Esi Edugyan - The Second Life of Samuel Tyne

“That’s unfair!” said Eudora, placing her pale, fat hands palm down on the table. “You make it sound like Ray’s out to get you.”

“No, no, I’ll admit it,” said Ray, his mouth down-turned. “This land is ideal for that kind of experimentation. I don’t have even an acre of my own fields to spare for it. But I haven’t been secretly plotting anything, sitting here rubbing my hands together and drooling, trying to plot your downfall. It’s just circumstance, Samuel. The Porters need a home, and I have the money to give them one. If I profit by owning the surrounding land, then that’s my business. Porter will, of course, be paying me back. Otherwise, where do you expect them to go?”

“Where do you expect us to go?” said Maud.

“Your children took their house. This is the one they want. Besides, you won’t care who lives here when you’re back in the city. The price I’m prepared to offer should be enough.” Ray exhaled. “Look, Aster is close-knit — I know that’s why you moved here. One man steals another man’s horse, it’s everyone’s business, and that’s the way it should be. We’re not cold and uncaring like in the city. But crime’s not as easy here, neither. Each man takes an interest and a responsibility in making sure the horse gets returned and the thief gets punished.”

Samuel scoffed. “What is this village mentality you have? And what do you think — I can be convinced to deprive my family of our house and my wife of her only children?”

“I’m trying to do you a favour by not calling the authorities.”

“Call the authorities! This is my house! My property! Do you understand me? Your municipality can have no clause on land I own or who lives on it!”

Ray looked sympathetic. “Generally, you’re right. But if the municipality doesn’t have the right to take a man’s house from him, another man’s children have no right in hell to take it from him, neither.”

Samuel set his jaw, and his voice filled with disgust. “Land of opportunities, land of law and justice. Let me tell you, all I have learned in coming here is that nationalities don’t matter — men are everywhere the same. When trouble comes, they never tire of looking for something to blame their misfortunes on. A child dies of malaria, and his mother nearly commits suicide trying to find out who sent the mosquito to her child. Always blame, blame, blame, as though there were no such thing as accidents. Let me tell you, my uncle, he took the blame of my family to such an extent that he let the conflicts of the past dictate and, quite frankly, belittle the rest of life. With such a mentality, what is the point in trying to live with each other?”

His words induced a silence more tired than thoughtful, and for some time the group sat dispossessed, wary of each other. Samuel kept glancing at Maud, for only the sight of her disillusionment was strong enough to revive his anger. The argument died into a silence both factions found hard to sit out. As the Franks rose to go, Samuel, relenting, said, “And if they tell you they did not do it?”

Ray exhaled with impatience. “They did it.”

“But if they tell it to you?”

“We’ll see.”

As soon as Samuel had closed the door on the Franks, he heard his wife crying. He wanted to abolish what lay before them with a single, convincing phrase. But he felt tired, and didn’t himself believe in a clean solution. They admitted the severity of their situation, and sat for a time without talking. He dropped his head to hide his twitching eye and spoke to his lap.

“Are the twins awake?”

Maud looked up, startled. “Samuel, please.”

“No, you please,” he said, but without aggression. “Are they?”

“Yes. Yes, I think so.”

He rose without further speech. Maud followed him, the sound of her crying echoing up the stairwell. He put a finger to her lips as they reached the top. The door to the girls’ room was open, and Samuel stepped through it, suppressing an urge to leave.

The twins sat on the cot nearest to the door, their cold eyes fixed behind him. He was filled with the terrible wonder of not being able to tell them apart. Also, there was their silence, and that stillness about them. The room smelled of stale water, of putrid smoke. Both girls looked frail and haggard, as though they, like Maud, had lost weight and gained age. They had bathed, but not thoroughly, and traces of dirt shaded their ears and other hollows. Samuel was saddened by the sight of what could be evidence, and unsettled at how each seemed like a reflection of the other.

But studying them, he discerned a difference: he saw fear in one and hostility in the other. When he addressed them, Ama sprang up in the far bed, where she’d been pretending to sleep, and tried to say something with her eyes. Samuel and Maud glanced at each other, as though agreeing to get through the worst first, and ignoring Ama, Samuel asked his daughters where they had been.

The girl on the right flinched, giving her sister a quick look.

“Do your eyes have tongues? What is it you are saying that cannot be said to us?”

“Samuel,” said Maud.

Samuel crouched in front of the girl on the right. “Yvie, if it is you to whom I’m speaking, please tell me what is wrong. Your mother and I, we want for you only what you want for yourselves. If it is journalism, be journalists. If it is politics, be politicians. What we cannot condone is the two of you hurting each other, or hurting those around you.” He paused with emotion. Chloe made an imperceptive eye gesture, and Yvette blinked. Samuel stood. “This has been a summer of accidents. Me, your mother, Ama. We accept them as misfortunes from God, and they are behind us.” He crouched again, his face tense and serious. “What we need to know is if what happened next door — are we to take what has happened there as an act of God, as the doing of people far removed from us, or is there yet more to the story? Does that dirt on your hands mean anything but that you have fallen in mud?”

“Samuel!” said Maud. But Samuel could tell her objection arose from habit and fear.

“Yvie, Chloe,” Maud said. “Just tell us you didn’t set that fire. I— we know you didn’t, but you’re going to have to say it. First to us, then to Ray Frank. Please . We know you didn’t.”

“You are not responsible,” said Samuel. “Of this we are certain. But given the circumstances — you ran out, you came back at the end …” Already annoyed, Samuel grew agitated when Maud started to cry again, and he stepped away from her to continue.

“You go and you come back soot-covered, and—”

“With a lighter,” screamed Ama, her voice so righteous she silenced the room. “They have a lighter, a fancy silver one. They were coughing when they came back and talking that gibberish, and the room stunk so bad with smoke it gave me asthma! It’s those letters, those brushes! They’re making them crazy. This house is making them crazy.”

Samuel was pained to hear this from her mouth.

Ama began to cry. “Don’t leave me here with them,” she said. “Don’t you leave me here! I can’t live here any more, I can’t. Take me back to Grandmère. Don’t you leave me here.”

Samuel and Maud neared the door, solemn, but unable to leave without an answer. Maud was the first to go, leaving Samuel alone. He confronted the twins’ cold, impassive faces.

“Will you not absolve yourselves?” he said.

They fixated on the dark hallway beyond him.

The weather in the coming week heralded autumn. The leaves rusted almost overnight. Trees grew nude, baring arthritic sticks. The river aged to the colour of lead, and the men of Peahorn Street, solemn, despondent, began to meet under the early streetlights to discuss the horror of another winter without work.