted something down in his notebook. Then he wandered down to the Serpentine and strolled around, stopping to gaze at the last intrepid boaters of the year and the model yacht enthusiasts.

He looked pale and thin-faced and, despite her resolve and her anger, she felt a pity for him grow in her, almost enough to make her run over and say, hello, it's me, I came up unexpectedly…. But not quite enough. She hung back and watched him until he went home, stopping on the way to buy food. She sat in her car outside the flat until ten and then returned to her hotel. She telephoned him.

“Hi, it's me,” she said. “How are you?”

“Fine, fine.”

“Have you tried to call? I've been out.”

“Ah, no. I was just about to.”

“Telepathy.”

“Yeah. Must be.”

“Are you all right? You sound a bit…down.”

“No, actually,” he said. “I'm fine.”

“What've you been up to?”

“Read the papers. Went for a walk in the park.”

“Nice day?”

“Yeah. Coldish.”

“Funny to think of you in London, doing these things, without me.”

“Just a walk in the park.”

“Miss me?”

“What? Yes, of course.”

“Why don't you come down this week? Wednesday, Thursday?”

“I might, actually.”

They talked on in this way for a while and then said good night. She thought he had sounded depressed, even though he denied it. She decided to wait one more day and telephoned Munro to tell him, making some excuse about a dental appointment.

The next morning she was outside the flat by eight, sitting in her car, munching a sticky bun and drinking coffee out of a plastic cup. By ten o'clock there had been no sign of John and she began to wonder if she might have missed him. Perhaps he had gone to work especially early? Perhaps he'd slept in? After some thought, she decided to ring the doorbell, just to see if he answered. There was an answer-phone device at the main door. Their flat was on the fourth floor. John would not see her even if he leaned out of the window.

She left the car and crossed the road. As she approached the front door she heard her name called. She stopped abruptly, her shoulders hunching automatically with guilt. She turned. It was Jenny Lewkovitch. Hope told herself not to be stupid: this was her front door; after all, what could be more natural.

“Hi,” Jenny said, smiling. “I forgot you lived round here. For some reason I thought you lived in Notting Hill.”

“No,” Hope said, as she rummaged in her bag for her keys. “Number forty-three.”

“I'm looking for a cheese shop,” Jenny said. “Supposed to be an amazing cheese shop near here, isn't there?”

Hope pointed. “Bute Street. Three along.”

“Great.”

There was a pause. Hope could not think of anything to say. She felt her face grow hot.

“Well…” Jenny said. “See you later. Are you going to that college do? Saturday?”

Hope opened the front door.

“No. I'll be in Dorset.”

“Oh, well. Say hi to John. See you.”

She left. Hope closed the door and stood in the dim hall, feeling absurdly foolish. She had been unbelievably tense and awkward, she realized. God knows what Jenny had thought. She sorted through the mail, picking out their letters. I have to go up now, she told herself, this is ridiculous. If he's here, I'll say I've had to come back for a meeting.

She ran up the stairs.

As she reached the landing below their floor she heard the door to their flat open and John said, “Miss Punctuality.” Hope's pace slowed. She turned the corner and looked up the last flight of stairs. John stood in the doorway, smiling broadly. When he saw her it faded, but only for a second.

“Hi,” he said. “Thought I heard you.”

Hope felt cold. She felt a tightness travel up her spine to constrict her scalp.

“Miss Punctuality,” she said. “Who's that?”

But she didn't need to ask. Now she knew who XXXXX was.

 

“I needed somebody,” he said, flatly. “You weren't here.”

“Jesus Christ. All my fault.”

“She's not happy. Bogdan's…he wants to leave her. And I was miserable. Christ, you know how miserable I've been.” He seemed to poke and prod at his face, as if it were going numb. “What can I say? All these clichés. Me, her, a moment. A kiss. So fucking banal.”

The thought of Jenny Lewkovitch kissing John made her want to vomit.

“I don't even like her particularly,” he said. “Don't particularly fancy her.”

“That's meant to make me feel better.”

“It's not a…grand passion. It was just something that happened. We fell into it.”

“Our bed.”

“Don't do the bitter sarcasm number, please.”

He looked down at his hands on the table.

“Everything's going wrong,” he said in a quiet voice. “Everything. I'm sorry.” He took a deep breath. “It's contemptible. Inexcusable. I'm weak. I'm a liar.” He shrugged and looked at her. “Now you're here, I'm baffled at myself. I can't understand what made me do it. Now you're here.”

Hope thought of that moment in the park yesterday and of her upwelling of sympathy for him. She pushed her chair back and went round the table to him. He tensed as she approached. Even then she wasn't sure what she might do. From somewhere came the urge to hit him.

“Life's too short,” she said, and bent to kiss his cheek.

 

They talked about it. Hope confessed she had been watching him for two days. He was unsettled by that news. He said he would never have expected her to be quite so devious. Hope said she would never have expected him to have an affair with Jenny Lewkovitch.

They went for a walk and had a meal in a restaurant. They tried talking about other things, then they acknowledged to each other that they were trying to talk about other things and so talked about the affair a bit more.

The day progressed with a strange lethargy.

Of all the emotions that Hope experienced, the most bizarre was a sense of disappointment. Disappointment that he could have betrayed her with someone so ordinary, so mundane as Jenny Lewkovitch. She recalled their encounter at the front door. Her awkwardness; Jenny's breezy, brazen calumnies. The cheese shop…the chitchat…she saw again Jenny's small face, her funny, pointed chin, her fringe, her bulky artisan's clothes. She tried to imagine, from a man's point of view, what there might be about Jenny Lewkovitch that could be described as sexually attractive. She failed. Perhaps it was simply a matter of mutual need and mutual opportunity?…But how
dull
, she thought, and how disappointing. And in any case where does that leave me?

 

By the evening of that slow day John's mood began to change. During the afternoon he had made an effort, had looked closely at his behavior and taken responsibility for the consequences of what he had done. As it grew dark, Hope sensed him beginning to withdraw into himself.