Walking on Dry Land by Denis Kehoe

Author:Denis Kehoe
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Profile
Published: 2010-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

Luanda: February 1969

HEAT RISING, MID-FEBRUARY. Helena is at home, alone, early on a Saturday afternoon, thinking she should really tidy the place up. There are breakfast dishes still in the sink, newspapers and books all over the table, and a couple of stray socks on the floor. She could water the plants too, but she doesn’t know where to begin really, feels exhausted already. She goes to the bedroom, runs her hands along the tiny babygrows, lifts them to her face; can almost smell her child already.

While he’s at a café not far from home, José, interviewing an older writer for a feature he’s doing for a South African newspaper. Which may even make it all the way to London, who knows? And he’s asking him about Angolan writers putting the musseques on the literary map, giving the people a voice, a presence, bringing them into the written world. He’d like to write himself too, José, but thinks he’ll learn all he can from his job first. And that’s going well too; he’s actually working as the editor of a novel for the first time now.

Funnily enough Helena is thinking about these new Angolan novels too. About how so many people in the musseques can’t even read or write, can’t recognise themselves in these words because they don’t make sense to them. Strange coded symbols huddled together like families, that’s what they must seem like, she thinks to herself as she puts a book back on the shelf.

And it’s then it first hits her, the savage pain between her legs. She can feel it, her waters breaking, oozing down between her thighs. She puts her hand there but there’s a lot of it, sticky and heavy, and it’s blood. The pain knocks her back onto the sofa.

José shakes the man’s hand and looks after him as he walks away, wondering how he has arrived at this point in his life. What makes a writer a writer, a man a man. Before he puts his sunglasses on and heads for home, thinking he’ll take Helena for a spin to the Iha. Maybe they can have lunch at a restaurant there, or a picnic. He notices the bakery on his left.

‘Good afternoon,’ the owner greets him, ‘everything good? How is Helena?’

‘Good, yes, everything is fine.’

‘How long to go now?’ she asks.

‘Just over a month,’ he replies, ‘though they say they often go late on their first, isn’t that right?’

‘Sim, senhor, but I was late on all three of mine. Boy or girl, what do you think it will be?’

‘A boy, definitely a boy,’ he smiles as he pays, takes the small box of cakes and walks out, then gets distracted and finds himself inside a record shop.

Where is he? Where the hell is he? Helena asks herself, thinking she has to get up, find some way to get to the hospital and help her little baby out. Her girl, it’s going to be a girl, isn’t it? the thought heaves through her. She’s always wanted a girl, never had a sister at home.

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