Free The Journey Prize Stories 21 by Various Page B

found another small market where I was able to sit again in the shade, drinking melon juice. My embarrassment at lingering was not as compelling as my pounding, pounding head and my exhaustion, and I spent the rest of the afternoon there, the girl who was the proprietor treating me like her fragile patient, commiserating aboutthe heat, offering water, juice, and advice, joined sometimes by others passing by or stopping for something to drink or eat, all seriously concerned about me. I turned down several offers of escort back to the hotel.
    Christopher was up when I returned, waiting, his eyes closed, hands folded in his lap, sitting in a chair under the ceiling fan in the small lobby. When I asked him what he had learned about music performances he told me that the desk clerk had said the town was empty of bands, that a festival was underway across the lake, and we would be taking the ferry in the morning, a twenty-four-hour ferry ride with several stops on the way till we reached the northern shore and the village where the highlife bands of the region had gathered.
    If we had made this long overseas journey before, we would have talked about everything. Christopher is dark, the darkest black person I’ve met, till here, where everyone is darker than he is. He would have joked but also admired, speculated, and invited me to speculate. We would have talked about the music we heard in the city, and the heat, the slave fort, the food, the taxi driver and the hotel clerk, the city and the beauty, the beauty I noticed without noticing, and we certainly would have spoken of the potential symbolism of our trip up the lake to join the festival, about our pursuit of the music that seemed to retreat as we advanced.
    In the evening, in our small room, like a sleeper on a train, boiling, with the rumble of the engines coming through the window and the vibrations humming through the hot floor, I said, “Christopher, please talk to me. Please let’s talk.” He was lying on the lower bunk, on his back, and he looked at me and said nothing.
    â€œI know you’re angry,” I said. “I’m angry too. I’m angry that all my love for you can’t do anything, and it seems so unimportant, our love seems so unimportant now, and I’d do anything, really, I’d do anything,” and of course I started to cry as soon as I spoke, and I couldn’t finish my sentence.
    Christopher sat up and turned to me; he looked at me, incredulous, or disgusted. He was about to speak; he was going to say something to me about love, but then he grimaced, and he said only “Oh,” and again “Oh,” emitted each time as a gasp of pain and surprise, and he fell back on the bunk. He lay there, curled up, one hand gripping the edge of the mattress, and cursed through clenched teeth while I sobbed uselessly, uselessly, till finally his attack passed. Christopher rolled over to face the wall and covered his face with his hands. A breeze had come up and the ship had begun to roll gently.
    What I said was true. Our love used to count for so much, enough for so much else not to matter; for twenty-six years all my life’s problems, anything that threatened me, was disabled and finally dispelled by Christopher’s love. Everyone could hear his voice everywhere, in commercials, voice-overs for coming attractions, in-flight audio, syndicated public radio, documentaries, but I heard him speak only for me; in a voice deeper and warmer than he ever used for anyone else, he would close his eyes and speak my name.
    The village we have come to is a sprawling collection of circular grass huts. We have been told that the festival began two days ago, but we are in time for the last day. We are staying in someone’s home; some family cheerfully gave up their home for us. Christopher could not disguise being sick,and his insistence that he would not see a doctor was met with a collective insistence that he must, till