by Peter Orner
We voyeurs wanted to watch their suffering up close. Their bulging eyes, their slowly whirling pupils. I had always thought cows have sad eyes. The one thing I know now is that this is conceit. That their eyes hold some sort of sorrow seems beside the point. They died with them open.
Out of mercy, Theofilus shoots a few of them that are no longer able to stand. Their meat’s all gone, but still he wants to save them the indignity of having their carcasses picked clean by the already circling, murderously patient vultures. How do they smell death before it even happens? We go out there with some boys and watch. Small bonfires light the veld. Petrol and smoke line our nostrils. The cows burn down to bone.
147
SINGLES QUARTERS
Morning meeting in eight minutes. Vilho gongs a pot to make certain, because aren’t there too many days now we sleep through the third triangle? Pohamba’s waking coughs, his cursing the universe that made Vilho’s mother, the foundry that made the pot, the God who gave us dreams and then wrenched them away from us for fucking morning meeting. Rarer times, I beat the first triangle. On my knees, in the chill, watching out my torn screen the blue as it rises above the shoulders of the mountains.
148
THE B-1 SOUTH
She was pretty, a little nasty-mouthed, but pretty. Tall, with a bullet-looking head. Standing west of Karibib with a suitcase. She didn’t wing her arm out when I drove by. Waiting on something better. They’re always waiting on something better while I work. But I stopped anyway, and she walked up, and I leaned over and opened the door. She didn’t say anything and didn’t get in. I didn’t say anything either. What would I? I leaned over to close the door. You’re getting in, you’re not getting in. What difference does it make to me? She put her hand on the door, and my eyes said to her, In or out? Her hand on the door like I’m the one in the road begging a lift. Where are you going? she said. I pointed up the road. How far? she said. I have to answer questions? Upington, I said. Tonight. Her hand was still on the edge of the door. All right, she said. She hoisted her suitcase and expected me to take it. I let the thing stand there in the air above the seat. She put it down on the seat and climbed up. I jerked my thumb. There’s room for it in the back, and she, with her knees on the seat, lifted it and put it back there. Then she sat with her hands folded like a nun. She wasn’t a nun. She looked straight ahead out the windscreen. I don’t play the radio. I like to think when I drive. Thirty, forty kilometers, she didn’t say a word. Up and over the hills and straight up to the checkpoint before Windhoek. At the checkpoint she didn’t take out her card and they didn’t ask her to. That’s how it is now. Six times in a route now I show my card. The other day they fined me two hundred rand for my tires. Cop measured my treads with a ruler and said I was in violation. Straight past Windhoek on the underway, and she’s so still it doesn’t look like she’s breathing. Maybe she thought if she breathed she’d be giving me something. I got used to it. I feel her there and don’t feel her, and listen for her breathing and don’t hear it. I do the three hundred k’s to Mariental, where I stop for petrol. When I get back in the cab, there’s thirty rand on my seat. I look at it awhile and then get in and sit on it. She doesn’t say anything, but I see her breathe. Outside Horncranz, I ask her if she has a name, and without taking her eyes off the glass or moving her nasty little mouth, she says she does. Outside Gibeon, I said, Do you ever tell people what it is? and then she did tilt her head and she did look straight at me. And all right, I want to touch her, not grab her, just touch her. And I look at her and she knows it. Stop, she says. Here? A flat stretch of tarmac south of Keetmans, at least two hundred more k to the border. Nothing, no dorp for sixty, seventy k in either direction. An hour to dark. You want to get out here?
Here.
Part Four
ANTOINETTE
The Russian loves recalling life, but he does not love living.
— CHEKHOV
149
GOAS
12 DECEMBER 2002
Kaplansk,
Excuse a long silence. We haven’t forsaken you. Your letters have not gone unread, only unanswered. Is there a word for letters like these? Not dead letters. Mutters on the wind? We’ve heard you, is what I’m trying to say. Don’t fear. We do think it’s high time for you to leave Cincinnati and see the world. Did you see so much of it the last time you ventured forth? Why don’t you at least cross the river and visit Kentucky?
