Garden of Eden Read Online Free PDF

taste, bringing back her years at university in Saskatoon, Tim and Armand, and all the nights she’d spent with men — she would not think about it. It was done with, it would never happen again. In the light of what she has seen herein this country, all her transgressions seem so much less horrifying, have dropped into the realm of the truly trivial, another reason why she isn’t sorry she has come here, another reason to stay, to never go back again. She thinks again of Iris and Barney, but their faces are remote now, and fade quickly.
    Shouts of welcome greet them and Rob, smiling, slides a beer toward her. She stops it with her hand, smiles back at him. She mouths her thanks, since he can’t hear her over the laughter. Two of the workers she doesn’t know, one with an Irish NGO — the shorthand they all quickly fall into for non-governmental agency, meaning everyone from obscure little church groups to the United Nations — and the other from the United States, have begun to sing “Michael, Row Your Boat Ashore,” while a second Irish nurse accompanies them on a guitar. They’ve just begun to sing, and for a moment nobody joins in.
    The Ethiopian men sitting here and there at the rickety tables against the corrugated iron wall turn their heads and listen, interested. Slowly others gather, amazed by these
ferenjis,
men who allow women to sit with them in a café, treating them like equals, women who sing, too, and laugh and touch the men with their hands, rub shoulders, even kiss them briefly in public. Rob opens his mouth and softly half hums, half sings. Soon all of them are singing, even Lannie.
    Much later when Daniel drops them back at Lannie’s door, then roars off to drop another worker at his house a mile down the road, Rob steps close to her, gathers her slowly, tentatively at first, and when she doesn’t resist, more firmly in his arms, and kisses her. She kisses him back as hard as he’s kissing her. She kisses him as if his mouth, his body, will blot out all the outrages and sorrows around them. She can’t stop herself, even though a part of her knows all too well that she — they — will pay for this down the road. He pulls back abruptly.
    “Do you think a person can fall in love with somebody the first time they go out?” His voice is husky.
    “I’m not in love,” Lannie states clearly. She can feel him go rigid, for just an instant, holding himself away from her.
    “You’re right,” he says. “All right.” They stand like that for a moment longer, close enough to feel the heat radiate from each other’s body, but not touching. Hyenas yelp and growl at the far edge of the black shadow that is the field. He sighs, the sound is diminished by the rumble of Daniel’s vehicle coming back down the road toward them, the headlights appearing and disappearing with the dips in the road.
    She wants to explain to him that she can’t fall in love, that she’s a bad choice, that she can only damage men. But while she’s still struggling to find a way to say this to him, or something like this, the Land Rover pulls up beside them. Its headlights pick out a figure making its way down the path from the hospital with the help of the wavering beam of a flashlight.
    “It’s Caroline,” Lannie says. They wait in silence, the Land Rover rumbling beside them, until she reaches them.
    “An emergency?” Rob asks Caroline as she nears. Not waiting for her answer, he climbs into the vehicle to sit beside the driver. It’s as if he and Lannie hadn’t been out on a date, hadn’t just begun to talk about love.
    “A birth,” Caroline says in that even tone all of them have come to rely on. “Dr. Habte had to do a Caesarean. The baby’s dead, but the mother made it.” She blinks away from the headlights, but not before Lannie sees her face.
    “We’ve got to hurry,” Daniel warns. Rob says good night and they drive away, Daniel stepping on the gas so as to get back to their camp before curfew