Theft

by N. S. Köenings

  How watching all the people had been fun! From the balconies of office buildings, from the ramparts of the fort, from a corner in a square: how they moved, how they bore loads on their heads instead of in their arms, how they flicked their wrists into the air and made sharp cracking sounds, how on the sidewalk women transformed tight and furry wads of kapok into smooth, soft mattress stuffing, how little girls and boys, and even sometimes men, could climb up tall papaya trees with just their feet and string. Such interesting variety. He had been amazed at the colors of the natives’ skins, how dark they were compared to him, even with his tan—ruddy, dark-haired George, whose mother had one summer said he looked just like an Indian. He was nothing, he thought, like them. Some of them, he’d seen, were purplish! Others a warm brown so like the bark of pine trees that in some lights they seemed almost green! Still others like shoe polish—some black, some tan, others more like oxblood, and then still other shades which were like nuts of various kinds. Oh, he’d liked to see them move! It was a pleasure he had also felt once, when, on a visit to a distant camp to count the refugees, they had passed through the savannah.

  Elephants and rhinos, warthogs, waterbucks, impalas, the giraffes, the dik-diks, and the hippos! So amazing in their way. Other men had shot at them, taken trophies home. Other men had laughed about their kills, had taken a wild joy from it, had likened Africans to animals. George hadn’t been like that. There’d been nothing wrong with his behavior. What harm was there in looking? What harm was there in simply looking at the world, if a person did not touch it? Such a simple joy. He’d felt very like a king. He spent three years swimming, eating, resting on his balcony, and feasting his hot eyes. When he left, so he might recall that sweetness, he’d bought souvenirs. The chest, the spears, the model dhow, the velvet. Though they’d not be enough, he knew, would not do it justice. On the boat back home, that long and stuffy journey back to ordinary seas that looked like soot and junk, back to a world where he might really be required, where he would have to speak and ask and get all kinds of things wrong, George Alexander Hewett had felt a wrenching in his heart, a silent creeping fear. A lovely chapter closed. And he’d been right to be afraid: he’d never felt that way again.

  Flora, dear, ignorant, amenable, unobtrusive, reassuring Flora, did not treat him like a king. Did not parade before him, or amaze him. She washed his shirts and ironed them and mended things for him; she cooked for him and kissed him on the cheek and asked him how he was and he’d found comfort in her limbs. But that had meant involvement, soothing her odd doubts, fixing things for her, telling her where he was going whenever he went out. It was not bad, not irksome, he did know that. But it was not the same. How, when he allowed himself to think of it—that sea! those sights!—he did, really, miss it.

  Had he ever, passing by the shore, tripped the heart of living man or djinn? Well, no one knew for sure. And if George knew what had happened, he was not able to say. From his bed, he’d certainly gone somewhere else, had lain there in deep silence. But what he’d seen or felt, he was, still mute, keeping to himself.

  Fontanella

  Eva’s telephone rang three times that night. Fontanella called her twice, worried, aptly, it turned out, that Eva might have taken matters into her own hands. Blackie had called once, when Nella had despaired, and said, “You try, Max, my love. The girl listens to you.” But there had been no answer. They tried Susan Darling’s next, where there was also no reply, but Fontanella was not so worried about that. “Dancing with her friends,” she said, “or somewhere making art.” Nella did sound wistful, so Blackie entertained her by putting on her tango records and holding out his arms. They danced. Fontanella kissed him. And while Fontanella trucked with Maxwell Black in the cottage’s back room and told herself to forget all about Sheikh Abdul Aziz, a well-planned partial meeting of the Thursday Club took place quite without her at Flora Hewett’s house.

  Flora Taking Charge

  Eva had not expected Flora’s parlor to remind her of the function room, but Flora, on her own, had taken steps to make the space feel special. She’d made sandwiches for them, cucumber on day-old buttered white, and set the tray on the piano, by the window. Beside it, a new cake. She’d brought a green cloth out—not heavy, forest velvet, as Fontanella’s was, but still, a cotton sheet that she had draped over the sofa. “I thought,” she said to Eva, “that it shouldn’t feel exactly like my home.” Flora’s thin voice dwindled, and Eva understood that although she was working very hard at being cheerful, it was also difficult for her.

