The World Unseen (21 page)

Chapter Twenty-Two

“I
ASKED
M
ISS
S
MITH TO HAVE DINNER
with me,” Jacob said, smiling.

Amina regarded him with a confused air. It was early morning, and she had been awake for much of the night, with only a brief interlude of sleep that had come so full of nightmares that she had been glad to wake up again. At five a.m she had risen, bathed, and prepared herself some strong tea in the kitchen. She sat then in a booth in the empty restaurant and sipped slowly while trying to read some of the local newspaper. There had been more arrests of demonstrators in the last week and, she noted, a black man had been detained in prison on suspicion of consorting with a white woman.

“You asked her to have dinner?” she repeated.

“Yes.” Jacob seemed uncommonly pleased with himself.

“What did she say?” Amina asked.

“She said yes.”

Jacob was smiling so broadly that Amina could not help but congratulate him. Her face became serious again, though, as she listened to Jacob describe the conversation he had had with the postmistress.

“Jacob…
”
She stopped and sighed and looked out of the window. Their waitresses were coming up the road, ready for the first breakfast shift.

“What is it?”

“Do you know what you are getting yourself into?”

Jacob frowned, and then nodded. “Yes, I believe I do.”

“I was just reading about this kind of thing in the paper,” she went on. “It’s not a safe way to live, however nice she might be.”

Jacob stood up from the booth.

“This kind of thing?” he said, and she winced at the implication he gave her words.

“I’m just saying,” she answered, “that you should be very careful. We don’t live in a place where certain ordinary human relationships are acceptable.”

“Do you think I don’t know that already?” He turned away, but she called his name with an apologetic tone and he came back, to find that she could only look at him.

“I never thought I’d have to hear something like this from you,” he said simply.

“Something like what?”

“It’s not a safe way to live?” he repeated. “It’s not acceptable? Since when have you known anything about an acceptable way to live? If you lived the way you were supposed to, and only went with people you were supposed to go with, you’d be married to some nice Indian boy by now.”

Jacob’s voice had risen, and the waitresses who had just arrived stopped awkwardly at the door.

“Don’t, Jacob,” said Amina in a hushed voice. “Sit down. Please?”

Jacob sat, and Amina noticed his fingers tremble as he reached for his coffee cup.

“I know she’s a nice lady, and you like her, Jacob, but in the real world, you could get both of you into a lot of trouble. That’s all.”

“It’s not right,” he said.

“I know.”

“They have no right to keep us from seeing who we want to see.”

“I know, Jacob.”

He sipped at his coffee and said nothing until the waitresses had put on their aprons and gone back into the kitchen to get some breakfast. Then he looked back at her. To Amina’s surprise and relief, his eyes contained again something of their usual sparkle.

“Amina, I know you mean well, and I will be careful. I’m not stupid. But life is short, and I don’t want to end it alone and unhappy because I had to live by someone else’s rules and not my own. You of all people should understand that.”

Amina sighed and pushed her hair back from her face. Jacob saw clearly the shadows beneath her eyes.

“Of course I understand,” she said. “But even I have been wondering lately whether it is always worth just doing what you want…
”
She paused as if biting off her sentence, and then added the final words, in a low voice:

“…and going after people you shouldn’t really go after. However strongly you feel about them.”

Jacob ran a thoughtful hand over his head and tried to decide what to tell her, because she watched him with such questioning eyes that he knew for certain that she was no longer talking about him.

“It is worth it,” he said finally. “You, more than anyone, my young friend, have taught me that, and I’ll tell you something else.”

Amina waited.

“If you start changing now, I’ll never forgive you.” With that, he stood up and went to open up for the first of the morning’s customers.

So it was that later that morning, Amina found herself sitting in her truck, at the top of the road where Sadru and Farah lived, waiting for any sign of Omar. She knew that he would probably come to Pretoria for business anyway, but she had no way of checking on this, unless she saw him arrive at his brother’s house. Impatiently she sat, humming to herself and watching the street. She saw some women come out of their houses to go shopping, but in general the street was quiet. The children had gone to school, the husbands had left for work, and only the wives and mothers were left, cleaning or cooking or, thought Amina, waiting for their brothers-in-law to visit.

Omar arrived much sooner than she had expected, and she instinctively lowered her shoulders when she saw him, trying to make herself small behind the wheel. She was many yards up the road, though, and he was not looking for her. She watched as he climbed out of the car, but this time he did not leave his jacket in the back seat. Although the day was hot, he reached in and put the coat on, buttoning up the front, and checking his tie.

“Oh no,” said Amina, under her breath. “Why are you all dressed up, young man? Are you planning to break it off? Does this mean you won’t be long?” She stared at him with eyes narrowed, as though waiting for him to respond.

“Dammit.” She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. She knew she could drive quickly, but even if she raced to Delhof, Omar would surely be shortly behind her, and there would not be enough time to tell Miriam the things she wanted to say.

Amina turned on the ignition and pushed the pick-up into reverse.

“Time for plan number two,” she said, and looking over her shoulder she reversed all the way to the end of the street and careered around the corner, pulling up by a group of Coloured boys who were playing cricket on the pavement.

“Hey,” she called as she jumped down from the truck.

