Читать книгу Memory Wall - Anthony Doerr, Anthony Doerr - Страница 19

An infection creeps through Site C, waylaying children shanty by shanty. One hour radio commentators say it’s passed through saliva; the next they say it’s commuted through the air. No, township dogs carry it; no, it’s the drinking water; no, it’s a conspiracy of Western pharmaceutical companies. It could be meningitis, another flu pandemic, some new child-plague. No one seems to know anything. There is talk of public antibiotic dispensaries. There is talk of quarantine.

Friday morning Pheko wakes at four thirty as always and takes the enameled washbasin to the spigot six sheds away. He lays out his razor and soap and washcloth on a towel and squats on his heels, shaving alone and without a mirror in the cool darkness. The sodium lights are off, and a few stars show here and there between clouds. Two house crows watch him in silence from a neighbor’s eave.

When he’s done he scrubs his arms and face and empties the washbasin into the street. At five Pheko carries Temba down the lane to Miss Amanda’s and knocks lightly before entering. Amanda pushes herself up on her elbows from the bed and gives him a groggy smile. He sets still-sleeping Temba on her couch and the boy’s eyeglasses on the table beside him.

On the walk to the Site C station Pheko sees a line of schoolgirls in navy-and-white uniforms, queuing to climb onto a white bus. Each wears a paper mask over her nose and mouth. He climbs the ramp and waits. Down in the grassy field below them forgotten concrete culverts lie here and there like fallen pillars from some foregone civilization, spray-painted with signs: Exacta and Fuck and Blind 43. Rich Get Richer. Jamakota dies please help.

Trains shuttle to and fro like rattling beasts. Pheko thinks, Three more days.