Read The Gloaming for Free Online

cook? As Jackson said, the bus comes once a week. I’ve never heard another vehicle.
    The police post is a shabby cement building with an office and a cell. No one is here.
    â€˜Where is this man?’ Dorothea says, frowning. ‘Let us wait. Are you free to wait with me?’
    The late afternoon light stretches out the shadows and the air cools. We sit on the steps. Down by the roundabout I see the men with the goat resting. The goat bleats with passion, its ribcage visibly expanding and lifting. How it longs for the reassurance of another goat’s answer.
    â€˜Kessy says you walked with him toward the north.’
    As if we’d gone on a little hike. ‘Yes. He came to help me.’
    â€˜The children, he told me. I’m sorry for your trouble. They are very bad. Little animals.’
    â€˜So Kessy said.’
    She’s looking up at me with a small smile. ‘This word, animals, you don’t like it.’
    Tom and I could never trust anyone with frankness. In those high-minded, expatriate circles, a comment made even in dark humor or innocence could be twisted. To call someone ‘an animal’—even one of the perpetrators—would lay you open to charges of racism. It would be a career-ender.
    â€˜Somehow it is shaming?’ Dorothea presses.
    â€˜Yes.’ And this makes her laugh.
    â€˜But they are without shame. Like animals. Do you see? You maybe feel shame for them, but they do not feel shame for themselves. They are strong, because their brothers and sisters who are weak have already died.’ She waves her hand around, encompassing all we see. ‘This is a graveyard. Here are more babies than rocks buried in the soil. It is too crowded. There is no room for shame.’
    In my mind’s eye, I see the three children dancing in the road—yes, shameless, weightless, and Kessy saying, ‘Do you think they will become civil?’ They were beating a puppy to death.
    â€˜Friend.’ Dorothea touches my wrist with her fingers. ‘Sometimes you’re going very far away.’
    Soon, I think, soon she will start asking questions. Why and how and who. So I turn to her, the party trick of my full attention. ‘Tell me. Tell me about Mr Kessy.’
    â€˜You see that he doesn’t belong here?’
    â€˜He doesn’t belong here.’ Tom called this means of deflection, lobbing. He was proud of my ability to lob our associates. For hours at any given dinner table I was able to deflect, to reveal not a single thing about myself while giving the impression of participating in the conversation.
    Dorothea adjusts her wig. ‘Kessy is a bad policeman but a good man. Once he was a good policeman and a bad man. He changed, you see. One day. In only one day, one hour, one minute. For the police, it is not the same in this country. They are corrupt. They must be.’
    Possibly, I could say to Dorothea: You’d be surprised at what happens in my country. But which country? My country was Tom. Instead, I simply lean forward, creasing my brow to show her my concentration.
    â€˜In this country,’ she says, ‘the salary of a policeman is too low and the barracks are filthy with very poor plumbing and often no running water.’ The spool of her story unravels, the more she tells, the more she wants to tell.
    There are seasons of corruption: twice a year, when school fees are due, and just before Christmas or Eid. The pressure on police to provide for their families is greatest during these times, so they set up roadblocks to check drivers’ licences and find all kinds of things wrong with cars: a cracked mirror, a missing door handle. This is easy to do because the Traffic Act is hundreds of pages long. Even driving in flip-flops is an offense.
    â€˜We plan for these periods,’ she explains. ‘We make sure we never have a lot of money in our wallets, only small bills, because a policeman will accept even two