The last moments before the bolt struck were vivid in her father’s memory. A year ago, he had started talking about it. He remembered the white caps advancing across the lake like a herd of small horses. He remembered the feeling of the electricity in the air, the way charged particles made them all giddy. And Harriet’s profile as she laughed at something Jack said. Jack could always make her laugh. What he didn’t remember was the actual event, that one great flash of light and energy that cleansed him from the inside out. How he wished he had stayed conscious for it! Jack never regained consciousness. And why hadn’t the bolt struck Harriet? It perplexed him until years later, when he understood that God had something else in mind for her.
It took Ingrid some time to understand why and how the plug of her father’s reticence had been pulled. It had begun when he was contacted by a support group for people who had been struck by lightning. They met every week. Now her otherwise unsociable father drove two hours every Wednesday evening to talk to his new lightning-struck friends about their shared experiences. These days, he rarely spoke to Ingrid of anything else. He confided to her that he was sure the event had changed him on a physiological level. He thought, no, he remembered, that before the accident he was not a restless man. He was capable of having a conversation. Of course, Ingrid hadn’t known him then. What she knew about him now was that he was paid to think and pace and talk into a tape recorder. He had published three highly respected and impenetrable books and was at work on a mathematical modeling of the fourth dimension. He didn’t actually write the books, but narrated into a tape recorder, because his fingers could no longer hold a pen. Couldn’t or wouldn’t, Ingrid didn’t know. “That part of my life is over,” he offered by way of an explanation, as if further evidence that his life had been split cleanly in two by that single bolt. What had come before, Ingrid had no idea.
She knocked softly on his door. The steady, deep sound of his voice stopped. She heard the click of the tape recorder. The door opened suddenly. “Ingrid!”
“Hi, Dad.”
He stepped back from the door to let her in. Today, as on most days, he had the slightly tormented look of a visionary struggling in an unfamiliar tongue. He was wearing slippers and a gray cardigan. “I’m writing a speech,” he said. “Someone actually wants to know about my life. Seems I’m quite remarkable. What do you think of that?”
Ingrid smiled. “I think you were in the right place at the right time.”
“Good, very good, Ingrid. What would I do without you to singe my wings and send me downward?”
“Disappear. Combust. I don’t know.”
“How did you get to be so bloody barbed? Did I teach you that? Should part of my speech include my failures as a father?”
Ingrid walked to the window. He had hung something in the branches of the tree. A glinting, spinning mobile of paper clips and something else she couldn’t identify. “I’ve got funding to go on another trip,” she said.
“Haven’t you just returned?” Ingrid nodded without turning around. “Where to now?”
“East Coast of Africa.”
“Now what’s this African thing? Haven’t you just been in Egypt?”
“Yes.”
“Such wanderlust. Where does it come from?”
“Where does anything come from?” She could hear the shuffle of her father’s slippers as he began to pace. “I don’t know how long I’ll be gone,” she added, the thrill of escape suddenly coursing through her.
He began to hum a melody from a Mozart concerto she recognized as he paced back to his desk. Ingrid turned to go. The movement seemed to interrupt his thought process and he was aware of her again. He looked at her with agitated concern. These were the most painful moments, when he tried to make conversation with her. “You know there’s a man in our group, he can’t feel the cold. Have I told you about him?”
“No.”
“Walks around in sub-zero temperatures in a T-shirt. It’s actually quite dangerous. He’s been badly frostbitten.” He glanced at his daughter to gauge her level of involvement. “I’m sorry. This is probably of little interest to you. It seems the only people I can speak to comfortably are in the group.” He smiled at Ingrid and said softly, “As odd as it sounds, I feel I have a place with them.”
To make it worse, just when Ingrid mustered enough anger to fight back, to somehow hurt her father the way he hurt her, she was disarmed by his innocence. He was not trying to hurt her. But he did it easily and often. If she had attempted to explain he would have been befuddled and overly apologetic for something he didn’t understand. It wasn’t worth the battle. “I’m happy for you, Dad,” she said.
