The Final Passage by Caryl Phillips

Author:Caryl Phillips [Phillips, Caryl]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2004-04-01T05:00:00+00:00

*

Thursday morning and the restless sun rose particularly early, or so it seemed. Michael opened his eyes and reached over to touch his wife, but his blind hand slid across the sheet and off the end of the bed. He turned over, sat up and heard her talking to Calvin. She was packing. In the pale morning light Michael's shadow moved slowly across the greyish white slats of the bedroom wall. He decided to lie in bed a few moments longer. As he reached down to pull up the sheet, he caught his hand in a band of light which clipped the edge of the ring; his memory stirred.

Last night he had eaten his meal in silence, then, scraping the wooden chair across the floor, he moved over to sit in the cooling breeze of the open doorway and watch the evening fall. Leila cleared up the soiled plate and utensils from the small table top. Michael kneaded his soft palm into his face, wondering whether he should bother to shave before he left but, as ever, there was very little stubble to remove. In this light nobody would notice. Leila handed her husband an open bottle of beer which he drank slowly and reflectively before placing it down empty beside the chair.

‘Anything you want?’ asked Leila.

‘No, it's alright.’

Michael spoke to her with detachment. Up above a solitary gull wheeled lazily. Then the sun set, not with the usual outburst of colour, but with a gentle, almost touching grace.

‘Leaving this place going make me feel old, you know, like leaving the safety of your family to go live with strangers,’ said Michael.

Leila stood up and carried Calvin across to the table where she would finally prepare him for bed. She looked across at the back of Michael's head, feeling as though he were confessing something to her and that perhaps she should not have moved away from him. But before she had a chance to say anything, he spoke again.

‘I met Footsie Walters’ brother Alphonse in town last Saturday when I went in to carry the yams. He don't make it sound bad or nothing, but he make it sound a bit different from how I did imagine it.’

‘Which is like what?’

‘Better, I suppose.’

For a moment Leila had thought she must be mistaken. She wondered if Michael was consciously trying to create this mood or if he had really forgotten himself. Either way she went forward and put a hand on to his shoulder.

‘I know things between us don't be so good at times,’ he said, looking up at her, ‘but it's like you're putting a chicken into a cardboard box. The thing bound to start jumping about a bit and loose off a few feathers.’ He laughed, then scraped back his chair and stood up. ‘I'm beginning to sound like a preacher man.’

He fastened his shirt buttons up to his neck, rolled his cuffs down and buttoned them up, then he quickly slipped on his blue suit jacket. He dragged his chair back across the floor and left it by the table.

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