The woman in the pink leotard was bouncing up and down on a step machine. A hefty young man pushed a weight above his chest very slowly. Jumbo could see the man’s face trembling, the lips stretched in a snarl. When he lowered the weight, the man growled, kicking out his legs as if his body had given up. Jumbo winced.
‘Oh!’ Jacinta shrilled. She covered her mouth with her fingertips.
The man began to lift the weight again. Jumbo started to feel nauseous.
‘You know, we could come here tomorrow morning. Extra early,’ Jacinta suggested. ‘I could come and watch you exercise,’ she clarified.
‘I’m too old for that nonsense, Jaci,’ he complained.
And fat, she thought. An image of Jumbo in the throes of cardiac arrest sprung up in her mind. She could see doctors and ambulance men and flashing sirens. Worst of all she could see her husband stretched out at the bottom of a weights machine, the life pummelled out of him by a dumbbell.
‘I’m afraid there’s just no hope,’ a white-coated paramedic would say to her, his soft, strong hands resting lightly on her shoulders, massaging gently, steadying her grief. She thought of herself, alone in this country with a dead husband. She let out a whimper.
‘What’s wrong, Jaci?’
‘Oh, nothing,’ she replied, and then added, ‘Maybe you’re right, dear. Maybe it isn’t such a good idea.’ And they returned to their room to prepare for the rest of the day.
The coach ride was pleasant enough, but it involved a lot of hopping on and hopping off and by the time the tour ended they were feeling tired and irritable. A British couple in the rear of the coach had argued earlier and now sat glumly across the aisle from each other, staring at views through opposite windows, pretending to be fascinated. The coach stopped at the base of a towering building, while the guide carried on in an untiring flurry, his arms gesticulating like the wings of a dragonfly. They were bundled into the building, their group fighting for the first available lifts. Jumbo and Jacinta found themselves in a lift with several Japanese tourists and an Argentine couple who had remained uncomfortably close to the guide during the entire tour. Jacinta eyed them. They reminded her, the pair of them, of Rosa Duchene who had sat at the front of the class when Jacinta was a girl. Rosa sometimes brought in fresh flowers from her mother’s garden for their teacher, Miss Kimberly. Jacinta had hated Rosa, and this couple was annoying her now. She squeezed in closer to her husband while they waited for the doors to shut.
A tall man and two children ran up to the lift before the doors began to close. The tourists glared. The man and his children decided to wait.
‘I can’t see nothing moving,’ Jumbo said as he stared out of the window beside their table.
Jacinta peered into the distance, trying to see if they were turning.
‘You’re moving your head,’ Jumbo pointed out. ‘Keep it still.’
‘Perhaps the restaurant’s broken down today,’ she said.
They ordered two glasses of cold beer and decided to ignore the view of the city.
‘I wonder what Alex is doing now?’ Jacinta thought out loud.
‘He’s probably set fire to the house, found the keys to the car and driven into the sea,’ Jumbo laughed.
‘Oh, Jumbo,’ Jacinta complained, but she was smiling in spite of herself. Alex, their youngest son, had been left in charge of the house while they were away. Their other children, Sam and Rebecca, had moved out several years ago. Sam to get married, Rebecca to study law at a university in California. Jacinta was constantly worrying about her children. She was determined not to think about them now.
A waiter came to take their order. After he had gone, Jacinta said quietly, ‘You know, Jumbo, I don’t think you should be eating steak right now. It’s not so good for you.’
‘Come on, Jaci. We’re on holiday now. Relax a little.’
She had tried relaxing, but she only ended up fidgeting like a blue tit, jittering about, all hyperactive and wired. Her hands losing control, startling her.
‘Too much red meat, Jumbo … ,’ she started and then her face bunched up and she went quiet.
Jumbo looked out of the window at the sun-showered city. He could see his wife’s face in the reflection. He could see a fat tear rolling down it now.
‘Oh, Jaci, why you crying?’
She remained silent, staring down at the table top.
Jumbo could tell when his wife was crying for effect and when she was genuinely upset. Sometimes she sniffed and dabbed at tears squeezed out under coercion, but her face remained as pretty as ever. Other times her face would move into another place, morphing like the pictures on television. She became another person then and it astonished him. It was as if she had lost control of her face as it spread like butter left out in the sun. The creasing eyebrows, the jut of the lips, the sour childlike eyes made her lose her beauty momentarily, and right now, Jumbo thought, she was very ugly.
‘Jaci, don’t cry,’ he said, rubbing her hand, squeezing it gently.
She sobbed quietly, still staring down at the table, at her husband’s hands which were covering her own. He had long, powerful fingers that did not seem to belong to the rest of him. They were not huge and clumsy, but graceful and nimble as athletes.
‘Oh, Jumbo. I’m just worrying, that’s all,’ she said. ‘You know me, always worrying.’ And she smiled an awkward smudge of a smile.
‘Be back in a minute,’ Jumbo said, getting up, disappearing into the washrooms in the centre of the restaurant.
Jacinta sighed, watching the swing and sway of his body.
