They Dream in Gold by Mai Sennaar

Author:Mai Sennaar
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Zando

Tonight, fifteen years later, Claude asks to see it again.

And the carriage driver, who is renting his horse from the local Marabout and is not supposed to take it more than a fifteen-mile radius from the French quarter, looks back at Sokhna in disbelief.

She shrugs and mouths, “Please.”

They agree upon a price for the young man to take them overnight through three towns to the village to see their homes.

_______

As they leave the city for the bush, the terrain quiets and Claude drifts off to sleep. The loudest sounds are his wheezing and the bluesy rhythm of the stallion’s stride. Sokhna peels open the collar of Claude’s shirt, hoping to cool him down, but closes it quickly when she sees the grayness of his skin. Death whispering. The plane fuel, the inhalation of the fumes day in and day out, had given him and her father the same cancer. Why them and not her? She examines her eyes all the time for the yellowing her father suffered. The fear that she too has been poisoned keeps her restless. She panics when she has no appetite or cannot recall simple things.

The driver’s voice interrupts her thoughts.

“He’s your … employer?” he asks.

“My husband,” she replies fiercely, insulted by the insinuation.

The carriage vibrates as they cross rockier ground. It reminds her of when Claude would come to see her at her mother’s house. As he landed his plane, it rattled the china in the cupboards, lifted the pages of the books from her lap, and, her favorite part, made her tutor wait for Claude to hit the ground before continuing the physics lecture.

_______

“I think we’re here,” the driver announces the next morning, but Sokhna, still half asleep, isn’t sure.

There is so much development, the town so full of life, that it’s difficult to spot their properties. Children in blue uniforms, filing through an unpainted concrete gate into a school; women behind wooden tables, selling breakfast to construction workers.

“There they are!” Claude says, somehow immediately spotting the buildings. He pulls her along as he rushes inside.

They have no keys with them, so he breaks the glass of a side window. The air of the house is stale, the floors and furniture are browned with several layers of dust, but everything, even two unfinished cups of scotch, are still where Claude and her father left them three years ago.

Later, she hears Claude’s voice calling from the bedroom. It has no door—just a curtain, holding place for the handcrafted one from Bamako that never arrived.

“What’s taking you so long? Come here, love.” His voice sputters into a husky cough. “Come here …”

She sits beside him and reaches for his cheek, hoping for softness (a cheek must be soft). But the illness has conquered there too, leaving it leathery and hard. No place on his body is safe. Everywhere is an echo of death. She takes her hands away, keeping them safe in her lap. And he, from the look in his eyes, heartbroken but wise, understands. He touches her instead.

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