He resumed his pacing. “What I’ve been thinking about today is how the lightning changed me. For instance, Jack and I are no longer friends.”
“Jack’s dead.”
“Jack’s dead. Yes. Well, I’ve been thinking that he was the better candidate for life. He was strong, honest, hardworking. A good man. Harriet, with her skills of resuscitation, chose to save me. Of course she did, she was my wife. What I’ve been thinking is, had it been up to God, I might have died. Jack was the better man. I think this is true because Harriet was taken from me so soon after. He evened it out. Ingrid, I think he gave her to Jack.”
“Who, God? God gave her cancer, Dad.”
“I always thought they made a good match. It’s unfortunate you didn’t know either of them better because we could talk about it some more. As it is, I’m the only one who talks, isn’t that right? You hardly say anything, ever. I’ve often wondered whose DNA was responsible for that. Your brains could have come from either, but your silence—I don’t know. Perhaps a touch of darkness from a generation or two back on your mother’s side.” Her father was the only person who accused Ingrid of silence. Depending on her state of mind, she thought it was either because he knew her well or not well enough. “It’s a shame your mother isn’t here to describe those old Swedish characters better. They were quite a cast.” He bent over at the waist and attempted to touch his toes. “Argh! We men have no flexibility in this area. None at all. This is as far as I will go.” He straightened, red-faced. “What about whosits, are you still seeing him?”
“Jonathan. I never really saw him.”
“Why not? I quite liked him.”
“I seem to keep going away.”
“You must have decided against him. Not smart enough or something.”
“No, I’m just not sure I’m built for these things.”
Her father laughed. “Of course you are! Look at yourself!”
Ingrid looked out the window. “That tells me absolutely nothing.”
“You’re just like your mother. You are genetically predisposed to be loved, despite your efforts to hide yourself. The stuff will continue to be hurled in your direction—for a decade more, anyway. It’s your nature. Did you ever just drink a nice bottle of wine with that young man? To fall in love you need, just for an hour or so, to forget the seriousness of it all. Christ, you and your mother remind me of two Swedes rattling around in a land where the sun never sets. While there’s still light, the work is never done. How I fell in love with such a melancholy people, I don’t know.”
“Maybe it was the wine.”
“Ha! Well, poor old whosits. I was hoping that might turn into something interesting for you.”
“Were you?” Ingrid faced her father again. “Why?”
“I’m an old man.” He seemed to have lost his train of thought and began to pace again. “You know, Harriet learned to relax after her childbearing years.” Her father stopped and turned to her. “Do you ever think about her?”
“What would I think about?” Ingrid asked hotly. These occasional direct questions felt like an attack. “She’s been dead for most of my life.”
Her father started his pacing again. “Now, if we could only know that with absolute certainty, we’d all be able to find some peace. God keeps people alive. The God inside here,” he touched h
is heart.
“Well, I barely remember her.”
“Nothing?” The question was plaintive. She remembered her mother was beautiful, with a graceful height that drew attention. She had full, high cheekbones and clear green eyes that people who knew her still talked about. The eyes were what Ingrid remembered, what stood out as she fought her disease. In the end, they became grotesque.
“There was a way she touched the place behind my ear when I sat with her,” Ingrid said quietly. “It put me into a trance. After she died I tried to do it on myself but it didn’t work.” She saw her father was about to cry. She tried and failed to smile. “It’s interesting that God is suddenly figuring into things for you.”
“Old age.” Her father stepped off his worn pacing path toward her. He put his hands on her shoulders and touched his dry lips to her forehead. “Do you know the origins of the term good-bye? It means ‘God be with you.’ So, you see, God’s been there all along.” He turned from her. The conversation was over. In that moment, she had ceased to exist for him. As a child, she had wanted to weight him down with something; keep him from floating away from her like this. Clearly, she herself wasn’t enough to keep him tethered. Now, as she stood watching him, she knew he had no idea she was there. As a child, she thought if he couldn’t see her, maybe she wasn’t really there. She would stand invisible in his presence and bite her lip until she could taste the warmth of blood.
