Love in the Driest Season by Neely Tucker

Author:Neely Tucker
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781400080809
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2004-02-16T16:00:00+00:00

11

RAIN

THE RAINS descended on Harare then, washing out power lines, phone connections, and television reception. Ditches were turned into midafternoon streams, and water dripped from trees and arose in a spray from passing cars. Thunder would boom seemingly at the treetops, a whoomp that would make you duck and would leave teacups rattling in their saucers. Dogs scampered for cover. Then a crack of lightning hit with the force of a detonation, and the windows vibrated and the lights flickered and died, leaving only the sound of rain drumming on the tin roof.

In these desultory afternoons, we threw open our curtains and watched the rain roll across the yard in sheets, bringing a malaise of depression and uncertainty and poverty and the sense of being a thousand miles away from the rest of the world. In Rome or Manhattan people were going to work in offices and chatting on the Internet and having cappuccino. Here the phones were down, the country was collapsing, and diversions were scarce. Bookstore shelves were lined with cheap paperbacks, celebrity memoirs, and last year’s novels that had been popular with distant, richer people. Hollywood movies of the previous season played in strip-mall theaters, the last stop on the international circuit of cinematic backwaters and afterthoughts. Cafes near them would be jammed late on weekend nights, echoing with the sound of bright chatter and clinking glasses. A friend in Egypt bound up a package to send to me, but Cairo post office clerks refused to accept it. They looked at the labeled destination and said, “There is no such place as Zimbabwe.” A supervisor ordered it opened and inspected for contraband.

Our rooms were filled with slender candles and fat candles and tall candles and short candles; their yellow light flickered in the evening gloom. Chipo would watch them, mesmerized.

And still the rains fell.

The swimming pool looked as if it were being sprayed by machine-gun bursts of raindrops. Palm trees twisted sideways in the gusts. The driving rain turned into ropes so thick I could scarcely see beyond our jacarandas. On the hillside above us, the rains built into a lake behind our boundary wall. The water was one foot high and then two, three, and then four, and then the wall toppled into our driveway in a cascade of rushing water and shattering brick.

In early December, I sent my editors this e-mail: “The local papers say Harare has been hit with the worst electrical storms in memory. Some sections of town, on priority circuits, are fine. But our phone lines are out or garbled beyond comprehension. E-mail, faxes, and phone calls have been impossible. Today our electricity has been out for fourteen hours. I am writing this on my last few minutes of computer battery power and sending via satellite phone, in which the batteries are also fading.”

We ate in restaurants and took Chipo to the town’s only bowling alley—the rattle and noise brought out round after round of giggles. Vita was the lead organizer of

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.