* * *
It got on my fucking nerves the way she was always talking to somebody, always looking at that bag of hers, which as I predicted had nothing in it. Just some T-shirts, blouses, shorts, and a pair of high-heeled shoes. I guess she must have sewn her wallet and passport under her skin. Really. I searched the whole thing when she was asleep, when we were both officially asleep, and there was nothing there. Maybe she left the important stuff in some other hotel, but then why didn’t she leave the photo there too? A6 format. I know that sort of thing. I can show you my ID from when I worked at the copy shop, until they fired me. But I will not go into that now. Now what matters is what I saw in the photo: a high forehead with long stringy hair hanging down, narrow shoulders like a woman’s, the start of a belly – even though the dude could not have been more than twenty-five or twenty-six, my age in other words. Plus, he had her eyebrows and those big thighs, in red corduroys. So a relative then, a cousin or something. If it was her son, I don’t know what she is doing in bed with me all this time.
I got out of bed and indicated to her with a slight nod that she should follow me. At first she just stared, at my back maybe, or my backside. She was probably thinking it was high time we did it. I was thinking too, mainly that I should do something funny, something unexpected, like pick her up and carry her into the bathroom. That woman needed a serious cleansing treatment. All that dust and dirt. And now she was talking too; that drove me crazy more than anything. Maybe with wussy boy from the picture. He looked like he had just crawled out his mama’s arse. His sort is the worst. Smoking hash, getting into trouble, then putting on some angel face. On the street they would strip him and slap him around, then hang him upside down in the sun for a few hours.
Eventually she got up, but instead of following me she went over to her bag, unzipped it, and looked in the side pocket. I knew she was checking to see if the photo was still there. Then she took out a shower sponge and went into the bathroom.
‘Are we going to have a shower together?’ she said, looking a little surprised, though I could tell she liked the idea. I was about to say ‘yah, together’ but changed my mind.
‘You get wet first, then I will scrub you. If you want...’
I do not know. At first I used vous with her; then I started using tu. But after spending the night together, after ogling her thighs and going through her bag, I guess I could do that too. And besides, I did not dislike her. Despite all the dust, which in the harmattan season can fill your mouth and nose and ears and literally turn you into a mummy, she still smelled of something sweet. But here again, I cannot remember what. It’s like she was taking my memory away.
‘Because somewhere you heard that we white people scrub ourselves like this?...’ She showed me with her fingers. It meant as gently as possible. And basically I agreed, though I had no idea how white people took showers. I had never seen them do it, at least not close up and certainly not in a bathroom like this, with walls covered in ceramic tiles. I tell you, that was a five-star hotel.
‘Turn around,’ I blurted, a little too fast and too loud, which made her turn around right away, without hesitating. ‘And get undressed.’ Now that was not so easy. She hunched forward slightly, as if hiding something, as if trying to shield something on her body. Her belly, her backside, I don’t know, maybe her privates. Then I started to whistle. From sheer embarrassment. I sucked in my cheeks and made a kind of warble.
‘It’s taboo to whistle at night. You might summon up the spirits...’
‘How do you know that?’
‘Somebody told me.’
I looked at her naked back in the mirror. It was slightly curved, the spine shaped like an S, which told me that when she is alone, when everything disappears around her, when there are no sounds for her to listen to, no faces for her to touch, what pain she must suffer. The top of her back was painted with spots that were strangely grafted into her skin; below, nothing. Just a lot of pink. ‘What do you have here?’ I said, and from simple consideration put my finger on the glass. ‘These spots, I mean...’
‘Freckles,’ she said. ‘They’re just freckles. Nothing to be afraid of. You can touch them. They come from the sun, if you have sensitive skin.’
That one in the picture had skin the same as hers. His arms, too, were full of freckles. At first I thought they were hair. But again, I could not tell her this or she would find out why I followed her into the hotel in the first place, why I closed the curtains, and especially why now I wanted to wash her.
I shut my eyes, as if to gain time. And when I opened my eyelids she had the sponge in her hand and was holding it out to me. The expression on her face, or maybe just the way her hair was slightly tousled after she pulled her T-shirt over her head, reminded me of my Auntie. She was married to a Nigerian, a short, black-skinned dude who was always saying scheisse. He promised to bring her some day to that country where mostly they say scheisse and generally shit on everything, except their chocolate and gold watches, but in the end he just stayed there and completely forgot he was ever married to my Auntie and was supposed to make a baby for her. Because if he had made a baby for her then my Auntie would not have rubbed lotion on my body every night. When she pulled me out of the plastic basin, which was painted blue so I could pretend I was swimming in the sea, in the Atlantic almost, I would lick my lips and stare at her dark, ringed nipples. We were both of us naked to the waist – I forgot to mention that. Me and my Auntie, I mean. And when I dropped my towel on the ground, I had an erection. My Auntie smiled, shook her head, and rubbed lotion on my penis.
‘I think you need to take your shorts off too if you are going to take a shower,’ I said. I was still avoiding her eyes.
‘And my panties?’
‘Yah, well, I do not know, I think...’
I started feeling hot, like I was plugged into 220 volts, or like somebody had hung me upside down in the sun. If my skin was white, as white as hers or her son’s, I would probably not get freckles but blisters. As it was, my eyes merely bulged out of their sockets.
‘God, you’re adorable,’ she said, and laughed my Auntie’s laugh. ‘Do you really think I’m going to let you wash me?’
It was like that one in her bag was laughing at me too. Like he curled his lips and then suddenly turned around and stuck his arse in my face. Fuck. I would slice it off him if I could. And I would also slice off those delicate shoulders, those thighs and that belly stuffed with European shit – Coca-Cola, chewing gum, hamburgers and I do not know what else. Because that photo does not tell you the entire story; if you don’t know about such things you would not even notice that the dude has a problem. But I knew about them and my dick swelled up. She was not even undressed but there it was already. ‘Your son is a queerboy, isn’t he?’ I blurted out in a moment of inspiration.
I thought she would say something different. Like ‘go fuck yourself’ or ‘you have got to be kidding’. When she admitted it right away, I was stunned. I just stood in that bathroom, pressed against the ceramic tiles, and tried to keep my eyes focused on her back. If at that moment I had taken the sponge she held out to me and started massaging her sensitive skin with tender strokes – she’s the one who said it was sensitive – then this thing now would not be happening to us. Basically, for the first time in the entire history of my short life, I would have touched white skin. And if I had touched her on the back I would have touched something else too. But now it all turned to scheisse. I will probably never eat chocolate with seventy per cent cocoa or wear a gold watch, at least not in the country where that Nigerian who forgot about my Auntie works up and down from one end to the other. More than once I heard her crying at night behind that gauzy sheet. When she realized my eyes were open, that I was listening, she said, go to sleep, Ismael, go to sleep, it has nothing to do with you. But if it had nothing to do with me, then how did I end up now with this woman in a five-star hotel?
‘Well, what did