The day had lost the fullness of light. There was enough of a wind to lift a layer of damp leaves into a brief, dispirited dance. Ingrid hobbled across the quad again, this time to the history department. Jonathan’s light was still on. She watched it from the walkway long enough to see that he was alone.
She entered his office without knocking and fell into his ancient, overstuffed armchair. Jonathan looked up from his desk and unhooked his wire glasses from behind his ears. “Hullo. Are you limping?”
“I twisted my bad ankle.”
Jonathan stood and removed his blazer, rolling it into a sausage shape. He placed it on the ottoman at his feet, which he wheeled to Ingrid. “Here,” he said, bending to lift her calf to the raised cushion. “You should keep it elevated.”
“I got the money.” Ingrid winced and adjusted her position. Jonathan gently moved her leg over and sat on the ottoman.
“When are you leaving?”
“Ten days from tomorrow.”
“Will you have time to prepare your courses?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is this trip a good idea?”
Ingrid was chewing the inside of her cheek, doubting every idea that came to mind. “I’m not sure.”
“Don’t go, Ingrid. Not now.”
“I think Templeton has found something he’s been looking for for a long time.”
“Good for him. Do something for me, will you? Think about moving in with me. You’re hardly around anyway. That apartment of yours is going to waste. We’ll be roommates.”
“Don’t be insane.”
“Just think about it and try to remember the pickings are slim in our business—I think we’re lucky to have found each other in a sea of myopic, sexually frustrated overachievers.”
Ingrid laughed. “That’s exactly what I am. I fooled you completely.”
Jonathan’s hands joined together and hung limply below his navel in a schoolboy posture that Ingrid called “the figleaf.” He did this when he was unhappy. “Then I’ll come to your place later?”
“No.”
“No?”
“I’ll call you.”
Jonathan returned to his desk. “Here I’ve elevated your foot, given you my chair, proposed free rent, and my reward is the so-called Ingrid phone call, which rarely comes. How did my standing drop so suddenly?”
“Please, Jonathan. Don’t.”
“Don’t what? Risk trying for more? You should do it once in a while. You might be happier.”
Jonathan began to pack his briefcase. He was not only unhappy, he was angry; too angry to hear from her that it was no good, particularly when she didn’t have the energy to tell him why. She felt both exhausted and giddy from the effort of the day, like an unfit soldier trying to complete an obstacle course. Jonathan now appeared to be the last obstacle. Let me go! She wanted to say. I am too weak for this! “My father has started crying,” she said. “I don’t know what’s happening to him.”
Jonathan wiped his glasses and rehooked them behind his ears. “Have you got something for the pain?”
“The pain?”
“Your ankle.”
“Oh. Somewhere, yes.”
“Take it. I have to teach now. Call me later.”
“Will you let me stay in this chair for a while? I feel so tired.”
Jonathan gathered his things, touched Ingrid’s cheek and then bent to kiss it. When he left, he switched off the overhead, leaving her in the half-light of his desk lamp. She watched the reflection of the room in the window. The night beyond was invisible. She dug in her briefcase for a pen and wrote a note on the back of an orange campus flyer saying she was going to be busy this next week, that perhaps they should leave things for now.
CHAPTER
4
Hotel Salama
Finn woke alone, although there had been someone there earlier. Thinking about what might have transpired between them, he slipped on his white plastic sandals and walked down to the seawall. It was not quite morning; the muezzin had not yet sounded the first prayer. The sky and the sea were flat, the houses he passed oyster gray and silent. His sandals slapped along the seawall that, in an hour or two, would be noisy with fish selling. Finn pushed his arms up into the air and yawned. He was still a little drunk. The girl had been drunker.
