“In a moment,” she said.
“Or would you rather we sit in the dark looking out on the moonlight?”
They met midway and embraced. The night was gauze-thin and she had little difficulty penetrating the greyish membrane with which it was wrapped. The moon guided her towards itself, where it occupied the centre of a clearing, and the clouds had stayed back, like a well-behaved crowd of onlookers, giving space and limelight to the principal actor the occasion had crowned. She loved the silence, loved the half-dark, she loved the two of them on their feet, chest to chest, with neither saying anything. Then she lost sight of the moon. But had it gone? She counted up to thirteen, as though it were a lighthouse whose flashing could be timed. Then the outside world began interfering with their inner quietness and peace.
The night watchman called Bosaaso’s name.
“Shall I answer?” he said, in a whisper.
Letting go of him, she said, “You already have.”
His breath was charged with tension, like a frightened lizard’s throat. Now that they fell apart, each cast a separate shadow, his shorter than hers. He was clearly upset, but didn’t want to shout at the night watchman, poor fellow. He was angry with himself. His voice carried in it a multitude of mixed emotions when he said, “What is it you want?”
The night watchman stood to the side of the door which Bosaaso had opened. Heard but not seen, he delivered his message: “Waaberi, your sister-in-law, has been here a number of times.”
Bosaaso was tempted to correct this fool of a night watchman, by reminding him that Waaberi was his former sister-in-law. But he let that pass, in deference to Duniya.
“What did she want, did she tell you?”
“She only said she needed to see you urgently.”
“Did she say what about?”
“And there was that man with her.”
“Whatman?”
The night watchman had a Baidoan Somali accent and this began to jar on Bosaaso. He might have lost his self-control had not Duniya come and taken his hand, to kiss it.
“Do you know the name of the man who came with Waaberi?” he asked.
“The one with the car shinier than moonlight,” said the night watchman.
Bosaaso described Kaahin.
“That’s him.”
“When did they say they will come back?”
“Some time tonight.”
Bosaaso’s voice, when he next spoke, assumed two tones, belonging to two different modes of his being. The first half of the statement was followed by a pause, long enough for him to return Duniya’s kiss. He said, “If either Waaberi or Kaahin comes here tonight … my instructions are not to allow either to disturb us.”
“What if they ask when they can see you or where?” said the night watchman.
“Tell them I’ll go and see them myself,” Bosaaso said.
When the door closed and they were in the dark, they listened to the receding footsteps of the night watchman.
She said, “You are so impeccably polite, it puts me to shame, when I think of my rages, fights and tempers. Are we attracted to each other because we’re so different?”
“We have many things in common,” he said.
“Of course we do,” she said, “but it wouldn’t upset me at all if you showed your anger now and then.”
Without saying any more, they walked together, hand in hand, towards the french windows.
“You have a beastly temper, you know that?” he said.
“And your politeness is not so much disarming as challenging,” she said, self-censoriously As they walked on, their hip-bones knocked against each other, like a couple dancing the bump.
Finally, they stopped. There was only one armchair. When sitting in it, Duniya’s fingers touched something hard, which she worked out to be a pair of binoculars. Since her sense of direction was excellent, it didn’t take her long to figure out that the chair was facing west. Did this mean that Bosaaso was a bird watcher? She didn’t think he was a voyeur; besides, who was there to pry on?
“I’m a bird watcher,” he volunteered without her asking him.
Then he kissed her. It was so powerful and so sudden that, in an attempt not to lose her balance, Duniya held on to his sleeve.
He said, when he could, before she had the chance to speak, “I love you.”
She took his hand in both hers and kissed it lightly.
Because she did not say anything, they kissed, this time briefly.
“It would upset me if anything I did or said upset you,” he said.
“I know,” she said.
He sat beside her in the armchair, hoping she could say, “I love you,” or something as pleasant.
She said, “Taariq used to say that I’m like most men, in that details bore me. He would argue that it’s the general drift of things that fascinate my wild nature, my temperamental mind.”
She pushed aside the book that had been in the armchair. He became curious, wondering what he had been reading the last time he sat there, probably one sleepless dawn. He knew from the feel of it that it was Dostoyevsky’s Brothers Karamazov.
“I’m a details person, all right; I attend to them rigorously,” he said.
“It’s the details of how a person smiles, their nervous tics, how they sleep, where they fall asleep, which side of the bed they prefer: these are the details that interest me,” Duniya replied.
He was restless, like a man on unsafe ground. “It depends what you mean, knowing a person,” he said.
“Where is the easiest bathroom to get to in the dark?” she asked.
“There’s one on the ground floor. Shall I take you there?”
Then he tickled her. She laughed. And laughing, she got to her feet. She thought he was teasing her like a cat that, once hurt by a bigger dog, falls back on its feline alertness, plays with the canine aggressive instinct, holding back a little. His seductive fingers moved up and down her spine, fingers that were ticklishly open like a cat’s playful but harmless claws. Suddenly, two of his fingers closed in on the clip of her brassiere and, before she could remember the Akan word for “breasts,” the support was gone and they were throbbing with the warmth of excitement. They kissed, he breathed heavily, his nostrils whistling, like a tyre losing air. She didn’t say, “Don’t rush me,” but, “Where is the bathroom, the one on the ground floor?”
The moon entered, shining their way, showing them where to go. The top landing was awash with moonlight. There were three rooms on this floor. He took the right turning and she followed him. He opened a window. More brightness.
Then she said, “I’ll be with you in a minute.”
Bosaaso approached Duniya’s body as if it were a door whose combination locks required the performance of a certain number of feats, before being allowed in. He might have been a lowly-bom Arabian Nights prince making good. The stakes were too high for him not to perform well. Only when he proved himself to be a charmer, did she let him in.
And then the doors of her body opened wider, and she lay on top of him, the mistress conducting the speed and flow of the river of their common love. Earlier, he had wanted to know if she had taken the necessary precautions. She had said, “Of course, I have,” making it plain that she wanted no more children, thank you.