Let's see.
My second novel-- oh no, I want to read
you a little bit from Cannibal.
I kind of like this book.
It's-- after you have a book published,
you have a hate relationship with it,
not a love-hate relationship.
And I was reading it.
I kind of liked it today.
Anyway, it's about a woman in Africa.
Guess what?
And there are no chapters in this book,
so this is like the second chapter.
The I voice is a woman.
She's with a man.
They're making a film there.
And they've come to visit--
what would they be called-- missionaries after a long walk
across--
from a long distance.
And they really came because a woman they were with
has a tumor, and she's come to be treated.
But I don't know if that's going to come here.
This is all about a glass of water, apropos of my drink.
"Would I Like a Glass of Cold Water?"
The idea of cold is so odd.
Cold in a glass, or even water in a glass.
You have to have something to compare it with.
The very middle of the night when the body
is next to the Earth and not the fire, with the Earth dark
from your body on top of it--
that is cold.
I say, "Yes, thank you."
She says, "That will be a dollar," and leaves the room.
A dollar.
A dollar for a glass of water.
Even a cold glass of water.
When she comes back bearing it, I
say "No, thank you" as polite as I
think you should be with clergy, for this is the wife of clergy.
At least I think so, since this is a mission,
and out the window I see a cross over what
is said to be a clinic.
But my tiredness makes it confusing.
Can you be a clergy doctor as well as this asking
for a dollar for a drink of water?
Isn't charity part of the clergy position?
Or is there only the missionary position?
I laugh to myself and I say, I changed my mind.
She puts the glass down on the table between us
very carefully, like it is a trophy,
and the sides of the glass weep with condensation.
I look away from it because it is not
polite to stare at something you've just refused,
but my hand sweat noticing the coolness.
That is, the picture of coolness my brain makes to send notice.
I look out the window, or where the window would
be if this matched the insides with its stereo, potted plants,
tables, and chairs, and out of the window hole
and screen I see him walking with the clergyman.
"Are you married long?" she asks in the same cold water voice.
I want to say yes, make the same kind of answer
as with the water, because that will please her.
That will answer her two questions at once--
long and are you--
making it easy not to be too specific.
But seeing him walking outside next to the clergyman who
could, if he wanted, marry us, I hesitate.
And the gap between her question and my hesitation
grows into a no, but a curious one, not like the gap
before the no to the water, which could be impolite.
And not, "no, we do not have a dollar,"
but, "no, you are mistaken, we are not married at all."
"There they are," I say instead, and point
to the air of the window hole to the woman
and her gray child, the woman with the tumor on her belly.
They are being moved from one line
to the other by a man who drags along a rope with a knot in it,
a knot that he likes to flick up into the air and land
very near someone, even her when it
takes her some time to move the boy and her belly
to a new line.
I mean more by my "there they are"
than just pointing, however, than just deflecting her
from my by now obviously unmarried state, unworthy
of even a lukewarm glass of water now sweating between us.
I mean that they are the ones we've walked days for
to get help.
And why do you allow that man to treat them
like that with his whip?
Or any of them?
She says, "Yes, there they are," and says, "they clawed
at the screen all last night."
And she points to the window hole with a screen across it.
And I think it's brown and black flesh stuck
to it from the night before, not shadow.
I look down and I see her hand move
then toward the water in slow motion,
so slow I see her hands are shaking.
She takes a drink.
"They want to get in," she says. "they
want 'Booma' You know what that means?
To be strong," she says, not giving me
a breath's worth of means.
"Boomatet" she says, "very strong.
They want injections like others of their kind want drugs.
They see someone get one smallpox scar and live,
and they want them all over.
They think they'll live forever with these injections.
They want to live forever."
She drinks a lot of the water.
I watch her.
The condensation has gone from the glass,
so I can see just how much is left, just how much goes down.
She doesn't finish it, though.
There's still about an inch of water left,
cool enough, I think, when she tosses the rest into the plant
in the pot next to her.
Then she raises her shaky hands up
to pat the hair on her head, which is not coming apart
like it is a hairdo, but sits solid as the glass
and shines an almost transparent white, the color of water,
but a brittle white.