White Dog Fell from the Sky

58



Two weeks after starting his medication for tuberculosis and typhoid, they moved Isaac out of the TB ward into a general medical ward. He was still very weak and had little appetite. Alice brought him a drawing from Lulu and another from Moses. Lulu’s was of their school and their teacher, with White Dog sitting outside under a tree. Moses had drawn Alice’s house, the outside on one half of the page, their bed with the two of them in it on the other half.

Alice sat on Isaac’s bed. There was no other place to sit. Her hair, which was usually gathered into a messy knot at the nape of her neck, was down around her face. Her eyes were very blue and she looked at him intently.

“How are you?” she asked. It overwhelmed him. He felt a ridiculous and dangerous urge to touch her hair where it had fallen around her chin, to push it back around her ear.

“I am going better,” he said, as though he were a truck with an engine.

“Have they said when you can leave?”

“My lungs must be clear, and also I must be strong enough to walk around the building three times without stopping.”

“And how many times can you walk now?”

His face clouded. “I am not in a hurry to go.”

“Because you have nowhere to stay?”

“Yes, madam.”

“You can stay with me. But don’t call me madam.”

He stopped. He could feel his ears ring, and then he said it. “I cannot live under the same roof as you, Alice.” To call her by her name, he felt that the sky would tumble to Earth.

She didn’t seem to notice. “Because you’re African and I’m European? Because you’re a man and I’m a woman?”

“Yes.”

“Because people would talk?”

“That also.”

“Do you care what people would say?”

He thought a moment. “No, I don’t care what people think or what they say. I care about going to prison. I will never go back to prison. I would kill myself first. And I care about hurting you.”

She glanced at his face and bowed her head. Out the window, the mourning doves on the roof called. “Do you think you’d go to prison for living in the same house? Even with Moses and Lulu there?”

“In my mind, I think no. In my heart, I think yes.”

She saw how easy it was for her. She could say, Don’t be ridiculous, you know it’s different here, but she’d be playing with him, with a soul so wounded.

“How are Moses and Lulu?”

“They ask after you every day. Shall I bring them to visit?”

“Not here, no. I’ll see them before long … And White Dog?”

“She’s waiting for you.”

“And you?” he asked.

Unaccountably, her eyes filled with tears. She waited a moment before she spoke. “A man I loved was killed while you were in prison. He was caught in a buffalo stampede up near Maun.” It felt unseemly to cry in front of him after what he’d suffered. She covered her eyes and turned away. He sat quietly, and when she turned back, his eyes looked pained.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

They were quiet together for a while.

Finally she said, “If you can’t live under the same roof, you can build a rondavel for yourself in the garden.”

“The land belongs to the government. It’s not possible.”

“Perhaps it is possible.” The hospital gown hung from his thin frame. “Would you like me to bring some clothes for you from home? I think there’s a pair of pants there and a shirt.”

“Yes.”

“Have you thought about later when you’re better, what you might want to do? Do you want to go back to school?”

He looked at her as though she were mad. “I will never be able to return there.”

“I’m not talking about South Africa. You could get a scholarship to study somewhere else. Zambia. Europe. The United States. I can help you.”

He didn’t answer, and she saw that she should shut up. He was ashen-faced, the wound on his shoulder still suppurated. His dreams had vanished. He looked like a man waiting to die. She stood up. “I’ll be back tomorrow,” she said. She walked out the front door of the hospital, past a row of women in kerchiefs sitting on the low concrete wall, with their little metal bowls of food for their loved ones.

On her way home, she thought of Mogoditshane, a small village outside Gaborone. She’d only been there once or twice but she loved the shade trees and chickens scratching about, the rondavels with their tight thatching, the neat mud walls with decorative patterns of contrasting mud. She could have two rondavels built, one for her, and one for Isaac and the children. Or she could stay where she was, have a house built for them in Mogoditshane, and leave them to it. Or she could do her own washing and cleaning, find another job for Itumeleng, and give Isaac the servant’s quarters. Whatever occurred to her, she bumped up against his haunted face, his eyes without a future. She had never seen a face like that.

She drove into the driveway and found the children playing in Ian’s Land Rover, Lulu in the driver’s seat, Itumeleng beside her, and Moses and Itumleleng’s daughter in the backseat. It gave her a start to see all this life in that dead thing.

Alice asked Itumeleng if she would mind watching the children a little longer. “Ee, mma,” she said, but her face said, I’m tired, the day is over. I’m sorry, Alice mouthed as she turned around and drove back to the hospital.

She sat down on Isaac’s bed and was quiet a moment before saying, “Help me understand what it’s like for you now.”

He shut his eyes and said, “It is impossible to understand.”

“I might understand a little. I too have lost something.”

He opened his eyes, studied her face a moment, and seemed to make a decision. “I never knew from moment to moment,” he said quietly, “if they would come or when they would come. And when they came, I never knew what part of my body they would break, whether I would survive to see another day.” His words grew more halting. “What they did was … how can I say? Without purpose. At first I tried to discover what made them do this, what made them do that. If I was quiet, did that make things better or worse? What if I spoke? But never was there … what is the word? Never was any one thing connected to another. One day they were using their fists and their boots. Another day they were drowning me. Another day, electric cattle prod on the tongue. I taught myself to stop trying to understand anything. I made my mind and body …” He turned one hand palm upward and swept the other hand over it as though erasing it. “I became blank inside. I was an animal, nothing more.”

She remembered the snake in the garden, the way it had tried to strike and strike, and in its dying had coiled.

“When they drove me toward the border, they pretended they were going to kill me. They had a gun. They tied my hands behind my back. They put a sack over my head. They took me out into the bush. And then they laughed.”

She closed her eyes and shrank from the image of him standing there with a sack over his head. The laughter in his ears.

“After that, I didn’t care. Shoot me. When I saw you I thought it was a dream. Even then I didn’t know whether I cared to live. Now there is a blank space inside. I tell you truly. If I knew I would be like this forever, I would wish to die. When I was young, I was full of plans. Now, there is nothing.” He stopped and put one hand over the other.

“Until my dying day,” she said, “I will hate those people who did this to you.” He sat very still and turned his head to the wall. “They took everything they could take from you,” she went on, “and now you’re empty. It was the only way you could survive. No one knows what part of you will come back. Maybe what was there is gone forever. Maybe it will return. Perhaps when you see the children, you will begin to know …”

He closed his eyes at the mention of them.

“Whatever happens, you have a place to come to. I have a tent. If you don’t feel comfortable sleeping inside the house, maybe you would feel all right sleeping in the tent in the garden. You can think about it.”

She stood up. “Do you need anything?” He seemed to not want her to leave.

“No, nothing.” He was quiet awhile, and then said, “I would like to stay in the tent, not in the house. I want to be near Moses and Lulu. When they tell me I am ready to leave here, I wish to walk to the Old Village, the same as I walked the first time. When I came here, I knew nothing and my feet showed me where to go. Again, perhaps they will show me.”

She took his hand before she left. She had no more words, and then she was gone.