The Bay of Foxes Read Online Free Page A

the rest of what I owe you soon—perhaps more than that,” as Asfa looks down at him in wonder. Asfa says, “Are you sure about this? There is no rush. We are happy to have you here with us, brother. You would do the same for me.”He speaks in a low voice, smiling at him but looking concerned by this sudden good fortune and putting an arm protectively around his shoulder.
    He is too polite to ask the source of this good fortune, but clearly it troubles him. He mumbles something about money not having any real importance where friendship is concerned.
    They eat sautéed spinach, salad, bread, and the stewed lamb, with the spicy sauce that brings tears to Dawit’s eyes, all served on a large platter, which the women put down in the center of the table so that everyone can help themselves. They dip into the platter with their fingers and mop up the sauce with the bread. They drink cheap red wine, which Asfa brings out in honor of the meal and of what he calls Dawit’s newfound fortune. No one questions Dawit about the source of the money, though they eye him suspiciously.
    Clearly they cannot imagine such a sum of money appearing suddenly in a legitimate fashion. Asfa makes various circumlocutions about the value of integrity and the importance of freedom, and his wife tells him he talks too much. Dawit smiles but says nothing about his meeting with M., which is already beginning to seem like a dream. They all sit huddled around the kitchen table, talking and laughing over the stained linoleum cloth, while the children crawl around on the scuffed floor under the table. Everyone is delighted.
    Dawit picks up the youngest boy, little Takla, who is crying again. The child seems to have difficulty catching his breath. Dawit dances him on his knee, and the child stops his wailing, but his breath still comes in small, desperate gasps. He looks up at Dawit with his enormous dark eyes, which lookstill larger in his pinched face. The little boy’s only garment is a tattered shirt. Dawit wipes away the boy’s tears with his paper napkin and wonders what will become of him in this strange, sunless country. He feeds the little boy from the big bunch of grapes, opening each one to extract the pips before passing it to him, watching the child savor the sweet black fruit with pleasure and ask for “More! More! More!” which seems to be the only word he knows. The very walls of this place seem to echo with his cry.
    On his arrival here, Dawit had been shocked at the squalid, cramped quarters, these degrading conditions, with only one filthy, malodorous, and eternally overflowing toilet. When it was flushed, the water would jump up high and splash the user, if it functioned at all. It was impossible to wash properly without going to the public baths. The windows leaked, the rain seeping into the ill-lit, filthy hallways. What bothered him above all was the constant noise, the impossibility of a moment alone, a moment of silence. Now he has the possibility of leaving this sordid place behind, perhaps of helping his friends, as well.
    Despite the copious meal he has eaten, for the first time in years he is unable to sleep that night in the cramped room he shares with the others who have found shelter here. They have so little space to sleep in they have to turn together. They are not much better than the people in the prison cells in his country that many of them have fled. He lies without a sheet over him, fully dressed, his small stock of underwear and clean socks, his few books, all his earthly goods bundled under his head for a pillow. Uncomfortably, he listens to the stertorous breathing of the others around him, the coughing,an occasional dream-cry in the night, and wonders if M. will really take him in, a strange Ethiopian. Will she reconsider and turn him away? He is afraid she may have been drunk, though she did not seem drunk to him. Had the
menthe verte
gone to her head? Perhaps she will have forgotten her encounter with him