“Who made you so wise, Hans?”
“You’d be surprised the experience you accrue lying here doing nothing.”
He stopped to regain his breath. I sat silently.
“It’s just as well that you leave now, David. I’m fading. My parents are gone. When I go, I want it to just be Elizabeth and Cristina here, just the three of us.”
“If you’re sure, then I will.”
“Yes, David, I’m sure.”
He paused for a moment.
“You’ve heard those stories about near-death experiences—running to the light and all?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I think of them a lot. The stories all start with some bloke hovering against the ceiling, looking down on his body. With a body like this, you can’t imagine how liberating that fantasy is.”
“No, Hans.” I chuckled. “I can’t.”
“I imagine myself floating over Brighton like some withered dirigible, looking for Wills and James and Julian and my butcher, and Elizabeth and Cristina of course. Lord, I hope they show up to the bloody funeral. You’re not invited, by the way.”
“You’ll have quite a party. I have no doubt about that, and I wouldn’t dream of coming.”
“Yes, they probably will come out of the woodwork. ‘He was a good cripple, kind enough to let us sit by his bedside as we gathered our absolutions.’ I suppose I have served that worthy purpose.”
“Hans.” I had something to say to him, something about how much more he was than that, how much he would be missed. How much I loved him, really. Instead, I leaned over and gently kissed his damp forehead.
“All those years of wanting to die, you know what I really wanted? To move. It’s not the light I dreamed of. It was the running to it.”
“You need some sleep,” I said, an unconvincing escape phrase.
“Yes, David. Before you go, under the medicine cabinet, at the end of the room, there are a couple of bottles of wine. Julian brought them round the other day, the idiot. I can’t drink them, and they won’t store properly here. Take them. Grab a tin or two of the foie gras while you’re at it.”
I turned on a small lamp and opened the cabinet. There were three dusty bottles of red, without any labels, the creation of the family vineyard in Tuscany, and maybe twenty tins I assumed were the pâté. I took two of each, then turned off the lamp.
“Did you find them?” Hans asked in a whisper.
“Yes, Hans, thank you.”
“There’s one more thing. Come around.”
I walked back gingerly to his bedside, juggling the wine and the tins while trying to preserve the quiet.
“In that top drawer”—he gestured with his head to the drawer below where the reading platform rested—“there’s an old book I’d like you to have.”
I set down my gifts and pulled out the dog-eared, yellowing copy of Darkness at Noon, the novel I had propped up in front of him countless times.
“It was my favorite in the years just before the accident, don’t ask me why. Koestler was a little Jew, like you—braver than you, but…”
I smiled at that. Hans could be brutal.
“He questioned. He questioned and stumbled, like you’re doing. ‘One must tear the umbilical cord, deny the last tie which bound one to the vain conceptions of honor and the hypocritical decency of the old world.’ David, you’re doing the right thing. It’s time for you to go.”
“Thank you, Hans.”
“‘Thank you, thank you.’ I suppose I am a Bromwell after all.”
“Shall I cover you up now?”
“No, no. I think not, not tonight. I won’t sleep.”
“Good night, Hans.”
Cristina and I headed out into the night, hand in hand, drawn to the ocean.
“I just got you,” I said. “I still can’t believe I can say that. How could I let you go now?”
“How do you know you’re letting me go, David? Don’t I have a say in the matter?”
She leaned into me and clasped my hand in both of hers, tucked against her thigh.
“Maybe there’s a way to work in Norwich. God, I could be a volunteer again. Maybe there’s some other cripple there, a nicer one.”
She was silent a moment. She was thinking about it, I could tell.
“David,” she began quietly, “you couldn’t get a work permit last year. You’re not getting one this year. You’re not going to be a CSV for the next three years.”
We had descended the concrete staircase from the Marine Parade to the beach, the ornate Victorian banisters, painted over hundreds of times, going untouched. We held each other for support, then stepped unsteadily onto Brighton’s rock beach, our feet wobbling on the small round stones that passed for, what, sand? I never got it. The ocean whispered to us.
“‘Begin, and cease, and then again begin, with tremulous cadence slow,’” she whispered in my ear. Her throat caught, and I thought I heard a little cry.
“We could get married,” I answered.
She looked into my eyes, a sad, sweet smile on her closed mouth. She dropped one of my hands to delicately dab away the beginning of a tear. I kissed her tenderly where her finger had touched her eye.
“Go home, David,” she said softly, her gaze drifting to our feet. “Go back to your life, and let me work on building mine. Write to me. Call when you can.”
“I love you, Cristina.”
“I know, Mr. X.”
She rose on the balls of her feet and kissed me.
“Walk me home, David. Think about standing on your own. No patrons. No one to float you. I want to see you do that. Show me you can. Then maybe I can come to you.”
