Truth, by Omission Read online

  “Yes that,” Vincent replied, and then he added, “and atonement.”

  “Atonement? For what?”

  Vincent was lost in introspection for several moments until the silence was broken by a deep guttural rumble that undulated on the night air. I felt the sound as much as I heard it. He put an extended finger up to his pursed lips and cupped a hand behind his ear.

  “Lions,” he whispered.

  The king of the jungle was more than just that. The way the reverberations rolled through the darkness with firm confidence and certainty, inspiring awe more than instigating fear, made him the supreme presence of an entire continent.

  We lolled in the majesty of the resonance for a few minutes after the basal music finished and the echoes floated away. Finally, Vincent restarted the conversation. “If we’re lucky we might see some of the game herds in the next couple of days,” he said. “Unfortunately, we’re too early for the big migrations, but the smaller herds should be gathering.”

  I was looking forward to the wildlife. I’d seen none since arriving at Nkwenda. Every creature down to the insects had been eaten by the starving hordes. So, the next day when Vincent pointed to the dust storm ahead and identified it as a buffalo herd, I paid careful attention. As we came closer, I could make out the animals, perhaps a hundred or more. I’d never seen them in such numbers, but our driver laughed and told me that during the great migrations they would gather by the thousands, the wildebeests by the hundreds of thousands. Before arriving in the camp I had seen lots of wild game, but only in small bands or as isolated animals. I wondered how so many people could have starved in our camp at Nkwenda when it was just a few days’ drive away from so much huntable game. What started as a novelty, seeing the herds of gazelle, zebra, giraffe, topi, and wildebeest, soon became a nuisance as they slowed us down, showing no fear of our approaching vehicle as they grazed by the hundreds on the dirt roadway.

  We spent two more nights in small hotels before arriving to three nights of luxury at the Continental in Dodoma. The United Nations provided us with the rooms, truly palatial to me. Vincent smiled as I turned on the tap and ran hot water over my hands. I flushed the toilet four times just to flush it. And then I noticed the cool air pumping from the air conditioner mounted on the wall. I put my hands in the flow and tried to direct it to my face.

  “Enjoy that while you can,” he said. “You won’t find many of those in Paris.”

  Vincent had told me a lot about Paris, preparing me for what to expect, and this was another bit of information I filed away.

  I stayed in the room while Vincent took a cab to the UN offices. The hot water and new bar of soap were a treat to be enjoyed. I filled the tub three times, refilling each time after the water cooled too much. But then when I got out I found the room much too cold. I shut off the air-conditioning and opened the window to allow the heat in.

  Three days in Dodoma and I was feeling antsy. I preferred more mileage between us and the camp now that I had my paperwork. I was glad when our driver showed up at the hotel to fetch us. Vincent and I had decided to forgo flying for this leg of our trip, as the others had chosen to do, and instead took the Camry and driver provided by the UN office. I’d never seen the savanna plateau, and Vincent assured me that four more days overland would be a worthwhile experience.

  The road from here on was paved and made for smoother travel. We never got as close to the wildlife as we did coming out of the lakes region, but we did see much more of it. In the distance we often spied elephants in large family herds and several times spotted prides of lions. This was the only time in all my life in Africa that I had seen the royal beasts. They were often referred to in my culture, but they had been hunted and driven from our mountain jungles years ago. We stopped by the roadside to sit and watch, and I studied them from a distance, admiring their elegance and gracefulness as they softly padded, a small puff of dust rising with each paw fall. Their dominance required no demonstration as the sounds of their night roars from a few days earlier proved. I saw no parallel at all between these regal creatures and Idi Mbuyamba, who had used his self-proclaimed affinity to the great cats to inspire fear in others. To me, he was much more like the striped hyenas skulking around in the darkness, scavenging off others.

  Anna

  Four weeks have now dragged by since our Stephanie passed, and we’re in the kitchen. Anna has just finished the dinner dishes and sits down across from me on a stool at the island.

  “Let’s take a trip, Freddie,” Anna says. She holds the top of the teapot secure as she pours us each a cup of chamomile.

