‘So, Snoopy met with Charlie Brown.’
‘What?’
He was talking, it transpired, about the moon landing, the subject of which continued to impress him. The proposed attempt was then just a few weeks away. Snoopy was one kind of craft, Charlie Brown another. Two astronauts had taken a trip outside their craft, and spacewalked close to the surface of the moon. They had made it safely back to the mother ship. From his pocket Julius drew an article cut from a news magazine. In the foreground of a black-and-white photograph was a stretch of milky land, in the distance the arc of a horizon upon which hovered a planet.
‘What is it?’ Julius demanded.
I shrugged. ‘Outer space?’
‘Yes, but what exactly? Look closely.’
I peered at the image. There was something faintly familiar about the far planet. You must remember, though such images are commonplace nowadays, at the time none of us had seen anything of its kind.
Julius tired of waiting for me. ‘It’s the earth, Elias! It’s an earthrise. Like a sunrise.’
And for a moment I was caught by his ardour. By the sight of the earth hovering above a pale lunar horizon.
‘There’s no place we can’t eventually go, and there’s nothing we can’t eventually do,’ one of the astronauts had said. Julius took it, jokingly, as his mantra, repeating it often over the next few weeks. ‘There’s nothing we can’t eventually do,’ he said, when a bottle-opener could not be found, as he expertly flipped the metal top off his beer on the edge of a table.
Yes, he was quick to friendship, in a way I was not, neither was I used to. It was a quality I might have mistrusted, but I couldn’t think what Julius might want from me. Or at least, put another way, since he never seemed to hesitate to ask for what he wanted, I could think of no ulterior motive in his befriending me. And on that basis, I suppose you could say we had become friends.
But for Saffia, we had become friends.
Saffia.
More than anything in those weeks and months, I desired time alone with Saffia, something I dreamt of constantly and how I might manage it. An evening, Julius asked for the loan of my office. It wasn’t the first time. As I say, he was in the habit of asking, when he craved a quiet place to work, or somewhere to hold a meeting with other members of his faculty. He remarked, in a teasing way, on my good fortune in acquiring a space of my own, especially in light of my relatively junior status on the campus. His own faculty was undergoing building works and the staff members crammed into every available remaining space. That day it was easy enough to agree. I was happy to be offered a way out. Work on my article had stalled, I needed to do more thinking, which I could just as easily do at home. I capped my pen, collected my papers and left the room to him.
But I didn’t go home.
There’d been a lull in the rain. In the last light of the day people were making their way home, passing me as I stood and smoked a cigarette across the road from the pink house. I threw the stub into a puddle, searched in my pocket for the packet, drew out another and lit it. When I had smoked the second cigarette, I crossed the road, stepping around the puddles and the other pedestrians. I stood before the front door, conscious I could yet turn back. At that moment I heard distinctly, on the other side of the door, the sound of her voice. My heart thudded to hear her thus, so close, unaware of my presence. I wondered who she might be talking to. Not Julius, who was in my office where I had left him. I thought I detected in her voice a note one might describe as controlled exasperation, the kind of voice a teacher might use to address a dull-witted child, or in this case a hapless servant. I raised my fist to the door and rapped. The footsteps changed direction and a moment later she stood before me.
‘Elias!’
She was surprised to see me, and the smile she gave me, though she did her best to cover it, had been preceded fleetingly by a frown. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘We’re just rearranging a few things. Come in, come in!’ She stepped backwards into the hall.
Inside the dining-room table was covered in papers and what I took to be botanical specimens, some labelled and bagged, others pressed on to paper. On the floor were piles of books, magazines, a stack of dressmaking material and patterns. She was clearing herself a workspace, she told me, as she led the way out on to the verandah, hoping to complete her PhD thesis. She’d been putting it off since their return home from Britain.
She sat down on the edge of a chair, tucked her hands in between her knees and leaned forward with a mild air of expectancy.
‘Julius isn’t home then?’ I asked.
‘No, I’m sorry. He’s not. He’s rarely back at this time. Did you want to talk to him?’
In not replying, I avoided the need to lie. She took my silence for assent.
‘I’d offer to let you call him, except, with all the disruption at the department, he doesn’t have an office.’
‘It’s not that important. I happened to be passing.’
‘You’re welcome to wait.’
I said, ‘I’m disturbing you.’
‘Oh, I welcome the distraction. What would you like? A beer?’ And she disappeared into the house.
When she returned Saffia asked after Vanessa. In my answer, I told her Vanessa was well, which I expect was true. We talked a while of unimportant matters. At some point — I can’t remember how we got there — Saffia told me she had newly acquired a camera and asked if she could take my picture.
‘Of course,’ I replied.
By the time she left the room and returned I had risen in readiness and was hovering, somewhat self-consciously, considering how best to position myself. The truth is I am an uncomfortable photographic subject. There is nothing about the experience I can find to like.
‘Over here.’ She patted the railing. ‘With the view behind you.’ I obliged and stood facing her.
‘Like this?’ I put my hat on my head and tipped it backwards, swung my jacket over my shoulder. An attempt to be jocular. Pathetic, I dare say. She didn’t smile. Instead she stood gazing at me, the camera held loosely in her hands. I waited, unnerved and excited at the same time. There was a boldness in the nakedness of her gaze, the way she eschewed the use of the camera either as prop or buffer. Finally she shook her head. The light was behind me, she said. She moved me to a chair.
One or two clicks of the camera shutter. She paused and fiddled with the lens, moved a foot or two closer and depressed the shutter release. Closer again. From the middle of the floor to the arm of a chair. From the chair arm to the edge of the coffee table. Neither of us spoke. My palms had begun to sweat and I could feel the prickle of moisture under my arms. Saffia’s proximity, the effort of maintaining my pose and of breathing through my nose was in danger of making me light-headed. I inhaled two or three times and forced myself to bring my breathing under control. Saffia for her part peered through the viewfinder and seemed to fidget with every knob and lever of the camera’s apparatus. If she noticed any awkwardness on my part she gave no sign of it. When she looked at me, which she did frequently, it was as though a veil had dropped in front of her eyes. Looking not seeing. I had transformed into a thing to be photographed. I saw how the power of the camera could be disinhibiting, too. So close to me now, I swear I caught a scent of her, a combination of her perfume and a warm, animal smell.
Somewhere inside the house a door opened. A shadow slid across the wall, a door closed. I turned my head. The shutter clicked one last time. Saffia lowered the camera and followed my gaze.