Tsila's Bar, Slowwater
There were many ways of dealing with it, when one who sat at the table could neither give nor receive the pledge of honesty. The best was to leave, politely, as the dented bowl came forth, for one such as he could spit and spit and yet never wash the evil from his mouth, and the facsimile of the effort made a mockery of those for whom it had meaning, and to return later, as if wandering back in, called by the smell of the kofi as it was poured. This he had done, in years past, as Uzoji welcomed new shipmates to the Eqe Aqawe, or other visitors to Dzum; sometimes he had returned, and other times he had not.
When one could not leave –
Aremu stilled his mind from chasing down the possibilities. It is not, he told himself, helpful to think so. It is Tsila who has the guarding of her honor, and not you; you know already what you lack. Nothing which passes in that room can change that; nothing which passes in this room can worsen the ache of it.
Aremu sat on one of the low soft chairs; his back was straight. He did not hide his right wrist, here; he thought they were past that, just now. His left hand and right prosthetic both rested on his lap, gently, and he could feel the difference in pressure on his left thigh and his right, his shoulders loose and relaxed in readiness.
He had not taken Tsofi’s answer as a no, nor a relief; he knew well that honesty and openness were not one and the same. Her continuation was not a surprise; Aremu did not lose his smooth smile, nor tense even the slightest bit. “Perhaps you will,” he agreed, knowing his speaking made a lie of the words.
Your leg seems well, Aremu might have said. The one who brought you there will be glad to know it, I think, from how she spoke of you.
“It is said,” Aremu said instead, smiling, “that the opportunities which greet one during the day of yellow and the day of red, and especially their joining, follow one through the year. I have heard also that the dzutaw uses the rest of its time in rest, first, and then in replenishing, for the year to come.”
He had not asked to challenge her; he had not asked to make her afraid. He was not Niccolette, and he was afraid, in the deep animal part of him which felt at all times the scraping of the three fields against all his senses, with nothing to push back against them, and nowhere to hide.
They are true, he wanted to say, to Tom, both of them; at least, I have heard both said. The first is old superstition, the sort of thing Ahura says; it was she who said it, although she, like any Mugrobi, said only that she had heard it said. It was drifting blossoms he thought of, then, beneath the bright moonlight on the beach, driftwood beneath him and Tom’s face close to his; he knew nothing of those thoughts showed on his face, but some of the fear receded.
The second, he might have said, if he’d had the time, a biologist told us the year before last, at the same festival, at the same festival hall, as we all stood – Uzoji too – admiring the tree in the entryway. That night pinched at him, and ached, and it, too, settled his resolve. Aremu smiled still at Tsofi, and then at Tsila, as well, sitting straight and upright on the soft chair.