Of this plague you refer to, my Antoinette merely says, Who are we to question His will? Then, of course, she deliberately, and with all her remaining strength, tries to thwart that very will. Often she rides into town with the priest and feeds the sick. I myself read the newspapers and wring my hands, weep, but open a can of beans and feed the sick? Never. What sort of man does this make me?
Our Tomo continues to be a hellion, but a kind one. He even writes poetry now, though I confess it is not of the sort that moves me. Teacher Pohamba has taken it upon himself to be another father to him. This has yielded, as you might expect, mixed results. The boy no longer seems to remember his mother, which I suppose is natural.
Everyone greets you.
One of these days expect a treatise on the practical uses of lamentation. I am preparing an anthology you may find interesting.
Affectionately,
O. Horaseb
150
CINCINNATI PUBLIC
When I run out of remembering, I sit here and read. I read haphazardly, finish nothing, collect much. I like this library. There’s a lot of light. It’s mostly quiet, with the exception of the guy who snores the liquidy snores. I’m talking about the Cincinnati Public, downtown branch, second floor, near the periodicals, the room with the puffy chairs.
I’ve come across another story of walking. I’ve found it in a footnote. It’s 1919 and the dawn of a new era. A group of men are hired to work in the diamond fields on the coast. They are not slaves; they are contract laborers. It’s only that the contract says they’re not free until their employer signs a paper. They work sixteen hours a day in the sand and wind. One night, one of the men makes a calculation that they can make it to a mining town called Rosh Pinah after only a day and a half of walking. All we have to do is follow the dry river. Who’s with me?
Everybody was with him.
Mavala would laugh at this, if not with her mouth, at least with her shoulders. Her silent laugh like a tremor. You’d have to watch her closely to see it. Not laughing at the men as men, but at their notion of how easy it would be. All we have to do is . . .
No heroes. The men wander eight days. There was no Rosh Pinah, at least not at the end of that dry river. Those who survived were recaptured and sent back to the diamond fields in chains.
My snorer gently wakes. He rubs his forehead with the back of his hand and squints into the light.
151
MAVALA
Antoinette thinks of her. She thinks of her in a crowded room in a place unknown but familiar. She thinks of her wanting to speak and how difficult that must be because it isn’t the kilometers or even the years that create distance, it’s silence.
Antoinette, I want you to under stand that I
Antoinette, I only want to explain to you
Why are there so many words in my head and none on the page? There is only the noise outside this window, the shouting that never ends, all this clashing music. Do I need to tell you this is not a room for a child, my child?
May I still call him that?
It is not for me to say.
152
ON THE MOLE AT SWAKOPMUND
They watch the sun flatten into the Atlantic. Soon the light so powerful for so long will be nothing but a smear on the horizon. The white-capped southwest rollers wrinkle toward them and pound the rocks at their feet. Above swoon the terrible gulls. Obadiah spits happily into the water. He said they needed to show Tomo the ocean, his ocean. The two of them in topcoats over their best clothes, on the mole at Swakopmund. Behind them murmur tourists
toasting the sunset.
“Before the Germans built this,” Obadiah says, “they dropped horses off the sides of the ships.”
“Why?”
“To swim in the chattel.”
“Chattel?”
“The merchandize.”
“Did the horses make it?”
“Sometimes.”
“Some drowned.”
“Of course.”
She looks north, at the stretch of beach, at Tomo. Now that he’s built his palace of sand, he stomps it. Then he calls out to them —his ouma and oupa—on the mole: “PAY ATTENTION PEOPLE!” He sprints into the water and dives into the waves. She waits for Tomo’s head to bob up before she breathes.
Obadiah nudges her, points at the sun, at the last slit of light drawn across the edge of the water.
“Cold?”
“Not so much.”
She leans against him as the wind flaps their topcoats.