  I look up from the news on my tablet. “Hmmph, where would you like to go, Anna?”

  “Anywhere, let’s just get out of this house for a while … take some real time off. Let’s take the honeymoon we never had.” I know what she’s doing. She’s doing it for me more than her. I’ve been able to escape sinking into the inky whirlpool for the past month because she’s been keeping me above water. She’s my brave knight. And I’m embarrassed by it, but also grateful, very grateful.

  “Maybe Mexico … or Hawaii,” she says. “Or let’s get far away. You could show me Africa. You said we’d go sometime.”

  We were going to do that with Stephanie. I’d wanted her to see what’s out there in the world when she was old enough, to see the beautiful majesty of Africa, even the corruption and bleakness of Africa—her heritage.

  “Now wouldn’t be a good time for me to show you Africa, Anna. I just can’t do Africa now, not yet. And I’m not sure I should take any more time away from the clinic right now. I haven’t pulled my share there since Steph got sick. No one’s saying anything, but I feel I need to make it up to them a bit.”

  “Fuck the clinic, Freddie. You’ve been doing extra time in there the whole last month since Steph died.” She’s not cautious anymore, I know she’s serious by the way she’s raised her voice. “That’s all in your head … you don’t owe them anything. They’re not asking you for anything. You’re the one putting all that pressure on yourself.” She’s right, of course, as she usually is. “Would you expect anything extra from any of them if they lost a child?” she asks. “No. You’d never think of it.”

  “It’s not just the partners, it’s my patients,” I say.

  “No, it’s not! They’re not getting sick now to make up for the time you were off six months ago.” She seldom shouts, so now I’m taking this very seriously. She takes her eyes from mine and looks straight into her cup. “Freddie, we haven’t made love for seven months.”

  I know this, but I’ve been blocking it out, avoiding thinking about it. “I’m not a nun,” she continues. “And I don’t want to be. I need you to come back from wherever you’ve gone. You have to try.” I know that she’s saying this for me and not for her. She’s always put me first, much to my own shame. I know that she would stay celibate if in some way it would be better for me. That’s how much she loves me. And I love her just as much. I just have a hard time showing her, unlike the way she so easily shows me.

  A thought suddenly comes into my mind, something a counselor from the hospital cautioned us about before Steph died. He said that the statistics for couples separating go way up after the death of a child and they go off the charts when that child was the only one. I love Anna way too much to become one of those statistics.

  “Okay, Anna. Let’s take a vacation. We’ll take our honeymoon, the one we’ve put off forever. A nice long vacation—maybe Saint Martin, or Jamaica … or anywhere you want, just not Africa right now.”

  She straightens up on the stool, her face brightening, and it makes me feel like I haven’t felt in a long time. Her exuberance is a dappling of light on the surface above my murky depths, and it gives me a fresh breath.

  “But let’s wait for a month,” I say. “We can both tidy up things at work. We’ll have Christmas with your family and then we’ll go away for the new y
ear. We can take a whole month and get away from winter. It’s a good idea, Anna … just the two of us, time just for us.”

  She comes around the island and sits on my lap, putting both arms around me, hugging tightly. It is the fun happy hug that has been missing for the last nine months. And it cleanses something in me, like an infection being rinsed out of a wound, like the worst is suddenly past and a healing has started.

  I immediately decide not to go back into Stephanie’s room tonight like I’d planned—like I’ve been doing for the past month since she passed, going in there and wallowing in thoughts of what we’ve lost and what we’ll never have. Instead, I lift Anna off my lap and direct her down the hall toward our bedroom.

  We spend the next four dreamy hours making love like we used to, seventeen years ago, when we first fell in love. We aren’t fucking, and we aren’t having sex. We’re making love—laughing, and crying, and holding, and touching, and kissing, and exploring, smelling, tasting, feeling, and crying, and laughing, again and again. We aren’t trying to make up for the past seven months, but it feels like we might be.

