The Other Language (43 page)

They passed clusters of zebras, antelopes and small cattle herds led by men wrapped in red cloth, covered in colorful beaded jewelry. Just before it got dark they saw a leopard appear and cross the track ahead of them, its golden shape cut against the white dust. He turned off the engine of the car and they watched the animal move slowly across—a tight bundle of muscles and tendons—and disappear into the thick again. They looked at each other and didn’t make a comment; they exchanged a smile, as though the leopard crossing their way had been a good omen, or a special signal sent just for them.

He glanced at his wristwatch.

“It’s a quarter to seven. Can you still make your flight to Nairobi?”

“Oh. Forget it, it left two hours ago. I’ll have to try to go tomorrow.”

She could almost hear them both think,
Good, we have a little time
.

Once they left the track the landscape changed, turned greener and the air cooler. They knew that now that the desert was behind them they’d reach town within an hour. They became aware that they’d have to come up with some sort of a plan in order to prolong the encounter. Neither was ready to let the other one go.

Behind a gas station, at the intersection of a small cluster of shacks selling wrinkled vegetables and Masai blankets, they saw a
nyama choma
sign painted on the side.

“They have good food here,” he said. “How about a snack and a drink?”

Sonia nodded, relieved that he’d taken the initiative.

The place was dimly lit by a string of red lightbulbs, empty except for a stocky man behind the counter, busy swatting flies away. He brought out what was left in the kitchen, cold chapatis, goat stew and
sukumawiki
, a meal that reminded Sonia of her childhood.

Suddenly a white woman with sandy hair walked briskly into the joint. She looked around and called his name.

“Hey, I saw your car outside, what are you …,” she said, and stopped, seeing he wasn’t alone.

He stood up and hugged her warmly, like an old friend. The two of them stood by the table and spoke briefly, while Sonia kept looking into her plate. She overheard the woman say something about a ghastly group of clients whom she had just driven to the airport, a problem with the power line, a lunch she was planning to have on Sunday.

“Please come and bring the children,” the woman said. “I’ve got to run now, give my love to Alexandra. Don’t forget Sunday.”

She moved away and quickly fluttered her hand in Sonia’s direction. Throughout the conversation with the woman he had seemed perfectly at ease and not in the least embarrassed to be seen with her, a fact that mildly disappointed Sonia. He sat down and ordered another round of drinks.

They lingered over their food, sipping cheap vodka and lime soda. The alcohol had smoothed their conversation, which was sliding more freely now, without pauses or impediments. They spoke only of things they’d be allowed to share: it didn’t matter what, anything that came to mind would do—a visit to the Prado, the beauty of Norwegian fjords, what had happened with Terrence Malick in his recent film, a cult book by Julian Jaynes they’d both happened to have read. They were like tightrope walkers on the same line, careful not to stray from their finely attuned balance. They had been given only one direction to go and the challenge was exhilarating.

The owner approached with the fly-swatting rag in his hand and began to wipe the table next to them. It was closing time.

There was a pause.

“Where shall I take you now?” he asked her.

“I’ll get a room somewhere for the night,” she said.

“There are no hotels around here where you’d want to spend the night.”

“It’s fine. I’m not fussy.”

They walked on the gravel toward the car. A soft breeze enveloped them. The sky was like blue carbon paper. It felt so wrong to pretend to be indifferent.

“Wow. I’m totally drunk,” Sonia said, stumbling, taking time, wanting it to slow down. It seemed to be ticking too fast.

He opened the passenger door and looked at her. He seemed perfectly sober.

“I like talking to you.”

“Yeah. Me, too. That was nice.”

She sat in her seat, not knowing what they would be doing next.

“I wish I had met you when you were still living here,” he said as he turned the key of the starter.

In the years that followed the accident Sonia thought often of that phrase. How her life would have panned out differently had the eye doctor Consuelo Gambrino never entered the bathroom and interrupted their conversation when they’d first met, had she not been too shy to follow him through the party crowd, had she pursued him, kissed him, made love to him that same night. Maybe she would’ve stayed on in the country and learned to cope with the hovering feeling of impending disaster, with her lack of sophistication, which at the time had seemed so unbearable to her. That way she would’ve had a good reason to go on living in the place where she belonged.

