Memory Wall: Stories by Anthony Doerr Read Free Book Online Page B

nowhere near the front of the line. Every hour or so a bleary nurse walks up and down the queue and says, in Xhosa, how grateful she is for everybody’s patience. The clinic, she says, is waiting for antibiotics.
    Pheko can feel Temba’s sweat soaking through the towel around him. The boy’s cheeks are the color of dishwater. “Temba,” Pheko whispers. Once the boy raises his face weakly and Pheko can see the wobbling pinpoints of the light towers reflected in the sheen of his eyes.
    T HAT S AME H OUR
    Roger and Luvo enter Alma Konachek’s house in the earliest hours of Sunday morning. Alma doesn’t wake. Her breathing sounds steadily from the bedroom. Roger wonders if perhaps the houseboy has given her a sedative.
    Luvo tromps upstairs. Roger opens the refrigerator and closes it; he contemplates stepping out into the garden to smoke a cigarette. He feels, very keenly tonight, that he is almost out of time. Down below the balcony, somewhere past the fog, Cape Town sleeps.
    Absently, for no reason, Roger opens the drawer beside the dishwasher. He has stood in this kitchen on seventeen different nights but has never before opened this drawer. Inside Roger can see butane lighters, coins, a box of staples. And a single beige polymer cartridge, identical to the hundreds upstairs.
    Roger picks up the cartridge and holds it to the window. Number 4510.
    “Kid,” Roger calls, raising his voice to the ceiling. “Kid.” Luvo does not reply. Roger walks upstairs and waits. The boy is hooked into the machine. His torso seems to vibrate lightly.After another minute the machine sighs, and Luvo’s eyes flit open. The boy sits back and grinds his palms into his eyesockets. Roger holds up the new cartridge.
    “Look at this.” There is a shakiness in Roger’s voice that surprises them both.
    Luvo reaches and takes it. “Have I seen this before?”
    C ARTRIDGE 4510
    Alma is in a movie theater with Harold. They are perhaps thirty years old. The movie is about scuba divers. Onscreen, white birds with forked tails soar above a beach. Light touches the tops of breaking waves. Alma and Harold sit side by side, Alma in a bright green dress, green shoes, green plastic earrings, Harold in an expensive brown shirt. The side of Harold’s knee presses against the side of Alma’s. Luvo can feel a dim electricity traveling between them.
    Now the camera slips underwater. Rainbows of fish flit across the screen. Reefs scroll past. Alma’s heart does its steady work.
    The memory jerks forward; Alma and Harold are in a cab, Alma’s camera bag on the bench seat between them. They travel through a place that looks to Luvo like Camps Bay. Everything out the windows is vague; it is as if, for Alma, there is nothing to look at all. There is only feeling, only anticipation, only her young husband beside her.
    In another breath they are climbing the steps of a regal, cream-colored hotel, backed by moonlit cliffs. Gulls soar everywhere. A little gold-lettered sign reads
Twelve Apostles Hotel.
Inside the lobby a willowy woman in a white shirt and white pants with a gold belt buckle gives them a key on a brass chain; they pad down a series of hallways.
    In the hotel room Alma lets out a succession of bright, genuine laughs. She gulps wine. Everything is pristine; two spotless windows, a wide white bed, richly ruffled lampshades. Harold switches on a music player and takes off his shoes and dances clumsily in his socks. Out the windows, range after range of spotlit waves fold over onto a beach.
    After what might be a few minutes Harold leaps the balcony railing and takes off his shirt and socks. “Come with me,” he calls, and Alma takes her camera bag and follows him down onto the beach. Alma laughs as Harold charges into the wavebreak. He splashes around a bit, grinning hugely. “Freezing!” he shouts. As he walks out of the water, Alma raises her camera, and takes a photograph.
    If they say anything more to one another, it is not remembered, not