  I have to be at the clinic at seven tomorrow morning. I’ll need to be up by five to get in a quick workout and then make the commute from Boulder to downtown Denver, yet I don’t care that it’s now after midnight. Anna has fallen asleep while I lie here awake. Splayed fully naked, on top of the sheets, the low November moon is reflecting a soft light on her. How lucky am I, an orphan out of Africa, lying here in my own home in America, beside this angel of a wife. At thirty-seven she is more beautiful than when we met seventeen years ago. The nubile softness of those times has been sculpted into a sleek sinewy mature body. Her pale skin, dotted with a galaxy of freckles, is complemented by her long blond hair, now cast on the pillow like a veil. Several times she’s threatened to crop off that hair simply for practicality, but she never has, knowing how much I adore it. Small breasts, shapely hips, her tummy shows no sign of ever having borne a child. I know she loves me totally and devotedly. How fortunate I am. The slight smile has returned to her face as she lies there, lost in her own dreams, that peaceful smile that has been missing all these past months. I resolve to myself, at this moment, not to let our loss of Stephanie drag either of us down. Content to just enjoy her sleeping presence, I let myself drift back to our first days together.

  * * *

  I was twenty-one when I first reluctantly met Anna in Paris. It was an arranged meeting, not like a date or anything, but rather a favor to Vincent. Since our meeting in the Nkwenda camp he had become my closest friend. A friend to whom I was deeply indebted, and to whom I would become even further indentured, once this meeting played out.

  “Alfred, I know you’re extremely busy with your studies, but I was hoping that you could take a few minutes and help me out.”

  “Of course, Vincent. Anything.” We conversed in French, the common language between us.

  “There’s a reporter, Anna … somebody from the student newspaper at Hautes Études Internationales et Politiques. She’s doing a little feature on the experience of African refugees here in Paris. Would you be able to talk to her?”

  “Does she want to talk about my experience in Africa or here?” I was reluctant to speak to a stranger about the things that I had seen and done in Africa, but I was happy to talk about my efforts to adapt to European life.

  “Hopefully both,” he replied. Vincent himself didn’t know the worst things from my past, but I would do anything for this man. We’d left Africa a little over a year earlier, and since arriving back in France he’d been tirelessly fundraising for Médecins Sans Frontières and promoting the case for a more open refugee policy here, in addition to his responsibilities at the hospital.

  Vincent made arrangements for me to meet the novice reporter at a café near the campus where I was studying. This was a good thing because I couldn’t really afford the time away from my studies or the Métro ticket to go anywhere beyond walking distance. As soon as I entered, a rather perky girl with long blond hair and soft, straight bangs stood from a table at the other side of the room and strode my way with one arm reaching out.

  “Alfred Olyontombo?”

  She took my hand firmly, surprising me with her grip. “Yes, Anna …?”

  “Fraser. Anna Fraser. Dr. Bergeron speaks very highly of you. I’m so pleased that you’ve taken the time to meet with me.” Her French was fine, but I noticed an unfamiliar accent to it.

  Still slightly off balance from the warmth of her handshake, I stupidly asked her, “How did you know I’m Alfred?”

  She half-stepped back, looked at me from head to toe, and then looked around the rest of the café. “You’re the only black dude in sight. Doesn’t take a Sherlock.” I didn’t understand this reference at the time, but her spunk impressed me. “Can I get you a coffee?” she asked.

  I was too shy to impose on her, but I also didn’t want to spend my meager funds on coffee. “No, I’m fine, thank you.”

  She ordered anyhow. “Two café américain. Do you want cream or sugar?”

  “Just black. Thank you.” There was a wholesomeness to her and a “take charge” attitude that most Frenchwomen didn’t have, at least in my limited experience. I can’t explain why, but I suddenly felt a bit inferior in the situation, intimidated.

  “Well, I guess we survived,” she said as we sat down.

  “Survived?”

  “Survived. No apocalypse, no second coming, not even a single computer failure reported anywhere in the world. Guess we could have made better use of those billions we got sucked into blowing.”