  Flora, it was true, was gambling. What if it didn’t work? Much better to allow herself to think, It wasn’t in my house, it wasn’t in the parlor that we planned to do these things. They were in it together, yes, but it wasn’t Eva’s husband, glazed and withering in the dark room down the hall. “You thought right,” said Eva. She explained that Susan would be coming, and Flora laughed, a little giddy. “All right. If you think so, Miss Bright. We’re in no position, are we, to discount someone’s feeling?” Eva smiled at her.

  Susan was dropped off by a young man on a motorbike. They saw it from the window, fey, lithe Susan raising a long leg over the seat and wobbling for a moment in the drive, looking gravely up at Flora’s house as though it were a hospital where she had come to carry out a visit. Flora worried for a moment about Susan’s companion. He had a fuzzy, unkempt bush of bright red hair, red even in this twilight. His long-sleeved periwinkle shirt was fluid, lacy at the cuffs, nearly like a blouse. “You don’t think he’ll come in?” she said to Eva. “I wouldn’t like a man here, I don’t think.” She caught herself. “Except for George, of course. And”—she laughed again, a tinny, brittle sound—“your Sheikh Abdul Aziz.”

  As Susan righted the back strap of a sandal with a finger, one knee bent, lifting up her foot, the boy stretched from his seat and offered her a kiss. Susan, Eva was impressed to see, was not having any. She slapped the air behind her, shooing the boy off, and, steady on her feet now, came up to the house. Her clear, smooth voice rang out. “Wait for me!” she shouted. “Down the road, not here.” The boy shook his head at her as though giving up on something, threw kisses with his hands, backed out into the street. The buzz and drumming of his motor sounded out as Flora got the door. “Susan,” Flora said, a little doubtful still. But Susan smiled at Flora brightly, thanked her for allowing her to be there, and then—this pleased Flora most, relieved her of her doubts—went, very naturally, happily, straight to the piano, where she said, “Oh, cake! I’m always hungry for it!” and lifted up a big piece to her mouth.

  And so the three began. Eva, setting down the sandwich she had taken, thought, Sheikh Abdul, if you can see us, if you’re here, please try to steer us right. They prepared to make a list. Flora said she knew of a good jeweler in a neighboring town, open on the weekend. If someone—Eva?—could agree to check on George and make sure he was all right, she would like to go, to find the silver ring. “I’m supposed to wear it, aren’t I? I’m assuming it will stay with . . . us. Afterwards, I mean.” She was refusing to imagine that there would not be an “us,” if George did not pull through. “So it’s right that I should get it?” Though Eva silently sought the spirit’s help, when no news came she did think, yes, that Flora ought to get the ring. With a look at Susan to make sure Susan felt all right about it, too, Eva said, “Yes, do.”

  Eva spoke up next. There was a market on the docks, Gitanjalee’s, she thought, where spices sat in sacks and colored paintings of bright deities dolled up the grim walls. She would like, if it was all right with the others, to go there for the rose water, unless Susan thought she should. Susan, for her part, was listening to her own forehead for guidance. “That’s fine, too,” she said. “I’m not here for that one.” Flora nodded, though wasn’t sure what Susan meant. “That’s just so, dear,” she said, because it helped her to agree. Eva patted Flora’s thigh. She knew now, as if something in her mind had cleared without her notice, what these things were for. “The rose water, I
believe, is to be sprinkled on the ground out there. You know, around the plum tree and the well.” Eva gestured vaguely to the back end of the house. To Susan she explained, “That’s where George fell ill, you see.” And Susan, wrinkling her eyes, said, very seriously, “I remember. Sheikh Abdul did mention the well.”

  Flora said, “Of course.” On the list they made together, Eva wrote their names beside the objects they had claimed. “Blue cloths,” she said. “Who wants to do that?” Flora brought her hand up, like a child responding to a teacher. “I’ll do it,” she said. “I’m to—I’m to wear them, aren’t I?” Eva nodded. Perhaps Sheikh Abdul had come to her somehow, though she felt her usual self. “Yes,” she said. “That’s right.” Eva looked at Susan and gestured with her pencil to her nose. “Susan?” Susan shook her head. “Not that either, no.” Her eyes were focused on the list in Eva’s lap. “Well,” said Eva. “We’ve nearly got it all.” Flora frowned. She plucked a loose thread from her hem. Eva sat still for a moment. The hardest thing—and they all knew it—the hardest thing was next.

