The Last Flight of Poxl West by Daniel Torday Read Free Book Online

and ready for bed, but clearly something was eating at her. Hazy as I was, I sat and listened.
    â€œFor a long time I’ve wanted to tell you the story of my childhood,” she said. “Now that you’ve met the Brauns, and will surely see them again before long, I’ll tell you. But before I tell you, before I do, first I must know something from you, something I’ve been needing to know: What do you think of my work? Of what I do for money?”
    She turned on a lamp, stood and lit the burner on the stove, brewed some tea. This wasn’t going to be a quick conversation, and I steeled myself for it. Unlike our first time together, now when Françoise made tea for me, we would go through the ritual of allowing it to steep, and then actually drink it. I’d learned to wait patiently while she finished this ritual before we could talk again. It gave me time to consider an answer. I was not displeased with her. I did not long to leave her. I’d never known a different version of her—this was simply Françoise, the same Françoise I’d first met. I’d tried in the past, against my better judgment, to think of her with her clients, but all I could think of was my mother and her cuckolding painter. I grew angry, but not at Françoise. I did not know where to put the anger. In our time together I’d learned not to ask. I did not know then what I even thought love was—I only knew that in the moments when I was with Françoise I did not want to be anywhere else in the world.
    But I could not say any of that now. When Françoise returned with our tea I said, “You do what you do. It’s the only way I’ve ever known you. What can I say? When I’m with you, I’m happy.”
    Françoise handed me my tea. She did not look me in the eyes, but sipped at her tea while I sipped at mine.
    â€œI think I knew that,” she said. She sighed, and we were both quiet.
    And then she started in on her story.
    Françoise explained that her father was a colonialist who had gone to the Congo, a Dutch protectorate at the time, to oversee an investment, and had returned with her mother, who was herself the daughter of a colonialist. Her mother, Françoise’s grandmother, was Congolese, though from my time growing up in Leitmeritz, I’d never encountered anyone with such a background, and I did not know until she told me that Françoise was one-quarter African. She was taupe. Freckled. There was a touch of albinism in her tan skin, which to the eye of one who knows such things might have been a distinguishing feature of her background. To a young Czechoslovak who for the first time was seeing a Dutch woman in Rotterdam, she was simply bronzed.
    As Françoise told me this I sat up on a sofa in her apartment, giving her full attention, attempting not to slouch. Françoise was sitting across from me, her legs tucked under her on a straight-backed chair. When I think of her now I think of the way she was that night: The lightness of her freckles was very light then, the brownness of her cocoa nipples very deep. Her eyes were wide, trained on me as she spoke. She was so young and so unblemished in those days, days when she seemed the most worldly woman I’d ever met.
    When Françoise’s parents returned to Rotterdam they found the house her father had grown up in destroyed by fire. Her father’s investments in the Congo had come to nothing. He sank into a deep depression. Her mother was unable to find a respectable job. The fire and penury led Françoise’s mother to work in a brothel near their home. She sometimes brought home more money in a night than Françoise’s father earned in a week, if he was seeking work at all.
    â€œBy fourteen, I began to work the ships in the harbor myself,” Françoise said, “where sailors had comfortable accommodations belowdecks.
    â€œI was good at my work. Being good meant many