  It was only a few days into the new millennium. It took me a moment to clue in to her quip. Survival clearly had a much more visceral meaning to me, but I wanted to match her tone. “Doesn’t actually feel any more like the future than the last century felt, does it?”

  She raised her coffee cup in a toast. “To the next century … peace and harmony.”

  I touched my cup to hers as I thought about this for a second, reflecting on where I came from and the brighter prospects of a future away from Africa.

  She looked me straight in the eyes, obviously noticing my hesitation. “Shall we begin? Please tell me your story.”

  “My story? What do you want to know?”

  “Dr. Bergeron says that he met you in Tanzania and that you then came here as a refugee. Tell me.” Her notebook and pen were ready, and she put a small recorder on the table. “Do you mind if I tape? I can’t really do shorthand.”

  “I don’t mind at all. Well, I met Vincent … Dr. Bergeron, in a camp … a refugee camp. He was working as a doctor there. He was totally overworked. There was one other doctor, provided by the UN, I think, and two nurses. But they couldn’t keep up. We were at least twenty thousand in the camp at that time. There was no water, no food. We were all hungry and most everyone was sick from something. Vincent was a saint there. He—”

  “Yes, but what about you?” she interrupted. “I want your story. I’d like to make this a personal account, firsthand … from you.”

  I didn’t like talking about myself. It was much easier to talk about others and to talk in generalities. I began to think that perhaps I had gotten myself into something I didn’t really want. Completely out of character, I blurted out, “What about you, what’s your story?”

  She stared at me for a moment, and then I think she sensed my discomfort. “Okay. I’m an American. I’ve been here for four months studying international politics at HEIP and trying to perfect my French. It’s my third year of college, and I volunteer on the student newspaper. It’s a way to meet people and force myself to do more writing in French.”

  “I think your story is better than mine,” I said. “Where in America?”

  “Colorado Springs.”

  I shook my head.

  “Near Denver. In the middle of the country.”

 
I nodded, but I really knew very little of American geography.

  “It’s in the mountains.”

  Mountains I knew about. I’d spent much of my life in them.

  “Where are you from? Not the camp—I mean, where were you born?” she asked.

  I thought how I might answer this and then decided to be honest. “I’m not sure … a small village, somewhere in the jungle. I know it was a pretty remote village. There were no roads, just a trail to the next village. Most people came by river.”

  “So, you grew up there, in the jungle?”

  “Sort of. In the jungle, anyhow. For the most part.”

  She noticed the hesitation in my answer and paused to think. “So, um, you went to school there? In the jungle?”

  It was at this moment that I made a split-second decision that would follow me to this very day. I liked this girl, and I wanted to be as honest as I could with her. But there were things, many things, that I didn’t want to be honest about even with myself. There were things that I had spent the last several years pretending had never happened, pushing them into hiding places in the back of my mind, hoping that if I didn’t look at them again, they might eventually disappear. I certainly wasn’t going to talk about these things with this person I had only just met. And yet I wanted to be truthful.

  So, I decided that I would not lie to her. I might avoid some answers and I might tell her only parts of the story, but I wouldn’t tell her any outright lies. And this is what I have done with Anna for the past seventeen years. Everything that has happened over all these years in which we have been together is a wide-open book. We have no secrets between us. We’ve made it our personal policy. We know each other’s deepest fantasies and ambitions. But much of what happened in Africa still remains buried.

  The truth I have told Anna about Africa contains no lies, it simply isn’t the whole truth. And it began on that very first day I met her with that split-second decision I made. She might have sensed that I wasn’t telling her everything, but she was sensitive enough, and kind enough, to not acknowledge it. She never pried any deeper with her questions than I had led her, a sure sign that she was not destined for a career as a reporter. And over the duration of our marriage she has never pushed into those places that she surely knows exist. Perhaps she thinks that eventually I will open up to her, or perhaps she has decided it really doesn’t matter anymore. I hope it is the latter. I hope that I have proven to her my goodness, my humanity. I hope that she will never be faced with judging me by any more than the person she has known me to be for seventeen years.