  Eva coughed. She gave Sheikh Abdul a chance to twist her tendons, flood into her mouth or head. She rolled her eyes back for a moment, in the way that Blackie did when making ready for a text. She breathed in through her nose and shook her wrists about. Something in her chest unclenched and balled up, unclenched itself again. Then nothing. If he had come, he was gone. “We have to talk about it,” Eva said. “If we’re going to do this thing. Flora?” Flora had begun to pull out other threads from her own skirt, her fingers flexing sharply, pinching, snapping up and back. Eva drummed the pencil on her knee. “We have to talk about the goats.” Flora shook her head.

  “Flora?” Susan, without stopping to think—generously—slid from her place on the sofa and came to crouch at Flora’s knee. She placed both her hands on Flora’s twitching ones. “Flora?” Eva waited. She knew it would be hard. “Yes,” Flora said at last. “I know.” She’d do anything, she told herself. Anything to help her George. And she’d killed chickens as a girl. She’d seen sheep and pigs done, too. Anything, she thought. Even kill a goat. But it wasn’t easy thinking of it. Not easy at all. “I can do it, yes. I’ll do it if I have to.” She would need, she thought, an awfully good knife.

  Flora’s hands slowed beneath the calming influence of Susan’s stroking thumb. Susan, like a girl beside her mother, laid her head on Flora’s dimpled knee. Her hair fell loose across it, caught up, a white fire, in the glow of Flora’s old brass lamps. “Shh . . .” she said. Something in the sound made Eva look up sharply, study the girl’s face. “Shh,” she said again. Flora, too, was watching Susan Darling. Susan’s eyes shut very tight. She lifted her pale hands from Flora’s speckled ones and brought them to her cheeks. Her fingers kneaded lightly at the domes of her shut lids, then, in one swift motion—which startled Flora, rather—wrapped one arm around Flora’s thick, soft legs, as if clutching for support. She seemed now to be humming lightly, breathing with marked force—the way she had at Eva’s doorstep, the very way, thought Eva, Fontanella did when she wished to concentrate. Flora looked embarrassed, awkward.

  At last Susan sat up. She moved onto her knees, and, very quickly, sweetly, kissed Flora on the cheek. “That’s it,” she said. She granted them a bright, very wonderful girl-smile and slipped her fingers gratefully across her butterfly tattoo, as if it had helped her. Then she squeezed her nose and held it at the bridge. Her eyebrows rose and fell in a slow stretch. “Yes, that’s it. I’m in charge of those. The goats. Please leave that up to me.” Giddy, sure, Susan seemed transformed. At the sofa beside Eva once again, she looked for just a moment as if she might kiss her, too, but Eva turned her head and made a note on the supply list. She was glad Susan had come. Goats, she wrote. And beside that, Susan D.

  When they left, Susan gave Flora’s arm a squeeze and kissed her once more on the brow. Flora touched her hand. “Thank you, dear.” The two of them walked out into the twilight, Eva’s slow tread thick and measured on the ground, and Susan Darling’s, headed for the motorcycle boy, as if her feet were bare, as if she had no feet at all.

  Fontanella

  In the days that followed, Blackie stayed at Fontanella’s cottage to give her his support. Nella was distraught, confused. Did not comb her hair; did not know what to do. She’d left messages for Eva Bright and Susan, and had not heard a word. She had so hoped that Eva would come round, apologize at last, admit that she had made the whole thing up, beg to be forgiven. She’d counted on it. But now she imagined Eva sitting by her answering machine, listening meanly, even laughing. And not hearing from Susan hurt her feelings, too. Didn’t Susan love her? Didn’t Susan owe her her accession to the Thursday Club’s rare ranks?