153
GRAVES
I’m losing her face. I remember more her hands, which were not small, and how they once took my feet hostage and rubbed them while I swore at her. Her eyebrows were thorny. I think of her lips and how parched they were, and her voice that got huskier when she was thirsty. I’d try to keep the water away from her so she’d talk that way longer. Her voice alone, I tell you, could slow an afternoon.
154
HOSTEL (NIGHT)
The boys are flailing up and down on their beds. Some nights the pillow wars go on for hours. That long a battle can get bloody, especially with foam pillows hardened by years of sweaty heads. The lights stay on all night in the hall that separates the two dorms. Antoinette enters through the far door and walks the hall, peeks in the west dorm and then the east dorm. Her shadow reaches, reaches across the beds. The quiet is immediate. Only their heartbeats are loud. Tiny squeaks of the bedsprings, like dying mice, their bodies tense—waiting, praying for the shadow’s retreat.
Other nights she prowls around outside, watches the chaos through the little windows, lets them carry on as if she’s curious to see what a world without her looks like.
In memory of Anna Nugolo, Anna Kanjimbi, and Freddy Khairabeb.
NOTES
Namibia:
Colonized by Germany in 1884 and known as Deutsch-Südwestafrika. After the defeat of the Germans during World War I, the name was changed to South-West Africa and the country was governed by South Africa under a mandate issued by the League of Nations. The mandate was abolished by the United Nations General Assembly in 1966. South Africa remained in power, claiming that the UN had no authority to rescind the mandate, and continued to govern the territory as a virtual fifth province. Apartheid was officially implemented in 1977. In 1988, after two decades of war between SWAPO and South Africa, a UN-sponsored cease-fire ended the conflict. Namibia became independent in 1989.
SWAPO:
Southwest Africa People’s Organization, liberation organization formed in 1960 to fight South African rule. After winning the 1989 elections, SWAPO became the governing party in independent Namibia.
PLAN:
People’s Liberation Army of Namibia, military wing of SWAPO.
SADF:
South African Defense Force, name of the South African military force that fought SWAPO.
The Struggle:
Commonly used in Namibia to describe the long war between SWAPO and the SADF. Much of the war was fought along the more densely populated border Namibia shares with Angola. SWAPO had established bases in Angola. No accurate death toll numbers exist. Conservative estimates reach 25,000 combat casualties.
DTA:
Democratic Turnhalle Alliance, opposition party in independent Namibia. Prior to independence, DTA was associated with the ruling white regime.
Cassinga:
On May 4, 1978, South African planes bombed a SWAPO base deep in Angola, killing an estimated seven hundred people, among them hundreds of civilian refugees.
Angolan Civil War:
A chaotic civil war broke out in Angola after the Portuguese withdrawal in 1975. Among those fighting were the MPLA, supported by Cuba and the Soviet Union, and Jonas Savimbi’s UNITA (National Union for the Total Independence of Angola), supported by South Africa and the United States. SWAPO was aligned with the MPLA and also received support from the Soviet Union as well as China. Hence, both wars, in Angola and Namibia, took on elements of a proxy Cold War. The war in Angola ended in 2002.
CDM:
Consolidated Diamond Mines, mining company located along the southern coast, a subsidiary of the DeBeers Corporation.
Zorba:
A fine whiskey with a smooth licorice finish.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank the following for their time and immeasurable support over the course of many years: In Namibia, the Khairabeb, Guidaooab, and Brandt families, and in the United States, Pat Strachan, Ellen Levine, Dantia MacDonald, Robert Preskill, David Krause, Melissa Kirsch, and Rhoda Kaplan Pierce. I am also grateful to the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy in Rome for a generous fellowship.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Peter Orner’s stories have appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, McSweeney’s, Bomb, The Best American Short Stories, and The Pushcart Prize XXV. They are collected in his first book, Esther Stories, which received many honors, including the Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Goldberg Prize from the Foundation of Jewish Culture, and was a finalist for a Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award. Orner is a graduate of the University of Michigan, Northeastern University School of Law, and the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He has lived in Namibia and currently teaches at San Francisco State University. The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo is his first novel.