There was something about Jumbo that unsettled people. He had a looseness, a slackness about him that perfect strangers wanted to fix, to tidy. Something they wanted to pick up and fold so he would not stumble over himself. Those close to him, however, had grown used to this quality, grown to love it even. It was something they could not quite place, something reassuring, though, that they could take up and share. Something soothing that relaxed the tightness in themselves. Jacinta tried to imagine Jumbo as a thin man, but she could not do so without losing this quality that was her husband’s essence.
‘Look, Jaci, the waterfall!’ Jumbo pointed as he sat down again. They could make out a part of it if they craned their necks.
‘We must be moving then,’ Jacinta marvelled. She looked about the restaurant for signs of rotation, but there were none. ‘I can’t even feel it.’
During a dessert of vanilla ice cream and blueberry meringues, the waterfall lay before them in its full splendour. They could make out the tiny shapes of people dotting one side of the river as plumes of spray gusted up at them. Jacinta wanted to be where those people were. She wanted to close her eyes and feel the cool mist settle on her face.
After lunch, the tourists were shepherded back to the coach. Some were dropped off at the waterfall while others, who had probably seen it before, were driven back to their hotels.
Jumbo and Jacinta climbed hesitantly off the coach. The roar of the water unsettled them. Jacinta had not counted on this deafening noise that shook the ground. It was as if the earth were about to give way. They moved slowly to the barrier where people were staring into the foaming water.
‘Jumbo, I’m scared. Hold me tight,’ she said, and he did so.
They watched the river flow over the wide crest that stretched all the way to America. Then their eyes followed the drop, crashing down into the basin below. Jacinta screamed.
‘Jumbo, there are people down there! Look at them!’ And there were. Jumbo could see them. Jacinta held one hand against her galloping heart while the other covered her gaping mouth. She stared at a boat bobbing in the water below and felt dizzy. Then she grabbed her husband’s hand when she realised she was not holding onto anything. ‘Those people are surely going to die,’ she whispered.
They watched the tiny boat with its cargo of yellow-coated passengers float towards the crush of water, disappearing into the clouds of mist. When it re-emerged, Jacinta squinte
d, trying to make sure the people were still on board. They followed the course of the boat to its mooring by the side of the basin, then walked down the descent of sodden steps, taking them past onlookers.
‘They’re probably just young boys having some fun,’ Jumbo said. They reached the boat as the passengers were alighting. There was a woman, laughing, holding onto another woman as the people stepped back on land.
‘These are not men,’ Jacinta noted. ‘They are not young either … Jumbo, that woman there, she’s older than Ma Kuramu, Lacine’s mother, isn’t it?’
Jumbo nodded. Jacinta was perplexed.
‘Look, Jaci, it says the next trip is in fifteen minutes.’ Jumbo rocked from side to side, unable to keep still. ‘Fifteen minutes.’
She eyed him suspiciously. Rocking. Idiot savant. She had read this somewhere. She did not have her medical aids to hand. She would ask later at the hotel reception. She watched the passengers emerging from the boat. They did not seem shaken or hysterical. ‘Pay the man the money and let us get on!’ she blurted.
Jumbo’s eyes darted between his wife and the boat. If he gave her the slightest chance she would change her mind. He charged to the counter and paid the fare while Jacinta remained stock still, looking unnaturally composed.
‘No use coming all this way and missing out on an experience like this,’ Jumbo said when he returned.
‘Jumbo,’ she said quietly. ‘It’s been so long. You know, I think I’ve forgotten how to swim.’
‘We’re not going swimming, woman!’ he almost shouted.
Jacinta looked at him, but was distracted by the call to board. The steward handed them each a hooded raincoat. The boat filled up quickly, so quickly others had to be turned away to await the next outing.
They began to move, swinging out to the centre of the basin, then heading directly towards the waterfall, like suicides. Jacinta was no longer afraid. She looked up at the people on land watching the passengers from above. She felt safer down here, even in this disaster of water, the white foam bubbling and churning all around them.
The spray fell thickly now, drenching them in a constant shower, but it felt cool and good. Jacinta remembered taking the children to the beach once when they were very young. Alex had brought his pet fish in a plastic sandwich bag, dipping it into the sea so they could have a view of their own wide world. She knew how the fish must have felt then. Small and bewildered and alone.
She stretched her arm across her husband’s back and looked up at him and smiled. The boat entered the confusion of mist, the chaos of water, secretively, inching into it, like a child into the sea.
With thanks to Ellah Allfrey and Anne Dewe.
Thanks and love to Rosemarie, Richard,
Ethan, Sol and Chris.
And Aunt Grace (Oyelude).
The following stories were originally published in slightly different form: ‘Monday Morning’ in Wasafiri; ‘Arithmetic’ in Tampa Review; ‘Two Sisters’ in Salamander; ‘The Husband of Your Wife’s Best Friend’ in Tampa Review; ‘Moses’ in Pretext and The Malahat Review; Now that I’m Back’ in Dream Catcher and The Kenyon Review; ‘Something in the Water’ in the text; ‘Mrs Minter’ in New Welsh Review; ‘Mrs Mahmood’ in Edinburgh Review; ‘Gifted’ in Granta; ‘In the Garden’ in Prism International and Wasafiri and ‘Jumbo and Jacinta’ in London Magazine.
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A Life Elsewhere Page 23