And really, why not? Disaster, as we have seen, sometimes lies in wait only a footstep away, so why bicker with your beloved, when you could take pleasure in him? In two days Daniela will return from Africa, and he knows she will want, as always, on her first night home, to know what happened to her husband day by day and hour by hour while she was away. And although she does not like him to speculate about their children's sex lives, this time he will insist on telling her how he stood with the grandchildren at the gate of the camp, exposed to thunder and lightning, while her son and daughter-in-law were out making love in the fields. Yes, he will withhold nothing from her. And therefore, on second thought, he will not spare her the blue video hidden between Baby Mozart and Baby Bach, lest she stumble upon it as he did. But really, why shouldn't she know? In three years she will be sixty, and she is mature enough to understand that there is wilder libido in the world than she has previously imagined. After all, she herself, before she disappeared through the departure gate at the airport, was the one who spoke the words real desire.
DIDN'T FORGET HER? Daniela laughs, astonished, and removes her feet from the opposite armchair, a movement that tilts her a bit backward. But how so? We exchanged at most a few words at the end of the flight.
"True," says the elderly Englishman as he elegantly gathers the skirts of his white bathrobe and sits down carefully in the vacant chair. They exchanged only a few words, but he remembers every one of them and regrets that he had not begun to converse with her at the start of the flight, to hear more about the late sister and the soldier killed by his comrades' friendly fire, and especially about herself, who she is and what she was smiling about the whole time with such tranquillity. But since during most of the flight she preferred to look out the window, as if deliberately avoiding him, it would not have been polite to interrupt her. Was the view really so fascinating, or did she think him not sober enough for conversation?
"Both."
But does the lady really believe that such a veteran drinker as he could become intoxicated during a flight of less than one hour? How many drinks did the stewardess bring him? Two? Three?
"At least five," she says, and smiles at the purplish, white-haired Briton, who sits before her naked under his bathrobe, gazing at her with admiration.
Five? Really? She counted them? Nevertheless, he did not depart the aircraft drunk.
"There was no way of knowing, since two stewards came quickly and took you in a wheelchair. Now I gather they were from this farm of yours. But what matters is that now you are completely sober, and you can apologize to me…"
To apologize to a pretty woman is a singular pleasure… but, all the same, for what?
"For giving me a calling card from this farm and telling me it was yours, although you are just a patient here."
Correct, says the Englishman, laughing heartily, he is just a patient, but a senior patient, a perennial patient, who returns here every year of his own free will for treatment, and he may thus be considered a bit of a shareholder too. But if she demands an apology, he will readily supply one. Yes, he is sorry that he misled her. He is sorry. There is nothing easier for an Englishman than to utter those words. From the moment he saw her maintain her aristocratic composure when she was detained at the departure gate, he found her attractive, and even more so during their short conversation at the end of the flight. And so, although he knew that the chances they would meet again were exceedingly slim, as she had told him that her visit to her brother-in-law would be brief, he had the notion of planting a little lure, like a hunter seeking to trap a rare animal. And in the end it succeeded, for here she is.
Daniela blushes, but smiles forgivingly.
"You are mistaken. I did not know that you were here. I did not notice that this place is the farm on the calling card you gave me. I simply came along with my brother-in-law, who was bringing a malaria patient, a young woman from the excavation team. But it is true that I did not forget you. I have been a teacher for many years, and I have trained myself to remember my students, and therefore people I meet by chance I remember as well. And when my husband isn't with me and does not demand all my attention, a unique person like you may be engraved in my memory."
To be engraved in the memory of such a lady is a great honor.
"If you want you may call it an honor…" Daniela tries to dampen the slightly sweaty excitement of the bathrobed Englishman, who is beginning to resemble a dirty old man. "But anyway, what are you doing here? You don't seem particularly ill."
That is correct, he is not actually ill, but he will be one day, and he plans to end his life with dignity. As a bachelor without children, living on a modest government pension, in England he has no chance to receive honorable care. In the municipal old-age homes, the old Englishwomen pester the elderly bachelors like him.
"What kind of work did you do?"
In more recent years he worked for British Rail, but his true career was with His Majesty's armed forces. He was too young for the world war, but when he joined up just afterward he asked to be sent to places where there was some hope of active duty, to colonies in Asia and Africa. But after India and Palestine were lost, the other colonies began to demand independence, and by the time he reached the rank of major, not a colony remained where the British Empire might rule honorably and justly without encountering much terrorism. Thus at the age of fifty, if she can imagine it, he became a train engineer for British Rail, and fifteen years ago, when he retired, he decided to return to East Africa not as a colonialist but as a patient.
"And you chose Africa over all the other places you served?"
Yes, of all the peoples of the former Empire he prefers Africans as caregivers. They are more genuine and honest than the Pakistanis or Burmese, and when they care for one's body, they do not try, as do the Indians, to steal your soul. They are modest and not suspicious, like the Arabs, or afraid that perhaps they will be afflicted by European diseases. They are introverted people, and they care for you without too much talking, like veterinarians caring for pets. It is true that the scenery here is less impressive than elsewhere on the continent, but he feels that a monotonous semiarid expanse enables one to depart from life with less anguish and more hope.
"Hope for what?"
Hope that one is not really losing anything by dying. This hope enables one to be indifferent to death, like an animal.
He speaks intimately, but with fluency, as if acting on stage. She finds it odd to be speaking so openly with a stranger, a man old enough to be her father who is nevertheless sitting in front of her wearing only a bathrobe.
"This is your standard of comparison? Animals?"
"Don't underestimate them."
"Of course not. Three years ago, when my sister was still alive, and my brother-in-law was an official chargé d'affaires, we came, my husband and I, for a visit of a few days, and the four of us went out to a nature preserve, and it was fascinating to see how they conduct themselves."