The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo

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.