Dumbfounded, I watch her retreating back as she fights through the Hardings crowd, slips through the open door, and melts into the warm, unremitting rain.
There are many ways to fall in love. Suddenly. Slowly. Patiently. Excessively. Destructively. Obsessively. Love has more sides than any other emotion. More shapes and facets. More deaths, apparitions, and resurrections. It reaches farther forward and farther back than any other emotion. It has more history and future woven into it than hatred, fury, and insanity combined. It always wants more. Demands to remember more. Insists on digging up things that belong to the past. Yet it also wants to forget. Forgive. Ignore.
You know more about it than about any other emotion, yet you also know less. And if it’s honest and raw and not premeditated, it always catches you off guard.
That’s what Ouma, my grandmother, told me just before she died. When she abruptly announced on her sickbed that it was time to leave. That she was glad she was finally joining my grandfather on the other side. And on a wet, stifling February night in a bar in Dar es Salaam, I understand exactly what she meant.
6
It’s still raining the next morning. It’s coming down even harder than last night—hard enough to wake me. It reminds me of things I’ve long been trying to forget.
When I was six, I woke up one morning to find our house on the open, arid plains, just before you reach the small town of Vanrhynsdorp, surrounded by water. For a child used to bleak desolation and a father who let fly with his belt if you dared water your mother’s roses at her request, it was strange to see so much water in one place.
At that age I had never even seen the ocean, though it wasn’t far from where we lived. But if I’d had to imagine the sight of that blue expanse, it would have resembled what I saw that morning on the farm. Water everywhere. In the normally parched, struggling flower beds. In the two-track road leading to the sheep kraals. At the back door, where I would wait for my father to stop yelling before sneaking into the kitchen to warm up my supper, exhausted after my cross-country run.
That cloudburst would result in a great flood in our part of Namaqualand. Almost like the deluge that swallowed Laingsburg some years before. But, unlike our neighbors, we didn’t lose everything, only enough for my father to become even more embittered and my mother even more withdrawn, her footsteps through the house growing increasingly soft, more tentative.
I had thought it impossible that she could tread any more lightly, but I was proved wrong the day I told my father I would be leaving the farm to study journalism at Stellenbosch University.
That day was different, however. Her footsteps might have been silent, but her heart was filled with joy. Her mind sang. She didn’t say anything, but I could see it in her eyes. I would get away. I would escape.
I get out of bed. Shake my head as if it will rid me of the memories. It’s of little use thinking about the past. It would be much more productive to try and figure out what happened to Ranna last night. I might even be able to do something about it.
Maybe she has calmed down by now. Maybe I should phone her and ask her what’s wrong. Who hurt her. Why she refused to do anything about it. Such complacency seems completely out of character for someone like Ranna.
I know I’m supposed to still be angry at her for being inconsiderate, but am I? Or am I more upset because she didn’t confide in me? Because there may be someone else in her life?
Oh, fuck it. Stop thinking.
I walk to the small kitchen and switch on the kettle. I stare out the window of my third-story studio apartment as I dial her number. The phone rings seven times before an electronic voice instructs me to leave a message. I end the call and put the phone down. Pick it up again. Make another call to her number.
My fourth call remains unanswered. It’s half past six. In a few hours some cabinet minister or other is going to address the media about the budget. Will Ranna be there? Should I wait to see whether she shows up, or should I knock on her door and check whether she’s okay?
As usual, the voice of chaos drowns out every other, saner answer.
I knock on Ranna’s blue front door, tentatively at first, then more insistently. There’s no sound from inside her apartment. All I can hear is the monotonous drumming of the rain on my jacket, deafening inside the black plastic hood that covers my head.
In the flower bed under the blue window frame, the muddy water is ankle-deep. I look for the shallowest spot to place my feet. I wipe the window and cup my hands on either side of my face to protect my eyes from the relentless, driving rain, but I see no movement inside. All I can make out is the vague outline of a couch. A kitchen counter. Books. Nothing more.
What should I do next? What is plan B?
Hadhi.
I go to the front door of the long, narrow house divided into four apartments. I knock. The door opens almost immediately.
“Hello, Hadhi.” I throw back the hood and move closer to the door to get out of the rain.
Without a word she steps back, staring at me as if she’s trying to place me. Finally she points at me with a crooked forefinger. “You’re Miss America’s friend. Alex? Your photos are beautiful. David framed the one of all of us on the dance floor for me.”
I nod and remember to smile. When a strange man knocks on a woman’s door in the early morning, he’s obliged to be friendly.
Hadhi looks at her watch, as if she suddenly remembers it’s not even eight o’clock yet.
“Are you looking for Ranna?” She puts her hands on her hips, ready to scold me for disturbing the photographer at this hour.
I hold out my hands, palms up, to show that I come in peace. “I’m glad you like the photos. I . . . Is Ranna still in bed?”
“I wouldn’t know. It’s very early.”
“You haven’t seen her this morning?”
“No. I’ve been cleaning since five. I get a new tenant today. Why don’t you knock and find out for yourself?”
“I did, but no one opened.”
“Then she’s probably not there.” Hadhi sounds annoyed. “Or she doesn’t want to see anyone.”
“I’d like to make sure,” I say. “I need to speak to her urgently.”
Hadhi frowns. “I don’t think she came home last night, but I may be wrong. I don’t keep track of everyone’s movements. And she sure doesn’t sleep a lot.” The frown is replaced by a worried look. “It’s unhealthy to be alone like that, without children or family. Especially for a girl her age.”
I wish I could tell her about last night. About the blood and Ranna’s arm. About her trapped, stubborn eyes. Perhaps Hadhi knows something that could help me. But I don’t say anything. I don’t want to sound the alarm for no reason but my own paranoia.
Hadhi tugs at the brown-and-white dress straining across her generous hips. “And there’s something dark in her eyes. Some kind of unhappiness, as if she remembers too much. Bad things.”
“When was she last here? Do you know?”
Hadhi shakes her head. “I haven’t seen her for a long time. Day before yesterday?”
“Not since?”
“No. As I’ve said, I’m not always here, so I wouldn’t know. I leave at about eight. I live next door.” She waves her hand at the smaller white building to my left. There’s no dividing wall between the two houses.