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some of her family’s experiences as colonialists in Algeria, where she had lived the earlier part of her life, and had had the opportunity to spend several hours alone in each other’s company. This was possible because I was then tending an elderly parishioner who lived on the outskirts of the village. There was no one else to feed and clothe him during the last weeks of his life, and so my father had assigned this task to me, in the hope, I suppose, that it would increase my feelings of humility. I was bored to distraction, and actively prayed for my patient to loose his feeble hold on life and die, which he eventually did.
    It was to this post, Torabe’s hut, that Lisette followed me. She stood by, chestnut-haired and pale, very pretty in the startling white people’s way that seems something of a clash at times with natural surroundings, as I fed and washed him and dressed his sores—for he had lain on his rags for a long time—and she chattered on about the charms of Paris. She spoke English with an accent that embellished it.
    I could not believe I’d found her so easily. But soon we were cozily sipping coffee in her tiny doll’s house near the train station, a house that had been left her by her grandmother, and she was telling me about her career as a teacher. In her surroundings I felt it was I who clashed.
    But you did not come all this way to hear about French high school students, she said, passing me a dainty slice of cake.
    You seem troubled, no? What is the use?
    It was a minor slip, charming, and made me laugh. It was just how I felt.
    You live alone here, and no one bothers you? I said.
    She shrugged.
    And no one cares that you are not married and that you make your own living?
    Mais non, she said. Women are no longer chattel, she sniffed. Even if it is only very recently that Frenchwomen got the vote. Now, she said, frowning, we get to vote for one man after another.
    I smiled sadly.
    I wanted so much to ask her about her sex life. When, whether, to whom she made love. How the act of lovemaking felt to her. Whether she knew and practiced the ways to make love without making babies.
    I asked instead about her church. Whether she was still active in it. Whether it still sent youth groups to Africa.
    Well, to tell the truth, she said, I have lost the faith. I look and look in this religion of mine and I am nowhere in it. When I was younger I thought the church was there because it helped everybody enlarge their spirit, but really, people around here appear to be more meanspirited than ever.
    She stopped suddenly.
    Don’t get me started. What happened was I could not reconcile the word “obedience” that the bride says in the church wedding with any kind of spiritual or physical expansion for myself. I felt tricked by that word.
    I thought of my father and of Mama Nettie. Had “obey” been a word used in their marriage ceremony? And would Mama Nettie “obey” my father? I knew them well enough to know they’d strive to please each other; they already did so. Neither he nor she would have the last word. But why did the word exist, in a ceremony between equals and loved ones? Well, obviously because the woman, who was required to obey, was not considered equal.
    I thought of Tashi. Each time we made love, she’d wanted me as much as I’d wanted her. She had engineered most of our meetings. Whenever we held each other she was breathless in anticipation. Once, she claimed her heart nearly stopped. Such pleasure as ours was difficult for us to believe. Was it a pleasure of which others knew? we often asked ourselves. The faces of our elders in the village bore no hint of it.

PART TWO

TASHI
    C AN YOU BEAR TO KNOW what I have lost? I scream this at the judges, in their stupid white wigs. And at the lawyers—my own and the one hired to prosecute me. They are both young, dapper African men who would not look out of place in London, Paris or New York. I scream it at the curious onlookers for whom my