"Zoo City" - читать интересную книгу автора (Beukes Lauren)22."We can't keep doing this," Benoît says, lifting my arm from the sweaty rumple of sheets. He turns over my hand and touches his mouth to my fingertips each in turn, the lightest of kisses. "What, stating the obvious? What difference does one more time make to your wife? She'll have you for the rest of your life. Or until you get divorced over something incidental, like squeezing the toothpaste from the top of the tube. Or, you know, being total strangers to each other after five years." "It makes a difference to me." "Well, you'll have you for the rest of your life, too." I roll over to straddle him. "So, can you live with it?" "Get off, wench." "You don't mean that." I dip down to kiss him, leaning on his chest and the smooth dead scar tissue that doesn't feel anything. "Don't I deserve some recovery time?" he says, pulling at my wrists as if he's going to wrestle me off. But he doesn't have any such intention. "I'll show you what you deserve," I say, dipping lower. I sit on the edge of the bed afterwards, my foot folded under me and fight with the cheap plastic lighter I stole from Ronaldo, which clicks like the luckiest game of Russian roulette ever. "Do you know where you're going?" "Burundi. They're in a camp called Bwagiriza in the east, in Ruyigi. Safe from the fighting, they say. They're consolidating, moving all the people to one place. It's better." "But still not exactly a holiday resort." "They had to close the supertubes, it's true." He smiles, but it's as fake as the designer labels at Bruma Lake. "Candyfloss machine broke down. The balloons have drifted away. The rebels took all the stuffed fluffy toys when they left. Have you spoken to her?" "There's only one satellite phone." "So you don't actually know it's them." I get a spark, but it doesn't last long enough for the cigarette to catch. Dammit. Flick-flick. "The UN aid worker scanned a copy of her "Could be stolen. Assumed identity. They do genetic testing in the UK refugee centres now to make sure you're actually from wherever you say you are. Have you asked for a DNA match to your actual wife? Do they have her dental records?" Flick. Flick. "This isn't easy for me either," he says. "Oh piss off, Benoît," I say, flick-flick-flicking the lighter. "I'm glad you've found someone else." "That spying pigdog D'Nice can piss off too." Flick. Flick. Flick. "It's good, Zinzi, it's what you need." I toss the goddamn fucking useless piece of fucking shit lighter against the fucking wall. And instantly regret it. Now I'll have to go down the fucking stairs and buy another fucking lighter at the fucking spaza, which will probably be fucking closed at this time of the fucking night. I prowl over to the wall and pick up the lighter. The little plastic nib has broken off. It's well and truly fucked. "Whatever is or isn't between me and Giovanni – you don't have a say in my life anymore, Benoît." "I didn't know I ever did." He looks at me like "Why would I want to see photographs of the people you're leaving me for?" "Because I'd like to show you." "Oh for god's sake. Fine." It takes him a couple of minutes to retrieve the photographs from his room upstairs. In the meantime, I manage to score a box of matches off a woman carrying a bucket of water up the stairs on her head. Back in my room, Benoît takes the cigarette from my mouth and drags on it. I've never seen him smoke before. Then he sits down beside me on the bed with a bundle wrapped in plastic and bound with elastic bands in his lap. He starts slipping off the elastic bands and putting them neatly beside him. Some of them are practically rotted through. I'm curious in spite of the poison flower in my chest. "When was the last time you looked at these?" "Yesterday. Before that, I don't know. A year? Two years? I used to look at them every day." He unfurls one Checkers packet. It's wrapped around another, which is wrapped around another, which is wrapped around a tight sheaf of papers bound in a piece of military green raincoat and tied with string. It's a mix of photos and computer print-outs of photographs, already faded, the paper worn soft with handling and the rigours of cross-continental travel. Benoît, a woman and three children aged two to seven at a guess, posing formally, unsmiling in front of a low wall. Their features are indistinct. Washed out. They already look like ghosts. The same woman, looking exhausted, wrapped in bright yellow sheets and holding a pinch-faced newborn, his eyes clenched against the light, a little girl poking her head into the bottom of the frame like she can't bear to be left out. The same little girl holding the baby under his arms, carting him around. The little boy sitting in a cardboard box, grinning to reveal one tooth. The family posing formally again in front of a fountain in a city setting. The same background, but this time Benoît is holding the little boy upside-down as if he's about to drop him into the fountain, while the rest of the family collapses in laughter. But the one that yanks my heart into my stomach is the picture of the woman hiding her face behind her apron with a coy smile, playing a game with the camera. Or rather, the man behind it. "Celvie," Benoît says. "Armand. Ginelle. Celestin. He's the smallest. Two and a half years old. He has so much energy. You need a leash to hold him." I do the maths. "So six or seven now." "Seven. His birthday is in April. Next week. Seven years old. Practically grown-up. I'll have to start saving for his university fees." The corner of his mouth twitches grimly, not even a Fong Kong smile. We're both considering the impossibilities of university fees, of universities in general, of where a university degree might get you. My BA. Benoît's third-year mechanical engineering. He starts to put the photographs away, re-bagging them in plastic, slipping the elastic bands back into place. "What are you going to tell them?" "That papa got lost for a while." "And the Mongoose?" "Ah," Benoît waves his hand. 'He'll get used to them. They might pull his tail, but it will be okay. He's only mean to nasty Sloth girls," Benoît says, shoving me for emphasis. "Oof. Well, I'm not going to miss you "I won't think about you for a second." "I won't even remember you, I'll be so busy shagging other guys. I'll be, like, Benoît "You'll remember the Mongoose when the fleas hatch." "I won't. I won't remember you. I won't miss you. I never loved you. I never even liked you. And you smell funny. And your feet, your calloused nasty-ass feet? They're disgusting. I'll be glad to have them gone from my bed." "You smell funny too," he says and kisses me on my cheekbone near my ruined ear. I tilt my head onto his shoulder. We sit quietly for a long time. |
||
|