The Foreign Service Journal, January 2007

had been to his house only once, when she and her husband had dropped him there in the car one rainy afternoon when his bicycle was broken. Moffat had invited them in for tea, and her husband had smiled and accepted with no hesitation. Later, he had berated Jane for her uncertainty. She’d been uncomfortable in Moffat’s little house. She felt she was intruding on him. The whole time they’d been there she’d sat stiffly in the rickety chair he’d offered, and tried not to gag as she looked around at the dirt floor and the spider webs high up the in the corners of the corrugated tin walls. The roof, also strips of tin, wasn’t fully covered, and over the open corner was a flapping sheet of wet plastic. Jane kept her eyes on the cut flowers in a tin vase on the table, huge pink blooms with blue-black cen- ters. They looked a bit like daisies. Moffat had noticed her curiosity, “My wife grows them in the back,” he said. “She sells them.” Jane’s husband had gulped down his tea with abandon, as if points were given for enthusiasm. Moffat’s house was surrounded by hundreds of others just like it in a maze of a neighborhood. Who knows if she could even find the house without Moffat as a guide? His home, for four children and two parents, had a hard-packed dirt floor, an iron bed, a broken wooden table with a too-short leg, two plastic chairs, a few water-stained boxes, a shelf that held a small collection of enamel plates and some cups and cooking things, a fire-ring in a corner of the floor where tea or stew bubbled, and a small, scratched mirror. It also had flowers, but no telephone for her to call, no way to ask why he hadn’t come. It was much later when Jane heard the familiar click of the gate latch, and then the scrape of metal against the con- crete of the walkway. She stood up from her patch of weeds in the yard, laid her trowel aside and wiped the dirt from her hands. She could see Moffat and a woman she didn’t recog- nize walking slowly up to the front door. The woman was tall and sinewy; the bare arms under the puffed sleeves of her blouse were lean and muscular. Her skin was smooth and vaguely shiny, like she’d been dipped in molasses. “Come in,” Jane said, gesturing at Moffat like he was an expected guest. She wondered how one was sup- posed to talk to the houseman when he appeared at the front door, late, and with a guest. Should she be stern? Beatific? She led the pair into the living room and sat down in an arm- chair, embarrassed about the mud smeared on her legs and under her fingernails. Moffat and the woman huddled on the couch. “This is my wife, madam,” Moffat said. Jane was surprised. Moffat looked ancient and mousy. His wife looked elegant and clear-eyed and, sitting ramrod straight on the couch, she towered over Moffat. There was a pause, and Jane wondered if she should offer the couple tea. Yes, she would, she thought, and moved to get up. Just then Moffat and his wife rustled, and spoke to each other in hushed voices. They looked at Jane expectant- ly and she sat down again. “Madam,” Moffat began, “we had a thief in our house last night.” Jane listened while the story unfolded. A pair of rob- bers had slid into Moffat’s house late the previous night. They had come in through the plastic sheet that covered up the unfinished part of the roof. Jane wondered what the rob- bers would have been after. There was nothing to steal in the house, the only beauty those flashing flowers on the table. “My wife heard the thieves before I did, madam; she fought with them.” Jane glanced at the tall woman on her couch. “There was a fight, madam; one of the thieves, he cut my wife,” Moffat turned to his wife again, and nodded abruptly. Jane watched as Moffat’s wife reached up to her head-scarf and pulled one side of the colorful fabric aside to reveal her neck. It was streaked with blood. “They cut her head, madam,” Moffat said. Jane saw the gash that had been hidden; it curved along the side of her dark head above her ear. It was clotted with black, drying blood, a glint of bone visible. Jane swallowed and tried not to recoil. She felt like she might cry. “Madam, we need to ask you for a ride in your car to the teaching hospital. My wife needs to see a doctor. Maybe they need to sew her skin.” “Umm ... now?” Jane asked, swallowing her tears of hor- ror, and longing for her chair in the yard, her trowel and her weeds. She rubbed ineffectively at the dirt on her hands. “Let me get my keys,” she said. Moffat’s wife sat still and calm on the couch. Her thin, straight body and the knot of brilliant cotton on her head made her appear as exotic as a statue. The teaching hospital lay on the outskirts of Lusaka. Jane proceeded hesitantly, for she hated driving here. She was nervous, the streets were rutted with deep holes, and people and animals and other cars tended to appear without warn- ing. She sat stiff and gripped the wheel tensely, leaning for- ward with concentration. The sun was in her eyes, and she fumbled to pull down the visor. She crawled along through the traffic, unsure exactly where to go, which turns to make. Occasionally Moffat would lean forward fromwhere he sat in the back seat with his wife and point one way or another, and Jane would dutifully turn. The halls of the hospital were filled with people. Moffat J A N U A R Y 2 0 0 7 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 51 Moffat’s house was surrounded by hundreds of others just like it in a maze of a neighborhood.