And so I did as I was told. I escorted Cristina home, then I walked. The water lapped the stones on Brighton beach, the sound gently percussive, like a soft roll on a hi-hat, but richer than that, water seeping through a million round rocks, receding, then rising again. I wandered a ways, down to the garish pier where lovers and tourists were eating candy floss and playing pinball machines. Pac-Man, Space Invaders, Frogger, and that funny shoot-the-centipede game, video junk I played in high school, still hadn’t made it to Brighton Pier. But the ring of the bells and the heavy roll of the metal pinballs fit the scene much better than amped-up laser shots and electronic racecars. Brighton was preparing for summer.
I stood on the far edge of the pier, the lights behind me, the darkness spreading expansively over the southern tip of a small island, once just the beginning, now empire’s end.
Dearest Cristina,
You don’t know me yet, but I am hoping we will be the best of friends. I am your Uncle Hans. Yes, it’s a silly, silly name, but think of Hansel and Gretel. Do you know that story? If not, I’ll tell it to you. It’s a little scary, but you are a big, brave girl, and I think you will like it.
I have heard so much about you. Your Mummy and Daddy love you very much, and I hear you have long, shining, black hair and a kind smile. And you know what else? I hear you like to hold hands on long walks in the park. I knew a girl like that once. Her name was Segolaine, a beautiful name.
I would like to take you for one of those long walks. I am coming soon to see you in your new home, and maybe, if you like, I can take you for a visit to where your Mum and I come from, in England, to see your granddad and grandmum. Oh, they’ll treat you like a princess in your palace, and it is a grand palace, a big house we call Houndsheath—with sweeping, carpeted staircases and banisters you can slide down forever.
And you know what’s best? Dogs, lots of dogs, puppies, playful mummy dogs and sleepy old daddy dogs, horses too. When we get there, you and I will go riding. Bet you haven’t tried that yet. You’ll love it. Maybe you and I and your Mum will run down to the pond for a swim. It was one of our favorite places when we were your age. Your Mummy had a sad old dog named Suzy who would lay her head on your Mum’s lap and listen to all her stories, maybe the way you do now.
Best of all, best, best, best of all, it will be peaceful t
here, no yelling and no hitting and no angry men. Oh, Cristina, you and I are going to have a grand time. I hope this letter, my very first, finds you well. We’re going to be such good friends. I will be coming soon.
All my fondest, fondest love,
Uncle Hans
One last letter was tucked into Hans’s copy of Darkness at Noon, in a carefully opened envelope marked Return to Sender. Address Unknown. The watermark was a springbok stamped roughly in red ink. I handed it to Cristina the following summer, and she read it for the first time, sunk into an overstuffed old sofa in my bright apartment in Chicago. She cried almost inaudibly.
I knelt in front of her and kissed her hands.
“I miss him,” she whispered.
Timeline
1932—António de Oliveira Salazar, a conservative Catholic economics professor, is appointed prime minister of Portugal and bloodlessly begins one of the longest authoritarian dictatorships in modern European history.
1959—A dockworkers strike in the West African colony of Portuguese Guinea, organized by the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC), is violently suppressed by Portuguese colonial police. More than fifty die in the Pijiguiti Massacre.
1961—Uprisings in Angola, first by peasants in the north, then by urban, educated mestiços of the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) and the Union of Peoples of Angola (UPA) under Holden Roberto, begin the wars for independence for Portugal’s African colonies.
Under the leadership of the educated, charismatic Amílcar Cabral, the Guinean PAIGC links with the MPLA of Angola and the Mozambique Liberation Front (FRELIMO) to create the Conference of Nationalist Organizations of the Portuguese Colonies in a rough alliance to end Portuguese rule in Africa.
1963—War begins in Portuguese Guinea when the PAIGC attacks a Portuguese garrison south of the capital of Bissau.
1964—Jonas Savimbi breaks from the other liberation movements in Angola to form the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), aiming at Angolan highlands and the region’s main city, Nova Lisboa, from bases in Zambia.
1968—António Sebastião Ribeiro de Spínola, a colorful and seasoned Portuguese general, is appointed military governor of Portuguese Guinea and launches a hearts-and-minds campaign to win over the population.
That year, Salazar suffers a brain hemorrhage when he falls from a chair (some say it was a bathtub). Marcello José das Neves Alves Caetano, a Salazar loyalist, takes control of Portugal and maintains the policies of the fascist Estado Novo, “New State,” including the wars to maintain Portuguese control in Africa.
1970—Francisco da Costa Gomes, a Portuguese military general who ten years earlier had been involved in plotting against the Lisbon government, is appointed commander of the Military Region of Angola.
1973—Spínola returns to Lisbon but refuses a post in the Caetano government as he completes his book Portugal e o Futuro, “Portugal and the Future,” a dry treatise on the ills of the Portuguese empire that helps launch the Carnation Revolution.
