empty theater, reflected only off the corners of Yak’s memory. As he
brushed his fingertips along her skin, inlines of the past began to take
shape, giving back the ghost.
She leaned low and kissed him. Water passed from her mouth to
his, baptizing the Baptist. Slowly she climbed up on top as if he were
a giant mountain laid low. They began coaxing their mutual burden
up to the precipice, moving deep and deliberately like the calypso of
suboceanic currents, pushing together and apart in a bid to change
the weather.
The other patients could sense those currents too. They too were
made mostly of water. Their sleepy abstract passions took form,
became hard and tangible. Soft dreamy whimpers of joy sang
together in concert, complementing a collective vision in which their
lives still had clarity and hope and love and beauty even in the
preternatural absence of light. The next morning, the condition of the
bed linen would astonish the ward’s cleaning staff.
A lifetime of stored-up grief flooded the mount of Yak’s amba,
washing away the walls and sending all of it crumbling over the edge.
Exhaustion overtook him as he fell, rolling and tumbling towards the
base. A seed of light strove to push through the loam. No mean folly,
this. None whatsoever.
Seeing that he was asleep, Sprout climbed down his legs and emerged
from the darkened hall. The pain in her stitched belly seemed
suddenly to have disappeared. She peeled the bandages from her flat
stomach and to her surprise she saw that the doctors had fashioned
a new navel for her, right where the knife had gone in. The stitches
could come out later.
It did not take long for her to dress and walk unnoticed out of her
room, out of the building. It was easy; she glowed with too much
radiance and ecstasy to be a patient.
On the edge of the parking lot she stopped to let an ambulance
come squealing in, followed by a police car, both sirens blaring
orange and blue and red and white. Fortunately her native curiosity
got the better of her and as she watched, Izzy was taken out of the van
on a gurney. His head was bandaged and he was muttering
something about slowing down and not driving so crazy.
She followed them in, from a distance. The physician came out,
speaking with the nurses.
“He’ll be fine,” the doctor said, “A little light trauma and some
ABYSSINIA
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