The Devil That Danced on the Water by Aminatta Forna

Author:Aminatta Forna
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grove Atlantic

27

We spent our first night in the Angus Hotel overlooking Piccadilly Circus. Memuna shared with Auntie Yabome; Sheka and I were put in the room next door. I pulled the cord by the window and the chocolate-coloured curtains swished open. We looked out onto the curved lights of the giant Coca-Cola sign and they rippled on and off throughout the night, forming my first and most abiding memory of London.

The next day the four of us went for a walk. The October day was bright and bitter. On Waterloo Bridge I buried my chin into the neck of my new blue anorak and pulled my fingers up into the sleeves. I scarcely dared breathe. At home in the mornings Amadu and Amara would put bottles of boiled drinking water in the freezer. Sometimes they would forget to take them out in time and the bottles would explode; afterwards we would help pick out shards of glass and ice, one indistinguishable from the other. There was a delicious excitement in licking the ice, which stuck to our tongues, and in trying to avoid the vicious spears of glass. That was what the air was like in England. It was cold and sharp and made breathing fraught with danger.

My breath erupted in plumes of steam, like a pot on the boil. What made it do that? I wondered. I looked up at my stepmother. ‘Auntie Yabome,’ I began.

She heard me and turned, but instead of answering my question she stopped walking and addressed the three of us: ‘From now on I want you to call me Mummy. Do you understand? Mummy. You’re not to call me Auntie Yabome any more.’

Memuna and Sheka nodded; so did I. I waited. She didn’t say anything else. I forgot what I had wanted to ask and then I remembered. ‘Auntie Yabome, how come I can see my breath?’ We had started walking back up along the Strand and I ran to catch up.

‘Mummy,’ she said slowly. ‘Mummy, how come I can see my breath?’ But then she never gave me the answer.

Sheka and I had spent the night spinning on a revolving chair in our room. Next door our stepmother spent long hours on the telephone. Unattended through bath time, through bed time, we spun as fast as we could. No one came to interrupt our game. As the night progressed we took turns racing across the room and landing in the chair. Hit at just the right angle the chair shot across the room, twirling round and round as it did so. Eventually someone in an adjoining room, or possibly the unfortunate guests below us, must have complained, because some time past midnight the night porter opened the door to our room with his pass key. If he knocked, we didn’t hear him – we were making much too much noise. And at the very moment the key turned in the lock, the hours of turbulence and motion had their inevitable effect on Sheka’s stomach.

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