A small boy with thin arms and a button nose stood up from his batting stance and regarded her coolly.

“You want to make some money?” she asked him.

“How much?” he replied.

She laughed. “Jesus,” she said. “You’ll go far.”

She reached into her trouser pocket, extracted a shiny coin, and held it out. The boy dropped his bat and came over, only to see her long fingers close over the coin as he reached it.

“What do you want, lady?” he asked in a polite tone. His voice was high and had the strong sing-song accent that Jacob had had when she had first met him. The boy’s family had probably come here from Cape Town. She squatted down and looked up at him.

“Do you know how to let the air out of tyres?” she asked.

The boy looked insulted. “Of course.”

“I mean properly. So they can’t be pumped again?

“Of course, lady.”

“Okay,” she said. “I need you to do it to two tyres, the ones on the road.”

He looked around. “Which car?”

Amina grasped his shoulder and walked him around the corner, pausing to tell his friends, who were following her with widened eyes, to stay where they were.

“There,” she said, pointing far down the road. “The green one. The one in front of the bike.”

“I can see it.”

“Good. Now. Go straight there, undo the caps, and for God’s sake, run like hell all the way back. There’s bound to be some bored old lady watching the street. Okay? You run back.”

“Okay,” he said with some impatience. “Where’s the money?”

“When you get back,” she said, smiling. “I’ll be in my truck around the corner.”

He looked suspicious, but the money was shining in her palm, and so he nodded, and after checking that he was ready, Amina gave him an encouraging pat on the shoulder before sending him on his way and retreating back to the corner. The boy ran like a hare, thin legs flying, and in no time he was crouched by the wheels, working at the caps. A few moments later, he was flying back, with the predicted shouts from a neighbour at his back, and Amina was getting into her pick-up and starting the engine. He rounded the corner like a tiny greyhound, to find that the unknown lady was already pulling away. Her arm swung out of the truck as she passed him, and their palms touched for a second to exchange the money, and the boy was left looking in surprise and pleasure at two silver coins in his small hand. When he looked up again, all he could see was a cloud of dust obscuring the distant pickup as it roared along towards Delhof.

Sam had woken up that morning with a fever and a sore throat, and Miriam had taken one look at the child and had known that he would not be able to go to school. She put him gently back in his bed, made him eat a few spoons of porridge and talked to him for a while. Miriam had been counting through each day of the past week, living with the idea only of getting as far as Tuesday once more, so that again she might live through the torment of waiting and wondering if Amina would come. Now, on the appointed morning, her son was ill, and her attention was almost, but not entirely, diverted to the boy, to watching over his thin, bony frame.

Omar looked in at the child’s door before leaving for Pretoria.

“He doesn’t look so sick,” he commented.

Miriam was sitting by Sam’s bed and had put her hand to his forehead for the tenth time that morning.

“He’s burning,” she said. She had become used, in the last seven days, to using only as many words as were entirely necessary for basic communication with her husband. Even to say “He has a fever” or “His forehead is burning,” felt to her to be one or two words too many.

Omar had done nothing wrong in the past seven days. On the contrary, he had seemed overly aware of her, and as considerate as she imagined he was able. He had tried to show her some affection, had not lost his temper more than once or twice, had even caught himself when issuing her with orders, but the truth was, the change in his behaviour made little difference to Miriam now because she no longer much cared.

She had never before swung between such extremes of happiness and despair in the space of one week, one day, or even one hour. In a week of mind-crowding confusion, she had searched for something that she could do regularly, something that could give her a basis of routine separate from those she had built around her husband and children. So she had gotten into a habit of reading a chapter or two from her old box of books, and she read with a sense of escapism that was familiar to her from her schooldays, but also with great care and attention, as if the subtle meter and the words themselves might somehow be holding a sign for her.

She was already absorbed in her reading this morning as she watched the shop, before Omar had even left. He stopped on his way out and looked at his wife, unused to seeing her seated at this time of the day, and wishing inwardly for the reassurance of her usual busyness and continual movement.

“I’m going,” he said, and beneath its deep tone, his voice held that familiar plea for attention that now irritated her as she looked up from her book.

“Okay,” she said. And then she remembered that it was Tuesday, and she looked back at him.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said, too nonchalantly, but he looked pleased, as though he had been waiting for this opportunity to surprise her.

“No,” he said, with a half-smile. “I’ll be back this afternoon.”

She had not responded with the gratitude that he had hoped to see, and so he had only turned and left, and she had watched him go, wishing that for once he would not be hurrying back.

At about two o’clock that afternoon, just as it began to rain, Amina Harjan came roaring through the main street of Delhof, with the fleeting thought that every time she passed this place it looked less and less like a town, and more and more like a few buildings strung together along a strip of dirt. The rapid movement of her truck brought to the few ramshackle stores and houses as much excitement as they had seen for a while – probably since her last visit - and she tooted her horn at a group of ragged-looking children and they stood in a row with some solemnity and waved to her as she passed. She smiled, but only briefly, for her stomach was churning – she had not eaten yet today, except for a biscuit with her tea for breakfast. She took a deep breath and began humming a tune to stop herself from thinking, and she was still humming when she pulled up outside the shop.