The Catastrophist: A Novel Read Online Free Page B

out alone, baton raised, and runs yelling directly at the crowd. As though on some unspoken order his comrades leap forward and charge into the penumbra. The rioters disappear in a hectic scatter.
    “Depanda,”
Inès repeats in a reverend whisper.
    “What is that?”
    “Independence!” she says. “They are shouting for independence.”
    She hugs me so tightly.

    I wake when she gets up to go to the bathroom. She urinates, then pads sleepily flat-footed back to bed. She yawns and lets out a small noise as she stretches. She breathes deeply, settling again under the sheet. I am lying with my back to her and do not move. I am drifting off to sleep when I hear the rasp of fingers on pubic hair; then, after some moments’ silence, there is something softer, slower: moist flesh palpated. The movement of the sheet is very slight. I hear something in her breath, a catch, a small cry suppressed, and though no part of us is joined I can feel her muscles tense and then relax. I am not the cause of her excitement, not tonight, but I do not feel excluded or diminished or insecure about this. I am filled with desire.
    I turn to her and she smiles guiltily.
    “Were you awake?”
    “Yes,” I say.
    “Why didn’t you do something?”
    She tastes salty and metallic, she is coming on.
    Later she says, “I suppose you have been with other women.”
    “I haven’t.”
    It is a lie.
    “You know I am a very jealous person.” She pronounces it
yellous
.
    I say nothing.
    “I love you,” she says.
    “Still?” I am not sure.
    “Ti amo,”
she says; and she adds the way she used to: “Don’t forget.”
    We kiss suddenly and deeply.
    She is above me now. I reach up, take hold of her hair and pull her head down to my shoulder, I am not gentle. I shiver beneath her and I say things to her—promise her, threaten her with things I have never done to her. Inès is stimulated by my abandon. She comes with the breath of my hot threat-promises in her ear. She flops on top of me and noisily draws air into her lungs.
    She kisses me and says, “I like you when you are ardent.”
    I have forgotten everything. All that exists for me is the lover’s state—the bed, the sheets, and the arms and breath of her. These days I am confused about where my emotions lie—they are in the wind, I can never catch them. It was not always like this. Once I was more like her, open and friendly and funny and hopeful. Along the way I have turned into someone I do not like. But tonight at least there is no contradiction between heat and sterility.

c h a p t e r   f o u r
    She is not an early riser, but this morning is different. The air tastes of imminence, there are patterns to the clouds and she can see things. I sit on the bed, silent, feet on the floor. She is behind me, playfully, naked, on hands and knees. Her excitement boils and the hairs on the back of my neck bristle with her kisses. She goes to shower and I become the sole object of my own gaze. I bunch the white cotton sheet in my lap. Where this leaves me I do not know.
    Her talk is high and fast over the drone of the water. It is of the slaving centuries when Europeans and Arabs hunted down the Congolese in their millions. It is of Léopold and Stanley and the millions more sacrificed to propitiate the accountants and ledgers of the Congo Free State. It is of the old colonial plantations, and the chain gangs, floggings, mutilations and rapes. It is of the lands and factories and mines of the Union Minière, Brufina, Unilever and the Banque Empain.
    She comes out of the shower and drops her towel to the floor. The ends of her hair are wet and coiled. She stands with her back to me, still talking, and stoops to recover yesterday’s panties. As she steps into them she notices something about her inner thigh—an insect bite, some red little mark. She splays her feet, bends in a sort of half squat and pulls the flesh to inspect the irritation. Her underwear is stretched just below the knees. She