She also often wondered how it had been possible to fall like that. When exactly had it happened, this falling, this opening up completely? What was the connection, why him of all the people she’d come across? Clearly she couldn’t talk to anyone about this without feeling pathetic. It sounded like some adolescent fantasy, material for a cheap novel, something her friends would laugh about.

She went quietly back to her life, and kept that feeling a secret, something stashed away in the folds of her memory that now and again she would turn to. She’d go back to it and there it would be, intact, unfaded, like a diamond ring that one cannot wear in daylight, that can only be taken out of its velvet pouch every now and again, just to make sure it is still as glittering and fabulous as one remembers.

The only tangible memory of the car crash was a tiny scar. Nothing more than a thin line running across her forearm. A
discreet reminder, something she would see on herself every day, that had become part of who she was, a mark that people hardly noticed.

II

The list, dashed off in pencil on the back of an envelope, is quite long. It starts with a new set of pajamas and a few toys for the child that she will need in the days to come. There’s lots of other stuff she has to get, like milk and vegetables, snow boots, medicines, honey, detergents, printing paper and converters for their European plugs, but Sonia has decided to start with the child’s list, which is the longest and the most urgent.

Since they arrived in New York it has been nonstop rushing and fatigue. The moving, the settling in, the adjusting to the new space. She hates the new bed. She hates the view. A fire escape is not what she was expecting to be looking at, first thing in the morning.

It has been snowing for days. The brownstones in the Village are laced in a mantle of white, romantic as in an Edith Wharton story, but this morning Sonia struggles to see the beautiful side of things.

She walks very fast, making her way uptown. These days she cannot face the subway and prefers to walk; crowds make her nervous, she has been breaking out in cold sweats. It’s just tension, nothing to worry about—after all, it’s the least she can expect from her body given the circumstances—so she keeps some herbal remedy in her pocket. It’s called Rescue Remedy and she likes the sound of its name. Every now and again she squeezes a few drops under her tongue to rein in any spike of anxiety.

Inside the department store the suffocating dampness mixed with the smells emanating from too many bodies feels like a lethal gas that will slowly poison her. She spends too long inside there,
unable to make up her mind between two sets of pajamas, incapable of picking the right kind of snow boots, feeling heady, hungry and weak. Too much to choose from, too many options, that’s always the problem with department stores.

She bolts.

Out on the street Sonia inhales the cold slap of air on her face and quickly heads back downtown toward her more familiar neighborhood. The farther south she goes, the deeper into the West Village, the more stylish the women: cloaked in well-cut coats and fur-lined boots, extravagant head gear—a Mongolian-Tibetan style with a contemporary touch—hands gloved in unusual shades for a splash of color. Her own clothes feel limp and stale on her. What seemed a perfectly decent coat only two weeks ago as she was leaving Europe here feels threadbare, secondhand.

It’s going to be tough to brave this city, she thinks. It would’ve been easier, exciting, had they been in a different state of mind. Had they come for a different reason. Her feet are freezing already after only a few steps, the soles of her boots are too thin for the hard, icy pavement. Had she been more patient in her shopping attempt, she could’ve gotten at least the snow boots that were on sale on the ground floor. At least she’d have ticked one item off the list. Actually this constant postponing is a way to keep away all that is in store for them in the coming weeks. For what feels like a long time now she has been pushing the future
—any
portion of the future, regardless of its weight and size—as far away as possible.

A bubble, a tiny capsule of time where nothing is happening, no decision can be made, is all she wishes for.

A Starbucks beckons from across the street. Another whiff of hot air welcomes her. Sleepy youths in cotton T-shirts lounge in the
ample armchairs holding laptops on their knees, busy with their Facebook pages, their backpacks and jackets spread on the floor as if it were their living room.

She sits by the window with a tall regular coffee, and along with the caffeine kick she injects her neurons with more drops of Rescue Remedy.

That’s when her peripheral vision catches a slight movement on her left side. She looks over to the window. Someone is standing outside looking in and shading with a hand the reflection on the glass. It’s a man in a leather coat. Their gaze meets in midair—a laser beam that pierces the glass and freezes the frame.

She jolts, her heart beating wildly in her throat.