The tide had left his dinghy high on the beach. A few yards away, the anchor lay on the sand. He cupped his hands under the bow and swiveled her toward the surf, taking the rope over his shoulder and walking down to the water. The dinghy almost skipped behind him.
Knee-deep in the calm bay, Finn pushed the boat into the water. The surface rippled only slightly. He floated awhile before lowering the oars and then he rowed leisurely, letting himself shoot, glide and slow almost to a stop before plunging the oars in again. As the beach receded, the thatched roofs of the village came into view. He took in the island’s changing composition sleepily, thinking of absolutely nothing until he bumped up gently against Uma. Jonah was asleep on her deck with a kikoi over his head. Finn pulled it off as he passed and Jonah mumbled something.
“Up, up,” Finn said as he lowered himself into the cabin, closing his eyes to adjust to the darkness. Below, the galley was in order, the counters and cabinets wiped down, the floor swept. Finn cut two slabs of bread, buttered them, and boiled water for tea.
The two men sat as they always did, across from each other but not exactly, so both could see the water.
“I thought we’d go up to Kifi,” Finn said in Swahili. “See what they’ve been catching.”
Jonah stared ahead dully, still half asleep. “Not much there now. Not yet,” he said, dropping his unfocused gaze to his tea, which he raised to his mouth and then scowled at. “Why you must boil the life out of water, I don’t know.”
“There aren’t many big ones, but there’re enough small fish for bait.”
“We’ll fish for marlin, then?” Jonah woke up a little. Marlin were the God and glory of the season.
“Mmm . . .” Finn swallowed his bread with a gulp of tea. “The season has to start sometime.” They sat and drank their tea while the sun poured color back into the water. Finn leaned over to get a look at Tarkar, moored next to Uma.
If he hadn’t known him all his life, Finn would have said that Nelson, Tarkar’s captain, was imported along with the boat. He was a good fisherman but recently he had grown lazy. His latest employer was a fellow European, but unlike Nelson, this man was a real mzungu. Under his guidance, Nelson’s habits had changed. For one thing, he no longer rose with the sun. Tarkar never left
at dawn with Uma because she could get out to sea in half the time. Uma’s engine chugged along noisily as Tarkar blew by her, humming along at her own sweet frequency, leaving Uma upset and rocking in her wake.
Finn found he often viewed Tarkar from behind. This gave him a good perspective of her rig, on which Tarkar’s owner, Stanley Wicks, had spent a small fortune. Last season Wicks had brought back carbon fiber rods from Europe, which were supposed to be more flexible and sensitive than fiberglass. Wicks talked about them like the second coming but Finn was skeptical of this worship of the new. Wicks’ revered “product advancement” meant only that more and more of your work was done for you. Soon enough, your expertise was stolen from you. Tarkar’s crew stood on deck like kings, but they were losing their feel for the fish and generally followed Uma’s direction in the morning. High technology hadn’t given Nelson the confidence he had always lacked; he still trusted Finn’s instincts more than all that equipment.
Finn tossed the last swallow of tea into the water. He stood and stretched before going to inspect the engine. The hotel needed fish for the week. He studied the pale sky, slapped a flea from his forearm and momentarily regretted leaving Kip on shore. She was pregnant—might drop any minute—and was so big now he didn’t have the heart to move her from his bed, much less give her a flea bath. She was a strange, water-loving cat, the only female that brought him good luck. It was useless trying to get rid of the fleas anyway; they were everywhere on the island. For a while, after visitors and various women complained, he had dutifully bathed Kip and flea-bombed his house every few weeks. But he never really minded the fleas, and after Kip got pregnant, he forgot about them altogether. Besides, with the house infested, visitors were more reluctant to barge in. Instead, they yelled from the doorway. Finn heard the voices from inside but often kept quiet until they went away.
An Obvious Enchantment Page 4