Free Small Circle of Beings by Damon Galgut Page B

leave her then, after putting out the fire: a sad old woman, unaware of sadness and of age, muttering to herself before an ash-choked grate. Once again I must drive back to the city: a road
five hours long, which I am already used to travelling.
    (That is our affliction, if you like. There is nothing in the world, nothing at all, which we cannot, in the end, come to accept.)

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    Stephen divorces me a month later in the high court in the city. He comes to the hospital afterwards, where I am reading to David. He stands at the foot of the bed and we all
three look questioningly at each other, as if there’s something that must be said. But, in the end, it is only formalities we must dispense with: Stephen gives me his set of keys, which open
every door to the property at home. He has given the spare ones, he explains, to Mrs de Jager on the neighbouring farm. She will come in each day to look around and check on my mother. He’ll
still go by when he can, but he lives in town now …
    I tell him that I understand.
    There are one or two other things, he adds, shifting from foot to foot. I wait expectantly, looking at this tall lean man with bristling black moustache to whom, it appears, I was once married.
I see in him, more and more, the side to his nature that Gloria MacIvor has indeed brought out, and wonder if I could have loved him this way. He is less of a headmaster now, and more of a
magician; but I have no doubt that, in a month or two, the ink will blot the edges of his hands again, the chalk dust will settle in his hair. When he has grown used to his life once more, he will
become the kind of man he was. He may even, who knows, miss me from time to time. But Gloria MacIvor, consigned to facelessness by me, will care for him and cater to his needs. He will have what he
has always, in his heart, desired: the little flat in town, bridge parties with friends, and a woman who wears colour in her face.
    ‘You must,’ he says, ‘come and visit us sometime. I would like to give you my address. If I may.’
    I say nothing, which he takes to be consent. He hands me a scrap of paper on which he has already printed, in neat black letters, the name of the place in which he lives. I accept this from him.
I put it in my bag.
    ‘I mean it,’ he says, as if I have laughed.
    ‘Thank you,’ I say gravely.
    There then follows another of the silences with which this last exchange began. He sucks at his moustache. He rattles the bottom of the bed and gives, unexpectedly, a smile.
‘Goodbye,’ he says. ‘Big boy.’
    ‘Bye,’ says David.
    ‘See you next weekend.’
    ‘Okay.’
    I continue to sit, smiling slightly to myself, as if I have a secret to keep, as Stephen leaves. I listen to the retreat of his footsteps on the tiles.
    ‘Do you want to cry?’ David asks.
    ‘No.’
    ‘I thought you said you didn’t hate him.’
    We look at each other, blinking.
    On one of the days that follows, as the afternoon draws on, Jason dies in his room at the end of the passage. The sound of screaming is what draws us all; I run from
David’s room in fright. It’s his mother, the woman named Sarah, who asked me so long ago to have tea with her: I catch a glimpse as, thrashing from side to side, two nurses grapple her
to the floor. Her mouth is open on a huge and spastic o, giving voice to a cry that we can no longer hear. I back away from her as from a vision of myself. Sightless, dizzy, I push past oncoming
bodies till I reach the safety of David’s room once more. It’s a long time before I have calmed enough to stand again.
    But David, he doesn’t die.
    I reach my decision. On a day like any other – which is, after all, the way he fell ill – I decide he has recovered. I enter his room and stand in the doorway. ‘David,’ I
tell him. ‘We’re going home.’
    He looks at me, intrigued. ‘Are we allowed to go?’
    ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Of course.’
    I realise this is true.

THREE

9
    For a long time afterwards,