Free The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears by Dinaw Mengestu Page A

were it.”
    There was a second of silence before Kenneth reached across the table and smacked Joseph on the arm.
    “Sorry, Stephanos. You know what I meant.”
    “Of course,” I told him.
    Joseph won the chess game easily, as he always did. Whenever he plays against Kenneth or me, he does so absentmindedly, his fingers dancing over the board as if he were seeing it for the first time. When he moves a piece, he never focuses on the spot he’s moving it to. Instead, he turns his eyes back to his opponent, or even better, to someone else in the room, lending an air of inevitability to every move he makes. As a young man, he had been one of the better chess players in Kinshasa, known for his quiet, restrained demeanor even in the face of certain defeat. He had stories of all-night chess tournaments held in dingy cafés and bars, games that erupted into beatings, stabbings, and on occasion, shootings. “We had no jobs, we were done with school, no family, no money, so we played chess all day. It was what we did.” Clusters, and in some cases, surrogate families of young men formed around the game. Some were illiterate and had spent years fighting from the bush; others, like Joseph, were born into affluent families who had paid for French and English tutors before losing everything to Mobutu and his corrupt, bloated government. They had a religious devotion to the game, a respect for its handful of rules and almost infinite variations born, as Joseph said, out of a shared sense of gratitude for having at least one space where their decisions mattered. “Nobody,” he said once, “understands chess like an African.”
    After the game was over, Joseph settled back into a quiet contemplation that involved deep breaths and long pauses between each sip of beer. Winning these games gave him nothing. Kenneth was rearranging the pieces on the board, trying to discover where he had gone wrong. If and when he figured it out, he would rock back in his chair and exclaim, “Now I see what you did, you tricky bastard. That will never work again with me.”
    “You know,” Joseph said to me, “I dated a white woman once. She was from Boston. She had short curly red hair, so the teachers nicknamed her Rouge.”
    “When?” I asked him.
    “A long time ago.”
    “In the Congo?”
    “In Zaire. She was a Peace Corps volunteer.”
    “For how long?”
    “Almost two years.”
    “You didn’t waste any time, did you?”
    “What can I say? It was meant to be. We were teaching at the same school.”
    “And then what?”
    “She went back to Boston.”
    “And you lost touch?”
    “We never tried to keep it. Maybe I wrote her a letter once or twice, but nothing more than that. We had talked briefly about getting married and having little red Afro babies together, but we both knew better. She lives here now. I see her every once in a while. She’s come into the restaurant a few times for lunch.”
    “What do you say to her?”
    “Nothing.”
    “Not even once?”
    “I don’t think she recognizes me.”
    “How could she not?” I asked him.
    He finished his beer and patted his stomach.
    “I was skinnier then,” he said. “You should have seen me. I was so beautiful. You wouldn’t have believed your eyes.”

5
    O n May 4 I wake up earlier than usual with my head still clouded from last night’s drinking. The sun has barely cracked through the day, and I can still hear Joseph’s voice singing in the bar. As I swing my legs onto the floor, I make a firm resolution to myself. To go on living halfheartedly is ridiculous, I think. Here I am; this is it. Starting today, I am going to press on valiantly. I am going to march through the hours and weeks and let no disappointment, regardless of how large, steer me from my course or bring me down. I am going to open my store early. I am going to catch the morning rush-hour commuters and make them mine.
    By seven a.m. I’m fully dressed and walking out the door. Five minutes later, I’m