1974—The Armed Forces Movement, a group of disaffected, liberal military officers, rises up to overthrow Portugal’s fascist government in a nearly bloodless coup known as the Carnation Revolution. The group, led by Major Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho, a Spínola loyalist, appoints Spínola as the first leader of post-fascist Portugal. Costa Gomes becomes Spínola’s second-in-command, then, later that year, president of the republic.
Portugal grants Guiné its independence.
1975—With South African forces openly battling Cuban troops and factional civil war erupting, Portugal unceremoniously quits Angola, leaving the country to years of bloodshed.
Acknowledgments
For the inspiration and great good humor they offer me every day, I would like to thank Hannah and Alissa Weisman.
For wisdom, ear, and language, I am forever indebted to my greatest reader, Jennifer Steinhauer.
This novel could not have happened without Rayhané Sanders, who believed in it from the beginning, Helene Cooper, who helped me find the path, Libby Burton, who took a chance, Susan Lund, who maintained her patience, Jamie Weisman, who meticulously edited, Mark Weisman, who dragged me to Europe at the perfect time, and my earliest fans and supporters, Evan and Nancy Weisman.
I would also like to thank my eagle-eyed copy editor, Rick Ball, and the whole Twelve team.
For a better understanding of the fall of Portuguese Africa, I give credit to Neil Bruce’s Portugal: The Last Empire, Arslan Humbaraci and Nicole Muchnik’s Portugal’s African Wars, and John P. Cann’s Counterinsurgency in Africa.
Lastly, thank you Wolf and Joanna, wherever you are.
About the Author
Jonathan Weisman is a Washington reporter and economic policy writer for the New York Times. In his twenty-five-year journalism career, he has covered the White House, Congress, national politics, and defense for the Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, USA Today, and the Baltimore Sun, among other publications. His freelance work has appeared in Spin, Washington Post Magazine, Outside, and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
Reading Group Questions
1. Rebecca uses books as a way to escape her pain in her final weeks of life, and Elizabeth quotes Shakespeare and tells stories as a means of connecting to João and David. What role do books and stories play in your life? Do you see books as a way to escape the world, or a means to better connect to it?
2. How would you describe Hans’s change in attitude toward David over the course of the novel? How did knowing David change Hans? And how did knowing Hans change David?
3. Elizabeth’s confidence peaked whenever she was quoting Shakespeare. What’s your area of expertise, or what are you always excited to talk about?
4. What are some of the themes in this book that you found fascinating? Here are just a few: ex-pats, escaping one’s family legacy, coping with grief, reconciliation, and an interracial marriage. Did you connect with any of the themes? Why or why not?
5. What do you think attracted David and Cristina to each other? How are their families similar, and how are they different? Was theirs a love born of convenience, or something more?
6. Do you think David idealizes Maggie and Cristina? If so, is this idealization an expression of David’s romantic nature? Or is it connected to losing Rebecca?
7. Absence plays an important role in the lives of both the Hellers and the Bromwells. João disappears twice, Rebecca fades away, and both sets of parents are largely absent during adolescence. Has absence played a role in your own life? How do you think the act of missing someone intensely (as David’s parents miss Rebecca) deludes our perception of them?
8. Some of the only clues we are given about David’s sister, Rebecca, are books she has read and loved. She was obsessed with Carson McCullers, Flannery O’Connor, Walker Percy, and William Faulkner. Based on that list, what type of person do you think she was? How did her family choose to remember her?
9. Hans calls David a people pleaser, saying that he is too afraid of disappointing those who surround him. Do you see this as a negative quality, as Hans does? Do you recognize this quality in yourself, or in the people you love?
10. How would you characterize David’s relationship to his parents? How did that relationship shape who he was? How has your own relationship with your parents shaped who you are?
11. What did João learn about the world from his father? How did that change how he saw Elizabeth? Does this help you to sympathize with João as a character, or do you find his actions to be unforgivable?
12. Do you think Elizabeth and João’s marriage was an act of love or rebellion? Have you ever dated someone out of rebellion? What happened?
13. This book shows us two ways to cope with loss: Elizabeth dwells on the past, while David lives completely in the present, trying not to look back. Does the book present one way of coping as superior to the other? How do you reconcile the present with past grief?<
br />
14. Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler was Hans’s favorite book as a young man, and he decided to give the novel to David as a parting gift. What was the significance of this gift? Do you think it was a spontaneous gesture or a planned one?
15. Lastly, do you believe that Hans knew the letter to Cristina was inside the book, or was it just a coincidence?
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Welcome
Dedication
Epigraph
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Timeline
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Reading Group Questions
Newsletters
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
No. 4 Imperial Lane Page 35