Thirty Girls. Susan Minot
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going faster. Now she was being hurled up against the ceiling.
When she landed in slow motion some time later, her gaze drifted to a blurry window where dawn had turned the sky glass-blue through a pane of lead squares like the windows you see in old churches.
In the late morning, returning to the cottage, Jane found Lana having breakfast in bed with her silver tray. Lana patted the pillow beside her and poured Jane a cup of coffee from a silver pot. Raymond has buggered off, Lana said. He’s tossed us for a safari job. Don’t blame him, really. But—she used a pointedly hopeful tone—Don wants to come.
Don?
Lana shrugged, as if uncertain whether she was ready to promote the idea. He thinks it might be interesting. He has a car …
Jane looked at her.
Lana bit her toast and studied Jane’s face, gauging her reaction. He can always help with the cash flow? she said, chewing.
Later after dinner Lana and Don peeled themselves up off the Balinese bed and slipped away to Lana’s room. It was an early night. Jane and Harry stayed collapsed on the pillows, upholstered in hemp and stamped with a black and beige triangular pattern. In the deeper cushions Pierre was asleep.
I’ll take you, Harry said out of nowhere.
Where?
To Uganda. I’ll drive.
You will?
Sure. I’ve got a truck.
That would be great, she said. Really?
He looked at her. His face was an inch from hers and his lowered eyes were cool. I just said I would.
What about the cows? she said.
Screw the cows.
Really?
Keep saying really and I’ll change my mind.
A warmth spread in her chest.
She couldn’t pay him, she told him, but could cover the gas and his room and board. She had a minor expense account from the magazine, she said, actually, hardly believing it herself, since she had no real credentials as a journalist.
It’s better if you don’t hire me, Harry said. If I’m hired I usually get sacked.
The guest room where Jane was staying had been painted by Lana, salmon and green. Its lantern threw half-moons of light on the stucco wall. Harry got in with her under the pink mosquito net.
He had been with her now three nights and each night in a different bed in a different place. She was in that early lull of physical happiness when going over it was a pleasure, with no real qualms yet. She felt a sinking deeper. And now he was coming with them on her trip. It’ll be what it is, she said to herself, as proof she was without illusion, but having no more idea what It’ll be what it is meant other than a hope against the sinking.
Again departure was postponed so Lana threw another dinner party.
She went into action, arranging what needed to be done, talking to the cook, unruffled and focused. Her energy spread outward and Jane helped her push three tables together and move brass elephants. Lana shook out a long white tablecloth stamped with silver and blue paisley which landed like a sail.
From Jaipur, she said. Lana’s things each had a story—linen napkins were from Porta Portese in Rome, gold-dotted plates passed down from her grandmother in Paris, the striped red and green Venetian glasses from the lover trying to woo her back. That worked, she said, for a while.
The cottage had four small rooms packed like a treasure chest. In her thirty-six years Lana had covered a lot of ground. There were the small business ventures: lanterns from Morocco, the alabaster Indian lamps, the belts with Maasai beading. She’d worked as a set designer and fund raiser, started schools for the Rendille in the bush. Her tastes were both extravagant and rustic. A chandelier hung from a water buffalo horn on the terrace. She was generous whether flush or broke. For all the pleasure she found in things, she did not have the hoarding instinct of the materialist. You liked her bracelet? Here. She would unclasp it from her wrist and snap it onto yours.
She held up a conch shell filled with salt. Sweet, she said. She had dressed for dinner in a short satin slip, boots laced to her knees and dark lipstick. Now, she said, most important, the lighting. They lit lanterns and candles which had been placed in abundance around the cottage on stands and floors and tables crowded with silver cups.
How old is Harry? Jane said.
What do you think?
Twenty-six? Jane said tremulously. Five?
More like twenty-three, darling.
You’re kidding.
Or twenty-two. What, you care? Age doesn’t matter.
It doesn’t?
For dinner there was a platter of grill-marked chicken sprinkled with singed herbs, roast pork beside peeled potatoes, stewed eggplant in tomato sauce, green beans shiny with butter and garlic, curried lentils, ribs, shredded cabbage, sliced avocado. Lana’s housekeeper and another woman carried dishes in and out of the kitchen, taking orders from Lana in Swahili, without seeming to hear them.
By the time the cook’s specialty, coconut flan, was brought out, no one at the table seemed to notice, deep in conversation or having left altogether. Many were out on the concrete terrace, dancing to the turned-up music. By the end of the night however there was no pudding left in the dish. The servants slipped in and out, clearing the plates, leaving glasses and candles and flowers, and a spotlessly washed-up kitchen. The music pounded.
Jane, feeling dazed from drink, from Harry, looked around the room at the people she didn’t know, at ones she barely did, in this place where people returned from war zones, from managing famines, from living in tents among the elephants, or being gored by buffalo, a place where everyone seemed matter-of-factly to lead a life of extremity and daring. Harry was with his parents tonight. They’d just returned from a trip vaccinating livestock before they were to leave again. In his absence, her thoughts of him were more vivid. He was young. He was quite young. She kept thinking of him being young. She remembered how easy it had been at that age to take up with a person. It happened all the time—new people came, you were with them. When they were gone, more new people would come. When she looked at it from that point of view she saw they were no big deal. She thought she’d try to adopt that viewpoint. Adopting other people’s viewpoints, you could convince yourself you were being empathetic—never mind you were ignoring your self.
More people arrived and the dancing grew wilder. One man took off his shirt and was rolling around on the lawn, a dog barking at him hysterically. In between songs you heard the high squawk of an animal, the hyrax who lived and shat on the roof.
Monday morning, readying for departure at last, Jane sat on a bed piled with linen pillows and watched Lana pack. Lana was tall but seemed larger than a normal tall person. She surveyed her room, eyes narrowed, hands on leather shorts. She was accustomed to packing and moving her caravan, but not having to restrain herself in volume. The room was as full as a bazaar, and indeed she had either bought or sold most of the things in it: piles of vintage fabric, leather-trimmed suitcases, necklaces draped on rusted hooks. She picked up an ancient wicker picnic basket with cylindrical holders for wine bottles.
This we take, she said. She opened the lid to show Jane the relics of the 1920s inside—tin plates with embossed leaves, miniature glass salt bottles fitting in felt holders, a silver-rimmed martini shaker.
What else? she said to herself. The tucks on either side of her mouth deepened in concentration. She strode across the room. Unlike some tall people who try to shrink themselves smaller, Lana strode with the confidence of a giant, jangling when she moved. She hoisted a trunk from behind a stand overloaded with brimmed hats and oilskin jackets and fished out a stack of brand new T-shirts. These we bring for the children, she said, and stuffed them in a canvas bag decorated with beadwork, another one of her ventures.
Jane told