  Blackie knew when Nella needed love. He’d spoken with his expert. And it had turned out that after all there were all kinds of beings out in Africa, invisibles who flew, mizimu in the gardens, sheitani out at noon to woo a human spouse, marubamba with hoofed legs, and yes indeed, a tribe of underwater Arab djinn, who often made pronouncements on dry land. These facts, he was told, were well known in the field. The expert had himself assisted at possessions. He’d gone on, but Max had heard enough. Too much information might make him do something that Nella would not like. And so, although he himself was now convinced that there was more to this than met the eye or ear, he kept his thoughts to himself and simply wished the days would pass and that George Hewett, somehow, would get better. He kept Nella supplied with sweet biscuits and hot tea, and sat beside her in the bedroom, where, though he stopped now and then to look over the notes he’d made when he’d talked with that professor, he mostly petted Nella’s crumpling face. They were right to worry, be concerned, in any case. There was plenty going on.

  Flora on Her Own

  Flora woke up beside George the day after the meeting in the parlor feeling somehow new, refreshed. Stronger than she’d been. She’d squeezed George’s body to her own and kissed him—as Susan had kissed her—wetly on the brow. “I’m going to fix this, George,” she whispered, and, did she imagine it? George smiled in his sleep. At nine, Eva came and Flora walked with her to George’s room. “Take care of him,” she said. “He won’t need much. Just keep those bottles fresh.” She put on some lipstick and made certain that her stockings were not rumpled at her knees. Daring, she did not take a sun hat.

  It was good for Flora to get out of the house. Apart from the Thursday meetings, and three times to the supermarket, where she bought as many things as she could think of so she wouldn’t have to go out again for something stupid—dish soap, toilet paper, flour, something she should have thought of—since George had fallen ill, she had not gone out at all. She’d not visited the library (where she liked the gardening section, and sometimes picked up novels) and she’d not even gone to Church, which she and George had always done together. She didn’t want to go to Mass alone. People noticed things like that, especially when a couple was what they thought of as old. “One down, one to go,” they’d whisper, or “Poor old Flora Hewett, all alone now.” They’d think George was dead. And she couldn’t make herself be anywhere that thought would arise. It wasn’t true, she told herself. And she was not about to get used to thinking that it might be, that he could leave her any day.

  So, having opted to go out of town, to Paliston, where no one knew her, made Flora feel glad. Light. As if (though she felt guilty thinking it, it was such serious business, after all), as if she were giving herself a small treat. She had no trouble locating a place to park. In fact, the curb right before the jeweler’s shop was free. This was definitely unusual, and she took it as a sign. She marched into the shop and told the jeweler what she wanted. “A silver ring,” she said. “A good one, but a plain one. Silver, that’s the most important thing.” When she stopped to look at him, the salesman’s youth surprised her, nearly still a boy, he was, black-haired, freckled, a sweet blush at his cheeks. Twenty, twenty-one. There was something nice about his manner, as if he liked the jewels he sold,
respected people’s wishes, and did not try to sell them things they really didn’t want. He heard her as she said it. “A right plain one. Let’s see.”

  It didn’t take her long to make her choice. She knew full well as she plucked it from the satin-cushioned tray that this ring was nearly like a wedding band, a good thick ring that was supposed to weather things. The kind of ring that one could drop into a drain by accident and recover with a wire without fearing it would keep a telling mark. She thanked the boy, was grateful. He even took the time to snip the thread that held the tiny tag, slipped the chosen ring into a small blue velvet box. Blue, she thought. And that made it all the righter.

  She found that she was strong enough to want to walk the half mile to the fabric shop. It was warm outside, still that thickness in the air that had come in with the winds on Wednesday last. But Flora didn’t mind. She was going to be courageous. And although George had never said much about those years in Africa, and she couldn’t hope to ask him anything until he was speaking up again—if, when—she had seen some programs on the television set. It was hot in Africa. She’d show George and Sheikh Abdul that she was more than equal to it. To anything they wished.

  Later, out of breath but carrying three yards of light blue linen (linen, she had thought, was natural, and fibrous, and expensive, the right kind of cloth for something elemental, as she’d come to think this was), she was nearly ready. She thought of Eva back at home, sitting beside George. She wondered what was happening in the bedroom. She missed him. But it was precious being out in the fresh air and under the bright sun. She made one more stop: she saw a chocolate frosted cake behind the window of a tea shop, and went in. She would fortify herself. Africa, she thought. Dark chocolate. By the time she’d placed her order, Flora knew that part of all this cheerfulness was horror, that she was putting off the return home, to see how Eva’d faired, putting off the wait for Susan’s news—goats could not be easy. God! thought Flora. Goats! Could she really kill one?