My Other Life Read Online Free PDF Page B

the lake was twenty miles away. Perhaps it was the flatness of the land, the high clouds, the thin bush, or perhaps the time of year. Whatever, it was something that made for glaring leaves and a shine on some rocks and pale soil and white skies. It made for nakedness.
    The scorching light exposed everything so completely it even burned shadows away. It was not sunshine, not warm and bright, but a fiery African light that swelled in the sky and seemed to drum against the land. It came rattling straight through the threadbare curtains into my room, waking me like a blade piercing my eyes. I saw that the walls were cracked plaster and dusty whitewash, with a wooden crucifix of a skinny, suffering jesus over my bed. The floor was dusty, the wood doorjamb was pitted with termite holes, and the whole place smelled of ants. It had seemed so substantial last night, the whole building on its hill, but in this harsh, truthful light the structure was frail and elderly.
    In the kitchen, Simon poured me a cup of milky tea. The large screened-in box that looked like an animal cage was, I knew, a meat safe, and its contents—plates of chicken—were going rancid. That was the smell that hung in the room, dead meat. On the table, the bread, the papaya, the margarine, and the jam all smelled of the meat safe.
    "Where is Father DeVoss?"
    "He is saying mass."
    So I sat at the worn table in the blinding light, with my bottle of Koo ketchup and dish of Springbok margarine.
    "Are there nuns here too?"
    "Yes, there are three," Simon said.
    "What do they do?"
    "The nuns take care of our bodies. The priests take care of our souls," he said, with the sententiousness of a convert. "And one American mzungu."
    "What is the American's name?"
    "I don't know. But they call her Birdie." He pronounced it in the African way, "Buddy."
    "Like 'bird'?
Mbalatne?
"
    "Yes. She is a sister."
    It was British usage: a sister also meant nursing sister, a nurse.
    "Is the convent nearby?"
    "It is near to the hospital."
    "How long has the woman Birdie been here?"
    "She was coming this side in July."
    Three months ago.
    "What about Father Touchette?"
    "He was coming this side in April."
    I asked no more questions, yet Simon sensed unspoken ones and told me that the old priest, Brother Piet, had helped build the church at Moyo, and that Father Touchette did not like to hear the drumming from the village, and that when Father DeVoss first came to Moyo, Simon had been a small child, and Simon's father had pointed him out and told Simon not to be afraid.
    "We thought that white people were ghosts who would eat us. But my father said, 'No, he is a good man.'"
    "What was your father doing here?"
    "He was sick with
mkhate.
"
    A leper.
    Father DeVoss appeared soon after that. His look of distraction, a dreamy vagueness and inattention, made him seem kind and gentle and a little sad.
    "Did you have a full house?"
    "Attendance at mass is not so good."
    "Maybe I should go."
    "If you wish," he said, as though he hardly cared.
    "I was about to prepare some lessons. I thought I might start my English classes soon."
    "That is a good idea," Father DeVoss said. "But there is no hurry." He was smiling sadly out of the window. "Would you like to see the church?"
    I said yes, because I suspected that he wanted to show me. It was a short walk from the priests' house, on the other side of that same low hill, and it was large and dusty, smelling of lighted candles—the tallow, the flames, the burned wicks. A few of the windows were stained glass, and the Stations of the Cross were African carvings.
    "Some of the lepers made them. They are not bad, eh? They are crude, but they have emotion."
    He looked around the church with a crooked smile that seemed like skepticism, as though he only half believed what all this represented. He pointed to a plaster statue.
    "Saint Roche. You know about him?"
    "No," I said.
    Father DeVoss smiled and said nothing more. There were other plaster statues,